Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
SIXTH INSTALLMENT
AGONY
Owing to a midlife crisis, in 1997 I found myself living part-time in New York. I entrusted my small manufacturing company in Jonesboro to my quite capable business partner, with the proviso that I would try it for three months and I’d return to Arkansas every other week, which was relatively easy thanks to direct flights between Memphis and New York. Meanwhile, in New York I was working on a novel. In my opinion, this was a great plan, a chance to stretch myself in a way that would make for at least one less late-life regret.
My small apartment, rented from a snowbird gone to Miami, had white walls, pin lights everywhere, a very cool black toilet, and a walk-in closet that my mother envied. Yet there was no cable television, only a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears. But thanks to the wonders of cable, Razorback games were often-enough on TV, so I sought out various sports bars around Manhattan, a hit-or-miss endeavor, typically ending in a desperate plea to a bartender: “Hey, I’m not trying to be high maintenance, but is there any way you could turn on the Arkansas-Louisiana Tech game?” Whereupon, the bartender might or might not pick up the remote to search out some obscure cable channel.
During my second year in New York, the Hogs, in their third game under new coach Houston Nutt, beat Alabama by 36 points. After this historic 42-6 thrashing of the Crimson Tide, I was as high as the nearby Empire State Building.
As the 1998 season progressed, a mid-November showdown loomed with the undefeated and seventh-ranked Hogs to face undefeated and second-ranked Tennessee in Knoxville. With a win, the long-sought Dynasty Year was within grasp. There’s nothing like a big game to look forward to. Anticipation is half the joy of it, and I was positively giddy, my excitement heightened by the prospect of a special visitor from New York.
Two years before, I’d met a new someone at a Super Bowl party. I had noted her graceful manner, beguiling almond-shaped eyes, and obvious lack of interest in the game between the Packers and Patriots. As always in New York, our conversation started with, “So, what do you do?” and I had tried not to betray any midlife confusion.
Her name was Rebecca, and she was from eastern Massachusetts, a Catholic and an Ivy League grad with an artistic side: her mother was a painter. And now, owing to plans we’d made back when the notion that the Hogs would win their first eight games had never crossed my mind, she was headed down to the Mid-South on the weekend of arguably the biggest Razorback game since December 6, 1969.
Rebecca and I spent Friday in Jonesboro, where I showed her all three houses I’d lived in when growing up (each in the same neighborhood), the high school I’d attended, the small factory at my manufacturing company. I pointed out the new mall as we passed by. Jonesboro had indeed grown and progressed, yet there were oddities like the fact that Craighead County was still dry.
Not surprisingly, Jonesboro was a bit pastoral for Rebecca’s tastes, so on Saturday morning I drove her over to Memphis. My mission was to impress her with the charms of the River City, such as they were, as well as to make an effort at bolstering my liberal bona fides. As a conservative in New York, I was as rare as the sight of a meerkat. Rebecca and I sometimes gently argued about politics, or had conversations like this:
“Do you feel safer in New York,” I asked, “now that Rudy Giuliani is the mayor?”
“Yes,” she said. “The city is definitely safer. Even Central Park is safer.” “So, you like Mayor Giuliani, right?” “No, I hate his smarmy guts. Why would you even ask me a silly question like that?”
In downtown Memphis, I took Rebecca to the National Civil Rights Museum, in part to further convince her that as a Southerner I wasn’t a closeted racist. But it’s dangerous to even try to convince a New Yorker that you possess any sort of liberal instincts at all. Once you start down this path, nothing you can do or say will ever convince a New Yorker that you’re liberal enough. They will always one-up you.
Because Rebecca and I had first paid a visit to Sun Studios, we arrived at the National Civil Rights Museum later than I expected: The kickoff of the Arkansas-Tennessee game loomed at 2:30 p.m. on CBS, and our tour was a rushed experience that made me look worse than if I hadn’t taken her to the museum at all.
We hustled out to my car, then headed east on Poplar Avenue. Desperate, I found a sports bar off Mendenhall, located a two-seater table near a suitably huge TV, and ordered iced teas; my girlfriend, like me, wasn’t an afternoon drinker.
This sports bar was dumpier than I’d have preferred, with rickety wooden chairs and the odor of stale beer. I should’ve planned better, but it was too late now; kick-off had arrived and I was riveted. Meanwhile, to my astonishment, Rebecca reached into her oversized purse and pulled out a paperback copy of Thomas Hardy’s late 19th-century literary classic “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
“I started reading this book on the plane from New York,” she said, melting me with her beguiling eyes. “Sure,” I said. What in the hell is she
doing? I thought.
