by Thomas Pluck
“He’s writing about the twenty-fifth anniversary,” JJ said.
“The twenty-fifth anniversary of what?”
“Come on, Uncle Wiley!” Scooter said. “Don’t tell us you forgot when you and Daddy won the state!”
“They didn’t win the state, Scooter,” JJ said. “They won the state basketball championship.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“Uncle Wiley, tell him to stop that. He does it all the time.”
“Why don’t both of you stop it and let Mr. Kohl have a chance to say something,” Wiley said with a smile.
Kohl was still standing there with a smile of his own in his eyes. “The Oregonian,” he said. “We’re doing a major retrospective on the year you guys won.”
“There was a lot going on around here besides basketball that year, you know.”
“I do. That’s what makes it interesting.”
“There are some other people you should talk to.”
“Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.”
“Actually, you could say the story didn’t even start here.”
“Right,” Kohl said. “I talked to some guy in St. Louis named Oscar about that. What I need now is to understand what happened after Leon got out here.”
“Best of luck with that, Vincent,” Wiley said slowly. “I’ve been tryin’ to understand that for a quarter of a century now.”
Cut
Kohl looked around the visiting room for a moment, and that’s as long as it took. Not as many black men in the room as in the stereotypical prison because Oregon wasn’t California and the Oregon State Prison wasn’t San Quentin, so the guy known as Cut back in the day had to be one of a handful of black men sitting at tables waiting for visitors to arrive—only one of whom could have ever been described as a black brick wall.
“You Kohl?” Cut said when Kohl walked up on him.
“Yeah,” Kohl answered. “Thanks for speaking with me.”
“My dance card is rarely full these days. Can’t say I mind a visitor now and then.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I know having a visitor puts you through a hassle coming and going you don’t really need, Cut. I appreciate it.”
“Well, look at you!” Cut said as he raised his eyebrows a little. “All knowin’ stuff and shit.”
“Well, I’d like to know a lot more.”
“So what can I tell you, reporter man?”
“I hear you were one of the first bangers in Portland.”
“I sold the first rock in the history of the town, I kid you not,” he said with a grin a little sad around the edges. “Not much to be proud of, though, looking back on it.”
“Still, you bangers were a big part of the story that year.”
“The biggest.”
“And considering how it all turned out, you might be the best source there is from the gang side of the scene.”
“No ‘might be’ about it,” he said. A scrawny white kid with a mop of curly blond hair on top of his head wandered by with an assortment of coins clutched in one hand. Cut’s eyes followed him all the way to the vending machine on the other side of the room.
The kid came back with a bag of M&Ms a moment later, and Cut watched that, too. Kohl observed this process without a comment, but Cut had something to say about it as soon as the kid was back at the table he had started from.
“I did what I did,” he said with a shrug, “and I am where I am. I don’t have a problem with all that, really, but I can’t say I have no regrets.”
“No kids, then?”
“Nope. You?”
Kohl shook his head.
“If I came back in some alternate universe somehow,” Cut said, “I think I’d like to try being a dad.”
“I don’t know if it’s something you can just try. Once you get started, you’re pretty much stuck with it.”
“I hear what you’re sayin’, reporter man. But I think there’s a shitload of evidence to the contrary out there.”
“I heard that,” Kohl said quietly.
“When are you due to get out of this place?”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“I thought everyone got out, eventually.”
“They do,” Cut said. “But they ain’t all still livin’ when they do it.”
Luther
The girl in the batter’s box watched without moving a muscle as the ball cut the middle of the plate. The umpire called the pitch a strike and a bald-headed man seated immediately to Kohl’s right in the bleachers shouted. “Swing the bat, baby!” the man said. ”You got this!”
The girl stepped back, took a couple of tentative practice swings, then returned to the box just in time to watch a called third strike whiz by. She glanced at the bleachers and trotted to the dugout with her head down.
“That’s okay, baby, that’s okay!” the same voice called out. “You’ll get it next time!”
“Everybody had to start somewhere,” Kohl said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” the bald man said.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”
“I’m not quite sure what brought you to me,” Luther said while he unwrapped a peanut butter sandwich. “I wasn’t much of anybody in that story.”
“Sounds like you were tight with the guy called himself Bam-Bam,” Kohl said.
Luther took a couple of bites out of his sandwich and chewed them both slowly before he responded. “Yeah,” he said. “I knew Anthony.”
Chester
“How much is that, if you don’t mind me asking?” Kohl said as Chester racked the weights above his head.
“Thanks, Jeff,” Chester said to his spotter before he turned in Kohl’s direction. “That was three-fifty.”
“You don’t mess around in here, do you?”
“I can’t afford to, really. You ever see what happens to guys like me who quit working out?”
“I don’t know that there are many guys like you.”
“There are guys like me all over the place,” Chester said with a grin that lit up his face. “They just don’t look like me anymore.”
