The Squared Circle

by JAMES W. BENNETT

  It was hopeless to try and talk to her when she got into one of these grooves. He was done with the eggs so he said, “I have to go now.”

  “Don’t you want some pudding?”

  “I’ll have it later.” He was putting on his jacket.

  “But you won’t be playing basketball in your condition?” She reached for him with tears in her eyes.

  “No,” he lied. When her fingers brushed the side of his face he said, “I’m just gonna watch.”

  When he got to the basketball office it was still so early the guys weren’t even dressed yet. He said to Coach Rice, “I’ve got to play.”

  “Are you kidding? Here, Youngblood, take a look.” Rice closed the medicine chest door above the sink so Sonny could look at himself in the mirror. The left side of his mouth was swollen twice its normal size, particularly the upper lip, which had a long, vertical crack. The black-and-blue swelling across the bridge of his nose seemed to remove the definition from his features; it was hard to believe the face was really his.

  “I know what I look like,” said Sonny.

  “Do you really? Do you have a doctor’s permission to play?”

  “No, but I don’t have a doctor’s order not to play, either.”

  The crooked smile. Rice leaned back in the swivel chair before he lit up. “You’ve got balls, Youngblood, I’ll say that for you. Why are you so unglued about this game? We start the tournament on Friday, and you should be ready to play by then.”

  “I have to play,” he said. But that sounded like a demand, which you could never do with Rice. So he added, “I’m afraid we’ll lose. With me and Lynch both missing, I’m afraid we’ll lose.”

  Brother Rice was already shaking his head. “No, no, that’s not it, Youngblood. I decide what it takes to win. We don’t have two players, we have twelve; the system is bigger than the individuals who make it up. You understand?”

  Sonny didn’t understand, but he didn’t care. He only knew he had to play. He thought his chances would be best if he didn’t say anymore, so he just sat still to watch Rice smoke his cigarette down.

  The coach finally said, “I admire your guts, though. What about your loose teeth?”

  Using his index finger, Sonny carefully lifted the damaged lip. “I’ve got this retainer; it holds them real tight.”

  Rice stubbed out the cigarette. “There’s a protective face mask in the supply room. See if Jake can get it adjusted to fit you. You won’t start and I’m not sure you’ll get to play at all. If you pester me on the bench, it’s for damn sure you won’t play. We understand each other?”

  Sonny was elated. “Thanks a lot, Coach.”

  The pliable face mask was white. It was made of a plastic material used for soft casts. Sonny was the last one in uniform because of the time it took to get the mask adjusted. Jake fussed with the straps while Sonny shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  When the mask was fastened in place it hurt, but not too bad. He looked weird in the mirror, like a voodoo creature or like Jason in one of the Friday the 13th movies. The bad part was, the pressure of the mask made his nose bleed. Jake didn’t see it though, so Sonny stuffed cotton wads up both nostrils. They hurt too, but the bleeding stopped.

  He left the mask on the bench when he joined the team for warm-ups, already in progress.

  “How come you’re not wearin’ the mask?” asked One Gram.

  “I don’t need it for warm-ups,” Sonny answered.

  The large crowd filled two thirds of the gym. Sonny went through the warm-up drills breathing through his mouth. He could see Lynch leaning against the wall by the drinking fountain partway down the hall by the ref’s dressing room. When the horn sounded, Sonny gave him the finger, down by his waist, so Lynch would see it but not other people.

  For the first time all season, Abydos was behind after the first quarter. Carbondale was very good. A tall, black player named Collins, who was a quick leaper, was tough to handle under the basket. Then there was Wheeler, a stocky point guard with terrific ball-handling skills. He was beating the Abydos press and laying the ball off for easy baskets. Sonny squirmed on the bench, but he knew he didn’t dare pester the coach to put him in.

