Once a Runner Read online

  THE NINETIES was not crowded during the middle of the week; Fat Fred, the owner, was so exultant having Bruce Denton in his place that he bought him a pitcher of beer. It was an enthusiasm he felt he could afford, there being a relative dearth of gold medal winners in Kernsville. The two runners retreated to a corner booth.

  “So what is the crisis?” Denton was pouring as the jukebox held forth: “…and time…washes clean…lu-huv’s wounds unseen…”

  “You’ve seen the stuff in the papers this morning?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “Well, they have decided that since I was the one who typed up the petition and also the one who delivered the signatures to the A.D., that this whole thing was conceived and, uh, ‘perpetrated’ as they say, by myself and one or two other unnamed conspirators.”

  “How do they figure? Every jock in this school is so pissed off…”

  “I’m convinced they really are as fucking stupid as they seem. When they couldn’t find themselves an outside agitator—”

  “Jeez, the whole thing looked pretty mild to me.”

  “You would think. But Doobey sat there and told me he didn’t really blame me for all this fuss. He figures the real blame should be leveled at all the communist and left-leaning professors on the other side of the campus who have been working on my poor little brain all these years.”

  “Good God. Do you suppose he’s serious?”

  “Oh, he’s serious all right. He isn’t a humorous man. He kept coming up with all these military analogies. ‘In the army, by God, you did what you were told, or they broke your plate—over your head.’ That kind of thing. And then he goes into this stuff about my professors. Christ! Here I’ve been taught by fuel-injected right-wing loonies and closet Nazis for three years and that idiot thinks I’ve been brainwashed by some leftist academic conspiracy. My goddamn econ teacher thinks Milton Friedman is a liberal! Hell, if this campus got a decent teacher, they’d have the son of a bitch rebinding books behind the stacks somewhere…”

  “All right, calm down. What happened exactly?”

  Cassidy finished his second glass with a grimace. He was still dehydrated from the run.

  “They’re taking a hard line. Apparently what’s got everyone all stirred up is the fact that a bunch of football players signed the damned thing. Apparently Doobey was called on the carpet by Prigman himself about it. I guess if it weren’t for the football players involved, they could probably just write the thing off by saying the spring sports guys have gone commie on us. You know, we’re all in individual events anyway, not part of, you know, a team effort…”

  “Oh say, that makes sense…”

  “And I think I’m beginning to get wind of a little gambit that smells something like the bottom of somebody’s locker.”

  “Lively analogy.” The jukebox played: “…has anybody here seen sweet thang…”

  “Doobey said something to the effect that he figured something like this was going on during the football season, otherwise with the talent they had, they would have never gone four and six. Get the drift?”

  “What!” Denton was incredulous. “They’re gonna try and pin their lousy football season…”

  Cassidy let the air out of his lungs. Physically he was keen, immensely strong at this point in his life; he could run a hundred miles. Yet he was starting to feel a smothering weight descending over him, a pale shroud he was helpless to evade.

  I feel old, he thought. I have been dead once, I guess you can’t get any older than that. But that was long ago, in the salt salt sea.

  To Denton, still sitting looking unbelieving at the ceiling, he said: “Bruce, I’m so close. It seems so stupid to have something like this…”

  “Yes. I know, but hang tough, don’t get nervous in the pack…”

  THREE DAYS LATER, a befuddled Coach Cornwall called Cassidy into his office and told him that due to circumstances over which he, as track coach, had no control, Quenton Cassidy would be henceforth suspended from participation in intercollegiate athletics.

  21.

  Steven C. Prigman

  SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY President Steven C. Prigman had once sat on the Florida Supreme Court bench and during his seven-year tenure had taken part in several illustrious decisions that stood as landmarks of jurisprudential comedy.

  The most famous of these much-read cases involved a young black man who had the audacity to request admission to Southeastern University’s law school. He wasn’t exactly turned down, but they did lose his application. The third time they lost it, he filed suit and was quickly hooted out of state circuit court. From there he took his appeal to the august tribunal upon which sat His Honor Justice Prigman and six of his toadies. Taking scant time to deliberate after oral arguments, they came down with a decision that said, in so many words, that if God Almighty had wanted all races to go to white law schools, Negroes would have been born with perfect LSAT scores and calfskin briefcases. Some months later, the United States Supreme Court, ignoring entirely the interesting logic used to arrive at the lower-court decision, overturned the case at the same time it issued its Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and sent it back to Justice Prigman and company without so much as a “nice try.”

  At this point the justices showed some real imagination. Declaring that the U.S. Supreme Court had made its determination on “constitutional grounds” alone, they decided that if there were other considerations for keeping the black man out, then the decision wouldn’t apply. Therefore, they decided to appoint a local circuit judge to be a “special master” to make a study of the situation and find out what would happen were a black man to enter the law school. The “special master” quickly found out that all hell would, of course, break loose; this would take the form of mass student withdrawals and attendant financial collapse. There would be great pandemonium in the school itself: riots, vandalism, even food fights. The “special master” was able to intuit these dire consequences by the tried-and-true interview method (“Are you going to riot?” “Of course!” “Okay.”).

