Semi-Tough (23 page)

Old Dreamer said, "Stick
that
in your fucking book."

Throughout the whole first quarter, even the first half, I guess it would be fair to say that we were in some kind of a daze.

For a long time I didn't think Hose Manning would be able to draw back and hit the ground with the football if you held the turf up in front of his face-guard.

Shake got as open as Linda the Stew's wool three or four times but Hose only threw the ball about twenty feet over his head, as if Hose was afraid an interception would give him syphilis.

After Hose had missed on his first eight passes, Shake trotted back to the huddle and said, "It's sure nice out there today, Hose. Can I order you anything from room service?"

Old Hose ignored him. He just spit and said, "Let's go, bunch. Lets strike a match now. Here we go."

Hose wasn't getting very good protection, I've got to say.

Our line was trying to zone-block or scramble-block or some idiot thing that wasn't working. On situations where I had to stay back and protect, it looked like a junior high school recess coming at me.

"Sumbitch," said Hose once, trying to get up after the whistle. "I thought you could only have eleven fuckers on a side."

What got us was, they were playing us normal, just like Shake and me felt they would. Dreamer played the wide part of the field, like any rover, even when Shake would split out toward the near sideline.

Obviously they were guessing that a good pass rush on Hose was the best defense against Shake Tiller.

Their defense jumped around a lot, trying to confuse us, when Hose would be up at the line calling signals. Dreamer would move up on the line of scrimmage, like he might be intending to come on a blitz, but he would back off.

It caused a couple of bad snaps and one or two delay penalties when Hose would try to call an audible. Once Hose called an audible for Booger Sanders to follow me through right guard, but Booger couldn't hear the play.

It was actually kind of funny.

Hose started his cadence at the line and then changed his play.

When he was calling out the new play, Booger hollered, "Check," meaning he couldn't hear the play.

Hose called out the signals again, and Booger shouted, "Check," again.

So old Hose raised up from behind the center and turned around to Booger Sanders and pointed at Puddin
Patterson's butt and said, "
Right
fuckin' through here, you country cocksucker."

The dog-ass Jets broke up laughing, and so did the rest of us, and we got a five-yard penalty for delay of the game.

For a while, it was a little bit unsettling to have Dreamer Tatum talking to us on the line of scrimmage.

Dreamer would say things like, "Hey, Billy Puckett, run at me, baby."

Or he would say to Hose Manning, "Watch it now, Mr. Quarterback. Dream Street comin' this time. Dream Street comin'."

You have to be a stud athlete that everybody expects miracles from to know what it's like to get as humiliated as we were in the early part of the game.

Especially in something like a Super Bowl before ninety-two thousand people and about a hundred million on television.

I'll grant you that we looked rotten, all of us, but I want to point out that it just isn't true what all of the newspapers and
Sports Illustrated
said about Shake Tiller
—
that he might have been suffering a slight case of over
-
confidence.

Some people have reasoned that this is why Shake dropped a couple of balls that Hose finally threw in his vicinity. And the reason why he fumbled the one ball he did catch in the first quarter. Which resulted in another touchdown for the dog-ass Jets.

The truth is, Shake dropped one ball because he was so wide open he was overeager to put some white stripes behind him. He knew there wasn't anything but six points in front of him if he could spin around and get going.

He just started too soon.

Shake unfastened his chin strap and walked slowly back to the huddle after the play. He winked at me and then looked at Hose and said, "Shit, it's no fun if you're gonna hit me in the hands."

Hose said, "Let's go, bunch. Let's pop the cork now and start pourin'."

I can testify also that Shake dropped the other ball because Hose threw it about five feet over his head and my buddy had to leap up, twist around, stretch out and grunt, and even then he only got one hand on it just as two dog-ass Jets high-lowed him.

But I guess the great sports writers think that if you're Shake Tiller you're supposed to be able to catch every flea that ever ran up a dog's ass.

When Shake fumbled that ball he caught in the first quarter, for what would have been our initial first down of the game, it was frankly because Dreamer Tatum knocked his eyelids off.

Shake grabbed it over his shoulder
—
it was a just little old quick-out
—
but just as he stopped to throw an inside fake, Dreamer, who was steaming up on him, caught him a lick that Barbara Jane said she could even hear.

The ball squirted straight up in the air, on our forty
-
five, and here came one of their dog-ass linebackers, Hoover Buford from Baylor of all places, to pick off the ball in mid-air and practically trot to the end zone.

The Baptist sumbitch could have stopped to take a leak and nobody could have caught him. I'd hit into the line and was too far away, and Hose, of course, is not exactly what you'd call your Metroliner.

A
l
(Abort) Goodwin would have had a chance, provided he knows how to tackle, but A
l
had sprinted his usual fifty yards down the sideline.

Barbara Jane says that up in the stands after we fell behind by fourteen
—
even though it was obviously the work of fate and not the dog-ass Jets
—
there were some fairly despondent souls among the Giant fans.

She said Big Ed couldn't decide who to cuss the most, Dreamer Tatum or Shoat Cooper.

She said Big Ed kept hollering: "Big toe! Big toe! Somebody kick that nigger in the big toe or he's gonna beat us by himself."

Barbara Jane said Burt Danby just kept shaking his head and saying: "We just wanted it too much, I guess. You shouldn't want something as badly as this. You
really
shouldn't."

