In between, he guided the Horned Frogs to a piece of the national championship in one poll. But he quoted the words of Bear Bryant: “You only need to win one, then your people can play-like they won ’em all.”

  This was before the Bowl Championship Series got itself invented to the delight of the five major conferences. Now a school can lose all twelve games in the regular season, year after year, but still rake in millions from TV. Is that sweet enough to make a chancellor dress like a Sinclair dinosaur and dance in the street?

  I expected everybody to appreciate T. J.’s thoughts on the world in general, which is why I called him at his retirement home in Horseshoe Bay to remind him about the reunion. He hadn’t answered my emails. Probably busy rooting for busted kneecaps on every hate-America buffoon in the country.

  Horseshoe Bay is fifty-some miles north of Austin. A spread-out area of mansions worth millions that face a body of water combining Lake Lyndon B. Johnson with a branch of the Colorado River. T. J. and Donna Lou live in one of the two-story houses with the lake for a front yard. Five golf courses are available, but T. J. only rides his bike around them and through them.

  *****

  T. J. WAS a ferocious competitor as a player. A two-time All-America defensive end at the University of Tennessee. Five years All-Pro with the Giants. A savage hitter. Billy Clyde described him as “the kind of defensive player who had no patience for back-talk.”

  Tales of T. J.’s lack of patience are preserved in the memories of his teammates, and friends like me.

  In the seasons he was with the Giants, he became bothered that he hadn’t received a raise in two seasons. He marched into Coach Shoat Cooper’s office to discuss it. Everyone on the squad and coaching staff knew that Shoat drank four Dr. Peppers a day and each bottle was laced with a jigger of Jack Daniels.

  When Shoat told T. J. he didn’t have a raise in the budget at the present time, T. J. picked up the Dr. Pepper off Shoat’s desk and chug-a-lugged it down.

  As Shoat stared at him speechless, T. J. said, “Sorry about that, Coach, but being underpaid makes me thirsty.”

  There was the time the Giants were in Chicago for the opening game of the season with the Bears. T. J. and Billy Clyde and two other teammates were downtown the night before the game savoring the delights of Rush, Clark, and State streets.

  They were milling around on the sidewalk outside a tavern when Wiley “Wolf Hound” Dusek showed up. Wolf Hound was a rookie linebacker out of Duke. The Bears had chosen him No. 1 in the NFL draft.

  Wolf Hound had already made his load that night, which caused him to say to T. J., “You’re the badass T. J. Lambert, right? Why don’t you and me get it on right now, right here, stink on stink?”

  T. J. grinned at him, and said, “Wolfie Boy, you know what?”

  Wolf Hound said, “What?”

  T. J. said, “I don’t have time for your cheap shit.”

  With that, he quickly grabbed Wolf Hound by his neck and his crotch, lifted him up over his head, and threw him away.

  Yeah. Sailed him up in the air six or seven yards down the street.

  Wolf Hound Dusek landed on the concrete curb and suffered a torn ACL, a fractured elbow, a broken jaw, and a chronic neck injury. He never played a down of pro ball.

  And there was the time the Giants were in Dallas the night before a game with the Cowboys. I met Billy Clyde, Shake, and T. J. in a bar that a player with the Cowboys recommended. It was north of downtown, surrounded by apartments for singles. Supposedly it was a get-lucky joint, as one might have guessed from the name: Exes and Ohs.

  I was having a cocktail at the bar with Billy Clyde and Shake when I saw T. J. on the dance floor in a dispute with three muscled-up, mean-looking buzz-cuts covered in tattoos. The argument appeared to be over who was going to dance with a young lady. Suddenly they decided to take the discussion outdoors.

  I nudged Billy Clyde and Shake, who had their backs to the dance floor, and said, “T. J. just went outside with three bad-looking dudes. They were having a disagreement over a lady.”

  Billy Clyde said, “Jesus, T. J. will kill ’em!”

  He and Shake spun off their barstools and plowed their way through the crowd to go outside and prevent the mayhem. I followed them.

  We arrived before any fists were flying.

