It was the kind of atmosphere the Flying Finn would have thrived in. Running around the gym, shaking his hips to the pep-band music, inviting and flinging back taunts. He wasn’t there, though. He was home, listening on the radio, nobody willing to give him a ride to the game.
Super Berg was there, though. Wife Mary at his side. Eating popcorn and open-mouth laughing at whatever the guy next to him was saying. He was in his greasy element.
Out on the floor, our kid Jimmy felt all kinds of butterflies in his belly. No, forget butterflies. Try locust. Sound packed tight.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dex shouted to him, “Just a game. Don’t mean much.”
“OK, Dex.”
Neither of them believed it, but it was still nice to hear.
“Besides, that kid,” Dex pointed at Shooter Ackley in the layup line, legs so muscular his shorts seemed a few sizes small, “he’s more worried about showing off those pretty legs than playing ball. Look at him wiggle his butt around!”
Jimmy chuckled. “His mom dry them on high?” The brothers laughed.
Then Dex stopped, serious. “I’ll put Shooter in his place, you just shoot like Tapiola.”
“OK, put your money where your mouth is. I bet Shooter shuts you down.”
“I’ll never put my money where my mouth is,” Dex said, falling into his old joke. “Don’t you know where money’s been?”
“It’s filthy.”
And the brothers laughed some more, and it felt good. Felt like they were all the way back.
“Look at that guy,” Dex said. He pointed to Pedro in the stands, so high his face looked like unfired clay, melting off his head.
“Hey you guuuuys!” Pedro shouted in an impersonation of Chunk from The Goonies.
“He really should get involved with DARE,” Jimmy said.
“Càllate, idiota!” Dex yelled wildly.
Dex was a bit shorter than Shooter, but a lot wider. Plus Dex had a chip on his shoulder the size of Oregon and most other western states combined. He hated Shooter more than he thought it possible to hate someone. It scared and electrified him, took his body over like when he socked Joe Looney.
Jimmy started the game on the bench and Seaside went up early. While Dex had a pretty good handle on Shooter, the rest of Seaside’s team got wide open looks and knocked them down. Dex needed outside scoring help. Stretch the floor. Couldn’t do it all on his own.
Each time Dex ran up the court, he shouted to Coach Kelly, “Put Jimmy in!”
Finally, start of the third quarter and Seaside up by fifteen, Coach Kelly called for Jimmy. Our kid retied the drawstring on his shorts, stomped his feet twice, and checked in. Seaside’s fans went berserk. Chants of “Dad-dy’s bet-ter!” rained down. The whistle blew. Jimmy got the inbounds pass. First few dribbles were shaky, he had to look at the ball instead of up the court. Everyone in the stands held their breath. The Seagulls player guarding Jimmy went for a swipe. Instincts set in, Jimmy dribbled through his legs and spun around. So smooth and tricky the defender was suddenly behind our kid, confused, disoriented.
“Oh, now!” Dex yelled.
The Seaside crowd cooed, confused.
Shooter Ackley came off Dex to pick up Jimmy. A caught crab, snapping his claws, eager to take off the first finger he got hold of. The crowd regained their lungs, sputtered, then full-out. Cheering, jeering, and shouting ensued. Jimmy saw Shooter running at him. The other game flashed in his mind. All the taunts came back fresh as the day they happened. “Your baby bro’s bigger than you.” BRICK. “Your Grandpa sleeps on the streets, crazy fuck.” WHIFF. “Your daddy was better than you’ll ever be.” AIR BALL. His whole life had locked up after that game. The pressure. It was happening again. He could feel his joints calcifying.
“Jimmy, baby, how I missed you,” Shooter yelled as he came.
Then Jimmy saw Dex setting up a screen to the left of Shooter. A little glint in his eye. Baby bro was going to be Jimmy’s rock, and a bad second choice to Shooter’s hard place. Jimmy jabbed to his right, which he knew Shooter would anticipate, knew the big, cocky farm kid would be ready to go full-steam to the left, and so Jimmy went full on to the left too. Led his man right into Dex’s bricked-up body. Shooter moaned when he hit. Screen? Naw, this was a playground pick. It picked inside Shooter’s body, jangled up his organs, stole all his wind. Left him coughing, spitting, broke. Hurt so bad his grandkids would be sore. Freed Jimmy up completely. He was practically floating. Pulled up from so far beyond the three-point line, he might as well have been shooting from a different state. Redraw the territory lines ’cause Jimmy claimed it Kirkus Country. Splash. Three points. Game on.
