You know, when we were trying to get him to breathing and everything up at Clyde’s house that time I didn’t really feel sorry for him. I would have, maybe, if I’d thought about it. But I guess I was too busy or too upset to think about feeling sorry at the time. But when he was standing on the corner talking to us, I really felt sorry for him for the first time. He was saying things that he wanted to do and I knew he wasn’t going to do most of those things at all. Carnation Charley wasn’t even in an academic program and the chances were that he wasn’t going to college at all. But he kept making up things, telling us that he was, and it was almost like he was begging us to believe him. I wanted to believe him, I really did. But I didn’t and I didn’t know what he was going to do with his life or where he was going. It was a funny feeling, because I didn’t feel sorry for what he was doing right then but for his future.
12
the game
We had practiced and practiced until it ran out of our ears. Every guy on the team knew every play. We were ready. It meant the championship. Everybody was there. I never saw so many people at the center at one time. We had never seen the other team play but Sam said that he knew some of the players and that they were good. Mr. Reese told us to go out and play as hard as we could every moment we were on the floor. We all shook hands in the locker room and then went out. Mostly we tried to ignore them warming up at the other end of the court but we couldn’t help but look a few times. They were doing exactly what we were doing, just shooting a few lay-ups and waiting for the game to begin.
They got the first tap and started passing the ball around. I mean they really started passing the ball around faster than anything I had ever seen. Zip! Zip! Zip! Two points! I didn’t even know how they could see the ball, let alone get it inside to their big man. We brought the ball down and one of their players stole the ball from Sam. We got back on defense but they weren’t in a hurry. The same old thing. Zip! Zip! Zip! Two points! They could pass the ball better than anybody I ever saw. Then we brought the ball down again and Chalky missed a jump shot. He missed the backboard, the rim, everything. One of their players caught the ball and then brought it down and a few seconds later the score was 6–0. We couldn’t even get close enough to foul them. Chalky brought the ball down again, passed to Sam cutting across the lane, and Sam walked. They brought the ball down and it was 8–0.
They were really enjoying the game. You could see. Every time they scored they’d slap hands and carry on. Also, they had some cheerleaders. They had about five girls with little pink skirts on and white sweaters cheering for them.
Clyde brought the ball down this time, passed into our center, a guy named Leon, and Leon turned and missed a hook. They got the rebound and came down, and Chalky missed a steal and fouled his man. That’s when Mr. Reese called time out.
“Okay, now, just trade basket for basket. They make a basket, you take your time and you make a basket—don’t rush it.” Mr. Reese looked at his starting five. “Okay, now, every once in a while take a look over at me and I’ll let you know when I want you to make your move. If I put my hands palm down, just keep on playing cool. If I stand up and put my hands up like this”— he put both hands up near his face—“that means to make your move. You understand that?”
Everyone said that they understood. When the ball was back in play Chalky and Sam and Leon started setting picks from the outside and then passed to Clyde for our first two points. They got the ball and started passing around again. Zip! Zip! Zip! But this time we were just waiting for that pass underneath and they knew it. Finally they tried a shot from outside and Chalky slapped it away to Sam on the break. We came down real quick and scored. On the way back Mr. Reese showed everybody that his palms were down. To keep playing cool.
They missed their next shot and fouled Chalky. They called time out and, much to my surprise, Mr. Reese put me in. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Chalky missed the foul shot but Leon slapped the ball out to Clyde, who passed it to me. I dribbled about two steps and threw it back to Leon in the bucket. Then I didn’t know what to do so I did what Mr. Reese always told us. If you don’t know what to do then, just move around. I started moving toward the corner and then I ran quickly toward the basket. I saw Sam coming at me from the other direction and it was a play. Two guards cutting past and one of the defensive men gets picked off. I ran as close as I could to Sam, and his man got picked off. Chalky threw the ball into him for an easy lay-up. They came down and missed again but one of their men got the rebound in. We brought the ball down and Sam went along the base line for a jump shot, but their center knocked the ball away. I caught it just before it went out at the corner and shot the ball. I remembered what Mr. Reese had said about following your shot in, and I started in after the ball but it went right in. It didn’t touch the rim or anything. Swish!
One of their players said to watch out for 17—that was me. I played about two minutes more, then Mr. Reese took me out. But I had scored another basket on a lay-up. We were coming back. Chalky and Sam were knocking away just about anything their guards were throwing up, and Leon, Chalky, and Sam controlled the defensive backboard. Mr. Reese brought in Cap, and Cap got fouled two times in two plays. At the end of the half, when I thought we were doing pretty well, I found out the score was 36–29. They were beating us by seven points. Mr. Reese didn’t seem worried, though.
“Okay, everybody, stay cool. No sweat. Just keep it nice and easy.”
