Rules for Becoming a Legend

by Timothy S. Lane

  Fifteen minutes after Todd Kirkus reads the blog post he’s down at the high school, storming through the winter-break-emptied halls, looking for the computer lab and Johnny Opel. Whoever had answered the phone when he called Opel’s house—sleepy-voiced, female—said he’d be down here. Merry Christmas. Opel, guy who graduated same year as Todd and Genny and went bouncing around town working gas station jobs while reading fantasy novels at the pump. Then, boom, computers, Bill Gates and soon, the Internet. Johnny Opel was sucked in. Started his own business called Dr. Wires, helping people with their computer programs, going in and killing viruses, driving around a stupid van he’d painted himself with a computer that had slanted eyes and a wriggling line for a mouth, thermometer jutted from its lips. Eventually he’d become the computer teacher at the high school and Dr. Wires shifted into a weekend business. Todd guessed the pay working for the school was steadier.

  He found the computer lab on the first floor, nestled among the senior lockers, a room he remembered as being Business 2 when he was in school. He’d once made a business plan for the class with James Berg about a lawn care company whose main pull was that Todd and James would work with their shirts off. Dumb-ass high school stuff.

  Todd ducked into the room, trembling. Johnny sat in a large cushioned wheelie chair, using a full table for a desk. Before him were three different monitors all sitting at different heights and angled to face him like inquisitive eyes of the same alien animal. His head jerked up at Todd’s presence.

  “Hiya, Todd.”

  “Looky, it’s Johnny Opel.” Todd was trying for casual, not an easy thing for him. He felt that if he were smaller it would come off better, but there was no way around the fact that he was huge. Tall and boxy in high school, he’d only packed on around his equator in the years since. Especially this last year. His hands in tight orbit between food and mouth. Eating somehow doing a trick on his thinking. Sounds, mostly. That’s what he thought about. Had they screamed? Had the breaks?

  He closed his eyes, slowed himself. He could do this, seem calm. He didn’t want to spook Johnny Opel so bad the guy didn’t help him. “How you been? Still here, I see. No Bermuda vacation plans for you.”

  “I sunburn too easy.” He took a slow sip of an enormous 7-Eleven bucket of pop.

  “Hey, you know back in the day we always used to say you had a good name to be a rock star. You ever try that out? Being a rock star?”

  The wrong thing to say. In school Opel been obsessed with Kiss and wore his hair long. Got pushed around some because of it.

  “No I guess I haven’t tried being a rock star, Todd.”

  “Oh, well, too bad. You would make a good one.” Then, trying to take some of the weight out of the conversation, backpedal, “I tried to be a basketball star once, you saw how that worked out, ha ha.”

  Johnny sighed. “What’s up?”

  Todd ran a hand through his hair, paused to itch at the back of his skull. “Well, I guess you’ve seen this thing on the Internet? A website called, I guess, it’s a web blog or something, called Missteps?”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I saw it.”

  “I was hoping, because you got Dr. Wires and you’re the computer teacher, you could tell me who made the damn thing? Or at least take it down maybe.”

  “I don’t know, Todd.”

  “Opel, it’s not really for me though, you know? It’s about my son, he’s a quiet kid, like not really one to use what he got from playing basketball to lord it over other people. Different from me, you know? Look, I was an asshole, I get that. In high school, the worst. But this isn’t for me. Jimmy, he’s already had a tough go of it lately.” Todd sank Johnny Opel with a stare that said what he hadn’t said—You know, about him and the wall and everything else.

  Already Opel was typing. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to do about taking it down. This blog is hosted by Google and they’re pretty tight, really, for a public, free setup. We can send in a complaint, and they’ll shut it down in a couple of days themselves. But what I can do now is post a link as a comment directly to the administrator, and he’ll have to click it to approve or not, which will then get his ISP and I’ll be able to get his physical location, you know. Or proximity. Like where his house is.”

  The whole explanation is beyond Todd and he has the distinct thought he’s forgetting what’s being said even as it’s being said. He noticed something in Opel’s eyes just before he’d cut them to the screen. Must be strange for him to see the former king of high school groveling.

