Murder is My Racquet

by Otto Penzler

  He ran as if he were on a killing frenzy, a berserker hellbent on mayhem and blood, a Confederate legend like the last man at Pickett’s Charge, and when he reached William, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun and thrust it right at William.

  Earl knew he wouldn’t make it and heard the crowd gasp as the gun steadied for the shot. But then it continued upward and toward the mouth of the shooter, who bent and took a bite out of it.

  It was chocolate.

  Earl knocked it away and kicked it off the court and grabbed the shooter.

  He hammerlocked him and bent him to his knees, to the rising torrent of boos and hisses.

  He twisted him around and saw that it was not a man at all; it was that damned Jimmy Pye.

  “You goddamned fool, Jimmy!” screamed Earl, but Jimmy, though not strong enough to resist Earl, was nevertheless laughing in operatic triumph. It seemed the town boys had heard what was going on out at the country club and had come on out to add their bit of intimidation to the ceremony, and Jimmy, as head miscreant and champion athlete of the county, had led the way.

  “I ought to lock you up, boy! You have committed a crime now. You have made a public nuisance of yourself and you could do a month in jail.”

  “Mr. Earl, I’se just hoo-dooing the nigra. Boo! boy, them ha’ants a-gonna git you, you come back.”

  Stephen, for his part, looked at Jimmy as Earl led the boy off the court. Jimmy was his own age, a cracker hero of sorts, just the kind of boy who could have been his friend if he weren’t so wild and stupid and vain and evil. He certainly had spirit.

  As Jimmy was dragged by, he looked over at Stephen.

  “Stephen, you’d best hope there’s a early bus out of town tomorrow. The boys is cranked up something terrible!”

  Stephen looked away, trying to deny the fear he felt.

  But it came, nevertheless, dry and hot to his heart.

  He walked over to William.

  “You okay?”

  “Like to died, seen that gun come up.”

  “He’s an asshole. They’re all assholes. You want to call it a day? We can get out of here. You get the same money, no problem. I won’t short you.”

  “No, suh,” said William. “Come to play. We can play it out now, if you want.”

  “Okay, William. You got some kind of nerve.”

  “You stay out here with me, you gots some kind of nerve.”

  Meanwhile, Earl took Jimmy to the two deputies and left him securely in their care. “If he tries anything, you bop his pretty curly head with that stick you’re always carrying, Buddy.”

  “Can’t b’lieve you’re asking me to whap a white fellow in favor of a colored one.”

  “The law is the law and that’s all it is,” Earl said.

  Then he turned and addressed the ugly townie contingent.

  “Y’all settle down now You let these fellows play their fool game, do you hear. I will call out a riot squad, by God, if I have to.”

  That was Earl. You couldn’t scare him with an atom bomb. He’d face up to anybody anywhere anytime, over any issue. It would get him killed one of these days.

  By the time some kind of order was restored, it was near twilight. The players now seemed almost bloody, not from their own plasma, but from the spray of red dust, which then clung to the sweat on their legs or the damp wool and canvas of their shoes. Where Bo had fallen, he wore a crown of red, like the red badge of courage; unfortunately, it was on his ass.

  In the third set, St. Sebastian and Bo rallied, went up 2–0 on Jeff’s serve and against William’s, which remained the least impressive part of his game. But Stephen held, the rattled Bo double-faulted three times, and then everybody held through the next round, and it was 4–4, William’s serve.

  He nodded at Stephen, who came over.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, suh,” said William.

  “What is it?”

  “Do I have to hit it straightlike?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do I have to hit it right in the center?”

  “Well, if I understand you, you can hit it anyway you want to.”

  “I could hit it on an angle. Like, you know, I could sort of brush it and git it to spinning.”

  “Well, yes. You didn’t know that? Gosh, I’m sorry, that’s my fault. William, you can hit it any way you want to.”

  William nodded solemnly, taking all this in. His eyes were faraway and intent, as if he were figuring something out.

  He went to the service line, showed the ball to signify the start of play, then stepped a good two yards back and tossed it high.

  Too high.

  He tossed it very high.

