Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3)

by T'Gracie Reese

She turned to Arnie Johnson, the balding and perpetually smiling driver who ran a swamp excursion as his primary source of income, and asked:

  “So when do we arrive in Donaldsonville?”

  His smile never disappeared, and his humor was thus measured by the width of it.

  Medium width.

  “About an hour. It’s thirty five miles away. We got to go through Abbeyport, Smithville, couple of other little places.”

  “That should exhaust their supply of songs and chants.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’ve been on band and sports busses. I know how wild the kids can be.”

  “How long has it been since you was on a bus?”

  “Doesn’t matter. some things never change.”

  Then she turned.

  All of the twelve players had boarded the bus, as well as the two team managers.

  Each of them had sprawled into a separate seat row.

  Each of them wore headphones.

  Each of them held in her hand a glowing device of some kind, and was typing on it with her thumbs.

  None spoke.

  They were completely silent. There was no sound in the bus except the grinding of gears, the low howl of the motor, and the soft tapping of incessant and nonstop text messaging––and it was clear that there would be no other sound or movement for the entire thirty five miles.

  I’m very old, thought Nina, going to sleep.

  Gyms, Nina had decided years earlier, like music, were decade things. All music from the sixties was the same, all music from the seventies was the same, all music from the eighties…etc., etc. Correspondingly, all gyms built in the sixties were the same, all gyms built and so on and so on.

  Donaldsville’s gym looked like the other gyms of its era, whichever decade that might have been. It was bright, cheery, polished, and the soul of mutability. Nothing about it was meant to be permanently in one place for, seemingly, more than a few hours. The stands were portable sliding things and could be folded like Formica accordions should there be a need for more court space. Four baskets and backboards hung uselessly over exit signs, and would hang so until needed for PE classes the following day and cranked into suitable positions.

  The whole place, Nina decided while walking into it, might have been rolled up into suitcases and packed on circus wagons if the need had arisen.

  The players walked in single file in front of her, seemingly unaware of their surroundings, following a sixth and lemming-like sense toward the visitors’ dressing room but never looking away from their palms, which glowed as though radioactive.

  “Hey, Coach!”

  A beefy man was walking across the court toward her, one arm extended.

  “Coach! I’m Coach Johnson!”

  Who came in? she found herself asking for an instant.

  Then she realized that she was the coach.

  She turned and walked out onto the court, peering up at her counterpart, who smiled down at her:

  “Ma’am, I don’t believe I know you.”

  “I’m Nina Bannister.”

  “Paul Johnson. We were expecting to see Coach Brennan.”

  Well, you won’t, Nina found herself thinking, and ‘why’ is none of your damned business.

  Oh well, you’ll probably hear it soon enough anyway.

  But not tonight.

  “She’s a little under the weather,” lied Nina.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Paul Johnson, who, with a sweat through white shirt and golden tie—Donaldsonville’s colors were gold and white—looked more like a minister than a coach.

  Of course, those things were dangerously similar.

  “I’m a great admirer of Coach Brennan. I also know some of y’all’s football staff: Coach Hargoty, Coach Polaskus, Coach Smith, Coach Drayton—y’all have a fine overall program down there!”

  “We’re proud of it.”

  “So are you the assistant coach now, Ms. Bannister?”

  “Actually, I’m the principal.”

  “Oh! Well, we’re honored to have you here!”

  “Thank you very much!”

  “Y’all spanked us pretty good last time down at your place.”

  “Well, every game is different.”

  Nina the sports philosopher.

  “That’s true! That’s true. Anyway, we’re gonna try and give a better account of ourselves this time. We’d like at least to make it kind of interesting for you!”

  “I’m sure you will!”

  “Looks like your players know where their dressing rooms are.”

  “Most of them were here last year.”

  “Okay then. Anything we can do for you, just let us know. And good luck!”

  “Same to you, Coach!”

  And, with a small, coach’s wave, she walked off to follow her team down into the bowels of dressingroomdom.

