The old man shook his head and laughed self-deprecatingly. "It went
on that way for years, and then it started to fall apart." He took
another drink and sighed. "I got in deep with the gamblers. Real deep.
Lost a few bets and tried to play my way out, kept pushing for the one big
night. One bookie told me he'd never seen anyone dig that deep a hole before.
But what the hell: I had the gift, the touch. My luck would turn, I knew
it just as surely as I knew that no one in America could bring me down in
the open-field..One day I happened upon something--never mind what it was--a
good scheme, and I was led to believe the fix was in. I went to the hangers-on,
the small-time mugs around town who were always looking for a quick score.
They led me to the people I went to work on. I charmed them out of it, did
what I did best. They dipped into their life's savings, some of them, turned
paychecks over to me, a couple sold their cars, an old woman took out a
loan. And when I took a bath on that, one everyone wanted a piece of me.
I had no place to turn. I was scared to death, afraid for my life. My drinking
got worse, and I went into a long tailspin and got sick. I was too sick
to go to practice--and when I saw my teammates become concerned--I began
formulating a plan."
The old man motioned me out of the wind and into the covered entryway of
the bar. In the late afternoon gloom, streams of people began to congregate
in line in front of a shelter down the street. "Of course, my coach
and teammates never knew," the old man continued. "I was always
able to keep that part of my life secret from them, although a few might
have suspected. They knew I was a hellraiser, but the other stuff they knew
nothing about. They were just like the fans: Even if they found out, it
wouldn't have mattered. They all looked up to me, a few damn near worshipped
me, and because of that I realized they would be perfect for what I had
concluded I had to do next. I spent the next three days fleecing marks in
poolrooms, paid off one mob guy I owed, and made a deal with him: The kind
of sting only the pros or the desperate attempt. At first, he backed off.
'You're crazy,' he said. 'You'll never get away with that.' But I kept after
him, played-up his cut of the payoff, and he finally agreed. He asked me
how I'd gotten myself into this fix, and I told him. He listened and said:
'So, along with everything else, you screwed with the futures of a lot of
decent, hardworking people who had very little to begin with.' I nodded
and he glared at me and said: 'You know what happens to you if you don't
hold up your end of this?' I did. He would find me. And when he did..."
"For one very important reason we needed 30 days before we could
complete it," the old man went on, "so we set it up for the following
month." He was shivering slightly in the gathering darkness, and his
eyes narrowed warily as he surveyed the Tenderloin streets beyond. "It
meant missing my last college game, like I mentioned to you before; that
was part of the plan, an important part of laying the groundwork. There
were a lot of tricky details to be dealt with, but the wise guys handled
those; all I had to do was play-act, but I was good at that, always had
been. I set the scene up beautifully, I must say. I knew that eventually
the authorities might be brought in; cops, medical people, insurance company
gumshoes--especially the insurance guys, they were our main worry. Most
important, my coach and teammates would be my witnesses; I had to make it
look good. And I did--put on a show at the end which was better than anything
I ever did on the field. To make a long story short, we pulled it off. Everyone
got their money back, and I was off the hook."
I was scrutinizing the old man now, intrigued a bit by this bizarre monologue,
and a few questions seemed in order. What was the plan, and what finally
happened? I asked politely. The old man studied me for a split second and
then lowered his gaze and stared past me. "You know, watching those
players celebrating on TV today took me back, reminded me of a lot of things.
Not that I've ever really forgotten about it--I live with it every day--but
it hit me worse than ever for some reason, and I've never really talked
about it before. I lived with a bunch of guys for four years and never wondered
about their lives outside of the huddle. It was always my name in the headlines,
never theirs, and I just assumed that's the way it was supposed to be. I
ran through the holes they endlessly opened for me, always on the way to
somewhere else, alone. And in the end I used them, put something over on
them the way I did everyone else. Used the--it's funny, you'd think a team
would be the next closest thing to family there is, wouldn't you?--and they
never knew they were the props which helped win the biggest game of all
for me, the one that helped me save my own skin. 'The plan,' you ask? Let's
just say it was my intention that my coach and teammates would be the last
people to ever see me. And when the time came, they would believe what they
finally saw, believe it because it was just another facet of this storybook
creature they'd helped create out of their own needs, and that moment would
be as dramatic as any time they ever watched me break into the clear and
take it all the way in."
With that cryptic reply he shambled off quickly down the street. For
a brief instant I thought to call him back, but he had made it plain his
baffling spiel was over. I watched him join the line of people waiting in
front of the shelter; if nothing else, I had at least indulged a lonely,
destitute old man and his chaotic fantasies on a cold winter afternoon.
All around me now, the human flotsam of the 1980s snaked in a long disheveled
thread the length of the block. I watched the line grow and remembered the
unyielding expression on Ronald Reagan's face the week before when he stated
that the homeless chose to live on the streets.
I searched the far end of the street for a sign of my bus, half-listening
to the post-game wrap-up from inside the bar. The announcer was comparing
this Notre Dame squad with the legendary teams of Knute Rockne and Frank
Leahy.
I saw my bus in the distance and walked out to the curb. The line of homeless
had begun to move rapidly and I could see people entering the shelter. I
looked for the old man and spotted him near the middle of the line. All
of a sudden a man came out of the shelter and the line halted. He waved
his hands back and forth over his head; he was turning away the others for
lack of room.
The crowd trudged off in various directions, bowed under layers of grimy
blankets and ragged backpacks, benumbed faces staring straight ahead, a
new breed of nomads destined to endlessly wander the urban maze. As my bus
pulled up I glimpsed the old man a couple of blocks away, moving slowly
across an intersection. Our conversation coursed disjointedly through my
mind as I watched him recede from view, and then it hit me just as I was
about to board. I whirled and began running down the street after him, trotted
three more blocks, then began checking the doorways on the side streets.
I retraced my steps and stood for a couple of minutes on the corner where
I thought I'd last seen him. The holiday streets were deserted, bathed in
pure silence. Nothing moved. I looked out over the quiet city and marveled
at what a perfect night George Gipp had chosen to again make it appear he
had departed this earth.