Total Loss Weekend

How does CJ respond to news from the real world?

When CJ reads or hears about an unusual event, such as two ships colliding in mid-ocean with great loss of life, or a Latvian brother and sister separated during World War I who learn they have been living on the same street in Bridgeport for the past 47 years, he usually says: "What's the odds on something like that?"

What does CJ fear most in this life and in the life to come?

CJ fears the weather most. He remembers waking up on the morning of Dec. 31, 1967 and turning on the radio and hearing a voice that sounded like the judgment of God (Him again). The voice said: "It is 13� below zero in Green Bay, Wis., site of today's NFL title game." Bad weather usually favors the underdog because it tends to neutralize superior strength, to atomize and equalize. CJ has the Packers 100 times and he is giving seven points and God has made the temperature drop to 13� below. The Packers win in the last few seconds but they fail to beat the spread.

CJ tries to use the weather like a tribal conjurer. One day the radio reports tornadoes in Kansas. It is Saturday evening and CJ tries desperately to find a college football game being played in Kansas that night. Finally he comes up with two small, small colleges—names he no longer remembers. He wants the points. He's dying to take the points. He will sit by the radio, all night if necessary, to wait for the final score of what is bound to be a windswept and topsy-turvy game. He feels sure the underdog will come through for him because he knows, he has always known, it has been basic knowledge for many years that bad weather favors the underdog because it is a neutralizer of ability, experience and talent, an atomizer and equalizer, and he is ready to wire his mind into the desolate roar of Kansas, for a full night if need be. But his bookmaker, Bernie-Sherm, has no line on the game in question because the two schools are exceedingly tiny, obscure and pathetic, assuming they exist at all.

How did CJ stop smoking?

The year is 1970. CJ has the Boston Celtics 40 times against the Cincinnati Royals. He is giving 5� points. With a minute left in the game, he leads by 11. With four seconds left, he leads by seven. He has possession of the basketball. The ball is his. Suddenly he loses the ball. The ball is lost. The other team has the ball. A man on the other team heaves a wild shot from a crazy angle. The ball falls in the basket as the buzzer sounds. Bzzzzz. CJ gets up, opens a cabinet, takes out a carton of cigarettes and in a morosely romantic and life-enhancing gesture he quietly strangles the carton before throwing it away.

"Something good had to come out of that game," he says.

Kool greets CJ by butting pads with him. He throws a shoulder, backs off, lunges again. Three times he does this, deadpan. It means they are together in this thing, and it is a manly thing, and they are not unlike the players themselves, fond of mock pummeling, doing work heroic enough to require ritual, and it is good luck besides.

Kool has made three bets. All look bad at the moment. Through the years he has been so consistently wrong that CJ often uses him as a guide, betting against the teams his brother selects as winners. Kool lives in a remote part of New Jersey, where he walks the moors in a half-trance before making his betting selections for the week. This trek is meant to empty his mind, enabling him to pick up vibrations from NFL cities.