“Or a loser,” I said.
“That don’t matter,” the Fat Man said. He looked over at me as if I had said something wrong. “It doesn’t matter if you lose as long as you get to win sometime, college boy.”
The Fat Man dropped me off at the campus and said he’d see me around. Sometimes I thought he liked me and sometimes, like when he said “college boy” just before dropping me off, I felt he didn’t. I didn’t think it was because I’m black, because I didn’t feel he liked Larson that much either. It might have had something to do with us going to college, I wasn’t sure. But it was funny, in a way, getting something else in my life that people didn’t like me for.
Back in Harlem we used to talk about going to college a lot. Most of the guys never made it, and in our hearts we didn’t have much faith in our actual going, but we talked about it all the same. You could hang out on the streets and look around you and see other dudes hanging out, guys that should have been working or going to college or something. Instead they were just there, waiting for something to happen, while the days piled up on them and pushed them down. After a while they were as much a part of the street itself as the lampposts and the fire hydrants. I could see this just the same as the others, but I kept hoping that something different would happen to me. Nothing had until Cal came along.
Cal had played college ball and then went on to the NBA. He did okay there until he got in with some gamblers and started shaving points. The gamblers would decide that one team should beat the others by, say, five points. That five points would be the “spread.” Then they would pay a player, someone like Cal, to keep the winning total down to four points so they could collect their bets. Cal went for it, got caught, and was kicked out of the NBA.
After that he went downhill until when I met him he was a wino, just a step up from sleeping in the streets. Someone from the community center knew him and arranged to have him coach our team in a Coaches Tournament. It was in the Coaches Tournament that Cal taught me a lot about the game and about myself. He got me to the point where I could control my game and myself enough for someone like Teufel to offer me a scholarship out to Montclare.
I went into the library and counted the money. It was all there, fifty bucks. I had made fifty bucks for just standing on the sideline watching the mill guys play against—what had the Fat Man called them?—a bunch of stiffs. I thought back to Cal and all the trouble he had got himself into with gamblers in the NBA. It had blown his whole career. What would he have said if he saw me sitting in the library counting the money?
“The Fat Man is buying,” he would have said. “What are you selling?”
I told myself that I wasn’t selling anything.
One thing that Sherry got me into was movies. At first I thought it was stupid to go see an old movie and then sit around and talk about it all day like it was something great. I went along with it because that’s what she wanted mostly to do when we went out. I figured she thought we weren’t going to get into anything too heavy in a movie, and she was right. But after a while I began to dig the movies, too. Once she began to talk about them, you could see a lot more things in them.
When I picked her up after coaching the game for the Fat Man, she was looking great. She wore this short white dress with a pleated bottom and white shoes. When she sat down and that dress fell across those coffee-brown thighs, my eyes damn near got the hiccups from checking her out. Instead of regular earrings she had earrings made of feathers that curled along her cheek, and I could have sworn they were pointing right toward her lips.
This movie wasn’t much, something about what life was going to be like in the future. Everything was supposed to be hard. People were taking pills to get high, taking pills to get happy, taking pills to eat, the whole bit. There weren’t any black people in the picture. I figured that whoever made the flick didn’t figure we’d be around in the future.
I still wasn’t sure about Sherry. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I didn’t know if she wanted me to or not. It was a funny thing, because if we had been in Harlem, I’d put my arm around her and wouldn’t think nothing of it. Only this was her turf. Even if she wasn’t white, it was still her turf somehow. I sat through half the flick being bored and then I put my arm around her to see what she would do. She squeezed my hand and put it on her stomach. All right!
So then I kissed the mama on her ear. She turned up to me and laid this heavy kiss on me with about as much tongue action as I could handle. I didn’t see the rest of the flick. It was true-love time in the balcony. She was twisting around in her seat and kissing and holding and everything else. She was letting her hands wander around my body in ways that were driving me crazy and I just went along for the ride.
By the time the movie was over and the lights came on I was breathing as if I had just run the hundred-yard dash about six times in a row. I waited while Sherry went into the ladies’ room to get herself together. When she came out she was just about glowing, she looked that good. I felt like dragging her off into the bushes or something. My cave man thing was definitely coming out and I figured she was ready for it.
I had enough bread for a motel and I guessed that was the play. I hadn’t seen any motels around but I thought that I could find one in the Yellow Pages.
“I’m exhausted,” Sherry said, putting her arm around my waist. “I think when I get back to the dorm I’m going to sleep for twenty-four hours straight.”
“If you’re that tired,” I whispered into her ear, “maybe we can find some place for you to lay down.”
“The only place I’m lying down is in my bed,” she said. “You know what time I got up this morning? I had to wash just about everything I owned.”
“Your roomie out tonight?”
“Linda? I don’t think so,” Sherry said. “Why?”
“I thought we could spend the night together,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as sexy as I could.
