The star of the team was announced last, Tanner Thomas. Tanner was a 6’2”, 188 pound point guard with great handles, terrific speed, and a silky-smooth jump shot. He averaged over 17 points per game as a junior and was getting some attention from Division 1 colleges. This was his team, and Tanner was the kind a leader who was poised, confident, and exciting to watch. There was a great cheer in the crowd as his name was announced as the fifth starter. Clay looked at Jessie, who was crying again and obviously looking for her purse, forgetting that she had left it in the car—tissues, make-up, chap stick, and all.
In the huddle, just before tip-off, Coach Piggott made his announcement. “Harding, you’re at the point. Thomas, you move to two. Simms, you’re three; Powell, you’re four; Sprout, you’re five. We’re in man defense; pick ’em up as soon as you’d like. Remember, they like to pound it inside, but keep your eye on number 22; he’s a pretty good shooter. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Why am I at the point?”
“Because I said so! If you have a problem with that, let me know right now. There’s prob’ly an empty seat for you down near the end of the bench. Now let’s go!”
On the way to the opening tip, Kevin asked Tanner if he was going to take the point anyway.
“No. Just do what he says.”
Sprout won the opening tap. Luke Simms tossed it to Harding and the game began…with a Harding turnover that led to a Lapeer West basket. Clay glanced over at Jack Harding while wondering what was going on. West pressured the inbounds pass, but Simms managed to get the ball to Tanner, who broke the pressure easily. As he pushed the ball up the court, the Lapeer defender backpedaled into the lane, and Tanner pulled up and nailed a three-pointer to get the Hornets on the board. Kevin pressured the Lapeer ball handler up the court. The guard tried a pass to the wing that Tanner intercepted and took the length of the court, finishing with a dunk and drawing a foul. Tanner made the free throw for a 6-2 lead, and Lapeer West’s coach called a quick time out.
Piggott was actually smiling when he turned and saw Jack Harding mouth, plain as day, “Take… him…out.” Coach’s face turned red, his sweat glands opened, and he told Lance Mankowski to check in for Tanner Thomas. Tanner didn’t play another minute for the rest of the half. Kevin Harding played the point. He handled and shot the ball poorly, and Lapeer West was ahead 37-19 at half time. Jessie was fit to be tied, yelling at Coach Piggott, crying again, then somehow blaming Clay for the benching. Clay sat on the bleachers, staring angrily at Pete Piggott and wondering what in the world to do. Jack Harding wasn’t too pleased with his son’s play, but he blamed Kevin’s teammates and smirked at Clay Thomas. He thought Clay’s face was priceless.
In the locker room, Tanner was so upset that he was staring arrows at the Pigman. But Coach Piggott would have nothing to do with Tanner. He never looked at him once. Whenever someone tried to question why Tanner wasn’t playing, Piggott told him to shut up. The entire team reentered the gym without a hint of enthusiasm. Kevin Harding had eight turnovers and was one-for-seven from the floor for two points. Clay could see Tanner trying to get Coach Piggott’s attention, but he simply wouldn’t look at Tanner, and Tanner was practically chasing him in a circle to get the Pigman to look him in the eyes. Clay was more certain than ever, as he watched Tanner in fascination, that Tanner had the “power.” It was going to be interesting to see what happened the rest of the game.
Simms, Powell, Monroe, Harding, and Mankowski started the second half. As the ball was inbounded, Coach Piggott lifted a water bottle to his lips, and his eyes settled on Tanner Thomas’s. Immediately he said, “Thomas, you’re in for Harding.” The fat man sat, wondering what he was thinking and why he had put Tanner back in the game. He was sure he was about to have a heart attack. The next half an hour was a nightmare for the Pigman. Four times, when he got his breathing under control, he told Harding to go into the game for Thomas, and each time before Thomas could even sit down, he decided to tell Thomas to go back in for Harding, and each time Tanner entered the game, he was spectacular. Finally Piggott gave up, and finally Jack Harding left the gym, looking like he could kill Pete Piggott, and finally the Kearsley Hornets took the lead. Tanner had 29 second-half points and willed his team to victory.
