by Katz, Bob;
Mom stopped the car at the building between the gates. The guard who approached did not wear a uniform or carry any weapon that I could see. He did wear a crisply ironed brown shirt and gray slacks that might have been some kind of official dress. But I definitely would not call it a uniform.
I didn’t hear what the guard said to Mom, but she smiled in reply as he handed her an envelope and told her where to park.
This place did not seem so horribly scary. In fact, it almost seemed like a place a man could escape from, if he chose. Somehow, that made me feel better.
I was happy to be visiting Dad.
Chapter Eleven
I had imagined the prison waiting room would be cold and depressing, with no windows, and bare bulbs swinging pools of harsh light. The walls, if they were decorated at all, would feature mug shots of scar-faced desperados. Dad would be seated on the other side of a solid wall, and we’d have to communicate through a small hole in a thick plastic window. This place was nothing like that.
The room was long and sunlit with high windows divided by vertical iron bars. There were several tables with chairs, with more chairs situated along the walls. Several other families were already seated, chatting and laughing in noisy little clusters. A few small kids were scampering around squealing, the way little kids do. It was all rather loud, but no worse than a popular pizza parlor on a Saturday afternoon.
The first thing Dad did when he entered the room through the sliding metal door was embrace Mom. He didn’t look any different than I remembered. He wore loose brownish-green pants and a shirt of the same color that buttoned down the front. His dark hair had more silver in it, but that could have had something to do with the angle of sunlight. He was still tall and handsome.
He hugged Mom tight for a long while, then lifted his face off her shoulder and fixed his eyes on me, like I was a strange object in a museum or something. It made me feel weird.
He let go of Mom and turned to me. “So you’ve been practicing?”
I’d specifically asked Mom not to tell anyone about my secret basketball ritual. It was nobody’s business but my own. The only reason I’d even told her was that she’d insisted on knowing what I was doing all day with my free time. She’d promised to keep it a secret.
I shot her a cold scowl to let her know I was ticked off. Mom scowled right back, with that stone-hard face she sometimes gets, to let me know I was pushing my luck. She didn’t need to say a single word. I knew exactly the words she would say: We have come here to see your father and let him know we care. He’s in a tough situation and we need to bring some hope into his life. Grow up!
Dad looked me up and down—literally moving his head slowly up and down, taking my measure. I was nearly an inch taller than when we had last met, and I could tell he was thinking that I might still develop into a ball player, a chip off the old block. I guess he hadn’t given up on that dream. Clearly it made him happy to think it still might come true.
Suddenly, Dad hopped backward and, in perfect pantomime, thrust a crisp two-hand chest pass, thumbs inward, fingers jutting out.
I had no choice. I pretended to catch Dad’s imaginary pass. I even pretended that his pass was wide, and lurched sideways to grab it.
Game on. We’d played like this before, when I was younger and smaller. Our living room, the one at our old house, wasn’t very big, but if you shoved the armchair out of the way and pushed the sofa aside, the area that remained was a perfect rectangle of carpet. We had pretended to play football and basketball there, make-believe games with make-believe teams and imaginary balls. When Mom was out shopping, we sometimes used a real Nerf ball. A broken table lamp put an end to that.
Dad said, “Let’s see your cross-over.”
I glanced around. So far, nobody else was paying attention.
Were there rules against this sort of thing in prison? Violating them could certainly result in something worse than a technical foul.
Dad urged me on. “Come on. Show me what you’ve got.”
I widened my stance and accelerated my dribble back and forth between my legs. A few of the visitors at a nearby table stopped talking and turned to stare. One of the pint-sized demons, who’d been darting around while barking out the alphabet song, came over to watch.
I wasn’t comfortable. I was about to tell Dad that we’d taken it far enough—quit while you’re ahead, as they say—when he lunged at me, dipping his shoulder to try to swipe my dribble.
I spun away, protecting the ball.
He went for it again.
I shifted to my left hand. He didn’t know what I was capable of now with my left, but he was about to see.
I faked right. He went for it. I cut back the other way, dodging the alphabet-singing kid. Dad recovered, but before I could go up for the dunk, the guard hustled over from his chair in the corner, obstructing my path.
The guard had a shaved head and a friendly face; he wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and had a walkie-talkie attached to his belt, but I didn’t see a gun.
“One more play, Mike,” Dad pleaded.
I couldn’t believe Dad was doing this. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Dad persisted. “Game’s tied. Come on. Can’t end a big game like this with a tie.”
The guard was not amused. “The game,” he said firmly, “is over.”
The three of us found some vacant folding chairs at the end of one of the tables. Mom’s mood seemed to have lifted. She put her hand on Dad’s knee, and not in the scolding way she sometimes did when he’d had too many beers and was talking louder than she liked. Visiting hours were about over. One by one, families were walking their prisoners back to the sliding door, hugging good-bye, and drifting solemnly away.
Dad stood. He put his hand on my shoulder, father to son. It felt like a serious moment. “Will you be trying out for the team this year?”
