Pick-Up Game

by Marc Aronson

  “Let’s go,” said ESPN. “This ain’t the NBA draft.”

  “The light, Cane, the light,” said Monji.

  It wasn’t hard. Maybe not exactly the team Dad would have picked — we talked about that, too — but a good team, with diversity. ESPN, ’Nique, Caesar, and Waco. Black, woman, Hispanic, and very white. The fifth was the hard choice. I was trying to decide between Boo and Red. Their games were about the same. Then I spotted the Indian guy, his hard hat under his arm.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  He glanced at Waco and gave me a funny grin. “Cochise.”

  “You’re on,” I said.

  He shook his head a little apologetically and thumped his chest. “Don’t have a full game in me.”

  “Not a full game,” said Waco. “Need an outside shooter.”

  “You guys ready?” said Monji.

  “We want Equity rates,” said ESPN. “Same as your guys getting.”

  “It’s a PSA,” said Monji. “We’re all waiving our fees.”

  “Be your audition, E,” said ’Nique. “For Zombie Hoops.”

  “I like that. You be the monster.”

  The guys with cameras and sound booms, some of them girls, took positions around the court and the makeup and hair ladies started powdering and combing. Monji said something about Waco being too pale, but before anyone could slap powder on his face, Waco walked away. ESPN wanted his eyebrows darkened, and ’Nique got in a big discussion about her hair. The actors were mostly made up already, just needed touch-ups.

  A girl came around with a clipboard and asked my team to sign papers.

  “What’s this?” said Caesar.

  “Release forms,” she said.

  “For permission to use your image,” I said. “You don’t have to use your real name.”

  The girl shot me a nasty look, but then Monji started yelling and she shrugged.

  Monji rushed them through warm-ups, then stepped off the court. “Play ball.”

  I got behind the backboard on the uptown side so I could lean against the fence there if I had to.

  The assistant-DA type said, “Three-pointers?”

  “No,” said Monji. “Too hard to edit.”

  “Yes,” said Waco. “You want authentic?”

  “You guys always play treys?” said Monji.

  “Yes,” I lied so Waco wouldn’t have to. He looked at me with those dark dead eyes. I could only imagine he was grateful. But imagine is what I do, bro.

  Monji glanced up at the sky, sighed, shrugged, nodded.

  They won the toss; the Geezer took it out.

  Monji’s guys could play, but they couldn’t really play together. They tried stuff that would look good if it worked, alley-oop passes for on-your-head dunks, but you can’t do that if you haven’t practiced it. They had enough trouble with picks. They wanted to look good. Those PSAs are short; getting a couple seconds of screen time is a big deal. It could lead to a commercial, a role in a lousy Monji film. The Hispanic model could slash to the hoop, but only if no one was in his path, and ’Nique always got at least one butt cheek in front of him. The rapper was their big man, fearless, but he was slow and he couldn’t go all the way up with Waco. Cochise did a good job boxing him out until he started coughing, and then he just waited for an outside shot. By the time the actors pulled ahead, 6–4, ESPN was playing a half-court game because he was a dog, and Cochise was always a step behind, breathing through his mouth.

  ’Nique, Waco, and Caesar kept us in the game. I started feeling something like love for them, without even liking them very much. ’Nique was a warrior, no one was going to get over her, and Caesar had a mean streak, he just wanted to chop you down, and Waco’s steady game never wavered, never quit. He passed a lot. He ran without the ball.

  Dad always said, You’ve got to have a mystery character in your story, one that’s going to surprise the reader. Who would it be? He was trying to finish a book before he died, but he didn’t make it. It was a basketball thriller — he wrote mostly literary detective novels that didn’t make much money — and he said he would turn it over to me if he got too sick. He did, but I haven’t been able to open it yet.

  I could hear Dad saying, So who is the mystery character here?

  Has to be Waco, with his ghostly look, his dead calm, and his weird tats.

  Too obvious, said Dad. That boy’s been in Iraq or Afghanistan or both, killed people, seen buddies die, maybe got hurt himself. He plays ball to keep the demons out of his head, to forget the Haj. He’s no mystery except to himself.

  So who’s the mystery man?

  It’s always the writer, said Dad. The one with the power to thrill, to teach, to surprise. Writer always gets the last shot.

  Cochise went down. He was on his hands and knees, coughing and retching, until two hard hats came on the court and lifted him up. As they led him off, Cochise looked around and said, “Sorry.”

  “Sub him,” yelled Monji.

  Waco pointed at me. “Cane.”

  I jerked off the back fence into a gray-taped backboard pole. “Me?”

  “Be four against five,” said ESPN.

  “Like life,” said ’Nique.

  “We want to win,” said Caesar.

  “Not about winning or losing,” said Monji. “It’s about making a movie. I like this. A gutsy crippled guy.”

  “We need an outside shooter,” said Waco. “I’ve seen his game.”

  “Where?” I started to remember.

  “Here. You were with an old dude. Your grandfather?”

  “Dad,” I said. “He was real sick.” I felt I needed to explain.

