It’s her voice. Sound almost close to shattering. She’s the girl from the hospital, he thinks, and then, quickly after, she’s pretty.
“I’m just . . . don’t really play anymore.” He hurries to get out of the door before the talk continues, paper sack full of sweets tight in his hand.
“Hey Jimmy?” she calls out.
“Yeah?” he turns back.
“I’m Carla.”
“I’m Jimmy,” Jimmy says, but then, realizing the redundancy of it, he gets embarrassed and quickly leaves. The bell above the door dings.
• • •
Then it happens—the gossip spreads. Not because Carla wants it to, or because she’s a bad person, but because she is new in the small town she has moved to, and wants desperately to be a part of its social scene.
She would be a freshman in high school if she weren’t homeschooled. In her spare time she often writes poems. She wrote one this morning about Jimmy, in fact, called “Oh Kamikaze, Why?” Her father is the preacher down at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Chapel. Her mother, when she’s not teaching her and her brothers, runs the youth group. She’s only been in town a year, but she knows all about Jimmy. He’s a story she can’t get enough of. She picks up loose conversations that are dropped in the aisles of stores or tossed over gas station pumps. She’s pieced them all together in a giant, oral mosaic.
She can’t believe she called out to him as he left. The sensation just before she did it was like something rising in her bowels. Maybe I’m sick, she’d thought. No, not sick. Just a little bit of recklessness bubbling up in her up-to-that-point carefully plotted life. She’s heady.
Jimmy’s this weird kid who hardly says anything—at least not anymore. There are rumors that he talks to himself now, just like the Flying Finn. People say he’s turning into a ghost, roaming the woods, looking for the people he lost. Carla’s heard it all. Her fingers are itching to call the friends she’s made at youth group and finally be the start of gossip. Nobody had believed her when she said she saw Jimmy in the hospital. This time they’ll have to believe. It’s her turn to tell them something they don’t know. Something they can’t deny. Say, “You’re never going to believe who came into the store just now. Yes! Kamikaze Kirkus—he bought Boston Baked Beans and like MoonPies.” So she dials.
Then whoever she calls, calls someone else, and the story shifts until it’s, “Guess who went into Peter Pan Market and stole twenty boxes of Boston Baked Beans and ten MoonPies? Yeah, Kamikaze Kirkus. He’s bonkers.”
Baked Beans and MoonPies? Shouldn’t he be in school?
He’s a delinquent. He’s over at Peter Pan Park right now, really losing it.
Might head over just to see.
Just to make sure.
Me too.
Poor Carla doesn’t know it, but she’s the lighter. . . . Doesn’t really matter though. If it’s not her, it’ll be someone else. Kid Kirkus is gasoline.
Rule 8. Be a Bit Off
Wednesday, October 15, 1997
JIMMY KIRKUS, SIX YEARS OLD—TEN YEARS UNTIL THE WALL.
Jimmy and Dex were out of the house, flying. They ran down Glasgow street, through the Barnes’s backyard—careful of Sam the dog, his chain goes farther than you’d think—out on to Alameda and then into Tapiola Park. Across sloping fields where people walk their dogs and kids use broke-down cardboard boxes to sled the grass, digging big streaks of bruised green.
“Do you hear it?” Jimmy asked.
“No!” Dex said.
“You don’t hear it? ’Cause I hear it.”
“No, not yet, do you? Really, do you really hear it, Jimmy?”
Dex was bigger than Jimmy already, but slower too, and huffing to catch up. His brother’s feet ate up distance with an amazing appetite, like Sonic the Hedgehog after some gold rings.
“They’re playing! I can hear it!”
The basketball courts weren’t even in sight, there was no way he could hear balls bouncing. And yet. “Jimmy, wait up. No fair, come on, wait.”
