"You bet, Lila, and another Coke."
She wrote it down eagerly and looked at me like I shouldn't dawdle. I ordered a club sandwich.
Lila lumbered off with the orders.
"You think I didn't see the column in the Collegian? Dumb ass kid writes it, what's his name?"
"Barry Ames," I said.
"Yeah, Ames' Games he calls it. Thinks he's Roger Angell."
"Most people aren't."
"This jerk isn't," Dixie said.
"So you knew there was talk of point shaving," I said. "You talk to the players?"
"I told them, 'Boys, anyone says that to you, you let me know, and I'll nail his ass up on the door of my office.'"
"You didn't ask them if it was so?"
"I tole you," Dixie said. "It ain't so."
"Dixie," I said, "somebody's got to ask them."
Dixie tilted his head back and let the ice cubes drain from his glass into his mouth. He crunched them with his teeth and rolled the fragments around in his mouth for a minute and then talked around the ice.
"We beat Syracuse Monday and we take the Conference championship. The playoffs come up in another week. Our first eight are as good as anybody's and we got one legitimate All-American. We don't get hurt and we could go the whole way. We don't have the stud in the middle, but Dwayne offsets that considerably."
Lila came back and slapped a green salad down in front of Dixie. It was sloshed with orange-colored dressing. Dixie swallowed his ice.
"You mind?" he said.
I shook my head and Dixie began to eat the salad. He acted like it was good.
"You figure that a point shaving investigation, even if it turns out to be groundless, will screw these kids' heads up," I said.
Dixie put his fork down and looked up from his salad.
"You know goddamned well it will," he said.
"I don't suppose they could shave points without you knowing it," I said.
Dixie snorted. Lila came with his mixed grill. There was a lamb chop, a kidney, a sausage, two strips of bacon, and a small minute steak. On the side was a large mound of french fries and a saucer of cubed carrots. Dixie sprinkled half a cellar of pepper on the carrots. Lila put my club sandwich in front of me. Her body language suggested that she found me unworthy to eat with the coach.
"Nobody's saying they're losing games, Dixie. Just beating the spread."
"You stay away from those boys, Spenser. You stay out of my gym, you stay away from my kids. Not one of them will talk to you."
"Because you told them not to."
"Because I told them not to. We've worked too hard to have you screw up our season now with some harebrained dip shit investigation so you can make a few bucks off the University."
"I can't do it, Dixie."
Dixie was silent for a while. The room was filling up. All the spots at the bar were full and most of the booths. The people at the bar were mostly Walford townies. The booths were full of college kids.
"Spenser, I swing a lot of weight around here," Dixie said. "You keep pressing this thing and I'll use some of it."
"Okay if I finish my sandwich," I said.
That was as far as I got with Dixie Dunham. I finished my club sandwich. He finished his mixed grill. He paid and when we left in silence I knew nothing I hadn't known when I came in. Maybe a little less.
5
"WHY not talk with the best player," Susan said. We were in my kitchen, Susan sipping coffee at my counter while I was attempting johnny cake for the third time, trying to get the batter thick enough to form cakes on the griddle.
"Because the coach can intimidate him less?"
"Maybe. Have they got a best player?"
"Dwayne Woodcock," I said.
"If he disobeys the coach what would be the punishment?"
"He doesn't play."
"And if he doesn't play does the team go down the tubes, or whatever revolting sports cliche fits?"
"The team suffers," I said. "Don't shrinks use cliches?"
"It would not be appropriate," Susan said and smiled at me as Mephistopheles might have smiled at Faust.
"Worth a try," I said. The johnny cake had been on the griddle nearly ten minutes and was holding its shape, although it had spread out to be a bigger cake than I had in mind. I edged the spatula under it and when it was loose I flipped it carefully. The shape held.
"What are those doughballs you're cooking?" Susan said.
I shook my head sadly. "You Jewesses know nothing about honest down-home cooking," I said. "This is johnny cake, rich in history and tradition, favored by goyim in this part of the country for three hundred years."
Susan shrugged. "Vot do day know from fency cooking?" she said.
"I seem to remember that punch line in slightly different form," I said.
"I destroyed the alliteration," she said.
I pressed down on the johnny cake with the spatula. It did not sizzle. I slid it onto a plate and put it on the counter in front of Susan. I spread on a bit of butter and splashed on some dark amber Vermont maple syrup. I cut a piece for her and held it out.
"Take a bite," I said. "Learn something." She nibbled it off the fork with a bright flash of teeth and chewed thoughtfully.
"Dried mush?" she said.
"Well, maybe a distant cousin," I said. "It's cornmeal, mostly. Originated with the Indians."
"Can I have some lox with it," Susan said.
Susan managed to eat three johnny cakes, without lox, and I put away four, and two cups of coffee. Susan was wearing the white silk peignoir I braved Victoria's Secret to buy her for Christmas. She had no makeup on and I could tell what she'd looked like when she was a little girl. Except when she looked at me. The eyes were not those of a little girl. The eyes had seen life intimately and clearly.
"Gee," I said, "that robe seems to fall open very revealingly."
"Must be a design flaw," Susan said.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't have bought it if I'd known it was a second," I said.
"The thought of you in Victoria's Secret is heart warming, though," Susan said.
"I blushed," I said.
"Good to know you can," Susan said and got up and started putting on her makeup. I cleaned up breakfast and went to shower and shave.
Two hours later, with the johnny cake still sticking to my ribs; I fell into step across the Taft Quadrangle with Dwayne Woodcock. At six feet nine and 255 pounds Dwayne was the premier power forward in the country; he was also probably the number one pick in the NBA draft next year, and, according to the papers, a fair head case. Most men his size played center in college and switched to forward in the pros.
The Taft center in fact was six foot seven, but Dwayne had made that condition when he came to Taft. He would be the power forward, giving him a four-year start on his pro position. Walking beside him was walking in the shade. "Dwayne Woodcock?" I said.
He looked down at me silently and, after a moment, nodded.
"My name is Spenser. I need to talk with you for a moment."
"Know who you are, man."
"You on your way to class?"
Woodcock smiled and shook his head. "Breakfast."
"Good, mind if I join you?"
"Coach says I ain't supposed to talk with you," Dwayne said. There was no apology in his voice, or embarrassment. He was just reporting a fact to me.
"You always do what Coach says?"
"Don't do what nobody says, man. Do what Dwayne Woodcock says." Again the smile, genuine, but not friendly, condescending, as if to say he would overlook the fact that I was a short old white guy. It was probably hard not to seem condescending if you were Dwayne's size. You looked down from above the everyday world.
"So what does Dwayne Woodcock say about having breakfast with me?" I said.
"Free country, man, you want to walk along, okay with me."
As we walked across the campus a hundred people said hello to Dwayne. He was friendly but regal.
"So what you want to talk about, man?"
"Didn't Coach tell you?"
Dwayne smiled again. "Naw. Coach don't do a lot of telling. He just say stay the fuck away from you and not to talk with you."