The Franchise (5 page)

Taylor peered out the window at another generation of students, heads down, trudging to some building to learn something.

“You know”—A.D. jumped in the seat—“when you talk to Red ...”

“I’m not talking to Red, A.D.”

“Thanks a lot, buddy.”

A.D. headed his convertible toward the city.

Red Kilroy had been at the University for ten years. To be head coach of a winning program at a major university,
the University
, took more than the sense to draw the
X’s
and
O’s.
Red Kilroy controlled a multimillion-dollar enterprise with hundreds of employees producing some of the best football in the country. He was cunning, with incredible endurance and the amazing ability to size up players physically and psychologically, predict what they would be in four years, then demand the player make Red’s predictions come true.

“You won’t make a liar out of me!!” he would scream, cuffing the player alongside the head. “I said you were gonna be goddam good this year, you bastard. If Red Kilroy says a piss-ant can pull a plow, you hitch him up.” Then he’d kick the player in the ass. The player got better or quit.

“If Red Kilroy says it’s gonna flood champagne, you load the boat. If Red Kilroy says ...”

Red was a mean son of a bitch. Of course he lied all the time. It came with the job. But who was going to call Red Kilroy a liar? Nobody, Taylor Rusk knew.

Taylor liked the old bastard. He was a genius. Not just a football genius but a genius genius. Taylor figured that was what made him so crazy. It was his junior year before Taylor noticed that Red was drunk most of the time.

A.D. was still tapping his fingers on the steering wheel but had quit bouncing in the seat. “Wait’ll you see this little split tail.” A.D. was talking about the latest in a long series of girl friends, all attractive. A.D. was always in pursuit of women and style, action, money, class, winning.

“How old is she?”

“Old enough to know better, too young to resist.” A.D. laughed, an uncontrolled spasm. “How the hell should I know? Who cares? Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher; you taking the census or something? Wait till you see her.”

The convertible sped past the last campus building and down Central Avenue to the city. A.D. only dated girls from the city.

“I got nothing in common with these college girls. They either believe that all this college horseshit is real or they got senior clutch and wanna get married. I don’t want a wife. My old man told me, ‘He travels swiftest who travels alone.’ ”

A.D. squealed the convertible into the Central Avenue Sonic Drive-in. Taylor turned and sat up. His nose ached, his jaw was sore and his shoulder muscles hurt. He had worked out hard that day, but it hadn’t made him feel better. He threw too much and ran too little.

A.D. pulled into a stall. The menu hung on the metal rack below the intercom.

“Can I take your order, please?”

“Yeah.” A.D. finished cranking down his window. “Have Suzy skate us a couple of giant Cokes.”

“I don’t want a Coke.”

A.D. held up his hand for silence.

“I don’t want a Coke,” Taylor repeated.

“Who cares, man? We’re here to watch Suzy skate the Cokes, not drink the fuckers.”

“Awww, shit, another waitress?” Taylor ran his hands through his long black hair and felt oil on his fingers. He had showered only two hours earlier.

“You have bad luck with waitresses, A.D.”

Leaning back in the seat with his greasy fingers clasped behind his neck, Taylor closed his eyes, wondering if he had the energy to study that night and still be up at seven to make Doc Webster’s eight
A.M.
test on the Civil War. He took every course he could from Doc Webster. Taylor enjoyed and liked him; he often went to him for advice. Doc had a law degree but hated lawyers—perfect credentials for Taylor’s adviser.

“You can’t figure where you’re heading if you don’t know where you been,” Doc said. “So study history or repeat it.”

A.D. was tapping on the steering wheel, watching the skating waitresses in tight tank tops and shorts.

“I’ll admit Doris was unfortunate,” A.D. said grudgingly.

“Unfortunate is an understatement.” Taylor didn’t move or open his eyes.

Doris, a waitress at the Clover Drive-In, told A.D. she was pregnant and needed five hundred dollars for an abortion. A.D. stole six televisions from the athletic dorm to get the money, only to discover later Doris wasn’t pregnant,
was
a hooker, and had a pimp in the Charros, a Mexican motorcycle gang from the East Side. When A.D. went over to her house to get his five hundred back, the pimp and three others hammered the dogshit out of him with pick handles. A.D. missed three weeks of classes before his face and ribs healed enough to act like nothing happened. People assumed he had lost the teeth in football.

“Here she comes.” A.D. leaned forward.

