Basketball (or Something Like It)

  BOUNCE PASS

  Joel Bischoff and Coach Neeley ran the practices for the next couple of weeks. Sam Bernegger’s mother worked over at the university, and she said she’d put up a notice for a new coach. A paid coach. Maybe a physical education major or just one of those sports-crazy young students would be interested.

  What they got wasn’t a phys ed major or even a student exactly, but Duke Hand was crazy. He had taken a couple of undergraduate classes that semester and he saw the posting. He wanted to someday “major in law” so he could become a sports agent and make a lot of money. The North Bridge parents had another meeting, and they even agreed to pay the little extra for Coach Hand’s transportation costs.

  Nathan

  Nathan had never known a grown-up who cursed like Coach Hand did, not in public, anyway. It was kind of exciting, like all of a sudden being in a movie that his mother would never have let him see. And being that he was sitting on the bench for the entire North Bridge vs. Strathmore game, Nathan got to hear it all.

  “One of these home games, I’ll come to,” Nathan’s father had told him that morning.

  This was when Nathan acted all hurt and he pretended to beg his father. It was the reverse-psychology manipulation. And it was working.

  “C’mon, Dad. You’ll love it. It’s real exciting.”

  “If you were really doing it just for fun, it wouldn’t matter if I came to watch or not,” his father said. “You don’t ask me to watch you play computer games, do you? You don’t want me to cheer you on when you’re playing GameBoy?”

  “No,” Nathan answered.

  “This whole sports thing is out of control. It’s not about the kids anymore,” Nathan’s father said. He got up from the table to clear his breakfast dishes. “Maybe it never was.”

  Nathan watched his dad. All these weeks he had come home from practices and told his dad about the scrimmages and about the other players. Mostly he told his dad about Jeremy, about how he made the shot in the final seconds, or how Jeremy had stuffed some kid just as he was about to make a crucial layup. He told his dad about how Jeremy never lost the ball and could dribble between his legs.

  Only when Nathan told the story, he was Jeremy.

  His father never seemed to notice. At first Nathan was certain his father would realize these stories of amazing feats of athletic ability couldn’t be about his son. But he didn’t. And the stories just got bigger.

  And bigger.

  His father just listened, as if he had expected Nathan to be some great basketball star all along, just like everybody else had. Only he wasn’t. Being black may have gotten Nathan on the team, but it didn’t get him onto the floor. After the first couple of practices, it was obvious he never should have made the team.

  Of course, nobody said that.

  Nobody even seemed to believe it. Nathan just kept puttering along, missing layups and double dribbling. When they got to the game, he pretty much sat on the bench. At that last game, it had turned out to be the best seat in the house.

  FADEAWAY JUMP SHOT

  Coach Hand argued every call. He even argued the jump ball to start the game. He said that the referee threw the ball closer to the kid on the other team. At first the referee was nice about it.

  “Coach, you got possession. What are you complaining about?”

  But about two minutes into the first half and twenty comments later, the referee started to lose his temper.

  “Call the foul, ref!” Coach Hand yelled. “I could hear that slap from here.”

  Matt King had lost the ball coming downcourt. The referee said it was clean, but Coach Hand didn’t agree. It didn’t help that the North Bridge parents seemed to be fueling Coach Hand’s paranoia.

  “What horrible reffing,” Hank Adler’s dad called out from the bleachers.

  Coach Hand stood up in full agreement with that assessment.

  “Sit down, coach,” the referee said. “This is a warning.”

  Coach Hand yelled back, “Just call it both ways.”

  The referees gave him a look and then began the play again. This time it was Tyler Bischoff going in for a layup and missing the shot.

  “That was a foul,” Coach Hand stood up and screamed.

  This time the referee blew his whistle. He made the shape of a T with his hands, a technical foul. Coach Hand went crazy. The parents did, too.

  “What?” Tyler’s dad shouted from the bleachers. “What kind of call is that?”

