Airball (16 page)

The Stuckey seventh-grade Prairie Dogs led off the ten o'clock Live-Action News on Channel 7 that night. We were the very first story, beating out a tax increase, a slump in wheat prices, and the weather.

“Wow,” said Bragger. “Underwear basketball is bigger news than we thought.”

The Channel 7 sports guy interviewed Mrs. Zimmer. She sat straight and tall in her school board president's chair, and the way her nostrils twitched at the camera every time the sports guy mentioned Mike Armstrong, you could tell she was aching to fire Coach on the spot. And send his whole team to reform school. And, while she was at it, cancel seventh-grade basketball till the NBA froze over.

But she could hardly do that right there on Channel 7, with the reporter cheerfully asking her how it felt to be a leading citizen in a town that had produced not one, but two basketball wonders: Brett McGrew and the Armstrong Coaching Method.

At the words “Armstrong Coaching Method,” Mrs. Zimmer's twitch snapped into a snarl. But she recovered quickly, pulling her lips into what passed as a smile, and said, as graciously as she could through gritted teeth, “Here in Stuckey, we've always known how special our basketball program is. What Coach Armstrong did tonight doesn't surprise me.”

“At least she didn't cancel us,” said Bragger.

“Not so far,” I said.

We made the paper that weekend, and not just in Hutchinson and Great Bend, either. The Wichita paper ran a story about us, and once again we landed on the front page of the Kansas City
Star
sports section, which Cousin Mildred thoughtfully clipped out and mailed to us.

The
Star
called Coach creative and daring. It said that in stripping his players down to their jockey shorts, Coach was literally stripping the game of basketball down to its essentials. That by getting rid of outside distractions, he was allowing his players to focus on the fundamentals. By peeling away everything but their skivvies, he had fused those players into a team. Pretty much the same stuff we'd already read in the other papers. But the end of the article was something new:

Coach Armstrong was Brett McGrew's teammate on two state champion basketball teams. He graduated the year before McGrew led Stuckey to a remarkable third straight championship. Armstrong still holds the Kansas high school record for most steals in a single season.

“Most steals?” I stared at the article, then at Bragger, who was scrunched up next to me at the kitchen table, reading over my shoulder. “It was Coach. The guy with the most steals was Coach.”

“Yeah.” Bragger wrinkled his forehead. “But that doesn't make any sense. I thought Coach asked
you
who had the most steals. If it was him, why would he go around asking other people about it? Wouldn't he remember his own record?”

“He remembered. He just wanted to see if anybody else did. And they didn't.” I shook my head. “Wouldn't that be awful? To do something great like set a state record, and not have anybody in your own town remember?”

Bragger wrinkled his forehead again. “But see, that doesn't make sense either. People in the Basketball Capital of Kansas would remember if one of their own players set a state record. Wouldn't they?”

I considered this. “Not if that player was on the same team as Brett McGrew. Think about it. Everything was focused on McNet, right? Everybody was watching him, waiting to see what kind of amazing shot he'd put up next. Probably nobody even noticed that other guy making all those steals.”

Bragger nodded. “Especially since those steals meant McNet got to put up more shots.”

*   *   *

We'd beaten Whipple, and Mrs. Zimmer hadn't canceled our program. Yet. But we still had lots of basketball left to play—and lots of games left to win—if we wanted to go to Lawrence.

So we kept playing. In our underwear. We'd gotten semi-famous for it, so we couldn't very well stop.

Besides, underwear basketball was working for us. Our tightie whities had helped us beat Whipple, and over the next three weeks, they helped us beat Collison, Woodard, and Pierce City. I can't say we actually got comfortable waltzing into a crowded gymnasium showing that much skin. Especially during the tournament at St. Agnes Academy, over in Lovellette, where the scorekeeper, one of the refs, and the St. Agnes coach were all nuns. But we took a deep breath, closed our eyes, and marched onto the court anyway.

By the middle of December, we were 6 and 0 and were the reigning St. Agnes Academy tournament champs.

Mrs. Zimmer kept a low profile. We hadn't seen—or, more importantly, heard—much out of her since we beat Whipple. But word around the beauty shop was that she'd ordered a brand new Jayhawk bleacher cushion.

