Hoosier Hoops and Hijinks

by Brenda Stewart

  Molly stepped out of the closet, nearly slipped on the throw rug in the foyer, and switched on the chandelier in the dining room. Now it was bright as day and she wasn’t surprised to look into the startled face of Kitty Harris, holding in her hands a painted bowl belonging to Molly’s great-grandmother a century ago. She might have dropped the bowl but she managed to gently place it on the table. Molly spoke first.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Kitty’s lips shook. Her face was ashen.

  “I thought I saw someone moving around in the dark over here,” she stammered, “I came to see if everything is all right.”

  “Like hell you did.”

  Molly watched her across the table.

  “You were about ready to take that bowl, weren’t you?”

  “I was not.”

  “Of course you were.”

  Molly pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling the police.”

  She flipped it open and started to call 911 but her finger tips shook. Kitty interrupted.

  “No, please, Molly. Wait a minute.”

  Molly pressed the cell phone to her ear. Kitty came toward her as if she were going to touch her.

  “I think we can work something out.”

  “You have my stuff don’t you?”

  Kitty sank into a chair and sobbed.

  “I’m so sorry for this. I just watched you enjoying all your nice things and talking about them and where they all came from, who had them before you. I just wished some of those were mine to enjoy. I had to buy my treasures myself. I know now how wrong I was. So often I do things I’m sorry for.”

  Molly thought about how many times over coffee they’d talked about their lives and regrets. She knew about Kitty’s life and what she regretted. She sat down close to the now weeping Kitty, who had so much to lose.

  “Where’s my stuff now?” she asked gently.

  Kitty blew her nose on a tattered tissue. “It’s all safe. In a box in my closet.”

  Molly’s tone resembled a teacher with a repentant though wayward student. She stared at Kitty’s down-tucked face. Her left hand tightened on the ancient stone ax head anchoring her unpaid bills.

  “I haven’t decided about all this. You have no idea how you’ve betrayed our friendship. I entrusted you with my key. You might say I was entrusting you with my life.”

  “And I’ve said I’m sorry.” She stood up and tightened her scarf. “I’ll go get your stuff. Everything is there. Let this be the end of it.”

  “No, no. Sit down. If this got out it would destroy Trey’s campaign for mayor, wouldn’t it?”

  Kitty cried again.

  “I don’t ever want Trey to find out about this. He couldn’t stand it. My life is in your hands.”

  “So it is. Here’s the deal I’m willing to make.”

  Kitty looked at her now with renewed hope.

  “I don’t want this all over town any more than you do. You bring back my stuff and I’ll tell Kevin and Jamie that it all showed up in a box delivered at the back door and I have no idea where it came from.”

  Kitty exhaled, like a defendant who’d just heard a not guilty verdict.

  “You’re a real friend Molly. I’ll never forget this. I’ll always be grateful.”

  “But there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” she asked through the tear-saturated tissue pressed to her face.

  “I want you to include your Haviland china.”

  Kitty visibly jerked, as if she wasn’t hearing right. She gasped as if the verdict had been the gallows after all.

  “But, but that belonged to my grandmother.”

  “I know. But it will now belong to me.”

  Kitty’s mouth hung open. Molly thought the blood was draining from her face. That Haviland china, so elegantly displayed in her lighted china closet, was the pride of her life. Used only on special occasions. Someday Kitty would pass it on to her daughter to display in her lighted china closet.

  “But Trey will notice that it’s gone.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something to tell him.”

  Kitty moved on unsteady legs. Molly thought she might fall over.

  “I’ll go get your stuff. But I have to think about this part.”

  “You have to decide now. I’m ready to call the police.”

  Again she flipped open her cell phone.

  So Kitty agreed to the deadly exchange.

  On Friday night Jamie and the Cougars were to leave from the south side of the field house for Lafayette. Molly patted Jamie’s cheek and told him she was fighting a cold and would stay at home.

