gives the offense an advantage, since it presumably knows where it is going.
“Carter might want to take advantage of the halftime and make some calls for a job in the Knoxville area,” Clan cracks.
“He bet on the wrong horse. I almost feel sorry for him. What’s he really like? He looks like he’s a hundred years old.”
I watch Carter on the screen trotting with his head down to the visitors’ dressing room. His eyes appear to be almost shut and his lips moving.
“He’s praying for a stroke,” Clan hoots, “so he won’t have to come back out on the field.”
“That or a drink,” I say, marveling at the pressure men put themselves under. No wonder we die sooner than women.
“He’s probably not a bad guy, just in over his head like the rest of us. He gave me the impression that he cares about Dade, but who knows? He’s got a lot riding on him.”
“Like you, huh?” Clan says softly. I have told him how much I would like to negotiate a pro contract for Dade.
“Like me,” I admit.
In the second half the Razorbacks play like a different team. Dade catches six passes in the third quarter alone and runs like a wild man, scoring twice, and with the second extra point the score is tied at 14 to 14. In the fourth quarter Dade takes some sickening hits as the Vols’ safety, gambling now that he isn’t going long, time after time explodes against his back just as the ball reaches him.
“He’s going to need a bone surgeon just to scrape him off the field,” Clan says, wincing after a particularly brutal tackle. Still, Dade holds onto the ball.
“What did Carter tell them at halftime?” I ask, delighted with the change in their play.
“He’s a genius, all right,” admits Clan.
“We can’t even get Julia to take her turn at making the coffee. Maybe Carter can come to the office and give a talk on motivation.”
With Tennessee leading 17 to 14 with five minutes to go, the Hogs begin their final drive from their thirty.
Double-teamed now, Dade is used as a decoy until in the final minute, he slants across the middle and catches the ball without breaking stride and reaches the three when he is crushed by two huge tacklers. After a timeout, with the entire crowd on its feet, according to the announcers, Jay Madison sends Dade, followed by three defenders, into the left corner of the end zone and then practically walks in untouched for the victory.
Clan and I yell and give each other high fives, startling Woogie, who watches from the end of the couch.
“God, this was great,” Clan says, “and I don’t even care.”
I am limp and almost hoarse from yelling at the TV screen. How odd that this should matter so much. I, and most of the rest of the state, will be happy the rest of the day. In large part, we have Dade Cunningham to thank for that. I hope people will remember it.
Totally out of character, Saturday night I bring Amy flowers.
“Why, Gideon, how nice!” she says, obviously flabbergasted but pleased as she opens the door.
“You don’t seem the type to buy a girl play pretties.”
“It’s pretty rare,” I admit.
“I’m basically cheap and unromantic but still very lovable.” I hand her the flowers and wander around her living room. Amy lives in an apartment just off the freeway. It seems inevitable that I compare her to Rainey, whose living room was filled with books. I don’t even see a bookcase, just pictures by artists I’ve never heard of. I liked Rainey’s house better, with its hardwood floors and plants. But what did books ever do for our relationship?
“I didn’t know you were into art,” I say, staring uncomprehendingly at an abstract poster.
“Still sorta, kinda, a little, I guess,” Amy says, coming up beside me.
“I got a degree in art history at college. Really dumb a rich girl’s major. My father was a retired factory worker in Jefferson County. He worked overtime at a paper mill in Pine Bluff so I could study in the East what Picasso was thinking about during his Cubist period. I’d come home from college every June, and Daddy would ask me what I’d learned. I think I gave him a little stroke every year. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to pay for law school.”
“How’d we do it?” I say, remembering my own exhaustion during those years. Amy worked in the circuit clerk’s office during the day, and walked across the street to go to school at night.
“I didn’t do it very well,” Amy admits.
“My grades, you remember, were average.”
“Better than mine,” I point out. Amy is a good lawyer.
In fact, she was a rising star in the prosecutor’s office until she got pregnant a couple of years ago and had an abortion. Her boss, a right-to-lifer, disapproved, and Amy left shortly afterward.
At Amy’s suggestion, we drive out Damell Road to eat at the Greenhouse, a Mexican restaurant open only on the weekends. Dressed in jeans and an old Clinton-Gore T-shirt, Amy teases me as we get out of the car.
“Who is celebrity lawyer Gideon Page escorting tonight to the fashionable Greenhouse restaurant? Why it’s that cute, pixieish Amy Gilchrist! What a darling couple they make! A blend of ancient history and hot-off-the-press slut puppy. Page is taking her arm; no, he’s leaning on her. She gently touches his face; no, she’s wiping it. She murmurs sweetly into his right ear. He cups the leathery, Perot-size orifice and shouts: “What? What did you say?”
” Walking into the restaurant beside her, I laugh and nudge her with my elbow.
“Do we look that ridiculous?”
My voice is plaintive, my worst fears activated.
“If they bring a highchair for me” she snickers “try to take it in stride.”
The Greenhouse is about as plain vanilla as restaurant decor gets. With its bare concrete walls, sturdy Formicatopped tables, and iron chairs, we won’t, despite Amy’s running commentary, make it into next week’s society section of the paper, but the food, chicken enchiladas for both of us, is delicious and reasonably priced.
“I was afraid you’d want to go out to a classy joint and spend my money,” I say over bread pudding and a cup of decaf.
Amy, who is still nursing her first and only beer, shrugs.
“I knew better than that. As cheap as you are, you’d pout the rest of the evening. If I were truly liberated I’d offer to pay half, but I just talk a good game when it’s to my advantage.”
I laugh at this woman, putting me in mind of Rainey at the beginning of our relationship before she got so serious. Or maybe I was the one who got too serious. Nothing is off-limits with Amy. In the fading moments of the late June twilight we drive further out Highway 10 to Lake Maumelle and park overlooking the water, where she asks me about Rainey.
“What happened, Gideon? I thought she had you headed onto the kill floor for sure.”
Marriage as slaughterhouse. I snicker at the image. As we get out of the Blazer, I wonder how to respond.
“Every time we got close,” I say, thinking I see a sailboat in the distance, “one of us would push the self- destruct button. It wasn’t meant to be. We had our chances but wouldn’t take them. She still calls occasionally to ask about Sarah.”
Amy picks up a rock and throws it into the water.
“She’s probably still in love with you. If we start dating and I tell my friends,” she says glumly, “I’ll probably open up the paper and read you two have taken out a marriage license.”
What an imagination this woman has!
“Nope, that’s over with. Actually, Rainey liked Sarah better than me.
What she liked was to rescue me. It was easier than loving me.”
Amy turns and says primly, “I’m not much of a rescuer.”
“Well, I’m not drowning.” I kiss her then. It seems as if we have been doing it for a long time. We stand in the darkness and nibble each other until the bugs get into the act, and then we drive back to her apartment where
