Ultimate Sports (3 page)

But Mickey did not always abide by this condition. Every once in a while he would pull a new piece of music from his satchel, wink conspiratorially at Peter, and ask him to give it a try. This was how Peter got to know jazz and ragtime and gospel music.

After Peter played through the piece once, Mickey would sit down on the bench beside him. “Next time,” he would say, “a little more like this.” And off he would go, playing the same notes in the same order, but making the piece sound more fluid, more powerful, more alive.

“It is not about hitting the right key at the right time,” Mickey used to say. “It is about taking this baby for a ride.” Peter began to tell the other boy about Mickey Ray.

“He sounds cool,” the runner said.

“My teacher now is better,” Peter said. Actually he wasn’t sure if that was true. “Mr. Brettone is a superior musical pedagogue,” his mother had said. But lately Peter had found himself imagining that Mr. Brettone had tiny pickaxes attached to his fingertips and that each time he struck a key it would crack and crumble.

They were standing in front of the house by the time Peter finished the story, and he was no closer to learning the other boy’s secret than he had been before all those grueling afternoons on the oval. Finally, just as the other boy was about to leave, he blurted: “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Win.”

“I don’t know anything about winning,” the runner said. “I just know about running.”

Then came what Peter found the most puzzling exchange of all. “I hope you win at the districts,” he said as the boy jogged away.

“Now what would I want to do that for?” the runner called back.

•   •   •

Kevin stood among the throng of two hundred runners packed into a clearing just off the first fairway at the Glen Oaks Golf Club. At the crack of the starter’s pistol they would all surge forward onto the manicured expanse of the fairway. The sight of all those bodies churning and all those bright uniforms bobbing up and down was so captivating that during his first two seasons Kevin had hung back at the beginning just to take in the spectacle.

Not this year, though. He had decided to run the race of his life, and moments after the gun was fired, he found
himself in the first fourth of the great mob of runners struggling for position as they tore toward the first green, where the course cut sharply downhill and into the woods. As he hit what he thought of as a good cruising speed for the first stage of the race, Kevin couldn’t help wondering if he would wear himself out too quickly or collapse on the grass at the finish line like that crazy little piano player.

It was strange to be thinking of him at a time like this. Or maybe it wasn’t. Because what Kevin had been trying to figure out all along was whether excelling at his sport would somehow ruin it for him, the way excelling at the piano had ruined it for Peter. He half suspected that it would, but something the kid had told him that day Kevin had walked him home had given him a half-assed kind of hope.

In the pack just ahead of him Kevin picked out Mark Fairbanks, Kovacs, and a couple of the top runners from other schools he had raced against during the year. No question—he was a lot closer to them than he usually was at the half-mile mark.

•   •   •

As the runner streaked by, Peter cheered and pointed his friend out to his mother. It had taken heroic persuasion to get Mom to come out to a cross-country meet on a Saturday morning, but now he was sure that everything would go just the way he planned. His friend would win the race and then Peter would introduce him to Mom.

He wasn’t really certain what would happen after that. He couldn’t really explain why he wanted them to meet. It wasn’t so that Mom could see that he was making friends at school, because she thought friends only distracted
him from his piano. And it wasn’t because he thought she would be impressed by a cross-country champion, since Mom didn’t really appreciate sports.

Peter wanted them to meet so that Mom could see that he had a little of the runner in him, a little bit of the champion, a little bit of something that would lift him beyond the status of a “perpetual runner-up.” If he could only convince her of that, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to keep sitting down alone at the piano. Or to keep sitting down to dinner with her.

“He’s not winning,” Peter’s mother said as they watched the runners cut off the fairway and into the woods.

“It’s strategy, Mom,” Peter told her, though he too was wondering why his friend was not at the head of the pack.

•   •   •

They were tearing along an old railroad bed at the top of a ridge near the fourth tee. Kevin’s legs still felt strong. His breath came easily. Fairbanks, who was fighting for the lead, was just a speck up along the train tracks, but Billy Kovacs was only twenty yards or so ahead of Kevin.

I can take him
, Kevin thought,
but then I’ll have to hold him off the rest of the way
. He hesitated for a second, and then decided to pick up his pace.

