taft robinson was the first black student to be enrolled at Logos College in west Texas. They got him for his speed.
By the end of that first season he was easily one of the best running backs in the history of the Southwest. In time he might have turned up on television screens across the land, endorsing eightthousanddollar automobiles or avocadoflavored instant shave. His name on a chain of fastfood outlets. His life story on the back of cereal boxes. A drowsy monograph might be written on just that subject, the modern athlete as commercial myth, with footnotes. But this doesn't happen to be it. There were other intonations to that year, for me at least, the phenomenon of antiapplause—words broken into brute sound, a consequent silence of metallic texture. And so Taft Robinson, rightly or wrongly, no more than haunts this book. I think it's fitting in a way. The mansion has long been haunted (double metaphor coming up) by the invisible man.
But let's keep things simple. Football players are simple folk. Whatever complexities, whatever dark politics of the human mind, the heart—these are noted only within the chalked borders of the playing field. At times strange visions ripple across that turf; madness leaks out. But wherever else he goes, the football player travels the straightest of lines. His thoughts are wholesomely commonplace, his actions uncomplicated by history, enigma, holocaust or dream.
A passion for simplicity, for the true old things, as of boys on bicycles delivering newspapers, filled our days and nights that fierce summer. We practiced in the undulating heat with nothing to sustain us but the conviction that things here were simple. Hit and get hit: key the pulling guard; run over people; suck some ice and reassume the threepoint stance. We were a lean and dedicated squad run by a hungry coach and his seven oppressive assistants. Some of us were more simple than others; a few might be called outcasts or exiles; three or four, as on every football team, were crazy. But we were all— even myself—we were all dedicated.
We did grass drills at a hundred and six in the sun. We attacked the blocking sleds and strutted through the intersecting ropes. We stood in what was called the chute (a narrow strip of ground bordered on two sides by blocking dummies) and we went one on one, blocker and passrusher, and handfought each other to the earth. We butted, clawed and kicked. There were any number of fistfights. There was one sprawling freeforall, which the coaches allowed to continue for about five minutes, standing on the sidelines looking pleasantly bored as we kicked each other in the shins and threw dumb rights and lefts at caged faces, the more impulsive taking off their helmets and swinging them at anything that moved. In the evenings we prayed.
I was one of the exiles. There were many tunes, believe it, when I wondered what I was doing in that remote and unfed place, that summer tundra, being hit high and low by a foaming pair of 240pound Texans. Being so tired and sore at night that I could not raise an arm to brush my teeth. Being made to obey the savage commands of unreasonable men. Being set apart from all styles of civilization as I had known or studied them. Being led in prayer every evening, with the rest of the squad, by our coach, warlock and avenging patriarch. Being made to lead a simple life.
Then they told us that Taft Robinson was coming to school. I looked forward to his arrival—an event, finally, in a time of incidents and small despairs. But my teammates seemed sullen at the news. It was a break with simplicity, the haunted corner of a dream, some piece of forest magic to scare them in the night.
Taft was a transfer student from Columbia. The word on him was good all the way. (1) He ran the hundred in 9.3 seconds. (2) He had good moves and good hands. (3) He was strong and rarely fumbled. (4) He broke tackles like a man pushing through a turnstile. (5) He could passblock—when in the mood.
But mostly he could fly—a 9.3 clocking for the hundred. Speed. He had sprinter's speed. Speed is the last excitement left, the one thing we haven't used up, still naked in its potential, the mysterious black gift that thrills the millions.
(EXILE or outcast: distinctions tend to vanish when the temperature exceeds one hundred.)
Taft Robinson showed up at the beginning of September, about two weeks before regular classes were to start. The squad, originally one hundred bodies, soon down to sixty, soon less, had reported in the middle of August. Taft had missed spring practice and twenty days of the current session. I didn't think he'd be able to catch up. I was in the president's office the day he arrived. The president was Mrs. Tom Wade, the founder's widow. Everybody called her Mrs. Tom. She was the only woman I had ever seen who might accurately be described as Lincolnesque. Beyond appearance I had no firm idea of her reality; she was tall, blackbrowed, stark as a railroad spike.
