Life Its Ownself Read Online Free Page A

the sidewalk, or a lone goose fly across the marsh.
    All of which was why I shut up in the huddle and took the handoff from Dump McKinney and ran the ball in my normal way—not fast, not slow, not fancy, but sort of in a threading, weaving, determined fashion.
    The blow came while I was in the air.
    I was jumping over Point Spread Powell when Dreamer's shoulder flew into my knee. It wasn't the lick itself that did me in. I landed awkwardly and 2,000 pounds of Redskin stink came down on top of me.
    I didn't hear the tear of the medial collateral ligament and everything else that got cross-threaded. Maybe it did sound like somebody opening an envelope, as a newspaper guy wrote. All I knew was, the inside of my knee was on fire. You couldn't have moved my leg with a tractor-pull.
    Everybody was untangling when I said, "You can turn me over, Dreamer. I'm done on this side."
    "Aw, shit, Clyde, are you hurt bad?" He scrambled to his feet.
    "Yeah," I groaned. "I think your pharmacist finally got me."
    Dreamer made frantic gestures toward our bench. He was genuinely concerned. He helped the trainers lift me onto a stretcher and he walked all the way to our sideline with me.
    The last thing I saw in the stadium was a fat woman wearing an Indian headdress and a buckskin pant suit. She screamed at me like a psychopath as the trainers carried the stretcher into a tunnel.
    "We got you, Puckett!" she yelled, waving a tomahawk in the air. She glared down at me over a railing. "We got you good! Does it hurt ? Oh, I hope it hurts you good! I hope you limp the rest of your life, you slimy bastard!"
    Given a choice, I suppose I'd rather have heard the woman sing a chorus of "Hail to the Redskins."
    We moved through the tunnel beneath the stands, and one of the trainers looked down at me.
    "How'd you like to be married to that , Billy Clyde?"
    "You'd have one problem," I said. "With all those dirty dishes in the sink, there wouldn't be nowhere to piss."
    In the dresing room, the team physician, Dr. Fritz Ma- honey, pushed around on my knee.
    "Won't know til I see the X-rays, old chum, but I'm afraid you've been Dick Butkused," he said with a hum .
    It would have been more accurate if Dr. Fritz Mahoney had said I'd been Gale Sayersed. Sayers had been a running back, Butkus a linebacker. But I got the drift.
    Damage to the medial collateral, a vital ligament in the middle of the knee, had prematurely ended the careers of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, two of your legendary Chicago Bears. Overnight, they had become famous medial collateralists.
    I knew enough about the injury to realize that if I ever did go on a football field again, I'd have to wear a knee brace the size of a Toyota Cressida and play with considerable pain, but even though I understood all this, the competitor in me came out. To the doctor, I said, "This ain't the end of my ass!"
    Dr. Fritz Mahoney said, "Spunk helps, Billy Clyde. Never underestimte the value of spunk. We in the medical profession place a great deal of trust in spunk."
    "I'll play again—you want to bet on it?"
    "Spunk can do wonders," the doctor said. "But I'll be honest. Spunk can't help you this season."
    "Next year!" I said. "Football's not through with me till I say it is!"
    Dr. Fritz Mahoney clasped my upper arm and looked at me proudly.
    "I like your style, Billy Clyde."
    "Good," I said. "Me and spunk want a corner room at Lenox Hill with a cable-ready color TV."

    The most esteemed guests to visit the hospital that evening were Burt Danby; his wife, Veronica; and Shoat Cooper, the old coacher.
    "Kiss on the lips, big guy!" Burt said, as he exploded into the room, doing a little dance step. "Hey, I know you're down, right? But are we talking down-down? No way! We're not talking Mondo Endo here. We're talking Johns Hopkins, baby. We're talking Houston Medical. We're talking Zurich!"
    I raised myself in the bed slightly. Veronica took a seat, browsed through a magazine. Shoat Cooper dabbed at a tear, his eyes