Barbara Jane said Elroy Blunt apparently hadn't been to bed at all
—
not for any sleep, at least
—
and that he was so tired and hung over and wool-whipped from his party that he couldn't even get excited about the game.

She said Elroy's eyes were the color of beets and he looked like he'd shrunk about two sizes.

She said that after the dog-ass Jets had us down by twenty-one in the middle of the second quarter
—
which was after Boyce Cayce had hit Jessie Luker on that seventy-yard bomb because Jimmy Keith Joy slipped down
—
that Elroy just looked up in the sky.

She said he just looked up at God and said:

"It's me again, ain't it? I got me ten large on it but you ain't gonna let me steal
nuthin'
, are you?"

She said Elroy turned to her with his floppy-brimmed suede hat halfway covering up his face and said quietly, "How come it's always my turn now instead of niggers?"

Well, of course, if anybody thinks it was semi-dreary up in the stands, they should have been down on the field.

Until
T.J.
Lambert smothered Boyce Cayce that time and got 11s a fumble on their thirty-five, we were on the brink of give-up because nothing would go right for us.

That fumble
T.J.
captured, which I think he got because he farted so viciously that no dog-ass Jet wanted to go near the ball, enabled us to get a field goal and at least get something on the scoreboard.

I didn't want us to take the three when we only had fourth-and-one on their two-yard line, especially when we were down by twenty-one, but Shoat Cooper wanted any points he could get.

That was Shoat's play and not Hose Manning's, so all of those Giant fans who threw all of those cushions and garbage at Hose when he came off the field ought to feel pretty apologetic about it.

I know it was Shoat's decision because Shake and me were in on the conversation when we called time out and went to the sideline to talk it over.

I wanted to try to stick in there myself, but Shoat said, "Stud hoss, if we was to line up tight, you'd get hit by ever-body in Queens."

Hose wanted to throw, but Shoat said we didn't have any passing room.

"If they stop us here without no points at all," said
Shoat, "it'll give them piss ants too much of an emotional boost."

This was when Shake Tiller said, "Hell, they're tellin' jokes out there now."

I still think I could have stuck it in there for six, but we did what Shoat ordered. Shake Tiller held the ball and Hose Manning kicked it through there and we got our three.

I was all set to block Dreamer when he rushed, but he didn't rush. He faked like he would, and then raised up and laughed. And before he jogged off the field, you may not have noticed how he patted Shake on top of the hat and shook Hose's hand to congratulate him. Would that piss you off at all?

Anyhow, that was the score, twenty-one to three, when we went in for the strangest halftime I've ever encountered.

I'm afraid that for about the first ten minutes we were in the dressing room we acted like a crowd of convicts who didn't like their fat meat. Just about everybody kicked something and slung his helmet against the wall or on the floor. It was
T.J.
Lambert of course who made the most noise.

"Tootie fruities!" he hollered. "We're all a bunch of goddamned tootie fruities."

T.J.
snarled and puffed and built up to a roar and called out, "
We're through takin' shit!"

There was general movement through the room, with guys going to get a Coke out of a drink box, or going to take a dump or a leak.

"Hose Manning!"
T.J.
yelled. "You know what your
fuckin' old offense looks like out there? It looks like a barrel of hog shit!"

Hose was over opening his locker and getting out a clipboard with pages of plays in it. He sat down quietly on the bench and started looking through the plays, and smoking a cigar.

T.J.
carried on.

"By God, my defense ain't give 'em nothin' but one diddywaddle pass and they don't get that if my nigger don't slip down back there," he said. "Jimmy Keith Joy, you Aferkin sumbitch, where are you?"

From across the room you could hear Jimmy Keith's voice.

"Yo, Daddy," Jimmy Keith hollered.

"Jimmy Keith, get your ass up here in front of everybody and take a fuckin' oath that there ain't no other tootie fruitie gonna get behind you the rest of the day,"
T.J.
said.

Jimmy Keith Joy hobbled over into the center of the dressing room.

"I got 'em, Daddy, I got 'em," he said. "Everything's groovin'."

"We ain't takin' no more
shit
!"
T.J.
Lambert hollered, a lot louder than he can fart.

"Giants has got one more half to be
men
,"
T.J.
said. "Them fuckers ain't won nothin'
yet
."

A group of us around Hose Manning's locker got a mite testy. I guess Shake Tiller started it.

"How much did you bet on the Jets?" Shake needled Hose.

Hose only looked up at him.

"Why don't you try throwin' balls in the same stadium the rest of us are in?" Shake asked.

Hose drew on his cigar and squinted and said, "And when did you forget how to run your routes, playboy?"

Shake said, "I can't run 'em in the stadium tunnels. They call that out of bounds, where the ball's been going."

Puddin Patterson interrupted.

"Let's stay together, babies," he said. "We can move it on them cats. I can feel it. We gonna sail like a big boat this half."

Shake said, "Bite my ass, Puddin. You haven't been off your belly all day. Sixty-four's all over you like the crabs."

Puddin said, "We gonna move it this half. We gonna fly like a big balloon."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna be the first nigger on the moon," Shake said, spitting on the floor.

I said for everybody to cut the crap and let's talk about what might work.

"A runnin' back wouldn't hurt us any," Hose said, calmly. "You haven't showed me a lot of Jim Brown out there."

"Line gonna move them cats this half," said Puddin. "We gonna spin like a big record."