The Outside Shot

  “Yeah, man, it was okay,” Neil said. “I see the coach likes you.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “He put you in instead of Jake. Jake was always the man to go in at forward.”

  “Leeds don’t like me,” I said. “He had his little say when the game was over about how I blew a play.”

  “He always has something to say,” Neil said. “I’ll see you at practice.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I called to Neil as he headed for the stairway. “What’s this thing with Bobby? His game is better than Go-Go’s but the way it looks … you know, they seem to be building Go-Go up so much.”

  “Between you and me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “go on.”

  “Bobby’s got a drinking problem,” Neil said. “You see how late he comes to practice sometimes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t be bringing down the team by boozing it up,” Neil said. “Anyway, he can’t play his best game when he’s tearing up his body.”

  “What did you say to him?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say anything to him,” Neil said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  I didn’t know Wortham that tough. He seemed to go his own way and didn’t have no whole lot to say to anybody. Still, I couldn’t figure out why Neil didn’t say anything to him if he knew what was going down. I figured I’d speak to him if I had the chance. I didn’t know what I could say to him, but at least I’d pull his coat that I heard about it.

  When the school paper came out I was surprised that Bowers hadn’t put anything in it about our little run-in. All it said about me was that I played a few “productive” minutes. I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but I figured nobody else did either, so I didn’t think about it anymore.

  “Yo! Lonnie, wake up!”

  I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. I pushed myself away from the smell of stale beer and tried to figure out who was shaking me.

  “Yo! Lonnie! C’mon, man, wake up!”

  It was Sly. The lights were on and Sly was dressed. Colin was behind Sly, and he looked like he had hurt his hand or something and was trying to put a bandage on it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Dig it, you got to get dressed and come downtown with us,” Sly said, pulling the cover off me. “Juice is jammed up in town.”

  “What you mean, jammed up?” I saw the clock. It read either two thirty or three thirty, I wasn’t sure.

  “Ain’t got no time for explanations right now,” Sly said. “Either you with us or you against us.”

  “You in a fight?”

  “No, man, c’mon, we got to get my man out this jam.”

  “You talk to me real fast and real straight while I’m getting my clothes on,” I said. “If I don’t hear nothing, I ain’t going no place.”

  “Look, Juice is in the music store in town,” Colin said. “He can’t get out.”

  “How come?”

  “We were counting the jelly beans,” Colin said over Sly’s shoulders. “Sly figured we’d get in and count the jelly beans at night. We got in but Juice couldn’t get out.”

  “You out.”

  “Yeah, but Juice ain’t,” Sly said. “Look, man, you’re wasting time and the brother needs help.”

  I tied my sneakers and we started off. I took a look at Colin’s hand and it looked like just a scrape. I was still only half awake when we got out in front of Orly Hall, but the damp night air shocked me back to my senses. If Colin hadn’t been going along with the thing, I would have stayed in bed. We got out front and then me and Colin followed behind Sly around to the side of the building, where a cab was waiting. I got in and Colin got in beside me and then Sly got in the front in the driver’s seat.

  “Sly, what you doing driving?” I said.

  “Somebody got to drive,” he said.

  “Where the driver?”

  “He lent me the cab,” Sly said.

  “Hey, man, what’s going on here?”

  “We went down to the music store,” Colin said, “and hung around trying to count the jelly beans in the jar.”

  “There must have been twenty people there counting them beans,” Sly said. “Some of them had slide rules, calculators, the whole nine yards.”

  “So Sly figured we could slip into the store over the transom when the place closed, then count the jelly beans.”

  “You went along with that?” I looked at Colin and he shrugged.

  “Hey, it’s just as fair as using them slide rules,” Sly said.

  “Look where you driving, man,” I told him.

  “So we sat down and we counted all the beans,” Colin said. “But then we started to leave and we found that the door had one of those double locks. Once the door is locked you had to have a key to get out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So we went back over the transom,” Colin said. “Only the way the transom is built, it’s easy to get into and hard to get out of. Juice couldn’t make it.”

  “Crap!”

  “And there are gates at the window, so we can’t even break a window and get him out,” Sly said.

  “So what you come and get me for?” I asked. “He’s the sap, let him take the rap.”

  “Sly has another idea,” Colin said.

  “Look, all we got to do is get somebody in who can give Juice a boost and hold him up while he wriggles through the transom, see,” Sly said. “And you can get in and out easy.”

  “Hold time, how come I got to get in and out easy? I wasn’t in this mess in the first place.”

  “ ’Cause Colin could hardly get out himself the first time and now he’s got a hurt hand,” Sly said. “I’d go in myself but the reason somebody got to go in is to give Juice a boost and I ain’t strong enough to be boosting that big brother. That only leaves you, my man. If you got the heart, you got the part.”

  We got to town and Sly parked the cab in an alley. I asked him why he parked in the alley and he said that the guy he borrowed the cab from didn’t want it on the street. Yeah. Sure.

  It was a sparrow trip. There was my man Juice in the store, behind bars, looking like a stone convict. The guy looked pitiful. I surveyed the situation carefully and quickly figured out the best thing to do.

