Don DeLillo - End Zone

"She's into miracles real heavy."

"I'm a miracle freak, Gary."

I walked back to Staley Hall. It was a blank afternoon, windless and pale, not too cold, the sun hidden, a faint haze obscuring the reduplicated landscape beyond the campus. I went to my room. Bloomberg was in bed, neatly blanketed, reading one of my ROTC manuals.

"They use simple declarative sentences," he said.

I put my coat away and looked out the window for a while. Then I stared at my right thumb. It seemed important to create every second with infinite care, as at the beginning or nearing the end of momentous ordeals. I spent ten minutes learning a new word. Finally, in my gray corduroy trousers and gray shirt, I went down the hall to Taft Robinson's room.

I paused in his doorway, realizing suddenly that I spent a good deal of time in doorways, that I had always spent a lot of time in doorways, that much of my life had been passed this way. I was forever finding myself pausing in a doorway or standing before a window, looking into rooms and out of them, waiting to be tapped on the shoulder by an impeccably dressed gentleman whose flesh has grown over his mouth.

Taft sat crosslegged on the bed, his back to the wall, a sagging newspaper spread from knee to knee. I took a chair by the door. The room seemed slightly more bare than it had the last time I'd visited. Perhaps there was one less chair now or something gone from the floor, a wastebasket or magazine rack.

Taft wore his dark glasses. We were silent for a time. He looked at the newspaper. I didn't experience any particular sense of tension in the room. Sooner or later one of us would say or do something. Then either or both of us would be in a position to decide exactly what had been said or done. I thought of going to stand by the window so that I might assess more clearly and from a somewhat greater altitude the relevant words or action. Then I realized that the very act of going to stand by the window would be the action itself, the selfsame action subject to interpretation. Taft continued to look at the newspaper. I was getting annoyed at the direction of my thoughts. My eyes attempted to focus upon the room's precise geometric center-that fixed point equidistant from the four corners and midway between ceiling and floor. Then Taft's left shoulder twitched a bit, an involuntary shudder, a minor quake in some gleaming arctic nerve. That faint break in basic structure was enough to alter every level of mood. It was all I could do to keep my lips from inching into a slight smile.

"A hundred thousand welcomes," he said.

"Thought I'd drop by."

"Come right in. Find a chair and make yourself right at home. I see you've already got a chair. If I'm not mistaken, you're already in the room and you're already seated."

"That's correct. I'm here and seated. What you see, in fact, is exactly what you think you see."

"We might as well begin then."

"Begin what?" I said.

"The dialogue. The exchange of words. The phrases and sentences."

"I don't really have anything to say, Taft. I just came by to visit. I like it here. It's a nice room. It appeals to me. I really like it. We don't have to talk unless you want to."

"I wouldn't mind talking. But what's there to talk about?"

"I was thinking the same thing when I came down the hall. That's why I say we don't have to talk unless you want to. Or unless I want to. One of us at any rate."

"I'm not very talkative, Gary. I go whole days without saying a word. Although there are times when I get the urge to babble. No subject in particular. Just babble on. Any kind of talk just to talk. But I don't think this is one of my babbling times. So we may have to work at it. I mean what'll we talk about? If we can get together on what to talk about, I'd be willing to talk."

"So would I," I said.

"Should we think separately about possible subjects for conversation and then report back to each other? Or what? I'm open to suggestion."

"There's always the common ground. There's football. I'm sure there's something in the whole vast spectrum of football that we can discuss for a few minutes to our mutual profit. For instance, I might point out that time is flying right along. In three months, you know what- thwack, thwack, thwack. We'll have the pads on. We'll be hitting. Three months plus a few days."

"Spring practice," he said.

"Boosh, boosh, boosh. Thwack, thwack."

"There's not too much for me to say on the subject of spring practice, Gary."

"Why not?"

"I won't be there. I'm all through with football. I don't want to play football anymore."