  The referee went over to the bleachers. He pointed right at Tyler’s dad. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got a certificate and rule book in my car. Do you want to see them?”

  “Yeah, well. I got a pair of glasses and a whistle in my car, wanna use them?” Tyler’s dad shouted back.

  The referee made the big T with his hands again. That’s when Michael Morrisey’s dad stood up. “You can’t T up a parent!”

  “I just did,” the referee answered. “That’s four shots for Strathmore.” He blew his whistle extra long and loud. But it wasn’t over.

  It was not over.

  Not before Coach Hand let fly a combination of four-letter words that most of the boys had never even heard before; some configurations of people and animals and curse words that defied the imagination. Even the North Bridge parents got quiet. Everyone was looking at Coach Hand, who didn’t seem to notice. He still seemed to feel the power of the mob that was no longer behind him.

  That’s when it ended.

  The coach was asked to leave. Actually the referee threw him out of the game and Harrison Neeley’s dad (speaking for everyone involved) asked Duke Hand not to come to the next practice.

  North Bridge lost 63–28.

  Jeremy

  Jeremy went straight up to his room after the game. His grandmother hadn’t been able to go this time. She had to work. She had tried to change her schedule with someone else at the post office, but that person had a doctor’s appointment and, well, Jeremy’s grandmother was sorry. Jeremy knew she really was.

  She wasn’t home yet, and Jeremy was kind of glad. He didn’t feel like telling her about the game. He didn’t even care. He barely got to play. But it wouldn’t have made much difference.

  Jeremy sat down on his bed. On the bed. It wasn’t his. Not really. His grandmother said it had been his father’s room, though you’d never have been able to tell. There was no evidence of this having once been anyone’s bedroom, except for the bed. It looked like the room had been used as storage for about a hundred years. His grandmother had tried to clean it out as best she could (she bought him a new comforter), but there just wasn’t a place for all of this stuff. Pictures, boxes, folded blankets, old clothes, smelly books, smelly magazines, a bag of extension cords. A bag of bags. His grandmother didn’t throw much away. She just put things in bags and pushed them into the corners.

  So this had been his father’s room. Jeremy looked around at the walls. They were dark-paneled wood, or fake wood maybe. He couldn’t tell.

  And so this was the town that his father had grown up in. Weird. Totally weird. Everyone here was so fancy and rich. Nothing like his father. Or nothing like what he remembered of his father.

  What did he remember about his father? He hadn’t seen him in almost six months. Jeremy knew that after his mother died, the woman in the next apartment started baby-sitting. It wasn’t Lannie. It was two or three someones before Lannie. Jeremy was only five, but he remembered it didn’t feel right that the baby-sitter starting staying with them even when his father came home from work.

  Jeremy did remember his father’s mother, his grandmother, coming to visit sometimes. She always brought presents, and Jeremy liked that. But his father didn’t. You could just feel it. Something was wrong. They didn’t like each other. His dad didn’t like Jeremy’s grandmother and Jeremy’s grandmother really didn’t like the baby-sitters. Any of them.

  Jeremy kicked off his sneakers. One slid onto the floor and the other one went the other way, against the wall. It kn
ocked into a little green-painted frame hanging sort of cockeyed, almost completely hidden by a tall cardboard box. It was the only thing in the room that looked like someone had once put it there on purpose. Someone had bought that cheery green frame and framed whatever was under that glass.

  Jeremy leaned off the bed to read it.

  North Bridge High School

  North Bridge, Connecticut

  Having met the requirements for graduation as prescribed for the senior high school by the Board of Education of the township of North Bridge

  Ronald Binder

  is hereby declared entitled to all the privileges belonging to a graduate of this school and in recognition thereof is awarded this

  Diploma

  Twenty-first day of June 1985

  It was his father’s diploma, still hanging on the wall. Framed. Well, so here was definite proof that this had been his father’s room. His father really had lived here. Gone to school here. Slept in this room. Studied. Maybe talked on the phone to his friends.