CHAPTER 12
Clay knew that it was time to speak to Tanner. When his son got home from practice on Wednesday evening, Clay suggested that they go out for a hamburger and have a talk. Tanner saw that his father was serious and began to make an excuse for not going. Some of the developments in Tanner’s life of late had been weighing on him and talking to his dad wasn’t what he wanted to do at the moment. Serious talks with his dad were not a very common occurrence, and Tanner wanted to keep it that way.
“I can’t, Dad…”
“Yes, you can, and you will.” Clay’s eyes were locked on Tanner’s. This was the first time he was sure he had used his power on his son since Tanner was seven years old and Clay had told him he hated the rain.
“Okay, Dad. Let me put my stuff in my room.”
They went to a Coney Island, which had booths and some privacy, something that Clay felt was important for this particular discussion.
“We haven’t talked about the game last night. What happened?”
“I don’t know. It was like Pig, I mean Piggott, was scared about somethin’. He never said a word, ’cept ‘shut up’ when someone tried to reason with him.”
“Did you try to ‘reason’ with him?” Clay made those little quotation marks with the first two fingers of each hand.
“He wouldn’t talk to me…wouldn’t even look at me. I tried to talk to him at halftime.”
“Yeah, I saw. It was pretty comical, actually, how he kept turning his back on you, and you were chasing him around in a circle.”
“Frustrating is a better word. I just wanted him to look me in the eyes, but he wouldn’t do it.”
“How’d you get him to look at you?”
“Chance…luck.”
“So you told him to put you in?”
“No,” Tanner sort of lied—he hadn’t actually said anything. “But he did decide to put me in.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with that?”
Tanner was getting very uncomfortable. This was something he had decided that he wasn’t going to tell anyone about, but he didn’t like lying to his dad. “I didn’t say anything to him. He just decided to put me in.”
Clay sighed a deep sigh. Tanner had a bad feeling about this. He was about to tell his father that they didn’t want to have this conversation. He would make his father give up the topic. But something strange happened. In his head he heard, “I have the same power you do.”
In his head, Clay heard, “Did you just tell me you have the same power I do?”
Without speaking, Clay replied, “Yes, I did. And it’s time we talked about it.”
“Dad, you can alter people’s minds?”
“I can make them think what I want them to think, just like you can.”
“How is it possible? And how did you know? Can you read my mind?”
“No, I can’t read minds…just influence them. I don’t know how it’s possible. I think something happened in our brains when we were born. I know you’re doing it because I’ve watched you.”
“I just figured this out in the last couple of months. I figured it was something I should never tell anyone about.”
Clay fought back the urge to cry. For the first time in his life, there was someone who might just understand what he’d gone through the past 30 years. “I reached the same conclusion years and years ago.” Clay swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He was talking about his powers for the first time in his life, and he was doing it with his son, someone with whom his relationship had certainly suffered because of Clay’s silence. “Once, when I was 12 or 13, I was pitching in a baseball game. I’d look the batters in the eyes and think, ‘You know you can’t hit me.’ It was weird because they’d get this l
ook, like they were really uncomfortable up there. I could see in their eyes that they didn’t believe they could hit me. Now, I was pretty good—threw pretty hard and had my share of success—but this was like some sort of new mind game. I’d tell the batter to swing and then throw something horrible, out of the strike zone, and they’d swing. I’d tell them I was throwing a fastball and then I’d throw a curve and they’d bail out, looking like an idiot. I’d tell them to take a pitch and then throw one right down the middle and they wouldn’t swing. After I threw two no hitters in a row, I began to feel guilty. The next time I pitched, I decided to not use the mind games. Funny, but I gave up a couple of hits and all of a sudden, I didn’t think I could get anyone out. I was getting shelled when it started raining. It was one of the only times in my life that I was glad it was raining.”
“So you stopped using your powers?”
