of all the aspects of exile, silence pleased me least. Other tilings were not so displeasing. Exile compensates the banished by offering certain opportunities. Each day, for example, I spent some time in meditation. This never failed to be a lovely interlude, for there was nothing to meditate on. Each day I added a new word to my vocabulary, wrote a letter to someone I loved, and memorized the name of one more president of the United States and the years of his term in office. Simplicity, repetition, solitude, starkness, discipline upon discipline. There were profits here, things that could be used to make me stronger; the small fanatical monk who clung to my liver would thrive on such ascetic scraps. And then there was geography. We were in the middle of the middle of nowhere, that terrain so flat and bare, suggestive of the end of recorded time, a splendid sense of remoteness firing my soul. It was easy to feel that back up there, where men spoke the name civilization in wistful tones, I was wanted for some terrible crime.
Exile in a real place, a place of few bodies and many stones, is just an extension (a packaging) of the other exile, the state of being separated from whatever is left of the center of one's own history. I found comfort in west Texas. There was even pleasure in the daily punishment on the field. I felt that I was better for it, reduced in complexity, a warrior.
But the silence was difficult. It hung over the land and drifted across the long plains. It was out there with the soft black insects beyond the last line of buildings, beyond the prefabs and the Quonset hut and the ROTC barracks. Day after day my eyes scanned in all directions a stunned earth, unchangingly dull, a land silenced by its own beginnings in the roaring heat, born dead, flat stones burying the memory. I felt threatened by the silence. In my room at home, during my retreats from destructive episodes of one land or another, I had never even noticed the quiet. Perhaps silence is dispersed by familiar things; their antiquity is heard. All I had feared then was that my mother, bringing my lunch upstairs, would forget to comment on the weather. (These reports were indispensable to my progress.) But now, in the vast burning west, the silences were menacing. I decided not to eat meat for a few weeks.
One day in early September we started playing a game called Bang You're Dead. It's an extremely simpleminded game. Almost every child has played it in one form or another. Your hand assumes the shape of a gun and you fire at anyone who passes. You try to reproduce, in your own way, the sound of a gun being fired. Or you simply shout these words: Bang, you're dead. The other person clutches a vital area of his body and then falls, simulating death. (Never mere injury; always death.) Nobody knew who had started the game or exactly when it had started. You had to fall if you were shot. The game depended on this.
It went on for six or seven days. At first, naturally enough, I thought it was all very silly, even for a bunch of bored and lonely athletes. Then I began to change my mind. Suddenly, beneath its bluntness, the game seemed compellingly intricate. It possessed gradations, dark joys, a resonance echoing from the most perplexing of dreams. I began to kill selectively. When killed, I fell to the floor or earth with great deliberation, with sincerity. I varied my falls, searching for the rhythm of something imperishable, a classic death.
We did not abuse the powers inherent in the game. The only massacre took place during the game's first or second day when things were still shapeless, the potential unrealized. It started on the second floor of the dormitory just before lightsout and worked along the floor and down one flight, everyone shooting each other, men in thenunderwear rolling down the stairs, huge nude brutes draped over the banisters. The pleasure throughout was empty. I guess we realized together that the game was better than this. So we cooled things off and devised unwritten limits.
I shot Terry Madden at sunset from a distance of forty yards as he appeared over the crest of a small hill and came toward me. He held his stomach and fell, in slow motion, and then rolled down the grassy slope, tumbling, rolling slowly as possible, closer, slower, ever nearer, tumbling down to die at my feet with the pale setting of the sun.
To kill with impunity. To die in the celebration of ancient ways.
All those days the almost empty campus was marked by the sound of human gunfire. There were several ways in which this sound was uttered—the comical, the truly gruesome, the futuristic, the stylized, the circumspect. Each served to break the silence of the long evenings. From the window of my room I'd hear the faint gunfire and see a lone figure in the distance fall to the ground. Sometimes, hearing nothing, I'd merely see the victim get hit, twisting around a tree as he fell or slowly dropping to his knees, and this isolated motion also served to break the silence, the lingering stillness of that time of day. So there was that reason above all to appreciate the game; it forced cracks in the enveloping silence.
I died well and for this reason was killed quite often. One afternoon, shot from behind, I staggered to the steps of the library and remained there, on my back, between the second and seventh step at the approximate middle of the stairway, for more than a few minutes. It was very relaxing despite the hardness of the steps. I felt the sun on my face. I tried to think of nothing. The longer I remained there, the more absurd it seemed to get up. My body became accustomed to the steps and the sun felt warmer. I was completely relaxed. I felt sure I was alone, that no one was standing there watching or even walking by. This thought relaxed me even more. In time I opened my eyes. Taft Robinson was sitting on a bench not far away, reading a periodical. For a moment, in a state of near rapture, I thought it was he who had fired the shot. At length the rest of the student body reported for the beginning of classes. We were no longer alone and the game ended. But I would think of it with affection because of its scenes of fragmentary beauty, because it brought men closer together through their perversity and fear, because it enabled us to pretend that death could be a tender experience, and because it breached the long silence.
