Uncommon Type

by Tom Hanks

  Steve rolled strike after strike, talked less and less, and entered a Concentration Zone that blocked out the rest of existence. He said nothing, never sat down, and never looked at what was happening behind him. People were texting their bowl mates to get down to the lanes on the PDQ. Free pizza was delivered. Smart-phone cameras came out in force, and a family of six showed up, the little kids in their pajamas, pulled out of bed because a sitter could not be found and Mom and Dad did not want to miss another perfect game. Steve Wong had yet to bowl anything other than a big black X for his third game in a row. In an atmosphere of utter wonder and magic, he kept right on smacking down thirty-point frames for his fourth, fifth, and—wait for it—sixth game. In a row.

  We were openmouthed and hoarse from screaming, the three of us, huddled around the little desk between lanes 7 and 8, surrounded by a crowd of 140 and then some. I had stopped bowling. Anna began pacing instead of playing in the fifth frame of game 2, not wanting to somehow mar the alley and screw up Steve’s run. Only MDash kept rolling, two gutter balls to every one that found the stack.

  Huzzahs rose and fell from lofty levels to silences thick with stilled lungs. Anna’s “Atta baby” became the common cheer not just for each of Steve’s strikes but, charitably, for MDash’s knockdowns as well. When the seventy-second consecutive strike for S. Wong was computed as his sixth perfect game in a row, the man-in-full stood at the foul line rubbing his eyes, his back to the berserk crowd, which screamed and stamped and pounded bottles of beer and cups of soda. None of us had ever been present for that kind of achievement—trivial to some, as what is bowling but a game? But come on! Six perfect anythings are a permanent memory.

  Check out the Internet for videos of the evening and you’ll see Steve stone-faced as strangers and pals celebrate him like a congressman-elect. Look at the comments: about 90 percent of the Anonymous Horde call it a hoax, but never mind them. The next day Steve was fielding calls from media outlets that wanted comments, photos, and appearances on camera. He went on the local news, the four channels shooting him individually on lane 7 as he stood stiffly, the embodiment of on-camera discomfort. You actually roll all those perfect games? How’s that feel, rolling all those perfect games? What were you thinking? You ever think you’d roll so many strikes? Yes. Good. Trying to get another. Nope.

  Each camera crew asked him to finish the interview with a roll down the alley. He obliged with four strikes, on camera, on cue. The string continued. The capper was a call from ESPN for an appearance on a show called Alley Nation. They’d pay him seventeen hundred bucks for just showing up, and if he rolled another perfect game, he’d get one of those six-foot-tall checks for $100,000.

  You’d think such a heady few days would be fun, with an invite to be on TV and all. But Steve comes from a long line of quiet, humble Wongs. He clammed up. MDash saw him at work at Home Depot, standing stock-still in Power Tools, supposedly racking saber saw blades, but all he was doing was staring at two different blades in their clamshell packaging like the labels were written in a foreign language. He woke up at night with the dry heaves. When we picked him up in my VW Bus to drive to the ESPN gig, he almost forgot the bags with his monogrammed shoes and Chinese Lightning.

  The show was going to be at Crowne Lanes in Fountain Valley—a long drive, so we stopped at an In-N-Out burger before hitting the freeway. In the drive-thru lane, Steve finally confessed what had been bothering him. He did not want to bowl on TV.

  “You against the idea of getting free money?” I asked him. “The closest I’ve ever been to a hundred K was a Powerball ticket with two numbers right.”

  “Bowling should be fun,” Steve said. “Laughs in an informal social contract. We roll when our turn comes up and no one cares about the score.”

  MDash wanted him to take his winnings in silver dollars.

  Steve continued as we crawled through the line. In-N-Out is always busy. “I stopped competitive bowling at St. Anthony Country Day when it became a letter sport. You had to file an application and sign score sheets. Keep up an average. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was stressful then. It’s stressful now.”

  “Look at me, Stevie baby,” Anna said, reaching around the seat and grabbing his face in her hands. “Relax! There is nothing you can’t do on a day like today!”

  “On what waiting room poster did you read that?”

  “I’m just saying, turn this day into fun with a capital F. Today, Steve Wong, you are going to go on TV and you are going to have fun. Fun fun fun fun.”

