Slam!

by Walter Dean Myers

“Her?” I couldn’t believe that anybody that looked that bad and smelled that bad could have had a shop of any kind.

  “Then she found the pipe,” Carl said. “Or maybe the pipe found her. Anyway, they still together.”

  “Her and the pipe?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shot around Carl’s shop and then I went down and shot the two pit bulls outside the bicycle shop. There was a red light flashing in the camera. The battery was probably low. The battery had been charging all day but Derek was probably messing with the camera even though Moms told him to keep his hands off it.

  I went upstairs and called Mtisha. Her mother answered the phone and called me a lowlife.

  “I thought you had more to you than that, Slam,” she said.

  “Can I speak to Mtisha?”

  “No.”

  “Will you tell her I’m sorry?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, just tell her that I didn’t date Kicky,” I said. “She was with Ice.”

  “Was Ice the one in the backseat kissing her?” Mrs. Clark asked.

  I wish the heck he had been.

  The whole weekend I spent doing two things, playing ball at the 135th Street YMCA and shooting some videotape around 125th Street. The games went good because there’s always some smoking brothers playing at the Y. At the Y if you can’t get down you got to watch. I played with some guys who had played college ball and they were good. One guy even played in Italy for a while. His name was Kenny Stith and he said his uncle used to play with the Knicks. I don’t know about that but I knew the dude could play.

  What I didn’t understand was how he could be so good and not be in the NBA, so I asked him when we were taking a break.

  “Being good in the NBA don’t mean nothing,” he said. “Everybody’s good in the NBA.”

  “Then how you get a play?”

  “You got to be better than good, and you got to be hungry all the time,” Stith said. “If you thinking about anything else than getting the ball and winning the game you gone.”

  “How you like my game?” I asked him.

  “You okay,” he said. “You in college?”

  “No, man, I’m just in high school,” I said.

  “You got a sweet game for high school,” he said.

  That made me feel good. And when we got back on the court I really busted it. The jumper was on. I went up on this one dude who had blocked a few shots and it was like I didn’t have any weight at all. I just floated to the top of my leap, stopped and let the ball go. The ball went through the rim, stopped for a second as it got caught up in the net, and fell through gently as I headed downcourt.

  After the game I saw Kenny talking to a girl and a kid. When he was leaving he was carrying the kid so I figured it must have been his. When I get to the NBA I’m just going to keep concentrating on ball. No wife. No kids. Maybe it was cool that Mtisha put me down. A sign or something. She was definitely wrong, though. I didn’t come on to Kicky she came on to me. If I hadn’t kissed her back she’d be running it down that I was freak or something. Sometimes any way you go you wrong.

  Monday morning and it’s New Year’s Day. This was going to be a fresh start. I called Mtisha and she answered the phone. All the cool stuff I was going to say just flew out my head and I heard myself begging for just one more chance. She said she would think about it.

  Okay. So I get to the NBA and I’ll have a wife, maybe a kid. Probably a boy.

  Tuesday after New Year’s and I’m busting into school thinking about the game we were going to have that afternoon against St. Peter’s. I kind of skate through the announcements and homeroom and then I’m dozing in history. In my mind I fast forward to the end of the day even though I know I got math. What I don’t know is we got a math test.

  “It’s a four-part test,” Mr. Greene said. “You will get partial credit so make sure all of your work is on the paper you hand in. This will make up twenty-five percent of your final grade, so be careful. You can leave whenever you’re finished.”

  My stomach tightened up real bad. When I looked at the problems it got even worse.

  1. -2X - 5 + 12X - 3 - 4 = 8 solve for X

  2. X/2 - X/3 + 7 = 5X/6 - 5 solve for X

  3. Pete, Jane, and Bill all worked on the same job, but for different rates of pay. Pete gets twice the amount that Jane gets, and three times the amount that Bill gets. How much does each worker get if they get a total of $1,254 dollars?

