I was feeling good when I went out onto the floor for practice. The good feeling lasted about two minutes. They put us through stretching drills we were supposed to memorize, and then ball handling drills until we were just about too tired to stand. There were two coaches, Teufel and Leeds. Teufel had seen me play and had offered me the scholarship. But on the floor it seemed as if Leeds, the assistant coach, was the main man. After the drills he had us playing three men against four at three different baskets.
“There’s two teams,” he said, “a home team and a traveling team. The traveling team will be the nucleus of Montclare’s basketball program and will consist of fifteen players. When we go on the road, these are the men who will go. The home team will be the traveling team and five more players. Under conference rules only fifteen players can suit up at any one time, but there will be five more players officially on the team. In case a player on the traveling team is hurt or sick, one of the five other players will suit up to take his place. All in all, there are twenty positions available, and if you look around you, you’ll see that there are twenty-one players trying for these positions.”
Leeds looked around with a big smile on his face like he was enjoying the whole thing.
There were three guys that Colin had told me about and I checked them out. One was a brother named Bobby Wortham that played center. I had heard about him because my cousin had played against him when the New York playground all-stars had played against the Philadelphia playground all-stars. I had seen him on television once when Montclare had played against DePaul’s. He was smooth and handled the ball better than most big men.
The main guard, at least the one who made the most noise, was a stocky guy from Indiana named Hauser. Hauser had dirty-blond hair and gray eyes that never blinked. He wasn’t much on going to the hoop but he could pass off either hand and hit from the outside. His best shot was on defense, though. He was quick and had real strong hands.
But the Montclare star was this long, lean dude who had made All-American the year before. Larson was thin in his body but he had big legs and he could really get up in the air. He could do anything that had to be done. Take you inside, take you to the corner, anything. He looked a little like the guy who played Superman in the movies, too, except that he had light brown eyes.
After the games Leeds asked us about injuries we’d had in the past, and if anybody needed their ankles taped for games. Then he went on about how they had computerized their offensive game and how each player was to accomplish certain goals. It didn’t sound much like the kind of ball I had been playing most of my life.
Most of the team was white. There were four black guys, me, Bobby Wortham, a guy called Neil, and Juice. Juice was okay. He was a muscle guy with a big barrel chest. He wasn’t too good-looking either, which made all those muscles seem for real. He wasn’t really ugly, it was just that one side of his face always seemed to have a regular expression and the other half looked like it was mad or something.
Wortham came over and said hello to me and Juice and asked where we were from, but Neil acted as if he didn’t even see us. His game was okay, he had a nice shot, but he acted a little as if he didn’t want to get sweaty or something.
The rookies and the redshirts had to wait until the regulars had finished their showers before we could get into the shower room. I didn’t mind that, but somehow I just didn’t feel like I was part of what was going on. I was glad to get dressed and head back to Orly Hall. Sly caught up with me halfway there. He was six feet and had this hippy-dippy be-bop walk. He had dark hair, which he had cut short.
“What you think so far?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said. “Same thing I was gonna say.”
We exchanged fives.
They give me this little piece of job. I was supposed to work in a hospital which was about a mile away from the campus. It was called University Hospital. A lot of the kids who were studying to be doctors and whatnot, they worked in the hospital. What I was supposed to do was to work in the physical therapy department. Leeds said there wasn’t much to the job, but I had to do it if I wanted to get some money for extra expenses, ’cause the scholarship only covered books and tuition and stuff and just enough money to get by on.
I got the campus bus and went over to the hospital. I found the physical therapy department after asking about six people directions. They looked at me as if they had never seen a black guy before. Finally they sent me down to the end of the building that looked a little newer than the rest.
“Excuse me, I’m supposed to see Dr. Corbett.”
The woman sitting behind the desk was kind of nice-looking. I thought I had seen her around the campus before but I wasn’t too sure.
“You’re Lonnie Jackson?” she asked. “The basketball player?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Ann Taylor.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it. “It’s really Annie Taylor, but I hate Annie, okay?”
“Hey, mama, it’s your name.”
“I hate mama, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay. Dr. Corbett isn’t here right now, he’s usually here in the mornings. It’s my understanding that you’re only going to be here six hours a week, right?”
“Right. Two days, three hours each day.”
“Okay. Eddie Brignole comes twice a week, two and a half hours each time. I think you can work with him.”
“You think?”
“Dr. Corbett isn’t too enthusiastic about the athletes working with the kids, but we’re too shorthanded to complain, really.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Let me tell you about Eddie. He’s got one real problem, as far as we know. Sometimes with a kid you really can’t tell what problems they have until they’re more developed. Anyway, Eddie’s nine and he’s so withdrawn that at first we thought he was autistic, you know what I mean?”
“What does he do, draw and stuff like that?”
“Draw?” She had pretty eyes, man, and when she said that they got kind of wide and nice.
“No, he doesn’t draw. He just sits around and does nothing most of the time. He won’t play with the other kids or anything. Most of the time he just goes into the gym and sits by himself. What we do is just sit with him and talk to him. The staff psychiatrist seems to think that he looks forward to coming here even if he doesn’t do anything and that it might help in the long run. Once in a while the athletes do get a rise from him, but not usually. So there you are.”