With Dex taking up so much attention in the middle, it freed Jimmy to skate the perimeter, free and clear. Nobody could keep up with Jimmy long enough to knock him off his rhythm. The Fishermen clawed their way back into the game. The small contingent of Fisherman Faithful were dancing in the aisles after every shot made. Shooter quit his talking to concentrate on his breathing.
Then, with ten seconds left in the game, score tied at sixty-three, Jimmy had the last shot. He had the ball. Had the open look. Then there was Shooter, barreling at him, seething. And Jimmy glanced around. Dex was tangled below the hoop. No help for him this time. And Jimmy—images of his pops’s career ending, his meltdown last year, all mixed in his head—flinched. Tried a halfhearted pass. Shooter got a hand on it. Up, up, up in the air. Somehow, Dex disentangled himself. The crowd held their breath. Dex ran for the ball. Threw his body after it. Clock winding down. Five, four, three—he got a hand on it and tapped it back to Jimmy. Shooter, his momentum carrying him past Jimmy, screamed. Jimmy caught—two—and released—one—as time expired and Dex, getting to the ball had been too much, careened into the bleachers. The shot was a little wrist-flicker that nestled in the very bottom of the net like it lived there and was just going home.
The Columbia City fans rushed the court—Seaside’s home floor—to mob Jimmy. Everyone loves a comeback story. Hope springs eternal and In Jimmy we trust. The chants of “Dad-dy’s bet-ter” forgotten. Not only had the Kirkus boys done well enough to make it seem silly, they’d proven there would need to be an addendum in the legend surrounding the Kirkus family. Maybe, in truth, Freight Train was the second, or even third best Kirkus to ever play ball. In the center of the packed court, Coach Kelly found Jimmy and shouted in his ear, “We’re gonna let this Kirkus train roll, baby, roll.”
“Yeah, Coach,” Jimmy said.
“You guys play like this, and we’re talking state titles. That’s plural. We’ll be getting calls from all over the country on you two. Nike Hoops Summit invites. Draft chatter.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
Jimmy tried to turn away but Coach Kelly wrapped an arm around his neck, roped him in. He didn’t like to be dismissed. That’s the way it was with Coach Kelly. Basketball, basketball, basketball, always and forever, one more detail, always one more detail, to discuss. “We just gotta get you tough. You should’ve waited on that last shot. Shooter would have fouled you.” It was exhausting.
Jimmy pulled out of his coach’s grip, squinted at him like, What the fuck, we just won, why the hell you telling me now? “Whatever, we got them,” he said.
“Listen to me, kid, the body’s an amazing thing. I know, I teach health class. Your head, your skeleton, your hands, your feet. They’re meant for this kind of shit. Pardon my French. You just can’t run fast enough into a wall to really hurt yourself. Impossible. Bodies are meant for it. Look at Dex, he ran straight into the bleachers for the tip, and he’s fine.”
Each of Coach Kelly’s words was a small amount of weight bringing him back down to earth. So Jimmy left him, filtered into the crowd, looking to reclaim some of the jump he’d felt after burying the game-winner.
• • •
In the bedlam, Dex had been forgotten except by those p
eople he pummeled through in their seats. He’d landed shoulder first on a bleacher’s edge. He was bleeding and swollen and sitting in the first row. Someone had brought him a handful of concession-stand napkins. He had the bloody wad up against his bottom lip and took it away to spray water from a plastic squeeze bottle into his mouth, letting it drip pinkish down his chin, laughing in joy at the celebration.
• • •
When the final buzzer sounded, Genny Mori, as if floating on a cloud, made her way through the mobbing fans to her son. She brought Jimmy into a tight hug. He pushed away at the odd display of affection from her.
“Jimmy,” she said, “Jimmy.”
