Drive

by Rob Roberge

  Safer a Picnic in Zagreb than Urological Surgery at Sister’s Hospital

  Billy holds it closer to my car like he wants some kind of response. There’s nor a hospital for miles, and I wonder why he chose Terry’s bar for his soapbox. I bit the gas and pull away.

  It takes me about five times longer than normal to get out of my car. This is how you’ll feel every day in ten years—twenty if you’re lucky—I tell myself as I climb up the stairs to go to bed. I drag the leg out to the side because it won’t bend enough to take the steps straight on. Every day, you’ll feel like this.

  18

  I can’t sleep most of the night with my leg throbbing. I stay up, thinking about all the nights this knee has cost me. After the first surgery, they stitched it up wrong, or put the plaster on too tight—they were never sure which it was—and I rolled over in my sleep in the hip to ankle cast. It popped some of the stitches and the knee hemorrhaged. Spread a pool of dark blood through the cast. We popped a couple more bending and twisting me into the car and the cast was a deep purple by the time Linda got me to the hospital. Blood from the inside is a different color than a simple cut—it oozes thick and oily in a blackish-purple. Once, when I still drank, I threw up the same color into a toilet in some Montreal bar.

  The sun comes up and I sit out on the porch with some coffee and watch it. At seven, I go down to Bone’s chair by the still-empty pool and start my EV’s. They’re these sheets that chart the strengths and weakness of a player. You rare them on a one to ten scale-—ten being the top. I look down at Money’s. You’ve got to fill in the blanks relating to the players physique, speed, jumping ability, quickness of hands, stamina, shot and intangibles and so on. Then, you answer LIKE WHO? Describing them isn’t what the scouts and the teams want—they want a shorthand note of who the kid’s like. I still have some of my old EV’s—I got them from my last agent before he let me go. A scout once said Walt Frazier in my Like Who column for defense. Me and Walt Frazier in the same sentence.

  I tap my pencil on the clipboard; too tired to fill in the pages. My head is full of sand, so I sit and feel the sun heat me up for a while.

  At eight, I head to The Bunker. Terry opens early, but there are rarely customers before the noon crowd. He spends most of his mornings reading papers. Terry’s a news junkie—we’d go on road trips when I was at Miami, and he’d buy up all the newspapers he could find and read them all standing up. The guy never sat—he’d even eat room service standing up, reading the whole time.

  I work my way down the stairs. The knee won’t bend, so I drop the right leg on a stair, support myself with my hand on the railing, and release the rest of me down after the bad leg. I put pressure on the right leg, and it’s like there’s crushed glass tumbling in there. Any motion or weight, and I wince. I’m about half way down and Terry comes to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Didn’t I used to be older than you?” He climbs up and helps me down. We reach the floor and I pat him on the back and hug him up by the neck.

  “Once upon a time” I say. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Just some fluid.”

  “You’re sure? Nothing popped?”

  “If it did, I didn’t hear it,” I say. “Always have before.”

  He helps me to a stool and gets me some coffee.

  “Your boss called me,” he says.

  I nod. “Can you do it?”

  “I’m no one’s charity case, Bomber.” He takes a drink and stares at me over his mug.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I’m doing fine here—don’t need no help.”

  “You got it backwards,” I say. “I need your help. I’m trying to make a go of this, and I need a point.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t buy it. Great white father offers me a ton of money to look, just look, at some kid in Mobile? Scouting trip ain’t worth more than a couple hundred—it’s a one day gig—and this man calls me this morning and says your chicken king is going to drop two grand on the deal. Shit ain’t right.”

  “Two grand?” I say.

  The bar is quiet except for our breathing and the pops and gurgles of the coffee maker. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  I shake my head.

  “Bullshit,” Terry says.

  I do my best to fill him in on how little I know. It takes a couple minutes for me to prove how inept and powerless I am.

  “Sorry,” he says. I thought I was getting a pity fuck.”

  “Better than none at all,” I say.

  “I would’ve taken the job.” He smiles. “But I had to let you know I was hurt.”