  While he works, Todd paces the room ringed with computers all showing the same rushing stars screen saver. He touches the mouse of one computer and it murmurs to life. Desktop a blown-up image of Columbia City High School’s mascot, the Stomper. Big old fisherman with one foot forward, ready for a giant step into the future. Dopy nose and droopy eyes, Todd remembers how he was always a little embarrassed to be seen with that logo on his jersey while the other teams rocked things that could kill you. Cougars, lions, bears.

  “Damn, guy already responded and, he’s at, looks like the address is . . .” Johnny says. He looks up from the screen, hesitating.

  “Yeah?”

  “I guess it’s old man Berg.” Johnny coughs and takes a pull of his Coke. “At least I’d give it a ninety-eight percent probability it is.”

  Well god-fucking-damn. It’s not how he thought it would feel. Knowing this. No blow-the-circuits-out anger. What Todd feels, really and truly deep into his bones, for the first time in his life, is old.

  • • •

  Meanwhile, Jimmy’s in his room, lying on his back, passing his ball up to the ceiling, where it bumps softly and dislodges paint flakes, thinking about what his grandpa said in the car. Magic. His basketball giving the people a little something to take with them. This thought almost bails out a bankrupt love. Almost. It still doesn’t seem different enough from when he played to be perfect and anything less was failure. He can’t slip back into basketball being his only counterbalance. That weight, he’s found, is inconsistent.

  He’s noticed, thinking about his past, that there are moments that seem small in the before but grow big in the after. This thing the Flying Finn said about magic? Maybe it’s a giant in the after. Seeing his mom lean into Doc McMahan’s window, face red, back when he was nine? That’s a redwood. The fact that his father keeps a dead cow skull glued to the dashboard of his work rig? A mountain. His grandpa a periodic bum? An ocean.

  He needs to parse this out. This could be important. He’s all buzzing. Then an image of Carla. Scribbling at the counter. A journal? Like a fucking after-school special, he laughs to himself. That’s what it was like. Joke Dex would have loved. Just write down your feelings, Lucy, and things will be OK . . .

  Jimmy is surprised Carla’s number is in the phone book for some reason. Aren’t they new to town?

  A man answers. “Ferguson residence.”

  Jimmy pulls himself to it. This isn’t natural. Butterflies on speed chipping away all manner of vital things on his insides. “Hi, may I speak to Carla, please?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “It’s, well.” Jimmy knows no one would want their daughter talking to him. His nickname is suddenly Kamikaze, after all, destruction. He says the first thing that comes into his head. “It’s about Jesus?”

  A let out. A sigh. That was a good move. “I’m a preacher, son, maybe I can help.”

  “It’s just, see. Carla was talking to me about it . . . I was kind of hoping we could talk more.”

  “Who is this?” He asks again. Softer now.

  “I’m embarrassed. Maybe I should go.”

  “No, hold on.”

  Scuffling, murmured words. Voices back and forth. A pause. Then clicking, scraping. “Hello?” It’s Carla.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Long draw-out on the i. She isn’t sure who he is.<
br />
  “It’s Jimmy.” He sits up. “Jimmy Kirkus? I saw you in Peter Pan.”

  More noises of the phone being brushed against something. A closing door. “Hi. Did you call me about Jesus?”

  “I’m not scared of 6A.”

  “What?”

  “You asked me, if I was scared? I’m not.”

  “But you’re like, not on the team.”

  “Still.” He’s got the phone cord up around his feet so that he almost trips when he walks over to his window. Rain—again—and condensation on the glass. He draws a smiley face into the window fog. “You were writing? At the counter? What was that, like a journal?”

  She giggles, nervous. “I guess it’s something like that. It’s so embarrassing. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Like your feelings?”

  “Like my day. Or. Sometimes poems, or whatever.”

  “Can you write me one?”

  “A poem?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, I don’t really do that anymore.” Voices in the background, the door being opened. “I gotta go,” she says.

  “Do you believe me?”

  “What?”

