Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  “My dad said that this started out as my team,” Danny said, “and maybe it did. But now, like, it’s all our team.”

  “Why don’t we do it this way?” Ali Walker asked. “Why don’t we ask the Warriors, and their new assistant coach, Tess, to vote.”

  Tess stood right up.

  First in everything.

  “I vote for Danny,” she said.

  Will got up. “Danny.”

  Bren walked over from Danny’s right. “Dan the man,” he said.

  Then the rest of them got up, all of them looking a little self-conscious, knowing all the adults were watching them.

  “Danny,” they said, one by one.

  Then Will Stoddard, clearly thinking everything was getting way too dramatic, turned the whole thing into a chant.

  “DAN-ny! DAN-ny! DAN-ny!”

  Even the parents joined in.

  26

  DANNY PUT HIS HAND ABOUT HALFWAY INTO THE AIR, THE WAY YOU DO WHEN you think you may have the answer a teacher was looking for, but aren’t really sure.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, “listen up. Okay?”

  They had warmed up in two layup lines, the way they always did. Now it was time to actually start practice. His mom and Molly Stoddard were sitting up on the stage, not even paying attention to them, both of them with their yellow legal pads, making plans for the Valentine’s Ball the parents had at St. Pat’s every February.

  So Danny was in charge.

  Except he really wasn’t, since no one was listening to him.

  The O’Brien twins were doing what they always did when they thought there was a break in the action, which was sitting on the floor. Colby had walked away from the group and was shooting free throws at one of the side baskets. Will was trying to make outside shots over Matt Fitzgerald from the deep corner.

  It reminded Danny of recess.

  “Guys,” he said, a little louder this time.

  Nothing.

  Tess was sitting in a folding chair at mid-court, watching him. She’d come with the Stoddards, explaining to Danny when she showed up, “If I’m going to be team manager, I want to see how things work.”

  “I thought your title was assistant coach?” Danny had said.

  “I’m more of a management type.”

  Now Danny put his hands out to her, the way you did when you were pleading with somebody for help. Tess gave him a slow nod, as if she got the picture. But then, she always seemed to get the picture. Danny watched as she slowly got up out of her chair, cleared her throat as if she were about to sing some kind of solo at the spring chorale, then put two fingers into her mouth and issued one of the most ear-shattering whistles Danny had ever heard in his life, one that would have done a big-whistle NBA coach like Pat Riley proud.

  The whistle got their attention.

  “Thank you,” Danny mouthed at her.

  “My pleasure,” Tess mouthed back, gave him a quick little curtsy, sat down, as if nothing had happened.

  Danny motioned for the Warriors to get around him at mid-court.

  “I know this must be a little weird for you guys, because it’s a lot weird for me,” he said. “But we need to get to work. We’ve only got the gym for an hour tonight, we’re playing Kirkland tomorrow afternoon, and we gotta get after it.”

  “Coach?” Will said. “Would you mind slowing down, you’re going a little too fast for me.”

  Colby said, “Shutupppppp,” in a singsongy voice.

  Danny said, “We tried to go man-to-man against them last time, but nobody could handle their big guy.”

  “Bud Sheedy,” Bren said.

  “We couldn’t handle him, we couldn’t handle their press,” Danny said. “So I figure we might as well go with a zone tomorrow. You guys okay with that?”

  They nodded.

  “But maybe not our normal zone,” he said. “I thought we might try a one-three-one. Let me show you.”

  He went over to where he’d left his backpack, next to Tess’s chair, reached into the side pocket, brought out the coach’s board his mom had bought him, and the erasable laundry marker that came with it.

  “Oooh,” Will said, “he brought toys.”

  From her chair, Tess said, “Will Stoddard, if you don’t zip it, I’m going to tell the whole team who you like.”

  Danny knew it was Colby. And he knew Tess knew. He couldn’t believe she’d rat him out now in front of the team—in front of Colby herself—but sometimes he couldn’t tell when Tess Hewitt was bluffing.

