by Rich Wallace
I don’t mind getting cut. It happens. But to keep a slimy little guy like that over me totally sucks.
So I plan to kick his ass up and down the court today, my first chance to show him up in a real basketball game. This is the Jaycees league at the Y—Saturday afternoons, seventh and eighth graders. We’re 3-2 and they’re undefeated, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just me versus Gary.
“Gonna nail you, Ron,” he says as he walks past me during warm-ups.
“We’ll see,” I tell him, meaning You’ll see, jerk.
“We’ll see, all right,” he says. He sneers at me, turns to one of his buddies, and says, “He actually thinks they can beat us.”
Somehow four of the kids from the middle school basketball team wound up on Gary’s team in this league, so they’ve dominated all their games. Our team is mostly small, quiet guys, but we play together pretty well. I play point guard and I take that seriously, so I don’t do a lot of scoring. Our inside guys can put it in the hoop if I get it to them.
The game starts and Gary is showing off on the first possession, dribbling the ball between his legs and talking a lot. Girls he hangs around with and some of his other friends are watching from the bleachers, egging him on. I hate guys like Gary who need a posse around them.
I cover him tight, hands up. He tries to drive past me, but I keep between him and the basket. Finally he picks up his dribble and I really hound him, and he throws the ball to one of our guys.
I get the ball and dribble up fast, with Gary right on me. I hit Eddie in the corner and he fakes a shot, ducks under his man, and gives me a perfect bounce pass as I drive to the basket. I’m a step up on Gary and I lay the ball off the backboard into the hoop.
I don’t think my teammates were intimidated by these guys, but this basket seems to give them some extra confidence. Our defense is great through the quarter, and we build a six-point lead with patient play. I get a steal from Gary and go the length of the court for another layup just before the buzzer, and we’re up 12–4 after one.
“You’re dead meat, Ron,” he says as we walk off the court.
I just point at the scoreboard.
He comes out seething and makes a terrible pass to start the quarter. Eddie smothers the pass and elbows big Jimmy, their center, and I race over to get the ball. “Stay smart,” I say as I dribble upcourt.
We do that through the second quarter. Gary is not a great dribbler; I can tie him up way outside and make him give up the ball. He does some grabbing and shoving, just enough not to get called, and keeps up a steady stream of insults under his breath. I hold him scoreless and he throws a couple more away. By half-time we’re up 25–13, and Jimmy and their other frontcourt guys are getting on Gary for screwing up.
In this league everybody has to sit at least one full quarter, so I watch the third from the bench. So does Gary. We glare over at each other. His cool friends and the girls don’t mean anything on the basketball court.
They manage to cut the lead to seven, but that’s good enough for me.
“Prime time,” Gary says as he dribbles in place above the key. “Now you get nailed,” he says.
I nod, give him a beckoning motion with my fingers. He jumps and shoots, missing badly, and my teammate Louie comes down with the rebound and races up the court. He passes to Eddie, who crosses midcourt and finds me again. I don’t need to break stride, taking the ball into the lane, stepping left, and pivoting. Gary fouls me badly, but he argues the call.
I make both free throws.
“Let’s press,” I say, and Louie covers the guy making the inbounds pass. I stick tight to Gary, who takes the pass and lets his elbow fly. It grazes my arm. Nothing. He dribbles up fast, doesn’t even look to pass. Just sets up for a three-pointer and shoots it. Not close.
Our coach yells, “Take your time” to me as I bring up the ball. (The coaches in this league are mostly high school and college kids; ours is a freshman at King’s.) He’s right. We’re up nine with seven minutes left, and Gary is obviously panicking.
Their whole team seems tight, confused. We move the ball around. They’re going for steals, overplaying on defense, and eventually I find Eddie wide open underneath for a layup.
The lead grows to fifteen while Gary’s team takes hurried shots and hardly bothers passing. Gary is 0 for 11 by my count when he finally hits a wild three with two minutes left in the game.
“In your face!” he says, and I just laugh. We’re still ahead by a dozen.
