Semi-Tough (10 page)

Barb told Miss Lewis that day, "I don't see how people can eat things like that without
ketchup
and fries." And me and Shake laughed so hard and fell down so many times we broke a desk.

I guess Barb was born funny and semi-grown up.

We didn't get expelled or anything that time back in elementary school. Miss Lewis was ashamed to show the picture to the principal. She wanted to keep it, I think. Miss Lewis wasn't so bad for a teacher, and the miniskirts she wore suggested that she might have had a little bit of hell in her.

Anyhow, we had us a semi-skate last night, is what we did. We got some of the crescendos on tape, but I don't think they'll be any good for the book, Jim Tom.

It's just a lot of laughing and semi-ecstasy words that nobody can spell.

Man, you can always tell when it's getting close to game time. That's when everybody from Big Ed Bookman to Hitler's nephews start asking for extra tickets that don't exist.

Here it is Thursday, and between our meeting of the offense this morning and our practice at UCLA this
goes out
afternoon, I guess I got five calls for tickets.

There'll probably be some more while I'm writing this. Downstairs in the lobby and in the bars, it is getting awfully crowded with Giant fans who have flown out for the big day.

Shake and Barbara Jane are down there with Big Ed and Big Barb, who have just arrived. Cissy Walford isn't back yet from going to a studio to watch Boke Kellum kill another fag in an episode of his TV series, which is called
McGill of Santa Fe
.

All we have to do tonight is something fairly quiet, thank the Lord. We have to stop by a cocktail party that CBS is having here in the hotel and then go to early dinner with Big Ed and Big Barb.

Big Ed and Big Barb don't normally arrive this early for our games. They usually hop in Big Ed's Firestream Two, his six-seater jet, and flog it in on Saturday night and then flog it back to Fort Worth on Sunday night in time for some drinks and boring talk at River Crest.

But since this is our first Super Bowl, Big Ed thought it was a special enough occasion that he and Big Barb had to be on hand early so he could tell us how to whip the dog-ass Jets.

There isn't anything that Big Ed doesn't know all about, especially football.

I think that if he had a loose sixty million that he wasn't "puttin' in the ground," as he says, he would buy the Giants from DDD and F just so he could sit on the bench and fire Shoat Cooper.

Which wouldn't be so bad an idea, to fire Shoat.

Big Ed thinks the only reason we're undefeated this season is because of the inside tips he's given us.

Big Ed's idea of strategy is to devise your game plan so that you run and throw at the other side's niggers.

Me and Shake have bust our butts laughing at some of Big Ed's serious ideas about football.

This is how Shake imitates Big Ed discussing football:

"Now if the other side has a fast goddamn nigger, you've got to get to him early in the game. Hit that black bastard a good lick on his big toe and he won't run so fast.

"Never give the ball to a nigger on third and three when you're behind and need the yardage. Goddamn it, they'll dog it on you ever time. It's too bad they've been raised that way, in Africa and Brazil and Philadelphia and Detroit and everywhere, but that's the way it is. One of these days when they've educated themselves better and shown some goddamn initiative at inventing things like
—
oh, I don't know, the offshore rig or the diamond drillin' bit, or something useful
—
then goddamn it, you can give a nigger the ball on third and three. But not now.

"I just wouldn't trust a nigger to make a big play for me any more than I'd trust a spick to fix a flat tire.

"Uh, little lady, I'll have one of your sixteen-ounce T-bones, medium rare."

Shake and me have pointed out to Big Ed that there are some fairly stud spooks on the Giants, such as Puddin Patterson and Sam Perkins and Euger Franklin in the offensive line, and Henry Knight and Perry Lou Jackson and Varnell Swist and Jimmy Keith Joy and Story Time Mitchell on defense, not to forget Randy Juan Llanez, our all-purpose stud who returns kicks, fills in at cornerback and behind Shake Tiller at split end, and is all kinds of mixed-up spook and spick blood.

Big Ed has said, however, "There are some goddamn exceptions to everything and as far as I'm concerned those boys are damn near as white as us because they've paid the price."

Speaking of our ball club, regardless of what colors we are or what Big Ed the Brain Trust thinks, this seems like a good time for me to go through our line-up and tell you a little something about each stud that you might find interesting.

I enjoy talking about these studs, anyhow, because I'm proud of what we've accomplished, both as a team and as what you might call your human beings.

At tight end, of course, we've got old Thacker Hubbard who just walked into camp one day. He'd been drafted and cut by Detroit and nobody wanted him. Granted, he's slow. But he'll catch it if Hose Manning doesn't make him reach too far, and he can block.

Thacker keeps to himself and does his job. He's from Idaho and likes sheep. He's about six three and two thirty-five.

Seems like Thacker said something funny back during the season but I can't remember what it was.

Sam Perkins is an offensive tackle on the right side of the line. Sam is just one of those spooks who never complains and gives you a whole lot of effort. He's about six feet and two fifty and he's been around long enough to know every kind of secret way there is to hold on a pass block.

Sam played college ball at Oregon State but he comes from Los Angeles. That's where he lives in the off-season, somewhere around here, like Compton. He's got a real good off-season business designing women's clothes, they tell me.

Some people say Sam might like boys better than girls, and that's why he's never been married, but I hesitate to believe something like this about a friend.

Anyway, I don't see how the Lord would make somebody an interior lineman, and black,
and
a fag.

