by Brown,Dick
“Mr. Jefferson sounds like a good man. He also grills some of the best steaks in Texas at the country club. So you think Junior’s a pretty good football player?” Jack asked, steering the subject back to football.
“Yeah, he is. Funny, I never noticed that we had different color skin until we started school in the first grade. I went to Bois D’Arc Elementary and he went to Dunbar Elementary. I got into a lot of fights because kids said I lived in nigger town and wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I even asked my mother if I could go to school with Junior. Things were never the same after that. But we stayed good friends and are finally getting to play on the same football team come fall. We’re hoping to get a shot at district.”
“You only won four games last year,” Jack said, a little surprised at Rod’s cockiness. “What makes you think your record will be any better this year?”
“Because I’ve played three years with the seniors coming back and grew up playing cow-pasture ball with most of the boys coming over from Booker T.”
Pulling out his handkerchief to wipe his brow, Jack said, “It’s getting too damn hot out here. After this hole, what say we take a break over there under that live oak tree by number three tee?” Distracted by their talk, Jack carded a double bogey on the shortest hole of the course, much to his chagrin.
Rod wet Jack’s handkerchief at the water cooler by the tree and handed it back to the heavily sweating golfer. Then he took his own red bandanna, soaked it in cold water, tied it back around his neck, and welcomed the shiver it sent down his spine.
Not a man to mince words, Jack picked up one of the chairs and moved it into the shade next to the water cooler. “How would you like to go to school in Dallas this fall?”
Caught off guard, Rod responded slowly. “Why . . . Why would I want to do that? What’s wrong with Bois D’Arc? We’re not as big as most of the Dallas schools, but we can hold our own. I think we have just as good a chance at district this year as Plainfield.”
“Think about it, son,” Jack said. “Every coach in the Southwest Conference, the best in the country, is on a first-name basis with those Dallas coaches. You’ve got what it takes to make it at a big college—speed, size, brains, and one of the strongest arms I’ve ever seen. You can kill a team a dozen different ways. Play somewhere you can showcase all that talent.”
Flushed with embarrassment, Rod answered. “I appreciate that, but I can’t leave my mother, little sister, and brother. I’m the man of the house . . . they depend on me. Even if I did go, I’d be like a fish out of water. I’m a small-town boy, don’t think I would like it in a big school in Dallas. Besides, with our schools combined, we are in their league now. I can showcase my talent right here whipping some big-city butts.”
“Big talk, but you won’t get the attention of the major college scouts like they do,” Jack said.
“If we’re good, they have to notice. If we beat some good Dallas teams, they’ll pay attention.”
“Maybe you’re right. It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind. But at least think about Dallas this fall. I can arrange it for you, even move your whole family. Just say the word. I own some property there and wouldn’t be surprised if your momma found a job, too.” He gave Rob an exaggerated wink as he turned and filled up his cup with ice-cold water.
Rod was thinking about it. His mind was spinning a mile a minute. He’s right, I could get the attention of the big colleges, more than at Bois D’Arc. But if I didn’t make it as a starter, I would waste my whole senior year and any shot at being recruited by Texas A&M or SMU. Why should I risk it? And what about Cass? We’ve been secretly dating since last year against her father’s and grandfather’s wishes. I’d lose the one person I love most, who accepts me for who I am, not where I live.
“Jack, I want to go to college and football is my only chance to get there. I don’t want to do anything to mess that up. I just want to play here. It’s home and where I need to be. Besides, Coach Haskins says he’s depending on me to pull this team together for a shot at a district championship.” Rod paused for a minute. “And there’s Cass Worthington, my girlfriend. I don’t want to leave her.”