“Is that what they do where you come from?” Sherry pulled away from me. “You take a girl to a movie and then she has to pay you with sex? Is that what they do where you come from?”
I was trying to think of a comeback when she turned and walked away. Some of the other people from the movie were standing around and some were looking at me. I watched Sherry hop into one of the cabs parked outside the theater and in a moment she was gone.
I felt like a fool, like a jackass. I felt like running after her and punching her out. I was mad and hurt at the same time. I didn’t know a thing about Sherry, I was sure. But I was even more sure that she didn’t know a thing about Lonnie Jackson!
“Look.” Larson and I were playing against each other at practice. He was guarding me at the low post and talking into my ear. “You know I like the Fat Man, he’s got a thousand on us to win our next game, so you’d better hustle your ass if you want any free pizza, bright eyes.”
I ignored Larson, took a pass from Hauser, and went up with a turnaround jumper that he slapped away.
“You should have been looking for somebody cutting!” Leeds said, after blowing his whistle. “I want you to count how many guys you have playing with you, Mr. Jackson. Go ahead, count ’em.”
“Four guys,” I said.
“I don’t want you to tell me how many guys from memory, Jackson.” Leeds jumped up into my face. “I told you to count ’em!”
I walked off the floor and went on into the locker room. Leeds didn’t get on anybody else the way he got on me and I was sick and tired of it. I was sitting in the locker room for about a hot minute when Neil came in.
“Hey, man, what’s wrong with you?” he asked, standing over me.
“What’s wrong with Leeds?” I asked. “He’s the one going crazy out there.”
“He’s not going crazy. You are.” Neil took off his sweat shirt. “You’re the one that’s making it bad for us out there.”
“Bad for who?”
“For the brothers on the team, that’s who,” Neil said. “When I first
came here I was the only brother on the team. The cat laid it down to me straight. He said that if I kept myself cool I could make it easier for any other brother to get a chance to play here. So, hey, I’ve been cool and you dudes got a chance to come to Montclare and get a piece of scholarship. Now you going to blow the whole thing, right? You going into your lame bag and making us all look bad, right?”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing right. I looked up at the cat and saw that his face was all puffed up like I had said something bad about his mother or something.
“Look, Neil.” I stood up so I could face the cat. “You go Tom for these suckers if you want, just leave me out the mess.”
“You’re a fool, man.” Neil was looking at me and shaking his head. I wanted to go up side his head so bad I could feel it. “If you ain’t a fool, you’re going to go back down there and apologize to the man. Other than that you can kiss your scholarship bye-bye.”
“I didn’t come into the world with no scholarship,” I said. “And I don’t have to leave with none.”
I showered and dressed. I was just leaving the locker room when the others started coming in. Nobody said anything to me except my roomies, they all showed tough. Even Leeds didn’t say anything.
That afternoon I got a call to come over to Teufel’s office. I figured that he was going to pussyfoot around the way Neil did and talk some trash about how I had to shape up. He didn’t do much pussyfooting.
“You’re suspended from the team for a week,” he said as I walked into the room. “The next offense and you’re off the team for good. I also expect you to apologize to each member of the team. If you don’t want to do that, you can turn your uniform in. Now get out of here.”
I went to the game the next day and sat up in the top seats. Kent State was in and they didn’t look that tough. But they did have this dude named Junior Stephens on the team and he was bad. I had played against him in the Bronx about four or five times. He was good when I played against him but a little awkward. Now the cat had grown about five inches and smoothed out. He was playing against Wortham and was giving him a rough game. Larson had a bad first half and the team was down by twelve at the half, but I had the feeling that the guys were going to get themselves together. Things were just a little off. They put my man Colin in for a while and he hit two nice jumpers from the corner just before half time.
The second half started out just as I figured it would. Larson began to work his show. He took over the game for about five minutes. Then the whole game fell apart as Stephens took over the rebounding and started scoring on the inside. It looked as if Wortham had just run out of steam. They brought in Go-Go to replace Wortham but Kent State boxed him out on the boards and the refs called some jive fouls on him real quick and you could see him looking over at the bench to see what Leeds was going to say. We lost by a point in a game we should have walked away with.
I felt terrible. It was the first game we lost and for the first time I got the feeling that I was part of the team, even though I was sitting out the game.
The room was quiet when the guys came in. I had picked up some Cokes and passed them around. I wanted to ask them what happened but I was kind of ashamed to, because I felt it was my fault, or at least partially my fault. If I had been there I could have helped out with the rebounds.
“Bobby was half drunk,” Sly said. “Teufel was going to start Go-Go but Wortham looked a little better after he had taken a shower.”
“Before the game?”
“Yeah,” Sly said. “I still thought we were going to win it in the second half but Wortham just kind of collapsed.”
“They called some jive calls on Go-Go too,” I said.
“No, that ain’t what happened,” Juice said. “You remember when they were fighting for that loose ball and they were on the floor?”
“Yeah.”