  “You guys don’t know who you’re dealing with,” Billy Clyde said. “This gentleman right here is Mr. T. J. Lambert of the New York City Football Giants.”

  “They know that now,” T. J. said. “They want my autograph. Anybody got a damn pen?”

  *****

  “WHAT’S up, asshole?”

  That’s how T. J. answers the phone if it’s not the governor of Texas or his wife Donna Lou.

  “Just checking in,” I said. “Making sure you’re set for the reunion.”

  “We’ll be there, but I don’t know why you want me. I hear you already got more celebrities lined up than California’s got wine-tasters.”

  “It’s shaping up to be festive.”

  “I know what would make it more festive for me.”

  “What?”

  “Round up some of these imbeciles who’ve ruined the NFL for me. Let me have a piece of their ass. They’re responsible for me joining Donna Lou in the den on Sundays to watch house flippers or fat girls try on wedding gowns.”

  “It’s the protestors you speak of, I’m guessing.”

  “Protestors, huh? If that’s how you want to dignify ’em. I’ve said from the start that any sumbitch who gets rich playing a game but won’t stand for our anthem . . . won’t show respect for the flag and country he’s lucky to be born in . . . a country that brave Americans fight and die for . . . he ought to be sent to live in a mud cave. See how he likes it. I’m not sure those kneeling turds can get me back in the audience.”

  “You don’t think you’re being a trifle harsh?”

  He said, “What the hell do they have to bitch about, Tommy Earl? Oh, I forgot. Social justice. You know what social justice is to them? The police officer ought to stand still and let the thug shoot him first.”

  I said, “Billy Clyde and I laugh at ’em. They aren’t smart enough to know a con job if it throws a chop-block on ’em. Some hired-help activist talks political crap to ’em, and they fall for it.”

  *****

  T. J. said, “Those jackasses make me wish I still coached. I’d remind ’em how easy they can be replaced. There are hundreds of kids playing major college football, and they’d love to take those pro jobs. Some are better players anyhow.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “All you have to do is check out the Washington Redskins from time to time.”

  T. J. said, “Like the old rodeo cowboy says, ‘It’s hard to ride ’em if you can’t get ’em in the chute.’”

  “See there, Coach,” I said. “All that’s why you’ll be the reunion’s star attraction, my man.”

  17.

  ONE LAST out-of-town couple had to be nailed down before I declared victory. That was Jim Tom Pinch and his wife, the former Iris McKinney, a good old Texas gal who could pass for saucy. Jim Tom, as I’ve mentioned, had become a sportswriter in New York City with all of the stripes, braid, and badges that came with it.

  He had spent fifteen years writing for The Fort Worth Light & Shopper, a newspaper born in 1922 but the first daily in this modern age to be shut down overnight. The grocery ads couldn’t keep it breathing forever.

  He escaped ahead of the paper’s collapse. He’d sent samples of his work to the editor of The Sports Magazine, the powerhouse sports weekly, and was hired. He moved to Manhattan and in no time became one of SM’s most reliable writers.

  Jim Tom and Iris met and were stricken in Gully Creek when he was there to do a piece on the Tornadoes. Iris had been brought on board from her accounting job with a concrete company by her friend Kelly Sue Woodley. Iris was hired to help out in the front office when Billy Clyde was the general manager.

  She and Jim Tom had lived in the common-law world for a while—Iris was against marriage.

  Iris said as she had observed it, “Marriage is for people who like to argue about shit.”

  But she gave in one day and they made it legit.

  Jim Tom was holding onto the competitive drive that living in Manhattan stirs up in people. Or so I’ve heard. He laughs at the stroke his national byline wields amid the agony and ecstasy of the sports world.

  “If I’m not at the Super Bowl,” he jokes, “they cancel it.”

  There are drawbacks that didn’t exist in his early years at the magazine. His reliable editors were more helpful then. They handled his copy delicately when he was on deadline on the road, and his piece would come out reading like it hadn’t been nibbled on by squirrels.

  Today Jim Tom is forced to get along with a collection of ambitious young editors that were schooled by academics, none of whom had worked a day on a newspaper or magazine with deadlines. The academics replaced the professionals who were talked into taking early retirement or buyouts when the publication went on a cost-cutting binge.

