Slam!

  We got up to Grandma’s room and she was sitting up eating some ice cream. You could see Moms relax when she saw Grandma looking good. She started talking about how she was doing on her job but Grandma wanted to talk about what she had seen on television. Grandma was looking all right, but you could tell she was still sick.

  “How’s that thing you making for me?” she asked. “You were supposed to be making a tape of your life.”

  “It’s going good,” I said.

  “He’s really working hard at it, Mama,” Moms said.

  They went on talking about how television was getting into people’s lives and I saw that Moms was talking about anything that Grandma wanted to talk about. I kind of drifted out of the conversation and started thinking about Ice again. The hospital made me think of him. Crack was like being sick, like having AIDS. When you see somebody wasted on crack it even looks like they got AIDS. I wasn’t usually scared of AIDS or of crack unless it came near me. I thought I might get messed around with some chick and pick up AIDS, but I wasn’t that worried about it because I knew how it spread around. Crack was scarier because I didn’t know how it got people.

  “Don’t you hear your grandmother talking to you, boy?” My mother’s voice brought me back.

  “Sorry, Grandma. What did you say?”

  “I said go out and tell that nurse to bring me some more ice water,” Grandma said.

  I went out, found the nurse, and asked her to bring Grandma some ice water. I stayed in the hallway for a while, and then Moms came out.

  “She wanted to tell me where her jewels were,” Moms said. “Go in and say good-bye.”

  I said good-bye and kissed Grandma. She smoothed my hair back and gave me a real pretty smile.

  “Be good to your mama, now,” she said.

  I thought Moms was right. That Grandma didn’t look like she was going to last too long. But on the way home Moms was more cheerful than she had been before. I didn’t say nothing to mess up her mood.

  At home I drank some milk, snatched up some cookies, and called Mtisha and told her I was sorry. She said I should be which pissed me off. Then I called Ducky.

  “You going to play tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You scared of basketball? What you do at night, make sure you put your ball outside so it won’t get you?”

  “Get out of here.”

  “See you tomorrow, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  Our next game was on Saturday but we all had to go to school first and then take a school bus downtown to Trinity. I liked riding in the bus to the game because it felt good when you showed up and got off the bus and everybody from the other school was looking at you.

  Me and Ducky sat in the back. Jimmy sat in front with Goldy and the coach. We had our little band with us, too. Me and Ducky were talking about the football play-offs and wondering if it was going to snow. That’s what we were talking about but I was really thinking about what Mtisha had said the day before, that I was scared of math. I didn’t think I was scared of math because math couldn’t do anything to me. It didn’t make sense to be scared of it, but then there was Ducky. Ducky acted like he was scared of basketball. I was ready to run some good doing stuff down on him about it when Nick came on the bus. He saw me in the back of the bus and came to the back.

  “How’s it going?” Ducky said to him.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You ready for the game?” Ducky asked.

  “I guess so.” Nick said to me, “Look, Slam, let me be up front. The coach called me last night and said that a college scout is coming to see me today. I can’t look good if you and I aren’t playing together.”

  “A scout from what college?” Ducky asked.

  “Brown,” Nick said. “Up in Providence.”

  “Brown?” Ducky looked at me. “They play Ivy League, and they can’t even win there.”

  “I can’t afford to go there without a scholarship,” Nick said. “I can’t afford to go most places with a scholarship.”

  “Goldy said the Ivy League schools didn’t give athletic scholarships,” Ducky went on.

  “They don’t, but if I can play ball for them I know I’ll get in,” Nick said, looking at me.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  Nick slid out of his seat and went up front. Ducky went back to the conversation about if it was going to snow or not. He was saying that his grandmother had a pain in her hip every time it was going to snow.

  My mind drifted to what Nick was saying. The coach had called him and told him that a scout was coming to see him play. How come he wasn’t coming to see me play? In a way it hurt, because I could see Nick was getting a chance that I wasn’t getting. He was asking me to help him look good to get what I thought I should get.

  “Hey! Slam, you awake?” Ducky was talking to me.

  “What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “I was asking you about how your grandmother was,” he said. “Didn’t you say she was sick?”

  “Yeah, she’s not doing that good,” I said. “My moms doesn’t think she’s going to make it.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  We got to Trinity on 91st Street and their cheerleaders were out front. They formed two lines from the bus to the door and cheered us as we went in. That was cool.

  Their locker room was old and beat up and their gym wasn’t as nice as I thought it was going to be. Before we went out to start the warm-ups the coach said this was going to be our first real test.

  “Trinity is one of the schools that has a chance to win the title this year,” he said. “They have a good basketball program and some excellent players, players who would start on any high school team in the city. We need to center our game, keep it under control so that if we need to make adjustments we can do it. If we get out there and act like a bunch of cowboys we can’t adjust.

  “They’ve got this kid named Brothers who can really play. I’m going to put Slam on him. We’re going to play man-to-man as long as it works. On offense I want the ball in Nick’s hands as much as possible. I’m moving Trip to forward for quickness and I need everybody to set picks for the guards. This has to be a team effort. Anybody who doesn’t play team ball sits down. Now let’s go get it done.”