  “I don’t think so,” Steve said. “Nope, nope, nope, nope.”

  Crowne Lanes had been a site for PBA tournaments. There were grandstand-style seats and ESPN banners, lights for the TV, and multiple cameras. When Steve saw the seats filled with avid bowling fans, he let out a cussword, rare for Steve Wong.

  An exhausted woman with a headset and a clipboard found us.

  “Which one of you is Steve Wong?” MDash and I raised our hands. “Okay. You’ll be on lane 4 after the game between Shaker Al Hassan and Kim Terrell-Kearny. The winner of that plays the winner of the Kyung Shin Park–Jason Belmonte game for the final. Nothing’s expected of you until then.”

  Steve went out to the parking lot to pace with Anna on his heels, talking about how fun it must be to work at ESPN. MDash and I grabbed sodas and sat in a VIP section to see Kyung Shin Park beat Jason Belmonte by 12 in what was a damn fine exhibition of the hardwood game of tenpin. In the second game, MDash rooted hard for Shaker Al Hassan—he knew a lot of Al Hassans before coming to the USA—but Kim Terrell-Kearny (who was a woman pro, by the way) nipped him 272–269. While the cameras were being rolled over to lane 4 and the crew started tweaking the lights, the crowd milled about and Anna came looking for us.

  “Steve is throwing up in the parking lot,” she told us. “Between the TV trucks.”

  “Nerves?” I wondered.

  “Are you an idiot?” she asked.

  MDash left us to get a selfie with Shaker Al Hassan.

  I found Steve sitting outside on a low wall by the entrance, his head in his hands like he was fighting a fever and might chook again.

  “Wong-o,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “Here’s what you are going to do today. You roll Chinese Lightning a couple of times. You go home seventeen hundred bucks to the better. Easy. Breezy.”

  “Can’t do that, man.” Steve raised up his head, eyes to the horizon across the parking lot. “Everyone expects god damn perfection. Drive me home right now.”

  I sat with him on the low wall. “Let me ask you a question. Is this bowling alley not like every bowling alley on the planet, with the foul line and the arrows in the wood? Are there ten pins down at the other end of the lane? Will your ball come back to you magically via an underground slot?”

  “Oh, I see. You are giving me a pep talk.”

  “Answer my insightful questions.”

  “Yes. True. Golly, jeepers, I see that you are right. Everything will be hunky-dory now that you have talked some sense into me.” Steve was speaking in a monotone. “I’m special and I can do anything I set my mind to and dreams do come true if I just carpe diem.”

  “Atta baby,” I said. We did not move for a couple of minutes. The exhausted woman in the headset came yelling for us that it was post time for Steve Wong.

  He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair, and then rose up, letting loose with a string of very un-Wong expletives. Good thing his parents weren’t around.

  —

  When Steve put on those ugly bowling shoes, a ripple of “hey…that’s that guy…” went through the crowd. His Internet legend had preceded him. When the tape was rolling and he was introduced by the host of Alley Nation, the place echoed with applause. Even the pro bowlers looked over at lane 4.

  “Steve Wong,” the host intoned. “Six perfect games in succession. Seventy-two strikes in a row. But questions linger as to whether your incredible streak has been the creation of clever editing and computer special effec
ts. What is your reaction to such allegations?” The host stuck the microphone up to Steve’s lips.

  “Makes sense, what with the Web being the Web.” Steve’s eyes darted from the host to the crowd to us to the floor and back to the host—all so fast it looked like he was having an attention-induced seizure.

  “Have you ever thought you’d reach such a level of technique and form that so many closed frames would be in your game?”

  “I just bowl for fun.”

  “The official record for straight strikes is held by Tommy Gollick at forty-seven, but here you claim to have rolled twenty-four consecutive Turkeys. Many in the bowling world wonder if such a string is even possible.”

  I turned to a fellow next to me who, with his bowling shirt emblazoned with a Crowne Lanes logo, must have been a citizen of Alley Nation. “What does he mean by Turkeys?” I asked him.

  “Three strikes in a row, dipshit. And no way in hell did that punk roll twenty-plus of ’em.” He then yelled “Hoax!” at the top of his lungs.

