He looks at Dale, while Dale is once more feeling defiance climbing his neck. “One thing,” Dale says. “I want it noted that Coach Burke allowed the Flintstone Truckers to use this gym throughout the season, which was unfair to every other team in the league and in the city. Put that in your report.”
Looking at Dale, Zebra One appears exhausted, eyes and face turning to the floor. On a sigh, raising his face, he says, “Objection noted. Now line it up. This game is going to be played on the floor, and those shenanigans will be judged elsewhere. Did he really?” he adds under his breath. “That sonofabitch.”
Dale’s mind flashes once more to Miss Furbish . . . to her possibly being present in the gym . . . possibly letting him back into her life? Will a win pave the way?
CHAPTER 12
SHOULDERING IN, THE FRONT-LINE PLAYERS CROUCH FOR THE jump. Dale, in his point-guard position, several steps from the circle, calls up his focus as Zebra One is about to loft the ball. There are the Bothner brothers, easy to spot among his former teammates, each more muscular than Dale had imagined. The older, Keith, is opposite Grady Devlin; the younger, Karl, behind the circle in a position corresponding to Dale’s, is back five or six full steps, entirely defensive and leaving considerable space between himself and Joe Dillard, who is preparing to jump and dominate as always.
“Let’s have a good clean game,” Zebra One is saying. “Captain Dillard? Captain Wheeler?”
They nod, all the while that Dale is noticing the younger Bothner kid edging back further, anticipating the ball being tipped from Sonny Joe’s long, talented fingers. As Zebra One is preparing to loft the ball, Dale decides to go for an outrageous steal. Yes! He’s seen it at the park by college stars home for the summer, an interception taken hard to the hoop for a quick score. Sonny Joe will win the jump—has he ever not?—and tip the ball to Karl Bothner as, over the years, he tipped the ball so many times to Dale.
Dale encroaches half-a-step. Another half-step. On a spurt—even if Karl Bothner comes to meet the ball—he’ll so startle him that he’ll tie him up, or maybe force a bad pass. Dale guards against telegraphing his move as all eyes are on Zebra One holding the ball in one hand—like a bowl of fruit—between the big centers. Seeing the man’s hand lower an inch before ascending, Dale explodes like a sprinter out of the blocks, slaps the ball from the air just where he knew it would be, and goes in on a dribble, blowing by Karl Bothner trying to reverse direction, taking it to the hoop, so determined not to miss that he goes under from the right—in case Karl Bothner is blasting after him—and lays it in from the left, a shot he has practiced hundreds of times at the park and, coming down in reverse motion, is instantly on defense as the ball is breaking threads and a collective gasp and scattering of astonished applause is erupting from the full house.
It worked! he’s telling himself of one of the best shots he’s ever scored in competition. Nor was any shot in the park ever sweeter or given his teammates a bigger charge. They know it, too, going on defense, calling, “Man, way to go!” “Hey, Flying Wheel!” “Let’s kick ass!”
Dale absorbs the excited charge. Play as in the park! he’s telling himself. Hang loose and take charge! Be creative as in the park! Show the speed . . . do the deed! Back-stepping, he eyeballs the Truckers coming on with the ball. Two-zip, he thinks. Have the snob bastards ever been behind? Two-zip, you cheating bastards!
Avoiding eye contact, reading giveaway chest-bones of opposing players, Dale sidesteps, arms extended. Beat these jerks! he keeps telling himself. Beat these jerks and be with her again . . . loved by her in turn!
Number 9. Dale keeps his eyes on Karl Bothner’s chest number, reading the ball as his counterpart dribbles to one side and the other, passes off, receives the ball in turn. Set plays. All at once, under Karl Bothner’s raised-finger V, the Truckers are initiating a set play. Dale is threatened and jealous, for none of the teams he’s played on ever got into set plays . . . a skill and role, had he been coached by a former professional star for the Detroit Pistons, that he could have been incorporating all year in anticipation of high school.
Suddenly the ball is passed to Hal Doyle as he comes weaving out and a rotation has Karl Bothner going low post and Dale collapsing to stay with him. Low post to high, the weaving continues until Sonny Joe comes up, going to the hoop—Chub, Lucky, Grady all finding themselves twisted and screened—where Sonny Joe lays it in off the glass. Score tied; the Truckers turn at once to swarm on defense in a near full-court press.
