When all the players had dressed, they assembled in a small alcove in the back of the locker room where the blackboard hung. Beneath the blackboard and to the left was a new whirlpool bath. The team members sat in the creaking, green folding chairs. Ben tied and untied his shoes over and over. Pinkie Taylor cracked his knuckles. Jim Don had disappeared to the toilet for his ritualistic pre-game excretion. The crowd, invisible but possessing a huge, menacing voice, roared its approval of a Calhoun girl's basket. Among the boys, tension exuded in a subtle musk, a glaze of perspiration under the arms, behind the knees, and in the hands. A whistle blew. The crowd jeered and the boys listened to the voice of the referee, faroff and muffled through the cinderblock wall, call a foul against a Calhoun player.
Then, the manager burst through the double doors that led to the court and ran breathlessly into Coach Spinks's small office. "Five minutes left in the girls' game, Coach."
"Thanks, Tommy," came the reply. "Get me another R.C.," he said, flipping the manager a dime.
A few moments later, Spinks walked to the blackboard, his eyes studying a 3 X 5 card filled with statistics. His face was businesslike, determined. A transformation had taken place. There was something noble in Spinks's face as he prepared to address his team, something military; this man Spinks, a generalissimo in the land of the jock, rising above himself and his R. C., above his coach's whistle and his small office, a speech forming on his lips, taken from storybooks and movies, and dogeared copies of Sports Illustrated.
But before he spoke he picked up a piece of yellow chalk and drew five X's and O's up on the board. He ran the X's through the offensive patterns the team had practiced repetitiously for two weeks. Spinks's chalkwork, with its sweeping, serpentine arrows and carefully crafted letters, was a genuine and delicate art. He had a flawless and very feminine handwriting that seemed detached from the man possessing it. But when he spoke it was in the harsh rhythms of coaches who had once been athletes who had failed in the same arenas they now presided over as adults.
"We are gonna stick to man-to-man no matter what kind of offense those sonsabitches throw at us. When I hold my arm up like this," he said, thrusting his arm straight upward, his fist clenched," I want you to pick 'em up all over the court. I want you to scramble assholes and elbows after them. When I stand up and hold my belt, I want you to slow the ball down. And when I grab hold of my nuts, I want the manager to run over with the jock powder, cause I'm gonna have a powerful itch."
The whole team laughed, pressure released like air from a tire. The buzzer sounded for a substitution.
"I want you boys to hit that court hungry. I want you boys to be starving. I want you boys to feast on some medium rare West Charleston High School asshole. I want us to win. Win. Win. Win. I want us to win big. I want us to make our school proud," he roared out, his voice surpassing exhortation. "I want us to make our parents proud, our grandparents proud, our first and second cousins proud, our poontang proud, and ourselves proud. Do y'all hear what I'm saying?"
"Yes, sir!" came the thunderous reply.
Suddenly, Coach Spinks's face mellowed. There was a dissociation of form and substance. His eyes glistened; his gaze became beatific. "Let us pray," he said and all the heads on the team dropped floorward as though they were puppets strung to the same wire.
"O sweet Jesus, we come again to ask your blessings and your forgiveness for our many trespasses against you and our fellow neighbor. We are playin' West Charleston High School tonight, Lord, but there's no need to tell you that since you knew about it two or three million years before I did. We ask, good Jesus, not that we beat West Charleston High but that we do our best before our God, our family, and our country. We do ask, Lord, if you see it befitting, that we score a point or two more than West Charleston even though I know that Coach Warners is a God-fearin' man and a deacon in the Baptist Church besides. But you know as well as I, Lord, he's one of the mouthiest so and so's that ever wore socks. I'm also aware, dear Jesus, that their players are all clean cut boys and also pleasant to your sight. We don't want to ask for anything special, Lord, but help my rebounders get off their feet. Help Pinkie and Jim Don control their tempers. Give Philip and Art a little more temper. And get Ben to quit throwin' those big city behind-the-back passes. And, Lord, please help this high school if I got to make any substitutions. My scrubs is good boys but they've been havin' a devil of a time puttin' that ball into the hole. The real thing I want to ask, Lord, is that all these boys make the first team in that great game of life. If they make mistakes, Lord, blow the whistle because you're the great referee. Call time out and bring them to center court for another jump ball. Don't let them go out of bounds, Lord. If they bust a play, make 'em run windsprints and figure eights but stay with 'em, Lord. Coach 'em all the way to the championship of life. A-men."
