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Killerbowl
by Gary K. Wolf
Copyright © Gary K. Wolf, 1975

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

This e-book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

Title Illustration: EIS

Interior Book Design: Cera Smith, cerasmith.com

Dedication

To my mother and father.
For their sacrifices, their guidance, and their love.

1

KILLERBOWL XXI, THE DAY BEFORE

Friday, December 31, 2010, 7:55 P.M.

Sitting on the floor next to a practice bag full of footballs, T.K. takes one last riff through his play book, making some inconsequential notations in the margins as he goes.

For what must be the hundredth time in the past hour, he pulls out and studies his Boston street map, paying particular attention to the area bordered by Cambridge and Mt. Vernon Streets on the north and south, Bowdoin and Charles to the east and west.

Coach Carrerra enters the locker room and wordlessly hands him the latest weather forecast. Not too different from the weather of the last few days, bitter and bone-chillingly cold. The temperatures will range from fourteen above zero at the start of the game to thirty degrees at the game’s midpoint, to a frigid five above when the game concludes tomorrow midnight. The chance of snowfall has declined from 50 to 30 per cent, but there’ll still be great quantities of it on the street left over from last week’s tumultuous storm.

The trainer calls T.K.’s name.

The familiar paraphernalia is all laid out, the tape, the scissors, the Band-Aids, the gauze. T.K. hops up on the training table, and the trainer sets to work. He applies flexible penetration resistant aluminum tape along T.K.’s major arteries, up and down both sides of his neck, around both his wrists, around his elbows and around his thighs from groin to knee. He wraps conventional surgical tape around T.K.’s ankles and knees. He changes the dressing on T.K.’s injured left shoulder.

T.K. climbs off the table, flexes his wrists, elbows and thighs and rotates his neck and ankles to work the tape into his skin’s natural creases.

Satisfied with the trainer’s work, he goes to his locker, opens it, and begins the laborious process of suiting up. First comes his aluminum groin cup—the infamous iron horse—and his elastic supporter.

To help fend off the cold, he slips on a set of ventilated thermal underwear.

Next, he straps on his kidney protectors, a series of narrow plastic slats lying vertically across the curvature of his back.

His slatted leggings, flexible resin ribbing covered with a half inch of absorbent rubber, go on in two sections, one for his calf, one for his thigh. The two portions join together in an alloy hinge at the knee. Narrow mesh metal mailing snaps into place over them.

Arm guards, thinner than his leggings but constructed and worn in exactly the same way, go on next.

Chest and back plates, also made of flexible resin, clamshell into place over his neck. The plates are supported by spring mounted, energy absorbing plastic braces contour fitted to his body. The braces neatly straddle the slats of his kidney protectors. The undersides of his chest and back plates are lined with a high impact, penetration resistant alloy.

Fiberglas backed foam rubber shoulder and hip pads, a mail covering over his lower abdomen and groin, and a foam rubber cushion across the back of his neck round out his body protective equipment.

He hooks on his garter belt, pulls on a knee-high pair of stockings, and fastens them up. He unrolls his snug blue uniform pants on over leggings, stockings, garter and pads. Because his team has been designated Visitor, he dons his blue and gold “away” jersey. He sticks his hand into the oblong pocket, the gut pocket, sewn into his jersey just over his stomach, to make certain it’s fully open and empty. On long runs, the football will go in here leaving T.K. with both hands free to defend himself.

His shoes are high-topped and metal lined with rubber soles. He has them equipped with deep suction cups for better footing on ice. Cleats of any type are expressly forbidden. He threads new laces into his shoes, tightens them up, then buckles a nylon strip over them to prevent the laces from being cut during the game.

He double checks the pressure on the inflatable bags in his honeycombed resin helmet. He also assures that there are no leaks in the ring of encased jelly that circumvents the helmet’s base and affords a measure of extra comfort to his jaw and the back of his neck.

His polarized Plexiglas face mask, self adjusting to give him correct glare protection under any degree of illumination, edges flawlessly into place in the frontal grooves incised around the facial opening of his helmet.

He slips his long knife into its sheath and clips on his bola. Lastly, he pulls on a pair of thin, resin mesh gloves, the fingers and palms of which are open for better ball control.