  “As you may hear, Steve Wong, there are some who doubt not just your claim but also the word of the manager of your home alley, the Ventura Party, Billiards, and Bowling Complex.”

  Steve looked the crowd over, probably seeing only the glaring eyes of unbelievers. “Like I said. I bowl for fun.”

  “Well, as I always say, the proof of any bowler is in the crash of pins, so, Steve Wong, step up to the line and show us what game you brought with you today. And remember, folks, a great time is waiting for you and your family at your nearby Bowling Alley and Fun Center. Take up bowling and get on a roll.”

  Steve walked to the ball return, strapping on his glove as the three of us hooted and hollered “Atta baby.” Some in the crowd catcalled. Steve heaved a sigh so deep and soulful we could see his shoulders sag, and we were perched far away in the upper row. He turned his back to us all and sighed again. By the time he took Chinese Lightning into his hands and placed his fingers into the ball’s custom-drilled holes, we who knew Steve Wong could tell this about him—he was not having fun.

  And yet, his movements were still a vision of grace, his release of the ball smooth and effortless, the flick of his hand applying the same spin we had seen so many times, his fingers reaching for the ceiling in one hand waving free, the toes on his right foot tap-tapping on the hardwood akimbo to his left shoe, XXX flashing from his heels.

  Rumble. Smash. Strike. Cries of “Lucky!” echoed throughout Crowne Lanes. Steve, his back to the world, cooled his hand waiting for Chinese Lightning to appear from below. With ball in hand, he assumed the pose and did it again. Rumble. Smash. Strike number 2.

  Then came strikes number 3 through 6, netting a score of 120 in the fourth frame. Steve had turned the crowd decidedly in his favor, but I doubt he noticed. He didn’t so much as glance our way.

  Shaker Al Hassan was asked what he thought of Steve’s form. “Unworldly magnificent!” he said on camera to all citizens of Alley Nation.

  Strikes 7, 8, and 9 had all four professionals weighing in on Steve’s balance, his mechanics, his cool-under-pressure command, in what Kyung Shin Park called “the Tunnel” and Jason Belmonte knew as the “Line of Fate.” Kim Terrell-Kearny said the PBA had a place for a competitor as poised as Steve Wong.

  When ten X-ed frames were superimposed on the TV monitors, the host became flabbergasted—actually saying, “I am flabbergasted by the performance of this fine young example to bowlers everywhere!” The crowd was on its feet shouting encouragements equal to those for the gladiators of Ancient Rome. Steve’s eleventh roll was a surreal moment in time, a dream ballet, a free fall out of the sky that hit the perfect pocket between the 1 and 3 pins and kablooey went all eight of the rest of them.

  With one last strike needed for a perfect game, $100,000, and ESPN immortality, Steve soft-shoed to the ball return without any tell of emotion—no expectation, no anxiety, no fear. No fun, either. As far as I could tell from the back of his head, his face must have looked like an open-eyed death mask.

  As he held his ball before his heart in preparation for his windup, something more encompassing than silence fell on Crowne Lanes—a void of sound, like the room had been vacuum-pumped of atmosphere, robbing sound waves of their purchase. Anna’s fingers were digging into MDash’s and my arms, the words atta baby forming mutely on her lips.

  The exact moment of the beginning of Steve’s twelfth and final roll was imperceptible, like the slow liftoff of a rocket to the moon, so heavy a thing that nothing moves despite the ignition of boosters and all the flames and fury. The nanosecond Chinese Lightning hit the hardwood a roar exploded so loud you’d have thought every member of Alley Nation was on the cusp of simultaneous orgasm with the love of his or her life. A SABRE jet engine is not as loud as the roof-busting blare that grew and grew as that brown and yellow orb spun along its arc. Just inches from the impact of ball on pin, Crowne Lanes was engulfed in a wall of sound.

  The smash of ball in the pocket just between pins 1 and 3 happened in some other place, a clap of thunder a hundred miles away. We all saw the flash of white, like the smile of a giant with perfect teeth suddenly busted, all ten pins scattering and clattering until what was left was empty space and dead soldiers—ten of them.