•   •   •

A single runner in the maroon Darden uniform came streaking out of the woods and onto the tenth fairway. There was only a half mile remaining in the race.

“That isn’t your friend,” Peter’s mother said.

Another runner in red and white charged out of the woods a few yards behind. In a few moments there were
six, seven, and then eight other runners pounding the last half mile toward the finish line. Peter didn’t recognize any of them.

“I’m sorry, dear,” his mother said, rummaging in her purse for her car keys.

Peter felt as though he had bet a lifetime of allowances on the wrong horse.

•   •   •

As he tore out of the woods and onto the tenth fairway, Kevin began counting the people ahead of him, a feat made more difficult by the sweat dripping into his eyes. There were fifteen of them, as nearly as he could tell. The top ten finishers went on to the state finals. Somewhere up along the railroad tracks the desire to be in that group had seized him and he had picked up his pace. Now the wind burned in his lungs and the acid burned in his calves. His Achilles tendons felt like guitar strings being tightened with each footfall. He had less than half a mile to make up six places.

He glanced quickly across the fairway and saw Fairbanks dueling for the lead with Pat Connors of Tech. In the crowd behind them he saw the little piano player. He was gazing in Kevin’s direction, disappointment etched on his face.

I’m running the race of my life and it isn’t good enough for him
, Kevin thought. He could feel the anger rising inside him. The race was ruined for him now, and he began to doubt his motives. Was he really running all out just to see what it felt like, or had the attention of this peculiar little kid made him hungry for more?

Kevin wanted his sense of purity back. He wanted to stop caring whether he finished in the top ten. Something
inside him whispered, “Slow down,” but instead he emptied his mind and kept running.

Into that emptiness floated the memory of the conversation he and the little piano player had had just a few days before. The kid had been talking about his old teacher, the one who liked to take the piano “for a ride.”
I can’t play
, Kevin thought,
but I can run. This can be my ride
.

Imagining that he was Mickey Ray, Kevin focused his eyes on the ground in front of him and sprinted the last two hundred yards, unaware of the screaming fans or the other runners on the course.

•   •   •

Peter couldn’t understand what the big fuss was about. The kid had come in eleventh. That wasn’t even good enough to qualify for the state finals, yet people were acting like that was a bigger deal than Mark Fairbanks, who had come in second. It was pretty cool to take a minute off your best time, he supposed, but still, eleventh place wasn’t worth all the cheering the Darden fans did when the kid crossed the finish line.

Besides that, Kevin McGrail looked like hell. When he had glided up Putnam Street six weeks ago he had been so smooth, so poised. Now he was bent over, walking like he had a sunburn on the bottoms of his feet.

Peter saw the boy’s coach, a gaunt man wearing a baseball cap, put an arm around Kevin’s shoulder. “You dug down deep and you came up big,” the coach barked.

Kevin drew a few rapid breaths. “I was joyriding,” he said.

“Joyriding,” Peter repeated to himself as he sat at his piano later that afternoon. “Joyriding lands you in eleventh place.” He stood up, opened the piano bench, and
withdrew the exercises Mr. Brettone had assigned for that week. Beneath it he found
The Fats Waller Songbook
. Mickey had given it to him as a going-away present. Peter thumbed through the pages until he found “Your Feet’s Too Big.” Just the title made him laugh. And the way Mickey used to play it—

He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway. “What are we featuring this afternoon?” she asked.

“Exercises for the left hand,” Peter said, and he sat down to work.

As a sports reporter, Jim Naughton covered the Mets for the New York
Daily News
in 1986, the year the Mets won the World Series. The holder of a BA. in journalism and an MA. in American history from Syracuse University, he has also covered sports for
The New York Times
and worked as a feature writer for
The Post-Standard
in Syracuse and
The Washington Post
. He is the author of three sports books for young adults: two novels and a biography of Michael Jordan.

My Brother Stealing Second
, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, is about a sixteen-year-old baseball player who has trouble dealing with the death of his older brother, who had been a star shortstop. As he slowly starts to heal with the help of a girlfriend and an older male friend, he learns the truth about the mysterious accident in which his brother was killed.