He checks himself out in the locker room mirror, paying special attention to the way his uniform covers him in his most vulnerable areas, his hands, neck, the backs of his knees, his inner elbows, and his inner groin, all sections of his body which, for one reason or another, can’t be adequately protected. Turning his back to the mirror, he sees a gold 13 on his jersey and above it the gold letters MANN, his number and name, wrinkle free and totally legible, the final item on his checklist.

Fully dressed and ready, he sits down on a bench, closes his eyes, and starts psyching himself up for the game.

It’s 10 p.m. He has two hours before it starts.

Friday, January 1, 2010

“Let me try and summarize this heart stopping situation for you, football fans,” enunciates Timothy Enge, the renowned Voice of Football, facing the camera. “We have two minutes left on the clock. The San Francisco Prospectors trail the New England Minutemen 116 to 121. The Prospectors have the ball with 225 yards to go for a touchdown. They must score to win, and they’re going to have an extremely hard time doing it. The Minutemen’s defense, which has been murderous all day, has toughened up even more in these final minutes. Nothing is getting through.”

He loosens his tie and unsnaps his tunic, a gesture which, to his millions of viewers, each and every one thoroughly familiar with his compulsively fastidious nature, goes farther than anything he can say to convey the degree of pressure in the air. “The Prospectors play the ever threatening brand of football that could still pull this game out of the fire. Twice this season, they’ve been down by one touchdown late in a game, and T.K. Mann has brought them back to win both times. The question is, can he make it three?”

Enge turns from the camera. “Let’s get down on the street and find out.”

As the opposing teams line up on Van Ness, an estimated 250 million Americans watching at home collectively hold their breath.

T.K. Mann takes the snap, fakes a handoff and drops back between two overflowing garbage cans to pass. The line holds. He has all the time in the world.

Nobody opens up.

T.K. breaks a tackle. He almost falls when his tackler stubbornly clings to him long enough to open a fleshy knife wound in his left knee. T.K. cuts behind a light pole.

The clock runs out, making this the last play of the game. Nobody opens up.

T.K. reverses direction, scrambling for time, looking for his receiver.

At last! Wide receiver Fred Gradington shakes his man and breaks from the sidewalk into the street. There’s nothing between him and the bay but 200 yards of wide open space.

T.K. cocks his arm.

Bumbo Johnson, All-Pro linebacker, six eleven, two eighty four, plunges through into the backfield and leaps.

T.K. lets go with the long bomb.

Bumbo Johnson tags T.K. with a powerful blow to the helmet. Stunned, T.K. goes down. Bumbo falls on him, knees first, and proceeds to give T.K.’s kidneys a methodical working over with a short handled club.

All alone out in midstreet, Fred Gradington comes in under the ball for an easy grab.

As one, America jumps screaming to its feet.

Gradington, playing his first season, lifts his whole head skyward, instead of only his eyes as a more seasoned pro would have done, and reaches for the ball.

The Minutemen’s hidden safety, crouching on the fifteenth floor of the Fontana West apartments, puts cross hairs on Gradington’s Adam’s apple, now ever so slightly exposed just below the bottom of his bulletproof helmet and mask, just above the top of his body armor. The hidden safety squeezes his trigger.

Gradington and the football hit the street at almost the exact same instant.

A gunshot echoes through the street.

T.K. Mann loses consciousness.

Killerbowl XX is over.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

“Marda,” screams the man of the house, with great excitement. “Did you see that finish?”

His wife shambles forth from the kitchen, a bowl of pretzels in one hand, a half empty beer in the other. “Yeah, Dreddie, I saw it out on the portable. It sure was thrilling.”

“I should hope to tell you. Thrilling ain’t even the word.” He cocks his head pleadingly. “Want to watch it again?”

Creases turn her brow into a meaty washboard. “Gee, I dunno, Dreddie. Can we afford it? I mean, we’re way over our base replay time already. It’s all extra for the rest of the month.”

“So we go into hock a little. So what? I mean, my God, Marda, how often do you see a finish like that?”

“Well, I suppose we could both work some overtime. Maybe cut down on snacks or…”

Content to let Marda worry about the economics of it, Dreddie is already at the set. He adjusts a dial, punches a code into a matrix of buttons, pushes the replay switch, joins Marda on the sofa, and helps himself to a drink of her beer.

The set winks to life, spews out an animated deodorant commercial (this at no charge) and fades in Dreddie’s rerun selection.

