The Franchise (82 page)

“This isn’t the Old League,” Taylor said. “Thank God.”

“The name of the game is protect the quarterback, and those guys didn’t protect you, they just did their jobs. The rules protected you. And it is still the Old League, it’s just a different game now. I could still beat the shit out of someone if I got permission from the referees, but I never know if I got it until
after
the play.”

“New rules for new fans, Ox. We are on a constant search for audience ... counted every fifteen minutes.” Taylor felt his aches and pains. “Today, for instance, the referees let them work me over late, like they have all year. Then the commissioner checks the Nielsen overnights. Change the rules and build ratings—or so current theory holds.”

“The rules make new kinds of players too. You got hit a dozen times today and these baby Nazis think they played great. Nice boys. Clean-cut, with a career rap for seminars and TV talk shows.” Ox unwrapped the towel from around his thick waist. “You should have seen training camp in LA in 1968. The highway from Oxnard looked like the Indy 500.” Ox smiled.
“The rules? Fuck the rules.
We broke all the rules. We fought the
law.
That year three players crashed and burned trying to make curfew. A glorious death when you consider Oxnard and the world in 1968.

“Fuck the rules, fight the law.” Ox took his boxer shorts from his locker and pulled them on. He was sad. Dressing for the last time. “These young guys, the baby Nazis, got everything: size, speed, technique. The colleges are building right to spec, including making them afraid to break the rules ... putting rings in their noses. There are no longer any football players allowed without nose rings. Basic equipment. Fear of
the rules
comes in their gene pools. Not the law but
the rules
, the ones printed in the front of the playbook.
These rules.
They don’t even know about the law. Union law, contract law, entertainment law. They want to get along, not cause trouble. Be friends. Friends? Why the fuck do this if you can’t break the rules?”

“Some people like to go through life in step.” Taylor shrugged. “Christ, it’s a team game. From goose liver to goose step.”

“A man who has never broken a rule”—Ox was frustrated—“is a dangerous man. The baby Nazis are all hormones and motor functions.”

“Why don’t you show them how to break the rules?”

“Why don’t you?” Ox pointed at Taylor.

“ ’Cause I’m finished.”

“Me too.” Ox wiped his face with his towel. “Besides, they don’t want to know. I ain’t playing with guys who don’t love the game between us and them. They think that being a pro football player makes you important. Well, I play ball to be me, not assbackwards. They follow the rules, so they’re allowed to stay. What happened to all the guys with tattoos? Where are all the real crazies? The sickies?”

“They broke the rules and the law.” Taylor took Ox’s towel, mopped his own forehead. “Break my mind and their rules.” He tossed the towel on the bench.

“I will, but
whose rules
? These guys aren’t ashamed when you get hit. I don’t understand a football player who wants to be normal and then hires some agent to hold his wallet. These guys hug too much. How about a little heckling and motherfucking, for Chrissakes?” Ox stopped dressing. “You know who holds my wallet?”

“Your wife.”

“And what does she have in her other hand?”

“Your balls.”

Ox nodded. “And, my friend,
that
is how you last twenty years.”

The zeuglodon, the prehistoric whale, the last of his kind, the scarred and tattooed giant, dressed awkwardly, his knees causing him great pain and imbalance. Ox Wood was the personification of the brutal pride that kept Taylor Rusk safe. Even when the referees gave a man permission to tear the Pistol quarterback’s head off, he had to get past Ox Wood, who made them pay the price and seldom gave them the privilege.

Taylor headed to the showers, singing: “Take it back, oh no! You can’t say that. All my friends are either dead or in jail ...

“You know,” Ox interrupted, “you never once put a cigarette out on my tongue.”

“I don’t smoke, Ox.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Taylor nodded, continuing: “Sweet revenge will prevail ... without fail.”

When Taylor returned from his shower, Ox Wood was gone. The trainers were draining the whirlpools and closing down the training room. The locker room was dark and empty. Taylor dressed slowly, taking a long last look, enjoying the satiated feeling that came at the end. He checked himself in the mirror, looking at the dressing room behind, then left.

In the hallway he noticed the new paint was peeling. Water stains streaked the ceiling, and it was cracked and sagging in spots. There was a sour smell; damp, moldy. It was already coming apart.