  Abydos made a spurt in the second quarter to take the lead, but then One Gram got into foul trouble trying to guard Collins, who was taller and quicker. Rice stomped the sidelines pouring verbal abuse on the refs as well as the players. But playing without One Gram, Lynch, and Sonny, Abydos was overmatched; they fell behind by five points at halftime.

  Brother Rice was so furious at halftime he chewed butt the whole time. “Goddamnit, Chico!” he hollered at Julio. “This is your game now, you have to be the man! You remember anything at all about defense?”

  When they went back on the floor for the second half, Coach took Sonny by the elbow. “Put on the mask. You’re going in.”

  Sonny was pleased, of course, but not surprised. With Rice there was winning and nothing but winning. When they lined up to inbound the ball, Sonny felt like everyone was staring at his weird appearance. His own teammates as well as the Carbondale players. Just before the ball was handed to the Carbondale player by the ref, he remembered the cotton wads inside his nostrils. He pulled them out and stuck them down inside his socks. He hoped too many people didn’t notice.

  Sonny was at home on the right wing of the diamond press, so it surprised him when a couple of ordinary passes got by him. He felt a little shaky, which caused him to wonder if he was more injured than he realized.

  But the first time down on the offensive end he made a three-pointer, and then another. The second one cut the lead to three points and brought the crowd roaring to its feet. Carbondale had the press on, so Julio’s next pass gave Sonny a lane to the basket. He could see Collins flying at him from the corner of his eye, but he decided to take it right to the hole. If there was a collision, it wouldn’t be charging.

  It was something in Collins’s face. In his eyes. Just as Sonny soared up to lay his finger roll over the front of the rim, Collins brushed him on the way by and took a useless swipe at the ball. Sonny saw the fear in those eyes, if only for an instant; it was fear of Sonny’s face, or his mask, or maybe even fear of hurting him. Either way, Sonny understood how it was an advantage.

  With the score tied and three minutes left in the quarter, Rice called a time-out. He wanted them to go to man-to-man full-court pressure, and he put Mickey Stanley in the game. The coach was giving in-detail directions, but Sonny’s nose was bleeding again. He crouched down, pretending to tie his shoes, got the stale cotton wads from inside his socks instead, and pushed them back up inside his nostrils.

  After that, he was in a zone where nothing could intrude. To the spectators, astonished by the ballistic intensity of his movements, he might have seemed out of control. But he was very much in control. The zone was a visionary location, impervious to any would-be distraction. There was no pain in his face, no crowd noise, not even any Brother Rice. Most important, there were no obstacles. He saw passes before, during, and after. Intercepted them lightning-quick, then took them in for layups.

  Sonny poured in automatic three-pointers, with the ball out of time, frozen in amber, in the orbitlike path of its rainbow arc, swishing the net it seemed even before it left his fingertips. Layup after layup off defensive turnovers, trey upon trey on the offensive end, electrified and galvanized but never out of control. Until, with less than four minutes remaining in the game and Abydos’s lead swollen to 66–50, Sonny saw One Gram sitting beneath the scorers’ bench. He knew that Coach Rice was taking him out.

  The next pass went to a Carbondale player named Gleeson, who raised the ball above his head to make a downcourt pass, but Sonny ripped it away from behind. Three quick dribbles and he was behind even Collins, the inbounds man. The path to the basket was clear, and Sonny knew he was coming out. He soared at the rim, looked it right in the face, and cocked the ball behind his head with both hands. It was a tomahawk dunk. As soon a
s he slammed it through, the backboard shimmered the aftermath.

  When he left the game to take his seat on the bench, he must have high-fived his way down the row of teammates. He was remotely aware of the earsplitting, standing ovation that the crowd bestowed, but he had no knowledge at all of his 31 points in less than one half.

  He did know he was having trouble breathing. He grabbed a towel and ran to the locker room. As soon as he took off the mask, he could feel a line of pain behind his eyes; he started running cold water full out in one of the sinks.

