Rucker Park Setup

by Paul Volponi

  “Because my father’s always looking out for us,” answered J.R., raising up from the top of the circle and burying another one.

  “That’s all right,” laughed Fat Anthony. “I’m even glad your pops is working the game tomorrow. I know he’ll keep things right.”

  Then Fat Anthony stuck out his hand, and after a second, Stove shook it.

  “I just hope it’s a game people remember for the action on the court,” said Stove. “Not for what happens on the side.”

  “And I know if there’s a close call, it won’t go your son’s way. You’re just like that,” said Fat Anthony, smiling like a guy who had a bet he couldn’t lose.

  I spent that whole next morning with J.R., before he got killed. We were trying to come up with a tag for him that would go with Hold the Mustard. We went through every kind of food in my refrigerator, looking for something that would fit. It was all laid out on the table next to the mustard. But nothing really clicked. Then my mom came in and yelled at us for making a mess out of her kitchen. But I was just happy to be home without her damn husband there to put me down, or hollering at me to get a part-time job instead of playing ball. J.R. knew it, too, and even made a fuss over my new nickname in front of her.

  “As long as you two keep clear of trouble, I don’t care what your friends call you,” Mom said, calming down enough to hug us both. “Now put everything back in that fridge the way I had it.”

  In the end, there were a couple of names we thought were all right. So we wrote them out and took the list to Acorn at his barbershop. The place was packed, but he looked up from giving a haircut and smiled when we walked in.

  “Maybe one day, I’ll have these boys’ pictures up with the rest of them,” said Acorn for everybody to hear.

  The back wall of his shop is covered with pictures of famous ballers who threw down at Rucker Park. There’s Doctor, Hawk, Pee Wee, Skates, Big Dipper, and maybe a hundred more. And lots of them got their tags straight from Acorn’s mouth.

  But when we showed him the list, Acorn’s face turned funny. He looked it over for a minute like he was serious. Then he busted out laughing in that big voice.

  “You boys want names?” asked Acorn, trying to hold himself together. “How about the Dummy Brothers?”

  That’s when everybody in the shop started laughing at us, too.

  “Listen to what they came up with,” crowed Acorn. “‘Sweet Relish!’ Can you imagine that?”

  “You can’t just choose yourself a nickname,” said the man getting a haircut. “That would be cheatin’.”

  “It’s got to come to Acorn natural-like, durin’ a game,” another dude kicked in.

  Then Acorn grabbed J.R. around the shoulders and stood him in front of the mirror.

  “Now you can stand here all day tellin’ everybody how good-looking you are,” said Acorn. “But you’re better off waitin’ for it to come from somebody else’s mouth first. It’s the same with nicknames.”

  We were almost out the door when an old man said, “It’s a good thing those boys got each other to talk to, ’cause nobody else in this world would take ’em serious.”

  Outside, we could still hear them laughing. Then somebody opened the door to the shop, and it got louder for a few seconds, till the door got closed again.

  The rest of our time together, J.R. was pissed at me.

  “Pickin’ out a tag was mostly your idea,” said J.R. “Only Acorn made more fun of me than you.”

  But nobody’s laughing at Rucker Park tonight. It’s all business. Even for the warm-ups, kids got their game faces screwed on tight. I can hear the snap in every pass on the layup line. Nobody’s going light. It’s all power dunks, and everybody’s trying to rip the rim right off the damn backboard. Sometimes you can scare another squad right out of the game when you got it cooking in the drills. But you don’t scare anybody off when you’re playing for the championship at Rucker Park. Not when both teams got confidence and know they belong.

  Non-Fiction’s real organized, and got everything planned out. They clap hands twice when the guy at the front of their layup line drives for the hoop. The third beat is supposed to be the sound of him throwing it down. And when it’s working right, it sounds like drums beating.

  We don’t have anything worked out together for the warm-ups. Kids on our team go dolo, and do whatever they feel. Every time one of our guys throws down a monster jam, the crowd goes crazy. Then nobody can hear that bullshit clapping from the other side of the court, and that’s what we want.

