by Greg Fields
A faint haze fueled by the artificial humidity of too many bodies in too little space hung near the ceiling, just low enough to blur the people in the opposite stands. McIlweath’s eyes were not good under any conditions. Tonight the crowd and the heat and the haze made him work twice as hard to follow what was happening on the gymnasium floor below him.
There, a blue contingent of scantily-clad bodies threw a ball over and around a similar group in white. Every few seconds the process reversed itself. In point of fact, Tom McIlweath knew very little about basketball, and cared even less. He attended these games as something of a social ritual, although he seemed to fall outside the society that ritualized it all. Tom McIlweath seemed this year incapable of asserting his personality among these new people.
Girls in particular baffled him, and to overcome his lack of self-confidence he reverted to Romantic posturing. He read the Cavalier poets and found something stirring in their idealizations. He preferred to remain passively enraptured of false versions, which he knew to be false, of the interplay between the sexes.
Not that he had any notion of cultivating high or deep emotion. Quite the opposite, in fact. But he found himself at that awkward stage of life when the inner core boils outward, creating new sensations that dictate fresh perspectives on familiar scenes. He saw people around him experiencing what he missed, and so felt that noticeable void. His remote vantage point in turn accelerated his reactions. He idealized the female form, its grace, its gentility, its kindnesses. He found himself perched on the edge of gallantry, a modern-day Herrick or Lovelace studying for his apprenticeship and yearning for the day it would begin.
Although McIlweath had been going to basketball games all season, the general schema—the gymnasium, the huge crowds, the sights and sounds and smells—still seemed quite foreign. People here took it far more seriously than they had elsewhere. All this excitement, the bolting out of seats to cheer good plays, the hooting at the referees, the obvious intensity of the players, all of it puzzled him a bit. Yet, he continued to come. In its own strange way, these games had become a personal forum, a hidden stage upon which he might enact his Romantic longings and quietly emulate his odd new society.
His father had changed jobs the summer before. A teacher, John McIlweath had taken a new position with the suburban Los Angeles schools that offered him better pay, more time to himself and a change in scenery, qualities he had always prized. So he had moved his family southward from the San Francisco area in yet another uprooting of what had been planted only a few years before.
From his first steps, John McIlweath carried a burn of time and place deep within him. Before he married he made his way through Canada from his native British Columbia, working as a lumberman, a singer, a fisherman, before tying himself to a wife and a life of teaching. But his burn had not lessened, and he concluded that his new respectability resulted more from a temporary stab of conscience than a lasting commitment to the stable life. How long, he had asked himself, could he really continue to be so formless? Each man had to face the time when, if he were to accomplish anything worthwhile at all in his limited years, he had to settle on one thing and try to do it well.
It had been a hard conclusion, and one that nothing throughout his previous ways had ever suggested. From an early age he knew himself well enough to know that he lacked discipline and had developed in its stead a passion for independence. They were opposite sides of the same coin, a coin he regarded as exceedingly rare and infinitely precious. He dropped out of high school near Vancouver and, with his father’s curses ringing in his ears, set off for the other coast, a six-month journey fueled by odd jobs, quick encounters, and more than a little liquor.
He worked several weeks on a fishing trawler in Nova Scotia until he tired of the not inconsiderable rigors of maritime life. The salt air made him think of British Columbia. He headed back west but was sidetracked in Montreal by a girl who taught him how to play guitar. He stayed with her a year, supporting himself as a clerk in a shoe store and aspiring to put his new talents to use as a songwriter. In time the city became too tense, too dense, and too dirty. His music lost its enchantment. It became a chore like all his other chores, a painful struggle to find words and melodies that malevolently lay just outside his grasp. If he finally grabbed a piece of what might become a song, he found it trite, or overstated, or dull. His woman, too, lost something, he couldn’t say what. She became shrewish, she clung to him suspiciously, criticized his speech, his dress, his casual habits and his casual friends. John McIlweath started to long for less congested space. One morning he packed his knapsack, left behind everything he didn’t need, including his guitar, and with no farewell headed west again.
Three months later he found himself back in Vancouver with nothing to do and little will to do it. As a last resort he entered college with a forged high school record, the pattern of his life confirmed in these two restless, unanchored years of wandering.
Tom McIlweath accepted his father’s pace. Movement and motion became the standard, and he considered himself fortunate to be so raised.
His father changed jobs with the lunar cycles. With the new jobs came new places, upheavals, which carried with them the challenge of reacclimation. But Tom McIlweath had never found it to be so difficult as his latest adjustment. He had been here six months, yet he had yet to develop any rhythm for himself. He remained on the outside, pressing his nose against an imaginary windowpane. Tom McIlweath saw himself isolated, with no friends and few acquaintances, unable to penetrate the patterns that had existed in this place for years.
Part of the reason for this detachment was watery. To his surprise and overwhelming disappointment, his new school had no swim team. Swimming was what McIlweath did best, his body a lean, sinewy complement to the water. He had emerged as one of the premier swimmers at his previous school and thereby something of a jock, noted and admired. McIlweath had presumed that joining the swim team at his new school would give him a ready identity with at least one group. Without a swim team, his new school presented nothing at which he could excel and so leverage his way into some level of notoriety. (Except academics, of course, but no one ever paid any attention to the smart kids.) So McIlweath swam instead with a team at a private swim club each morning before school, with no one he cared to watch.