  But as he tossed it, he himself leaped, and, airborne, he was a thing of majesty, as if suddenly having found his creativity, his place in the game and the universe, and he hit the ball at a sliced angle so that it rocketed downward but broke to the left radically, and poor Jeff couldn’t get a racquet on it.

  “Jesus Christ, you could do that all the time?” said Stephen.

  “I guess,” he said.

  At any rate he did it three more times and each time, the other fellows struggled for it.

  Suddenly the crowd was quiet.

  A thunderhead rolled in from out of the mountains.

  Nobody said a thing.

  Jeff was serving at 4–5 to stay in the match.

  William walked back to Stephen.

  “You be cool, man. It ain’t nothing. You just be there, man, cool and quiet and in control, you got me? We gon’ take these motherfuckers, okay. Take they asses.”

  “You got that right.”

  Jeff double-faulted his first serve.

  On his second serve he hit a nice shot that William blocked back, but he came up with a screamer.

  Two more good serves and he was serving for the game at 40–15.

  But he hit another double.

  Stephen watched him. He bounced the ball three times. Backhand. Stephen began to cheat, but then it occurred to him that Jeff hadn’t been bouncing the ball at all. He’d caught on! He cranked the racquet back to the forehand grip and at least got his momentum going, and when Jeff hit his best serve of the match, a bullet to the right, Stephen lunged and dinked a looper back that just hit on the line, which deflected its bounce just a bit, and Bo drove it into the net.

  Deuce.

  Jeff served to William, who blocked clumsily something like a Texas leaguer right at Bo at the net, but Jeff didn’t trust him, screamed “NO” as he came in to take the ball on the hop, utterly confusing Bo, who didn’t give way and hit it out.

  Suddenly it was match point.

  Jeff conferred ever so quickly with Bo.

  He didn’t bounce the ball.

  He collected himself calmly, began the syncopation of the server, the orchestration of left to right, the shiver that liberated the strength to rise through his lean body, the delicacy of the toss, the ball, now red and shaggy, hanging at the equipoise as he craned his arm through, snapped shoulders and hips, the whole world, it seemed, resting on his brow.

  • • •

  His mother would always remember this moment. There were cruel days to come, when Connie didn’t think she could live another second, and only the ministrations of good men like Sam kept her alive. But there was also her memory of this moment, her only son’s, her doomed son’s, her haunted, crazed, and self-destructive son’s best moment on earth.

  Jeff served, Stephen got it back, a nice return fated to go deep and extend the point, but Bo had been instructed to poach. So on the serve of the ball, he’d moved quickly to his left, and was set to volley Stephen’s return into the alley, and for once his nerve and his coordination didn’t fail him, and he got a good stiff-wristed volley onto the ball to tap it away.

  What was not expected was that in the split second he left his position, William left his, too, and raced toward him along the net, and when Bo’s volley crossed, there was Will
iam to volley it back, and it bounced in the alley, and Jeff ran full-goddamn-out to flick it back through the falling dusk, and did get it, too, hitting a nice clean shot into the open court, but alas, on the second bounce.

  No cheer went up.

  Rance didn’t stay to congratulate his son.

  Somehow the cup signifying victory was never presented.

  The crowd filed out sullenly.

  William and Stephen were too goddamned tired to embrace.

  Jeff disappeared quickly; Bo seemed to fade from the surface of the planet in a split second.

  The two boys stood there, heaving with oxygen debt.

  “How’d you know he was going to poach?”

  “Poach?”

  “You know, come to my side of the court?”

  “Oh, he up on his toes when the serve be tossed. He don’t never do that before, so I figgered something was up. I just ran and as I ran I could see what he was trying to do and I just keep on running and got there.”

  “Wow,” said Stephen, “you sure figured those boys out.”

  “Wasn’t much,” said William.

  The one man who approached them was Earl.

  “You know what, this ain’t a place to be lingering. Let’s git to my car and I’ll get you boys out of here.”

  And that’s the way it ended, the two tennis players, sweaty and smeared with red clay, climbing into Earl’s State Police Ford. William sat in back, and held Earl’s young son, Bob Lee, and Earl drove them straight up Route 71.

