"Now the first thing we're gonna do after warmups is to see how well you boys stack up against the varsity. If you can't play with them boys out there then you're gonna have a mighty rough time against some of our opponents this year. We've got ten games scheduled with teams from the Charleston area this year and that's nothin' but city basketball up there. Get out there on the other end of the court for layups. Then when I call you, line up in two lines at center court. We're gonna play two on two for a while to see if you can put the ball in the hole. Now get your butts down there for layups."
The whole crowd of boys rose and thundered off the bleachers, white shoes shining and voices raised in a high-pitched whistle as the layup line formed inexpertly. The first boy who shot missed the basket by three feet in his excitement. Ben watched Coach Spinks's face and knew that boy had been cut. Coaches were all the same: they had ineffable powers of memory when you made a horse's ass out of yourself. Ben didn't know who the boy was but was certain that his time on the team was finite and brief. Ben took his turn, receiving the pass, dribbling twice, then laying the ball softly off the backboard. He watched as it dripped in the net. He was being cautious and making sure of his moves and his shots. "That's it, son. Lay it up there soft, like it was a basket of eggs."
Then Coach Spinks turned his attention toward his returning players, letting them go one on one while he shouted instructions to the defensive players. "Get that butt down, Cooper, like you was a dog scratching for worms," the coach called out. Awaiting his turn to rebound, Ben watched the drills in progress at the other end of the court. He watched each player, looking for the unmistakable signs of the exceptional basketball player. Ben had been a ballplayer for a long time and he knew other ballplayers the way a gypsy knows other gypsies or a thief other thieves. There were things to look for, an unspoken language of movement and form to decipher, passwords to exchange, and glances to decode. First, he looked for the walk. Every good basketball player Ben had ever known walked in a certain way, insouciant, ambling, even awkward, as if to purposefully confuse boys who would guard them when they slipped into their Converse All Stars and called for a basketball. Then this creature of the strange walk turned into something ethereal, flowing. The dancer in him was loosed. Whatever poetry was in him found release as his hands rolled the ball over and over, spinning it, warming to it, touching it before he made his first move toward the basket. The walk came back to him when he did not have the ball, during time outs, when he walked to the foul line, or when he walked to the end of a line in practice. The walk was an indelible mark of identification, like a fingerprint. An unspoken joy arose in Ben as he looked for the walk and could not find it.
Then he watched for the wrist, the snap of the wrist after a shot, the hand bent at the joint of the wrist at about a 45 degree angle, the index finger pointed toward the center of the basket. His father called it the wounded duck but to Ben the hand and wrist took on the shape of a cobra prepared to strike. From this wrist snap came touch. And no good shooter was without it. Ben found approximations of it but the shooters at the other end of the court were only adequate, not gifted. None of them had the carriage and bearing that indicated they were of a royal line of shooters or rebounders; none of them had the easy arrogance of talent that was so commonplace on the courts around D.C.
Ben then concentrated on studying the individual players at the other end of the court. He was in a rhythm now, rebounding, running to the end of the opposite line, studying his enemies at the far court, moving up, cheering, then sprinting toward the basket to drop in a layup, and resuming his survey of the other court. He examined the ball-handling skills of Pinkie Taylor who had been a starting guard on the team the year before. Pinkie was Ben's size but much thinner. He had a large scarlet birthmark on his throat that made his pale skin seem almost translucent. He was in Ben's history class where he distinguished himself daily with a titanic ignorance of American history. His intellect was a sparse acreage indeed but Pinkie got along by wearing a perpetual smile on his face and having an uncanny knack for repairing the engines of his teachers' automobiles. He was uncomplicated and Ben had fantasized that if a surgeon performed brain surgery on Pinkie he would open his head to find it looking like the inside of a potato. He did have a nice set shot, though, and his small, fast hands bothered the boy he guarded.
