“If I guarded you every night, you’d be an All-American for sure, Jimmy,” I said.
“If I played as well against everyone else, I’d deserve to be. Good luck, Will.”
“You’re the best I ever saw, Jimmy. The best I ever saw in my life.”
Mance walked to his seat by his coach and out of my life forever.
Without Mance, the VMI team was not nearly as good a team as we were. But there are times in athletics when that does not matter. There are times when average ballplayers transform themselves by an immense spiritual effort into athletes they were never meant to be. When we returned to the court to face the disadvantaged VMI squad for the final minutes, we figured we would win the game easily. But we had not reckoned on the possibility of these splendid transformations. The VMI team came at us with hunger and spirit and elan. They surprised us with their hunger, the fierce terror of their want, as they scrapped us from line to line. The boardplay beneath the rim was fearful and savage. Only a last-second shot by Reuben tied the game and brought us into the first overtime. VMI had found heroes in three mediocre players, and it was beautiful to watch.
Though we did not know it then, we were engaged in one of those games that would become legendary in the barracks. On this night, these two average college basketball teams would honor their sport with the irrepressible intensity of their will to win and the radiant chivalry of their gamesmanship. Each team scored nine points in the first five-minute overtime. Each team scored six in the second overtime. Each team scored seven in the third overtime. We were playing in the longest game in the history of the Institute.
As we prepared to take to the court, exhausted and feverish below the passionate crowd, we could not hear Coach Byrum’s shouted instructions for our strategy in the fourth overtime. He was losing his voice and the noise of the crowd precluded any chance or need of hearing him. Bo Maybank stroked my arms and neck with a clean towel, and the pressure of his small hands felt almost sexual as I closed my eyes and listened to the masculine chant of the Corps in all its primitiveness and lawless carnality.
I could barely move as the horn sounded to end the fourth overtime. My feet and legs ached, and my knees felt as though someone had poured lead shot into them. I winked at Abigail, nodded to the General, and knelt on the floor to tie my shoes. Johnny DuBruhl came over, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Let’s end it, Will. I’m tired as shit. If we have to go through one more overtime, I’m going to ask Byrum to forfeit.”
“I’m dying, boy,” I replied.
VMI scored two quick baskets in that first minute of play, but Doug hit a fall-away jumper in the corner and Johnny scored on a fast break. With three minutes left, VMI went into their freeze pattern and decided to gamble on taking the last shot of the game. The seconds fell slowly off the clock. I tried to pressure the sophomore guard who had taken Mance’s place, but he was a fine and cautious ball handler. I dropped back off him as he fed a pass to a forward, who had come out to the back court to take the pressure off the VMI guards. When I looked at the clock again, there was only a minute left to play, and I edged out toward the sophomore again and tried to bother him into a mistake of inexperience.
With twenty-two seconds left, the sophomore passed to the VMI center, who had broken up to the foul line. The center shoveled a pass to the forward on my side of the court. The forward’s eyes were nervous with the pressure, and I saw that he was desperately looking to get rid of the ball as soon as he could find an open man. My man moved to his right to receive an outlet pass. Doug, with his hands held high and his body taut and glistening, moved in quickly to pressure the forward. The forward pivoted cleanly away from Doug and glanced at the clock. Eighteen seconds. Seventeen. My body tensed as I felt the critical moment arrive as the game died on us. I saw the forward’s eyes search for the man I was guarding. I pulled back and let my man slide out unmolested to receive the pass. But I carefully preserved an angle between my man and the passer. I crouched and waited and I knew I was going to make a move, knew I was going to gamble, that I was going to spring into the center of action, knew that I was going to, knew I was, knew I . . . fourteen seconds, thirteen . . . and I saw the ball coming through the air as I lunged outward, my hand extended, as I tipped the ball away and chased it to the side of the court, controlled it, went behind my back with the dribble, and broke for the center, with players from both teams exploding toward the far court. Then I felt it.