  4. Mary is two times (4 + 15/X) years old. Her identical twin Chris is almost fifteen. Solve for X.

  I couldn’t believe Mr. Greene was serious. I just kept looking at the numbers and they didn’t mean nothing to me. We had gone over the problems in class but the way it looked in front of me didn’t make sense. I looked up at Mr. Greene and he was looking dead at me.

  The last problem looked the easiest so I tried to do that one first. Mary is two times (4 + fifteen over X). She had to be more than eight because she was two times four plus something else. Then her twin brother was almost fifteen. That meant that he was fourteen and since that was her twin brother it made her almost fifteen, too. That meant she was fourteen.

  There wasn’t any fourteen in the problem but there was a two times four which was eight. So the rest of it had to be six. But I didn’t know where the X come in. Mr. Greene went to the door and I took a look over to where Ducky sat. He wasn’t up to number four yet.

  Then I went to number three. For a long time it didn’t make any sense at all. I remembered Mr. Greene putting a problem like it on the board. Then I figured that X is what I was looking for. Pete got three times more than Bill so I put down 3X. Then he got two times more than Jane so I put down 2X. Then I put down just plain X for the last amount. That added up to 6X and I made that equal to $1,254. Then I divided $1,254 by 6 and got $209. Then I figured that Pete got the most so I gave him three times $209 which was $627. Jane got the next so she got two times $209 which was $418. Then Bill got the least which was only one X and that was $209. I added up the $627, the $418, and the $209 and it came up to $1,254, which was right.

  Margie got up and left. She handed her paper to Mr. Greene and she was smiling. Then two more kids got up and left. The questions wasn’t that easy.

  Number one was okay since it was negatives and positives and those aren’t too bad. Number two had fractions in it and they were hard unless they were all the same. You can make them all the same if you multiply by the right number. I remembered something like that, or maybe it was divide them all by the same number.

  At the beginning of the year Mr. Greene went through a whole day talking about how we could use math. He was showing us how everything we did had some math in it. He said that if you went to the moon you would have to figure out things using math and if you went to the corner store you would have to do math, too. If I had to go to the corner store and do fractions I wouldn’t even bother going, I’d just look for a store that didn’t have fractions.

  Sixty-five was the passing grade and I needed some credit on each of the problems if I was going to pass. I divided 65 by 4 and got 16.25. Each part had 25 points to add up to a hundred and I needed 16.25 out of each part. If I only got partial credit for three then I would have to divide 65 by 3. I did that and it come out to 21.66. That means I had to get them almost right. So if I got three almost right I would pass. And then if I got three almost right and did okay on the other one I would be fine.

  I looked my work over. Number one, three, and four looked almost right to me. But now I knew I had to do something to get partial credit on number two, just to make sure.

  I decided to change the fractions to sixes. That made the problem X over six minus another X over six, which didn’t look right because first I had two different numbers and now I had the same number.

  Carol O’Connor, who used to go to Catholic school, got up and turned her paper in and then just about everybody else was standing up. I didn’t want to be the last one to go.

  Glen stood t
o go and I looked over and saw his answer for the second problem. It was 18. I looked back at my paper and tried to figure out how he got 18. Then I saw it. You multiplied the tops of the equations and you got to minus X over six. Then when you brought that over to the other side it was a plus X over six which made that number six X over six. Then you brought the minus five over to the other side, changed the signs, and made that a plus twelve. So then you got to six X over six equals twelve. Glen was wrong.

  Six X over six equals X. X equals twelve was the answer. I put that down and then I got up and turned my paper in.

  In the hallway some of the kids were talking about how easy a test it was. It wasn’t that easy, I knew that. But I figured I did okay on it. When I was taking it I was looking for the answer and I didn’t know if I got it right or not, but that’s how those tests go. You look around for something that looks like the answer and then you go with that. Sometimes you’re right. When you get partial credit that’s good. At least it shows you know something.