  And all of a sudden something jumped into Jeremy’s brain. Something from the game that afternoon. It was after Coach Hand had gotten kicked out and they started the game again. The team was down by a million and two points. There was no chance of even coming close. The coach called Jeremy and a bunch of other kids off the bench. He went in with the loser team.

  He didn’t care.

  There was a minute and a half left on the clock. Jeremy stole the ball. He’d passed it to that big kid, Joey Water-something, and by some miracle he caught it. Jeremy dodged inside. He didn’t look. He knew it, the ball was coming back to him. The big kid bounced the ball back, and Jeremy snagged it down low. He dribbled two times hard, between two kids on the other team who were closing in on him. It was like slow motion. He went up. The ball rolled off the tip of his fingers and through the net, and then, out of the corner of his eye, Jeremy thought he saw him. He thought he saw his father. Was that him? Or someone who looked like him?

  Forty-five seconds left.

  He really did. It was as if his father was there. Watching him. So proud.

  It felt like energy inside. It felt, for those few seconds, like everything was all right again. The other team scored, and on North Bridge’s next possession Jeremy came downcourt, caught the ball at the three-point line, and hit the shot.

  He was sure someone was watching him. But when the buzzer sounded to end the game, Jeremy looked again. No one was there.

  POST UP

  Two days later Coach Vince was hired and Harrison Neeley’s dad was demoted to score-keeper. Although it wasn’t called a demotion. It’s just that in an effort to be 100 percent fair there really shouldn’t be any parents on the bench during games. If there are no parents coaching, then no one can accuse anyone else of playing favorites. An objective, honest, qualified coach was needed once more. And Coach Vince accepted.

  It seemed just right. Vince Anderson had played high school and college basketball. He had coached at the Y and the Boys and Girls Club in New York, where he was from. He was married only a few years and had no children yet. He worked during the day and his wife worked late. He loved basketball and he loved kids.

  No, he didn’t want to get paid. It was like a hobby. He liked being part of the community.

  Everyone had a good feeling. The kids liked him right away.

  And in a stroke of fortune or misfortune, depending on your point of view, Sam Bernegger’s dad said he could get all the boys leather basketball jackets from a friend of his, wholesale. Jackets with their names on the back. They needed a boost; after all, there was still more than three-quarters of the season to go. What’s eighty-five dollars?

  A bargain.

  SECOND HALF

  Hank

  Hank loved being on the travel team. There was something about everybody being on the same side, wanting the same thing, and fighting the same enemy; something that never happened in school or anywhere else. So in spite of having gone through three coaches already (if you include the two dads who took over for a short time), in spite of the fact that they were zero and five, and that they were nothing but a huge embarrassment to the North Bridge basketball board, Hank loved being on the team.

  He wore his team jacket to school. Proudly.

  “Hey, Adler, why don’t your jackets just say loser on the back.”

  Hank put his lunch tray on the table. There were five crucial minutes or so when the seventh-graders were passing through from recess and sixth-grade lunch began. Hank wished he had taken a minute or so longer at the counter.

  Hank turned around, even though he knew better. Even though he knew the owner of that voice was Alex Lyons; Alex, who had been picking on Hank since the beginning of this year, since sixth-graders started riding the middle-school bus. There was no real explanation for it. There had never been an original fight or disagreement. Never once had Hank said anything or done anything to make Alex Lyons decide to pick on him and nobody else.

  It was just one of those things. One of those being in the wrong place at the wrong time kind of things.

  Hank’s mother never understood. The same way his parents never understood why Hank wasn’t always a starter on the basketball team. They were certain it was all political. Another conspiracy.

  “Well, it must have been something,” his mother said. “Can’t you talk to this Alex boy? What’s his last name? I’ll call his mother. I’ll call the bus driver.”

  That was the first and last time Hank told his mother about Alex Lyons. And some days were better than others. Some days Alex wasn’t in the mood and didn’t say anything when Hank got on the bus or saw him in school. And some days were like today.

