Once two of the people you believe in most have told you something, you kind of have to believe it.
So I do.
As soon as the other car disappears around a bend, Jake’s reading the papers: Daphne gave him printed pages underlined and scrawled on in her handwriting. He mutters to himself. Taps his fingers against the handle of the door.
Kmart knew everything had changed before they even climbed into the truck. “Talk to me,” he says, not for the first time.
So Jake talks.
Kmart listens.
After twenty miles, Jake finally calls a new play.
“Turn around. I need to go back.”
Kmart sighs, but he pulls over.
“You sure about this?” he asks as the truck idles.
Jake nods. “I’ll find you on the other side,” he says.
Kmart shrugs. “If you want to.”
Jake turns to him. “Of course. You’re my sponsor, man.”
They both laugh at the absurdity of this, at how true and untrue it is all at once. They laugh because sometimes the only way to do something this difficult is to laugh. Whether they realize it or not, they have both learned this from Kolt.
“Here,” Kmart says. “It was time to give this back, anyway.” He tosses Jake’s phone onto the seat between them, then peels out of the gravel and onto the road—heading for Ashland this time.
Jake’s almost afraid to pick the phone up. Was it really just a few hours ago he snuck it out to send that text? How has so much changed so quickly?
When he finally turns it over, there’s a message from Luke. The highlight video, as promised.
Jake watches himself on the court and aches to get back there again. When the screen fades to black, he picks up the stack of mail from Luke and opens one college envelope after another. Some are just generic mailers, but most seem personalized, and a few are even signed by the whole coaching staff. For the first time, it seems possible that somebody could still want him, that this could still be his future.
Eventually the truck pulls to the curb in front of Jake’s house—the very same spot where it waited all those weeks ago. The snow has long since melted; the path to the front door is clear. Jake climbs out, collects his backpack. Can’t quite bring himself to say goodbye yet.
“You could come with me,” he says.
They both know this isn’t true. Not right now, anyway.
Kmart shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good.”
“You could try things out here for a while. Go see your family.”
“I could,” Kmart admits. It’s not a commitment, but it’s not a no, either.
He pulls the roll of cash from his pocket, but Jake refuses.
“At least give it back to your brother,” Kmart insists.
Now Jake shuts the door. He cups his hand to his ear, then shrugs, pretending he didn’t hear. He knows that Kmart will need the money, and that Luke is way too generous to want the gift returned, in any case. He’s a good kid like that. The best kid.
As the truck rolls away from the house, Jake takes a paper from Daphne’s stack—the one she’s marked up the most. At the top she’s drawn a bold, dark star next to the words “works best for Jake.”
Jake studies the words. Maybe rehab didn’t work for his dad because he didn’t work for himself. But Jake is willing to work. Always has been.
With shaking hands, he dials the number, and with a shaking voice, he answers a woman’s questions about what he needs.
“We have an open bed,” she says. “Can you come in tonight?”
Jake looks through the front window, sees the outline of his mom and Luke asleep on the couch. He rests his hand on the glass, half hoping to see their eyes flutter open.
But they don’t, and he knows it’s probably better this way. He has to take this next step while he’s still got the courage. Walk away now so he can be with them again.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “I can come in tonight.”
After he hangs up, Jake programs the address from the paper into his phone. He finds a pen on the floor of his truck and writes his own words beneath Daphne’s, then slides the paper through the crack below the door.
I love you. I’m okay. This is where I’ll be for a while but then I’m coming home.
This time he knows the ink is real, and the promise will be kept.
Jake goes to his truck, takes the key from the ashtray, and drives.
The whole world has woken up. Crocuses bloom, then tulips and daffodils hurry to catch up. The stream runs, muddy and strong. And one blade at a time, the dry, yellowed grass of last autumn is replaced by this season’s green.
Across the town, four phones vibrate as one, coming to life with the same message.
Rehab going well. Visiting hours on website. Will text more when I can.
Daphne reads it as she fills out her housing application for the university. She’ll show it to Seth later, before they staff the table for summer basketball sign-ups. He’ll want to know.
Kolt will share the message too, both with his parents and with Jenna. He still waits for the day when his brother will reach out to him, but somehow just knowing what he knows now has already helped the old wounds begin to heal.
Luke reads the text as he rides his bike to his very first day at his very first job. Before he puts his phone away, he looks back at the thread. All these messages to the same four people, but he still isn’t sure who the fourth is.
* * *
—
Across town, Coach B stops at the end of his driveway to gather the mail. There are two packages: one from a small college hours away where he used to take the boys for a summer tournament, and the other without a return address. He drives the old Jeep into the carport and takes them both to his kitchen table to open.
