A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul

  Sutton knew that without Houston in the upcoming match against the University of Nebraska, the team would have a tough time. He sat Houston down before the game. "Do you think you're up to playing?" he asked him.

  "No," the young athlete mumbled, fingering his swollen left ankle.

  Scott wheeled his chair over to Houston, joking, "I guess I've got to suit up if you don't play." Houston chuckled, and then the irony hit him. His ankle was only sprained. This child was missing half a leg. He gave the boy a playful jab. "I'm going to play the greatest gamefor you."

  When the final buzzer sounded that evening, OSU had whipped Nebraska 7251. Few would have guessed by the 17 points he scored that Byron Houston was in constant pain.

  Scott Carter wheeled himself into the post-game locker room. "Tonight's Player of the Game award goes to a guy who doesn't quit, no matter how hard things get," Scott said. "I admire him because he cares about his team and he's my friend." On the certificate, in a 12-year-old's scrawl was the name Byron Houston.

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  Tears in his eyes, Houston walked up to the boy. "Thank you," he mumbled, then retreated quickly from the limelight.

  A week later, after the Cowboys' last home game of the season, as Houston jogged off the court to a standing ovation, the graduating senior finally uttered what he had not been able to say in the locker room. Wrapping a long, muscular arm around the frail boy and weeping openly, he whispered in Scott's ear, "I love you, buddy." Scott responded, "I love you too."

  It was a hopeful time for Scott. He was getting around on crutches. Lung and bone scans had revealed no new tumors, although he did appear to have a small spinal fracture. If Scott remained tumor-free, doctors promised, he could quit chemotherapy, even go swimming and fishing again.

  Then Scott's doctor called Paula. "That area on your son's spine isn't a fracture but a malignant tumor." Scott would need a painful operation, followed by six months in a neck-to-hip body brace, and more chemotherapy and radiation.

  Paula had always tried to urge Scott to be upbeat about his condition. He took the news with a simple nod of the head. But when Paula continued to cry, he hugged her and then shook a finger in motherly imitation. "Now, Mom, we can't be un-positive about this."

  Scott took refuge in the plight of others. One day, seeing a trembling boy being lifted into a wheelchair at the hospital entrance, he said to Paula, "Next time somebody says they will pray for me, I'm going to tell them to pray for him. I'll be all right."

  Paula and Mike often talked to their children about God and heaven. At every turn, Scott demonstrated a kindness and concern for others that convinced the Carters he understood there was more to life than fulfilling one's selfish needs.

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  The news of Scott's latest tumor hit the Cowboys hard. Their sadness deepened when they learned that surgeons hadn't been able to remove all of it, since doing so would have risked leaving Scott paraplegic.

  Coach Sutton longed to do something special for Scott. One day an idea struck him. He ordered a Cowboy practice uniform, in Scott's size, to be shipped to the boy.

  "I guess this means I'm really a Cowboy!" Scott said when he called Sutton.

  "You'll always be a Cowboy, Son," Sutton assured him. "You've got a warrior's spirit."

  No one was more dazzled by Scott's continued good humor than Bryant Reeves. Now that Houston had graduated, the shy blond center had become the Cowboys' star player. But as confident as he was on the court, the sophomore was still agonizingly reticent elsewhere.

  On a frosty night in late February 1993, the Cowboys played Missouri. Back in the hospital, Scott was watching the game on TV. With the team trailing 6461 with two seconds left, Reeves had been told to tip the ball to either wing, where guards would try for a long three-pointer. Instead, Reeves reached for the ball and turned toward the hoop. Just as the buzzer sounded, the ball swished through the net. Reeves' incredible 45-foot shot sent the game into overtime, and the Cowboys won 7773.

  In that giddy moment, Reeves felt possessed of the same courage and confidence he'd seen in Scott. He wished he could tell him how he felt, but of course the boy wasn't there.

  Weeks later, Reeves sat quietly at the head table in the student union center as the annual basketball banquetwith 600 fans, reporters and players' familieswas coming to a close. The task before him was perhaps the hardest of his life.

  Sutton stepped to the podium and announced, "Bryant

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  Reeves has something he'd like to say."

  Standing at the podium, hearing nothing in the terrifying silence but an occasional tinkling of glasses, the shy athlete took a deep breath and tried to focus his mind. Then, as he looked beyond the spotlights, he saw Scott, with his family, smiling up at him.

