by Paul Volponi
Mitchell’s there, too.
“I’m stayin’ in the game, Coach!” I say.
He’s flipped over me getting dropped like that.
“That’s not a foul! It’s a felony!” cracks Mitchell.
“You’re right!” says Stove, who signals Anthony’s goon for a flagrant foul, and throws him out of the game.
The crowd boos the shit out of that guy as he walks off the court. But when he gets back to the bench, Anthony gives him a pound, like he did his job perfect.
I walk to the foul line for two free throws, and Fat Anthony’s eyes stab mine.
That bastard had his boy knock me flat. I guess that was supposed to be some kind of reminder. But Anthony doesn’t own me, and he better remember that.
I set my feet at the edge of the foul line, and Stove sends me the ball. Then I take a deep breath and look back to where I saw J.R. Only that part of the court is empty.
The foul line’s called the charity stripe because nobody guards you or waves a hand in your face. It’s like they’re giving those points away, so you’re supposed to make every one.
Kids can knock down free throws in practice all day long. But in a game, it’s a different story. Never mind the crowd or the pressure; sprinting up and down the court can zap your legs good. Then you get tired and don’t follow through on the shot.
“There are plenty of excuses for missing free throws,” Stove always told J.R. and me. “But that’s all they are—excuses. Big-time players make those shots, no matter what.”
So every time Stove saw us walking out of the park exhausted, he’d challenge J.R. and me to make two straight free throws before we left.
“I can’t figure out if your pops is tryin’ to make us better players or if he just wants to torture us,” I’d say to J.R.
“Either way, it’s still basketball,” he’d always answer.
But it isn’t just basketball anymore. Not for me. And maybe I can’t afford to make both free throws.
I clear the air from my lungs. Then I raise up and release the ball. It’s right on line, but I can feel that my stroke’s off a hair.
The shot rims the basket, and spins out.
My teammates lined up along the foul line clap for me anyway. But I can hear Fat Anthony clapping the loudest.
“This is our time, Non-Fiction,” says Anthony.
I step back off the foul line and shake loose every part of me. You never stay at the line after a missed shot, because you know something’s off. Then I go to reset myself, and Stove walks the ball out to me.
“You could make these free throws blindfolded if you wanted,” Stove says low.
J.R. would think up different games when we practiced foul shots. We’d see who could hit the most in the row, or the best out of twenty. Underhanded, one-handed—it didn’t matter. We’d do anything to keep it from getting boring.
Fooling around in the park one day, I made three straight with my eyes closed. J.R. couldn’t come close to matching that, and I bragged about it for a week. Then Stove showed up at the park with a blindfold.
“This will separate the men from the boys,” said Stove. “Maybe we oughtta make it interesting, like the loser runs laps.”
“No way!” said J.R. “Pops, you should have seen Mackey nail those free throws with his eyes shut.”
I told J.R. he was scared, and kept dissing him till he bet me. I pushed it up to ten laps around Rucker Park, with the loser skipping all the way and clucking like a chicken.
Stove tied the blindfold on J.R. first and stood him even with the rim. He handed him the ball, and J.R. reached out for it like a blind man. But J.R. started knocking down free throws, one after another. I was in shock and felt my stomach start to turn.
“Really! That one went in, too?” asked J.R. in a surprised voice.
He made eight out of ten, and I couldn’t say a thing.
I stepped to the foul line and swallowed hard. Then Stove tied the blindfold on me. Only it was a fake, and I could see right through it.
They were both rolling on the floor, laughing.
“¡Qué lástima!” said Stove, pointing at me. “Poor chicken! Cluck! Cluck!”
Finally I had to start laughing, too. I never expected something like that from them. But they played me good.
Now I’m standing at the foul line with everybody watching. I close my eyes, and there’s nothing but dark. Then I open them again, and the only thing I let myself see is the front lip of the rim. The shot’s perfect out of my hand, and settles through the net without even touching iron.