  “He was proud of you,” said Waco.

  “How’d you know that?” I wanted to hear more.

  “Later.” Waco waved me on-court. “Stay in the game. Be ready.”

  “For what?”

  The game went on around me, without me. I was an invisible spectator again, only this time I was inside the fence, on the court. It looked like four against five, but the model and the Geezer and the rapper were sucking air while Waco and ’Nique and Caesar were just getting stronger, tougher. They wanted to win; this was their court; they were going to beat back the invaders, reclaim their land. I wanted to share this with Dad; it was the key to our story. Hoops was their life; it was all they had right now, maybe would ever have unless the game gave them confidence for something else. Tonight I am going to open Dad’s manuscript, finish his book for him.

  “Stay in the game, Cane,” yelled Waco.

  The actors were leading, 10–9, and ’Nique was shouting, “Got to win by two,” when the assistant DA slapped the ball out of ESPN’s hand and bounced it through Caesar’s legs to the Asian kid, who fired it to the rapper, who shouldered to the basket, traveling all the way. He went straight up. Waco went up with him. Black and white arms rising to the hoop.

  Waco punched the ball out of the rapper’s hand, right to me at half court.

  I am all alone because I am invisible, the writer, the mystery character. As Dad taught me, I soften my hands for the impact of the ball, take it in, grind the grit into my fingers, then lighten the touch until only my fingertips control the ball. I flex the good leg, relax the bad leg, lift my arms, and let the ball go. I follow the thought straight to the end of the story.

  Readers, I had more time to write this little piece than I expected. Last Friday I went to the gym to play some ball. I found three guys, and we started a good game of two-on-two — I made a couple of nice drives and we’d just come back from being down 7–3 to tying the score when I felt like someone threw a hardball and bashed me in the leg. I had been bad — hadn’t stretched, wasn’t in shape, and tore my Achilles tendon. I should have known better: the combined ages of the other three people on the court was less than mine. I am seriously old. But if you love the game, you just love the game. It is in your blood. For now, I can’t play — all I can do is read, and write, basketball stories.

  When you walk out
on a basketball court, you walk into a story: I win; you lose. But that’s only the big picture: every move you see has a story behind it. No, many stories. When you shoot a jump shot just right, you don’t have to look; you know it’s good — and that’s because of the hundred, no, thousand, times you’ve shot it, and when it feels that golden, that pure, it always goes through — nothing but net. Sometimes you pattern yourself on a star you see on TV — so you are literally reenacting history, trying to be what you saw. But then some of those practices were with coaches — in school, or on a team. That coach taught you how to slide your feet on D, how to box out, how to follow through — leaving that gooseneck arch of fingers hanging in the air. Your coach was passing on a layer of history — lessons from an earlier generation. Maybe there is even a trace of old James Naismith in some of those drills — the guy who invented basketball in December of 1891. But when you come to play pick-up, street ball, especially in a big city, there is yet another mist of history around you: the stories of the legends, the men who walked on air.

  In Willie’s and Bob Burleigh’s and Joe’s stories, they mention some legends of the game: Joe “the Destroyer” Hammond, Earl “the Goat” Manigault, Spanish Doc, Corky, Helicopter, Pee Wee Kirkland, Smush Parker, and former Knick Anthony Mason. Those are (or were) real people, who really did amazing things. There have been black players on college teams forever — though for a long time that was mainly in historically black colleges and a few northern schools. Major college basketball began to be integrated only in 1947, and the NBA followed three years later. But there was a long period, from the 1950s clear up to the ’70s, when some colleges resisted having black students and even integrated college and pro teams made sure to remain predominantly white. These racist policies left a great many terrific players behind to play street ball. And that was not so bad. The street heroes had enthusiastic fans, they could wow the crowds, and they could even pick up a lot of money — legally or illegally. The college and pro recruiters were nervous about the players — and the players were not so eager to give up the streets. So the official college and pro stats are only part of the history of the game. The other part is the legends.

  The most famous street-ball tournament was organized by Holcombe Rucker, a New York City playground director. The Rucker contests of the ’60s are so famous, people still talk about them. You can see (or play in) Rucker, Gaucho, and Riverside tournaments today, though Rucker is not on the original playground. The good news is that these great players have been described in some terrific books. That is yet another way that walking out on a court is walking into a story — if you love playing, there is so much worth reading. The classics are Pete Axthelm’s The City Game, Rick Telander’s Heaven Is a Playground, and Darcy Frey’s The Last Shot. But I’ve also seen some newer books and even videos on the Rucker, or the Goat, or the mingled history of civil rights and basketball. And to be personal, the first piece I ever published was an op-ed in the New York Times — about the sad day when the two courts where I used to play pick-up ball were closed and I realized how much those games meant to me (“Melting Court, Melting Pavement,” July 4, 1987).

