Slam!

by Walter Dean Myers

  “Heard you lost to Trinity,” Ice said.

  “Man, nobody in Harlem even know about Trinity until we lost that game,” I said. “Now everybody and their mama knows about them.”

  “How you let a bunch of preppie boys beat you?” Ice asked. “You should go hide your face.”

  “They jumped out quick and got a little lead and we had to struggle to make a comeback,” I said. “At the end we were down by a point and our guy made the last shot but the refs said he got it off after the buzzer.”

  “They got them a white boy that thinks he’s Larry Bird.” Ice looked sideways at Willie. “He talks trash but he can back it up pretty good.”

  “Yeah, he talked a lot,” I said. “If I play him again I’ll have to deal with him personally.”

  “I hear you,” Willie said. “I got to be moving now but the next time you play let me know. Ice said you had a sweet game.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said.

  Willie went down the street and cut into the park. Ice kept talking about how good Willie used to be when he played down at Riverside Church.

  “Nobody could mess with him,” Ice said. “You just had to keep the ball away from him. We played against him when he was with the Gauchos and you know how we beat him?”

  “How?”

  “We found the worse guy on their team and didn’t guard him,” Ice said. “We let the guy just run free. Willie kept feeding the guy the ball and he couldn’t make a shot. Guy threw up so many bricks he could have been in construction. He scored nine points the whole game and we kept Willie to twelve.”

  I watched Willie walk through a crowd of kids. Being good on the court hadn’t helped him at all. The wind seemed to pick up a little and I pulled my coat shut against the cold and pushed my mind away from Willie.

  “Yo, man, how come we don’t hang out no more?” I said. “We used to hang out big time. Now you’re always on the run.”

  “Hey, got to be doing that juggling thing,” Ice said. He was looking across the street where there was a small crowd gathered over something on the ground. “Between going to school, playing ball, and trying to get paid once in a while the time gets away.”

  “You look like you getting paid heavy,” I said. “You dressing like you ready to make the cover of some magazine.”

  “When they let you in the FBI?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You checking out my closet, figuring out how much I get paid, you must be FBI or something,” Ice said.

  “No big thing.”

  Across the street the crowd was getting bigger and Ice pointed to it and started off the stoop. I went after him.

  The guy laying on the sidewalk was about forty or something. He was big but a little flabby-looking. The way he was puffing, it looked like he was having trouble getting enough air. Every time he gasped there would be a little puff of steam like coming from his mouth. His eyes were open but they were rolling back and forth real quick.

  “Guy’s having a heart attack,” Ice said. “Yo, anybody call nine-one-one?”

  “Yeah, I called,” a pretty, light-skinned woman in glasses said. “ ’Bout five minutes ago.”

  “Go call them again,” Ice said. “Tell them it’s a heart attack.”

  Ice pulled out a roll of bills from his pocket and gave the woman twenty dollars. She looked at it, looked at Ice, then turned and headed to the phone.

  “Anybody know CPR?” Ice held up another twenty.

  Two dudes dropped down to the ground and went for the guy’s mouth. The guy that got there first started giving him mouth-to-mouth and the other guy started pushing on his chest. I don’t know if they were doing it right, but the brothers were definitely working.

  I was looking down but I saw Ice glance over at me. He didn’t stay on me, just looked at me for a moment to see if I was checking him out.

  The emergency service ambulance and the cops arrived at the same time. The emergency guys already had their rubber gloves on when they got to the dude. First they checked his eyes to see if he was overdosing, then they listened to his heart.

  “He having a heart attack?” the woman who had called 9-1-1 asked.

  “Looks like it,” the emergency attendant said.

  “That’s what he said,” the woman said.

  The cops were still sitting in their car and one of them called over an emergency guy to see what was happening. Then they split.

  Ice gave the guys who had given the man CPR twenty dollars each. We went back to the stoop as they got the guy in the ambulance.

  “That was real tough,” I said. “You took charge of the deal.”

  “No big thing,” Ice said.

  Two old women came down the street. They were arm in arm and they looked like they liked each other. I like to see old people hanging out together. When I see them I think about all the times they must have had and all the things they must have seen.

  “You know, I was worried about you for a while,” I said. I was tense as I talked, almost holding my breath. “I thought you were dealing.”

  “Bianca tell you that?”

  “I think she was worried about it.”

  “Woman stays on my nerves, man.” Ice shook his head like he was disgusted. “I got a little light gig I’m trying to build into something and she talking like a stone lame. Maybe she wants me to deal.”

  “Ain’t nobody want you to deal,” I said. “Just trying to look out for a homey.”

  “How I’m going to blow with all my people around me?” Ice smiled.

  “I hear you.”

  “Look, I’m not funny or nothing, but I know when I feel some real love around me.” Ice came over to me and hugged me. Then he said he had to get upstairs and find something to eat.

  On the way home I felt good and bad. I was telling myself how good it was that Ice had got the woman to call 9-1-1 again and how he had paid the brothers to give the heart attack dude CPR.