Kohl smiled back at that, then he followed when Chester rose from the bench and headed for the stairs. “How ’bout I grab a quick shower and meet you in the lobby?”
“That works for me,” Kohl said, and less than ten minutes later he proved himself right.
“So how can I help you?” Chester said. They were both settled on stools at the snack bar with soft drinks in front of them.
“Like I said on the phone, I’ve been trying to talk to everyone who has a take on the year you guys won the state championship. I’m hoping to hear yours.”
“I have more than one way of telling that story, Vincent. Which one do you want to hear?”
“The real story would be nice, if that’s one of the options.”
“It is, but I’d have to trust you quite a bit to go there.”
“I understand that I haven’t done anything to earn that level of trust. But I think the alternative is worse—we both get stuck with a story in the paper that isn’t as real as it should have been.”
“Good point,” Chester said. “If your story sucks, I’d rather it be your fault than mine. Let’s go ahead and do this thing, Vincent.”
Angelique
“Had to be Cut, right?” Angelique said. “Ain’t that many people still around who would even know my name.”
“According to him,” Kohl said, “you’re a big piece of this story.”
“I’m surprised you were able to track me down.”
“It did take a little work, but that’s kinda what I do.”
“There are some things about that year that you wouldn’t get from anyone else, that’s for damn sure,” she said, the words floating out of her mouth on a cloud of smoke she had drawn in from a menthol cigarette. “But the thing is, I don’t really
like to talk about them.”
“I don’t want to push you anywhere you don’t want to go, Angelique, but I’d like to get this thing right. If there’s any part of it that you can help me with, I’d really appreciate it.”
Angelique took another drag from her cigarette and exhaled while her eyes went from one of the kids running through the play structure to the other. Kohl guessed the kids might be six or seven years old.
“Do you have kids, Mr. Kohl?” Angelique asked.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s in the cards for me.”
“You never really know. I used to think the same thing, and look at me now—I take care of kids for a living.”
“Yeah, but you look like you know what you’re doing with them.”
“I do now, but I had to learn it. And from where I started, my chances of getting here were about the same as my chances of flying to the fucking moon.”
“Sounds like a story that should be told, Angelique.”
“Maybe,” she said, leaning into her cigarette again.
“You don’t have to decide right now. I can always check back later to see how you feel about it.”
“Fuck it,” she said after another smoke-filled pause. “Where do you want me to start?”
Leon
The street Kohl was looking for turned out to run in front of a string of huge houses that backed up on the lake, and the right house turned out to have a lean blonde woman at the door who could have been on the cover of a Beach Boys album a decade or two earlier.
“He’s out on the deck,” she said when she ushered Kohl inside and pointed him in the right direction.
Leon was leaning back on a canvas lounge chair in a gray sweat suit that matched the gray in his close-cropped hair. He was looking down on the lake when Kohl came out on the deck.
“So that’s Lake Oswego,” Kohl said. “I’ve been familiar with the name forever, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen the lake.”
“No doubt you knew it was around here somewhere,” Leon said.
“Yeah,” Kohl said with a chuckle.
“Grab a chair, Vincent.”
“This is quite a place you have here,” Kohl said as he sank into a chair that matched the one Leon was using.
“It’s not mine,” Leon said, his eyes peering into the shining shimmer of sunlight bouncing off the water. “It belongs to the lady who let you in the door. But it is quite a place—these days I spend a lot of time exactly where I am right now.”
“A well-earned respite, no doubt.”
“For sure it’s a respite, anyway. Whether or not this is what I’ve earned is a matter of some debate.”
“Debate among whom?”
“A lot of people, I’m afraid, both living and dead.”
Kohl didn’t know what to do with that statement, so he didn’t do a thing with it. Fortunately, the blonde woman came out on the deck with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses and placed them on a table next to Leon’s chair.
“Thanks,” Leon said, “but you don’t need to be waitin’ on us out here.”
“I know,” the woman said. “I won’t be making a habit of it.”
“Good. You sure don’t need any more bad habits.”
The woman didn’t say anything in response to that, but Kohl caught the flash of a grin before she disappeared back into the house. “That’s Linda,” Leon said when Kohl looked back in his direction. “We were a thing once, back in the day.”
“What day was that?”
“The day before I gave her this house.”
“That sounds like an interesting story, too.”
“There have been quite a few of those between now and the one you’re trying to write.”
“No doubt,” Kohl said, “but I have to admit that it seems strange to be talking to you out here in the burbs.”
“Why is that?”
“You are a legitimate legend in the hood, Leon. So I guess I mostly think of you in connection with that part of town.”
“Let me tell you a little secret, Vincent. Sometimes it takes more energy than I have most days to keep up with that reputation.”
Chapter 1: Wiley
I came down the stairs two at a time, and Grams was all over me by the time I got to the bottom.