it's not easy to fake a limp. The tendency is to exaggerate, a natural mistake and one that no coach would fail to recognize. Over the years I had learned to eliminate this tendency. I had mastered the dip and grimace, perfected the semimoan, and when I came off the field this time, after receiving a mild blow on the right calf, nobody considered pressing me back into service. The trainer handed me an ice pack and I sat on the bench next to Bing Jackmin, who kicked field goals and extra points. The practice field was miserably hot. I was relieved to be off and slightly surprised that I felt guilty about it. Bing Jackmin was wearing headgear; his eyes, deep inside the facemask, seemed crazed by sun or dust or inner visions.
Work, he shouted past me. "Work, you substandard industrial robots. Work, work, work, work."
Look at them hit, I said. "What a pretty sight. When Coach says hit, we hit. It's so simple."
It's not simple, Gary. Reality is constantly being interrupted. We're hardly even aware of it when we're out there. We perform like things with metal claws. But there's the other element. For lack of a better term I call it the psychomythical. That's a phrase I coined myself.
I don't like it. What does it refer to?
Ancient warriorship, he said. "Cults devoted to pagan forms of technology. What we do out on that field harks back. It harks back. Why don't you like the term?"
It's vague and pretentious. It means nothing. There's only one good thing about it. Nobody could remember a stupid phrase like that for more than five seconds. See, I've already forgotten it. " "Wuuurrrrk. Wuuuurrrrrk."
Hobbs'll throw to Jessup now, I said. "He always goes to his tight end on third and short inside the twenty. He's like a retarded computer."
For a quarterback Hobbs isn't too bright. But you should have seen him last year, Gary. At least Creed's got him changing plays at the line. Last year it was all Hobbsie could do to keep from upchucking when he saw a blitz coming. Linebackers pawing at the ground, snarling at him. He didn't have what you might call a whole lot of poise.
Here comes Cecil off. Is that him?
They got old Cecil. Looks like his shoulder.
Cecil Rector, a guard, came toward the sideline and Roy Yellin went running in to replace him. The trainer popped Cecil's shoulder back into place. Then Cecil fainted. Bing strolled down that way to have a look at Cecil unconscious. Vern Feck, who coached the linebackers, started shouting at his people. Then he called the special units on to practice kickoS return and coverage. Bing headed slowly up to the 40yard line. He kicked off and the two teams converged, everybody yelling, bodies rolling and bouncing on the scant grass. When it was over Bing came back to the bench. His eyes seemed to belong to some small dark cave animal.
Something just happened, he said.
You look frightened.
You won't believe what just happened. I was standing out there, getting ready to stride toward the ball, when a strange feeling came over me. I was looking right at the football. It was up on the tee. I was standing ten yards away, looking right at it, waiting for the whistle so I could make my approach, and that's when I got this strange insight. I wish I could describe it, Gary, but it was too wild, too unbelievable. It was too everything, man. Nobody would understand what I meant if I tried to describe it.
Describe it, I said.
I sensed knowledge in the football. I sensed a strange power and restfulness. The football possessed awareness. The football knew what was happening. It knew. I'm sure of it.
Are you serious, Bing?
The football knew that this is a football game. It knew that it was the center of the game. It was aware of its own footballness.
But was it aware of its own awareness? That's the ultimate test, you know.
Go ahead, Gary, play around. I knew you wouldn't understand. It was too unreal. It was uneverything, man.
You went ahead and kicked the ball.
Naturally, he said. "That's the essence of the word. It's a football, isn't it? It is a foot ball. My foot sought union with the ball."
We watched Bobby Hopper get about eighteen on a sweep. When the play ended a defensive tackle named Dickie Kidd remained on his knees. He managed to take his helmet off and then fell forward, his face hitting the midfield stripe. Two players dragged him off and Raymond Toon went running in to replace him. The next play fell apart when Hobbs fumbled the snap. Creed spoke to him through the bullhorn. Bing walked along the bench to look at Dickie Kidd.
I watched the scrimmage. It was getting mean out there. The players were reaching the point where they wanted to inflict harm. It was hardly a time for displays of finesse and ungoverned grace. This was the ugly hour. I felt like getting back in. Bing took his seat again.
How's Dickie?
Dehydration, Bing said. "Hauptfuhrer's giving him hell."
What for?
For dehydrating.
I went over to Oscar Veech and told him I was ready. He said they wanted to take a longer look at Jim Deering. I watched Deering drop a short pass and get hit a full two seconds later by Buddy Shock, a linebacker. This cheered me up and I returned to the bench.
They want to look at Deering some more.
Coach is getting edgy. We open in six days. This is the last scrimmage and he wants to look at everybody.
I wish I knew how good we are.
Coach must be thinking the same thing.