  The gym may have been bright and polished, but there was something murky and cave-like about the dressing room: glistening tile floors, steam in the air, and the clanging of locker doors as the players spread their deep blue road jerseys on benches beside them and slipped into sports bras.

  Nina walked behind them, wondering how many times they’d gone through this ritual, and wishing she were getting ready to address an English and not a basketball class.

  “All right,” she said. “This is your last district game before Logansport, then Hattiesburg. Don’t be nervous. Just play your individual games, and you’ll be all right. There’s going to be a crowd out there trying to give you a hard time; don’t let them. Just remember to concentrate and do the things Meg has taught you. And remember also: you’re representing your school, and your community. We’re all very proud of you. Now: any questions?”

  There was no response at all for a second or so.

  Finally, Alyssha Bennett, who’d finished dressing first, turned.

  She took off her headphones.

  “Ms. Bannister?”

  “Yes?”

  “Were you saying something?”

  Nina shook her head.

  “No.”

  Then she walked out of the dressing room and up into the gym.

  From that point, everything went fine for fifteen minutes or so. The players filed out onto the court, the mangers distributed basketballs, the layup lines were formed, the free throw drills got done, the familiar omnipresent thumpthumpthump of dribbling drummed its reassuring background undertone, and, on the other end of the court, a dozen or so ponytailed and gold-jerseyed figures went about doing the same thing.

  The stands were two-third filled on the home side, practically empty on the visitors’ side.

  Except for a few parents who’d driven up from Bay St. Lucy.

  And, of course, Jackson Bennett.

  “GO MARINERS! GO MARINERS!”

  The Donaldsonville pep band struck up, playing the same thing that the Bay St. Lucy pep band always played:

  “BLAAAAAAAAHHHHHH DE

  BLAAAAAAAAHHH DE BLAAAAAAAHH!”

  Rest rest—

  “BLAAAAAAAAAAAHHH DE

  BLAAAAAAAAHHH DE BLAAAAAAAHH!”

  Then came the fight song.

  Donaldsonville’s team called itself The Pirates.

  The University of Wisconsin had stolen their fight song, too.

  ON YOU PIE-RUTS, ON YOU PIE-RUTS

  FAT FAT FAT FAT FAAAAT!

  (BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM)

  The scoreboard clock clicked down over the south basket:

  One minute forty five seconds.

  One minute ten seconds.

  Players huddled.

  My God, thought Nina. No headphones!

  Well, they must be somewhere.

  Starters in game jerseys now, bench players sitting down, warm-ups still pulled around them…

  Everybody out on the court.

  Star Spangled Banner.

  AND THE HOOOME OF THE BRAVE!

  Cheers.

  Clapping.

  Fans on their feet.
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  And the jump ball!

  For a minute or so things went normally.

  It all reminded Nina of the Pass Christian game:

  Donaldsonville won the tip.

  Trouble there. They had a six-foot tall girl.

  (Why did all the opposing teams always have a six-foot tall girl?)

  Still, there was hope. Bay St. Lucy stole a pass, worked the ball down the court, and began a fancy outside semi-circular weave, Alyssha Bennett dribbling hard to the right, slipping it behind the back to Sarah Gray barreling left over the top of the key, Sonia Ramirez taking it right back in the other direction, Haley Stephens right there on another switch, everyone milling inside, screening, turning, heading out, then back in, then the ball back in Haley’s hands, shot clock now at ten seconds, now at eight seconds, back to Sonia and then—

  Bullet pass under the basket!

  Alyssha! All alone! Uncontested layup!

  Inbound Pass by Donaldsonville—

  Stolen ball?

  What was the call?

  Bay St. Lucy ball!

  Long pass—

  Haley open from the three-point line, then a long, arching shot, soft, soft—

  SWISH!

  THREE POINTS!

  Bay St. Lucy five, Donaldsonville nothing!