  "Scott Carter is an inspiration to every player on this team," said Reeves, his voice trembling. "I'd like to thank him for showing me what determination is all about."

  Reeves beckoned the boy to the dais. As Scott slipped his crutches under his arms and began to walk, Reeves lifted a basketball from underneath the podium. Scribbled across it were Reeves' autograph and the words "Oklahoma State versus Missouri, Feb. 24, 1993, the Big Shot.'"

  "I want you to have the ball I used to make that shot against Missouri," the athlete said. "Nobody deserves it more."

  Scott, balanced on his crutches, fell into the huge athlete's arms. As Reeves fought back tears, the room erupted into a standing ovation.

  In early October 1993, a bone scan revealed new tumors growing around Scott's spine, threatening to choke off his spinal cord. This would end his intense pain, but also destroy all sensation from the waist down. More tumors were found in his lungs and brain.

  "It's over," the doctors told his parents. "He's likely to die before Thanksgiving."

  The fear that had beat in Mike's and Paula's hearts from the moment they first heard the word cancer had now come to pass. They were being asked to summon the strength to say good-bye.

  As Mike and Paula broke the news to Scott, the frail teenager listened quietly. When he finally spoke, he didn't mention all the things he wouldn't be able to dograduate from high school, marry, become a fatherbut the one

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  thing he would do. "I'll get to see Uncle Tom again in heaven," he said. "I'll get to fish with him and Grandfather Bo."

  On Thanksgiving Day, vans started pulling up in front of the Carters' house in Tulsa. "You won't believe who's at the door!" Paula called out to her son, now confined to a bed in the family room. Scott smiled as one by one the Cowboys, their coaches and their families filed through the Carters' hallway.

  Permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Scott's body was bloated from heavy doses of steroids. Drugs to control brain tumor seizures slowed his speech. Yet the old Scott shone through. "You'd better win tomorrow night," he told Reeves, "because I'm going to be there to make sure you do."

  The next evening, despite a packed house, one seat remained emptyat the end of the Cowboys' bench. Throughout the first half of their game against Providence College, the Cowboys played mechanically.

  Sutton shook his head. It had been foolish to hope that Scott could make the game. Still, he wished he could share one more win with the kid.

  Then, beneath the crowd's roar, Sutton detected the squeak of a wheelchair. He turned and saw Mike Carter pushing Scott toward the court. Scott, no longer able to sit up, was stretched out in a reclining wheelchair, his head propped to view the game. The Cowboys on the court sensed it immediately: Scott's here. Now they would be playing for him. OSU beat Providence 113102. Senior guard Brooks Thompson scored a career-high 33 points. And Scott got in a final barb. "Pretty good game," he said to Thompson. "But why'd you miss that last shot?"

  Then Scott did something he'd been doing for more than two seasons, though now it took every ounce of his energy. As each player passed him on the way to the

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  shower, the boy lifted his pale, bony hand h
igh in the air. One by one, every Cowboy spread open a sweaty palm and high-rived him.

  It would be their last time. On December 2, 1993, minutes before the tip-off against Arizona State, Scott, surrounded by his parents and brother and sister, stopped breathing. At his side was a plaque with a Biblical verse from 2 Timothy 4:7. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord . . . will award to me on that day."

  Scott was buried in a black OSU warm-up uniform beside a creek like the one he had fished with his uncle and grandfather. "He's in a better place," Paula and Mike Carter told a red-eyed Coach Sutton and the CowboysScott's honorary pallbearersú

  In the months to come, when Coach Sutton became depressed thinking about the empty spot on his bench, when he caught a player looking glum, he reminded the team of Scott's awards. The Player of the Game, he told them, was the person who offered up his last ounce of breath no matter how defeating the odds. He was the player who valued his team, his fans and his faith in God too much to quit.

  Scott Carter, he told them, would forever be his model for Player of the Game.

  Suzame Chazin

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  We Never Told Him He Couldn't Do It

  They can because they think they can.

  Virgil

  When my son Joey was born, his feet were twisted upward with the bottoms resting on his tummy. As a first-time mother, I thought this looked odd, but I didn't really know what it meant. It meant that Joey had been born with club feet. The doctors assured us that with treatment he would be able to walk normally, but would probably never run very well. The first three years of his life, Joey spent in surgery, casts and braces. His legs were massaged, worked and exercised and, yes, by the time he was seven or eight you wouldn't even know he'd had a problem if you watched him walk.

