Rules for Becoming a Legend

by Timothy S. Lane

  “How we doing, Jim?” he asked.

  “We’re fine?” It was the first time since the end of his freshman season that Coach Kelly had spoke to him.

  “Glad to hear it. Dex tells me you can still shoot?”

  “Sometimes I go down to Tapiola.”

  Coach Kelly patted him on the shoulder. “Well, you think you’d be ready? Get back on the team, maybe go through the reps?”

  Jimmy squinted his eyes, mind racing ahead, nosing around for the trap. “I don’t know if I’m any good.”

  “Oh, you’re too young to know one way or the other.” Coach Kelly walked off leaving Jimmy to wonder what the hell was going on. When he went back into the classroom, all eyes were on him. Mrs. Parson stopped her lesson on similes. Silence. Jimmy realized he was frozen in the doorway—halfway in the classroom and halfway in the hall.

  “Sorry,” he said, and quickly found his seat.

  When the final school bell rang, Jimmy went home, lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling. The Fishermen had their game with Seaside that night. He planned to listen in on the radio. Imagine himself there. Three hours to tip off, and he wasn’t even going to play, and yet his stomach was a mess of nerves.

  Then his door burst open. “Get up,” Dex said. “Let’s ball or something.”

  “What?”

  “We got Seaside tonight. Bus leaves in ten. Coach says you can play, so play.” Then Jimmy understood all the strangeness at school. Dex had been orchestrating this all day, lobbying on his behalf.

  There was a pause where both boys acknowledged the space between them they’d opened up that summer to make room for the pointy edges of their fight, Jimmy’s argument with Pedro, the basketball slump, shit with Mom and Pops.

  “I’m no good,” Jimmy finally told him. “Not anymore.”

  “Well you ain’t good as me anyway.”

  Jimmy’s face flushed. “Why knock Looney down, anyway?” In the end, any shame he felt about being protected by Dex was burned out with the glow of love that came from knowing his brother was still in his corner.

  “Dickhead was annoying me.” Dex couldn’t help but smile. “Listen, I got something I was thinking on. Know that saying, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush? What if you didn’t like bird? What if all you were looking for was the fucking bush ’cause you were a vegetarian? What about that?”

  Jimmy couldn’t help it, he laughed. “What’s it got to do with basketball?”

  “Nothing, just something I was thinking about.”

  “Jesus, Dex.”

  “Just come on, huh? Don’t be a jackass.”

  And so Jimmy went. Just because it was Dex asking. He put on his sweats, packed up his sneaks. Took his gray ball and walked down to the bus with his little—enormous, heroic—brother at his side, yammering on about potential nicknames for himself.

  “What about Microwave?”

  “What?”

  “Like, I’m going to put you on three minutes high!”

  “No.”

  “Windmill? ’Cause I got long arms?”

  Jimmy laughed. Shook his head. It felt good to laugh, be cheered up. He played along. “You do got huge arms, but no.”

  “One Punch? One Punch Kirkus?”

  “One Punch?”

  “I knocked Joe Looney down in one punch!”

  “Hell Dex, you’d knock most of the population down in one punch.”

  When they boarded the bus, every player looked at the two brothers as if they were extraterrestrials, nervous of how to make first contact. Jimmy would’ve turned and fled if Dex hadn’t boarded behind him.

  “So Dex talked you into it, huh?” Coach Kelly said.

  “Guess so.” Jimmy looked away and the music stopped. No one knew what to do next.

  Dex punched through the silence in an act of gallantry on par with punching Joe Looney in the face. He shouted, “Let’s go roast us some Shooter Ackley!” and the team cheered and Jimmy found a seat. They started up the bus and headed down the coast to Seaside.

  • • •

  Excitement about the Fishermen’s rematch with Shooter Ackley and the Gulls ran high like a deadly fever. It would either break in a cold, satisfied sweat or someone would die. It was that simple. Genny Mori didn’t hear the end of it at work. During her rounds at the hospital, other nurses, doctors, and patients found ways to bring up her two boys and their basketball fortunes. She liked having this new buzz. She enjoyed the attention, but more than that, it helped to take her mind off Doc McMahan and his beautiful eyes, his remembered touch, those hopes she had harbored for a future, shared life together.

