The Confession of Copeland Cane

by Keenan Norris

  “Everyone in East Oakland knows the Glove!” I shot back, stating the grand total of all I had heard said about this ancient athlete: “Is he not East Oakland’s own, born and raised? Is he in the Basketball Hall of Fame?” I hoped the answers to my questions was yes.

  “Yeah, bro,” Mr. Financial District huffed, “but literally every great basketball player ever is in the Hall of Fame. So what? How does that make him the greatest of all time?”

  “The Glove is East Oakland royalty.” I stayed playin’ my other card. “He must be the greatest.”

  “Are you serious? So now you’re arguing on the grounds of a local popularity contest?”

  I shook my head, and then it poured from me, every loud, cussing convo in the courtyard, every basketball court war of words which I’d witnessed from my dumpsters. All the sports pages scattered in the streets and on trains and in our hallways looked up at me in my sudden memory, names of players and teams and statistics of greatness that I had never noticed as anything but the noise of my neighborhood and the fantasies of men. “Oakland ain’t local, my man. Oakland is a planet. The Bay is its own universe. We done raised up Bill Russell on these courts. The town birthed Dame D.O.L.L.A., J-Kidd, and many more. Don’t lemme take it to baseball and football and track. Shit, what you know ’bout the first man to run ten flat was raised in the Oakland Flats? What you know ’bout Beast Mode?” I didn’t even know what I was sayin’, but it felt good to speak my speech. So often had I heard all these things said, and not just said but sermonized with the conviction of the Lord God Most High that it was almost like even though it was just me and this Brooks Brothers/Giorgio Armani dude arguing on the train, I felt I had a whole congregation in my corner, pulling me toward my pitch. “What you know ’bout the only man to look Black Jesus in the face like a straight Oaktown gangster in the NBA Finals and turn that joker into Black Job, just gettin’ worked and made to suffer for the sins of humanity? The Glove made Jordan ask God why he forsaked him.”

  “That is the most blasphemous shit I’ve heard in my entire life! Is that what passes for logic in the world of East Oakland basketball? No wonder your Warriors moved across the bridge to San Francisco,” the man said with real anger in his voice. “Michael Jordan won that championship series, by the way, not your guy the Glove. Jordan’s poor performance in the one-on-one matchup against the Glove is basically irrelevant. He’s far and away the greatest basketball player, athlete, and competitor in American sports history. There’s no one who’s paralleled Jordan’s success on and off the court. He led the league in scoring for a decade, led his team to six NBA championships, made the NBA a global business. He …”

  The preacher kept pushing his religion: Jordan this, Jordan that. It was like listening to a Sunday school teacher read out the begets in the Bible. But I’d started it and couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to.

  “… And let’s talk cultural impact and marketing influence, since you wanted to make this a popularity contest, which was a bullshit tactic, by the way, but it happens to be what I studied for my MBA at Columbia. The Jordan shoe is the most iconic piece of footwear on the planet. These wingtip shoes I bought from Brooks: six-hundred-dollar price tag, beautiful shoes, my wife loves them. I would throw these in a goddamn river if it meant I could get my hands on the red-and-black 86 Air Jordans.”

  I didn’t say nothin’. I let him catch his breath and adjust his posture so that he didn’t have to stand there stiff as a Roman pillar holdin’ up the whole sky.

  The businessman got quiet and looked me up and down like the cops do, and then dude broke out in the biggest chicken-eatin’ grin I’ve ever seen: “Ingenious, really. You set me up beautifully. You captured my attention. You involved my emotions. You expertly shifted me from my entry point to your sales goal. Your abilities are rare. Are you in high school? It’s always hard to tell how old you people—I mean, you African American people, you all just look amazing. The most beautiful woman I ever dated was the color of dusk and honey under dim lamplight, an absolutely gorgeous specimen of a girl. She looked years younger than what was on her driver’s license, I promise you that. Here’s a picture. Do you agree? You are in high school. Wow. OK, no more of those pictures for you. Don’t report me. Anyway, you are an impressive, intuitive persuader. Here’s the thing: I not only work in finance, I give back to my community. I create and maintain endowment opportunities for Piedmontagne Prep—”

  “Pied-montay Prep?” I asked, thinking about you all of a sudden, Jacq, in the last place I would ever find Your Flyness.