“Time out!” Dale calls. “Time out!”
“What the hell happened!?” he says as the Little Ms huddle. “He was all alone!”
“I got screened!” Chub is saying as Lucky and Grady are saying, “We got blocked!”
“Hafta double-team Joe Dillard!” Dale says. “They’ll eat us alive! Triple-team him! All three of you, collapse on him every time! Make somebody else take the shots! Somebody sets a pick, knock him down, take a foul if you have to! He’ll kill us! Doubleteam that sonofabitch!”
Breaking huddle, they return to their positions as Zebra One tweets and hands over the ball. Dale inbounds to Emmett, receives the ball in return, moves it down-court.
“WHEELER, GOOD TIME OUT!” someone shouts and unable to keep her from his mind, hoping Miss Furbish is in attendance, Dale senses all at once, of course, that she is not. “TRAITOR!” someone else shouts.
“GOOD TIME OUT!” the first voice calls back.
Reminding himself to close his mind to shouts from the stands, Dale passes to Emmett, moves without the ball, receives a pass in turn. Dribbling to his side, he raises two fingers in a V for the hell of it, draws smirks from Lucky and Grady, fires a one-handed pass to Lucky, who passes inside-high at once to Chub.
Going up to shoot from five or six feet, Chub finds the arms and flagging hands of Sonny Joe and Hal Doyle all over him—the bastards know how to double-team—and even as Chub gets off his shot, a usual sure thing, the ball clangs and is taken from the air by big Keith Bothner, who fires a pass upcourt to his brother. Dale and the Little Ms scramble back on defense, but it’s clear to all, again, that the opposition is skilled, athletic, motivated.
Dale hounds Karl as the boy dribbles, looking to initiate another play. Jealousy stings Dale for not knowing these routines, being denied training he had sought more than anyone in his commitment to improving . . . to winning the city . . . to starring in high school.
In time, Karl Bothner puts up a lone finger on dribbling to his right.
Jerk! Dale thinks. One, two, three passes follow. Under the hoop, however, Chub and Lucky swarm and collapse on Sonny Joe, forcing him to pass off to Keith Bothner, who takes an open shot from ten feet, overshoots the rim, and as Lucky rips the ball from the air, Dale is already halfway down-court on the fly.
Shadowed by Karl Bothner, not receiving the pass—Dale loops under to be open to Grady on the outside, takes a pass and fires to Lucky breaking for the hoop and watches him lay it in. Returning up-court, Lucky pumps a fist, says, “Great pass!” to which Dale replies, “Keep going in like that! Keep shooting!”
CHAPTER 13
THE GAME HAS FOUND A RHYTHM. BASKETS ARE TRADED, AS are misses, turnovers, steals and fouls, free throws and more baskets, more fast breaks and set-plays that fail or succeed from outside the foul circle. Players perspire, gasp for air, keep moving without the ball. Every sign indicates the teams to be evenly matched, with an early edge going to the Little Ms for aggressiveness, tenacity, grit. It’s another real game and one that is taking players—spectators and coaches even more than players—on a rollercoaster ride back and forth in heart-squeezing competition . . . all the while the Little Ms gain, lose, gain again a lead extending to five points before returning to three.
# # #
EYES FOLLOWING KARL Bothner as he in-bounds at end-court, Dale sees Miss Furbish! Just like that, even as he can include her in his gaze for less than a second, Miss Furbish is in view, standing where she stood before. Miss Furbish, st
anding there. She hasn’t written him off! However she might explain it—if she ever would—she’s here, still in his life.
DALE FOLLOWS THE ball while knowing her presence is adding dimension to his muscles, chest, desire. On another steal, his third, he takes it in to score straight over the rim. Circling on under, flagging a low fist to Lucky, he is back on Karl Bothner’s case at once, before he can advance the ball to center court.
No one can steal the ball, Dale knows, like he can steal the ball. No one he has ever played with could anticipate and steal with his quickness, his peripheral vision, his desire and confidence. Focus and aggression lay at the heart of his thefts, and no one he has ever competed against possessed his depth of dream, of need and speed. Aggressive focus. All the same, back-peddling, he lets his eyes take in where she had been, only to see that she is no longer there. In a deflation occasioned by her absence, he tells himself to fight on anyway because she has given him a chance and has to be somewhere. Did she move behind the thumping bleachers for a view at the other end? Could she be wearing the bracelet he made for her?