  Before he got on the bus, he said, “Dad promised to be at this game. He’s upset because I’m not making as many three-pointers as I was before. He said he expects improvement.”

  “Typical,” said Molly.

  “Lisa doesn’t measure up to you, you know,” he told her.

  She took a deep breath of cold air.

  “You don’t know how good that makes me feel.”

  Later that evening Molly peered through her dining room window into the cold night. She saw no light at Kitty’s house, and she suspected her of skulking in the dark. The light shining by the garage indicated that Trey was away. She watched from behind the curtains until she saw Kitty make her way across the street carrying a cardboard box. Molly received it at her back door, careful not to turn on the back porch light.

  Neither woman said a word. Kitty stood by while Molly unpacked the box under the chandelier above her dining room table, accounting for all her rightful belongings. She examined the pre-Columbian bowl and gently placed it on the buffet. She found the Miriam Haskell brooch and pinned it to her sweat shirt. The Japanese water colors were soon hanging back in the foyer. Then she stared Kitty straight in the face.

  “Now where is my Haviland china?”

  “It’s packed up. I’ll get it.”

  Her shoulders drooped as she left by the backdoor. Molly waited in the darkness. In a half hour she saw Kitty crossing the street trundling the wheelbarrow she used for gardening. As she approached the back porch, Molly saw through dim light that the Haviland china had been packed in shopping bags, the china pieces cushioned with green excelsior.

  She helped Kitty carry the bags into the dining room and place them carefully on the table. Excelsior fell on the table and on the oriental carpet, looking almost like part of the carpet design.

  Molly uncovered one of the Haviland cups and ran her fingers over the rim.

  “I really hate taking this china from you,” Molly said calmly. “But my aunt took my grandmother’s china after my mother died. She came in this house after the funeral and packed up what she wanted. She said the china belonged to her for some reason I can’t remember. My mother’s will said nothing about it. Believe me, I’d never felt so violated. People are always stealing from me. Even now Kevin is trying to get Jamie away from me. Well, this time I’m the one who’s doing the taking.”

  Then she held the Haviland cup up to the light. Kitty stood across the table, shaking, rubbing fingers that were red with the cold.

  “I never will forget the time you bid against me for that curio cabinet at the Lovell’s estate sale. You didn’t want me to have it so you ran up the bidding and got it for yourself.”

  “So it’s purely vengeance?” Kitty murmured.

  “What did you tell Trey about this china?” Molly asked, not taking her eyes off the cup.

  “I said it was going to my sister for a time. My mother’s will stipulated sharing the china.”

  “And he accepted that?”

  “His attention was on an editorial in the paper.” Kitty’s voice faded away.

  Then she circled around the table and begged for mercy, that this penance was too great. Paying no attention, Molly examined the perfect rose bud in the center of a plate, regretting that it would be hidden away for a time. Perhaps there would be occasions when she could serve dinner on this
china. She was contemplating such an occasion so she was unaware of Kitty moving behind her, unaware of her hand on the stone ax head. There was a sudden flash of pain and light as Kitty with all her strength brought the ax head down on Molly’s head, not once, but three times, before Molly’s legs gave way and she fell unconscious and bleeding on the oriental carpet.

  Kitty then dropped the stone ax head at Molly’s feet and packed her china back in the green excelsior and trundled it back across the street.

  Jamie hurried into the house after his father and Lisa let him off at the back door before they left for Indianapolis. He was almost dancing because he wanted to tell his mother about another game in which he’d made four three-pointers. His game was back on track. The coach told him so.

  He stopped short when he saw his mother sprawled at the foot of the dining room table, her blood soaking the oriental carpet. He took two steps back from her, then went to the telephone in the kitchen and with trembling fingers punched out his father’s cell phone number.

  “I’ll be right there. But call 91—now,” Kevin yelled after hearing Jamie’s incoherent message.

