The Legend of Jesse Smoke

by Robert Bausch

  Yet, here’s the thing. Hundreds of thousands of people believe this—believe the moon landing was faked! In spite of the impossibility of more than three people keeping a secret of any scale; in spite of six other missions to the same place. I mean, does anyone wonder if any if those subsequent missions were faked? Whether the photographs taken on those missions had the right sort of shadows? And if all the others were faked, did the same conspirators get in on the act, too, or did they have to enlist new participants in the lie? All seven missions lined up and faked with the same people and they all kept the secret? And did all those people finally decide it was better to fake a failure? Was Apollo 13 faked as well?

  You see how utterly stupid some people insist on being?

  And so: Moon Landing Ignorance.

  The rumors about Jesse didn’t hurt her immediately; but then we did not foresee the effect they would have on her endorsements. First, some of the women’s products sponsors started pulling back. No reason was ever given; she just suddenly wasn’t so important to some of the perfume people or the clothing manufacturers. With the training shoe company she had a one year contract, so those ads continued. But a hair salon dropped out, and then an appliance store. Mostly local people, but … you could see what was going on. And all of them would be damn sorry later on, I can tell you.

  How could I change anyone’s mind about Jesse? For hundreds of thousands of people, she was now a man who had played college football and developed into a great player there, only to then realize he was a woman and get a sex change operation. And who was this mystery man, anyway? That’s what the press began to wonder. No one ever posed the question: If this guy played college football so well, why wasn’t he famous before the operation? And where had this mystery man played college football, anyway?

  All of that hoopla and all she’d done for us was kick the ball—and, of course, thrown and completed a single pass during a fluke play of an exhibition game. Through everything, Jesse didn’t care. “I just want to think about the next game,” she’d say.

  With Kelso gone and Ambrose nursing a sore shoulder and arm, Jesse got to throw more than a few balls in practice. In fact, during the week we prepared for the Giants, she played quarterback on the practice team—the offense that our defense practices against. I was really busy working with our offense, all the way over on another field, but I heard from a few of the guys on defense that she handled herself like a pro. “Those guys scored on us,” Orlando said after practice one day. “No shit.”

  “Really?”

  “She can throw the thing a mile,” he said.

  Our two backup wide receivers—a kick returner named Jeremy Frank and a quick little speedster named Sean Rice—played especially hard against our defense. Rice frequently got in games with the first-string offense whenever we had three-receiver sets, but in practice he was the one who imitated the opposing team’s number one receiver, so he played on the right or left side. It was always a gas for the second stringers to beat the number one defense in the league, which, after four games, is what we had.

  “Who’s she throwing the ball to?” I asked. We were walking on the track, toward the locker room.

  “Mostly Rice,” Orlando said. “He caught six balls today. Two for touchdowns.”

  “Really?”

  “She hit Jeremy with a few balls, too. She can throw it.”

  “I know.”

  “If she is a she,” Orlando said.

  “She is, goddamn it.”

  He looked hard at me, which required that he nearly bend over. I looked up at him with what I hoped was a scowl on my face. “Don’t believe any of those lies, Orlando,” I said. “Okay? It’s just folks who can’t accept the fact that a woman might actually play this game as well as a man.”

  “Well she do,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what might happen if she ever get hit really hard, but … she quick on her feet and move just like a pro.”

  “And she’s got a killer release,” I said.

  “Sure do.”

  “Tell Coach Engram about it,” I said.

  He nodded, a half smile on his face.

  “It’s all on film, right?” I said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Well, I’ll mention it to him, too.” Then I told him he was having a great year.

  “I got a long way to go,” he said. “A long way.”

  He, too, talked like a champion. Walking up to the locker room, I couldn’t help feeling like maybe my job was safe after all, at least for another year. And even if we were just 2 and 2, I was pretty sure we would knock off the Giants.

  Nineteen

  The Giants came out running the ball and ran right at Orlando Brown. Their first drive went from their 28 to our 1-yard line on thirteen runs and only one short pass around midfield to their tight end on a third and 2 play. The Giant right tackle was a huge, strong man named Edward Engel who’d been watching film of Orlando all week. On the first play, and many thereafter, Engel stood up like he was going to pass block, only to duck down in front of Orlando’s charge. The rookie would put his hands down to get ready to jump over what looked like a roll block, then Engel would hit him square in the gut and just push him out of the way. The fullback and tight end took out the linebacker and the cornerback on that side. The Giants also pulled their guard and their tackle from the left side, the center would take out anybody who followed them, and both of those huge blockers would just smash around the right end. Our cornerback, a very good player named Jerry Walls, who was supposed to force the play back inside on runs around the end, was no match for that herd of blockers coming around that side. The Giant running backs would get to the outside and just dance through the bodies. They averaged 7.9 yards a carry, and the longest run of the day was 18 yards, so you have some idea how many times they wiped us out on that side. Even putting both safeties up close to the line in what is called “the box” was no help.

