by Mike Lupica
He went on with his story.
Maybe if Ocean State had been some big basketball powerhouse at the time, it would have been an even bigger story. It was still big enough that the story made news all over the country. The four players involved, including Joe Samuels, were arrested one day at the gym right before practice.
“Even that suspended sentence felt like jail,” Gramps said, “just without being in jail.”
They were all expelled from Ocean State on the spot.
“What did your foster parents do?” Lucas said.
“They took me in when I came back home,” Gramps said. “It’s what parents do, even after you break their hearts.”
But they closed their grocery store about six months later. It was because of the shame they felt in front of their friends and customers, Gramps said. They ended up moving to Vancouver, in Canada, thinking that no one would know them, or care about what Joe Samuels had done.
Gramps didn’t go with them.
“What did you do?” Lucas said.
“Getting to that,” Gramps said.
“First tell me how you became Sam Winston,” Lucas said.
He wanted to know all of it now. There was no going back, for either one of them.
“I legally changed my name,” he said. “It’s not as hard to do as you might think. After I did, I worked odd jobs here and there. Worked for the railroad. Worked at a radio station. Worked some construction. Then finally I joined the army, even shipped out and spent some time in the war in Vietnam.”
“You fought in a war?” Lucas said.
Gramps nodded.
“I guess that’s just one more thing about you I didn’t know,” he said.
“Even got shot right above the knee one time for my trouble,” he said. “My other knee just wore down over time from favoring the one that got shot.”
He was discharged from the army after that. He came back to California and got a job as a carpenter. He said he’d always been good with his hands. He met a young woman and fell in love and got married.
“Did Grandmom know what you’d done?” Lucas said. “Did she know who you really were?”
“She knew every bit of it,” Gramps said. “I told her one night just like I told you.”
They finally decided to move to the other side of the country. If they were going to start a new life together, they might as well make it a really new life. He’d changed his name. He’d gotten married. He thought of Claremont as a new beginning.
“I decided,” he said, “to live a life and not an apology.”
He went to work for the post office. He became a dad. He got into coaching, he said, because of his son, who loved all sports, but basketball most of all. When people would ask him about his life before Claremont, he was vague enough with his answers that people finally gave up asking the questions.
“They just came to know me for who I was,” Gramps said.
Lucas knew it was getting late. He knew Gramps had been talking for a long time. But he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
And there was still a big question he wanted to ask.
“How did Dad find out?” Lucas said.
His grandfather pulled his hat off his head and ran an old hand through his short white hair. Then he put his hat back on.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I didn’t know that he had, until now. I didn’t know that I’d already let him down before I let you down.”
“You never saw that letter?” Lucas said.
Gramps shook his head.
“So he never asked you about any of it?” Lucas said.
“He died,” Gramps said.
Lucas looked down and realized he’d been holding his basketball in his lap the whole time Gramps had been talking. He could feel himself squeezing both sides of it now, as if trying to squeeze the air right out of it.
He was feeling himself breathing hard. Even though it had been Gramps telling the story, it was Lucas who felt worn out by it.
“I’m sorry,” Gramps said.
“Not as sorry as I am,” Lucas said.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said, “or even understand why I did what I did. I’m still not sure why I did everything I did. Or didn’t do what I know I should have done at the time. I haven’t told you all of it tonight. But I didn’t leave out anything important.”
All because of a school paper, Lucas thought.
He looked at his grandfather, slumped now in his chair, looking older than he ever had before, like the oldest man on Earth.
“At least now it’s out in the open,” Gramps said. “And I’m not making excuses for what I did. The things that happened, I let them happen.”
“What about the money?” Lucas said.
He had meant to ask about the money before. The stories he’d printed out said Joe Samuels had been paid five thousand dollars, and that Tommy Angelo had gotten more.
“I kept it in a pocket of a jacket hanging in the closet of my dorm room,” Gramps said. “I thought that when the school year was over I could take it home and give it to my parents and tell them I’d gotten a job when I wasn’t playing basketball.”
Lucas shook his head quickly now, from side to side, feeling the anger rising up in him again.
“You should have been brave enough to tell,” Lucas said.
“You don’t think I know that?” Gramps said in a tired voice.
“I want to go home now,” Lucas said.
He stood up and bounced the ball as hard as he could, then caught it, and bounced it again, even harder than before. The sound of the ball hitting the floor was very loud.
“Are you sure you haven’t told me more lies?” Lucas said.
“Everything I’ve told you is the truth, son,” Gramps said.
“It’s like you lied to me my whole life!” Lucas said.
“Until now,” Gramps said.
“Until you got caught again,” Lucas said.
Gramps stared at him. Lucas saw the hurt in his eyes. Then his grandfather said, “The worst part of all this wasn’t that everybody ended up knowing what I’d done. The worst part was that I knew.”
