Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  Now it was just Danny and Ty in the gym.

  Ty said, “You want to shoot around a little?”

  “Nah,” Danny said. “Will and me have got to be someplace. Maybe next week when you guys are here or something.”

  You lied enough, it got easier—that had been his experience, though pretty limited.

  “Later,” he said.

  “Later,” Ty Ross said.

  Danny found Will at the soda machine and told him he was meeting his mom soon, which was technically true, as long as you had a pretty loose definition of the word soon.

  “I’ll call you later,” Danny said, “or check you out on the computer.”

  “Either way,” Will said. “You know my motto: We never close.”

  Then he whipped out his cell phone again to call his brother. The last thing Danny heard as Will walked down the hall was him saying, “Great news, you need to come get me at school.” Then Danny saw him nod his head before saying, “You can thank me later.”

  Danny wasn’t meeting his mother anytime soon. She was going to be later than usual on this Friday because she had promised to handle Drama Club rehearsals for Sister Marlene, the drama teacher at St. Pat’s who had been out sick for a couple of days. The big first-semester production this year was Guys and Dolls, with Bren Darcy playing one of the lead roles, a gambler named Nathan Detroit.

  “Just remember Nate Archibald, one of our all-time faves out of ancient history,” Bren had said. “And the Detroit Pistons.”

  They both loved Nate Archibald because his nickname as a player had been “Tiny.”

  Ali Walker had said that rehearsal went from four-thirty to six-thirty, which had been just fine with Danny at the time, it meant more gym time for him. It wouldn’t have been that way a few years ago, when this auditorium had served as both a gym and a theater at St. Pat’s. But since then, the Annual Fund drive had raised enough money and the kids had chipped in with money of their own and now Drama Club kids held both rehearsals and the plays themselves in the brand-new theater that had been built next to the lower school.

  Only now he couldn’t make himself leave the gym.

  He knew he was better off going over and sneaking into the theater, up in the top row, watching Bren try to sing so he could bust his chops to the high heavens on Monday.

  Except.

  Except here he was, like he was nailed to the spot on the old stage at St. Pat’s. Here he was in what used to be the wings, stage right, peering through the sliding panel some St. Pat’s kids had fashioned in the old days, like a sliding door, so on the night of the school play the kids could look out when they weren’t on the stage trying to remember their lines, watching the audience while the audience watched them.

  That was where Danny was watching the Middletown Vikings as they began their first practice.

  In the past, the Middletown Basketball Association had hired outside coaches, usually young, to coach the various travel teams in town, boys’ and girls’, from fifth grade until the travel program ended in eighth. Danny had loved his coach of the last two years, a cool black guy in his twenties named Kelvin Norris, who’d thought nothing of making the two-hour car ride out from Queens twice a week, sometimes three times a week, for travel practices and games. Sometimes during the season, when there had been a Friday night game followed by a Saturday morning game, Coach Kel would stay over at the Walkers’ house, or the Darcys’, to the point where most of the travel-team parents considered him part of the family.

  After coaching fifth grade his first year and sixth grade the next, moving up with them to the next level, everybody had just assumed that Coach Kel would move up again this season and work with the seventh graders. But then over the summer, Mr. Ross had called up Coach Kel at the summer camp he ran in the Catskills and told him that he, Mr. Ross, planned to coach the seventh graders himself this season.

  Coach Kel had called Danny when it happened, wanting him to know, saying, “I think Mr. Ross’s first choice to coach Ty all the way into the national spotlight was Phil Jackson. Obviously his second choice was himself.”

  “But everybody wants to play for you,” Danny said. “Including Ty. Especially Ty. I don’t think he’s crazy about having his dad as his dad. Having him as a coach will probably just make him crazy.”

  That was when it still mattered to Danny who was going to coach the Vikings this season.

  “Before I get too much older,” Coach Kel said, “I’ve got to get as good at kissing butt as I am with those X ’s and O’s and that passion-for-the-game stuff.”

  Mr. Ross said Middletown Basketball loved Coach Kel’s enthusiasm so much that he wanted him to drop back and work with the fifth graders. Coach Kel turned him down, saying he wanted to work with older kids, not younger kids.

  Danny didn’t know what Coach Kel was doing now, whether he was coaching somewhere or just teaching phys ed at Christ the King High School. Danny just knew that kneeling at the middle of the court with all the players around him, speaking in such a low voice that Danny couldn’t hear what he was saying from his hiding place, was Mr. Ross.

  Coach Mr. Ross, that’s what he’d probably have them call him.

  Danny could see all of the usual suspects out there, trying to act as if they were fascinated by whatever pep talk—or sermon—Ty’s dad was giving them:

  There was Ty’s best friend, Teddy Moran, who was going to be one of the point guards on the team, along with the kid from Colorado, Andy Mayne. Danny noticed that Andy, who’d had long hair almost down to his shoulders for the tryouts, now looked as if he’d gotten his hair buzzed to look like Ty’s. He was also wearing the same McGrady sneakers as Ty. Top of the line, a hundred bucks, maybe more. Andy’s hair and sneakers at least made Danny smile. A lot of kids who grew up in Middletown tried to copy Ty Ross. Now the new kid from Colorado was the latest to run with the crowd.

