Drive

by Rob Roberge

  Kenny Cash hasn’t talked to me since our conversation on the bus. He’s got a stern game face on—eyes that look through things, and not at them. He’s either mad as hell or focused beyond belief. Maybe both.

  The game starts and it becomes apparent that this Hancock is the focus of their offense. They isolate him and John Gale—a big, slow center—on the right in a two-man game. Hancock dribbles out front and looks to Gale in the post, but Jefferson beats Hedda on a back cut. Hancock throws a one-handed pass off the dribble, hits Jefferson in stride and they’re up 2-0.

  “Hedda,” I scream. “See the god-damn ball!”

  They run the two-man game for most of the first quarter and we trade baskets. After a time-out with two minutes left in the first, Money turns to me as he heads onto the court.

  “Say goodnight to Mr. Hancock,” he says. “Money’s got him measured.” He wipes off his face and flicks the towel toward me. “Be watching.”

  They give the ball to Hancock at half-court and run three players weak side, the same way they’ve been doing it all night. Hancock dribbles out high. Money’s deep in his stance, hands down, eyes riveted. He pokes the ball away and gets loose for a dunk. He runs back toward half court and looks over at me. He mouths, “one” and holds his index finger in the air.

  The next time Hancock gets the ball on the wing, Money picks his pocket again. Another dunk. He runs up court and looks over at me with two fingers up.

  Early in the second quarter, they try to run the two-man game again. Hancock dribbles about twenty feet from the hole. Money strips him again and starts to head toward the hoop. Hancock chases after him. At the foul line, Money stops. Hancock runs by and gets in front of him. Money hands him the ball and gets down in his defensive stance. It’s the most arrogant, demeaning play I’ve ever seen. Money just told Hancock that he can take it from him every time, and he told him in front of two thousand people and both teams.

  Rather than try to beat Money off the dribble, Hancock passes off and lets their point bring it up. After that, Hancock doesn’t look for the ball on offense and Money tears him up at the other end. Everyone plays sharp, except for Darnell and we win going away. Money’s still not talking to me in the locker room. I feel bad, but he played his best game. Still, it’s a hell of a way to get what I want from him.

  I congratulate the team and walk toward the little office cubicle. On the way, I see Darnell limping toward the trainer’s table.

  “Achilles?”

  He nods. “And the knees.”

  “Put some ice on them,” I say. “Tomorrow’s a day off, but if you need more than that, let me know.” I’m worried—he’s had no major injuries, but he’s got too many miles on those legs.

  He takes a step away from me and winces when he puts pressure on the left leg. “Thanks. Can’t afford too many days off, though.”

  “Get it ready for the game. Don’t worry about practice.”

  He heads into the trainer’s room and I turn around and see Money who’s heard the conversation. He looks hard at me and points at the office.

  I close the door behind us.

  “I was all over your boy tonight,” he says.

  “He’s not my boy,” I say. “You’ve got this wrong.”

  He’s already showered and dressed. Sweat still breaks on his head below the hairline and trickles down his face, “Owned him. I was inside that chump. They‘re going to cut Hancock up at the morgue someday, and ‘Kenny Cash Was Here’ is gonna be stamped on everything they see.”

  “You played a great game,” I say.

  He nods and puts his hand on the doorknob. “Nice to hear you say it.”

  “Don’t leave,” I say. “Sit. I need to tell you something.” He sits and I tell him about The Hawks and Nets and the European team whose name I can’t pronounce. He sits there, nodding and looking straight ahead.

  “And you’ve known this a while?”

  “About a week.”

  “How long were you going to hold off from telling me?”

  It’s a good question. “I’m not Sure.” I say. “Until I saw some improvement. Until I thought you were close to being ready.”

  “And I’m close?”

  “You are. Do what you did tonight a few more times-—except for that stunt with the steal—and you won’t have me to deal with me anymore.”

  “What was wrong with the steal? I put him away with that.”

  “Nothing was wrong here,” I say. “But you try to pull that arrogant shit at the next level and you’ll have your head handed to you. pull that attitude on Mitch Richmond or John Starks and you’ll see how foolish it is.”

