The Legend of Jesse Smoke (37 page)

Her eyes seemed to widen then, as if recognizing the idea for the first time; she was seriously considering it. But then she said, “No. She wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, you did send her away …”

“I didn’t tell her to leave. Not like that. I told her I just needed some space, to think.”

“You told me you broke her heart.”

“She’ll get over it.”

I said nothing.

“Hell, she broke
my
heart.”

“I know. You said that.” We started walking toward the door. I could see her thinking as we walked, staring at the ground in front of her. “We’ll work something out,” I said.

“Not even fingerprints.”

“What?” I said, looking up, confused, and then nodded.

“Nobody else has to do it. You think that’s fair?”

“Jesse, who cares if it’s fair? The world’s not fair.”

“
I
care,” she said. “
I
do.”

“I just want you back on the field,” I said. I couldn’t believe that, with so much at stake, she would not give in to the simple demand that just this one time she allow herself to be treated differently than any of her teammates. But this was a principle she held in her heart for herself. She was not thinking of women, or the rights of the players or any other thing but her will to be treated as she thought she should be. And she was stubborn. By god, she was stubborn. But I loved her. Hell, I still do. It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now, the pretty big lie she continued to tell.

The judge was an elderly gentleman named Joshua P. Lorenzo. He announced he would hear both sides and then decide for himself the merits of the case. Which meant it would be up to him if it went any further than his courtroom. He could rule that the league and the players’ union had a valid case and let it go forward as a lawsuit, which would effectively end Jesse’s season, or he could decide that the case was frivolous and dismiss it, which would put Jesse back on the field immediately. What he was going to hear, therefore, was pretty much the entire case as the lawyers had prepared it. And what we would have to do is present our case as well.

Who was Robert Ibraham? Everybody on both sides wanted to know. Flores said we had to find out, had to find this guy if we could. As far as I knew, the lawyers on both sides were looking high and low for him. What the plaintiffs had was film of him at the Montreal tryout camp, some from fairly close up, and then film of Jesse to contrast it with. They also had players who said they knew him and
who had seen pictures of Jesse and believed she was, in fact, the man they knew as Ibraham.

Ibraham, we learned, had played college ball at a small two-year school in Alberta, then tried out for Montreal. He was good enough in tryouts that they signed him to a two-year contract. Then, shortly after that, he disappeared and nobody ever saw him again. All of this happened the year before I met Jesse. The players who had seen Ibraham in camp would testify and, if possible, identify Jesse at the hearing.

In the meantime, we had another home game to prepare for. While we were doing that, again with Spivey at quarterback, the news broke online that Jesse was my lover and that I had discovered that she was really a man during a “lost weekend” in Belize. A
Post
gossip columnist printed that rumor while disingenuously denouncing it as “almost certainly untrue,” which “almost certainly” guaranteed that half the population would believe it, implicitly.

Nothing’s more stupid than a crowd, sometimes. We have become a culture that responds almost exclusively to crowdthink—to the unruly reaction of the mob—everything we do now predicated on popularity and audience approval. Nobody really cares anymore what the truth really is; only what everybody
thinks
. After all, if everybody thinks it, then, hell … it must be true.

I had no contact with Jesse while I was preparing the game plan for Tampa Bay and conducting practices with the team. She was not allowed at Redskins Park, and she would be needed in court anyway, so she went to New York with Edgar Flores and his legal team. At some point, I knew she was supposed to testify at the hearing.

Judge Lorenzo began hearing the case the Monday after the Bengals game. It seemed like everybody was in New York except for me, Engram, Bayne, and a few assistants, and of course the players
themselves. We tried to concentrate on Tampa Bay—a pretty solid team that had sustained some very bad injury problems early in the year. Now they were getting healthy, though, having battled back to an 8 and 6 record and a chance at the playoffs. After winning five in a row, these guys were not going to be easy to beat.