  In the locker room the test was still on my mind. It was only part over. The part of taking it was over but then the next day, or whenever Mr. Greene marked the papers, was the rest of it.

  “Hey, there’s a guy with a dog in the stands,” Charley Movalli said when we got into the gym.

  The guy was sitting there with a Seeing Eye dog and a white cane. He was kind of a good-looking guy, distinguished.

  “That’s Trip’s father,” Ducky said.

  “Get out of here!”

  “No, that’s his father,” Ducky said. “He lost his sight in the army. There was an explosion in the barracks, Lebanon or some place like that, and he was blinded.”

  That was cold. Losing your sight was nasty.

  We shot around for a while and then the guys from St. Peter’s showed up. They had one dude who was so fat I had to laugh. Guy looked like he should have been a football player, or better than that he could have just stood on the curb and been a fireplug. They didn’t look like anything to worry about.

  The coach called us over and told us to start our warm-ups.

  I felt good. We formed two lines and ran layups for a while and then Nick started shooting from the outside and we all switched to that. St. Peter’s was running the same lines that we had ran but they had a nice little twist to theirs. One guy would throw the ball off the board and the guy in the other line would tap it in. I liked that.

  They didn’t make all their taps but they made a lot and I thought they might not be scrubs after all. They had some height but their big men were skinny.

  “Yo, here comes our band!” Jimmy said.

  I looked over and saw a group of kids coming through the door with instruments. They started setting up and I saw that they had six violins, two clarinets, a marching snare, Marjorie on a portable keyboard, and two flutes. The ref blew the whistle and gave us the signal for the game to start.

  “Okay, Trip and Nick at guard, and I want you to keep the defensive pressure on these guys. They want to play a half-court game, they don’t want to play the whole court …”

  He went on but I didn’t want to hear. I still wasn’t starting. What was wrong with the man?

  I looked up in the stands and there wasn’t anybody I knew there. I mean, there were most of the kids I knew from Latimer but nobody from the hood.

  The team went out on the floor and Ducky found me and sat next to me.

  “Maybe he’s mad because you beat him that time,” he said.

  “Or maybe he’s just stupid,” I said.

  St. Peter’s got the tap and right away their forwards came out to the top of the key. The guards passed the ball into the forwards and then moved into the forward spots and the two guys who had lined up at forward were now playing guard. Cute.

  Nick and Trip didn’t know whether to go out to play the first guys they had or stay with the new guards. The coach stood up and looked at his clipboard as St. Peter’s rotated again, but this time their center picked Trip deep and they got an easy bucket.

  This was going to be one of those tricky games.

  St. Peter’s started with a two-one-two zone defense. That’s when I saw that the fat dude on their team was playing center. He wasn’t tall, and he wasn’t quick, just fat. And strong. He was pushing Jimmy all over the place. Trip tried to get inside but the inside zone picked him up and he passed to Jimmy who was standing alone at the top of the key. Jimmy threw up a three and caught nothing but net and everybody on our side of the gym went off.

  “Good shot, Jimmy!” the coach yelled as Jimmy started backing down the court on D.

  Behind us our band started playing. They were playing the theme from The Lone Ranger and they were kicking it pretty good.

  The St. Peter’s team was called the Marauders. Two guys brought the ball down and then the two guys who had hustled down into the forward slots came out and took the ball. They were going to play that game all day about who were the guards and who weren’t. I could see Trip glance toward the coach.

  We were still in a man-to-man and they worked the ball around until their big man, I mean their fat man, picked off one of our guys and they had another easy two.

  We brought the ball down and as soon as Jimmy touched the ball he turned and threw up his second three-pointer.

  “Way to go Jimmy!”

  We were up six to four, but our center was shooting threes. You don’t win no game with your center shooting threes.