I was there because I was a northerner. Apparently they thought my presence would help make Taft feel at home, an idea I tended to regard as laughable. (He was from Brooklyn, having gone on to Columbia from Boys High, a school known for the athletes it turns out.) Mrs. Tom and I sat waiting.
My husband loved this place, she said. "He built it out of nothing. He had an idea and he followed it through to the end. He believed in reason. He was a man of reason. He cherished the very word. Unfortunately he was mute."
I didn't know that.
All he could do was grunt. He made disgusting sounds. Spit used to collect at both corners of his mouth. It wasn't a real pretty sight.
Taft walked in flanked by our head coach, Emmett Creed, and backfield coach, Oscar Veech. Right away I estimated height and weight, about sixtwo, about 210. Good shoulders, narrow waist, acceptable neck. Prize beef at the county fair. He wore a dark gray suit that may have been as old as he was.
Mrs. Tom made her speech.
Young man, I have always admired the endurance of your people. You've a tough row to hoe. Frankly I was against this from the start. When they told me their plan, I said it was bushwah. Complete bushwah. But Emmett Creed is a mighty persuasive man. This won't be easy for any of us. But what's reason for if not to get us through the hard times? There now. I've had my say. Now you go on ahead with Coach Creed and when you're all thoo talking football you be sure to come on back here and see Mrs. Berry Trout next door. She'll get you all settled on courses and accommodations and things. History will be our ultimate judge.
Then it was my turn.
Gary Harkness, I said. "We're more or less neighbors. I'm from upstate New York."
How far up? he said.
Pretty far. Very far in fact. Small town in the Adirondacks.
We went over to the players' dorm, an isolated unit just about completed but with no landscaping out front and wet paint signs everywhere. I left the three of them in Taft's room and went downstairs to get suited up for afternoon practice. Moody Kimbrough, our right tackle and captain on offense, stopped me as I was going through the isometrics area.
Is he here?
He is here, I said.
That's nice. That's real nice.
In the training room Jerry Fallon had his leg in the whirlpool. He was doing a crossword puzzle in the local newspaper.
Is he here?
He is everywhere, I said.
Who?
Supreme being of heaven and earth. Three letters.
You know who I mean.
He's here all right. He's all here. Two hundred and fiftyfive pounds of solid mahogany.
How much? Fallon said.
They're thinking of playing him at guard. He came in a little heavier than they expected. About two fiftyfive. Left guard, I think Coach said.
You kidding me, Gary?
Left guard's your spot, isn't it? I just realized.
How much is he weigh again?
He came in at two fiftyfive, two sixty. Solid bronze right from the foundry. Coach calls him the fastest twofivefive in the country.
He's supposed to be a running back, Fallon said. "That was before he added the weight." "I think you're kidding me, Gary."
That's right, I said.
You son of a bitch, Fallon said.
We ran through some new plays for about an hour. Creed's assistants moved among us yelling at our mistakes. Creed himself was up in the tower studying overall patterns. I saw Taft on the sidelines with Oscar Veech. The players kept glancing that way. When the second unit took over on offense, I went over to the far end of the field and grubbed around for a spot of shade in which to sit. Finally I just sank into the canvas fence and remained more or less upright, contemplating the distant fury. These canvas blinds surrounded the entire practice field in order to discourage spying by future opponents. The blinds were one of the many innovations Creed had come up with—innovations as far as this particular college was concerned. He had also had the tower bunt as well as the separate living quarters for the football team. (To instill a sense of unity.) This was Creed's first year here. He had been born in Texas, in either a log cabin or a manger, depending on who was telling the story, on the banks of the Rio Grande in what is now Big Bend National Park. The sporting press liked to call him Big Bend. He made a few ailAmerican teams as a tailback in the old singlewing days at SMU and then flew a B27 during the war and later played halfback for three years with the Chicago Bears. He went into coaching then, first as an assistant to George Halas in Chicago and then as head coach in the Missouri Valley Conference, the Big Eight and the Southeast Conference. He became famous for creating order out of chaos, building good teams at schools known for their perennial losers. He had four unbeaten seasons, five conference champions and two national champions. Then a secondstring quarterback said or did something he didn't like and Creed broke his jaw. It became something of a national scandal and he went into obscurity for three years until Mrs. Tom beckoned him to west Texas. It was a long drop down from the Big Eight but Creed managed to convince the widow that a good football team could put her lonely little school on the map. So priorities were changed, new assistants were hired, alumni were courted, a certain amount of oil money began to flow, a certain number of private planes were made available for recruiting purposes, the team name was changed from the Cactus Wrens to the Screaming Eagles—and Emmett Creed was on the comeback trail. The only thing that didn't make sense was the ton of canvas that hid our practice sessions. There was nothing out there but insects.