“You said he’ll be here soon?”
“Oh, one more little problem that you’ll just love,” Ann said. “Can I call you Lonnie?”
“Yeah.”
“Eddie comes here with his mother. She sits in the gymnasium for the whole time. Whatever you do will be wrong as far as she is concerned. If she had the money she would take him to the—how does she put it now—‘the best clinics in the world.’ But she doesn’t, so she’s stuck with us, and we’re stuck with her. She’s not shy about telling you either.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I can handle it.”
“I hope so. She’s worn out two football players already.”
I just sat around for a while and read and looked at a magazine until this kid Eddie was supposed to show up. After a while a woman about medium height with dark hair pulled away from her face with a comb and bobby pins at the back of her head came in. She wore a suede jacket with fur trim that fit her kind of nice. She probably could have looked a little better if she took care of herself. Ann motioned for me to come over. Well, this chick was sitting at the side of Ann’s desk drumming her fingers like she was pissed off already.
“Mrs. Brignole, this is Lonnie Jackson.” Ann’s voice carried a smile with it. “He’s going to be working with Eddie for a while.”
“Hello.” I stuck out my hand. She looked at it, and when she looked back at Ann she didn’t make a move to shake my hand.
“Does he have experience working
with young children?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Ann said, smiling. “But I’m sure he’ll do a wonderful job, Mrs. Brignole.”
“If he has no experience, I don’t want him working with Eddie,” Mrs. Brignole said. “I insist upon having someone with some experience at least.”
“Fine,” Ann said. “We might get some experienced people in when the new budget is approved next spring. If and when we do, you’ll be the first person we contact.”
“I think … I think you’re being impudent,” Mrs. Brignole said.
“If you want to speak to Dr. Corbett, it’s fine with me,” Ann said. “He’ll be in sometime tomorrow morning.”
Mrs. Brignole took a deep breath and put her fingertips to her brow. Ann looked at her and then looked down at the desk. I started to say something like how I would try real hard, but Ann stopped me by raising her hand. I wasn’t that interested in working with a handicapped kid in the first place.
“What am I supposed to do?” Mrs. Brignole spat each word out carefully. “Give my son over to any student who seems to have nothing to do?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brignole,” Ann said. “The only thing I can do is offer you what services we have. I don’t want to sound uncaring, because I’m not, but you’re going to have to take what we have to offer or wait until our budget is increased. Look, why don’t you go and get Eddie, at least for today, and let him meet Lonnie.”
Mrs. Brignole took a deep breath, stood, and walked out of the office.
“She don’t seem too happy to see me,” I said.
“She is not a happy woman,” Ann answered.
“Look, is that it, she’s just going now?”
“No, she has Eddie out in the car. She has this station wagon that looks like a World War Two tank. You know, the child has been like this for a long, long time. It’s got to be hard on her, too, Lonnie. Dr. Corbett thinks it would help if she went through a little therapy herself, but she won’t do it.”
“She’s a little wacky?” Lonnie asked.
“Probably not your out-and-out wack,” Ann said. “But the home environment isn’t right. A few hours here isn’t going to help very much. But at least Eddie hasn’t gotten worse.”
“What do you do when he comes here? I mean, does he have a program?”
“No, he sits on the floor and he stays there for the whole time unless there’s a chair set up—then he sits on that.”
“He sits down wherever you put the chair?”
“Wherever you put it,” Ann said.
“Hey, look, what am I supposed to be doing with the dude?”
“Well, let him sit down on the chair and you could talk to him and you can do jumping jacks, anything. He will just look at you. If he responds to anything, which I don’t think he will, then you can try to play on that. The whole thing is to try to get some response and, you know, other than that, you’re just babysitting.”
“Yeah, okay. Look, I’m going to check on the gym.”
I went into the gym. It was a little dinky gym. I saw where the chairs were stacked against the one wall and I got one. I set it up and put it at the side of the foul lane under one basket. I saw a basketball and I went and got that.
Just then a door opened and Mrs. Brignole came in with Eddie. He was a little kid. Not even five feet tall. He looked a lot like his mother, except for his hair. Her hair was dark brown and his was like a red, a deep, dark red. I stood beneath the basket, just sort of bouncing the ball off the backboard. I watched as Eddie came slowly toward the chair and sat in it. Mrs. Brignole leaned against the wall.
“Do you want to sit there or do you want to get up and play some ball?” I asked.
Nothing.
The cat’s face wasn’t like blank, which is what I thought that Ann meant. Instead he just had his head down, like, you know, beaten, pushed down. I threw the basketball through the hoop and I looked at Eddie. The boy’s head was still down.
“Okay,” I said. “Now you sitting in that chair because somebody told you that you got to sit in that chair, right?”
Nothing.
“Now you got to look at what I’m doing for the same reason you got to sit in that chair, because if you don’t look at me, then I don’t know if you know what I’m doing, see. And you and me are going to get along. You can’t make believe I ain’t here. That’s the only thing I don’t like. Now you look at me, man.”
Nothing.
Eddie kept his head down.
