Semi-Tough (26 page)

"Nobody comes in until five," Jim Tom said, "but if you see anything you like, speak up."

"What'll we do until then?" I asked.

"Hopefully," he said, "we get drunk."

Jim Tom and I talked about the book for a little while. He said that all he would do was break it up into chapters, and maybe move a couple of anecdotes around. And maybe take out a few fucks.

"How much more will there be?" he asked.

I told him just one or two more tapes, which I would do when I go back to New York after I had been on the road for another three weeks or so.

"Shake Tiller's off jacking around somewhere, acting like he's Mr. Mysterious. I'll give him a chance to turn up, but if he doesn't, then I'll just end the book," I said.

Jim Tom asked if I knew what Shake was up to.

I said I had a suspicion or two.

"He's always had a little semi-hippie in him," I said. "And he's told me he's tired of playing ball. Now that we've won the Super Bowl, I'm about to believe he just might hang it up. He's interested in a lot of other things, you know."

Jim Tom motioned for some back-up Scotches.

"Barbara Jane know how to handle all this?" Jim Tom said.

"I think so," I said. "She's not gonna sit on her ass the rest of her life, wondering whatever happened to old Eighty-eight. She's a perky sumbitch, you know. And she's got a whole pile of pride going for her own self."

"How long will she wait?" Jim Tom said.

"In some moods, as long as it takes," I said. "But in others, about five minutes."

I said, "She's into a lot of stuff. She's working all the time, and she knows everybody in New York. When she's not with us, she's moving around town with TV people and ad guys and agency types and the show biz crowd."

Edna Mae brought two young Scotches to the table and lit Jim Tom's cigarette for him.

"You met my football hero here?" Jim Tom asked her.

"Thought you looked familiar," Edna Mae said. "Billy Clyde Puckett, ain't it?"

I smiled.

"Goddamn, wait'll I tell my sons you was in here," Edna Mae said. "They'll be so excited they'll get constipated."

I thanked Edna Mae for the compliment.

Jim Tom said to her, "If anything comes in that looks good, ask 'em if they'd like to fuck old Billy Clyde Puckett."

Edna Mae said, "I don't see why they wouldn't. They done fucked everything else that walked in here."

I told Jim Tom I wasn't all that interested in getting laid for some reason, but I said for him not to mind me. If he saw something enticing, go right ahead. I'd just drink.

He said, "Stud, I've got to confess something. Once you've had Crazy Iris, it's a close-out on anything else. I'm not lying to you. That crazy sumbitch is Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey and the whole golden age of fucking rolled into one."

His home life sounded about normal, I mentioned.

In the three hours that followed Jim Tom told me some of the great horror tales about marriage. It seems that his wife, Earlene, had come to despise him so much over the past couple of years that she had gotten fairly inventive in displaying her hate.

At first, he said, Earlene did all the predictable things like locking him out of the house and throwing clock radios at him. Also, he said, she developed the habit of running screaming out of restaurants and bars.

Because he hadn't lit her cigarette.

"Stud," Jim Tom said, "believe me when I tell you that there's no terror in the world like being out with a group of friends and being in a conversation with somebody else and then casually looking over at Earlene Padgett
—
who had seemed to be having a good time, mind you
—
and seeing in that instant that her cigarette isn't
lit and she's glaring at you."

I asked, "What's the punishment for that?"

Jim Tom said, "Oh, that can be anything from your clothes being thrown out in the yard, to all the sleeves cut off your sports coats at the elbow, to a Sunbeam hair
-
curler being thrown through the screen of your color Zenith."

I said, "Would you mind telling me something else? Why in the fuck don't you get divorced?"

Jim Tom Pinch grinned and lifted his young Scotch up in the manner of a toast.

"Stud," he said. "I don't have a cent to my name, but if I have to sleep in the back of my car and write my column in this booth, that's exactly what I'm about to do."

I clinked my glass against Jim Tom's.

"It took me a while to figure out that I'd rather starve to death than get bitched to death," he said.

I explained to my collaborator that I'd like to drink with him the rest of the evening but I had a lot of phone calls to make, for plane reservations here and there. And I'd promised I'd call Barb.

"Send me the book as soon as you think it looks enough like a book to give the publisher," he said.

In the parking lot of Reba's Lounge, a Volks drove up and a girl jumped out, rather hurriedly. She wriggled toward the front door, carrying an overnight bag that I thought might have had Jim Tom's undershorts in it.

She had short brown hair, a mouthful of gum, and a fairly stout body. She reminded me more than just a little bit of Earlene Padgett five years ago.

"You wouldn't be Crazy Iris, would you?" I said.

The girl stopped, turned, and squinted at me, putting her hand over her eyebrows. She had a voice that was more on the order of a yelp.

"I might be and I might not," she said. "Who the piss wants to know?"

I
WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO REPORT THAT I HAD A
number of thrilling experiences after I left Fort Worth and went out on the green pea and fat roast beef circuit.

