# # #
THEIR FORTUNES HAVE reversed. Losing has to be fought against, no matter knowing they’re being defeated or that a turning point has occurred. They retain a one-point lead, and fight, while the Mother Truckers have an overload of momentum and tons of strength and courage.
There comes a moment—on a raised finger from their coach—when the Mother Truckers are all over the Little Ms in a blizzard of arms, legs, bodies. Turbulence and conclusion. The Little Ms fight, while Dale knows it to be the death of his dream. Miracles happen in sports. And miracles fail to happen.
A minute remains, during which the Little Ms make a final run. On a basket by Lucky, they return their lead to three. As their aggressiveness seeks to hold, Dale’s desire for the kill has never been more pointed. Still, he is alarmed as the lead returns to one and the Truckers call time out! time out! A huddle follows at their bench while the Little Ms stand gasping, hands on hips and chins hanging. In the Trucker’s huddle, Mr. Bothner is pointing, instructing, jabbing/spitting/eyeballing, giving them the word.
Seeing on the clock that sixteen seconds remain, Dale hopes that time is on their side with their one-point lead . . . knows their lead will hold if they can score but one more time. How, though, to stop the raging storm the Truckers have invoked? How to slow it down and get the seconds to fly? How to ice the game with just one more two-pointer?
There again is the swarming full-court press interfering with the Little Ms attempt to inbound. The Mother Truckers are seized, crazed, on fire. Placing Sonny Joe at the center of the storm, Dale knows, is a brilliant move. It defies logic and is something Coach Burke would never try. With his reach and speed, his brains and confidence, his strength and even his malicious smirk, Joe anchors the most formidable press Dale has ever seen.
Sidestepping along the end line to inbound the ball, Dale is swarmed by Sonny Joe and Keith Bothner in a Truckers’ move apparently held in reserve for a crisis. Who held moves in reserve for crises? Scrambling not to turn it over, Dale fakes, fakes, snaps a bounce pass at Lucky only—on a shock!—to see the ball short-hop-snatched from the floor by Sonny Joe’s dinner plates (the big sonofabitch read him like a book!) back-dribbled on a bounce and laid in with ease.
The gym explodes. Turbulence and conclusion. Sonny Joe’s basket has ignited a response unlike any ever seen before. The Mother Truckers have the lead and Dale feels stabbed to the heart just as he did on learning, in the fall, that he wasn’t on a team he believed to be his. Panic runs through his heart as he looks to the scoreboard and sees the time remaining:
0:09
It was his first turnover—he did not give up turnovers! ever!—and the lead is gone. Whatever marks his teammates might have against them, his turnover is the worst of the game, of his life, the worst error he has ever committed. “Time! Time!” he is calling, thinking he has to risk a time-out or all is lost.
“No no, no time-outs remaining!” Grady is calling.
“Technical, no time-outs remaining!” Zebra Two snaps at once, flagging his fingers to receive the ball.
Another technical, and another loss of the ball. A final constricted breath of junior high school hoop, of Miss Furbish, of every dream Dale has known in his life.
# # #
THEY HAVE TO stand and swallow defeat as Sonny Joe is selected to shoot from the line. Possession goes with the shot and anyone who knows the score—everyone by then—knows the game has been lost by the hoodlum hillbilly players from the wrong side of town. Dale stands helpless, numb, defeated.
Whipp!
The crowd explodes again as the Mother Truckers, up by two, retain possession. The disintegration of Dale’s heart and fight follows within a countdown from the stands. “SEVEN . . . SIX . . . FIVE. . . .” Defeat has the Little Ms by the throat as a blaring horn sounds to let them know it is the end. But wait, another technical has been called, on Lucky Bartell—for pro-fanity—though Dale did not hear whatever it was he had to say.
The clock reset at :00, the Little Ms stand in confusion. Mr. Bothner selects his youngest son to shoot the meaningless free throw. The Truckers encountered adversity, but rallied their talents and experience, invoked their training and—if taking a page or two from the opposition—used their experience to seize a come-from-behind win.
