Shame (21 page)

I looked out over the pond, dancing lights and blue water, and didn't say anything. I spotted the first of Michael's black-and-white heifers off in the trees and gave Patches a light jab in the flanks with my boot heels. We apprehended the culprits, white cow faces mooning up at us as they chewed contentedly on whatever species of dry ragweed they had discovered. Michael took the rear, I took the flank and rode down strays, and we pushed them slowly back up the hill, across the pasture, past the house, and down the road to Michael's, a task of some hours. Michael and I rode in easy silence and copious sweat, and I again pondered the fate that had given me a job that left me with hours on end for reflection.

When I got in, my legs were sore and bowed like barrel staves from an afternoon holding onto Patches. Michelle was home from school and cleaning house with a frenzy, she and the vacuum cleaner doing a dance that I momentarily mistook for the Hokey Pokey.

“I want everything to be nice for your folks,” she announced over the roar. “I thought I'd just tidy up a little.”

“Isn't that why we had kids?” I yelled back.

“Lauren's at a Christmas party. And you and B. W. have to get ready for the game.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, pulled off my cap, and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand one last time prior to getting cleaned up.

It was a home game against Woodward, and I'd been dreading it for two weeks because it promised to be a bloodbath: Woodward had flown through their season thus far undefeated. They'd been to the semis at state the year previous, and although they'd lost two fine players off that team, they still had three starters with state tournament experience. The only Watonga person on the court who had gone to a state tournament was, unfortunately, me.

I sat my team down before the game—which would be the last except for Bill's game after the holidays—and talked with them about tradition and making new traditions, about individual achievement and teamwork, about home crowds and parents and friends—pretty much every inspirational phrase I could throw at them besides the Gipper and the Great God Almighty.

Then I sat down myself, looked around at them. “Except for that thing against the old folks after Christmas, this is our last game of the year. It is the last game that matters. So here's how it's gonna go.” I picked up my clipboard. “Martel and Tyrel—you're both in the game at the beginning. I want you to run their legs off. Jimmy, I'm going to bring you in off the bench when I see the other guys sucking wind and then you're going to haul down every rebound in sight.”

I'd made Tyrel Sparks very happy; he and his brother slapped skin in every conceivable congratulatory fashion. Jimmy, for his part, nodded staunchly at me, although I knew that he would rather start than ride lumber.

“Everybody gather round,” I said, and they formed a shaggy-sided circle, inserted their hands like spokes toward the center, and I prayed the same prayer I always prayed before a game: “Lord, watch over every player tonight so that no one gets hurt. Be with us out there on the court. Help us to play our best and give You the glory for it. Amen.”

They said “Amen,” and we ran out onto the court and got a good look at the crowd, mostly ours, and a big one, despite the distractions of the holiday season. My boys ran their pregame drills, shot free throws, and then the starters shot while the reserves rebounded for them. I waved at Lauren, Michelle, Carla Briggs, and the Hooks up in the stands. Bobby Ray joined me on the bench as he sometimes did so he could tell me how he thought I ought to be handling game situations, and then the PA announcer read off our lineups. The teams arrayed themselves around the half-court circle for the tip, and Martel directed it to Bird Burke, who promptly had it stolen from his hands in a blur of motion by Woodward's small forward, who took it in for an easy layup.

Behind me, Bobby Ray cursed loudly and violently.

“Ixnay on the ussingcay,” I said, inclining my head toward Jimmy and the others on the bench. “Jimmy,” I called back, my eyes on the action, “your hook has looked good this week. How're you feeling down in the post?”

“I feel strong,” he said. “My shot's not falling like I want, but it's coming back.”

I turned to him and blinked. That was quite an outburst, coming from Jimmy. “Well, I want you to shoot that hook tonight. You hit a couple shots, and they'll collapse on you whenever you get the ball. That'll open up a lot of other things for us.”

“Yessir,” he said.

