Racing the Rain

by John L Parker

  Cassidy pulled the ball out of the net, but he and Osgood both stepped out-of-bounds simultaneously fifteen feet apart. Cassidy acted like he was going to throw a baseball pass downcourt, which got his man up in the air, then tossed the ball over to Osgood, who was still out of bounds, waiting. Not many players were aware that a pass between two out-of-bounds players was completely legal. Cassidy immediately stepped around his airborne defender and headed downcourt as Osgood hit him with a quick pass. By the time his man got back on terra firma, Cassidy had a five-yard lead on him, which he maintained all the way down the floor.

  Pahokee’s center and forwards were not set up when Cassidy got to the top of the key, but one of them turned just in time to see Cassidy getting ready to shoot. He immediately went to defend just as Randleman stepped over and turned sideways, setting a left screen on the guy at the foul line. Cassidy did a crossover dribble and went left around the screen, which now left him completely open down the key. Everyone else on the Pahokee team was busy trying to figure out whom they were supposed to be guarding, what the score was, whether their uniform jerseys were properly tucked in, everything but stopping the guy with the ball. It was the simplest offensive concept in basketball: get open and put the ball in the hole. Cassidy pulled up into his jumper and buried it.

  Now the Pahokee guys looked at each other with real concern. In their first game Quenton Cassidy hadn’t played at all, and little Pahokee had come within five points of beating Edgewater. That fact didn’t engender a great deal of respect for anything about Edgewater except its size. Now this guy they’d never seen before had just breezily scored twice in less than a minute. Worse, it all seemed too casual. The guy wasn’t in the least surprised, and neither was anyone on his team.

  Cassidy was trotting back on defense when he heard a familiar jungle call among the noise from the little crowd. He looked over to the home side and was surprised to see Trapper Nelson sitting courtside. And by him, in civvies, was Ron Lefaro, giving him a pumping fist and a whoop. Cassidy gave them a happy little wave as he scurried down the court.

  Edgewater ran the score up so high the reserves played most of the last quarter. For once Cassidy was happy to sit on the bench, cheering on the second team.

  Pahokee was just the first in a long succession of one-sided victories. Dewey Stoddard still hardly had a word to say to him, but Cassidy started every game. After the games, Coach Cinnamon would sometimes offer a word of praise or encouragement, but Dewey said nothing.

  In fact, Dewey was as clueless as everyone else about his own sudden startling success as a basketball coach. In reality, Cassidy and Stiggs had taken over the team, working out a system of hand gestures to indicate changing from man-to-man to zone, which out-of-bounds play to use, which offense to set up, and so on. Dewey was only vaguely aware that something was going on, but as long as it seemed to be working he didn’t trouble himself about it. His coaching advice, when he had any to offer, was opaque and confusing: Don’t take anything the defense doesn’t give you! Cut off the passing lanes! Give and go!

  When the JV team went 18–2 for the season, the conference coaches voted Dewey the junior varsity Coach of the Year. Cassidy told Stiggs and Randleman that everyone on the JV team should become professional magicians, because they had somehow turned Dewey Stoddard—who still thought a zone press was something you used to make Cuban sandwiches—into a basketball genius.

  “Yeah, we were winning by fifteen a game until Dewey got the flu. Then we won by thirty-two and twenty-eight with Mr. Kamrad coaching. And Mr. Kamrad never played basketball in his life. If Dewey had just stayed at home every game, he’d have made Coach of the Century.”

  The irony of Dewey’s award was not lost on the local sportswriters, who loved to report examples of “Dewenglish” in their columns:

  “Sure, we’ve got some height. But what we don’t have in height, we make up for in size,” he told the Orlando Sentinel’s Bill Buchalter.

  In a pep talk about sticking to training rules, he told his minions: “You can’t just keep burning your bridges at both ends.”

  When explaining why he was resting a semi-injured player for two games, Dewey explained: “You’ve got to be careful not to kill the goose that laid the deviled egg.”

  Then there were the cryptic practice directives: “All right, men, line up alphabetically by height.”