Their eyes wide, their mouths full of pretzels, living color splashing death on their faces, Dreddie and Marda watch once again the last five minutes of Fred Gradington’s life.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

T.K. collapses onto a bench in front of his locker, involuntarily jerks halfway back up in an all-over spasm of pain. He lowers himself again, more slowly this time, consciously forcing his body to ignore the exploding nerve endings that would send him screaming back into space. Jesus but that Johnson can handle a short club.

T.K. rubs his kidneys, especially sore from Johnson’s repeated thrashings, and his chest, which burns in parallel lines where the braces for his body armor have been shoved, time and again during the game today, up against his ribs.

He has the whole locker room, a large mobile trailer, temporarily to himself. His teammates are still out on the street telling Timothy Enge and his viewers how next year they’re going to come back, come back and win XXI. The breaks went against us, they were saying when he left them. We’ll get the breaks back next year. Sure they will. T.K.’s heard the same story with minor variations a million times before. Bad breaks. The loser’s lament.

T.K. isn’t out there with them joining in on the chorus because he doesn’t have the stomach for self absolving delusion. T.K.’s a realist. He knows the Prospectors didn’t lose that game because of bad breaks. They lost because Harv Matision, the Minutemen’s rookie quarterback, faked T.K. Mann right out of his iron horse. The apartment house. How obvious could Matision have been? Putting his hidden safety in the God damned apartment house. So obvious. A clear shot in any direction. T.K. should have guessed it. Then he would have thrown that last pass to Gradington’s right side instead of to his left. That way, when Gradington got excited, as T.K. should have realized he would, and lifted his head, the kid would have had his back to the apartment house. His neck would have been covered and the best the hidden safety could have hoped for would have been a lucky shot to the inside of Gradington’s knee, to the quarter inch opening where thigh and calf ribbing come together.

T.K. shifts around in his seat, trying to find a position that will relieve the pain in his injured parts. The fact that he can’t make the pain go away resurrects the nagging realization that’s been festering within him for a long while. He’s getting old. Thirty four. What the newscaster on the six o’clock sports roundup refers to as an aging quarterback. It’s probably the worst kept secret in the league that the Prospectors’ head office has been scouting around for a new quarterback to replace him. After that mediocre showing he put up against Matision today, they’re undoubtedly looking even harder.

Christ, how he wished it didn’t matter. How he wished he could just say screw ‘em and retire. Live a Sunday without pain.

The plain and simple truth is that he can’t afford to. Always fast with a dollar, T.K. Mann is broke. Where did it all go? Twelve year’s worth of six figure salaries, that much again in endorsement money? Simple. It went to buy gasoline for his car, pay the rent on his parent’s’ farmhouse and on his fancy penthouse apartment on Russian Hill. A good chunk went to buy him and a string of impressionable young women honest-to-God real meat dinners at Ernie’s.

While he hasn’t undertaken any sweeping economy measures, nowadays he does live week to week, totally reliant on his football paycheck to meet his expenses. The sweet promotional deals that used to fall into his lap every time he laid a touchdown pass into a teammate’s waiting arms have all petered out. The sporting goods companies, the department stores, the bicycle firms want someone that the youth of America can more easily identify with, someone strong, victorious and young.

There’s no such thing as a pension fund in the Street Football League. Players get a fat salary and a big, paid up life insurance policy. Most guys, T.K. in his younger days included, figure it to be a lot better deal that way. So T.K. plays football, and will keep playing football until the head office throws him out on his ass, or some linebacker fuses his kidneys to the street.

The exhaustion that T.K. has ignored for the past twenty four hours overcomes him and drags him down into sleep. Even here he gets no relief. Like a nightmarish spike, the pain punches holes in his dreams.

2

KILLERBOWL XXI, THE DAY BEFORE

Friday, December 31, 2010, 10:30 P.M.

Mentally, T.K.’s as ready as he’ll ever be, his desire sharpened to a killing edge, his concentration honed to a pinpoint, his pain shoved far to the back of his mind.

Most of T.K.’s teammates are still undergoing the strange rituals men sustain to prepare themselves to face death.

Varnie Pfleg, a tackle/lineman, sits in perfect silence on the floor off in a corner, his hands cupping his face, his legs spread open in a V in front of him. From time to time, he slides his hands open and peers down between his thighs. There lies a full color hologram of his wife and three children.

