Playing Without the Ball (15 page)

Alan gives me the ball. No press this time. I dribble slowly
across the midcourt line. Nobody’s open. Kaipo is crouched low, hands up, eyes on my waist.

I get the ball to Robin; she’s covered by a short, slow guy with glasses. She makes a nice move and gets a step on him, driving to the lane. Robinson comes out on her and she bounces it to Alan, who lays it in, and we’re finally on the board.

I slap hands with Robin as we hustle back. “Sweet,” I say.

Alan yells, “Defense, now!” I concentrate harder.

They get it inside to Robinson, and Alan fouls him on the shot. He makes the first free throw, but misses the second.

I get the rebound and start to run, but pull back because all of my teammates are behind me. I dribble a long time past the three-point arc, waiting for somebody to get open.

Finally I pass it to Robin again and make a quick cut inside. She gives me a nice feed, and I hit a short running jumper in the lane.

We go back and forth the rest of the half, holding their lead down to six or eight points, never getting closer but keeping it within reach. Kaipo keeps scoring, but they don’t get any more big runs like that opening minute.

They start out hot in the second half. Kaipo hits three straight three-pointers and they build the lead to fourteen. Alan takes another time-out. “Let’s go to a triangle-two,” he says. “Kaipo and Robinson are the only ones handling the ball, and Robinson’s staying inside. You three,” he says, addressing Peter, Robin, and Beth, “play that triangle out front and help Jay with Kaipo. Just get in his face. I’ll stay home with Robinson.”

It works, some. Kaipo sees the situation and makes a few good passes to the open players, but that mostly results in
missed shots. We chip away at the lead and bring it down to nine by the end of the third quarter.

“Go back to a man-to-man,” Alan says between quarters. “Kaipo’s gonna start shooting again, I guarantee it. Jay, the man is gonna score. But if you stop him a few times we’ll get back in it.”

A few times, yeah. Maybe one out of five. But we do trim the lead—Alan gets a couple of layups, I hit a three, even Danny nails a fifteen-footer. Two minutes left and we’re within five points.

Kaipo’s dribbling with his left hand, slowly pushing his right hand out and back. He’s signaling to his teammates to clear out of the lane, wanting to go one-on-one with me.

He steps back, gives me a head fake, and drives left. I stay with him, hands up, bumping him with my body. He stops his dribble, leans toward the basket, then eases back and lofts a fallaway jumper over my outstretched hands. It swishes.

I bring it up quick. Alan’s got position inside and I give him a hard bounce pass. He pivots and lays it over Robinson. The margin is back to five.

Kaipo dribbles for half a minute, staying outside, not risking a pass. There’s no shot clock, of course, so he can dribble out the game if he wants.

“Pressure!” Alan yells, and I go for a steal. He easily gets around me, but Peter comes up and gets a hand on the ball. It’s loose and I scramble after it, grabbing it at midcourt. I call time-out.

“How much time?” Alan yells to the scorer’s table.

“Forty-two seconds.” We’re still down by five.

“Okay,” Alan says as we huddle up. “We don’t need a three
yet. We need two scores. Take the best shot, Jay, or get it to me inside. After we score, play tight defense. Peter—great play back there—double up on Brian. Let’s go!”

Peter inbounds the ball to me and Kaipo is in my face. I dribble in, protecting the ball, needing to shoot in a hurry. I give a quick fake and shoot from behind the arc. I can tell it’s off right away.

“Short!” I yell. Alan gets the rebound and I’m cutting down the lane. He dishes it to me and I duck under Robinson, hitting the layup despite getting whacked. There’s no whistle.

They call time-out. We’ve cut it to three.

Brian takes the ball and dribbles outside again. He doesn’t have to shoot; we have to foul. I go for his arm but he darts away, and I run into the short guy setting a pick.

I finally catch him and go for the steal, bumping him hard. The ref blows his whistle. Brian goes to the line for a one-and-one.

“How much time?” I holler.

“Six seconds.”

Shit.

Brian makes the first but misses the second. Alan gets the rebound and throws an overhand pass to me at midcourt. I get it and shoot, but it’s way too late and the shot doesn’t come close. So much for an undefeated season.