  Jim Tom referred to the new breed of editors as “the egg whites.” He claims they are known to lapse into severe depression if they lose a comma war to a staff writer like, for instance, him.

  There was one good friend and editor left on the staff. That was Reg Blake, a seasoned vet at the magazine. They had fun arguing politics—Reg the Red Menace, Jim Tom the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

  “If it gets serious,” Jim Tom says, “we settle it at ping pong.”

  He was considering taking early retirement, becoming a contract writer, and moving somewhere easier on his whip-out. Somewhere affordable other than an Eskimo community in Siberia or a village of pygmies in Uganda.

  He said, “You can’t buy a broom closet in Manhattan for less than two million dollars today. Our apartment rent has ballooned to six thousand a month because there’s a working fireplace in the living room.”

  On the side he’d written two autobiographies of sports heroes that flirted with best-sellerdom. One of course was with Billy Clyde. The other was with “Rats” Keener, the basketball coach at Kentucky who won five NCAA championships with teams on which you couldn’t find a player who spoke English.

  Jim Tom spent the first couple of years celebrating the fact that he’d made it to the bigtime. He’d become part of everything New York City represented. The skyscrapers, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, the Plaza Hotel, Yankee Stadium, Broadway, Sardi’s, “21,” P. J. Clarke’s, Saks Fifth Avenue. One of the first things he did was find out where Tin Pan Alley had been. He’d seen enough movie musicals to make him curious about it.

  He found out it had been a stretch of West Twenty-Eighth Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. But he also discovered that popular music had since then moved to the Brill Building at Forty-Ninth and Broadway.

  As the magic began to wear off, Jim Tom next found himself hopping from one deadline event to another. Which brings him up to date where he’s finding it harder to live comfortably in what he now calls “the Manhattan money funnel.”

  On the phone, he said, “Tommy Earl, when I came to New York a cab to LaGuardia was six bucks. Now it’s fifteen dollars to go six blocks in Manhattan, and the guy at the wheel is an illegal from Bangladesh who not only expects me to speak Bengali, he’ll have no understanding of what a red signal light means.”

  Then there were Iris’s wishes to consider.

  Iris is a likable redhead if you don’t count off too many points for her mouth. If anyone could drop more four-letter words than T. J. Lambert in one conversation, it was Iris. And if anybody disliked New York City more than Big Ed Bookman, it was Iris.

  The magic that Jim Tom once felt about Manhattan never gripped Iris. Her take on the Apple:

  “I’m supposed to appreciate the culture this city offers? What culture is that? The insufferable traffic? The head-throbbing congestion? The brain-crushing noise? The outrageous cost of everything? It’s a melting pot, all right.”

  She would tell you, “You want to make me happy? Plant my butt someplace like Sag Harbor where I can breathe fresh air, not get pushed off the sidewalk by a Center of the Universe, and be forced to stand in line for thirty goddamn minutes to be honored with a seat at a lunch counter.”

  Iris enjoys telling about the evening when she was verbally attacked by a white chick social worker, but one who lived in a five-million-dollar penthouse apartment on Park Avenue.

  They met at a dinner party in the social worker’s home. Iris and Jim Tom had been invited as a couple—the social worker was a Boston Red Sox fan. But Jim Tom was out of town on assignment, so Iris went alone, mainly to see what a Park Avenue penthouse looked like.

  The thing that set off the exchange was Iris letting it be known that she was a native Texan.

  The social worker said, “Oh, my. Then I must ask you how you’re dealing with your ‘whiteness?’”

  Iris fired back with, “How do you deal with yours, honey? Do you keep it under control in your Vuitton handbag or your Gucci purse?”

  Iris heard gasps as she stormed out.

  Jim Tom confessed they were looking forward to the reunion. It would be a welcome break from the inconveniences of life.

  18.

  THE MOMENT I posted the signs—one for the dining room, one for the bar—I had no idea how many sirens it would set off. I was trying to alert the diners and cocktail crowd to the fact that Herb’s would be closed to the public for a private party on the day and night of August 21.