Taking to the Air: The Rise of Michael Jordan
examines the basketball star’s life, as well as the social, cultural, and commercial forces that helped shape his legend. This was selected as a New York Public library best book for teenagers in 1993.

Mr. Naughton’s most recent novel,
Where the Frost Has Its Home
, features a seventh-grade hockey player.

In high school, Jim Naughton helped found his school’s cross-country team. But, he says, when he was growing up “my heart belonged to baseball. Unfortunately I wasn’t much good at it.” As an adult living in Washington, D.C., he now walks and swims for exercise.

It
was after midnight when Harlow Fuller heard his dog barking in the front yard. He was in his bedroom, in the neat, five-room brick house he’d owned for years. He put down the magazine he’d been reading and went cautiously to the front door. A baseball bat stood in the corner behind the door. South Jamaica was a bit safer than ghetto Brooklyn, but here, where people owned their homes, the burglary rate was higher.

Harlow peeked through the drawn curtains on his barred windows. He saw a large young man standing at his front gate. From behind the gate, Emile, Harlow’s huge Doberman, was barking wildly. Harlow went to the front door and opened it a crack.

“Who’s out there? What do you want at this hour?” he called.

“Uncle Harlow? It’s me—Randy Fuller.”

“What are you doing out here in Jamaica?”

“I can explain, if you let me in.”

Harlow stepped outside. “Emile!” he said softly.
“Place!” The dog stopped barking immediately and trotted over to Harlow’s side, where he sat down and looked up at his master. “Good boy,” Harlow said, rubbing the dog’s ears.

“It’s okay, Randy,” Harlow called to the boy at the gate. “You can come in. Emile won’t bother you now.” He turned and went inside. Randy entered the yard and followed his uncle into the house.

Once inside, Harlow said, “Well, let’s have a look at you, boy. Last time I saw you, you were… ten years old, I think. At your daddy’s funeral. You’ve sure grown.”

There was no denying Randy’s size. He stood two inches over six feet. When Randy took off his light wind-breaker, under which he wore a T-shirt, Harlow noticed the young man’s barrel chest and thickly muscled arms. He whistled softly.

“Seems we got us a heavyweight in the family,” Harlow observed. “I can’t believe how much you look like your daddy. He could have been a fine boxer, you know. I offered to train him, but your mamma was dead against it.

“So your daddy stayed on, driving a truck. And what happened? He gets hit by a drunk with no insurance. Some safe job.

“I said that to your mamma at the funeral. Bert would have been safer in the ring. She hasn’t talked to me since. I’m not welcome at your mamma’s house. That’s why I’m so surprised that you showed up here. And at this hour. What’s going on, Randy?”

Randy shifted in the chair, facing Harlow. “I’m in bad trouble, Uncle Harlow. Police are looking for me.”

“What did you do, boy?”

“Nothing, really. I was just there when something happened.”

Harlow threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Half the cons in the joint say the same thing, Randy. Suppose you back up a bit and tell me just what went down.”

“I was helping out a pal,” Randy said. “His name is…
was
Eddie Sanger. Some dude owed Eddie some money. Eddie asked me to come with him to collect it.”

“Hold on,” Harlow said. “What did this ’dude’ owe Eddie the money for?”

Randy avoided his uncle’s eyes. “That’s what Eddie does for a living—he loans out money.”

“And this was the first time you ever went with Eddie to collect?”

“Uh… no. I done it before.”

“And Eddie paid you, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then let’s get things straight, boy. You were strong-arming for a loan shark when this ’something’ happened.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Randy said.

Harlow smiled. “I can think of a half dozen judges and DAs who
would
. But go on with your story.”

“When me and Eddie found the guy, I had to run him down. He was taking off on us. I knocked him down on the sidewalk, right off Ralph Avenue and Jefferson Street.

“All of a sudden, the dude pulls out a piece and starts shooting. I didn’t know Eddie had a gun, too. Before I know it, there’s bullets flying all over. I got out of there, fast. I took in a movie over on Broadway.” He reached over to his jacket and took out a ticket stub.