“And not just a cheapo vinyl pad, either,” Duncan told us. “A real stadium seat, with a reclining back rest and hooks to slide it in place. Not the kind of thing you'd order if you were bent on canceling a basketball program.”

As we racked up wins, we also racked up fame, and not just in Kansas. News stations across the country started reporting on the remarkable success of the Armstrong Coaching Method. We showed up on ESPN, on the cover of
Sports Illustrated,
and on
David Letterman
as the number one reason to buy boxers, not briefs.

USA Today
reported that teams across the country were trying their luck with underwear basketball. First, a middle school in Montana, then one in Kentucky. Pretty soon, a high school popped up in Vermont. A junior college team from the Oklahoma panhandle drove up to watch us play one night, and the next thing we heard, they were playing skivvy ball, too.

Right before Christmas,
Good Morning, America
sent their weather guy to Stuckey to do his weather broadcast. The whole town, it seemed, gathered at the Double Dribble that morning.

Grandma made a cake for the occasion. Shaped like a Jayhawk. Enormous, of course. She had to bake it in sections, and each section was lopsided, so the Jayhawk came out flat and crispy in some places, bulging in others. The car ride from our house hadn't done the frosting any good, so by the time we arrived at the Double Dribble, his yellow beak had glopped down to rest on his buckled shoes.

Manning's dad brought a Basketball Capital of Kansas cap for the weather guy, compliments of Reece Feed and Grain. Mrs. Snodgrass served the whole TV crew French vanilla cappuccino. On the house. I about fell off my chair. Mrs. Snodgrass never gave away free food. Ever. I'd seen her chase down the street after arthritic old farmers who'd forgotten to leave change on the table for their coffee. But there she was, passing out free cappuccino and smiling so wide, her crayoned eyebrows about popped off her forehead.

Coach, as usual, wasn't very talkative. “Really, not much to tell,” he said when the weather guy asked how he'd developed the Armstrong Coaching Method. Which was about all Coach ever said.

But the coffee drinkers were happy to weigh in.

“It was bound to happen,” said Lloyd Metcalf. “This is a basketball town, and if somebody's going to put a new wrinkle in the game, why, we pretty much expect it to happen here. This is where Brett McGrew came up with his most famous move, you know. The spinning layup.”

The weatherman nodded. “Yes, Brett McGrew is quite famous for that move.” He smiled into the camera. “Of course, I should remind viewers that Brett McGrew wasn't the first player to spin while doing a layup.”

Which pretty much amounted to treason in Stuckey. Nobody ever said Brett McGrew wasn't the first at anything. Not inside the city limits. Not if they wanted to stick around for any length of time.

But Lloyd Metcalf just chuckled. “No, sir, he wasn't. He wasn't the first, and he wasn't the last. But he sure was the best. Still is.” He pushed his Allis-Chalmers cap back and scratched his head. “Now that I think on it, McNet wasn't even the first player from Stuckey to use that move.” He turned to the other coffee drinkers. “What was that other kid's name, one that did the spinning layup before Brett McGrew got ahold of it? Was that the Lamprey kid?”

The other coffee drinkers furrowed their brows and leaned over their coffee cups to ponder the question.

“Now that you mention it, I do seem to remember somebody.…”

“But I thought it was Bert Hager's boy.”

“Or one of the Doolins.”

“Nah. Weren't none of them quick enough.”

But America wasn't interested in some long-ago nobody who maybe did a spinning layup one time in the middle of nowhere, so while the coffee drinkers tried to puzzle out the player's name, the weather guy drifted over to interview Mrs. Snodgrass about her autographed Brett McGrew menu.

I glanced at Coach. A long-ago somebody who'd set a state record while nobody was looking.

“Are they right?” I said. “Did somebody really do Brett McGrew's spinning layup first?”

Coach gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Spinning in the air isn't anything new.”

“So who was it?” I said.

“Doesn't matter.”

“Yes, it does. I imagine it matters a lot to the person who did it.”