The first unit was called back in and I headed slowly toward the dust and noise. Creed up in the tower spoke through his bullhorn.
Defense, I'd appreciate some pursuit. They don't give points for apathy in this sport. Pursue those people. Come out of the ground at them. Hit somebody. Hit somebody. Hit somebody.
On the first play Garland Hobbs, our quarterback, faked to me going straight into the line and then pitched to the other setback, Jim Deering. He got hit first by a linebacker, Dennis Smee, who drove him into the ground, getting some belated and very nasty help from a tackle and another linebacker. Deering didn't move. Two assistant coaches started shouting at him, telling him he was defacing the landscape. He tried to get up but couldn't make it. The rest of us walked over to the far hashmark and ran the next play.
It all ended with two laps around the goal posts. Lloyd Philpot Jr., a defensive end, fell down in the middle of the second lap. We left him there in the end zone, on his stomach, one leg twitching slightly. His father had won allconference honors at Baylor for three straight years.
That evening Emmett Creed addressed the squad.
Write home on a regular basis. Dress neatly. Be courteous. Articulate your problems. Do not dragass. Anything I have no use for, it's a football player who consistently dragasses. Move swiftly from place to place, both on the field and in the corridors of buildings. Don't ever get too proud to pray.
rolf hauptfuhrer coached the defensive line and attended to problems of morale and grooming. He approached me one morning after practice.
We want you to room with Bloomberg, he said.
Why me?
John Billy Small was in there with him. Couldn't take the tension. We figure you won't mind. You're more the complicated type.
Of course I'll mind.
John Billy said he wets the bed. Aside from that there's no problem. He gets nervous. No doubt about that. A lot of tension in that frame. But we figure you can cope with it.
I object. I really do. I've got my own tensions.
Harkness, everybody knows what kind of reputation you brought down here. Coach is willing to take a chance on you only as long as you follow orders. So keep in line. Just keep in line—hear?
Who's rooming with Taft Robinson? I said.
Robinson rooms alone.
Why's that?
You'll have to ask the powers that be. In the meantime move your stuff in with Bloomberg.
I don't like tension, I said. "And I don't see why I have to be the one who gets put in with controversial people."
It's for the good of the team, Hauptfuhrer said.
Five of us sneaked into the nearest town that night, a place called Rooster, to see what was happening. We ended up at Bing Jackmin's house, right outside town, where we drank beer for five hours. Bing's father joined us, falling off the porch when he came out to say good night. We drove back to campus and held a drunken Olympiad in the moonlight at the edge of the football field—slowmotion races, grass swimming, spitting for distance. Then we walked slowly back to the dorm and listened to Norgene Azamanian tell the story of his name.
A lot of people take it for a girl's name. But it's no such thing. It comes from Norge refrigerators and from my uncle, Captain Gene Kinney. How it all came about, my being called Norgene, makes for a real interesting story. You see, everybody in my mother's family going back for generations, man or woman, always had a Christian name of just one syllable. Nobody knows how it started but at some point along the line they decided they'd keep it going. So I go and get born and it comes time to name me. Now it just so happens there was an old Norge refrigerator out on the back porch waiting to get thrown away. It also happens that my daddy wasn't too happy about the syllable thing, it being his belief that the bible carries a warning against onesyllable names, Cain being his brother's slayer. And finally there was the amazing coincidence that my uncle Gene Kinney was on leave and coming over to visit so he could see the new baby, which was me, and so he could get in on the naming of it to be sure the family tradition would be carried out. How all these different factors resulted in the name Norgene is the whole crux of the story.
Very good, Bing said. "But first tell us how you got Azamanian."