  “Do you believe me, about not being scared.”

  “I gotta go,” she says again and hangs up.

  He finds a notebook, opens it to a blank page before him. Write it all down, what a fucking waste of time. He jabs his pencil into the page, rips down and to the side, then throws his pencil across the room. It bounces off the wall—eraser end hitting—and then belly flops on the floor, its tip cracking off. He leaves it there and takes a pen from the cup bristling with writing utensils at the desk his pops set up for him in Dex’s old room when he started homeschool lessons. He dots around the first line. It’s the path of a bumblebee.

  Jimmy grips the whole pen in a fist as though he were grabbing a bar to hang from. He etches into a new page, letters sprawling across three or four blue lines, IT’S THE FUCKING STUPIDEST THING IN THE WORLD TO WRITE ANYTHING DOWN. One whole page to get those giant-lettered words out. Breathing hard. Then, he keeps on with the next page, this time switching his grip to normal but still using big letters. LAST NIGHT I, he stops, goes back and crosses this out. Starts below it. NO MATTER IF I, again a stop, a cross out.

  He stands up, paces the room, comes back and sits. This writing it down thing isn’t going to help anything, and I’ll tell you why. And he does.

  Rule 14. When You Shine, Don’t Apologize for Your Sparkle

  Tuesday, December 6, 2005

  JIMMY KIRKUS, FOURTEEN YEARS OLD—TWO YEARS UNTIL THE WALL.

  Jimmy started his freshman season under pressure you wouldn’t believe. Already the college recruitment letters were coming in. Big envelopes with glossy tri-fold brochures brimming with positive stats, past players, and hints about Jimmy’s eventual spot in campus hierarchy. This is where the athletes eat . . . The Columbia City Standard picked the Purple and Gold Fishermen as the preseason favorite to win the state title with little Jimmy at the helm. A day before the first game of the season, the paper ran a photo of him posing in his new Columbia City Fishermen jersey. He stood, arms folded, just enough to hang the uniform on. The headline read The Second Coming . . . of Kirkus and the article pushed its column legs all the way past the fold. News on distant wars, local elections, and a tax to fund repairs to the Mengler Bridge were all squished shorter that day, their headlines hardly getting breathing room under Jimmy’s feet.

  Neither of his parents made it to his first high school game, a matchup against the Tillamook Cheesemakers. The Flying Finn would have made it, if at all humanly possible, but no one in Columbia City would give him a ride and he’d failed his most recent driver’s test in spectacular fashion: turning the Driver’s Ed car the wrong way into the Warrington Bridge turnabout and driving straight into a bush in the center circle to avoid running head on into Officer Humphreys’s police cruiser. No matter. Jimmy scorched the nets for 52 points in the Cheesemakers’ gym. Capped it all off with a half-court buzzer-beater. Dex and Pedro stormed the court with the rest of the fans who had traveled, but they couldn’t find him. Jimmy had promised to take the booster bus back with Dex and Pedro but his teammates had other plans. He was already swept onto the team bus, riding the shoulders of the upper classmen.

  “Shit,” Pedro said, “Jimmy was gonna ride back with us.”

  “You gonna cry?” Dex put Pedro in a loose headlock. “He just hit a half-court buzzer-beater, course he needs to go on the team bus. Can’t be on the booster bus,” Dex lowered his voice to a whisper, “These crazed fans would eat him alive!”

  “You know, I got a tío who scored the winning goal for Mexico in World Cup against Uruguay.”

  “Damn, you got a tío for everything.”

  “I got a tío for your mom, you racist puta.”

  “I got a foot for you ass.”

  “I got a . . .” and on and on the boys went.

  • • •

  After Jimmy hit that game winner in Tillamook, the seniors piled him on their shoulders. “Guys, I’m supposed to . . .” Jimmy yelled. “Pedro and Dex and me . . .”

