The Franchise (14 page)

Wendy Chandler was gone and he was in bed alone.

“Goddam, Doc,” Taylor grumbled to himself sitting up. “What the fuck are you doing out there?”

“Nothing,” came Doc’s voice from the living room. “I’m in here, looking at your contract. That’s Tommy getting ready to go in and cover a symposium on ‘The Electronic Revolution in Mass Media and Its Effect on Relations Between Business and Government.’ It’s being held at the University School of Economic Communications.”

“Why go?” Taylor fell back in the old bed. It seemed too large without Wendy. Taylor ran his hand across the place she had slept.

“He has to do a story for the paper about it,” Doc answered from the next room.

“I mean, why go after hearing the title?” Taylor lay on Wendy’s pillow and found the scent of her hair. “What’s left to say?”

“Plenty. Your friend, Terry Dudley, fellow Spur and lawyer-jock, is a speaker on the effects of the revolution on professional athletes and their unions. Terry Dudley is a brilliant young man,” Doc continued, “and will go a long way. He has a great future ahead of him.”

“He’s studying to be a talking head.” Taylor ran his cheek along the pillowcase, then buried his face in the pillow, searching for a further sense of her presence.

“He is definitely more of a team player than you.”

“He was in a team sport.” Taylor lifted his head and spoke sourly. “I’m a command officer fighting limited war.”

“Well, my little containment fascist, you may do well in the future. Much better if we get this first contact right.”

From outside came a peculiarly frightening screech as Tommy McNamara banged the truck into the stone wall near the bed.

“What the fuck ... ?” Taylor jumped. “He’s mashing cats against the house.”

“Just getting up momentum,” Doc said. “He doesn’t
want
to go, but he’s like the rest of us, always doing things for the money.”

“I thought he lived on chicken feed.”

“That’s what you’ll be working for if you don’t get up and out here,” Doc snapped. “We have a Standard Player’s Contract to negotiate. Oh, yeah, Neely Johnson from Chandler Communications will be at the symposium today, talking about advocacy advertising as an alternative to handing the money directly to senators, regulatory-board members, congressmen and presidents.”

“Who’s representing the masses at this mass communications thing?” Taylor stretched and yawned.

“You have a degree in communications and graduated with honors. How about you?”

“I just learned it. Doc, I never said I believed it. Besides, they change the rules so fast, I couldn’t keep up if I wanted.” Taylor swung his legs off the bed and sat up. “Now what is all this shit about my contract and Terry Dudley’s future?”

Doc, his back to Taylor as Taylor walked into the living room, was reading the papers spread out in front of him. A Standard Player’s Contract.

“I’m leaving Tommy the ranch. He’ll do great work here.” Doc leaned back, away from the papers, and stared sightlessly at the wall.

Taylor didn’t speak, listening instead to the distant commotion as the Kinky-Headed Boy’s truck roared up behind Coon Ridge and away, finally leaving the ranch in silence.

“Yessir.” Doc leaned back. “Tommy will do fine here. You, on the other hand ...” Doc’s voice trailed off as his interest was drawn to a particular clause in the contract in front of him.

Taylor rebuilt the fire, uncovering the coals, still glowing hot remnants of the light that had played across Wendy Chandler’s face. The new flames grew as Taylor stripped cedar bark and piled on oak chips. He stared into the Fire.
Choose me ... Choose me.
Did he and Wendy have a relationship? Did she want one? Did he? Were they as connected as last night’s fire to this morning’s, a common glow that could grow quickly into flames? And if they were, could she stand the heat? The pain? Or had it been just one fire from the start to be purposely doused, drowned, scattered—once the flames had driven away the chill from the soul, a momentary warmth of heart to replace the five-carat fire she had tossed into the tules.

“Wood shavings take a long time,” Taylor said aloud, stepping away from the increasing heat of the fire. “I wonder if she knows or cares.”

“The future, Taylor. It’s your decision, and it’s all the time you have left.” Doc said, “Wendy may not understand how fast your future arrived.”

“Is that why you’re comparing it with Terry Dudley’s?”

“No. Lem Carleton III’s.” Doc eyed Taylor. “Shouldn’t forget the future of a man you just put horns on.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I took a calculated guess. I also compared your future with the rest of this year’s batch.” Doc added, “Just ’cause Wendy’s at the track ...”

“Batch of what?”

