Airball (18 page)

But Coach did. “Where did you get that?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He touched the medal. “I didn't think I'd ever see it again.”

Thirty-six

“You?” I looked from Coach to Brett McGrew. And back again. Coach was still staring at the medal. “But—”

“We found it in Grandma's prairie dog,” said Bragger.

“But—,” I said again.

“Prairie dog?” said Brett McGrew.

“Prairie dog.” Coach closed his eyes.

“Prairie dog!” Grandma thunked herself in the forehead. “We looked everywhere but the prairie dog.”

I stared at Grandma. Then at Coach. “So the medal's…?”

“Mine,” he said.

Bragger poked me with his elbow. “See? I told you it might not be McNet's.”

“Okay.” I grabbed the jersey from Bragger and shook it so Brett McGrew could see the number 5 shimmering under the lights. “But the jersey's yours. And this”—I snatched the old newspaper photo from Coach—“this is you.”

Brett McGrew gave me a sad smile. “No,” he said. “It's not.”

“But…” I looked at the picture.

The player in the picture was sliding across the floor on his belly. And you couldn't see his face, not even from the side. He was reaching for the ball, and his outstretched arms blocked his face from the camera's view. The only clear thing in the yellowed old photo was the big number 5 on the player's back.

“But…” I looked up. First at Brett McGrew.

Then at Coach.

He nodded. “It's me.”

He stared at the photo in my hand. Stared at it like he was trying to stare himself back in time.

“My freshman year,” he said. “McNet was still in middle school. Already on his way to basketball stardom. That much was obvious. When he came up to the high school the next year, our coach wanted him to keep the same number he wore all through middle school. Number five. Thought a new number might jinx him. You know how basketball folks get.” He raised an eyebrow. “Some teams are so superstitious they change into their underwear at halftime. So McNet kept number five, and I switched to number twenty-three. Kept my old number five jersey, though. Would've been too small for McNet.” He touched the shimmering number 5. “Your mother promised she'd keep it safe. She always did keep her promises.”

Coach stopped talking then. He rubbed a hand across his mouth. And finally looked at me. Looked at me and looked at me and looked at me, for thirteen years, it seemed. A smile threatened to break out at the corners of his mouth, and this time he didn't stop it. He let it slide right out there onto his face.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

I nodded.

And then, almost like we'd planned it, we hiked up the bottoms of our matching Jayhawk boxers. And there, on the backs of our legs, were matching pink hearts.

And I know this part sounds crazy, like something I made up, but at that moment, a shaft of light really did beam down, and music really did swell up around us. Okay, so the light was the blinding bulb of a TV camera aimed right at our butts, and the music was the KU pep band blasting out the KU fight song to get the crowd riled up before the game.

Still, somehow it was perfect. Somehow it was the way I'd always imagined it.

I looked at Coach. My father.

I'd finally found my father.

Thirty-seven

“Well.” Grandma took a good, hard look at Coach's pink heart. “If I'd known about that, it would've answered a lot of questions, wouldn't it?” She peered up at Coach through her bifocals. “I always thought you were a good boy.” She gave Coach's face a good, hard look, too. “You were good for my Melissa. You better be good for my Kirby, too.”

She gave Coach's hand a squeeze, then left Coach and me to ourselves. She said it was because we needed time alone to sort things out. I think secretly she just didn't want to miss tip-off.

Coach—my father—and I spent the first half of the game talking. Yeah, me and Coach. The kid whose tongue gets wrapped around his tonsils every time he speaks, and the guy whose main form of communication is a grunt. We didn't look at each other much. Just sat there, side by side, watching the game, eating nachos, and figuring things out. Things we'd both been wondering about.

Like, for instance, why my mom never told anybody who my father was. Turns out she
had
been protecting him, just like I thought. Just like I told Bragger. Only, instead of protecting Brett McGrew while he fielded offers from every big-time basketball program in the country, she was protecting Mike Armstrong, who'd managed to land a scholarship to Kaw Valley Community College and was scrapping and scraping to make a name for himself in junior college ball so maybe a big-time program would recruit him as a transfer.

“I thought it could happen.” Coach shook his head. “I really thought it could. You know why? Because of your mother. Because she thought I could do anything. Everybody else noticed Brett McGrew. But your mom, she noticed me. I wouldn't have gotten half as far if it weren't for her telling me I could.”

And she kept telling him that, too, till one day, when he was off at college, eating, sleeping, breathing basketball, she called him. Said she couldn't see him anymore. Said she'd found someone else. She didn't tell him that someone else was me.

“And I believed it.” Coach ran a hand across his mouth. “Why wouldn't I? She always deserved better than me, anyway. I figured I was lucky it took her as long as it did to catch on.”

I sat there for a long time after that, chewing my nachos. “I wish I'd known her,” I said finally.

“Yeah.” Coach stared straight ahead at the basketball court. “I wish you had, too.”

*   *   *

Just before halftime, somebody from the athletic department came and got us. We stripped down to our silky Jayhawk boxers and lined up at the end of the court, waiting for the half to end so the University of Kansas could retire Brett McGrew's jersey.

Camera bulbs flashed. The Jayhawks and their opponents thundered up and down the court. Glittery cheerleaders bounced and yelled and shook their pom-poms. I stood at the edge of it, in my underwear, waiting to play basketball with my father on national television.

“So.” Bragger squeezed in between me and Coach. “What should I call you, now that we're family? Mike? Uncle Mike? Uncle Iron Man?”

