If Tomas had taken the ball from me, I might have punched his lights out. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the ball. But then, maybe, we wouldn’t have copped the W.
The next day in school there was some back-and-forth about how Ruffy had put Tomas on the ground, but I stayed away from it. I was trying to be cool. Like my man Othello, I was trying to be bigger than the small stuff.
The second period ended and I was going toward the media center when I saw Tomas in the hallway. He stopped and glared at me as I came near him. I guessed that was supposed to mean something. I stopped a few feet from him and glared back.
“I’m getting tired of you,” he said.
“If you got something you need to say with your hands,” I said, “speak up or get out my face.”
I think he was measuring me, wondering if he could take me. I had an answer for him if he had the nerve to put the question out there. Hell, no.
He walked away, but he was ready. He wasn’t backing down, just not dishing in school.
Practice. House was cutting daggers at me like he wanted to do me some serious harm. We didn’t have any drills, just worked on getting the ball inbounds and ran a few plays off the high pick with Ruffy and Abdul taking turns at center. I wondered if House was going to start Abdul. Abdul was okay, but he wasn’t big enough to play center, and he wasn’t as good as Ruffy anyway.
Fletch came over to me at the end of practice. When House saw him start to talk to me, he called him. Fletch said he’d see him in a minute.
“Now!” House shot back.
Fletch turned his back to House and put his arm around me. “Don’t let what’s happening off the court get on the court and mess with your game,” he said.
“Whatever.”
“And I said the same thing to Tomas,” he said. Then he walked away.
Boys & Girls had DeShaun Williams. He was six-nine and skinny. He claimed he was only eighteen, but he had three kids and one of them was going to school already. Jocelyn and her girl friend Ramona came to the game, and I pointed him out to her and asked her if she thought he was only eighteen.
“Probably,” Jocelyn said. “I know his whole family. They’re all ugly. That’s how ugly looks when it’s stretched out like that.”
Boys & Girls should have been a good team, but they laid everything on DeShaun. Their team stood around and waited for him to throw them the ball. Ruffy’s job was just to keep him off the boards, and it wasn’t easy because he was strong and he kept swinging his elbows. On defense I helped to block out as much as I could or else went over and helped bang on DeShaun.
On offense they were letting us go by, but DeShaun was knocking everything away. The first quarter ended with a sloppy 13–13 score and we had a bunch of turnovers. We were up at the half 37–27.
The whole second half was stupid ball, with Boys & Girls turning the ball over like they didn’t want to win. I made sure that I fed Tomas inside a few times, and he made sure that he blocked out when I took my man to the hoop. It was like we were showing respect but without the feeling.
We half won the game and they half lost it. We were changing and Tomas came over and hit me on the leg.
“Nice game,” he said.
“Your mama tell you to say that?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling.
I got home, and my mother’s sister, Aunt Ethel, was there with her husband’s father, Mr. Cephus. The old fellow fascinated me because he was nearly blind but he was always sharp. Aunt Ethel said he dressed himself. Plus he had become rich working as a mechanic or rebuilding cars, something like that. He was kind of a typical old dude because he always asked how we were and then started talking about himself before you had a chance to answer.
“So what’s going on in your life, young Mr. Drew?” he asked me.
“Not much,” I said. “Just going to school, playing a little ball—you know, same old thing.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “You know, I used to play baseball back when they had Negro Leagues.”
“I’ve heard a lot about the Negro League,” I said.
“Not Negro League,” he said, turning his head away from me. “Negro Leagues. There was more than one Negro league. There were the big-time leagues that everybody knows about because white writers talk about them, and then there were the little leagues around the country. There was a Kansas City Monarchs out in Kansas City and there was the Monarchs right here in New York. That’s who I played for.”
“It must have been frustrating knowing you could play ball as good as the white players and not be able to get into the Major Leagues.” Jocelyn had come in and sat in the armchair across from Mr. Cephus.
“Not for me it wasn’t,” Mr. Cephus said. He moved his head away again, and I knew that little move must have just been about something he felt inside.
“It would have been for me,” Jocelyn said.
“It wasn’t for me because I couldn’t play no ball!” Mr. Cephus said. “I could field a little, but everybody knew I couldn’t hit a fastball to save my soul. Did I tell you I once batted against Bob Feller, the white guy who went into the Hall of Fame?”
“No, you didn’t,” I answered.
“Well, I wasn’t blind then,” Mr. Cephus went on. “But I might have been, because that young boy was throwing smoke across that plate and all I saw was a blur out on the mound, followed by a large pop when that ball hit the catcher’s glove. Man, he could pitch.”
“But you still played?” Jocelyn asked.
“Yeah, I played. I had a dream that I wanted to be something special. I thought it was baseball until I played it. I played for two years and I knew it wasn’t going to be about baseball.”
“Then you went into cars?” I asked.
“No, I always worked around cars,” Mr. Cephus said. “After I left baseball—or baseball left me—I got into the antique business. Read a lot of books about it and learned to prance around like I knew something.”
“That’s a good business,” Jocelyn said.
Mom looked in, saw me and Jocelyn talking with Mr. Cephus, and gave us a Mom smile before ducking back into the kitchen to talk with Aunt Ethel.
