by Bill Dodds
“That’s not in the rules,” Matthew answered.
“That’s not against the rules,” Charlie argued. “Ask your pa. Ask him if we can use a substitute.”
The crowd parted and there was Mr. Meyer. “How about it, Pa?” Matthew asked.
“Well, now,” Mr. Meyer said, “I suppose, under the right conditions that might be . . .”
“What conditions?” Uncle Peter asked.
“Have to be a family member, of course,” Mr. Meyer said and Uncle Peter nodded. “And . . . and my boys here would get to pick him.”
“Now, wait . . .” Uncle Peter said.
“Him!” Matthew Meyer immediately said. “In the funny jacket. Him! Him! Him!”
He was pointing straight at me.
Chapter 27
Hoops? Hoops!
“I can’t,” I said, feeling sick because I knew I was going to lose the tournament and that meant losing the farm.
“Never met a Farrell couldn’t pitch a horseshoe,” some man said.
“Or pitch woo,” another answered and a bunch of people laughed.
“Right on both accounts,” Uncle Peter said. “We can toss the shoes and we know how to court the ladies. Now watch as our cousin Michael here . . .”
“Not horseshoes,” Matthew Meyer said. “No one ever said the final round would be horseshoes.”
“But Founders’ Day always has a horseshoe-pitching contest,” Sean said. “Everyone knows that any contest would include . . .”
“A new game,” Matthew Meyer said. “Sweeping the country. All the rage in the cities. Being played up at State.”
“State?” I asked.
“The state college,” Charlie said. “Matthew goes away to school, to college. He’s just home for the summer.”
“You two will like it,” Mark Meyer said. “Matthew and I have been practicing for the last two weeks now, but you’ll get the hang of it real fast.” Then he and his brother and their father laughed.
“I knew it,” Aunt Mary whispered.
“What new game?” Uncle Peter asked.
“You’ll see,” Matthew Meyer said. “Come on. Over to the dance floor.”
A dance contest! Charlie and I were going to be competing in a dance contest?
Aunt Mary stayed with Pat, who still wasn’t ready to stand up, but the rest of us walked over to the other side of the little park where the wooden dance floor had been set up. Spectators lined the perimeter of the floor and the Meyer boys and Mr. Palmer walked out into the middle of it. Mr. Palmer was holding a ball, about the size of a soccer ball or a volleyball only made out of dark brown leather.
“Come along, boys,” he said to Charlie and me. “I’ll explain the rules, as best I understand them. The object here is to take the ball and put it up through one of those, without letting your opponent put it through the other one.”
What was he talking about? I looked to where he was pointing. The dance floor was a rectangle. At each of the shorter ends, a post about ten feet tall was sticking straight up, and about eight feet up on the post a wicker basket with the bottom missing was nailed to it.
“Who put the peach baskets way up there?” someone asked and people laughed.
It looked like a very crude . . . . They were talking about basketball. The new game was basketball!
“Charlie, I know this game,” I whispered with excitement. “Charlie, this is my game!”
Or at least it was kind of like my game. We were all at midcourt when Mr. Palmer handed the ball to Matthew Meyer and yelled, “Begin.” Matthew dribbled the ball every once in a while as he walked down the court and threw the ball—two-hand, underhand—up at the basket. It took him four tries to score.
All the while I was yelling “Traveling!” but no one was paying any attention to me.
“One to cipher,” Mr. Palmer said.
“Hey,” I said, “that’s no fair. He has to . . . .”
He handed the ball to Charlie who for some reason was looking up at the sky and Mark Meyer promptly pushed Charlie over and took the ball. Mark handed it to Matthew who walked back down the court and scored again.
“Two to cipher,” Mr. Palmer said. “The game is to ten. First team to ten wins.”
“Foul!” I said. “Flagrant . . . .”
Mr. Palmer handed the ball to me and Matthew Meyer immediately stomped down on my foot. I yelped as the ball came lose. He picked it up and threw it to his brother who took three tries to make another basket from right underneath.
“Three to cipher,” Mr. Palmer said and some of the spectators cheered.
“They’re cheating,” I said to Mr. Palmer as he handed me the ball and Matthew Meyer ran toward me again. “Time out,” I screamed as he tackled me and wrestled the ball away. “Time out, time out, time out!”
He rolled the ball to his brother who walked back down the court again and made another basket.
“Four to cipher,” Mr. Palmer said.
“Come on, Charlie,” I heard Sean call out. “Come on, Michael.”
“Charlie,” I said quickly before Mr. Palmer could hand me the ball again. “Run down court and stand in the key and I’ll give you a lob pass.”
