End Zone (20 page)

“The scavenger beetle is equipped with a set of digging claws. It can bury a dead mouse or a dead bird in two or three hours. Something many times its own size. The beetle then lays eggs on the dead carcass. These eggs hatch very quickly and the larvae come out and start eating the meat of the dead bird. The scarab beetle is of the scavenger type. It lives on dung. The scarab has been a symbol of immortality since the ancient Egyptians.”

Dennis Smee walked in.

“Somebody told me to ask you about radioactivity.”

“Insects are highly resistant to radioactivity,” Conway said. “Man dies if he’s exposed to six hundred units. Mr. Insect can survive one hundred thousand units and more. And he won’t have birds feeding off him. He’ll be able to reproduce freely. There won’t be any balance in the sense we know it.”

“Balance,” Fife said. “The equality of effective values with respect to the applied number of reduced symbolic quantities on each side of an equation, excluding combined derivatives.”

Terry Madden came in and congratulated me on my co-captaincy. Everybody shook my hand and wished me well. Then Lee Roy Tyler and Ron Steeples came in to look at the insects. Steeples was wearing a red golf glove on his right hand.

“Where you going, Gary?” he said.

“Things to do.”

In my room I wrote a long hysterical letter on the subject of space-time. Even though I knew nothing about space-time, the letter was fairly easy to write. It practically wrote itself. When I was finished I tried to decide to whom it had been written. This itself seemed the most important thing about the letter. To whom was it going? Whose name would sail, unsuspecting, on that extended text? (Whichever name, it would be minus the word Dear and followed by a dour colon — overly formal perhaps but more unfeigned than the mock-casual comma.) I thought of a dozen people and concluded that none was worthy. I left the six pieces of paper on the old brown saddle blanket atop Anatole’s bed. Bing Jackmin walked in and took a chair.

“Did you hear?” he said.

“What?”

“He’s wearing those sunglasses again. Shaved skull and dark glasses. What the hell does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It probably doesn’t mean anything. He’s a remote individual. The dark glasses conceal him. Or conceal whatever’s around him. I don’t know.”

“What about the skull, Gary?”

“I don’t know why he shaved. I have no idea.”

“Don’t you care to speculate?”

“I leave that to the joint chiefs. I’m just a lowly captain.”

“I heard, Gary. Nice going. Although you’ll probably regret it as soon as Coach starts in with the tongue-lashings. He saves that stuff for the quarterback and the two captains.”

“I know,” I said. “He told me to expect trouble.”

“Verbal tongue-lashings. Public humiliation.”

“I know, Bing.”

“First time it happens you’ll wish you never even saw a football. You’ll experience total personality destructuring.”

“We’re wasting space-time,” I said. “I have a lot to do.”

“I’ll tell you why I came in here in the first place. I want to grow a beard. I want hair. It’s a question of increasing my personal reality. I’m serious about this, Gary.”

“What color beard?”

“Gary, I’m serious now.”

“Because if you want it the same color as the hair on your head, you’ll have a lot easier time growing it.”

“I’d like you to talk to Coach. You’re one of the captains now. You’ve got a power base. There’s no word out on
excess hair. I want you to find out what the word is.”

“It’s very curious,” I said. “All these juxtapositions of hair and non-hair. I half expect Anatole to come walking in with a long white mane down over his shoulders.”

“Talk to Coach. Talk to him. It’s just an ounce of hair but it’ll mean a whole lot to me. I’m becoming too psychomythical in my orientation. I need a reality increment. Find out what the word is.”

“He’ll ignore me, Bing. He’ll just look away in disgust.”

“Keep after him. Hound the son of a bitch. I want some excess hair. I’m serious about this. Tell him I’m willing to shave it off when spring practice begins. But I need a beard now. Try to explain personalized reality to him.”

“These are subglacial matters,” I said. “I can’t just snap my fingers and decide. Besides I have no real power. He’ll just look away in disgust. All I can do for the moment is think about it. I’ll think about it.”

“Think about it,” Bing said. “I’ll be in Conway’s room looking at the insects.”

I went for a walk. It had stopped snowing. The lamps were lit along the straight white paths. It was dinner-time and everyone was inside. I inhaled deeply, feeling the air enter and bite. My right shoulder ached from the game in the snow. I rotated my arm slowly. Then I saw Alan Zapalac coming down the library steps, an enormous yellow scarf circling his neck two or three times and terminating at his kneecap. He made his way carefully, using the heel of his right shoe to probe each step for ice beneath the stacked snow. I waited for him at the foot of the stairs. He wore an armband on which was printed the word
TREES
, green on light blue.

