Rucker Park Setup

by Paul Volponi

  I step in front of a pass headed for a Non-Fiction kid and jet the other way with it. They’ve got two guys back between me and the basket, so I rocket straight for the first one. A couple of steps before him, I dip my head and shoulders to the right. Soon as he bites, I cross over to my left. The guy almost breaks his ankles trying to stay with me and falls to the floor with his feet twisted in a knot.

  “He got corkscrewed!” screams Acorn.

  There’s a goon planted under the hoop, waiting for me. I cup the ball in my right hand and show it to that bonehead. Then I bring it behind my back, like I’m going to switch hands. I hesitate, and when the rock doesn’t come out on the left side, he gambles on the right. But I switched hands all along, and I go sailing past.

  He scrapes my shoulder, and I scoop the ball into the basket, high off the backboard. Stove’s and Hamilton’s cheeks puff up to blow their whistles, and they both bring one arm down through the air. It’s a foul. That basket counts, and I got a chance for a three-point play.

  Only I never heard those whistles. Right then, you couldn’t hear a car horn blowing on the court. Everyone at Rucker Park was going wild, celebrating that move I made.

  “I don’t care if it’s yellow, spicy brown, or even di-jon. Hold the Mustard ’cause that was a foot-long hot dog delivered bone dry,” bellows Acorn.

  Before I step to the foul line, Fat Anthony calls a time-out to quiet the crowd. Then he shoots me a look, like I better start doing what I’m supposed to, quick.

  4

  DON’T SMILE! JUST don’t smile! I got to walk off this court with a straight face. People need to think this is nothing for me. That I make those kinds of plays every day. Kids can give me high fives all they want, my face isn’t going to move a muscle.

  Greene and his posse are standing on chairs, cheering. And every time they throw their arms up, the crowd screams, “Hold the Mustard!” till even the trees start to shake with my name.

  That’s how it was when Nike shot their TV commercial here with Vinsanity, the most vicious dunker in the NBA. He played in the Olympics, too, and even jumped over some foreign dude from head to toe on a dunk.

  Vinsanity came to Rucker to play in a tournament game a few years back, and everybody was stoked to see him. Only the sky opened up and it poured buckets, so the game got moved inside, to a junior-high gym.

  The place was mobbed, but J.R. and me fought our way into the first row. People came in soaked to the skin and were dripping puddles on the floor. The windows were stuck closed and the whole gym smelled like wet dog, but nobody minded.

  “I just wanna see Vinsanity lay down some insane move,” said J.R.

  A couple of minutes into the game, Vinsanity picked off a pass and streaked to the hoop alone. Stove back-pedaled his ass off to keep close to him and probably had the best view of anybody.

  “¡Dios mío! This is it!” said J.R., like it was his birthday and Christmas rolled into one.

  Vinsanity climbed some invisible ladder and didn’t stop till his knees were as high as Stove’s head. Then he brought the rock back down for everybody to see, before he pounded the rim with it.

  I swear, the roof jumped five feet off of that gym from all the noise.

  “It’s like going to church, and seeing God,” I said, after I got down off my toes.

  Lots of people must have felt that way, because Nike made a commercial about that slam. Only they shot it at Rucker Park, and not the gym.

  They dressed everybody up “old school,” like back in the days when lots of the pros took their summer vacations at Rucker. Vinsanity had on a throwback jersey and a big Afro wig. Stove played the ref on the court, and J.R. and me even got twenty-five bucks apiece to be part of the crowd.

  Vinsanity copied the same move he made in the gym, and everybody went wild for the cameras. They made him do it maybe ten times, and we screamed on every one.

  “No matter what they do, nothin’ can match the way it felt that night,” I told J.R. while they were filming. “ ’Cause after somethin’ like that, everything else is just pretend.”

  But the championship game, and everything else I’m feeling here tonight, is too real.