“Holy shit, your girlfriend is the granddaughter of old Randolph? Wow! Son, you do think big. Do you think for a second he or his disappointment of a son, John, will stand for that when they find out about your little secret? You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t try to have you arrested. He swings a lot of weight in this town. I’ve had my share of run-ins with him and he’s a tough old bird. He and his bank run this town with an iron fist. You don’t have a chance, son. I’d hate to see you get on the wrong side of old man Worthington over his granddaughter. If he liked you, he could really help you. But he doesn’t like you, and he can destroy you.
“Well, that’s enough talk about football for one day,” Jack said dejectedly. “It’s too damn hot for golf anyway. Let’s head back to the clubhouse and get something cold to drink?”
Chapter 3
Cool and dimly lit, the lounge was a comfortable refuge from the Texas sun bearing down on the open golf course. Jack had already finished his first beer by the time Rod returned from the kitchen after a chat with Junior.
“This is the best part of playing golf, son. The nineteenth hole makes up for all the rest.” Jack waved to the bartender for another beer and a Coke for Rod. “Hope I didn’t bother you with that talk about moving to Dallas. It’s just that I’ve watched you develop over the last couple of years into a really good quarterback. With better coaching, you could write your own ticket next year for college. You know, you kinda remind me of myself when I was in high school,” Jack said before taking a long drag on the Salem Menthol he’d just started smoking. They didn’t taste as good as Camels, but to get old Doc McCombs off his back, he’d promised to try them.
“My daddy wanted me to go into the Army right out of high school,” Jack said, “but I wasn’t so hot on that. It worked out okay, though. We played six-man football out in West Texas and even then some of us still had to play both ways. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to Texas A&M.”
Another beer loosened Jack up a little more and brought down the wall to a part of his life no one had ever heard him mention. Rod took in every word. By the late afternoon he knew more about the mysterious Jack Workman than anybody in Bois D’Arc.
“I was a lot bigger in those days.” Jack fumbled around for his wallet and fished out a tattered photo to show Rod how he towered over the rest of his Texas A&M teammates. “If it hadn’t been for the war, Coach Lowe said I could have played in the pros. At six-four and two hundred forty-eight pounds, I was usually the biggest man on the field. We had already beaten Texas on Thanksgiving Day and just finished a good season with a big win over SMU when Pearl Harbor was bombed.”
His mind drifted as he stared into space. Then all of a sudden Jack snapped back. “You couldn’t believe the commotion around there when Pearl Harbor went up in smoke. The whole damn corps volunteered. I was going to be a hotshot fighter pilot, but they said I was too big to fit into the cockpit and assigned me to a transport squadron.”
“Did you see any action?” Rod broke in, pleading for more with his eyes.
“Sort of,” Jack said. “I spent most of the war flying supplies over the hump, as they called it, into China. They had their own private little war going on over there between the communists and Chiang Kai-shek, as well as the one with the Japanese.”
Jack bolted up from his seat. “How about you and me going up and grabbing some sky?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Don’t worry about Mr. Gardner, I’ll square things with him,” Jack said, crossing the clubhouse dining room, a little unsteady on his feet in search of the men’s room first, then Mr. Gardner.
Rod quickly ran back to the kitchen. “Junior, Jack’s going to take me up in his airplane!”
About that time Jack reappeared. Rod brought Junior with him from the kitchen.
“Come on, Rod, let’s go.” Jack slurred a little. “Everything’s okay with Mr. Gardner, he just said he won’t be responsible if we don’t come back.”
“Wait, Jack, I want you to meet my friend Junior.”
“Glad to meet you, Junior. Heard a lot of good things about you from Rod here.” Turning toward the door, Jack called Rod again, “Come on, son, we’re wasting flying time.”
It took only a few minutes to reach Jack’s private hangar at the airfield where he operated his airfreight business. He taxied his Cessna 210 out to the main runway. Rod’s knuckles were bloodless from his death grip on the metal frame of his seat. The takeoff was smooth and the air calm as the red and white single-engine Cessna cruised above Bois D’Arc so low he could wave to people busily scurrying around downtown. Rod’s breakfast almost came up when Jack pulled the nose up and made his stomach do flip-flops. They zoomed over countryside that looked like a patchwork quilt. Jack put the plane through some deep turns and barrel rolls to impress Rod. Three beers were nothing. Jack could hold his booze and knew what he was doing.