Orval Frazier, the fullback/middle linebacker, stands with his helmet on, his back to the locker room’s forward bulkhead, the one separating the dressing area from the trainer’s room. With metronomic regularity, he lets his head drop forward, then, in a snapping motion, slams it full force backwards into the wall. Frazier has been All-Pro for the past four seasons. He’s generally considered to be the toughest man in football.

Harland Minick, center/lineman, Lester Brye, guard/lineman, and Hellinger Clausen, halfback/deep safety, sit in a circle in the middle of the floor. All of them have rosary beads. Minick, an ex-altar boy, leads them in prayer.

Ken Dedemus, a guard/lineman, never suits up until minutes before the team goes out onto the street for warm-ups. He spends his pregame hours in the locker room shower letting the water run across his shoulders, down his back and chest. Every half hour or so, he masturbates.

The most unflappable man on the team, Lammy Howe, a halfback/deep safety, takes a nap, spread out under the trainer’s table. His snores echo loudly throughout the room.

Ros DeGeller and Mike Michalski, the ends, slap each other’s shoulder pads and trade light combinations of punches, mostly uppercuts and jabs.

Kneeling in a comer, Buddy Healy, a tackle/lineman, throws up into a gray plastic bucket. Zack Rauscher, the mediman, holds Healy by the shoulders, giving him what little comfort he can.

Gus D’Armato, the hidden safety, dry fires his rifle, drawing in on a target pasted to his locker door, slowly squeezing his trigger, SNAP.

There are two large bowls set out, one on the trainer’s table, one on a bench in the dressing room. Both contain a smorgasbord assortment of pills, brand name uppers donated by leading pharmaceutical companies in return for free endorsements. Most players sort through the pills on their way by the bowls, pluck out and ingest a few of their favorite tablets. T.K., in line with his long held belief that a reliance on chemicals for extra endurance shortens long-term playing life, abstains. Although he doesn’t feel the slightest bit of disdain for those who don’t. T.K. doesn’t care what his teammates do to get up for games, as long as they perform their duties out on the street.

Coach Carrerra enters the locker room and calls for attention. A swarm of giant man-slaying moths drawn to the flame of inspiration, his players step forward and surround him.

“I’m not going to give you any long sermon,” he says. “We all know what we’re here for, we all know what we have to do.” He reaches into his handbag and pulls out a newspaper clipping. “Before you go out there, I want to read you something. This is from yesterday’s Chronicle. I thought you might like to hear what Harv Matision has to say about Killerbowl XXI. ‘This Killerbowl stuff is getting to be old hat to me,’ he says. ‘I mean, it gets kind of repetitious. Every New Year’s Day, regular as clockwork, I kick hell out of the Prospectors. I wouldn’t complain if it was at least good exercise but, hell, I’d get more of a workout by staying home and getting laid. Although I guess playing the Prospectors is almost the same thing. Either way, I wind up giving a bunch of pussies a good fucking over.”

Carrerra wads the sheet up and tosses it on the floor. “After something like that, do I have to get you up? Do I have to give you a reason to go out and win this game? Look up there.” He points to a faded XXI written in chalk on the locker room blackboard. “That’s where we’ve been going all year, and now we’re here. Why? Because we’re the best damn team in the league. We’re winners. And we’re gonna show ‘em we’re winners. Matision, the Minutemen, and the whole god damned world. Now, let’s go out there and play football.”

Orval Frazier hits the locker room door. “Fucking aye,” he screams, and he’s out on the street. The rest of the team follows after.

T.K. hangs back. From here on, Carrerra is little different from millions of other Americans. He’ll watch the game on television just like everybody else. Nothing less, nor more, than an observer to its self-ordained ebb and flow. He’s performed his function, done his duty. He’s given his men everything he thinks they need to win. It’s too late to take part of it back or add more. He’ll see them at the quarter timeouts, but in less than an hour he can’t undo what will have gone on in the five and a half hours before. When his last man takes to the street to start the game, he enters a state of limbo, powerless to aid in victory, a foremost object of blame in defeat.

“Any final instructions?” T.K. asks as if there could really be any that mattered.

Carrerra stares balefully up into T.K.’s eyes. He has genuinely solicitous emotion in his voice when he speaks. “Just go out and win the son of a bitch, T.K. Just you go out on that street and you win.”

T.K. nods, and trots out after his team.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

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