All day Jimmy hadn’t said a word to Mrs. Lilly or anyone else in the class, out of an instinct for self-preservation. Even when Mrs. Lilly promised Jimmy the honor of leading the lunch line he refused to speak. He was still spinning from the events of the morning. Father walking him to class, not saying a word. His mother at home sleeping off last night’s shift at the Seaside hospital. Taste of strawberry yogurt and toothpaste mixing ugly in the back of his mouth. One squeeze on the shoulder and then the big man gone. People looking at his father, whispering to each other. The other kids all with their moms, or their moms and dads, getting three, four hugs. Some of the parents even camping out on the sidelines of the classroom during morning meeting, there just in case. Jimmy with no one. No just in case for him.
Speak? Naw that wasn’t for him. Not on this first day of kindergarten. He needed every bit of himself and giving away words counted.
Then at lunch, as he pulled out a peanut butter and banana sandwich, an apple and a baggie of chips, the black hair clip he had taken from the many in his mother’s nightstand fell out of the bag too. His mother’s hair. Such a symbol of her. Every night she sat at her bedside table and combed her hair while the news of the day was grimly told over the radio. When it was all combed out she clipped it in place with clips—so many clips! To have one with him was to have her with him, even when she wasn’t, even when it was becoming clear to him that she didn’t want to be.
The kids at the table laughed at his clip, at him. Aren’t those for girls? So he threw it in the trash—a thin, rare thread that connected him to a deeper part of his mother, gone.
Then recess and salvation. Outside, he saw two classmates passing an orange ball—a basketball—back and forth. Of course he’d seen basketball played from the back seat of his father’s van driving through town, flickers of it while flipping through channels on TV, but he’d never actually played it himself. If someone were playing it at the park his father led him into a new game, if it came on the tube, his pops turned the dial.
Right then though Jimmy was alone, and couldn’t help but be drawn in. That ball, suspended briefly in the air, seemed magical—something worth chasing until he could hold it. Once held, it seemed big enough to anchor him, at least until he was home again. He was a year older than Dex, but more comfortable drafting off his wisecracking sibling than leading things himself. The background was a place Jimmy preferred. It was from there he was let into his mother’s affections most often. From a quiet game played on the floor he could watch her as she talked on the phone, sucked salted edamame skinny, discarding the green husks until a small mountain crowded her plate, crossed off check numbers in her checkbook, one ear to the phone, painted her nails or watched daytime television—Judge Judy her favorite. Through this study from his blind of shyness he had spotted the rare flash of her smile on occasion, stalking across her face like the deer that sometimes high-stepped into their yard, trembling and ready to bolt. A thrilling peek into what it might be like to always be loved by your mother. And with boisterous, banging, always talking Dex in the picture, Jimmy’s contrasting quietness went unnoticed all the more. Alone and trained for anonymity, basketball suddenly seemed like a tempting way out. Just shoot the ball, just pass the ball, just dribble the ball and you were doing it right. It seemed perfect and it overrode his instinct for shyness. He walked right up to boys he’d never met before in his life.
“Let me,” Jimmy said.
The little blond-haired boy looked at him, shaking his head. “We aren’t letting you, right Pedro?”
Pedro didn’t miss a beat, as if it were all planned out. “Yeah, yeah! Come on, pass it to me, David!”
This boy was even browner than Jimmy, about the same shade as Dex. It made Jimmy like him even as he was being mean.
“You don’t talk, so you’re dumb,” David said and passed to Pedro. “We only like people who talk.”
“I can talk,” Jimmy said. “Look, I’m talking.”
They ignored him and his unassailable logic. Pedro accordioned his body down, and then unwound in a burst that pushed the ball up toward the hoop. He missed badly.
Jimmy felt itchiness in his nose and around his eyes. He might cry. All morning he carried an aching loneliness at being away from his pops and Dex, at seeing everyone else’s mom come and drop off their kids, at the hair clip thrown in the trash, and now this? Also, he felt—no, our kid Jimmy knew—these two little boys were doing this magical thing wrong. He knew their playing was a sacrilege, even before he learned what a sacrilege was. Like farting in church, pissing in the pool, stepping on cracks and breaking grannies’ backs. There was an itch in his bones to step up and show them. Correct it. But he couldn’t because these kids wouldn’t let him play. It hurt. He shifted his weight back and forth and stayed at the edge of the court while the rest of recess boiled around him.