  “Yes, of course, Piedmontagne Prep, the most prestigious prep school in the Bay Area. You know of it, I assume?”

  “Kinda,” I confessed.

  “There’s no kinda when it comes to my school.” The right reverend retook his pulpit. “You’d absolutely be a great scholarship candidate. I don’t do kinda; I’ll call my shot now. You have rare practical intellect. There’s not enough of that in elite academia. Not enough African Americans in elite academia period—not sure why that is, maybe someone should study it, figure that out. Anyway, you should apply to our school, provided you aren’t already at an elite institution, which does not seem likely given the circumstances under which we’ve met. Make sure to put my name on your application: Douglas Deadrich …”

  I nodded and I promised I would, and as he kept on talkin’, I thought about the shoeshine men in the Financial District. I thought about the street corner preachers in the Fruitvale who hawked they Bibles and ten-cent truths. I thought about my old man: more’n once, I’d heard him call nine-to-five suit-and-tie cats prostitute hoes, especially the black ones. And on the flip side, I had heard him praise them brothers who wadn’t too scared to go into business for theyselves even if they suits was raggedy and the business didn’t make a dime. I could just imagine Daddy praising me for the first time. Go to that school and study, but keep sellin’ them shoes, too. Be a hustler and a gentleman.

  A few minutes later I pocketed a clean $350 purchase off of playboy and snatched both my balls back. Later, I worked them bills between my fingers, just feeling all that crumpled cash. I thought about what I could do with that kinda skrilla, what kinda man it could make me, and then I thought about that faceless silhouette and them ticket prices and old boy wearing clothes that ain’t even fit him, and I reminded myself how it couldn’t be no parts sentimental, it had to be all about the money, but the fact that it was all about the money for me, all about surviving, all about doing what had to be done—all that meant it was about way more’n just money for me and for old boy. So I went back to his cramped little apartment and gave him all but fifty dollars from my profit.

  *

  By the time I got home, the sun was starting to go down, which in the Bay only means the light gets even brighter, like it wants us all to go blind by nightfall. I walked in. Nobody was in the front room. I could hear Momma from they bedroom. She was on the phone with one of her girlfriends. She liked to tuck herself in a corner of the apartment where you would barely know she was there till she opened up and started speakin’, and then she and whosoever she had on that call with her got to talkin’ like technology don’t exist, like the cable lines and wavelengths and whatnot don’t carry sound and they gotta holler from Oakland to Indiana and back to hear each other. You might call it annoying, but I liked hearing her inside doors without no mask just being herself. I imagined floating beneath the surface of her speech.

  Below her loudness, everything else in the apartment hummed low. I figured the old man must be on the back porch. Wadn’t no razor cords running beneath the door and wadn’t no noise coming from back there, so I knew he couldn’t be cuttin’ heads. Which meant, by process of elimination, he was probably back there consulting hisself on how he was finna turn around the family fortunes. It ain’t easy to make a fortune if you’re not fortunate, though. I thought about my fortunate day, about meeting Deadrich, about seeing in his support a di-rect line to you and your school, and I thought how
the old man had never had such fortunate luck that I could recall. I felt bad for him but good for myself. I wanted to tell him what I had in mind to do, from applying to the Pied-montay private school to hustling sneakers to all the rich kids up in that mug: I could get a proper education and enough money to at least attempt to pay our increasing rent.

  I knocked on the door.

  “What up, Cope?” he called in a low voice thru the door. “How you know it’s me?”

  “Cuz you don’t sound nothin’ like yo’ momma, now do you? Even your knock sound different. Y’all don’t know how good I know y’all.”

  I opened the door. He sat in his barbershop chair. The sun had anointed his bald dome with one wide aura of white light.

  “You knock fast because you young, don’t quite know where you should be headed but you in a hurry to get there. That impatient shit will get you in trouble. Already has,” he added.

