Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  “Why did you come back?” Danny said. “This time, I mean?”

  “I didn’t have a specific plan,” his dad said. “I just knew you were my best part, and that I had to do something about that before you got too big.”

  Now Danny smiled. “Me? Too big? Not a problem.”

  “The only time I got drunk after coming back was that one night at Runyon’s, when I started to think that starting this team was a big dumb mistake, that you guys getting your brains beat out every game was worse than if you didn’t have any games at all.”

  “The yelling day.”

  “The yelling day,” Richie said. “I let myself get messed-up ’cause of drinking one last time. Haven’t touched a drop since, if you want to know.”

  “I don’t, Dad,” Danny said. “I don’t care.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I do.”

  The door opened. The nurse’s head appeared again and she said in her perky nurse voice that it was getting late, and we needed our rest, didn’t we, Mr. Walker?

  “One minute,” Richie said to her.

  To Danny he said, “I wanted us to have this season.”

  “We still can.”

  “You still can,” Richie said. “I was full of it with the other kids before, I’m going to be on the disabled list for a while.”

  Might as well ask him.

  “Who’s gonna coach us?” Danny said.

  “Don’t worry,” Richie said. “I got a guy in mind who’d be perfect.”

  23

  KELVIN NORRIS—THE GREAT COACH KEL FROM LAST YEAR’S TRAVEL TEAM, cool-guy hero to all his players and all their parents—was waiting for them in the gym when they showed up for Thursday’s practice. With the exception of Danny, who knew Coach Kel was coming, the rest of the players were expecting Mr. Harden to run his last practice with the Warriors before leaving town the next day.

  Except they walked into St. Pat’s at six-thirty and there was Coach Kel, in baggy sweats almost as dark as his skin and a bright yellow T-shirt that read “B. Silly.” The sight of him got an immediate whoop out of Bren and Will, the guys he’d coached before. And even from Matt Fitzgerald, who remembered him as being cool just from having tried out for the sixth-grade team.

  “You couldn’t tell me he was coming?” Will said to Danny. “Not even a stinking hint?”

  Danny shrugged. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  Will said, “Once trust is gone in a relationship, what is there?”

  From across the court, in a boom-box voice, Coach Kel said, “Stoddard, why don’t you go run some laps instead of runnin’ your mouth.”

  Will’s mouth opened and closed and, for once, nothing came out.

  Coach Kel grinned. “I’m just playin’,” he said. “You know.”

  Bren said, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “When Richie Walker calls from his damn hospital bed and asks for a favor, you don’t say no, I’m not in the mood, Richie Walker. Or, no, I’m too busy, Richie Walker.”

  Coach Kel went around and introduced himself to the other Warriors.

  “Say hello to your substitute teacher,” he said. “You ever hear of a movie called To Sir, With Love? Starring the great Sidney Poitier?”

  He got blank looks from everybody, as if he’d started speaking Russian to them.

  “In that case,” he said, “go get in two lines and shoot some damn layups.”

  He told them Danny was going to be his assistant coach tonight, just so they could make things feel like normal, run practice the way they usually did when Coach Walker was there.

  “Just want to see your basic stuff,” he said.

  You always got the feeling with Coach Kel that he wanted to use another s-word instead of stuff, but kept it inside him like he was a bottle with the cap still on it.

  Once they got going, got into their stuff, Danny realized this was exactly like the picture of the court, the other players, he’d take sometimes when they were starting their offense; when he didn’t even have to look at the left side of the court when he was over on the right side because he knew where everybody was. He knew what drills they were supposed to run, in what order, what plays his dad had them working on at their last practice, the new way he had them set up when they went to a zone press.

  Coach Kel leaned over at one point and said, “Even when you were just eleven, I used to tell people I was just waitin’ on that little body of yours to grow into that big basketball brain.”

  “You sound just like my dad,” Danny said.

  “Gonna take that there as a compliment,” Coach Kel said.

  He had shaved his head completely bald, and as soon as he started getting on the court and showing them how he thought they should be doing something, you could see the little raindrops of sweat start to form on top of his head. He was also wearing retro Air Jordans, the red-and-black ones.

  Will once said that guys would notice what sneakers you were wearing before they noticed whether or not you were carrying a paint gun.

  They scrimmaged hard for the last half hour, really hard, Coach Kel saying he was going to push them, that he really wanted them to show him what they all had. And they did. Maybe it was because of what had happened to Danny’s dad, but it was serious ball with the Warriors tonight, even less messing around than when Coach Walker was in the gym and blowing the whistle and calling the shots.

  Somehow—and not just because Coach Kel was a high-energy guy who always kept you fired up, about basketball and life—they all seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing tonight without being told.

  Go figure.

  When they were done, right before parents started showing up, Will said, “See you Saturday, Coach K.”

  Coach Kel looked at him. “Say what?”

  “I said, we’ll see you Saturday,” Will said. “For the Kirkland game.”