"A-men," the team echoed in relief.
"Now you boys sit here and think about the game," Coach Spinks ordered. "I'm gonna go out and watch the girls finish getting stomped," he said, walking from the blackboard.
Then he stopped and said in an afterthought," You know why I like to watch the girls' games so much? You probably think I'm watchin' the strategy used or something. But that's not it. Naw. I just love to watch all those titties bounce."
When he left the room and the double doors closed, Pinkie whispered," If those prayers get any longer, I'm gonna quit believin' in God."
His teammates laughed.
The final buzzer croaked. The team formed a circle, placed their hands on top of each other, then broke in a single file for the double doors. As captain, Pinkie led the team, breaking through the papered hoop that the cheerleaders held at the entrance to the gymnasium. Three hundred voices greeted the team as they broke for the far basket, fanning out in two disciplined lines for layups. At first, Ben could see or hear nothing. He had prepared for this moment since the last basketball game he had played the season before. Fifty thousand jump shots ago he had ended his career as an Atlanta high school junior. The noise of the crowd entered his body from the air, through his skin, into his bloodstream where it burned and cooled at the same time. He shot two layups before he began picking out faces in the crowd: Mr. Loring was taking tickets by the door, Mr. Dacus sat at the scorer's table, and Ben's family sat on the front row not far from the bench where Coach Spinks watched their warmups. Matthew and Karen waved at him, frantically trying to get his attention. But Ben knew that it was uncool to visibly acknowledge one's family when going about the serious business of warming up. He winked at them when he went to the back of the layup line. He also wondered where his father was.
On the last row of bleachers the boys cut from the team sat with their backs against the cinderblock wall. In their rejection they had formed new friendships, a brotherhood of pain that they could interpret for no one, least of all themselves. But they sat together, their dreams bruised, but alive. In the faces of the boys in uniform, they could see their faces. When a jump shot split cleanly through the net, it was their hand, their phantom hand, that guided the ball. Fantasy crackled like electricity along the back wall.
West Charleston was warming up at the other end of the court. Their uniforms were bright yellow and Ben hunted for Number 5, the boy Coach Spinks had assigned to him. He found him shooting jump shots from the top of the key, hard, artless shots with almost no arch. Then, he watched the boy dribble, a teammate pretending to guard him. No left hand, Ben thought. No left hand. The boy's name was Rostelli and his father owned an Italian restaurant just off Meeting Street in Charleston. Rostelli was six-three and with a guard that tall Ben knew he would have to release his jump shots quickly if Rostelli guarded him.
From the Ravenel stands Ben heard someone ask," Who's Number thirteen?" Ben looked down and was almost startled to find out that he was Number 13. As of that moment, he had not associated himself spiritually with the Number 13. He had asked for 22 but Philip had worn that numeral for three years.
The cheerleaders bounced, sasha
yed, strutted, preened, and generally acted as if they had died and gone to heaven. Whenever she could catch Jim Don's eyes, Ansley Matthews threw him long, telegraphed, slow motion kisses that stung Ben in their passage. There was a sibilance to the pompoms. Legs were golden. Desire stalked their leaps.
At the center of the court, Pinkie shook hands with the opposing co-captains. One of them was Rostelli. Ben turned when he heard a familiar voice near the door where Mr. Loring was selling tickets. "Stand by for a fighter pilot," his father said as he weaved through a crowd that had congregated near the main entrance. He was in his flight jacket and uniform. All eyes in the stands turned toward him as he swaggered down the side of the court. He shook hands with Mr. Dacus and paused to have a brief conversation with the principal. The two men laughed, Bull a bit too loudly.
"Who's that jerk?" Jim Don said, retrieving a rebound.
"That's my father, Jim Don," Ben flared," and I don't like you calling him a jerk."
