SAVAGE
SATURDAY
15) Sunday, February 2nd – “Comeback Kidz!”
By the weekend,
Grape Street was back to normal… for the end of January, that is… temperatures
in the mid-thirties, walks clear (courtesy of Swee’ Pea Tarleton and his
shovel), money in pockets (courtesy of FRECOC, Uncle Raoul’s amazing
thirty-dollar converters and safety nets from Social Security on down) and the
twelve-point underdog Football Team was hanging tough in Green Bay. Westy, Miz Lottie, Raoul and successive generations of Soameses… granddaughters Earline and Rima and their niece,
Nicole (here for the duration while her father was a guest of the state of
Virginia) and Raoul’s three-year-old son Jeff.
His grandson Trevor was sleeping in the kitchen, no doubt stirring as
the whole gang rose up, cheering, when Portis broke through the
“Might do it!”
Raoul dared to hope. “Sons-a-bitchers
just might do it…”
“Watch yo’ mouth!” Miz Lottie warned,
between sips of diet Pepsi from a jelly glass.
“Sorry!” Raoul put his hand over his mouth, as much to
stifle a laugh as to comply, a gesture that broke Jeff and Nicole up. (Westy and the
older girls had seen it too often before.)
On the venerable analog screen bolstered by its indomitable (but perilously
hot) Apex conversion box, Biff McLaine and Puson Snead, heavily bundled for the trip up to Lambeau,
breathed steam from their mouths like a couple of fat dragons as they
speculated on the possibilities of an upset…
“Comeback kids comin’ back again…” Biff said.
“Right.” Westy could only
speculate, himself, what Snead… whose knees were more plastic and chrome than
gristle, muscle and blood… really
thought of his pale, bloated sidekick.
“First and ten at the fourteen.
Blitz on – Frear fires a quick shot over the
middle and Kennedy drags two Packers to the eight.”
“Another second
and short…” Biff chimed in.
Miz Lottie leaned
forward in her chair, a posture that General Westmoreland knew was precursive to pronouncing judgment. “That Green Bay, that’s cold up there…”
“Sure is,” Westy agreed. “Worse
than Chicago…”
“Nothin’ worse n’
Chicago,” Raoul disagreed.
“Green Bay is. They all
white up there, too. Germans! Drinking beer
like that two-time rapin’ Judge…”
Miz Lottie, having made her point, lowered the jelly glass
and glared at the men on the couch.
“Shush up, you boys…”
So they watched
Portis grind out two hard yards to the imaginary yellow line delineating first
down and, when the pile unpiled, a Washington lineman
stayed down…
“Team can ill
afford to lose Collins,” Snead observed, “they’re already thinning on the
bench…”
“Like you must be
upstairs,” Biff joked as trainers and coaches surrounded the fallen
lineman. There was no comeback from Puson Snead, so McLaine added,
“And we’ll be back after these messages…”
And the game
footage gave way to a Western-garbed, highly-caffeinated, bepodiumed
Big Sonny Sonnenschein, towering over a bevy of his
beautiful models.
“Big Sonny here,
and have I got news for all you Yankee folk between Boston and Washington…
arriving at a Giga-Plex near you on Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12th,
just ten days off, and just in time for the Superbowl… the Dominator. Ninety-two inches of pure mega-modulated high
def Heaven, that’s sixteen inches larger than any other model, at any other
retail outlet.”
An actor dressed
like Abraham Lincoln… though even shorter than the pitchman… crept up on
tiptoes behind Big Sonny, beseeching…
“You know, I’ve
got a birthday coming up…”
“You and plenty
of others. How about Georgie?” A bewigged Washington briefly entered the
picture, waved and departed. “Martin…
well, a little after that fact, but still… how about that special someone in your life… even yourself! With the low, E-Z
terms at Giga-Plex, there’s no need to settle for second best, right Abe?”
The Lincoln
impersonator, distracted and fondling two of Big Sonny’s beauties, one to
either side, did a double-take.
“Honest!”
“So it could be
your loved one… or you!… cheering on the uh Manders come Super Sunday!
We’re taking advance orders in advance of our nine-day Presidents’ Week
sale… but quantities are limited. And
the first fifty people ordering who say ‘Honest, Sonny!’ well, they’ll get a
free microwave for any MHDTV over fifty inches… not just the Dominator, but
Panasonics… Sony… Apuku, even European-made Sievers…
only at your local Giga-Plex. Right,
Abe? Abe!”
The camera had
panned back to show Lincoln entwined with the two models, top hat off, rolling
his eyes and licking his lips – and there went his beard! Big Sonny shrugged and mugged for the camera
and dissolved into a car commercial… scowling, Miz Lottie pointed at the plain,
fuzzy TV with rabbit ears feeding into the Apex (and, on top of it, a black
cardboard box, one of Raoul’s backseat converters, ready to be plugged-in for
the day of becoming) as if the set itself were to blame.