Pedro and David kept missing badly. They shot blindly, trusting strength over aim. On one heave from David, the ball careened off the back of the rim—a “brick,” Jimmy would soon learn—and flew right into Jimmy’s hands.
“Hey!”
“Give it.”
And. Well. Jimmy gave it all right. Hell, our kid was born with the dribble, dribble, drive pumping in his veins. He was a natural—he was the natural. So Jimmy shot two-handed, somehow still beautiful with no form, and the ball arced up and into the hoop, straight and true. Dropped so clean it took the bottom off all three of their little worlds, in different ways.
“Sweet,” said Pedro. Jimmy noticed something for the first time on his lips—an accent.
“Bet you can’t do it again,” David said.
“OK.”
So Jimmy teed off again. And he made it again. Our kid was lights-out. He dropped two in a row, and then extended the string to five, then seven, then eight shots in a row. With each shot he made, he got his change—another shot. A rhythm developed. Pedro kept yelling, “Give ’em his change!” and they passed the basketball back to Jimmy’s tingling hands and he made another; but also each time he made a shot, David became more angry. Soon he was jumping up and down, screaming, “No fair! No fair, you’re cheating!”
It wasn’t clear how exactly David thought Jimmy was cheating, but he was red-faced and adamant. By the time the bell rang at the end of recess, Jimmy was squaring up for his last shot, his ninth, and David simply couldn’t take it anymore. He ran headfirst into Jimmy’s stomach just as the ball left his fingertips . . .
• • •
Back at the Kirkus house, over on Glasgow Street, Dex sat beside one of the big front windows. His parents and Jimmy were the only stars in his sky, so right then, his pops at work, his mom flickering in the bathroom, drawing a bath, and Jimmy gone for his first day of school, the sky was dark. He tapped on the window. He knew eventually Jimmy would come back home, through the front door, and he’d see him first through this window. He tried to imagine the things that were happening to Jimmy at school. He couldn’t though. He could only see the things that were really there. The tree. The sidewalk. The mailbox. So he just kept tapping on the glass, waiting for his brother. Tapped one, two, three. And again and again.
• • •
Genny Mori lay on her back in bed. Today would be the same as the last—spend all afternoon putting the house in order with Dex underfoot, then head off to her night shift at the hospital just as Todd was getting home. Come home later as Todd was leaving, sleep through the morning and then do it again. All told she spent maybe twelve real hours with her husband each week. She complained to Bonnie, but then Bonnie had just said, “Welcome to real life,” so she’d hung up on her.
And then there was the fact that today was Jimmy’s first day of school. Todd had taken him on his way to work. Didn’t even ask if she wanted to go. He was good like that, not putting guilt on her, not weighing in on what she should do, how she should divide her time. Ever since Suzie it had been like this. Fin
e. Just fine. But that was all. A small part of her wished he would push a little harder, demand a little more. It was too easy to hang back. She had started to feel Todd preferred it this way. Had he asked her to be there, she would have probably said no. Still, to be asked.
She’d be angrier if she hadn’t just gotten out of a very hot bath. Genny felt the heat unfold off her in wave after paralyzing wave. Light-headed from the effort of getting out of the tub and walking the short distance to her bedroom, she could picture her heart beating in that particularly strutting way hearts have when seen on monitors in the hospital. Fingertips and toes numb, mind dipping and vision blurred, she gave in, fell asleep.
• • •
. . . the ball splashed through the net as Jimmy and David tussled on the cement. Kids gathered around, taking up the universal chant, “Fight, fight, fight!” It was the last fight Jimmy Kirkus would win in a very many years.
Meanwhile, Pedro was hopping around yelling in his little accent that squished the o on each word, “WOW! WOW! WOW!” For he was the only one to witness the miracle of the Ninth Shot while Jimmy and David fought. For even as Jimmy was getting piled into by David’s huge head, the ball was dropping through the net. An improbable, impossible, incredible, nine baskets in a row.