Unfortunately I can't.

In Akron I met a fairly cute brunette who said she worked in public relations for a tire company. I didn't learn much about tires but I got drunk and dimly remember that before the night was over she said she needed $100 for her mother's cancer treatments.

I don't often get fooled like that.

They asked me several questions in Atlanta about the attitude of the spade ball players.

The Jaycees in Charlotte made me go bowling with them.

In Denver I somehow wound up on a TV panel show with a militant fag photographer, a woman psychiatrist and the editor of a teen-age newspaper. They told me that because of football America was in her "sunset years."

In Detroit somebody named Freddie kept calling my hotel room and trying to get me to come out to a certain address in the suburbs. He said I would have a keen time if I asked for Doris, Jackie, Florence or Pam. They were all great guys, he said.

The Elks in Omaha made me go play handball with them.

And the head of the American Legion in Charleston told me all about the games he'd won for Clemson and the Hitler War he'd won for the United States.

It was in Atlanta, about a week and a half ago, when I found out about this letter from our old friend Shake Tiller. I was talking long distance to Barbara Jane and she said we had just gotten it, postmarked from Fez in Morocco.

She said the letter was addressed to both of us but it had been mailed to her New York apartment.

I have it right here, and if it pleases the court, Your Honor, I would like to read it into the record at this time.

Pals
—

I am learning much about primitive arts and handicraft, and also about the guesswork of life.

Did either of you know that the Indians who killed George Custer had gone to Little Big Horn as part of a cultural exchange program? A dope peddler from Sioux Falls explained it all to me yesterday in the casbah.

Behind the veil of almost every Arab woman lies a bicuspid with a cavity. And atrocious breath.

In Casablanca I drank with an old Nazi bomber pilot whose hobby is flying over Rotterdam, London and Coventry and singing Auld Lang Syne.

He who snort coke talketh on and on.

Why don't you two get married and have me over
for Christmas dinner some year?

Whatever you do, remember: anticipating infinity
is a self-canceling thought-form.

Go Giants,

A charter subscriber

After Barb had read me that letter over the phone, I said, "I just hope he doesn't get busted."

Barb said, "Yeah. You know what they say about Arab prisons, don't you?"

"I've forgotten," I said.

And Barb said:

"Well, for one thing, they say you can't get a good cheeseburger, no matter how hard you try."

JUST BEFORE MY LAST SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT, WHICH was in Columbus, Ohio, only a few days ago, I phoned Barbara Jane to tell her I could make a flight back to New York late that night.

"I've loved every minute of it," I said, "but I've got to get my ass back to America."

I asked her to meet me at Clarke's around midnight and I would cheer her up with tales of the great heartland.

It turned out that when I stepped into the terminal at La Guardia, Barb was there at my gate with a young Scotch and water in both hands.

"Here." She smiled, handing me a drink. "I promised the girl in the Admiral's Club that I'd bring these glasses back, but she told me she was a Jet fan. So fuck her, right?"

I laughed and gave her a hug and kissed her on the forehead.

"This is a celebration," said Barb. "It's a celebration and also the announcement of a grand scheme."

We began walking slowly toward the baggage claim area and Barb took my arm.

"Now don't say anything until I'm finished," she said. "I've been doing some thinking lately. About the world and the economy and the general social upheaval, and
I"ve come to a momentous decision."

"Which is," I said.

"Just hush," Barb said. "I've reached the conclusion that you and I, being so much alike, and having shared so many experiences, and having such an immense fondness for each other, are simply going to have to become lovers."

We kept on walking and I didn't respond.

"Like it?" she said. "What do you think?"

"About what?" I said.

She stopped.

"About
what
?" she said. "Oh, I don't know. About the history of the Colorado River project, I guess."

I looked at her.

"Let me put it a different way," Barb said. "Look. You probably have a perfect right to think that I would make a suggestion like this with an ulterior motive, right? Which would be to get back at Shake Tiller. You
do
remember Shake Tiller?"

I kept looking.

"That's already entered your mind. But you know me better than that, so you've dismissed it," she said.

And sipped her drink.

"It has also passed through your head very quickly that I've gotten desperately horny and maybe we could
somehow
work it out to screw and Shake Tiller, if he ever does come back, won't ever have to know about it. As if he'd care. But you've dismissed that, too," she went on.

I reached in my jacket pocket to make sure I had my baggage claim tags.

"Now you've had time to think about the third thing," she said. "That I'm quite serious, but it's only because I've been so hurt that I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm afraid of being lonely because you two guys are the only people I've ever known or been close to."

I said, "When do I get to vote?"

She took my arm again and we walked on. I've never had a close gate in an airline terminal in my life, by the way.

"Hell, I don't know what would happen," she said. "We might just laugh ourselves to death, I don't know. See. What we'd have to do is this: take a totally different view of each other as individuals."

