Airball

by L. D. Harkrader

  I wriggled into my practice clothes, then hunkered on the bench in front of my locker and pulled on my Jammers.

  Practice went about as well as any of us expected. We were, after all, the Stuckey seventh-grade basketball team. Missing the basket was clearly our best talent. Coach spent most of his time blowing his whistle and assigning laps. By the time practice was over, we’d run around the gym at least 150 times, which, by my calculations, equaled roughly twelve miles, which, if we’d been running out on the highway, would’ve taken us all the way to Whipple and back. We filed into the locker room, our sweat-soaked practice clothes clinging to bodies too exhausted for even a half-hearted high five.

  Coach marched in behind us.

  “You think you worked hard, don’t you?” he barked. “You think you can take your showers now and scurry on home to your mommies. Well, you got one more thing to take care of. You gotta elect yourselves a team captain.” He narrowed his eyes. “Think long and hard about who you pick. Your captain is your team representative. The face you show to the world. You pick somebody who’s not up to the job, what does that tell the world?”

  The truth, probably. But I didn’t say that.

  Coach looked us up and down for a long moment, then strode into his office and swung the door shut behind him. We stood there for a minute, watching the miniblinds in his office windows rattle against the glass. Then Eddie stepped forward. Of course. “I think we can take care of this pretty fast.” He snapped the waistband of his sweaty shorts. “It’s obvious who should be team captain. And as captain”—he sauntered toward the shower room—“I believe the first shower is mine.”

  “Whoa.” Bragger stepped out into the aisle to block his way. “Hold onto your panties there, Gertrude. You can’t just appoint yourself captain. You heard Coach. We need to give this serious thought. We need to take nominations, discuss each candidate’s strengths, and vote.”

  Bragger turned to face the rest of the team. The jack-o’-lantern grin stretched across his face, and I knew trouble was on its way. Trouble that undoubtedly included me. I swear, if Bragger and I hadn’t been cousins, I wonder if we’d even be friends. Friends you can pick. Family you’re just stuck with.

  “For our first and, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, most qualified candidate, I’m nominating”—Bragger flung his arm around my shoulders—“Kirby Nickel.”

  “Kirby Nickel?” I stared at him.

  “Kirby Nickel?” Eddie stared at him too. “How do you figure?”

  I didn’t care how he figured. “Look, Bragger, I don’t want—”

  Bragger clamped a hand over my mouth. “Trust me, Kirb,” he muttered in my ear.

  He puffed up his chest and gazed from player to player. “Our captain must go above and beyond the call of basketball. He must put the team’s needs ahead of his own.” Bragger’s voice quivered with emotion, just like Reverend Wesley Jack Wooten’s, the TV evangelist on Channel 7. “Who here is willing to make that sacrifice? To put the team’s needs above his own comfort? Be honest now. Who among us is willing to lead this team no matter how much it hurts?”

  “Hurts?” said Duncan. “I don’t want to get hurt.”

  “Me, neither,” said Russell. “I thought the captain just had to shake hands with the other team’s captain before games and stand next to Coach for yearbook pictures.”

  Bragger nodded. “That’s what a lot of people think, Russell.” He gave the team a sad, sympathetic smile. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s leadership. Courage. Honesty. Think about it. Who had the guts to attempt a spinning layup in front of the school board? Yes, he fell on his face, and yes, he knocked the wind out of himself. The point is, he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid to try, and he wasn’t afraid to face Coach’s fury. Kirby Nickel is not afraid to endure pain for the sake of his team.”

  “Yes, I am, Bragger,” I hissed. “I am very afraid.”

  “Kirby Nickel knows what his team needs.”

  “No, I don’t, Bragger. No. I. Don’t.”

  “Kirby Nickel will lead our team to victory.” Bragger grabbed my wrist and pulled it straight up in the air, like a prizefighter who’d scored a knockout. “He’s got my vote for team captain. Who’s with me?”