  Ten minutes later Kevin barged through the backdoor, trailed by Lisa, and found Jamie sitting by his mother’s fallen body, her bleeding head in his lap.

  “Listen to me. Did you call 911?”

  Jamie mouthed something indecipherable. His mother’s blood stained his hands, his blue jeans, his sweatshirt. The ancient ax head they had all handled and examined over the years lay at Molly’s feet. Kevin knelt on one knee and pressed a finger against her jugular vein and got a faint heartbeat.

  “Did you call 911?”

  Jamie barely nodded.

  Kevin gently lifted Molly’s head off Jamie’s lap. He took his son by the shoulders and helped him to his feet and away from Molly.

  Jamie sobbed and cried, “Mom, Mom,” over and over again.

  Kevin gripped his shoulders and whispered close to his face, “Listen to me. I’m going to say we found her like this together. I don’t want them questioning you when you’re falling apart. Don’t you be saying something different.”

  After the police arrived, Kevin explained, “Jamie has blood on him because he fell on her body, trying to revive her. He and his mother are very close.”

  Jamie stood aside and watched the paramedics examine his mother. Outside the winter night was bright with the revolving lights of police and ambulance. The lights bounced off the walls of the dining room. Neighbors clustered on the sidewalks around the house, huddling in heavy coats, whispering to one another. Kevin followed the police as they went room to room, as if someone might still be in the house.

  Jamie stood where Kevin told him to stand, as if he were a little boy, crying and keeping watch on his mother’s battered head. Then he noticed the Miriam Haskell brooch on her sweat shirt. The coral brooch that was stolen. He couldn’t remember his mother ever wearing it on a sweat shirt. Tears dried on his cheeks as he looked around the room. The pre-Colombian bowl was back in its place on the buffet, as if it had never been gone. He moved around the dining room table. No one noticed. Kevin and the police were going upstairs.

  Next to the thick-soled shoe of a paramedic he saw a thread of green excelsior, reminding him of what he’d found a week ago. He crept up behind the paramedic, knelt down, and pinched the excelsior between thumb and index finger, as if they were tweezers. The attention of the paramedics stayed on his mother. Her flashlight was on the table. Jamie picked it up. The paramedics paid him no mind.

  Jamie saw more excelsior near the hallway to the kitchen, on the sienna tiles on the kitchen floor. Still nobody was watching him. He heard his father and the police coming down the stairs. He passed through the kitchen. More excelsior lay on the back porch and on the back steps. With a blood stained hand he pulled open the back door and stepped out into the cold. His flashlight shone on green excelsior on the driveway, tangled on a chunk of ice, amid countless clues: boot prints, the single tire tread of a wheel barrow in packed snow. The police should cordon off the driveway, he thought.

  He followed the trail of green excelsior across the street, toward the shuttered windows of the Harris’s house. The light burning above their garage door told him Trey wasn’t home yet. His mother’s best friend Kitty wasn’t at her side that night, as she was at the first break-in, as she was at every crisis in his mother’s life.

  The flashlight caught green excelsior ground into the icy street by a passing car. Excelsior caught in the bare twigs of a bush by the steps to the Harris’s back porch. Green excelsior on the steps to the back door, the door his mother and Kitty used a dozen times a day. Revolving lights bounced off the side of the house.

  There was no light in the kitchen. He rapped on the door. He couldn’t see into the house through the closed shutters. He banged on the backdoor. He rattled the doorknob as Kitty’s shadow fell across the window. Slowly she opened the door a crack.

  “What’s going on?” she murmured.

  “I came to see you. I wanna come in?” Jamie wedged his foot in the doorway. His mother’s blood was drying on his sneaker. Kitty pulled open the door.

  “Was there another break-in? I’m not feeling well tonight.”

  Jamie pushed himself inside her kitchen, nearly knocking her over. The aroma of beef stew filled the room. Trey’s supper probably.

  “I’m calling the police,” she threatened. She looked terrified in the half-lit kitchen.