It didn’t seem as though they had been the air any time when the sun began its western descent.
“We better start heading back,” Jack said. Not much was said during the return flight. Rod was too caught up in keeping his breakfast down and the thrill of soaring through the air free as a bird. The landing was a little bouncy for the lightweight aircraft.
Jack taxied the aircraft as smoothly to its hanger as if he were driving his Lincoln Continental.
“Well, what do you think?”
“It was really cool. Can we go up again sometime?”
“Sure, anytime you want. But right now I better get you home before your mother starts worrying.”
They climbed into his silver Lincoln Continental. Jack’s size fourteen cowboy boots hit the accelerator, kicking up gravel as they sped off.
On the ride back to town, Rod relived the free feeling of flight with his friend. Dust settled on the Continental as it rolled to a stop in front of Rod’s house on Alamo Street. It wasn’t exactly the neighborhood one would expect to house the star quarterback dating the granddaughter of the town’s richest citizen. All the homes were exactly alike—small and well-kept with yards full of young children playing and chasing summer lightning bugs.
Jack turned to Rod before he popped the door locks.
In a serious tone, Jack said, “I have a proposition for you to talk to your mother about tonight.”
Rod, sensing another pitch for moving to Dallas, butted in, “Will you be playing golf again tomorrow?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I will be playing golf, but not tomorrow or at the country club. I have to fly up to Washington, D.C. in a couple of days on business, and I would like you to go with me. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ll square things with Mr. Gardner and pay you to caddy for me at the Congressional Country Club. We’ll do some sightseeing after I take care of business. What do you say? I know your mother doesn’t know me,” Jack quickly added. “I’ll be glad to come in and talk to her if you want me to.”
“No . . . I mean yes I would like to go, but let me handle Momma, she’ll come around, I’m sure,” Rod said, sitting on the edge of his seat.
“Okay, but I need to know tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I get to the clubhouse in the morning,” Rod said over his shoulder as he bounded out of the car to his front door. He was inside before Jack pulled away from the house.
“Momma, Momma,” Rod called, “can I go to Washington, D.C. with Mr. Workman?”
Chapter 4
Before he went to bed that night, Rod convinced his mother, Mary Virginia Miller, that Jack Workman was trustworthy enough for Rod to go to Washington with him for several days.
Two days later, she had packed his only two pairs of worn but neatly pressed jeans and a couple of T-shirts and underwear in his father’s battered cardboard suitcase with the frayed corners. He would wear his Sunday clothes—dark blue dress slacks, white short-sleeve shirt, and freshly polished, black lace-up shoes.
Mary Virginia cleared the lunch plate with its crumbs from Rod’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With a worried look she said, “I trust Mr. Workman to take care of you. I want you to listen to him. Do everything he says. You’ve never been to a big city before.” She went to the kitchen cabinet and got down a coffee can that held her savings. “You will need some money.” She tried to hand him five wrinkled one-dollar bills from her sewing jobs.
“No, Momma, he’s going to pay me to caddy for him and all my expenses. I’ll have plenty of money. You keep that. You worked too hard for it.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. “My boy is all grown up. Your daddy would be so proud.”
The silver Continental rolled up and Jack honked the horn. Rod’s mother grabbed him and almost squeezed the breath out of him. “Be careful and come home safely to us.”
“I will,” he promised and pulled away from her grip. He hustled out the door and soon disappeared in the cloud of dust kicked up by the Continental. She stood in the doorway waving until they were out of sight. It was the first time he had ever left home, an experience that she knew would be repeated when he went away to college—if he could get a scholarship. But it didn’t make it any easier.
