The Legend of Jesse Smoke (30 page)

“Sure.”

“What kind of things?”

“Nothing important.”

“They call you names?”

“Oh, they taunt and stuff. Sometimes they might call me something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t want to get into that. Just, they get frustrated sometimes, but like I said, I got a great offensive line in front of me.”

“Talk about your father. He teach you how to play this game?”

“He taught me everything. But—it wasn’t like he wanted me to be a boy, you know? Some of the newspaper people—some have tried to make it like I was a disappointment to him because I was a girl, but that’s just … not true. Let’s put it this way. He loved the game and he loved me. He wanted me to know it. It’s not like he hoped I’d play professionally, though.”

“That was your idea.”

She looked directly into the camera now and laughed. “Actually, it was Coach Granger’s idea. It never really crossed my mind.” My heart brimmed over, of course, when she said that.

“Do you feel like a role model for other young women?” Cross asked.

“Look, I just want to play football. I don’t want to be anything to anybody.”

“Does it bother you that other girls are getting involved in the game now?”

“No.”

“Other girls are trying out for football teams across the country, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” She got a bit of a serious look on her face. “I guess that’s okay. I mean, if a woman wants to play football, then why not? I played in a women’s league. Women can play any sport they want. I just think it’s not fair to suggest that because I’m a woman I can’t do as well at something as men do. If I’m strong enough, if I have the talent, if I move fast enough, then … why not?”

“How about the danger?”

“It can be dangerous for anybody who plays it.”

“Have you ever been hurt? I mean really hurt?”

“Not really.”

“Ever had a concussion?”

“Once, in a game against the Philadelphia Fillies in the women’s league, I got slammed down pretty hard and bumped my head. I was dizzy for a while after that. I had trouble sleeping and I had a headache for most of the rest of that week. I guess that could have been a concussion. I know I was hurt on
that
play more than any play so far playing against the men.”

“Talk about your relationship to the men on the team.”

“They’re my teammates. We all work together.”

“Did you have trouble in the beginning, getting them to listen to you?”

She looked a little puzzled. “You mean on the field?”

“In general.”

“I call the plays,” she said patiently. “Or, I let them know what play has been called. We practice all week together. They get used to running the plays I call, the way they would with any quarterback.”

“How do you get along with the other quarterbacks on the team? Ambrose? Spivey?”

“Fine. Corey helps me a lot, actually. He coaches me about things.”

“What things?”

“Reading defenses. How to mislead the safeties. That kind of thing. He’s been a big help.”

I thought she was kind to say that. As for Spivey, she didn’t say anything about him, except that he was a terrific competitor and never missed getting the ball where it needed to be on kicks when she had to try a field goal.

Except for the news that she might have had a concussion during that game against the Fillies, no really earth-shattering revelations came out of the interview. That’s what I liked about Cross, though.
He wasn’t adversarial, or interested in pushing the sensational. He was interested in the human side of things. He didn’t want to embarrass or expose anybody; he just wanted the audience to meet the person he was interviewing. More than once he gave players who were maligned a chance to defend themselves. And he was a good listener. The whole interview only lasted about a half an hour. Near the end of it he playfully asked Jesse if she was dating anybody.

She got this modest smile on her face. “Not right now, that’s for sure. Too busy.”

“But do you have a love interest?”

“I’m not exactly … free for that, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

She blushed. I could see she had let out more than she intended. But she maintained an expression of concentration, taking her time now to find the right words. Finally she just shook her head and laughed. “Nobody wants to go out with me.”

“Is that really true?” Cross said.

She was smiling again. “I won’t be going out with anybody until the season is over.”

“But then?”

“Are you interested?” She laughed, again.

And that’s how it ended, with music and her smiling face, and then a slow-motion film of her launching the ball, in top form. Even in slow motion her release was a kind of blur.