“Escort me to the administration building,” he said.
“If I fall down and break my leg, I’ll need somebody to tell the others not to move me. If you weren’t here and if it happened, breaking my leg, they’d come along and move me, broken bone and all. If you yourself slip, which I doubt will happen with your athletic prowess and tremendous genetic advantages, make sure you don’t reach out and grab for me. I know that’s everybody’s natural instinct but I want you to fight off the urge because if you take me with you with my delicate bone structure I’m as good as dead. They’d probably use me in one of their experiments with hogs or chickens. None of my organs would be safe. Tomorrow you’d go behind that white building that looks like somebody pinned a surgical gown over it and in that pen they’ve got out back for the inoculated animals you’d see a hog walking along with my kidneys inside it, urinating the last dregs of my life into the alfalfa.”

“I’m going that way anyway,” I said.

“Good, good, good. How’s the lady friend?”

“Myna,” I said. “Myna’s fine as far as I know.”

“I’m no good at names. My students are catching on. In one of my classes there’s an all-out hoax being perpetrated, supposedly at my expense. They’ve invented a student. His name is Robert Reynolds. After class somebody always comes up to my desk to ask a question. Whoever it is, he makes it a point to identify himself by name. It’s a different boy every day but the name is always Robert Reynolds. I get test papers from Robert Reynolds. Yesterday there was a new attendance card in my bunch, very authentic looking, full of IBM holes. It was Robert Reynolds’ card. So I called out his name when I took the attendance. Naturally somebody answered. Everybody else said
here.
But the Robert Reynolds person said
present.
You could sense the laughter being contained, the greatness
of their mission, how they had banded together to perpetrate this thing at my expense, the teacher, the so-called font of wisdom. For the moment I’m playing dumb. I’m letting them get away with it. They think I don’t know what’s going on. But there are ploys and there are counterploys. Getting back for a second. Your lady friend. Why is she so fat?”

“The responsibilities of beauty,” I said. “She thinks they’d be too much for her. They’d cause her to change. I think I tend to agree.”

“My wife-to-be is a white Protestant fencepost. A very one-dimensional body-shape. She’s rough and tough, a classic Midwest bitch. When we argue she squeezes the flesh on the back of my hand. She really twists it hard, pinching it simultaneously. Her face becomes very Protestant if you know what I mean. A Zurich theologian lives inside her.”

“I don’t understand why you’d want to marry somebody like that. If somebody like that twisted my flesh, to be perfectly frank with you I think I’d hit her. I’d hate to have my flesh pinched and squeezed on any kind of recurring basis.”

“I’ve never punched or slapped a woman,” he said. “I like to body-check them instead, like a hockey player. I smash them into the boards. It surprises them. A body-check is something they can’t interpret with their normal uncanniness of knowing exactly how to retaliate, with whatever exact give-and-take, the way only women can do, giving back tenfold but with a genius that makes it seem even steven.”

“But why would you marry somebody like that?”

“She loves me. I’m the only person she’s ever loved. Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the whole world
she’s capable of loving. She calls me long-distance every other day. I jump with joy every time the telephone rings. She’s three inches taller than I am but why quibble over inches when you’re involved in matters of eternal import. Speaking of tall and short, notice the length of my scarf. Little men like to wear long scarfs. The reason for this is lost in the mists of time. But to return to love. Love is a way of salvation. It makes us less imperfect and draws us closer to immortality. I want to stir up ecstasy in my soul. I want to ascend to the world of forms. Love basically is the suspension of gravity. It’s an ascent to higher places. The very existence of her love will stir me to deep ecstasy. I’ll begin to climb. Notice the selfish element in my scheme.”

“You mentioned salvation,” I said. “What kind of salvation?”

“I believe in the remission of sins,” Zapalac said. “The world’s, the nation’s, the individual’s sins. Do penance and they shall be forgiven. Salvation consists in the remission of sins. Whatever penances can be performed. Whatever denials or offerings up.”

“Are you serious?”

“The nation’s sins,” he said.

“That was the administration building.”

“I’m going in the back way. It’s part of my overall schemata. I like to turn up behind people’s backs. Suddenly there I am, at their shoulder blades, ready to be a friend to the enemies of injustice.”