  Coach Kel said, “Won’t be here Saturday, big hair. I guess I should have told y’all from the jump. I’m coaching the JV at Christ the King this season. I just came tonight to get you through tonight. Like I was sayin’, as a favor to Coach Richie.”

  “Then who’s going to coach us against Kirkland?” Bren Darcy said.

  “Don’t know,” Coach Kel said. “Danny’s dad just said that him and the other parents were gonna come up with a Plan B by then.”

  Will said, “Excuse me, but we thought you were Plan B.”

  “Only for tonight.”

  On their way out of the gym, Will said to Danny, “You got any bright ideas, Mr. Point Guard?”

  “I thought you were the idea man,” Danny said to him.

  “Not this time.”

  Danny said, “Then we better do what we always do when we have a crisis.”

  He looked at Will and at the same time they both said, “Call Tess.”

  It had been arranged with Ali Walker before practice that Coach Kel would drive him home.

  “Keep your eye on the prize, little man,” Coach Kel said when he got out of the car.

  “I’m trying, Coach K,” Danny said. “I’m trying.”

  When he got inside, his mom was walking around with the portable phone. She put her hand over the mouth part and said, “I’m talking to Mrs. Stoddard, we’re trying to come up with a plan for Saturday’s game, and the other games before the play-offs.”

  He went upstairs to work on some English homework he hadn’t been able to finish in study hall, just because his mind kept going back to his dad’s crazy plan. When he was done with homework, he opened his door a crack and gave a listen. His mom must have finished with Molly Stoddard, because right then he heard the chirp of the phone.

  He had a feeling he knew who it was, and what was coming next.

  Knew there was probably going to be some yelling in the house.

  The first thing he heard: “No. Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

  Danny didn’t cover his head with a pillow this time. He pulled on his new hooded Gap sweatshirt, part of his
Christmas clothes, grabbed the Infusion ball out of the closet, went quietly down the stairs, slipped out the back door, put on the driveway floodlight and the light over the basket, went out on the part of the driveway near the basket he had shoveled himself, having managed to keep that area—his area—bone dry despite all the snow they’d been having lately.

  He had forgotten to shut the back door. When he went over, he heard his mom say, “…a head injury the doctors must have missed. Because you can’t do this, Richard. I won’t let you.”

  “Richard” was never good, that had been Danny’s experience.

  He closed the door firmly this time, shot around for a couple of minutes, then stepped away from the basket and went right to the double crossover.

  He went back and forth with the ball. Then again. Then again. Three times without missing, then four, never looking down at the ball once. His fingers felt like icicles in the night, but even that didn’t matter, because for this night Danny felt as if he had the ball on a string.

  As if he could do anything he wanted with it.

  His mom was still on the phone when he came back inside. But now she had closed the door to the small study off the dining room that served as her office.

  At least she wasn’t yelling anymore.

  He snuck over, put his ear to the door, heard: “I understand you can’t quit now. That they can’t quit now. It’s why we’re having the parents’ meeting here tomorrow night…. No, you can explain it to them, Rich.”

  They had at least moved off “Richard.”

  Danny went to the kitchen, microwaved himself up some hot chocolate, took the mug up to his room.

  Time to get Tess into the loop.

  CROSSOVER2: Hey. Tall Girl. You there?

  When in doubt, always talk to the tall girl.

  CONTESSA44: On 24-hour call. Even when doing our dopey outline on The Pearl.

  CROSSOVER2: You mean Earl the Pearl?

  CONTESSA44: Don’t tell me. Another legend of the hardwood.

  CROSSOVER2: Hardwood?

  CONTESSA44: You forget. My dad talks like he goes through life doing the six o’clock sports report.

  Danny went to his door, poked his head out. No yelling from downstairs. No talking, period. Unless she’d worked herself all the way down to whispering.

  Maybe she was actually listening.

  He went back to his new Sony.

  CONTESSA44: What’s on your mind, cutie?

  CROSSOVER2: ShutUP.

  It was like they were waiting each other out. Or she knew he had something on his mind.

  As if she could read his mind, too.

  CROSSOVER2: We have to get a new coach. Or we’re toast.

  CONTESSA44: I heard.

  CROSSOVER2: Coach Kel did tonight.

  CONTESSA44: Will told me. But just tonight, he said.

  CROSSOVER2: Yeah.

  CONTESSA44: So we need a plan.

  Downstairs, he thought he might have heard a laugh.

  CROSSOVER2: My dad actually came up with a plan.

  He could hear his mom coming up the stairs.

  CONTESSA44: Who does he want to coach?

  It didn’t take long to type out his answer.

  He could keep up with her when he kept it this simple.

  When he’d replay the scene in his head later, another scene he thought would have to be in the movie, he remembered getting the answer he wanted from the two women in his life pretty much at the exact same moment.

  His mom was in the doorway when he turned around, hands on her hips the way she had been on Christmas Day when she had watched him and his dad finish up their video game.

  Basically smiling the same smile.

  “Hey, Coach,” she said.