The Ninth Shot of Jimmy Kirkus.
It was Principal Berg who pulled them apart. Father to James and grandfather to David, he was a skinny, crooked old man whose interior spring had gone shoddy with age. Hunched and lilting slightly to the left, he gave the impression of constantly being suspicious.
Principal Berg bent at the waist until he was sure the boys felt his hot coffee breath on the tops of their heads. “Against the wall,” he said. He pointed at Pedro, who had stopped jumping around, but still had his mouth wide open, like another “WOW” could possibly escape. “You too.” While the rest of the students lined up to go back into school, whispering about the fight, Principal Berg made the three boys wait in silence. Silence was the best discipline trick he’d ever learned.
He tightened the knot of his tie. The incident had made him feel loose, undone. He buttoned his suit jacket. More trouble between a Berg and a Kirkus.
When the playground was empty, he finally spoke. “Well?”
Pedro went first. “He made nine shots in the row!” He pointed at our kid Jimmy, finger trembling. “And the last one, David hit him.” Pedro patted his own head. “With his head. And he made it still!”
“He’s lying, Pop-Pop!” David shouted.
Principal Berg ignored his grandson. He knew he should think the world of little David, but he couldn’t get over it—kid was a whiner. Actually, he’d always taken a weird pleasure in denying David. He was sure it was evilness inside him and so he chose not to think about it.
Principal Berg eyed Jimmy. “Did you make nine shots in a row?”
“I don’t know.” Jimmy looked away. “I didn’t see. He hit me.”
“He made nine in a row,” Pedro said with the firmness of a true believer.
“Pedro can’t count, Pop-Pop,” David said. “He speaks Spanish.”
Principal Berg stomped his foot and the boys flinched. “Shut your mouth, David.” He took a moment to gather himself, turned and patted Pedro on the head. “It’s great you’re multilingual.”
Pedro ducked. “Huh?”
Principal Berg thought for a moment. “Do it again, Jimmy.”
“What?”
“Do it again, make nine shots in a row.”
So Jimmy picked up the ball and started shooting. He didn’t make all of them, but he made enough, including two streaks: one of five and another of seven.
“Jesus,” Principal Berg said.
Later in his office, he started making phone calls. He couldn’t help it. And new news in a small town is lighter fluid on a barbeque.
• • •
At Van Eyck Beverages, Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus accidently cut his thumb with a box cutter. As he took his time wrapping it with medical tape, he worried about how his son Jimmy was doing at his first day of school. He could feel his heart through the wound in his thumb.
The phone rang on the loading dock and Todd’s boss, Ronnie O’Rourke, picked up. After a little talking, the pitch of his voice rose. He put down the phone and walked over to where Todd was loading up a truck for a solo run to Fred Meyer.
Ronnie slapped him on his broad back. “What say, Freight Train?”
Todd shrugged him off. “How’s that, Ronnie?”
“Just got off the phone with Shawn, and she just got off the phone with Nell, who ran into Mrs. Lilly. People are talking about your boy Jimmy. He was wowing over at Grey School today. They’re saying he’s a basketball natural.”
Todd had long known this was going to happen. He did. What kid in Columbia City could go to school and not play basketball? It wasn’t death and taxes in this little town—it was basketball and rain. Still, gone were the hopes he could protect his boys a little longer from the game that would be anything but a game for them. Todd breathed in. Kept telling himself, It doesn’t mean anything. Stay calm, you knew it was going to happen. You knew. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Yeah,” Ronnie slapped Todd on the back again. “They say he’s a chip off the old block, or an apple not far from the tree, or . . .” He tilted his head slightly to see how far he could take this. Todd was grimacing, face in profile, so maybe old Ronnie mistook it as a smile, because for some reason he kept going. “Let’s hope he’s not too close to his old man.” Ronnie nudged Todd with his elbow.
A kid from across the loading dock joined in, “Yeah, hey Todd—” but he stopped because he could almost see the anger dance off Todd’s ox shoulders, heat on cement.
