Dr. Word first saw French Edward in a junior-high football game; the boy moved like a genius, finding all the openings, sprinting away from all the other boys on the field. French was the quarterback. He ran for a touchdown nearly every time the ball was centered to him, whenever the play was busted. The only thing that held him back was passing and handing off. Otherwise, he scored, or almost did. An absurd clutter of bodies would be gnashing behind him on the field. It was then that Dr. Word saw French’s mother, Olive, sitting in the bleachers, looking calm, auburn-haired and handsome. From then on Dr. Word was queer no more. Mrs. Edward was a secretary for the P.E. department, and Dr. Word was baldheaded and virile, suave with the grace of his Ph.D. from Michigan State, obtained years ago but still appropriating him some charm as an exotic scholar. Three weeks of tender words and French’s mother was his, in any shadow of Word’s choosing.
Curious and flaming like a pubescent, he caressed her on back roads and in the darkened basement of the gym, their trysts protected by his repute as a queer or, at the outside, an oyster. Her husband — a man turned lopsided and cycloptic by sports mania — never discovered them. It was her son, French Edward, who did, walking into his own home wearing sneakers and thus unheard — and unwitting — to discover them coiled infamously. Mr. Edward was away as an uninvited delegate to a rules-review board meeting of the Southeastern Conference in Mobile. French was not seen. He crawled under the bed of his room and slept so as to gather the episode into a dream that would vanish when he awoke. What he dreamed was exactly what he had just seen, with the addition that he was present in her room, practicing his strokes with ball and racket, using a great mirror as a backboard, while on the bed his mother and this man groaned in approval, a monstrous twin-headed nude spectator.
Because by that time Word had taken French Edward over and made him quite a tennis player. French could beat Baby Levaster and all the college aces. At eighteen, he was a large angel-bodied tyrant of the court, who drove tennis balls through, outside, beyond and over the reach of any challenger Dr. Word could dig up. The only one who could give French Edward a match was Word himself, who was sixty and could run and knew the few faults French had, such as disbelieving Dr. Word could keep racing after the balls and knocking them back, French then knocking the odd ball ten feet out of court in an expression of sheer wonder. Furthermore, French had a tendency to soft-serve players he disliked, perhaps an unthinking gesture of derision or perhaps a self-inflicted handicap, to punish himself for ill will. For French’s love of the game was so intense he did not want it fouled by personal uglinesses. He had never liked Dr. Word, even as he learned from him. He had never liked Word’s closeness, nor his manufactured British or Boston accent, nor the zeal of his interest in him, which French supposed surpassed that of mere coach. For instance, Dr. Word would every now and then give French Edward a pinch, a hard, affectionate little nip of the fingers.
And now French Edward was swollen with hatred of the man, the degree of which had no name. It was expelled on the second day of August, hottest day of the year. He called up Word for a match. Not practice, French said. A match. Dr. Word would have played with him in the rain. At the net, he pinched French as they took the balls out of the can. French knocked his hand away and lost games deliberately to keep the match going. Word glowed with a perilous self-congratulation for staying in there; French had fooled Word into thinking he was playing even with him. French pretended to fail in the heat, knocking slow balls from corner to corner, easing over a drop shot to watch the old man ramble up for it. French himself was tiring in the disguise of his ruse when the old devil keeled over, falling out in the alley with his racket clattering away. Dr. Word did not move, though the concrete must have been burning him. French had hoped for a heart attack. Word mumbled that he was cold and couldn’t see anything. He asked French to get help.
“No. Buck up. Run it out. Nothing wrong with you,” said French.
“Is that you, French, my son?”
“I ain’t your son. You might treat my mother like I was, but I ain’t. I saw you.”
“A doctor. Out of the cold. I need medical help,” Dr. Word said.
“I got another idea. Why don’t you kick the bucket?”
“Help.”
“Go on. Die. It’s easy.”
When French got home, he discovered his mother escaping the heat in a tub of cold water. Their house was an unprosperous and unlevel connection of boxes. No door of any room shut properly. He heard her sloshing the water on herself. His father was up at Dick Lee’s grocery watching the Cardinals on the television. French walked in on her. Her body lay underwater up to her neck.
“Your romance has been terminated,” he said.
“French?” She grabbed a towel off the rack and pulled it in the water over her.
“He’s blind. He can’t even find his way to the house anymore.”
“This was a sin, you to look at me!” Mrs. Edward cried.
“Maybe so,” French said, “but I’ve looked before, when you had company.”
French left home for Baton Rouge, on the bounty of the scholarship Dr. Word had hustled for him through the athletic department at Louisiana State. French swore never to return. His father was a fool, his mother a lewd traitor, his mentor a snake from the blind side, the river a brown ditch of bile, his town a hill range of ashes and gloomy souvenirs of the Great Moment in Vicksburg. His days at college were numbered. Like that of most natural athletes, half French Edward’s mind was taken over by a sort of tidal barbarous desert where men ran and struggled, grappling, hitting, cursing as some fell into the sands of defeat. The only professor he liked was one who spoke of “muscular thought.” The professor said he was sick and tired of thought that sat on its ass and vapored around the room for the benefit of limp-wrists and their whiskey.
As for Dr. Word, he stumbled from clinic to clinic, guided by his brother Wilbur, veteran of Korea and colossal military boredoms all over the globe, before resettling in Vicksburg on the avant-garde of ennui.
Baby Levaster saw the pair in Charity Hospital when he was a med student at Tulane. Word’s arm was still curled up with stroke and he had only a sort of quarter vision in one eye. His voice was frightful, like that of a man in a cave of wasps. Levaster was stunned by seeing Dr. Word in New Orleans. He hid in a closet, but Word had already recognized him. Brother Wilbur flung the door open, illuminating Levaster demurring under a bale of puke sheets.
“Our boy won the Southern!” shouted Word. “He’s the real thing, more than I ever thought!”
“Who are you talking about?” said Baby Levaster. The volume of the man had blown Levaster’s eyebrows out of order.
“Well, French! French Edward! He won the Southern tournament in Mobile!”
Levaster looked to Wilbur for some mediator in this loudness. Wilbur cut away to the water fountain. He acted deaf.
“And the Davis Cup!” Word screamed. “He held up America in the Davis Cup! Don’t you read the papers? Then he went to Wimbledon!”
“French went to Wimbledon?”
“Yes! Made the quarterfinals!”
A nurse and a man in white came up to crush the noise from Word. Levaster went back into the closet and shut the door. Then he peeped out, seeing Word and his brother small in the corridor, Word limping slightly to the left, proceeding with a roll and capitulation. The stroke had wrecked him from brain to ankles, had fouled the centers that prevent screaming. Levaster heard Word bleating a quarter mile down the corridor.