  Ducky looked over at me. He dug what the coach was really talking about. The whole thing was to make Nick look good.

  We started warming up and I checked out the Trinity kids who had come to watch the game. All the guys were dressed in jackets, and ties. Sometimes the ties looked whack but they still had them on. The girls were mostly fine and a lot of them were rich-looking. You could tell by the way their hair was cut just right.

  Jimmy came over to me and put his hand out and said something about being sorry for the fight. I shook his hand but I looked away when I did it. He should have said something about punking out when I backed up Ducky, but he didn’t.

  We lined up for the tip and this guy Brothers lined up with me. He was my height and strong-looking. When I saw that he wore his hair in a ponytail I remembered that Ice had told me about him, that he had a game.

  “Sorry I don’t have pockets in this uniform,” he said.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “Usually when I come on the court I take a guy’s game and put it in my pocket,” he said with this crooked grin, “but I had to leave yours in the locker room.”

  “You got the talk, white boy.”

  “And I walk the walk, black boy.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  Their team was a little shorter than ours, but all of them looked physical. I felt a good kind of nervous, the way I did when I played against the good players in the Rucker Tournaments in Harlem. It was going to be a good game.

  They got the tip and Brothers brought the ball down. He came down dribbling the pill between his leg
s like it was supposed to impress me. I knew as long as it was going between his legs he wasn’t going anywhere with it. We got near the top of the key and I moved up on him.

  “I’m going right, baby,” he said.

  “Come on,” I answered him.

  He dribbled low with his left hand, turned, and put an elbow in my side and ducked his head toward the left. I moved over to cut it off and he spun right and ran me into a pick. I fought through the pick but I was a step behind him. I went up with him, trying to keep my body off him so he wouldn’t draw the foul. My eye was dead on the ball as he put it softly against the backboard. They were up by two.

  Nick brought the ball down for us. They were slow in getting back and Nick went all the way to the foul line, pulled up, and threw up a jumper to tie the score.

  They had two black guys on their team. One was tall and skinny and the other one was short and stocky. The short one, number 5, brought the ball down and passed it in to their center on a simple give-and-go. Number 5 got past Nick but Trip picked him up and partially blocked his shot. The ball came off the boards and Brothers got past me and tapped it back in. Four to two.

  Brothers was all over me. When I had the ball he was in my face, and when I didn’t have it he kept his hands on me to know where I was and kept his eyes on the ball. Their number 5 could play, too. We started falling behind and the only one on the floor looking good was Brothers. I started thinking about Ice playing him, and figured that Carver would crush these guys.

  Nick lost the ball twice bringing it down, and missed two easy jumpers. He wanted to look good but he was looking like nothing, and I wasn’t even in the game. The first half went by fast and we were behind 28–16.

  “We’re doing lousy,” Ducky said on the way to the locker room.

  “You figure that out on your calculator?” I asked him.

  The locker room was quiet. Nobody was saying we were going to lose but that’s what everybody was thinking. The coach said that we had to give a hundred and ten percent if we wanted to snatch the game, but he didn’t come up with any strategy.

  “We’re playing a good game, but we need to elevate our effort,” he said.

  He didn’t say anything about me. I had scored three points in the first half and my man, Brothers, had scored twelve.

  We were still feeling bad when we came out for the second half, which made me mad. Us walking with our heads down meant that the guys were convinced we were going to blow. When you think you going to lose you might as well pack up the game bags and get on the bus. What I had was winning at ball, and I took it serious. On the other side Brothers was talking his talk and walking his walk like he owned the world.

  Nick come over to me during the warm-ups and asked me if I had any ideas.

  “Yeah, I got an idea,” I said. “Let’s win.”

  “How?”

  “Give me the ball,” I said.

  “You got it,” he said.

  The team huddled and put our fists together.

  “Let’s put some muscle in the hustle,” Trip said.

  “And let’s get the ball to Slam,” Nick said.

  Jimmy shot him a look and Nick stared him down.

  Okay. So it was show time or blow time. We got the tap and Nick brought the ball down. I took Brothers to the baseline and got under the boards. He had expected me to move back outside and when he saw I was trying to position him he leaned on me good. He knew the game. Nick shook his man at the foul circle and drove the right side of the lane. Their center moved over to cut him off and Nick passed off to me. A fake took Brothers into the air and I went up a split second later, leaned into him for the foul and put the ball against the boards.

  The whistle blew and when I looked the ref was pointing to Brothers for the foul. My foul shot rimmed the basket and fell in.

  Brothers brought the ball down for them, dribbling the ball between his legs the same way he had before. I was looking around for the pick when he passed the ball into the center. Brothers put his hand on my chest and just pushed a little. I went to slap his hand away and he cut past me toward the hoop. He got the handoff from their center, went up and drove through the dunk. Their crowd went into a wild, crazy-butt chant.

