Another grueling football practice was over and Zurich Robinson’s pumpernickel-brown face was a shower of sweat. As he opened his locker, he heard the voices and laughter of his teammates echoing against the cement walls of the locker room, the snapping of towels against skin, the slamming of locker doors. His stomach began churning like a washing machine when he saw the note inside his locker instructing him to report to the offensive coordinator’s office. Instead of heading to the showers, as he normally did after practice, Zurich removed his gray practice shorts, put on his jeans, pulled a mesh T-shirt from his locker and slipped it over his massive shoulders. He did not make eye contact with any of his teammates as he raced toward Coach Kennedy’s office.
When he reached the dingy area that served as a makeshift office for the coaching staff, Zurich stepped into the first open door, where he saw Dave Kennedy and Gene Tolbert, the head coach and general manager, sitting on the edge of a large gray desk. He became even more nervous when he saw them talking in hushed tones with grim looks on their faces. Zurich knew something was up, something that concerned him and his career with the Chicago Cougars, an NFL expansion team. Was his dream of becoming an NFL quarterback about to come to an end? Would he be going back to Canada, where black quarterbacks were as common as black running backs? He believed that he was practicing well. He was number two on the depth charts, and roster cuts, to the final fifty-three players, were more than a week away, after the final exhibition game against the Chicago Bears. But who knew when the coaches would make up their minds?
“Have a seat, Z-man,” Coach Kennedy said.
“If you don’t mind, Coach K, I prefer to stand,” Zurich replied. Standing, he could make a quick exit in case any tears welled up when he received the bad news.
“Suit yourself,” Kennedy said. He looked toward the Cougars’ head coach and asked, “Are you going to give him the news or should I?”
“You do it,” Gene said.
Kennedy nodded and looked Zurich straight in the eye. “Zurich, we’ve made a very important decision. A decision we think will have a big impact on our inaugural season in the NFL.”
“Yes, sir,” Zurich mumbled.
“Well, you might wish you had taken that seat, but here goes. Coach Tolbert and I have decided that you’re going to start against the Bears.” Now both coaches were smiling broadly, and Zurich’s muscular legs suddenly felt like Jell-O. Had he heard his coach correctly?
“What do you say, Z-man?” Coach Tolbert asked, as he slapped Zurich on the shoulders.
“I am, I am … I’m starting,” Zurich stuttered. It was not a question, just a statement of disbelief.
“You will be the starting quarterback the first time two Chicago professional teams play each other on the field. You, Mr. Robinson, will become a part of history.” Zurich decided he needed some support after all. He slowly slid his body onto the black metal chair near the door. He felt a tear forming in the corner of his eye and then suddenly broke out into infectious laughter.
“I don’t believe this. This is a joke … right?” he asked as he clasped his hands together and quickly released them, pointing toward his coaches. “This is a joke?” he repeated.
“It will be a joke if you don’t perform,” Coach Tolbert said.
Zurich leaped from his chair and started to hug both his coaches, but opted for firm handshakes instead.
“Thanks, guys. I promise not to let you down,” he said as he raced from the office. Zurich had some calls to make.
He located a pay phone in the dim hallway, but Zurich couldn’t decide whom to call first, his agent, Dan Cunningham, or his father. He remembered Dan was on the West Coast with one of his more prominent clients, so Zurich dialed his father’s number and when the operator came on the other line, he said, “This is collect from the NFL’s newest starting quarterback.”
“Excuse me?” the operator said.
“Collect from Zuri,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
After a few rings, the answering machine came over the line. As he listened to his father’s cheerful voice, he wondered where his father could be. He knew his father had finally convinced his sometime live-in lady friend, Rhona, of the merits of golf and they played often. His father had spent most of his life as a caddy at one of Tampa’s country clubs and was enjoying his early retirement. He now had his own caddy, thanks to his savings, the Florida lottery, and the generosity of his three working sons. But at times like this when he needed to talk to him personally, Zurich regretted giving his father a fancy answering machine. He would always leave him messages saying he was thinking about him and things were going great, even when they were not. If his voice sounded depressed, it never failed that his father would call him back and say, “Remember, son, it’s only a game.”
“Sorry, sir, but there’s a recorder picking up,” the operator said.
“Thanks anyway,” Zurich said in a dejected tone.
“Well, I’m happy for you,” the operator said.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” he said.
“What’s your name so when you become rich and famous I can tell my grandkids I talked to you?” she asked.
“Zurich Thurgood Robinson.” Saying his name out loud made him remember how MamaCee, his grandmother, had chosen the middle name of the Supreme Court justice because she had dreamed that Zurich, too, would become a judge. His mother got his first name from a postcard his father had sent from Switzerland, when he visited the country while serving in the Army. It looked like such a beautiful city, she told Zuri later, and she knew her newborn would be beautiful, too. It was one of the few memories Zurich had of his mother. Leola Robinson had died of breast cancer when he was only six years old.