  And: “Now I want everyone to pair up in threes and line up in a circle.”

  They could have given the credit to the ladies in the lunchroom for all Cassidy cared. He was on top of the world. Stiggs and Randleman told him he was becoming pretty obnoxious, but they were mostly kidding. Mostly.

  * * *

  Jim Cinnamon came by fifth-period study hall, which was held in the cafeteria. He talked to Mrs. Midyette, the monitor, then signaled Cassidy.

  “Hope you don’t mind me pulling you out of study hall like this,” he said, his ripple-soled coaching shoes making little squeaks on the terrazzo hallway floor.

  “No, sir. I’ve worked out enough quadratic equations to last the rest of the year. Is there anything wrong?”

  “Not at all. I just wanted to talk to you about next season. That suit you?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind. Say, are you growing again?”

  “Yes, sir. I hope to be over six feet by next year,” said Cassidy.

  “Me too!” said Coach Cinnamon.

  When they sat down in his office, Coach Cinnamon picked up a sheath of stapled mimeographed pages from a stack on the corner of his desk.

  “This is the offense I’m thinking about running next year. It’s basically a one-three-one, with a low post, a high post, and two wings. That essentially gives us two centers and two forwards. But the key is the last guy, the point guard. He has to be able to bring the ball up—under pressure sometimes—and he has to start the offense. He has to be able to hit from the outside so they can’t sag on him and jam up the middle. He has to be able to penetrate so they can’t just lay back in a zone. If he can manage all that, that lets us put a really big team on the floor: two inside big boys, two outside big boys—four tough rebounders on the boards on every shot.”

  Cassidy whistled.

  “But it doesn’t work without the point guard. He can’t be a weak link. In fact, he has to be a strong link. If they can stifle him, they stifle the whole offense. He has to be aggressive and just . . . well, just active. He has to be in constant motion, a nonstop scoring threat, but always looking to penetrate the key or pass it inside to the big boys.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So. Think you can handle it?”

  Cassidy could not pretend to be surprised. His JV team had often run much the same offense just because of the personnel they had on the floor and the fact that Cassidy didn’t really need help bringing the ball up. They often found themselves with four big players and Cassidy. Dewey hadn’t put in an offense that took advantage of that fact, so he just called one of the big men a “strong guard” and told them to run their regular offense. Stiggs and Cassidy quickly figured out how to use the extra forward, and they had basically come up with their own version of a 1-3-1.

  Jim Cinnamon was now telling him that they were going to make that familiar formation their official offense for the next season.

  “What I need to know, Quenton, is whether you think you can be our point guard?” he said.

  After an 18–2 season and leading the JV team in scoring and several other categories, Cassidy had left his nerdy persona behind. Humility had never been his strong suit, and he was already developing an affinity for intentional mixed metaphors.

  “Does a one-legged duck swim in the woods?” Cassidy said.

  Coach Cinnamon gave him a strange look. “Afraid I don’t follow.”

  “I mean, yes, sir!” said Cassidy.

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  BAG BOY SUMMER

  This was shaping up to be a pretty darned good
summer despite the fact that Cassidy had what he thought was the most grueling and thankless job in Citrus City.

  With no small amount of silent cussing, he got two heavily laden carts through the automatic doors and out into the ferocious heat and humidity of the commissary parking lot. It was payday and the place was packed with military wives and their squalling progeny, and the women always left the place with at least two grocery carts loaded to the scuppers with Pop-Tarts, Froot Loops, and Cheez Whiz.

  Cassidy pushed one cart with his right hand while dragging the other one behind with his left. His customer, a young Filipina woman, had her hands full with a five-year-old girl who was blowing a steady stream of soap bubbles, and a three-year-old boy running around in a harness at the end of an honest-to-God leash.

  Dog-boy eyed Cassidy suspiciously. He was wearing a little jumper embroidered with a happy-looking Dutch child and the legend BUSTER BROWN. Cassidy winked at him, causing him to widen his eyes with alarm and reach for the water pistol in the little plastic holster he wore around his nonexistent hips.