Behind us, the crowd was yelling—I could pick out individual parents calling encouragement and instructions. Off to my left stood the cheerleaders shouting and stamping—“Let's go! Let's fight! Let's win tonight!” When B. W. was fouled running the break and stepped to the line, there was a cheer from the other cheerleaders (a breech of etiquette, by the way, to cheer when someone was shooting free throws)—“Rebound that basketball,”
stomp clap stomp clap clap
, “Rebound that basketball”—and our cheerleaders were jumping and kicking and doing joyful cheerleader things when he made his first shot, providing even greater histrionics when he made the second.

It occurred to me that life would be so much more exciting if we had cheerleaders off the court as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know that whenever you did something right, people were going to jump up and down and call out your name?

With every defensive rebound, every inbound pass, my kids pushed it up the floor quickly, just like I wanted. A gratifying number of times, I looked up to find B. W. dribbling hard up the center of the court, the Sparks brothers on either side of him, just like I'd diagrammed it. When they didn't have an out-and-out fast break, they'd kick it back out and work it around. This was my team of scorers, not my best defensive team, and I was willing to concede Woodward some points, even let them build up a lead.

I knew Bob Tryon's philosophy on the other bench. I'd played against him in high school. He was a thinking player then and a thinking coach now, and his offensive approach was slow and methodical: Move the ball around, look for the open man inside or the open shot outside. I thought that if I pushed the pace, I might get Woodward playing outside their game plan, get their kids itching to show they could run with mine.

I knew that no one else had a point guard like mine to run the break, so I was willing to take the risk that they'd score some points off of us.

At the end of the first quarter, we were down eleven points, but the pace of the game had shifted.

“The best-laid plans,” I said, looking over at the Woodward sideline, where Bob was making emphatic gestures, his palms to the floor—
slow down
.

“What?” Bobby Ray said, then looked and nodded. “It's working.”

“We'll see. We're losing.” I put Jimmy Bad Heart Bull and Ramiro Garza into the game at the start of the second quarter to rebound and give the Sparks brothers a breather and Albert Heap of Birds in for a short stint while B. W. came off the court and gulped air like water. The Sparks and B. W. had run at a furious pace, but it was starting to pay off. The Woodward players weren't getting as high off the ground; they were starting to leave some of their jump shots a little short—sure signs they were getting tired—and I quickly rotated B. W. and Martel back into the game to take advantage.

By halftime we had pulled back within five, and it might have been two if they hadn't sunk a long three-pointer at the buzzer. Back in the locker room I closed the door as they seated themselves facing me, and when I turned around, I felt a smile spread slowly across my face.

“You're finally playing like a team,” I told them. “Our sprinters are wearing them down, our grunters are pulling down rebounds, and right now Bob Tryon is yelling at his team, telling them to remember what they did to get this far undefeated. Great job!”

I left them to sit so I could get a little air of my own and evaluate my plans for the second half—mostly more of the same unless Bob changed his plans, which he was almost sure to do, being the smart coach that he was.

There were things he could get his team to do to try and counter that pace—but what if I pushed even harder? Before halftime was over, I pulled the boys back together and sketched a few diagrams as a reminder as I talked, the ancient chalk occasionally screeching on the blackboard. “Same starters in the second half. We're going to push the pace even more, continue taking them off their game, make them play ours. We're going into the backcourt to press and trap on the inbounds, make them hurry their passes.” Smiles spread across their tired faces.

“Martel, Tyrel, I want to see you use that quickness on defense for a change. Trap and release, trap and release.” They nodded.

I turned to the others. “In half-court defense, I want Micheal to release when they shoot and B. W. to move to half-court—you get a head start like that, we can push it down court even faster. Jimmy, you're in for Bird to start. Keep fighting under the basket. I'm going to depend on you to get those rebounds.” Then I stepped away from the blackboard and toward them, got down on one knee. “We're going to press them even harder than the first half and see if we can take them down for the count. You've done everything right so far. Come on. Let's take these guys.”

