Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

“I was headed over in six more months, so I guess so. Yes ma’am.”

“You don’t have to ma’am me, Frank,” Lynette says and bats her eyes all around. She smiles dreamily down the table at Wade, who smiles back at her in his best old southern gent manner. “My former husband was in Vietnam in the Coast Guard,” Lynette says. “Not many knew the Guard was even there. But I have letters postmarked the Mekong Delta and Saigon.”

“Where’ve you got ’em hid?” Vicki smirks at everyone.

“Past is past, sweetheart. I threw them out when I met that man right there.” Lynette nods and smiles at Wade. “We don’t need to pretend, do we. Everybody’s been married here except Cade.”

Cade blinks his dark eyes like a puzzled bull.

“Those guys saw some real tough action,” Wade says. “Stan told me, Lynette’s ex-husband, that he probably killed two hundred people he never saw, just riding along shooting the jungle day after day, night after night.” Wade shakes his head.

“That’s really something,” I say.

“Right,” Cade grunts sarcastically.

“Are you sorry not to have seen real action,” Lynette says, turning to me.

“He sees enough,” Vicki says and smirks again. “That’s my department.”

Lynette smiles dimly at her. “Be nice, sweetheart. Try to be, anyway.”

“I’m perfect,” Vicki says. “Don’t I look perfect?”

“I’d have some more of that lamb,” I say. “Cade, can I pass some your way?” Cade gives me a devious look as I catch a slab of gray lamb and pass him the platter. For some reason, my mind cannot come up with a good sports topic, though it’s trying like a computer. All I can think is facts. Batting averages. Dates. Seating capacities. Third-down ratios of last year’s Super Bowl opponents (though I can’t remember which teams actually played). Sometimes sports are no help.

“Frank, I’d be interested to hear you out on this one,” Wade says, swallowing a big wedge of lamb. “Just in your journalist’s opinion, are we, would you say, in a prewar or a postwar situation in this country right now?” Wade shakes his head in earnest dismay. “I guess I get sour about things sometimes. I wish I didn’t.”

“I haven’t paid much attention to politics the last few years, to tell the truth, Wade. My opinion never seemed worth much.”

“I hope there’s a world war before I’m too old to be in it. That’s all I know,” Cade says.

“That’s what Beany thought, Cade.” Lynette frowns at Cade.

“Well,” he says to his plate after a moment’s numbed silence.

“Now seriously, Frank,” Wade says. “How can you stay isolated from events on a grand scale, is my question.” Wade isn’t badgering me. It is just the earnest way of his mind.

“I write sports, Wade. If I can write a piece for the magazine on, say, what’s happening to the team concept here in America, and do a good job there, I feel pretty good about things. Pretty patriotic, like I’m not isolating myself.”

“That makes sense.” Wade nods at me thoughtfully. He is leaning on his elbows, over his plate, hands clasped. “I can buy that.”

“What has happened to the team concept,” Lynette asks, and looks at everyone by turns. “I’m not sure I know even what that is.”

“That’s pretty complicated,” Wade says, “wouldn’t you say so, Frank?”

“If you talk to athletes and coaches the way I do, that’s all you hear, from the pros especially. Baseball, football. The line is, everybody has a role to play, and if anybody isn’t willing to play his role, then he doesn’t fit into the team’s plans.”

“It sounds all right to me, Frank,” Lynette says.

“It’s all a crocka shit’s what it is.” Cade scowls miserably at his own two hands, which are on the table. “They’re just all assholes. They wouldn’t know a team if it bit ’em on the ass. They’re all prima donnas. Half of ’em are queers, too.”

“That’s certainly intelligent, Cade,” Vicki says. “Thanks very much for your brilliant comment. Why don’t you tell us some more of your philosophies.”

“That wasn’t too nice, Cade,” Lynette says. “Frank had the floor then.”

“Ppptttt,” Cade gives a Bronx cheer and rolls his eyes.

“Is that some new language you learned working on boats?” Vicki says.

“Okay, seriously, Frank.” Wade is still leaning up on his elbows like a jurist. He’s hit a subject with some meat on its bones, and he’s ready to saw right in. “I think Lynette’s got a pretty valid point in what she says here.” (Forgetting for the moment Cade’s opinion.) “I mean, what’s the matter with following your assignment on the team? When I was working oil rigs, that’s exactly how we did it. And I’ll tell you, too, it worked.”

“Well, maybe it’s too small a point. Only the way these guys use team concept is too much like a machine to me, Wade. Too much like one of those oil wells. It leaves out the player’s part — to play or not play; to play well or not so well. To give his all. What all these guys mean by team concept is just cogs in the machine. It forgets a guy has to decide to do it again every day, and that men don’t work like machines. I don’t think that’s a crazy point, Wade. It’s just the nineteenth-century idea — dynamos and all that baloney — and I don’t much like it.”

“But in the end, the result’s the same, isn’t it?” Wade says seriously. “Our team wins.” He blinks hard at me.

“If everybody decides that’s what they want, it is. If they can perform well enough and long enough. It’s just the if I’m concerned about, Wade. I worry about the decide part, too, I guess. We take too much for granted. What if I just don’t want to win that bad, or can’t?”

“Then you shouldn’t be on the team.” Wade seems utterly puzzled (and I can’t blame him). “Maybe we agree and I don’t know it, Frank?”

“It’s all niggers with big salaries shootin dope, if you ask me,” Cade says. “I think if everybody carried a gun, everything’d work a lot better.”

“Oh, Christ.” Vicki throws down her napkin and stares away into the living room.

“Who’s he?” Cade gapes.

“You can just be excused, Cade Arcenault,” Lynette says crisply, with utter certainty. “You can leave and live with the other cavemen. Tell Cade, Wade. He can leave the table.”

“Cade.” Wade beams an unmistakable look of unmentionable violence Cade’s way. “Put the lock on that, mister.” But Cade cannot stop smirking and lurks back in his chair like a criminal, folding his big arms and balling his fists in hatred. Wade balls his own fists and butts them together softly in front of him, while his eyes return to a point two inches out onto the white field of linen tablecloth. He is cogitating about teams still, about what makes one and what doesn’t. I could jawbone about this till it’s time to start home again, though I admit the whole subject has begun to make me vaguely uneasy.

“What you’re telling me then, Frank, and I may have this all bum-fuzzled up. But it seems to me you’re saying this idea—” Wade arches his eyebrows and smiles up at me in a beatific way “—leaves out our human element. Am I right?”

“That says it well, Wade.” I nod in complete agreement. Wade has got this in terms he likes now (and a pretty versatile sports cliché at that). And I am pleased as a good son to go along with him. “A team is really intriguing to me, Wade. It’s an event, not a thing. It’s time but not a watch. You can’t reduce it to mechanics and roles.”

Wade nods, holding his chin between his thumbs and index fingers. “All right, all right, I guess I understand.”