The buzzer sounded. The team ran to the bench and formed a circle around Coach Spinks, who had gone down on one knee. "I want you boys to set pics like you were Mack trucks. Work the ball around for good shots. Try to get Meecham open. Ben, I want you to drive these boys. Let's whip ass and win for ol' Calhoun."
The starting five broke to the center of the court. Ben shook hands with a huge bearlike forward, another linebacker masquerading as a basketball player. "I've got Number thirteen," he heard Rostelli say. "Let's get these country boys," their center said before he turned to jump against Art. "I got the guy with the shit on his face," a guard named Jones called to his teammates as he pointed toward Pinkie. "Don't say anything about my face, Bucky Beaver," Pinkie shot back.
Art tipped the ball to Pinkie, who snapped a quick pass to Ben. Rostelli picked him up quickly. Ben dribbled toward the center of the court, spotted Philip backdooring his man near the baseline and shuffled a pass beneath Rostelli's arms. Philip scored the first two points on a layup that breathed softly through the net.
"Take Meecham out," Ben heard his father cry out from the opposite side of the court.
Rostelli came down court, dribbling slowly with his right hand, barking out plays to his teammates. Overplaying his right hand, Ben forced Rostelli to switch hands. He faked as though he were going for the steal, then retreated as Rostelli switched hands and passed it to the other guard. "Next time, next time," Ben said to himself as he watched the forwards setting screens against Jim Don and Art. The ball came back to Rostelli who dribbled it to the right of the key, Ben overplaying the right hand again, watching, tensing, until the moment Rostelli moved the ball to his left hand. Then Ben broke for the ball, tipped it away from Rostelli, but only barely, sprinting after it with Rostelli matching him step for step, gaining control of the ball, dribbling it behind his back and breaking toward the center of the court where he heard Pinkie's shout coming into his left ear. He felt Rostelli on his right but he was moving fast now, and faster, till he felt himself rising toward the basket, the ball rolling off his fingertips, and an arm crashing over his shoulder as Rostelli came over him, lunging for the ball that was dropping through the net.
"Good move," Rostelli said, offering a hand to pull him off the floor.
"The basket is good," the referee motioned to the scorer's table. "Number thirteen will shoot one."
"Thirteen charged, ref," Bull cried out.
In the first half Ben scored eighteen points. Plays and moves, embedded in him, poured out of him. Twice more he stole the ball from the opposing guard, dribbled the length of the court, and laid the ball gently in the white square painted on the glass backboard. Three times he left Rostelli on reverse dribbles and drove the center of the lane before the forward could react and rush to prevent the intrusion, to repel the attack of the little man in the area of the court marked out for giants. Always, there was the quick, unanticipated move. It all took place in a timeless frontier, in fractional divisions of moments unrecallable, as Ben fed on the noise of the crowd, the plankton of applause as he drove and passed and shot, as the lungs strained, as the heart thundered, and as the father watched. On the court, the court he loved, the court he ruled at times, Ben felt disembodied, running to the point of exhaustion, but more alive and more human than he would ever be again. Every pore was open to the action swirling around him, every vibration, every stirring, every cheer, every carnivorous roar. The basketball was a part of him, an extension of him because of long years of dribbling around trees, through chairs, down sidewalks, past brothers, away from dogs, past store windows and before the eyes of men and women who thought his fixation was demented at best. But he had lived with a basketball, had paid his dues, and could now exult in this one small skill of boyhood. This sport in all its absurdity did a special thing for Ben Meecham: it made him happy. The court was a testing ground of purpose. There was a reason. There were goals, rewards, and instant punishments for failure. It was life reduced to a set of rules, an existential life, a life clarified by the eyes of fathers.
At half time, Calhoun led by thirteen points. In the locker room Ben drank ice water as though it were a drug. The sweat was hot on his flesh. His teammates pummeled him again and again until his back and shoulders ached. In the gym, Bull paid the director of the pep club band five dollars to play the Marine Corps hymn. Then he made every person in his section of the stands rise and sing the anthem with him. Silently, Lillian and her children left their seats and walked to the opposite side of the gym.