  What I said and what I should have said ran through my mind and it was all weak. Me and Ice were edging in on a truth and we both knew it. That was what he was really saying when he said he loved me and when we hugged.

  The thing was I didn’t see nothing in Ice that I didn’t see in me or Pops. Sometimes it was like we were all edging around that big truth we knew was out there waiting to get us. That’s why we could hang tough when we hung together, and why when things broke down and one brother or sister showed wrong we came down so hard. The same truth that got your brother in the middle of the block was waiting for you on the corner.

  When I got home my moms and pops had been fighting. No big thing. I didn’t even have to ask if they were fighting about money. They never talked about money, but that’s what the fight was always about. They were in the kitchen working hard at ignoring each other, which was always a trip. Moms was washing some collard greens in the sink and Pops was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. He had liquor on his breath. I know he didn’t want to hear her mouth but he wasn’t going to go slinking into the bedroom.

  “What you think about getting a television in the bedroom?” Moms said to me.

  “Whatever.”

  “ ‘Whatever’?” She had her hand on her hip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It don’t mean nothing,” I said. “You ask me what I thought about getting a television in the bedroom and I don’t care, that’s all.”

  “I just asked your opinion, Mr. Harris.”

  “I don’t have an opinion,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t see why, if I’m out here working every day, I can’t have a television in the bedroom so I can watch my programs in the evenings,” Moms said. “I just don’t know why. Maybe I’m not good enough to have a television.”

  Pops was turning the page as I headed for my bedroom.

  “Mtisha called,” he said. His voice was blurry from the booze.

  I laid on the bed and thought about calling Mtisha. Then I thought what
it would be like to be married to her. She’d probably want a whole lot of stuff. Once, just before New Year’s, I went with her to the Pioneer market to get some dried black-eyed peas for Hopping John and we were talking about what we wanted to do. Mostly dream stuff. I was talking about getting my picture on a box of cereal. She said she wanted a boat.

  I couldn’t see myself buying a boat or even traveling anyplace on a boat. It wasn’t because I couldn’t swim either.

  When I called Mtisha’s house her mom answered. She told me Mtisha had a surprise for me.

  “You don’t deserve a good girl like Mtisha,” Mrs. Clark said. There was a smile in her voice. “Next thing I know she’ll be cooking for you. You know she can cook, don’t you?”

  “Mtisha? No, I didn’t know she could cook.”

  “You tell her to make dinner for you some night,” Mrs. Clark said. “Here she is now.”

  “Hello, Slam?”

  “Yeah, I heard you could cook.”

  “I can, but guess what I got?”

  “What?”

  “Guess!”

  “How I know what you got?”

  “Guess!”

  “You got a scholarship to some college?”

  “The video camera,” she said. “A guy sold it to Carl for a dime and he remembered you saying you lost it. He gave it to me but you got to drop by his place with the dime.”

  “Hey, I’ll come right over to pick it up,” I said.

  “Uh-uh. I told Carl you were going to bring his ten dollars over today, so you do that,” Mtisha said. “I’m going downtown with my mother. You can pick the camera up tomorrow.”

  “Yeah? Look, Carver is playing Trinity tomorrow. Bring the camera to the game and I’ll meet you there,” I said. “And don’t lose it before I get there.”

  “How did the talk with Ice go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I kept looking around for something to say that wasn’t old.”

  “Is he dealing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He says he’s not.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  “You should know if he’s telling the truth,” she said.

  “Yeah, I believe him.”

  “Get to Carl’s,” she said.

  Man, I loved me some Carver. When I showed up at my old school everybody knew me. Two guys who hung out together, Big Tony and Ouzi Smith, started yelling out that I was a scout and they should put me out. I dug it.

  I got this move on. When I spotted Mtisha I came up behind her, put my arm around, and when she turned to see who it was I planted one right on her lips. She gave me a look like she was mad but I know she dug it.

  “You give Carl his money?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I got it from my pops.”

  “Carl looks out,” she said.

  “He was as happy to find the camera for us as I was to get it back,” I said.

  “He tell you a crack head brought it in?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “You didn’t want to know, did you?” she asked, suddenly serious.

  “I guess I didn’t,” I said. She didn’t answer, just nodded.

  We started making our way through the crowd into the fold-down wooden stands. Carver’s band was at mid-court so we sat down from them so we could hear ourselves.

  “Yo, Slam, you here to see us tear up these white boys?” It was Abdul, a guy from the block. He was wearing a Raiders jacket and a hood.

  “Yo, Abdul, what’s happening?” Abdul used to play ball, nothing heavy, but he had some game until he dropped out of school.

  “How come you ain’t down there on the court, man?” Abdul said, knowing that I didn’t go to Carver anymore.

  “I’m just here checking everything out,” I said.

  The Carver band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and everybody stood up, then they broke into “Lift Every Voice,” and I saw that everybody from Trinity stayed standing along with the black kids from Carver. Down on the floor I saw Ice in the maroon-and-yellow warm-up suit that Carver wore. He was looking good.

  When the game started I was nervous. Mtisha said I should tape the game and I said yes, but I was so nervous she even noticed it.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “I guess it was that kiss,” I said. “You know you mess with my soul, don’t you?”