Time was called and the coaches moved in to lecture their players. Creed climbed down from the tower and walked slowly toward Garland Hobbs. He took off his baseball cap and brushed it against his thigh as he walked. Hobbs saw him coming and instinctively put on his helmet. Creed engaged him in conversation.
It's a tonguelashing, Bing said. "Coach is hacking at poor old Hobbsie."
He seems pretty calm.
It's a tonguelashing, Bing hissed to Cecil Rector, who was edging along the bench to sit next to us.
How's the shoulder? I said.
Dislocated.
Too bad.
They can put a harness on it, he said. "We go in six days. If Coach needs me, I'll be ready."
Just then Creed looked toward Bing Jackmin, drawing him off the bench without even a nod. Bing jogged over there. The rest of the players were standing or kneeüng between the 40yard lines. Next to me, Cecil Rector leaned over and plucked at blades of grass. I thought of the Adirondaoks, chill lakes of inverted timber, sash of blue snow across the mountains, the whispering presence of the things that filled my room. Far beyond the canvas blinds, on the top floor of the women's dormitory, a figure stood by an open window. I thought of women. I thought of women in snow and rain, on mountains and in forests, at the end of long galleries immersed in the brave light of Rembrandts.
Coach is real anxious, Rector said. "He knows a lot of people are watching to see how he does. I bet the wire services send somebody out to cover the opener. If they can ever find this place."
I'd really like to get back in.
So would I, he said. "Yellin's been haunting me since way back last spring. He's like a hyena. Every time I get hurt, Roy Yellin is right there grinning. He likes to see me get hurt. He's after my job. Every time I'm face down on the grass in pain, I know I'll look up to see Roy Yellin grinning at the injured part of my body. His daddy sells mutual funds in the prairie states."
Bing came back, apparently upset about something.
He wants me to practice my squib kick tomorrow. I told him I don't have any squib kick. He guaranteed me I'd have one by tomorrow night. Then he called Onan over and picked him apart. Told him he was playing center as if the position had just been invented.
They're putting Randy King in for Onan, I said.
Onan's been depressed, Bing said. "He found out Ms girl friend spent a night with some guy on leave from Nam. It's affecting his play."
What did they do? Rector said.
They spent a night.
Did they have relations?
Are you asking me did they fuck?
There goes Taft again, I said. "Look at that cutback. God, that's beautiful."
He's some kind of football player.
He's a real good one.
He can do it all, can't he?
They played for another fifteen minutes. On the final play, after a long steady drive that took the offense down to the 8yard line, Taft fumbled the handoff. Defense recovered, whistles blew, and that was it for the day. The three of us headed back together.
Hobbsie laid it right in his gut and he goes and loses it, Rector said. "I attribute that kind of error to lack of concentration. That's a mental error and it's caused by lack of concentration. Coloreds can run and leap but they can't concentrate. A colored is a runner and leaper. You're making a big mistake if you ask him to concentrate."
A very heavy girl wearing an orange dress came walking toward us across a wide lawn. There was a mushroom cloud appliquéd on the front of her dress. I recognized the girl; we had some classes together. I let the others walk on ahead and I stood for a moment watching her walk past me and move into the distance. I was wearing a smudge of lampblack under each eye to reduce the sun's glare. I didn't know whether the lampblack was very effective but I liked the way it looked and I liked the idea of painting myself in a barbaric manner before going forth to battle in mud. I wondered if the fat girl knew I was still watching her. I had a vivid picture of myself standing there holding my helmet at my side, left knee bent slightly, hah all mussed and the lampblack under my eyes. Her dress was brightest orange. I thought she must be a little crazy to wear a dress like that with her figure.