  “Freddo, what did we talk about already?” said the mother.

  Freddo pouted unhappily at his mother, whom Cassidy was just now noticing was actually pretty attractive. Freddo looked at him with narrowed eyes.

  “What was it, Freddo?” she said. Freddo slumped in defeat, taking his hand off his six-shooter.

  “NO ’QUIRTING!”

  “That’s right, baby, no squirting until we’re in the backyard again.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Cassidy told her out of the side of his mouth. Actually, he might not have minded a quick dousing, since he was sweating like a field hand as he maneuvered both carts through the blistering asphalt hell of the parking lot. Other bag boys whooped at him as they raced back to the store pushing empty carts. You had to go through a complete rotation, like a batting order, to get to be the lead bagger, the one who got the tip—if any. Everyone else pitched in and bagged like maniacs to help get their buddy out the door, not out of altruism or any sense of esprit de corps, but because the faster they got rid of the guy in front, the faster their turn came up.

  Stiggs went flying by, riding his cart like a skateboard. He held up two dollar bills and waved them in Cassidy’s face.

  Damn, Cassidy thought. He had had just one cart, not even full at that, and he got two bucks! Must have been an officer’s wife. Enlisted men’s wives were the stingiest, but noncoms usually weren’t too bad. Cassidy hoped his customer would pick up a hint from Stiggs’s elation, but she seemed intent on reining in the dog-child, who was groaning mightily and straining at the end of his leash toward a parked 1932 Harley-Davidson seventy-four-inch flathead motorcycle that was still clicking and pinging as it dissipated heat.

  “Don’t let him . . .” Cassidy started, but it was too late. Dog-boy, completely helpless in the powerful spell of the machine, had fetched up at the end of his retractable leash but still had just enough room to reach out and touch the object of his fascination, the bright chrome exhaust of the elegant machine.

  It took a second to register, but when the circle of synapses in Freddo’s little nervous system had finally completed the loop, the kid went wild.

  “WAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” He held his already blistering fingers up accusingly to his mother, crying so hard that for a moment he went completely silent as he tried to catch his breath for the next round.

  Cassidy’s heart sank as he tried to calculate how much extra time this was going to cost him before he could get back into the rotation.

  The little girl was wholly unconcerned, happily tending her bubbles. The mom, at least, wasn’t completely losing it. Apparently this was not Freddo’s first experience with interesting objects that caused pain, and Cassidy was beginning to appreciate the undeniable utility of that harness.

  By the time they got to the car, a de rigueur 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon, the woman had downgraded Freddo from panicky screaming to simple loud crying. Cassidy, dripping sweat now, had to clear out a space among the toys in back—Fanner-50 cap pistols, Etch A Sketch tablets, Little Princess coloring books, 112-color Crayolas, Slinkies, Silly Putty, Hot Wheels, Easy-Bake Oven, Doctor Who’s Astro-Ray Dalek Gun, not to mention uncountable loose Lincoln Logs, dominoes, and Pick-up Sticks.

  Goaded by Freddo’s continued wailing, Cassidy loaded the groceries as fast as he could, and when he came to one heavy bag full of frozen stuff, he got a brainstorm and took the time to dig through the bag and locate a box of Popsicles. At his suggestion, the mom took a Popsicle and had Freddo hold it in his poor little burnt fingers. Whether out of real relief or mere distraction, he seemed somewhat mollified and the wailing was reduced to intermittent whimpering and finally to exhausted snuffling.

  A favorite phrase of Cassidy’s own mother’s came to mind when she was especially exasperated with him: I hope you have ten just like you.

  All loaded finally, the mother got behind the wheel and looked up at Cassidy with gratitude, then backed out and drove off. Cassidy stood, forlorn and unbelieving, watching the little station wagon pull away. A good solid half hour of blood, sweat, toil, and tears, and he had absolutely nothing to show for it.

  Maybe she looked in the rearview and took pity on him. For whatever reason, the brake lights flashed on, the station wagon came to a stop. Slowly at first, then gaining speed, the car backed up all the way to where Cassidy stood with his two empty grocery carts.