Tom McIlweath was not one of those favored few whose presence mingled with self-confidence to transcend any social gathering. He was not unattractive, although he would have disagreed—he considered himself hopelessly plain. McIlweath was slender but muscular— stringy, as his father called him—with a lean physique that masked uncommon strength. He carried a full head of light brown hair, the ends blonded during the summer through sunlight and chlorine. His angular face highlighted a mouth that turned up sharply at each end and eyes that seemed in a perpetual squint, a function of his poor vision. For several years he had worn glasses. Now, in an effort to lose his scholarly air, he had traded heavy black frames for wire-rims. They perched upon his heavy nose, a well-shaped ridge that skewed the dimensions of the rest of his face.
And so, in this new place, McIlweath’s self-perceptions quietly deepened. On the rare occasions when he spoke to anyone, he presumed a disinterested audience. He resigned himself to his studies, his private swimming, and his Romantic fantasies.
Basketball games at his new school, always significant, this year rose to new levels. The team had never before been so good. Students, parents and the community at large reacted with unprecedented, obnoxious enthusiasm. The stands filled completely for every game. Ranked first in Southern California, the team had yet to lose. Heady stuff to be sure, and their followers responded with appropriate cockiness while the players swaggered across campus.
McIlweath did not totally understand the game, but he had come to like the sounds that accompanied it—the rhythmic slap of the ball on the shiny hardwood, the squeak of sneakers, the throaty chatter between teammates, the grunts of a defender, the snap of the net as the
ball passed through it, the crowd’s respondent roar. There was a lyrical surety in all that, a predictability based upon prescribed actions within clearly defined boundaries—the thick black lines around the court that locked the players in and everyone else out.
Tonight, as usual, his school’s team led comfortably. Down below, McIlweath watched a solidly built player he knew only as Dave pull down a rebound and whip a pass to Finnegan near the sidelines. Finnegan caught it already in motion. On the court Finnegan always seemed to be moving, directing the offense, calling the defense, barking hoarse orders to his teammates, who, like chessmen, yielded to his hand. McIlweath enjoyed watching Finnegan more so than any of the other players. Finnegan embodied a restless movement, a driven force well below the surface. He took command intensely yet gracefully, eyes ever active, scouring the game around him for the best move, thinking two or three steps ahead of everyone else. He moved with a fluidity that implied his personal harmony with the game, with the crowd, with life itself. The balls of his feet never seemed to touch the court, his arms and legs never tangled. McIlweath, knowing little about the sport, would have likened Finnegan to a dancer, but of course he never could have told him that.
Finnegan grabbed the outlet pass and raced down the sideline. Slightly past half-court he cut to the middle. Bodies raced to catch up. The lone retreating defender challenged Finnegan just inside the free-throw line when Finnegan left the ground, his body screening the ball, his left leg pointing him toward the basket. The defender joined him in the air to block the coming shot. But at the top of his jump Finnegan pulled the ball down from his right hand, transferred it and deftly flipped it over his shoulder with his left. The defender watched without recourse as Finnegan’s trailing teammate grabbed the pass and laid the ball through the rim. The crowd cheered lustily.
“Basket by Koscielski. Assist to Finnegan.”
McIlweath, who cheered him too, shook his head. My God, he thought, it all comes so easy for him.
By the middle of the fourth quarter the game was put away. The outcome, never really in doubt to begin with, had been solidified. Some of the crowd started to leave, obviously with other places to go. McIlweath, with scant reason even for being there, fought back his envy.
“Ron Barber entering the game, replacing Conor Finnegan.” The announcer raised his voice in enunciating he last two words as if he were introducing a Broadway starlet. The crowd, what was left of it, applauded loudly. Many stood; others yelled his name.
Finnegan trotted back to the bench, caught the towel thrown his way, took a slap on the back from his coach and went the length of the bench shaking every hand he could find. His face, reddened by exertion, glowed from the light reflecting off the perspiration there. Sweat darkened the front of his jersey in an inverted triangle. Finnegan draped the towel around his neck and sat back to watch the final few minutes, clearly content with his night’s work.
At the final buzzer the crowd rose. Most stood in place for the school’s alma mater, a dreadful piece of music reminiscent of an Old English dirge. At its end McIlweath stayed standing to survey the crowd. Unlike those around him he was in no special hurry. The cool January night air rushed against his face as he finally neared the door. After a couple of thick hours in a steamy gymnasium, he breathed it in deeply and let it clear the hazy dust inside him. The perspiration on his neck and armpits turned cold. Once outside, the crowd scattered in small groups, a bead of mercury dropped on a table. McIlweath, the remaining droplet, walked slowly to his father’s car parked in a corner of the emptying lot. As was the case on most of these nights, depression hung on him like a disease.