I went up to my room. Bloomberg was asleep, on his belly, snoring softly into the pillow. He was absolutely enormous. It was easy to imagine him attached to the bed by guywires, to be floated aloft once a year like a Macy's balloon. His full name was Anatole Bloomberg and he played left tackle on offense. That was all I knew about him, that plus the fact that he wasn't a Texan. One of the outcasts, I thought. Or a voluntary exile of the philosophic type. I decided to wake him up.
Anatole, I said. "It's Gary Harkness, your new roommate. Let's shake hands and be friends."
We're roommates, he said. "Why do we have to be friends?"
It's just an expression. I didn't mean undying comrades. Just friends as opposed to enemies. I'm sorry I woke you up.
I wasn't asleep.
You were snoring, I said.
That's the way I breathe when I'm on my stomach What happened to my original roommate?
John Billy? John Billy's been moved.
Was that his name?
He's been moved. I hope you're not tense about my showing up. All I want to do is get off to a good start and avoid all possible tension.
Who in your opinion was the greater man? Bloomberg said. "Edward Gibbon or Archimedes?"
Archimedes.
Correct,he said.
In the morning Creed sent us into an allout scrimmage with a brief inspirational message that summed up everything we knew or had to know.
It's only a game, he said, "but it's the only game."
Taft Robinson and I were the setbacks. Taft caught a flare pass, evaded two men and went racing down the sideline, Bobby Iselin, a cornerback, gave up the chase at the 25. Bobby used to be the team's fastest man.
through all our days together my father returned time and again to a favorite saying.
Suck in that gut and go harder.
He never suggested that this saying of his ranked with the maxims of Teddy Roosevelt. Still, he was dedicated to it. He believed in the idea that a simple but lasting reward, something just short of a presidential handshake, awaited the extra effort, the persevering act of a tired man. Backbone, will, mental toughness, desire—these were his themes, the qualities that insured success. He was a pharmaceutical salesman with a lazy son.
It seems that wherever I went I was hounded by people urging me to suck in my gut and go harder. They would never give tip on me—my father, my teachers, my coaches, even a girl friend or two. I was a challenge, I guess: a piece of string that does not wish to be knotted. My father was by far the most tireless of those who tried to give me direction, to sharpen my initiative, to piece together some collective memory of hardwon land or dusty struggles in the sun. He put a sign in my room.
WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH THE TOUGH GET GOING
I looked at this sign for three years (roughly from ages fourteen to seventeen) before I began to perceive a certain beauty in it. The sentiment of course had small appeal but it seemed that beauty flew from the words themselves, the letters, consonants swallowing vowels, aggression and tenderness, a semiselfrecreation from line to line, word to word, letter to letter. All meaning faded. The words became pictures. It was a sinister thing to discover at such an age, that words can escape their meanings. A strange beauty that sign began to express.
My father had a territory and a company car. He sold vitamins, nutritional supplements, mineral preparations, and antibiotics. His customers included about fifty doctors and dentists, about a dozen pharmacies, a few hospitals, some drug wholesalers. He had specific goals, both geographic and economic, each linked with the other, and perhaps because of this he hated waste of any kind, of shoe leather, talent, irretrievable time. (Get cracking, Straighten out. Hang in.) It paid, in his view, to follow the simplest, most pioneer of rhythms—the eternal work cycle, the bloodhunt for bear and deer, the mellow rocking of chairs as screen doors swing open and bang shut in the gathering fragments of summer's sulky dusk. Beyond these honest latitudes lay nothing but chaos.
He had played football at Michigan State. He had ambitions on my behalf and more or less at my expense. This is the custom among men who have failed to be heroes; their sons must prove that the seed was not impoverished. He had spent his autumn Saturdays on the sidelines, watching others fall in battle and rise then to the thunder of the drums and the crowd's demanding chants. He put me in a football uniform very early. Then, as a high school junior, I won allstate honors at halfback. (This was the first of his ambitions and as it turned out the only one to be fulfilled.) Eventually I received twentyeight offers of athletic scholarships—tuition, books, room and board, fifteen dollars a month. There were several broad hints of further almsgiving. Visions were painted of lovely young ladies with charitable instincts of their own. It seemed that every section of the country had much to offer in the way of scenery, outdoor activities, entertainment, companionship, and even, if necessary, education.
On the application blanks, I had to fill in my height, my weight, my academic average and my time for the 40yard dash.