Mrs. B brings him a glass of water and his medication. She sets his phone next to them.
“Someday you’ll actually remember to take that with you when you go out,” she says, kissing him on the thin waves of his gray hair.
Coach B grabs her hand and gives it a squeeze. The best he can, anyway, with his arthritis. He’s never quite gotten the hang of cellular telephones. Maybe his new employee will show him how to use it as more than just a telephone. He turns back to the packages, opening the larger one, which has the name of one of his former players—now a successful coach himself—in the top corner.
“Oh.” The sound escapes him as soon as he sees the sign, its paint worn off along the bottom edge by the good-luck taps of decades of his players: HEAD, HANDS, HEART. All those boys, for all those years. They gave it all, didn’t they?
He thinks he’ll return the sign to the school, but then he thinks again. On the one hand, the team was certainly successful without it last season.
But on the other, that success came at great cost.
Which reminds him—he has a poem to write and a visit to make today, to a former player who is working toward a fresh start from inside a prison cell. If you want somebody to do what’s right, let them see you believing that they can. He’s said this for years, and he’s believed it every time.
Coach B sets the sign aside and looks out at the buds on his maple tree. He knows the team will need a new tradition to go along with their new coach, whoever it ends up being. But he’ll keep the sign safe somewhere, just in case.
The second package is more of a puzzle. All it contains is an old notebook he doesn’t recognize. But tucked inside the front cover, he finds a note with his name scrawled across the top.
Coach B,
I wanted you to know that I finally took your advice and wrote a poem. It’s not very long or very good, but I’ve written more, and they’re getting better. It’s actually for Luke, but I wanted you to be the first to read it. Will you read the back page and give him this notebook when
you’re done? Will you keep an eye on him too? And tell him I said to keep an eye on you?
Thank you for everything, always.
Jake
Coach B reads the cover of the notebook: The Book of Luke and Jake. He’s curious about what’s inside, but he is also an unfailingly honest man, so he turns only to the back page and reads the poem.
a haiku for my brother
Baller and Jedi
May the force be with you, Luke.
Someday I will too.
It isn’t long before Coach B hears someone humming his way up the path.
“Ah,” he says as Luke comes to the screen door. “My new employee. Are you sure you don’t mind getting paid in raspberry lemonade and basketball lessons?”
Luke shrugs. “If that’s what you paid Jake, that’s what I want you to pay me.”
Coach B can tell he means it. But more important, he can tell Luke’s not just saying it to be nice but because he still truly wants to be like his big brother. And even after all that has happened, this is a very good thing.
“Do you want me to mow the lawn?” he asks.
Coach B shakes his head. “It’s still a little early for that. I was actually hoping you could show me how to operate this contraption.”
He holds out his phone, knowing it’s capable of so much more than he’s ever used it for. He’s spent decades doing what Luke is about to do—helping someone see the potential in the palm of their hand. There’s something nice about being on the other end of that today.
They sit together in the crackling wicker chairs on the front porch. Coach B demonstrates that, yes, he knows how to turn the phone on.
“This is your text app,” Luke says, tapping on something that looks like a speech bubble.
Then Luke’s jaw drops. “It was you. It was you!” He stands up, still staring at the phone.
He turns the screen to face the old man. “These are your texts,” he says. “You have three of them.”
Coach B reads the messages.
It’s not your fault.
I’m so sorry I wish I would have done everything differently maybe when this is all over you will find a way to forgive me
Rehab going well. Visiting hours on website. Will text more when I can.
“These are from Jake?” Coach asks, already knowing the answer.
Luke nods.
“Can you show me how to write him back?”
Luke shrugs. “He can’t really text very much right now. But I’ll show you how to text me.”
After that, it’s Coach B’s turn to teach Luke something. He shows him how to till the garden, loosening the soil so things can grow. It’s hard, slow work, and the boy begins to sweat after only a few turns of the handle.
“Are there machines that can do this faster?” he asks.
“I’m sure there are,” Coach B says, afraid the boy will give up before he’s really begun. But Luke just pushes harder against the tiller.
“If there wasn’t, I’d invent one. I’m very interested in inventing lately. I have forty-seven ideas in my invention notebook. I can bring it next time and show you. Or my poetry notebook. I have one of those too.”
Coach B takes a moment to marvel at this fascinating, confident kid. He can’t help but feel that it’s Jake who has helped shape him this way.
And then the mention of a notebook reminds him. “Ah,” says the old man. “Don’t let me forget. I have something for you. Come in when you get thirsty, and I’ll give it to you.”
