Pick-Up Game

by Marc Aronson

  Step into the arena

  where gladiators meet,

  the Cage at West 4th,

  home of hallowed concrete,

  where ballers test skill,

  heart

  soul

  and will,

  and go toe-to-toe

  to entertain

  and thrill

  faces behind fences

  focused courtside

  on warriors being tested

  with noplace to hide.

  Battle-hardened bodies

  crash into the fence

  from “no blood, no foul”

  hands-on defense,

  making wide-eyed wannabes

  freeze and get shook,

  ’cause here you show heart

  or your soul

  will get took.

  “Boo, you wake?” Moms standing in the doorway.

  “Yeah.”

  “That white boy on the phone,” she said. “What he want calling so early?”

  “What white boy?”

  “The one brought that little skinny girl up here last week.”

  “Fish,” I said. “I don’t know what he wants.”

  “He going to marry that girl?”

  “I don’t know, Mom.”

  The minutes on my cell were long gone, and so I had to trek out to the kitchen to use the house phone. Shanay was up, looking at something in a bowl. I asked her what she was eating.

  “Grits,” she said. “You want some?”

  “Naw,” I said as I picked up the phone. “Yo, Fish, what’s up, man?”

  “You want to run tomorrow morning?” he asked. “I got some dudes together. Maybe about nine? Down at the Cage.”

  “Nine in the damned morning?” I asked. “Who’s going to be running at nine in the morning?”

  “Some of my guys got jobs,” Fish said. “I figured we could get in a good run, five-on-five, for twenty cents a man. Cop some exercise.”

  Whoa. The alarms went off big-time. Jeff Fisher loved ball and knew I was into balling, but why was he trying to sweeten the pot? He wouldn’t be calling me the first thing in the morning talking about running no ball for twenty dollars a man unless there was something going on.

  “I don’t know, man,” I said. “Nine is early. This is July. Guys don’t want to get out of bed that time.”

  “You can’t handle it?” he asked. Calm. Casual. That was Fish.

  “Give me a minute and call me back,” I said.

  Fish and me have played ball together since the fifth grade. He was a run-mouth and had the game to back it up. But if there was any taste involved, it would usually be three dollars, maybe five at the most, enough to buy some sodas. Him talking about twenty dollars a man meant he was really anxious to get something going. I asked Shanay if I could use her cell.

  “No.”

  I called my man Earl on my mother’s phone.

  “I think he’s going to bring down some white boys from college,” Earl said. “They got that kind of money to be throwing around. Or maybe he got some of them wine heads he play with out at St. John’s in Brooklyn. They beat you half to death.”

  “Yeah, but they can’t run with us and Fish knows that,” I said. “He got something else going on if he’s going to lay out twenty a man and don’t even ask me who I’m going to bring.”

  “Yeah, but it don’t make me no nevermind because I ain’t got twenty dollars anyway,” Earl said.

  “Ronnie got money,” I said. “We get him to front us, we can play. We just got to figure out what Fish got up his sleeve.”

  “If Ronnie is fronting, I’m in,” Earl said.

  Earl had played some football and looked it. Thick head, thick neck that came down into sloping shoulders, and a body that tapered quickly into a small waistline that moved a lot quicker than people expected. Most of all he hated to lose and was as strong as skunk pee. He was half the battle.

  I called around and lined up Jamal, Ronnie from 116th Street, and LD, a skinny brother with a nice touch. Ronnie agreed to front the deal, but he was worried about Fish, too.

  “He knows that we know he’s slick, and it don’t even matter to him,” Ronnie said. “But what I think is he’s got some big center and he thinks we won’t know who he is. It’s got to be a size thing. If everybody shows up, we can handle our business.”

  Like Ronnie said, Fish was throwing down and we all knew it. But that was the challenge, and I was hooked.

  Mom asked me what Fish had wanted, and I told her we were going to be playing ball in the morning. She asked me if Mr. Morton, my coach, knew about it, and I said something about “Yeah, Tiny knows.” She could smell the lie but didn’t push it.