  And so it was that the Honorable Florida Supreme Court was able, in all good conscience, to blatantly disobey a direct mandate of the United States Supreme Court by saying that their new ruling denied admission to the student not on constitutional grounds, but on the inherent police power of the government to prevent violence. That the said violence would be caused by law-breaking (and perhaps imaginary) whites, concerned them not a whit. The young black man, out of money and patience, disgustedly threw in the towel and went north to procure his degree.

  Steven C. Prigman had always been a charter member of the Florida Panhandle good old boy network. Sipping fifteen-year-old bourbon, his handsome ruddy face aglow with good humor, he could charm the fangs off water moccasins. Although Sidecar Doobey often referred to him as a “snub-nose little twerp,” the two men understood each other very well. Doobey was influential in helping Prigman relocate to an academic setting when the jurist decided to step down from the bench.

  And when he finally did so, he left Tallahassee with no small measure of pride that he and his associates had been able, for even a short period of time, to stanch the flow of the twentieth century. Their golden moment, still preserved in volume 93 of the second Southern Reporter series, to this day provides many hours of comic relief for law students all across the country.

  DICK DOOBEY had felt a trifle ill at ease the day before on his way to Prigman’s office. His squishy, ripple-soled coaching shoes squeaked embarrassingly as he walked up the marble steps to the president’s office.

  “Hello, Roberta.” He winked at the middle-aged and not unattractive brunette, wondering if the old man was getting any. She looked up pleasantly, greeted him, and then ushered him into the quiet office. She was a charming woman, but Doobey knew she did not like him. Her smile was that of a headwaiter.

  “Well, Coach!” said the old man heartily, rising to shake hands. “Have a seat, my boy. Make yourself comfortable.” In the b
attle of the giant offices, Prigman had it all over Dick Doobey, even though his carpet did not bear a giant Daryl the Swamp Dawg. It was decorated much more in the taste of a former state supreme court justice, the walls full of honorary degrees, hunting memorabilia, and photographs of Prigman with recognizable personages. Dick Doobey envied the dignified brown and tan hues that seemed to command much more respect than his colorful mishmash of caricatures and trophies. The aura of the office was, in a word, impressive, and Dick Doobey never sat in that chair without feeling both fear and envy.

  “Well, what kind of spring practice are we going to have this year?” Prigman asked. Doobey had not expected this kind of question, so frenzied had been his other problems of late. He started to launch into his routine about some junior college transfers and redshirts that were going to be “of real great help to us out there next year,” but he didn’t get very far before Prigman cut him off.

  “Fine, fine. I know what some of our detractors are saying about last year’s record, but I know you’re going to pull the program together once you get your feet on the ground here.”

  “Well, yes sir, I feel that I’m just now getting to the point where I can—”

  “Fine, fine. Coach, what I wanted to ask you about”—he reached over to a corner of his huge polished desk and held up a legal-sized xeroxed page—“is this. Do you know anything about it?”

  Dick Doobey took the sheet, held it away from his face as if it were a small serpent, and studied it carefully. He tried to act as though he had never seen the likes before. Prigman knew better. At the top of the page was a paragraph that began: “We, the athletes of Southeastern University, hereby wish to make known certain grievances…” The page Doobey held contained thirty-eight signatures. There were other sheets as well, and Doobey knew that all in all, about 125 varsity athletes, including many of his own football players, had signed the petition.

  “Well, sir, I do happen to know something about this particular matter.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to fill me in.” There was the faintest hint of menace in the old man’s voice.

  “Well, sir, this morning an athlete from the track team dropped by a stack of these, uh, petitions. It seems that quite a few of the athletes have signed them and—”

  “How many?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t know exactly but somewhere I would say, oh, around a hundred or so, sir, and—”

  “A hundred!” He practically shouted it. Dick Doobey felt himself pressing backward in the soft chair.

  “Well, yes sir, more or less, sir…”

  “Any football men among ’em?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir, I didn’t check the lists out very carefully or any—”

  “I asked…if there were any football men…on the lists?” Very quietly, this last.

  “Yes, sir! There were, oh, forty or so, I would say offhand, sir.”

  “Forty!” Prigman rested his chin on the steeple of his hands, turning his chair to the side, either deep in thought or too angry to speak. Doobey prayed to God it was the former.

  The old man swung the chair back around and leaned forward, skewering Doobey against the chair with a stare that seemed a physical force. It was the kind of gesture Prigman had developed to a high art, and he noted with satisfaction Doobey’s bobbing Adam’s apple.

  “Well, Coach Doobey, perhaps you can explain to me what in the devil all this is about?” Doobey started to say something but the old man continued.

  “I mean, just for instance, what is this stuff about ‘unwarranted neo-Gestapo raids upon athletes’ rooms…’ and ‘militaristic hair and dress regulations…’ Perhaps you could explain just what in the hell is happening on my campus, Coach Doobey!” He was half standing in front of his chair, but slowly forced himself to sit back down, giving the impression of rage brought under control only with great effort. Doobey had been thinking all morning what he would say right now and though he thought he had it worked out, it all left him now. He stared at the petition as if it would provide him with some clue.