Coach shot him a dark look.

“Okay, maybe not.” Bragger nodded. “Maybe we'll just leave it at Coach for now. Or no, I got it—Uncle Coach.”

Coach closed his eyes and shook his head.

The buzzer honked. Halftime. The Kansas Jayhawks jogged off the court. The Stuckey seventh-grade Prairie Dogs jogged on. A guy from the athletic department strolled out to center court with a microphone and a framed Brett McGrew number 5 jersey. He gave a little speech, telling all about McNet's astonishing college basketball career. Then Brett McGrew took the microphone and gave his own little speech, thanking KU, the fans, his college coach, his parents.

“But my career wouldn't have been possible without all the folks back home in Stuckey who believed in me,” he said.

He waved a hand toward Mrs. Zimmer and Mr. Dobbs, who had risen to their feet. Mrs. Zimmer fanned herself with one hand while holding her chest with the other. I thought she was going to faint dead away, right there in the third row. Mr. Dobbs had traded his John Deere cap for a Jayhawk basketball cap, and now he pulled it off his head and held it over his heart.

“I'd also like to thank a fellow player from those Stuckey years,” said Brett McGrew. “A guy who, even then, was helping his teammates, including me, play better basketball. The Stuckey seventh-grade coach, Mike Armstrong, who led his team to a perfect fourteen and O record this year.”

The crowd clapped. Coach's face went red. He studied the toes of his shoes. Mrs. Zimmer beamed. Brett McGrew had announced our record on national television, and it was a better record than she ever could have imagined.

Brett McGrew handed the microphone back, and we started our scrimmage. Four players and Coach on one team, four players and McNet on the other, two subs for each. I was on Coach's team. He'd picked me. First. I almost didn't know what to do. I'd never been picked first choosing up sides before.

We tipped off, and the two teams rumbled up and down the floor, trading baskets. About halfway through the scrimmage, I picked off a pass. I fired the ball to Coach, and he thundered up the court for an easy layup.

Easy if he'd been playing with mere mortals. But we had a future hall-of-famer on the court. Brett McGrew whipped past Coach and set up in front of the hoop.

Coach didn't stop. Didn't slow down. He barreled toward McNet. Right toward him. He went in for the layup, but instead of going straight up, instead of charging into McNet and committing the offensive foul, he pushed off and spun around to the other side of the basket.

Th-bumpf.

The ball hit the backboard and swished through the net.

Iron Man Mike Armstrong's spinning layup. Executed perfectly.

The crowd cheered. Or, at least, the part of the crowd that hadn't wandered off to buy Coke and nachos. Coach's team cheered, too. Brett McGrew slapped Coach a high five.

But Coach didn't look at them. Not at the crowd or the other guys or even Brett McGrew. As the ball dropped through the hoop, Coach turned and looked down the court, searching, till his gaze landed on me. He nodded, smiled, and pointed, the way a shooter does to thank the guy who fed him the ball.

I nodded, smiled, and pointed back.

And then I just stood there. The other guys whooped past me down the court. But for a second, I stood there, in the shadow of the banners and the scoreboard and all that history. Stood there and took it all in.

Because sometimes the things you want aren't possible.

Sometimes they're not even good for you.

But sometimes, even if you kick the ball out of bounds when you dribble, even if your jump shots look like bounce passes, even if you end up on national television wearing nothing but your underpants—

Coach backpedaled past me, and as he did, he reached out and ruffled my hair.

—sometimes the thing you want most in the world really does want you back.

 

GOFISH

QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR

L. D. HARKRADER

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be an artist and a spy. My plan was to own an art supply store, which would make a great cover for my spying activities, and when I wasn't spying, I could sit at the front counter and paint masterpieces. I apparently thought store owners had nothing to do but sit at their front counters. I also wanted to play second base for the Royals. I figured I could do that during summers when the spy business was slow.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

Third grade. Most third-graders, when they got their work done in class and had free time, would run Hot Wheels along the inside of their desks or make fake fingernails by squirting glue in the curved part of their rulers and waiting for it to dry. Me, I wrote poems. And then illustrated them. And my teacher thought they were wonderful. Or at least, she
told
me she thought they were wonderful. So, during the summer after third grade, I wrote a whole book of poems, with illustrations and a construction paper cover, and when I went back to school in the fall, I gave it to her. Many years later, when I was home from college, I ran into my teacher—Mrs. Mary Wager, a wonderful woman—and she remembered my book of poems. She said she still had it. With encouragement like that, how could I
not
become a writer?

What's your first childhood memory?

I have this horrible memory of being held down by my dad and two nurses while our doctor pulled a bean out of my nose.

What's your most embarrassing childhood memory?

In kindergarten, our teacher brought out a bowl of something creamy and yellow and told us it was pudding. She asked if anybody wanted a bite. I, of course, raised my hand high in the air and said, “I do! I do!” Then she told us it was a joke. It wasn't really pudding, it was finger paint, and we needed to go put our paint shirts on. There I was with my hand in the air with all the other kids laughing at me and feeling pretty smug that they hadn't volunteered to eat finger paint. I don't think I ever volunteered for anything again. And I don't like pudding so much anymore.

As a young person, who did you look up to most?

Nancy Drew. Well, my parents, too. But mostly Nancy Drew. This was during the late '60s and early '70s, when girls were still being told they couldn't do everything boys could do, and here was Nancy, proving them all wrong. Nancy could do anything, and do it better than anyone. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. I still do.