  One minute into the game…

  …two minutes into the game…

  Haley off to Alyssha over to—nope, ball stolen by the tall red-haired girl from Donaldsonville down court to the slender girl with glowing ebony skin over to the feisty blonde who was built like a fire plug and who hurtled over everything in her path then her pass re-stolen by Sarah across to Sonia and then—OH NO BAD PASS knocked away by tall Hispanic girl with ponytail taken by fireplug girl—my god, she’s everywhere—down court to red head over to frizz hair number thirty two—who’d just checked into the ball game—and bounce pass to ponytail back to frizz over to taller-than-anybody-on-our-team, then back to fireplug—

  ––and two points.

  Then things began to go badly.

  The weave worked imperfectly. The Mariners seemed to stop communicating effectively. They began yelling at each other:

  “Take her! Take thirty two!”

  “No, I’ve got 54!”

  “They’re zoning, don’t you see that?”

  “They’re not, it’s man to man!”

  “I’m open!”

  “Get out of the middle!”

  “Post her up, post her up!”

  “Switch! Switch!”

  “Double down, now!”

  Two minutes left in the first quarter; Donaldsonville 15, Mariners 9.

  And then:

  Alyssha Bennett dribbled hard to the right, slipped it behind the back to Sarah Gray barreling left over the top of the key and she ran SMACK into Sonia Ramirez and they fell down like two sacks of wet cement.

  “OhmyGod!” screamed the whole bench.

  And Nina found herself out on the floor, kneeling inside a circle of players, all of them looking down at Alyssha and Sonia, who, dazed, were sitting on their knees.

  “Are you two ok?” she asked the girls.

  They nodded, woozily.

  “I think so.”

  “I think so.”

  “What happened?”

  Alyssha pursed her lips and said:

  “They were going 2-1-2. We had to adjust, and…”

  Sonia shook her head:

  “It wasn’t 2-1-2, Leesh! They had switched back to 1-3-1, didn’t you catch that? The middle was completely closed!”

  “They don’t play 1-3-1! They never use that! It’s a disguised 2-1-2 with number 54 back in the paint to clog things up!”

  “No, no, she was doubling down on the baseline!”

  Sarah Gray:

  “Guys, it’s man to man! They’re just softening it, don’t you see that?”

  The two girls got to their feet and made their way to the sideline, replaced by two bench players, while Nina found herself thinking:

  They don’t know what the hell is going on out there.

  Which was, of course, unfortunate, given the fact that she didn’t either.

  And that was the way it went for the rest of the game, except it got worse.

  Shots that usually went in for the Lady Mariners clanged off the rim, or, worse, were partially blocked.

  There was no open space on the court in which to maneuver.

  Every patch of floor that should have been used as a jump shot’s launching pad was, impossibly, occupied by two beefy young women in yellow jerseys, snarling and snatching the ball away.

  Halftime score: Donaldsonville 32—Bay St. Lucy 17.

  “...and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

  ––William Faulkner

  There was nothing to say at halftime—or rather, there was probably a lot to say and Nina didn’t know what it was.

  The Lady Mariners spent their fifteen minute break doing unladylike things, such as banging their balled up fists into the locker room and screaming into each other’s faces:

  “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M OPEN! I’VE BEEN OPEN THE WHOLE HALF!”

  “NOBODY’S OPEN! WHAT THE HELL KIND OF A DEFENSE ARE THEY RUNNING!”

  “IT’S A MATCH UP ZONE, DON’T YOU SEE THAT, DOESN’T ANYBODY SEE THAT?”

  “IT’S NOT A ZONE AT ALL, THAT’S THE PROBLEM!”

  And then, of course, there was the inevitable realization that the game was being lost for the same reason that all athletic events are lost, and that, when one thought long and hard about it, all potential joy, success, and happiness in life itself were lost:

  “THESE REFEREES ARE CHEATING!”

  “THESE ARE THE WORST DAMN REFEREES I’VE EVER SEEN!”

  “THIS GAME NEEDS TO BE PLAYED UNDER PROTEST!”

