I could see that he was beginning to get riled up himself, and he pulled in his teeth and smoothed out his face and said, “Look, sonny, I don’t like nasty kids who come in here making threats and trying to make the entertainers. I ought to have you thrown right out on your tail, but I’m a kindly guy by nature and inclined to give you a break. Suppose you just step back to Miss Caldwell’s dressing room with me, and we’ll get this all straightened out,” and I said I sure as hell would, and we went through a door into a hall and down the hall to another door, and he knocked and said, “It’s Hershell, Candy,” and she said on the inside, “Come on in, Hersh.”
He opened the door, and I went in ahead of him, and Candy was sitting at a dressing table fixing her face. She was wearing a white satin dress that wasn’t a hell of a lot more than she’d worn on schedule, which wasn’t a damn thing, and she looked up and saw me in the mirror, and it’s a fact that you couldn’t tell from her face that she’d ever seen me before. Hershell Goans said, “Here’s a guy says he knows you, Candy,” and she said to the mirror, “Lots of guys say they know me,” and he said, “You ever seen him before?” and she said, “Never,” I’m damned if she didn’t, and he turned to me with his teeth out again and said, “There you are, Sonny. Satisfied?”
Well, I wasn’t so damn dumb I didn’t know what was coming off, and I’d known it the minute Candy gave me the works on the telephone, which was that Francis Z. Ketch had put out the word to cut me loose, and I said to Candy, “Well, I’m satisfied if you are, because you’re nothing but a round-heeled bitch, and the truth is, I was beginning to get tired of it, anyhow,” and that got under her skin and she jumped up and said, “Tired of it, hell! You couldn’t get enough of it!” and I laughed and said, “I thought you’d never seen me before,” and she said, “What a smart little bastard you are!” and Hershell Goans said, “Yeah. Too damn smart,” and he’d slipped in behind me and grabbed my arm and bent it up behind my back, and it hurt like hell.
I tried to get loose, but every damn time I moved he’d shove up on my arm, and it felt like it was damn well coming out of the socket at the shoulder, and finally I got quiet and looked at Candy, and she said, “Look, Junior, as a Goddamn athlete you ought to know that all schedules end when the season’s over, and the simple truth is, the season’s over for you and me. I won’t say it wasn’t fun, and as a matter of fact I’ll admit it was, but it wasn’t enough fun to justify keeping it up when the percentage is out of it, and now that Franzie’s goons have got too God-damn ambitious and brought the heat on, the percentage is damn well out of it. Right now the risk would be too big for the cut, and that means that you were useful once but aren’t useful any more, and it’s tough as hell and all that, but that’s the way it is. In brief, Junior, it’s just like I said to Hershell. I don’t know you. I never saw you. Who the hell’s Skimmer Scaggs?”
I could see that she was laying it on the line, all right, and that there wasn’t a damn bit of use fighting it, but the truth is, she looked pretty slick in that white satin dress, and I didn’t want to give up my turn on the schedule in spite of what I’d said to the contrary, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing it, so I said, “Well, you may not know who Skimmer Scaggs is now, but you’ll damn well know who he is before he’s through, and everyone else in the damn country will know who he is, and that’s a hell of a lot more than they’ll ever know about a doll who doesn’t do anything but diddle on a schedule and sing dirty songs in a joint,” and then before Hershell Goans could push up on my arm again, I jerked away and turned and kicked him right where it did the most good and scooted out into the hall and down the alley, and from the God-damn noise in the room behind me, it sounded like the bastard’s name should have been Hershell Groans instead of Hershell Goans. I went down the alley and around to the street where I’d left the Crosley, and all the way back to Pipskill I kept thinking about Candy and wishing the schedule hadn’t ended, and as a matter of fact I still wish it, and it seems like I remember her more than any other doll I ever knew, unless possibly Marsha Davis.
Well, as I see it, there’s not a hell of a lot of use going on with it much longer, except to say that Pipskill went all the way and got to be national champs, even without Micky Spicer, and afterward I was pretty tired of it, especially at nothing but a hundred a month, and decided to quit. I went ahead on the quiet and got lined up to play with a pro team, the team I’m still playing with, and then I went around to old Umplett’s office in the field house and walked in and said, “Well, Coach, I’ve decided to quit old Pipskill, and I’ve just come around to tell you to blow it.”
He was sitting at his desk in a swivel chair, and he swung around in it very slowly and looked at me a long time with those God-damn sour, sick eyes of his, and then he said very softly, “So you’re running out. Well, I’ve been expecting it, and I’m not surprised, and it’s God’s own wonder that you stuck around as long as you did. But you made us national champs. It was mainly you, and I’ll hand it to you, and you’re welcome. I made you, and you made us, and we’re even and quits and to hell with it. Go, and God go with you, Mr. Scaggs. I’ll follow your career with interest, and I have no doubt at all that you’ll be a shining star in the professional world, and God himself knows the satisfaction it will be to my soul to remember the part I had in the making of you.”
Then he started to laugh, not out loud like a reasonable person, but so softly you could hardly hear it, like he was laughing at something in his own mind that he didn’t even think was very funny, and I think the son of a bitch was crazy, if you want to know the truth of it, and I turned around and got the hell out of there.
And that’s all I’m going to tell about. The last damn word. All I wanted in the first place was to tell how I got started and made something of myself, and now I’ve told it, and you can see for yourself that it was all because of this God-damn crazy game and nothing else.