Slam!

by Walter Dean Myers

  “No, if I lose it I’m going to put out a serious contract out on me and then I’m going to hire myself to bump me off,” he said.

  He kept on talking about how careful he was going to be and what he was going to do to anybody who tried to take the camera from him. I was looking at him and I saw that he was getting to be kind of good-looking. The mirror was right behind him and I checked him out against me and he wasn’t that bad. It didn’t really matter because I was still going to get all the babes.

  After we had turned out the lights he came over to my bed and rubbed my shoulder the way he used to do when he was scared to be in the dark. It was good to have a little brother.

  In school we got our P.S.A.T. scores back. They had them separated into classes and Mr. Tate, looking like a stuffed sausage with a tie, came to the class to give them out. First he had to give his talk.

  “Nobody knows you outside of your immediate friends and family,” he said. “So they look for markers to give them a clue to just who you are. Are you a decent person? They look to see if you have a discipline record. They ask your teachers for recommendations. Are you a person who does his work in school? They look for your grades. Are you college material? They look at all these things and then add the S.A.T. to it.

  “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I want you to look at your S.A.T. scores and think what it means to people on the admissions boards in these colleges. This is the P.S.A.T. and you have a chance to improve your scores with some study and practice.”

  He handed out the scores, which is really like a form you have to tear apart. The kids who knew they did good started ripping theirs open right away. I slid mine in my notebook.

  On television they had these two guys who were trying to get a basketball scholarship and one of them couldn’t get 700 on the S.A.T. The guy had an all right game but it wasn’t bodacious. He was a player, but he was up at forward when he didn’t have the weight to be no forward. Anyway, he had to go to a junior college. Then, on this same program, this black newscaster came on and said that any idiot could get 700.

  I figure that the kid who didn’t get the 700 was somewhere listening to the whole thing. The newscaster didn’t show the kid any respect at all. If the kid had busted a cap in the newscaster’s heart everybody would have said the kid was wrong. The diss was cool, but the comeback was wrong.

  I went to the bathroom and sat in the john near the door. Somebody was smoking weed in the booth near the window.

  Some of the scores I heard in the classroom and in the halls were real high. Trip got a 1200 and change and Tony Fornay got 1100. My scores were low, but I added them up and they came up to 740. They weren’t kicking no butt, but if somebody wanted to offer me a scholarship I could take it. That was before Mtisha started helping me with the math, too.

  Hunter was the next game and I knew I had to get up for it. Getting the 740 on the S.A.T. was going to let me take a basketball scholarship. Now I had to go out and get one.

  The game was held at Hunter College and I dug that. The gym was dynamite with glass backboards that came down from the ceiling. The locker room had rubdown benches, a whirlpool, and a weight room off to one side. Ducky liked the first-aid cabinet. It was locked but Ducky said it was so big they could probably do brain surgery in the locker room at halftime. The whole joint looked big time.

  When you got a real game sooner or later everybody peeps it and you don’t show up nowhere like a stranger. When we came onto the court one of their players came over and asked which of us was Slam. I heard the dude popping the question and I had to smile. The truth is that my game is my fame and when I made the scene with my gangster lean I knew I was crazy good and on the money. We warmed up, running our lines and whatnot, and then the coach dropped the bomb on me. Nick and Trip were the starting guards. I put the ball down and left the warm-ups.

  There was nothing for me to say so I don’t say anything. I was definitely pissed. The way I saw it I earned my respect and I didn’t go for him dissing me like I was some chump. He played me when he needed me and then let me sit when he thought he could get by without me like I was something he could just use and throw away. I didn’t go for it.

  The game started and Hunter could play. They were one of those teams that didn’t do anything great but didn’t blow anything either. If they had a deuce set up you could bank it. Nobody on their team was jamming or making any special moves. It was just pass, pass, move, cut, pass, and lay the sucker up. We were down 6 points, then we were down 9, and then 12 with a minute to play in the first half.

  “Is the prima donna ready to play now?” The coach stands right in front of me looking down like he was something special.

  “Cop a walk!”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me, man,” I said. “Go on and lose the game!”

  I got up and walked into the locker room. Yo, I knew I was wrong but I still walked. I didn’t know if I was madder at the coach for playing with my mind or madder at myself for letting him play with it.

  There was a folding chair in the corner and I sat on it and put a towel over my head. It felt like everything was coming down on me and I just wanted to shut everything out. A little while later the team came in and I heard somebody pull up a chair next to mine.

  “Get away from me.”

  “You’re right,” Ducky was saying. “You should have been in the game. You’re right.”

  “Yeah, get out of here.”

  Ducky patted me on the shoulder and moved away.

  I thought if I even got up I might start crying or something. What I would have really liked to have happened was to let the coach come up and jump up in my face. Then I could light him up. Hitting him would blow everything for me, but it was almost like it didn’t matter. He could blow everything for me anyway.

  I heard him talking about the game, how Latimer had to put out a hundred and ten percent, that old-time movie bull. He must have seen that on the late late show. When the team went out for the second half they went out quiet.