  Danny saw the two black kids on the team, two of the coolest kids in the whole town, Alex Aaron and Daryll Mullins, both of them as long and skinny as Ty.

  Towering above everybody was Jack Harty, star tight end on Middletown’s twelve-year-old travel football team. Jack, with his dark complexion, looking big and wide like some dark-colored Hummer H2, was a born rebounder, stronger than everybody else his age, one who had a way of finding the ball once the people around him stopped flying off in different directions, like characters he’d just terminated in a blood-gore video game.

  Jack Harty was also famous in Middletown for being the only seventh grader who had already started shaving.

  Huge deal.

  So there they all were. Ty and Teddy. Alex and Daryll and Jack and the rest of them, Mr. Ross reaching into the big bag he had next to him and passing out practice jerseys, the guys trying those on before Mr. Ross went into the bag and came out with more goodies: long-sleeved navy-blue shooting shirts you could wear over your jersey while you were warming up.

  Great, Danny thought. What did Tess and her friends call it when they went girlie-girl shopping?

  Accessorizing?

  Now they were even doing that with travel basketball.

  “First class for you guys all the way,” Mr. Ross said when he was done passing everything out. He was walking toward the stage now, where he’d left his bag of basketballs, walking straight at Danny as if he’d noticed the narrow hole in the wall. “First class all the way for a team that’s going all the way this season.”

  He was a little taller than Danny’s dad. Danny was always struck first by how tall somebody was, was always playing off this adult’s height against somebody else’s. He did the same with kids, like he was comparison shopping, never really knowing how tall other kids were in feet and inches, even if he knew exactly what he was on a daily basis, exactly fifty-five inches—no sneakers—by his last check in the door frame of his room.

  Fifty-five.

  The speed limit.

  He kept looking through the narrow space, feeling as if he were on the wrong side of a fence.r />
  “One ball,” Mr. Ross said, taking a single ball, brand-new, out of the bag. “Three lines at the other end. Big guys—and there’s more size on this team than ever, and not by accident—in the middle. I want you to bounce the ball off the backboard, grab it like it’s a rebound, make an outlet pass to the guard on your right. Then guards, you pass it to the guy cutting to the middle from the other wing. Cut behind your passes. And make sure to get the lead out of those Hefty-bag shorts you all like to wear.”

  He threw the ball to the other end of the court and blew the whistle he was wearing around his neck.

  Some of these guys love their whistles as much as they do their clipboards, Danny thought.

  “I don’t want to see that ball touching the floor,” Mr. Ross said from underneath the basket closest to the stage, giving another quick blast to his whistle, as if he were using it like punctuation marks. “This is going to be a team that passes the ball, not a team that dribbles the ball.”

  The first three-man fast break came right at Danny.

  Jack Harty started the play at the other end, wheeling around after he came down with his fake rebound, throwing a hard two-hand chest pass to Teddy, who got it to Ty, cutting toward the middle of the court from the other wing.

  Ty gave it back to Jack Harty with so little effort, so quickly, it was as if the ball had never passed through his hands at all.

  Jack passed it back to Teddy, who waited a couple of beats too long, hesitated just enough when he fed Ty near the basket—Ty needs me passing him the ball, Danny told himself, even in a boring drill like this—that Ty had to go underneath the rim and then twist his body around in the air to make a neat reverse layup.

  As soon as those three got out of the way, here came the next three players on the break, Alex and Daryll so fast filling their lanes that they left fat Eric Buford behind, Eric’s face already the color of one of the fat tomatoes Ali Walker grew in her backyard garden.

  Danny Walker, his hands pressing against the wall above him, watching like he had a hidden camera, felt his knees buckle suddenly, without warning, the way they’d buckle when one of your buddies snuck up behind you and gave them a little karate chop.

  Felt his heart sink at the same time.

  He slid the board back in place, placed his forehead against it, stayed like that for a minute, listening to the basketball sounds from the other side of the wall, seeing it all with his hole closed up, with his eyes closed.

  His gym.

  Their team.

  Hey little guy, he thought to himself, using the refrain he’d heard his whole life.

  You’re right back where you started, little guy.

  You’re with the wrong group again.

  6

  DANNY WALKER DIDN’T PICK UP A BASKETBALL FOR A WEEK, FRIDAY TO FRIDAY, a personal best.

  Or worst.

  He didn’t play the weekend after that first Vikings practice at St. Pat’s. Or after dinner the first couple of nights of the next week. When his mom finally asked him about it on Tuesday, he shrugged and said, “My knee’s been bothering me a little bit, is all.”

  “An injury?” she said, giving him that raised-eyebrow deal that Danny figured girls must master at, like, the age of ten and then always have in their bag of tricks after that. “To my six-million-dollar bionic boy?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “I don’t need other people to remind me I’m getting older, I do it to myself. Constantly.”

  “You’re still young,” he said, as a mild form of protest.

  “Well, not if I’m coming at you with old TV shows like The Six Million Dollar Man. It was about this hunky guy who was half-hunky guy and half-superhuman robot.”