Non-Fiction misses their next shot. But Bones out-fights everybody for the ball and taps it in. Then he turns his shoulders sideways and slips out through the crowd of players.
We’re up 55 to 49.
Fat Anthony thought Bones got fouled on that play. He’s all over Hamilton about it and won’t let up. Hamilton gives him a long look and a chance to back off. But Fat Anthony doesn’t take it.
“You can’t miss calls like that, Ham!” hollers Anthony. “What the fuck were you looking at?”
That’s when Hamilton puts one hand on top of the other and hits Fat Anthony with a T.
Fat Anthony
I needed to pop Ham’s cork. I can’t let him ref the rest of this game with a hard-on for me. Let him get it out of his system now and smack me with a technical.
“I was wrong to say that, Mr. Hamilton. From now on, nothing but basketball.”
That’ll soften him towards my team down the stretch.
But I got one more ace in the hole that nobody knows about. And I’ll give the signal for it to kick in any minute.
That’s it, send Mustard to the line to shoot the technical.
The prick. When I tap a kid, it should be a done deal from the start. I shouldn’t have to sweat out a minute of this crap. Mustard’s playing it from the front end. He needs to hear everybody cheering his name before he gets himself too dirty. But he didn’t want to be the hero when his best friend got killed. He doesn’t even have the guts to say what really happened. I know he’s feeling that. So he puts himself on a tightrope with my money and sees how far he can go without looking down. All because he’s a spineless little nobody with something to prove.
“Ha! Good miss, Mustard! Good miss!”
I thought Mustard being a coward was going to make this bet easy. I should have known better. Murders go down in a heartbeat. It takes two hours to dump a game. And that’s too much time for a kid to think.
12
THERE’S A LIGHT shining off that trophy, and it catches my eye. J.R. and me used to joke that it was more beautiful than any shorty we knew. Every year we’d watch that trophy as much as the second half of the championship game.
We’d won lots of trophies balling. So do most kids playing youth league. When you’re young, they give you a trophy just for tying your kicks right. Then you get older, and the trophies start to mean something.
Some of the best players to throw down at Rucker Park never won a championship. Only one squad a year gets to hold that trophy, and they got to survive everything to do it.
“It’s not just on the court,” I told J.R. before the tournament started. “It’s every step you take in this neighborhood. You never have to lower your head to anybody with that trophy behind you.”
“It’ll put me ahead of my pops at Rucker, too,” said J.R. “And he’s just gonna have to live with that.”
Every inch of the dude on top of that huge trophy is covered in gold—his arms, his face, and the uniform he’s got on. One arm is straight over his head, with a basketball in his hand. He’s holding the rock up to the sky, like nobody could ever jump up high enough to slap it away.
Acorn only hands out one trophy right after the game—to show that a whole squad pulled together to win the championship. All the players take turns holding it in front of the crowd, even guys on the bench who never got into the game. Then later on, everybody gets a trophy of their own to keep.
/> “I got twenty-seven trophies on those two shelves in my room. But I wouldn’t keep any of them next to the big one,” said J.R., before this year’s tournament started. “That’s goin’ on the top shelf by itself. All the others are gonna have to fit underneath. I don’t care if I gotta push some into the closet.”
“You got to. That’s for the championship of all street ball. The rest of ’em are just kiddie toys,” I said. “I don’t know what I’d do with mine. Maybe I’d put it on a gold chain and wear it around my neck.”
“Oh, shit! Rucker Park bling!” cracked J.R.
J.R. and me would have done anything to win that trophy. But now it’s sitting right in front of me, and I’m holding back on my best game.
They’ll give J.R.’s trophy to Stove for sure if we win.
I’d tell him how J.R. wanted to keep it on his top shelf. Only that’s not what his pops wants to hear out of my mouth. I don’t know what I’d do with my trophy now. I just know it’s not going to mean shit to me, compared to before.
I’m a step back off my man. He scores on a jumper from deep in the corner, and I probably couldn’t have stopped him anyway.
