A Fan's Notes (51 page)

In the years since I had last been there the price of beer had risen from fifteen to a preposterous fifty cents a glass, and like most drinkers I felt a heavy distress at being in a bar where with five dollars I did not have enough to get a glow on.
“
Who the hell are these people kidding?
”
I sneeringly asked myself. That sneer encompassed my entire surroundings. The decor of the room, which I had once thought so very English, now seemed merely dingy. In the back a great, barnlike dining room had been added; and with a different kind of luck, I thought, the customers would have scurried to some other place in search of the intimacy that had been sacrificed to the expansion. Feeling cold and hostile, I was standing there wondering why Clarke
’
s, having almost totally changed the face it presented to the public, should be lucky enough to survive, when I noticed the bartender, he noticed me, and in a vague way I thought I understood. The bartender was my chum from the long ago—he who had been caught in the middle the night the blonde
’
s date, whacking away at the bar with his effeminate hand, had demanded my expulsion from the human race. Recognizing each other simultaneously, we did not speak; but our heads nodded in recognition of each other. In its way that nodding was a thousand times more eloquent than anything we might have said.
“
You look older,
”
his nod seemed to say.
“
You do, too,
”
said mine.
“
And how did those years go?
”
his head asked; to which mine replied,
“
Look at me—you can see.
”
“
Yeah, I can see.
”
It was this nodding, this tacit conversation, that made me see why Clarke
’
s had lasted. Clarke
’
s was a place of youth where we were no longer youths, a place of high optimism where we knew better. And save for one or two perennial adolescents the people who came there now were not those we had brushed shoulders with and hence did not know what the place had been. But the bartender and I knew. And so knowing, we had an amiable warmth pass between us. Ordering a shot, I drank it off; then I ordered another. He did not take the money for this second one; and when I drank it abruptly off, he refilled the glass. Again he didn
’
t take the money, and his nod seemed to say,
“
It
’
s that bad, huh?
”
In acknowledgment, I nodded that it was.

All this time J. had been drifting between the phone booth and the bar, filling me in on his progress. So caught up in my own
“
conversation,
”
I had nodded only cursorily and didn
’
t really think of him again until, detecting that I was about out of money, I asked for more. He met the request with such a look of surprise that my eyes fled immediately to the clock. To my surprise, I discovered I had gone through the five dollars in an hour
’
s time. Attempting to keep condescension from his voice, the tone of adult speaking to child, and introducing that element of false joviality with which people often approach drunks, J. reminded me that the night was young and that we had hours to do the town. This was news of which I was aware and which I met by putting on my face the base, pouting, and churlish grimace of the alcoholic denied. Seeing this, J. suddenly became silent, cutting himself off in mid-lecture, and laid ten dollars on the bar. His eyes were squinted in an agony of apprehension, an unequivocal disappointment no longer muddied by false hopes for me. It was the simple, un adulterated disappointment that signaled the end of the game for me, that told me the final whistle had blown and I wasn
’
t going to get the ball again. What I saw in his eyes struck me mute, crushed me, terrified me! Oh, I had borne the grievous eyes of family and acquaintances, of Patience and Prudence; but the friend of one
’
s Youth—he may be the only friend one ever has—never sees one
’
s defeat. Or almost never; and if he does, one can be certain it is too late for him. Having seen my abasement, that I groveled and had ceased to struggle, unwittingly J. had hurt me terribly. My first impulse —as it always is with the alcoholic—was to hurt him back. Seeking room enough for my grief, I wanted to flee out into
the night, leaving the ten dollars on the bar—imagining that
J. would spend his entire weekend worrying about me. But I rejected that, thinking of still a hundred other ways to hurt him, rejecting them all in turn as lacking subtlety. By that time, unfortunately, I had already put a considerable dent in the ten dollars. Finally, by luck, through the deep, devious waters of the drunk
’
s mind, there arose the obvious question: why hurt him at all? He was right—God, yes, he was right! Accepting this, I, too, got some dimes, slid them into my pocket, and walked to the other phone booth, in the dining
room.