“Figuring that if anyone came looking for you, you’d say you were at the movie all along?” Harlow asked.

Randy nodded. “When I got back to my street, there was talk already. Eddie was dead. The other guy was in the hospital in bad shape. But word on the street was that he’s
saying Eddie shot at him first. And the cops are looking for me.”

“I’m not a bit surprised. But what brought you out here to me, Randy?”

“Well, Mamma always talks about how you were in trouble once. That you did time, upstate. I thought maybe you, knowing about these things, could tell me what to do.”

Harlow shook his head. “Francie always had a mouth on her. Did she ever tell you what I was in for?”

“No.”

“I was in for being stupid, that’s what for. I did six years out of eighteen for manslaughter. I killed a man with these.” Harlow held up two knotted fists. “Some fool got wise with my woman one night at a restaurant. He swung at me when I told him to buzz off. I punched him out. But he hit his head on a table when he fell. He died.”

“Then it wasn’t your fault,” Randy said.

“Oh, but it was. I was a pro—a boxer. To the law, my hands were deadly weapons. And it was my fault, too. I could have talked my way out of it. But a hot temper runs in the Fuller family. Your daddy had it too. It could have made him great in the ring. But it’s no good if you can’t control it outside the ring. That’s what happened to me.”

“And you did all that time for it.”

“Nowhere near what it could have been. After a few years, I got another lawyer and a new trial. When I came out, I was an ex-con. I lost my license to fight. It was hard to stay straight. Then I started in training young fighters that I thought looked good—kids who could be champs. I’ve done okay. I get respect as a businessman these days. But I still haven’t found my champ—that kid who can make it all the way to the top.”

“So you never were a real criminal, were you?”

“Sorry to let you down, Randy. I was stupid and made a bad mistake. I paid for it, too. Even one day in a cage would be too much. I did over two thousand days. Most hotheaded kids never know what it’s like inside—until it’s too late.”

Harlow got up from his chair. “Now, what am I going to do with you, kid?” He saw the look on Randy’s face. “Don’t worry—I ain’t going to turn you in. But it’s a matter of time before the police start checking out the whole family. They
will
come here, sooner or later.”

“If I can stay a few days…,” Randy began.

“Are you hungry, kid?” Harlow asked. “Did you eat at all today?”

“Not since breakfast.”

“You go on into the kitchen. Help yourself to what’s in the freezer. You know how to run a microwave?”

“Yeah.”

“Get yourself something, then. I have to go down to the basement and set up a place for you to sleep.”

“In the basement?”

“Can’t have you up here. I got a finished basement down there, though. I got a door that locks from the outside. If anyone checked, they could see no one’s using my other bedroom. I’m gone in the daytime, at my gym on Jamaica Avenue. Emile keeps people away from the place while I’m out.”

“He’s some kind of dog.”

“Ain’t he ever? I named him for Emile Griffith. That’s what Emile looked like when he was welterweight champ. All muscle, steel wires, and teeth. Now, you get something to eat while I go downstairs.”

A half hour later, Randy followed his uncle down the
basement stairs. Harlow swung open a door to a large, wood-paneled room. There was a mattress in one corner. A heavy bag hung from a chain in the center of the room, and a light speed bag was in the far corner. On the walls were bright, shiny weights for bodybuilding. Between two paneled doors was a rowing machine. The only light came from a bare bulb that hung from the low ceiling.

“Okay, kid,” Harlow said. “It ain’t much, but it’s going to be your home for a time. You can’t keep the light on at night—people could see it through the basement windows.” He waved at the barred windows set high in the walls. “Once the sun comes up, you’ll have light enough down here.”

“But what will I do down here?” Randy protested. “There’s no radio, no TV—”

“What do you think you’d have in jail, boy?” snapped Harlow. “You want to do something, hit the speed bag or the heavy bag. There’s a pair of workout gloves in that closet and some sweats that should fit you. They’re mine. There’s a little John behind that other door. I’ll bring you a toothbrush and some shaving stuff when I get back from work tomorrow. Now I have to get some sleep.”

Harlow closed the door and shut off the light switch alongside it. “But this is like jail!” Randy protested from behind the door.