It’s down to a four-point lead.
The ball’s in my hands, and while the score’s under the point spread, half of everything I fucked up is off my back. But I don’t feel one damn bit of that weight disappear.
There’s a stop in play, and two kids off our bench scramble to the scorer’s table. One of them looks me in the eye and jogs straight for me.
“I’m in for you, Mustard,” he says, slapping my hand.
“I told you we’d wear their starters down,” yells Fat Anthony. “Just a matter of time. Get ’em off the court!”
Only I could hear in Anthony’s voice how he didn’t mean it. How he doesn’t need for me to be sitting.
I shake my head at Mitchell, like taking me out of the game was the worst mistake he could make. But another part of me wants to rip off this Greenbacks jersey and run out of Rucker Park. Then if we win, I might not even get a trophy.
“Catch a quick blow,” says Mitchell, waiting for me on the sideline. “I need you at full strength come crunch time.”
Down the line, every one of our guys gives me a pound as I grab a seat at the end of the bench.
Our squad’s got the ball. I don’t have control over anything now. I feel the sweat stinging my eyes and my heart pounding against my chest.
A shot rattles in and out of the rim, and I jump a foot in the air.
That’s when Greene slides the kid next to me out of the way and sits his ass down next to mine. I won’t look him in the face for anything.
“I told Mitch I want you back on the court, pronto. I don’t trust anybody with the ball but you,” says Greene, chewing on the ice from a plastic cup.
I watch Stove follow the play. The whistle’s always in his mouth, ready to go. He runs up and down the court, breathing hard. And no air gets into that whistle till Stove wants it to.
We score the next basket and Greene slaps me on the knee.
“Yeah!” he screams. “That’s right!”
I feel his breath on the side of my face.
“Mitch, now!” yells Greene, pointing to me.
But Mitchell won’t turn away from the game and puts a hand up to wave Greene off.
Both squads score, and I watch the clock tick down inside eleven minutes. I hear the ice cracking between Greene’s teeth.
“You gotta get back in, Mustard,” says Greene. “I need you to do your thing.”
Greene grabs me by the wrist, and the cold from his fingers sends a chill through me. Then he yanks me off the bench.
Non-Fiction misses a shot, and Junkyard Dog snatches down the rebound. He looks up and sees we got a kid all alone at the other end of the court.
“Get it to him, Dog!” yells Greene, squeezing off the pulse in my wrist.
Dog’s arm pulls back, and I watch the rock sail through the air. It’s ten feet over everybody’s head, and nobody can touch it. Then somewhere past half-court, it starts to glide down, like a bird on its wings. It lands right in our kid’s hands. He lays it in, and we go up by eight points.
Mitchell pulls me away from Greene, talking right over him.
“It’s our chance to bury this thing for good,” says Mitchell, tapping me in the chest. “It all runs through you out there. Take it where it has to go.”
“Everything you got, Mustard. No unfinished business,” says Greene, shoving me towards the scorer’s table.
All ten guys on the court fly past me as I walk over to the scorekeeper. There’s a book in front of him where he keeps track of everything that happens. And he does it in pen. That way nobody can ever erase something later.
I get down on one knee in front of him, so I don’t block his view.
“I’m goin’ in on the next stop,” I tell him.
He nods his head to me without taking his eyes off the court.
I can see the book upside down, and all the marks next to my name. There’s an X for every basket I scored. But I know there should be marks against me, too, for everything I didn’t do. And they’d probably fill up a whole page by themselves.
Fat Anthony’s looking right at me, and as soon as my eyes touch his, he turns them back to the game.
The time ticks down to ten minutes flat.
Old Man Monty runs the clock. He’s been doing that job since before I was born, and Acorn calls him “Father Time.”
I’ve heard Stove take down lots of coaches who were ready to blow because they thought they got cheated out of a few seconds.
“The time you pissed away in the beginning—that’s the same time you’re cryin’ about now,” Stove would tell them. “The game’s finished. Go home and hug your family while that time’s still in front of you.”
