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S p o r t s m a n ’ s by "The Jimmy Wynn Ensemble" Dale Barrigar, Michael Antonucci, & Garin Cycholl I’m
standing up there counting out the money to this cute little white chick
when I run across a purple bill. The
Doc over on the couch, laughing it up with one of the Greek’s women. “Katsimbalis
seen this?” I asked. She
shook her head. I pulled a
fifty out of my top pocket and offered it to her. “Well,
see that he doesn’t,” I said, pocketing the counterfeit bill. She
nodded. From across the
parlor, Rupp studied me with this girl.
I stared back and he gave me an empty nod, scooted into the
kitchen hallway. Katsimbalis
had treated us both well. Like
beloved nephews. The card
game for me and hill music on Sunday nights.
Dancing with a bottle of booze ‘til past one o’clock.
With Rupp, I don’t what the fuck all, although Rupp did
outdress me. He had what he
called “spring suits” and “fall colors.”
How could Doc Hoyt think that he could get away with fucking the
Greek? I asked him in the
car. “Aw,
fuck the Greek,” the Doc said. “What
he don’t know won’t hurt him.” I
wouldn’t look up from the speedometer. “You’re
awfully fucking brave all of a sudden,” I said.
“You’re liable to end up in the Sag.” He
waved me off, sipping from his bottle. “I
don’t bring you along for your company or for your good fucking
advice, dear Abby,” he said and tossed the bottle out the window.
Even with the engine’s rev, the glass sounded, scraping along
the pavement. “We got
time to stop in at the farm.” “I
don’t know,” I said. “We got to be back to Sportsman’s by post in the
third—” “That
wasn’t a fucking question. It
was a statement. If you
don’t want to go, you can walk on back to the city.
I can drive this fucking car myself.” I
was so fucking tired. Coronas surrounding the approaching headlights.
The air slick with the refinery’s belches at Joliet.
Five A.M. breakfast at some Illinois farmhouse.
By seven, we’d pulled off at one of the remote exits east of
Peoria. Bag of shit in hand, Doc Hoyt coming down the steps of the
farmhouse that the Greek’s women would use when they got tired of the
city. Katsimbalis would
show up from time to time to check out the party that he was paying for.
Once, Rupp and I mixed it up on the lawn there.
They broke us up after we’d rolled around through the ratty
grass for a couple of minutes like grade schoolers.
I busted my right hand in the fight.
The Doc looked at it. “Doesn’t
look too bad,” he said, cupping the point of my fist in his palm.
“Maybe some nerve damage.
My medical opinion is that you’ll get yourself into more
stupid, fucking fights.” The
place wasn’t healthy. The
Greek and those women would get into terrible battles at the farmhouse.
Many unkind words. Toasters
fucking flying. But here
comes this fat, old doctor, bouncing down the steps.
He’s in love. I
tossed my cigarette into the wet, overgrown lawn. “Have
you lost your fucking mind?” I asked. “Come
on.” He slid into the
Lincoln. “We got bills to
pay.” And
it was back on that fucking road to Peoria.
It wasn’t my business if he aimed to get himself shot or take a
dip in the Sag, but I started to think seriously about retirement in
1974. $ “I
started to think seriously about retirement in 1974—” I
laughed hard. Big Tim’s
retirement. We kept driving
south. Late as it was, time
was not our consideration. “—You
laugh all you want, but I was ready.
Really ready to pack up and go,” he said into the car window.
“Just two shots to call and I’d have cleaned the tables.
Back home to the Blue Grass or maybe Floridy. Gone back to fighting cocks.
Small time amusements a few times a month. There was a horse that the Doc liked. It went off back east somewhere like Rockingham or Suffolk
Downs. A long-shot.
But some Yankee lawyer had just enough of the nag to tell someone
else what it might do that day and we were soon all over it.
We’d worked hard to stretch that line, too.
And that was before all your super-net telecasts and casino
company tricks. We were sportsmen. She
didn’t pay near what she should have.
That was number one.” Seemed
like I got myself into this position.
Anytime I took any of the old boys out of Uptown, they started in
on their life stories. I
couldn’t tell Big Tim what I was thinking about.
Their country-ass ways ruined the three-way between Joliet and
Nakamora and his creditors. Nobody
was happy about it and I couldn’t figure how this would make things
right. They were bloodless and cold.
Katsimbalis knew his people. “I
liked those New York Knicks in ’74,” Big Tim continued.