Tentatively, shyly, I began dialing. Whereas I might have just emerged from a Trappist monastery, this game seemed a dreadfully secular business. I called people I hadn
’
t talked with in years; though they offered no comfort in the way of tickets, they seemed rather pleased to hear from me. One of them jocularly said,
“
How much yuh need?
”
Another said,
“
Why, Exley, you dip-shitty old bastard—/ thought you
’
d be dead.
”
He then invited me up to his Riverside Drive apartment to get drunk with him; but in the background his wife groaned loudly and achingly and distinctly said,
“
Oh, no—not that crazy bastard!
”
That he might join me for a drink, he then tried to find out where I was. But I refused to tell him and said good-bye by saying,
“
Tell that witch you
’
re married to that she ought to douche out her rancid soul.
”
With each call I became more obnoxiously persuasive, and through sheer balls I finally got through to Charley Conerly at his hotel. Feeling unable to handle it, I got J. and had him talk to Conerly. The conversation was a long one, and other than Conerly
’
s agreeing to leave two tickets for us at Booth of the stadium and the fact of our (for I had my head stuck inside the booth) being as giddy as two teen-agers in contact with a cinema star, I remember only that Conerly had the gift of granting one ease. When he began the conversation, J.
’
s voice had been hurried and nervous, the way one
’
s voice is with the famous. But by the end of the conversation J.
’
s voice had become modulated and easy. Whatever it was he said to J., Conerly succeeded in putting him at his ease, a gift not all of the famous are said to have. Describing to him the change in his voice as the conversation had proceeded, I later asked J. what Conerly had said to him. J. couldn
’
t remember anything specific, saying only,
“
He was a good guy—you could tell that.
”

Even after we had checked into the One Fifth Avenue Hotel, and while J. was preparing to go on the town and I was lying atop the bed, we kept shaking our heads in farcical wonder, as though saying,
“
Imagine? Tickets from Conerly!
”
It was our way of agreeing that in the conspiracy we had had for so many years this was our grandest success to date, something to really make the boys back home sit up and take notice. Though genuine—where Holden Caulfield might want to call up old Tom Hardy, and S. N. Behrman, Max Beerbohm, there was no one I
’
d have rather talked with than Conerly—my enthusiasm was colored by an ulterior motive, that of being pleasant till J. was safely out of the room. With the peculiar canniness of the alcoholic, I had figured out a way to drink all I pleased, and drink it out of the pained view of my friend. Worse yet, having been the one who was responsible for getting the tickets, and with the drunk
’
s really monstrous perspective on the nature of things (it wasn
’
t enough that J. was paying for the tickets and the hotel), I honestly felt I had a right to do what I was about to do. Beginning by telling J., amidst some histrionic yawns and superb sighs, that I was really too, too exhausted to go on the town, I now lay on the bed feigning a heavy slumber and squinting at J. through the curtain of my eyelashes. Though J. was disappointed and asked me a dozen times if I wouldn
’
t change my mind, I think he took my abstinence as a hopeful omen and in his voice there was no real insistence. Spruced up and standing by the door, he asked me once again if I wouldn
’
t reconsider, to which I really outdid myself. Fixing on him the most doleful eyes, and in martyr-like, near sotto voce tones, I said,
“
No, really. You go ahead and have yourself a good time.
”
The door was no sooner closed than I was up, showered, shaved, dressed, and in a matter of minutes sitting at the hotel bar drinking a Vodka Presbyterian and as happy as a fat man in a delicatessen, looking lustfully at all the bottles on the back bar. I could drink as much as I could hold. All I had to do was sign the bar tab with J.
’
s signature and room number.

