Hot Shot (3 page)

The night of the first game finally came around, and I might as well come right out and admit it, I was as nervous as a whore in church. It was a home game, and I’d never been to see a damn game before, even though I was a senior and was there my fourth year, and to tell the truth, I was surprised at the big fuss they made over it. Man, the God-damn place was jumping. All the seats were full up in the sections where people were supposed to sit, and they brought in a lot of folding chairs and set them up around the sides of the court, except where the benches for the teams were, and the school band sat down at one end of the gym just off the court and played all these snappy marches that are enough to make you get your rocks off, and all the time these crazy guys in white pants and dolls in little white pleated skirts ran up and down on the court and jumped in the air and waved their arms and yelled, “Fifteen for the team, fifteen for the team,” and everyone, even the ones old enough to know better, jumped up and yelled fifteen rahs in batches of twos and threes with three big teams after them, and in my opinion they all acted like God-damn maniacs.

The game finally got started, and I guess all the rest of the team were as nervous as I was, because every time we got hold of the ball we threw the damn thing away, and the only good thing was that the other team was even worse than we were. After a while, though, someone managed to get the ball in to old Tizzy, and Tizzy banged it out to me, and I banged it through, and you’d have thought from the racket that went up that I’d won a war all by myself or something. After that, we settled down, and I could hear old Mulloy yelling, “Run, run, run!” and we ran like hell, and I’m telling you straight that the other team didn’t have a sucker’s chance from then on. We really ran the pants off the poor bastards. They must not have been so hot, anyhow, to tell the truth, because they finally wound up in the cellar at the end of the season, but it was a damn good game to get us started off on top, especially me, because I got hotter than a bitch in August and scored thirty points altogether. To tell the honest truth, it would have been better sometimes if I’d passed back in to Tizzy under the basket, because he’d broken free of his guard and could have laid it in like nothing, but you don’t make points for number one that way, and besides, I was hitting the bucket myself, so what the hell. The God-damn goofy creeps up in the seats and all around the floor in the folding chairs kept yelling, “Scaggs, Scaggs, Scaggs!” and once, during a time out that the other team took to suck their guts in, the guys and dolls in white pants and white shirts got out on the floor and got everyone to yell fifteen rahs with three Scaggses after them, and I’m bound to say it gave me a funny feeling in spite of myself to hear my name yelled out like that. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, or any other Scaggs, either, for that matter, except in a kind of way to Eddie when the paper printed his name as a war hero, but he was dead then and couldn’t appreciate it. And incidentally, the guys who led the yells weren’t the only ones who wore white pants. The girls did too, and you could see them when they jumped up in the air and made their skirts fly up, and I thought myself that it was a better show than the God-damn game.

In the locker room after it was all over, everyone was yelling and horse-playing and acting as wild as a pregnant fox in a forest fire, and no one but the principal himself came in and shook my hand and said, “Congratulations on a great game, Scaggs,” and I was naked at the time and felt silly as hell. Old Mulloy kept prancing up and down the room in the steam and stink, taking big breaths of the air like it was blowing over roses and sticking his God-damn chest out like Tarzan, and he kept saying, “Great game, fellows, great game,” but then he’d stop and say, “Don’t let it go to your heads, though. There’s a lot of kinks in this team, a lot of kinks, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get them out,” and it was pretty plain that he was trying to give the impression that he was about the only God-damn coach on earth who could do it. It all got pretty pukey, to tell the truth, especially the horseplay, and while I was in the shower old Tizzy Davis reached around inside with one of those skinny arms of his that were about as long as an ape’s and turned the hot water off and damn near froze my tail. I never did go for that kind of stuff much, and I was about to go out and slap his stinking chops for him, but then I decided if I was going to mess around with this bunch of goof-balls I’d have to learn to take that kind of kid stuff, and I might as well start now, so I didn’t do it.