“That wasn’t no good business for a black man, because black people don’t want old furniture and they don’t care if you call it an antique or not,” Mr. Cephus said. “Then when they get to the point they do want antiques, they’re so white they need to go buy it from the white dealers. You see what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said.
“People told me to give up trying to be special and settle down to a regular life. There ain’t nothing wrong with a regular life, and that’s the Lord’s truth,” Mr. Cephus said. “But it wasn’t for me, because I wanted to be something special. I didn’t care what it was going to be or how it was going to be special, but I wanted to be special. I thought I might have to go out and rob a bank or something. So when people started pointing their fingers at me and smiling up their sleeves, it didn’t bother me none. I believed in my little dream even though it wasn’t doing exactly what I wanted it to do.
“Sometimes I felt like I was coming home to my dream—walking in the front door—and Mr. Reality was sneaking out the back door with a grin on his face. I knew how easy it was for a dream to die. I seen that all around me. You could let it die by just looking the other way—you know, some of those Asian people say they don’t kill nothing, but they’ll take a fish out of water and lay it on the ground and then say it just died on its own—you can do that with a dream, too. And sometimes you can get so frustrated, you feel so bad about your dream, that you go on and kill it yourself. When you do that, you’re killing a piece of yourself, too.”
“So did you get to be special?” Jocelyn asked.
“Yeah, I did, girl.” Mr. Cephus smiled as he shook his head. “I was working in a car repair business, and every once in a while I got my hands on a car that I could fix up and resell. That worked out pretty good, and after a while I bought a c
ouple of houses and fixed them up and resold them. Before I knew it, I had made enough money for people in Harlem to start calling me mister. When I made enough money for the white folks downtown to start calling me mister—then guess what?”
“You knew you were special,” Jocelyn said.
“Do tell!” Mr. Cephus slapped his knee and started laughing out loud. Mama and Aunt Ethel came in to see what was going on, and Mr. Cephus started telling the same story all over again, beginning with the Negro Leagues.
The news about Bryant reached the neighborhood about a quarter past six. Three guys and a girl called to give it to me. Boogie had been thrown out on a technical late in the last quarter, and Bryant had lost to Warrick. We had a chance to win the division and move to the next level. All we had to do was beat Bryant with Boogie in the game.
The story was in the hood that night and all around the city in the morning. Kids in school who didn’t know squat about ball were running around talking about the big game coming up. The teacher’s aide who made the announcements in the morning wished the team luck and said that she hoped we got more runs than Bryant. Right.
Sporting News sent a photographer and a reporter to our practice. The reporter said that he had talked to the Bryant coach, and he was glad that it was a showdown between the two best teams.
House said us against Bryant was like the old rivalries between Lincoln and Grady in the B League.
The photographer took a lot of pictures, mostly of Tomas and way too many of Colin. They even took a picture of Colin standing on a chair up near the rim as if he were dunking.
“If he wanted to slam during a game, I’d have to follow him around the floor with that chair,” Sky said.
Soon as the guys from the paper left, House got down to business. We practiced some backdoors and everybody had to shoot fifty shots from the foul line.
“We can win or lose the game from the foul line,” Fletch was saying. “You get tired, you get nervous, and you forget to bend your knees. Your body puts the ball in motion, not just your arms. If your body puts the ball in motion, you’re going to make seventy-five percent of your shots. And don’t do what Abdul likes to do, bend your knees, then straighten up before you take the shot. One smooth motion. Bryant lost by five points and they missed eight free throws. You can do the math. Anybody who can’t figure that out, see me after practice!”
I did my free throws and hit thirty-one out of fifty. House asked me what my problem was and I said, “Nothing.” That was a stupid question.
I sat down and watched Tomas go to the line. He hit forty-two out of fifty. Colin hit forty-two out of fifty, too.
“That’s what white people do when they’re not out in the street or going to work,” Ernie said. “They shoot foul shots.”
That was funny. I was just hoping they shot them that well against Bryant.
Back in the hood the weather was freaky warm and the garbage was stinking up the place. People had their windows closed, and someone even called the fire department to see what the smell was. It was just the garbage and the dirty street and the smell coming off the river.
We were going to play Bryant at our gym on Friday, and Mr. Barker called a special pep rally assembly on Wednesday morning. We all had to show up in our uniforms. The band played, and we were introduced one by one. It was definitely mad. Everybody was making noise, and Mr. Barker and House made speeches about how proud they were of the team and whatnot. A girl from the eleventh grade said that she was going to go out with the guy who made the most points. Abdul said he hoped it was him.
“Yo, Abdul, she’s a skank!” Needham said when we reached the locker room. “She’s liable to have congenital pregnancy or something!”
“Yo, check this out.” Ernie called us in close. “Abdul finally found out that him and his sister are built different. Now he wants to know what that means.”
“Don’t talk about my sister,” Abdul said.
“The only way that Abdul and his sister are built different is that her mustache is bigger than his,” Sky chimed in.
Abdul got mad and pushed Sky, and we almost had a fight right there, but House and Ruffy broke it up.
“Save your fight for the game, guys,” House said.