  I heard him, but I wadn’t listening. I had somethin’ to tell him. In a rush, I spilled everything all at once, almost in one breath— the train, the businessman, the prep school—I was finna get to the sneaker business and explain that plan in more detail when he sniffed loud as the BART train coming down the tracks. Ain’t a mystery where I get my impatience from.

  “Them jokers across the way be sellin’ ramen out they apartment.” He shook his head. “Cain’t knock the hustle, but I can smell the sodium. Anyway, pump them brakes, Barack Obama. Look, now, you don’t need to attend no high sediddy prep school. They ain’t teachin’ nothin’ over there ain’t in the books right here in Rockwood. Don’t let them hustle you. You nothin’ but a number to them. They need you for they di-versity records and that’s about it. You don’t wanna be in nobody’s records no kinda way. Have you up in they brochure next to some Friscodite half man, half amazing, and a fake Indian with pigeon feathers in her hair, and all kinda other ol’ bullshit you cain’t even imagine.”

  Indisputably, Daddy did have him an imagination. But I knew that I was not a number to you. I knew that even if I was a number to Deadrich that he had some excellent numbers for me, three hundred some presidents in my palm to be precise. If it benefited me to add to the diversity of y’all’s school, I didn’t see the problem with it.

  I heard the old man out, sitting there under what was fast becoming nightfall, smelling the sodium that our neighbors was selling, but I wadn’t listening to a word that he said. Long story simple: he was too negative. I couldn’t stand how he wanted me to see the world, everything an illusion. He was also becoming ankh-right-ish, which meant he was becoming a bigot, basically, against whatever it was he imagined y’all was. I didn’t need his negativity. I didn’t need his imagination. My imagination was made.

  I left him on the back porch and went inside and fell into my bed. Ain’t even undress, just dropped there on top of my bedcovers, underneath the noise of Momma’s conversation and the old man’s negativity. I didn’t care how bad he slandered Pied-montay and all its privileges stacked like so many expensive suits in a shop he’d never see except from outside its window. I didn’t want no Goodwill hand-me-down yesterday’s fashion. I wanted to see the thing fresh and new, up close and within my price range, and of course I wanted to keep connecting with you, Jacq, and the only way to do all that was to transfer schools. It was time to get outta Rockwood.

  *

  I started scholarshipping: filled out the forms, figured out what my grade point average was and what my parents’ reported income came to and the financial aid I would be eligible for (short story: all of it). I did it all and waited. And they responded. Y’all responded, like, out the blue in a letter to our apartment. I was asked to come in for an interview where I would meet with the principal and he would ask me a number of questions—and that’s when I hit pause.

  Don’t front, boss. An interview? Why wouldn’t I be thrown off? Ain’t like you get interviewed to get in to public school.

  *

  “Ain’t like someone interviews you to get you in to public school,” I remarked next time I seen you.

  We were both loners by then, you especially. I didn’t kick it with my old friends hardly ever, and most of the folks on the Rock still took me for crazy. You, on the other hand, were a mystery and maybe a threat. Boys who knew they didn’t have the education to keep your attention wadn’t about to approach you asking for your number. They knew you came from somewhere other than the Rock, and wherever that somewhere was was not gonna include them. Plus, they wadn’t tryna get rejected, they self-esteem smashed, so they social distanced from you and you from them.

  “There also aren’t tuition fees and scholarship and fellowship awards at public school,” you rejoindered. “There aren’t precollege Stanford classes or study abroad or virtual reality curriculum or private security personnel on call via every student’s cell phone. It’s just a different world altogether.”

  “It might be some crazy interviews if they start interviewing every kid round the way.”

  “Then maybe they should do that. After all, you can learn a lot about somebody just from talking to them, or just by letting them talk to you. That’s all an interview is, right? Two people talking to each other?”

  “Why you askin’ me? You should be giving me game.”

  “It’s not a game,” you said. “Or maybe it is. The whole world’s a stage—a game. You can play that game just as well as they can.”

  “You sure ’bout that?”

  “Oh my God, am I? You’re their dream, Cope. You’re kind of my dream, honestly.”