Inside, Coach B sits at the table with his eyes closed, willing himself not to get dizzy today. And then, because there’s still something of the stubborn kid he once was inside him, he tries sending Jake a text.
Proud of you. Call me anytime.
He’s not sure how to determine whether it worked. Probably it didn’t. And it’s just as well—the arthritis makes it hard for him to text anyway. It’s certainly no way to write poetry.
He’s about to go ask Luke if he needs a drink yet when the phone rings on the table.
“Hello?” he answers.
“Coach” comes the voice.
Coach B swallows. Blinks back the tears that have sprung so suddenly.
“Jake.”
“I probably shouldn’t have called,” Jake says, but Coach B protests.
“You call me anytime.”
“Well, not anytime. They’re kind of strict about that here.” He clears his throat. “I stole from you.”
“I wondered about that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know, son.”
There’s a long pause, and the boy’s next words are choked. “What do you think of me now?”
“Now?” Coach B stops to consider this. “I think, or I suppose I hope, that you’re starting to see the worth I saw in you all along. Not on the court but the real worth of your soul.” He closes his eyes. “I think you’re facing an opponent as tough as any I ever did, and you’re conquering it, day by day.”
Jake starts to protest, but Coach B won’t have it.
“It’s true,” he says. “How many soldiers face the enemy on the battlefield with great courage, only to fall to the very same foe you’re facing now?
“And why?” he asks. “Because we treat it like a shameful, secret battle. We make each other face it alone.” He thinks of all the friends he has lost, in one way or another, to this same shadowy opponent. “Please know you’re not alone, son. That you’re never alone. And please know how proud I am of you.”
They both have a hard time saying anything after that. Coach B clears his throat and looks out the window to where Luke still toils away at the tilling.
“This brother of yours,” Coach says. “He writes poetry. Did you know that?”
“Some of my favorite people do,” Jake says. “I’m starting to write some too.”
“I know. I read one today. It’s a fine poem, son. Have you called your mother?”
“I can’t.”
“I know. But you’d better do it anyway.”
Jake only hesitates a moment. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to talk about the hard things yet, if that helps.”
Another pause. “There’s a cooking group here. I could ask her how to make pad thai.”
“I think that would be an excellent idea. I might ask her that myself. I’ll get off the line so you can give her a call now. But you take care, son. And if you happen to hear from Kade again, tell him I said hello.”
“I will.”
Coach B waits for Jake to end the call, then tucks the phone into the pocket of his sweater. He looks out the window and sees the tiller lying across the loose earth, the task completed and its master gone. Then a smile breaks across his face as he hears a familiar rhythm: three dribbles, pause, then the clang of the ball off the rim. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear it was Jake out there shooting foul shots.
He opens the screen door and watches.
Three dribbles, pause, and this time, only the chunk of the ball through the net.
All at once, Coach B is transported back to the first time he watched Jake shoot at this very same hoop.
“That’s nice,” he says. “Foul shots are important. Fundamental. I can see somebody’s been working with you on those.”
Luke nods. Dribbles three times, exhales, shoots again.
Makes it again.
“Has anybody ever taught you the fadeaway?” he asks.
Luke nods again. Dribbles once, pulls up to shoot, fades it away.
Misses badly.
But the form is there. His head is in it, hands are soft. No doubt the heart is there too.
“Good, good,” Coach B says. “Should we work on that for a bit?”
And they do.
Once upon a time there was
Nothing
and then there was
Something.
No brother,
then
Brother.
But before that
galaxies
planets
oceans
mountains
grass and trees
seasons
whales
birds
cows
spiders
people.
And it was good.
Mostly.
Because as soon as there were people,
they could hurt each other,
but they could help each other too.
And they did.
And it hasn’t stopped.
The opposite of a big bang
is a fadeaway,
but the opposite of a fadeaway
is something else,
I think.
Something that disappears
and you wait
and you wait
and you hope
and you wait
and just when you’re about to give up
it comes back again.
Like leaves on bare branches.
Like spring.
Even though the events of this story are fictional, they are far too real for so many in America. In 2019, overdose deaths in the United States surpassed 700,000, with over 50,000 of those deaths involving opioids. Tragically, these numbers will likely continue to rise along with the usage of other drugs, such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin, and a drastic increase in illicitly manufactured fentanyl analogs—all of which has been complicated and exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Although a lot of smart and dedicated people are fighting the problem from a lot of angles, it isn’t going away anytime soon, and our tendency as a society to shame and other those who suffer from addiction only makes the problem worse.
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