  At first after she had broken it off he had tried to find her alone in the hospital to plead his case. Walking through the tan, brightly lit corridors she came to half expect being sprung upon from a doorway by a waiting McMahan whispering entreaties to come over to his condo, have a drink, talk. He called at night, counting on Todd to be off on his night shift, and told her how he loved her and in all the different ways, until she cut him off with phone to cradle. These little run-ins and late night calls sent her heart rocketing, but she held strong. If he wanted her—this seemed more and more clear—then he needed to go in all the way.

  So on the desperate nights with Todd felling forests beside her, as she clenched her teeth, hugged her pillow, and waited for the sadness, the missing, to seep out, the colder, rational part of her brain congratulated her on her resolve: if McMahan couldn’t commit to her, then she’d be doing right by her family; but, also, by making him choose she was seeing if their love was a real possibility.

  • • •

  On the day of the game, McMahan set off to find Genny Mori. He planned on cornering her in public so she couldn’t blow him off. He was a new man. This was it.

  For McMahan, the affair with Genny Mori had been all about passion where his marriage was all about practicality. He liked to be able to say things to Genny Mori like “I wish I could stay inside you forever” that Madeline would ridicule him for. He hadn’t exactly lied all those times he told Genny Mori he was planning on running away with her, he just had a proximity problem. In Portland, in his big house with wife and kids, it was easy to promise himself he’d break it off with Genny.

  Then somewhere around the turnoff for Saddle Mountain on Highway 26, on his way to a three-day stint in Seaside, everything would shift, his body would produce a chemical and pump it into his bloodstream, he would press the gas pedal farther, eager to see his sweet Genny Mori, silently vowing to leave Madeline instead.

  Since Genny Mori broke it off though, he missed her all the time. Even in Portland. Especially in Portland. Madeline had gotten into cleanses. Their fridge full of different color shakes and damp, leafy greens. Never before had his wife smelled so bad. And then also she always seemed annoyed with him. Jumped up, ready to fight.

  No, this was it. He’d make Genny Mori listen to him because now he had something real to say.

  • • •

  McMahan approached Genny Mori in the lunchroom while she sat gossiping with her nursing friends. He came up to their table, clicking a pharmaceutical company pen compulsively.

  “Dex is the talk of the town, Nurse Mori,” McMahan said in the loud, disaffected “doctor” voice he used when talking to nurses. It came off sounding like a bad robot impression. The nurses stifled their laughter. There were plenty of McMa-bot impressions around the hospital, but Nurse Larry had the best. Genny, though she felt bad afterward, had even tried it a few times. Despite a real suaveness when he had been alone with Genny, and an undeniable physical appeal, McMahan stiffened up when addressing a group. And, she was happy to notice, he had gotten worse since the breakup.

  “Yes, Dex’s doing well,” Genny said quietly, already sensing trouble.

  “People are saying that with Dex in the middle, the Fishermen are h
ard to beat.” His words came as though from memory and Genny thought she may have read them in the Columbia City Standard. He put a hand on the back of a chair, and then, finding it awkward, put it in his pocket. Then back to the chair. “Now if Jimmy can find his touch again, you could have an exceptional team.”

  “You seem to know your basketball, Doctor,” Nurse Larry said in that suggestive lilt he saved for stuffy men and women he wasn’t interested in.

  McMahan didn’t pick up on the sarcastic tone. He let out an expansive sigh. “Well I played a little when I was younger. I was fortunate enough to get the Country Christian Cougars into the playoffs one year.”

  “I think I remember that year.” Genny Mori chimed in. “We bumped you didn’t we? I mean Todd and his friends.”

  McMahan cocked his head. “How is the delivery-man business these days?” he asked.

  Genny Mori stared at him in disbelief. There was a big bulging vein on his neck. She felt the other nurses watching them, sensing a bruised spot between her and McMahan. They were uncomfortable. There would be gossip over what the tension between Doctor McMahan and Nurse Kirkus really meant later, she knew. One by one the nurses made their exits, Nurse Larry last.