  And all of it was because Orlando got handled so completely. He just wasn’t there to clog things up. He got pushed so far back, in fact, he sometimes got credited for the tackle downfield. He just never gave up. It wasn’t that Engel was stronger, or even better, than Orlando; he just knew more, had more experience, and could outplay him with that experience. You knew others would try his technique on our prize rookie, but eventually he’d learn how to counter it. By the fourth quarter of that game, in fact, he could already stall that move a little better. He was learning even as we watched him. But it was too late for our game plan.

  We scored two touchdowns. Jesse made the two extra points. She never got to try a field goal, though. The Giants drove on us all day, using up most of the clock and racking up a commanding 24 points.

  Ken Spivey played well enough but couldn’t get it done when it counted. Twice, he had Exley wide open down the sideline. One of those times he threw it out-of-bounds, and the other he threw it clear over Exley’s head. He finished with 16 completions out of 28 attempts, for 155 yards and 2 touchdowns. No interceptions. It wasn’t a bad performance. But those two missed opportunities hurt.

  Nobody was happy on the ride back to Washington. We were now 2 and 3 and in second to last place in the division. And our next opponent was the Oakland Raiders, who in our first exhibition game had already made us look like a high school junior varsity team.

  The good news? We’d be playing at home.

  The bad news? We’d been playing at home when the Raiders kicked our asses the first time. We’d been shown to be the weaker team, then, and it was only clearer now. The Raiders were undefeated—5 and 0. And the mystique surrounding Jesse had pretty much worn off. She was our kicker and that was that. Given how badly they’d licked us before, and the way we were playing, it wasn’t likely to be a packed house. And nothing irritated Mr. Flores more than seeing empty seats at home.

  Not that he didn’t always make money; technically, we were always sold out. All the tickets to the stadium were season tickets, and the Redskins had sold out ever
y game since the early 1970s. But folks didn’t always come to the games, and empty seats are very bad for publicity and future sales of team paraphernalia. Empty seats mean fewer sales of food and beer and other assorted souvenirs on game day and much less in parking revenues. So it was never good to have them.

  We were not looking forward to Sunday afternoon.

  In fact, the night we got back from New York, Coach Engram called a meeting.

  He wanted all the coaches, but it was clear we were going to be working on the offensive game plan for the Raiders. We were going to run the ball, he said. The passing game was going to be limited. He respected the way the Giants dominated the field, pushed our vaunted, league-leading defense out of the way with old-fashioned sweeps and runs up the gut. “That’s football at its most basic,” he said. “And we’re going to do the same thing to the Raiders.”

  “I’d like nothing better,” I said.

  “Dan Wilber asked for it,” Engram said. “On the ride home.”

  “He did?”

  “The whole offensive line wants to stick it down somebody’s throat.”

  “You think they can do that against Oakland’s guys up front?”

  “They think they can.”

  We talked about the poor showing on the left of our line—the way the Giants continued to run around their right side.

  “Orlando was starting to correct at the end there,” Engram said.

  Our defensive coordinator was a tall, puffy guy named Greg Bayne. He’d been a safety in his playing days, but now you wouldn’t put him anywhere but nose guard. He was the one who begged us to draft Orlando Brown and was particularly upset with his prize rookie’s play that night. When Engram said he thought Orlando was getting a little better by the end of the game, Bayne said, “Only because Engel got tired of pushing him around.”

  “Well, he’s got a lot to learn yet,” Engram said.

  “A lot. I think I’m going to play him only when we think Oakland’s going to be passing.”

  “It’s your call. Your defense,” Engram said. “But I wish you wouldn’t do that to him.”

  “On first and ten,” Bayne said, “Oakland runs the ball sixty-eight percent of the time. That counts as a running down. So does second and under five yards to go. They run a lot then, too. When they’re third and long—eight to ten or more, Orlando will play to rush the passer. If I think they’re going to run the ball, he’s coming out of there.”

  We were sitting around a big table under long, hanging neon lights in the biggest meeting room at Redskins Park. The lights looked like the kind you see dangling over pool tables. Cigar smoke used to fill that room when I first started coaching here, but these days, this evening and every evening, the air was as clean and clear as spring water. Anybody who wanted to smoke had to go outside, or step into Engram’s office.

  “What will that do to Orlando’s confidence?” I said. “Won’t take long for him to figure out what you’re doing.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Bayne said. “He’s not happy with what happened against the Giants either, believe me. But the Raiders will see what the Giants did to him on film. They’ve got a guy over there—Ruggins, or whatever his name is—who will eat Orlando alive.”

  It was true. The Raiders had a right tackle who had been All-Pro and who made the Pro Bowl every year since he came into the league. He was almost as tall as Orlando, weighed forty pounds more, and could lift a dump truck. His name was Jon Ruggins.