Coach pulls our starters with about a minute left, and we walk off beaming, slapping hands and shouting. When it ends we shake hands with the other team, but Gary isn’t in line.
I head down to the locker room, and he’s in there with two of his friends. I’ve got Louie with me, which is better than nobody.
“Way to nail me, Gary,” I say. This is beautiful.
“Yeah?” he says, making a fist. “Want me to nail you right now?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll trash you, Ron.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Any time, pal.”
I just stand there, waiting for him to move. He glares at me. Calls me an asshole.
“What are you waiting for?” I ask.
He turns toward the outside door. “We’ll play you again,” he says.
“Three weeks,” I say. “I’ve got it circled on my calendar.”
“I’ll kick your ass,” he says as he steps outside into the parking lot.
I follow him out. When he’s twenty feet away, he turns and gives me the finger. “You’re dead,” he says.
“I’m waiting.”
I lean against the building and watch him walk away.
Think you’re tougher than I am?
Prove it.
The Amazing
Two-Headed Boy
My father won a third-place ribbon at the county fair thirty years ago for his 4-H goat, back when that meant something. Third out of hundreds. Last year we sat in the empty grandstand one Thursday afternoon and watched nine goats get judged. The only entries. My father didn’t have much to say.
We live in town. Dad left the farm years ago and never looked back. There are fewer farms around now. More people.
Later in the week I’ll spend an evening here with my mom and dad, maybe go to the demolition derby, but on opening night I need to roam. So me and Louie walked along Route 191 the mile or so to the fairgrounds, paid the six dollars to get in, and got our hands stamped in case we decide to leave and come back. In case we meet somebody, for example.
We start looking.
In particular I am looking for girls. Having Louie along will probably not help in the search—he’s tall and skinny and awkward and talks with a lisp—but it’s better than doing it alone.
I am, at best, in the second tier among my classmates, nowhere near the elite level, where guys and girls have been pairing up since fifth grade, talking on the phone, instant-messaging each other, and having parties where they make out and smoke. Those are not the people I am looking for.
Just inside the entrance to the fairgrounds are rows and rows of vendors selling T-shirts and jewelry and leather stuff and rubbery necklaces that glow in the dark in red and green and orange. And you’re hit right away with the smells of pizza and french fries and London-broil sandwiches. There’s country line dancing going on at the small stage outside the farm museum, watched by a cluster of old people and tiny little kids.
Louie is a year and a half older than I am, but we’ll both be eighth graders this fall. Tonight he’s got several welts on his arm and another on his neck.
“Got stung,” he says. “Catching hornets … in the dumpster behind the diner.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Caught a really big one.”
We go into the pavilion where they have the vegetable and pie exhibits. We look at the cucumbers first. They all look pretty much the same.
There are piles of small green apples. Most apples don’t rip
en until fall—I know that much—but these have already been judged, so there are ribbons by some of the piles. They’ve judged the string beans and tomatoes, too. Louie picks up a zucchini, looks around, and says, “Ron” to draw my attention. He holds the squash down by his crotch and smirks at me.
“Right,” I say. “Try a string bean.”
The other side of the pavilion has paintings and photographs and other artwork. Most of it’s by younger kids, but I see that a girl I sat next to in English last year won second prize for a photo of a deer with two spotted fawns. Angie Callahan. I talked to her once. She dropped a pen. I picked it up and said, “Here.” She said, “Thanks.” That was back in February. Maybe I’ll run into her tonight.
We get Cokes at a fish-and-chips stand. Way too much ice, but it’s a big cup. We reach the carnival midway, with the rides and games. The crowd is so thick you get jostled every step. They’ve got all the kiddie rides like flying Dumbos and a miniature train right here by the grandstand. The Big-Rig Truck Pull is going on in the arena.
