It was just about then that someone said, “Skimmer! Skimmer Scaggs!” and the truth is, he said it so sudden and so close to my shoulder that it scared the hell out of me. I turned around to see who it was, and it was this spook Mulloy, coach of the team, and he’d sneaked up behind me on his Goddamn rubber-soled shoes. He was a big guy going kind of bald and with a lot of flab around the belly, even if he was athletic as hell and all that, and he was one of these man-to-man scoutmaster kind of bastards. I thought at first he was going to tell me to get the hell off the floor with my street shoes on, but it turned out he’d been watching me from the beginning and had something else on his mind. He started out telling me I ought to be ashamed of myself, and then he switched off on a sermon about how everyone owed something to the dear old school, and the more you had to offer, the more you owed, because it was the duty of the gifted to give a full measure of their gifts, and to make it short, I finally began to get the idea that I was gifted at throwing a ball through a hoop and was some kind of dirty son of a bitch because I hadn’t been out there in the gym doing it a long time ago instead of hanging around Beegie’s all the time, and altogether it was the kind of crap to make you puke. I was on the verge of telling old Mulloy to blow it, but then I happened to look around and see the faces of the other guys, and I didn’t say it.
I might as well tell the truth about it. The truth is, I wasn’t very popular around school, and I’d been thinking pretty hard about putting the place down for good and all, but now I saw these guys standing there with their teeth hanging out and a kind of old buddy-buddy look in their eyes, and I began to get the drift that I’d made a lot of points just by throwing that damn ball through the hoop seven times out of ten with no practice, and I began to think, What the hell, why not, a guy never knows when he can use a few suckers on his side. It was pretty plain these guys really swallowed the bull old Mulloy put out, and one of them, a tall skinny creep who wore contact lenses plastered on his eyeballs, spoke up and said that the team sure could use a sharpshooter like me, and everyone hoped I’d play, and as a matter of fact, this creep was Tizzy Davis, whose old man was president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, and the whole family was snotty as the window in a nursery. Well, in the end I told a lot of God-damn lies about how I’d always wanted to play and had started to try out for the team two or three times but never had because I figured I wouldn’t be any good at it, and old buller Mulloy put an arm around my shoulders so I got a good whiff of his lousy stinking sweat shirt that smelled like my old man’s underwear, and he said in one of these loud jovial voices, “Skimmer, you get in that locker room and get a suit and a pair of shoes and get back out here for practice. Fellows, I got an idea Skimmer’s just the fellow we’ve been looking for.”
I went in the locker room and put on a suit and a pair of basketball shoes, and I felt pretty naked because I didn’t have a jock strap. I was supposed to have one for gym class, but I didn’t have it because I never went to the damn class, in spite of their threatening to throw me out of school for not going, and that was because all they ever did in gym class was a lot of corny squats and push-ups and stuff that didn’t amount to anything but plain hard work, and I couldn’t see any percentage in it. Anyhow, I decided I’d have to have a jock strap if I was going to play basketball in public, and I went back out and we played some, and I guess I just had the knack for it, because it turned out that I was pretty damn good. Every once in a while old Mulloy would stop us and show me how to catch the ball and pass it and a lot of stuff about pivoting and dribbling and things like that, and at first I just wished he’d let me the hell alone so I could throw the ball through the hoop, but after a while I was damn glad to have him stop us any time he wanted to, because the truth is, it pooped me out running up and down the damn court. He had us play what he called a firehorse game, and I learned later this was just the opposite of what was called a control game, which meant the teams that played a control game sort of took their time when they had the ball and tried to set up plays for good shots and all, while we just grabbed the ball and raced like hell for the basket that was ours and slammed away at it with the idea that the ball was bound to go through enough times to win the game if you tried often enough. As a matter of fact, it hadn’t been going through so often, though, and that’s why they wanted a sharpshooter like me, but to tell the truth, in the beginning I wished to hell we played a control game ourselves.
We kept at it so God-damn long I began to think, To hell with it, I wish I’d gone on down to Beegie’s and played rotation, and before we were through I began to get sick in the belly, and I thought I was going to puke right there on the lousy floor, but then we quit and went in the locker room and had showers, and old Mulloy came out of his little cubbyhole of an office and had a shower too, and stood around all manly and naked and calling everyone fellow until you wanted to poke him right in his fat mouth, and he wound up saying, “Skimmer, old man, we’re going to make the best dog-gone forward in the state out of you, and I’m predicting right now that this little old team is going to win the league championship and then go right on to take the state tournament. How about it, fellows?”
They all laughed and yelled like a bunch of boobs and said sure, that was right, and slapped each other on the bare butt, and no one but Tizzy Davis himself came over and sat down on the bench beside me and said, “Sure glad you’ve joined us, Scaggs. You’re a natural.” Then he gave me one of these damn virile slaps on the bare shoulders, and it stung like hell, the skinny fruit, and if it’d been anyone else I’d have knocked him on his ass, but as it was I let it go, and he stood up and said, “By the way, Scaggs, you ought to get together with some of us fellows some evening. We have some damn good times.”