We came out in the second half and played it pretty cool. Once we came within one point, but then they ran it up to five again. We kept looking over to Mr. Reese to see what he wanted us to do and he would just put his palms down and nod his head for us to play cool. There were six minutes to go when Mr. Reese put me and another guy named Turk in. Now I didn’t really understand why he did this because I know I’m not the best basketball player in the world, although I’m not bad, and I know Turk is worse than me. Also, he took out both Sam and Chalky, our two best players. We were still losing by five points, too. And they weren’t doing anything wrong. There was a jump ball between Leon and their center when all of a sudden this big cheer goes up and everybody looks over to the sidelines. Well, there was Gloria, BB, Maria, Sharon, Kitty, and about four other girls, all dressed in white blouses and black skirts and with big T’s on their blouses and they were our cheerleaders. One of their players said something stupid about them but I liked them. They looked real good to me. We controlled the jump and Turk drove right down the lane and made a lay-up. Turk actually made the lay-up. Turk once missed seven lay-ups in a row in practice and no one was even guarding him. But this one he made. Then one of their men double-dribbled and we got the ball and I passed it to Leon, who threw up a shot and got fouled. The shot went in and when he made the foul shot it added up to a three-point play. They started down court and Mr. Reese started yelling for us to give a foul.
“Foul him! Foul him!” he yelled from the sidelines.
Now this was something we had worked on in practice and that Mr. Reese had told us would only work once in a game. Anybody who plays basketball knows that if you’re fouled while shooting the ball you get two foul shots and if you’re fouled while not shooting the ball you only get one. So when a guy knows you’re going to foul him he’ll try to get off a quick shot. At least that’s what we hoped. When their guard came across the mid-court line, I ran at him as if I was going to foul him. Then, just as I was going to touch him, I stopped short and moved around him without touching him. Sure enough, he threw the ball wildly toward the basket. It went over the base line and it was our ball. Mr. Reese took me out and Turk and put Sam and Chalky back in. And the game was just about over.
We hadn’t realized it but in the two minutes that me and Turk played the score had been tied. When Sam and Chalky came back in they outscored the other team by four points in the last four minutes. We were the champs. We got the first-place trophies and we were so happy we were all jumping around a
nd slapping each other on the back. Gloria and the other girls were just as happy as we were, and when we found that we had an extra trophy we gave it to them. Then Mr. Reese took us all in the locker room and shook each guy’s hand and then went out and invited the parents and the girls in. He made a little speech about how he was proud of us and all, and not just because we won tonight but because we had worked so hard to win. When he finished everybody started clapping for us and, as usual, I started boo-hooing. But it wasn’t so bad this time because Leon started boo-hooing worse than me.
You know what high is? We felt so good the next couple of days that it was ridiculous. We’d see someone in the street and we’d just walk up and be happy. Really. And even the people on the team or who weren’t in the Good People or anything. Everybody was just so happy. And things started happening that made us even more happy. Well, what actually happened was that we got our report cards again and Clyde got some really good marks. They weren’t in the nineties but every single one of them was in the eighties. His grade adviser called him down to the office and told him how hard it was going to be for him in summer school and all but that he thought Clyde could do it if he really tried.
Clyde said that he got mad because he was saying that he couldn’t graduate just a little while ago and he still didn’t say anything about what made the difference. But that wasn’t even the best news. It didn’t help that we all thought that Clyde was going to make it—we just took it for granted that he was, but it didn’t help him. But no one thought that Sam was going to college. Especially Sam.
Sam came running down the block and screaming and carrying on and talking about how great he was. His voice went way up and he could hardly talk he was so excited. Finally Clyde made him sit down and Gloria sat on his lap while BB read the letter he was carrying.
It was from the University of Arizona and it was offering Sam a full athletic scholarship to play baseball. And Sam didn’t even think that baseball was one of his good sports. It was such a good thing that we decided to have a party right then and there. We got all our money together and bought some cookies and chips and things and took them all up to Angel’s house because Angel’s mother always had something to eat. And we all had the cakes and sodas and some saffron rice and sausages that Angel’s mother made and we just felt good. Gloria called it a living high. We went from being happy to feeling great and then to feeling almost silly we were so happy. It was just so good. It was one of the happiest times that I had ever had. We started calling up everybody we knew and told them to come on over to Angel’s house. When Angel’s father came home and saw the party he called in some of his Puerto Rican friends and they played guitars and sang.
We were all slapping each other on the back and laughing when Maria, who had gone into the bedroom with Gloria, came back crying. She said that Gloria was in her bedroom crying and that it had made her sad. We went in and asked her what the matter was.
“Nothing,” she said. She was smiling but her face was streaked with where she had wiped away the tears.
“Do you feel okay?” I asked.
“Yeah!” She stood up and had a big smile on her face and turned to us so that we could see that she wasn’t unhappy. But her shoulders began to heave gently and her eyes filled with tears. She fell back onto the bed and cried into the blanket. “I just wish my father would come back!”
She kept saying it over and over again, only you couldn’t make out all the words as she cried them into the bed. Suddenly things didn’t seem as happy any more. Even the things that looked as if they’d worked out were suddenly less real, less sure. Clyde’s passing, which seemed like a sure entry into college a few minutes before, now seemed just a chance. A maybe thing.