He started walking toward the doors at the other end of the gym. Gramps followed him. His whole life his grandfather had tried to be like his father, too. He’d coached Lucas the way he’d coached Lucas’s own father. All he’d ever wanted was to be in a gym like this with him. All he’d wanted to do was learn basketball from him and talk basketball with him. Gramps had been the only coach he’d ever wanted. Or needed. He’d even dreamed that Gramps would somehow get to coach him at Claremont High.
Now he wasn’t sure that he even wanted him to be his coach tomorrow.
Or ever again.
TWENTY-TWO
But Gramps did coach the Wolves on Saturday.
Lucas tried to act as if things were normal between him and Gramps. But once they were back in the gym together, Lucas managed to stay away from him as much as possible. He just wanted to concentrate on basketball today.
Then the game started and it was as if he’d forgotten how to play basketball. Or at least winning basketball. Or play smart basketball.
He couldn’t make a shot. He felt like he had more turnovers in the first quarter of this one game than all the other games he’d played this season combined. He got caught in switches on defense. Sometimes he just got beat at that end of the court. His teammates seemed to be working around him today, and not with him.
By the end of the quarter Lucas kept sneaking looks at his grandfather, waiting for him to take him out. But when Lucas threw another pass away early in the second quarter, with the Wolves in the lead despite him, he did something he’d never done before in his life.
He called a time-out and took himself out of the game.
“You need to put Neil in for me,” Lucas said. “He’ll give us a better chance. I can’t do anything.”
“I’m still the coach of this team,” Gramps said when Lucas got to the b
ench, keeping his voice low, maybe as a way of trying to calm down Lucas, even though that wasn’t about to happen.
“Then start acting like one,” Lucas said.
Now Gramps told him to go sit down. Lucas did, as far away from his grandfather as possible. When he got there, he turned and looked out at the court. Ryan was staring at him, almost like he was staring at a stranger.
But that’s what Lucas felt like to himself today.
* * *
He didn’t play great in the second half. But at least he’d stopped embarrassing himself. Jake Farr was still having a better game at point for the Mavs than Lucas was for the Wolves. A much better game. But Jake was no longer dominating Lucas when he had the ball. And Lucas, even though he still couldn’t find his shot, had stopped turning the ball over. He had started distributing the ball to his teammates and making better decisions.
There was a point early in the fourth quarter when the game started to get away, and the Wolves managed to waste a ten-point lead. But Gramps kept Lucas out there. Ryan hit a couple of huge shots in the last two minutes. The Wolves ended up winning by four. They stayed unbeaten.
Ryan waited until they were all finished with the handshake line until he pulled Lucas aside.
“Okay, what happened out there?” Ryan said, whispering just loud enough for Lucas to hear.
“Bad day,” Lucas said.
“Dude,” Ryan said, “you took yourself out of a game. I didn’t think you’d do that even if you had a broken leg.”
“Hey, we won,” Lucas said.
Ryan was staring at him, frowning. “Did something happen?”
“I’m good,” Lucas said.
“Don’t lie to me,” Ryan said.
“Everybody lies once in a while,” Lucas said.
“Now what is that supposed to mean?” Ryan said. “You never lie.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Lucas said. “Like I said. Just a bad day.”
Usually after games, Lucas would try to find time to break down what had happened with Gramps, both the good and bad. But he knew that wasn’t happening today. He already knew what had happened. He’d been distracted, and let that affect his play, and nearly cost his team a game. Unacceptable. Maybe, because the Wolves had managed to hang on to their lead in the end, everything looked pretty much the same as always if you were watching from the stands.
But Lucas knew that everything was different, and that maybe nothing was ever going to be the same for him again.
Gramps had already left the gym. Some of the guys were talking about going to Gus’s for pizza. Ryan asked Lucas if he wanted to join them. Lucas said he’d pass, he had some schoolwork to do. And the way he’d played today, he’d probably drop his slice on the floor when he went to eat it.
“Schoolwork?” Ryan said. “On a Saturday? After we won a game? Dude, now I know you’re having some kind of melt.”
“Crazy, right?” Lucas said.
He told Ryan that maybe he’d call him later, and they could hang out. He promised his attitude would be better by then. Ryan said he was holding him to that.
“I hate playing lousy,” Lucas said. “Usually going up against somebody like Jake brings out the best in me. Not today.”
“You never play lousy,” Ryan said. “Sometimes you just don’t play great.”
“But I want to, every single time.”
“Even LeBron has bad games,” Ryan said. “Heck, his first year with the Lakers, he had a bad season.”
Lucas managed a grin.
“So you’re admitting I played bad,” he said.
“I give up,” Ryan said. “Sometimes I can’t win with you.”
In the car on the way home Lucas’s mom said, “We’ll have to find a way to fix this. With you and Gramps, I mean.”
“I’m not sure it can be fixed,” Lucas said. “I know he says he’s sorry. But aren’t you the one who says that sorry doesn’t fix the lamp?”
“The love between the two of you just didn’t go away because you found that picture and that letter your dad wrote,” she said.
“Not saying I’m gonna stop loving him,” Lucas said. “But I can’t help it if I don’t trust him anymore.”