  “What, now that he’s the coach, this has turned into, like, a mirth-free zone?” Will said.

  “Tonight it is,” Tess said. “Are we clear?”

  “As Clearasil,” Will said, rather gloomily.

  Danny drew up the zone he wanted them to play, then did some quick X-and-O work with their inbounds offense against the Kirkland press.

  “See, Oliver, you’re going to take it out instead of Matt,” Danny said, trying to draw as fast as he was talking. “Matt, you’re going to get the first pass instead of throw it. You flash to the near free throw line, with your arms up in the air, like you’re a tight end getting ready to catch a pass.”

  He gave a quick look up. They were all really watching.

  And all really listening.

  Hot dog.

  “Oliver, you make sure you give him the ball where he can handle it. Matt, as soon as you get it, you turn. Now you’re a quarterback. Bren will be flying down the left side, like he’s going for a bomb. I’ll be at half-court, over on the right. But I’m just a decoy.”

  Colby Danes said, “I don’t like this.”

  Danny ignored her. “If Bren’s ahead of everybody, throw it to him. But only if he’s wide open. If he’s not, give it to Colby, who’ll be a few feet away, on your left or your right, depending on where she is after the first pass. They won’t be expecting her to bring it up. But she’s going to.”

  “You and Bren are the ball-bringer-uppers,” Colby said. “Don’t make me bring it up.” She brightened. “I’ll pay you.”

  Danny said, “You can do this. You can handle the ball better than you think. Remember that dorky guy they had covering you in the first game? The one with the thingies in his hair?”

  “Highlights,” Colby said.

  “Him,” Danny said. “He couldn’t cover you in the half-court, he’s too slow. He’s not gonna have a chance covering you full-court. When he sees you coming at him with the ball, and a head of steam, he’ll start backing up like he just saw something in that Blair Witch movie we watched the other day in audio-visual.”

  “How do you know that?” Colby said, still sounding pretty skeptical.

  “Can I say one thing?” Will said, looking over at Tess. “Without being threatened?”

  “Okay, but just one,” team manager Tess said.

  Tess understood the situation, because everybody who knew and loved Will did:

  He totally zipped it about as often as he saw Mars.

  “He knows things,” Will said. “I’m talking about basketball things. Don’t ask him to fix a flat on his bike. Or burn a song.”

  “Don’t even think about asking him to diagram a sentence,” Tess called out.

  “But if he tells you something is going to happen in basketball, it’s probably going to happen,” Will said. “Annoying, but true.”

  “This’ll work great,” Danny said to Colby. “Trust me.”

  “You want me to bring the ball up the whole game?” Colby said.

  Just against the press, Danny assured her, and then said, c’mon, they could all walk through it.

  They did. The only person playing defense was Michael Harden, guarding Colby after she got the ball from Matt. Danny had told him to back off a few feet, the way he was sure the highlighted dork from Kirkland would, not try to steal it from her. But after they’d half run, half walked through it a few times, Danny motioned for Michael to get up on her.

  And when he did, the Warriors’ girl, lookin
g as if she was about to have the ball stolen from her, put the ball behind her back—a move none of them had ever seen from her—and just absolutely dusted Michael Harden.

  Colby Danes did that to war whoops from the rest of them, with the exception of Michael, who was on the ground trying to get them to believe he’d twisted an ankle.

  Danny went over to Colby, jumped up, gave her a high five.

  “See,” he said, “sometimes you can do stuff you didn’t know you could do.”

  It was a short practice, but a good one, everybody rallying around Danny the way they had that night with Coach Kel.

  At least until Danny yelled.

  At Will.

  They had all just decided—group decision—that next basket won in the scrimmage. They were going four-on-four by then: Danny, Bren, Oliver, and Colby against Steven O’Brien, Michael, Matt, Will.