We sit in the bleachers after the game. “Not bad,” Alan says. “One loss won’t kill us. We hustled.”

“I sucked,” I say.

“You did all right on him.”

“Bullshit,” I say, shaking my head. “He must have had fifty points.”

“Forty-five. But you’re not gonna shut him down,” Alan says. “It’s a matter of degree. You hold him to forty and we win that game.”

I look up at the ceiling. I sucked.

Beth speaks. “He’s a great player.”

“Yeah,” I say. Great. But what does that say about me?

“We’ll get another shot at them,” Alan says. “He was on fire tonight. It won’t always be like that. You know how you get in a groove sometimes.”

I’m spent physically and emotionally, so I stay in the bleachers to watch the second game. Turns out I finished with twenty-three points, which is my high for the season, but I don’t remember many of them.

Halfway into the first quarter, Kaipo comes up, showered and changed, and sits next to me.

“Good game,” he says.

I smirk. “You pissed all over me.”

“I was up. I hadn’t had a chance to really play in about two weeks.”

“What happened?”

“Ah, it’s been coming,” he says. “No big scene, really. I just told him I didn’t need any more lessons, and if he wasn’t going to play me, I might as well give it up.”

“And he agreed?”

“He gave me some shit about accepting my role, but it was pretty clear I was finished.”

“So here you are,” I say.

“Here I am. It’s okay. There’s enough talent here. You’re better than half the guards in that league.”

“Thanks.”

“Hell, we could put together an all-star team from this league and beat the varsity.”

“You think?”

“Definitely. There’s at least four of us who ought to be playing there anyway.” He points at Donny Colasurdo, from the other Catholic team, who’s bringing up the ball. “He could. And you and Alan should be. And I’m sorry, but that kid Ricky should not have my starting job. No way in hell.”

“That’s obvious.”

He shakes his head. “Coach did the same thing two years ago when I came along—screwed a senior out of a job so I could take his place. What did I know?”

He looks out at the court a few seconds, scratching his chin. “See, Ralph doesn’t like coaching seniors. I was his boy when I was a sophomore, too. It’s easy that way. If you win with young guys, everybody loves you. And if you lose with young guys, it’s okay, because you’re building for the future. But his future never gets here because he’s in a constant building mode. There’s always some great sophomore who’s gonna light it up in a few seasons. But Ralph can’t coach, so that kid never develops. And when he gets to be a senior, the coach is already looking at somebody else. He knows if he plays the seniors and loses, he looks like a bad coach, which he is. So he invents attitude problems, says guys like me don’t want it bad enough.”

He laughs and turns his head toward me. “So screw it. I don’t need that rah-rah shit. Next year I’ll get on the team over at Weston Community College.”

He slaps me on the back and gets up to leave. “I don’t need an audience, man,” he says. “I just wanna keep playing ball.”

S
pit and I quickly fall into a pattern of finding each other at the end of the evening and spending the night in my room. It’s a good week physically, but something isn’t right. I’m afraid I’m becoming her latest addiction. I don’t want her to become one of mine.

On Tuesday I go alone to the diner. I haven’t been in here since Brenda left. It doesn’t look like they’ve replaced her.

I didn’t bring anything to read, so I just look out at Main Street while I eat. This town shuts down at dusk except for Turkey Hill and a couple of drugstores. Summer’s different, with all the vacationers in the area, but nine months a year it’s fairly bleak.

I ran into Dana today in the cafeteria at school. Sleep has become more of a necessity lately, so I haven’t played on a Tuesday morning in weeks. I was really more interested in checking her out than playing hoops at that time of day anyway, and there’ve been just too many others on my mind to even think
about her. Physically she’d be a great match for me, but I think her general maturity might be a problem.

I don’t know why, but I decide to call my father. I haven’t talked to him in a month.

He picks up on the third ring. He sounds upbeat, a little out of breath.

“Just this second got in from the gym,” he says.

“You lifting weights?”

“No. Just hanging out. Treadmill. Checking out the women.”

“Oh.”

“You doing all right?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Things are looking up?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I left a couple of messages at the bar. Shorty ever tell you?”

“He usually remembers about a week later.”

“That’s him,” he says. “Thought I’d hear from you on Christmas, though.”