  “I’m going back to the dorm.”

  “Hey, we can’t let Juice go down the tubes,” Sly said.

  “Look, if I can get in there, and I’m not sure I can, what happens if the cops come along? Bam! They got my butt for breaking and entering. Bam! They got Juice for breaking and entering. This is your idea, you go in.”

  “He’s right,” Colin said. “It was your idea.”

  We went across the street and pretended to look into some windows of a bookstore until one of the town’s two patrol cars passed. Then we went over to the music store and boosted Sly up through the transom. He tried to lift Juice up so that he could get out of the transom but he couldn’t make it. He just wasn’t strong enough. I could see the clock in the church tower off the square. It was four thirty. It would be daylight soon and the way I figured it, Juice could be in a world of trouble. I had to help him.

  I told Colin to give me a hand up and went over and into the store. My heart was beating as fast as it could. Me and Sly made a step with our hands for Juice and he tried again. Soon as I saw him go up I saw that there was no way he was going to make it.

  “How did you get in that little space?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Juice said. “I got myself all skinned up getting in.”

  We sat there and looked at the transom for a while longer while we were waiting for the patrol car to pass again, then we tried to get Juice up again. He pushed and grunted a little, but it wasn’t any use. He couldn’t get out. I looked out at Colin and shook my head.

  The only thing to do at that point, I figured, was to split. The thing was mean, but there wasn’t any use for all of us to take the rap.

&nb
sp; “I guess y’all going to leave me,” Juice said.

  “I can’t see what else we can do,” I said. I felt sorry for the brother but it looked hopeless. “If we try to bust out of here, the only thing we’re going to do is set off an alarm or something, cause a lot of damage, and get into more trouble. Hey, maybe you could hide behind something and run out when the store opens.”

  The thought of Juice hiding behind a pole or something when the owner came in cracked me up and I had to smile a little. I turned away from Juice but he caught me and looked even sadder. Then I looked up and saw Colin coming through the transom. He got in with a little effort just as the patrol car came down the street. We all held our breaths as the patrol car stopped in front of the music store, then moved on. I looked over to where Colin was crouched down near a snare drum and saw he was holding a stick.

  “What are you going to do with that?” I asked. “I ain’t breaking no window in here.”

  “Look around for a hammer and nails,” Colin said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  We looked around for a hammer and nails as Colin laid the plan out. We found a tool box in the back. Then Sly and Colin worked on the transom while me and Juice set things up.

  We watched for the clock down the street, which we could see reflected off a mirror that the guy had on a shelf. The store was supposed to open at nine o’clock. We waited until eight forty-five. There were a lot of people walking past the shop, going to work, walking dogs, and whatnot. There were some students going past too. A few had already stopped and were looking at the jelly beans in the jar in the window when we started.

  Sly wasn’t bad on drums. Colin had given Juice a xylophone and showed him what notes to beat on. I had a cowbell and a little stick I was hitting it with, and Colin was playing a guitar. He had hooked it up to an amplifier and it just about drowned out the rest of us, thank God.

  We had a small crowd out in front of the place by the time the owner got to the store. We could see him standing out front and looking at his store like he didn’t know whether to spit or go blind. We had put the lights on so the students could see us and some of them were clapping along with us and a few were even dancing.

  The store owner ran around to the side door, saw that it was locked, shrugged, and started opening the gates. A policeman came by and he stopped him and pointed to us. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I’m sure the policeman was asking him how we got in, because he shrugged again. Then he and the policeman went around to the side door and saw that it was still locked. Every time they looked in at us we’d smile and keep on playing. The policeman came in the front door with the store owner and a lot of kids. The kids started dancing around us and one guy picked up some clave sticks and started playing them. The policeman went to the side door with the owner but kept an eye on us. They checked the door again and then checked the transom, but Colin and Sly had nailed the stick across the inside so it couldn’t be opened, at least not enough to let anyone in. Colin had figured from the dirt on the transom that the store owner hadn’t bothered with it for years and wouldn’t remember if he had put the stick there or not.

  “Okay, okay, you guys!” The policeman raised both hands and we stopped playing. Some of the girls that had come in with the policeman and the owner kept dancing until the policeman gave them a look. “How did you guys get in here?”

  “It’s a military secret,” Colin said. “The university is working on a research project designed to put people through walls.”

  “Don’t play grab-ass with me, punk!” The policeman, a big dude with ears that came down to the middle of his jaws, stuck his face into Colin’s.

  The crowd started booing and the policeman looked like he wanted to punch someone.

  “You gonna press charges against these clowns?” the policeman asked, looking at us.

  “Nooo!!” The people in the store all called out at once.

  “I guess not,” the store owner said, looking around and not seeing any damage.

  It took us another ten minutes, after we had all given our names to the policeman in case anything was missing, before we could go. The store owner thought it was some kind of a college joke or something. Then the policeman gave us ten minutes to get out of the store and out of town.

  “Where you guys going?” Sly asked as me, Colin, and Juice headed for the bus stop.