Then Dex came up, bloody napkins still held tightly to his lip. He’d procured an icepack somewhere and this was strapped to his already purpling shoulder.
“Oh, Jesus, Dex, what happened?”
“Tough last rebound.”
She turned to McMahan, little man of her dreams almost lost among the height, athleticism, and sheer joy of his surroundings. “Well we’ve got a doctor right here. What do you say, Doc?”
McMahan stuttered. “Well, I.” He lifted the edge of the napkin wad. “Might take him to the hospital for a look, just to be completely certain.” He touched the throbbing shoulder, “Yep, we should definitely check this one out.”
“Dex, mind if I ride the bus?” Jimmy asked. He looked over at Naomi, the cheerleader who had ignored him for the past year but was right then staring smoldering eyes at him—game-winning shots can be very sexy on some people.
“Jimmy’s got a girlfriend,” Dex said in a high voice.
“Shut up,” Jimmy said with no malice. He hugged his mom one last time, punched Dex soft in his good shoulder, and then walked over to Naomi. She led him to the team bus.
“Pretty good playing out there, Dex,” Doc McMahan said. “I used to play a little out in Colton for Country Christian.”
Dex straightened up to his full six-foot, three-inch height. He puffed out his chest and looked far down at little McMahan. “Guess they’re pretty desperate for players that far out.”
• • •
There was a traffic jam in the parking lot after the game. Cars honked happily to one another. All, even the Seaside fans, still under the spell of the Kirkus boys’ display of greatness. Fishermen fans because it meant another uptick in the basketball quality of life, and Seagull fans because they had just witnessed something truly transcendent. The Fishermen bus edged through the lot foot by foot as traffic allowed, while smaller vehicles slipped by and honked to the players. Jimmy sat in the back of the bus, game ball in hand, Naomi at his side, just waiting for the darkness of the open road to cover them. Waiting for the future. Waiting to be the Jimmy Kirkus the town wanted him to be.
• • •
In McMahan’s car, Dex sat in the back and traded texts with teammates and Pedro. He was weighed down with fatigue. More so than he’d ever been in his life. And while he could have been on the bus trying to get with his own lady, doing that awkward wrestle with her on fake leather bench-seats, smelly adolescent boys all around, all he wanted to do was sleep for a million years.
The world was spinning pleasurably. The Doc had given him some wonderful pain relievers. Large, white pills that found the pain occupying his banged-up shoulder and then revoked its right to vote. Peace once more in the body of Dexter Kirkus. The start and stop traffic lulled him. He put on his headphones. Huge, black things with half-inch of donut cushion on each side. He slumped his head against the window, watched scenes play out in the cars stuck in traffic beside him. Kids and parents. Sing-alongs and fights over seats. Cell phones and radio dials.
He was about to press play on his CD player, finger on the button to import the fat beats of Pharrell into his skull, when he noticed his mom and the Doc both glance back at him through the rearview mirror at the same time. On a hunch he didn’t press the button, but started to nod his head as if he had. He closed his eyes, pretending to drift off to sleep.
• • •
The moon was out, and just before Arch Cape, the traffic cleared and McMahan stepped on the gas. Genny Mori and him were having a whispered conversation. Kind of thing that seemed light enough to float away on the night, but that was only because it was too dark to see all the heaviness it carried. “Come away” was said a lot. “With me,” too. “Please” was everywhere and “I don’t know” splattered the space between knee and stick shift and knee again.
And then finally, “Yes.”
Genny Mori knew something and she smiled to herself. This was where the tide shifted. The Doc would be hers and a second act of her life was set to begin. No more highs and lows courtesy of blustery Todd Kirkus. She had made up her mind and the Doc had too. Decision reached, it seemed so easy and she wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner. She had an urge to celebrate. Go somewhere and plan a whole new life. They were headed to the Columbia City hospital to have Dex’s shoulder looked at, but after that, who knew?
“Hawaii, what about Hawaii?” McMahan said.
The idea seemed so big Genny just laughed, but then again, now that her two boys were back to being friends, back to their old selves on the court, she felt free to let her mind roll. “Like Hawaii, Hawaii?”
“Like aloha.”