The Trucker’s bench players are on the floor slapping, jumping, celebrating a win snatched from the jaws of defeat. Emmett, beside Dale, cannot contain his bawling tears. Dale glances through his own blurred eyes into the stands before looking to the floor. Miss Furbish, if she stayed, would seem to have left. Where to now? How to live again?
Karl Bothner makes the free throw as Dale stands with his teammates. Walking with them, he wonders what it was at the outset of the season that had him imagining being adopted by the big man as a son more skilled than his own. What a childish notion not to have better understood the ways of the world. Lucky, moving toward the tunnel, says, “We had it and let it get away.”
They had it and let it get away. No loss is worse than having it and letting it get away. The death of a dream. A lesson learned. Love and loss having their way, as they seem always to do.
CHAPTER 21
IN THEIR AISLE IN THE LOCKER ROOM, AS TEAMMATES PULL off jerseys and unlace shoes, Dale sits on the bench and stares into a locker he opened like a normal person. If only they had trailed all the way and lost by twenty. But of course, as Lucky noted: They had it and let it get away. Dale gave up the go-ahead basket on a turnover. He committed a technical when, as captain, he should have known the number of time-outs remaining. Dale knows already that they were mistakes he will never be able to leave behind.
Emmett, if weeping, is laughing through his tears at something someone has said. Dale sits waiting as if for his heart to let him live again. A thought crosses his mind, that it was his resumption of pride that cost them the game. Why did he think he could gamble on that injudicious shot from outside? Not a bold shot, but a frightened shot. A lapse in judgment. The shot of a loser.
“Don’t be second-guessing yourself,” Lucky says from down the aisle.
Dale attempts to grin. “I’m cool,” he says, knowing he isn’t and will never be again. Lucky, Dale notices, is striding off bareassed on his way to the gang shower, towel in hand. For his part, Dale feels no further inclination to stand or think or speak. Or to breathe. How can he, when all has been lost?
The Mother Truckers, having stormed into the locker room—loud and brash in their victory—continue their smug volume several aisles over. All the same they have been coached in sportsmanship—like everything else—and their remarks are but slightly offensive, vaguely confrontational.
Dale continues sitting there. In time he unlaces a shoe on a thought of concealing his despair and his losses. Strength has vacated his body, and as he removes one shoe, freeing up a heated foot, he has to pause and regain his breath before unlacing the other. He has no wish to see or be seen by any of the Truckers, for the smirks that will line their mouths. Nakedness and defeat; red-eyed and crashed on the rocks; his failure has to be apparent to all, and all he wants is to be alone, unseen even by his adored teacher. Goodbye to her, too. The end of his run for the city . . . and for Miss Furbish.
CHAPTER 22
LATER, UNAWARE OF TELLING HIMSELF TO DO SO, DALE IS standing to remove his jersey, thinking that anyone glancing his way will think he’s okay and leave him alone. Lucky, returned from the shower like everyone else, is returning to his street clothes, his DA and mafia overcoat.
“Went sixteen and one, had a great year,” Lloyd says, apart from Dale. Showered and dried, his tie-less white shirt buttoned to the neck, Lloyd is also covering up with a double-breasted gangster overcoat.
“Yeah,” Dale manages to reply.
For no reason than to inform some imagined observer that he is doing okay, Dale removes his other sneaker and begins working to remove the sweat socks he had washed and reserved for the big game. One sock, and the other, laying them on his sneaker
s in the bottom of his locker, putting on a modest show of freeing up his feet and appearing to be normal in his heart and mind.
The Little Ms, but for Dale, have made their way in two or three cars driven by fathers and will be leaving to make their way back to the hillbilly heaven after which they proudly named their team: Little Missouri. Pride matters. They’re moving on, Dale tells himself, imagining how comfortable it would be to leave in one of the cars with teammates. For he no longer belongs where he is. Many weeks of school remain . . . before heading to high school in the fall, and he no longer belongs where he will have to pass his time.