  Danny passed it to Colby, who missed. Michael got the rebound, fed Will, who was flying up the court. Matt had taken off down the court early, as soon as he saw nobody was going to contest Michael for the rebound. So it was Will and Matt in a two-on-one against Oliver Towne, the Round Mound of Towne, who was sucking wind big-time, the way he usually did by the end of practice.

  Will on Oliver’s left, Matt on his right.

  Oliver was so tired, Will could not only have walked past him, but rubbed the top of his head for luck on the way by. Instead, maybe to show off for Colby, show that he could go behind his back, too, he threw this behind-the-back pass that Matt wasn’t expecting, one that hit him on the side of the head, before bouncing harmlessly out of bounds.

  “Hey, Will, cut the crap, okay?” Danny yelled, and just the way he did let everybody know he meant it.

  His voice as loud in the gym as the air-raid siren they still used when they practiced evacuating school in case of an emergency.

  Will looked at Danny as if he were the one who’d just gotten hit in the head by the ball, hurt and surprised at the same time.

  Danny didn’t know why he was as hot as he was. But he was. “What’s the deal, it was too big a job for you to throw one simple pass so we could get our butts out of here?” he said. “Is that, like, some kind of problem?”

  He looked around and saw the whole gym now the way he could see the court when he was coming up with the ball. Tess in her chair. His mom and Will’s mom watching from the stage. The other players on the Warriors frozen in place as if somebody had hit the Pause button.

  Will said, “You sound like a dad.”

  And, just like that, Danny knew his best friend was right.

  He did sound like a dad. Like his dad had sounded that night when he was in a bad mood and his mom yelled at him about his drinking afterward.

  At least Dad’d had an excuse, Danny thought now.

  What’s mine?

  Sometimes he was a little slow out of the chutes figuring stuff out. Not now. Now he was the one who got the picture, just like that. He’d sounded like a schmuck and gotten busted for it. He looked bad in front of his friends, and knew he had to get out of it right now, even if it meant backing off and looking like some kind of wimp.

  “I’m going to tell you something you already know,” Danny said to Will. “Sometimes, I’ve got a pretty big mouth for a little guy.”

  He saw his mom watching from the stage, standing next to Will’s mom. Ali Walker had always told him that there was no great skill to being right about something, anybody could carry that off. The trick, she said, was knowing how to be wrong.

  Danny walked over to Will and put his hand out. No high five, no low five, no clenched fist, no secret handshake. He was just looking for a normal handshake. Strictly regulation.

  “Sorry, dude,” he said.

  Will grinned. “You’re the first coach ever to apologize for being too stinking loud.”

  “Nah, I was just another coach who forgot whose team it really is,” Danny said.

  Then he said, “We’ve been telling you to shut up all night. Anything you want to say to the team before we call it a night.”

  “Yes,” Will said. “Kirkland sucks.”

  Words to live by.

  He and his mom stopped off at the hospital before they went over to St. Pat’s for the Kirkland game. When they got there, his mom said he ought to have a few minutes alone with his dad, she’d be upstairs in the cafeteria having a cup of coffee and actually being able to read the morning papers for a change.

  “The nurse said he had kind of a rough night,” Ali Walker said. “He had a pretty high fever, which sometimes happens after extensive surgery like he had, but they finally got it under control a few hours ago.”

  Danny said, “He’s going to be all right, though. Right? I mean, like, really all right?”

  “He is,” she said. “Just not as fast as he wants. Or you want.”

  “I don’t get this,” Danny said. “Everybody said all the operation stuff they needed to do went the way it was supposed to.”

  They were standing near the nurses’ station. She walked him a few feet away, put her hands on his shoulders, scrunched down a little so they were eye to eye. “Now pay attention,” she said.

  “What did I do?” Danny said.

  “Nothing,” his mom said. “You just have to understand something for today, and for however long it takes your dad to get better. Yes, the surgery went fine. Yes, he’s starting to get better and is going to get better. Eventually, okay? But when he had the first accident, he was in the best shape of his life. Now it’s ten years later, honey. And it’s the second time the sky fell on him. And this time, he doesn’t have any, well, wellness to fall back on the way he did when he was younger. So when I tell you it’s going to take time, it’s going to take time.”

