Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  “Especially because we haven’t.”

  It ended up Middletown 42, Seekonk 22.

  Final.

  Richie Walker said for the players and parents to meet at Fierro’s about five o’clock, the pizza was on him.

  “Is your mom here?” Richie said to Danny.

  Danny nodded to the row of folding chairs up on the stage. “She came late with Tess.”

  “See you all at Fierro’s,” his dad said.

  They tapped clenched fists.

  “We’re on the board,” his dad said.

  They were on the board.

  His dad still wasn’t there at five-thirty.

  “See?” his mom said. “The game’s over. He thought it was a soft five.”

  The Warriors and their parents had taken up most of the front room at Fierro’s, pushing four tables together. They finally decided to order, a bunch of plain pizzas and a couple of pepperonis, huge greasy paper plates covered with mountains of French fries, pitchers of Coke and Sprite. They were playing oldies on the old-fashioned Fierro’s jukebox as usual, but nobody could hear them over the mega-amped-up noise of the place, and laughter, and excitement, as the kids on the team replayed just about every basket of the game.

  In honor of the Warriors’ first win, Al Fierro announced that the ice cream sundaes were on him today.

  The waitresses, all of them from Middletown High, were starting to clear away the plates and pizza platters when the pay phone on the wall next to the front door rang.

  Al Fierro answered it, called out “Ali,” and motioned for her to come up there.

  Danny watched his mom take the receiver.

  Watched the smile leave her face.

  Saw her free hand come to her mouth.

  “Not again,” he heard her say.

  She nodded hard a couple of times, placed the receiver back in its cradle, walked over to where Danny was sitting between Will and Tess.

  “It’s your father,” she said. “There’s been an accident.”

  21

  SHE CONVINCED HIM IN THE CAR THAT HIS DAD WASN’T GOING TO DIE. “But he’s broken up pretty badly,” his mom said, her hands gripping the steering wheel like she was holding on for dear life.

  Maybe she was.

  “But they can put him back together, right?” Danny said.

  “They did it before, they can do it again. It’s his hip again, his shoulder. One of his lungs collapsed, but they said they fixed that when he got to the hospital. However they fix things like that.”

  “He must have stopped somewhere after the game,” she said. “They say he lost control of his car, right before that big curve where 37 intersects with 118. You know where that is, right? Near the Burger King and the Home Depot?”

  Danny said he knew it, but he didn’t remember a big curve.

  “At least he was wearing a seat belt this time,” Ali Walker said, turning her head slightly to talk to him.

  They were doing it by the book today, Danny sitting in the back where he belonged.

  “Coming home from a game, just like last time,” his mom said, not really talking to him now, more like she was talking to herself.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “I’m okay.”

  He wasn’t going to cry, that was for sure. Somehow crying to him meant that the whole thing was worse than he wanted it to be.

  We’re on the board, his dad had said.

  Danny sat in the waiting room looking at the pictures in the front of Sports Illustrated, just so he had something to do while his mom talked to the doctors.

  When they finally got into his dad’s room, all he could see were tubes, coming out of Richie Walker’s arm and stuck in his nose. There was a thick bandage covering his forehead.

  “Did I miss a good party?” Richie said when he saw them at the end of his bed.

  “We’re not staying long,” Ali said. “The doctors say you need your rest.”

  “Before they do their body and fender work on me in the morning.”

  “Well,” Ali said, “it’s not like the hip and shoulder they gave you last time around were top-of-the-line, anyway.”

  Richie said, “I asked them to try something besides used parts this time.”

  “Good one, Dad,” Danny said.

  He realized when he took his jacket off that he was still wearing his Warriors Number 3, the jersey hanging all the way down to the knees of the gray sweats he’d put on after the game.

  His mom stood on one side of the bed now, he stood on the other. Richie reached out with his left hand, the one not in the sling, and took Danny’s left hand.

  Danny squeezed it hard.

  “I wasn’t drunk,” Richie said, holding on to Danny but looking at Ali.

  She said, “Rich, you don’t have to—”

  He said, “I know I don’t. But I want to. I’m not going to lie to you, I thought about breaking the pledge, stopping for a cold one, just to toast our great victory. But I knew better this time.”

  “Don’t talk,” she said.

  “Hey,” Richie said to her. “Did you ever think you’d be telling me not to talk?”

  She said, “This is like being in class. What part of ‘don’t talk’ aren’t you getting here, mister?” She tried to smile at the end of it, but then she got that lower lip going and made Danny afraid she was the one who was going to lose it.

  But she didn’t.

  Danny had always known she was the toughest one of all of them.

  “The doctors said they’re going to fix up Dad as good as new, didn’t they, Mom?” Danny said.

  “Only if they’re grading me against the curve, right, teach?”

  “Close your eyes now,” Ali Walker said.

  He did, and a few minutes later, was sleeping.

  They were scheduled to operate on his right hip and his right shoulder at nine the next morning. Danny didn’t want to go to school, but his mom made him, saying he wasn’t going to do his father or anybody else any good hanging around the hospital and staring at the clock.

  “You’d rather have me sitting in class and staring at the clock?” he said.