“Monroe and Frazier. Hunked
up big on those two. Real
prospects with them. Anyway
we wanted it, we got it that year.
Worked too, until late in the season.
Monroe holds out on somebody.
Scores thirty-five, thirty-seven.
And Clyde is firing passes out of bounds, dribbling off his foot,
anything to keep things tight. Everyone
thinks he’s drunk or high. Finally,
there’s a timeout and Clyde says something to Monroe.
Next thing you know, Holtzman’s set them both down.
It was madness. We took it on the chin that night, too. I’ve kept my head out of the clouds since then.
An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work is what your Pap
always said to me. . .” If
he knew something was up, he was not going to make it easy on me.
Joliet was going to take care of the matter.
I was just a runner. It
was like a drop only—only what? There
wasn’t too many ways of looking at this.
We passed a blue and white billboard.
There was a breakfast spot at the next exit. “You
all want some biscuits and gravy? You
ready?” I asked. “Goddamn
you, boy. You know me better than that. A man don’t want biscuits and
gravy, he ain’t shit.” We
turned off at the little diner and greased.
I listened to more of Big Tim’s stories over a mess of white
gravy and three extra large, buttermilk biscuits.
I choked it all down without tasting or chewing.
Listening. Sure
things that came through and locks that failed.
Names of refs you could trust.
How to handle a double-crossing, club fighter.
Politicians on the take. Big
Tim had seen them all. It
was the least I could do. Joliet
was cold. We parked on the
lower level, near the elevators that ran up to one of the restaurants.
Big Tim had heard about it on a radio commercial and he sang out
part of the jingle. Upstairs,
I introduced him to a man named Brussard.
I told Big Tim that he had come up from Peoria, then I excused
myself, waiting at the bar in the VIP suites.
NFL previews and highlights played on the only TV in the room. When
Brussard came back, I felt some relief.
He stood next to me for a short time before he set the check on
the bar. Not making eye
contact, he spoke slowly and distinctly. “Change
the wording from the notes to the novel; it’s of extreme
significance.” $ The
change in wording from the notes to the novel however was certainly
highly significant. On
the day he was going to kill him, the Doc woke me (Katsimbalis) before
sunup. It was a new
version of the same old routine: Kat ratcheted from a pleasing dream by
the old man knocking on the outside of his second-story window.
In the dream, Kat and Sallie had been walking through a field,
holding hands. It was a
Nebraska field that went on and on and on, filled with waving grass.
Sallie was pointing at something in the distance.
She said she had seen a beautiful dog in the grass, running away.
I had the sense she was not lying, the dog was there, hidden in
the grass, running away, and Kat was struggling to see, but he could
not; instead he felt a distracting thump in his head that would not go
away. He felt like his head
was filled with wax. Then
he woke to the sounds of the old man, the Doc rapping on the window
glass. The
window was open part way, and through it along with the old man’s
voice came a fresh, damp morning smell.
“Out of bed now, pardner,” said the Doc, just loudly enough
to be heard. “It’s time
for me and you to rise and shine. We have business that cannot be
ignored.” When Kat raised
his head up finally to look up from his pillow to the window, all he saw
was the blur of the old man’s head going away as he climbed down the
ladder. A moment later, the
ladder disappeared and Kat returned his head to the pillow.
He lay on his back, his hands crossed over his chest, fingers
laced together. At the end
of the bed, sticking out from under the blankets, he saw his own toes.
This seemed incredibly odd, that he should get this unexpected
view of his own feet. Then
he was climbing from the bed, pulling his clothes on, then sitting back
down on the bed to stick the feet in socks and boots and lace and tie
them tight. His t-shirt hanging over his large stomach, which had shrunk
some this summer with much running away and less beer, Kat went to the
window and looked down, then shut the window.
The ladder lay in the grass below, at a perpendicular angle to
the house, in the darkness just before dawn. In
the kitchen, Kat ate lightly from the sausage and egg breakfast the Doc
had made them. Kat finished
a cup of coffee. They’d
eaten together in total silence, without meeting each other’s eyes,
but now that they were both done, sitting over their coffee, Kat could
tell that the old fart had an urge to start up his mouth. The old guy
fidgeted in his seat, playing with his coffee cup.
Kat didn’t look at him, just sipped his hot coffee and stared
straight ahead in the other direction, and after a little bit, he felt
the Doc’s desire to jump-start his mouth lessen.