  LD lived with his aunt on St. Nicholas Ave., and by eight fifteen in the morning, we were piling into the A train ready to go down to West 4th. On the way, everybody was talking about how we were going to bust some serious ass and how it really didn’t mean nothing who Fish brought. I wasn’t buying that because I had known Fish for longer than the other guys, and me and him were close. The skinny girl he had brought to the house was Marilyn, and he had brought her around for my moms to check her out because he was dead-on serious about marrying her.

  “You ain’t but seventeen,” my moms had said to him. “If she ain’t pregnant, why you in such a hurry?”

  Fish said he was in love but the real reason was that Marilyn was the only decent white chick he knew.

  The Cage. I loved the place. A tiny little court surrounded by a twenty-foot fence that every real player in the city knew about and eventually showed up with their best game to be checked out. It was as if we were all gladiators coming into the arena to show off our skills. We got off at the 8th Street exit and walked slowly down 6th Avenue to 4th. I could feel myself getting excited and could hear Jamal’s voice start getting high. He was excited, too. Soon as we got close, we spotted Fish talking to Marcus from Fort Greene.

  “Marcus can’t handle me,” LD said. “I’ll eat his ass up.”

  I knew Marcus, too, and he was OK. He had a nice jump shot if you gave him room to set it up. Him and Fish were both good shooters, and I figured that if they did have a monster to fill the paint, that might be the play.

  “Hey, Fish, what’s happening, my brother!” I gave Fish a fist bump.

  “What’s happening, Mr. Byron Jackson?” Fish came back. “How’s the family and especially sweet little Shantay?”

  “Don’t be looking at my sister,” I said. “I’ll have to get my shotgun out.”

  “I got to change my shoelaces,” Jamal said. “The left one broke and it’s bad luck to wear different shoelaces.”

  “Your bad luck started when you showed up,” Fish said. “The shoelaces won’t help.”

  “Well, we gonna see, white boy,” Jamal said. “That’s why we here.”

  Jamal knew his shoelace wasn’t broken, but we wanted to get some time to assess who they had and strategize.

  “Who they got?” Jamal was asking when we reached the sideline. “Fish and Marcus can play, but they ain’t all that.”

  “Yo, Boo, I played against that light-skinned guy with FLYER across his shirt,” Earl said to me. “His name is Bryan.”

  “How he play?” I asked.

  “He’s pretty good,” Earl said. “He can get up and snatch bounds, but he’s too skinny to make a difference. And that dude with all the muscle is Frankie Walls. He’s starting for Grady this year. He looks strong, but my grandmother got more speed.”

  “Who’s that other white guy they got?” Jamal asked. “I think he’s a white supremacist or something.”

  We looked over and saw the guy Jamal was talking about. He was about my height, six two . . . maybe six three, with square, bony shoulders. Kind of a creepy-l
ooking dude.

  “Why you think he’s a white supremacist?” I asked.

  “Look how white the sucker is,” Jamal said. “You know he must have been in prison or something. He ain’t never been in no sun.”

  “He’s wearing a sweatshirt,” Earl said. “If he takes it off, we can see if he’s got any tats. All those skinheads got tats and shit.”

  “No, man, he wouldn’t be hanging out with Fish if he was a skinhead,” I said. “They don’t like Jews either.”

  “He got to be their ace,” Jamal said. “Unless they wouldn’t be throwing no twenty dollars in the pot.”

  “We’ll find out.” LD was pulling on his jockstrap. “And it really don’t make me no nevermind. I’m going home with some money today.”

  I knew it wasn’t about the paper. Fish had just thrown that in to make sure I could get guys down so early in the morning. There was something else floating around in his head.