I stop and look at the little kids bouncing in one of those big caged-in air-mattress things. When I turn back, Louie is talking to two couples our age, the girls both wearing little halter things and the guys with choker beads and cool haircuts. Ricky Butler acknowledges me, but the girls look kind of bored and don’t make eye contact. Louie can talk to anybody, but I know what they say behind his back.
Ricky and the others go into the truck pull. We keep going toward the better rides.
I’ve got a Knicks shirt on, so naturally the guy at the basketball shoot calls me over and starts busting my chops. “Two balls for a dollar. You got a dollar?”
“Maybe. You got two balls?”
“Wiseass.”
He’s a college guy, or at least the age of one. I know they’ve got the rims bent so you have to make a perfect shot, but I’m up for it. If I make them both I win a basketball.
My first shot hits hard against the back of the rim and drops off, but the second one swishes. The guy hands me a plastic whistle and says I should try again. Maybe later.
“Candy!” Louie says, and we step over to the booth where you can win fifty bars at a time. Of course they paint the 50 BARS thing in huge letters on the wheel, but they angle it so there’s only a tiny fraction of the wheel that would actually give you that prize.
I put a quarter on the seven and Louie plays five. We lose twice each before five comes up, and the guy tosses a little ticket thing toward Louie as he sweeps up the quarters.
“It says four bars,” Louie says.
“That’s decent,” I say.
“Maybe we can sell ’em and make some of my money back.”
He gets four Hershey bars, smaller than the ones you buy at the store. He shoves them into his back pocket with his wallet.
We head toward the animal sheds, which are over in the far corner of the grounds. We pass crowds of kids our age and younger, and some older. Kids come from over by Wallenpau-pack or even Scranton for this, and of course there are lots of out-of-towners in the area in the summer. New Yorkers and people from Jersey. They have summer homes.
My father says the fair gets worse every year. More New Jersey sleazebags, more gold jewelry, more loudmouths. Fewer sheep and cattle.
Jared Osborne walks up to us eating a sausage sandwich. We’re friends. I used to kick his butt at everything sportswise, but last winter he grew about six inches and sprouted muscles and facial hair, and this spring he was the best sprinter on our track team, including the eighth graders. I was about third. Maybe fourth.
“What are you guys doing?” Jared asks.
“Hanging around,” Louie says. “Maybe get in a fight later.”
“For what?”
“No reason. Just if somebody says something I don’t like.”
“Oh.”
I look at Louie, then at Jared. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking for Nick.”
Nick is at the top of the elite group. He mostly hangs with high school kids and has a new girlfriend every week. Jared’s gone from below us to way ahead in a matter of months. That happens.
Jared walks away. We’re by the freak show, and the signs say TWO-HEADED COW, WORLD’S FATTEST MAN, BEARDED LADY, MONKEY BOY. It’s the same show they have every year. You go inside the tent (for three dollars) and they have pictures of a bearded lady and a two-headed cow and other things. They have a real dead python with two heads, but it’s pretty obvious the second head was sewn on.
There is a very huge man in there who needs a cart to get around, but it’s hard to imagine that he’s the world’s fattest. I get the idea that the pictures and the snake and stuff belong to him. Anyway, we reach the stables where the 4-H animals are kept. Kids camp out here to be by their animals in the days before the judging, grooming them and feeding them and cleaning the stalls. Most of the animals aren’t here yet; mainly it’s just some cows, but the barn smells good, like hay and cow manure.
There are about six horses that live here year-round. They’re in their stalls. I go up to one and pat its nose, a dark brown guy with a white spot on his forehead.
This end of the fairgrounds is still quiet, since most of the livestock stuff doesn’t begin for a few days. So when we turn toward another stall we’re surprised to see two girls sitting on the ground smoking cigarettes. They’re about, what—maybe eighteen? They both have blue T-shirts that say GRANDSTAND AMUSEMENTS, so they must be with the carnival.
“Taking a break?” Louie says.
“Been working hard,” says the one with red hair. She’s got the bottom of her shirt rolled up and tied above her navel. The other one has shortish dark hair with maroon tips, and one of those fluorescent orange necklaces wrapped a couple of times around her wrist. “Came to see the horses,” she says.