It was a good thing I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. When I finally went out of the locker room into the hall, there was old Tizzy talking to a couple of dolls, and he said, “Come on over here, Scaggs. I want you to meet my sister.” Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard him say that, because I was already beginning to get the idea that Bugs had been right about the classy dolls, and some of them were already beginning to look at me that hadn’t ever looked at me before, but I’d never expected anything like Tizzy Davis’s sister, and that’s no bull. Anyhow, I went over there, and Tizzy said, “Marsha, this is Skimmer Scaggs, the best damn forward in the state,” and Marsha laughed and said, “Well, it isn’t exactly true that Tizzy wanted you to meet me. It’s more that I wanted to meet you,” and I thought, Oh, oh, hold on to your God-damn hats because here we go.

I said I was glad to meet her, and I was, and that’s the truth if I ever told it. She was a junior in school, a year younger than Tizzy and me, and she had this very pale blond hair and this willowy kind of body that looked like it could wrap itself around you and tie a half-hitch, and besides, her voice had this kind of little laugh running through it all the time that made you wonder what the hell she was thinking about, and her eyes, which were blue and kind of shining, came up at you through her lashes with a sly sort of look that made you wonder what they did for entertainment over on the side of town where people like the Davises lived. She was a classy doll, all right, doubled in spades, and I don’t mind telling you that I met and had a lot of dolls after her, but there never was a damn one of them a damn bit classier, even in college or the city or places like that.

She said, “Do you have anything in particular to do?” and I said I didn’t, and she said, “We’re going over to Tompkins’ for hamburgers and cokes. Would you like to come?”

I said that sounded pretty good to me, and she said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Don’t you think that’s wonderful, Tizzy?” Tizzy said he did, and I couldn’t tell from his voice whether he really meant it or not, and to tell the truth, I didn’t give a damn. We all walked over to Tompkins’, Marsha and me behind, and she hung onto my arm real tight, sort of running her hand up and down the inside of it every now and then, and all the time she kept telling me what a wonderful game I’d played, and just to think it was the first real game I’d ever played in my life, and she bet someday I’d be one of the best basketball players in the country and make All-American in
Collier’s
and
Look
and all the big magazines and newspapers.

Tompkins’ was a joint where all the classy dolls and fancy guys from school hung out, and I’d never been in it before, but tonight I walked in like I owned the place, and the way everyone started yelling Good game, Scaggs, great going, Scaggs, thataboy, Scaggs, they must have thought I owned it too. We got a booth in the back, Tizzy and his girl, name of Marion, on one side and Marsha and me on the other, and we ordered hamburgers and cokes, and I’m ready to swear that was the first time I remembered that I didn’t have a God-damn red cent in my pocket. It took some of the fun out of it, that’s for sure, because I kept wondering if that damn Tizzy would pick up the check, and what the hell I’d do if he didn’t.

There was a juke box jumping in a corner, and Tizzy and his girl got out of the booth to dance, and Marsha said, “Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” and I said, “I don’t know much about dancing. I guess I just never bothered to learn,” and she said, “Oh, it’s easy, there’s nothing to it, come on.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the booth, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot to it, at that, and I had a kind of knack for it, just like I had for basketball. As a matter of fact, I found out I had a knack for a hell of a lot of things I’d never thought anything about, and probably I’d never have found out about any of them if it hadn’t been for the day old Bugs called me into the gym and bet me two-bits I couldn’t throw the ball through the hoop two times out of ten.

Marsha was a real classy dancer and hardly seemed to touch the floor, she was so light on her feet, but she touched plenty in other places, namely all up and down the front of me, and she kept whispering things to me about how marvelous it was I could pick up the steps so quick and how strange it was she had never noticed me around before, and her lips kept brushing the side of my neck, and it may not seem like much to happen, but it was better than a tussle with old Mopsy on her lousy sofa anytime. We kept on dancing for a long time to the nickels other guys fed the juke box, and when we finally got back to the booth, old Tizzy and his girls were standing up ready to go.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’d better pay the check,” but Tizzy said, “Oh, never mind, I’ve already paid it,” and I said, “You didn’t have to do that,” and he said, “That’s all right,” and the truth is, I’d seen him pay it, and that’s why I’d come back to the booth.