Coach Engram didn’t want any of us distracted by what was going on in New York, so he wouldn’t let us check in with anybody during the day. Thus, I knew about as much back then as you or anyone who read the newspapers what the players’ union and NFL lawyers were planning to say on those first days of testimony. But once the case got started in court, Charley Duncan called Coach Engram and me almost every night to let us know what was going on. First, the lead lawyer for the league, a flat-faced, round little man who spoke very slowly and, according to Charley Duncan, bent forward as if he were about to tip over, presented the case of Robert Ibraham, drawing upon films, as I said, and the testimony of four witnesses, all of whom played for the Alouettes.

The films, Charley said after that first day in court, were pretty amazing. “This guy Ibraham? He looked just like Jesse throwing the ball, I’m not kidding.”

“Really?” Engram said, sighing. We sat at his desk, listening to the speakerphone. He looked at me, his right eyebrow slightly raised.

“Same motion, you know? Same footwork. He was as tall as she is. And what a release. Just like Jesse’s.”

“But it couldn’t have been Jesse,” Engram said.

Duncan let a long silence develop. “I really don’t know. In those films,” he said after a moment. “Those films were just … a little more persuasive than I’d ’a liked …”

“This is crazy,” I said. “Has anyone been able to
find
this guy Abraham, or whatever his name is?”

“Ibraham,” he corrected me.

“Okay, goddamn it,
EEbraham
,” I said. “Anybody know where the hell he is?”

“No. That’s the thing. Even the league can’t locate him. The Canadian League says he disappeared right after they signed him. But they’ve got these guys who played with him in a few practices and saw him in drills. Tomorrow morning, Jesse’s going to be there, and they’ll have a chance to identify her.”

“You think I should come up there?” Engram said.

“Nah, Coach. Team needs you in Washington. We’re handling it.”

I asked him how Jesse was taking it.

“She just sits in court all day and listens. Doesn’t say anything. Just sits there with Flores and me and the lawyers.”

“What do the Canadians
mean
this guy disappeared?” Engram asked.

“Just that—he walked away, I guess, after they signed him, and nobody’s heard from him since. We got ’em on the contract, though.”

“How so?” Engram sat forward, listening intently now.

“So they claim he was still under contract to them, right? And if Jesse is really a man—if she really
is
this Ibraham fellow—she’s under contract to the Alouettes, but our guys pointed out the contract was for two years and since that time has passed and no money has changed hands—the contract is null and void.”

“You think the judge’ll buy that?”

“Why not? It’s common sense. And it’s the law. They didn’t pay him—or her, right? After the first full practice they never paid any money.” Duncan seemed pretty certain we had them on that point, and he was a lawyer, too. He said our guy had pointed out that according to the law, since neither party executed any part of the contract, there
was
no contract. “Even if she was Ibraham, she signed the thing, see, but never got paid one penny for it. They didn’t pay and she didn’t play.”

“Well that’s good news, at least, isn’t it?” Engram said, rubbing his temples.

“Far as it goes, yes, absolutely.”

“I don’t care if Jesse is really a man,” I said now. “I want her playing for us.”

“We’re doing our best,” Duncan said. “Flores has got our boy in Japan looking for a birth certificate that says Robert Ibraham on it.”

“He couldn’t locate Jesse’s?” Engram said.

“The Japanese don’t believe she was born there. Flores says if she’s really a man, it’s fraud, pure and simple.”

“So what if she’s had the operation?” I said. “That kind of thing is— I mean technically and literally, she’d still be a woman now. So how can it be fraud?”

“I just know Flores won’t like it,” Duncan said. “And let’s face it, guys, it’s bad for the league.”

“Come on,” I said, but Engram nodded his head.

“I don’t mean the integrity of the game,” Duncan said. “We’re going to win that with the video I put together. But it’s just … real bad publicity, you know? For the league.”

“What’s bad publicity is this stupid lawsuit,” I said. “They should have thought of that before they went on the attack.”

“Folks didn’t like it,” Duncan went on. “A woman playing quarterback. And now this … This is just one hell of a publicity clusterfuck, no two ways about it …”

“She’s the best I’ve ever seen at reading defenses,” Engram said. I stared at him, trying to figure out where he was going. “She’s got a cannon for an arm, she can run almost as fast as Rob Anders; she’s got feet quicker than Darius Exley’s, and she can kick it a goddamned mile. Fuck them.”