“Ooh, I love your name! The best of luck, Zurich Thurgood Robinson,” she said.
“Thank you. Thanks a lot,” he said as he hung up. A broad smile crossed his face. He knew MamaCee would be home and happy with her grandson’s exciting news.
MamaCee picked up the phone on the first ring. She, too, had an answering machine, which he had given her, but she refused to install it and was firm about leaving the machine in its box in her closet alongside several other unused electronic gadgets.
Zurich could hear the excitement in MamaCee’s voice when she told the operator, “Of course I’ll accept the charges; that’s my grandbaby.”
“MamaCee.”
“Hey, baby. How you doin’?” MamaCee asked.
“I’m doing great!” Zurich said. But before he could share his news, MamaCee had some news of her own.
“Baby, you ’member Miss Bertha Joy?”
“Miss Bertha Joy. Naw, MamaCee, I don’t think so,” Zurich responded.
“Yeah, you ’member her. She lived down the road from me. You know, in that terrible-looking pink house, the one with them dirty gray shingles on the front. You know, baby, cross the creek, where you boys used to play all the time.”
“Naw, I don’t remember her. Guess what, MamaCee?”
MamaCee ignored Zurich’s question.
“You got to ’member her, Zuri. Bertha Joy weren’t that pretty of a lady, not ’xactly ugly either, even though ugly was spread pretty even through that family of hers. She moved up to Detroit, but then she moved back home with her mama, six months after she followed that man up there, you know, that skinny fellow who used to collect bottles and sell them up at the Piggy Wiggly. Laroyce was his name; man wasn’t big as a Georgia peanut. But he was a real city slicker, him being from Detroit and all. I don’t think he’s been back down here since he moved back up North. I wonder what happened to him?” MamaCee paused for a second, but before Zurich could get in a word, she continued her story.
“Well, anyhow, when she got up to Detroit, Miss Bertha Joy found out that fool was married. A couple of months later his wife pulled a gun on her when she found out Bertha Joy was messin’ round with her husband. It was a shame ’fore God. That’s when Bertha Joy moved back home. Everybody down here was talking ’bout it. You know peoples in Warm Springs like to mind other folks’ business. But not me. I wouldn’t have known ’bout it ‘cept her own mama told me the whole story. I really felt sorry for her. Them kids of hers gave her so much trouble. Miss Mabel Joy, you know that’s Bertha Joy’s mother, used to say all the time, The good Lord gave me all these bad-assed kids just to mess with me.’ Not like my babies. I tell my friends all the time, none of my children or my grandbabies ever gave me an ounce of trouble. Can’t say that ’bout some of them women my sons married though.”
“I still can’t remember her, MamaCee. What about her?” Zurich asked. By now he realized it would have made more sense to say he remembered Miss Bertha Joy. Instead he leaned back against the wall and enjoyed the animated buzz of his grandmother’s lively conversation, or as his father called it, Mississippi storytelling. Sooner or later he would be able to share his good news.
Zurich pictured MamaCee, whom everyone in Warm Springs called Miss Cora, wearing some floral print dress with her slip and bra strap showing, well-worn flip flops, most likely yellow, sitting on her favorite sturdy, wooden stool in the cluttered kitchen of her home, talking on the black wall phone with the rotary dial. She was probably looking out the screened door at her vegetable garden, gently tapping her ample hips with an old flyswatter she held in her other hand. MamaCee was a robust woman, a true size eighteen, with smooth raisin-brown skin and plain features that lit up like a movie marquee when she smiled. And she smiled a lot. Miss Cora was proud of the fact that she was seventy-five years old and still had most of her own teeth. She had one gold tooth, right up front, that sparkled with an aura of wisdom when MamaCee was doling out advice to her friends and family members. She still pressed her concrete gray hair with a pressing comb her mother had given her, but on special occasions she wore one of the two wigs she had purchased from a wig mail-order house.
After his mother died, Zurich had spent most of his youth in Warm Springs, chasing his brothers through MamaCee’s garden. It was in that garden and in the field beyond that he learned he could run fast and throw a football further than most boys his age and even his older brothers. At times, he longed for MamaCee’s dirty white five-room clapboard house, sitting under a sky of the purest blue and protected by trees that struggled to produce a few feet of shade during the summer. He missed the front porch, which always seemed drenched in some type of divine sunlight, with its swinging bench and MamaCee’s spit cup resting beneath her favorite rust-colored lawn chair. The cup stayed there even after MamaCee had given up dipping snuff.
“She dead,” MamaCee said calmly.
“What?” Zurich quizzed. Did she say this lady he couldn’t remember was dead?
“She dead,” MamaCee repeated.
