True Legend

by Mike Lupica

  “Nobody made you run.”

  The man made a sound that was like a laugh that didn’t make it all the way out of his throat. “I made me.”

  “Why?”

  In a whisper, Legend said, “Because I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?” There was another long pause. Drew turned himself so he could watch the man’s face.

  Legend’s eyes were closed.

  “Afraid of stepping back into the light,” he said.

  “What about your job?” Drew said. “What about your place to live and your talk about getting a degree? Maybe even going on to college?”

  “I wasn’t ready,” Legend said, eyes still closed. “Because I’m never gonna be ready to take that step, or the one after it, or the one after that. It’s the same as in ball. When you’re growin’ up, there’s finally a game you’re not ready for.”

  Drew nodded his head, yeah, like he understood, even though he didn’t—there’d never been that kind of game for him, even when he was the littlest and youngest one on the playgrounds back in the Bronx.

  Legend said, “I can’t make myself into something more. It’s too late for that. This is who I am. Maybe who I was always gonna be.”

  Opening his eyes, putting those sad eyes on Drew now, hard.

  “Liar,” Drew said.

  “Leave me alone, boy. Leave me be. This here, the bust-out you’re looking at, I took a good look at him the last few days. This is me. The rest of it is just dreams. Just worry about your own.”

  “Too late.”

  “No!” His voice got louder. He dialed it right back down. “No. It’s too late for me to go back to being Urban Sellers.”

  Now Drew was the one putting a loud voice on him. “No!” he said back to him. Imagining his voice carrying all the way down to the front desk, or to wherever Callie was.

  “You’re just a punk kid. Your whole life, you only cared about yourself, playing ball, and now you’re gonna make things right for me? Who do you think you are?”

  The answer came from Seth Gilbert, all the times he’d said this to Drew: “I’m your guy.”

  Legend actually laughed, but not in a mean way. “Are you, now?” he said. “And how do you know I won’t run again?”

  “You can try,” Drew said. “But you’re not as fast as me. Probably never were.”

  “You say.”

  “I know, old man.”

  And for the first time today, he saw some life in Legend, some little spark in his eyes.

  “You’re trash-talkin’ me now . . . in a library?”

  “Word,” Drew said.

  “All just words today,” Legend said, “that neither one of us can back up.”

  Drew said, “If you didn’t want to be found, you would’ve run farther than this. But you didn’t.”

  Legend closed his eyes, looking tired again, and said, “You got no way of understanding this, but as you get older, your world gets bigger or it gets smaller.” He let his breath out now, almost like he’d been holding it all in. “I didn’t run farther on account of I got nowhere else to go.”

  “Where are you living?”

  “Got myself a room at the Y.”

  “Never thought to look there.”

  “Shouldn’t’ve bothered to look anywhere.”

  “Give up? You got to know that’s not me. Tell me I can’t do something? Now you have lost your mind.”

  “I may have underestimated you.”

  They just sat there, both of them comfortable with the quiet. Or maybe just comfortable being with each other.

  “How’s that paper of yours comin’?”

  “Comin’.”

  “Doin’ it on your own for once?”

  “Couldn’t find anybody smart to help me out with it. So, yeah.”

  “Look at you. Just another Hemingway.”

  They laughed at the same moment. Something else too loud for the library, even with the two of them stuck back here. This time they heard somebody shushing them. Drew looked up and smiled.

  “So I see you made a library friend,” Legend said.

  Callie was standing there, hands on hips, smiling.

  “I did,” Drew said.

  And without hesitating or asking for permission, Drew introduced her to Urban Sellers. By name. And her to him.

  Legend didn’t hesitate, either, stepped forward, took off his Lakers cap, put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. Even gave her a little bow.

  Drew had stepped back to give them room. Or maybe just to take it all in.

  As he did he noticed something: the last of the afternoon sun coming through the window, hitting Legend square.

  Like he really had come back into the light.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Callie drove them all to the Y, about four blocks from the train station. Legend had collected his bag, which was mostly filled with the five or six books he hadn’t put into storage.

  Then they went back to the Conejo Valley Hotel.

  The man behind the desk seemed about as interested in Legend’s return as the fly buzzing around above his head. “You’re back,” he said, sliding a room key across to him.

  “Miss me?”

  “Oh, something terrible.”

  Drew asked if Legend wanted them to help move the boxes of books back in tonight. Legend said no, he was tired, he could manage tomorrow.

  “Tomorrow you meet Mr. Shockey,” Drew said. “World’s greatest English teacher.”

  “You being such an expert on English, and teachers,” Legend said. Turning back into his old self, right in front of Drew’s eyes. “You told him about me?”

  “Not your real name. And not all about you. I told him I couldn’t tell everything about you in a paper. You got one of those lives that if you wrote it all, people would think it was made up.”