I handed over a letter of acceptance to Syracuse University. I was eager to enrich their tradition of great running backs. They threw me out when I barricaded myself in my room with two packages of Oreo cookies and a girl named Lippy Margolis. She wanted to hide from the world and I volunteered to help her. For a day and a night we read to each other from a textbook on economics. She seemed calmed by the incoherent doctrines set forth on those pages. When I was sure I had changed the course of her life for the better, I opened the door.
At Perm State, the next stop, I studied hard and played well. But each, day that autumn was exactly like the day before and the one to follow. I had not yet learned to appreciate the slowly gliding drift of identical things; chunks of time spun past me like meteorites in a universe predicated on repetition. For weeks the cool clear weather was unvarying; the girls wore white kneehigh stockings; a small red plane passed over the practice field every afternoon at the same time. There was something hugely Asian about those days in Pennsylvania. I tripped on the same step on the same staircase on three successive days. After this I stopped going to practice. The freshman coach wanted to know what was up. I told him I knew all the plays; there was no reason to practice them over and over; the endless repetition might be spiritually disastrous; we were becoming a nation devoted to human xerography. He and I had a long earnest discussion. Much was made of my talent and my potential value to the varsity squad. Oneness was stressed—the oneness necessary for a winning team. It was a good concept, oneness, but I suggested that, to me at least, it could not be truly attractive unless it meant oneness with God or the universe or some equally redoubtable superphenomenon. What he meant by oneness was in fact elevenness or twentytwoness. He told me that my attitude was all wrong. People don't go to football games to see pass patterns run by theologians. He told me, in effect, that I would have to suck in my gut and go harder. (1) A team sport. (2) The need to sacrifice. (3) Preparation for the future. (4) Microcosm of life.
You're saying that what I learn on the gridiron about sacrifice and oneness will be of inestimable value later on in life. In other words if I give up now I'll almost surely give up in the more important contests of the future.
That's it exactly, Gary.
I'm giving up, I said.
It was a perverse thing to do—go home and sit through a blinding white winter in the Adirondacks. I was passing through one of those odd periods of youth in which significance is seen only on the blankest of walls, found only in dull places, and so I thought I'd turn my back to the world and to my father's sign and try to achieve, indeed, establish, some lowly form of American sainthood. The repetition of Perm State was small stuff compared to that deep winter. For five months I did nothing and then repeated it. I had breakfast in the kitchen, lunch in my room, dinner at the dinner table with the others, meaning my parents. They concluded that I was dying of something slow and incurable and that I did not wish to tell them in order to spare their feelings. This was an excellent thing to infer for all concerned. My father took down the sign and hung in its place a framed photo of his favorite pro team, the Detroit Lions—their official team picture. In late spring, a word appeared all over town. militarize. The word was printed on cardboard placards that stood in shop windows. It was scrawled on fences. It was handwritten on looseleaf paper taped to the windshields of cars. It appeared on bumper stickers and signboards.
I had accomplished nothing all those months and so I decided to enroll at the University of Miami. It wasn't a bad place. Repetition gave way to the beginnings of simplicity. (A preparation thus for Texas) I wanted badly to stay. I liked playing football and I knew that by this time I'd have trouble finding another school that would take me. But I had to leave. It started with a book, an immense volume about the possibilities of nuclear war— assigned reading for a course I was taking in modes of disaster technology. The problem was simple and terrible: I enjoyed the book. I liked reading about the deaths of tens of millions of people. I liked dwelling on the destruction of great cities. Five to twenty million dead. Fifty to a hundred million dead. Ninety percent population loss. Seattle wiped out by mistake. Moscow demolished. Airbursts over every SAC base in Europe. I liked to think of huge buildings toppling, of firestorms, of bridges collapsing, survivors roaming the charred countryside. Carbon 14 and strontium 90. Escalation ladder and subcrisis situation. Titan, Spartan, Poseidon. People burned and unable to breathe. People being evacuated from doomed cities. People diseased and starving. Two hundred thousand bodies decomposing on the roads outside Chicago. I read several chapters twice. Pleasure in the contemplation of millions dying and dead. I became fascinated by words and phrases like thermal hurricane, overkill, circular error probability, postattack environment, stark deterrence, doserate contours, killratio, spasm war. Pleasure in these words. They were extremely effective, I thought, whispering shyly of cycles of destruction so great that the language of past world wars became laughable, the wars themselves somewhat naive. A thrill almost sensual accompanied the reading of this book. What was wrong with me? Had I gone mad? Did others feel as I did? I became seriously depressed. Yet I went to the library and got more books on the subject. Some of these had been published well after the original volume and things were much more uptodate. Old weapons vanished. Megatonnage soared. New concepts appeared—the rationality of irrationality, hostage cities, orbital attacks. I became more fascinated, more depressed, and finally I left Coral Gables and went back home to my room and to the official team photo of the Detroit Lions. It seemed the only thing to do. My mother brought lunch upstairs. I took the dog for walks.