Kat was completely glad of this, that the old man had simply
decided not to start speaking. Kat
felt nothing else at this time. After
his coffee was gone, Kat rose and went out to the front porch, letting
the door bump shut behind him. He
stood on the edge of the porch looking out at the plain.
Some gray whiffs of mist were unaccountably rising from the ditch
across the road, beyond that the plain as massive and vast as ever.
It occurred to Kat that there were too many things. Life to him had so often been constricted to one narrow scope
and focus, but here the possibilities were limitless. They were limitless one second, then felt completely out of
reach the next. It was too
big. The land went on too
long. It was not a place
where you could find a thing that you were looking for.
Then the Doc came out of the door behind Kat and moved to the
porch steps and sat down on them by Kat’s side.
He didn’t say a word, just looked out quietly at the plain like
Kat did. Then he stuck his
index fingers into the corners of his mouth, and whistled, Loud,
Piercing, hurting-the-ears. Fred
came dragging his sorry old dog ass around the corner of the house.
He went to the porch steps and sat down in the dirt in front of
them, looking up at the Doc. Then
he put one scraggly paw forth and placed it on the bottom step.
“Come on up here, old friend,” the Doc said, patting his lap.
But Fred didn’t listen. He
looked up at the old man, then removed his paw from the step and
actually seemed to shake his head before standing and retreating around
the corner of the house again. “I’ll
be damned,” the Doc said, incredulous, shaking his head.
He sat motionless on the porch steps below Kat.
He had his knees drawn up in front of him and his forearms
resting on his knees, in the posture of this little child.
“That’s the damnedest thing, when something like that
happens. When your own
goddamn dog, that you rescued and raised up from a little pup, turns his
back on you and refuses to. . .but it don’t matter.
Pretty soon we’ll be back in the city running those horses
again. But I say this whole
damn country’s just one big butt-fucked scandal anyway.
It was just sodomy and screwing everybody over from the word go.
The pilgrims, shit. I would like to see what would have become of
them if they had ever made it over there to Kentucky.
‘Pure’-itans, my ass. They
would fart under the bed sheet and try to make you smell it.” The
two men were already in the truck, old man behind the wheel, rumbling
backward down the driveway toward the road, before Kat remembered that
today was his birthday. He
was about to say something to the Doc. He looked out the windshield and decided not to.
Then the truck was running forward, one more time, down the road
again. In
the part of town where the hanging tree jutted out of the ground in the
middle of the courthouse lawn, the two fuckers who’d been sent after
Kat were waiting. Where had
they come from, how had they found him, he wanted to know.
The two lay in the grass, resting on their elbows.
For a second, for some reason unknown to him, they reminded Kat
of the Doc and himself. They
looked like they were about to start having a picnic, except that there
was no picnic basket or checkered blanket, no sandwiches or jars of iced
tea, tubs of coleslaw or baked beans, slices of ham or bags of potato
chips for that matter. Even
riding by them quickly, not getting a chance to look for long, Kat could
tell what aura Rupp and the one they called “Sailor” lying in the
grass on the courthouse lawn had about them, since he’d had it about
himself so many times. They
hadn’t been to bed that night. Now,
in the light of new day, the party was over, but they couldn’t let go
yet and wanted it to continue. They
wanted it to go on and on and on. Yes,
Katsimbalis knew the feeling well, since he bad felt it himself so many
times. But now Chicago and
the track were behind him. When
the Doc pulled a sharp U-turn in the middle of the empty main street,
Kat was not surprised. When
the Doc pulled the sawed-off single-barrel twelve-gauge from beneath the
seat, Kat did not feel like he was in a dream.
The dark brown wood of the stock was warmly smooth in the morning
light, and the black, shortened barrel was gray and raw at its tip where
the saw teeth had bitten in. The
Doc, steering with one hand, reached over, popped open the glove
compartment and took from it a handful of shotgun shells.
Then he asked Kat to close the glove compartment door for him.
Katsimbalis did. The old man, slowing down drastically now and
steering with his knees, broke the barrel of the gun and fitted a shell
in, then closed the gun back up. The other shells he’d stuck in the right front pocket of
the bib overalls. He acted
like Kat wasn’t there at all. He
was all business, the old man, his face serious and grave, and no words
now. He left the truck
running in neutral in front of the courthouse lawn as he threw open the
door and leapt out—like a circus clown with unexpected gun, flying on
a dastardly mission. $
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