His boots slipped on the concrete, the promised carpeting was still not installed and wires dangled through holes in the ceiling and walls, marking unfinished electrical work.

When he reached the underground parking lot, he heard sirens in the distance and wondered if the gridlocked traffic would ever be cleared.

Taylor recognized the deep roar of the engine before the white Ford drove up out of the darkness.

Wendy jumped out, smiling, and ran over to Taylor. “You did it!” He lifted her up and she kissed him hard. She stopped for a moment, leaning away to look at him. “You actually did it! Unbelievable!”

“I was out there alone with lots of other guys.” Taylor pulled her toward him; she kissed him hard again, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing, hugging him tightly.

“God! I do love you! I never knew how much I loved you until now.”

“Front-runner.” Taylor’s ears rang from the pressure she put on his neck. She had never shown him this desperate sort of affection. “I apparently showed a side of me recently that has caught your attention.”

She kissed him again.

Randall walked up with his Pistols pennant. “Come on, Mom, knock it off, quit the kissing. Taylor’s had a rough game. Right? Haven’t you, Taylor?”

“Yeah.” Taylor bent and scooped up the boy. “But not so tough that I can’t kiss you.” He began nuzzling the boy’s neck and kissing his soft face.

“No ... no ... no ... no ...” the boy squealed with glee.

Taylor carried him to the car, following Wendy into the backseat.

Taylor
had
created a miracle. He was carrying him in his arms.

“I
’M DONE,”
T
AYLOR SAID.
They were still driving. Randall had fallen asleep at the edge of town. Wendy told what she knew about the carnage at the Pistol Dome.

“This Super Bowl was the first time I played for
real
stakes.” Taylor cradled the sleeping boy in his aching arms; he loved the feel of holding him. “The real game. Your basic human struggle ... greed ... hatred ... revenge ... stupidity ... pride ... vanity ... your life-and-death issues. I could only do that once. I got through this thing without getting killed and I am finished. That was my last and best game. It was amazing, but I’m not going to invest another fifteen years for more. We’ll move to Doc’s until we buy our own place. Just take up sunbathing where we left off.”

“I’m delighted.” Wendy sounded skeptical. “If you think you really can quit.”

Taylor laughed. “Quitting is easy;
everybody quits.
I contracted for the Super Bowl, a hopeless bargain, but I delivered. That’s why I’m worth one million. Now it’s adios.”

“You
are
serious,” Wendy watched approaching headlights; she wondered what he would do if he weren’t quarterback.

“They
are serious,” Taylor replied.

“You just decide today?”

“I’ve always known, but I decided right after the game.” Taylor smiled. “It’s easy. I am just not going to do it anymore. I don’t want any more training camps or late-night neurotic phone calls from Red Kilroy. I got hit by another Grapette bottle today.” Taylor sighed. “I wish I had the deposit money on all the Grapette bottles I’ve been hit with.”

“What are you going to do?” Wendy asked.

“I don’t know. Don’t care.” Taylor drummed his fingers on his knee. “I have to straighten out the problems with the Union benefits for Ginny Hendrix and Simon’s kid, but that’s all, and then I just quit chuckin’ ’em.” Taylor shifted Randall.

“I want us to be a family,” Wendy said. “It will be wonderful for us to have all the time we want.”

“Nothing but time together.”

They rode in silence for several minutes. Finally Taylor spoke. “I
can
quit, just like I’ve done everything in my life that everyone tells me I
cannot.
Nobody wants anything to work for anybody else.... They don’t want to hear or see my good idea. They’re hustling their own good idea. I can do anything, Wendy, but only if
you
believe I’m right. Only if you understand why and who I am.”

“You’re a misfit,” Wendy said. “A freak. Savvy?”

“Savvy.” Taylor nodded. “Why go to all this trouble and not be allowed to be a freak? Ox Wood makes that point exquisitely.”

They drove out to Doc Webster’s Ranch.

He carried Randall into bed. Taylor kissed the soft cheek and lay the sleeping boy down, the gentle, unlined face framed by the yellow pillow. He went to the kitchen and then out on the porch, searching for Wendy. She was lying in the new double hammock and listening to the night sounds. Taylor lay next to her. The gentle sway of the hammock and Wendy’s reassuring presence helped ease the coming down.