the thing to do, I thought, is to walk in circles. This is demanded by the mythology of all deserts and wasted places. A number of traditions insist on it. I was about a mile beyond the campus. Motion was strange. Motion consisted of sunlight on particular stones. (With the opening of classes I had been brushing up on perimeter acquisition radar, unauthorized explosions, slowmotion countercity war, superready status, collateral destruction, crisis management, civilian devastation attack.) All the colors were different shades of one nameless color. Water would have been a miracle or mirage. I took off my shoes and socks and the stones burned. I saw a long bug. I was careful to keep the tallest of the campus buildings in sight. This was a practical measure, nonritualistic, meant to offset the saintly feet. I remembered then to think of Rutherford B. Hayes, nineteenth president, 18771881. That took care of that for the day. Each day had to be completed. I avoided a sharp stone. Something sudden, a movement, turned out to be sunlight on paint, a painted stone, one stone, black in color, identifiably black, a single round stone, painted black, carefully painted, the ground around it the same nameless color as the rest of the plain. Some vandal had preceded me then. Stonepainter. Metaphorist of the desert. To complete the day truly I had to remember to think of Milwaukee in flames. I was doing a different area every day. This practice filled me with selfdisgust and was meant, eventually, to liberate me from the joy of imagining millions dead. In time, I assumed, my disgust would become so great that I would be released from all sense of global holocaust. But it wasn't working. I continued to look forward to each new puddle of destruction. Six megatons for Cairo. MIRVs for the Benelux countries. Typhoid and cholera for the Hudson River Valley. I seemed to be subjecting my emotions to an unintentioned cycle in which pleasure nourished itself on the black bones of revulsion and dread. Tidal waves for Bremerhaven. Longterm radiation for the Mekong Delta. For Milwaukee I had planned firestorms. But now I could not imagine Milwaukee in flames. I had never been to Milwaukee. I had never even seen a photograph of the place. I had no idea what the city looked like and I could not imagine it in flames. I put on my socks first, as I had been taught, and then my shoes. I was hungry. Pot roast had been served for lunch and I had eaten only some cereal and fruit. Heading back I kept watching for insects. Buildings rose across the plain. I could see cadets marching quite clearly now, bright blue squadrons on the parade grounds. The thing to do is to concentrate on objects. In the room, when I got there, Bloomberg was occupying his bed, prone, on top of the blanket, hands folded behind his white neck—the lone unsuntanned member of the squad. There were two beds, two chairs, two desks, a window, a closet. His white skin was remarkable. Some dietary law perhaps. An overhead light, two wall lamps. Consume only those foods that do not tint the flesh. A desk lamp, two bureaus, a wastebasket, a pencil, six books, three shoes. Bloomberg himself. Harkness himself or itself.
Milwaukee is spared, I said.
hours later, after we had both missed dinner, Bloomberg rolled over on his back. He managed this without taking his hands from their position behind his neck. He used his elbows as levers and brakes, as landing gear. It seemed some kind of test—to move one's body 180 degrees without changing the relationship among its parts. Finally he settled himself and stared into the ceiling. I was sitting on my own bed, my back against the wall. This placing of bodies may seem inconsequential. But I believed it mattered terribly where we were situated and which way we were facing. Words move the body into position. In time the position itself dictates events. As the sun went down I tried to explain this concept to Bloomberg.
History is guilt, he said.
It's also the placement of bodies. What men say is relevant only to the point at which language moves masses of people or a few momentous objects into significant juxtaposition. After that it becomes almost mathematical. The placements take over. It becomes some sort of historical calculus. What you and I say this evening won't add up to much. We'll remember only where we sat, which way our feet pointed, at what angle our realities met. Whatever importance this evening might have is based on placements, relative positions, things like that. A million pilgrims face Mecca. Think of the power behind that fact. All turning now. And bending. And praying. History is the angle at which realities meet.
History is guilt. It's mostly guilt.
What are you doing here, Anatole?
I'm unjewing myself.
I had a hunch. I thought to myself Anatole's being here has some spiritual import. It must be a hard thing to do. No wonder you're so tense.
I'm not tense.
You didn't even go down to dinner tonight. You're too tense to eat. It's quite obvious.
I'm trying to lose weight, he said. "I'm like a bridge. I expand in hot weather. Creed wants to get me down to two seventyfive."
Where are you now?
An even three.
Don't you sweat it off in the grass drills or when we scrimmage?
I expand in this weather.
Anatole, how do you unjew yourself?
You go to a place where there aren't any Jews. After that you revise your way of speaking. You take out the urbanisms. The question marks. All that folk wisdom. The melodies in your speech. The inverted sentences. You use a completely different set of words and phrases. Then you transform your mind into a ruthless instrument. You teach yourself to reject certain categories of thought.
Why don't you want to be Jewish anymore?
I'm tired of the guilt. That enormous nagging historical guilt.
What guilt?
The guilt of being innocent victims.
Let's change the subject.
Also the predicate and the object, he said.
He did not modify his expression. He seemed sublimely sad, a man engaged in surviving persistent winters at some northernmost point of the compass. I thought that winter must be his season, as it was mine, and it did not seem strange that we had come to this place. Even now, long before the snows, there was some quality of winter here, converse seasons almost interspersed, a sense of brevity, one color, much of winter's purity and silence, a chance for reason to prevail.
Anatole, do you ever think of playing pro ball?
I'm not quick enough. I don't have quick feet. Tweego keeps after me about my feet. He says I'd be the best passblocker in the country if I had quick feet.
I'd like to play pro ball, I said. "That would really be tremendous."
You could make it, Gary.
I don't have the speed. I'll never be big enough to go inside tune after time, twentyfive or thirty times a game. And I don't have the speed to turn the corner. Up there you need overdrive. It would be tremendous if I could make it. It's tremendous just thinking about it.
There are Jews in those big cities, Bloomberg said.
The window was open and there was a breeze. We were speaking very slowly, almost drunkenly. Our words seemed to rise toward the ceiling. The air was light and sweet. The words we spoke did not seem particularly ours; although we said nothing remarkable, the words surprised me at times. It may have been my hunger that accounted for these feelings.
What's it like to weigh three hundred pounds?
It's like being an overwritten paragraph.
They should get you a larger bed.