In the year since they saw their pops wallowing at the beach in the soupy incoming tide, a lot had changed. Ronnie O’Rourke had pushed Todd into working night deliveries with the high school kids, a punishment. This meant Genny Mori started working the day shift with a recently hired doctor named McMahan. So here it was: when Jimmy and Dex came home after school it was to their let-anything-fly mom, instead of their too-watchful pops. All they had to do was be back to the house by dinner, and it was fine. Most days, Genny was too busy gossiping on the phone with her friend Bonnie to even notice the boys had left. Jimmy and Dex took in how their mom didn’t particularly care if they were around and this drove them out all the more. Basketball gave them reason to ignore their mom before she could ignore them. We’re not alone, we’re looking for a game; we’re not lonely, we’re just waiting to be found. They ran to the outside world with its wide-open possibilities of revealing the beautiful game every chance they got.
They were almost there, one more grassy rise and then a long sloping spread of park to the Tapiola basketball courts. Dex could hear it by then, and he was amazed that his brother Jimmy had heard it so far back—the sounds of basketballs bounced, guys grunting in effort, calls of “And one!” and “Foul!”—and it only cemented further the mythical place Jimmy held in Dex’s mind. He was shy in everything else, let Dex take the lead, except in this, except in ball, and Dex loved the game for this reason. With Jimmy on basketball, he was the little brother.
There were eight guys playing four on four. Two more sat on the grass, watching the game, laughing and calling out taunts. Also—look!—three basketballs not being used, lying beautiful, just waiting for Jimmy and Dex to grab hold, dribble and shoot at the opposite side of the court from the real game, ears pricked for any sounds of play coming back their way.
This was an every-day-after-school thing for these two brothers. They roamed unattended through Columbia City, looking for the paved squares of basketball heaven that popped up in city parks. Running secret trails, hopping fences, skirting drunks, all to get to the next court. Always the next game. In the past year since Jimmy had discovered basketball he’d converted completely, like how some come to religion. An instant, intense, before-and-after thing. There was something preordained in hoops. It was a fact that wasn’t lost on the town: all anyone could talk about was how Jimmy was taking after his pops. Teachers, other kids at school, the bus driver on field trips, all had memories—first-, second-, or even thirdhand—of his pops playing for the Fishermen. To play basketball was to step into a role Jimmy felt—even at so young an age—written for him. A relief. With a little dose of context, he didn’t need to worry about who he was because his last name was Kirkus. Kirkus = basketball. He’d got his brother to buy in too. So he and Dex were just two kids jonesing for a bounce, praying for the rain to hold off for just a little while longer.
People who saw them couldn’t believe it.
The Kirkus kids? Naw, couldn’t be them.
No, it’s them. Little half Japs. Dark-skinned like their mom. There’s not another like ’em in town.
You seen these kids around?
They show up at any court in town if there’s a game going on. It’s like they can smell it.
Where are their parents?
How these little kids watch games so patiently? They should be shouting, crying—you know, scraped knees and gum bubbles out their mouths. Not watching like this. Creeps me out.
Kindergarten and first grade? Damn. Don’t sleep on them. I’ve seen them make shots you wouldn’t believe.
Jimmy shot and Dex rebounded. Then, when the game came back down, they ran off the court, watched some sloppy play unfold, before someone missed, or made it, and the game went galloping off to the other end. Then it was Dex shooting and Jimmy on the bounds. Switch and repeat. Repeat. Until the lights went on, until the players
, steaming from their workouts, zipped up their duffels, left. Repeat.
So it was Jimmy’s turn to shoot. Dex snapped the ball back to him and he made a few in a row. Then there was a breakaway in the game. Someone picked a pocket at the top of the key and Dex wasn’t quick enough to warn Jimmy. “Run!” Some knee-braced sweat-machine, all facilities focused on dribbling, running, not messing up in front of the guys, didn’t see Jimmy in time. Ran our kid down. Scraped knees. Wind gone. Covered in this guy’s sweat. Disgusting. The weight of him. Guy got up, and then pulled Jimmy up after him.
“What the hell, little dude?” the man said. He was someone Jimmy recognized. Then again, it was an odd occurrence when Jimmy didn’t recognize a person in Columbia City.
Jimmy stood up, chest heaving.
“You OK?” The man put a hand on his shoulder. “Just breathe. You got your breath knocked out of you.”
“Fat as you are, I’m surprised the kid isn’t loose a lung!” someone said.