  “But he’s going to be able to walk okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Do it,” Danny said.

  She stepped back, wrote a big T on the front of her sweater. “Now you go let your father get you all ready for the big game,” she said.

  Richie Walker’s eyes were closed, and for a minute Danny thought he might be sleeping, even though the nurse had said he was awake, he’d just had an early lunch. But when the door closed, Richie opened his eyes, saw who it was, and smiled, though pretty weakly.

  Somehow, Danny thought, the cast on his dad’s leg, going all the way to his hip, seemed even bigger than it had the last time he had visited him. And there seemed to be even more tubes than before. Even the bed seemed to have grown in the last couple of days.

  All of it seeming to swallow up his dad.

  Richie said, “Hey, Coach.”

  “Hey, Coach,” Danny said.

  “C’mon over closer, let me see you. Sometimes these pain pills give me such a jolt I feel like I’ve got the sun in my eyes all of a sudden.”

  Danny was wearing an old orange Syracuse sweatshirt his dad had given him a couple of years ago; Danny didn’t like to wear it that often, mostly because he still hadn’t grown into it.

  But he figured he’d go with something from Syracuse today, the last place his dad still felt like the king of the world in basketball.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She said she was going to have coffee. She’s probably got one of the doctors against a wall, trying to get stuff out of him.”

  Richie said, “If I don’t get out of here soon, they’re going to make her chief of staff.”

  “She’s pretty good at bossing people in that quiet way she has.”

  “Tell me about it,” Richie said.

  “We’re on our way to the game,” Danny said.

  “You ready?”

  Danny laughed, he couldn’t help himself. “Heck no.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Danny said.

  Richie moved his head from side to side on the pillow. “Nothing’s easy for me to say these days. Not even, good morning.”

  Dan
ny said, “I’m just worried that if I worry too much about coaching, I won’t be worrying enough about playing. Which makes me worry that I won’t be able to handle either job too well.”

  “That’s way too much worrying over one travel basketball game,” his dad said. “Just play. The rest of it will take care of itself.”

  “But what if I have the wrong guys out there? Or forget to get everybody enough time? You want another one? What if—”

  “Daniel Walker?”

  “What?” Danny had nearly what-if ’d himself out of breath.

  “Shut your piehole.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Shut your piehole now.”

  He did.

  Thinking: At least now you sound like my dad.

  “Let me ask you something, bud: Who would you rather be today—you or me?”

  Danny looked down and studied the toe of his left LeBron. “Me,” he said, without looking up.

  “Maybe I told you this before, maybe not, I can’t remember anything anymore. But listen up now: There isn’t an adult who’ll be in the gym today who wouldn’t change places with you in a freaking heartbeat. You, or Big Matt, or Miss Colby. Or Will. You got that?”

  He studied his right toe now. “Got it.”

  “Do you really get it?”

  “Yes,” Danny said.

  “Good. Because if you put all this dumb pressure on yourself, then it means your mom was right the first night, her precious little boy can’t handle this, boo freaking hoo.”

  Really sounding like his old dad now, the one who could cut you in half with a single word.

  “The other players? They want to follow you today. They’ll be watching you. If you look like the whole thing makes you want to wet your pants, they’re gonna want to do the same.”

  For some reason, Danny turned around, as if he could feel someone watching them. And there, in the window that faced out to the hall, the drapes just open enough for him to see her, was his mom. Not wanting to interrupt by walking in on them. But pointing at her watch, like they had to get going soon.

  “It’s your ball today,” Richie said. “Your game. So don’t worry about the rest of that…stuff.”

  Danny said, “You can say the s-word in front of me, Dad. Or any of the other biggies. It’s not like I haven’t heard them before. Or used them myself.”