Somehow Ronnie didn’t get it. Took the kid’s half-said sentence as backup. “Let’s hope we don’t get another Kirkus letdown! Columbia City couldn’t handle that, although I bet old Diane’d get wet for the headline potential.” He bent his fingers in the air in front of him like he was bracketing a newspaper headline. “Kirkus Curse Strikes Columbia City Again.”
That was how they kidded at Van Eyck Pepsi Plant. Mocked one another about the old days. The time you tried to get the girl, drink the booze, win the fight, land the job, and you failed. It was their catharsis. Their therapy. A manly portal into talking about their feelings. The guys kid you, so you kid ’em back, and at the end of the day, everything is out on the table. No couch. No bill.
It wasn’t that way with Todd, though. Ronnie remembered too late. It was never that way with Todd.
“Hey, Todd.” Ronnie looked around the loading dock but got nothing. The rest of the workers avoided his eyes.
Todd slowed in his actions. Carefully he placed the last crate of Pepsi liter bottles into the back of the truck. He breathed out. Then in again. His shoulders flexed. He wasn’t the lithe basketball player he used to be. Years of loading heavy crates into the back of trucks had stacked him up comically top-heavy. Arms so big they didn’t lie flat if he put them to his sides but angled out instead, like he was about to curtsy. Chest a barrel, neck a series of thick cables. And angry, Todd seemed even bigger. The other men on the loading dock hurried to busy themselves. An alarm had been tripped in Todd’s mind and they were picking up on it. They’re gonna use him, it screamed. Todd started shivering. They’re gonna use my boy!
Todd slammed the back door of the truck shut, kicked a crate of Pepsi cans off the edge of the loading dock. They dropped the three feet to the ground and skittered about the tires like fizzy demons. He leapt down after them, breathing hard, climbed into the cab. Engine took on the first turn and he was off.
Ronnie was yelling, stomping, spitting mad. “Get back here goddamn it, that’s company property!”
And Todd floored the truck, middle finger out the window, whole rig tipping on his first turn, his daughter’s old cow skull, his accomplice,
grinning from the dash. He was gone, renegade.
• • •
Jimmy came home but his pops wasn’t there. Instead his mother, who should have been at work by then, was pacing in front of the bed, phone at her ear. She wrapped and unwrapped the cord around her arm. It made little white lines in her skin. She wore her nursing uniform. It looked impossibly crisp and clean. Her hair in clips and makeup perfect. Amazing. Dex was on the carpeted floor, watching her.
“I realize that, Mr. O’Rourke,” his mother was saying. “But I don’t think calling the police is necessary.”
Jimmy crept up and kneeled in front of his brother. “Dexy?”
“Pops didn’t come home,” Dex said.
Something very bad happened, Jimmy thought. Maybe he died. In this moment his mouth went dry and he felt very small. Jimmy had a sister who died—he knew that—and it meant you never got to know them or see them.
There was a picture on his mother’s bedside table of his sister, thumbs up and grinning, standing in a rain puddle, wearing a blue jacket with the hood up. It was behind the cradle for the phone, so when his mom hung up she blocked it out for a moment with her hand and sleeve. “Come on, boys, we better get your father.”
“You know where he is?” Dex asked, face slack with relief.
Genny Mori ignored Dex’s question and snapped to look at Jimmy. He was pulling threads from the carpet. “Stop that, Jimmy-boy. You know how carpet is?”
Jimmy didn’t know and he didn’t care.
• • •
Freight Train drove across the bridge from Columbia City into Warrington. Past Fred Myers and over the next bridge into Hammond. He looked out and noticed how sparkly the mud was at low tide. He remembered a story about a man who got sunk waist-deep into that mud when he was out clamming and the tide started coming back in. They couldn’t pull him out without ripping him in two, but if they waited, he’d drown.
Past the Shipyard Bar and Grill, the green soccer fields and the turnoff for Camp Kiwanilong, he arrived in Fort Stevens State Park, skidded past the winter-deserted campsites and burst into the Area C parking lot.
Rules for Becoming a Legend Page 8