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Chapter 11: Dueling Bubbies
 By Jim Caple |
Previously at 24 College Avenue: Former Red Devils mascot Jenn Robbins, pregnant
after one night with State College linebacker Kenan Hill, lost the baby late in the
term (Chaper 9). She has re-enrolled in school and with the hope of resuming her
role as Bubby the Red Devil. Mandy Stephenson, a Red Hottie cheerleader, has moved
into Jenn’s old room at the house (Chapter 7). . . .
Jenn could hear the pep band playing as she readied herself under the seats in
history Buckley Sheaffer Fieldhouse. Already sweating from the heat, she took
another long swallow from her water bottle. She adjusted the clinging silk Red Devil
costume on her body, then lifted her cape and reached behind her back to pin on her
tail. A sudden sharp pain in her abdomen stopped her; she wasn’t fully healed from
the miscarriage. She held out her devil’s tail to Clay Ellum and gestured. “A
little help?’’
Ellum, seated on the dusty gynamsium floor, merely looked at the tail as if it were
a dead rattlesnake and continued his pre-game stretching routine. “Get it
yourself,’’ he said.
“Thanks a lot,’’ Jenn said, grimacing as she twisted around painfully again and
safety-pinned the tail to her costume. “Nice team spirit.’’
Ellum only grunted. He spread his legs wide and slowly lowered his face to the
floor, then kissed the hardwood exactly 10 times, each time an inch closer to his
crotch. The guy might be rude, Jenn thought, but he was incredibly limber.
“My old housemate Danny would love to be able to bend himself like that,’’ Jenn
said. “It would save him money on dates. Or at least one strippers, I don’t know if
he ever actually dates.’’
Again, Ellum said nothing. Which was just as well given his usual conversation was
usually nasty and mean. Actually, “Get it yourself’’ was one of his more pleasant
offerings. Jenn tolerated the resentment somewhat at first but as the days went on,
her teammate’s hostility became increasingly annoying, if not downright hurtful.
After all, it wasn’t as if Ellum would even be Bubby had not Jenn’s pregnancy forced
her to drop the role. Had that not happened, Jenn would have returned for her third
year as the Red Devil mascot and Ellum would not have gotten the job. So she didn’t
think it was asking too much at all to request that the two share the gig when she
returned to school. In fact, the way she saw it, she was being magnanimous by not
asking that she be given her solo act back. And given Ellum’s performance so far, he
should consider himself lucky the administration kept him.
Oh, Ellum was good, Jenn admitted. Damn good. A muscular 6-2 and 190 pounds, he was
in better shape than most of the athletes. His routines were imaginative and
skillfully performed – using his trident as a pole vault for his slam-dunks not only
was inspired, it was athletically far beyond anything Jenn could hope to do. The
problem was his performances were a little too slick, a little too choreographed.
Whatever they had in sheer talent and professionalism, they lacked in heart and
passion. Even now, as he slipped on his costume over the knee and elbow pads, Ellum
showed no emotion. He might as well have been putting on a gray flannel suit for a
day at the office.
Their costumes marked the essential difference between Jenn and Ellum. While Jenn
continued the State College tradition of lovingly hand-sewing her costume and
fashioning a paper mache headpiece, Ellum’s was professionally manufactured with a
custom-fitted polychrome headpiece that must have cost $1,000. While Ellum’s looked
better, Jenn’s costume had soul.
Jenn pulled on her headpiece and checked herself in the mirror. How many times did
she pose just like this during her pregnancy, looking everyday for another sign that
the baby was growing in her body? Now, she sadly considered, the only bulges were
the result of too much beer.
“Checking out your figure?’’ Ellum said. “About time. I was just going to suggest
that you might want to mix in a salad or rice cake.’’
Jenn turned around so quickly her headpiece almost spun off. “What did you just say?’’
“Oh, are you going to start crying? Are your hormones going to start overflowing?’’
“What is your @#% problem man?’’
Ellum rose, stepped toward Jenn and pointed his index finger into her chest. “You’re
my problem, that’s what. I dedicate myself to being a mascot. I work my ass off,
taking yoga and pilates classes to stay flexible, lifting weights and running six
miles a day so that I’m as strong in the final minutes as I am at tipoff. And then
the department makes me share the gig with a fat cow just because some secretaries
feel sorry for her.’’
Jenn didn’t know what to say. She could only stare and be thankful she had already
put on her headpiece so that Ellum couldn’t see that she was beginning to cry.