  “Sometimes I get to thinking maybe it was.”

  They were in the room now, Legend sitting on his bed.

  “Nah, it’s real,” Callie said. “Like us being here with you is real. You got two point guards with you, not one. How can you lose?”

  “Got real good at that over time.”

  Callie said, “Yeah, but I hate to lose.”

  Legend said, “As much as him?”

  She put one of her best Callie smiles on him and said, “Not so sure about that. Someday I’ll tell you about this game of H-O-R-S-E we played one time.”

  Drew said to Legend, “I have to know something. You gonna be here tomorrow when we come back to get you?”

  Legend nodded.

  “We’re clear on that, right?”

  “Clear,” Legend said. He looked over at Callie then and said, “The young man will tell you. I took this fall a long time ago, thought it was the worst thing ever happened to me. But it turned out to be the easy part.”

  • • •

  On the way back to the best burger place in Thousand Oaks, called P & L, Drew told her as much of the story as he could fit into the short ride, including the fall in the club.

  “It’s hard to see him as that guy,” Callie said. “He seems so sweet.”

  “Sweet? Legend?” Drew shook his head. “Only because you were around.”

  “Nah,” she said, “it’s in him. I can always spot it when it’s in somebody. She gave Drew a quick look, just with her eyes, and said, “It just takes more work with some people than others.”

  They went inside and ate like fools and then had banana splits for dessert, and when they were finished with the banana splits, they just sat and talked. So it was nearly eleven o’clock when they finally pulled up in front of Drew’s house.

  Even then, he didn’t get out of the car right away.

  Callie shut
off the engine, like she wasn’t ready to call it a night, either.

  “You think he’ll be there tomorrow like he said?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “And you think he’ll see things through once you get him with Mr. S?”

  “Not a clue.”

  Now they sat there in silence until Callie said, “Well, a pretty interesting first date, all in all.”

  “Is that what this was?”

  She leaned forward, before Drew had any idea what was going to happen next, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Well, it sure was a lot better than H-O-R-S-E,” she said.

  When her car was out of sight, Drew ran for his house. Feeling as fast as he ever had.

  In that moment, feeling no pain.

  FORTY

  After school, Drew and Callie got into her Kia and went to pick up Legend for his meeting with Mr. Shockey.

  If Legend was waiting for them at the hotel.

  If he’d kept his word this time and hadn’t run off.

  “You look more nervous than you’d be on the line with a couple of free throws to win the game,” she said.

  “I never get nervous there.”

  “Sor-ry,” she said. But grinning as she did. “That True Robinson talking?”

  “Nah, just me.” He grinned back at her, feeling more comfortable with her all the time. Not having to be anybody but himself. “Just speaking the truth.”

  “He’ll be waiting for us,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m just going off the vibe I’m getting from the man. And I think he’s tired of running.”

  Drew put his head back. “You know that TV commercial, where the younger guy turns around, and there’s the older version of himself standing right next to him? That’s what I think about sometimes when I’m with him.”

  “You’re not anything like him,” Callie said.

  Like she was defending Drew to Drew.

  Eyes on the road, Callie said, “He sounds like he was a total jerk when he was our age, on top of all the other issues he had. Not that you can’t act like a jerk, telling me I was lookin’ fine, girl. Or throwing one down at the end of a H-O-R-S-E game.” She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. “Or being in a car you’re not supposed to be in.”

  Driving that car, Drew thought. He’d wanted to tell her that because she was making him want to tell her everything, but he’d promised Lee.

  And speaking of promises, there was Urban Sellers waiting for them out front. A backpack on him. Wearing what looked like the nicest pair of jeans he owned, a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. No cap.

  He’d even shaved.

  Callie said, “Like he’s waiting for the bus on his first day of school.”

  • • •

  If Mr. Shockey had any idea who Legend was—or used to be—he didn’t show it when they got to his office.

  He just shook Legend’s hand, said he admired what he was doing, asked where he’d gone to high school. Legend told him where, and when, and that he’d been a ballplayer in his day.

  “A great one,” Drew said. “Off-the-grid great.”

  Mr. Shockey nodded, looking at Drew and then Legend.

  “This is the player you’re writing the paper about?” he said. “The playground legend?”

  Urban Sellers said, “The paper we’re writing.”

  “Interesting,” Mr. Shockey said. “Never had a subject walk right off the page and into my office like this.”

  Callie was sitting on the edge of Mr. Shockey’s desk. “Not sure you know just how interesting, Mr. S,” she said.

  “And now you’re part of the story?”

  “I’m just the wheel man,” she said. “Or wheel girl.”

  Mr. Shockey focused his attention on Legend now. “You have a job?”

  “Working for the town.”

  “You’re willing to do the classroom work we’ll need to do at night?”

  “Don’t have a choice if I want to do this right. And I do.”