“Stand in the what?”
It was too late. This time Mark Meyer struck and Matthew Meyer scored. It was five to nothing. They were halfway there. Mr. Palmer was walking toward Charlie and me with the ball.
“Charlie,” I said. “As soon as you get the ball, throw it to me.” I ran down the court, he got he ball and tossed it to me, and I missed the shot.
I had a lot of excuses. The ball was the wrong size and weight. The basket was smaller than regulation size. There was no backboard. The sun was right in my eyes, almost straight up in the sky, and two big boys were charging toward me. But I got my own rebound and made the shot.
“Five to one,” Mr. Palmer said and I could hear the Farrell family cheering.
Then the pace of the game picked up. Matthew Meyer missed his next shot and I was right there to get the rebound. I tossed it to Charlie, who was still standing about midcourt, and raced to our own basket. He knew what to do. He passed it to me and I was able to make another easy bucket.
We were doing better but the Meyers kept doing all right, too. All too soon the score was nine to seven and we were only one basket away from losing everything.
Matthew and Mark had finally adapted to my no-backboard lay-ins and were waiting at the base of the key, ready to knock me on my rear end.
“We’ll use the ‘give and go,’” I said to Charlie before Mr. Palmer handed me the ball. “My coach says it’s the oldest play in basketball.”
“That’s what this is, huh?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “this is more like wrestling and there just happens to be a ball out here.”
I brought the ball from midcourt down to the top of the key—if there had been a key—and handed it to Charlie. I went by both Meyers who came charging out at him. He just barely got it over the tops of their outstretched arms and into my hands.
I missed the lay-in but Charlie got the rebound and put it in. It was nine to eight. I slapped him on the back. “Way to go,” I said but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was looking up at the sky again.
After Mr. Palmer gave Matthew Meyer the ball, he carried it down to about three-point range and gave a big two-hand underhand shot that went way over the top of the backboard.
People laughed.
“This time,” I said to Charlie, “instead of passing the ball over the top of them, bounce it down by their feet so that it comes up where I am.”
“You’re really smart, Michael,” he said, as if I had invented the bounce pass.
It worked. I made the lay-in and it was nine to nine.
Matthew Meyer got the ball and I felt as if a bull were running toward me as I stood down there on defense. I carefully planted my feet so he would be called with charging. That was a pretty stupid thing to do, considering Mr. Palmer hadn’t called
a foul the whole game because apparently he didn’t know what a foul was.
Charlie was smarter than I was. And he was braver to. He ran toward Matthew and then sprang straight out and butted Matthew right in the chest with his head. The ball popped loose and I scooped it up and ran toward our basket.
But Mark Meyer was still down there. He came steaming right at me and I knew there was no way I was ever going to make a lay-in or survive the crash that was coming.
At about three-point range I stopped and jumped straight up, as far as I could. With one hand, I lofted the ball toward the basket. I was concentrating on what my coach had always said: “Look, set, shoot. Center of the basket.”
The ball seemed to hang in the air forever. Mark Meyer turned his head to see what was going to happen and he smashed right into me just as the ball started heading down.
Chapter 28
My Old World Seems Like a New World
Swish!
And then Mark Meyer drove me into the hard floor and spectators came streaming out, cheering loudly. I had landed on my bottom and my head snapped back against the floor. My eyes were squeezed shut—I was trying not to cry—but I could tell the crowd was all around me.
Then I heard Charlie. He was right on the floor next to me. “Here,” he shouted over all the noise. He pressed something into my hand. It was hard and round.
“You all right?”
“I smacked my head,” I said.
“But are you all right?”
There was a booming, too, that was slowly fading away. And some loud tapping. A lot of it. I wondered if the dancing had already started.
I opened my eyes and my great-grandfather was staring down at me with concern. The thunder was dying. It was raining. I was sitting on the floor, up against the wall in a small, two-bed room at Fair Brook Nursing Home and Convalescent Center.
“I . . . I . . .” I stammered and Great-grandpa sat back in bed.
“Bumped your head,” he said.
“I . . .”
“You were out for a couple of seconds there. Sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, Charlie,” I said, “I’m fine. I just . . . . I mean . . . .”
He gave me a big toothless smile, making him look like an old jack-o’-lantern that was starting to shrivel up.
I stood up. “I . . . .” I tried again. “I had a dream.”
“Been quite a birthday, has it?” he asked.
“No, that was a week ago. I . . . .”
He laughed softly. “I wish you could see your face,” he said.
“But it was so real!” I said.
“Who said it wasn’t real?” he asked.
“But . . .”