  Both teams want to one-up each other for the crowd and really rock the house. Lots of people are still open about which team to pull for, and both squads want to win them over bad. Crowds at Rucker Park are loud, and almost right on top of the court. When they’re all together on something, their voice can be like a sledgehammer that no team wants to get hit with.

  I can even hear them screaming from outside the fence and down the block. There are kids sitting in trees and on the tops of streetlights. The park’s mobbed, and people are still lined up on the sidewalk waiting to get inside. It takes a while because everybody gets patted down by the cops for weapons and bottles, even the players.

  Half the windows on J.R.’s side of our building are filled up with people hanging out of them. I can see his bedroom window clear as anything. It’s closed up tight, with the shade pulled down.

  Most kids on the court can really sky. I can dunk a ball okay, but I’m not going to turn any heads like that. My game is all about being fast on my feet, so I try to lay the ball in with some real style behind it.

  I cradle the pass on my fingertips, like somebody tossed me a baby from the window in a fire. I drive for the basket going a hundred miles an hour. Then I let every muscle in my body go easy. Everybody’s eyes are still moving quick to keep up. That’s when I find my own space, where everything else just slides by, and nothing can touch me. I plant my left foot and bring the ball over my head. And just as I finger-roll it to the rim, I flip it soft and high. I start back down to the ground the same time as the ball. The net jiggles as it slips through, and I send that same little wave down my shoulders to my hips.

  The crowd oohs and aahs like I brushed them with a feather. Then I jog back to the end of the line. Only I keep my eyes up the whole way, so I don’t see the spot on the court where J.R. got killed.

  Greene grabs the mike out of Acorn’s hand and starts rapping about me.

  “They call him Hold the Mustard,

  But the brother’s smooth like custard.

  If there’s a move he’ll bust it . . .”

  The whole park’s yelling my name, and I start to feel good inside. Then I see J.R.’s pops. I know he’s the ref and is supposed to stay even. But that cold look on his face turns me blank, till it robs me of everything.

  Stove keeps waiting to hear something different out of my mouth.

  “That’s everything I saw!” I told him, the same way I practiced over and over to sell the cops on it. “There’s nothin’ I’m leavin’ out! That’s how it went down! Why do I gotta keep sayin’ it?”

  Anyway, nothing’s going to bring back J.R.

  Stove

  Mackey told the cops it was two kids he’d never seen before. That they were playing two-man when one of them started arguing with J.R. over a foul call. Then the kid went loco and pulled a knife. But it wasn’t like J.R. to get heated over a pickup game, or go out looking for a run when he had the tournament that night. No one else saw a thing, and that didn’t make sense to me, either. The regulars at the park are always checking out newjacks who come to play on their turf. They’d drop a dime on any stranger who touched somebody from the neighborhood. But Mackey hasn’t gone back on a word of his story. And he hasn’t been able to look me in the eye since.

  I hear that damn bet Anthony and Greene made got carried over to tonight, after the first game got canceled because of J.R. That’s something else that doesn’t sit right with me.

  The cancer th
at took Carmen was from God, but I know this was even dirtier than Mackey’s letting on.

  An official basketball weighs twenty-one and one-quarter ounces. I’ve started enough games by tossing one up at center court to know. But every ball here feels heavier than that to me.

  3

  STOVE PLAYED BALL in this park when he was a kid. Back when it was called the 155th Street Playground, and Holcombe Rucker, the guy who thought up the tournament, was still alive. J.R. and me heard Stove’s stories about the old days so many times, it was almost like we lived them out ourselves.

  “Rucker worked for the Parks Department. He didn’t have a dime behind him, so he used scoreboards made from oak tag, tied up to fences. Then the pros started showing up to play. They loved the freedom of street ball, and so did everybody who came out to watch,” J.R.’s pops would tell us. “Once before a game, the teams needed a few more balls to shoot around with and get loose. A pro, big enough to block out the sun, said to me, ‘Hey, kid, let me hold that ball for a while.’ He caught my throw in one hand, and squeezed it like an orange. Then I watched them shoot around with my ball, following it from player to player. I took that ball to bed with me for the rest of the summer.”

