taken by the board. This means that star wide receiver Dade Cunningham, unless head Razorback football coach Dale Carter says otherwise, will be in the starting line-up against the Crimson Tide tomorrow afternoon….”
“Shit!” Barton whines at the screen.
“Those assholes could have waited! If we lose, it’ll be their fault.”
I reach for the phone and dial Dade’s room and get his answering machine. Hoping I don’t sound drunk, I say that he shouldn’t worry and that if he needs to call me, I can be reached at either Barton Sanders’s home or his office tonight and tomorrow morning. Barton gives me the numbers, which I read into the phone, wondering how Dade will react I hang up, pissed at the “J” Board but knowing it could have been worse. While Barton continues to rant, I try to think what lesson there is to be gained from their decision.
Obviously, they don’t consider Dade presently a threat to Robin, but they believed her over him. Not a good sign, but I don’t know what factor politics, campus or otherwise, played into their decision. A lot, probably, since Dozier told me they try to achieve a consensus. I’d love to know what part war’s rallies played in this decision, but I know I never will.
“You got problems,” Barton says, gloomily sipping at his drink.
“If you can’t convince students and professors Dade is innocent, think what a bunch of hillbillies on that jury will do to him.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I say, glad Barton called about the ticket before we got the news. I don’t seem like such a hero all of a sudden. I call Sarah to find out her reaction, but only get her answering machine as usual. She is probably out celebrating with Paula Crawford. On second thought, they are probably furious Dade wasn’t kicked out of school. Nothing will ever satisfy them.
Unlike last week in Knoxville, the weather stays gorgeous all morning Saturday, and walking to the stadium it is easy to forget that football at this level is essentially a business. Hundreds of tailgate parties are going on simultaneously in a sea of Razorback red; multi generation Arkansans gather together outside their RVs in lawn chairs and wolf down tons of barbecue, potato salad, cole slaw, and baked beans and drink beer. Diet Coke, and iced tea, trading friendly insults with the healthy con ting gent of Alabama fans who are, as usual, cocky but not obnoxious, at least not before the game. Truly, it is a cultural thing, right or wrong, the way we live. If the fans are right, the Hogs are back. The Alabama game will prove it.
During the warm-up I train my binoculars on Dade and am shaken as twenty yards downfield he drops a perfectly thrown ball. When he trots back in. Carter, who apparently has been watching too, says something to him, and Dade listens with his head bowed. He didn’t call last night or this morning. I spoke with his mother briefly be fore I left for the game, and she hadn’t heard from him either. If he is able to turn pro after this season, I wonder how much money this game alone will be worth to him.
Alabama’s preseason All-American safety, Ty Mosely, will be covering him all afternoon. If Mosely shuts him down, it will be hard for a pro owner to forget his statistics, since he will have seen the game. As the cheerleaders minus Robin Perry lead the crowd in calling the Hogs, it is impossible not to feel a shiver run down my spine. It is just a game, I tell myself. Of course, it’s not.
The Hogs come out as fired up as the crowd and out quick the bigger Tide linemen as Carter keeps the ball on the ground even in obvious passing situations. By the second quarter with the Razorbacks on top 10 to 7, it is easy to forget Dade is even on the field. Jay Madison, the Hogs’ quarterback, has thrown a total of three passes, all screens to his backs. Incredibly, with one minute left in the half Alabama fumbles inside its own five, and the Hogs recover and go up 17 to 7 at the half.
I realize my dominant emotion is one of relief. The game will put a crimp in some of Dade’s total season statistics, but if Arkansas wins, it can’t hurt him too badly. If Madison doesn’t throw the ball to him, he can’t drop it.
Just at the kickoff I return to my seat from a trip to the bathroom. Predictably, someone was drunk and sick (it sounded like an animal giving birth to a too large off spring). The crowd around me is reasonably in control, but it won’t be if we win. I don’t look forward to the drive back to Blackwell County after the game, no matter what happens.
As I feared, Alabama’s strength begins to tell by the fourth quarter, and their offense begins to look like Sherman marching through Georgia, and they go ahead 21 to 17 with five minutes left. Now, stuck on our twenty- yard line, we have to throw, and everybody in the stadium knows it.
Quickly, the battle between Ty Mosely and Dade be comes awesome to watch. Dade is a step faster, but Mosely has an uncanny gift of being able to react while the ball is in the air, and unless Jay Madison throws the ball almost perfectly, Mosely will just get a hand on it and knock it away from Dade at the last moment. Though there is now double coverage on Dade, the Hogs are still able to move downfield, thanks to Madison’s success in finding secondary receivers. With the ball on the twenty with one minute left, Dade has caught four passes on this drive, three for first downs, so there is no doubt about his ability to perform under pressure. Forgotten is his dropped ball in warm-ups. Even if we don’t win, he has performed creditably.
With second and ten, Dade accelerates faster than I’ve seen him all day and blows by Mosely and heads for the corner of the left end zone. The right safety comes over to cover him, but Dade suddenly plants his foot and cuts to the right at the instant the ball is thrown. The exact moment the ball reaches him, he is almost decapitated by the left safety who has come over to cover him. Somehow, Dade manages to hold onto the ball while being knocked into the end zone, and the stadium erupts as I’ve never seen it. In my excitement I trip over the seat in front of me and fall forward onto the back of a huge fat guy who is so deliriously happy he jumps up and down with me clinging to his shoulders.
“We win! We win!” he screams as tears stream down his cheeks.
Twenty minutes later I am on my way out of town, heading back to Blackwell County, listening to the postgame comments on the radio. Coach Carter calls Dade’s catch the greatest he has ever seen. His interviewer does not mention that if the All-University Judiciary Board’s decision is upheld, it will be the last one he’ll make as a Razorback this season. Caught hopelessly in traffic on Highway 23 (I’ll have to call Amy and tell her I’ll be late), I think that the reason men like sports is that if we try hard enough we can pretend for a couple of hours that the real world doesn’t have anything to do with us.
10
At two on Monday I am picking up peanut shells from my carpet when Clan saunters into my office. He has converted our office into a peanut warehouse Jimmy Carter himself could be proud of. He has agreed to go with me to the apartment of Gina Whitehall, my dependency neglect case, to see how difficult it might have been for the child to turn on the water. I have the trial later this week. The police have investigated the incident, and I don’t want to cross-examine a cop without having seen the place for myself.
“Are you still going out there with me, or are you coming to weasel out?”
“What a mess!” he exclaims, ignoring my question.
“It looks like those bars where they throw the shells on the floor.”
“Most of them are yours,” I say irritably.
“How much weight have you lost?”
Squeezing into one of my chairs, Clan snorts, his double chin wobbling like a helping of cranberry sauce, “Three pounds. You get sick of the damn things awfully fast.”
I throw a handful of shells into the wastepaper basket beside me and then, despite my best intentions, I take another peanut from my desk drawer.
Clan extracts a reddish substance from his teeth with a straightened paper clip and wipes it on his pants. We seem to be regressing into after-hours behavior without much prompting. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another nut, shaking his head.
“I hate these damn things.”
I grin at Clan. The son of a gun is irrepressible. His marriage is terrible; his law practice is at a standstill; he is a hundred pounds overweight; he has the emotional maturity of a five year old; and I wouldn’t trade his friendship for anything. As we talk, the phone rings. It is a psychologist friend I contacted at the university to see if there was any research on the reaction of small children to burns. I push the speaker button to let Clan hear. It is