To those who understand the slightness of an American
’
s traditions, the place of sports in his life, and New York City
’
s need to make do with what it has (the stadium, for instance, is a nearly impossible place to watch football), the Yankee Stadium can be a heart-stopping, an awesomely imposing place, and never more so than on a temperate and brilliant afternoon in late November. The vivid reds and oranges, the plaids and tans, the golds and greens of autumn clothing flicker incessantly across the way where the stadium, rising as sheer as a cliff, is one quivering mass of color out of which there comes continually, like music from a monstrous kaleidoscope, the unending roar of the crowd. And where I have been in Los Angeles
’
vast Coliseum and Chicago
’
s monumental Soldiers
’
Field and able to imagine it, I am yet unable to imagine a young man coming for the first time out of those dugouts at that moment just prior to kickoff when the stadium is all but bursting its great steel beams with people. I am incapable of imagining stepping out and craning my head upward at the roaring cliff of color, wondering whether it be all a dream which might at any moment come tumbling down, waking me to life
’
s hard fact of famelessness. The stadium stays. The game proceeds. Autumnal mists set in. At half time the stadium
’
s floodlights are turned on; so that the colors, with each change of light, change, too—become muted, become brighter again, like a leaf going from vivid green to lemon yellow to wine red to rust brown, reminding one that time is passing, that time indeed is running out. It was that kind of a day, that kind of an hour, when the Giants, losing - with two minutes remaining, came hurriedly to the line of scrimmage, eighty yards from a touchdown and a possible tie. Gifford, whom I was of course watching, had neither thrown off his sluggishness nor played particularly well. Nevertheless, I knew that Quarterback George Shaw, who was substituting for an ailing Conerly, would make the play to him. I knew he would because men under pressure believe in miracles and see what they want to see. Shaw would not, of course, pass to the Gifford who was even now flanked wide to the left side of the field but to some memory of the ball player he once had been.

J. thought otherwise, predicting that Shaw would pass to another.

“
Don
’
t be absurd,
”
I snapped, and J. looked at me with great surprise, causing me to flush with embarrassment. Though I
’
m sure he didn
’
t understand the reason, I could see by his expression that he had gauged my temper correctly. J. saw that I was afraid.

For a few delirious moments Gifford made me forget my fear and the crowd eat crow for their rumors of his lost heart. In the same way that Shaw perhaps threw to some memory of him, he became that memory. Running one of his favorite patterns, he caught his first pass by moving straight up the left side of the field, beautifully faking one defender to the outside. Abruptly cutting in front of another, he had, when he caught the ball, eluded both defenders and to the deafening roar of the crowd was at mid-field when he was finally tackled. Pummeling and pounding J. on the back, I shouted,
“
Oh, Jesus, Frank! Atta way! Atta way, kid!
”
The next play was an all-or
-
nothing post pattern, i.e., the receiver runs full speed for the goal posts, and the quarterback drops straight back into the pocket and heaves for those posts. Running swiftly and looking back for the ball, having lost the goal posts from his distracted vision and fearful of running into them, Bob Schnelker dropped a lovely, a high, thrilling, perfectly trajected pass. There was scarcely a moan. So sure was the crowd now that it was going to be their day, they seemed happily undaunted. Nor was I any longer upset. Now the Giants were at the line of scrimmage again, and again Gifford was flanked wide left. Running what seemed the precise pattern he had run before, and to another thundering roar of the crowd, he made the catch at about the Philadelphia thirty and was moving later ally across the field toward us, trying even as he ran to find a way by Philadelphia
’
s two deep men, now converging on him, and into the end zone. The crowd was wild. The crowd was maniacal. The crowd was his. J. was the one who noticed Chuck Bednarik, Philadelphia
’
s—there are no adjectives to properly describe him—linebacker.
“
Watch out for Bednarik,
”
he said. Hearing J., I turned to see Bednarik coming from behind Gifford out of his linebacking zone, pounding the turf furiously, like some fierce animal gone berserk. I watched Bednarik all the way, thinking that at any second Gifford would turn back and see him, whispering,
“
Watch it, Frank. Watch it, Frank.
”
Then, quite suddenly, I knew it was going to happen; and accepting, with the fatalistic horror of a man anchored by fear to a curb and watching a tractor trailer bear down on a blind man, I stood breathlessly and waited. Gifford never saw him, and Bednarik did his job well. Drop ping his shoulder ever so slightly, so that it would meet Gifford in the region of the neck and chest, he ran into him without breaking his furious stride,
thwaaahhhp
, taking Gifford
’
s legs out from under him, sending the ball careening wildly into the air, and bringing him to the soft green turf with a sickening thud. In a way it was beautiful to behold. For what seemed an eternity both Gifford and the ball had seemed to float, weightless, above the field, as if they were performing for the crowd on the trampoline. About five minutes later, after unsuccessfully trying to revive him, they lifted him onto a stretcher, looking, from where we sat high up in the mezzanine, like a small, broken, blue-and-silver manikin, and carried him out of the stadium.