“I meant you could hold it,” he said. “But I didn’t mean you could keep it. We weren’t playing for keeps.”
“What?” I asked.
He pointed at my right hand. I opened it up and there was Charlie’s—I mean Great-grandpa’s, I mean Charlie’s—prize marble. The one with the red, white, and blue streaks in it.
“It was real?” I asked.
“Happy birthday, Michael,” he said.
“But,” I said, “if I close my eyes, I’m right there. Eighty-eight years ago.”
“Me, too,” Great-grandpa said. “Not like you were. In my memory. The years just disappear. They went so very fast. Everyone tells me I’m one hundred today but inside I’m still . . . .” He paused and shrugged.
“You mean all those things happened?” I asked.
“We saved the farm,” he said. “You and I.”
I had a million questions and he was very patient with me as he gave me some of the answers.
“Did you ever sail around the world?” I asked first.
“No,” he said. “After I was through with school, I went right to work in Culver City and then I got married and started a family.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It was all right,” Great-grandpa said. “It was the right thing to do. Francis joined the Navy. Saw a lot of the world.” He paused. “He was at Pearl Harbor in 1941 when it was attacked. He died there.”
I thought of little Francis. It was hard to imagine he had been dead for more than fifty years.
“What about the rest of the family?” I asked.
“Ma and Pa died about twenty years after your visit,” Great-grandpa said. “Flu epidemic. Within three days of one another. Brigid got married and raised a family. She passed away thirty years ago.
“Sean got the farm. He married and raised a family, too. He kept the farm until he was too old to work it and none of his boys were interested in it, so he sold it and he and his wife moved into town. He died of a heart attack when he was eighty.”
I nodded. I supposed they were all gone. All but Charlie. All but Great-grandpa.
“Pat got into the insurance game,” he said. “Made a small fortune and retired to Florida. Cancer. He’s been gone for, oh, twenty years now anyway.”
The list continued. Jerome and Catherine had also led long and happy lives but they were dead, too.
We were both silent for a while. Remembering a time that was long ago. A time that had just been here.
“You had a neat childhood,” I said and he nodded.
“It goes too quickly,” he said. “A lifetime goes much too quickly.”
“Do you miss all of them?”
“Of course. But it doesn’t hurt so much after a while.”
“The hole in you heart gets smaller,” I said. “Like Richard said.”
“Richard . . . .” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “I haven’t thought about Richard in I don’t know how long.”
“Did I just disappear after the game?” I asked. “How did you explain that to your parents?”
“In the crowd. You were gone. Nobody knew where. I said you were shy and you wanted to get back to your own family.”
“I did,” I agreed. I thought about David and Robert and Sarah. About Mom and Dad. “A family doesn’t live together at the same place for very long, does it?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “but the love never has to end.”
There was a soft knocking at the door.
“Come in,” Great-grandpa called out.
“What should I call you?” I asked.
“Call me?” he said.
“Great-grandpa seems too . . . I don’t know. Formal. And Charlie isn’t right either.” I could just imagine what my mother would say if I started to call Great-grandpa “Charlie.”
But that sounded good. “How about ‘Great-grandpa Charlie’?” I asked.
“That would be fine,” he said. “And I do want my marble back.” I handed it to him.
“All done with your little visit?” It was Great-great-aunt Lauretta.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“All done for now, Sissie,” Great-grandpa Charlie said.
Chapter 29
Hellos and Good-byes
Sissie? Great-great-aunt Lauretta, this tiny old lady, was Sissie? The little girl who liked to swing on the gate?
“I want to stay and talk to you longer,” I said to Great-grandpa Charlie and he smiled and nodded.
“I’m a little tired,” he said, “but I want to talk more, too. You come back and see me another day, all right?”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re not coming down to your own birthday party?” Great-great-aunt Lauretta asked him.
“Later. I think I’ll take a little nap now,” he said, adding, “The nicest part about being the oldest member of the family is that sometimes you really get to do what you want to do.”
He held out his hand and I took it. The same hand that had grabbed a rope to carry him squealing out over a river, that had dunked bucket after bucket into a horse trough while the summer kitchen burned, that had pushed a red-white-and-blue marble into my own hand a long time a ago—a little while ago.
“I’ve thought it over and I want you to keep this,” he said softly, handing
me the little glass ball one more time. “Happy birthday, Michael.”
“Happy birthday, Great-grandpa Charlie,” I said, bending down and giving him a hug, happy that it’s all right for a twelve-year-old boy to hug his one hundred-year-old great-grandpa. I stood back up, slipped the marble into my pants pocket and looked at him. “Will I ever get to go back again?” I asked.
