Everybody's All-american by Frank Deford

Author:Frank Deford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2010-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

THE JUDGE PRESIDED after dinner in the living room. Gavin fixed him a bourbon, and took a beer for himself and sat down, content, over in the corner chair. He loved just to listen to the judge talk. “Are the children asleep?” the judge asked, and Babs said they were, even including little Lawrence, and she patted her stomach for effect.

The judge cleared his throat at that, and Gavin kicked off his loafers. I never saw him look stronger. To be sure, he no longer had that visible tingle of stardust surrounding him, as he had at Carolina, but he was more mature now, age twenty-seven, his hair ran a bit longer, and his face had, in a way, caught up with his body, which had always been ahead of the rest of him. He looked better as a mortal.

He had never played better, either. The season before, he had been acknowledged as by far the best running back in the league, and even with the Redskins’ woeful blocking, now he was setting new records. The team had been carried along in his wake, too, and thanks to luck and an easy early schedule, Washington had actually won its first three games. The whole gridiron fandom of the nation’s capital was agog, and Sunday’s game against the Chicago Cardinals was sold out. Not only that, but the Cardinals were a sorry outfit, and the Redskins had been established as solid favorites to go 4-0. For a team that seldom even managed four wins in a whole season, that was cause enough for great joy and excitement in the nation’s capital. Gavin himself had not lost his head to this euphoria, and, in fact, during dinner, he had carefully catalogued the team’s many shortcomings, but it was also a fact that he was running with the tide, just aching to play. You could tell it in the way he moved across the room, in how he ate and laughed, even in how he sat still, a spring of kinetic energy.

The judge took a long pull on his bourbon, almost gulping it, it seemed, which was quite unlike him. “I’ve got some bad news for you, Gavin,” he said. Lord, that disappointed me: I always thought the judge could do better than that.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Gavin replied, in a jaunty tone that indicated that this information could not possibly relate to him, but rather to some unfortunate mutual acquaintance.

“I mean, it’s about you,” the judge said, and he took another swallow. Now Gavin sat up, but still more curious, it seemed to me, than affected. “I didn’t want to come, Gavin. I didn’t want to be the bearer of these ill tidings, but it’s no longer possible to conceal this from you.”

Gavin shot a look to his wife. “Do you know about this, Babsie?”

She shook her head. “I informed Babs there had been some business . . . reverses,” the judge explained. “I never told her how bad it is.”

“Well, what is it, Judge?” He was genuinely perplexed.

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