In time the draft board began to get interested. I allowed my father to get in touch with a former classmate of his, an influential alumnus of Michigan State. Negotiations were held and I was granted an interview with two subalterns of the athletic department, types familiar to football and other paramilitary complexes, the squarejawed bedrock of the corporation. They knew what I could do on the football field, having followed my high school career, but they wouldn't accept me unless I could convince them that I was ready to take orders, to pursue a mature course, to submit my will to the common good. I managed to convince them. I went to East Lansing the following autumn, an aging recruit, and was leading the freshman squad in touchdowns, yards gained rushing, and platitudes. Then, in a game against the Indiana freshmen, I was one of three players converging on a safetyman who had just intercepted a pass. We seemed to hit him simultaneously. He died the next day and I went home that evening.
I stayed in my room for seven weeks this time, shuffling a deck of cards. I got to the point where I could cut to the six of spades about three out of five times, as long as I didn't try it too often, abuse the gift, as long as I tried only when I truly felt an emanation from the six, when I knew in my fingers that I could cut to that particular card.
Then I got a phone call from Emmett Creed. Two days later he flew up to see me. I liked the idea of losing myself in an obscure part of the world. And I had discovered a very simple truth. My life meant nothing without football.
raymond toon stood six feet seven. He was a mild young man, totally unintimidating, a former bible student. He was a reserve tackle on defense and he had come here because it was the only school he knew of that offered a course in sportscasting.
Timeadjusted rate of return, he said. "Redundant asset method. Capital budgeting, Probable stream of earnings. Independently negotiated credit balances. Consolidation. Tax anticipation notes."
We were in the cafeteria. John Jessup was also at our table, reading a textbook. Jessup and Toon were roommates. Jessup didn't like the arrangement because Raymond practiced his sportscasting in the room all weekend. When he wasn't studying theories of economic valuation, he was camped in front of his portable TV set. He'd switch it on, turn the sound down to nothing, and describe the action. At this time of year it was mainly baseball, golf, bowling and stock car racing. Jessup had complained to Rolf Hauptfuhrer that he was being driven out of his mind. But so far nothing had been done. Moody Kimbrough brought his tray over to our table.
This milk is putrid, Jessup told him.
What do you want from me?
You're one of the captains. Go tell Coach. They shouldn't give us milk like this. They should be more careful with the athletes' milk.
Back home it's the blanketyblank water you have to watch, Kimbrough said.
Back where I come from it's the water and the milk, Raymond said.
This is shitpiss, Jessup said. "This is the worstass milk I ever tasted."
Kimbrough drank from his little carton.
I'll tell you something, he said. "This milk is putrid."
Damnright, Jessup said.
This milk is contaminated. It's putrid. It's the worst I ever tasted. Back up home it's the water. Here I guess it's the milk. I'll be sure and tell Coach.
Toony, what was the point you were trying to make? I said.
The level of deemed merit, Raymond said. "Assessed value. Imputed market prices. Munitions. Maximized comparative risk."
Onan Moley joined us. He was wearing a sweat shirt with a screaming eagle, the team symbol, pictured across the front. The word sacrifice was inscribed beneath the eagle. Onan hunched his shoulders and lowered his head almost to table level before speaking.
There's a lot of talk about a lot of things.
What talk? Kimbrough said.
Never mind.
I'm cocaptain, Onan. I've got a pipeline. But I don't know about any talk. Now what talk do you mean?
There might be a queer on the squad.
Offense or defense, Kimbrough said.