  “So you’ll look at Keller?”

  “I’ll look,” he says. “But what kind of strings are there? What if the kid’s a zero?”

  I shrug. “We don’t make the trade.”

  “So he’s serious? Two grand to scout the kid?”

  “If that’s what he said,” I say.

  “Parcell for real?” Terry says.

  “In his own way, he is.Like I said, I don’t know a whole lot more about Parcell than you. He knows a little about the game, but not much. He’s got to be losing a ton of money on it. It seems like a game to him.”

  “It is a game,” Terry says.

  “A different game, if you know what I mean. I’m like a pet—the team’s a toy to play with.”

  “He’s an owner,” Terry says. “That’s the way they are.”

  I nod and feel a little stupid for agreeing. Parcell is my first owner. Terry dealt with a few, but I had no idea what to expect and I’m still off-guard at every turn. “You got a satellite dish, right?”

  “Got one. Don’t know shit about using it, but I got one.”

  “We’re on some shitty little sports network tonight. Can you tape it?”

  Terry agrees and I drag my body to the airport. Parcell may be nuts and hard to deal with, but we go—on this trip at least—in style. The Sarasota Sun—the only Gulf Coast League team that flies—meets me at the airport.

  19

  Coach Ben Thompson went 0-2 in Baton Rogue. This time there’s no one to blame but me. Latimore finally looked the player he used to be—26 points 16 boards and a bunch of blocks. Ran the floor pretty well until he gassed out in the fourth. Money hit for thirty. But I fucked up. Before the game, I run into Chucky “Hoops” Chandler—a CBA and freelance NBA scout. If Chucky’s here, he’s not alone. Scouts are like cockroaches—you see one, you’ve got a nest. He’s slime, but his word carries weight. Chucky Hoops is looking for players so I go to Clem Garret, coach of the Swamp Dragons while the players are running warm-ups.

  “Listen,” I say to Garret. “We’ve got some eyes on the guys tonight.”

  We’re by the scorer’s table, our teams run lay-up drills, except for Latimore and Anthony Walker—another rehab case that should be in the bigs—who talk at center court in the jump circle. “I know,” Garret says. “What do you want?”

  “No zones. Straight man. We throw zones at each other, and there’s no way Chucky or anyone else has an accurate report. What do you say?”

  “I hate zones,” Garret says and gives me a just-sucked-lemons face. His dentures don’t fit right—they’re too big and kind of flappy—and his mouth looks mildly tortured. Lon Chancy talking hoops. “Rat-ass league shouldn’t allow it. Fine with me.”

  The game’s tight all the way. Money and Darnell play well enough for it to matter. We’re in a position to win and my two best players look solid in front of the scouts. Everything’s about as good as I could have hoped. We’re down one with fifteen seconds left and I burn my last time-out to set up a play.

  I set a two-man screen and roll with Money and Luimore and I never saw it coming. Out of the time-out. Garret throws a box-in-one zone on us. They face-guard Money and Ciares can’t get the ball in. We turn it over, they hit a shot, and we lose.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” I say to Garret as he heads to his lockers. “We had a deal.”

  “And I kept i
t. You wanted your guys to look good and they did. You got your deal,” he says. “Your players looked fine. Only their coach looked bad.”

  I grab his jacket and swing him in front of me. I could hit him; head-burr him. I can see his forehead splitting open, feel his blood on my face. Darnell comes up behind me, and starts to pull me away.

  “Fuck you, Thompson,” Garret says and swings free of my grasp.

  “Calm down, coach,” Latimore says and takes me off the court.

  On the plane home, I stand up in the center aisle like I’m about to show them how to breathe into those masks. “My fault,” I say. “I owe you one.” The borderline players, they don’t seem to care much—this is their last stop and they’re inching closer to selling insurance or aluminum siding or painting or tending bar. The players who’ve been somewhere, though, Gates, Darnell, Money and Hedda, I’m losing them.

  Ben Thompson, loser, sucker, 0-2 chump, sat down, his leg straight and obtrusive in the aisle.