  “Me!” Duncan’s hand shot up. I’m not sure he was voting for me or voting to keep his own sorry self out of danger.

  One by one the hands went up. Bragger had converted the nonbelievers. And I, Kirby Nickel, the clumsiest kid in the gym, was elected captain of the Stuckey seventh-grade Prairie Dogs.

  Bragger was still holding my wrist, and now I yanked it, and him, to the side. “You just elected me to a whole heap of trouble, you know that? Do you know what Coach is going to do when he finds out who his captain is?”

  “I bet he’ll be surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  An image flashed into my brain: Coach, the way he looked after my spinning belly flop. Face squinched into a burning snarl. Purple vein in his neck pulsing with rage. Fists clenched so tight his biceps strained against the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Biceps that were bigger around than my entire flimsy body.

  “Oh, he’ll be surprised,” I said. “He’ll probably hemorrhage, he’ll be so surprised. I’ll be doing a fair amount of bleeding myself, what with his big, meaty fists clamped around my throat all season long. What were you thinking?”

  Bragger looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t get you, Kirby. Every kid in the world is dying to be captain of something. But you, you’d rather be the guy who gets picked last choosing up sides.” His shoulders slumped. The Wesley Jack Wooten voice was gone. “Fine. Go ahead and be mad. You won’t think it’s so awful when you’re scrunched up next to Brett McGrew at the KU game, grinning like an idiot at the TV cameras.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He shook his head. “For such a smart kid, you are unbelievably slow sometimes. Who do you think is going to be hanging out with McNet? Not Eddie or Russell. And certainly not Duncan.” He flung his arm toward the team. “None of those guys. Because they aren’t the captain. You are. And even if it doesn’t mean anything to you, it probably does to Brett McGrew.”

  He ambled over to where the rest of the team stood watching. Waiting. Sweaty red faces looking to their captain to make his next move.

  I blinked. Brett McGrew. Standing next to Brett McGrew. Maybe even talking to him. In actual conversation. All because I was the captain of the basketball team. And Bragger …

  I glanced at him. He had his foot up on the bench and was tying and retying his shoestrings into a sturdy, even bow, careful not to look at me.

  … Bragger had figured this all out before we ever got here. He probably started planning it the minute I told him Brett McGrew was my father. He’d cooked up his own surprise Step Three of The Plan: Get Kirby elected captain against his will.

  Still, what if Bragger was right? What if I could be the team captain? What if somewhere, deep inside, I had it in me?

  I did have some admirable qualities, after all. I was conscientious and responsible. And smart. I got very good grades, especially in math. I kicked butt in math. I also kept my room fairly tidy and brushed my teeth twice a day without being told to.

  And what was that other stuff Bragger said I had? Leadership? Courage? Okay, so leadership and courage might be stretching it. But he also mentioned honesty, and I certainly do have that. Mainly because I am not a very good liar. Still, I am honest, and that counts.

  It had to. Otherwise all I had going for me was mathematics and good personal hygiene.

  Ten

  My first job as team captain was to go find the janitor to unlock the supply closet. It had taken one middle-school basketball team exactly six minutes and twenty-seven seconds to turn a moderately scummy locker room into a festering biohazard, and if I was going in, I needed heavy artillery: mop, plunger, industrial-strength deodorizing cleanser. And rubber gloves. No way was I picking up their fungus-infested towels with my bare
hands.

  My second job was to give Coach the results of our election.

  I made sure the janitor was still around when I did it. I figured I’d need somebody to unclog the toilet after Coach tried to flush me down.

  But Coach surprised me.

  He didn’t growl or snarl or clench his fists or make one move toward turning me into a human swirly cone. He just pooched his lips and looked at me, eyes narrowed.

  “Team captain. Huh.” He looked me up and down. “You’re not exactly athletic, but you’re bright. I can’t see you doing anything too stupid.” He leaned closer till his eyes were level with mine. “You won’t do anything stupid, will you, Nickel?”

  I swallowed. “No, sir.”

