North Dallas Forty Read Free Page A

but shook his head and hoped deeply that we could become friends.
    On the other side of the lot Jo Bob was getting into Maxwell’s blue-on-blue Cadillac convertible.
    “Say er ah babee.” Maxwell fell into a black dialect, which he often did when asking for or talking about drugs. “Ah, let’s have some of what you call your grassss.” He hissed out the last word purposely.
    “Hey man, just say grass.”
    “Can’t babee. Gots to get in de mood. Now where’s dat killer weed?”
    “There’s some in the glove compartment.”
    I picked through the cartridge tapes scattered on the floor beneath my feet. I pushed the Sir Douglas Quintet Together After Five into the deck, adjusted the eight-position steering wheel, and pulled out of the lot. Doug Sahm sang about the ill-fated love of two kids in Dallas.
    “Seems her father didn’t approve
    Of his long hair and far-out groove ...”
    Maxwell lit the joint and took a long drag, making the familiar hissing sound that could only come from someone inhaling cannabis.
    “So ... that there is what you call yer killer weed.” Maxwell held the joint up for inspection. “Well, it ain’t Cutty and water, but it’ll do.” He passed me the joint, and I sucked on it in short soft puffs, a habit acquired from turning on in airplanes, public restrooms, and dark back yards at straight parties. All getting pretty risky what with the current dope publicity and universal vigilance for peculiar smells.
    Three years ago, on the team plane from Washington, Maxwell and I had kept sneaking to the john to smoke dope. The stewardess noticed the smell and thought the galley wiring was smoldering. There was a five-minute panic, both for those who were scared the plane was afire, and for Maxwell and me, who were terrified that it wasn’t. We weren’t caught but we swore a blood oath to never smoke on the team plane again. It was a promise we kept until the next road game.
    The lights from the toll plaza appeared up ahead. I eased off the gas and rolled down my window. A fat man, about forty-five, in a sweat-stained gray uniform, stood at the door of the booth. One hand held out the toll ticket, the other was stuffing what appeared to be a peanut butter and lizard sandwich into his face. I slowly coasted the car through the gate, neatly picking the ticket from the outstretched hand. A name tag stenciled Billy Wayne Robinson hung from his shirt-pocket flap.
    “Hey, Billy Wayne.” Maxwell leaned toward the open window. “How’s yer mom and them?”
    The attendant looked startled, then confused, then, recognized the famous smiling face. Like a true Texas football fan he went completely berserk. Waving and trying to speak as we glided through, he spat half his sandwich on the trunk.
    “Did you know that guy?”
    “Naw, just a little of the ol’ instant humble. I shoulda offered him some of this here maryjawana.”
    “Show ’em you can straddle the old generation gap,” I said.
    I accelerated into the main lanes of the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike, heading for Dallas at about ninety miles an hour, a high-speed island of increased awareness and stereophonic sound heading back to the future. The turnpike was twenty-eight straight miles of concrete laid on rolling hills, connecting the two cities for anyone with sixty cents and a Class A automobile. Factories, warehouses, and two medium cities smother the land the length of the highway. Back in the early sixties, five minutes past the toll gate, heading for either end, you were out in the West. That was when Braniffs planes were gray. Jack Ruby ran a burlesque house. And the School Book Depository was a place they kept schoolbooks.
    “Smoke will rise
    In the Dallas skies
    Coming back to you
    Dallas Alice ...”
    “Here.”
    “Huh?”
    “Here!” Maxwell was thrusting the joint at me. His eyes and cheeks and neck were bulging. He was trying to stifle a cough. His face was crimson. I took the joint. Maxwell exhaled, coughing and clearing his