We had the Eagles next. In our first game against them, in Philadelphia, they’d beaten us 21 to 9 and nothing much happened in that game that would make it into team highlights, except for the fact that Jesse kicked three field goals. But the Eagles were always tough. It didn’t matter what kind of season we were having, they still managed to give us a hell of a game, and it was no different in
Jesse’s first year. Of course for this second game, they had to play on our field.

It didn’t help that on the day of the game it rained. It was a damp drizzly November day, and the offense couldn’t get the ground game going. The Eagles stuffed Mickens pretty badly, and when Jesse tried to get the ball downfield, they seemed to have a dozen defenders around the ball no matter what play we ran. Jesse got knocked down a lot, but always after she’d let the ball go. Once she got hit so hard the whole stadium gasped, but she kept getting up. At one point when she came to the sideline for a time-out, she had bloody snot hanging from her nose. She got it all over her sleeve and the equipment manager held a wet cloth over her face for a bit, then wiped the blood off her uniform.

“Jesus,” she said. “That’s embarrassing.”

“You okay?”

“I wish they didn’t know what we’re going to do on
every
play.”

“Sure seems like it, doesn’t it?” I said.

Coach Engram told Jesse we were going to keep trying to run the ball. By the end of the first half, we still had not scored, while the Eagles had already kicked two field goals.

Jesse completed only 5 of 22 passes in that first half, her worst outing. Some she missed, some got dropped or knocked down. She just couldn’t seem to settle down and play to her natural talents, always being forced to move and dodge before she threw the ball. On the opening play of the third quarter, she ducked under a 300-pound lineman and ran the damned thing right through a big hole up the middle. She dodged to the outside when she saw a linebacker coming for her and gained 13 yards before a safety threw his body at her and knocked her out-of-bounds. She flew into the air and landed on her neck and shoulders. I thought every bone in her body might have broken. It looked like a deliberate attempt to hurt her and you could see how angry every player on our side was. The refs didn’t like it either. They called an unnecessary roughness penalty and tacked on
another 15 yards, which put the ball on our own 41-yard line. Jesse got up and shook her head, then trotted back onto the field.

“Jesse! Jesse, you all right?” I hollered into my headset.

She didn’t respond. So I called the next play and tried to get her to look my way. “Jesse, let me know you’re all right.” She brought the team out of the huddle; I could see she had them in the formation I had called. She glanced over the line, shook her head a bit, then leaned down and called the signals, her voice high and girlish—it had no bass in it at all—and when the ball was snapped, she dropped straight back, looked to her right, then her left, bodies flying all around her. She hit Gayle Glenn Louis going up the seam about 30 yards downfield and he raced up the numbers just outside the hash marks all the way into the end zone. The crowd went ballistic. And all the more so when Jesse kicked the extra point.

Now we were leading 7 to 6. The Eagles took the ensuing kickoff out to their 30. On the next play, Talon Jones batted a pass into the air, snatched it, and took it to the house. Suddenly and very finally, we were ahead, 14 to 6.

The rain picked up shortly after that, and for most of the rest of the game both teams ended up just pushing each other around in the mud in the middle of the field. The Eagles had, I think, one first down in the second half. Again, Orlando Brown made riotous incursions into their backfield, and Talon Jones looked like he had learned a whole lot from Drew Bruckner. Maybe he couldn’t rush the passer the way Bruckner did, but he was sure something to see in pass coverage. He knocked two other passes into the air and almost intercepted a second one.

We were glad when the final whistle sounded. As Jesse came off the field, I noticed she was limping a little bit.

“I’m all right,” she said with some exasperation when she saw me staring at her. “Don’t make a big deal of it.”

“Why are you limping then?”

“I’m sore. Okay?” She was in a bad mood, so I let her alone.

∙
    
∙
    
∙

Coach Engram said all the usual things in the postgame press conference. How hard the Eagles always are to beat; how we just played as well as we could. Somebody said, “So, when Jesse Smoke got knocked out-of-bounds on that run play, did your heart stop?”