  Goldy came over to me and sat where Ducky had been sitting.

  “You want to hear the rest of it?” he asked me.

  “I’m off the team?”

  “No, the rest of it is that if you go on to make it big in basketball he’s going to tell the world how he helped you make it big,” Goldy said.

  I looked up at him. “How he gonna do that when I ain’t even playing unless he know he can’t win without me?”

  “What do you want?” Goldy asked. “You want fair? How come a kid as streetwise as you seem to be is so naive when it comes to real life?”

  “I don’t want to hear your stuff, man,” I said.

  “Well, I owe you one thing,” Goldy said. “And that’s some advice. You’re a good ballplayer, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know you almost let Brothers talk you out of it last week,” he said. “And now you’re going to let the coach talk you out of it, right?”

  “I can’t play if he doesn’t put me in.”

  “He’ll put you in this half,” Goldy said. “Play for yourself. Go for it.”

  “Then he’s going to think he got me to play hard by keeping me out the first half,” I said.

  “Now you got it,” Goldy stood up. “And it’s up to you to play for yourself and show what you can do.”

  “It’s not right, man,” I said.

  “Are you hard enough to handle it, anyway?” Goldy asked. “Hard enough to do what’s right for Slam?”

  “Yeah, I’m hard enough.”

  “Get your attitude together and come on out for the game.” Goldy turned and walked out of the dressing room.

  By the time I got out the game had started. Goldy spoke to Mr. Nipper and he looked over at me. I looked down at the hardwood floor. What I had said in the dressing room sounded good, but I didn’t know if I was hard enough to deal with the coach at all. I just didn’t know.

  On the court Trip go
t trapped in the corner and threw up a three that rimmed and came out. Hunter came back with a nice deuce on a backdoor play. Nick and Glen tried to trap along the sidelines and they called Glen for a foul. The coach spoke to Goldy and he came over and told me to go in for Glen.

  “We’re going with a three-guard offense,” Goldy said. “Keep going for the basket, make them stop you. If they collapse on you it’ll open it up for Trip and Nick.”

  Hunter inbounded the ball and started their passing routine. No good. I jumped out after a pass and when the guy pulled it back Nick took it away. We were downcourt in a heartbeat with Trip leading. Their forward came over and Trip passed the ball back to me trailing. I got it right and went up strong with their center coming over to block out for the bound. I slammed that sucker so hard it snapped through the net like a whip.

  They turned the ball over on a traveling call. Trip got the ball and passed it inside to Jimmy. Jimmy threw up a hook that was short. I went up over their forward, snatched the bound, and bounce-passed it back to Jimmy. He took it right up. I checked the scoreboard and saw we were only down by 5.

  Hunter called a time-out and we went to the bench. Ducky threw me a towel. The dude was happy, smiling and everything. He really wanted me to do good.

  When time was in they kept four men down to inbound the ball. They kept their forward at half-court; in case we tried to trap they’d have a third man to get the ball across the mid-court line.

  Once they got the ball across mid-court they went into a kind of a lame weave. I didn’t get what they were doing right away but Nick called it out.

  “They’re stalling! They’re stalling!”

  It was too early in the half to get into a slowdown but that was what they were doing. Trip went after the ball and got called for a foul.

  “That’s four on Trip,” Nick said.

  “How many you got?” I asked him.

  “Two.”

  They brought the ball back in and went back into their stall.

  “Back off! Let them shoot,” I called out. “They’re scared to shoot.”

  Nick gave me a look but he backed off. Their guard stopped and held the ball. He watched the clock until it ran down to ten seconds and then he passed the ball off and held tow fingers up.

  They brought the ball into their center and two of them cut, crisscrossing near the foul line looking for somebody to lose their man for the ball.

  I went off my man and went after their center. He was about six foot six and was all elbows and shoulders. He didn’t expect me to get on him and he passed the ball over my head out to where his forward had drifted. Trip beat the guy to the ball and sprinted down the court. We were down by three.

  They came back with a deuce on a short jumper and Nick threw the ball all the way downcourt to Frank who had laid back on the last play.

  They missed their next shot and Jimmy got the board and flung it out to Nick who got it to me. I was coming down the side and their forward was on me. When I got to the hoop I saw the dude had me cut off. He went up with me and he went up strong. His fingers were higher than the ball and straining toward it so I pulled it down and stretched my body out and pushed the pill with my fingertips. I was on the other side of the hoop and watched the ball roll over the side of the rim for the deuce.

  They kept their forward on me but I was stronger than he was. He was looking for finesse but I came after him with muscle. On defense he could jump as high as I could if I let him get set. I kept my body on him so he couldn’t set himself for the leap or blocked him out with my elbow in his chest.

  On offense he was giving me too much room. He didn’t put his body on me even when we were right under the basket, so I had the move.

  Nick was feeding me the ball from every angle and we were moving away from them. The best feed he did was when he went across the lane and brought it through his legs on a bounce pass. Soon as I got the ball I had one thing on my mind, a reverse slam. I went up strong, spun, and slammed the ball into the rim. The sucker bounced out almost to mid-court. Embarrassed.

