Ben turned on a shower at the end of the room and stepped into water as hot as he could bear. The sweat burned off his body in an instant. He stuck his hand under the spray and felt the blood rush through his body. In a minute all ten showers were in use. The steam was so thick that the players were vague, ethereal forms in the mist. Only their voices remained clear.
"Pinkie, T. C. O'Quinn says he can take your 'fifty Ford any day of the week and twice on Sunday," Jim Don said.
"Shit, that car of mine's souped up better than Campbell's. What's O'Quinn been running?"
"He says he's got it up to one-twenty."
"Big deal."
"That's in second gear."
"Bullshit."
"Shit. Pinkie's car can stop on a dime and give you nine cents change," Art said.
"We ain't discussin' stoppin'," Jim Don said, "we's discussin' racin'."
"Pinkie's car got more horses under that hood than a John Wayne movie and you and T. C. O'Quinn both know it," Art said.
"Fucking A," Mumford said.
"Shut up, Mumford," Jim Don shouted. "Who asked you anyway. You ain't even circumcised."
"Did you hear that Pamela Wall swallowed a watermelon seed?" Art said.
"Odum Bell ain't gonna marry her either," Pinkie added. "She's going to that home in Charleston."
"If I'd known she was giving it away for free, I'd have played hide the banana with her myself," Jim Don said.
"Pamela had peanut butter legs all right," Art said, his head under the shower," smooth and easily spread."
"I heard her old man just beat the livin' shit out of her when he found out."
"Shit, I could have told him she's only been screwed twice that I knowed of," Pinkie said. "Once by the football team and once by the band."
"Jim Don, I hear Lou Ellen Alston's got the hot uterus for you," Art said.
"I might find time to slip her a piece of my prime Grade A twelve incher."
"You gonna screw her with your foot?" Pinkie said. "That's the only thing on your body that's twelve inches long except your nose."
"Mine's a lot bigger than that little dried up piece of shit you call a pecker," Jim Don fired back.
"You're dreamin', boy," Pinkie said. "It's like comparin' an El Dorado to a Volkswagen."
Jim Don spoke:" I know my pecker's bigger than most men's 'cause I couldn't satisfy Ansley's biological needs for three seconds if I wasn't hung like a horse."
"You ain't never touched Ansley Matthews, Jim Don," Pinkie said.
"I touched every inch of her body," Jim Don answered angrily. "She don't even have a freckle."
"It makes me sick to think of you climbing on top of Ansley Matthews," Philip said.
"It does?" Jim Don sneered, imitating Philip's clipped, aristocratic speech.
"Don't worry, Philip," Artie said," Ansley wouldn't let that monkey in her pants even for a little peek."
"Oh boys, I'll tell you about the first time I did the evil deed with ol' Ansley. We were parking at the old beach and I was puttin' my best moves on her. One thing led to another and before you knew it my big, hairy banana was whistlin' Dixie when it struck gold in them thar hills. I decided to make the first time a memorable occasion for her. After I cracked her cherry, I decided to write my name in her big vagina. I wrote 'Jim Don' with my big pencil."
"Why didn't you write 'James Donald'?" Philip interrupted.
"Cause my name's Jim Don," he replied, then continued his narrative. "First I wrote a capital 'J.' A fancy, swirly 'J.' With all the little curls and things. Then I wrote a small 'i' and a small 'm.' I didn't want to drive her crazy by writing the whole thing in capital letters. But Lord, she was going wild. I even did the 'd' in a small letter. As a favor. Then a little 'o and an 'n.' I was giving her too much pleasure all at once and I knew I had to slow down. But then I made a mistake. I realized I'd forgotten to dot the 'i.' So I went back and put the dot way up high. Well sir, she fainted dead away. It like to scared me to death. I thought to myself, 'Oh, God, what have I done now? I done fucked her to death!'"
"Bullshit," Pinkie said, amidst the whoops and hollers of the team.
"I've fucked over twenty women in the past two years and every one of 'em loved it and begged for more," Jim Don declared.
"That's the biggest lie I've ever heard," Pinkie said.