  “Good.” He nodded and ambled out of the locker room.

  The janitor followed him.

  I rinsed out the mop bucket, flipped off the lights, and trudged through the empty gym by myself. Bragger had offered to wait for me, but I told him no, go on home, I was team captain now and had certain responsibilities.

  The truth was, I couldn’t blame him for coming up with a secret Step Three. I’d devised my own Step Three, and I hadn’t seen fit to tell Bragger about it.

  Of course, my Step Three didn’t put anybody else’s personal safety in jeopardy. My Step Three only involved getting people to do more of what they liked doing anyway: talk about Brett McGrew. My Step Three was to find out what kind of person Brett McGrew was, to see if he was the kind of guy who could go around knowing he had a son and not do anything about it. To see if maybe the reason my mom never told anyone Brett McGrew was my father was because Brett McGrew didn’t want to be my father.

  Which was why I didn’t go straight home after practice. I scrunched my jacket up around my ears, leaned into the wind, and headed to the Double Dribble.

  Warm cafe air wrapped around me when I walked through the door. I wound my way through the tables and scooted onto the stool at the end of the counter.

  Mrs. Snodgrass filled a glass with Coke and set it in front of me. “Where’d you lose Bragger?” She reached under the counter for a straw.

  “No place.” I dropped my backpack onto the floor. “Bragger and I don’t always do everything together.”

  “Really.” Mrs. Snodgrass looked at me. Her eyebrows were two thick black crayon marks carefully drawn across the bald ridges above her eyes. She raised them now, surprised. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen either one of you doing anything apart.”

  I shrugged—casually, I hoped—and peeled the paper from my straw. I didn’t have anybody to throw it at, so I set it next to my Coke.

  Mrs. Snodgrass had the radio tuned to her usual country-and-western station, and now she started filling up saltshakers, sashaying around the restaurant in time with Garth Brooks. I could hear her husband, Mr. Snodgrass, clanking dishes around in the kitchen, but the afternoon coffee drinkers had all gone home, and the supper crowd hadn’t come in yet. So except for me and Mrs. Snodgrass, the restaurant was empty.

  “Hey, Mrs. Snodgrass,” I said. Still casual. “How well did you know Brett McGrew? You know, back when he was in high school?”

  Mrs. Snodgrass unscrewed a saltshaker lid. “As well as most folks, I guess. Went to all his games, of course. And he stopped in here pretty regular. Him and his daddy used to come in on Saturday mornings for breakfast. Started when Brett was real little, and they kept coming in every Saturday till he went away to college. Even after that, they’d still have breakfast here sometimes when Brett was down from KU. He said nobody in Lawrence knew how to fix decent biscuits and gravy, so he had to load up on them whenever he was home.” She set the newly filled saltshaker back on the table and raised a crayon mark at me. “Why?”

  “Oh. No reason,” I said. “I was just wondering what he was like. As a person. You know, since I’ll be meeting him and all when the team goes to KU.”

  Mrs. Snodgrass nodded. “I can understand that.” She picked up another saltshaker. “But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Brett was always a nice kid. That kind of talent would’ve turned most people arrogant, I guess, but not Brett. He didn’t get rowdy in here like some of the kids, putting mustard in the ketchup bottles and loosening the sugar lids. He was polite. Haven’t seen him in years, though. Not since he started making all that money and built his parents that big house out in Arizona.” She screwed the lid back on the saltshaker. “Hope the NBA didn’t ruin him.”

  Yeah. Me, too.

  I finished my Coke, counted out the money to pay for it, and left it on the counter. I grabbed my backpack and tromped outside, into the wind and the growing darkness. I pulled my spiral notebook from my backpack. It wasn’t quite as crisp and new, now that it was flecked with goulash stains. I scraped a dried chunk off the cover, flipped past my list of Places to Look for Pictures, and set the notebook on top of the big, square Full Court Press vending machine that stood outside the cafe.