“Why, Spur, Taylor. Spur.” Doc was amused and stroked his chin slyly. “How do you think you were chosen? By all the paper you so deftly chased? The NCAA records? Your Heisman Trophy?”

“Well ... fuck, I don’t know ... I figure they didn’t hurt.” Taylor was puzzled.

“They didn’t. They helped quite a bit; in fact, they got the attention of the folks who count, but in your case that was the dilemma. As the people who counted watched you closer and closer, they noticed that you had acquaintances but, other than A.D. Koster and Simon D’Hanis, you had few friends. Were you a team player? No. You had the stats. You were the perfect paper man with the grade-point average and the passing percentage to prove it. All you lacked was
one friend
among the people who counted. You appeared to have no systems potential, no networking abilities.”

“Well, I didn’t know anything about that shit.” Taylor was irritated. “I didn’t have time to go around kissing asses to join a group I never heard of.... I don’t join groups. I didn’t give a shit if I got in Spur. I still don’t.”

“Wasn’t that how you met Wendy Chandler?” Doc asked. “Wasn’t it worth meeting her?”

“I met her before. She was in Simon D’Hanis and Buffy Martin’s wedding party. The two of us
were
it.”

“Oh, so Spur made no difference to Wendy?”

“Don’t you remember, Doc? I called you about missing that Civil War test and ...” Taylor stopped as he stumbled across a thought. “Jealous, Doc? Are you jealous of me and Wendy? I never thought ...”

Doc Webster burst out laughing.

“No ... no ... hardly that. I couldn’t be happier for the both of you. I just thought Spur played a bigger part in your relationship.”

“It played a part. I wouldn’t have gone to Water Carnival rehearsal, watched her throw Lem Three’s diamond into the river-bottom. Spur played a part.”

“Good.” Doc smiled and picked up another page of the contract. “Maybe a bigger part in
her
case than in yours. I’d hate to think I wasted my efforts.”

“What efforts?” Taylor was bewildered.

Doc smiled; his eyes twinkled. “Among the people who counted, no one else knew you more than casually. I was your only friend.”

“You’re in Spur?” Taylor looked at the history professor with renewed amazement.

“The class of ’39.” Doc nodded. “Some real scumbags in that one. Cyrus Chandler, Harrison H. Harrison, Senator Thompson. Our gang of war profiteers. During the selections I spoke up for you. It was lies, all lies, but you’re in now and they can’t put you out.”

“How did Terry Dudley get chosen? He’s five years out of school.”

“Special case; he had a lot of juice.” Doc dropped the contract and looked at Taylor. “In 1940 I went on to law school and got my degree, only to realize
if I
expected to get rich, I would spend my life around lawyers, judges, politicians and criminals.” Doc sighed slowly. “So I joined the Army, the Texas thirty-sixth. After the war I gave up on being rich, relearned history and became a teacher. I have never regretted the decision. I have my tenure and a vast store of inside information that makes me almost invulnerable and quite possibly dangerous. Most of the time I just lay around, but every now and then I piss in the soup.”

“Like getting me into Spur?”

Doc nodded. “And this contract.”

“What about it?” Taylor tossed a log on the new fire. “It’s the standard contract; every player in the League has to sign one.”

“Well, if Jefferson Davis had signed his niggers to the Standard Player’s Contract, we might have avoided the Civil War. You can be the line command officer for this franchise, but unless you look forward to a life of involuntary servitude, I better handle this contract and all your financial affairs,” Doc said. “It will allow me to piss in the soup more frequently, which will make me happy, can make you rich and will quite possibly improve the taste of the soup.”

The two men worked on the contract for five days before Doc went into town for the first negotiating session with Cyrus Chandler.

It was the only contract Cyrus negotiated, and Doc ran him through the corn picker.

Doc’s first demand was a “golden handshake” clause worth one million dollars. Cyrus agreed finally, then began his spiel about the advantages of deferred payments. Doc stopped him with a demand for six-month money-market interest rates on anything deferred and the use of the money to deal margins in the commodities market.

They finally agreed on a two-year contract at $600,000 per season with an additional signing bonus of $400,000, of which $300,000 was deferred. Using the deferred money as collateral, Doc optioned 200,000 bushels of wheat for three dollars a bushel. An ex-student who was in the State Department had leaked him the word on a Russian wheat deal. After the Russian wheat deal was announced, Doc sold at six dollars a bushel.