"How many girls you nailed, albino?" Jim Don asked.
"About ten."
"Ten, my ass," Jim Don said. "How many you had, Art the Fart?"
"Ten or eleven," Art said. "I can't remember for sure."
"Try zero. That's easy enough to remember," Philip said, walking out of the shower room.
"Excuse us, Prince Philip, for our filthy talk," Jim Don said. "We country boys like to talk about pussy every once in a while if his lordship don't mind. I bet you never even found out that thing between your legs is good for somethin' besides pissin'."
"Shit, Jim Don, Philip turns down more muff than you ever dream about. Girls love his rich little ass."
"How about you, Meecham, how many times you do the job?" Jim Don asked.
"Once," Ben answered in a lie that had been born out of a pure adolescent instinct.
"Once!" a disbelieving chorus shouted in his direction.
"You must be queer as a three dollar bill, Meecham," Jim Don said roughly.
"You ever fucked a nigger, Meecham?" Art asked.
"No."
"Shit, I don't even count niggers on my list," Jim Don boasted.
"Me neither," Art agreed. "Only white women make the golden list. I fucked so many niggers I lost count."
Ben turned his shower off and walked half blind through the steam. He was clean and tired in a grand way. He thought for a moment about the universality of the locker room experience. Over the years, in the time before and after the playing of games, in the trembling zone of adolescence, Ben had listened to the dialogue and banter of athletes talking about girls. It had been a long, extended anatomy lesson purged of reverence or homage. It was talk that dulled the diamond-headed points of lust that cut into Ben his every waking moment. As he dressed, he realized that coming out of a shower full of boys he felt both the cleanest and the dirtiest of any other time in his life. The transistor radio played on as he dressed. Then, waving good-bye to Philip, he walked out into the cold night air to face his father.
Bull started the car when he saw Ben emerge through the locker room door. He was chainsmoking Camels as he waited for his son in the parking lot. As Ben opened the door, Bull began to criticize his play in a severe, cutting voice. It was like this after every game Ben had ever played in, so neither the tone nor the content of the speech was a surprise. With his right hand Bull hit the dashboard to emphasize his major points. As he drove, he looked at his son more frequently than the road. "I'll tell you one thing, jocko," he said, slamming his fist against the dash," if you think you can play college basketball just because you can score thirty against that pack of pansies you got another think coming. A good college guard could have cut you a new asshole out there tonight. You made so many mistakes I don't even know where to start. Your defense wouldn't have won a prize in the girls' game. Your jump shot was just sad to watch. You loafed getting back down the court after your team scored. You passed the ball off to those clowns on your team when you should have taken the good shot. If you gonna play the goddam game then you're gonna play it goddam right or I want you to turn in your uniform and try out for second flutist in the goddam pep band. Now you tell me what really pissed me off about your play tonight."
Ben was silent.
"Do you know, jocko? Do you have any idea?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I'll fill you in. The thing that really pissed me off and embarrassed me was when you knocked that West Charleston boy on his ass, then put out your hand to help him up."
"What was wrong with that?"
"I'm doing the talking. You keep your yap buttoned and just listen. I don't want to see you being a good sport t
he rest of this season. I want you to be a goddam animal from the time that whistle blows to start that game to the time the buzzer goes off to end it. I want to see foam coming out of your mouth. If I was your coach I'd have pulled you out of the game and kicked you all over that gymnasium when you helped pull that son of a bitch up off the court. The next time you knock someone down run up and kick him in the head. Tell him that the next time he gets in your way you're gonna break his goddam neck or rip out his pissin' kidneys. I hate a goddam good sport on a basketball court worse than I hate a pigtailed Chinaman. You could have scored forty tonight. But you just weren't hungry enough. You got too much of your mother in you and not enough of Santini. Not enough man. You got it?"
"Yes, sir."
"You read me loud and clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then say it like you were a man."
"Yes, sir."
"I don't want to see any more of that good sportsmanship horseshit. The next time you put a boy on the floor, you ought to make sure he stays down there awhile. Otherwise you've wasted a foul. The way I see it, the rules give you five chances to break someone's bones. When I used to deck guys, they considered it an act of God if they could get up without major surgery. I played the game like I had rabies."