  20

  Terry meets me, to my surprise, at the airport.

  “The kid’s a keeper,” he says.

  “You’ve seen him?”

  He nods as he steers. “Fast and quick. Good court sense. No shot.” We get to the ticket booth. “On me,” he says. “And dinner if you want it.”

  “You tape the game?”

  “I set it to. Had to fly out to Mobile.”

  We grab some take-out Chinese and go to The Bunker to watch the game. From what Terry says, Keller’s good enough to trade for. I want Terry to see the team and get his ideas on who we can let go of. We’re into the second quarter; Terry stands behind the bar and I’m on a stool.

  “Cash went left,” he says as Money cuts around a screen up on the TV.

  “Not well,” I say. “But he’s mixing it up a little.”

  Terry watches the TV, and doesn’t look at me when he talks. “A good point’ll help him. He’s working too hard. Ball’s in his hands too much.”

  “I’m doing what I can,” I say.

  “No offense, Bomber. They look pretty good—it wasn’t a criticism. You seem to have a fix on it.”

  At half-time, Terry fast forwards the tape with the remote in his right hand while eating with his left. Half-time zips by with some three-point shot contest and bunch of dancing cheerleaders in spandex tights. They move, all jerky and funny, synchronized in spastic movement.

  “What’s the deal with the six-string outlaw?” I say.

  “Safer a picnic in Zagreb?” Terry says. “Got me. Sisters Mercy is downtown.”

  “Why’s he outside The Bunker?”

  “He’s got to be somewhere,” Terry says. “Odd sign though.” He stops the tape, and cues it up for the third quarter. “Demands an awful lot from its audience. Got to know a little about sentence construction and world events.”

  “He’s asking too much,” I say.

  “Around here, he is. Sound like he’s got a story to tell. Man walks around with a sign like that, he’s begging you to ask what’s up.”

  “Did you?” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Just cause he’s begging don’t mean I got to ask. Listening to people’s trouble’s like feeding stray dogs, Bomber.”

  The game is on again. Latimore has a beautiful third—he’s all over the court on defense, rotates well and runs in transition. He’s out on the right wing—his strong side. If Latimore goes right, he’s going all the way to the hoop. If he goes left, he takes a ten foot jumper. That’s his only bad tendency—it’s too predictable. But Tony Capel, the guy who’s guarding him, can’t stop him either way.

  On the tape, Latimore throws a ball fake with one hand. He palms the ball like it’s a grapefruit and makes like he’s hitting a cutter in the lane. Capel bites the fake, Darnell blows by him right and dunks.

  “Pretty,” Terry says. “Connie Hawkins.”

  I nod. “Kids today think Jordan invented that.”

  “Kids today think a lot of shit,” he says.

  Larimore makes a steal and flies down the left wing. He’s got a chance for the lane, but he makes the right pass and hits Money spotting up for a three.

  Terry whistles. “Boy can shoot.” He rewinds the play back to Latimore’s steal and watches it again. “Latimore doesn’t play like he’s selfish.”

  “He’s not “ I say. “Team player. Good kid.”

  “He’s not selfish,” Terry says and laughs. “He’s a fuck-up. You dangle ten million in his face—which is fuck you money, be somebody money—and what does he do? Runs to a dealer and puts it up his nose, in his veins, or however the fuck he did it.” Terry pauses the tape and looks at me.

  “He’s clean,” I say. “He’s hanging in.”

  “Clean, shit,” he says. “Don’t do it. Don’t count on this kid. Don’t trust him and don’t care about him.”

  “You don’t know him,” I say.

  Terry goes back to his food. He eats out of the little box they give you. They’ve changed them, those boxes. No more metal handles so now you can toss them in a microwave. Terry points at me with his chopsticks. “Spencer Haywood. Michael Ray Richardson. Terry Fur-low. Roy Tarpley,” he says. “Learn from history.”

