Life's Work by Jonathan Valin

perplexed by the fact that he was talking at all. "How do you know that he didn't leave because of his contract?" I asked. "That's what Petrie gave as the reason. Bill's apparently got some money problems to go along with his legal hassles."
    "Petrie!" Bluerock snorted. "What does that putz know about what's going on in the locker room? The night before Bill ducked out of camp we went out drinking together, and he didn't say a word about contracts, money, or the law."
    "What did he talk about?"
    "His mother, jewel. A Mormon bitch who lives out in Missoula, Montana. I met her once, when she came through here with Bill's old man. The only things she had on her mind were the end of time and who was going to hell and who was going to be a saint. It was pretty goddamn depressing."
    "What did Parks say about her?"
    "Not much really," Bluerock said. "Talking to Bill is like opening a new bottle of ketchup -you gotta wait a while before anything comes out. Sometimes you wait and nothing happens. That's the way it was on Monday. Of course, he was stewed to the gills and so was I, so that might have had a bearing on it. I think maybe Jewel had been lecturing him about C.W. again. C.W.'s a Baptist, and they're goddamn heathens to the Mormons. Bill doesn't usually talk about jewel unless she's giving him some kind of grief. She made him pay a lot of dues when he was a kid."
    I thought about what Laurel had said about C.W.'s attempts to "convert" Bill. Apparently that was part of an old and somewhat surprising pattern in Parks's life, although I could have guessed that his past had been pretty damn strange. It just turned out to be strange in an unexpected way. It occurred to me that marrying a pregnant girlfriend -and a Baptist, at that- probably wouldn't sit too well with his strict Mormon mother. Though it seemed absurd in a tough cookie like Parks, it was just possible that he'd left camp in order to run home and explain things to Mom.
    "Did Parks's mother know that he was going to marry C.W.? Or that she was seven months pregnant?"
    "I didn't know that they were going to get married or that she was pregnant," Bluerock said. "But then, like I said, C.W. and I didn't get along, and Bill knew that. I haven't seen her since last December. In fact, I didn't see Billy until the minicamp in May."
    "What is it you don't like about C.W.?" I said, out of curiosity.
    "She's another version of Bill's batty mother," Bluerock said grimly, "full of the same crooked crap. An amen sister with a streak of self-righteousness a mile wide and the morals of a whore. I knew she'd sunk her hooks into Bill last fall. I guess I just didn't know how deep. I always thought he put up with her Christian bullshit to score some steady ass. But if she reminded me of Jewel, I guess she must have reminded Bill of her too. A lot of football players end up marrying their mothers. Hell, did you ever take a good look at the wives' section? It's like staring at a shelf of bread."
    I laughed. "Well, this loaf has some bruises on it. From what I hear, Bill beats her up pretty regularly."
    "Yeah, and she loves it," Bluerock said with contempt. "It gives her an excuse to tattle with the other players' girlfriends. C.W.'s a shrewd little bitch. The way she looks at it getting slapped around gets her to heaven faster. Not to mention giving her a leg up on the other football wives. C.W. is always looking for an edge, a way to boost herself into the main ring. Self-pity and Jesus are her stepladder to glory. She's just another cunt, looking to score a football player and to get respectable all at once. I used to think Bill had enough on the ball not to get caught up in her game. But maybe I was wrong."
    "Do you think C.W. was why Parks left camp?" I asked. "Do you think he went back to Missoula, to settle things with jewel?"
    Bluerock chewed on his lower lip. "I don't know, sport. I'm beginning to wonder about why he left, myself."
    Chewing his lip was about as close as I'd seen