Coach snorted. “Every player who ever put on a Stuckey uniform could've done a spinning layup, Nickel. It wouldn't matter. McNet's the one who took it places.” He took a sip of coffee. “Nobody else ever went anywhere.”

Thirty-three

Coach, the team, and the whole town spent the winter thinking about nothing but basketball. Me, I had something else to worry about.

I'd gone through all the trophy cases and yearbooks at the middle school and high school, every back issue of the
Full Court Press
at the library downtown, and every Internet page that showed up on every search engine I'd ever heard of till I couldn't bend my mouse finger anymore. And I still hadn't found that little part of Brett McGrew that looked like me. That one piece of visual evidence that would convince Brett McGrew in an instant that he was my father.

“Don't worry about it,” Bragger told me.

It was a week before the KU game, and we were in the locker room after practice. The other guys were still showering.

Bragger snapped me with his towel. “You've still got his old number 5 jersey and the medal you found in the prairie dog. That'll grab his attention. And then you can tell him who you are. It'll work out great.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

I moped past Coach's office to the big trash can in the corner. Coach had his door open. He was hunkered over his desk, sorting through the mountain of papers stacked in his in-box. He glanced up. Saw me starting to bag up the trash.

“Nickel.” He motioned his head toward the heaped-over wastebasket by his desk. “You mind taking this out? I don't think I've emptied it since school started.”

I scrambled into his office, retrieved his trash can, and dumped it into the big can out in the locker room. I had to shake it a couple of times to get the crunched-up trash in the bottom to fall out, and when I did, a wad of paper tumbled to the floor. I picked it up. Started to toss it into the can with the rest of the trash. But then something caught my eye. A big number 5.

I glanced up at Coach. He was still hunkered over his desk, leafing through a sports catalog, not paying any attention to me. I turned my back to him and unwadded the paper.

It was a picture. Torn haphazardly from a newspaper. Slightly yellowed. I smoothed it out with my hand.

And stared down at Brett McGrew. At a game shot of McNet skidding across the floor on his stomach after a loose ball, his arms outstretched. The word S
TUCKEY
and a big number 5 were stretched across the back of his jersey, and the bottoms of his shorts were hiked up so you could see an obscene amount of bare skin.

And there, on the back of his left leg, right where his thigh met his butt cheek, was a birthmark.

A big, humiliating, heart-shaped birthmark.

“Bragger.” I kept my voice low and even. Motioned for him to follow me.

We strolled—casually—around the end of the lockers, where nobody could see us. I held up the picture.

Bragger looked at it. Then at me.

He smiled. “We finally found that tiny little piece of Brett McGrew that looks like you.” He punched my arm. “Too bad it had to be the most embarrassing part.”

*   *   *

After practice, we stopped by the drugstore so I could buy another roll of film.

Back home, in the safety of my bedroom, I put on the number 5 Stuckey High School basketball uniform from my mother's dresser. I had to pull the shorts up practically to my armpits and fix them with a safety pin so they wouldn't fall down around my ankles. But once Bragger finished fluffing me out and making sure I wasn't crooked, it didn't look too bad. Especially not from the back, which is what we were most concerned with.

“Got the ball?” said Bragger.

I nodded and thumped my autographed Jayhawk basketball.

“Okay, get into position.”

We'd pushed my rug aside so that the bare wood floor would show, simulating a basketball court. I hiked the leg of my shorts up, stretched out on my stomach, and pretended I was reaching for the ball. Bragger kicked my feet apart so they were in the same position as Brett McGrew's in the picture.

“Perfect,” he said.

“Does the birthmark show?”

“Oh, yeah. Big and heart shaped, just like McNet's.” He clicked the picture.

*   *   *

By the time the season rolled to a close, the Stuckey Prairie Dogs were 14 and 0 and had won the league championship for the first time since Brett McGrew played seventh-grade ball. The nearly bare championship banner hanging in the middle school gym now had one more year stitched onto it: ours.

Nobody could argue with success like that, not even Mrs. Zimmer. So early one wind-whipped February morning, a Stuckey school bus pulled out of the middle-school parking lot, the seventh-grade basketball team and its coach on board, and rumbled up Highway 50 toward Lawrence.