“Not completely. I had a few lessons to learn still, but I didn’t use them too often. I didn’t like how I felt when I did it. Guilt. Shame. I wanted to know that what I’d accomplished was because I deserved it; I’d earned it somehow. Let me give you another example. There was this girl when I was in tenth grade. She was beautiful, the catch of the school, but she never acted like she even knew who I was. I thought I’d be happy if she was my girlfriend, so I told her to like me. And she did. For a couple of days, it was awesome. I was cool; I had the hottest girlfriend in the school. But it didn’t take long before I didn’t like it at all. She’d follow me around, call me on the phone, write me love notes. She was always touching me. Not only was I suffocating, but I also knew she only liked me because I told her to. It didn’t give me any pleasure knowing I’d made her like me. She didn’t have a choice. It would have been much better if she had decided to like me on her own. Does that make sense to you?”
“Dad, I told Coach Piggott to put me in the game—about four times actually. He kept taking me out, and I kept makin’ him put me back in.”
“I know. I watched you do it.”
“Was I wrong? I actually don’t feel very good about it, but I should have been in the game, and we were losing.”
“Something’s going on with your coach and Mr. Harding. I’m sure of it. I don’t blame you for anything, Tanner. If I were you, I’d have probably done the same thing. But this ‘gift’ we have, I think of it as more of a curse.”
“What do you mean?”
Clay paused, trying to sort his thoughts further. “The Apostle Paul wrote in the Bible about how God had given him a ‘thorn in the flesh.’ Some people think it was bad eyesight or some physical deformity or other health problem, but that’s not what I think. Paul wrote that he had spent three years with Jesus and was actually taken up into Heaven. He called Heaven ‘paradise’, and he wrote that he heard and saw ‘inexpressible things’ that he wasn’t permitted to tell to others. He said God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him from becoming conceited. He wrote that the thorn in the flesh ‘tormented’ him, and he asked God to take it away, but God wouldn’t. When I really thought about that, I began to look at my power as a gift, sort of like God showing Heaven to Paul. But then he was told that he couldn’t share what he knew with anyone else. When God made Paul keep it to himself, the knowledge tormented the man in some way. I’ve often thought that maybe God gave me a gift too, but instead of being able to use it and talk about it, it torments me each and every day. The gift itself might be a blessing, but keeping it to myself or using it has been a curse.”
“And using it, like to pitch a no-hitter or to get a girlfriend,” Tanner interjected, “makes you conceited or you feel terrible about it.”
“Exactly. One or the other. I think you understand.”
“So you think I shouldn’t have made Piggott put me in the game?”
“No, I don’t actually believe that. You didn’t take away Piggott’s choice because I think Mr. Harding took it away first. If Piggott had his first choice, he would’ve been playing you. And I don’t think you were actually being selfish, like you wanted to play so you could score points and get headlines. I think you were thinking of the team. But there’ll be consequences; I’m pretty sure of that. Harding has a screw loose and Piggott’s stuck in the middle of all of this. Something bad is gonna happen.”
“What should I do, Dad?
“We all have our own consciences to deal with, Tanner. It’s not my place to decide for you. In some ways, Son, I haven’t felt like a good dad to you because I’ve let you make your own choices. I’ve backed off and let your mother train you up because I wanted you to decide for yourself. I wanted to be confident knowing that the choices you made were yours instead of mine. I would like it, though, when you make your future choices that you would try to do what’s right.”
“Do you always know what to do?”
“Not always, Tanner; not always.”
CHAPTER 13
Jack Harding hadn’t showed up at Harding Metals on Tuesday night and Pete had managed to avoid him on Wednesday, but when Pete showed up for work on Thursday after practice, there Jack was, waiting. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, holding a sawed-off shotgun. Pete flinched noticeably, and Jack began laughing. “I ain’t plannin’ on shootin’ ya, Pete—not yet anyway. Some gangbanger from the neighborhood just pawned this off to me a coupla minutes ago. Needed some cash to help out his sister who got herself in some trouble. I’ll shoot ya some other time, Pete. Now, tell me what happened the other night.”