Taylor peered over the leather dashboard at the flowing blond hair, beautiful little-girl face, succulent woman’s body, long legs, tight white shorts and red satin jacket open over a blue tank top. Tray over her shoulder, breasts out like a ’60 Cadillac, taking long strokes with her lean, tan legs, Suzy Ballard skated the Cokes like the queen of the Roller Derby.

“Can you believe it?” A.D. whispered. “She’s only sixteen.”

Taylor was silent; he had stopped breathing.

“Two Cokes.” Suzy Ballard skidded alongside, hooking the tray on the window. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and thimble-size nipples strained against the blue tank top.

Taylor hadn’t taken a breath since Suzy wheeled out the door. He finally reacted to the carbon dioxide overload, exhaling long and loud, lying back in the seat, aroused and perplexed.

“Why, A.D. Koster, I didn’t see that was you.” Suzy smiled, her teeth white and straight. She bent into the window, kissed A.D. on the cheek. Her satin jacket hung open, and Taylor glimpsed an exposed nipple of one startling breast. She astonished and beguiled him. From outside the car, or half outside, she was enticing him, draining him physically and emotionally.

“You may be overmatched here, A.D.,” Taylor said quietly.

“And who are you?” Suzy’s blue-green eyes glittered, her teeth sparkled. Wrigley’s spearmint crackled wetly in her red mouth.

“I’m Taylor.” He smiled carefully, working his eyes gently over her full lips, flawless teeth and high cheekbones—a stunning, angelic, perfect face. “The local voluptuary.” He held out his hand.

“I’m Suzy.” Her eyes bore into him. The blue had faded, the green turned dark. Menacing.

Taylor found himself frightened of a sixteen-year-old girl.

Her eyes seared into him without a hint of friendship. They shook hands. Her vernal flesh was soft, yet Taylor was surprised at the firmness of her grip. It was the kind of handshake he got before a coin toss.

“Hand me my Coke, will you? I’m gonna need the caffeine.”

“That’s seventy-five cents,” Suzy said, her voice hard, dark-green eyes still on Taylor, driving him into the seat. “Everybody knows you get the money first, sonny.”

“Taylor, get it, will you? I haven’t got anything smaller than a twenty.” A.D. had moved up in the seat and his face was against Suzy’s cheek. He was whispering to her. She traced A.D.’s hard jawline with a long fingernail while Taylor dug out a dollar and handed it to her.

“A.D. says you’re gonna get him on with the new pro football team.” She slid the dollar into her apron.

“He did?”

“Yeah. Sounds great. A.D.’s real smart.” Pressing the Coke into Taylor’s hand, scraping the palm with her nails, she kept her eyes on him and her free hand on A.D.’s face. “They need any young blondes with good bodies?”

“They’d have more use for you than A.D. Keep the change.” Taylor dropped his hand to the seat.

“Thanks, sonny,” She released him from the cold, hard stare. “But I go with A.D. We are a team. He’s got the brains, I got the body.” She looked at A.D. for the first time. “We got what he needs, don’t we, A.D.?”

“I been telling him.”

Taylor tried to analyze what took place there at Stall Nine of the Central Avenue Sonic. The contradictory beauty of Suzy, angelic and tough. The sight of the carelessly exposed nipple, the heavy smell of Jungle Gardenia. The malodorous mix of French fries and gasoline, ketchup and exhaust. Food and petroleum. He tasted it in his Coke. The sound of a loud roaring, like the ocean, the traffic on Central Avenue or blood pounding through his ears.

She was sixteen and she called him sonny. A senior in college, Taylor Rusk was six foot five and weighed 225 and she called him sonny. The memory always looked, smelled and tasted good. The roaring sound bothered Taylor. It was the sound of fear.

“Didn’t I tell you she was something?” A.D. was bouncing in the seat again, tapping the steering wheel. They were headed back up Central Avenue to the University.

“She’s something, all right,” Taylor said. He was slumped down in the seat. “I’m just not sure what. Why did you tell her I was getting you a job with the Franchise?”

“You’re just jealous, man, admit it. Come on, admit it. You’re jealous.” A.D. took both hands off the wheel and turned to look at Taylor. “Is she a knockout or what? You should feel those
chalugas.
” A.D. made squeezing motions. Doing fifty-five miles per hour in three lanes of heavy traffic back out Central toward the University, A.D. had neither hands on the wheel nor eyes on the road.