I felt the Corps. They had broken with me; they had risen to their feet and I was swept forward by the immensity of their sound. They carried me forward with their noise and the power of their advocacy. I heard their thunder, their storm, the whole prodigious solidarity of the brotherhood accompanying my charge down the court.
I watched two of the VMI players, blurred images of scrambling gold racing ahead of me, trying to position themselves to contain the fast break that was forming in perfect order as I approached them, coming faster than I had ever come before, the seconds spilling off the clock. I heard Johnny filling the lane to the right and Doug calling to me from the left and Reuben trailing four steps behind me. The ball was part of me and I was confident and exultant as I swept past center court and faced the two nameless VMI players who awaited my coming.
The first player came out to meet me. It was the sophomore guard, and he came too quickly, an error of inexperience. I slowed, faked a change to my right, and switched to my left hand, passing him in a blur. He had not recognized the old trick of hesitation, the small betrayal of speed that was the essence of the change of pace.
I heard Johnny screaming for the ball to my right. I turned my head toward him, but my eye fastened on the last defender. The VMI man moved out to cut off the pass to Johnny But there would be no pass to Johnny. I left the floor, rising into the air, into the light and smoke, into the history of that night, into the death of time and the last game I would ever play. I rose up into the happiest, most glorious moment in my life, to take the shot I had awaited since I was a boy of ten. Realizing his mistake too late, the VMI forward lunged wildly toward me, but I moved my left shoulder between him and the ball, braced myself for his impact, and spun the ball softly, gently against the backboard. I did not see the ball go into the basket, but I did not need to. The marvelous noise of the Corps had turned the Armory into a vessel of unimaginable tumult.
I lay on my back, out of bounds, where the collision with the VMI forward had knocked me and stared straight up into the ceiling lights. But I was not seeing anything; I was taking in the praise of the crowd, accepting the homage of its brawling, rowdy lyrics. I heard the chant of my name. At that moment, the Corps and I were one body, one substance, one passionate, untamable force.
Then Johnny fell on me, locked me into a jubilant embrace, and we rolled on the gym floor, laughing hysterically Rising, we began leaping up and down in a delirious, primitive dance of triumph. Doug and Reuben and Dave joined us, and I was slapped, pummeled, and hugged. All five VMI players had bowed their heads in that gesture of shame and failure I had known so many times in my career at the Institute. Their faces were dispirited, beaten, and exhausted.
Going to the foul line, I lifted both arms to the crowd and the noise carried me again, entered each cell of my dazzled, inflamed consciousness, and I let it take me, seduce me. . . . I wanted my life to freeze at that exact moment, with my arms raised above me, the crowd on its feet, those thousands of human voices screaming out my name.
The referees handed me the ball and I shot my free throw, watched the net shiver with the ball’s entry, saw the long desperate pass of the VMI guard fall harmlessly into the far court, and heard the buzzer signal the end of the game.
Then the Corps was on me. I was in the center of an uproarious surge of gray uniforms; I was lifted toward the lights and found myself on the shoulders of Mark and Pig, felt hands reaching me, touching me, and I thought I would remember those hands more than anything else that night. I tried to preserve every memory of that delirious c
harge of the Corps onto center court. But you cannot preserve the memory of applause; it is too volatile, too perishable. Later it would astonish me that I could not satisfactorily summon back that moment. I remembered the ride to the locker room, the hands trying to reach me, the movement of the gray uniforms trying to get close to me. But it was my destiny and my character not to be able to recall the exact feeling, the exact one, of those brief seconds in the adoration of the Corps.
No, I would remember the towel. . . Bo Maybank’s towel. Precisely and completely and for the rest of my life. I do not know how he got to me, but I felt his light leaps up to my face and felt the towel warm against my brow. And his face, I would remember his face as he wiped the sweat from mine, transfigured with joy for me—his face vulnerable and febrile and anonymous—as he danced on the floor below me, as he tried to reach me, as he tried to be a part of the finest moment of my life.