All the way down.

The night was cold, clear and still. Dead Man Creek gurgled and splashed; animals moved along the fence row; a doe dashed through the yard after grazing almost to the porch before Taylor’s cough spooked her. The deer bounded off into the darkness, its white flag still visible as she cleared the fence and headed back to the cover of the creek bottom.

Several times in the stillness Taylor would sip tequila and stare into the sucking vacuum of the billion-star sky—no up or down, right or left, just on or off. Dead or alive. Do you get what you deserve? Or merely what’s left? Wendy’s even breathing told him she was asleep.

Sometime before dawn Taylor thought he heard typing. He knew it was something else, rationally explainable if he made the effort, an insect or the wind or a chaparral suffering from future shock. A coyote preparing for the endless chase. Taylor never made the effort and drifted off to sleep in the hammock as the sun came up. He was fully dressed, wearing a heavy coat and bundled in quilts, clutching Wendy desperately in his arms.

It was over and he was glad.

T
AYLOR AND
W
ENDY
and Randall Rusk made their home in the main house for a while. They had to remodel the bunkhouse to accommodate Bob and Toby and leave room for Doc, should he want to use his own ranch. Taylor also requested an outhouse for perspective. The contractor started work immediately.

“God, it’s cold this morning.” Wendy led the way out of the back of the house toward the rain barrel. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Sure ... it’ll be good for us.” Taylor carried Randall out the kitchen door on his shoulders. “Duck, bub.”

The boy squealed as Taylor squatted down and waddled under the lintel. “Stop ... stop ...” The small boy laughed and dug his little fingers into his father’s hair. “Look at me. Momma. Momma? Look at me. I’m riding a bucking bull. Momma?”

Taylor snorted and swung the boy. Wendy watched them while she stood by the rain barrel and listened to the hammers knocking out the wall next to Tommy McNamara’s old desk. She shivered involuntarily at the memory of the horror in that bunkhouse.

“Come on, I think it’s too cold.” Wendy protested, still shaking.

“Momma? Watch me ride the bucking bull. Momma?”

“Oh! That’s wonderful; you are such a good cowboy. Taylor, it is too cold!”

“No it’s not. It’s fresh. I’ll go first.” Plucking the boy off his shoulders with his huge hands, setting him on his feet next to his mother, Taylor plunged his head in the cold water.

Real cold water.

The frigid jolt made his ears ring, his eyes ache, his soft tissues instantly contract in shock and squeeze his skull. It felt as if he had set his face on fire. Taylor jerked backward as fast as he could. The cold water had stunned him as effectively as a hit in the head.

“Aaaahh! Yeeahhhh! Haaahh!” Taylor’s head throbbed. Eyes still closed in shock, he clutched at his face with his hands. Gasping in pain, he sat down on the crate next to the barrel. Wendy laughed and tossed the towel at him.

“Maybe it is a little too cold.” His ears still rang. Spots swam in his eyes.

“Say, Wendy,” the contractor called from the bunkhouse. He always talked with Wendy, who understood his task and information requirements much better than Taylor. “Could I show you something?”

Wendy walked toward the fat, middle-aged carpenter who did all of Doc’s work. Taylor wrapped the towel around his frozen head.

“I’m next,” Randall yelled. “I want to jump all the way in the rain barrel.”

“Wait a minute, Randall.” Taylor was trying to recover. “I think I miscalculated.”

“You promised! You liar, you promised!” Randall began in a singsong, “Taylor is a liar, Taylor is a liar ...”

“I’m not a liar. I made a mistake.”

“You
lied ..
.” Randall pointed at Taylor in disgust. “Liar, liar, pants on fire ...”

“I didn’t lie, I made a
mistake
,” Taylor was pleading as Randall was trying to crawl up the side of the rain barrel. “Wait.”

“Don’t touch me,” the boy howled, as though he had been stabbed. “You got to let me do it.”

“An honest mistake.” Taylor tried to placate the boy. “Everyone makes mistakes, why can’t I? Huh? Get down from there ...” He grabbed the boy’s arm just as Randall was about to dive headfirst into the cold water.

Wendy finished talking to the contractor and returned to where Taylor and Randall’s argument had degenerated into scuffling.