  She give me a look like she was searching my face looking for the real me. I gave her a light kiss. Yes! That was the RIGHT move. She kind of sighed and I know her love was coming down. It almost made me forget how nervous I was.

  The thing was, I didn’t want Brothers, the dude with the ponytail from Trinity, to do the thing to my man Ice. On the other hand, I didn’t want Ice to really tear up Brothers. If I couldn’t tear him up I didn’t want Ice to do it, either.

  Ice did it. Ice came out smoking. It was tap and rap because I saw him start to run his mouth from the get-go. The whole first half was Carver, and everybody in the stands was going crazy. On one play Ice pulled that little move that the dude from St. John’s always did. He came down the court, broke near the foul line, dipped his knees and came up without ever leaving the ground. Brothers went up in the air and Ice went around him for a reverse slam.

  Ice moved smoothly around the floor, thin legs wide apart, head bobbing, the ball moving from his hand to the floor and rushing back to his light palms as if it was a giant yo-yo. He could pass with a single movement, a sweep of his arm would send the ball through a crowd of straining bodies to just the right outstretched hands, just the right player.

  It was the thing with Ice, you could never tell what he was going to do. There was no getting-ready move, no need for him to make three moves to set you up. He would be coming down the right side and move a half-step faster or a half-step slower and you would think, or drop a hand, or move a knee, and then Ice would be in the air, the ball poised on his fingertips, the wrist bent back, and whatever you did would be too late.

  Trinity, against Carver, was all huff and puff. Brothers got a breakaway jam and made some nice passes but at the end of the first half it was Carver 34 and Trinity 20.

  The Carver cheerleaders were on one side during the halftime break and the Trinity cheerleaders were on the other side. They took turns and every time Carver did something all the kids from Carver, which was most of the people there, cheered. When Trinity’s cheerleaders did their thing everybody booed. Mtisha taped that.

  The second half started out the same way as the first half ended. Carver got the pill, busted it downcourt, and Carver’s shooting guard threw it up for Ice. Ice put his palm on it and slammed it through.

  Okay, then Trinity get the ball and Brothers brings it down. He stops at the top of the key and tells his team to clear out. Everybody cracks on this and the whole Carver team moves away and it’s just Brothers and Ice working the show. Brothers makes a little okeydokey move and Ice goes around him for the pill. But then Brothers pulls the pill in and he’s clear for the basket, but instead of going for the basket he comes out again and around Ice. He turns Ice and then he drives in slow. Ice is a half-step behind him at the foul line but two steps in and he’s dead on the dude. Brothers goes up real strong and I expect Ice to throw away his stuff but it don’t happen. It just don’t happen and Brothers slams again.

  That gave the whole Trinity team some juice and they made a little light comeback but then Carver put the game away. Ice didn’t do anything great in the second half, but then he didn’t have to, the game was really over in the first half. Sometimes I thought Ice looked tired, sometimes I thought he just didn’t care what Brothers had done. He had already beat him and that’s what counted. It was dope checking out the scene through the viewfinder. There were a lot of things you couldn’t see when you had your eye up to the camera, but there were a lot of things you could see better because you were concentrating on them.

  All in all Ice was the man, but Brothers had that one pla
y on him.

  After the game Mtisha was talking about Ice and how well he had played. She was going on about how he had did this and did that, stuff that he hadn’t even done. I knew she was just glad to see him do well.

  I took Mtisha home and tried to figure out my next move. That gentle kiss was a nice move and I thought I could get in another one and then throw something heavy at her. Especially if I could get her on her mama’s couch.

  “So maybe I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, in front of her apartment building.

  “Thought I’d come up for a while,” I said.

  “Capital N, small o,” she said. “That spells No.”

  “You mean you just want me to go home when my heart is all filled up with love for you?”

  “That works.”

  “How come every time I talk to you I feel like my mouth is too small to get the words out?” I asked her.

  “How come every time I talk to you I feel my mouth is too big?” she said. “And I got to watch what comes out?”

  “What you afraid of saying?” I asked.

  “You can’t figure it out?” she flashed that famous smile, white teeth in the prettiest black face in Harlem, and disappeared into her hallway leaving me on the stoop.

  No, I couldn’t figure it out. All the way home I thought about what she was afraid of saying. Maybe she didn’t want to say she loved me. No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t that shy. She had said she loved me before. She would always say it in a half-kidding way, but she had said it.

  It could have been something about sex. That’s what I figured it had to be about. Mtisha wasn’t the kind of girl that just fell down because you took her out for Chinese food. But maybe she was getting nervous around me. That’s what I figured was on her mind. Even if it wasn’t, that was what was on my mind so I let it be on hers, too.

  When I got home I showed Derek the camera and he busted out a smile that was something else. He started running down how sorry he was that he had lost it. I had thought about what I was going to say to him but I let him slide.

  “I know you’re not going to let me use it again,” he said.

  “No, you can use it,” I said. “But you lose the sucker again I’m going to put out a serious contract on your life.”