I walked back to Staley Hall. In the dining room I saw Bloomberg sitting with Spurgeon Cole. I put some corn flakes on a tray and joined them.

“How’s Coach?” Spurgeon said.

“He’s progressing as anticipated.”

“I have a feeling,” Bloomberg said, “that’s he’s about ready to shuffle off these mortal coils, as they say in show business.”

“How does it feel being captain, Gary?”

“I get to go out for the coin toss. I’ve always wanted to be part of that. It’s tremendously ceremonial without being too pompous.”

“He’s wearing the dark glasses again,” Spurgeon said. “He hasn’t worn them in months. Now he’s wearing them.”

“I know all about it. I have no comment.”

“It must mean something, Gary. Dark glasses indoors in the dead of winter.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Look at Steeples. Steeples is going around with a golf glove on his hand. What the hell does that mean?”

“Steeples has some kind of infection. It’s ugly as hell apparently. He was exposed to something. It’s a sort of burn plus a sort of infection. He just wants to keep it hidden.”

“Is that all you’re eating?” Bloomberg said to me.

“It contains vitamin B, iron and niacin.”

“I’m up to three-o-six,” he said. “The new mind expands with the old body. I feel more alert every day. I feel revitalized.”

Bing Jackmin came over and sat down. His tray held baked ham, mashed potatoes, salad and pound cake. He was looking at me intensely.

“Did you talk to Coach?”

“Give me time,” I said.

“There is no time.”

“Can’t you start growing it and then either keep it going or terminate it when I find out what the word is?”

“Terminate what?” Spurgeon said.

“His excess hair. He wants a beard. Does anybody know what the prevailing attitude is on excess hair?”

“Excess hair is acceptable if it doesn’t exceed accepted standards,” Spurgeon said.

“There’s your answer, Bing.”

“I am interested in certain aspects of global violence,” Bloomberg said.

“Pass the salt,” Bing said.

“This meat,” Spurgeon said. “There’s something wrong with this meat.”

Bloomberg cleared his throat.

“I am an anguished physicist. I take long walks in the country. From time to time I have second thoughts about the super-megaroach aerosol bomb which can kill anything that moves on the whole earth in a fraction of a microsecond and which I alone invented and marketed. As I walk the peaceful country lanes of the Institute for Abstract Speculation and Sneak Attacks way out there in an unmarked site somewhere in the Pacific Northeast, a television crew films my every step. The director asks me to gaze up over the treetops and to squint slightly into the late afternoon sun. At such moments I think of my roachbomb and I am filled with a sense of deep humility and also with a feeling of fantastic bloodsucking power. And I am reminded of the comforting words of the famed celestial song of the Hindus.
What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna?
So you see, my friends, I am not without a sense of history nor of personal responsibility. I have a human side and I love the classics. As I smoke my pipe and play a quiet game of chess with my lovely wife, the mother of three fine boys by a previous marriage, I like to ruminate on the nature of man. What brought
us forth from the primordial slime? Whence are we headed? What is the grand design? And pondering these vast questions over cheese and port, I come to the realization that one terminal bomb more or less makes small difference in this ever-expanding universe of ours.”

“Would somebody please pass the salt,” Bing said.

“I am interested in the violent man and the ascetic. I am on the verge of concluding that an individual’s capacity for violence is closely linked with his ascetic tendencies. We are about to rediscover that austerity is our true mode. In our future meditations we may decide to seek the devil’s death. In our silence and terror we may steer our technology toward the metaphysical, toward the creation of some unimaginable weapon able to pierce spiritual barriers, to maim or kill whatever dark presence envelops the world. You will say this seems an unlikely matter to engage the talents of superrational man. But it is precisely this kind of man who has been confronting the unreal, the paradoxical, the ironic, the satanic. After all, the ultimate genius of modern weapons, from the purely theoretical standpoint, is that they destroy the unborn much more effectively than they destroy the living. We can go on from there to frame any number of provocative remarks but we will resist the temptation. We all know that life, happiness, fulfillment come surging out of particular forms of destructiveness. The moral system is enriched by violence put to positive use. But as the capacity for violence grows in the world, the regenerative effects of specific violent episodes become less significant. The capacity overwhelms everything. The mere potential of one form of violence eclipses the actuality of other forms. I am interested in these things. I am also interested in the discontinuation of contractions.
Medial letters are as valid as any others. I have already begun to revise my speech patterns accordingly.”