“Can’t tell ya, ’cept for I think I had a heart attack. Somewhere between hyperventilations, I kept telling Thomas to go into the game. Then I’d panic, thinkin’ about you, and I’d take ’im out. But then I’d change my mind again and put ’im back in.”
“That’s a lot of thinkin’ for you, all in one night.”
Piggott shrugged. There was nothing to say.
“Have to admit, I was pretty perturbed, but then I got to thinkin’. Pete Piggott stood up to me, and that takes guts. I don’t like it, but I got to admit, I’m surprised enough by it to give you another chance.”
“Jack, Kevin had a terrible game. Don’t you think he’s smart enough to know it was you who put me up to playin’ him at the point instead of Thomas? And you who had me bench Tanner? He’s an above average shooting guard and a below average point guard. Can’t you see that?”
“What I can see is that Tanner Thomas takes the attention away from my kid. What’d he have, 40 points?”
Piggott shrugged again, though he knew it was 35.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, Coach. I owe one of my business associates—you know him, name’s Johnny Papalli—’bout four grand for a delivery here a week or so ago. Says he attends a lotta games and seems to have taken a real liking to your boy, Thomas. Wanted to bet me two large that Thomas gets at least 20 tomorrow night, and another two grand that Kearsley wins by at least ten points. So I got to thinkin’ real fast like a man of my intellect does every so often, that who but you can better control those two outcomes, savin’ me several thousand dollars? So here’s my proposition: Make sure Thomas gets less than 20, and make sure your team wins by less than ten. You do that and I’ll subtract four grand from what you owe me. I’m thinking that maybe now you’ll be a little better motivated. So what do ya think?” Jack repositioned the shotgun across his lap, so that both barrels were aimed at Piggott’s protruding belly.
Piggott didn’t have to think too long about it this time. He agreed to the proposition right away.
***
Harding Metals was a large scrap yard—45 acres of scrapped autos and other waste metal. The property included a 4,000 square foot storage facility/garage. Stacked inside, according to government specifications, were layers and layers of used tires, which were occasionally sold to needy customers. It was in that storage facility that machines for discarded batteries and waste containers for motor oil, gasoline, anti-freeze, mercury switches, and freon were stored, all carefully within government guidelines. Harding made more money wi
th his criminal interests, but he couldn’t afford to be shut down by not obeying governmental waste standards. A ten-foot high chain link fence, topped by two rows of barbed wire, surrounded the scrap yard. At each corner of the lot, there was an outbuilding, either a shed or a trailer. Each had electricity, heat, a coffee pot, and a mini-fridge that was kept stocked with drinks. At each building and at the two large gates, there were security cameras and motion activated floodlights. As Piggott walked around the yard, the floodlights would light his way. In addition to the original purchase, Jack had collected quite a bit of heavy machinery for his metal yard, including a 7,000 pound lift, two welders, a front end loader, two tow trucks, a 3,000 pound Yale forklift, a 12,000 pound Hasco forklift, a dump truck, a 42 foot Transcraft flatbed, a Big Mac car crusher, various shipping containers, and a waste-oil furnace.
In addition to the machinery and the outbuildings, there were always junked cars, tractors, campers, and mobile homes, so there were always lots of places to sit down and think, lots of places to ponder how his life had turned out. Pete sat on the seat of a Massey Ferguson lawn tractor which had caught fire and been totaled. At least the seat wasn’t a charred mess. He knew that if he could have just kept his temper when that stupid, irritating paperboy was harassing him, he’d have never met Jack Harding. But then he probably would have never become a coach either, and the only things in his lifetime for which he was proud were his high school basketball career and his high school coaching career. And though he admittedly was less than spectacular at even those two things, at least he wasn’t a loser. Eight seasons and he only had one losing record. He’d won two league championships and one district championship and felt confident he’d add to both totals this year. But now Jack Harding was asking him to shave points in a basketball game, destroying any pride he had in his career, and Pete was going to let it happen. He was about to become a loser at everything.
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