  If he walked great distances, like at the amusement parks or on a visit to the zoo, he complained that his legs were tired and that they hurt. We would stop walking, take a break with a soda or ice cream cone and talk about what we had seen and what we had to see. We didn't tell him why his legs hurt and why they were weak. We didn't tell him this was expected due to his deformity at birth. We didn't tell him, so he didn't know.

  The children in our neighborhood ran around as most

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  children do during play. Joey would watch them play and, of course, would jump right in and run and play too. We never told him that he probably wouldn't be able to run as well as the other children. We didn't tell him he was different. We didn't tell him. So he didn't know.

  In seventh grade he decided to go out for the cross-country team. Every day he trained with the team. He seemed to work harder and run more than any of the others. Perhaps he sensed that the abilities that seemed to come naturally to so many others did not come naturally to him. We didn't tell him that although he could run, he probably would always remain in the back of the pack. We didn't tell him that he shouldn't expect to make the ''team." The team runners are the top seven runners of the school. Although the entire team runs, it is only these seven who will have potential to score points for the school. We didn't tell him he probably would never make the "team," so he didn't know.

  He continued to run four to five miles a day, every day. I'll never forget the time he had a 103-degree fever. He couldn't stay home because he had cross-country practice. I worried about him all day. I expected to get a call from the school asking me to come get him and take him home. No one called.

  I went out to the cross-country training area after school, thinking that if I were there, he might decide to skip practice that evening. When I got to the school, he was running along the side of a long tree-lined street, all alone. I pulled up alongside of him and drove slowly to keep pace with him as he ran. I asked how he felt. "Okay," he said. He only had two more miles to go. As the sweat rolled down his face, his eyes were glassy from his fever. Yet he looked straight ahead and kept running. We never told him he couldn't run four miles with a 103-degree fever. We never told him. So he didn't know.

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  Two weeks later, the day before the second to the last race of the season, the names of the "team" runners were called. Joey was number 6 on the list. Joey had made the "team." He was in seventh grade. The other six team members were all eighth-graders. We never told him he probably shouldn't expect to make the ''team." We never told him he couldn't do it. We never told him he couldn't do it . . . so he didn't know. He just did it.

  Kathy Lamancusa

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  A Lesson in Heart

  A lesson in "heart" is my little 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was born with a muscle missing in her foot and wears a brace all the time. She came home one beautiful spring day to tell me she had competed in "field day"that's where they have lots of races and other competitive events.

  Because of her leg support, my mind raced as I tried to think of words of encouragement for my Sarah, things I could say to her about not letting this get her downthings I have heard many famous coaches tell the players when they were faced with defeatbut before I could get word out, she looked up and said, "Daddy, I won two of the races!"

  I couldn't believe it! And then Sarah said, "I had an advantage."

  Ahh. I knew it. I thought she must have been given a head start . . . some kind of physical advantage. But again, before I could say anything, she said, "Daddy, I didn't get head start . . . my advantage was I had to try harder!"

  That's heart! That's my Sarah.

  Stan frager

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  Fourteen Steps

  Hal Manwaring

  Adversity introduces a man to himself.

  Anonymous

  They say a cat has nine lives, and I am inclined to think that possible since I am now living my third life and I'm not even a cat.

  My first life began on a clear, cold day in November, 1904, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a farming family. My father died when I was 15, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. Mother stayed home and cooked the potatoes and beans and cornbread and greens, while the rest of us worked for whatever we could geta small amount at best.

  As the children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself to support and care for Mother, who became paralyzed in her last years and died while still in her 60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example within the year.

  This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent health, and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely girls. I had a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula in San Carlos.

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  Life was a pleasant dream.

  Then the dream ended and became one of those horrible nightmares that cause you to wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. I became afflicted with a slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg, and then my other side.Thus began my second life. . . .

  In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my health and optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps.

  Crazy? Not at all.

  Our home was a split-level affair with 14 steps leading up from the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge of life. They were my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after itrepeating the process 14 times until, utterly spent, I would be throughI could then admit defeat and lie down and die.