Puddin Patterson is our right guard on offense, as you already know, and of course Puddin is simply one of the all-time immortals. He must be the fastest big man that ever was, and he's such a good buddy that if I ask Puddin to kill somebody for me, he wouldn't say anything except, "Where you want this cat's body shipped?"

Because I like country music so much, Puddin calls me his "closet red neck," but he knows I love his big ass, and Rosalie, and his two little cousins, too.

Through our connections, me and Shake helped Puddin get a beer distributorship in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he's from, and we also put his mamma in the pie
-
making business, in which she is about to get semi-rich.

One of the things I think me and Shake will do one of these days when Puddin retires from pro ball is give his old school, Grambling, a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship in his name.

Puddin says that won't make up for the fact that we're white.

He says, "You cats know how much better ball you'd play if you didn't feel so much guilt?"

We tell Puddin to go play the saxophone, or whatever it is spades do.

At center we've got a peculiar old boy named Nobakov Korelovich from Notre Dame. He's got a monk's haircut, no front teeth, real white skin and a cross eye. Everybody calls him the Pope and he kind of grins.

The Pope goes about six four and two sixty and one of the fascinating things he can do
—
for money
—
is drink a can of beer in four seconds. He just sucks it out in a giant inhale.

The Pope broke in as a rookie last year, and I'm sure he would have made All-Pro if he hadn't beaten up a sports writer from Chicago when we were out there playing the Bears.

It was on Saturday night before the game and some of us were in Adolph's having dinner and some drinks when the sports writer saw us and came over to our booth and started kidding the Pope about Notre Dame losing to Tulane.

The sports writer found out that only two things make the Pope mad. One is the guy he's blocking on, and the other is a joke about Notre Dame football.

The Pope vaulted out of the booth with a big steak bone in his mouth and grabbed the sports writer and lifted him up in the air by his neck. He held him up in the air near the piano bar and slapped him a few times,
growling through the meat in his mouth.

Then he took the poor old sports writer out on the sidewalk, right there on Rush Street, turned him upside down and shook him. He took the guy's money and threw it down the street, and took the guy's glasses and ate them.

He just chewed all the glass out of the rims and swallowed it, growling some more, and went back in Adolph's and washed it down with some beer.

We got him calmed down and the Pope just sat there the rest of the night and said, "Fuckin' literary fuckers."

The sports writer didn't press any charges. In fact, he wrote what I thought was a funny story in the paper the next day about how to interview Nobakov Korelovich.

What I mainly remember was the guy's opening paragraph.

He wrote:

"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again last night. You remember them. Pestilence, Famine, War and Korelovich."

Our other offensive guard is Euger Franklin. Euger is from Nebraska and he's about as close as anything we've got to what some people might call a troublemaker.

There's no worry about Euger in a football game. He's a strong-shouldered old boy with a hell of a physique and he's quick as a turpentined cat. He weighs about two forty and stands about six one.

Shoat Cooper refers to Euger as his "malcontent."

Since I've been around Euger, which is roughly three seasons, he hasn't been overly friendly with the white studs on the team. He never hangs around with any of us, even when there are other spooks in the crowd. Even Puddin Patterson, who sort of keeps Euger cool.

Euger is about the only spade on the team that you wouldn't get too funny with, in terms of race or anything. It's strange, too, because actually he's a lot lighter than the rest.

Euger, in fact, could damn near pass as a Mexican or an A-rab.

Euger was a No. 1 draft choice of the Giants, and also an A
l
l-American and a Lineman of the Year at Nebraska.

He's married to a good-looking chick named Eunice, who's not a bad blues singer and who's been in the movies. He makes good money with the Giants. He's probably the highest-paid lineman we've got, next to Puddin. Or maybe higher, considering the bonus he got.

But Euger Franklin's been right there with every kind of spook movement that's gone on in the league. Like the white-shoe movement, which was when all the spooks decided they would only wear white game shoes. Things like that.

Shake Tiller somehow gets away with kidding him. A little bit.

Like today at practice.

We were working on a tricky reverse where Euger has to fake a pass block, then circle out and around and go downfield and try to get the safety.

We ran it four or five times and messed up the hand
-
offs, and Euger, meanwhile, was going downfield and coming back.

He just walked off and sat down, pissed.

Shoat Cooper strolled over to him and said something and Euger said something back, waving his arms, and standing up and kicking his helmet.

Puddin hollered at him, "Hey, boy. You get that mean and we'll whip them cats on Sunday."

Euger took a few steps back toward our unit, cupped his hands, and shouted at Hose Manning. He shouted:

"Say, baby. Why don't you let those cats back there
fair-catch
those handoffs, you dig?"

Shake Tiller grinned and so did Hose Manning.

And Shake called to him:

"Come on, Euger. Get your white ass over here. A little extra running can't hurt anybody as mean as you."

Euger said, "I don't get paid to take laps, baby."

Everybody whooped and hooted.

"Get over here, Euger," said Hose Manning. "Let's work, gang. Here we go."

And Hose whistled loudly and clapped his hands.

Euger Franklin started walking to the huddle, slowly, talking to himself.

"Tell you what, Euger," said Shake. "When that big black tribunal takes over, your trouble-makin' ass is gonna be the first one they execute."

Euger fastened his chin strap and spit.

We ran the play a few more times and Euger dug out harder than anybody.

Our other offensive tackle is just a big old country boy named Dean McCoobry from the University of Texas. He's a rookie who hasn't said anything that I know of
since training camp when we made him try to sing "The Eyes of Texas" every night after dinner until he got the words right.