After that, Doc went into silver at five dollars an ounce, again paying the minimal five percent margin on futures contracts. He contracted one hundred thousand ounces, which he continued to roll over until he sold at $18.80 an ounce. Adding the silver and the wheat profits, the quarterback’s total was over $2,000,000, which Doc locked into five-year government securities at eighteen percent. During the intervening years Doc seldom mentioned financial transactions to Taylor Rusk.

On the other hand, he mentioned them to Dick Conly and Cyrus Chandler at every opportunity.

Conly just gritted his teeth and tried not to look as foolish as he felt for allowing Cyrus to handle Taylor’s first contract. Dick Conly knew that a good negotiator should bury a player on the first contract with deferred money, incentive and performance bonuses, houses, cars and insurance policies, all combined to keep the base salary low. Keeping the base low made future raises insignificant.

Cyrus Chandler was angry because he looked foolish. He would have been furious had he known that no one was surprised.

When Cyrus Chandler was initiated into Spur in 1939, Doc Webster nicknamed Cyrus The Cockroach. “It ain’t what he eats or hauls off but what he falls in and messes up.” The same personal qualities that earned Cyrus the nickname before the Big War continued unabated throughout his life. It was why Amos Chandler had left Chandler Industries in Dick Conly’s hands.

Cyrus “The Cockroach” Chandler had signed Taylor Rusk to the largest
real money
contract in League history and lost his first and best chance to rob the quarterback with a fountain pen.

Pissing in the soup.

U
SING THE $10,000
paid by the Bowl committee for keeping his hamstring pull a rumor, Taylor bought a “previously owned” yellow Lincoln four-door. He drove the huge car to the Pi Phi House, stopped by unannounced and picked up Wendy. She was irritated and pleased simultaneously.

They drove slowly through the campus; it was late and the traffic had eased. They passed the Union building, an eclectic creation of exotic granite quarried near Enchanted Rock. It was a beautiful setting with a boulevard flanking a long row of oak trees that were once part of an exceptionally large motte called Shelter Oaks. The original motte had been used as a refuge by the Indians because its gigantic size offered protection. The ancient oaks formed a perfect canopy. No Comanche would fight in the Shelter Oaks for fear his spirit would be lost.

Wendy turned and watched the huge, wide, gnarled live oaks, the massive, drooping, twisting, arching limbs. During her college years Wendy came to know each tree intimately. There weren’t many left between the bulldozers and Oak Decline.

“I spent hours lying around those trees,” Wendy said. “They’re like old friends.”

Taylor let the Lincoln idle along; he rolled down all the electric windows. Air rushed in with heavy, damp force.

“Smell.” Wendy inhaled deeply. Her tiny nostrils flared and her soft pale eyes sparkled as the air rushed into her lungs. Her cheeks flushed. “Don’t you just get high on the air?”

Taylor flared his nose and tensed his neck to inhale, but his displaced septum caused whistling noises. Wendy laughed at him.

“Shouldn’t laugh at another’s misfortune.”

“It’s the price you pay for the privilege you earn,” Wendy mocked. “Which in your case is a distinctive profile.”

She gazed at the live oaks, passing slowly, shimmering, a defiant green.

“Okay, tell me ... what did you guys do at the Shelter Oaks the night of the Spur initiation?”

“I didn’t do anything. Lem took off his pants and they all made fun of his dick....”

“Stop!” She slugged his arm.

“That was about it.” Taylor watched as the last oak passed and they left the Union and the boulevards.

“It’s a beautiful place.” Taylor watched the strange purple granite building and the surviving oaks in the mirror. He pictured the young beautiful girl next to him on the grass with her girl friends.

The front wheel of the Lincoln hit the curb.

“Ooops.” He began paying closer attention. The driving angle began to get steep; he planned to cross the river on the low-water bridge. Taylor pointed up to the footbridge. “Simon D’Hanis threw an ROTC student commander from up there for demanding a salute.”

“Oh, my God.” Wendy held both her hands to her mouth. “Was he trying to kill him?”

“I got that impression at the time. The river is rock bottom and four inches deep everywhere else, and this lucky SOB, falling backward with no idea where he was going, hits in the
one hole
that was about six feet across and six feet deep. He screamed a long time, I remember that.” They bumped over the low-water bridge through the Canyon Cut.