  “You two play nice now,” he said.

  • • •

  It hadn’t gone well. He’d snapped at her. Nobody could get him to a boil the way Genny Kirkus could. He was sorry for what he’d just said. He leaned in and whispered, the bigness of his news rounding out the words with hope. “Have a drink with me tonight.”

  “No.” Genny folded her arms.

  “It’s just a drink. There’s something I want to talk about.”

  “Go jump off a cliff. You want to talk? You just want to screw.” She stood and stalked off into the cafeteria crowd.

  He caught up to her, pulled her arm, people looking, but finally he didn’t care. “I want to be with you, OK? I don’t care about anything else.” Genny’s eyes cut to those around them, everyone staring. “I’ll give you a ride to the game. We can talk.”

  She looked at him. He knew how she loved his eyes. He didn’t dare blink. Then she looked down, and he saw through the part in her hair how her skin was turning red. Warmth. He’d got to her.

  “Yeah, I do.” She looked up at him, blushing, but steely too. “We can watch together, side by side. What do you think?”

  She meant to test him. He swallowed, eyes breaking to the floor and then back to her face. “Yes, OK, sounds fun.”

  • • •

  Meanwhile, Todd was hearing the same hype about Dex at the Van Eyck Pepsi Plant. The night of the game he was paired with Ray Atto.

  “So, Mr. Kirkus, big game tonight,” Ray said as they loaded up the truck.

  “Sure is.”

  “Too bad Jimmy quit playing.” Todd gave him an eye, but Ray stammered on. “Well, you never know with slumps. Alls I’m saying.” Ray rubbed his fingers together: a little tic that drove Todd nuts. It came whenever the kid tried to quit smoking.

  Todd sighed, tried to change the subject. “So your girlfriend’s pregnant again?”

  “Oh she wasn’t pregnant before, or the time before that. If you remember. She just thought she was. Now, I guess she says it’s for real. She’s all mowing down on these dill chips all the time ’cause they’re the craving.”

  “Better kick smoking then. For real.”

  “Sure, I know. I have. Flushed all my cigarettes last week. It’s been a bitch. My fingers keep moving like they think there’s a smoke.” He set down a crate and looked at his hand. “Hey, you think Dex got a chance to be as good as me. Or you?”

  “He’ll be better than one of us, that’s for sure.”

  Ray hummed while he thought it over. “You got recruited from everywhere. I heard Oregon, UCLA. So you got to know if Dex will make it.”

  “Ray.”

  “But if you had to guess if he got what it takes. I mean, Jimmy, he started for a while, you know, until the pressure got up.”

  “Drop it, Ray,” Mr. Kirkus growled. “It takes one bum friend and one bum knee is all it takes.”

  They loaded the rest of the product in silence. Todd hated to admit it, but he was feeling nervous about the game. Ever since Jimmy’s meltdown against Seaside last year—and his own drunken scene that followed—he had an ominous feeling in his gut that there were still more hits to come. He was actually glad he had to work and couldn’t be there.

  “Easy, OK, I get it,” Ray said, all forced cheer.

  Todd put his energy into ignoring Ray. He stiffened his face, didn’t say a word. Todd was a guy who could use silence like the blunt end of a bat.

  Their boss, Ronnie O’Rourke, walked by. “You two ladies in a spat?”

  Todd didn’t laugh so Ronnie scuttled off.

  Todd kept it silent all through the drive out to Warrington where they were setting up a new display at Fred Meyer after store hours. They didn’t say a word as they loaded up the hand trucks. In the parking lot, the fog hung so low it felt like they were dipping their heads into a sky-bound pool. Everything was beaded wetness. Ray fell into a coughing fit and the sound was huge, long-legged, as it ran off under white cover.

  Later, while Todd and Ray were setting up the new display, they listened to the game on a little battery-powered radio. Todd was surprised to hear Jimmy was in the lineup. He thought the kid wasn’t even on the team. Nobody tells me anything. He cracked a beer. Ray looked around, chuckled, opened his own.