I don't mind the bed. Everything is fine here. Things are going very well. I'm glad I came. It was good thinking. It showed intelligence. The bed is perfectly all right.
Does the silence bother you?
What silence? he said.
You know what I mean. The big noise out there.
Out over the desert you mean. The rumble.
The silence. The big metallic noise.
It doesn't bother me.
It bothers me, I said.
I was enjoying myself immensely. I was drunk with hunger. My tongue emitted wisdom after wisdom. Our words floated in the dimness, in the room's mild moonlight, weightless phrases polished by the cool confident knowledge of centuries. I was eager for subjects to envelop, tìmeless questions demanding men of antic dimension, riddles as yet unsolved, large bloody meathunks we might rip apart with mastiff teeth. Nothing unromantic would suffice. Detachment was needed only for the likes of astrophysics, quantum mechanics, all painstaking matters so delicate in their refracted light that intellects such as ours would sooner yield to the prudish machine. There was no vulgarity in the sciences of measurement, nothing to laugh at, to drink to, to weep about like Russians guzzling vodka and despairing of God a hundred years ago in books written by bearded titans. Bloomberg and I needed men, mass consciousness, great vulgar armies surging dumbly across the plains. Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity. It seemed a worthwhile goal for prospective saints and flagellants. The new asceticism. All the visionary possibilities of the fast. To feed on the plants and animals of earth. To expand and wallow. I cherished his size, the formlessness of it, the sheer vulgar pleasure, his sense of being overwritten prose. Somehow it was the opposite of death.
Feet retain the qualities they possessed at birth, Bloomberg said. "They're either quick or they're slow and there's nothing you can do about it. Tweego knows this. But he keeps after me anyway."
Tweego is halfman, halfpig. All Creed's assistants have their piggish aspects but Tweego heads the list. He's fully halfpig. Tweego, Vern Feck and Hauptfuhrer. Mythology chose to ignore the species.
I respect Tweego in a way. He thinks in one direction, straight ahead. He just aims and fires. He has ruthlessness of mind. That's something I respect. I think it's a distinctly modern characteristic. The systems planner. The management consultant. The nuclear stragegist. It's a question of fantastic singlemindedness. That's something I genuinely respect.
It's all angles, I said. "The angle at which great masses collide. The angle at which projectiles are aimed. The angle at which blunt instruments strike a particular surface. Consider our respective positions."
Go ahead, I'm listening.
Consider the placements. Foot to hip. Knee to ear. Angles within angles. Interrelationships. The angle of incidence. The angle of reflection. Of course I'm just beginning to formulate this concept.
Where do you do your thinking, Gary?
I've been spending time in the desert lately. You can evolve theories out there. The sun's heat purifies the thinking apparatus. Which reminds me. Why are you so white, Anatole? I've been reluctant to ask.
I stay out of the sun whenever possible because I don't like to peel. I hate the whole process. Let's just say that my awareness of reptilian antecedents is unnaturally vivid.
I like to peel, I said. "I like to reach behind me and strip the skin off my back. Or have it stripped off for me. A girl I knew in Coral Gables used to do it. Slowly peel the skin right off my back. She was Jewish."
Did she make sounds while she did it?
Noises, I said. "She made noises."
Bloomberg shifted on the bed.
I'm hungry, he said. "They had chicken for dinner. Fried chicken, mixed vegetables and corn bread. They had peach pie for dessert."
Anatole, I think you should forget your diet. You'd be a better football player at two seventyfive. But a greater man at three hundred plus.
It's possible but not probable. I base my notion of probability on a given number in a given pattern expressing the likelihood of the occurrence of a sequentially ordered set of events, such as the ratio of the number of coordinate elements that would produce the set of events to the total number of elements considered possible. "I look forward to these talks of ours, chaplain." At Logos there existed both Army and Air Force ROTC. I belonged to neither. But I had received permission to audit AFROTC courses. Geopolitics—one hour a week. History of air power—one hour a week. Aspects of modern wax—one hour a week.
bobby luke was sitting on the front steps of Staley Hall, the living quarters for the football team. It was another hot and empty afternoon; everybody else was indoors; the campus seemed deserted. I sat a few feet away from Bobby, spreading my arms along the top step. He looked my way with a slight grin, his eyes nearly shut. I stretched my legs and gazed out at the distant parade grounds. Nothing moved out there and the heat rolled in. The night "before, we had opened against a school called Dorothy Hamilton Hodge. Taft Robinson gained 104 yards rushing in the first half and we left the field leading 24—0. Creed didn't use his reserves until there were only five minutes left in the game. By that time we had eight touchdowns; apparently he wanted to make news. Since Dorothy Hamilton Hodge was considered a typical opponent (with one exception), it was obvious that we'd have a winning season. We were better than any of us had imagined and it just seemed a question of how many points we'd score, how few we'd give up, and how many records would fall to Taft Robinson. The exception was West Centrex Biotechnical, an independent like us and a minor power in the area for years. The previous season they had swept through their schedule without the slightest hint of defeat, yielding an occasional touchdown only as a concession to the law of averages. The game with Centrex, which would be our seventh, was already shaping up as the whole season for us. If we could beat them, Creed's face would be back in the papers, we'd get smallcollege ranking, and the pro scouts would come drifting down for a look at the big old country boys. Bobby glanced up now. A side door of the science building had opened. A girl stepped out, stood for a moment with her arms folded, then went back in.
