Blue Star Rapture (6 page)

“I'm so tired, though,” said Tyron with the sweat running rivulets down his face and neck. “It's hot as hell.”

“You heard what I said.”

There were no more sparks after that, but T.J.'s relief was tempered by a measure of wariness. He was beginning to understand that it was more than talent alone that set Ishmael apart on the court. It was his unlimited intensity, his
passion
for competition that elevated him to the next level. But it was the same characteristic that could bring him into conflict with Tyron again.

FIVE

When he went to the cafeteria, T.J. sought out a corner table that was a dumping ground for old newspapers. What he wanted was a place where he could be by himself and read sections of the
Peoria Journal-Star
and the
Chicago Tribune
, even if they were a day or two stale. He ate alone while reading an article about football players at Southeastern Conference schools who were suspended for betting on football games. After lunch, he made his way to the parking lot so he could spend some time in the Toyota. He flung the doors open for ventilation, sat in the passenger's seat, and opened the glove box. There were Marlboros in it, so he lit one up while he took out his diary. He turned to a fresh page, the one right after his record of the call Tyron had received from the De Paul coach. He decided to make a record of the information about Bee Edwards and the shoes, as well as his Notre Dame conversation with Tyron. As usual, he didn't know whether these entries would ever prove important or not; he simply wrote them down.

The voice he heard startled him: “Paperwork is never done, huh?”

When T.J. looked up he saw it was Coach Lindsey. He smiled. “I guess not, Coach.”

Lindsey made a face. “Oh, Nucci, you're not smoking those things?”

“Not me, no sir.”

“You don't want to, do you? Weren't you told it's against the rules?”

“I think I remember hearin' somethin' about it.” Lindsey was wearing a white polo shirt with an Adidas logo. No wrinkles. No sweat. He was evenly tanned and handsome. T.J. said, “Okay, how about this? If you don't tell on me, I won't tell on you.”

“Tell on me for what?”

“You're talkin' to me. Coaches aren't allowed to do that. Even if it's only to me, a guy who doesn't have a college future as a player. I'm still one of the participants.”

“Strictly speaking, that's right,” confirmed the coach.

“Strictly speaking.”

Coach Lindsey asked him, “Is that the diary?”

T.J. glanced down at the open book on his sweaty knees. “That's the diary,” he acknowledged. “I was just reading the place where Tyron got a call from the De Paul coach.”

“A call, you say?”

“That's what I said.”

“You're not saying a letter, T.J.? You're saying Coach Kennedy called him on the phone?”

“He called him on the phone.” The mysteries of the recruiting game were numerous, but T.J. didn't need to be told how important it was to receive a phone call from a major coach; a letter was just a matter of form, but the telephone was always the signal of serious interest.

Lindsey took a minute or two to absorb this information, as it was significant. Then he asked T.J. where Tyron stood relative to the ACT.

“That'll be up to Mrs. Osby,” T.J. replied.

“Who's Mrs. Osby?” asked Lindsey, leaning against the car with his arms folded on his chest.

“She's a counselor at Burton. She's a kind of formal prude, but her heart's in the right place. At least I think it is.”

“So what does she have to say about Tyron and the ACT?”

“You want to hear about this?” asked T.J.

“I asked, so I guess I do.”

T.J. stubbed out the cigarette. He thought to himself,
as long as we're breaking the rules, why not do it large?
“Okay, here's what happened,” he began.

His conversation with Mrs. Osby had occurred on a warm spring day on his very own front porch. He had simply been sitting there, reading a book for English class, when he chanced to see Mrs. Osby enter Tyron's huge, hodgepodge house on the corner. It was possible to see that far in spring before the trees were leafed out. He wondered why, exactly, Mrs. Osby would be there, but then she was a counselor at the high school where Tyron was a student. She probably had a place on the roster of all the advocates and specialists and social workers who managed the lives of young people living in group homes.