“Yeah, I’m jealous. Now, why did you lie about the job? You owe her money too?”

“Listen, Taylor, I’ll fix you up with her—talk about sport fucking. Just help me out with Red—”

“Goddam, A.D.,” Taylor cut him off. “Just shut up and watch the road.” A.D. Koster never did watch. He was running too fast to see where he was going or notice where he’d been.

Suzy Ballard didn’t care. She had plans.

“You ever had a horse eat oats out of your hand?” A.D. pressed his case. “I mean, this gal can suck a dick. Now, if you and Red could get me ...”

“Knock it off, A.D.” Taylor closed his eyes and, looking back into tomorrow, heard the clackety-clack of roller skates on concrete.

L
OUISE
B
UFFY
M
ARTIN
sat on the floor next to the green plastic couch. Simon was still stretched out and was watching another movie on a different channel. Buffy clutched Simon’s big-knuckled right hand with her small fingers. The foiled rabbit ears had been recontorted and the picture was much clearer.

When A.D. and Taylor returned to the apartment, Simon pulled his hand free and pointed at the screen. “Harry Carey,” Simon said,
“junior.”

Buffy quickly clutched Simon’s hand back. Her red face twisted into a tormented smile; she said hello to Taylor and A.D., keeping her wet eyes on Harry Carey, Jr., and her hands on Simon.

A.D. went to his room to change again. Taylor stretched out on his bed and read the letter from his mother. A.D. was right; there was no mention of money or anything interesting, other than the fact people were dying like flies in Two Oaks. Taylor’s mother’s letters were more like casualty lists. She certainly hoped “your poppa and I will see you again. We always wondered whether sending you off to the city in the ninth grade was the thing to do.”

Taylor Rusk knew moving was change. He just didn’t know what change meant. That was why he stayed with A.D. and Simon. He watched them change, then figured from there.

“I don’t think life gets any
better
than this,” Simon said when they won the first high school state championship. He had been right. It all changed, but it didn’t seem to get better, just faster and different.

Taylor put down the letter and curled fetuslike around his pillow and wadded quilt. He pictured Suzy Ballard on roller skates, then Buffy Martin clutching Simon D’Hanis’s big scarred hand. He wondered why she was crying.

“Do you want to have the baby?” Simon asked, his eyes on Harry Carey.

“I don’t know,” Buffy said. “What do you want?”

“I asked first.” He felt the pulsing of her heart in her desperate grip.

Louise Buffy Martin was the eldest daughter of a South Texas rancher who owned sections of Bee County in the high double figures. He also had a seventeen-room house in Kingsville and was married to the daughter of the bank president. Louise Buffy Martin was the first issue of that dandy union of land and liquid capital.

Buffy met Simon when they were freshmen; they had dated ever since.

“I want it if you want it.” Buffy’s voice was weak and cracked. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. She had red hair and pale skin with freckles and was a stocky five foot five. Her face was pretty but too full. When she cried, it bunched up rather than breaking into wrinkly patterns of pain.

“I want it.” Simon slowly broke into a grin: he laughed, suddenly excited. “Goddam!” Simon had wonder in his voice. “I never had a kid.” He no longer saw Harry Carey or cared about him. “Goddam,
my kid.
” His eyes unfocused a moment and then snapped back clearly. He sat up and looked at the sad South Texas rancher’s redheaded daughter.

“Let’s go to Oklahoma and get married.”

“Tonight?” Buffy’s question was a yelp of joy.

Simon nodded. “That’s why God made Oklahoma.”

“C’mon ... wake up.” Simon D’Hanis shook Taylor Rusk roughly out of his dream. “I’m getting married and I need a best man.”

Taylor pulled away and rolled over sleepily. “Get A.D. He’s got the wardrobe.”

“I want you. Now come on.” Simon grabbed the mattress and flipped Taylor out onto the floor. “Buffy has gone to get Wendy Cy Chandler to be her best lady.”

Taylor curled up on the floor. His eyes still closed. “It’s called maid of honor, not best lady.”

“I don’t give a shit.” Simon came around the bed and started pulling Taylor to his feet. “Come on, we got a long drive to Oklahoma.”

“Jesus! Oklahoma?” Taylor Rusk realized he was going. “Isn’t there some place a little closer than goddam Oklahoma?”

“They’re expecting us to pick them up in an hour,” Simon urged Taylor as he dressed. “Hurry up.”