Mom shot me that look again, reminding me why we were here. Dad would be happier believing that I had decided to try out for the team. And making Dad happy, even if only for a little while, was our purpose.
I nodded Yes, but did not say anything. That seemed better than actually lying out loud.
Pleased, Dad smacked his hands together. “Keep practicing. You’ll see. One step at a time. Someday you’ll be just as good as your dad.” He quickly corrected himself. “I mean, you’ll be as good as I used to be.”
The three of us walked to the sliding door where another guard—this one a woman with bushy hair—was checking prisoners through.
Dad was grinning now. Some of the old twinkle was back in his face. “And one more thing. This season, if you get yourself trapped with the ball, and your only option is a long, desperate pass and somehow it accidentally happens to swish through the hoop?”
I had no choice. I couldn’t let him down. I punched my fist to the sky and declared, “Count it!”
Chapter Twelve
I thought sixth grade would be different. Why did I think this? Mostly, I guess, because I was taller.
The first day in class, Mr. Freeman had us all move our chairs to the rear of the classroom and arrange them in a circle. Because there were so many of us, we had to form two circles, inner and outer. I figured Mr. Freeman would stand in the middle, so I sat in the outer circle. That way I would be less likely to get called on.
Most kids don’t like to get called on because they don’t know what to say. That wasn’t my problem. I’m not sure what my problem was. Once, last year, Ms. Gunderson made the entire class delay our afternoon recess until one of us could explain why electing a president was better than having the country run by a king who got the job because his father had been the king. I knew the answer. But I didn’t want that kind of attention. I didn’t want to be popular just for opening the gates to a stupid recess. I didn’t want to be popular at all. And really, since when did getting the righ
t answer to an easy question make someone popular?
Eventually, a Japanese boy named Stephen Takaki, who’d only lived in the U.S. for one year, got it right. He liked the attention.
Mr. Freeman was thin with wiry black hair and a pointy goatee that made his long face seem even longer. During book group, he would position himself in the center of the circle and rotate clockwise, like a lawn sprinkler, giving an equal chance to all.
Treasure Island had been our assigned reading over the summer. Mr. Freeman explained that we would be discussing not just the plot of what happens to young Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, but also things like history, geography, language, and even philosophy. He explained that even if we did not understand everything that happened in the book, we could still participate because the text was just the prompt for further discussion.
Mr. Freeman had handed out an instruction sheet to each of us that listed some things he wanted us to discuss. One example: Are pirates criminals? The answer to that seemed obvious, but I had no intention of raising my hand.
For the first few weeks of school, we would gather every Tuesday and Thursday morning for book group. Mr. Freeman stayed planted in the middle of the circle, but he never stayed still. He would rotate and rock on his heels, stroking his goatee and emitting little murmuring sounds from his closed mouth.
Other kids had a lot to say, but they weren’t always the smartest. Gretchen Hawkins, I guess because she had the same last name as Jim, had opinions on everything. One of her thoughts was that Long John was probably nasty because he had had mean parents who fought all the time and forced him to do rotten chores and never gave him presents. None of this was in the book, but that didn’t stop Gretchen. Her conclusion was that Long John needed to see a psychiatrist.
“Were there psychiatrists back then?” Mr. Freeman asked her.
I knew the answer. There were not. And even if there had been, only wealthy people from noble families would have been able to afford that kind of professional help. My own theory, which I kept to myself, was that Long John was nasty because life had taught him that was how he needed to behave in order to survive. In the cutthroat pirate’s world, nice people with sunny personalities probably starved to death. For a poor man from a poor family—one who was cunning and very determined to make something of himself—to pull himself up by his own bootstraps, becoming a pirate might make sense. What better options did he have? That’s what I thought.
“EZ?” Mr. Freeman moved around the circle to face me directly.
“Yes, sir?”
“Any thoughts on what Gretchen just presented? That Long John suffers fundamentally from psychological problems?” Mr. Freeman had edged between the rows of chairs and stood dangerously close. “EZ?”
“No, sir.”
“No, you don’t agree with Gretchen?”
“No, sir. I don’t have any thoughts.”
Mr. Freeman had a reputation for being a cool teacher who wouldn’t go out of his way to embarrass a student. It was only the other kind of teachers, ones with psychological problems, who ever did that.
Thankfully, Mr. Freeman stepped backward to the middle of the circle. “You will,” he said, in a voice so kind and reassuring that I half-way believed him. “Everyone has thoughts.”
Chapter Thirteen
Okay, so sixth grade was not proving to be all that different from fifth—at least not when it came to my classroom participation. I did have thoughts about Treasure Island and just about everything else we talked about in class. But having thoughts—even having the right answer when nobody else had a clue—did not mean that I felt any need to say it out loud. What was the point? To hear myself talk?
Mr. Freeman, I hoped, understood. He was probably the coolest teacher at Highcrest. He would certainly know that it’s okay for a kid to be smart and, at the same time, not want to show off about it. He would know that it’s not particularly weird to act like that. I mean, it isn’t weird, is it? After all, what’s so darn important about demonstrating to the whole class that I knew something? Wasn’t the thing that mattered most supposed to be the fact that I actually knew the information, and that I understood it? I’m pretty sure Mr. Freeman knew that I knew the material, especially when it came to math. Fractions, percentages, number patterns; I loved how numbers can prove something is true even when you didn’t think it was.