Engram stared at the questioner, a sardonic smile on his face. “Jesse’s tough,” he said. “All right?” It got quiet in the room, and he looked around at the others. “You people ought to leave her alone.”

“But Coach, was she hurt? I saw her favoring one leg as she came off the field.”

“She’s okay,” he said. “We’ll see what the trainer says.”

“You said we should leave her alone?” a reporter asked.

“Look, I’m not going to let this business go on anymore,” he said. His voice was utterly cold. “I’ve watched you guys—not just in this room, and not
all
of you
in
this room—but I’ve watched a lot of you guys hound her and distract her from what she should be doing. She’s a great football player; a great quarterback. I ought to know, because I played the position myself pretty well for a few years.”

A chorus of voices went up—all starting with “Coach,” for there were other questions, but he raised his hand to quiet them. “I’m closing practices from now on. And Jesse’s informed me she will no longer grant interviews. I expect you guys to honor that.”

“Isn’t closed practices prohibited by league rules?” somebody said.

“No, it isn’t. I can do it
occasionally
as conditions demand. Well, these conditions demand it every week from now on. Or until I say otherwise.” He looked around the room one more time, again with the voices raised and thrown at him, and then he bent the microphone in front of him down and away from his chin, turned, and walked out of the room. Naturally, I followed.

The first reporter to come to see me was Roddy, of course. He had a female from the
Washington Times
with him—a woman named Debbie Croft who was short and lean and wore a business suit that
accentuated her waist and hips. Her hair was tight and formed to her skull with curls around her ears, and it bounced when she walked. She did all the talking and Roddy listened. I realized she had no questions for me but a kind of proposal. “You get Jesse to talk to me and I promise she won’t regret it.”

“What about me?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Will I regret it?”

“See? I’m a woman, also in a man’s job.”

“Come on. Women have been doing your job for more than five decades,” I said.

“And it still does not feel like a woman’s job.”

“I’ll grant that.”

“I think I can help her.”

Roddy nodded agreement.

“What makes you people think she needs help?” I asked. “Do any of you even know her?”

“Well, we don’t know her like you,” Debbie said.

“
I
don’t know her,” I said, with some energy. “You understand that? I discovered her and I don’t know her, really. I’m not sure anybody does. She’s her own person, Jesse. She is entirely self-possessed. I know what she wants me to know and nothing more.”

“So I’m wondering if maybe she would open up to me.”

“She opened up to
me
,” Roddy said. “I mean, she told me things.”

“She gave you nothing, okay,” I said, immediately regretting it. Now he thought I knew something shocking, or at least intimately revealing. The look in his eye would have made a housefly sick.

“What’d she tell you?” he said.

Debbie looked at him oddly.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “I just meant she didn’t tell
you
anything either.”

“Come on, Coach,” Roddy said impatiently. “You
know
something. I can tell.”

“What’s there to know? Goddamn it. Why does there always have to be a worm in your apple?”

He blinked. The question was completely opaque to him. “It’s the world.”

I said nothing. It was quiet for a moment, then Debbie said, “Is it true about the sex change operation? That she’s really a man?”

“You know who spreads rumors like that?” I said, not even bothering to contain my anger. “Men who can’t stand the idea that Jesse can do things with a football that have always been the province of men, and she can do them better than any man
ever
did them.”

“Can I quote you?” Roddy said.

“You always strive to tell the truth, Roddy, don’t you?” I walked away from them and didn’t look back.

Our next game was against the Jets. They had a pretty good offense, but their defense was weak against the pass. Their record was 6 and 5, and they needed a win to stay in the race for the AFC East title. They trailed Buffalo, at 7 and 4, by one game, so a victory against us would certainly help their cause. We were now 8 and 3, having won six straight—all six games Jesse had started—and trailed the Giants (9 and 2) by only one game. So we needed a win pretty badly as well. Dallas, meanwhile, was coming on behind us at 7 and 4. Philadelphia was out of it, having fallen to 5 and 6. Eleven games into the season, the standings in the NFC East looked like this: