Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve defended you — successfully, God help me. I’ve made threats that at last have had their effect, and at least the police won’t be called. But if you think I for one second think you’re innocent, you’re badly mistaken. I should have known it would be something like this. With the rotten, depraved blood that’s in you, to which something young is only a new excitement—”

Don’t ask me how I got through the rest of that horrible night. I stood there, and pumps began driving in my head, like they had the day I beat up the organist, like they do still, at no more than a look in somebody’s eye, if I happen to think that look means my mother. I held on to the door jamb, for control, and he talked on and on, and every other sentence he’d tell me to get out of there. I tried to tell him what the truth was, but it was like talking to something insane, and after a while I went upstairs. Then while I was packing, Sheila came in, looking thin and old in some kind of a Chinese kimono, and I told her I was taking clothes and underwear only, and might have to write for the other stuff. She said she’d send anything I wanted. Then she began to cry and I went over to kiss her but she turned away. At that I felt my face get hot, picked up my bags, and went downstairs. In the living room something moved and then Nancy was there with a thermos bottle and a basket full of sandwiches. She whispered the thermos had coffee in it. I thanked her and wanted to kiss her but hated the idea of somebody else turning away. I put the stuff under my arm and went out. Then I was in the car, driving through the night, with the rain coming down, the black road shining ahead, with no more idea where I was going than the Flying Dutchman, and just as much chance of getting there.

“The future of football, of pro football, is right here in the South. With outdoor night sports the coming thing, a whole new field has opened up and pro football will claim it. I mean to take advantage of what the South offers. I mean to cooperate with baseball. I mean to begin where baseball leaves off, beginning the week after the World Series this October, and by using the ball parks, put on night games, not once a week, but seven nights a week, with doubleheaders if we skip any. But that’s the beauty of football: there’ll be no need to skip. Football is the one sport that never called a game on account of weather, that never gave a rain check, hail check, or snow check. Whatever it’s doing topside, the game goes on. If the customers don’t mind, the players don’t care. But why would the customers mind? Here in the South it’s always warm enough, and in a covered stand it’s dry enough. Once more, the South will find out it’s got something.”

“You running the whole league?”

“I’m running one team, here in Atlanta.”

“But, Mr. Dillon, who’ll you play?”

“Chattanooga, Memphis, Houston, San Antonio, New Orleans, Jacksonville, and Miami.”

“You’ll go into the Southwest, too?”

“Why not? This is a pure matter of weather. Sure I’ll cross the river.”

“Are those teams ready?”

“They soon will be. While I’m promoting them and lining up backing — which is all in sight, my friends, I’m not out to sell stock — we’ll challenge existing teams, and the way I hear it, the boys on the big Eastern clubs have quite a little time on their hands, and for a nice guarantee, maybe they won’t be too proud to come down here and do their stuff for Georgia. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m offering dates to colleges. For a nice cut of the gate and the fastest practice they’ll ever get, you may find those campus coaches will take a liberal view of ethics, if, as, and when they’ve got any.”

It was maybe a week later, in the lobby of the Atlanta Biltmore. I had called the sporting editors, and they’d sent three or four reporters and some photographers over. And in hardly more than an hour there I was, all over the front pages, with big pictures of me, and big banner headlines telling how Atlanta was to have a team. Seeing it in print made it seem like in a week you’d hear the referee’s whistle. How much of it was real and how much was phony, just a stall to hide the spot I was in, I don’t know. I had driven on to Richmond and gone to bed in some little hotel there, then after I caught up on my sleep, gone on to Raleigh and Durham and I don’t know what other places. All that time I was trying to forget Helen, cut out the bitter way I was raging at the Old Man, and figure out where I was at and what I was going to do. In Durham, I guess it was, I snapped out of it enough to cruise around to get a little work. I went to garages, because at least I could talk car language and make the things go. Some of the owners just laughed at me, some of them got sore for taking up their time with an idea like that, and some of them gave me a serious talking to. They told me to go home, if I had one, because there was no work to do. It wasn’t news, but it showed what I was up against. I toted my money, what I had with me and what was in bank, and I had about two hundred dollars, which was what I had saved during the summer, after paying a couple of bills. And I had the car. I did a little more asking around, and then it came to me I better pull something, but quick. That was when I hit on this idea of organizing a pro league in the South, and as I write it up now, I don’t see such a whole lot wrong with it. I’ve done plenty of promoting since then, and it doesn’t look even a little bit silly. I might have got away with it, at that, if it hadn’t been for one of the reporters, a little guy named Harmon. The day after the press conference I was reading papers in the lobby when he crossed over and sat down. “I rang your room but you didn’t answer, then I saw you buy the papers. Thought I’d give you a chance to look ’em over before I came up with my proposition.”

“Which is?”

“Who’s back of this?”

“Why — me, among other people.”

“Just asking, shut my mouth if I’m out of order. If you’ve got all the backing you want, that lets me out. But — if it’s an open game — I might have a friend, Mr. Dillon, and — we’re all out to make a dollar, aren’t we? — I might have an angle.”

“No harm hearing it.”

His angle was to handle press stuff, public relations he called it, for my Atlanta club, and maybe later for the league. But his friend was what interested me. Because I give you one guess how much backing I had. I had put on a tall front, but beyond that I didn’t have any backing, and it was just this kind of break I had hoped to get. Looking back at it now I’m amazed I didn’t go with it straight to the baseball people, on the basis of winter shows for their park, and let them put up the jack while I worked on plays. But I was doing it all off the cuff, and with this bird caught it looked like I hadn’t done so bad. And when he began talking about his days on the Washington Star, and remembered stuff I’d pulled in the Georgetown games, and reminded me how two or three writers had picked me for all-American, I was plenty glad to listen to him, and let him take his time getting around to his friend. When he did he got mysterious. “You know a certain soft drink that’s manufactured here, Mr. Dillon?”

“Why not Jack?”

“And my name’s Harry — to my friends, Hank.”

“Yeah, Hank, I know the beverage.”

“My friend’s close to that pause that refreshes. About as close as you can get without glue. That gives you an idea the circles he moves in. But there’s a difference. That soft-drink dough, I’d never want it for a sporting proposition.”

“Dough is dough.”