He said damn like it was something he just threw in to show what a hell of a guy he was underneath and I almost spit in his eyes, it was so damn funny, but it didn’t turn out to be so funny after all, and a lot of those so-called nice guys really werea lot different underneath than you’d think to watch the prissy way they talked and carried on. That went for Tizzy Davis in spades, and I’m ashamed to say that right while I was talking to him that first time there in the locker room, I was a stinking virgin and he wasn’t.
After I was dressed, I went out with Bugs, and old Mulloy yelled after me that practice was at three o’clock sharp tomorrow afternoon, and I said sure, I’d be there, and Bugs said, “Boy, you’re solid. This game is the nuts.”
“Nuts is right,” I said, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer, this God-damn game’s a racket. You don’t have to study a damn bit, and you still pass all your subjects, because the coach runs down to the principal and raises blue hell if any of the team flunks, and the principal goes and raises hell with the teacher that flunked you, because the principal thinks the team is great stuff for school spirit and all that crap, and he won’t stand for any of the guys being flunked.”
I said I didn’t study, anyhow, and didn’t need any crummy excuse like playing a crummy game to keep me from doing it, and he said sure, that was right, but as it was I flunked half my subjects at least and this way I wouldn’t flunk any at all, because anyone that flunked couldn’t play on the team. “Besides,” he said, “that’s not all of it,” and I said, “What’s the rest of it?” and he said, “Well, the dolls, for one thing,” and I said, “What the hell about the dolls?” and he said, “Jesus, Skimmer, the dolls really go for the guys that play this game. No bull, you’re a hotshot if you’re on the team. You’d think throwing that ball around made you some kind of lousy hero or something. You got to be on some kind of team to get the real classy dolls.”
“I haven’t seen you with any real classy dolls lately,” I said, and he said, “Never mind. I got a couple sniffing at me. You just wait and see. You won’t have to fool around any more with old Mopsy Beacon once the classy dolls get an eyeful of you giving your all for the dear old school,” and I said, “Jesus Christ, you sound just like that God-damn Mulloy. Besides, what’s the matt
er with Mopsy Beacon? Ever since Mopsy told her old man you tried to sneak a feel, and he told your old man and got the hell beat out of you, you’ve had a hard on for her. You start riding Mopsy again, I’m liable to give you a fat lip.”
“You and who else?” he said, and I stopped and said, “You like to find out?” and he gave this sickly laugh and said, “Oh, to hell with Mopsy. She’s just a ring-tailed wonder. Ava Gardner’s just a hag compared to Mopsy.”
I let it drop then, because I really didn’t want to slap old Bugs around any, him being a pretty good guy for a Goddamn moron, and besides, to tell the truth, Mopsy wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t a bad looking doll when she took her crummy goggles off, and if I’d wanted to I could’ve told Bugs that she might have squealed on him for sneaking a feel, but she didn’t squeal on me, and I’d done it lots of times, but the hell of it was, she wouldn’t let me go any farther. You tried to get down to business, she started telling you all this bull about how that was something holy and precious that ought to be saved till after a guy and a girl were married, and I got sore once and told her that if she was planning to save it that long for me, she’d be saving it forever.
Bugs and I had to go through town to get over on the side where we lived, which was the crummy side, naturally, and on the way we passed Dummke’s Cigar Store. When we got in front of it, I told Bugs to give me the lousy two-bits he owed me because I was all out of cigarettes and wanted to get some. He started in telling me how I couldn’t smoke any more, now that I was on the team, because cigarettes took your wind, and wind was one of the most important things when it came to playing basketball, and I said he was just trying to get out of paying off the two-bits, and I didn’t intend to give up gaspers for any lousy game, and pretty soon he dug down in his stinking pocket and paid off, only twenty-three cents, though, three nickels and eight God-damn pennies. If there’s anything I hate, it’s pennies, because you always feel like a damn fool counting them out, and whoever’s selling you whatever you’re buying keeps looking at you like you were a crummy cheapskate who’d robbed the baby’s piggy bank or something, and besides, someone’s always saying, “You got a penny for tax?” and if you don’t have it, they say, “Oh, that’s all right, I’ll get it next time,” but if you do have it, you got to fork the damn thing over, and you always feel like a sucker for having it.
Twenty-three cents was just exactly enough for the cigarettes, so I went in to get them, and old Gravy Dummke himself came up behind the counter to wait on me. Everyone called him Gravy because he got a cut from so God-damn many crooked things around town, and it was a crying wonder how he did it, because you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that anyone would have bothered to spit on him. He was fat and greasy with a headful of dirty black curls all slopped up with some kind of stinking oil, and when he smiled at you it looked like his whole damn face fell apart and left you standing there looking at about a square mile of ivory. The smile didn’t mean a damn thing, though, and he was a nasty bastard, always throwing something into you and breaking it off, and today he said, “Hello, kid. You still out of jail?”
“You’re a hell of a one to be yakking about jail,” I said. “The cop’ll jump that game in your back room someday, and you’ll damn well think jail.”