He had continued his reading long enough to give the porch post time to carve a sharp pain in his back. He would have gone inside, but he wanted to stay put until Mrs. Osby came out of the big house. When she finally did emerge, not until after 10:30, T.J. submitted to the urge to wave to her. Seeing him, she had crossed the street. She asked him if this was where he lived. He told her yes. She asked him if his mother was inside. He told her yes, but she was still in bed. “She works the night shift at Oblio's,” he added.

“The pizzeria?”

“Yes. On weekend afternoons, she cleans office buildings.”

“A hard worker. A very hard worker. Salt of the earth, it sounds like.”

“I guess.”

“May I join you for a few minutes?” Mrs. Osby had taken from her bag a cloth napkin with blue fringe, which was nearly as large as a dish towel. She shook it before she spread it carefully on the floorboards of the porch. When she seated herself squarely, she asked T.J. how long he'd known Tyron.

T.J. wondered about the big napkin, how she happened to have it ready like she knew she might need it. There were sharp creases in the legs of her navy blue pants suit. He thought of the woman lawyer in one of John Grisham's novels who wore camisoles all the time; it was an undergarment she wore to make sure her bra wouldn't show through her blouse. He figured Mrs. Osby would be no less circumspect in her manner of dress.

“Actually, I knew him back at Douglass High, in the city. I didn't know he was moving in that house until last summer.”

“So the two of you were reunited, then?”

“In a way. I'm a lot closer to him now than I was back then.”

“You want to advocate for him. You want to help him.”

T.J. had realized quickly that her questions were going to require careful answers, and it wouldn't help matters much if they continued to come in the form of statements. The bottom line, he reminded himself, was that this was a woman you wanted on your side. He said, “It seems like somebody needs to give him a little help.”

“Indeed. I'm afraid I don't know much about basketball. I take it Tyron is a good player?”

If you don't count the mental part
, T.J. had thought to himself. “He's so good, he's had college coaches from all over watching him play. He's only a junior, but he averaged almost twenty-three points a game this season.”

“He certainly is large. It would be basketball, then, which presumably would get him into college?”

“He'll get basketball scholarship offers,” T.J. had replied.

“May I ask which schools are showing interest?”

“There's so many, it's hard to count. North State seems to be after him more than the rest.”

“That's a major university. High entrance requirements and academic standards.”

He had been careful not to argue with her, not even by mentioning the bonehead classes for athletes. “I guess.”

“It seems a tricky business,” Mrs. Osby observed, while taking a small notebook from her bag. “I've just been talking with him about school, his personal history, his goals, and so on. He's been through a lot, hasn't he?”

“Oh, yeah. He never knew his father, his mother was a druggie, I mean, what chance has he had in life?”
Back off
, T.J. warned himself.
It won't help to lay it on too thick
.

“It wouldn't seem like he's ready to tackle college work.”

T.J. knew there was no way to counter this. But he could also tell that Mrs. Osby didn't understand about the kind of academic shelters given to college jocks. “He needs to work harder on his studies.”

Mrs. Osby had opened a thin booklet that looked like it was made of newsprint. “Tyron and I went over some of the questions in the ACT practice book. We looked at them together, to try to establish the kind of material included in the test.”

T.J. didn't say a word. He was afraid to.

Mrs. Osby continued, “I wish I could say that he showed a solid grasp, at least in general.”

“The ACT is tough,” said T.J. “Especially under a time limit.”

Now she was looking him in the eye, but T.J. returned her gaze. “T.J., your friend thinks the faces carved in Mount Rushmore are accidents of nature. He thinks those faces are miracles of wind and rain.”

“You mean that's not true?”

Mrs. Osby laughed with a kind of gay, ringing sound. It was the first time she had seemed attractive. T.J. could imagine she might have been a babe in her day.

“I see you have humor,” she had continued. “Tyron also thinks that Washington, D.C., and Washington State are the same place.”