  “You’re going to school,” she said. “I’ll wait it out at the hospital. The second he’s out, I’ll call.”

  Mrs. Stoddard picked him up. Right before first period, the principal at St. Pat’s, Mr. Dawes, an old guy who was retiring at what Will said was the age of dirt at the end of the school year, came over the intercom and said all students should keep Danny Walker’s dad in their thoughts today, even though he was sure Mr. Walker was going to come through surgery that morning with flying colors.

  They were in their English classroom by then.

  Will leaned over and said, “Hem and Haw Dawes makes the operation sound like a pop quiz your dad is trying to pass.”

  Danny had already decided that he wasn’t going anywhere today without either Will or Tess—or both—with him.

  Danny said to Will, “You’re my official spokesman today.”

  “Finally,” Will Stoddard said. “Finally, my brother, you have seen the light.”

  They still hadn’t heard anything at lunch, but Tess said that wasn’t unusual for a hip operation.

  “How do you know that?” Will said.

  She stuck her nose up in the air. “I know things,” she said.

  “You, like, researched Mr. Walker’s surgery?” Will said.

  “Last night,” she said. “Some people actually use Google to look up things besides somebody’s lifetime batting average.”

  “Mom said the same thing,” Danny said. “She said that if they were done by lunch, that would be fast.”

  Will and Danny had already finished eating the hamburgers they usually got in the cafeteria on Mondays. Tess cut off a small corner of hers, and chewed it carefully. As usual, she was working on her food as though it were some kind of tricky math problem.

  “Can I ask a completely selfish question?” Will said.

  Tess said
, “We’d expect nothing more of you.”

  “Or less,” Danny said.

  “Who’s gonna coach the team if your dad is laid up a while?” Will said.

  “I knew it was going to be something incredibly messed-up lame,” Tess said. “He’s not even out of surgery yet.”

  “It’s okay,” Danny said, putting a hand on her arm. “I’ve been thinking about it, too. Just to have something to think about besides the surgery.”

  “You guys never cease to amaze,” she said. “All guys never cease to amaze.”

  “No, really, Will’s right,” Danny said. “Mr. Harden’s going to be out of town on a case for the next month, Michael was talking about that at the party. Oliver’s only got his mom. Bren’s dad is all jammed up coaching his brothers in hockey. Mr. O’Brien’s got that Wall Street job that has him in London, England, half the time. Colby said that the only time Dr. Danes ever coached her was in soccer, that he gave up coaching anything after that because he’s on call so much on the weekends.”

  So who would coach them, Danny wondered.

  Fifteen minutes into Spanish, Mr. Dawes—who reminded Danny of Alfred, the butler from the Batman cartoons—appeared in the doorway, and motioned for Danny to come out in the hall.

  For the first time since they’d all been at St. Pat’s, Mr. Dawes was smiling.

  “Your mother just called from the hospital,” he said. “Your father made it through the surgery just fine. He’s a little worse for wear, but there were no surprises, she said to tell you, and no complications. She wanted me to tell you that she’ll pick you up here after school and drive you over there.”

  Danny thanked him, even shook his long, thin bony hand.

  When he came back into class, he gave a thumbs-up to Will and Tess, sat down at his desk, and thought: His dad had been a little worse for wear for as long as Danny could remember things.

  Ali Walker called off Warriors practice on Tuesday night. But after dinner that night, the whole team went to visit Richie at the hospital.

  Colby brought the present they had all chipped in to buy him, ten bucks a kid:

  An official Spalding NBA ball they’d all signed in Magic Marker.

  “Now you’ve got a gamer of your own,” Danny said to his dad.

  Richie still had the IV-tube attached to his right arm. With his left, he placed the ball next to him on the bed.

  “Just because I’m a little stiff,” he said, “I’m going to let you knuckleheads off without making you learn a couple of new plays I’ve got cooked up against the man-to-man.”

  There were only two chairs in the room; the O’Brien twins grabbed those. The rest of them stood at the foot of the bed so Richie could see them without turning his head. Any time he tried to move at all, Danny saw, there was a look on his father’s face like somebody had punched him. In addition to everything else that had happened at the intersection of 37 and 118, he’d broken two ribs.

  He let the kids do most of the talking. Will made everybody laugh—Richie included—by asking him if he’d mind just sliding over on the bed a little and handing Will the remote for the television set that came down out of the ceiling.

  Richie said, “The surgery didn’t kill me. But you making me laugh with busted ribs might make me do myself in.”

  “It’s a burden I have to bear, Coach,” Will Stoddard said. “Some people are just too funny.”

  Richie promised them all he’d be back before they knew it. The room then filled with the sound of Cool and That’s right and Now you’re talking, Coach. Even though they all knew he was lying, just by the looks of him, by what their own eyes were telling them.

  Finally the kids ran out of small talk and nobody knew what to say and it was at that moment, as if on cue, that the nurse stuck her head inside the door and said it was time for them to go, her patient needed his sleep.

  Danny was the last one to say good-bye.

  And now, after three days of holding everything in, even when he was alone in his room at night, thinking alone-in-his-room thoughts, he started to cry.