“Hey, I’m not going to keep telling you. When I tell you to look at me, I’m serious, man. I’m really serious.”
Nothing.
I put the ball under my arm and walked over to the dude and lifted his chin up. I moved my arm and he let his head fall down to his chest again. I lifted it up again, the expression was the same. Now, I mean, he looked like he was sad, so I lifted his head a little harder.
“Hey, man, I ain’t playing with your butt, stop ignoring me, man.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see his mama changing her position. I stood back and watched as my man’s head dropped again and then I passed him the ball. It bounced lightly off his chest. I grabbed the ball and went up for a layup.
“Two nothing, my favor,” I said. “Now it’s your turn.” I bounced the ball off of him again. “You missed an inbound pass, dude,” I said, grabbing the ball. “I got it, I’ll dribble around you, fake you out, and shoot. Yes! I got the ball in, that’s four points for me and nothing for you. I’m going to wipe you up, turkey, you ain’t no ballplayer.”
I bounced the ball off Eddie’s leg this time, grabbed it off the ground and started dribbling around him, faking left and faking right, then I leaned against Eddie’s chair and turned around and put up a soft hook that touched nothing but net and fell through.
“All right. The kid is on his game,” I said. “The television cameras are on me as I slaughter you, Eddieee. The score, nothing for you and six for meee.”
I saw his mother take a step forward and stop. I see she is one of those protective mamas. I didn’t care. I backed off a little bit and threw the ball to him, lightly.
“Here comes a pass to you.” Bang. He didn’t move and the ball rolled over to the side. I grabbed it.
“I got the rebound, now I’m going to dribble around you again and I’m going to fake you out. Here I come.” I dribbled past him and laid the ball up again. “There, man. That’s ten for me and nothing for you.”
“Eight,” came the voice from Eddie Brignole. “You only have eight.”
“Okay, turkey,” I said. “Eight. I thought I could beat you a little easier than that. I see you watching everything I do, huh. Okay, this time I’m not going to announce the game, man, I’m just going to go on and shoot the ball, man. ’Cause you got your head down and you won’t be seeing what I be doing, man. Okay, here comes the ball to you.” I threw him the ball. It bounced off of him again. I grabbed it and moved toward the basket, but this time I was watching him and he turned just as I threw the ball against the backboard. It fell through.
“Now I got ten, now I got ten!” Then I came back, threw him the ball again. I saw his hand move, he wanted to grab it. I just knew he wanted to grab that ball.
I said, “Okay, okay, Eddie, now the game is twenty. I got ten in the first half. But right now I’m going to show you a few shots, right? I’m going to amaze you. Watch this.”
I moved back to the top of the key. I looked at him to see if he was looking at me. He wasn’t looking right at me but he had lifted his head and I knew he could see me out of the corner of his eye. I put the ball on the floor one time and I threw up a soft jump shot. It arched easily through the air and bounced off the back rim. I looked over at Eddie and he smiled.
“Hey, man, don’t be smiling at me. I mean, I could still beat you, even if I did miss that one shot.”
It went on like that for about a half hour more. The dude was actually glad to see me miss and I didn’t care. It was like a little game we
were playing. He was sitting there watching me, hoping I would miss and I was watching him, seeing how he would react. Then I told him we would have a rest period and we would start the second half of our game, but this time I told him I wanted him to get up off that chair and try a shot. All you got to do is try one shot, just one shot and that’s all, okay, one shot?
“Can you make one shot? Oh, I see you can’t even make one shot, that’s your problem, man.”
He didn’t say anything. I sort of picked him up in one arm, half lifted him, and walked him over to the basket. I knew he could walk okay. I put the basketball in his hands and lifted it, and I told him very softly in his ear, “Don’t drop this ball when I give it to you, man. Don’t drop this ball, ’cause I ain’t like those other people, man, you know. I’m black and mean, jim. So don’t drop this basketball.”
I put it in his hand and he held it for a long moment.
“Go on shoot it, go on shoot it.”
He threw the ball up, it hit the bottom of the rim and fell down. I grabbed it and I kept on playing like I had before when he was sitting down. I would grab it and dribble around him. He just stood there. I kept throwing him the ball but he would just let it bounce off his body.
I said, “Okay, man.”
I figured I would see what this dude was really made of. I had an idea what he was made of when I saw the smile when I missed the shot and when he corrected me on the score. The dude didn’t like losing. He didn’t like losing, I knew.
I said, “Okay, Eddie, tell you what I’m going to do, man. Since I’m on the basketball team and you’re not even on a basketball team, I guess you need a little break, so I’m going to give you a break. Here, I’m going to give you the basketball and walk all the way across the gym now. If you make a basket before I get back over to you, I’m going to give you ten points. Now hold this basketball, Eddie, HOLD THE BASKETBALL. I told you I’m black and mean, jim.”
He took the basketball. I didn’t have to lift his arms. I walked all the way across the floor, turned, and said, “Okay, Eddie, here I come now.” I began walking slowly toward him. He didn’t move. I kept on coming, very slowly. “Here I come, Eddie, here I come. You better get it up now. You better get it up. If you want them ten points you better get it up, here I come.”