  Sonny blew his nose on the towel to get out the cotton wads, but lots of snot and blood came with them. When Jake poked his head in, Sonny asked for some aspirin. He had a slight case of the shakes, so he lay on his back on one of the benches between the lockers. His pulse was too fast and the headache was worse. His head down flat, Sonny piled the cold, wet towel on top of his face and didn’t move.

  It was about a week after that, in the bandshell gazebo, when she asked him for her ring back. It was cold if you didn’t keep moving; with his large hands stuffed in his pockets, Sonny prowled the perimeter, counting all eight sides. He was still restless when he came full circle.

  “Why?” he asked her.

  She had her hands in the pockets of the navy blue coat. Around her neck was the angora scarf. She looked at him and said, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

  “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “I don’t know either, Sonny. The way you played against Carbondale was truly awesome, but I only felt sorry for you.”

  “Yeah, right. Sorry for me.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but it just didn’t seem like you playing.”

  Sonny took another uneasy trip around the sectioned circumference, kicking at the dirty slush preserved along the southern baseboard. He tongued the uncomfortable retainer, which anchored the two damaged teeth that were still sore, but firming up. “I’ll tell you why you didn’t recognize me, it’s the same reason nobody else did. How often have you seen a guy score thirty points in one half? Even less than a half.”

  “I said I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I know how well you played.”

  “Barb, that was better than playing good. Rice said it was the best half ever by one of his players.”

  Barb turned away. “Don’t bring him up. You know how I feel about Coach Rice. Sonny, let’s don’t talk about this now; the bus leaves for Cairo in an hour.”

  “It’s not my idea to talk about this stuff, but you asked for your ring back. What d’you expect me to do?”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll tell you something about Brother Rice. He may be a jerk, but he knows what it takes to win. That’s why he’s such a great coach. Why do you think we’re undefeated?”

  She went clear to the other side of the gazebo to look in the direction of Goldie’s Cafe. “How can you say that? He beat your friend up in practice and you still stand up for him. Even Julio just took it and went right on playing. I don’t understand.”

  “You have to be on the team to understand,” said Sonny.

  “He put you in the game with your face the way it was. You could have been injured for life. D’you think he cares?”

  “We were behind. He knows what it takes to win. Besides, he took me out as soon as the lead was safe.” A knot of frustration was forming in his chest. He wouldn’t know the words to make her understand what a turning point that game was, that face, that pain, that zone.

  “You know what the truth really is, Sonny? Coach Rice should be fired for the things he does. Butch is the only one on your team with enough courage to quit.”

  Now he was pissed. What does she know about courage? It was the way she was putting him down when she put the coach down. “What makes you so perfect? You’re a cheerleader, what about that?”

  “That’s different.”

  “What makes it different? Cheerleaders are like a part of the team, right?”

  “We cheer for every team. Every sport. That’s why it’s not the same.”

  If it wasn’t a satisfactory answer, he didn’t know how to dispute it. They were sitting side-by-side on the gazebo’s east-side bench. The low sun reflected in the bank’s plate glass windows was so glaring it hurt his eyes. He moved to sit on her other side.

  She said to him, “Sonny, I know we’ve talked about this before, but you think you’ll be somebody if you’re a basketball star. That’s not what makes a person important, it’s what they are on the inside.”

  Her tone was sincere, but he hated the way she didn’t understand. “Before basketball, what was I? Who cared about me then?”

  “I cared about you then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of who you are; who you were.”

  She didn’t get it. He got up to pace some more. “I don’t know how you could understand. Your father’s rich and your mother’s the PTO president. You’ve been somebody your whole life.” They were his honest thoughts, but he was surprised by the bluntness of his words. He unhooked the chain from behind his neck.

  He was standing in front of her with the chain and ring hanging from his index finger. “There’s no way you can understand this,” he said.