“Who’s dead?”
“Baby, didn’t you hear me? Miss Bertha Joy. She dead.”
“She died?”
“Dead as that fish I fried last night,” MamaCee said. “Miss Mabel Joy been dead for ’bout five years. The mailman found Bertha Joy laid out on the floor of her kitchen. She hadn’t been dead long when he found her, ’cause she still had her color. Doctor said she had a stroke. You know she was never the same when she came back from up North. Started drinking, hanging in juke joints, sleeping with anything with three legs. But I don’t think she suffered much pain,” MamaCee said. She let out a short sigh and continued, “I guess the way she died was just as good as dying in your sleep. You know I have asked the good Lord, if it’s His will, that my last days will be my best and that I die in my sleep.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zurich said. How he loved the stories his grandmother could tell, no matter how long, but he sure didn’t like to hear her talk about death so casually.
“Yeah, they gonna have the funeral tomorrow evening down at the church. I’m ushering. I hope them kids of hers don’t act a fool. Them girls of hers are young, but they some big heifers and you know how we can act at funerals. It don’t matter if we like the folks or not. I hope y’all don’t be actin’ no fools when I’ve gon’ on to glory.” She paused for a moment, as if she was taking a minute of silent prayer that her family would behave without her. After a moment, she remembered Zurich was the one who called, not her.
“What news you got for me? That team you playin’ for treatin’ you right? ’cause if they ain’t, you tell them don’t make your grandma charter a plane up there to git them straight,” MamaCee joked. It didn’t matter that MamaCee had never been on a plane of any kind and had turned down every opportunity her children and grandchildren had offered to fly her anywhere.
“You don’t have to do that, MamaCee. Matter of fact, I got some great news today,” Zurich said. At last.
“What’s your big news, baby?”
“I’m starting against the Bears,” Zurich said proudly.
“That’s wonderful, baby. Even though I don’t like my baby playing that brutal he-man game, I’m happy for you. Who are the Bears? I bet they’re paying you a nice chunk of change for that … huh, baby?”
“The Bears are Chicago’s other professional football team and yes, I’m doing all right,” Zurich said, remembering the bonus in his six-figure contract if he started an exhibition game and another bonus if he started during the regular season.
“You watchin’ your money right, baby? Giving your ten percent to the Lord? Can’t forget Him. He’s brought us from a mighty long way,” MamaCee said.
“I’m being real careful. But I’ve got to run, MamaCee,” Zurich said.
“You been praying, baby?” MamaCee asked.
“Every day. First thing in the morning and right before I go to bed,” Zurich said.
“That’s my baby.”
“Well, I’ve got to run. I love you, MamaCee.”
“And I love you, too, baby. Have you talked to your daddy? I haven’t talked to him in ’bout a month. Every time I call down there I get that answering contraption. What ’bout your brothers. You talked to your brothers?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, I haven’t talked with my brothers. I’ve been real busy with practice. Did you leave a message for my dad? I just tried calling him,” Zurich said.
“Naw, I don’t like talkin’ into that mess,” MamaCee said.
“If I talk with him soon, I’ll tell him to give you a call.”
“Okay. But tell him not to call tomorrow. I’ll be at the funeral. And then I’m going to take a case of Co-Cola over to Bertha Joy’s house. Maybe I should make some tater salad and take that over there too. I know it won’t go to waste. They may be in grief but them heifers still like to eat.”
“You do that, MamaCee. Please give the family my regards. Tell them I’ll be praying for them,” Zurich said.
“See, I knew you ’member Bertha Joy,” MamaCee laughed.
“I love you, MamaCee. Bye.”
“Bye, baby.”
Zurich looked at his watch and raced back to the locker room where he saw a couple of players getting taped by trainers and a few others sitting in the whirlpool. He tried to identify a friendly face with whom he could share his good news. Mark Traylor, a huge offensive lineman with golden blond hair and crooked teeth, walked up and patted Zurich on his shoulders. “What’s up, Z-man? How’s my favorite rookie doing?”
“Mark, guess what? I’m starting against the Bears,” Zurich said.
“Get the fuck outta here. That’s great, man! Cool. Yeah, that’s real cool.” He gave Zurich a powerful embrace, which startled him. Pleased at Mark’s affection, Zurich stood stiffly in front of his locker, as several of his teammates started congregating around Zurich, patting him on his shoulders and butt, and offering their congratulations. For the first time the Cougars’ locker room was festive. The team was 0–3 in their first exhibition season, and football pundits had not expected them to win any games against established NFL teams, though they had surprised people when they actually came close to winning their second game against San Diego in overtime. Zurich had played a few downs in each of the losses, but didn’t really feel as if he was making a contribution to the team.