  Stove replayed moves for us that went down smooth as silk. Moves invented on the spot that couldn’t be drawn up ahead of time with a pencil and paper, and even had to be explained to the guys who made them after the game. Lots of them were made by street ballers—guys who never wore a uniform in their lives, except for maybe going shirts or skins in the street. But they got a chance to go up against pros in front of a crowd at Rucker Park, and played their hearts out.

  Most of the pro ballers stopped coming to Rucker when their contracts got so many zeros in them that they couldn’t afford to get hurt in a park game. There were only a couple of pros who played this year. But J.R. and me made a pact that even after we hit it big in the NBA, we’d play in the tournament together every summer, no matter what.

  “Money will never push us off our love for the game. We’re gonna recognize where we come from and not disrespect the park,” J.R. said before our first tournament game, making a fist for me to give him a pound.

  “The love of ball ahead of everything,” I said, connecting my fist to his.

  But I shit all over that promise the first time Fat Anthony put a dime in front of me.

  And now I can’t even tell J.R. how sorry I am.

  J.R. always knew what I was thinking on the court. It was like he could see the moves being born in my mind at the same time I did. Only J.R. couldn’t see everything inside of me. He didn’t know what I got myself into, or how it got him killed. But I got to keep all that strapped down tight. I need to hold up the deal I made—and find a way to win the championship, too.

  The horn sounds to end the warm-ups, and both squads go back to their benches. Acorn is out in the middle of the court, talking to the crowd. There are people here from all over the city, and lots of them never heard about J.R.

  “Right here on this court, we lost a member of our Rucker Park family to an act of violence a few weeks back. He was more than a promising young player. He was already a superstar son, friend, teammate, and member of this community. Despite a heavy heart, his father is here to ref the game tonight because this championship meant so much to his son,” says Acorn, turning his eyes to Stove. “I want you all to join me in a moment of silence for Nicolas Vasquez Jr. Most of you knew him as J.R.”

  Except for the traffic on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, there isn’t a sound.

  Stove’s standing straight, like a statue, with his head bowed down.

  I see lots of people holding back tears. But nothing gets to that murdering fuck. He just stands there with his chin in his chest, like he’s talking to God. He’s the reason everybody’s praying for J.R. And it doesn’t bother him one damn bit.

  When that silence is over, kids drop their hands on my back and shoulders, like I deserve some kind of sympathy. Only I don’t.

  Mitchell huddles us up and goes through the first few plays he wants to run. Then we all put our hands on top of each other’s in a big pile, and Mitchell gives us a speech about playing hard.

  “This is what you’ve all been dreamin’ about,” says Mitchell. “Now you each gotta look inside yourself and see what’s really there. And don’t forget—when you let yourself down, you fail your brother, too.”

  My eyes are already down on the ground.

  Everybody’s got J.R.’s initials on their sneakers to remember him.

  His good kicks are still in the hallway at my crib, and I won’t touch them for anything.

  J.R.’s mom once taught mine how to make Spanish rice and beans. We were going to eat that at my place and change there before the game, while my mother’s husband was still at work.

  Sometimes I see J.R. standing inside those sneakers. He just looks at me with his arms folded on top of his chest. I keep thinking how he must know everything from where he is. But his face is all calm, and he’s not mad or anything.

  He just looks at me, like he’s waiting for me to set things right.

  But that’s easy for J.R. He’s safe now, and nobody can touch him anymore. I still got to walk these streets and be out here playing ball so I can make it one day.

  “Let me hear it, everybody! On three!” says Mitchell.

  “One, two, three—teamwork!” kids shout.

  It blasts from my throat, too, but it doesn’t have any feeling.