And it wasn’t like our classroom was plagued by too much silence. Whenever we got onto a good topic—like whether
the Spanish explorers should have been nicer to Native Americans or how we’d feel about the Civil War if our parents were southern slaveholders—the room grew as raucous as the monkey cage at the Columbus zoo. There were times Mr. Freeman had to hop onto his desk just to get everyone to pipe down. Heck, you’d think a student who quietly kept his thoughts to himself would be appreciated, even rewarded.
Truthfully, I do think Mr. Freeman understood why I preferred not to speak up in class, but I was worried that he wanted that to change.
At recess, something was changing. Not immediately, though. The first few weeks at school, I kept to myself, as I had always done. I’d spend the twenty-five minutes of recess meandering the edge of the playground, thinking. Sometimes, I wandered down the slope to where a muddy creek curved into the woods.
What would Jim Hawkins have done if he were wandering alone at recess and came upon a stream that disappeared into the forest? He would follow it, of course. To wherever it might lead—to a broader, faster stream, then onto a broad flowing river like the mighty Ohio, eventually flowing to the wild open sea and all its mysteries.
But I wasn’t Jim Hawkins. I was Ethan Zanay.
As I walked around, minding my own business, I was wary of getting caught peering over at the playground. I did not want anyone to think I had any interest in what anyone else was doing. I particularly did not want to look like I was watching the sixth-grade boys playing basketball. I did not want to appear as if I secretly longed to play in their game. That would be pathetic. And with the sorry state of my lowly reputation, I was very careful about not doing anything to make it worse.
I walked around, here and there. I looked at the sky. I did peek at the little kids playing tag or kick ball or whatever they did. I didn’t care if I got caught watching that. They were all so goofy and small—it was like watching puppies roll around in the grass.
I did occasionally steal a glance at the basketball game, but I was pretty crafty about it; I pretended that I was watching something else in the same line of sight as the game, like a dancing butterfly or some second grader flying high on the swings. The game would be in my field of focus, but in the background.
What I observed about the sixth-grade boys’ basketball game—and I had to make my observations quickly, like a detective who didn’t want to get caught snooping around through a prime suspect’s file cabinet— was: a) Troy Rutledge was still the best player, by far; b) Leo Espada and Matt O’Neil had gotten a lot better, but neither could dribble worth beans with their left hand; c) a new student named Rudy who had trouble speaking English didn’t have many moves, but the ones he did have were extremely productive; d) a few of the girls in our class would hang around on the lawn behind one of the hoops, holding a Frisbee like they were going to play with it, but never did; e) the sides were imbalanced in terms of the number of players; f) Troy was always on the team with one less player. That was a lot of information to gather through brief sneaky glances. It gave me more things to think about.
Toward the end of September, I was wandering around the border of the playground, pretending to watch some second graders doing some dumb relay race running backwards, when I noticed the basketball game had paused.
Troy Rutledge was standing at the baseline, ball in hand, with his back to the game. He was looking straight at me. I quickly looked away, but I feared that I’d been caught in the act. Caught in the act of watc
hing!
Hurriedly, I turned my back, hoping I could get away with pretending I had not seen him see me. I began to walk briskly away. I didn’t want to run; that would reveal too much. I headed down the slope toward the muddy creek. Jim Hawkins would’ve kept right on going, right out to sea.
“EZ!” I heard Troy shout my name. Even though he was the best player, he still made an effort with his voice to sounder tougher, older.
I did not turn around for fear of…I don’t know what.
“Hey, EZ, wanna play?”
Chapter Fourteen
Now things really did begin to change. I continued to get As. Actually, A-minuses, due to a lack of classroom participation. I still did my best to avoid eye contact with Mr. Freeman while he stalked around our circle like a caged cheetah. I still kept quiet in class, as quiet as possible—even if the question we were discussing was right in my wheelhouse, like when Mr. Freeman wanted us to examine what he called “The Ethics” of buried treasure.
“How did this treasure come into the hands of pirates? To whom did it belong? Who should be allowed to keep it if it’s found? Do pirates exist in our own twenty-first century world? How about hidden treasures?”
It was almost as if Mr. Freeman posed these questions specifically with me in mind, like a play drawn up for my benefit. There I was, wide open right under the basket, and he was throwing me a perfect pass. But I didn’t shoot.
Although my classroom experience had not significantly changed, recess had. I was now a regular participant in the five-on-five full court game. With the exception of Rudy, who had moved to Longview from Germany over the summer, all the other players were kids I’d known since first grade. Which is to say, kids who had known me since first grade. Leo Espada had attended Blue Horizons preschool with me. He had been as bad a thumb-sucker as me, and my first book-buddy in first grade. We’d taken turns reading aloud from Cat in the Hat. He had arm muscles that you could actually see.