Rod was in awe and a little nervous as he buckled in next to the window in the Boeing 707 jetliner. Being able to see where the wing attached to the aircraft fuselage below his seat gave him a guarded sense of security. He drank several sodas to quench his dry mouth, driven by nerves he tried to hide from Jack. Jack took his comfort in the tiny brown bottles the stewardess served from the cart she pushed up and down the aisle. Rod knew Jack’s reputation for drinking, but trusted him to stay sober while they were together.
The flight seemed long and was a little bumpy. Before their descent into the pitch-black night the pilot turned on the seatbelt light. Rod was glued to his window when the plane banked to circle Washington National Airport for its approach. The pilot called their attention to the white marble monuments, the Capitol dome, and the White House washed spotless in the bright beams of hundreds of lights. He’d never seen anything as beautiful in his life. They were much more beautiful than the pictures in his history book.
Suddenly his stomach lurched. The plane was headed straight into the Potomac River. He gave Jack a panicked look. The floor seemed to be dropping out from under them.
“Don’t worry, son, we aren’t going into the river.” Jack put his hand on Rod’s shoulder. “It looks like it every time I fly into National Airport. It’s just they made the runway longer for these bigger jetliners by building it to the edge of the Potomac River. The pilot has to hit it perfectly at the edge of the water. They do it all the time and haven’t gone in the drink yet.”
As soon as the plane parked and the stewardess opened the door, Jack was up and retrieved their luggage from the overhead stowage. “Stay close behind me, this is no place to get lost.”
Rod’s eyes popped as they waded through the throng of people in the terminal, making their way to the curb outside lined with taxis. He had never seen so many foreigners in his life. Actually, he had never seen a foreigner before. Mexicans didn’t count. All the ones he knew were born in Texas.
“Stay close,” Jack warned Rod again. “Taxi,” Jack called, standing out in the crowd with his black Stetson and western-cut jacket, bolo tie, and boot-cut jeans over his cowboy boots. He waved his arm, flagging down a yellow cab. The dark-skinned driver wearing a turban opened the trunk for their luggage. As the cab pulled away, Jack slipped the driv
er a twenty-dollar bill to take the scenic route to the hotel.
“How do you know your way around?” Rod asked.
“I spent some time up here after the war. Too many politicians and not enough open space to suit me,” Jack said. “It pays to know some of those politicians though. That’s why we’re here. I need a little help landing some government contract work. Listen, son, when you aren’t an important person yourself, you have to know people who are important to ever get anywhere in this world. Senator Langtree is an old A&M teammate of mine. After the war, he was too lazy to get a real job, so he got into politics.” Jack chuckled and watched for Rod’s reaction.
“I didn’t know you knew any important people in Washington,” Rod said, surprised.
“It doesn’t hurt to have a good friend who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially now that there is a big push on spreading government contracts around to small businesses. He helped me get that old World War II fighter training base in Bois D’Arc by having it declared surplus. I got the whole thing for practically nothing. Same thing with the surplus DC-3s to get the air-freight business started.”
Rod was only half listening. He was looking at the marble-domed Jefferson Memorial glowing in bright white lights as they crossed over the Potomac River. They were on their way to the Willard Hotel by way of the Capitol building and the White House. The cab darted through traffic and down Constitution Avenue, where Rod craned his neck when they drove right past the U.S. Capitol, trying to see the dome with the Statue of Freedom perched on top.
The buildings and monuments that looked like miniatures as they circled to land were so big up close it was hard for Rod to take it all in. From their Capitol Hill vantage point, he saw the Washington Monument sitting like a rocket on its launch pad on the Washington Mall. He was overwhelmed by the evening light show of the city of monuments. The Smithsonian Institution and the House and Senate office buildings were on his list of things to tour. A slow drive-by of the White House with its tall wrought-iron fence protecting the palace where the President lived topped it off. After seeing so many sights, that night Rod wondered what they would do tomorrow.