  This is my time. I got to be the man out here right now. Before it’s over, I might have to play bad for a while to keep this game close. I’m not even sure I know how, without everybody in Rucker Park figuring it out. But I can change my mind, too. I can keep on scoring, till we win by fifty points. The crowd will be all over me after the game, and Fat Anthony won’t be able to get close. Then I’d just lay low for the next year and take a college scholarship out of state. I’d cut Anthony a fat check from my first pro contract, and we’d be square. . . .

  Screw that shit!

  Non-Fiction just needs to pump their game up, so I can stay on top of mine.

  The rest of our squad jumps up off the bench, so the starters can sit and catch a blow. Mitchell kneels in front of us with a clipboard, and everybody circles around.

  “Don’t get caught up in how easy this is,” says Mitchell. “They’re a good team, and they’re gonna make adjustments.”

  Mitchell’s drawing Xs and Os, and everybody’s eyes are glued.

  But I hear the crowd and my mind goes to the times J.R. and me pretended there were people lined up outside this fence to see us play. We’d make our own crowd noise by cupping our hands over our mouths and screaming loud. Only that was nothing compared to the way it sounds right now.

  J.R. would count down the last seconds: “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”

  Then he’d pass me the ball, and I’d heave it up from half-court.

  While the shot was still in the air, we’d be finishing counting together: “Two . . . one . . . buzzzz.”

  If the shot was good we’d run around the court and go crazy, like we’d just won the championship. If it missed, we’d start over with J.R. taking the next shot. We could spend an hour going back and forth getting it to come out right. And we wouldn’t even think about quitting till it did.

  Look at that fuck’s face.

  He thinks I’m his boy. That I’m going to put money in his pocket and keep my mouth shut about what he did to J.R., too. I hate how much he thinks I’m under his thumb, because I’m not.

  I never snitched on anybody in my life. And if I did now, it would be all over the TV and newspapers. Everybody would know how I screwed over my best friend and sold out my team for money. Then I could never show my face at Rucker Park again.

  Mitchell jumps to his feet, and everybody’s moving. The time-out’s over.

  J.R.’s pops is waiting under the basket, flipping the ball up at the rim with one hand. It goes straight in, and the crowd gives him a cheer.

  Stove got his tag playing in the tournament, too.

  “If I got my feet set, I could be on fire shooting the ball. That’s how they got to call me ‘Stove,’” he’d tell anybody who’d listen.

  But J.R. and his mom used to snap on him all the time.

  “Now that tag’s for your stomach, like a potbellied stove,” needled J.R.

  “A stove that don’t throw off the kind of heat it used to, either,” she’d stick on top of it.

  Stove twists the ball between his hands. His eyes are sharp like razors, and I can feel them running over every inch of me. He’s got a look on his face harder than any player’s on the court. And I know he’s challenging me with it.

  It’s a look that says, Mackey, you’re a liar! And I’m not backing off!

  “You’re my warrior out there, Mustard!” shouts Greene from behind me. “Be a Greenback all the way!”

  But I never turn around, and his words just bounce off my back.

  I set myself at the foul line to finish that three-point play, and Stove sends me the ball with some zip. But it’s like ice in my hands, and I can’t feel the grips.

  I drop my head and take a deep breath. Then I raise up, and let the shot go. It doesn’t roll off my fingertips like it’s supposed to, and co
mes out of my hand flat.

  The shot’s way short. But it catches the front lip of the basket, and spins backwards. It rolls around till it sits dead still on the rim, and can’t stay balanced there anymore. Then it falls through the hoop to the floor.

  “That’s a real shooter’s roll,” announces Acorn. “It’s seven to two, Greenbacks.”

  That’s when my eyes lock up with Fat Anthony’s. He’s grilling me fierce. He’s probably not sure if he can trust me. His squad’s already down by five points, and it’s mostly because of my scoring.

  Fat Anthony’s always telling stories about the bets he loses. I guess that’s because if he told about every time he won, nobody would put their money up against him. He’s even got one about the Goat, a playground legend from back in the day, who skinned Fat Anthony for fifty bucks.

  “Goat was only six-one, but he could jump out of his goddamn shoes,” Anthony told a bunch of us at the park one time. “He was sayin’ how he could dunk backwards twenty times straight—no problem. I pushed it up to thirty times and challenged him in front of a crowd so he couldn’t back down.”