  Fish had brought along three brothers and the pale white dude to take us on. When he introduced us, he said the white guy’s name was Waco. Up close he didn’t look like a ballplayer. His eyes were set deep and looked dark, but that could have been just because he was so pale. He had dirty blond hair that hung down over his forehead and a thin mouth that looked like somebody had just slashed it across his face. But the thing that set him apart was how white he was. He wasn’t like an albino because his eyes were dark enough. It was just that he didn’t have any color to him, and I was wondering if he was a crackhead or something, and if he was, what the heck Fish was hanging with him for.

  We were going to go eleven, straight. We got two Korean students with NYU backpacks to keep score for us so there would be no arguments.

  OK, I know my game is correct. Fish was hip to everybody on my squad, and when he told us to take the ball out first, I knew he was making the matchups.

  The run started out cool enough, and right away I saw that Waco was on me. I figured Fish had told him about my game, but telling and smelling ain’t the same, so I wasn’t worried.

  He picked me up just past the short half court line they got in the Cage and started pushing me toward the side. That was cool. White college ball 101; don’t give your man the middle. I gave up the ball to Jamal and went to set up a screen, but Waco was on my case and blocking it off. I stepped to him, pushed off, and went to the corner, where I got the ball and went up for the shot.

  The shot dropped, and we had to stop the game to figure out if we were going to go with threes or not. We had the size so I said no and Fish went along with it.

  They brought the ball down, and Waco was off the play and sliding toward the corner. I thought he was going to either come in and bump back out to the corner to match my shot or try to cut across the lane to see what he could do there.

  He did come in, bumped out a step, and then posted high when the ball swung away from us. Fish made a move to the hoop and passed out to Waco. He went straight up without faking or putting the ball on the ground. Efficient. He dropped his shot, and I could see he was confident. I tightened up on him, and he was on me just as hard. He ran his hands good, first a hand on my side, then on my hip; he was watching the ball and feeling where I was at the same time. When I was on the dribble, he played back just enough where the crossover wasn’t going to work but not too far back for me to get off another easy jumper.

  On one play, we got into some serious Cage play. Marcus tried to hand check LD and got knocked hard into the fence, making a girl leaning against the fence drop her ice cream. I liked that.

  The game was going back and forth, and I thought everybody was on their game when Ronnie called time-out.

  “Yo, Boo, get into it, man!” he said to me. “I got some bucks on the game. They’re ahead, and you ain’t getting with it.”

  “Dude’s all over me,” I said. “You see I ain’t free.”

  “Bruise his ass!” was the comeback.

  Ronnie was right. I had to give Waco a heart check.

  Earl was leaning against the fence when he threw the ball in to LD.

  “Look for me on the breakaway,” I said. “Alley left!”

  LD passed the ball to Jamal, who brought it down, and I headed right toward the center. Like I figured, Waco came out and blocked off the middle, waiting for me to pick a side. No way. I made a little jive fake to my right, which I knew he wasn’t going to go for, and then went right at him, planting my right foot on top of his right sneaker hard and pushing off straight past him. I knew with my foot on his, he couldn’t move, and by the time he got turned around, I was down the left side and going up for Jamal’s pass.

  There weren’t many people watching the game when I came down from the slam, but it made me feel good. When I went back upcourt, I brushed past Waco like he was nothing.

  He had been trying to post me, which I thought was wack because he didn’t know how strong I am. He tried to push in down the lane again with Flyer on the other line. They were taking turns rocking toward the middle and looking for the pass. Waco was steady backing into me and he was strong, but I brought my elbow up aside his head, all the time looking the other way like I didn’t know I was up in his face. When the ball came in to Flyer and he spun into the middle with a little left-hand move, I clocked Waco out hard.

  He whirled toward me as Earl grabbed the bound and started downcourt.

  “What? What?” I stood toe-to-toe and eyeball-to-eyeball with the sucker. “You got something to say?”

  He didn’t say nothing. He just lifted his hands in the air a little like, “Hey, if that’s the game . . .” He went on to midcourt and didn’t turn until the ball came out from under the basket and Jamal was setting us up again.