Back in the gymnasium locker room, the team pulled off their uniforms while listening to their coach’s summary remarks. The room quickly filled with thick clouds of steam. In the showers the young men exchanged the good-natured jokes and jibes born of self-assurance impervious to assault. Winning brought people together. This team had no rivalries, no jealousies, no cliques. They relied upon each other implicitly, both on the court and off. The postgame shower where they stood naked in each other’s proximity, stripped of numbers, roles and responsibilities, had become a rite to which they all looked forward immensely. This was sacred ground where they stood, shared by a select handful. Here, amid the steam, the soap and the hissing of the water, they reflected upon the game and each other, then rambled onto the common topics of omnipotent youth while their coach, a gentle, scholarly man, retreated to his office. The shower baptized them, reminding them that they had been chosen apart from all others, and sent them out to an appreciative world to claim what was rightfully theirs in their youngest, strongest years.
Conor Finnegan enjoyed the postgame rituals as much as any teammate, yet he was usually among the first to leave. Tonight was no different. While the loud voices rang behind him, he stepped out of the shower, the starchy towel rasped across his skin. He dried quickly to avoid a chill and pulled on his clothes. By the time the next person emerged from the shower, he was fully dressed.
“What’s the rush, Conor? Elaine waiting for you?” Jim Koscielski was one of Finnegan’s closest friends. Finnegan looked up with a quiet smile.
“I thought so. What are you two up to tonight? I mean besides the obvious.”
“I don’t know. Probably just getting something to eat.”
“There’s a party at Macaluso’s, you know. You ought to stop by, say hello to your admiring fans.”
“Is that where you’re going, Kos?”
“Of course. You know, Conor, I fear you’re not making sufficient use of all this. The ladies respond to basketball players, especially undefeated ones. You’re limiting your opportunities.”
“The pleasure of the flesh, and all that?” responded Finnegan, tying his shoes.
“Something along those lines. Not that Elaine isn’t a nice catch.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“I mean it, Con. She’s gorgeous. I’ve lusted after her myself. But a man shouldn’t restrict himself to one flavor, no matter how delicious.”
“Christ, Kos, I’m not going to marry her. She’s good company, that’s all.”
“Objection sustained. But I do believe you’re shutting yourself out on some of life’s greatest pleasures. Why don’t you two stop by? You’ll have plenty of time for gazing into each other’s eyes later.”
“Maybe,” said Finnegan, rising from the bench to pull a light jacket out of his locker.
“Where women are concerned, ’maybe’ usually means ’no.’ Your loss.”
“Perhaps, Kos. Give my regards to the other animals.”
Finnegan hustled down the hallway, his step light despite the usual fatigue that settled in after a game. That would vanish though, as soon as he set himself about the rest of the evening. His body could recover at night, after he went to bed and pulled the covers up against the darkness. Then he would sleep deeply well into the next morning. But at night, between the game and bed, he was alive, completely alive. The energy he poured onto the court stayed with him, ebbing only in a slow, syrupy ooze.
On this night, as on most nights, Finnegan found himself overwhelmed by the vast panoply his life presented. There were so many corners to it, even at his young age, so many tendrils. It spread before him with no apparent boundary, limited only by the constraints of time and the tethers of imagination. Invigorating, rhapsodic passions surged through him like boiling water.
Let choices come later, and restrictions, and responsibilities, and sorrow, and death itself. Tonight there was life, only life, magnificent, powerful, glorious and mystical life, the trill of an angel’s harp. Let the body respond while the body still could, let the mind grow lyrical, let the soul go on forever. Let the brewing, brimming chalice be guzzled down in a desperate thirst, and let the sweet meat be torn from the bone in a frantic hunger. For there is no other way, no other way at all, and the succulent flesh must nourish us, or we die.
***
Conor James Finnegan. Six foo
t, one inch, in the heart and prime of his most graceful years. Friends and acquaintances considered him rather handsome with his light brown hair, deeply set brown eyes and a naturally rounded, open, amiable face. His countenance radiated dynamism, a good natured love of action, of being in motion. His body, well-proportioned for his height, effused strength. He had no waist. His broad shoulders tapered only slightly to a firm midsection that flared outward again along muscular legs. He might have been a boxer, or, under different circumstances, a street fighter. His body suggested power and contention even though perched atop it was a face that only intimated charity.
In a biographical essay for an English class Finnegan had written, “I don’t consider myself favored in any important way. My background is humble. But I’ve expanded by diligence whatever has been given me by fortune.”
By his final year of high school he had indeed achieved a great deal for one of tender years—a nearly perfect academic record, an equally impressive athletic history, and a large coterie of friends that responded to the various aspects of his entertaining personality. Conor Finnegan had every reason to cast off the insecurities that commonly plague late adolescence. He had vaulted past them with a Herculean leap that scarcely taxed his remarkable abilities.
From the start, Finnegan had been blessed with a vision of the idyllic. He had always known what he wanted for himself, and so his life had progressed through a series of goal-oriented stages. The process had begun early. As an only child he was spared the distractions of a sibling’s demands for attention. All his resources could be self-directed. As a result, Finnegan’s life revolved around his own attainments, his own successes.