  “Well, Mr. President, it seems that some of the athletes are a little upset over our new hair and dress code, sir, and then there was an incident at the track dormitory the other night which was not authorized on my part and which perhaps was a little, uh, unwarranted, I mean, trying to be subjective about the whole thing and all…”

  “What in the hell are you babbling about, man? What hair and dress code? What incident?”

  “Well, sir, the code was a little idea of mine to try to boost morale a little, sir…”

  Doobey filled in the old man as best he could. When he finished, the elder man sat sideways again, in deep thought. After a while, Doobey thought he had been forgotten such was the length of the old man’s meditation. Finally, Prigman swung around to face Doobey, but he spoke so softly the coach had to lean forward to hear.

  “I had a call from Walter Davis this morning. You know Walt?”

  “Well, sir, I—”

  “He’s the UPI man out of Miami, Coach Doobey. But I couldn’t talk to him right away because I had Norman Johnson on the other line. You know Norm?” Still very quiet.

  “Yes, sir, I—”

  “He’s the AP man out of Miami. Well, it seems these representatives of our nation’s wire services were pretty much interested in the same thing…” He held up the petition with one hand, tapping it briskly with the back of his other hand.

  “The same thing as the fellow from Sports Illustrated—I’ve never had the pleasure of talking to those folks before—and the sports editors of about twelve or so major newspapers around the Southeast. Roberta has been real good about that. Anything with a circulation below fifty thousand and the call gets diverted to a vice president or a dean. Now, of course, I don’t know how many calls they had…”

  “I talked to quite a few myself and—”

  “I’m not interested!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “What I am interested in”—calmly now—“is exactly what in the name of all that’s holy are we going to do about this thing now that you have so blithely gotten it rolling for us, Coach Doobey?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I mean, do you realize the implications, sir, of an athletes’ revolt? Do you know, can you appreciate the fact that we’ve just gone through several years of strife and violence on our campuses because of our country’s selfless battle against communism in Vietnam? And that throughout that time of crisis our athletes have been our mainstay, our rock? No matter what kind of crap was going on everywhere else, our boys were out there every Saturday, hitting hard, blocking clean, going at it like there was no tomorrow, giving it the old guts-balls college try. Why, those boys have been carrying on, in our darkest hour, our very American traditions!”

  Doobey perked up. “Why, yes sir, that’s exactly why—”

  “I’m not through. And now, Coach Doobey, now just as our athletes had come to symbolize all that was good and loyal and patriotic about our country, now we find them running around and…and…signing petitions!”

  “I’m as surprised as you are, sir!”

  “Surprised batshit!” He picked up another sheet of paper. “‘Sideburns not to be lower than a line extending perpendicular from the bottom tip of the earlobe…’ Where did you get such…such notions?” His contempt was barely contained.

  “Well, sir, some of them I picked up from my military training…”

  “Mmmmmm.”

  “…some of them were suggested by Assistant Coach Slattery, uh, he came up with the one about shirts with no collars…”

  “Collars,” said Prigman miserably.

  “…and some of them I just sort of made up myself, sir.”

  “Somehow I might have guessed that,” said Prigman very softly to the ceiling.

  THEIR CONFERENCE WENT ON into the afternoon. Prigman, his rage somewhat mollified, now concentrated on the logistics of the problem at hand. He pretty much knew what Doobey was going to tell him
anyway, but was not about to forgo his pound of flesh. He would deal further with this dodo son of Sidecar’s later; for the time being he was content to watch the involuntary quiver of fear that ran through the portly body every time he emphasized the word “coach.” But this was a time for action; policy had to be formulated, the media had to be dealt with. It called for swift, clear, eminently intelligent decision making. It required, in short, the kind of grit that Prigman proudly reflected was precisely the reason he was where he was. Secretly, he relished the prospects.

  “Who brought the petitions to your office?”

  “It was a track man. A Quenton Cassidy, sir. He just dropped them off.”

  “Did he say anything when he left them?”

  “Yes, sir. He told Mary Lou, that’s my secretary, that he would be glad to talk the situation over with me at our mutual convenience.”

  “At your—”

  “Mutual convenience, that’s what he said, sir.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  22.

  Brady Grapehouse

  Over the whirlpool in the large training room a hand-lettered sign read:

  YOU CAN’T MAKE THE CLUB

  SITTING IN THE TUB

  Brady Grapehouse presided here and since he knew that healing waters sometimes had not so much to do with real physical injuries as with providing a good place to hide from a hurtful world, the sign—like everything else in this domain—was his idea.

  He had been the head trainer at Southeastern for ten years before Dick Doobey arrived as football coach. Many generations of athletes felt a single emotion for Brady: love, pure and unabashed. If an interrogator were to corner the toughest, meanest son of a bitch of a lineman from among Brady’s former customers and ask him point-blank if he loved Brady Grapehouse, the lineman would say: “Goddamn right I love Brady Grapehouse. Everybody loves Brady Grapehouse.” Everybody except Dick Doobey, who hated Brady Grapehouse.