  We had the ball and I went coast-to-coast with Brothers breathing on me. I decided to just power over him but he went up with me and slapped my stuff away. It went out over my head and when I turned I saw that Nick had it for a split second. Then it was back to me and I was going up again. This time I got over Brothers and made the deuce.

  It was our deuce but Brothers was getting to me and he knew it. Every time I looked at him he was smiling. Their center lost the ball the next time down and we got back faster than they did for another deuce. Trinity was strong, but they couldn’t run that good.

  They brought it down slow and Brothers pointed at me and started waving to his team. He wanted them to clear out so he could go one-on-one with me. I pushed up on him and kept a hand on his hip. He kept his body between me and the ball and kept an elbow in my chest. He rocked back and forth a little, faking a move to his left and running his mouth.

  “What you want me to do, man?” he said. “Your choice.”

  “Shut up!” I said, and I was sorry I said it because I didn’t want him to know I didn’t dig his rap.

  He made another fake left and I felt a hand in the small of my back. I reached behind me, looking for the pick, when he took off. Second slam.

  Trip threw up a shot for us and it was blocked but Jimmy got it and bounced it to me. I went down the right side with Brothers almost in my skin. Nick was curling on the baseline. On the way up for the shot I saw that Brothers had his arms up in my way and I brought the ball back down and around my back to where I hoped Nick was. Nick made the basket.

  Their number 5 took the ball out, threw it into Brothers, and he spun around with a big step and ran smack into Trip for a charging foul. That was Brother’s third foul and they called a time-out. The scoreboard said Visitor’s 27, Home 32.

  “Slam, he’s doing everything on that first step,” Ducky said as I sat down. “He’s got that one real long step.”

  We had been twelve points down at the half and now we were only five down with the ball.

  When play started again we inbounded the ball on the side and I took it at the top of the key.

  “Come on!” Brothers beckoned me to him.

  I went right up with the three-pointer and it didn’t touch nothing but net.

  They threw a long pass that went out of bounds and we got the ball. We brought it down and Jimmy put the ball up. It bounced around the rim and he got it and put it back up again. It bounced off again and I got it and put it up. It bounced off again and their tall black guy went up for it. The pill bounced off his hands and went against the backboard and in. The score was tied.

  Ducky was right. What Trinity was doing was setting things up for Brothers. All he needed was a heartbeat for that one quick step and he was gone. Once he got past he had a strong move to the hoop. I moved up on him and kept slapping at the ball so he had to keep his back to me. That slowed down that big step. And I told Jimmy to yell out when I was moving toward a pick so I wouldn’t have to reach for it.

  We were playing them good and you could tell that the team was getting their confidence back.

  I was looking for the chance to slam on Brothers and it came with a minute and a half left and us up by three. Glen was in the game and he picked off a pass that was headed for their center. I broke and Glen threw the ball downcourt. The ball arrived six feet in front of our foul line just as I was crossing it. I grabbed the ball and went up with Brothers all over me. But I was definitely flying. I brought it down with two hands as hard as I could and heard it rip through the net. We were up by five.

  “How you like it?” I asked Brothers as we come down the court. He didn’t say nothing.

  They brought the ball up slow, confident, and Brothers took me in deep. I fronted him and he went out to the corne
r. He got the ball there and I cut off the baseline but he wasn’t going anyplace. He just popped the three from the corner and we were only up two with a whole minute to play.

  The coach was signaling for us to take some time off the clock. We ran it down for a while waiting for them to foul us.

  “Foul nine!” Brothers was calling when number 9, Trip, got the ball.

  The black guy on their team ran over toward Trip with his hands out like he was going to foul him then slapped the ball away. He took off after the ball and I took off after him. I caught up with him halfway down the lane and he dished out to Brothers in the corner.

  Bam! The dude hit his second three in a row. We were down by one with eight seconds to play.

  We called a time-out and the coach set up a play for me.

  “Two picks. I want Jimmy at high post and Glen at low post,” he said. “Nick’s got the ball. Slam, you start baseline and run and come out to the lane. Try to run your man into either the low pick or the high pick. It’s got to go bang-bang because we only have eight seconds left. If there’s any problem inbounding, call another time-out, we have one left. Nick, if Slam goes in you come out for the dish in case he gets tied up, if he’s making a move on the outside you go deep. Jimmy clear out the paint. Now, put your hands together.”

  It sounded on the money. We put our hands together and went out for the last play.

  Jose was in and he was inbounding. Trinity had Brothers on me, as usual. I checked his mug and he wasn’t smiling. The ball came in and I ran along the baseline and past Glen with Brothers on my hip. I moved him into Jimmy at the high post but Brothers got past him, too.

  I turned and headed back toward the hoop as Nick got the pill. Nick went up in the air and one of their players went up with him. He brought the ball toward me and Brothers cut me off as the guy guarding him brought his hand down to stop the pass. Nick twisted in the air and somehow got the ball against the backboard. Yes! Yes!

  The gym was going wild and I looked up and saw that time had run out. We had won! Our bench was going crazy.