Snatch, Bobby said.
The sky roared for a second. I looked up and saw it finally, a fighter, sunlight at its wingtips, climbing, lost now in the middle of the clear day. Bobby tried to spit past his shoes but didn't make it, hitting the left pants leg. Saliva hung there, glistening, full of exuberant bubbles. Bobby hummed a bit. I listened, trying to pick out a tune of some kind. Bobby was a strange sort of kid, lean but strong, a very sleepy violence radiating from his sparse body. He was famous for saying he would go through a brick wall for Coach Creed. Young athletes were always saying that sort of thing about their coaches. But Bobby became famous for it because he said practically nothing else. He was simply a shy boy who had little to say. Even the brickwall remark was reserved for close friends in situations that called for earnestness above all else. We had all heard about it though, how often he used it, and I tried to figure out exactly what it meant to him. Maybe he had heard others use it and thought it was a remark demanded by history, a way of affirming the meaning of one's straggle. Maybe the words were commissioned, as it were, by language itself, by that compartment of language in which are kept all bits of diction designed to outlive the men who abuse them, all phrases that reduce speech to units of sounds, lullabies processed through intricate systems. Or maybe the remark just satisfied Bobby's need to be loyal to someone. Creed had done plenty to command respect but little or nothing to merit loyalty, a much more emotional quality. He kept to himself, using his assistants to temper and bend us, coming down from the tower only to correct a correction, living alone in a small room off the isometrics area—a landlocked Ahab who paced and raged, who was unfolding his life toward a single moment. Coach wanted our obedience and that was all. But Bobby had this loyalty to give, this eager violence of the heart, and he would smash his body to manifest it. Tradition, of course, supported his sense of what was right. The words were old and true, full of reassurance, comfort, consolation. Men followed such words to their death because other men before them had done the same, and perhaps it was easier to die than admit that words could lose their meaning. Bobby stopped humming now and tried to spit past his shoes again. The sun was directly overhead. Sunlight covered everything. I smelled casual sweat collecting under my arms and soon the soreness in my body began to ease just slightly. Two girls left the administration building and walked slowly across campus toward the women's dormitory. It took about ten minutes and we watched them all the way.
Gash, Bobby said.
In time I let my head ease back on the top step and I closed my eyes. I was moving into the biblical phase of the afternoon, the peak of my new simplicity. A verity less than eternal had little appeal. I prepared myself to think of night, desert, sorrowful forests, of the moon, the stars, the west wind, baptismal mist and the rich myrrh of harvested earth. Instead I thought of tits. I thought of flaming limbs, a moody whore's mouth, hair the color of bourbon. Quietly I sweated, motionless on the steps. A girl in a cotton dress on a bed with brass posts. A ceiling fan rubbing the moist air. Scent of slick magazines. She'd be poorborn, the dumbest thing in Texas, a girl from a gulf town, moviemade, her voice an unlaundered drawl, fierce and coarse, fit for badtempered talking blues. I listened to Bobby hum. I had forgotten to add a new word to my vocabulary that day and I resolved to do it before nightfall. I tried to get back to the girl again. It was a different one this time, roundish, more than plump, almost monumental in her measureless dimensions. She removed her tessellated bluegreen sweater. It was all happening in a Mexico City hotel. I heard Bobby stir. The girl became the hotel itself, an incredible cake of mosaic stone. I continued to perspire quietly. Women came and went, a few I'd known, some more magical than that, not memories and therefore absurdly sensual, exaggerated by cameras. It was wonderful to sit in one's own sweat and feel it bathe the tight muscles, tickling at this or that crevice, and to grow slightly delirious in the terrible sun and think of a woman's body (women in warm climates), someone to know when the room at the back of the house is damp and black until she is in it, the round one now, a quite unlikely woman to take you through this first silent winter, body of perfect knowledge, the flesh made word. Then I heard Bobby Luke scratching at his belly or neck.
Pussy, he said.
I opened my eyes and searched the silent lawns.
we were doing simple calisthenics, row upon row of us, bending, breathing and stretching, instructing our collective soul in the disciplines necessary to make us one body, a thing of ninety legs. Two of the coaches, George Owen and Brian Tweego, walked through the ranks, bestowing their shrill blessing on prince and dog alike. At Tweego's command we switched to squatjumps. Automatically my teammates groaned and just as automatically I became elated. My body surged and dropped; my mind repeated the process. The indifferent drift of time and all things filled me with affection for the universe. I squatted and jumped and jumped and squatted. Life was simplified by these afternoons of opposites and affinities. Eventually we headed toward the far goal posts for the first of two laps. I ran in a group that included Buddy Shock, Tim Flanders and Howard Lowry. When we were finished we watched the offensive linemen charge the blocking sled. These were Tweego's people and he screamed at them as he rode the sled, reviling Bloomberg and Onan Moley in particular. Creed himself stood about twenty yards off to the side, arms folded, eyes very busy beneath the peak of his black baseball cap.
