No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  She walked into the house without looking back. Wes followed her, stopping only long enough to reach down and pick up the empty water bottle.

  NINETEEN

  WES AND HIS MOM WERE sitting in the den where he had once watched basketball with his dad.

  His mom had made herself a cup of tea. Wes was having hot chocolate. As much as he liked hot chocolate, he knew it never made things better. But it sure never made them worse.

  “I’ve seen him like this before,” Wes’s mom said in a sad voice, with sad eyes to go along with it. “But I never thought he’d let you see him this way.”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” Wes said. “As weird as he was acting, he actually seemed kind of happy. He even laughed.”

  “They call them happy drunks,” she said.

  She had her big mug in both hands and drank some of her tea. There was, Wes saw, still steam coming off it.

  Wes said, “I can’t remember the last time I heard Dad laugh.”

  “I just wish it came out of him, and not a bottle,” she said.

  “Was he really drunk?” Wes said.

  It had occurred to him as they were having their conversation that he didn’t really know what a person who was drunk acted like. He knew he had never seen his dad like this, even if he didn’t know what was causing him to act the way he was.

  “I don’t think he was all the way drunk,” Wes’s mom said. “And I don’t really think he was happy. I think he drinks not to be sad. And that may make trick him into thinking he is happy. But he’s not.”

  Her eyes were so big and sad now Wes was afraid she might cry. As much as he hated to see his dad in pain, he hated it just as much when his mom cried. It was her way of telling Wes how much pain she was in, too.

  And he felt as helpless with her as he did with his dad.

  “We can only control what we can control,” she said.

  Wes thought, she sounds like Dad talking about basketball.

  “No,” she continued, “let me rephrase that. We can only do what he allows us to do. In the end, the only person who can make your father happy again is your father.”

  “So you’re saying we shouldn’t even try?”

  He was never going to stop trying, not with basketball, not with his dad.

  “No,” his mom said, “I’m not saying that at all. I will never give up on him. I know that’s not the way you’re wired, either. But I’ve learned the hard way that we can’t help him if he won’t make the effort to help himself.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of doctor who can help him?” Wes said.

  “He was seeing someone at the academy,” she said. “But he stopped going. He’d rather go to the bar these days.”

  “But he came here.”

  “Probably from the bar,” she said.

  “Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “He still wants to connect with you, honey,” she said. “He wants to do that in the worst way. The problem is that today he did it in the worst way.”

  “So why did he come?”

  “I think he’s afraid of losing you. It’s probably why he had a few drinks. To get his courage up.”

  “But he’s the bravest person I know,” Wes said.

  “This isn’t about courage in the face of the enemy,” she said. “Because right now your father’s worst enemy is himself.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. His mom talked about controlling what you could control. The only time Wes felt in control right now is when he had a basketball in his hands, even if it wasn’t in his hands as often as he wanted it to be. As crazy as it might sound if he tried to explain it to his mom, he still had the same plan:

  Get better at basketball, get his dad back.

  All he had.

  His mom reached down now, carefully set her mug on the coaster in front of her on the coffee table. She had been sitting in a chair across from the couch where Wes was. Now she came around the table and sat next to him.

  “Sweetheart,” she said. “Have you ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder? Sometimes people just call it by its initials: PTSD.”

  Wes thought it sounded like something they were always trying to cure with medicine on television commercials. Every time Wes would see one of those commercials, he’d wonder whether there was something his dad could take to get better.

  He told his mom that he might have heard something about it watching the new SEALs show on television.

  “It’s something that can affect people when they come back from fighting a war,” she said. “Doesn’t just affect them, but changes them. They come back and they’re angry all the time. Or they can’t hold a job. Or they get set off by the littlest thing that reminds them of war. All of a sudden they’re not the same person they used to be.”

  “Like Dad is right now,” Wes said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Sometimes it’s something that happened to them. Or to someone they cared about. Or both. But when they get back home, even when they’re one of the lucky ones who did make it back home, they can’t let go of whatever put them in a bad place in the first place. It’s like the war and all the bad memories that go with it have followed them all the way home.”

  “But you can get better from it, right?” Wes asked her.

  He wanted her to say yes right away, as if that was the easiest and most obvious answer in the world. But she did not.

  “I told you that I would never lie to you, so I’m not going to start now,” she said. “Some people do get better. Many people get better. Just not all.”

  “But Dad’s not just brave, he’s strong,” Wes said.

  And just like that, she finally started to cry. But instead of wiping the tears away, she reached across the couch and put her hand over Wes’s.

  “PTSD can make even a strong man like your father weak,” she said.

  “But we still don’t know what the thing was,” Wes said.

  “Maybe,” she said, “it wasn’t just one thing, it was everything.”

  “And now it’s followed Dad home,” Wes said.

  The tears kept rolling down her cheek. She wouldn’t let go of Wes’s hand.

  “I’m sorry that today he brought them to this home,” she said.