They rode in silence through the streets of Ravenel. Ben looked out the window, but his eyes focused on nothing. Bull continued to speak, gesturing with his right hand, his lips moving, his eyes narrowing, as he continued the lecture in a soundless world where he was the sole audience. When they drove up to the house, Ben left the car hurriedly. As he ran up the steps, he heard his father say behind him," But all in all, that's the best game I've ever seen you play."
The family had gathered in the kitchen to celebrate the victory while the afterglow of Ben's performance burned strongly in their memories. Mary Anne shuffled a covered pan of popcorn on the stove. Matthew dribbled a rubber basketball in the hallway that led to the dining room and shot repeatedly at an imaginary goal above the door. Karen and Mrs. Meecham poured Coca-Colas into jelly glasses of different sizes.
When Ben walked through the door, Lillian ran up to him and kissed him lightly. Ben threw his bag to the floor and picked his mother up in his arms like a child.
"A little sicko-sexual, don't you think, feces face?" Mary Anne said at the stove.
"You were marvelous, Ben," Lillian said. "Everybody around us was talking about you. I didn't let on that I even knew you. I just said, 'He isn't that good,' and everyone argued with me. Finally I told them you were my boy and they just about died."
"I sat with Mary Helen Epps, Ben," Karen said. "She couldn't believe you were my brother. Will you say 'Hi' to her if I bring her home tomorrow?"
"Naw, I'm real sorry, Karen, but I can't go around saying 'Hi' to just anybody. A man in my position has to be pretty selective."
"Oh barf," Mary Anne said. "The birth of the golden Apollo."
"You're just jealous, freckles," Matt yelled from the hallway. "Ben's the star and you aren't nothing but a bunch of nasty freckles."
"If you ever grow to be over three feet tall, we're going to have a fist fight, midget."
"Mom, you heard her!" Matt cried.
"Put me down, darling," Lillian said to Ben.
"Hey, drop the old lady. You want to get a hernia or something?" Bull said coming through the door.
"You'd think I weighed a ton, Bull," Lillian said, then, turning toward Mary Anne, she said," Since you're the oldest, Mary Anne, I expect you to be mature enough not to get into these fights with your younger brother."
"Are they fighting again?" Bull asked his wife. "Let me mop the floor with them. Then there won't be no more jawboning."
"That was some game Ben played tonight wasn't it, Dad?"
"He's a hot shot down here among the grits. A good Yankee guard would eat him alive."
"You can't eat me alive," Ben said.
"You'd be a piece of cake. You don't have the killer instinct."
"Yes, I do."
"Would you two killers please sit your brutal selves down at the kitchen table and eat some popcorn," Lillian said.
Taking a bottle of George Dickel from the liquor cabinet, Bull poured himself a drink. Leaning back on his chair he thought again about the game he had just witnessed. The game that night had affected him strangely and in some barely articulated way Bull had garnered some ineluctable insight into the nature of fathers and sons, a recondite lesson in the passage of blood from one generation to another. He had watched Ben's legs that night as if seeing them for the first time. They were his legs passed down to this child. The heavy thighs, the thick calves, the strange roundness of the knees, the wide feet. Those were the legs of Meecham men and a few unfortunate Meecham women. Bull took a long drink and looked at Ben who was reading the sports section of the Charleston Evening Post. He stared at him as if he were studying the shadows of an aerial photograph. He felt he had failed Ben badly in one critical way: he had failed to drive the natural softness of Lillian Meecham out of him, to root out and expel the gentleness that was his wife's enduring legacy to her children. Above all things, Bull wanted to pass on the gift of fury to his oldest son, a passion to inflict defeat on others, even humiliation. Deep down, he thought Ben possessed it. Bull believed that when the flesh was torn away and the bones naked, the fighter would emerge in Ben. The fighter lived in the bones. It lived in the desire to excel and win. Taking another long drink, Bull began to talk of the past.