CHAPTER 14
THE LITTLE MS HANG ONTO THEIR LEAD, EXTENDING IT TO six, seven . . . back to five. If they can get it to nine or ten—maybe just nine, Dale thinks—they’ll have a cushion with which to absorb an inevitable run against them. On opening a lead to nine, they might give consideration to actually winning. No! he won’t let himself think such a thing. At once, on an interception of a pass from Emmett, the Truckers run a fast-break to a Karl Bothner score, returning the lead to three, and Dale is angry with himself for daring to think as he had. Never count your chips! Don’t even think of counting your chips! Be tough and aggressive all the way! Don’t be a fool! Play it cool . . . if you wanna rule!
Frustration and relief, anger and hope visit as they race back and forth, grab and jump, dribble and pass, shoot and rebound, suck in air. Chub, Grady and Lucky shift side to side, low to high on Sonny Joe, drawing fiercely swung elbows and exhortations from Joe as he looks for fouls to be called, smirking when they go his way, flagging his hands when they don’t. Big Joe is butted, forced to pass, compelled to try looping hook shots, which—two times out of three—find iron and glass but fail to snap the lacy skirt and trigger an explosion from the crowd, as Dale saw them do so often against easy competition.
The Truckers also tighten on defense. Steals and easy layups, as well as moves without the ball in low behind Chub, Grady, and Lucky become ever more difficult to pull off. Going in and out of a zone, working in substitutions where the Little Ms have yet to bring anyone in off the bench, the Truckers keep tightening and, on time-out huddles with Mr. Bothner and his clipboard, switch to man-to-man, back to zone, back to man-to-man, making shots harder to get off and rebounds harder to rip from the air.
As difficulty getting the ball inside intensifies, Dale begins to consider shooting from outside. If he can score but once before the half, they might not only return their lead to six or seven but force the Truckers to re-tighten outside and maybe surrender a close-in bucket or two that will be a foot-on-the-throat and, at the half, have the Truckers terrified on leaving the floor.
End to end, misses and rebounds, passes and moves without the ball. Whistles and fouls. Hands on hips to pull in air on toeing the line to shoot free throws. A dramatic game and a three-point lead. Miss Furbish relegated elsewhere, if not forgotten. Dale knows the score on all counts without looking up, glances to the clock not to read the score but the time remaining. With under a minute in the half, on an opening from fifteen feet on a pass-back from Lucky, he gets a look at sixteen feet, goes up, squares up and aims, pulls the trigger as he did so often in this gym at daybreak, sending the ball tumbling.
There comes the snapped skirt, the sweet whipp!
A thrill shoots through him. The sensation is like sex, has spectators responding and Dale turning onto defense with a vengeance, eager to have the ball back in his hands and do it again. Whereupon, twenty seconds later—the Truckers unprepared for attempts from outside—he gets his look again, goes up again, locks and fires.
The skirt snaps as before, delivering another precious whipp!
If the crowd’s response was ragged on his first shot from outside, this time the gasp and explosion are large and the thrill shooting through him multiplies. Their lead is seven. Chub, loping by, has volcanic eyes. “We can beat these jerks! We can!!”
To his amazement, Dale scores again before the half ends. Looking to pass inside, drawing defenders and arms and hands, he knows it is a shot he should be smart enough not to take, only to see the ball glance from the rim, teeter in indecision, drop through the lacy skirt. Pure luck. The Little Ms are up by no fewer than nine points, and everyone in the big double gym is gripped with tension and terror as their champions are being beaten.
The Mother Truckers call time. Dim clock-bulbs on the far wall electrical apparatus show eleven seconds remaining.
The Little Ms also huddle where Dale, crouching, spits out: “Full-court press! Trap like maniacs! Scare the living shit outta these assholes!”
On Karl Bothner’s inbound, the Little Ms swarm trapping, flashing, flagging more hands than the officials can call as fouls. Bulky Keith Bothner, caged by crazed hands, has the ball tipped at last, to be recovered by Grady, who fires it to Lucky, taking it to the glass to score as the horn blares.