She squeezed his knee and yipped and he shushed her, Dex was in the backseat after all. Genny giggled, did a poor job of covering it up. Life was an exciting, huge thing and she had love for everyone and everything in it, but especially those monstrous headphones that she knew from experience blocked out any incoming sounds to Dex’s ears. She was chiefly thankful for those.
McMahan really had the car going when he reached the curves leading up to the cove. He seemed jumped up, heady on the conversation they were having. A sort of thing that felt like it was stamped all over with LAST CHANCE and yet they’d made it just under the wire.
• • •
The bus—loaded with Fishermen players sleeping or listening to their iPods, or, in the case of Jimmy Kirkus, about three hundred taste buds deep into Naomi’s mouth—was a few cars ahead of McMahan’s and troubled with the steepness of the hill. The bus slowed as the driver shifted into a lower gear to take on the steep grade. Doc McMahan’s car went boldly into the oncoming lane and around the bus, lit off like a UFO.
“Fucking hell, punk,” the bus driver muttered.
• • •
Tuned in to his mom’s conversation with the Doc, Dex almost missed the headlights barreling down the hill at them. The Doc was leaning toward his mother, not looking at the road, entering sacred airspace, and Dex was trying to concentrate hard enough to get his hands to release their death-grip on the seat cushion and instead wrap around the scrawny little man’s neck. The headlights were too much though. They demanded notice. Through the fog of the painkillers pumping in his blood, he registered what was happening. The oncoming Toyota pickup, jacked easily a foot above regulation, came roaring down around the curve and drifted into McMahan’s lane. Dex screamed in a hoarse way, his voice mostly gone from the game. It caught the Doc’s attention and he tried to turn away from the truck, but it wasn’t enough because it was too much. His mom’s voice entered the fray. One word, repeated again and again. The Doc’s luxury car tumbled over the shoulder of the road, tripping on the guardrail, pivoting and flipping so the back hit the metal ribbon upside down. The in-dash navigation computer cried danger. The guardrail skinned the back end of the car and the big, muscled Dex within, flat. Then the car glanced off one tree and wrapped its nose around the next. It was so sudden, violent, and final that when the car settled and silence quickly followed, it was almost as if it had never happened. Two or three seconds was it.
All three dead on the scene.
Part Three
Rule 23. Don’t Ever Stop
Saturday, March 8, 2008
JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD�
�EIGHTY-TWO DAYS AFTER THE WALL.
The radio is blaring.
Hunter: Welcome to Eugene, Oregon, sports fans, for the 2007 Oregon 6A state basketball championship. Columbia City versus North Bend. This is one for the record books. All because of one young Jimmy Kirkus from Columbia City, Oregon. I’m Hunter Smith, on behalf of Craig Lang, we’re happy to have you with us for what will surely prove to be classic basketball tonight.
Craig: That’s right, Hunt, but you gotta get your names right. McArthur Court is The Pit and Jimmy Kirkus is Kamikaze Kirkus.
Hunter: My partner in crime is right. Here in Eugene it’s a federal offense to call it anything but The Pit, and the star of the show, Jimmy Kirkus, he’s not only transformed his play this year, but his name as well.
Craig: Transformed his play is right. He’d be a lottery pick in the NBA draft right now if they still let kids come out of high school. Guaranteed. I played against his dad, a heck of a player, heck of a player, Freight Train, and eh, well a lot of tragedy has befallen the Kirkus household and we here at 950 The Fan wish them all the best.
Hunter: This has truly been one for the record books, partner. A thing of beauty. Jimmy has just steamrolled a strong team out of Canby led by the Duke-bound Ian Callert, and it doesn’t seem like he can be stopped.
Craig: OSAA might want to reconsider sending the Fishermen down to 4A! I mean, have some mercy!
Todd Kirkus throws a half of a chewed pizza crust at the radio. He misses. “Fucking Craig Lang!” He sits up from where he’d been reclining on the couch. “Pop, you remember Craig Lang?”
The Flying Finn is on his bike in its spinning stand, fully spandexed in gear, pumping away the nerves as they listen to Jimmy play a couple hundred miles south for the state title. “No, was he in this movie Princes of Persia?”
Rules for Becoming a Legend Page 29