  Fat Anthony said how the Goat started out gliding, like he wasn’t even jumping. Then once he hit twenty, he started to strain. His legs turned to jelly on the last few dunks, and he just cleared the rim. But he did it. The Goat dunked backwards thirty times in a row, and Fat Anthony had to cough up the cash.

  “Like always, I was the bad guy, and everybody was rooting against me. Goat didn’t even have the fifty bucks to put up. Two or three dudes helped to stake him, so they were all countin’ as my money hit his hand. And all I had was a pocketful of tens. It felt like forever. ‘Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . forty . . . fifty!’ everybody shouted. I’d have given anything to have a fifty-dollar-bill on me, just to make it go faster!” said Fat Anthony.

  I thought about how it would kill Fat Anthony to pay off Greene—because I know there’s no such thing as a five-thousand-dollar-bill.

  Stove told J.R. and me how the Goat got hooked on heroin and went to jail instead of the pros. The Goat was gone from around here for a long time. But years later, he got himself together and made it back to the park. It didn’t matter that he was old and his skills were used up. Kids had heard so much about his game, they lined up just to see if he was for real. The Goat died a few years back. His heart gave out, maybe from all the abuse. And the one time I got to shake his hand, I could almost feel Fat Anthony’s money piling up inside his palm.

  A Non-Fiction player tries to sneak a pass by me. I reach out to steal it, without thinking. Then I remember Fat Anthony. So I slap the ball out-of-bounds instead, and Non-Fiction keeps possession.

  I turn my head to see Fat Anthony. I thought he’d be happy with what I did. But he’s got a look on his face like he’d kill me if he could, right here in front of everybody.

  Fat Anthony

  I’ll stare that boy down for as long as it takes. He needs to understand—whatever he does for me out there isn’t good enough. He thinks this is his party, and he’s just doing a little job for me on the side. But that’s wrong. All wrong! I bought his ass, plain and simple. It took just five hundred dollars to turn his head around. Now he’s got to understand that I snatched up part of his soul, too.

  He’s looking for me now. It took a while for it to start at his brain. But it finally kicked in. He won’t go thirty seconds without sneaking another peek at my face. Later on, when it gets down to crunch time, I’ll be looking for Mustard. And there’s nowhere to hide out there. If they’re still ahead, I’ll be catching his eye every two or three seconds. And if he doesn’t dump enough points on his own, that’ll wreck his concentration.

  I want this fifth championship more than anything. But if I got to lose to Greene, it won’t be by more than those five points. That’s for damn sure.

  There goes Mustard again, turning his head to see how I’m standing. He’s my little puppet now, and I’ll pull at every string before it’s over.

  5

  FAT ANTHONY CAME to J.R.’s wake. He looked me dead square in the eye when he walked through the door but never said a word to me.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Anthony told J.R.’s pops. “I hope they catch the bastard that did it, and give you five minutes alone with him before they slap the cuffs on.”

  I’d never heard Fat Anthony’s voice that way before. It sounded straight from the heart, without any hustle to it. But Stove wasn’t closing his eyes on anybody. And after Fat Anthony left, he got me alone in the corner.

  “You don’t see that side of Anthony too much, or maybe he’s just that good a liar,” said Stove. “I know lots of people get good at hiding the truth when they have to.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and I felt the back of my legs turn to rubber, staring down into Stove’s chest.

  Greene was at the wake, too. Only it was more like he put in a personal appearance. He came with two dudes from his posse and signed autographs outside the funeral home for almost fifteen minutes. Right before he got there, somebody delivered a big bunch of green flowers shaped like a dollar sign that nearly touched the ceiling. The words across it read FOREVER A GREENBACK. ALWAYS, J-GREENE AND YOUR TEAMMATES.

  I could see in Stove’s face how much he hated them. But lots of kids were blown away by those flowers. And they were grieving for J.R., too, so Stove let them stay right there.