I would lose Bo after that night, as I would lose Jimmy Mance, Coach Byrum, Johnny, Doug, and Reuben. I would lose basketball and the fine camaraderie of athletics. But it was Bo I would miss the most, the little boy-child with his useless, lonely set shot and his towels fresh and warm from the dryers. His mother would call me three years later, grieving and proud, to tell me about the death of her son, the helicopter pilot, Lieutenant Bo Maybank. How can I say how splendid it must have been for him to come winged and ominous from the heights, dwarfing the tall men who had once teased him and stuffed him struggling and outraged into towel carts full of soiled laundry? How can I tell you that Bo never learned that height is not always the important thing? But he had learned all that he would ever need to learn about other small men with good eyes, good hands, instinctive cunning, and set shots far deadlier than his. A small man shot Bo Maybank out of the skies of Vietnam. The bullet entered his eye and blew out the back of his head.
His mother wept and I wept. I cried all night for that smallest of men who had loved me with his towels, who loved the game but never scored a single point or took a single shot except in empty gyms after the crowds had gone home. I remembered his tiny leaps up toward me after the VMI game and I regretted I had not looked down from the shoulders of my roommates, from the accolades of the crowd, looked down and done the right thing for once in my life, the grand and perfect gesture. I should have lifted Bo Maybank up with me, and together we should have taken that last frantic ride to the locker room. But I didn’t; I wanted it all, all for myself.
When I finished dressing that evening, I walked out to the center court and stood, silent, in the middle of the gymnasium floor. I was one of the last to dress and the Armory was massive and lonely. I saw a basketball beneath the bench that Bo had not seen when he collected the equipment after the game. My footsteps echoed through the gym as I walked over to retrieve it. I dribbled the ball to the top of the key. I could measure my life in the number of jump shots and layups I had aimed at the steel rims of baskets. I had played the game because I felt ugly as a kid and painfully shy. People sought me out in my guise as an athlete. I did not have confidence they would seek me out or like me if I faced them nakedly, without the aura of my sport to recommend me. To masquerade my fear and insecurity I had found a sport to hide behind, and now I would have to perfect other disguises and join other masquerades. My time in gymnasiums was finished.
In the darkness of a gymnasium lit only by a winter moon, I shot a jump shot that hit the rim and bounced back toward me. I did not retrieve it. It bounced past the half-court line, the bounces getting smaller until the ball began rolling. I watched it roll past the other foul line, slowly now, until it crossed the out-of-bounds line and stopped. Out of bounds and out of my life. Like most other ballplayers I had a superstition. I could never leave the gym until I had made my last shot. But not tonight. I turned and began walking out of the gym. I had missed the shot and somewhere along the line, I had missed the point. But it was over now. I had gone to my limits as an athlete and I knew the secrets all athletes knew. I walked out of the gymnasium and never once did it occur to me to look back. I was free.
But as I passed through the dark corridor behind the stands, a voice called out to me from beneath the bleachers. I was startled and turned toward the voice, both angry and afraid.
“Mr. McLean,” the voice said desperately, “I’ve got to see you, sir.”
It was Pearce. I looked back toward the locker room and saw Doug Cumming saying good night to Bo.
“You scared the living shit out of me, Pearce,” I said.
“I need your help, sir,” he answered. “Could you come down to the yacht basin and talk to me? There’s no one around there at this time of night. We can talk alone.”
“Go on down there, Pearce. I’ll walk around first battalion and cut across the baseball field.”
He departed silently and I walked out the front door.
The boats of the marina were silvery with moonlight. Pearce’s face was black and silver. He was handsome and frightened, and the moon highlighted his face like a coin recovered from pitch.
As I approached him, I realized I did not know this somber boy at all. In a real sense, you could never know a freshman at the Institute, no matter how resolutely you tried to remove the social barriers that separated you. A plebe could never fully trust an upperclassman, could not afford to relax his guard around anyone except his classmates, who shared his station and his exile. Pearce tensed as I neared him. When I called his name, he came to attention and braced.