"That's impossible. You can't be serious. What do you want to do if you don't want to play football?"

"I want to concentrate on my studies."

"Studies? Concentrate on what studies?"

"There are books in this room," he said. "I go to class every day. I think about things. I study. I read and formulate. There's plenty to concentrate on. I'm instructing myself in certain disciplines."

"Taft, you can always fit it in. I mean it's football we're talking about. Nobody reads and studies all day long. You can easily make time for football. I mean it's not swimming or track or some kind of extracurricular thing we're talking about here. It's football. It's football, Taft."

"Great big game," he said. "I'm after small things. Tiny little things. Less of white father watching me run. Prefer to sit still."

He did a curious thing then: untied his shoelaces. I took a moment to scan the walls for taperemnants. Poster of Wittgenstein, I thought. Maybe that's what he'd had up there, or almost had. Dollar ninetyeight poster of philosopher surrounded by Vienna Circle. Two parts to that man's work. What is written. What is not written. The man himself seemed to favor second part. Perhaps Taft was a student of that part.

"You have to admit that football represents a tremendous opportunity," I said. "There's money at the end of all this. And what money can't buy."

"You mean the crowd."

"The everything," I said. "The sense of living an inner life right up against the external or tangible life. Of living close to your own skin. You know what I mean. Everything. The pattern. The morality."

"Maybe I crave the languid smoky dream," he said, slowly and softly, with barely evident selfdirected humor, dressing the words in black satin. "That's living close to yourself too. You talk about bringing the inside close to the outside. I'm talking about taking the whole big outside and dragging it in behind me. What's the word they use in northern parts of Africa for that stuff they smoke? Not that I'm planning any kind of holy weed mysticism. I'm too hard edged for that. But there are rewards in contemplation. A new way of life requires a new language."

"All right then, damn it. Money aside. Metaphysics aside. It becomes a question of pursuing whatever it is you do best. It's a damn shame to waste talent like yours. It almost goes against some tenuous kind of equilibrium or master plan. Some very carefully balanced natural mechanism. I'm serious about that."

"If I don't play football, the bobcat will become extinct in Wyoming." "You're an athlete, Taft."

"So are you, Gary. But I'm not going to talk you out of quitting if you want to quit."

"As an athlete I have serious lapses. I don't play football as much as drift in and out of cloud banks of action and noise. I'm not a onehundredpercentintheAmericangrain football player. I tend to draw back now and again in order to make minor discoveries that have no bearing on anything. I conduct spurious examinations. I bullshit myself."

"Gary, you're a credit to your race." He looked down at the newspaper. I took this as an indication that we had reached the end of the introductory phase. I went to the window and stretched. A twopart yawn elongated the faint reflection of my face. There was little movement to be seen on the campus. It wasn't quite dark yet. A man (perhaps a woman) stared at me from a window of the nearest building. It disturbed me that I couldn't be sure of the person's sex. It's always interesting to stand by a window and exchange looks with an unknown woman in another building. But in this case I couldn't be sure whether I was looking at a man or woman. Therefore it seemed dangerous to get interested. It was definitely much too delicate a matter to involve myself with at the present time. I went back to the chair and sat down. Hunched forward I studied my shoes. I thought of going down to the equipment room to check out the rumor about new uniforms. According to the rumor, the coaching staff had decided on a few slight design changes for next season's uniform. At this very moment people were probably crowding into Billy Mast's room or Randy King's room to talk about the rumor, to embellish it, to swim and play in it. I could go down to the equipment room, check things out, then rush up to Billy Mast's room with whatever information or misinformation I had managed to gather. Then we could all discuss it for an hour or so. I wondered whether the designation capt or cocapt would be included on my uniform below the right shoulder or above the number 44 on my back. I hoped the rumor turned out to be true. At the very least I hoped we'd get new headgear. I didn't like the old helmets much. I'd be satisfied with new headgear and with the designation cocapt above my number.