  “They’re right across the street.”

  He pushed past her into the dining room. Shopping bags filled with green excelsior were all around the room. Haviland china plates were stacked on the table. A serving dish and meat platter were positioned in her china closet.

  “Get out of here.” She pointed to the blood on his blue jeans and sweat shirt.

  “I see what I need to know,” he said.

  “You’re getting her blood everywhere. Look at my carpet.”

  Jamie’s head began to clear a little.

  “How do you know it’s her blood?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned to retrace his steps back through the kitchen and across the street. But Kitty suddenly blocked his way. He stepped back. Then he dodged around her as he would a defender on the basketball court. She pulled a meat cleaver from the knife rack by the stove, but again he dodged away. When she came at him, the cleaver flashing in the light, he made a weaving move and pivoted, avoiding her again, but smashing into the side of the stove. The pot thudded to the floor and stew spilled across the kitchen tiles.

  “You brat,” she screamed.

  So that’s what she thought of him.

  “I’m super brat,” he yelled.

  He almost made the backdoor when he slipped. He was on his back on the floor in pain and she was coming toward him with the cleaver. Jamie managed, as if endowed with new strength, to push himself against the backdoor and kick at Kitty. She stumbled backward but came at him again. But before she could strike, he felt movement against his leg as Trey pushed open the door. Kitty dropped the meat cleaver and pointed at Jamie.

  “He tried to kill me.”

  Black lines swam in Jamie’s vision before he passed out. When he became conscious again, Kevin was bending over him.

  “Just lie there. Don’t try to move.”

  He groaned and squeezed his father’s hand.

  Later that night, after the ambulance took Molly to the hospital, neighbors stood in the street and on snowbanks, oblivious to freezing temperatures, and watched a hand-cuffed Kitty Harris, supported by her husband, being led to a police car.

  Molly died at the hospital early the next morning. Jamie went to Indianapolis with his father the next day. He never came back to his mother’s house and never played another basketball game with the Cougars.

  Steve Alford

  Tony Perona

  Steve Alford, now coach of the University of New Mexico Lobos, was an Indiana legend in both the high school and college basketball arena.The
son of a basketball coach, Alford moved around the state as his dad changed coaching jobs. Eventually the family settled in New Castle, where his father became the high school coach and Steve attended New Castle Chrysler High School. Alford was a standout player for his father and won the state “Mr. Basketball” award his senior year. The team went to the state tournament in the quarterfinals but lost to Connersville.

  Alford made the decision to play basketball at Indiana University for Coach Bobby Knight. During his career at Indiana, Alford amassed 2,438 points and became the all-time scoring leader. He was the first person to win the MVP award four times. In 1987 he helped Indiana win the national championship.

  After graduation, Alford became the 26th draft pick in the NBA Draft. He spent most of the next four years with the Dallas Mavericks. When he moved into coaching in 1992, it was at Manchester College in Indiana. He quickly established himself as a winning coach, turning the Manchester program around. He spent four seasons there, then another four at Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State). Following that, he went to coach at Iowa for another eight years.

  Alford left Iowa to coach at the University of New Mexico, where he has continued his winning ways. His latest contract extension has him there until the 2019-2020 season.

  Alford was a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic basketball team, which won the gold medal and was the last fully amateur U.S. Olympic team. He and his wife Tanya have three children, Kory, Bryce and Kayla.

  UNCLE VITO AND THE CHEERLEADER

  M. E. May

  It was time for what those Indiana relatives of mine call Hoosier Hysteria. Hysteria’s right! Those people down there in Indy are nuts when it comes to basketball. Don’t matter if it’s elementary school, high school or college—they love it with a capital “L.”

  My name’s Vito Mazzara and I’m a P. I. from Chicago. Ma says our ancestors are from some province called Enna in Sicily. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinkin.’ Just because I live in Chicago and my ancestors are from Sicily don’t mean I have mob connections. Sometimes I wish I did.