“Me too. Then I got busy.”

“Yeah? Did you go to your mom’s?”

“No …. No, I just called her.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So how’d that go?” he asks.

“Pretty much like you’d expect.”

“Mmmm. I can imagine.”

“The usual guilt trip.”

“I been there, buddy. I been there.”

We’re quiet for a few seconds. Phone silences, even short ones, always leave me feeling empty.

“She bitch about me?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“That figures.”

“I know.”

“Listen,” he says, “I had my life on hold for almost ten years, Jay. I’m forty years old. I’m losing my hair. I was tired of being alone.”

“Dad, I know all that. I don’t blame you.”

“I know you don’t. I would have stuck out the year if I didn’t think you could handle it. But I’m still carrying some guilt about it.”

“Yeah. Well, she ought to be carrying a whole lot more than you are,” I say.

“I’m sure she is. Maybe not on the surface, but it’s got to be there somewhere.”

“Pretty deep inside, I’d say.”

“That can be the worst place.”

“True,” I say. “Hey, if I thought she was capable of being a parent, I’d hold it against her for not trying.”

I think he laughs a little. “Sometimes I think you’re more mature than either one of us,” he says.

I’m not going to argue that point. “I’m doing fine,” I say. “I’m playing a lot of hoops. Staying out of trouble.”

“Me too, unfortunately.”

“No prospects, huh?”

“Maybe a few. More opportunities than in Sturbridge, that’s for sure.”

“Hey, your wife said you screwed around here plenty.” I’m
trying to make a joke. I can tell right away how flat it falls.

“Well,” he says hesitantly. “She exaggerated that.”

“Exaggerated it or made it up?”

“A little of both,” he says. “She wasn’t totally paranoid. Those accusations were … well, they had some merit, I suppose.”

More silence. He clears his throat. “How about you?” he asks.

“What?”

“You seeing anybody?”

“Um, yeah, sort of.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s not like … I don’t know. Not a complete package.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I guess … I’m not in love. Not with her anyway.”

“Hey. Don’t let that bother you,” he says. “I mean, you’re not even eighteen years old yet. You’ll think you’re in love ten times before you even know what it is.”

“Only ten?”

He laughs. “If you’re lucky. Hell, if you do figure it out, be sure to let me know.”

I head for the Y about an hour early on Thursday to shoot. We’re playing the tit team, which we beat by twenty the first time around.

Spit’s in the gym when I get there, talking to two little girls in leotards. She waves. I pick up a basketball and start dribbling.

I go down to the far end and shoot chippies, just rebounding
and laying it in off the backboard. After a minute Spit comes running down.

“Pass,” she yells, and I bounce the ball toward her. She grabs it and shoots it over the backboard. “Pretty close,” she says.

I chase the ball down. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Working with those kids,” she says. “I finished the mural and I still owed like five hours. They were starting gymnastics practice when I was ready to leave, so I asked if I could help out.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. I’m rusty, but I got up on the beam. The girls are adorable.”

I shrug. “Do me a favor,” I say. “Rebound for me while I shoot free throws.”

“Check.”

Alan shows up about twenty minutes later, and the rest of the team follows soon after. Alan says he and I won’t start, since this is an obvious mismatch and we’ve played nearly every second of every game so far. Baptist-Lutheran is winless.

So we sit on the bench and watch as we fall behind by a couple of baskets early. No cause for concern, but we’ve got no size on the court, and our opponents are moving the ball around better than usual. Alan tells Beth to call time-out about midway through the first quarter with us trailing 8-4.

“Peter,” he says in the huddle, “you’ve got to push the ball up the floor. These guys are slow as shit, and we should get some easy transition baskets. Tighten up the defense, too.”

Beth asks when me and Alan are coming in.

“Second quarter,” Alan says. “You guys get some work in first. We’ll be fine.”

But we’re down by eight when Alan and I check in. It’s been mostly amusing, although we figured the others would at least hold them even. No sweat.

I match up with their best shooter, a junior who can hit from the outside if he’s open. He won’t be.

First time down I chuck up a long three-point attempt, but it bounces off the rim and they get possession. “Cold,” I say to Alan as we run back.