  When she reached for the ring, she had tears in her eyes. “Like I said, Sonny, sometimes I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

  The ring and chain nestled into the hollow of her open palm. He would go home now, make himself a peanut butter sandwich, and eat a couple of bowls of stale butterscotch pudding. He would get to school ten minutes early for the tournament bus.

  He might have two black eyes, but the tender swelling across the bridge of his nose was reduced. He might even play without the face mask. With or without it, though, it wouldn’t matter; he knew all of the teams in the tournament and all of their personnel. No one could stop him. No one from Cairo, or Egyptian High, or Mounds Meridian, or Anna-Jonesboro. No one could stop him.

  The national pollsters might have been slow to recognize the achievements of the Salukis, but not so the NCAA selection committee when tournament pairings were announced. Their number one seed in the Midwest guaranteed them a spot in the Indianapolis Hoosierdome if they won their two subregional games in Louisville. Since Louisville and Indianapolis were both relatively close to Carbondale, SIU fans could participate in large numbers.

  For nearly a week, the campus was a media blitz. The hysteria that gripped the region seemed to intensify with the arrival of each new contingent, whether from USA Today, ESPN, or CBS. In the midst of all this glory, though, Sonny felt alienated. His heart was not in it, could not get in it. Instead, he found himself lost in the peculiar and mystifying malaise that he labeled “the float,” the ongoing condition of distracted ennui.

  His heart was not in the photo sequence arranged by Sports Illustrated and neither was his head. The sequence, which SI editors intended to call “Jam Session,” required Sonny and Luther to wear tuxedos and hold trumpets or saxophones while dunking basketballs. He had no focus in the press conferences, each one of which opened with Coach Gentry’s disclaimer that he would not answer questions about the NCAA investigation into the Saluki program, nor would he answer any more questions about SIU’s so-called “soft” schedule.

  At Wednesday’s press conference, the day before their first tournament game, Warner the sportswriter rescued him by taking him for a walk around McAndrew Stadium.

  According to Warner, the SIU basketball program was in line for some severe NCAA penalties. His candor in saying so in his columns made him persona non grata with Coach Gentry; Warner was no longer allowed to travel with the team.

  “You really pissed him off, I guess,” said Sonny.

  Warner just shrugged. “It’s not my job to make Gentry happy. Athletics has a sports information office to take care of the propaganda. What’s the story on your slump?”

  “I’m in a slump,” Sonny agreed.

  “Yo
u haven’t had one all season, so I guess you’re entitled.”

  “I guess,” Sonny mumbled.

  Warner was walking with his hands wrapped around his Styrofoam coffee cup. No notebook and no ballpoint. “You know what it looks like?”

  “No, I don’t.” Sonny replied. “You’re not writing any of this down.”

  “This is just between you and me. I’m only curious about what’s going on with your game.”

  “Okay, what does it look like?”

  “Like you’re sleepwalking. Like you’re not motivated. It looks like you’re gliding, just on talent.”

  How much does he know? Sonny wondered. “Some games you get pumped more than others, Warner.”

  “Bullshit. Not you, Youngblood. I’ve been watching you play for four years. You never put it on idle. Never.”

  Sonny tried to brush him off. “If you say so.”

  “Are you losing your nerve?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you a psychiatrist or something?”

  Warner laughed before he said, “No, just a Wal-Mart psychologist. Are you going to answer the question?”

  But before he could even try to answer, unexpectedly and abruptly, Sonny was whisked in memory to eighth-grade football. In a game hopelessly lost, Coach Risby had assigned him to kick-off return. When the ball tumbled fearfully out of the sky, Sonny’s main concern, other than fumbling, was keeping his loose-fitting pants from falling down. With his head down, he hoped to more or less fall to the ground, so someone could drop on him. But there was no contact.

  “I guess there must’ve been some pretty good blocks,” he said to Warner. “By the time I got my head up again, I was in the clear. I was all the way to the forty, and the only thing in front of me was sixty yards of green grass.”