Jimmy looked back at where the other men were standing, arms making triangles as they held their hands at their waists. He started off the court with the ball he’d been using. I won’t cry, he kept telling himself.
“Listen, I’m sorry, but you got to get out of the way. You could get hurt.”
Jimmy kept walking, ball on hip.
“Hey, pass it,” one of the guys from the sidelines said. “That’s my ball, give it here, kid.”
Jimmy rolled him the ball. Suddenly the other men were getting theirs as well. Basketballs zipped up in bags.
“Maybe enough for tonight,” another guy said. “You need a Band-Aid or something?”
Jimmy did not. What he needed was a basketball of his own. But how? Every time he asked their parents to buy him one, he was told there wasn’t money to spare. And so basketballs became hugely expensive, precious objects in his mind. Still. It was the tipping point. His inalienable rights might as well read: life, liberty, and the pursuit of hoops.
• • •
The next day, Jimmy got his chance. David Berg came to class with the brand-new basketball he got for his birthday, and Jimmy had an idea.
“This the one they got in the NBA,” David told everyone. “Real leather and genuine size.”
“You seen the glow-in-the-dark basketballs?” Jimmy asked. Imagine, being able to play the beautiful game even after the sun went down.
“Those are for babies. This ball’s real.”
Jimmy shrugged. “OK, let’s play.”
“I don’t want it dirty.”
“If it’s the real thing, than let’s play,” Pedro said. “Me and Jimmy versus you and whoever you can think.”
“You, you and Jimmy?” Ever since the Ninth Shot, Jimmy and Pedro had become inseparable. It was one thing to lose your best friend, it was another to lose him to your worst enemy. David practically boiled. “That’s not fair.”
“OK,” Jimmy said, “We’ll play you and I won’t even shoot, only Pedro.”
The small crowd of kids who had gathered sank into whispers. The story of Jimmy and David’s fight was famous. A prominent footnote to the Ninth Shot.
“Um.” Jimmy had him in a tough spot. If David played and lost with Jimmy not even shooting, he’d never hear the end of it. Then again, if he didn’t play at all, he’d be tagged as a scaredy-cat, and never hear the end of that either.
“I told you,” Jimmy said, “I won’t even shoot.”
Pedro interrupted him: “Ah, Jimmy, I.”
“I won’t shoot and if you win you can throw the ball at my head, hard as you want.”
This was too good to pass up. “OK,” David said.
They played with that beautiful leather basketball, just like the NBA guys used, and every time Jimmy touched it, he passed. Poor Pedro played valiantly, but he was a little bit slow, a little bit fat, and a lot a bit off with his shot. Jimmy stuck to his word. He never shot the ball.
When David and his teammate won, eleven to two, he had Jimmy stand a few feet away so that the rest of the deal could be completed. The crowd of kids hushed. Jimmy stared straight at David, never flinching.
David addressed the crowd. “It’s like how my dad says. Even if you are the best shooter, you need good teammates too, and Pedro isn’t any good.”
“Fuck you, puta!” Pedro said.
The kids oohed.
“Shut up, or I’ll tell on you,” David said.
“Doesn’t matter, your abuelo don’t even like you.”
Jimmy turned away from David to look at Pedro and David saw his chance. He whipped the ball straight at the back of Jimmy’s head. The crowd watched breathlessly. Pedro’s eyes widened, he wanted to tell Jimmy to LOOK OUT, but the words were stuck.
Then, just as the ball was about to hit our kid Jimmy square on the melon—quite a good throw from David, really—a miracle. Jimmy spun around a moment before it was too late and caught the basketball. The leather snapped against his palms, ball humming a centimeter from his nose. The crowd, God bless them, erupted in cheers. Jimmy smiled at David and said, “Thanks.” Then he took off, running for the far end of the playground, Pedro whooping at his side, David in pursuit and all the other kids following, laughing and screaming at the tops of their lungs. A rain was just starting, finally acting on the threat the gray skies had been issuing all day. With a thrill, Jimmy felt the first drop detonate on his forehead. More touched down just after. He pumped his legs faster.
“No fair!” David shouted. “No fair!”