“Why are you so mean to me?’’ she said finally. “I mean, I know you don’t kike
sharing Bubby but is that so bad? I’m not gonna lie to you, when I was Bubby by
myself I would have been glad to have some help with all the games I had to perform
at. And with the two of us splitting the duties, we can be at more games and help
the Red Devils win even more. Team spirit is the whole point, isn’t it?’’
Ellum gave a disgusted snort. “Team spirit?’’ he said. “I’ve got news for you,
sister. I don’t consider you a teammate. You’re my competition.’’
“Competition?’’
“You don’t get it, do you?’’ Ellum said. “Bubby the Red Devil may be all ‘rah, rah,
college spirit’ for you, but not for me. This is my career. I don’t give a @#& %
whether the team wins or loses – my performance is the only thing that matters to
me.’’
“How can you say that? That’s disgusting. It’s like an athlete saying he doesn’t
care whether the team wins or loses as long as his stats look good.’’
“Wake up and smell the brimstone, baby,’’ Ellum said. “ I’ve spent half my life
working up the mascot food chain. I’ve been doing this since I was Gerky the Gerkin
Pickle for my parents sub sandwich shop. I was a med fly for my junior high team, a
salamander for my high school team, a spotted owl for the local minor league team
and an albino possum for my JC. And those were the good gigs. Try being Blister, the
mascot for the burn unit at a children’s hospital. Trust me, it takes talent and a
lot of damn hard work to get an enthusiastic response from an eight-year-old stuck
in bed with third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body.
“I’ve crawled my way out of the primordial mascot ooze to get where I am today,
evolving from vegetable to reptile to mammal. And now that I’m finally human – well,
underworld demon, but in human form -- I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you steal
my job. Which is why I’m doing halftime and all the TV timeouts!’’
By this point, he and Jenn were headpiece to headpiece.
“Get over yourself, Clay,’’ Jenn said. “I have two @#%& years in as Bubby. When
you’ve cheered at half as many games, when you’ve fainted from heat stroke and been
hospitalized with frostbite, when you’ve sewn repairs on your costume until your
fingers bleed, when you’ve set yourself on fire because you misjudged how much
explosive charge to put in your flashpot, then you can lecture me on your dedication
to the great mascot profession. But in the meantime, we’re sharing the job and you
just better get used to it.’’
“Share the job? OK. Here’s how we’ll share it. You work the non-rev sports,
swimming, soccer, softball – you know, the crap chick sports -- and leave men’s
basketball for me!’’
“How about you just go @#$ & yourself!’’ Jenn said and head-butted Ellum to
emphasize her point.
He responded by head-butting her back. And she responded by head-butting him again.
And he responded by grabbing his trident and pointing it toward Jenn. She grabbed
her own trident and pointed it at Ellum. The two stood poised for battle, each
daring the other to make the first move. This might have escalated into a demonic
joust that would have left one or both Bubbies disemboweled had Mandy Stephenson and
the rest of the State College Red Hotties cheerleaders not walked in from their
dressing room just then. Because the devil headpieces effectively hid all emotions
-- joy, anger, sadness, pain all look the same behind the maniacal smile – the
Hotties did not appreciate the gravity of the situation.
“You two are so cute,’’ Mandy said to the warring devils. “You looked just like
football players banging their heads together in the tunnel to fire themselves up.’’
Something about the tone of Mandy’s voice, or more likely, her figure, calmed Ellum
instantly. He lowered his trident and nodded to Mandy. He waved awkwardly to the
Hotties as they filed past and prepared to take the court. As the cheerleaders stood
at the entrance of the court, he watched Mandy hike up her skirt slightly and then
tugg at her scarlet dance pants. He noticed that unlike the other Hotties, a bit of
lace showed on her undies.
Not pausing to take his eyes of Mandy, Ellum turned to Jenn. “All right, all
right,’’ he relented. “You can have one TV timeout. But it’s in the first half. And
I do the cheerleader lift, with Mandy. You just stand there with your trident
pumping up the crowd. It’s what you do best.’’
“Whatever.’’
As the pep band struck up the school fight song, Ellum raised his trident and began
charging toward the court for his customary multiple backflips to center court. He
didn’t make it this time. Just as he was about to reach the court, Jenn slipped her
trident between his legs, sending him flying headfirst to the floor with a loud
thud.
“Sorry,’’ Jenn said, dashing past. “My hormones must have gotten the best of me.’’
Next: College World
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