  He turned back to the screen when he heard the old doodlely-doo.

  CONTESSA44: Cool.

  When he didn’t respond right away, she did.

  CONTESSA44: Very VERY cool.

  Before he got himself calmed down enough to think about going to sleep, he took the Kidd poster off the wall, carefully laid it out on the bed, made sure to smooth out any wrinkly places, took off his LeBrons, went over to the wall, placed the pen on top of his head.

  Made his mark.

  Turned around.

  The new line was an inch higher than the line he’d made in October the last time he’d measured himself.

  Fifty-six inches.

  He took out the tape measure just to make sure.

  Fifty-six on the button.

  He’d grown an inch!

  24

  “WHAT FINALLY CONVINCED YOU?” DANNY SAID AT THE KITCHEN TABLE.

  It was way past his bedtime, but his mom wanted to talk. And Danny knew by now that when she wanted to talk, the Walker house turned into the place where time stood still.

  She had made them some real hot chocolate from scratch, boiling the milk in a pan on the stove, slowly stirring in the Hershey’s chocolate from the can.

  After she poured it into their mugs, she even threw a couple of marshmallows on top.

  His mom thought microwaved hot chocolate was for sissies.

  “What convinced me?” she said, pushing her marshmallows slowly around with a spoon. “I guess you’d have to say it was when your father hit me with, ‘We’re one-and-nine with me coaching, how could the kid do any worse?’ I have to admit, that one got a good laugh out of me.”

  Danny said, “Not a lot of laughs around here lately.”

  “No,” she said, “there haven’t been.”

  She saw that his cup was almost empty, got up without asking him if he wanted more, poured the last of the hot chocolate from the pan. Usually she guarded against any kind of chocolate intake around bedtime. Like she was the Chocolate Police.

  Not tonight.

  Danny took a look at her as she made sure not to spill any. A good look. His friends liked to needle him sometimes by telling him his mom was hot, knowing that would get a rise out of him. But he didn’t need them to tell him that, he knew she was pretty, movie pretty, that was a given. You could count on that with her, the way you could count on her always wearing nice clothes, never really looking like a slob, even when it was just the two of them hanging around the house on what his mom would sometimes call slob weekends. And when he compared her to some of the other moms, it was no contest. Some of the other moms, it was like they’d packed it in, they didn’t care how they looked anymore.

  Ali Walker always cared.

  But tonight he saw how tired she looked, noticed the bags under her eyes, what he thought of as worry bags.

  She said, “I had been telling him—yelling at him—for most of the conversation about what a ridiculous idea this was.”

  “I heard.”

  “Figured,” she said. “But I didn’t care, I meant it. I told him it was way too much pressure on a twelve-year-old boy, even one with supernatural basketball powers, and that on top of that, I wasn’t sure the other parents would go for it.”

  “What did Dad say to that?”

  Ali Walker, elbow on the table, rested her cheek in her hand, as if keeping her head propped up. He could see it was going to be a fight to the finish now, her need to talk against her need to go to bed. “He did what he always used to do when I was yelling at him,” she said. “Waited me out.”

  “Yeah, but when he finally said something, it must’ve been pretty good.” He reached over and plucked the marshmallow out of her cup and swallowed it.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “I could tell you didn’t really want it.”

  “What would I do without you?” she said.

  Danny said, “Dad always says that it was harder turning you around on stuff than it used to be playing UConn on the road.”

  “I know,” she said, and sighed. “Anyway,” she said, “he told me that this had been your team from the start, not his. That you knew it better than he did. That for all the normal screwing around the other kids did, they all took their lead from yo
u, even through all the losing. That no matter how much they hung their heads, they didn’t quit because you didn’t quit.”

  “He said that?”

  “He did. Then he hit me with this: Kids always make the best game.”

  “Wait a second,” Danny said, “that’s my line.”

  “He told me it was. And you know what? I knew he was right. Then he finished up by telling me that you might learn more about basketball doing this, even for a few games, than you’ve ever learned in your life. And then he said one last ultimate thing that sealed the deal for old Mom.”

  “What?”

  “He said that even he never had the guts to coach one of his own teams.”

  She reached across the table now with both of her hands, with those long, pretty fingers, and made a motion with them for him to get his hands out there. He did.

  His mom’s hands were always warm.

  “Truth or dare,” she said.

  Danny said, “Truth.”

  “You can do this?”

  Danny made sure to look her in the eyes. “I can do this.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “If it’s okay with the guys—”

  “—and Miss Colby—”

  “—and Colby. If it’s okay with them and the parents say they’re good with it, yeah, so am I.”

  “We’re going to have a team meeting here, tomorrow night, seven-thirty,” Ali Walker said. “We’ll run the whole thing up the flagpole, bud, and see who salutes.”

  “You have some very weird expressions, Mom, have I ever mentioned that to you?”

  She came around the table, pulled him up out of his chair, put her arms around him, leaned over as she did and put her face on top of his head.

  “I grew an inch,” he said.