“Wiley!” she said, her voice bouncing off the stairwell like it had been shot out of a gun.
“Sorry, Grams,” I said, which is what I usually said when she addressed me in that tone. Saves a lot of time just cutting to the chase that way.
“No,” she said, “you ain’t sorry at all. You break your fool neck, though, you will be.”
Got me there, Grams. I would for sure be sorry about that. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I spilled into the kitchen right behind the words and found her standing at the sink peeling potatoes, her gray hair barely five feet above the worn house slippers she was standing on. I took a moment to marvel once again at the energy she had access to in that slight frame, but a moment was all I could spare.
“Gotta go,” I said to the back of her head. “Told Sam I’d meet him five minutes ago.”
“You know what I think about the park,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at me. I nodded back at her because I knew exactly what she thought about the park. I thought pretty much the same thing about it myself—the place had changed right before my eyes as the bangers began to sprout like weeds all over the neighborhood, and it didn’t seem likely to ever change back.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said again. I walked up and kissed her on the forehead. “But it’s still where the ballers are.”
“Oh, Lord have mercy. No matter what, you gotta play.”
“Yup.”
“Take care of yourself, you hear me?”
“You know I will,” I said, and I wrapped my arms around her and held her close for a moment. “Your Wiley is the king of staying out of trouble.”
“Then long live the king,” she said with a wan smile. “Now scoot, before I change my mind.”
I smiled too, but scooted without elaborating on what was funny about the comment—we both knew there weren’t many things she could change her mind to that could keep me away from the best game of hoops I could find every day.
Irving Park was three doors up from the house I shared with my grandmother on Ninth Avenue, which brought me in past a wading pool full of kids squealing like the spray from the fountain was the first running water they had ever seen. I climbed over a short hill overlooking several basketball courts as full as the wading pool behind me, eased down the hill, and joined a loose crowd of players watching a team of grown men manhandle a random assortment of high school kids.
Every player on the winning team had part of a blue bandanna sticking out of his shorts like a neon sign flashing “Crips,” unless he had it wrapped around his head, plus a set of eyes that might have been in a deep freeze earlier in the day and hadn’t come close to thawing out yet. The heat dropped by several degrees every time one of them stared at an opponent; and when a kid finally tried to buck the tide and scrap for a rebound, he caught an elbow to the throat that sent him sprawling across the asphalt. The game ground to an end a moment later without another sign of life from the losers.
I looked around at the players on the sideline. Only one of them looked like he might be able to hold his own against the winners—a mountain of sculpted black muscle standing off to my right behind the ugliest pair of glasses I had ever seen.
“Sorry I’m late, Sam,” I said.
“You didn’t miss a damn thing.”
“You takin’ this one?”
“What’s the point? We’re at least one player short.”
A tall, skinny kid with Jeri curls everyone called Shadow was next after Sam, and he picked up four more sacrificial lambs. He stepped out on the court with more chance of winning the lottery than the game.
“Wassup, Sam?” Cut shouted from the court. “Thought you had next.”
I looked in Cut
’s direction—and he was just about all I could see. He was halfway between my five-ten and Sam’s six-six but heavier than both of us, all of it put together like a black brick wall on wheels.
“I’m not quite ready, Cut,” Sam said.
“You ain’ gonna get no readier standin’ over there, fool.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what happens while I’m standin’ here. Maybe you guys’ll die of old age.”
“That’s funny,” Cut said, but he wasn’t laughing when he said it. “That’s one thing I sure ain’ gonna die of.”
I smiled at that exchange, and Cut immediately zeroed in on me. “What you laughin’ at, Wiley?” he said.
Same thing you just said was funny yourself, I thought, but I didn’t share it with Cut unless he could read my mind. Instead, I did what any king of staying out of trouble would do—shrugged and kept my mouth shut.
Cut gave me the same hard stare I had seen earlier, but he turned away without another word and the game began. I watched Shadow get cut off at the roots with the rest of his team for a while, then glanced at Sam. Sam looked back and raised his eyebrows.
“They been beatin’ us like bitches all summer,” he said.
“Not many of us boys can beat grown men in this game.”
“Tell me about it.”
I didn’t really have anything more to say on the subject. We both turned toward a kid approaching the court from Seventh Avenue. He stopped on the opposite side from us and watched as the game wound down. He had a way of looking at it that set him apart from everyone standing near him.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Nope,” Sam said. We watched as the kid slowly made his way around the court. He had a glide in his stride as he moved and an easy way of interacting with the kids he passed along the way, and I was pretty clear about what we were looking at by the time he joined us.
“Who’s got next?” he said.
“I do,” Sam said.
“I’m Leon,” he said with the flicker of a smile. “Pick me up.”
Sam glanced at me and I nodded. “I’m Wiley, this is Sam,” I said. “Welcome to Portland, Leon.”