Next, Ben inspected Jim Don Cooper, the captain of the football team and all-conference linebacker. He looked like a linebacker, would always look like one, and if his head were mounted on a trophy wall along with cape water buffalo and sable antelopes, people would look at it and say, "That's a nice linebacker you have there. "He was six feet three inches tall and weighed over two hundred and thirty pounds. An exaggerated supraorbital ridge gave him an aurignacian, sinister appearance. Ben had carried a strong antipathy for Jim Don since his one date with Ansley Matthews. Often, Ben had watched Jim Don walking the halls of school escorted by Ansley and a school of pilot fish mainly composed of third string football players. He was the most feared boy in the school, at least among the population that did not carry knives. But he was terribly clumsy in gym shoes and the court was his own private china shop. He tried to play basketball as if there were still grass beneath his cleats and pads on his shoulders. His shot, however, was surprisingly dainty and soft. He could not leap but he would gather in many rebounds because of his girth. In shorts and rubber-soled shoes he looked vulnerable and misplaced, like a Cro-Magnon man lost in the centuries.
Art" The Fart" Ballard was unquestionably the best rebounder on the team. He was squirrelly and skinny to the point of emaciation. But he could come close to dunking the ball during warmups and had the great spring that one comes to associate with tall, skinny boys. He had a poor, uninspired shot and was a terrible dribbler. But Art" The Fart" could jump higher than boys six inches taller than he. Ben had heard him called nothing but Art" The Fart" since he had arrived at Calhoun High School. It was an extension of the name that seemed natural. Sammy said Art had been called that since first grade so he had had plenty of time to grow accustomed to his nickname. Ben made a mental note never to name a son Art or Bart.
The only boy that Ben knew personally was Philip Turner. Philip was the Student Council President and had the chiseled, immaculate, Anglican features of that aristocratic breed. He sat in front of Ben in Mr. Loring's English class. They had talked several times but Ben was not important enough for them to become friends or for Philip to engage Ben in a truly serious conversation. At all times, Philip was impeccably groomed, his shock of rich brown hair combed neatly, his demeanor serious and forthright. He walked around school with a sense of urgency as if Khrushchev were calling him collect from Moscow or he, Philip Turner, had to make a decision that afternoon whether to recognize Red China or not. Teachers loved him without reservation which made it a law for students to hate and envy him. Though he laughed a lot it seemed more like good social training than the enjoyment of a good joke. He did things in earnest only if he thought it would help him later on. He played basketball because he thought it would help him win a prestigious scholarship to an Ivy League college. Always he was thinking about the future, about events that would occur two, four, or ten years hence. Teachers were always looking at him and saying to each other," There goes the future governor of South Carolina. "Philip would sometimes hear them, blush, but silently agree. Philip's father was a man of little formal education who had become a powerful social force in Ravenel. After twenty years of hard work and ruthless manipulation of small farmers, Marshall Turner had become the emperor of truck farming in one of the most fertile agricultural areas of the state. Though Mr. Turner had dirt under his fingernails and though he could never look like anybody but a man who had seen a lot of cucumbers in his life, he had trained his wife to train his sons to be gentlemen. Philip was the youngest, the most princely, and the one furthest removed from his father. As a basketball player, Ben noticed that Philip was mostly form. His jump shot looked good but he rarely made the sh
ot. Philip would go up, his legs would come together beautifully, the arm and wrist motion was pure, but something was not there. The shot differed in small ways each time he left his feet. Several times Ben saw Philip look down at his feet when he was shooting. Philip was worried that his feet were not coming together properly; he was worried how the shot looked. He was well muscled, handsome, and proud in his uniform, but Ben saw immediately that Philip was the poorest athlete among last year's starters. He also saw that none of the other players talked to Philip at all.
The whistle blew and Coach Spinks called Ben's group to the center line where they queued up in two lines to wait for their chance to go against the returnees. Spinks called for Pinkie and Jim Don to play defense first. The seven members of the team came together in a circle, joined hands, then broke from the circle cheering and confident. Pinkie and Jim Don slapped hands and Jim Don glowered at the first two boys in the line and sneered, "C'mon, rookies."
The first two boys to face the varsity players were both overcautious, spareboned, young, and fearful of sudden error and humiliation. The boy on the right side in Ben's line received the ball from Coach Spinks, took one tentative, almost apologetic dribble toward the basket, then stopped and looked for his partner. Pinkie was on him as soon as he picked the ball off the floor. Panicked, the boy threw the ball directly into the arms of Jim Don Cooper. The whistle blew, the two boys raced quickly to the back of the line, and the next two boys moved in to challenge Pinkie and Jim Don.