  Wes wanted to be strong now for his mom. He just didn’t know how. It was clear that there was nothing left for them to say, so he said he was going to grab his basketball.

  Sometimes that ball felt like a life preserver.

  TWENTY

  THERE WAS AN OPEN GYM, and good games, at the rec center on Sunday afternoons between noon and two o’clock. Wes asked his mom after church if she would drive him over there.

  She said, “Have you ever considered that a basketball-free day might be a good thing once in a while?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Will you know anybody who’ll be playing there?” she said.

  “It might be fun for a change not to know anybody in the game.”

  “Won’t a lot of the boys be older?”

  Wes smiled at her. It might have been the first smile he felt coming over him since yesterday’s game had ended the way it had.

  “The better the competition, the better you play,” Wes said.

  “Silly me,” she said, smiling back. “How could I have forgotten a basketball fact of life like that?”

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate,” he said.

  “Don’t we all.”

  She dropped him off a few minutes after noon. There were already games being played on all three courts. It gave Wes a chance to look around, check out the level of play, see which game might be the best fit for him. But he didn’t have to look for long because he saw Mr. Correa in a game on the court closest to the front doors.

  When Mr. Correa noticed Wes to the side, he held up
one finger. It turned out his game was one basket away from being over. He scored it, beating his man cleanly on a drive. As soon as he did, he jogged over to where Wes was standing.

  “I’m going to use my excellent powers of observation and assume you’re looking for a game,” he said.

  “Kind of.”

  “Couple of my buds are leaving,” Mr. Correa said, “to go watch football. But the rest of the guys are hard-core and want to keep going.”

  “You think I’m good enough?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do!” Mr. Correa said.

  “How serious?” Wes asked.

  “Just serious fun,” Joe Correa said.

  Wes was nervous, but it was the kind of nervous that could make you raise the level of your game the same as the competition could. There were four guys who looked to be about Mr. Correa’s age, a couple of eighth-graders, two high school seniors that Mr. Correa told Wes had been the last two cuts at Annapolis High, and were going to try out again this season.

  Mr. Correa introduced Wes around, told them that he was one of the stars of the Hawks.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Wes said.

  “They have to listen,” Mr. Correa said. “I’m a teacher.”

  One of the older guys said, “Not my teacher.”

  “I can tell by the way you play,” Mr. Correa said.

  One of the high school kids, Neil, was on their team. So was one of the eighth-graders, Rakeem, tall for his age, who said he’d be playing on the team from St. Anne’s of Annapolis this season. The other two players on their side were Mr. Correa and his friend, Chuck Giles, who Rakeem said was his English teacher at St. Anne’s.

  “Wes,” Mr. Correa said, “why don’t you play point? Chuck and I will play their bigs. Rakeem can play in the backcourt with you while Neil plays up front with Chuck and me.”

  “Mr. Correa, you know I don’t play point for the Hawks, right? Dinero does.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but we both know there’s a point guard inside you just begging to bust out.”

  As they walked out on the court Wes whispered to Mr. Correa, “I’m the youngest guy here.”

  Mr. Correa gave him a pat on the back.

  “You’re not here to get your lifeguard certificate,” he said. “Just to play some ball.”

  The kid guarding Wes, with long blond hair and long arms and legs, was also an eighth-grader from St. Anne’s. His name was Troy Sutherland. He said he’d probably be playing for St. Anne’s this season, too.

  Before they started he said to Wes, “How’re things working out with you and Dinero?”

  “How do you know about me and Dinero?” Wes said.

  Troy laughed. “Are you kidding? Everybody in town does. So, is he giving you enough touches?”

  “Only if I take him for ice cream,” Wes said.

  Wes didn’t play good nervous at the start. Just nervous. He was too conscious about passing the ball first chance he got, not trying to make anything happen himself, never looking for his own shot. They were playing to twenty baskets, because there were no players right now waiting to play winners.

  The score was 5–5, side out for Wes’s team, when Mr. Correa came over to him.

  “Start playing your game,” he said, “and not the one you think you should be playing.”

  He started to say something, but Mr. Correa was already walking away, just adding this over his shoulder:

  “Your ball today.”

  As Wes dribbled the ball toward the top of the circle, he made eye contact with Mr. Correa and gave him a nod. Mr. Correa immediately came running up and set a screen on Troy, creating space for Wes, who drove to the right. The guy guarding Mr. Correa slid over to cut him off. Wes went up in the air, as if he were about to attempt a short jumper anyway. Even elevated like it was a jump shot. But at the last second he saw that Mr. Correa had seen the opening for him that the switch had created and was flashing to the basket.

  Wes sold his shooting motion right until the last second, when he fired a pass to Mr. Correa, who caught the ball and laid it in.

  As they headed back up the court, Wes said to Mr. Correa, “My first career assist to a teacher.”

  And gave him a fast hand slap.