  “You Martin Luther King now?”

  “No. I just like you.”

  “I like you, too. But why would they like me?”

  “Don’t you see it? Maybe you have to go there to see it. You’ve never been to Piedmontagne, have you? I didn’t think so, which is funny, not just that you haven’t been there, really, but that I didn’t expect that you had. It’s right there.” Your finger followed the line of the freeway stretching west toward downtown. “It’s like ten miles from here, but it’s a city inside a city, remember. It’s a world inside a world, and in that world sits this elite, nationally recognized prep school that enrolls not a single student from East Oakland. It makes them feel racist.”

  “But what about my background?”

  “You’re gold.”

  One of them God-level fireworks thundered from below, shaking us sideways. Like Daddy would do, I looked at the ground and shook my head for no reason and let it pass. “Gold? You sure ’bout that?”

  “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “But what about my record?”

  “What record?”

  So, basically, you remembered a lot less about me’n I did about you, Jacq. You hold no memory of me from the long before which I think of as my innocence. Nor do you remember the day of my arrest. Where most of Rockwood still watched me like I was liable to go for my matches, you gave me the benefit of the doubt.

  “If they ask you about your incarceration, just figure out something to tell them that will make them feel good about it. Say that you’re a better person now, and then say that there needs to be more abundant options for the rehabilitation of troubled youth and that the state needs to invest in, you know, like, innovative strategies. They’ll respect the way you manipulate the conversation. I’m pretty sure they view manipulation as a positive characteristic.”

  *

  Momma spent all morning gettin’ dressed for Pied-montay, and then she helped me put myself together. Only one problem: Daddy had the car keys and wadn’t about to relinquish them to what he’d been calling my wild boojie goose chase.

  “What you tryin’ to get from goin’ to that school anyway, Cope? Books is books. Teachers is teachers. Them folks don’t have a magic potion that they sprinkle on yo’ ass and make you new. And what’s so special about them? Who died and made them the shit?”

  I was not about to argue with him. The gap between us was growing beyond argument an
d beyond reason. It wadn’t just that I had changed, turning hard and distant. He had changed, too. His voice fell away with a quiet fatigue, which was not somethin’ that I remembered about him. It was new. He never talked openly about his notions and inventions anymore, where before he would go on for days. Now we rarely spoke.

  “Hush up, old man,” Momma said, sighing. “The boy idn’t arguing with you.” She opened her hand like he might actually concede her the keys, just drop them into her palm because she asked politely.

  *

  Me and Momma hoofed it, taking the train as close as it could carry us to Pied-montay. I swear, Jacq, Bay Area Rapid Transit must have a blood pact with the rich that it won’t go nowhere close to they enclaves. You get off the train and gotta walk, like, a mile or more thru some twisty-windy cobblestoned streets just to get into that mug, and then you’re there and you see the three-story homes and private po-lice on every street corner and you know that this ain’t Oakland no more. This is different. Then them jokers smile at you and one of them up and gives you precise di-rections to exactly where you’re going like they knew you was coming, and then if it wadn’t clear to you before, now you really know that you don’t know shit about where you’re at.

  We followed the heaven-sent officer’s hand. As we took the route, we passed by the Artisanal Absurdity Shop, whatever that meant, and a storefront that’s signage stated that it sold only luxury animal-skin wallets, and we passed by the Goodwill giveaway where Daddy got the fine suits that the people of Pied-montay got rid of all but brand new, like money wadn’t shit, let alone real. Despite all the walking, we arrived at the campus on time, which surprised Momma but not me. I ain’t never late, no matter the obstacles, that’s just how it is. We came to the school and strolled along another cobblestoned walkway and underneath a stone arch that read FIAT LUX, which you let me know is Latin for “let there be light.” The pillars that flanked the walk were draped in coils of flowered vines. Birds-of-paradise rose like leafy pelicans from the rock crystal–sprinkled soil that ran on either side of our path. And after the third marble water fountain and the fourth statue of a big-money benefactor to the school, I started to feel like this new world might just be some kinda paradise.