  And, as he did, he blurted out something he’d been holding inside along with the tears:

  “Why does this crap keep happening to you?”

  In a voice that was about one level above a whisper, Richie said, “You mean why do I have to be the victim of the world?”

  “Yeah, basically.”

  “I’m not a victim,” his dad said. “Even though I’ve been playing one for a hell of a long time.”

  He told Danny to tell his mom he was going to be a few extra minutes, then to come back and pull up one of those chairs, it was time for him to set the record straight, once and for all.

  22

  “YOU HAVE MORE THAN JUST THE BEST HEAD FOR BASKETBALL I’VE EVER seen—and that includes me,” his dad said. “You’ve got a great head, period. So I’m going to talk to you like you’re older.”

  Danny didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Just sat there thinking again how quiet hospitals were, especially at night, the only loud sound he could hear being the soft ding of the elevator down the hall.

  “I didn’t just come back for you,” his dad said. “I came back for me.”

  “I didn’t care why you came back,” Danny said. “You were back, that’s all that mattered to me.”

  “But I can’t have you feeling sorry for me anymore,” Richie said, trying to sit up a little, squeezing his eyes shut for a minute as he did. “I’ve been letting people feel sorry for me, you included, for as long as you’ve been alive.”

  He made a motion toward the glass of ice water on the table next to him, and the pain pill the nurse had left for him. Danny got up and handed both to him, waited while his dad swallowed the pill, then took the glass back. “Your mom’s right about something. Something she’s been telling me for a long time. That’s no way to live, just a slow way to die.”

  Danny nodded, as if he understood.

  His father smiled.

  “I don’t expect you to get all of this. But it’s important that you get this: The accident that wrecked everything, for all of us, it was my fault.”

  “The roads were bad that night,” Danny said. “I’ve read all about it a bunch of times. You lost control of the car.”

  “I lost control of the car because I was drunk.”

  Now the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock above the bed.

  “I never liked to let the sportswriters see me drinking after the game. Didn’t want to screw up my image. But I’d always liked a few after the game, even at Syracuse. I had this equipment room down the hall where I’d go before I went out after the game. Even had a little cooler back there. That was one of the nights I drank a whole six-pack before I got in my Jeep.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Danny said. “Why do I have to know this now? I know you drink, okay? I heard you and Mom that night at the gym. I heard her call you a drunk. Okay? I don’t need to know any more bad stuff right now.”

  He was shouting.

  His dad didn’t shout back, came at him with a voice so soft Danny imagined the words barely making it off the bed.

  “It’s time you knew,” Richie said.

  Danny heard the ding of another elevator, wishing it were the bell telling him it was time to go to the next class.

  “The cop who found me in the ditch took me to the hospital, as busted up as I was. He told them afterward that he was afraid to even call an ambulance, he thought I was dying. They asked him why he wasn’t afraid to move me, and the guy—Drew Nagelson was his name—said he was afraid not to. He could smell the beer on me. He had to know I was loaded. But I remember him telling me in the car that he was a big Warriors fan.” Richie Walker smiled. “They always want to tell you that. Anyway, he asked me if I could chew some gum. I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘We’ve got to get the beer stink out of you.’ He threw my shirt away, put a blanket on me, took me to the hospital. The doctors worked on your old
dad all night. By morning, it was too late for them to take a blood alcohol test.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a test they have to see how much alcohol you have in your blood system.”

  “Oh,” Danny said.

  “Sergeant Nagelson came by the next day, and I thanked him for saving my life. He said, ‘And your rep.’ I said, ‘Yeah, and my rep.’” Richie reached out and ran his hand over his new basketball. “And from that night on, everybody has felt just awful about America’s lovable little point guard getting a bad break like that. Having his career end that way. And I let them, kiddo. I let them.”

  “Does Mom—?”

  “Yesterday,” he said. “When I finished telling her, I told her it was the drugs talking. But it wasn’t. It was the truth, the whole truth, nothing but. There was, like, a million times when I started to tell her. But I never did. And you want to know why? Because as mad as I knew she was at me for leaving the two of you, I wanted her to feel sorry for me, too.” He looked at Danny with those sad eyes as he worked his mouth into a crooked-looking smile. “The rest of the time, when she was yelling at me how drinking had ruined my life and hers more than the accident had, I just didn’t have the guts.”

  “No,” Danny said, not wanting to believe it.

  “Yes.”

  “All these years, you just let Mom think—?”

  “That I was still the toughest guy going.”

  “But what you did,” Danny said, “that was, like, the opposite of tough.”

  “But it kept up the myth of little Richie Walker,” his dad said.

  Richie said he was too tired to tell him all of it tonight, all about his drinking life. Another time, he said, when they had more time. When he had the strength to get it right.

  “It’s funny how things work out, though,” his dad said. “The thing that started everything—drinking—is the thing I kept turning to after I felt like my life had turned to crap.”

  Danny told him about Teddy Moran saying one time that people knew the “real truth” about him, and Richie shook his head, no, saying that people suspected he was drunk that night, just because he drank as much as he did after the accident. But the only people who knew the “real truth,” at least until now, were Richie Walker himself, and Sergeant Drew Nagelson, big Warriors fan.