“This isn’t a sweat party, Pearce,” I said. “I didn’t come down here to rack ass. At ease.”
Not until I said, “At ease,” did he quit bracing. I was a senior and he was a freshman, and only the passage of time could free us from the recognition of our enmity. And there was a part of me that liked it very much, that Pearce snapped to attention when I entered his field of vision. I needed the silent ritualistic acknowledgment of my superiority.
Also, with Pearce, there was something atavistically Southern at work between us. I wanted his gratitude for my being a white Southerner who had changed. I wanted to be his deliverer, and I expected the same measure of servility from him that I demanded from all the other humans who were the victims of my deliverance. From his eyes I could tell that Pearce recognized the subtlety and tenuousness of both our connection and our enmity. Among the masts and with the hulls of boats reflecting in the waters of the incoming tide, we faced each other uncertainly, as allies, but most inimically and essentially, as white boy and nigger.
His eyes were dark and troubled as they moved past me toward the huge, illuminated silhouettes of the barracks, toward the baseball field, toward the Armory. He was looking to see if I’d been followed.
“Do you want to go water skiing, Pearce?” I said, glancing at my watch.
“Pardon me, sir?” he responded, puzzled and still looking over my shoulder.
“Why else did you call me down to the marina?” I asked. “Every time I see you I feel like I’m working for the CIA and you’re going to pass me top secret plans for the destruction of Miami.”
“You haven’t been answering my notes, Mr. McLean,” he said, and his tone was accusatory and angry.
“What?”
“I’ve left you four notes and you haven’t answered a single one. You haven’t tried to contact me.”
“That’s bullshit, dumbhead. I check that book every single day, and there hasn’t been one communication from you in months. Are you sure you haven’t been putting the notes in the wrong book?”
“Decline of the West. Between pages three hundred eight and nine, sir.” There was irony in the way he emphasized the word sir.
“Pearce,” I said, “has anyone seen you put those notes in there?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Then I wonder if anyone has seen me check the book,” I thought aloud, “or seen my roommates check it when the team’s been on the road. Hell, Pearce, I’ve done it so much and it’s such a habit, I don’t even look to see if anyone’
s watching me anymore.”
“The four notes I left you have all been removed from the book, sir,” Pearce said. “I thought you had taken them but just didn’t care to do anything about them. But someone has taken them, and someone obviously knows how I contact you.”
“What did you say in the notes?” I asked, as I looked back over my shoulder, back toward the lights of the barracks.
“Mr. McLean, last week at retreat formation, someone came up behind me and said I had two weeks to leave the Institute of my own accord. He said if I didn’t leave I’d get special treatment far worse than anything I had gotten until now. He said I would go on a long ride I’d never forget.”
“Who was it, Pearce?” I asked. “If you knew who was talking to you then maybe I could find out what’s going on.”
“He came up from behind me, Mr. McLean,” Pearce explained. “I’m on the quadrangle and I’m a knob and I’m bracing my ass off, sir. It’s dark and I’m not allowed to move a muscle. Suddenly there’s this strange mean voice telling me to get my black nigger ass out of this school or I’m going to take a ride in two weeks.”
“There’s no place they can take you without being seen or heard.”
“Maybe they’ll take me off campus,” he said. “Once they get me out of those gates, America is a mighty big place, Mr. McLean.”
“Don’t piss me off, dumbhead,” I said, irritated at his scornful tone. “I was just wondering how they’d get you off campus. They can’t just tool through the front gates unless they have permission. They can’t just drive right by the guard and the Officer in Charge. And they can’t just take the only black smackhead in the history of the school without everybody on campus knowing it.”
Then I remembered something, and it hit me with a blazing force and clarity. I was no longer standing with Pearce beneath the shadows of boats. Suddenly I was high in the air, dizzy with fear and the vision of the quadrangle far below me, and I was listening again to the crazed, unbalanced voice of a fat boy who would be dead in eight hours, hanged by his own belt. Poteete’s voice roared out in my memory. He came to me now furious, wronged, and vengeful.