  Wind whipped at the pages. I weighted them down with my algebra book and wrote What I Know about Brett McGrew at the top of the page. Then I listed everything Mrs. Snodgrass had told me:

  Not arrogant

  Not rowdy

  Good manners

  Likes biscuits and gravy

  I looked at my list. It didn’t help much. I’d know what to fix if he ever dropped by for breakfast, but I wasn’t any closer to knowing how he felt about kids.

  Especially his own.

  Eleven

  Bragger wrenched his tail loose, and the heavy metal door banged shut. We stood there for a stunned second, huddled inside our musty prairie dog costume, waiting to be tossed out of the high school—again—but nobody looked our way. The music was thudding so loud, nobody’d heard us when we clanked in the side entrance.

  “Try to blend in,” Bragger hissed in my ear. “Walk like you’re in high school.”

  We had tried to get in the legal way. We’d sacrificed our Coke at the Double Dribble and raced over to the high school as soon as practice was over. Bragger had secretly borrowed his dad’s no-flash camera and brand-new, auto-crisp zoom lens. We figured we’d casually snap a few shots of the Brett McGrew photos in the high school trophy case and hope one of those photos showed a piece of Brett McGrew that looked like me.

  As usual, we figured wrong. The assistant principal had been stationed inside the front doors, his suit jacket pushed back behind the bony fists he’d planted on his hips. Bragger and I had barely gotten the front door open before he turned us around again and headed us back outside. Punky little middle school kids had no business on high school property. We were up to no good. He could tell just by looking at us.

  Fortunately, Bragger had noticed a flyer for the Halloween dance taped to the door. He snatched it down and tucked it under his coat as the vice principal shoved us out of his school.

  Which is how we ended up inside the prairie dog.

  The costume was Grandma’s. She’d been the back half of the mascot at all the football and basketball games when she was in high school. The costume had been stored in the attic, wrapped in old sheets, for longer than I could remember, and when Bragger and I suddenly found ourselves in need of a Halloween costume that would cover us up so completely nobody would guess who we were, I immediately thought of the prairie dog.

  We hauled it down from the attic and cleaned it up as best we could with a lint brush and a can of air freshener. Grandma muttered something about us getting a little too old for trick-or-treating, and we didn’t argue with her. Better to let her think we were immature babies looking to score free chocolate than to admit we’d turned to a life of crime.

  The worst part, the part that almost made me confess our crimes even before we’d committed any, was that even though Grandma thought we were immature, she seemed proud that we wanted to be immature wearing her prairie dog. She dragged the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet and helped us suck the cobwebs off with her drapery attachment.

  “Sure has been a good old prairie dog.�
� She ran her hand over its mangy ears. “He needs a little cleaning up, but he’s still in good shape. Solid.” She rapped the prairie dog’s head with her knuckles. “He’s served three generations of our family well.”

  I looked up from the lint I was removing. “Three?”

  Grandma nodded. “You, me, and your mother. She wore it a time or two when she was in school.”

  “She did?” I looked down at the fuzz accumulated on my lint brush. I’d been throwing that fuzz away. Right in the trash can. Not realizing that it might have come off one of my mother’s sweaters or something.

  And then I had another thought. This was a costume built for two.

  “Who’d she wear it with?” I said.

  Grandma shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Different ones.” She dragged the vacuum around so she could suction decades of dust from the prairie dog’s back end. “Friends of hers. They were all taller than her, of course, and she ended up in back, just like I always did.”

  “Taller?” I said. “Like how tall?”

  Grandma frowned at me and dropped the tail. “I don’t know, Kirby. Tall enough to be the front end of a prairie dog.”

  She powered the vacuum cleaner off, wound the cord around the handle, and lugged it back to the hall closet.

  I thunked Bragger in the arm. “Did you hear that? My mother wore this with somebody who was taller than her.”

  Bragger nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? Think about it. Who do we know who went to school with my mom who was taller than her?”

  “Everyone.”

  “But who in particular?”