  Troy brought the ball up. Wes played off him a bit, trying to read his eyes, because he’d noticed Troy mostly passed the ball where he was looking. So Wes sat back in a passing lane as Mr. Correa’s man, Pete, came running up to the wing. Now Troy really was like a quarterback whose eyes had locked on his primary receiver. As he looped the ball in the direction of Pete, Wes made his move, stepping in, intercepting the ball easily. Wes probably could have driven the length of the court and scored easily himself, but Rakeem had taken off as soon as Wes had stepped in on the pass. Wes hit Rakeem with a long, perfect bounce pass, and Rakeem laid the ball in with a flourish, turning the play into a reverse even though there was nobody close to him. Just for the serious fun of it.

  He heard about it right away from just about everybody in the game.

  “Wasn’t just mustard on that hot dog,” his teacher, Mr. Giles, said. “Was relish and sauerkraut, too.”

  “More like hot sausage, if you ask me,” Mr. Correa said.

  Rakeem, grinning, ducked his head in embarrassment. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I get it. Can’t a brother style a little bit?”

  The other players yelled, “No!”

  Sometimes Wes would let Rakeem bring the ball up, and get them into their offense. Or Neil. Or Mr. Correa. It was because sharing the ball was easy today. If he gave it up, he didn’t have to worry that he wasn’t going to see it again on that possession. Wes felt free today, almost lighter than normal, as if he’d stopped carrying so much stuff around with him.

  This was ball the way it was supposed to be. Maybe, he thought, the real reason he’d had his head down in a big moment yesterday was because he had been spending so much time lately walking around with his head down.

  Yesterday wasn’t him.

  Today was.

  At 14–all he got too fancy with a pass to Mr. Correa, maybe styling a little bit himself, and threw the ball behind him and out of bounds. But as bad as the pass was, he was able to laugh at himself.

  In mock outrage, Mr. Correa said, “You think any of this is funny, Mr. Davies?”

  Like they were in school.

  “Kind of,” Wes said.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Correa said. “Me too.”

  They got to 19–19 when Wes, in traffic, managed to bank in a floater. Best shot he’d made all day. Then Troy threw the ball away at the other end.

  Their ball now, with a chance to win.

  Wes brought it up. Without anybody telling them to, his teammates spread the court. Rakeem ended up in the left corner, Mr. Correa in the right. Neil came out. Wes passed it to him. Neil passed it back. When the ball was in Wes’s hands, he saw Rakeem running hard down the baseline from the left, Mr. Correa from the right.

  Neither one was looking to set a pick.

  They were both just doing what you were supposed to:

  Filling empty spaces.

  Wes was eyeballing Rakeem. But it was Mr. Correa who got open. Wes saw that with his basketball eyes. And as soon as Mr. Correa was looking—playing with his head up—Wes whipped him a fierce chest pass.

  Mr. Correa caught the ball, squared up, shot, made it, ball game.

  Mr. Giles came over and said to Wes, “Are you certain you’re only twelve years old?”

  “Positive.”

  Mr. Giles high-fived him. So did the other players on their team. Mr. Correa was last.

  “You played big today,” he said to Wes.

  “Bigger than I felt when I showed up,” he said.

  “Bigger and older,” Mr. Correa said.

  “Sometimes you make your team better and s
ometimes your team makes you better,” Wes said.

  “And sometimes,” his adviser said, “it’s a little bit of both.”

  Mr. Correa said that was the last game for him, he wanted to watch some football on television, too. Wes said he was done as well, he was going to end on a high note. Mr. Correa said he could drop Wes at home, as a way of saving his mom a trip. Wes went over to his bag and grabbed his phone and told her what Mr. Correa had said.

  She said, fine with her, things were crazy at the book fair this afternoon. Wes said, “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Any school librarian in this world,” she said, “would tell you it’s actually a great thing.”

  She said she’d see him at home. Before she ended the call, she asked if open gym had been a good thing.

  “A great thing,” Wes said.

  Mr. Correa asked him then how he planned to celebrate the way he’d just run with the big dogs.

  “By asking you to make a stop on the way home,” Wes said.

  “Where we going?” Mr. Correa said.

  “To my dad’s place,” Wes said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WES KNEW HIS DAD LIVED at the Woodside Garden Apartments on Newtowne Drive. But he had never been there, not even with his mom.

  His mom had told him on the phone that she didn’t think Wes going over there was a good idea. He told her he really wanted to do it. They went back and forth for a couple of minutes like they were passing a ball before she finally said, “I don’t want you to allow your father to think that yesterday was okay, no matter what he’s going through. Because it was not okay.”

  “Okay,” Wes said.

  “I mean it, Wesley,” she said.

  Wesley. Always meant business, even when she didn’t change her tone of voice.

  “Not saying it was okay,” Wes said to her. “I only want him to know that just because he had a bad day that I’m not giving up on him or anything.”

  “They’re all bad days these days.”

  “So maybe I can make this a good one,” Wes said. “Or at least a better one.”