  “It worked tonight.” he says.

  “It did.”

  He smiles, but it’s not a nice we’ve-reached-common-ground-smile. “Hypothetical. A scout’s looking at D,” he says and points toward the training room where Darnell is icing his knees and ankle. “Do you tell him?”

  “Probably,” I say.

  He stops smiling. “Twenty-seven teams in the NBA—with expansion next year we’re at twenty-nine. Twelve spots per team—that’s 348 jobs. I’ve done the fucking math. Every night, every day, I do the math. 348 slots. Don’t mean shit that me and D play different positions—a job for him could mean no job for me and you’re willing to tell him about one of those slots, and you’re not going to tell me?” He shakes his head. “Shit ain’t right.”

  “A job for Darnell means no job for you? That’s an ugly way to look at this situation,” I say.

  “It’s a practical way to look at it. And you’re dealing us different hands.” He gets up. “How come you treat me and D so different?”

  “I’m not Sure.” I say. “You’re different people.”

  “And my reward for this is getting shit on.” He opens the door and starts to leave.

  “Kenny,” I say. He stops and turns. “You played a hell of a game tonight. You’re a player.”

  He looks at me a little less hard than before. “You’re right,” he says. “I did and I am.” He closes the door and heads out toward the team bus, waiting in the parking lot. I gather my things. Most of the players are on the bus. Darnell is having trouble getting his pants on. I know that feeling—the knee won’t bend enough so you throw the pants on the floor and kind of shimmy your way into them. Lewie Keller’s on the phone, talking to his wife.

  “Back in Sarasota tomorrow. No more pancake houses for a while,” he says. “Long night.” He nods. “Put her on.” He turns to me with his hand over the receiver and asks if we’ve got tomorrow off. I tell him we do and he turns hack to the payphone. “How’s my little girl?”

  I start to leave.

  “We won. That’s right, they haven’t lost since they got daddy. I’ve got to go, honey so put your mother back on. I’ll be home tomorrow. I promise.”

  I leave the room and get on the bus. We wait about five minutes and finally I go back to get them. When I get to the gym door, they both come out.

  “Sorry coach,” Lewie says. “Hard to get her off. She misses her dad.”

  “ Don’t sweat it,” I say.

  He runs up ahead of us and onto the bus. I look at Darnell. “You OK?”

  He limps forward. “Nope. I’m old.”

  “You’re twenty-eight. You’re young,” I say, trying to lighten him up. “I’m old.”

  “I’m as old as I’ve ever been,” he says. “Feels old to me.”

  I watch him get on the bus—he lifts his body with his arms and pulls himself up—thinking, he is twenty-eight and he is old.

  31

  We get to The Palms early in the morning. The team is quiet and groggy and people head to their rooms without talking much. Keller goes home to a little apartment he’s got down off twelfth street, just outside of the Mennonite community. There are no messages on my bulletin board. I check my machine in hopes that Sean might have called. Nothing except a message from The Chicken Man.

  “A 4-0 road trip, Ben Thompson. Good show. Ca
ll me when you get in.”

  I decide to get some rest and call him later. I flop down on the bed and turn on the TV. Nothing’s on but those chatty, perky morning shows full of fluff. Julia Roberts plugs some new movie. She says it’s better than “Pretty Woman”—-she says this like that would be a difficult thing. But people love these shows—love those movies. I shake my head, decide I don’t understand much about the world and that it’s probably my fault and not the world’s. I turn it off, roll over and try to get some sleep.

  32

  Late in the afternoon—still no word from Sean—I head up to Tampa for a meeting with The Chicken Man. I sit out in his office for a while and wait. Two men leave his office and the receptionist buzzes me through.

  “How’s my winner?” he says.

  “Your winner’s tired.”

  He gets up and walks toward the bar. He gets himself a drink and hands me a mineral water with a lime wedge in the rim. I push the lime down into the bottle and take a drink. He moves back behind his desk.

  “You, Ben Thompson, wake up with a four letter word.”