  His heart soared like a hawk!

  The window rolled down, a brown, braceleted arm extended. Cassidy reached his hand out and she dropped the coins in. She drove off without a word as Cassidy looked down. Resting in his glistening palm were two shiny liberty head dimes.

  * * *

  The commissary itself was air-conditioned to a fare-thee-well, and since he worked there every day but Sunday, Cassidy suffered from a more or less permanent summer cold. On weekdays Randleman had a job as a fry cook at the Burger King on Dixie Highway, and Stiggs had lucked into a high-paying job with a plumbing contractor, soldering copper pipes. It was hard work, but he made real money, which his father made him deposit into an account at Citrus City First Federal.

  But they all quit work at four P.M. and were at the base gym by four forty-five, about the time the servicemen started drifting in for their pickup games.

  Stiggs was skinny as ever but had shot up to almost six six, and he had springs for legs. The weight room in the gym had a heavy-duty squat station, on which the three of them did three sets of half-squats every day after their games and drills. They did one set of eight or more reps with relatively light weight, one set of six reps with moderate weight, and one set of three or four reps with as much weight as they could tolerate.

  Despite his thin frame, Stiggs could handle more than two hundred pounds on his final set. He could now stand flat-footed under the rim and dunk the ball one-handed. Randleman outweighed Stiggs by twenty pounds, but he could jump almost as high. And he was particularly good at maneuvering his sturdy frame underneath the boards.

  Cassidy could now, with a running start, grab the rim one-handed and hang on like a monkey, though the coveted dunk still eluded him. He could occasionally slam home a volleyball, though, and that gave him great status in certain quarters.

  Perhaps the best thing about coming into their own as ballplayers was the way the trio had slowly, almost imperceptibly, begun to be accepted by the gym regulars. They even had their own base nicknames.

  “I pick Moose,” said House, pointing to Randleman, who moved over to his side.

  “I’ll take the kid,” said Ron Lefaro, pointing to Cassidy.

  “Man choose Hot Shot,” said House. “Got two shooters now. I take Stretch.”

  Stiggs joined House. They clearly had the rebounds. The rest of the candidates were divvied up. All three of the boys had been picked before any of the older players, but they weren’t surprised anymore when that happened.

  The games went on most of the afternoon, and to Cassidy’s sur
prise, his team won most of them. Or more correctly, Lefaro figured out a way to win most of them.

  “I don’t get it,” Cassidy said, resting in the bleachers during a break. “We got almost no rebounding whatsoever.”

  “Right,” said Lefaro. “So what do you do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cassidy. “Punt?”

  “No. You avoid creating rebounds.”

  Cassidy looked at him.

  Lefaro slapped him on the knee. “You don’t miss, Hot Shot! Just don’t ever miss!”

  Randleman had his mother’s car, so they drove over to the cafeteria afterward. Cassidy got two cheeseburgers, two donuts, and two Cokes. Stiggs got a banana split, Randleman a tuna sandwich and potato salad. They inhaled it all so fast they sat at the Formica table afterward looking at each other and breathing hard, like they had just come off the court.

  “Hey, I just realized something,” said Stiggs.

  “What’s that?” Randleman said from under the table, where he was retying his Converse lowcuts.

  “All three of us are going to start next year!”

  “Shhh!” said Cassidy. “Don’t put your mouth on it. Don’t you dare put your mouth on it.”

  CHAPTER 32

  * * *

  GLORIOUS SEASON

  All three of them started every game.

  At the end of March they were 26–3 and ranked seventh in the state. They came back from the state tournament in Kernsville licking their wounds, but it had been an amazing season.

  And because the first of April felt like summer already, Trapper Nelson proposed a tank dive trip in celebration; also, he had some people who had requested certain tropical fish—Trapper rarely did anything for pleasure alone. Jim Branch had loaned them his twenty-two-foot Aquasport with its commodious dive platform, so they cruised along for once in unaccustomed luxury.