  “Back to campus,” Juice said. “You think that cop wasn’t serious?”

  “C’mon, man,” Sly said. “We’ll take the cab, might as well go back in style.”

  We told Sly what he could do with his cab, and when he said it wouldn’t fit we all volunteered to break it down into pieces that would.

  We had just got back to the dorm when the Fat Man called and asked if I wanted to coach a game between the mill guys and the post office team he had talked about before.

  “Larson says he’s tied up,” the Fat Man said. He had a voice that sounded as if it was coming out of his chest. “There’s fifty bucks in it for you if you want it.”

  I said okay. What I wanted was to take Sherry out, and I needed the fifty. I remembered what Cal had said about easy money. I wasn’t going to get the money for nothing, after all. I was working for it.

  I sat around with Colin for a while after I had spoken to the Fat Man, and he asked me if there was anything wrong, and I told him no.

  “I just get down sometimes,” I said.

  “You call home recently?” he asked.

  “What are you, now?” I asked. “My moms away from home?”

  “Yeah,” Colin said. “Why don’t you call home?”

  It was funny for him to say that and it took me by surprise. He didn’t care about the little names I was laying on him if he could help me. I hadn’t really thought about us being that tight, but I guess we were, or at least we were heading in that direction.

  I decided to make the call from the library. I felt good as I started out, but as I got near the library I got this funny feeling in my stomach. I started thinking of things I was going to say and I kept changing them in my mind. It didn’t make any sense to me that I was nervous about calling my own mother. I knew there were things she would want to hear, about how good I was getting on and how much I was getting out of college, things like that. But I wasn’t sure if I could make her understand how I was feeling.

  It wasn’t just that things were hard, because they weren’t really. I had hustled food from the supermarket when I was ten. There had been a time, when my moms was sick, that I had to fight my way through the junkies to get to the drugstore and get her prescription filled, and then fight my way past them again to keep it. I could take hard, I had learned to handle it. This was different. I had been man enough to struggle and get over in Harlem; in Montclare I was struggling just to let people know I was for real.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s happening?”

  “Lonnie? Is that you, baby? Oh, I’m so glad to hear you. How you doing out there?”

  “I’m doing just fine,” I said. “I had to make some adjustments, but things are working out. And how about you? How’ve you been?”

  “Pretty good. I’ve been doing pretty good,” she said.

  “I think you’d like it out here,” I said. “All those open spaces you used to talk so much about. Maybe you can come out one day.”

  “I don’t know.…” Her voice kind of died out a little. “Now that you in college and everything, I’m not sure if I know how to talk to you. You should hear yourself, soundin’ so proper and everything. You must be doin’ good at that school.”

  “Doing okay,” I said. “It sure doesn’t seem like I’ve been away three months.”

  “It’ll be three months this coming Saturday,” she said. “You like it out there?”

  “It’s a lot different than being home,” I said. “It’s nice.”

  “You got a new girlfriend?”

  “Well, I met this girl,” I said, “but Sherry and I aren’t really serious.”

  “She
’s going to the college, too?”

  “Yeah, she’s in some of my classes.”

  “Lonnie, you sure sound good,” Mom said. “I can’t wait to see somebody and tell them how good you’re soundin’.”

  We talked for a while longer and I felt sorry I had to say good-bye to her. I was really surprised at how she sounded. I had never thought about how we talked in Harlem before, and wondered how I sounded. I didn’t get around to telling her that I missed her, or that I missed Harlem either. That kind of thing was still hard for me to say. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t made many friends, or that I didn’t think many of the people at Montclare liked me. No use in getting her worried.

  The game between the mill guys and the post office dudes was jive. Pure and simple. The mill guys didn’t play as well as they did against us, but they didn’t have to, either. The post office guys played well for the first five minutes and even went ahead a little, but they were out of shape. By the end of the first twenty-minute half they were huffing and puffing around the court. The mill guys ate them up. I couldn’t see anybody betting on the game, but the Fat Man went around to some guys and it looked like he was collecting money.

  After the game the mill guys were all happy, as if they had really done something. They wanted to talk the game, to act like ballplayers. It took forever to get away from them. They even wanted me to go have some beer with them. I said I couldn’t because I was in training. They said they understood that and thanked me for coaching. Yeah.

  The Fat Man gave me the money and I put it in my pocket without counting it.

  “That post office team was crap,” the Fat Man said. “A bunch of stiffs.”

  “Somebody must have thought they were okay,” I said. “If there was money on them.”

  “Nah, it ain’t the game.” The Fat Man drove with one hand. He had two big rings on his hand. “It’s the action. Guys like to bet, ’cause they get a chance to be winners. You don’t know about that, see, because you’re a winner already or they wouldn’t have you playing ball for Montclare. The average guy, though, he don’t win nothing in his life. When he was a kid, like you, he didn’t make the teams ’cause he wasn’t good enough. When he got older he couldn’t play anything either. Chances are he’s either not married or he’s got some dame that’s breaking his chops. His boss kicks his butt, his telephone bills kick his butt, everything kicks his butt. But if he bets, he can be a winner.”