  “Come again.”

  “You, like most people wake up with a four letter word—you don’t know how to take on a day. I wake up with a three letter word—PEP.” He holds out his hand and counts the letters off on his fingers. “P-Positive. E-Energy. And P-Program. You got to have a program. PEP.”

  I look at him and down at the bottle in my hand. “I’m not a PEP kind of guy,” I say.

  “Ben Thompson living on a chicken farm, driving some shitbox car, telling Rube Parcell he doesn’t know how to start a day.” He laughs a grumpy I’m-better-than-you-and-you-know-it laugh.

  “Score one for you,” I say.

  “So, what’s your program?”

  I sit quietly for a moment, wondering whether I should talk with Parcell or not. “Can we talk seriously?” I say.

  “I’m always serious, even when I’m joking,” he says, “Serious as cancer—is cancer serious enough for you?”

  “It is.”

  “Shoot, Ben Thompson.”

  I fill him in on the situation with Money and the scouts. The whole bit about Money being pissed because I treat him and Darnell differently.

  “I don’t see your problem,” Parcell says. “You’ve got my team winning, you’ve got my players playing.”

  “He hates me,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Kenny Cash,” I say. “He can’t stand me.”

  Parcell leans forward and I see a wavy reflection of his face in the polished desk. “Why didn’t you tell Cash he was being scouted?”

  “To help his game,” I say.

  “Then you did the right thing.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about what Money said, and he’s got a point. If someone wanted Darnell, I’d tell him—Money deserves the same treatment. I didn’t do right by him.”

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong. So very wrong it hurts me to hear you say it. You’ve got that young man playing better than he’s ever played, right?”

  I nod.

  “That’s doing right by him. Take whatever sense of fairness you have and throw it out a window. Being a leader, Ben Thompson, is not about being good. It’s not about being kind, and it sure as hell isn’t a democracy. Fuck fair. Fuck good. You think I got to this chair worrying about people’s feelings? You worry about his feelings, you’re fucking up. Why should you give one iota of a rat’s ass what Kenny Cash thinks of you?”

  I shrug. “I just do. I like him—he’s a hot dog, but he’s not a bad kid.”

  “Fine. Like him. That’s your right. But your job is not to be liked—it’s to win.”

  “I’d like to do both,” I say.

  “Wrong again. Can’t be done.” He lights a cigar and looks at the ceiling. “I haven’t asked you—ever—what you thought of me, have I?”

  “No,” I say.

  He smiles that same warm smile he gave me the first day I was here. “I like you. Ben Thompson. I liked you when I hired you and I like you more now. But I could give a shit what you think about me. I’m sure there are things about me that bother you, and that’s fine. You cannot be in a position of power and be concerned about feelings. Those are diametrically opposed patterns of thought. I get concerned about you and I’m not in charge. You follow?”

  “I do,” I say. “I don’t agree, though.”

  “You think you know better, and that’s fine. I’m trying to give you a life lesson here, but it’s your right to find out the hard way. You get Kenny Cash to like you—you work real hard on that—and I’ll be sure he gets a job at a meat packing plant. You work on coaching him, and he might play in the NBA. I understand. I’m sure he’ll be happier up to his elbows in pig guts, knowing that Ben Thompson is his friend.”

  I stand up. “Are we done?”

  He motions me to sit. “We are not.” He has this look of concern on his face. “You need to listen to me, Ben Thompson. You need to grow up.”

  “Not caring what people think of you is growing up?” I say.

  “Who the hell said you shouldn’t care what people think of you?” he says. “I said you shouldn’t care what employees think of you. There’s a difference.” He leans back. “Stay on track, Ben. Ride that young man as hard as you need to. Make him hate you and don’t care about how he feels. Forget he’s human if that’s what it takes for you to make him better. Do your job.”

  33

  I’m in my room, lying down, my hands behind my head. I can hear the click, click, click of the second hand of my watch. I’ve never known what to do with a day off, I stay by myself in a room alone too long and all I think of is the sweep of that second hand, reminding me of another wasted second after another wasted second. Death and Stagnation.