They were at a light. She turned to look at him.
“Honey,” she said. “He made a bad mistake. But people make mistakes, especially when they’re young. That doesn’t define who they are. From everything I know, your grandfather made a conscious decision not to let his mistake define who he is. He got knocked down and picked himself back up and tried to make something of himself. And by the way? He became someone I know you admire as much as anybody you’ve ever met.”
“Used to admire,” Lucas said.
The light changed. They were just a couple blocks from home.
“Eventually you’re not going to be as angry as you are now,” she said.
“Can I hold you to that?” Lucas said.
Now his mom was making the turn on to their street.
“This whole thing has hurt him enough,” Julia said. “You don’t want to be the one who hurts him more.”
“What about the way I’m hurting?” Lucas said.
“It will get better,” she said.
“I hold you to that, too,” Lucas said to his mom.
He just knew it wasn’t getting better today. He tried to remember a time when he’d ever felt anything like this after winning a game.
But he couldn’t.
TWENTY-THREE
Lucas didn’t call Ryan and ask him to hang out. He actually did do some schoolwork on a Saturday. He wanted to finish his English paper before the deadline. There was enough going on his life right now. He didn’t need one more distraction.
So he stayed at it until it was time for dinner. When it was just him and his mom at the table, he talked about his writing. Not basketball. Not today’s game.
Not Gramps.
For a change.
* * *
The next morning, after Lucas’s mom had treated him to a pancake breakfast at the Claremont Diner, Gramps was waiting for them when they got home, sitting on the front porch.
When he stood, Lucas’s mom immediately gave him a hug.
“Sam Winston,” she said, as if lecturing a child. “You know you have a key to this house. You didn’t have to sit out here in the cold.”
“Couldn’t find the darn thing,” he said. “Getting worse and worse finding keys the older I get. And not just keys.”
He looked at both of them then and said, “I won’t be here long. I just need to talk to Lucas.”
They went inside. Lucas’s mom asked Gramps if he wanted some hot chocolate, one of his favorites. He said no thanks. They all took seats in the living room. Lucas and his mom sat next to each other on the couch. Gramps turned around the chair from which he usually watched basketball, so he was facing both of them.
“Let me get right to it,” he said. “I gave some thought, in light of everything, to quitting the team and letting Ryan’s mom finish out the season. Or letting them see if they wanted to hire somebody else, if she couldn’t coach full-time.”
He sighed.
“But then when I thought about it a little more, I decided that there’s no one in this town better than me at coaching these boys,” he said. “I may be a lot of things. But a quitter sure isn’t one of them.”
“Okay,” Lucas said.
“Wasn’t asking for your okay,” Gramps said.
Lucas started to say something, but his grandfather held up a hand to stop him.
“I love you as much as I ever did, son, even knowing I let you down,” he said. “I love you even knowing that things have changed between us and might not ever change back. It’s because of things I did that I can’t go back and fix, and that’s on me. But what I’m not here to do is ask your permission to coach the Wolves.”
Suddenly Lucas felt himself getting angry all over again.
“I never said you needed my permission,” Lucas said. “
That’s not what this is about, and you know it.”
“Then what is it about?” Gramps said.
“It’s about you!” Lucas said. He wasn’t shouting. But he was close. “Not only did you cheat, you hid what you did from Mom and me. And you thought you were hiding it from Dad when he was still alive.”
Lucas saw Gramps’s face redden. He’d never seen his grandfather angry. But he looked angry now. They both had things they wanted to get off their chest today, neither one of them willing to give an inch, like they were fighting for a loose ball.
It was Gramps who backed down first.
“You know something?” he said. “You’re right. Hiding it was wrong. And I can see why you think that’s even worse than what I did when I was in college. Because hiding it just made things worse.”
“A lot worse,” Lucas said.
“But now we’ve got to figure this out, you and me,” Gramps said. “As good a player as you are and as good a teammate as we both know you are, you let your feelings about me get in the way of what was best for your team today.” He paused, but only for a second. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? That if I’m still going to be the coach, I’m the one who has to be in charge?”
“I do understand,” Lucas said.
“And you’re good with that?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the truth?”
“I tell the truth,” Lucas said.
“Lucas,” his mom said. “Please watch your tone. I know there’s a lot going on here. But he’s still your grandfather.”
“It’s fine, Julia,” Gramps said. “Boy’s got a right to blow off some steam.” He turned back to Lucas. “But I don’t want you to ever call a time-out like that and take yourself out of a game ever again. Is that understood?”
“It is,” Lucas said.
“If you don’t show me respect,” Gramps said, “the others won’t. They take their lead from you.”
“They don’t know what you did,” Lucas said.
“No, son, they don’t,” Gramps said. “Those other boys don’t know. And if you choose to tell them about me, well, that’s up to you, nothing I can do to stop you. But if there’s one thing I still know, it’s how I want players to play and how I want them to act, and not just when they’re having a good day.”