“That 22 on their team hit Go-Go in his jewels.”
“I thought he hurt his knee,” I said.
“He didn’t want to rub his balls in front of everybody,” Sly said. “That 22 just kept beating on him and Neil wouldn’t do anything about it. Hauser elbowed him in the side of his head but he didn’t get a good shot at him.”
“That 22’s not even a regular,” Colin said. “They put him in to give that black forward a breather, but when he just beat on Go-Go and Neil wouldn’t do anything about it, they left him in.”
“What did Teufel say about Wortham?” I asked.
“He said something to him and then they went into his office after the game,” Juice said.
I called Sherry later that night and asked if we could go out and she got on her high horse about she didn’t come to college to party all the time and whatnot. I asked her what the movie was all about. She acted as if she had wanted to do more than party when we were in the flick. She came back with how sorry she was that she had even gone out with me, and that I didn’t seem to understand anything.
Well, she was right about that. And it was for sure that I didn’t understand where she was coming from. I hadn’t thought about it a whole lot, but when I got into the college thing I picked up a dream along with the scholarship. I figured I would come out to Montclare and be a star and meet all kinds of super cool people. But the real deal was that everybody was looking at me to see what I could give up. Teufel and Leeds wanted me to help them win games but not be too out front when I did it, and God only knew what Sherry wanted. What I was pretty sure that she didn’t want, what none of them wanted, was a street guy from Harlem.
Another thing I was thinking was that important as basketball was to me, it really wasn’t that important to the rest of the world, no matter what it seemed like at times. I got to Montclare by playing ball, but if I ever got to the end of something good, I didn’t think it was going to be ball.
I had been getting along pretty good with Eddie. His mother kept going on about how much she was amazed that he responded to me and everything and how good I was with kids. But Eddie was pretty good with people too. The first time I saw him after I got suspended from the team I was really uptight. I got the feeling that Teufel didn’t care if I was on the team or not. Eddie hardly ever spoke, but when I stopped shooting with him and held the ball while I thought of what was going on with the team, he must have sensed something was wrong.
“You okay?” he asked. He had a funny way of turning his head sideways when he spoke.
I looked at him and he looked at me and then away. He was still shy, but he was worried about me, I could tell. I told him everything was going to be all right.
“I’m glad,” he said. He didn’t crack a smile. No teeth showing, no phony handshake, just a few words from the heart.
That was on a Tuesday. When I saw him that Thursday it was my turn to see that something was wrong.
When I got to the clinic, Eddie and his mother were already there. I thought I was late or something, but I wasn’t. Eddie came into the gym, and when I started playing with him he responded right away. He played against me just like there was nothing wrong with him. He played too hard, going for the ball when he didn’t even have a chance to get it, trying to force himself past me, that kind of thing. I figured maybe he needed to work off some energy so I let him play himself out.
We played for about an hour straight and the sweat was pouring off him. Then I set up some chairs for him to dribble around and he did that for a half hour until I made him stop.
“You playing some hard ball,” I said.
“Can you play tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t think I can come tomorrow, my man.”
“Please!”
There was something in his face, I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it. It was like he was desperate to have me play with him right away. I looked over at his mother and she gave me this little weak smile. I thought for a minute, then remembered that I would be free about four o’clock.
“You get here about four, maybe four-fifteen?” I asked Eddie loud enough f
or his mother to hear me.
He turned to her and she nodded and started walking out.
Eddie was covered with sweat and I threw him a sweat jacket.
“Put this on, man, so you don’t catch cold.”
He was putting it on when he left.
“What’s going down with Eddie?” I asked Ann when I had finished washing up.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Is he okay today? He looked a little upset.”
“He played ball against me,” I said. “He went the whole nine yards today.”
“Maybe he’s going through another phase,” she said.
“I’m going to come over tomorrow and play with him for a while.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “I think you really have a way with kids.”
“Maybe I do,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The hardest thing I had to do was to go around apologizing to everyone. I got my roomies all together and they said to forget about it, like I thought they would. Then I got Go-Go, who was more embarrassed about it than me. I went all the way down the line, leaving Leeds and Hauser for last, because I knew they were going to give me some static. Finally, I got to Leeds and said I was sorry I gave him a hard time.
“You’re sorry that you gave me a hard time and I’m sorry that you didn’t stay in Harlem,” Leeds said. “I guess we’re both sorry, huh?”
He spat on the floor in front of me and walked away. Beautiful. I only had Hauser to deal with.
Hauser was a sweet ballplayer. He could shoot, he was fast, and he could pass like a dream. The only thing wrong with him was that he was only about five ten. I played against him in practice and he could do a lot of things against me, he was that good, but he couldn’t shoot over me. And because he couldn’t shoot over me I could concentrate on his going around me. I couldn’t stop his passes because he could pass with either hand and you couldn’t tell from his eyes where he was going to pass. He was a good college ballplayer, but I didn’t think he could ever make the pros.