His fat, greasy face smoothed out like a billiard ball, and his little eyes got kind of sleepy and mean, and he said, “You got a big mouth, kid. You’re bound to get in big trouble someday, you got such a big mouth.”
I said, “All I want is a God-damn pack of cigarettes. You want to sell me a pack of cigarettes or not?” and he said, “Why the hell should I particularly want to sell you a lousy pack of cigarettes?” but he slapped a pack on the counter, anyhow, the brand I smoked, and I slapped all those stinking pennies on the glass counter and spread them around and left. You ever tried to pick up a lot of coins off a glass counter? It’s a hell of a job.
Outside, Bugs said, “You oughtn’t to needle Gravy that way. Gravy’s a pretty damn big shot, if you want to know it. Jackie Bramble’s big brother works for Gravy, dealing and taking bets and things like that, and he says Gravy’s got connections in the city with all the big gamblers and everyone,” and I said, “He’s just a lousy small-town punk, and if he had so much on the ball he’d be a big shot gambler up in the city himself instead of being down here in this jerk town running a crummy game in the back of a cigar store. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference if he had connections with Frank Costello himself, I don’t take any lip from any lousy grease-ball.”
We went on through town, and the lights were on because it was getting late and it got dark pretty early that time of year, and I thought about hanging around for a while before I went home, but I didn’t do it because all the damn running up and down had made me hungry as hell, and I didn’t have any money to buy a hamburger or anything with. The farther we walked, the crummier it got, and when it got just about as crummy as it was going to get, that’s where I lived. Bugs turned off to cross over a few blocks to the street he lived on, and he said he’d see me tomorrow at school, and I said sure, I’d see him around, and I kept on going down the street I was on to the house I lived in, and it was dark as hell down there and pretty cold.
I went up across the porch and back through the house to the kitchen, and the old man and the old lady were still bellied up to the table, and the old man said, “Where the hell you been?”
I said, “I been playing basketball, if you want to know, that’s where I’ve been,” and he said, “Basketball? What the hell you mean, basketball?” and I said, “I mean basketball, that’s what I mean. Didn’t you ever hear of basketball?”
He laid his knife down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at me like he was stupid, which he was. “By God, I can’t believe I heard right,” he said, and I said, “You dig the muck out of your ears, maybe you could hear better.”
He glared at me across the table and said, “Don’t mouth off at me, you smart little bastard, and I’ll tell you something else too. No kid of mine is going to play any God-damn silly games, and you get home for your supper on time after this or I’ll damn well go up the side of your head.”
“I’ll play any games I like, and I won’t ask you a damn thing about it before I do,” I said, but I said it too close, and the old man jumped up and clobbered me on the side of the head before I could duck. He was pretty strong in spite of being a beer-soaked slob, and he slammed me up against the wall and damn near knocked my brains out. That set the old lady to bawling, and she went into the old routine about how I was a bad boy, and it was all because I’d lost the big brother I needed to look after me and teach me what I needed to know, but that was a lot of bull because my big brother, whose name was Eddie, hadn’t ever loked after me any at all, and the only things he ever taught me were some dirty stories and limericks and how to shoot pool. He’d been in the war and off in some stinking place like New Guinea or somewhere, and he’d written me this letter once that said pretty plain between the lines that he was damn sick of it and was going to pull out and desert the first chance he got, but damned if he didn’t get killed before he could go. That made the old lady a gold star war mother or something corny like that, and she sure as hell got her kicks out of it, especially when she was drunk.
After my head quit ringing, I eased into my chair at the table and began to eat, and the chow was pretty damn lousy, besides being cold, and the only reason I bothered to eat at all was because I’d worked up this big appetite. Pretty soon the old man got up and said he was going up the street to the tavern to watch the fights, and I said if he’d quit blowing all his money for beer in the lousy tavern he’d have enough to buy a television set, and we could all watch the God-damn fights. He looked like he was figuring to clobber me again, but he hardly ever bothered to clobber me more than once a day, and so he just belched and rubbed his fat gut and went on out. I finished eating and went in the living room and sat down and tried to think of something to
do with the damn night. There wasn’t any use going back uptown, because I didn’t have any money, and I’d had plenty of Bugs for one day, a little of Bugs going a hell of a long way, and finally I decided I might as well go over and see if I could stir up something with Mopsy, so I went.
The whole damn sky was lousy with stars, and the moon was floating around big and yellow up there among them, and when you walked under a tree and looked up you could see the moon and a big mess of the stars through the bare branches of the tree, and it was like seeing it all through a God-damn black filigree or something, and it was a pretty good eyeful if you cared for that kind of crap. The wind was blowing pretty strong in the street, stirring up the dead leaves in the yards and along the gutter, and it was damn cold, and I got to thinking that it was too cold to sit outside with Mopsy, and what the hell could you do with Mopsy inside with her old man and her old lady hanging around, and I was about to turn around and go home and to hell with it when it occurred to me that there was an outside chance that the old man and the old lady had gone out to a movie or somewhere, and so I took the chance and went on, and that’s just the way it turned out, as luck would have it.
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