  The regulars knew about it, as did the staff, and I had bought an ad in the papers which mentioned that it was by invitation only. But that didn’t keep half the population on the globe from inquiring about invitations, or maybe they were interested in something else.

  People who had never dined at Herb’s even once showed up and as casually as possible would ask about an invitation as they paid the lunch or dinner check. I guess if you’ve never known a celebrity, or breathed the same air as one . . . oh, well.

  It was necessary for the early arrivals from out of town to entertain themselves for a while. They were informed that Olivia and I would be occupied. We would be settling on decorations, arranging a place to put a service bar in the dining room, and finding a spot for a mic and podium for those I would ask to speak, as in entertain us with songs, dances, and snappy patter.

  I told the visitors by email that they might need maps to negotiate the roadwork taking place in the old hometown. It caused detours and traffic jams all over town. A dozen freeways were under construction going nowhere in every direction. That didn’t particularly fill me with a sense of civic pride.

  Bobby Downs came in the bar with Dorito Bracy and Everywhere Red Fuqua to tell me they realized they wouldn’t be invited, but they offered to provide security. Hang outside in case any car-jackers or party-crashers paid a visit.

  Bobby said, “Everybody knows there’s gonna be people here who is rich and famous.”

  I said I wasn’t worried about it. I was continuing to work on which locals to include and which ones to cull. I couldn’t invite everybody, and I hoped I wouldn’t leave out somebody who might want to get even with me by puncturing the tires on my sparkling black Lexus.

  Bobby and Dorito asked on behalf of Montana Slim and Boots Dunlap if the bookmakers could buy invitations.

  Bobby said, “Slim used to come here for the chicken fried steak when Herb was alive. It was usually in football season when Herb could test his brain against the six-point teasers.”

  Red Fuqua said, “Circus Face invented the six-point teaser.”

  I said, “He may have. I know it was either Circus Face or Al Capone.”

  Bobby said, “Herb never learned that teasers are for suckers, like the stock market.”

  “Both have ripped my heart out enough times,” I said.

  Bobby said, “Slim says only five people understand money, and they are all in New York. They can make the market do whatever they want it to do. I ask him how you get to be one of the five guys. He said you start by being a crook.”

  Dorito said, “Boots came here for the fried shrimp.”

  I said, “Boots Dunlap ate here for the fried shrimp? What? He thought Herb caught them out of the Trinity River?”

  Bobby looked surprised. “There’s shrimp in the Trinity River?”

  I turned to Red Fuqua. “Does Circus Face want to buy an invitation?”

  Red said, “Circus Face don’t do public . . . only when he goes to Railhead or Angelo’s for barbecue.”

  I said I’d seen Circus Face at Carshon’s on chocolate pie day. And I’d seen him in the Paris Coffee Shop going after a slice of the egg custard.

  Red Fuqua said, “I didn’t know we was talkin’ about deezerts.”

  I said the guys could tell Slim and Boots they would receive invitations in the mail. They were local celebrities, after all.

  *****

  LOYCE EVETTS showed up with a problem. He was currently keeping up Yasmin and Renata, and asked if he could bring one of them to the reunion.

  I said, “Loyce, I’ve lost count, but I recall a Heather and an Amber . . . an Ashly and an Angel . . . and wasn’t there an Andrea and a Tina?”

  He said, “You skipped Dawn and Dagmar.”

  “You never mentioned Dawn and Dagmar.”

  “They didn’t last long. Skanks, is what they were. They stole rugs, lamps, plates, silverware, and blankets from the apartments when they left. Trust in this life is becoming a thing of the past, Tommy Earl.”

  “Which one do you feel the strongest about. Now. Today.”

  “Can’t decide. They’re both knockouts.”

  “I’ll help you out. Which one speaks English?”

  “They’re Americans,” he frowned. “I don’t fool with foreigners anymore. Your foreigners don’t bathe regular. That was a bitch of a thing to find out the hard way, if you want the truth.”

  “Which one is most likely to sue you for sexual harassment?”