  “Where to?”

  “Can you cut over to Little Rock?”

  They drove in silence the two long hours to Little Rock. William had nothing to say.

  Finally, swallowed by the squalor of that city’s black district, they drove by honky-tonks and fried chicken parlors and throbbing night crowds.

  “Turn left up here,” William finally said, guiding them down Kedzie to 154th, then right again, this time up Wilson.

  They pulled up in front of a block of row houses, decrepit and mostly deserted.

  “You live here?” Stephen said.

  “Wif my mama. You got my money?”

  “Of course.”

  He handed an envelope over.

  “It’s all there, plus something. Hey, you really did well.”

  “Yeah, we showed them boys, didn’t we?”

  “We sure did.”

  “William,” said Earl, “is there someone we could talk to? A doctor, a priest, your dad, or someone? I’d like to tell them what a great young man you are and how well you did today. They should know. You were a real hero.”

  “No, suh,” said William. “I am fine. Thank y’all fo’ being so nice to me.”

  But then there was a moment of awkwardness. The child, Bob Lee, had fallen asleep in William’s arms. William didn’t want to wake him, but there was no other way. Gently, he laid the child down on the backseat of the car.

  “So long, little man,” he said, and with his envelope, left the car and was gone.

  “That’s an athlete,” said Earl.

  “That is an athlete. He’s supposedly the best basketball player this city has ever seen. He’s legend. He can do things with a basketball you can’t believe.”

  “I hope he’s all right. Is there a place for him to go?”

  There seemed to be no answer to that question, so the trooper, the boy, and the child drove back in silence to Polk County and what lay ahead for them.

  NO STRINGS

  JUDITH KELMAN

  Bobby Webber had Roy Duchamps down two sets to zip, five games to two, staring down the barrel of a possible triple match point. Duchamps was buckling under the strain, making desperate dumb tyro mistakes. All Webber had to do was hold steady, stay focused, and watch the lanky swamp rat self-destruct.

  Duchamps poised at the baseline, muttering under his brackish breath. Vexation carved a ditch between his mud-brown eyes and pinched his crooked mouth. Sweat rained from his wild cayenne curls as he rocked forward and bounced the ball in short, fretful hops.

  Webber shuffled deftly from side to side, keeping everything light and loose. Training his mind, he tuned out the heady magnolia scent and the sassy buzz of a flirting mosquito.

  Ready… steady.

  Duchamps reared back and flung the ball too high, so it was swallowed by the fierce midday glare. With an anguished grunt, he hammered down, trying to redeem the ruined toss.

  Webber breezed toward the backcourt as the ball approached. His calculations were dead-on for a normal shot, but the swamp rat’s aberration struck with a sickening thump and fell dangerously short.

  Racing in, Webber lunged madly and scooped the ball before it hit ground. Somehow, he mustered enough force to send it dribbling back over the net. Duchamps watched gap-jawed from the baseline as the fuzzy orb died inches from the net post, raising red dust and explosive applause from the packed bleachers.

  Flushed with pleasure, Webber dipped in a modest little bow. That was the kind of shot that had earned him the prized moniker Bobby the Backboard. That kind of shot would get him past Duchamps and all comers, on to the national tour and the big time.

  “Love–forty. Match point, Mr. Webber,” boomed the umpire.

  As Webber turned back toward the baseline, his right shoe went slack. Peering down, he spotted a broken lace trailing from the cheek of his lucky Reebok. He caught the umpire’s eye and signaled for a time-out.

  Coach Deke Hardeman appeared at the bench with his axe jaw jutting, arms bulging force, and a new lace drooping from his ham-sized hand. Webber took the strand with a somber nod, striving to match the coach’s fierce, muscular silence.

  Propping his foot on the bench, he flicked out the broken lace. Quickly, he strung the replacement, yanked tight, and worked a double bow. He stepped on the foot, testing, and then tossed the ruined scraps aside.

  Before he could make it back onto the court, a horrified shriek stalled Webber.

  “You can’t leave those lying around, Bobby. Jee-zuz.”