“How do that man
know we’re for the Team,” she challenged Big Sonny, “…there’s Giga-Plex stores
all over America, right? Worldwide! What about those people in Vegas, up in Green
Bay?”
“Bet that man
made three different commercials, maybe more.
He did say something about the East Coast,” Westy
remembered. “One for here, one for those
other teams and maybe somethin’ else for them without a team to root for…”
“He allowed to do
that?” Miz Lottie asked, offended.
“Why not? He got the money…”
“And, you know…”
Raoul broke in with a wink. “I gotta boy I know out in the Maryland store… tells me Big
Sonny ain’t so big, he’s short, wears lifts! So them girls, they gotta be midgets,
Lincoln too…”
“Ain’t right, makin’ fun of Mr.
Lincoln like that. He disrespectin’ our emancipatin’…”
the matriarch shook her head. “At least
he didn’t bring in some fool pretendin’ to be Rev’rend King!”
“Man don’t
care. Who roun’
here got money for one of those big-ass… sorry…” Raoul corrected himself
quickly, “one of them… large… television sets from Dracula-land?”
“I could check it
out,” Westy volunteered. “Been to Giga-Plex, goin’
back, maybe, for a converter, just in case…”
“Just in case
what, man?” Raoul bristled, “…my conversion boxes are solid, man, they
golden. They just ain’t
gonna work until midnight on the fifteenth, the guy tells me, it’s science…”
“It’ll be the
fourteenth, man, Friday the Fourteenth! Like them movies,” Westy
scoffed, “the sequel. Valentines’
Day. It’s horror…”
“You talkin’…”
Raoul wound up for a fight, then glanced at Miz
Lottie, eyes boring into his skull like two electric drills as an ad for the
Army wrapped and the injured Teamster was helped off the field, limping, “…don’t know what
you talkin’ about.
Trust me…”
“We’ll give you
an update on Shadrach Collins as soon as we hear from the Washington trainer,”
said a subdued Puson Snead, “meanwhile it’s third and
two on the Green Bay six…”
“It’s Portis… no,
Peterson,” Biff McLaine corrected himself, “he’s
down, he’s at least a yard short…”
“They’re not even
gonna measure…” Snead rebuked.
Over the Maryland
line, the Eppert house in Dempstertown
erupted in a chorus of obscenities from the four spuds on the couch – Tom, Nat Silstrom, Lenny Witcher and
Stretch.
“That ol’
man? Zorn’s an idiot…” proclaimed the
host. “Worse than chokin’
Atlanta! Worse n’ Pete Carroll in
Superbowl forty-nine.”
“Conservative,”
Nat deduced, before waxing historical. “Worse than Bum Phillips, remember… back
in that last century…”
“Never pass on
third and fifteen?” Lenny remembered.
“That Bum?”
“That Bum! Worse n’ those guys at Giga-Plex what lost
your order…” Nat seized the opportunity to needle Witcher.
“They didn’t lose
it,” Lenny whined, “they ran out. I’m on
back order… some kinda trouble in Latvia, fer Chrissakes! They
won’t fuck with me, I got a receipt.
They don’t deliver, I sue Big
Sonny’s fat ass…” he rubbed his chin.
“I’d get a converter, but goofball
here let them tear up my coupon,” he gestured.
“Hey! Bastards called the cops on me, had me taken
down to the station to call Nan for bail.
Meanwhile,” Tom groaned, “we’re watching here, again, on my same crap
set that we won’t be watching Super
Sunday…”
“I said…” Lenny began, but the others
shushed him.
“So we’ve got
fourth and a long yard on the Packer five,” Biff said, as if reading off the
pop-ups onscreen, “two thirty-eight remaining in the half and Green Bay up by
thirteen…”
“Field goal ain’t gonna cut it with Rodgers tossin’
touchdowns. Why couldn’t he break his
arm this year?”
“Yeah,” McLaine admitted, “but three’ll
give ‘em some confidence, goin’ into the locker room
with at least a few more points on the board…”
“Unless… well,
looks like Washington’s gonna go for it…” Puson Snead
exhibited mild surprise.
“Looks like Coach
Zorn grew a pair…” Stretch noted.
Tom nodded. “Had to.
And ‘bout time…”
“Portis, you’d
think…” Biff predicted, “Packers think so, too, nine men up…”
“And it’s Por… no,
a fake…” Snead’s voice rose, “… it’s Frear making for the sidelines, looking… looking, Crowder’s
in the end zone, open as a can o’beans in a hobo
village…”
“Touchdown, Team!”
Biff whooped. “Commanders,
arf! arf!... Touchdown, Skins! Twenty-thirteen pending the extra point. A one-possession game and we’re taking the
second half kickoff. The Comeback Kidz are coming back!
The Comeback Kidz are coming back!”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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