  Charles and I created this book as a way to get some of the feeling of pick-up on the page. So we made the book itself a kind of game. We chose the setting and the date and gave each author a time slot. Each author knew who was on the court because we didn’t let an author write a new story until the previous one was done. Each writer came on the court knowing who was playing, who had won, but ready to tell his or her own story. And that is just what it is in pick-up — there is the constant of the game and the court, but the ever changing challenge of the mix of players and skills that you find when it is your next. Nothing could be more fun. One day I was standing with my older son at a court in Venice Beach, California — body builders and strange creatures on roller skates all around us. We found a game, just as we usually do at our local Jewish center in suburban New Jersey. The two games could not have been more different, or more similar. And in a way, that’s what the stories in this book are — similar and totally different. I hope some of you try your own pick-up games — choose a place, a time, set the rules of the game, and start to tell stories — just the way you do on the court.

  Walter Dean Myers says, “My best basketball experience: getting into a game with Wilt Chamberlain, who had brought a crew up from Philly to play at (I believe) City College. I was a 160-pound guard, and Wilt was Wilt. I got caught in a switch and found myself behind him in the lane. He backed in — his butt in my chest — and called for the ball. I decided to make a joke of it and grabbed his arm. Wilt got the ball and went up, lifting me off the ground. A lesson in understanding levels of basketball. I also traveled to Prague to watch basketball there and used the city as the origin of one player in my book Game. Seymour Simon’s late wife (a fanatical Knicks fan) set me up to meet local Czechs.” Walter Dean Myers is one of the most important writers for children today. His books include the much-lauded Monster, Fallen Angels, Sunrise over Fallujah, and, most recently, Riot.

  Bruce Brooks is the author of two hoops books: The Moves Make the Man, a novel, and Those Who Love the Game, the true story of Celtics coach Doc Rivers’s life in the NBA and elsewhere. Bruce has written other books too, many of them about sports. He has three sons and lives in Brooklyn.

  Willie Perdomo is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in the New York Times Magazine, Bomb, African Voices, and CENTRO journal. His children’s book Visiting Langston received a Coretta Scott King Honor, and his most recent picture book is called Clemente! He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University and a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. He is cofounder and publisher of Cypher Books.

  Sharon G. Flake has one of the most authentic voices in young adult literature today. From elementary school through college, young people, educators, and school districts across the nation clamor for her work. She is a multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner whose novel The Skin I’m In made her a household name. Her collection You Don’t Even Know Me: Short Stories and Poems About Boys demonstrates her ability to captivate male readers and speak to their hopes and concerns. Sharon G. Flake’s claim to basketball is the hoop attached to her house. It was there when she purchased the home eleven years ago and has been used sparingly. “Since I never did use that hoop or follow basketball, I had to put my own spin on the basketball story I wrote for this collection, proving that at a game, all the action doesn’t take place on the court.”

  Robert Burleigh says, “There have been countless alleys, garage driveways, playgrounds, YMCAs, sports clubs, school gyms. I wish I could remember all the names and cool (and not so cool) nicknames I’ve carried in my head. It would be nice to have a few videos, too, because some people I played with had real game. What remains most for me, though, is the feeling of moving on the fly (3 on 2, 2 on 1, whatever) when the flow — no matter what part of it you are — is pure magic. That, along with the rough of the ball in your hands, won’t soon go. My one attempt to catch the game in words is a picture book called Hoops, published in the late ’90s by Harcourt, and illustrated by Steven Johnson.”

  Rita Williams-Garcia says, “When I was taking dance classes in the West Village, I’d pass crowds hanging on to the chain-link fence watching the action inside the Cage. Sometimes I’d watch the run. Mostly I’d scan the onlookers who couldn’t pull away from the spectacular plays and the on-court brutality. When I was writing my novel Jumped, I wanted Dominique to be a point guard and to know something about that kind of brutality. In one chapter she mentions playing ball on 4th Street. It was a no-brainer to suit Dominique up when I was invited to contribute a story to Pick-Up Game. Not only did I want to get a girl inside the Cage; I also wanted to get that collision of West Village art and the physical contest inside the Cage. With the IFC Center directly opposing the Cage
on 6th Avenue, I had to go for it. As a girl playing ball in my neighborhood, my shooting wasn’t great, but I could dribble, pass, and guard. Even today while bouncing from game to game on cable, I stay glued to whoever’s playing guard. My all-time favorite guard in the WNBA is the late Kim Perrot of the Houston Comets.”

  Joseph Bruchac has had a lifelong love of basketball, even though he was too short to make the team his first three years in high school. (He explores that time in another of his stories, “Swish,” which was anthologized in Lay-Ups and Long Shots.) He also feels a special connection to the game because of his American Indian ancestry. Ball games of all kinds were played by many Native American nations before the coming of Europeans, and the rubber ball was an invention of the peoples of Central America.

  Adam Rapp has been a full-fledged basketball junkie since the age of nine. In addition to playing high-school, college, semipro, and pro ball, he has played in all the major unlimited and pro-am tournaments in New York City, including the West 4th Summer Classic, where he was twice selected to the all-star team. He currently plays five times a week and can still go by guys half his age. He is the author of several YA novels, including the Michael L. Printz Honor winner Punkzilla.