  Steve stood at the foul line surveying the emptiness at the other end of the alley as upright pins appeared on automatic reset. As the host was yelling into his headset, “Steve Wong is perfect!” our friend knelt on one knee, appearing to thank God-as-he-knew-God for such a triumph.

  Instead, he was unlacing his left shoe—STEVE. He took it off and set its toe on the foul line. He did the same to WONG on the right, neatly setting his custom-made bowling footware so that XXX showed on TV.

  In stocking feet, he padded to the ball return and took up that which had already been delivered. Carrying Chinese Lightning in two hands like it was nothing more than a paving stone, he set it on top of his shoes in a gesture that Anna, MDash, and I knew to mean, “I will bowl no more. Forever.”

  As he tossed his bowling glove into the crowd—setting off a melee for the memorabilia hounds—Kim Terrell-Kearny ran up and kissed his cheek in an embrace, while the other pros offered handshakes and head rubs.

  By the time we made our way through the adoring bowlers—all of them now fans—Anna was weeping. She threw her arms around Steve Wong and sobbed so deeply I was worried she would pass out. MDash kept saying something in his native language, a superlative, I am sure. I toasted Steve with a beer I had found in a cooler by one of TV cameras, then grabbed his stack of bowling gear and stuffed it all in his bowling bag.

  Only the three of us heard him say, “I’m glad that’s over.”

  —

  None of us went bowling again for the next few months, though not by plan. I had a dime-size growth on my leg that went all raised up and spooky on me, so I scheduled outpatient surgery to have it removed, sliced away, potato-peeled off. Nothing serious. MDash got a new job, walking away from his career possibilities at Home Depot for a position at Target, his new workplace separated from his former job by a vast, shared parking lot. He walked to the other store, changed his polo shirt, and never looked back. Anna took fly-fishing lessons at a place run by the Parks Department—at the Stanley P. Swett Municipal Casting Ponds, a place no one had ever heard of or could find without Google Maps. She tried to get me to sign up along with her, but I look on fly-fishing as a companion sport to luge racing—never will I do either one.

  Steve Wong’s life settled down. He figured out how many ESPN dollars would go to taxes and planned accordingly. He went back to work, had to take selfies with customers for a while, and told MDash that leaving Home Depot for Target was like emigrating from his sub-Saharan home country to North Korea (such is the competitive rhetoric of Home Depot management). One thing Steve never did talk about was bowling.

  But one night, there we were, bowling for free, the regulars at the lanes sidling up to Steve for bumps with the fist that had rolled th
ose perfect games. Steve and I arrived first. I had picked him up, but he came out of his house empty-handed!

  “You dope!” I said as he climbed into the shotgun seat of the VW Bus.

  “What?”

  “Go back inside and get your stuff. Your shoes and your bag and Chinese Lightning.”

  “Okay,” he said, after a long pause.

  By the time Anna arrived, then MDash, I had finished a Rolling Rock and Steve was pumping quarters into a video motocross game. We carried his equipment down to our assigned lane, changed into our rental shoes, and picked out our bowling balls, Anna considering every single one, I think. When we called to Steve that we were ready to begin, he was still racing on the machine and just waved blindly for us to start without him. We ended up playing two games, just the three of us. Anna won both, I lost them, and MDash was crowing about being a Silver Medalist over me.

  Steve came down to our lane and watched the last frames of that second game. We were debating whether or not to go again, since it was getting late and it was a Thursday night. I wanted to go home, MDash wanted to beat Anna for the Gold, and she wanted to crush all our dreams for the third straight time in one evening. Steve didn’t care what we did, saying he would sit out the next line and maybe have a beer or two.

  “You aren’t going to bowl with us?” Anna was incredulous. “When did you get so stuck-up?”

  “C’mon, Steve,” MDash pleaded. “You and bowling mean America to me.”

  “Put your shoes on,” I told him. “Or you are walking home.”

  Steve sat there for a moment, then called us a bunch of jerks and took off his street shoes to change into his ugly bowling footwear.

  I rolled first, hitting a paltry four on my first ball, then missing the remaining pins by millimeters. MDash nearly died laughing. His first ball left three standing, which he then clobbered to pick up the spare.