The crowd at the sports bar was a motley mix of Tennessee and Arkansas fans, and occasionally Rebecca glanced up from her reading to see what all of the fuss was about. But mostly she stuck to her Tess. Despite my initial shock, the undergraduate English major in me couldn’t help but grudgingly admire her. This woman was no mere reader of trendy chick lit. Yet I was so obsessed with this game—was in fact in a zone in which everything on planet earth was subsumed to it—that it never occurred to me that she would’ve preferred to be doing something else. Anything else.
During a TV timeout, I came up for air. “How’s your book?” I said, even as she strained to read in the dim light. She finally marked her book with the wrapper of a straw, and said, “Fine. How’s your game?”
“Good, so far. Long way to go, though.”
Rebecca nibbled at a nacho, then went back to her Tess. Meanwhile, with the Hogs ahead 24-10 with 11:43 left in the third quarter, a familiar logic set up in my mind. In a high-stakes game like this, at some point I become convinced the Hogs are going to win and I play out all of the positive consequences; in this instance, the national recognition from beating the nation’s second-ranked team on their home field; the Hogs’ jump into the top three in the national rankings, perhaps even the top two; a berth in the SEC Championship Game and an odds-on shot at the national championship.
As the third quarter progressed, I banked all of these wonderful aftereffects somewhere deep in my soul. I knew it was dangerous to do this, yet with under two minutes left in the game, I was even more convinced. The Hogs had the football and a 24-22 lead. It was second down. All the Porkers had to do was run a few plays to milk the clock, then punt the ball deep into Tennessee territory. I stood up, so overwrought with excitement that I playfully put my hand over Tess, pinning Rebecca’s book to the table and when she looked up, I surprised her with a kiss squarely on her mouth.
“We will go somewhere nice for dinner,” I said with a big smile. “I’ll make this up to you. We’ll have a great night.”
Then, with 1:43 left, the damnedest thing happened. Clint Stoerner took the snap from center, tripped over the left foot of Hogs’ right guard Brandon Burlsworth, lost his balance and, to steady himself, he literally sat the football on the ground. All this occurred with no contact whatsoever from any Tennessee defensive player.
Staggered, if I’d been stabbed in the heart with a sharp object, I sank back into my rickety chair. The replay, repeated multiple times in slow motion, only twisted the knife in deeper. With little resistance from the demoralized Razorback defense, Tennessee went on to score the winning touchdown.
This confounding game ended at that awkward hour of late fall when the sun has set and it feels late, even though it’s not. Somehow, I had to get through the evening hours.
In downtown Memphis, Rebecca and I had dinner at Automatic Slim’s Tonga Club (considerably tamer than the name implies), where I had a serious and no doubt annoying case of the blank stares. “Are you okay?” she said, more than once.
I couldn’t summon the energy to explain why this game mattered so much to me, and any attempt to do so would’ve only made me more depressed than I already was. Thankfully, there were no orange-clad Tennessee fans sitting near us, or I’d probably have said or done something I’d have regretted.
When I crawled into bed later that night, I was still trying to process what had happened. I tossed and turned, and whenever I awakened long enough for a cogent thought to form in my head, my mind went straight to the game’s bizarre ending.
Daylight brought no relief. This ache certainly wasn’t going away anytime soon. The instant Clint Stoerner had laid the football on the ground, I knew that what had happened would stay with me for as long as I was able to draw a breath. Before Rebecca and I headed to the airport to fly back to New York, as if trying to breathe life into a corpse, I bought a copy of The Commercial Appeal to confirm my lingering hunch that the Hogs had dominated this game statistically. They had not.
It was an easy flight from Memphis into LaGuardia Airport. On our approach, we skirted the edge of Manhattan, towering and magically real yet also a bit Lego-like with its man-made high rises. This was another world, and the jarring sight made me think about my behavior with Rebecca over the past weekend. There was so much to unpack. I hadn’t been a barrel of fun, I realized, and in my ongoing funk I regretted that I hadn’t exactly presented the best side of myself. But should I have trimmed my behavior and pretended that the game hadn’t been terribly important to me? If Rebecca and I were serious about our relationship—and we were—should I have pretended to be somebody I was not? I said I loved her, but was it right to inflict this on her? All that aside, it didn’t matter if I was back in my home state or in New York, I couldn’t get away from myself. And I was stuck with the reality that my team had once again lost the big game in the most Arkansas way possible.