  “Every night would be out of the question, with my schedule,” Mr. Shockey said. “How about two two-and-a-half hour sessions per week?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  It was as if Drew and Callie weren’t even there now, as if Mr. Shockey and Legend were having the kind of teacher-student conference Drew would have in this same room. When Drew would be the one in the chair Legend was in.

  “Why are you doing this, really?” Mr. Shockey said. “There’s still a lot I’ll need to know, and I assume you can put your hands on your old transcripts somehow. You can do that, right?”

  “My old coach can help me with the transcripts.”

  “Then back to my question: why?”

  It was quiet in the office. Legend’s big hands were folded in his lap. Backpack was on the floor next to him. Finally he said, “Because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes you can’t plan it out, it’s just there, and you react.” He took a deep breath. “This is a way for me to start being the person I should have been. The one I hope I still have a chance to be. And that’s the truth, sir.”

  He was answering Mr. Shockey’s question, but Drew heard something else in his answer.

  He’s talking to me.

  “You can spend your whole life hiding from the truth about yourself,” Legend said, “but it will find you sooner or later. I learned that the hard way.”

  • • •

  Callie waited for Drew after practice, the girls having gotten to go first, and passed the time by doing her homework in the Oakley library. Lee had his car privileges back—“My folks decided that taking my wheels away was like punishing themselves”—and had offered to give Drew a lift home, but Drew told him no, thanks, he had a ride.

  “More mystery?” Lee said. “I thought we were past that.”

  “Callie.”

  It was just the two of them in the locker room; everybody else was gone.

  “Reallllllllly,” Lee said. He made the word sound like it went the length of the room. Maybe a whole basketball court.

  Drew said, “Don’t start busting on me, or I won’t tell you stuff.”

  “Dude, I’m not busting on you. I’m happy for you. Don’t know if I’d say the same for Callie, of course—”

  “It’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”

  “Deep,” Lee said. “I never knew you were this deep.” Then he made a motion with his hand, as if he were doing some math on an imaginary blackboard.

  “What?” Drew said.

  “Just trying to guesstimate how much gas money Callie is going to save me.”

  Lee left. Callie was waiting for Drew outside the locker room.

  She said, “Before we go, you have to see something.”

  She led him out of the arena and into the main classroom building and up the stairs to the second floor, the hallway mostly dark.

  One light came from the end of the hall.

  Mr. Shockey’s classroom.

  Class was already in session.

  He and Callie walked down there, trying not to make any noise. Saw Legend in a front seat, Mr. S sitting on his desk, facing him, legs dangling over the side, talking away.

  Legend taking notes in his Mead Square Deal composition book.

  “We have to get him a laptop,” Drew whispered.

  Callie put a finger to her lips.

  They watched for another minute or so, and then left. Drew thinking that in that moment, he loved school more than he ever thought he would in his life.

  FORTY-ONE

  They had three regular-season games left, Coach telling them they had to treat them as if the tournament had started already, that they were all the same as knockout games if they
wanted to win the regular-season title.

  The first of the three was against their old friends, the Conejo Valley Christian Wildcats, the guys who’d upset them at the buzzer the first time they met, the night Drew didn’t dive for that loose ball.

  His knee was still sore, but not as sore as it had been. In a perfect world—when anyone would use that expression, Drew’s mom would say, “Call me when you find one of those perfect worlds”—the Oakley Wolves would already have clinched the regular-season title.

  Only they hadn’t.

  And one of the reasons was that Drew hadn’t dived to the floor for that ball. In his mind, it was the same as if he’d lain down. Just given them the game.

  But he evened the score at their little gym, even with Lee still parked on the end of the bench. It hadn’t been the Wildcats’ point guard who’d stopped Drew from going for the loose ball in that first game. Drew had done that all by himself.

  Drew made him pay anyway. Not forcing it. Not doing anything on this night that was going to cost his team a single basket. But going after the kid the way he should have the first time, taking him down low and backing him in every chance he got, exploiting his natural advantage, first with his shot, then with passes when they were forced to double-team him, finding the open man, shot after shot.

  Oakley was up twenty-three at halftime, and Drew knew already they could win by twice that if they wanted. But Coach finally took him out with nine minutes to go. Even with that, Drew still ended up with a triple double: Twenty-three points, seventeen assists, ten boards.

  When it was over, the Wildcats’ point guard, Gregg Sutter, came over and shook Drew’s hand, shaking his head and grinning as he asked, “Was it something I said?”

  “Nah,” Drew said, “but I had to get you back for that shot you made.”

  “Figured it was something like that.”

  “See you guys in the tournament,” Drew said.

  “After tonight?” Sutter said. “I hope not.”

  In the locker room, Drew could see how relieved Lee was that they’d won without him, that his being on the bench hadn’t cost his team. Even though Drew knew it was killing him, missing one of the handful of high school games he had left.