"The first game I played for St. Mike's in high school, the other team had this kid named Rosie Roselle who was eatin' the league up with a two-hand set shot. I was only a sophomore and hadn't played much but the coach liked the way I played defense, liked the way I clawed the man I was guardin'. Liked the way I growled at him. I was a real skinny kid then, young, and it would be two or three years before I muscled out. Well we were playin' Roselle's team and no one could stop that son of a bitch from scoring."
"There are three ladies present, sugah," Lillian admonished," and two gentlemen in waiting."
"Every time Rosie shot it seemed that the ball swished through the net. He had a fine eye. A fine eye. In the locker room at half time, Coach Kelly, Benny Kelly came up to me and said, 'Meecham, are you man enough to stop Roselle?' I looked up and said, 'Yes, sir,' and he looked down and said, 'Bullshit. Bullshit, Meecham.'"
"Is that how you got your nickname, Popsy?" Mary Anne said at the stove.
"That's enough of that, Bull Meecham."
"Then Benny Kelly screamed at me, 'You don't have the guts to stop a door from squeakin', but I'm going to give you the chance.' Well I went out of that locker room with blood in my eye. When we met for the tipoff I went up to Rosie and poked him in the belly and said, 'If you score on me, I'm gonna whip your fanny after this game.' For the rest of the game I hung on him like he was a dog in heat. I breathed in when he breathed out. I kept tellin' him that I was another jockstrap he was wearing. I even followed him to his bench during time out. I told him he would dream about me that night. He didn't score a single point in the second half. After the game Coach Benny Kelly himself came up and kissed me in the middle of the court, in front of more than three hundred people. I never sat on the bench after that. I went on to become the best that Benny Kelly ever had."
"Popcorn's ready," Mary Anne shouted. "Dad, I want you to tell me how fabulous you were just one more time. I couldn't hear the story with all the racket this popcorn was making."
"Before we eat it I think we ought to say a prayer," Lillian intoned, lowering her head.
"Thank you, Lord, for your many blessings. Thank you for letting us beat West Charleston and thank you for letting Ben do so well. But Lord, we especially want to remember in our prayers poor ol' Rosie Roselle."
"Poor Roselle," Ben said sadly," I bet he's been a wreck of a man ever since meeting up with Meecham."
"I wonder where poor Rosie is now," Karen giggled.
"He's probably killed himself by now," Matthe
w said.
"Poor, poor Roselle," Ben said. "Poor Rosie Roselle."
"Cut your yappin'. I was being serious."
"The sad thing, Popsy," Mary Anne said, dispensing popcorn into bowls," is that I'm probably the only one in this family who knows what that story means to you. But you don't care that I know. It's sad."
"It's just a story, sportsfans. It doesn't mean anything to me."
"Then why do you tell it twenty times a year, darling?"
"Because I'm a believer in history," Bull answered.
"No, you just like to brag about yourself, Dad," Mary Anne said.
"Poor Rosie," Ben cooed.
"Poor Rosie Roselle," the family chanted.
Before Ben climbed into bed, Mary Anne stole into his room. "Oh, my hero, my jump-shooter. Let me touch your feet. No, your feet smell like something dead. Let me touch your golden hair or your runny red nose. Let me touch your emerald bellybutton."
"Get out of here, Mary Anne," Ben grinned. "Great athletes need their rest."
"Of course. Otherwise you can't make jumpshots. You just lie there and go beddy-bye and little nothing sister Mary Anne will hum lullabies until the hero makes disgusting snoring noises."
"How would you like a fist where your mouth used to be, little sister?"
"How would you like a Marine where your little sister used to be, feces face?"
"You're a coward. You won't fight like a man," Ben said.
"That's right, mousketeer. I believe in prudence. Prudent people never get hurt or injured. Vishnu approves of prudence."
"Who is Vishnu?"
"Poor dumb jock of a brother. Your brain has begun to rot since basketball season started. Vishnu is the Hindu god of self-preservation. I believe in self-preservation above all other virtues. Heroes don't appeal to me. They think of others and do silly things, like die for causes. I like to think about myself. Before I do anything I ask myself, 'What good will this do my favorite person, the charming and elegant Mary Anne Meecham?'"