  “Your team sucks it up big-time. The rec team is better. And I hear you haven’t made a shot the whole season,” Alex said.

  “You got the fancy jacket and all your ass is doing is collecting splinters.”

  That was Alex’s friend, Carter Bunnell.

  “Why don’t you sell the jacket and take some shooting lessons?” Alex laughed. “Not that it would help. Lo-ser.” He made an L shape and held it up to his forehead.

  Hank still had not said anything.

  Alex Lyons wasn’t that big. But Carter Bunnell was huge. Huge and majorly ugly. Everyone knew Carter had beat up an eighth-grader at the beginning of this year for picking up his backpack by mistake. Both Carter and Alex played on the seventh-grade travel basketball team.

  Carter already had lots of hair under his arms, and Alex was developing acne.

  “Why don’t you see if the girl’s team has an opening,” Carter said, walking past.

  “Yeah, keeping the score book,” Alex said, and as he walked past he shoved Hank with his shoulder. It was the first time he had actually touched Hank. Hard.

  Hank reeled around and pushed Alex in the back. It happened so fast. The strength of his own reaction surprised Hank. It was an instinct he didn’t know he had.

  “Go to hell,” Hank added in, because at this point, why the hell not?

  By now more than a few kids in the cafeteria had noticed and started forming a kind of spontaneous circle. For the briefest second Hank was reminded of a picture in his social studies book: cavemen moving in for the big kill, surrounding one poor defenseless buffalo.

  “You little turd,” Alex said, and spun back around. Carter immediately stepped up beside him.

  So this is it.

  This is a fight. Hank’s heart started beating wildly. He was caught between pure fear and an incredible anger that was rising inside of him, as if it had been waiting there every bus ride of every morning all year. Hank felt his mouth go dry instantly. His fingers were tingling and his knees felt like rubber, like after running the mile in gym class. Apparently fear had some side effects.

  He could only hope that his anger would give him superhuman powers (he was going to need them), like in that movie from health class that showed how the fight-or-flight part of your brain sends out a message to release
lots of adrenaline.

  Hank was hoping lots of adrenaline makes you really, really strong.

  Or that the cafeteria lady (hurry up, please) would come rushing over and break it up.

  But instead, something more remarkable happened.

  “Leave him alone, asshole.”

  It was Jeremy Binder.

  Anabel

  Anabel saw the whole thing. She was sitting with Brigit and Erin, her two best friends. She watched until that new boy, Jeremy, suddenly jumped up and rushed all the way over from the other side of the cafeteria to where Hank Adler was standing. Normally somebody rushing, even somebody running, wouldn’t seem so unusual, but there was something so deliberate about Jeremy’s motion. Anabel thought she could sense a change in the actual atmosphere in the room. And even though she really had never seen it before, Anabel knew something very aggressively boylike was about to happen.

  “What’s going on?” Erin said. She was just about to take everything out of her lunch bag.

  “Looks like a fight,” Brigit said. “That new boy just ran over there like he was going to hit somebody.”

  “Jeremy Binder,” Anabel said.

  “You know him?” Brigit asked.

  “He’s on my brother’s basketball team.”

  “He’s cute,” Erin said.

  “Yeah, and he’s going to be killed,” Brigit added. “That’s Carter and Alex over there. It’s going to be terrible.” She stood up. “Let’s go watch.”

  Erin and Anabel didn’t hesitate.

  It’s just that there were not many good fights in North Bridge. Not any at all, really. Just the occasional shoving, pushing, name-calling, send everyone to the principal’s office. Last year a kid got in trouble for stealing another kid’s Palm Pilot from the gym lockers. And of course there was a rumor that Carter Bunnell beat up an eighth-grader who had cut in front of him in the lunch line. But Anabel had never talked to anyone who had really seen that themselves. Or even knew who the eighth-grader was. Only half the kids believed it happened at all. The other half had a completely different story about a backpack or something like that.