All day Friday I was nervous, thinking about the game. In English, Miss Tomita got on my case because my mind wasn’t on the class discussion. She had wanted it to be on contrasting the character of Iago with the character of Roderigo, but it broke down into a fight between the girls and the boys. The boys thought that Othello should have killed Iago for lying on his woman.
“Or at least for putting his business in the street,” one dude said.
The girls said that Iago and Othello were doing a man kind of thing and it was the chick who got iced.
I knew it was wrong to take Othello’s side, but I could see where the brother was coming from. If the only thing he had going on was his rep and his woman, and all of a sudden it looked like she was running off and kicking his rep in the dust along the way, he would have to feel like he wanted to go to 187. It was wrong, but in a way I could still see it.
“So what you’re saying, Mr. Lawson”—Miss Tomita had a hand on her little bony hip—“is that you would throw away your whole life because of what you thought was going on?”
“Yo, Miss T, can I think about it?”
“Think, my lord.”
We met at the gym. House talked about getting everybody into the game and going after loose balls. We were telling some jokes, and I could see that all the guys were on edge as much as I was. And we all knew we weren’t playing any chumps.
Game time. The Bryant team came by bus, but their student body came by train or bus or car. There must have been five hundred kids with Bryant’s colors, maroon and gold. When our people saw that, they started coming in, too. Soon the whole gym was packed and cell phones were ringing everywhere. Baldwin’s blue and white was at the west end of the court and Bryant’s supporters were on the far end, away from the door.
“You see Boogie?” Ruffy asked me.
I looked over to where Bryant was running layups, and Boogie wasn’t there. “You think he’s going to play?”
“I don’t know,” Ruffy said. “I asked one of their guys about their last game, and he said some little white boy—number 14—got happy and threw in about two hundred threes. It wasn’t just a technical.”
“Why did Boogie get thrown out of the game?”
“There was a scramble on the floor and a guy bit him,” Ruffy said, smiling. “Boogie punched him in the mouth and got thrown out.”
I was glad to see that Ruffy was smiling.
The warning buzzer sounded, and all of a sudden we heard this big oooooooo! sound come from the Bryant side of the stands. We looked up, and they were bringing out signs and holding them up. I knew we shouldn’t have looked, but we all did. The signs read BEWARE THE BOOGIE MAN! And then, from out of the crowd, in his warm-up suit, came James “Boogie” Simpson.
“Hey, Drew, you looking good.” Boogie came over and put his arm around my shoulder. “You look like you eating Wheaties and lifting weights.”
“No, you’re the one eating Wheaties,” I said. “I see you brought your fan club with you.”
“Yeah, they came to see the Boogie Man.” Boogie grinned.
He patted me on the shoulder and went back to his team’s bench.
House got us together, and we stacked hands.
“Keep your heads in the game and play together,” he said. “We need to stop the ball early so they don’t set up their plays. This is our court and, if we want it bad enough, our game. On three—”
“One! Two! Three!” We broke and the game was on.
They copped the tap, and their two guard brought the ball down. We stopped the ball high and they forced it inside to their center, then threw it outside to Boogie. Boogie started his dribble outside the three-point line, and I came out to get him. I saw their big man come out to set a high pick. Boogie poin
ted to a spot on the floor and made a move toward him. I slid right and straightened up slightly to slide past him. Boogie made a quick move, I reached with my elbow to make contact on the pick, and Boogie made a crossover move to my left, which caught me leaning the wrong way.
Boogie’s first step was outside my foot and his next step was down the lane with me trailing him. Tomas came over and went up with Boogie. No contest. Boogie slammed over Tomas and the Bryant crowd went wild. They were up by two.
Ernie brought the ball down for us and Boogie was on me tight. I went inside and cut across the baseline and then out looking for their forwards. I found one, leaned into him hard for a moment, then shot out toward the three-point line. The forward took a step after me, stopped, and turned toward his own man, but it was too late. Sky had slipped deep, taken Ernie’s pass, and made the deuce.
I was tight. I kept my hands on Boogie when he didn’t have the ball, and pushed him whenever he tried to go by me. Boogie was strong, but mostly he relied on his speed, and I wanted to make him use his strength. Our guys were more active than Bryant’s, and if any of them tried to muscle his way to the hoop, we could double-team him and force the ball out.
We exchanged baskets again and everyone was feeling that the game was going well. The sneakers were squeaking on the newly polished floor as guys made good cuts. Bryant was trying to run plays, trying to establish an inside game against Ruffy, Tomas, and Sky, but it wasn’t working, so the guards were controlling the ball more and more. Boogie was probing, looking for something weak he could work on. The crowd was calling his name, for him to do something spectacular, but he was concentrating on setting up patterns. He had his game face on, and I knew he was showing us respect, but he was digging for the win.
Their center could sky, but he had bad hands. He was getting to the bounds but he wasn’t pulling them down cleanly. Plus whenever he had the ball, he would bring it down low and away from his body. Ernie tied him up twice and Sky stole the ball from him twice.
Boogie kept going to his left and I kept pushing him. Once he put a move on me and turned me around but drove into Tomas, and they called a charging foul on him. He grinned.