Terry Madden seated himself at the end of the table. He broke a roll and began to butter it.
What's the good word? he said.
Jessup read aloud from his textbook on monolithic integrated circuitry.
The pattern match begins with a search for a substring of a given string that has a specified structure in the stringmanipulation language.
Taft Robinson was sitting three tables away. I took my dessert over. He looked up, nodded, then looked down again and sliced a quivering ribbon of fat off the last piece of sirloin on his plate.
That weakside sweep looked good today, I said. "I finally got in a good block for you."
I saw it, he said.
I wiped out that bastard Smee. He likes to hurt people, that son of a bitch.
Which one is he?
Middle linebacker. He's the defensive captain. He 1 captains the defense. "I saw the block," Taft said. "I really wiped him out, that bastard. Hey, look, what are you doing here anyway?"
Where—here?
Right, I said. "Here in this particular locale. This dude ranch."
I'm here to play football. Same as you.
You could be at almost any school in the country. Why would you want to leave a place like Columbia to come here? Granted, Columbia's not exactly a football colossus. But to come here. How the hell did you let Creed talk you into this place? It's not as though you're integrating the place. Technically you're integrating the place but that's only because nobody else ever wanted to come here. Who the hell would want to come to a place like this?
You came here.
Hey, Robinson, Kimbrough said.
I'm here because I'm a chronic ballbreaker. First, it's not likely any other school would have me. Second, I wanted to disappear.
But you're here, he said. "We're all here."
I can't argue with that. How's your milk? Jessup says the milk is putrid.
Which one is he?
Hey, Robinson, Moody Kimbrough said. "We don't wear sunglasses indoors around here. We don't do that— hear?"
Mind your own business, I said.
I watched him coming toward our table. I thought briefly about the fact that he outweighed me by forty pounds or so. Then I got up and hit him in the stomach. He made a noise, an abrupt burp, and hit me in roughly the same spot. I sat down and tried to breathe. When I raised my head finally, Taft was just finishing his dessert.
we stood in a circle in the enormous gray morning, all the receivers and offensive backs, helmets in hands. Thunder moved down from the northeast. Creed, in a transparent raincoat, was already up in the tower. At the center of the circle was Tom Cook Clark, an assistant coach, an expert on quarterbacking, known as a scholarly man because he smoked a pipe and did not use profanity.
What we want to do is establish a planning procedures approach whereby we neutralize the defense. We'll be employing a lot of playaction and some passrun options off the sweep. We'll be using a minimum number of sprintouts because the passing philosophy here is based on the pocket concept and we don't want to inflate the injury potential which is what you do if your quarterback strays from the pocket and if he can't run real well, which most don't. We use the aerial game here to implement the ground game whereby we force their defense to respect the run which is what they won't do if they can anticipate pass and read pass and if our frequency, say on second and long, indicates pass. So that's what we'll try to come up with, depending on the situation and the contingency plan and how they react to the running game. I should insert at this point that if they send their linebackers, you've been trained and briefed and you know how to counter this. You've got your screen, your flare, your quick slantin. You've been drilled and drilled on this in the blitz drills. It all depends on what eventuates. It's just eleven men doing their job. That's all it is.
Oscar Veech moved into the circle."I want you to bust ass out there today," he said. "Guards and tackles, I want you to come off that ball real quick and pop, pop, hit those people, move those people out, pop them, put some hurt on them, drive them back till they look like sick little puppy dogs squatting down to crap."
The guards and tackles are over in that other group, I said.
Right, right, right. Now go out there and execute. Move that ball. Hit somebody. Hit somebody. Hit somebody.
Garland Hobbs handed off to me on a quick trap and two people hit me. There was a big pileup and I felt a fair number of knees and elbows and then somebody's hand was inside my facemask trying to come away with flesh. I realized Mr. Kimbrough had issued directives. On the next play I was passblocking for Hobbs and they sent everybody including the free safety. I went after the middle linebacker, Dennis Smee, helmet to groin, and then fell on top of him with a forearm leading the way.
Whistles were blowing and the coaches edged in a bit closer. Vern Feck took off his baseball cap and put his pink face right into the pileup, little sparks of saliva jumping out of his whistle as he blew it right under my nose. Creed came down from the tower.