  It was not played under protest, of course, nor would any subsequent in depth investigation reveal a cunningly concealed plot among the two officials—one a hardware store owner from Cape Hatteras and the other an insurance agent from Sedonia—among these two men, the school administration of Donaldsonville, The Warren Commission, and the Cuban government.

  There was no such plot.

  There were just twenty more minutes of ugly and sordid basketball on court, accompanied off court by blaring pep band fanfares and delirious cheers from the home side of the gymnasium, and complete silence from the other side, unless one counted Jackson Bennett, who stood for most of the time bellowing alternatively the C word, the R word, the E word, the H word, the S word, the P word, and other words, so loudly that he would have been thrown bodily out of the building, had he been less than six foot five in height, and lighter than two hundred and eighty pounds in weight.

  So that he got to stay.

  But it wasn’t much fun.

  Not for anyone connected to Bay St. Lucy Basketball.

  Final score: Donaldsonville 64-Bay St. Lucy 41.

  And it wasn’t really as close as the score made it seem.

  The events following the game resembled the events following any well run funeral. Some tears, a few mutual assurances that it was all for the best and was part of a plan that we do not understand now but will at a later date, the packing of any food that remained uneaten, and everybody finally going home.

  By ten o’clock they were all on the bus.

  Nina had shaken hands again with Paul Johnson, of course, and had congratulated him on his victory.

  “Your girls played great tonight, Coach Johnson.”

  “Well, we got lucky. Your bunch never quit; they kept fighting.”

  Da da da da and so on and so on.

  She was last onto the darkened, sepulchral bus.

  The players lay motionless and silent across their seats, decorating them as angels decorate tombstones.

  She got into her seat.

  Her travel bag lay at her feet.

  She looked out of the bus.

  She burned within.

  Somehow, deep down, she reali
zed this was her own fault.

  Her team had been outcoached.

  That big fat jackass from Donaldsonville had outsmarted her.

  Well, it would not happen again.

  She put her nose ball against the cold bus window, and squinted out into the night.

  The sky was on fire. Atlanta was burning.

  She had no head phones, but the music was playing quite clearly in her head:

  Ta taaa ta ta…”

  Tara’s theme.

  All the city was ablaze around her, but…

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered, “is another day.”

  Tara might be in blazes, but…

  Ta taa ta ta…”

  “I’ll never be beaten again!”

  She turned on the small reading light overhead.

  Then she reached into her bag, pulled out the playbook, and began reading it.

  “Read, read, read. Read everything––trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

  ––William Faulkner

  “When it's a matter of not-do, I reckon a man can trust himself for advice. But when it comes to a matter of doing, I reckon a fellow had better listen to all the advice he can get.”

  ––William Faulkner, Light in August

  The following morning—Saturday—she rose, ate breakfast, went back to bed, curled up, and continued to read the playbook.

  She finished the playbook at nine thirty, then began re-reading it.

  She finished a second reading at eleven, then took out her notebook and re-drew the playbook until she knew every diagram by heart.

  She finished this task at one PM, when she had a salami sandwich for lunch. She also fed Furl and changed his litter.

  At two o’clock, she went to the Bay City Public Library and affixed herself to one of its computers.

  A short time later, she approached the main desk, carrying one book (You Haven’t Taught Until They have Learned: John Wooden’s Teaching Principals and Practices), and a list of ten others, which she requested to be ordered as quickly as possible, this being an emergency situation. The list included: Dan Meyer, Basketball the Dan Meyer Way; (by, obviously, Dan Meyer, who, according to the computer, was a coaching legend); The Game of Basketball: Basketball Fundamentals, Intangibles, and Finer Points for Coaches, Players, and Fans by Kevin Sivils; Basketball Skills and Drills, 3rd Edition by Jerry Krause; The Complete Handbook of Rebounding Fundamentals by Swen Nater; The Physics of Basketball by Joseph Fontanella and My Philosophy of Basketball by Bobby Knight.