Squeezing his feet in two hands at once, he puts on another small show of being okay, only to first smell then look up and see Lucky and Grady with cigarettes in their mouths. “Flying Wheel, gonna sit there all night?” Chub says and, given how gratified Dale is to have Chub speak to him, is reduced enough that he can only reply with a grin. Anything not to cry.
“You guys ready to bolt?” Lucky asks of the others.
Hair combed back, big overcoats on, they’re taking up their bags and moving to leave when a man appears at the end of the aisle—Hal Doyle’s father, Dale thinks—sniffing that certain smell.
“You’re smoking in here!?” he demands of Lucky, who is standing the closest. “Put that cigarette out right now!” he adds, wagging a finger at Lucky.
Lucky takes his time grinning, replacing his bag on the bench as if something at Walt Whitman Junior High has finally gone his way. “Tell you what,” he tells the man, laying it out with his drawl and friendly smile. “S’pose you step closer and make me. Be my guest, motherfucker.”
All go silent as they await the man’s reply. Appearing to think better of what he is doing, Mr. Doyle only stares back at Lucky.
“Whatta ya say . . . you sack of shit?” Lucky says. “Like me to step over there?”
The man looks for another second before withdrawing, leaving the Little Ms to swallow their snickering. “Guy’s got brains, give him that,” Grady says with his smile. “Seen Lucky like that. He’d a’ killed that asshole in ten seconds flat.”
The Little Ms resume departing, unafraid, picking up bags, closing locker doors. This is it. Dale has come to love his brothers, and they’re departing his life, probably forever.
“You gonna be okay?” Grady wants to know.
“Yeah, no sweat,” Dale says.
“Think there’s gonna be trouble, we’ll stay,” Chub says. “Nothing I’d like better.”
“Just taking my time,” Dale says. “Any second now I’m gonna get it together. What I wanna do, wanna thank you guys for taking me in when I was down,” he says. This time Dale needs to avert his face, to conceal his glossy eyes.
“Hey, was a good year all the way,” Grady says.
“Yeah, a good year,” they all agree.
As Dale gets himself to look up, in an attempt to smile, they’re packed in their big overcoats and shiny DAs, ready to move on.
“See you, man, take it easy,” Lucky says.
“See ya,” Dale says as they file off and are gone.
CHAPTER 23
ELBOWS ON THIGHS, DALE SITS STARING BETWEEN HIS FEET. He’ll be okay, is coming around, he’s telling himself. The locker room is free of voices and the sound of running water, and he guesses he’s the last player from either team remaining. Gazing at the floor, he knows that in any moment he’s going to get up and commence to make his way. What else is there to do?
Sensing someone at the end of the aisle, he glances over. Expecting to see the locker room man, Slim, for whom he swept floors, he sees Mr. Bothner filling the space.
“Fella, how’s it going?” the man says.
Stricken, Dale cannot say, can only look back in confusion.
“Wanted to say good game. You’re a competitor,” the man tells him.
Through a blur, Dale knows the man has withdrawn. He also knows how alone he is now, that they lost and, on tears filling his eyes, that he has to get moving.
OVERTIME
CHAPTER 1
AT PECK’S IN LOWER DOWNTOWN, FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life, Dale buys cigarettes. A need for identity and independence has been beckoning for weeks. The code of the Little Ms, who became brothers and in whom, but for living in another school district, he came to see as better versions of himself, remain beacons in love and life. They are true to who they are . . . are not putty in the hands of others. Some would say it’s wrong to buy cigarettes, but Dale knows what he knows. Being true to yourself is the largest thing he’s learned all year.
He decides on his father’s brand.
On being refused (there where he purchased Shalimar Fantasy Bath Oil for Miss Furbish) he’ll find a vending machine. He lives all but alone, does things on his own, and placing his money on the glass counter, he says, “Camels.”
The clerk hardly glances his way in removing a pack from a rack, adding a book of paper matches, making change. Taking up pack, matches, change, turning to leave, Dale imagines Miss Furbish frowning in disapproval. There are times when you’re obligated to be who you are, he imagines having her know. Sorry if you disapprove, but this is an occasion when I need to be who I am.
