Paul Levine: Paydirt

"Ow!"

"Give me those car keys!"

Christine moved closer. "You do not lift a hand to a woman, Wilbur Jackson. You do not hurt a woman, ever!"

Nightlife turned to Christine, his eyes flaring with such fury that she staggered back a step on wobbly legs.

"The fuck you doing, woman! This ain't your fight!"

"If you don't let her go right now, I'll have my father suspend you.

"Fuck that! I'm your meal ticket, rich girl and this 'ho ain't nothing."

Nightlife's face was a searing mask of violence. For a moment, Christine was sure he would hit her. Her vision blurred, and his features mutated into something barely human. He became a horned beast, a goat-man, and then finally something else altogether. Something — someone — from her past. As Nightlife balled his fist and glared at her with eyes as hard as steel spikes, she saw the face that still haunted her nightmares. She girded herself and chased away the memory.

"Don't be a fool, Wilbur. I can end your career."

"The fuck you can, woman. You're just the team bling and don't even know it."

"Try me."

With a look of utter disgust, he released Shaina and turned to leave. "Shee-it, you women stick together like flies on shit."

Christine put her arms around the young woman and let her sob. "He's not worth the tears, Shaina," Christine told her, remembering her own past, "but someday you'll find someone who is."

Christine was late for the game because she had stopped to see her father in his macho den. It was a place of dark leather sofas and tobacco humidors, red Mexican tile floors with Navajo rugs, rough-hewn knotty pine walls mounted with crossed swords and rifles used in the defense of the Alamo. On the wall behind her father's desk, the head of a wild boar, fangs exposed, greeted her with a macabre smile.

She found her father standing at a reading table. He was a ramrod straight Marlboro man who looked younger than his sixty-seven years. He stood six feet-three-taller in his ostrich cowboy boots-and was a fit, rangy one hundred ninety-five pounds. His skin was a leathery parchment from too much West Texas sun in his youth, and his deeply set blue eyes looked out from under bushy white eyebrows. He had let his trademark long hair go silvery white, sweeping up at the neckline. He did not discourage sports writers who compared his looks-and actions-to Buffalo Bill Cody.

Christine had intended to tell her father about her encounter with Nightlife, but something stopped her. At first she thought she was afraid what her father would have done to his All-Pro receiver. But upon further review — as the replay officials say, it might have been just the opposite.

So what if Nightlife had beaten his girlfriend? So what if he had frightened Christine?

Her father wouldn't suspend his star player. She could almost hear him.

Now Chrissy, it's part of their culture, and you best not stick your nose into any of my players' personal affairs.

Bobby might exaggerate her father's flaws, but he was right about some things, she thought. Daddy was obsessed with winning and the glory that came with it. Overlooking his best player's sins would not be all that difficult. Christine felt a sisterhood with Shaina and every other woman who knew the terror of a man's fist. But her father, with no connection to Shaina, no stake in her life, would be insensitive to her pain.

"I need to talk to you about the Kingsley Women's Shelter," Christine said, after they said their hellos.

"That again?" He leaned back in his black leather judge's chair and propped his boots on the mahogany desk. Breaking into a crooked grin, he exhaled a long whistle, then spoke in his West Texas twang. "Christine, darlin', I'm trying to get to the Super Bowl. I don't have the time or inclination to get involved with those problem women."

" Abused women, Daddy."

"I know. I know. But my point's still the same. I got bigger catfish to fry."

"The Super Bowl isn't everything, Daddy."

"Sure it is! It's the American way. Winner take all. When the final gun sounds and the music stops playing, one guy goes home with the girl, and the other guy's singing the big dance blues."

"Is winning a football game more important than saving a woman's life?"

"Depends on the woman," he said, cracking a smile to let her know he was only semi-serious.

"We need another ninety thousand dollars for roof repairs," she said.

He let out another whistle. "If I keep giving money away, I won't have a pot to pee in. Hell, I won't even have a window to throw it out of. Sometimes I wonder if you realize the value of a dollar."

"I realize the good it can do when it's well spent."

"I guess I look at money differently. After my old man lost everything, we were so poor the roaches had to eat out or go hungry."

That was part truth, part amiable fiction, she knew. True, her grandfather, Earl Kingsley, went from poverty to riches and back to near-poverty again, but there had always been food on the table.

"All that oil and gas in the ground but we couldn't afford any for the car," her father went on, rehashing family folklore. "I filled up my old man's Ford with the help of a West Texas credit card. Do you know what that is, Chrissy?"

"A rubber hose."

"Right! We'd just siphon it out of the banker's Buick. Only time in my life I ever got anything from a banker without signing enough papers to choke a horse."

Christine let him ramble on, telling tales she'd heard dozens of times. Her father always had to bleat and paw the earth for a while before giving in. While he blathered, she planned her strategy. She wouldn't tell him about the panic-stricken women who would be forced back into the streets or worse, into the homes of men who brutalized them. He couldn't relate to women, so she'd make it personal for him.

"Remember the great publicity when you opened the shelter. Pictures in the paper, TV interviews."

"Sure. It was damn near worth the half million you talked me out of."

"Well, give the ninety thousand now and hold a press conference challenging all your Ashbrook Country Club pals to each match it. Get enough to endow the Shelter so we don't need to do this again."

"Hey, I like that, put the squeeze on those cheap bastards."

"It'll make the local news for sure, probably the NFL pre-game show on Sunday."

He chewed over a thought for a second, then said, "Done deal."

Christine smiled to herself. Now, if she could only teach Bobby how to handle her father. He wasn't that difficult."

— 4 Razzle-Dazzle

"C'mon Dad, put a spiral on it," Scott Gallagher urged, as a wobbly pass fluttered over his head.

Bobby was looking at the world through a tequila haze as he warmed up, tossing the football to his son on the freshly lined field. Scott wore a tattered Penn State jersey, number twelve, because it once belonged to his father.

Twelve was a quarterback's number, but Bobby Gallagher never played a down at that position in college. He held the ball for the kicker. With a weak arm and slow feet, he was third-string quarterback at Shanahan High in Fort Lauder-damn-dale. A walk-on at Penn State, his good hands and keen concentration made him a natural for the sport's least appreciated position: the holder on field goals and P-A-T's.

Three years and he never bobbled a snap. Repetition and focus. Consistency, the quiet confidence that coach Joe Paterno admired. Even now, Bobby could visualize the ball rocketing back to him from between the center's legs. Hundreds of snaps in practice, each time Bobby catching the ball with thumbs together, bringing it down smoothly, tilted ever-so-slightly toward him, simultaneously spinning the ball so the laces faced away from the kicker's foot, leaving a left index finger on top, and tucking his right hand into his crotch, out of the kicker's way.