End Zone

"It's a tonguelashing," Bing said. "Coach is hacking at poor old Hobbsie."

"He seems pretty calm."

"It's a tonguelashing," Bing hissed to Cecil Rector, who was edging along the bench to sit next to us.

"How's the shoulder?" I said.

"Dislocated."

"Too bad."

"They can put a harness on it," he said. "We go in six days. If Coach needs me, I'll be ready."

Just then Creed looked toward Bing Jackmin, drawing him off the bench without even a nod. Bing jogged over there. The rest of the players were standing or kneeüng between the 40yard lines. Next to me, Cecil Rector leaned over and plucked at blades of grass. I thought of the Adirondaoks, chill lakes of inverted timber, sash of blue snow across the mountains, the whispering presence of the things that filled my room. Far beyond the canvas blinds, on the top floor of the women's dormitory, a figure stood by an open window. I thought of women. I thought of women in snow and rain, on mountains and in forests, at the end of long galleries immersed in the brave light of Rembrandts.

"Coach is real anxious," Rector said. "He knows a lot of people are watching to see how he does. I bet the wire services send somebody out to cover the opener. If they can ever find this place."

"I'd really like to get back in."

"So would I," he said. "Yellin's been haunting me since way back last spring. He's like a hyena. Every time I get hurt, Roy Yellin is right there gri

Bing came back, apparently upset about something.

"He wants me to practice my squib kick tomorrow. I told him I don't have any squib kick. He guaranteed me I'd have one by tomorrow night. Then he called Onan over and picked him apart. Told him he was playing center as if the position had just been invented."

"They're putting Randy King in for Onan," I said.

"Onan's been depressed," Bing said. "He found out Ms girl friend spent a night with some guy on leave from Nam. It's affecting his play."

"What did they do?" Rector said.

"They spent a night."

"Did they have relations?"

"Are you asking me did they fuck?"

"There goes Taft again," I said. "Look at that cutback. God, that's beautiful."

"He's some kind of football player."

"He's a real good one."

"He can do it all, can't he?"

They played for another fifteen minutes. On the final play, after a long steady drive that took the offense down to the 8yard line, Taft fumbled the handoff. Defense recovered, whistles blew, and that was it for the day. The three of us headed back together.

"Hobbsie laid it right in his gut and he goes and loses it," Rector said. "I attribute that kind of error to lack of concentration. That's a mental error and it's caused by lack of concentration. Coloreds can run and leap but they can't concentrate. A colored is a ru

A very heavy girl wearing an orange dress came walking toward us across a wide lawn. There was a mushroom cloud appliquéd on the front of her dress. I recognized the girl; we had some classes together. I let the others walk on ahead and I stood for a moment watching her walk past me and move into the distance. I was wearing a smudge of lampblack under each eye to reduce the sun's glare. I didn't know whether the lampblack was very effective but I liked the way it looked and I liked the idea of painting myself in a barbaric ma

9

The thing to do, I thought, is to walk in circles. This is demanded by the mythology of all deserts and wasted places. A number of traditions insist on it. I was about a mile beyond the campus. Motion was strange. Motion consisted of sunlight on particular stones. (With the opening of classes I had been brushing up on perimeter acquisition radar, unauthorized explosions, slowmotion countercity war, superready status, collateral destruction, crisis management, civilian devastation attack.) All the colors were different shades of one nameless color. Water would have been a miracle or mirage. I took off my shoes and socks and the stones burned. I saw a long bug. I was careful to keep the tallest of the campus buildings in sight. This was a practical measure, nonritualistic, meant to offset the saintly feet. I remembered then to think of Rutherford B. Hayes, nineteenth president, 18771881. That took care of that for the day. Each day had to be completed. I avoided a sharp stone. Something sudden, a movement, turned out to be sunlight on paint, a painted stone, one stone, black in color, identifiably black, a single round stone, painted black, carefully painted, the ground around it the same nameless color as the rest of the plain. Some vandal had preceded me then. Stonepainter. Metaphorist of the desert. To complete the day truly I had to remember to think of Milwaukee in flames. I was doing a different area every day. This practice filled me with selfdisgust and was meant, eventually, to liberate me from the joy of imagining millions dead. In time, I assumed, my disgust would become so great that I would be released from all sense of global holocaust. But it wasn't working. I continued to look forward to each new puddle of destruction. Six megatons for Cairo. MIRVs for the Benelux countries. Typhoid and cholera for the Hudson River Valley. I seemed to be subjecting my emotions to an unintentioned cycle in which pleasure nourished itself on the black bones of revulsion and dread. Tidal waves for Bremerhaven. Longterm radiation for the Mekong Delta. For Milwaukee I had pla

"Milwaukee is spared," I said.