  They wouldn’t listen, too hopped up on winning the game. Joe Looney, big slob of a guy, led the excitement, yelling, “We got our Mighty Mouse!” Everyone was excited but Ray Atto. It was his senior season after all. He had been the leading scorer two years running before Jimmy Kirkus came. Leading scorer on a losing team, but leading scorer still. Ray had finished the game with four points and five fouls. Worst output since middle school. He sulked to the bus with a towel over his head. What was he, if not a basketball stud?

  On the bus ride home the rest of the team, all upperclassmen, erupted in the Fishermen cheer. It was a cheer that had been around since before Freight Train. The coaches didn’t exactly condone it, but wouldn’t exactly stop it either.

  “Three cheers for Columbia City High, you bring the whiskey, I’ll bring the rye, send the seniors out for beer and don’t let the sober FRESHMAN NEAR”—all fingers pointed to Jimmy, laughter rolling. “We never falter, we never fall, we sober up on pure alcohol, watch the ro-yal faculty go stumbling down the hall! MORE BEER!”

  That night, in the back of the bus, junior cheerleader Naomi Smith sat next to Jimmy. He felt his heart in his hands. He trembled. She scooted closer to him on the cracked leather.

  “You need more room?” he asked her. “I could give you more room.”

  She giggled. “You’re funny.”

  A groupie! Jimmy realized all at once as she kissed his neck and trailed her lips downward. She gave him head that night as the bus rumbled home. It was something he and Pedro had joked about, but never thought would happen to either of them. Jimmy hadn’t even puzzled out the mechanics fully. He was shocked that she was willing to put her mouth there. He worried over if they ought to use a condom. When he was almost there, she sat up and nibbled his ear and he came into his sweaty game jersey. He kicked the seat in front of him in ecstasy. Joe Looney roused from sleep long enough to say “corndog.” Him and Naomi busted up laughing. Jimmy, exhausted, leaned back with Naomi’s head on his shoulder. He knew his life was going to be, well, gravy from then on out.

  • • •

  The next few games went much the same. Jimmy broke off audacious bushels of points as if there were perforated lines on the future—some cut-here directions that made the amazing things he did come off so easy they seemed scripted. Ordained. Word spread quickly through the league that our kid Jimmy was for real. Opinions floated around about the best way to stop him. Full-court press? Dedicated doubles? Traps? Nope. Six games into the season—all wins—and our kid averaging just over 29 points a game. Give him a breath’s whisper and he’d dagger the shot every time. Just ask the Tillamook Cheesemakers.

  Fifty-two points!

  From a little, skinny, freshman kid?

  Holy God!


  Opposing coaches planned Jimmy Kirkus specials. Defensive schemes and setups that would do something, anything, to slow the scoring machine. It turned out little helped against Jimmy, as he was a gifted passer. In the seventh game of the season the coach of Clatskanie subbed in new defenders to guard Jimmy at every whistle. Fresh legs and whenever he got past half court, a double team. Still, nothing doing. Kid Kirkus dished out twenty-three assists that night, a school and league record, and still managed eighteen points. Fishermen won in a blowout.

  After the game in Clatskanie’s echo-heavy gym Coach Kelly, at the top of his lungs, shouted, “Way to go Jimmy! Making the rest of these bums look like stars!” He was joking of course, but . . .

  Ray Atto, on his way past Coach, said, “So we’re bums now?”

  “Now, Ray, come on,” Coach Kelly pleaded. “Not how I meant it.”

  Jimmy lingered after his teammates filtered from the gym to say hi to Dex and Pedro. He waded through the remaining fans still buzzing around slapping him on his shoulder, asking him to pose in their photos. He was newly weary about his best friend and brother. How could they fit into this time where he made the big shots and was carried off the court, a hero?

  “You pass too?” Pedro said sarcastically. “How’s that?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy laughed.

  “You were looking sharp, kid!”

  “Sharp enough to cut,” Dex said.

  “Sharp enough for a knife to be fucking jealous,” Pedro chimed in.

  “Thanks, guys,” Jimmy said, hoping to stop their routine before they really got into the momentum of it. A back and forth they found funny, but he never was comfortable jumping into himself. A lot of shouting and obscure references. Who can say the weirdest thing with the most bluster. It brought stares.