Through the front door of the gym, Mr. Dacus entered silently, walked to the top of the bleachers and watched as a tall, red-headed boy, painfully clumsy, forced his way all the way under the basket where he had his shot blocked fiercely by Jim Don as soon as he made a move to shoot. The whistle blew and it was Ben's turn.
He glanced to his left and saw that his partner was the blond boy who had been cut the two previous years. Before Spinks threw him the ball, Ben called out to the boy," My name's Ben. What's yours?"
"Lyle," the boy answered shyly.
"This ain't no social," the coach barked, hurling the ball at Ben.
Ben turned toward Pinkie who was crabbing out to challenge him. The other members of the varsity were screaming, whipping themselves up into a lather now that the season had officially started and they were strutting their skills before the newcomers. Ben watched Pinkie and made no move. "Do something, boy," the coach ordered. Ben began a slow deliberate dribble to his right. "Get under the basket, Lyle," he shouted to his partner. Lyle raced for the basket in an awkward spring, Jim Don with him every step, slowing him down with a furtive forearm shiver to Lyle's chest. "C'mon, boy, we don't have but five years to get this practice over. I didn't tell you to freeze the ball."
Ben now had a tremendous area of the court in which to maneuver Pinkie. Keeping to the right side of the court, he began to dribble rapidly, faking as if he were going to burst toward the basket, reversing hands, keeping Pinkie off balance, then slowing up, and bouncing the ball higher, close to Pinkie's reach, until Pinkie made a lunge for the ball, as Ben had waited for him to do, and Ben drove toward the basket and Jim Don. He came with speed and momentum, dazzling speed for a boy encumbered with the ball, and Jim Don moved out heavily, menacingly to stop Ben. Ben left his feet, his eyes affixed to the basket, the ball swung up in two hands, until Jim Don rose in the air to repel the attack, the two bodies of the two boys suspended, warring, in synchronization, and at the last second Ben slipped the ball toward Lyle, who waited alone under the basket, slipped the ball under the huge arms of Jim Don who crashed into Ben at the same time Lyle was making a layup with no one around him.
The players in the center of the court cheered madly. Lyle almost fell on Ben as he pulled him off the floor and slapped him on the rump, his face astonished and pleased. The varsity brooded and demanded a rematch. The whistle blew. Coach Spinks took a long pull on his R.C., then spat a huge portion of it on the cinderblock wall. Ben saw Mr. Dacus flash him the V-sign in the bleachers. "Now that was a prime example of stinkin' defense. Stinkin'. Stinkin'. Stinkin'. That was dogdoo defense. Now let's do that again. Same four. I wanna see some ass-scratching defense this time."
"Hey, Coach," Jim Don said," let me guard the show-off rookie."
"Go ahead."
Jim Don pressed close to Ben even before Coach Spinks threw Ben the ball. "C'mon, rookie. C'mon, rookie," Jim Don growled at Ben, his breath smelling like peanut butter and onions. When the ball came Ben made a violent feint toward the basket which drove Jim Don stumbling backward. Ben smiled as Jim Don returned, the anger fanning out in his face.
"Ass down. Ass down," Spinks said and Jim Don spread his legs wide, bent his knees, spread his arms, and kept up a fierce whisper," Come to me, rookie. I want a piece of you, rookie. "In a single fluid motion, Ben bounced the ball between Jim Don's outstretched legs, broke for the basket, retrieved the ball before it bounced a second time, beat Pinkie in a foot race to the basket, and laid the ball into the basket left-handed. Going back to the line, Ben slapped Jim Don on the rump and said, "Nice try, fatso."
"That's Yankee basketball, son. We don't play Yankee basketball down here," Coach Spinks said to Ben. "I want a little less showing off next time you handle the ball, you understand?"
"Yes sir," Ben said at the end of the line.
"Hey, Coach, you tell the rookie if he calls me fatso again, he's gonna have some knuckles where his tonsils used to be," Jim Don said.