  Turning, Webber watched Earl Emerson dash onto the court, scoop up the broken lace strings and stuff them hard in the pocket of his grass-stained jeans.

  Webber’s ears went hot. “Are you nuts, Emerson? Get out of here. Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a match?”

  Emerson’s eyes skittered nervously. “Hell with the match, Bobby. There’s serious danger here. She’s got her eye on you. I can see.”

  Webber tracked Earl’s gaze to the dark, hulking woman in the first row. Large jet-lensed glasses masked her eyes, and a bright scarf bound her head like a giant wasp’s nest. Sun sparks sprayed off the knitting needles that clicked with startling rapidity in her leathery hands. Blood-red yarn snaked up from the canvas tote bag beside her, and a beard of taut, even stitches stretched beneath the needle like a spreading wound.

  “Take your crazy hokum nonsense and get the hell away, Earl. I’ve got a game to win.”

  Emerson touched his pocket, checking for the lace. Then he backed away, peering anxiously over his shoulder. “Sure, Bobby. You just go on ahead and play. I’ll see she don’t get a-hold of the strings. Don’t you worry yourself one bit.”

  “Go, Earl.”

  Webber’s heart was stammering. Damned Earl Emerson was forever hanging around, running at the mouth; and breaking his concentration. It had started as soon as Webber showed up at Beaumont Academy six weeks ago. Before he got his duffel bags unpacked, there was Earl, grinning and gawking, drawling his endless stream of irritating trash.

  Webber still remembered Earl’s first words, drooping off his lazy tongue like tar. “Stick with me, Bobby, and I’ll show you what’s what. Real soon, you’ll be a genuine bayou-blooded southern boy, N’awlins to the bone.”

  Fat chance.

  Webber had explained in picture-book terms that he was a bagel-blooded, Yanks-addicted Brooklyn boy to the bone, and glad of it. He had come to Beaumont for the tennis program, which regularly set its number-one player on a fast track t
o world-class prominence. His plan was to take the number-one seed from Roy Duchamps, then play ball and reap the juicy benefits. With any luck, by this time next year he would be back in civilization, enrolled at Columbia or NYU, armed with a Beaumont degree and the academy’s powerful contacts.

  But Emerson refused to listen. Kid was determined to convert Webber to Creole, jambalaya, and moonshine. Damned Earl was thick as gator hide and stubborn as a tick. And he was still standing at courtside, casting his slouchy shadow over Webber’s shining moment in the sun.

  “Go on, Earl! Get lost.”

  Stupid kid just stood there. “There’s danger, Bobby. Real serious. You got to listen.”

  The umpire scowled. “Ready, Mr. Webber? This is a tennis court, not a chat room.”

  “Ready, sir.” Webber took up his racquet and hurried onto the court. Earl’s warnings echoed in his head. She’s got her eye on you. Serious danger.

  Waiting for Duchamps to serve, Webber’s gaze drifted toward the woman on the bench. He imagined her staring at him behind those great black glasses, leaking lethal poison from her eyes.

  Suddenly, Duchamps arched back, flung the toss, and looped his racquet with dislocating speed. The ball exploded across the court, sharp and low.

  Webber charged in, racquet poised, but the shot whizzed past at a crazy angle as he swatted madly at the torpid air.

  “Fifteen–forty,” came the call.

  Grim-faced, Webber trudged back to the line. The mosquito dove in, emboldened, so Webber had to slap his own cheek hard to thwart the assault. Smarting, he peered at his adversary. He could sense Duchamps settling down, gaining confidence. Damned Earl and his superstitious crap.

  Webber shook his head to clear it. He would not think about murdering Earl or his stinging cheek or how badly he ached to beat Roy Duchamps. He would not think about the spooky woman on the bench. Her face was turned his way now, mouth pressed in a grim, stingy line.

  Suddenly, Webber heard a crack followed by a grunt from Duchamps. The ball streaked into the service box before he could react.

  “Thirty-forty.”

  Coach Hardeman howled like a stuck beast. “Tune in, Webber. Focus, for the love of Pete!”