  As they listened to the game, Ray knew enough to keep his mouth shut and Todd was happy he did. They were in a deserted store where anything could happen if he lost his temper. Finally, when the last buzzer sounded, Ray opened his mouth, and Todd was happy he did that too.

  “Your boys did pretty good, Mr. Kirkus,” he said.

  “Ray, you got no idea.”

  • • •

  Genny Mori and McMahan enjoyed a ripe silence on the way to the game. It had been a while since they had been like this: alone, embarking on something together. There was a giddiness to it that reminded her of when things between them were just starting. She’d do it right this time, though. No sneaking around. If he wanted her back, then take her all the way. They could get a place together in Seaside. Jimmy and Dex would come live there half the time. With the Doc’s salary, they could afford a house on the beach. A big house. Glass windows, reclaimed wooden furniture. She envisioned a hot tub in the back, running through the cold rain with him to that steamy, bubbly water. Any day could be like that.

  “This is nice,” he said. Through the skylight in his rich man’s car, an early moon lit up his face. Glowed.

  “Yes,” she said, and resisted holding his hand. “It is.”

  They watched the game side by side four bleachers up from the court. The gym so jam-packed their sides touched from ankle to shoulder. Genny remembered it was one of the things she preferred about McMahan. In the tortuous months she’d spent apart from him, she’d almost forgotten this. How she felt she measured up against him. Never tiny or eclipsed. They shared an excitement at being forced into such tight physical contact in a public place.

  “Need more room, Genny?” McMahan asked. What he really was asking was Can we again?

  “No, I’m OK,” she shouted over the pandemonium. Let’s try, for real this time. She ran her eyes from his feet all the way up to his shoulders and then into his eyes.

  Genny felt the heat pulsing from him. Funny how her man who was supposed to make millions in the NBA was barely paying bills stacking cans of Pepsi while little Doc McMahan, who couldn’t get his team out of the first round of the Oregon High School playoffs, owned a yacht. That was life for Genny though: a slippery thing. Being with him here felt like her orbit was tied to his gravity. It was a thing she remembered about her and Todd when they were first starting out. Up until Suzie died, really. Focused so tightl
y onto one another that their own world came to seem so big it was hard to believe anything else existed. A complete tipping into that she hadn’t come out of for so long. So close to one another that it was hard to tell when they were being ridiculous, hard to know when Todd was taking it too far, holding on too long. Slowly though, with an inevitable force, Todd pushed her out.

  And here was that world-expanding feeling with McMahan. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it.

  • • •

  That Seaside game would prove to be both the first and last time the Kirkus boys played together in high school. The Gulls came ready. With all the hype surrounding Dex, and the history of Jimmy’s meltdown the previous year, Shooter Ackley and his team had long had the game circled on the calendar. Shooter was loose, confident; the Gulls’ fans rowdy. When Jimmy unexpectedly walked in for warm-ups—everyone had heard he wasn’t on the team this year—Seaside’s chants almost immediately shifted to the old classic.

  “Dad-dy’s bet-ter!”

  “Dad-dy’s bet-ter!”

  “Dad-dy’s bet-ter!”

  Industrious lowerclassmen boys ran among the crowd selling Krispy Kreme donuts they’d driven in from outside Portland for three dollars apiece. People high on the sense that something important was finally happening in their area, laughed louder than normal, touched longer than usual, and lingered in bathroom doorways and on every step back up to their spot in the bleachers, hoping to get caught in conversation with someone, anyone. Everyone was an expert. The band played loud, sloppy versions of “We Will Rock You”—focusing more on their choreographed trumpet swings than on the actual notes they hit—while the crowd stamped the popcorn-crunch ground in appreciation. Boom, boom, clap. Wading perilously through the crowd an overweight woman wearing a Seaside basketball jersey with “Trevor’s Mom” stitched on the back sold raffle tickets to the fifty-fifty drawing at halftime. Some lucky bum would leave the gym with more than $200 extra in his pocket for the investment of a dollar. Then he’d either get famously drunk with his pals, or buy a new spray-in liner for the bed of his pickup.