"Do we get to wear costumes?" I said.

She said, "Damn it, I'm serious. You haven't got anybody else to fool around with, and I certainly don't. You don't enjoy talking to anybody but me, and I don't enjoy talking to anybody but you. Not in any length. Of course, we'd have to try very hard not to think about the seventh grade or anything."

She stopped again in the corridor.

"Aw, you know what, Billy C.? I
do
love you. I genuinely do. I was thinking the other night that all these years when the three of us have been together, that it was always old Eighty-eight for sex and smart-ass, and it was always old Twenty-three for sweetness and understanding," she said.

I sort of frowned at her and glanced down at my young Scotch.

"I wonder if my luggage has gone to Puerto Rico as usual," I said casually.

Barb continued.

"The thing about it is, you love me too," she said. "You always have. I know that. You know that. Everybody knows that. Can I tell you something? I have caught myself wondering why it was I could never really like any of those Cissy Walfords you kept bringing around. I think I know now that it wasn't just because they were empty
-
headed bitches, it was because they were with
you
. I never wanted anybody to be with you, except me. I always thought that you and Shake were both my own private property, and that was hardly fair to you because if the two of you were sharing me, then old Eighty-eight certainly had all the best of it in terms of getting laid."

I think two nuns were walking by in the corridor when Barb said the next thing.

"And you know what I suddenly thought this morning?" she said. "I was pining for you, I really was
—
for all the stuff you mean to me, in so many ways
—
and I thought,
Christ
-o-mighty, what if Billy C. on top of everything else is a great fuck!"

In the taxi and later on when we stopped by Clarke's to get something to eat, during all that time, I tried to explain to Barb why her grand scheme was such a bad one. And why, even if Shake Tiller did become a stoned monk
—
or whatever
—
which might detain him for a while; why, even so, her plan probably wouldn't turn out to be anything more than a waste of time.

It could even affect our friendship, I said.

But Barb kept on arguing.

"All you have to do is pretend I'm a brand new wool," she said.

"But you're Barbara Jane Bookman from Fort Worth," I said. "Your mother is planning a big debutante party and sending you off to school."

Barb pressed her leg against mine beneath the table in the back of Clarke's and whispered to me, kind of huskily:

"You can call me Miss Earthquake, fellow. Where you from? Des Moines?"

Well, I can't truthfully say that I know what my intentions were, but I finally agreed at least to play the game. Two or three days ago, we started dating, I guess you could call it.

It was pretty funny at first. We explored some new restaurants in some curious parts of town. She even got me to a Broadway show.

We did a lot of lines. Like I would say I'd just as soon hold
T.J.
Lambert's hand as hers. And she would say she knew she could never mean as much to me as Martha Nell Burch or Amelia Simcox, but if she could only have me in showers after workouts, that would be enough.

It was just last night that Barbara Jane managed to write the ending to this book, in a manner of speaking.

Are you listening close, Jim Tom?

Tell Crazy Iris to get her face out of your lap and pay attention. It's semi-touching, is what it is.

What happened was, Barb and me had decided to stay home so she could show me how she could fix one of my favorite meals, which is the chicken-fried steak, cream gravy and
biscuits
that we au know and love from Herb's Cafe.

She just missed taking it as good as they used to at Herb's, but of
course
the meal she fixed was a whole lot better than the food we sometimes pay a surly Frenchman forty dollars for.

We had a few drinks before and after, and then we plunged into some Irish, coffee. And mainly we just sat here on the sofa a
nd kind of
half-watched television and half-read magazine^

After a while, for some reason, I found myself looking at Barb. And afte*
-
a while, she looked over at me. And we just slouched
th
ere
,
looking at each other.

Finally, Barb
said
, "Hey, don't say anything funny, O.K.?"

I shrugged and smiled.

She kept on locking at me like I had never quite seen her look at me
before
. I
can't exactly describe the look except that it wa
s
tenderly solemn, if that makes sense. Her lips kind of
were
parted and the whole thing made my eyes blur.

I put my hand over the back of her streaked butterscotch hair and kin
d
o
f caressed it. And I gently squeezed the back of her neck. She kind of slid over nearer to me.

I almost said something then. Something smart-ass about how subtle we were with our indicators.

But what I
did
i
nstead was, I hauled off and took it upon myself to
ki
ss her
li
ke I most likely have kissed a lot of Cissy Walf
ords
the first time out of the blocks.

And then I kissed her again the same way.

She turned around then and laid across me, facing up to me, with her legs stretched out on the sofa. She blinked at me and sort of quivered, and she softly rubbed her hand on my shoulder and my cheek and over my mouth.

We kissed again very seriously and held onto each other like we were in the back seat of a car out in the woods on a cold night and the windows were fogging up.

"Say, uh, whatever your name is," I said quietly. "I think this deal might work out."

And Barbara Jane said, "It sure as hell might. I'll be a sumbitch."