  Danny said, “How big did they make him?”

  She acted as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “Is your knee really hurting you?” she asked. “Should I call Dr. Jim?”

  He had muted the Knicks-Timberwolves preseason game he’d been watching when she’d come into the room. Now he pointed the remote at the set and let the voices of Marv Albert and Walt Frazier rejoin them.

  “I think I’ll just rest it a couple more days,” Danny said.

  “By the way,” she said, “when are the tryouts for Y basketball?”

  “Coming up pretty soon,” he said, trying to be as vague as possible. “Will mentioned something about that the other day, I think.”

  “It would be fun if the two of you ended up on the same team.”

  On television, Frazier was talking about somebody whooping and swooping, then swishing and dishing, but Danny had missed the play.

  “Really fun,” he said. “Fun, fun, fun.”

  “Is that sarcasm, Daniel Walker?”

  “Just kidding,” he said.

  Always the last line of defense, whether you were kidding or not.

  He muted the set again. “Have you seen Dad?”

  “At the Candy Kitchen the other day when I ran in to grab a sandwich. He was at the same seat at the counter he’s been sitting at since high school. I’m going to petition the town to give it landmark status.”

  “By himself?” Danny said. “Not doing anything?”

  “Yes,” his mom said in a voice so soft it surprised him, just because of who they were talking about. “That’s exactly what he was doing. Sitting alone. Not talking to anybody. Not doing anything except drinking a cup of coffee.”

  She came off the couch and knelt next to the easy chair. “Is there something you want to talk about that we’re not talking about here? Like this knee of yours, maybe, and how maybe that’s not the thing that’s keeping you off the court?”

  He looked past her to the Knicks game—you had to be careful about eye contact sometimes, eye contact could get you every time—and said, “What would you think if I didn’t, like, play basketball this year?”

  Danny had to give his mom credit. She didn’t start yelling about it on the spot, though that didn’t actually surprise him, she’d never been one of those parents who felt like she had to pump up the volume every time there was a disagreement in the house, or you stepped out of line.

  Even when she got really mad at you about something, she didn’t act as if you’d suddenly gone deaf.

  Even when you were talking about quitting basketball, at least for the time being.

  “You’ve always played, from the time you were big enough,” she said.

  Meaning, old enough.

  “Maybe I need a break, is all.”

  “At the age of twelve?”

  What she’d do in moments like this was, she’d start straightening up the room. Moving magazines about an inch, one way or the other, on the coffee table. Fluffing up pillows on the couch that didn’t need fluffing.

  Waiting him out a little bit.

  Danny said, “Mr. Fleming has baseball workouts all winter, at the tennis bubble. Just about every weekend.”

  Danny Walker played second base in baseball, always batted leadoff because of his size. And he was good. Just not as good as he was in basketball. At least as good as he used to think he was in basketball.

  “You could do both,” she said.

  Straightening a picture of her parents on the wall now.

  “Like I said, I’m just thinking that maybe I need a little break.”

  Ali Walker said, “And what other essentials do you plan to take a break from now that travel basketball didn’t work out for you—eating and sleeping and bathing regularly?”

  Danny tried to lighten the mood in the room a little bit. Fluff things up a little himself.

  “Is that sarcasm, Alison Walker?”

  She didn’t want to play.

  “Have you decided that Y ball is some kind of step down?”

  “Only on account of, it is a step down.”

  “Not every single good basketball-playing boy in this town is on travel,” she said. “And don’t say, on account of.”

  �
�Sorry,” he said. “And, yes, all the good kids in town are on travel, unless they’re playing hockey or something.”

  “You need basketball,” she said. Again with the soft voice.

  “Well, it sure doesn’t need me.”

  Standoff. They had them sometimes.

  “So you’re telling me you’re quitting.”

  “Not quitting permanently, Mom. Just for one season.”

  She had run out of things to move around. So she stood in the middle of the room, between him and the Knicks game, hands on hips. Danny saw that one long piece of hair had somehow gotten loose and had fallen over one eye. She blew it out of the way now, which sounded more like she was blowing off steam.

  “I think you need to talk to your father on this one.”

  They both knew she never called him in.

  On anything.

  Sometimes, when he was in the house, when they were in the kitchen and Danny was upstairs eavesdropping, he would hear her say, “When I want your advice on parenting, I’ll send up a flare.”

  In those moments, Danny wouldn’t even recognize his mom’s voice, as if it were another person doing the talking down there.

  “I was planning to call Dad, actually. So’s I could tell him myself.”

  She walked past him, probably on her way to straighten up the whole kitchen, do the dinner dishes all over again or mop the floor, saying to herself as much as him, “His two specialties, playing ball and quitting things.”

  Danny had forgotten to shut his computer off, so it was still on when he went up to his room, the screen giving off its spooky glow in the otherwise dark room, like a blue night-light.

  He’d also forgotten to go offline.

  He went over, sat down at his desk, was about to shut the whole thing down for the night, not even giving one last check to the sports news at ESPN.com, when he heard the goofy instant-message sound—“the old doodlely-doo,” his mom called it, “the music of our lives”—come out of it, at the same time a message box appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.