“Viva Jimmy!” Pedro yelled back.
• • •
Dex sat in his kindergarten class. He hadn’t said a word the entire first month of school—even more stubborn than Jimmy in his refusal to speak. The teacher would often look back on that speechless month with nostalgia, because after Dex started talking, he didn’t stop.
Dex looked out the window and saw his brother running across the playground with the most beautiful basketball in the world held in his hands.
“Basketball!” Dex shouted. “My brother and a basketball!” His teacher dropped an armful of Play-Doh canisters. When they hit the floor the kid-dirtied globs jumped out in a dull rainbow. “My brother and me, we love basketball!”
• • •
Back at the Kirkus household, big Freight Train, alone and lonely with those northwest winds knocking on the windows, the raindrops tattooed with the day’s spectrum of light, burned his lips on the coffee he was sipping. He spit it out across the table and poured the rest down the drain. It was terrible. He noticed how many coffee grains were mixed in with the sludge at the bottom of his cup, and this made him very sad.
He wiped the table with paper towels.
• • •
Genny Mori sat at the coffee counter in the hospital cafeteria. She was trying to ignore the persistent stares of one Dr. McMahan. He was a little guy, tanned and bowlegged. A large easy laugh and ready opinions. Great smile with deep dimples asterisking each side. He had eyes like galaxies being born, each time she looked into them they seemed to have changed. Well-formed hands that he used when speaking, to shape his opinions and ideas, which she found herself following even when she wished she weren’t. He was always wearing the mask of whiskers coming in, a five o’clock shadow that Bonnie called a five o’hot shadow. He had these sticky little looks he’d paste on her at the hospital that she found later in her thoughts, long after she was home from work for the day. She fumbled with the sugar dispenser while he stared at her. Spilled sugar all over the countertop. She wondered if it was the same as salt, if she should throw some of it over her shoulder.
She should have.
• • •
Down along the docks, on Marine Drive, the Flying Finn pushed a shopping cart. This was deep into his first homeless period. He wore a green motorcycle helmet and Todd’s old, purple warm-up jacket. He had dis
appeared after Suzie’s funeral, wild with grief and the pressures of his failing restaurant. Now he was too dirty, too bearded, too ragged for most to recognize. It was a hard life he lived, but not an impossible one. He’d learned about a few warm places in town to sleep—a grate on the backside of River’s Bakery that spewed warm, doughy air was especially nice—and he never got too hungry because it was understood that if he knocked on the back door of Fultano’s Pizza he’d get a medium cheese, no questions asked, and his son, Todd, would pay the bill.
Still, some days were better than others. A car full of high school kids out for lunch cruised past. They used his green helmet for target practice. All out of pennies, they threw quarters instead.
Clatter, clatter, plunk!
“You sons of dogs!” the Flying Finn shouted. “Female dogs!”
The car honked back happily.
All in all, $2.75 dropped to the street around him, and he sung as he collected the coins: “We will, we will, ROCK YOU!”
• • •
Coach Kelly was down in his health class, thinking about what a bunch of bums he had going into next season. Diane, the sports reporter at the Columbia City Standard, was scheduled to call him in a few minutes to talk about the Fishermen’s chances in the upcoming season. What chances? What he wouldn’t give for another player like Todd Kirkus. He would have literally, no exaggeration, given his kidney. Who needs two kidneys anyway? He went out to the hallway pop machine to buy a Pepsi before his students came. Instead of cola, out came a beer. A practical joke by some Van Eyck Pepsi deliverymen.
Ha ha, the joke’s on them. It was just what Coach Kelly needed. He put in a few more coins, made sure that the next can out was Pepsi, and went back to his classroom. He poured the beer into his empty coffee mug and then crumpled the can and buried it beneath papers in the wastebasket. He sat at his desk and sipped, waiting for the call.
Diane’s first question was “We can’t be too good next year, can we Coach? Tillamook and Scappoose look awful strong.”
Coach Kelly blamed the beer for how he answered. “You know, before we got Freight Train Kirkus, we were terrible. One stroke of luck can turn the boat around.”
Rules for Becoming a Legend Page 11