  Greene came up from behind and slipped an arm around Stove’s shoulder.

  “That’s the way it is on these streets,” said Greene. “The young trees fall too soon.”

  Then Greene went up to kneel at the casket. But he never took his dark glasses off, not even to look at J.R. Those are the same shades he’s got on tonight.

  Non-Fiction scores a basket, and Fat Anthony punches the air, mouthing off. “Keepin’ it real, Non-Fiction!” he screams. “Keepin’ it real!”

  Players are moving all around me. Their eyes are burning with fire. I can see the fight inside every one of them, and how they’d tear somebody to pieces to win. Even kids who aren’t tough on the street can turn into killers once they get a basketball in their hands. But it’s not personal. It’s something pure the game brings out in them. That’s how it was with J.R. And I only wish that fuck would have stepped to him without that knife, in the middle of a tournament game, when J.R. was running hot, too. The Spanish curse words would have been flying from J.R.’s mouth, and I know it would have been somebody else’s blood on the ground.

  That’s something I’d bet on.

  We score another hoop. Then Fat Anthony makes the first sub of the game. The whole park’s in shock because he brings this skinny old white guy off the bench. Maybe he’s fifty years old. He comes jogging out in black canvas high-tops, like they wore back in the 1970s. Some people are even laughing, but kids on our squad know better.

  Greene starts rhyming from the sideline—

  “This old man, he tried to ball.

  He forgot his Geri-tol. . . .”

  “Take him serious. Don’t give him any room out there,” says Mitchell, shooting an invisible ball.

  The guy’s tag is Deadeye, because he can shoot the lights out cold. I’d seen him play before, and it doesn’t matter how old he is. The dude’s a window washer. He works all over the city and balls in every big yard. He carries a heavy wood ladder around all day, so his muscles are still strong. But he’s a half step slower than anybody out here.

  “Go home and tell your granddaddy to get off the couch. Deadeye’s in the game,” says Acorn. “He’s wearin’ number fifty-one, and that’s his age.”

  I step over to guard him before anybody else does, like I was pulled there by a magnet.

  The first time Deadeye touches the ball, I lay off him just a foot. He launches a long one-handed shot that probably nobody else would have took.

  “Swish!” cries Acorn. “The old dog’s teachin’ the kiddies new tricks. Make it nine to six, Greenbacks.”

  I turn around and Fat Anth
ony’s looking right at me.

  Then Deadeye flashes me a smile, and most of his front teeth are missing.

  I walk up court slow, pounding the rock. I can see Stove out of one eye, and out of the other, Deadeye playing defense on me. I can go by his wrinkled ass anytime I want. But I don’t. Instead, I see somebody open down low, so I pass it inside.

  The kid puts up the shot, and misses it bad.

  Non-Fiction works the ball to Deadeye, way on the outside. I’m not going to give him an inch this time. But before I can get up on him, he lets one fly from downtown.

  My hand falls in front of his face, and I follow the shot in his eyes. The whole crowd goes zoo, so I know he hit it. And I can feel the energy in the park start to change against me.

  A couple of summers back, J.R. and me were playing one-on-one in the park when Stove showed up with some older guy. He was tall and thin, with a high-pitched voice.

  “I want you boys to meet the Wrecker,” said J.R.’s pops. “He used to live on this court, till he moved down south.”

  “Did you get that slick tag from knocking down houses, Mister?” asked J.R. with a smart mouth.

  I thought his pops was going to dropkick J.R. across the park for being disrespectful. But the Wrecker broke out laughing and answered, “No, son. But I could build a house underneath the basket I was playin’ defense on.”

  “Great! Let’s play two-man,” I said. “Young guns against the senior citizens.”

  The Wrecker didn’t want to play at first. But J.R.’s pop almost begged him to.

  “Just to shut their mouths for a while, so I can have some peace and quiet,” said Stove. “You don’t understand how they think they’re all that.”

  We took the ball first and didn’t think there was any way we could lose. Then J.R.’s pops stood over in the corner of the court with both hands in his pockets, like the Wrecker would beat us by himself.