Outside on the street, old Tizzy said, “Sorry I don’t have the old man’s car tonight, Scaggs, or I’d drive you home.”

I said, “Oh, that’s all right,” and it was too, because to tell the truth, I didn’t much want them to see the crummy dump I lived in, and besides, if the old man and the old lady happened to be in one of their brawls, you could hear them all over the God-damn neighborhood, even with all the doors and windows closed. Anyhow, Marsha spoke up and said, “It’s a wonderful night for walking. You go on with Marion, Tizzy, and Skimmer will see I get home. You wouldn’t object to walking me home, would you, Skimmer?” She said it with this sly look through her lashes and the kind of little laugh in her voice, like she knew God-damn well no guy with all his marbles would object to walking
her
home, and I wondered for a second what she’d say if I said Hell, yes, I’d object to taking her shank’s mare clear the hell across the lousy town, but you can bet I didn’t say it, but said instead, “It would be my pleasure,” which was pretty damn corny, I admit, but true, nevertheless.

Old Tizzy said all right and went off with his girl Marion, who wasn’t a bad piece herself, except she had the kind of teeth you could use to eat roasting ears through a picket fence, and I started off with Marsha across town, not east toward the crummy section where I lived, but north toward the section where the people lived who were lousy with dough, and she held onto my arm and kept running her hand up and down the inside of it like she did before on the way to Tompkins’. She said again she simply couldn’t understand how she’d missed me so long around school and asked me to tell her all about myself, because she simply had to know every little detail about a guy who was bound to be a big basketball star and famous as all hell, and I thought, Anytime you think I’m going to louse up the works by telling you about my crummy family, baby, you’re a hell of a lot crazier than I think you are, so instead I told her a lot of God-damn lies about how my old man was pretty poor, even though he’d once been on the way to becoming a damn millionaire or something, and this was because he had a very bad disease of some kind that he never talked about and the doctors couldn’t do anything about, and it was just a damn crying shame all around. I told her, besides, that my older brother had been killed in the war, which was the only true thing I told her, and that my old lady had been heart-broken ever since and just seemed to keep on wasting away over the grief of it, but as a matter of fact, my old lady never felt any grief in her life that she couldn’t cure with a few cans of beer. Anyhow, I got warmed up to it pretty well and laid it on pretty thick, and she kept hanging onto my arm tighter and tighter and rubbing harder and harder on the inside, and every once in a while she’d make this little cooing sound that was like a doll makes when she’s working up to a tumble, and by the time I’d finished, damned if we hadn’t walked all the way across to her neighborhood and down to her house on the very street she lived on.

It was a big God-damn place, built like one of these old colonial mansions you see in pictures about the Civil War and stuff, and it was set back of a big front yard with a lot of trees and bushes growing around and a curved driveway going up one side and around in front of the house. We stopped along the drive under a tree, and she said, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to come in tonight. You understand, don’t you?” and I thought, Sure, I understand. I understand your old man would probably throw me out on my butt if you did, but I said, “That’s all right. It’s getting pretty late, anyhow, and I’d better be getting home.” Then she turned and put her arms up around my God-damn neck and said, “Here’s a kiss for the hero, anyhow,” and that’s when I found out for sure what I’d been suspecting already, that this little old Marsha was a real worker, and that it didn’t make any God-damn difference which side of town you were on when you got down to business, it was the same wherever you were, only a little better some places than others, depending on who you were doing business with. I don’t mind telling you that kiss would have blistered the paint on a new automobile, and she may have been pretty good at it and all that, but no doll is that good naturally, and the only way she gets that good is by a hell of a lot of experience. I sneaked in a feel or two upstairs, and she didn’t seem to mind, but pretty soon she pulled away and skipped up the driveway laughing and said over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Skimmer. See you at school.” I watched her go up between the big columns on the porch and through the door, and then I turned and started shank’s mare for home, and as you can see, there hadn’t really been much to it, just a kiss and a couple of feels where they didn’t count much, and that’s the way she worked on me.