Coach is a man of destiny, Tim Flanders said. "They're a vanishing breed. My grandfather was a man of destiny. On my father's side. His whole identity was dominated by some tremendous vision."
Identity, Buddy Shock said. "An equality satisfied by all possible values of the variables for which the standardized expressions involved in the equality are quantitatively determined."
What happened to your grandfather? I said.
He was killed in an industrial accident, Flanders said. "He was burned beyond recognition. Selective ordnance. You know what that is, don't you?"
You're not saying that was his destiny. To get burned beyond recognition.
Of course not.
Then what was his destiny?
He never attained it, Gary. It was the accident that prevented him from attaining it.
Then how do you know he was a man of destiny?
Same way I know Coach is a man of destiny. He sits up nights. He has piercing eyes. You never see him in a phone booth.
Garland Hobbs strolled over to join us. He was tall and solidly constructed, about sixfour and 215, goodlooking in a blank way, faintly impressive, like a tall motel. He had a quarterback's gait, slack and expensive.
What's your comment on the big move? I said.
What move is that?
Switching Taft Robinson to quarterback. We'd like your comment.
Switching shit, he said.
It's the truth, Hobbsie, I said. "Coach is going over to a whole new offense just for the Centrex game. He wants a quarterback who can run. Sprintouts, rollouts, options, bootlegs. You see, he wants a quarterback who can run."
I'm the quarterback.
It's just for one game.
I'm the quarterback.
But you can't run, Hobbsie. He wants a quarterback who can run.
We're undefeated in three games, Hobbs said. "I've got sixtytwo percent completions. I've been intercepted just once and that's because Jessup broke the pattern and he'll tell you that himself. I've been concentrating. I've been taking command in the huddle. I've been reading the blitz just like Coach taught me."
But you can't run.
I can throw, damn it. Can he throw?
Sure he can throw. He can do anything. You know that as well as I do. Coach thinks with Taft at quarterback we'll be able to do a lot more with our offense. It's a total offense concept. It's a reordering of priorities.
I don't understand it. We've been doing real well up to now.
We've been playing leprosariums and barbers' colleges. Coach wants something special to spring on Centrex.
He's putting you on, Buddy Shock said.
Is that right, Gary?
That's right, I said.
You son of a bitch, Hobbs said.
Vern Feck ran around blowing a whistle and each player reported to his respective coach. The six running backs formed a circle around Oscar Veech. He was trying to think of something to say. Finally he focused on me.
Button up when you get hit, Harkness. You haven't been buttoning up. You lost the ball once against those people and you almost lost it two other times.
I was running with reckless abandon.
Run with reckless abandon until you're hit. When you're hit, button up.
Right.
Button up. Become fetal. Hug that ball. Hug it. Hug it.
Yes sir.
Lee Roy, what am I talking about, Lee Roy?
I wasn't listening, sir, Lee Roy Tyler said.
Typical, Veech said. "That's typical of the whole attitude around here. You people are a bunch of feebleminded shit fanners. You're lazy, you're selfsatisfied, you're stupid. In my considered opinion, you're a bunch of feebs. If you can't concentrate, you can't play football for this team. Awright now. What was I talking about, Hopper?"
Buttoning up.
Lee Roy, what are you supposed to do when your quarterback calls trips right and you're parked out there in the slot ready to fly and suddenly it dawns on you that they're in a zone? What do you do, Lee Roy?
Sir?
Lee Roy, you're a dung beetle. Shit is your proper environment. You do nothing, that's what you do. You run your damn pattern.
Yes sir.
Let's get real basic here. Deering, who do you take out on a weakside sweep against a fourthree?
Sir, I take out the linebacker.
You take out the end, feeb. Your wide receiver cracks back on the linebacker.
It's coming back to me now, Jim Deering said.
If you had half a brain you'd be dangerous, Veech said. "Come on, let's get out of here before I hemorrhage."
We went over for a joint conference with Tom Cook Clark and his three quarterbacks, Garland Hobbs, Terry Madden and Byrd Whiteside. Then Vern Feck brought his linebackers over and we got Randy King to center for us so we could practice defending against the blitz, two setbacks and the center against blitz variations by the three linebackers. It was a timing drill really; we were wearing pads and headgear but there wasn't supposed to be any real contact. Madden was at quarterback. Bobby Hopper and I were behind him. On the first snapback, Champ Conway slipped and fell before he even reached me. Vern Feck was all over him in a second.