It was almost eight thirty when Sharon and I got home and I told my mother what had happened. I told her about Sam getting the scholarship and about Clyde having a chance to get an academic diploma and about Gloria. I got a mini-lecture from my father about how things work out if you study and pay attention in school.
“What about Gloria?” I asked. “What about her?”
I was immediately sorry for saying that. I knew his lectures were meant to help me and all but I just wasn’t in the mood to hear his same-old-thing speeches. I tried to cover it up a little by asking him who had won the ball game. I guess I didn’t cover it up very well because he answered me.
“It doesn’t always work out, I guess. But what are you going to do, believe that it’s not going to work out from the start? So maybe it’ll work out and maybe it won’t. Things don’t work out for everybody.” He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Maybe things that don’t work out for some might work for others. Gloria’s getting some tough breaks. I had a few tough breaks and things didn’t work out so good for me, either. Well, maybe you’ll get the breaks. Who knows?”
He stood up and went into the living room and a moment later I heard the television come on. I looked at my mother. She had a faraway look in her eye for a moment and then she looked at me and smiled.
“Getting to be a man, aren’t you, boy?”
13
carnation charley
At first it started as a rumor the next day in school. But when we got out in the afternoon we found out that it was true. Carnation Charley was dead. They said that he’d been downtown and had tried to rob a store. The owner of the store had set off an alarm and the police came just as he was leaving. They had chased him two blocks and then had shot him to death.
He had said he was through with drugs but when we read about him in the paper the next day they said he was an addict. They said the storekeeper had recognized him as an addict and had triggered the alarm the moment Carnation Charley had entered the store.
I thought about Charley running from the police. I wondered if he was afraid. I tried to feel what he felt as he ran and I was sad for him. It had happened so far away from where he lived, among strangers, and strange places. And I thought that dying must be strange. That it must be something that he couldn’t have understood much more than I understood it. I cut the newspaper article out and saved it and read it over and over again. I found out that Clyde had cut it out, too.
We all went to his funeral and said good-bye to him. He was the first one of us who had died, and even though he wasn’t among our close friends it seemed as if it meant that we could all die and that was a sad thing. Because we were all beginning to like each other and like living so much. It was a sad thing that we could die. I felt sorry for me and for Clyde and Sam and BB and Gloria and all of us, just the way I felt sorry for Carnation Charley.
Clyde called another meeting of the Good People after the funeral and he said that, no matter what happened to Charley, we were for real. That even if we couldn’t do anything for Charley to save him from being a junkie, or from dying, that at least he must have known that we did care for him.
I wonder what Carnation Charley thought of when he was dying. If he thought of his mother, maybe, or any of us? I don’t think so. I think he was just very lonely and afraid. Because that’s probably how you die.
We started a softball team that summer and entered a tournament. We had about twelve guys on the team and two girls, BB and Maria. The league told us that if we had girls playing we’d forfeit all of them because of our two girls. We really didn’t care. Because they meant more to us than the rules did or than winning did. Oh, yes, I also got a letter from Mr. Brechstein saying that I did not qualify for the school band. As good as I played he must have been out of his mind.
epilogue
The year that Carnation Charley died I think I jumped a year. The calendar didn’t say that I was any older but I seemed older to me. I think all of us did. You could kind of see it during that summer. Clyde finished up high school with really good grades and Sam took some summer courses that he didn’t have to, just to help himself in areas where he felt kind of weak. Sharon was sick a lot over the summer and so I stayed home more than I would have normally. I
kept playing the saxophone and my father bought me a flute. I didn’t even ask him but he said that a good sax player usually doubled on flute. Then he gave me this long lecture about how he had never had anything really good when he was a kid and all and how I should be grateful. It was a two-hour lecture. Can you believe that? Two hours!
It was really a funny thing, too, because I hadn’t even asked him for the flute. He started talking and talking and I began to feel that he couldn’t stop. He just had to go on. And then I realized that I was right. He did have to go on. And he kept saying a lot of jive things about how hard he had it as a kid and how I should really practice a lot because that’s the only way I could really be good and things like that. But what had really happened was that he had thought about me and done something really nice for me. That was the flute-buying part. And I got the feeling that he wanted to say something like how he felt about me but just couldn’t get it out. So he just kept talking about what I should do as he tried to work his way up to saying something like he liked me. I guess it’s hard for people, some people anyway, to say things like that. Maybe we all need Good People clubs.
You know what I did? I helped him. It was funny because he’s my father, yet I was helping him.
“I really think you care a lot for me, Pop,” I said, but I couldn’t look at him. “And I’m glad because I really care for you, too.”
“What’re you talking about?” he asked in this rough voice. “Just take care of the flute.”
He went on into the living room and turned on the television without saying anything else. Later my mother came into my room and said thanks. I asked her for what and she said for whatever it was I said to my father. She can be cool when she wants to, too.
Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff Page 13