I’m close enough to the see the gold face of the dude on top of the trophy. His eyes are smoothed over, and I can’t tell for sure if they’re open or closed. I can see the seams and grips on the ball he’s holding over his head. I never noticed before, but the hand down by his side is closed tight in a fist.
A whistle finally blows, and I pop up to my feet. I feel the blood rushing to my head, and everything’s spinning. But I push through till it all comes back steady again.
Stove’s waving me onto the court. My eyes start at his face. Then they follow the stripes on his referee’s shirt down to his shadow on the ground.
“Let’s go, Mackey,” I hear his voice. “Come on in.”
Stove
I look at Mackey and think—he’s almost a grown man.
I remember playing against J.R. a couple of years back, and suddenly, I couldn’t get by him anymore. You wake up one morning and your son’s stronger than you are. And while I was feeling bad about it, J.R. was flying high, because it was his turn to prove himself. But I got used to it and gave him the space he needed—as much as I thought he could handle. He never disappointed me once. It was almost the same for me with Mackey, and part of me felt like I had two sons.
But Mackey’s turned into something different, or somebody poisoned him. My blood boils thinking about it. And if I find out Anthony brought any of his shit into my house, and had something to do with J.R., I’ll tear him in fucking half.
I’ve been in plenty of fights on basketball courts. But all of them exploded out of something that happened on the spot. Maybe somebody threw an elbow, and I just lost it. It was never personal. Not like this. I never walked onto a court before looking to settle up.
Players should decide games—not referees. The best refs are invisible, and you can’t even remember they were there. But I’m not about to fade into the background tonight. I’m going to do whatever I have to. And before it’s over, somebody’s going to see me.
13
FAT ANTHONY RAISES his arms, hollering in Hamilton’s direction.
“I got a sub comin’, ref! Hold on!” says Anthony.
Spider runs over to the scorer’
s table and yanks at his sweats. The snaps up and down the sides pop open, and the sweats fly off him with a thip.
The dude’s all arms and legs—that’s how he got the tag “Spider.”
He runs right up to me and throws his feet down in front of mine. I know right away that Spider’s going to shadow me everywhere I go. He’s fresh off the bench, and all his energy’s supposed to go into stopping me.
It’s like Fat Anthony is making it easy for me now. All I have to do is let Spider cut me off from the ball, or throw a couple of passes away with him hanging all over me. Then he gets props for sticking to me like glue, and all I have to do is suck it up and say I couldn’t shake him.
I start down court with Spider on my ass. His eyes are on my stomach, with his arms spread out wide. And every time I turn my feet, he switches his around, too, and keeps centered in front of me.
One of our kids tries to get the rock into my hands. But he can’t because Spider’s right there, playing the passing lane.
“Hold the Mustard’s caught in Spider’s web,” says Acorn. “‘Can you find the way out?’ said the spider to the f ly.”
Now half of Rucker Park is cheering for Spider.
I keep a look on my face like it’s nothing to me. That I haven’t started to flash my speed yet, and that Spider’s just a little mosquito I’m getting ready to swat. But before I can get free, Non-Fiction steals the ball and heads the other way with it.
J.R. and me were playing three-on-three at the park last summer when somebody on the other squad had to split. None of the regulars were left, so we asked some grown man standing on the sideline if he wanted in. “Sure,” he said, and whipped off his jacket. That’s when we saw that one of his sleeves was empty, and he only had one arm.
I traded looks with J.R. while the dude sprinted across the court to get loose and jumped up at the rim with his arm stretched to the sky.
“I know the teams,” the dude said, getting in front of me on defense.
I never felt more lost on a basketball court in my life. I didn’t know what to do against him. I didn’t want to blow by, like I needed to beat on a guy with one arm to show my skills. So I kept passing the ball off and never pulled the trigger on some wide-open shots I had. That whole time, the dude kept looking at me, like he was waiting for me to get serious and play for real.