  Fish had seen me and Waco facing off and looked at both of us but he didn’t say nothing either. I would have thought that maybe the game was over, that I had just punked Waco out and we were on the way to copping the game except for one thing: when me and him were face-to-face and I could feel the dude’s breath on me, it was like, seriously cold. We were in the middle of the damned summer running a full and the dude’s breath was cold as freaking ice. He was sweating; I could see the drops on his brow, but he was still pale and his breath was flat-out cold.

  It was 7–6 in their favor; by now there were more people watching the game and about at least a half dozen guys who wanted to get some game. A fat brother was selling water near the entrance to the Cage for two dollars a bottle, and I saw Fish standing with him. I went over.

  “Yo, Boo, let’s not get into nothing,” Fish said.

  “That guy got some kind of disease or something?” I asked Fish. “His breath is cold, man. What’s up with that?”

  “No, he’s OK,” Fish said. He looked away and then glanced past my shoulder to where Waco was leaning against the fence. “He’s from out in Riverhead, where my cousin lives. I played some ball with him out there, and I liked the game and gave him my number. I kind of owe him. You know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean,” I said. Fish didn’t answer. That wasn’t like Fish. Fish always had something to say. Was always running his mouth and would back it up with his hands if he had to.

  “Boo, we got two dimes apiece on this game.” Ronnie was back to his money. “I ain’t got no Benjamins to spare. Let’s get something going.”

  I was working as hard as I could. Waco wasn’t kicking my butt, but he was taking me out of the game and I knew I was supposed to be the one collecting the offering.

  Fish had a lot of respect for my game. We had made some righteous runs together. Brooklyn, Rucker, Fort Greene, even down to Philly. But he was lying to me about Waco.

  I kept thinking about Waco’s breath and even found myself trying to get close to his face to see if I was imagining it or something. The dude was strong and he had some game and all that was good, but the cold breath thing still had me going.

  When Waco had the ball, he didn’t have no big moves. What he had was a steady game and the art of putting
the ball soft against the backboard when he was inside. Usually, with two or three guys going up with the ball and two or three trying to stop them, the ball would be bouncing off the rim mostly. But Waco didn’t go for the straight-in shot over the rim; he always went for the backboard, and that sucker was steady dropping.

  Ronnie was trying to post Frankie, their muscle man, and was getting hacked to death, so he wasn’t doing nothing but jawing.

  It was looking bad for us. With Waco and Fish keeping our offense on the wings, we were paying for every mistake we made. People along the sidelines was talking, and I imagined them saying how good a game it was, and some were even taking pictures. Probably tourists. But my side was losing, and I hated that crap.

  Dudes were already lining up who was going to run next.

  I had tried to muscle Waco, and he could give as well as he could take. I had tested his heart, and he hadn’t backed off. Now I knew I had to test myself. I had to step up and call my own number.

  “Get the ball to me,” I said as we huddled. “You dudes ’bound and I’ll bring us back.”

  “Bet!” This from Earl.

  I had to say something to Waco. Maybe it was really me I was talking to, but I knew I had to say the words so I wouldn’t be backing down on no humble.

  “Yo, Flake-O or Waco or whatever your damn name is,” I said, looking him dead in the face, “it’s my game now.”

  When he grinned, his face looked like a wound you see in the morgue. Then, for a moment, he looked serious, like he was thinking. Then he leaned forward and said, “I hear you.”

  With Waco’s words came that same freaky cold breath.

  I know I can hoop. I know what the ball feels like against the palm of my hand even when I’m laying in bed or walking through the supermarket. I know what it feels like against my palms and going off my fingertips. I know the feeling and I love it. I love it because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  I got the ball and took it straight to the hoop. Waco went with me, pushing me farther out from the middle than I wanted to be, than I needed to be, but I still made my move, still went up, still put it up over his outstretched fingers, but it rolled around the rim and missed. Ronnie copped the tap in, but I dug what was happening. Waco had taken up my challenge. He was telling me to bring whatever game I had.