  But the thing was we had them. Nick played his best game ever and even Jimmy got a few baskets as we beat them by five. We had won other games, but beating Hunter in their fine gym felt good.

  We showered and got dressed and headed for the subway because the Forensics Team was using the school bus. Goldy got to me in the locker room, telling me that I had showed character.

  “You have to show the same character off the court,” he said.

  “Yo, man, you don’t blow a chance to give up a lecture, do you?”

  “You’re only going to be here another year,” Goldy said. “I have to take every chance I can get. See you tomorrow.”

  “What did the coach say?”

  “He said we can’t afford to fall behind when we play Carver,” Goldy said.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  Ducky’s mom had came to the game and she took him home and me and Nick copped the subway uptown. We were laughing and going on about the game so much people must have thought we were drunk or something. It was just a good feeling. Then, when we hit 125th Street we saw this devastated-looking chick get on the train. It was cold but she was sweating and I knew she was a head. What she looked like most was a blackbird that was caught in the rain. The chick really looked pitiful and it got me down.

  I pushed my mind back to the game and what Goldy was saying about dealing for myself when things weren’t going that tough. It all sounded good but just because something sounded good it didn’t mean it was easy. Sometimes it seemed that when you were into a thing with schools and officials or just about anything that wasn’t happening in the hood you couldn’t even figure out what you were going up against. It was like a game where everybody knew the rules but you.

  Ducky had been a trip, slapping me on the back and smiling and everything. Thinking about having him for a friend made me think of Ice, too. It was getting to be easier hanging with Ducky than it was with Ice. Hanging with Ice was scary. I wanted to know more about Ducky but I knew I was looking away from finding out more about Ice.

  Grandma got out the hospital. My moms said she wasn’t any worse but she wasn’t any better, either. I didn’t dig it too tough. It was like they were sending her home to die. I busted over to her place and she was sitting at the kitchen table. She had on a housedress that looked a lot too big for her.

  “How you doing, boy?”

  “You know me, Grandma,” I said. “I’m always doing good. You know I started making that videotape for you. When I get it edited I’ll bring it over and show it to you.”

  “How you doing in school?” she asked. “Your mama said you were having a little trouble.”

  “I just got to buckle down and hit the books,” I said. “Get serious.”

  “There was a time they didn’t even let black people go to school.” Grandma got up and started making tea. “I only went three months a year when I was little.”

  Me and Grandma had tea and then she told me about a little Puerto Rican nurse she had met in the hospital and how smart she had been.

  “She called herself Estella,” she said. “Ain’t that a pretty name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That nurse was pretty, too,” she said. “I asked her if she had a boyfriend.”

  “What she say?”

  “She said she didn’t have none as handsome as my grandson,” Grandma said. She gave me a wink.

  “Yo, Grandma, good looking out.”

  We rapped for a while more and Grandma kissed me at the door when I was leaving, but the visit got me in a bad mood. Being sick and being old is something you have to deal with, but it isn’t something you have to like.

  When I got to school it was like everybody had a chip on their shoulder. We had a paper due in English and Mr. Parrish collected them. I remembered that we had the paper due some time, but I forgot just when. Mr. Parrish is the kind of guy who always thinks somebody is dissing him because they don’t do their homewo
rk. Like, you’re supposed to give him his propers by going home and working on what he wants you to work on. Then if you show late he cops this nasty attitude and puts his mouth on you.

  “So, Mr. Harris, just why are you taking up classroom space?” He was standing over me. “Why don’t you just go out to your neighborhood and find a corner to stand on? That’s what you want from life, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be standing over me, man,” I said.

  “Don’t be standing over me?” he raised his voice. “Is that directly from your African background? Maybe from the We-Be tribe?”

  As I got up I knew I was wrong. And I knew that what I had in mind was to rock his jaw. I pulled my fist back and felt somebody grab my arm. It was little Karen. By the time I had turned and pushed her away, Mr. Parrish had backed away and was headed toward the door.

  “Forget him!” Karen was yelling at me. “He’s wrong, forget him!”

  My books were on my desk and I reached for them and knocked them to the floor. I left them there and walked on out the classroom. Mr. Parrish was already all the way down the hall, headed toward the principal’s office. The door leading outside was in the other direction and I headed that way.

  It was cold as it wanted to be. The hawk was biting and there were snow flurries in the air. There was a little restaurant down the street and I went into it and ordered a cup of soup.

  “Seventy-five cents!” the guy behind the counter said.

  “Yeah.”

  He took the change I put on the counter and I took the soup and found a table.

  The soup was barley bean, which I don’t dig that tough but it was hot and the restaurant was warm. I kept having flashes of scenes go off in my mind. Some scenes would have me punching out Mr. Parrish. Other scenes would have me being put out of school, or getting arrested. I tried to think back if I had hurt Karen. She looked okay, I thought. I wondered why she jumped up and grabbed me. Did I look like a wild man or something?

  “So what’s happening?”

  I jumped when I heard Goldy’s voice.