I was so glad to hear that right then, to hear him talk like that. Engram seemed as much in her corner now as I was. Despite this tremendous distraction, Jesse was one of us, and the league had gone after her. We were all in it together.

Tuesday afternoon, we had a mishap in practice. Orlando Brown sprained his right knee. He limped off the field and we wouldn’t know until Wednesday or Thursday how bad it was. The backup over
there was Dave Schott. And Carey Epps, too, could step in and play there. Both were capable players, but you couldn’t lie: Neither one of them could hold a candle to Orlando, who was a bona fide superstar now. In just the fourteen games he’d played as a pro he’d accumulated 16½ sacks, 7 forced fumbles, 4 fumble recoveries, 2 interceptions, and 1 touchdown, all with two and sometimes three blockers working on him. Orlando was everybody’s choice for Defensive Rookie of the Year and All-Pro honors. His loss would be very, very costly.

Feeling none too good about how things were going, I was not looking forward to the kind of ball-control offense I knew Coach Engram would want to run in the absence of Orlando. I wanted to eat alone that Tuesday night, but I got a call from Nate. I was in my office when he called, just getting ready to give up on the day.

“What’s going on?” he wanted to know.

“Nate, I don’t know any more than you do,” I sighed.

We talked for a while about the lawsuit, then he asked if I would meet him for dinner at a restaurant and bar near Redskins Park called PJ’s. I was hungry and needed to eat anyway, so I agreed.

I tried to find out if there was any word on Orlando before I left that night, but there was nothing. He was home resting his knee and he wouldn’t see an orthopedist until the next morning. In some ways that was good news. If he could wait to see a doctor, it was probably not a very bad sprain.

When I got to PJ’s, Nate was already there. We had a drink at the bar while we waited for a table. Nate talked about how ridiculous everything was and about the stupidity of the players’ union and the league. “She’s good for the game,” he said. “More women than ever are watching.”

“I know.”

“Jesse’s a hero to women all over the world. Men too.”

“
Some
men,” I said.

“Most men.”

I shrugged.

“Everybody
I
know.”

After a while a waiter came over and led us to our table. I just wanted a salad, but Nate ordered up a huge steak. I drank a few glasses of wine, and Nate had a shot of whiskey and two Bass ales. Something was eating at him, but I wasn’t ready for any more problems, so I didn’t ask about it. I told him about Orlando’s injury and what I thought it would do to our game plan.

“I don’t mind running the ball,” I said. “Fact, I like it when it goes well. But I hate to play keep-away; I hate to run the ball and keep running it because I don’t want to play defense. That can backfire. You don’t score enough points. You’re still vulnerable in the fourth quarter, and then if your opponent gets something going, you can end up losing.”

Nate continued to gnaw on his steak and I thought again about how odd it was that he and Jesse were only friends. If I was this guy’s age and had his physique, I’d have been chasing Jesse around like a rutting buffalo. Not that his own girlfriend wasn’t attractive or anything, but … come on.

After dinner, he sat back and looked at me. I was sipping coffee. “You talked to Jesse?” he asked.

“Not this week.”

“She calls me every night.” He sat there for a while, thinking. I had the impression he was trying to get up the nerve to tell me something, but then he just shrugged. “Jesse’s so grateful for everything you’ve done,” he said.

I didn’t see the need to respond to that. I
had
done a lot for her and she’d told me before that she was grateful.

“She thinks it’s over,” he went on.

“Really?”

“She feels as though she’s been caught in a trap.”

“What sort of trap?”

He shook his head slowly. “She’s afraid of losing your respect, Coach.”

“Impossible.”

“Well, it’s the team she’s thinking about. This kind of distraction, so late in the season …”

“Nate, did she tell you something I should know?”

“Just what I told you. But … she’s worried about what’s going to happen.”

I took a sip of my wine. “You two are pretty good friends, aren’t you?”

“Sure.”

“How long have you known her?”

“She was just a girl when we met.” He smiled to himself. “Lent her my jacket because she was freezing.”

“In Guam?”