  The list is a who’s-who of ruined careers. Furlow, they found OD’d on heroin in a car accident after his fourth year. I add to the list in my head. Bubble Hawkins, a sweet lefty shooting guard that got a shot with the Nets in ‘77 when Tiny Archibald popped his Achilles, dead in a crack house in Detroit last winter. Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, flushed out of the league in four years with Hall of Fame talent.

  “Haywood cleaned up,” I say. “So did Barnes. Richardson—he’s still playing in Europe. Bernard King.”

  “King was alcohol.” Terry says. “So were you, Bomber. That’s different.”

  “Don’t go there.” I say. My body squeezes itself up cold and tight. “You don’t know Latimore, and you don’t know addiction. Staying straight is harder than coming off an injury. It’s worse than divorce. It’s with you every day, sometimes down to the minute. You’ve got no right to talk about it.”

  Terry shakes his head and puts his food on the counter. “I don’t want to fight you. And if I crossed a line, I’m sorry. But I know I’m right. He’s dead weight. Cut him loose. Trade him for Keller.”

  “Hes worth three Kellers,” I say.

  “Ten years and a million miles ago, he was. “Trade him,” Terry says. “You know you should.”

  I shake my head.

  “What do you owe him?” Terry says.

  “Maybe nothing,” I say.

  “Don’t give me that brotherhood of fuck-ups garbage,” he says.

  “I owe him a chance. I owe myself a chance to help him.”

  Terry dumps an empty box of food into the trash. He comes from behind the bar and goes toward the men’s room. He stops by the pool table. “You won’t trade him?”

  I shake my head. “I’m thinking Morris and Gates.”

  Terry tosses the cue ball from one hand to the other. He nods. “That’s the second best deal you could make. The kid’s got game, but they’ll take Morris and Gates,” He drops the ball in a pocket. “We OK, Bomber?”

  “Just a difference of opinion.”

  He opens the door to the men’s room. “I’ll be right out. Keep the tape paused.”

  I look up at the tape, stopped after Darnell’s steal and Money’s three-pointer. They’re together, high-fiving at midcourt. I watch them, frozen in their minor celebration, until Terry comes back.

  Early in the fourth quarter, we’re up six. Things are clicking and the momentum s with us.

  “Thought you lost this game,” Terry says.

  “We did. Darnell gets tired, and our spacing goes downhill. Bad execution.” As if on cue, Darnell floats a lazy pass out of a double team and they get two in transition.

  The last play happens—they score after our turnover—and the little me on screen goes nuts. What seemed like legitimate anger to me when it happened lo
oks like a crazy person on the TV. I jump up and down, stomp my foot like a spoiled kid. My face is red and I’m screaming at Garret.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Terry says.

  I hold up my hand to shush him. You can hear my voice, booming and distant at the same time, from the courtside mikes.

  “Totally unprofessional behavior,” the play-by-play guy says. “Thompson ought to be ashamed of himself. It’s sad that a great game has to end this ugly.”

  Terry pauses the tape with me screaming at Garret and Darnell just about to take me away. I shrug. “He said he wouldn’t throw a zone at us. I lost my cool.”

  “That you did.” Terry says. “You got to learn to take these things less personal.”

  I look back up at crazy me fixed on the screen. I smile, embarrassed. Terry hits play and the announcer comes back on.

  “Ben Thompson was a fine player,” he says, “But he has an awful lot to learn about coaching.”

  “Chump probably never picked up a ball,” Terry says. He’s trying to be nice, but the guy’s right.

  “Didn’t need to,” I say.

  21

  I call Parcell in the morning and it’s a done deal. We get Keller and they get Gates, who’s seen his best days, and Morris, who can’t play. A steal. The kid’s on a plane and we should get him for the afternoon practice. He’ll start tomorrow night.

  “Went easy?” I ask Parcell.

  “Easy enough,” he says. “Nothing for you to worry about, Ben Thompson. We had to throw in a meat freezer.”

  “What?”

  “Keller’s got three kids. His wife wanted a new meat freezer. I threw in an old one from one of the chicken houses. Everybody’s happy, Ben Thompson. Gates and Morris can pick up their tickets at the airport after you let them know.” He hangs up.