The first half is over.
The Little Ms are up magically, unbelievably, incredibly by eleven. Not seven or nine . . . but eleven. A miracle hasn’t happened, but neither has a miracle not happened. For the moment they have the Mother Truckers by the throat.
CHAPTER 15
DEPARTING THE FLOOR, DALE KNOWS THE SCORE WITHOUT having to look at the tiny bulbs stacked like marbles in the clock high on the wall:
HOME 28/VISITORS 39.
A sensation akin to eternity is alive within him. Not seeing Miss Furbish, he senses her presence, senses her believing in him again, allowing him to hold her again with the passion that rose naturally between them the first time around.
Approaching the tunnel—on the breaking of crowd noise behind them—the Little Ms look back to see the Truckers being herded in the other direction by Mr. Bothner waving his clipboard. There is Burkebutt, too, struggling with his key ring to unlock the door to the girl’s locker room. An emergency! A crisis! The two men are out of their minds with outrage. Did the Little Ms full-court press scare them shitless as intended?
Within their locker room aisle, Grady says, “Flying Wheel, man, you are having the game of your life!”
“So are you! Everybody is!”
“I mean it. We can beat these guys! We can go downtown Saturday night and win the goddamn city! We can do it!”
“I’m tasting it!” Chub says. “Got the taste right in my god-damn mouth!”
“Let’s not get cautious,” Lucky says. “Gotta keep doing what we been doing! Rough and tough all the way.”
Sitting along a bench between lockers, they mop their faces and necks with towels. Only later will Dale realize that for the first time all year no defiant cigarettes were lit.
“They’ll be trying some new stuff, and all we can do is keep giving it everything we got,” Lucky says. “Rough and tough, hard to bluff . . . don’t forget it.”
“All focus, all drive, all everything!” Dale says. “Every last thing, let’s leave it all on the floor!” he adds to his teammates. Whereupon his mind’s eye re-envisions Miss Furbish, having him thinking that anything is possible, maybe holding her again, maybe returning from high school to be with her again, maybe more in the open and with the lights on. The ultimate reward for winning: Being with Miss Furbish . . . being loved by her as before.
CHAPTER 16
TWO EIGHT-MINUTE QUARTERS TO GO. IT’S AN ETERNITY AND a nightmare with a lead to protect . . . disappearing blips as seen from the other side. Every big game has a winner and a loser, however far they have traveled, however deep they have dug. All the same, in the end but on
e team photo will manage to survive, the one that reads: CITY CHAMPIONS.
Arms and legs heavier, the Little Ms return through the tunnel into the cavernous space. Shouts, hoots, boos rage as they cross the floor, some including Dale’s name, while none of his sweeping glances spot Miss Furbish. Nor do his glances fall on the Mother Truckers, for they have yet to return to the floor. Dale imagines them being harangued and undone (he hopes) by Mr. Bothner and Burkebutt, too, given the smoke that was puffing from the men’s hairy ears. It crosses Dale’s mind to demand a technical for delay of game, but given their lead, he decides to leave well enough alone.
A superstition is also racing through him: Should they warm up or not? “Maybe we shouldn’t warm up now either,” he says as they approach the bench.
“Nah, let’s shoot around and loosen up,” Chub says. “Let’s be normal.”
“Let’s warm up,” Emmett says.
At the scorer’s table, where the officials are waiting to start the second half, Dale says, “Could we use a couple balls?”
Zebra One raises both hands in immediate mock surrender. “Whatever you say, Captain. Don’t wanna go to court.” The man draws laughs from his colleagues and the Little Ms, too, while Dale is worrying about losing the edge that gave them their aggressive charge at the outset.
Proceeding with new pebbly balls to the basket they’ll be defending, there comes a bellowing: “YOU HILLBILLIES, YOUR BEST PLAYER IS FROM OUR SCHOOL!” The Little Ms smirk, act as if they haven’t heard a thing.
# # #
THE MOTHER TRUCKERS come jogging out at last in a military line, and it is clear to all that something is different. Mr. Bothner has broken through, Dale sees, for he has never seen a team look so serious. They carry no balls, are—of all things—plagiarizing the Little Ms in forgoing a warm-up!
Winning the City Redux Page 21