the longhorns gonna kick some serious butt this saturday, you just watch. we got a kid at tailback from down your way--outta el indio--
oh. right. and you're in--?
well, daddy's got his box at the stadium, of course, and i'll fly to the cowboy away games when they're in the conference. then there's the high school on friday' nights. west side got a boy 6'6", 310, moves like a cat. high school, we're talkin'. guess how much he can bench-press?
do i seem jumpy?
last year was awful rough--mama passing on and the whole business with o.j.--i mean it's not like it was don meredith or roger staubach or one of our own boys, but it really knocked me for a loop--
--and that squeaker the aggies dropped to oklahoma-sonofabitch stepped in some lucky shit before he kicked that goal--
--they hadn't pulled me off that woman i would have jerked a knot in her.
daddy calls it an "altercation." how you doing, sam? you look skinny.
you look awful good in that uniform, though.
daddy hired a pinhead to take your job. he says so himself. says "even my son-in-law was better than this pinhead i got now".
least he never called me that. with me, it was always "high-strung." "my bunny might have done something with her life, she wasn't so high-strung." or "tightly wound," that was another one. you seeing anyone?
yeah. sort of. daddy rounds 'em up. you aren't talking about money, their beady little eyes go dead.
you watch the draft this year? 'course you didn't, idiot question. they try to make it dramatic, like there's some big surprise who picks who in the first round? only they been working it over with their experts and their computers for months. doctor's reports, highlight reels, coaches' evaluations, psychological profiles--hell, i wouldn't be surprised if they collected stool samples on these boys, have 'em analyzed. all this stuff to pick a football player for your squad. compared to that, what you know about the person you get married to don't amount to diddly, does it?
you kind of bought yourself a pig in a poke, didn't you, sam? all that time we were first seeing each other you didn't know i was tightly wound--
no, it wasn't, was it? you didn't exactly throw yourself into it heart and soul, did you?
your shit's still in the garage if that's what you came for.
350 pounds.
this boy from west side, plays tackle both ways. bench-presses 350 pounds. you imagine having that much weight on top of you? pushing down? be hard to breathe. hard to swallow.
"i only got my little girl now," he says, "she's my lifeline." then he tells me i can't be in the box anymore if i can't control myself. sonofabitch don't even watch the damn game, just sits there drinking with his bidness friends, look up at the tv now and then. i do better to sit in the cheap seats with some real football people.
thanks. i like it when you say that, sam.