For a moment out in the spring air of evening, Dale doesn’t care if he takes up smoking or not, though he knows that he’s on his way to giving it a try. He’s seeing all things differently now, and in the death of his dream is seeing a need to start over again.
# # #
IN THE DIM US Coney Island where, again, he has his choice of seats viewing head-lighted traffic on the big street, he places the Camels and matches near an ashtray and orders a bottle of Hires. His wish is to have the Little Ms with him, and Miss Furbish, too, for the way they’ve made him feel in the face of every challenge down through the turning final year of junior high. They could pack a booth and it would be a treat to be with people he has learned to love. He would introduce Miss Furbish to Lucky and Grady, to Chub and Emmett, and in no time at all his favorite teacher would have them listening and talking, laughing and learning. The Little Ms would like her, as he does, for her ability to let them be grown up and real. No condescension from Miss Furbish. She would see who they were and would speak directly, and they would see who she was and would like her for helping them see themselves as the human beings they happen to be.
On a sip of root beer, he takes up the Camels. The package has the firm feel of nothing other than Miss Furbish’s brassiered breast, which, as another small package, he loved touching that one time. Pulling the pack’s gold band, he proceeds with the ritual presentation of smokes by removing the cellophane cover. In his father’s style, he turns back two tinfoil triangles, lifts the fold, tears it off.
Cigarettes. There they are, ends evenly packed and ready to be withdrawn, and he imagines telling Miss Furbish that being true to himself is the way he has to go, to not be false like those who manipulate and cheat and attempt to beat out others unfairly. Neither rich nor false, but proud and independent. True to himself. It’s what he wants to be . . . a true person able to think for himself.
Pushing up enough smokes to grip one in his fingers, he pulls it out and places it on his lip. As he has been drawn to smoking, so he is drawn to how it looks, and locates his reflection in glass by excluding the street’s adjacent movement and neon. Checking the reflection, he rolls the butt along his lip for a more jaunty feel on one side of his mouth. Striking a paper match, noting the orange explosion in the glass as well, he allows the cigarette and flame to meet, pulls in enough orange to ignite the tobacco . . . and realizes that someone is settling into the seat beside him.
# # #
OF COURSE IT’S Miss Furbish, who is saying, “May I join you?” triggering a cough-spurt of smoke from his chest. Muffling the spurt, Dale tries to expel the irritating puff.
“I thought I would find you here,” she says.
Pleased beyond all else to see her, Dale blinks away a coating covering his eyes and restrains himself from cryi
ng, or from touching her hand.
Close enough beside him that her forearm is nearly against his, her eyes have also filmed over. “Are you okay?” she wants to know.
“I’m okay,” he says.
“I’m pleased to find you. I was worried.”
“It’s nice being with you again.”
Smiling, she says, “Well, don’t get any ideas about that. The game was heartbreaking,” she adds. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
“We had it, and let it get away.”
“I can see how hard it must be for you. I cried all the way home. I called, but there wasn’t any answer.”
Hunching, Dale says, “I have to move on.”
“You know, games are only that . . . someone always loses,” she says. “They had advantages in coaching, management, training. By any measure, you played better.”
“All but the score.”
“I only watched you,” she says.
“I thought I could win the city,” he says. “That was my dream.”
“You did win the city. Don’t think for one second that you didn’t.” Her smile is tender, tears glossing her eyes while her fingers move toward touching his hand, only to pause. “Dale, I’ll always like you,” she says, her voice barely audible. “What we did was moving toward being wrong . . . still, I’ll never forget it.”
On a glance to the window Dale sees the two of them in reflection sitting together, his smoldering white stick yet in the ashtray.
“So you’re taking up smoking?” she says, expressing her disapproval without saying it directly.
“I decided I had to be true to myself.”
“I can see that. Being true to yourself is admirable.”
“I used to be a Trucker. Before I saw that I was a Little M. What I learned is to never be them again.”
Winning the City Redux Page 23
