By the time Viceroy Wilson crossed the fifty-yard line, he was in full gait and no $3.50-an-hour security guard on the face of the earth could have caught him. Viceroy’s mad dash seemed to freeze the authorities, who did not wish to shoot, maim, or otherwise embarrass any Notre Dame player. Maybe the kid was psyching himself for the game, or maybe just showing off for South Bend. After all, there were TV cameras everywhere.
In the midst of Viceroy Wilson’s virtuoso run two other disturbances erupted in the stadium.
First, the Seminole float rumbled and began to shudder at the tail of the procession—it appeared as if it was about to blow apart. The Shriners slowed their motorcycles and wheeled around, believing that the dim-witted Indian had accidentally started up the air-boat.
At the same instant John Davidson was accosted at midfield by a bald, barefoot, russet-bearded man who was dressed as the King of Siam. It was, of course, Skip Wiley.
Unintelligible bits of their argument went out over the stadium sound system and then a struggle began. The two men tumbled out of the spotlight.
Seconds later the King of Siam appeared alone, holding Davidson’s cordless microphone.
The crowd seemed greatly confused about whether this was part of the official program; half of them clapped and half murmured.
Skip Wiley beamed up at the stands and said, “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
Brian Keyes had extricated himself from the card-flashers and was bounding down the stadium, four steps at a time, when he heard it.
Skip Wiley shouted to the heavens: ‘‘Been around for long, long years. Stolen many a man’s soul and faith.”
Swell, Keyes said to himself, he’s doing the Stones.
From the crest of the queen’s float, Kara Lynn Shivers stopped waving at the crippled Cub Scouts in Section Q and turned to see what was going on. She did not recall “Sympathy for the Devil” being listed in the Orange Bowl music program. Nor did she recognize the bald performer in the gold Oriental waistcoat.
“Pleased to meet you,” Wiley sang, “hope you guess my name … “
In the NBC trailer the assistant producer barked into his mike: “Keep two cameras on that asshole!” Which was the prevailing sentiment among his forty-one million viewers.
Skip Wiley’s performance was queer enough to draw almost everyone’s attention away from Viceroy Wilson—everyone except the Shriners. Reacting swiftly, Burt and James led the motorcycle squadron across the east zone to intercept the hulking ex-fullback. It was the ultimate test of Viceroy’s reborn skill, zigging and juking through the stolid heart of the Evanston Shrine; stiff-arming fenders where necessary; using his All-Pro shoulder to knock the cyclists off balance; an elbow to the fez, a fist to the throat (in the old days, fifteen yards and loss of down). With each collision Viceroy Wilson gave a contented growl. Thirty-one Z-right. This was the only part he’d ever missed, the purity of contact. Galvanized by adrenaline, he rejoiced in the shining justice of his run—the abused black hero outwitting, outflanking, outmuscling the whitest of the white establishment, impotent against his inevitable assault on precious honky womanhood. In Wilson’s wake the bruised Shriners squirmed in the slop, pinned beneath their spangled Harleys; defeated, Viceroy mused, by their own gaudy materialism. And all this played out with splendid irony in the theater of his past heroics.
With the pursuers in chaos, all that stood between Viceroy Wilson and the Orange Bowl queen was the United States Marine Corps Honor Guard, whose members had no intention of breaking formation or soiling their dress blues. Wilson threaded them effortlessly and bounded onto the mermaid float.
“Oh shit,” said Kara Lynn Shivers.
“Come on, girl,” Viceroy Wilson said, catching his wind.
“Where we going?” Kara Lynn asked.
“Into history.”
The tuna-blue mermaids shrieked as Wilson slung the queen over his shoulder and sprinted back upfield.
At that second the Seminole airboat shot off the Everglades float, splintering plywood, disemboweling the stuffed deer, leveling the chickee; the aviation engine expelling a suffocating contrail of rain and kerosene fumes over the stands. The airboat’s aluminum hull pancaked on the slick football turf and hydroplaned; it was perfect, the Indian thought, gaining speed—you couldn’t ask for a better surface.