It is an oft-repeated but nonetheless valid truism that any given team can beat any other given team on any given night given certain conditions, so let me stress that what happened on that given night was not a result of my brilliant coaching. It was a result of a lot of things, almost none of them having anything to do with me other than the fact that I fathered a brilliant point guard named Brian Wilson Tilden.

B. W. threw baseball passes, lobbed the ball up for Martel to take to the basket, bounced, backhanded, and flipped the ball behind his back, and when he saw that the Woodward boys were laying way off him to play his passing lanes, he started taking it directly to the basket, scoring nineteen points in the half. Our backcourt press was executed just the way I diagrammed it, with the Sparks brothers closing in so quickly on the inbounds pass that they must have caused half a dozen turnovers. And under our basket, Jimmy pulled down rebound after rebound, elevating over the panting Woodward five and even putting in a few buckets of his own.

It was one of those games you dream about as a coach: The ball always bounced in the right direction, shots that caromed up off the rim came back down through the center of the hoop, calls that could have been decided either way went ours. The last two minutes of the game—normally the most nerve-racking—were actually almost uneventful. Sure, Woodward, down by twelve, tried to foul us to stop the clock, then come down and shoot threes, but we made all our free throws, and their three-pointers looked like rockets launched by hair-brained Lithuanian scientists from backyard workshops.

When B. W. tossed the ball toward the rafters as the final buzzer went off, I walked across the court savoring an eighteen-point win over one of the top teams in the state, and accepted Bob Tryon's congratulations. I could truthfully say to him, “Everything just went our way, and next time you'd kick our butts.”

I couldn't say that to anyone else, though, because no one would have heard me. Our fans were berserk; if there had been goalposts, they would have been twisted metal. I couldn't tell you when Watonga had last won this big a basketball game, but I could certainly say that it hadn't happened on my watch or in the memory of most of those in attendance. The cheerleaders were still jumping up and down and doing backflips, throwing their hands high and doing that sprinkling thing with their fingers; the crowd was swarming around my players and raising their index fingers toward the ceiling while our high school principal was yelling, “No street shoes on the gym floor”; and Michelle and Carla mobbed me, almost knocking me off my feet.

“Congratulations,” Michelle was shouting before she jumped into my arms and wrapped her legs around me; Carla was pounding me violently on the back; Lauren stood behind her clinging mother and shouted “Nice job” through Dr. Pepper-flavored lip gloss.

“Decorum,” I said to Michelle. “Don't give your seniors the wrong impression.”

She was laughing and squeezing and sliding back down onto the floor, and Carla was still pounding me and had been joined by Bobby Ray, judging by the violence being done to my shoulder blades, and then the ocean of players and fans and cheerleaders and our poor principal still shouting “No street shoes,” swept over us and I felt myself pulled out of Michelle's arms and lofted atop the surface of this human sea, full of swirls and eddies, where I saw B. W. and Martel Sparks and Jimmy Bad Heart Bull similarly walking—or at least sitting—on water. I waved across the roiling sea of heads and arms, and they waved back, and if I could ever have stopped time and lived continuously in one moment, I think that instant would have been a serious contender.

But at some point even the greatest of heroes has to put his feet back on the ground and take his own faltering steps, to live and breathe and love and make mistakes like any ordinary human, and after the crowd had carried us around the gym a few times, I found myself slipping from shoulders and hands tired of bearing my weight.

At last, I made contact with my poor scuffed floor.

B. W., deservedly, was the last of us to come to earth, and although the hoarse shouts of “Yeah!” and the jumping up and down continued for some minutes, I made my way under the stands, shaking with the weight of celebration, and back to the locker room.

The boys had played a great game, and they deserved every credit for their win, so I left them a message to that effect on the blackboard, added “Have a Merry Christmas,” underlined “Merry” twice, sighed, and hit the showers.

My own holiday was about to begin.