“You don’t know what jail is,” Harlow said. “You got your own health club in there, kid. Use it.”

He went upstairs, brushed his teeth, and went to bed. As he turned out the light, he heard a slow, regular thumping sound from the basement. He smiled. “Fool kid’s hitting that heavy bag in the dark,” he thought as he drifted off. “Yeah, no doubt of it. He’s got that Fuller hot blood.”

•   •   •

Early the next morning, Randy was awakened by a rough hand on his shoulder. Without thinking, he swung hard at its owner. His large fist hit nothing but air. He opened his eyes, for a moment not remembering where he was. He saw his uncle standing over him, smiling.

“You do wake up a bit sudden, don’t you, Randy?” Harlow said.

“What time is it?”

“Six o’clock. Time to be up and doing, boy!”

“Leave me alone,” Randy grunted, rolling over. “I don’t get up at home until noon.”

“This ain’t home, kid,” Harlow said. He grabbed at one corner of the mattress on the floor and tugged mightily. Randy rolled out onto the hard tile. The young man got to his feet with fists at the ready. Harlow laughed.

“Come on, kid. Anytime you’re ready.”

Randy rushed at the older man, swinging a wild, overhand right. Harlow barely moved. As the force of the blow carried Randy past him, Harlow gave the younger man a hard shove that sent him sprawling onto the floor.

Harlow then threw the mattress over Randy. As the young man got to his hands and knees under the mattress, Harlow placed a well-aimed kick on his padded rear. Even through the mattress, he could hear Randy’s grunt of surprise and pain.

“This is no way to treat somebody who’s brought you breakfast, Randy,” Harlow said to the form on the floor. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Mmmmph”
came from under the mattress.

“I guess that means yes,” the older man said. He walked to the open door and picked up a tray from the
bottom step of the stairs. When he returned, Randy was sitting up in the center of the floor. Harlow set the tray before him.

“What’s this?” Randy asked, eyeing the tray.

“High-protein drink, high-fiber cereal, and skim milk. Some complex carbohydrates and a handful of vitamins.”

“This is garbage,” Randy said. “Ain’t you got any Froot Loops?”

“You’re something else, boy,” Harlow answered. “Here you show up at my house, on the run. I take you in, give you a nice place to stay, and you try to punch me out. Then you complain about the eats. You sure got a short grip on being grateful, boy.” He pointed to the tray. “If you’re hungry, eat it. If not, I’ll be taking it with me, along with the mattress.”

“What are you taking that for?” Randy asked. He had secretly intended to go back to sleep once his uncle had left.

“I got it off the bed in my spare room. If anyone came by to look for you, they’d wonder where the mattress was.

“I’m going to be gone for most of the day. When I get back, we’ll have dinner.”

“But what will I do for lunch?”

“That’s why I gave you such a big and healthy breakfast. Eat it, or don’t.” Harlow grinned widely as Randy began to try the cereal. He was still smiling as he locked the heavy door behind him and tugged the mattress upstairs. As he reached the top step, he heard Randy call out through the door.

“What am I supposed to do in here all day?”

“You could do a couple of things,” Harlow called back. “You could think on how you got yourself into this mess. And you could also do your body some good. You may
look okay, but you’re slow on the punch. The only thing you could hit for sure is the floor.”

As Harlow left the house, he could hear thumping coming from the basement. He paused outside to feed Emile before getting into his car. He patted the dog and whispered, “You take care of things around here, Emile. I think we got us a heavyweight, all right.”

•   •   •

It was growing dark when Harlow returned to his home. He was greeted by Emile. He reached into his car, took out a large paper sack, and walked into the house. He checked his answering machine, then went downstairs. As he did, he heard the
rat-a-tat
of the speed bag. It didn’t last long. But then it began again, after some muffled curses from Randy.

Harlow unlocked the door to find Randy flailing away at the speed bag. “I told you that you had slow hands,” Harlow said, setting the paper sack on the floor. “Didn’t anyone show you how to use that bag right?”

Randy turned and looked at his uncle sullenly. “Nobody ever showed me nothing. But I had to do something. I’m going crazy down here.”