  “So who’ll fill in on running downs?” I asked.

  “Alvin Parker,” Bayne said.

  Parker had been our starter for the two years before. He was not a great player, but he played the run fairly well. He’d give Ruggins a battle at least on that side. He’d get in the tangle.

  So we were talking about moving some players around. We were discussing the kind of defensive formations we would use to stop Oakland, and then in the middle of it, after a short pause, Bayne said, “What about the quarterback?”

  I looked at him. Coach Engram said, “We’ll get to that.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Greg’s been telling me some things about that girly quarterback of yours.”

  “Really. What about her?”

  “He’s got some film he wants me to see,” said Engram.

  “She plays the second-string offense against our first-string defense and beats them,” Bayne said. “They keep scoring on us, and she doesn’t miss.”

  I couldn’t help feeling like I should jump up and hug the guy. “She won’t miss those long bombs down the sideline,” I said. “You give her time and she’ll pick apart any defense out there.”

  “You think so,” Coach Engram said.

  “And we wouldn’t be playing to any empty seats either,” I said, thinking again of what that might do to our job security. I’m sorry to say I was thinking about that, but … I was. I’d never seen Flores around practice so much, and Coach Engram himself had said a number of times, “This is it, folks. This is the year. We gotta do it.” I think we all knew what was at stake.

  “Then we’re going to have to close practice,” Engram said.

  I couldn’t contain my surprise or excitement. “Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is I’m just tired of missing those open plays downfield.”

  “So …”

  “I’ll make the announcement on Saturday. Enough folks will know about it after that to fill the stadium.”

  “You going to do it, then?” Bayne said.

  Engram just sat there looking at him. I could see he didn’t want to commit to it, even then. But he wanted so badly to win. And those two bad balls Spivey threw were haunting him. He respected me, I knew that. And he believed in Greg Bayne. We were both telling him, as clearly as we knew how, that Jesse could do it.

  What was he supposed to do?

  Twenty

  I stopped Jesse outside the weight room early Monday morning, all excited to give her the news. Coach Engram let me have the honor—believe it or not, we did have a discussion about who would tell her. I figured she might just grab me around the neck and squeeze so hard I’d faint. That’s how I pictured it. I thought she might want me to pick her up and swing her around like a daughter at a wedding reception. All she did was smile a bit and look out at the playing field. “It’s going to be your team, Jesse,” I said, confused by the cool of her reaction.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You’re not nervous are you?”

  She looked at me. “I just wish my father was alive.” And by god her eyes were shining with tears.

  “I wish he was too,” I said and I reached for her.

  But she pulled back, raising her hand up, gently. “No,” she said. “It’s all right.” The tears ran down that pretty freckled face now. “I just never thought …” she trailed off, looking out over the practice field again. A few players came out of the locker room and trotted down the hill.

  “I never thought I’d see this day, either,” I said, trying to finish what she’d started to say.

  And that’s when she reached over, touched my jaw with the tips of her fingers, and whispered, “I have you to thank for all this.” It was the most womanly thing I’d ever heard her say or do with her football uniform on, her voice husky and sad and beautiful. I really did feel kind of fatherly toward her then, as I noticed how perfect her neck was—the small, fine bones under her throat produced exquisite shadows. Suddenly I was terrified for her.

  “I want you to practice that quick release of yours, you hear?”

  She nodded, taking her hand away.

  “You don’t see something right away, throw the damned football into the crowd.”

  “We’re talking game plan right now?”

  I laughed a little. “And another thing, Jesse. You can’t tell anybody about this yet, all right? Coach Engram’s going to close practice. No one can know about this for a while.”

>   “What about Nate?”

  “Not even him.”

  “He said he might come to a practice this week.”

  “He won’t be able to get in. They’ll be closed.”

  She still had the tears running down her face. “Just Nate?”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I said, feeling bad. “Look, I’m sorry. He’ll know soon enough.”

  She didn’t like it, but she wiped her eyes and turned to go into the weight room. “Anyway, thank you,” she said again.

  “We’re going to make history, Jesse,” I said, but I don’t even think she heard me. She was already through the door.

  In spite of my anxiety over her continuing good health, I really was excited about giving Jesse the ball. For one thing, she would be working a lot more with me now. We’d work on the game plan together and be in meetings most of every evening after practice. We’d watch film of the Oakland defense together. She’d have to learn every move they made, every nuance of their defensive alignments.

  She already knew our playbook as well as anyone, myself included. She’d memorized every single facet of our offense. I could talk to her about specific plays and she didn’t need the playbook in her lap to page through it and find what I was talking about. Even Ambrose had to do that once in a while. And Spivey hardly ever went anywhere without his playbook.

  Jesse had the damn thing in her head.