  Fat Anthony’s jawing at his players in their huddle. I can see his face twist with every word he pushes out of his mouth.

  Then they circle up tighter and shout, “Just win!”

  Fat Anthony follows them halfway onto the court.

  “Remember, if you fuck up out there, don’t even come back to the bench. I only got seats for winners,” says Anthony. “Yo mama might still love you, but I won’t!”

  J.R.’s pops stands at center court, between the two tallest kids. He tosses the ball up higher than both of them can reach, and the crowd lets out a noise that starts something burning inside of me.

  There’s no more talk, and nothing to think about. There’s just basketball.

  A kid in green rips the rock away from a white jersey, and we head up court with the ball. Mitchell called my number for the first play. Two of our kids step out in front of me, and I move around a double-screen. The guy that’s guarding me gets caught up in all the traffic. I sprint alone past the spot where J.R. got killed. I let an open shot fly from the corner, and the ball’s through the net before my feet touch the ground again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you better Hold the Mustard tonight,” echoes Acorn. “It’s two to nothing, Greenbacks.”

  I look up, and Stove is running back down court, right next to me. But before our eyes come together, I turn away to find my man on defense.

  Both teams score a basket on their next possession. Then the ball kicks out-of-bounds off two kids fighting for it. Hamilton, the other ref on the court, isn’t sure who touched it last, and looks at Stove for help. Finally Hamilton points our way. That’s when Fat Anthony flips, and starts screaming at Hamilton like it’s the biggest play of the game.

  “You don’t make a call against my team unless you see it!” fires Anthony. “Folks didn’t fill this park to hear you blow that tin whistle!”

  Hamilton walks off from Fat Anthony, and the crowd lets him hear it.

  “Zebra—Zebra! We don’t need ya—We don’t need ya!”

  This is Hamilton’s first championship game at Rucker Park, and Fat Anthony’s working him hard. He’s trying to get into Hamilton’s head, so a big call at the end of the game might go his way.

  Fat Anthony’s got two goons on his squad, and getting close to the basket’s like being in a football game. It’s that rough.

  The painted rectangle from the backboard to the foul line, fifteen feet away, is called “The House.” Only there aren’t any welcome mats for kids in different colored jers
eys, just elbows and forearms to greet you.

  That crap stops lots of teams without any heart. But nobody on our side’s backing down an inch, especially in front of a crowd like this.

  Non-Fiction misses a shot, and I push the ball back the other way in a hurry. Two of Fat Anthony’s guys follow after me, so I know somebody’s running free. I look up on instinct, expecting to see J.R. waving his arms, like I couldn’t get him the ball fast enough.

  But J.R.’s not here.

  There’s a kid in green alone on the other side of the court. I whip him a pass, and he drives for the hoop. That’s when one of Anthony’s goons hammers him hard to the ground.

  Three Non-Fiction dudes are standing over him.

  “Not in our house!” one of them pops off.

  Hamilton is already between them, and everybody in green is rushing over to stick up for their man. Players on both benches are standing, and Mitchell’s holding back our guys.

  Greene jumps the scorer’s table and makes a run at Fat Anthony, till two cops get in front of him. But Anthony doesn’t budge. He just stares straight at Greene, and the corners of his mouth curl up in a smile. The crowd is split between boos and cheers. And Stove is in the middle of everything, laying down the law.

  Stove gets Mitchell and Fat Anthony out at center court, away from everybody. But Stove is so hyped that half the park can hear his speech.

  “I’ll kick the next player out of this game who crosses the line. I don’t care how important he is to your team,” warns Stove. “I don’t referee football or boxing, just hoops!”

  Then everything settles down, and the game starts up again.

  Players on both squads are flat-out fast. Only Stove hasn’t been on a court in a few weeks. There are circles under his eyes, and he’s breathing hard to keep up. And the next time the ball goes out-of-bounds, Stove stalls for time by walking it over to the scorer’s table and wiping it dry. But it’s mostly slick from his own sweat.