  I get up and decide to go to the practice courts, thinking that maybe doing something will get me out of this funk. I leave a note about where I am on my memo board in case anyone needs me.

  The gym is empty except for me and some kid who’s running the bleachers. The ball echoes with every dribble and the bleachers rattle with every step the kid takes. I shoot one off glass from about fifteen feet out and it falls. I run through some shooting drills—spot up going left—spot up going right. After a few minutes, I step up to the line and shoot some free throws. The kid still runs the bleachers, but after a while I don’t hear it so much. Three dribbles, focus on the rim, follow through, keep the eyes on the rim. I drop ten, fifteen. twenty five in a row. Three dribbles, pause, swish.

  I can’t miss. It’s been years since I had this feeling. Just you, the ball and the rim. Nothing else exists in the world—it’s like those pictures of the Earth from outer space, only there’s you and a hoop and nothing else. I stop counting and just focus on the rhythm. I’ve got the touch and start shooting threes. The floor shines like a bowling alley, the bleachers rock and creak under the kid’s feet, and everything I throw up falls in like it had eyes.

  I jab-step in and shoot a step-back fade-away from twenty. The form’s good, but my legs aren’t under me and it falls short with a dead clang off the rim.

  “You miss.”

  I turn and see Sean sitting on the bleachers by the side of the court.

  “I do,” I say. I run and get the ball and shoot one off glass. “How long have you been here?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes,” she says. “You’re good.”

  I walk over to her. “I used to be.”

  “But not anymore?”

  “Nope,” I say and point to my knee.

  Sean looks closely at the knee and runs a finger down the thickest of the scars on both sides. The scars are numb—all the nerves were severed—and I can only feel the pressure around where she’s touching, not on the spot itself. “They’re beautiful.”’

  “Really?” I say.

  She’s wearing black jeans with a black suede vest that shows off her arms, which are more cut than mine. Black cowboy boots. It’s 95 degrees out.
“Is that a statement? All the black?”

  She smiles. “It’s a color.”

  “But it’s not,” I say.

  “It’s not, but it is,” she says. “How about lunch?”

  I’d love to have lunch with her alone, but I still have work to do before tomorrow’s practice. “I’m watching some game tape at Terry’s. You’re welcome to come.”

  She thinks about it for a moment. “You and Terry and shop talk?” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Today’s kind of tight.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she says. “Sounds like fun.”

  34

  We’re early in the second quarter of the Montgomery game. On the tape, Money steals the ball from Hancock and gives it back. Terry rewinds the play and watches it again.

  “Shit,” he says.

  He rewinds it and plays it back again.

  He shakes his head and laughs. “Wow. That’s cold.” He lets the tape run. “He might make it up.”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Up?” Sean says.

  “The NBA,” I say. “He’s leading the Gulf Coast in scoring. He’s becoming a defender. He’s getting there.”

  “He’s got the meanness,” Terry says. “Too much of a hot dog, but he’s mean.”

  “He has to be mean to make it?” Sean says.

  Terry pours himself a cup of coffee. “There’s two ways to play the game—Keller, the little point, he’s all enthusiasm and love for the game. You can see it in him, he’s got that Isaiah Thomas. Earvin John son quality. Happy as a kid when he’s on the floor.”

  “Magic,” I say. “Magic Johnson.”

  “Earl Monroe was Magic when little Earvin was in diapers. Johnson could play, but you don’t go giving away Monroe’s nickname.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Giving away someone’s nickname is forgetting history. Forgetting the man who changed the game. That’s like forgetting Charlie Parker and calling some kid Bird. Don’t matter how good the kid is—it shouldn’t be done.” He gives me a look. “This is more important than you think it is, Bomber.”

  “What’s the other way to play the game?” Sean says.

  “More common. Disdain. Hatred and a lack of respect. Treat the other man like he doesn’t belong on the same planet as you.” He points at the screen. “That’s how young Mr. Cash plays. Like if you get in his way, he’ll hurt you, so you might as well get out of his way.”