"Shut up, Jim Don, and get your butt down. I'm tired of all this dog-doo defense," Spinks said, blowing his whistle.
Three days later, on a Thursday night, the final cuts were made. On a bulletin board outside his office, Coach Spinks posted the names of the players who had made the team. Singly and in pairs, boys who had tried out for the team walked up to check the list for their names. Most of them checked the list quickly, then returned to the locker room to pack their belongings, and vanish in the night to be alone with their private desolation. Ben walked to the paper and saw his name. But he felt very little cause for celebration. He had come to like the boys who were trying out much better than he liked the boys on the team. When he returned to the locker room, Philip Turner and Pinkie walked up to congratulate him. He thanked them, showered, and dressed. As he left the gymnasium, he noticed a large number of parked cars sitting beneath the street lights outside the locker room door. Within the cars the dark shadows of fathers waiting for the verdict on their sons smoked out to meet him as Ben began to walk home. He passed on car where a Drill Instructor from the training base on Biddle Island was holding his crying son in his arms. He heard the man say in a voice that shivered with pain and a stark, inchoate helplessness when faced with his son's naked hurt," Shoot, Eddie. We won't tell Mama nothing. We'll just tell her you sprained your ankle and had to quit the team. It's O.K., Eddie. It's O.K. Well go huntin' this weekend. Just me and you. "Ben went down on one knee to tie his shoe and listened to the boy cry. It was the boy who had missed the layup on the first day of practice. All along the street, in the privacy of lightless automobiles, beneath the gaze of fathers there was a suffering that would be brief, but one that, at this moment, in this place, was all but unendurable.
Ben walked home beside the river, his gym shoes slung over his shoulder, and his thoughts going back to the one team from which he had been cut. He had tried out for the Arlington Jaycees, a Little League team with a long history of winning teams. He had been cut after the second day of practice and had gone to his room and cried for three days. Bull had come up and told him that only girls and babies cried but this had served only to increase Ben's sense of failure. Not even Lillian could soothe him and make him re-enter family life. He missed two days of school until finally Lillian ordered him to school and threatened to spank him if he did not comply with her order. Ben had blamed Bull for his getting cut. "If you hadn't been so cheap and had bought me a decent glove, I'd 'a made the team," Ben had shouted at his father, expecting a hard slap to the face even as he said
it. But the slap never came. Instead, each day after he finished work at the Pentagon, Bull went to the coach of every Little League team in Arlington, Virginia, and asked them if they were short any players. None of them were, but Bull kept looking until he finally came to the practice field below the Fairlington Apartments where he walked up to the man who would become Ben's first coach, Dave Murphy.
The next day Ben received a phone call from a Coach Murphy who said he heard from some of his players that the Arlington Jaycees had cut one hell of a baseball player and that he would consider it a personal favor if Ben would come play for his team. That was the beginning. And as Ben walked along the edge of the salt river, he realized that he wore the memory of Dave Murphy like a chain and it carried him like a prisoner to the infields of Four Mile Run Park in Arlington, Virginia, where he played for the Old Dominion Kiwanis for two of the best years of his life. In the night games, beneath the arc of lights, in his last year of Little League, Ben's new spikes gleamed like teeth as he walked toward Dave Murphy. For years Ben had walked toward him in dreams and sudden thoughts. If he could, Ben would have told him about the soft places a boy reserves for his first coach, his unruined father who enters the grassless practice fields of boyhood like a priest at the end of a life. Coach Murphy was gentle. Yes, that was it. Gentle to the clumsy, girl-voiced boys whom he trained to be average, to be adequate, as he hit the soft fungoes to the outfield green. But Dave Murphy had a gift. Any boy who came to him had moments of feeling like a king. Any boy who played for the Old Dominion Kiwanis. Any boy. Coach Murphy still haunts the old fields where his boys bunted down the line, and with graceless fever took infield in voices that cried out for fathers. Going home after practice, they waved good-bye to their coach as they slid their spikes on the sidewalk, astonished at the fire that sprang from their feet. Then they turned toward home, toward the real fathers who waited for their sons to come homeward disguised as heroes.