Shitbird! he screamed. "Shit, shit, shitbird. You got dumb feet, Conway. Messages from your brain must get clogged up somewhere around your kneecap. We got people ready to take your place, shitbird. Now you remember that."
Audibilize, Tom Cook Clark was saying to Madden. "When you see them leaning like that, get ready to audibilize."
Awright, awright, awright, Oscar Veech shouted, clapping his hands for no apparent reason.
What are you, Conway?
Shitbird, sir.
Later a fight broke out between Randy King and a reserve linebacker, John Butler. King got Butler in a headlock and tried to spin him quickly to the ground. He ended his spin holding Butler's helmet. He caught a forearm from behind, then got spun around himself 'and kicked in the leg. He went down, grunting, and Butler jumped on him and they wrestled for a while, making dust. King, on the bottom, tried to pull Butler's jersey over his head. Finally the coaches stopped it and we got going again. Several plays later the blocking got sloppy, and Hobbs, at quarterback now, ran out of the pocket a bit prematurely. A whistle blew, rather softly, as if reluctant to call attention to itself, and we watched Creed come walking across the field. Hobbs put his hands on his hips and looked at the grass. Creed, taking his time, began speaking while he was still ten yards away, very quietly though, with forbearance.
You've got to stay in the pocket, son.
Yes sir, I know.
You bailed out too early. You've got to stand firm even with all that meat coming in at you. If you can't do that, you can't play for me. Now that's a fact.
Yes sir.
Gary, that blocking was dreadful.
Yes sir, I said.
King and Butler were fighting again. Creed heard the noise and turned slowly to watch. Since both of them wore linemen's facemasks, it was extremely difficult to draw blood, the unannounced purpose and only real satisfaction of such a fight. So they started kicking and wrestling again, pulling at each other's equipment, not tactically but in frustration, the pads, the faceguard, the helmet itself. King down now, John Butler kicked him in the stomach. Somebody pushed Butler away. King was through for the afternoon. They had to help him off. Butler stood alone near the sideline. Creed walked slowly across the field toward the offensive linemen, who were running wind sprints. I watched Bloomberg for a moment. Then we went back to our blitz drill. Everybody ignored Butler. He stood off to one side, watching. Five minutes later (you could feel it), we forgave him.
Sam Trammel, who coached the receivers, called the starting offensive and defensive units together for a dummy scrimmage. Vern Feck jumped in and out of the defensive huddle, checking on his boys, little pink face halfshady under the baseball cap, whistle bouncing off his wet Tshirt. I went through the motions; the motions seemed to reciprocate. I blocked, I carried the ball, I ran pass patterns. Out on a deep pattern I watched the ball spiral toward me, nose dropping now, laces spuming, my hands up and fingers spread, eyes following the ball right into my hands, here, now, and then lengthening my stride, breaking toward the middle, seeing myself on largescreen color TV as I veered into the end zone. The afternoon went by in theoretically measured stages, gliding, and I moved about not as myself but as some sequence from the idea of motion, a brief arrangement of schemes and physical laws abstracted from the whole. Everything was wonderfully automatic, in harmony, dreamed by genius. Cruising over the middle on a circle pattern, just loafing because the play was directed elsewhere, I got blasted for no reason by the free safety, Lenny Wells. I rolled over twice, enjoying the grass, and then got to my feet and patted Lenny on the rump.
How to hit, baby, I told him.
It ended as it had begun, two laps around the goal posts. On the first turn a tackle named Ted Joost, who was Randy King's roommate, bumped John Butler right into the goal post and kept on going. Butler ran after him and jumped on his back. Joost shook him off and they started swinging. I jogged past them and by the time I made the far turn and headed back it was all over. I walked toward Staley Hall with Bing Jackmin.
I can't take much more of this, he said.
Of what?
The antiquated procedures.
What do you mean? I said.
All the procedures around here are antiquated. Blocking sleds are antiquated whether you know it or not. Agility drills are antiquated. We even have to bend down and touch our toes. Gary, this is the second half of the twentieth century. That stuff went out with the gladiators. We're using antiquated procedures and we don't even know it.
You said yourself that we hark back. We hark back, you said. You're the one who coined that dumb phrase referring to the connection between then and now.
Hyperatavistic, he said.
I don't think that was it.
Whatever it was, I still think football is antiquated. And you want to know what else it is? I've already given you a hint.
What else, Bing?
It's gladiatorial, he said. "They fatten us up and then put us in the arena together. They tram us to kill, more or less."
Lead a revolt, I said.
Coach would break me in half.
Howard Lowry was walking ahead of us. Howard was known as Boxcar. He was a starting tackle on defense and one of the few men on the squad who had normal human flab around his middle. He went about 265, packed low and very wide, and he was considered immovable.
Howard roomed with Billy Mast, a reserve back on defense. Billy was in the process of memorizing Rilke's ninth Duino Elegy in German, a language he did not understand. It was for a course he was taking in the untellable.