“Did he say centigrade or Fahrenheit?” Not that it was actually funny, not that he wanted to be flippant, but the bottom line of this conversation had become apparent. Mrs. Osby had a reputation as a kind soul, but even she could see how far out it would be to picture Bumpy enrolled in a university.

But then she said, “It's clear that something is wrong.”

“Something is wrong? I'm not sure I understand.”

“Of course something is wrong,” Mrs. Osby enlarged. “A student doesn't come this ill-prepared to the end of his junior year for no reason. It should be clear to any of us that the system has failed him along the way. Or should I say systems, plural?”

“I'm not sure I follow you.”
Could the negative be the positive?

“Instead of assuming that the fault lies in the student, we need always to ask ourselves if the system itself has met his needs. In other words, a student who has such a view of Mount Rushmore has probably not been given adequate educational opportunities.”

“I see.”

“That's what I meant when I said something must be wrong.”

“I see,” T.J. repeated himself. At this point, a link had formed in his mind between this conversation and the first heart-to-heart he'd had with Coach Lindsey from North State. He asked Mrs. Osby, “You're saying he hasn't had enough opportunities.”

“I don't know where his opportunities would have occurred. Certainly not in the home. As for Douglass High, I don't have to tell you that Chicago schools are plagued with the kind of social problems that inhibit quality education. All manner of standardized testing results confirm that.”

T.J. was listening hard and sitting up straight, and not only because of the pain in his back. If this didn't sound like 504, he didn't know what would.

Mrs. Osby was putting the printed matter back in her bag. “He may never have been properly tested along the way, or he may not have been tested at all,” she said. “The system is designed to include a safety net, but a net has lots of holes.”

Dare I say it?
T.J. had asked himself. Then he did, anyway. “He may have slipped through the cracks.”

“If you like cracks better than holes,” she said with another laugh. “In any case, that's the point.”

T.J. had decided to push the envelope by one more increment: “Did you know that college athletes have daily tutoring and help with their academics? It's called a support system.”

“That's another important element in the mix, then. Support systems are crucial for atrisk students.”

“Does this mean you'll read the ACT to him?”

“I can't make a promise at this point, but it certainly bears looking into.”

When he was finished with the story, T.J. looked up at Coach Lindsey, who was still propped against the side of the car, wearing the same slouching posture.

“That's where it stands?” asked the coach.

“Right now, that's where it stands. What d'you think?”

“I think you made a short story long. That's more details than I need.”

“Sorry. You had to be there, though.”

Lindsey seemed pensive, the way he was squeezing on his chin. “If she reads him the test, when will that be?”

“The end of September, I think. Maybe it's October; I can't remember for sure.”

“Something to think about, isn't it?” mused the coach. He was still squeezing his chin, but not looking in T.J.'s direction. Instead, he was staring at the right rear tire.

Lindsey's response was disappointing to T.J., who was hoping that this possibility in connection with the ACT would trigger some enthusiasm. He decided to keep his mouth shut, though.

The coach was looking at his watch. “You've got another game, don't you?”

“Not for five minutes yet. I'll be okay.” In a way, it bothered him too that Lindsey wasn't asking about other parts of his diary. While he put the book away in the glove box, he found himself thinking ever so briefly of the girl on the bridge. What was her name? LuAnn, wasn't it?

“Don't be late for tip-off, Nucci.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll be there, don't worry.”

He might not have seen her again at all, except he chose to. That is to say, he chose to try. First, though, they had to get through the game against a team called the Blazers, made up primarily of players from the Quad Cities and Quincy.

Since it was their second game of the evening, it didn't start until dusk. At least it was cooler when you played under the lights, thought T.J., but the game brought out the worst in Tyron. He was matched against a wiry jumping jack named Sweeney, who was relentless. He wasn't a good shooter, but he was extremely active and focused. During the first half alone, Sweeney blocked at least three of Tyron's jump shots and outhustled him for inside rebounds.