  The next few times up and down the court and St. Peter’s was moving ahead slow without playing any real ball. They were bringing their forwards out, sending their guards into the low post, and using their center for some picks that looked illegal to me but the referee didn’t call them. A couple of times I saw Jimmy and Frank looking over at me. They were wondering the same thing I was, when was I going in.

  At halftime St. Peter’s was ahead 32–22.

  I looked in the stands and saw Trip’s father. He had his chin on the handle of his cane. There was a girl sitting next to him. I figured she was telling him about the game. I wondered if she was telling him how bad we was playing.

  In the locker room the coach was talking about how we had to overload one side of their zone and block off the defense when we swung it to that side.

  “Hey, Coach, how come Slam isn’t in the game?” Glen asked the question.

  “Because we need a whole team of players, not just one guy,” the coach said. “Everybody will play if and when the opportunity comes.”

  I didn’t go for it, and I could tell the rest of the team didn’t either. Nobody said much, we just hung in the locker room until it was time to go out for the second half. We started warming up and Goldy came up to me.

  “You want to play the second half?” he asked.

  “What’s up with this ‘you want to play’ bit?” I asked.

  “The coach thinks you’re a hot dog,” Goldy said. “He thinks you’re more interested in showing off your stuff than playing with the team.”

  “I think he’s mad because I slammed on him,” I said.

  “Could be,” Goldy said. “But that’s real life. What did you expect?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thought he could take you and you showed him up,” Goldy said. “You expect him to like it?”

  “That ain’t got nothing to do with playing today,” I said. The coach was playing with my mind because his game was raggedy. I didn’t even know how to deal with that.

  I turned and threw up a jumper that didn’t even reach the rim. Then I chased the ball down, and threw up another jumper. Blew that sucker, too. Goldy came over to me.

  “Get into the game,” he said. “Whenever he lets you play, get into the game and show what you got. They can argue with what you say, but nobody can argue with what you accomplish. You see what I mean?”

  I didn’t say nothing and Goldy walked away. I blew another jumper and went and sat down next to Ducky. I put a towel over my head.

  “What�
��s the matter?” Ducky asked.

  “What you think is the matter?”

  “You’re not playing?”

  “You must be Einstein or somebody,” I said.

  The second half started with me sitting on the bench. The coach looked over at me and I looked the other way. If he was expecting me to show humble he was wrong big time.

  St. Peter’s was trying the same things they did in the first half and we were in the same zone, but still standing around trying to figure out who they were playing where. We were down 42–30 with eight minutes to play when the coach signals me to go in.

  “Get ’em, Slam,” Ducky called out.

  “Move that guy out of the center,” I told Jimmy.

  “You’re not the coach,” he said.

  “Move him or I’ll break your jaw after the game!” I said. Jimmy really pissed me off. He knew the game was getting away and that was why the coach put me in, and he was still going to come down lame.

  The first time I got my hands on the ball I knew I was going to make them know I was there. I went right toward their big man, and when he stepped out I faked left and drove around his right side. Their forward came over quick but he was a step late so he could have kept his butt home. I went up, did a 180 and slammed backwards. The crowd went wild and they called a time-out.

  Goldy and the coach went over to the scorer’s tables to check on the time-outs. That’s when Nick got into my face.

  “Hey, you don’t have any right to jump on Jimmy,” he said.

  “I’m taking the right,” I came back.

  “Well, if you throw down with him you got to throw down with me, too,” he said.

  “Then it’s two against two,” Ducky said. “I’m fighting with Slam.”

  “So when we doing it?” I asked.

  “Hey, let’s cool it,” Jose stepped in between us as Goldy and the coach came back.

  I didn’t want to hear nothing from nobody. When the game started again I went into my bag and pulled out my whole act. They dropped their fat boy deep into the paint to clog up the middle but I just went over him. When they sent the fat boy and a forward into the paint I pulled up and dropped the pill from the top of the key. Nick didn’t want me to have the whole show so he started doing his thing, too. That was okay with me, he could have anything left over after I did mine.