At the start of the second half, Ben hit two quick jump shots in a row. The night again blurred into sprints and slow walks up to the foul line. Every time he shot a foul shot, he heard the crowd stir as he made the sign of the cross. He remembered that he was in the land of the hardshell, the barren hardscrabble of the spirit where the sign of the cross conjured up rich images in lands that had been totally immersed in the waters of a hardassed Christ. He ended the game with a drive down the right side and a behind-the-back pass to Art when Art's man moved over to challenge him. "Show-off," he heard Bull say. But then he was mobbed by his teammates and then by a perfumed, hysterical flock of cheerleaders. As Ansley Matthews kissed him and Janice Sanders hung on to his sweating arm, Ben caught a glimpse of Mary Anne watching him from her seat on the bleachers. It crossed his mind that he had never seen her so sad, but then Carol Huger kissed him on the mouth and the boys who had been cut surrounded him and walked with him to the locker room.
Rebel yells resonated through the steel lockers and scraped along the cinderblock walls. Fathers lined the dark hallway that led to the locker room. They were smoking cigarettes and reaching out to touch the sweating forms of the starters as they glided past them. Not a single father touched a boy from the second string even if it was his own son. The fathers whose sons had played merited a more aggrandized status in the fraternity of older men who queued along the passageway. They pounded Ben as he ran their gauntlet. Bull was not among them. He would be waiting outside in his squadron car preparing an exhaustive critique of Ben's performance.
When Ben entered the locker room, Art lifted him off his feet and danced him from one end of the locker room to the other, spinning in circles and singing the fight song of Calhoun High. The players had begun to peel the sweaty uniforms from their bodies. The scrubs who had not played removed their warmups that still smelled of detergent and their mothers' hands. Mr. Dacus moved down the long bench slapping buttocks and punching shoulders. "Jim Don, you ain't worth a tinker's damn," he shouted at the large forward. "Artie, what's wrong with you? You played well tonight."
Art put Ben down, ran over and began to shadowbox with Mr. Dacus. "Did you see me sky tonight, Mr. D.? I was jumpin' so high I felt like I was part nigger."
When Mr. Dacus reached Ben, he grabbed him in a headlock and said," You sorry damn pissant. You're going to be sweet as potato pie if you learn to play both ends of the court. Work on your defense, Ben. Otherwise, it was a great game."
"Thanks, Mr. Dacus."
"We
ain't beat West Charleston in ten years," Pinkie screamed.
"Fucking A," Mumford said.
"You've got to score more, Philip," Ben heard Mr. Dacus say. "You've got to look for the basket. You treat that ball like it's radioactive."
"I get more satisfaction out of making good passes than I do scoring, Mr. Dacus," Philip answered. "Anyway, I didn't feel very good tonight."
"You sick?" the principal asked.
"Yeah," Pinkie said, entering the conversation, "Prince Philip's got the Mongolian Zinch disease."
"What's that, Pinkie?" Ben asked.
"Everything he eats turns to shit," Pinkie said.
The locker room exploded with laughter until Jim Don said, "All right, let's hold it down in here or I'm gonna have to kick ass and take names later."
"You going to whip my ass, Jim Don?" Mr. Dacus asked.
"Naw, Mr. D., I'm gonna let you slip out the back door before I commence to doling out fist burgers."
"Meecham got thirty!" the manager cried.
"Jesus H. Christ!" someone said.
"Who's got some greasy kid stuff I can use after I clean my gorgeous body?" Art asked.
"Philip's got some," Pinkie answered. "Hey, Prince. You gonna let me use some of that English Leather jungle juice?"
"Why don't you buy your own shit," Philip snapped.
"Because my old man don't own the whole fucking state of South Carolina," Pinkie answered.
"Sure, Pinkie, I was just kidding."
"Hey, Pinkie," Art called. "What do you think of the rectum as a whole?"
"I think it ought to be wiped out."
A transistor radio tuned to the Big APE radio in Jacksonville blared through the locker room with a song by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Then the Big Ape bellowed. The first shower burst against the tile floors of the shower room and plumes of steam inched along the ceiling and flowed down the walls. Ben rose naked from the bench and walked slowly to the shower room. The place where his uniform lay made a wet spot on the cement floor. He would be sore tomorrow, he knew, for already the stiffness was settling into trembling half-cramped leg muscles. The body always demanded and received payment for the punishment it endured in a basketball game.