Chicagoans were excited to have two professional teams like rival New York City. The NFL had surprised everyone when it awarded Second City the franchise over Memphis and St. Louis. Even more surprising, the city and the Chicago Bears’ management had agreed to let the team share Soldier Field with the Bears until a new stadium was built on the city’s North Side, facing Lake Michigan. The first game between the soon-to-be city rivals was the hottest ticket in town and had been sold out for over a year. Scalpers were selling tickets for no less than two hundred dollars apiece. There was even talk that the NFL commissioner was going to attend, which was unheard of for a preseason exhibition game. It was also going to be shown nationwide by ABC, with its regular Monday night crew announcing the game.
“With you starting, maybe we’ll have a chance against those punk-ass Bears,” said Mario Hunter, the team’s first-round draft pick from the University of Michigan. Mario and Zuri had been friends since their first meeting at a high school all-star football camp before their senior year. Zurich had tried to convince Mario to attend his alma mater, Southern Florida Tech, a small Division II black college in south Florida, but Mario had decided on Michigan. Zurich, too, had been recruited by some of the country’s top universities, including Michigan and Florida State, but none of them could promise he would play quarterback.
“Thanks, Mario. You think I’m up to it?”
“Do I think you’re up to it? Man, don’t worry ’bout what I think. ’cause you know what I think. You the man … my dog. Now gimme some love,” he smiled as he moved toward Zurich.
Zurich gave Mario a bear hug and turned to see Craig Vincent walking toward them. A tall and gangly white guy with brilliant red hair, Craig had started in all three of the Cougars’ preseason games. He had been in the NFL as backup quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys for four years and was expected by everyone to be the Cougars’ first quarterback. He had not started the season off that great, but no one put the blame on him, especially since the Cougars’ offensive line was inexperienced even by college standards. He had not been that talkative with Zurich on the field during practice or in team meetings. As a matter of fact, Zurich could count the words they had exchanged on one hand. Craig was from Miami, and he and Zurich had been rivals in high school. Zurich was All-City in Tampa, while Craig was All-City in the greater Miami area. Craig went on to become the starting quarterback for the University of Florida during his sophomore year and had led the Gators to two Sugar Bowl victories. Named All-SEC quarterback in his junior year, Craig had finished in the top five in the Heisman Trophy voting. It was Craig who was drafted in the first round, with a million-dollar signing bonus. Zurich was left with nothing but impressive statistics. Despite losing only once as a starter while in college, Zurich was ignored by the NFL in the draft. Several teams had encouraged him to go the free agent route if he was willing to try another position, like wide receiver or free safety. Pro scouts often commented that with his speed and that chiseled six-four, two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound body he could play many positions in the NFL, just not quarterback.
Zurich realized professional sports had an unwritten racial code. They justified their racism by pointing out the many blacks hired in other positions and how well paid they were. When it came to quarterbacks, blacks who had led their teams to victory in high school and college suddenly had their intelligence challenged. Then there was the dubious question of whether the fans would accept a black quarterback. Athletic ability versus strategic skill hovered over any young black man who aspired to play quarterback on the professional level. Black NFL quarterbacks like Warren Moon and Rodney Peete were the exception. Black quarterbacks in the NFL were still as rare as black players in the National Hockey League.
Zurich ignored the advice and subtle racism of NFL coaches and stayed an extra year at Southern Florida Tech, taking classes and assisting the coaching staff while working out daily and honing his already impressive skills. He also managed to get his degree in Communications and made the dean’s list every semester. When Zurich graduated and the NFL was still unimpressed, he headed to Canada, where he led Montreal to two Grey Cup Championships. And now, it all seemed to be coming together.
“Congratulations, Zurich,” the white quarterback said stoically.
“Thanks, Craig,” Zurich replied.
“But don’t get too comfortable ’cause I’m right behind you.”
“That’s fine. I welcome the challenge,” Zurich said.
“We will see,” Craig said with a slight edge.
“Come on, Gee, let’s go celebrate with some brews,” Mario said.
“I’ll buy,” Zurich said.
“Cool. We can get you some milk or Kool-Aid or whatever it is your square ass drinks. I might even arrange to get your timid ass some pussy,” Mario said.
Zurich looked at Mario and shook his head, but he was used to the constant ribbing about his clean lifestyle. Zurich reached into his locker for the keys to his rental car and noticed Craig sitting alone at the opposite end of the locker room. Craig stood up, ripped off his mesh practice jersey, slammed his fist against the metal lockers, and yelled, “Oh, fuck.”
As happy as he was, Zurich empathized with Craig. He knew how it felt to be rejected by a team. Zurich removed the coach’s note from his locker and briefly considered sharing his feelings with Craig, but he realized maybe now was not the best time. He tucked the note in his wallet to save and show to his father, and walked briskly out of the locker room and into the brilliant sunlight.