I look at the horse in the stall she’s sitting by, a lighter-colored one with a blondish mane.
“So what are you boys up to?” the red-haired one asks. “Looking for trouble?”
“We make trouble,” Louie says. “We don’t need to look for it.”
Good one, Louie. I’m sure they’re impressed.
The red-haired one uncrosses her legs. “Wow,” she says. “We better look out, Deb.”
Deb laughs. She gets up and leans against the wall, taking a deep drag on her cigarette. “So. You guys local?” she says.
“Not really,” Louie says. “We’ve lived all over. My dad travels a lot. Racing cars. So we move around. We just live here for now.”
Louie is full of shit. His dad works at Sturbridge Building Products and they’ve lived here a hundred years.
Deb looks right past him at me and licks her lips. She stares at me for a few seconds. I feel like I’m going to melt.
“Racing cars,” she says. “Wow. What about you?” she asks me. “You play for the Knicks?”
I laugh. “Sure.”
“Show her the whistle,” Louie says. “He won it shooting baskets.”
“You must be quite a shooter,” Deb says. She’s no taller than I am. Looks like she’s got strong arms and could kick my butt.
She’s kind of staring me down now. “See that trailer?” she finally says, motioning with her head toward a blue-and-white trailer behind the Tilt-A-Whirl.
“Yeah?” My voice sounds kind of squeaky.
“Got twenty bucks?” she asks. She runs her tongue back and forth across her teeth.
Louie giggles. “Holy shit,” he says.
The red-haired one is standing now, too. “Same deal for you,” she tells Louie. “Or would that be too much trouble?”
“Shit,” he says again, drawing out the word. He looks at me with a grin and very wide eyes. He’s blushing. My mouth feels dry.
“Geez,” I say under my breath. I should laugh, too, but all I can manage is a weak, wimpy “Heh.” I have at least that much in my wallet.
Louie swallows hard. “I’ve got two dollars and four Hershey bars,” he says.
The red-haired one snorts. “Take a hike,” she says. She gives him a good hard stare. “Get lost. Send your race-car father instead.”
Louie backs away, looking at me, looking like a scared little kid. I take a step back, too. Deb tilts her head to the side, then back, studying me. I can’t move. “Go take a Dumbo ride, fellas.” They both crack up. I feel smaller than a string bean.
We don’t say a word as we hurry out of the barn and make our way through the crowd again, past the bumper cars and the merry-go-round and the Italian-ice stand and bingo. The truck pull is still going on, and there’s a rock band playing near the entrance.
Jared goes by with two girls I don’t recognize, both of them showing lots of suntanned skin and smelling overly sweet. They look five years older than us but probably aren’t at all.
Louie stares after them with his mouth open, then bites down on his lip. “How much money you have?” he finally says.
“A few bucks,” I say. “Maybe forty,” though I don’t think I have quite that much left.
“Can you loan me some?” he asks. “Just a dollar so I can get in the freak show. I’ll pay you back next week.”
“Sure,” I say. “No problem.”
“You want a candy bar?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say as we walk past the basketball shoot. “Later we’ll win fifty more.”
I Voted
for Mary Ann
Last night my dad hassled me about staying out late every night this week and only working part-time. I said it’s August, I’m in training. I run every evening and I hang out to unwind. I get up early to run again, and I can only handle so much. So twenty-five hours a week washing dishes is all I can stand right now. He said I was a pussy.
So I was lying in bed thinking of how all we do is disagree anymore. And I thought about Grandpa, and how he used to show up every Sunday when we were little, laughing and joking and carrying pies and rolls from the bakery, and he’d give me and Devin money and take us bowling and out to Pizza Hut. And when I was eleven and I did a crappy job painting his porch and I knew it and I cried about it, he called me the next morning and told me to come back and see how great it looked now that the paint had dried and smoothed itself out. And we both knew he’d touched it up himself, but we never said so. He just made me feel good about it.
