AT 29 (14 page)

Everyday, after the morning show was over, the two DJs adjourned to a small room just off the broadcast booth where they debated the next day's schedule. They were at the mercy of the New York scene. Schedules, agents, record labels and the
personalities of the artists had to be balanced. Mike Winfield would not settle for just anyone. He was a pro who tolerated no on-air miscues.

It was Loren who brought up Blossom Records. She had been at the last concert of The Jimmy Button Band, the only music on the Blossom label she liked. It was common knowledge that the group had broken up and she knew that Mike would not be interested in an interview about a band that was no more. Nevertheless, she heard that there was new leadership at the indie label across the river.

“Let's do something different,” she suggested to her partner.

“Like what?” he asked.

“There's that indie label over in Millburn, New Jersey. You know, the one Daisy Overton started a few years back?”

“Blossom, yeah, I know it.” Mike smirked. “Kinda weak, don't you think? Aside from Jimmy Button, they don't have much. I mean, we could see what he's up to, maybe explore the blow-up down at Atlantic City, but I hear he's all done. Why waste air on a has been?”

“I wasn't thinking of Button.”

“Who then?”

“I ran into Cindy Crane a week ago. She mentioned her new boss. He's shaking things up. She seemed quite upbeat.”

“So?”

“Cindy said he's an older guy who came out of nowhere, no background in the music business whatsoever.”

“I'm still not catching your drift.”

“He's dumped most of Daisy's signings. Just cut them loose. Cindy was on her way to London to evaluate two groups he wants to know more about.”

“So, what's the angle?”

“Let's see what he's up to. Cindy says he's driven to succeed, hard-nosed and very involved. She said he immersed himself in every piece of music the label ever recorded, published and unpublished.”

“Big deal. If he's worth his salt he should be an expert on his business.”

“He did it around the clock, non-stop, as soon as he arrived. At the first staff meeting he already knew more about the label than the people in the room. He started asking questions, giving orders fast.”

Winfield set aside his copy of Billboard and gave Loren his full attention. “What's his name?”

“Miles McCabe. The angle is who is he and what are his plans. In a few weeks, Cindy says he'll be up to his neck in litigation with the artists he's dumped. It takes courage to risk your label's reputation and any chance to sign new talent.”

Winfield turned back to his magazine. “That's not guts. It simply means he doesn't know the music business. All he's doing is conserving cash. He's probably already decided to take the company down.”

“I thought of that, but why send Cindy to London?”

“You think he has a plan of some kind?

“It might be interesting to find out.”

The waters of Walden Pond shimmer cold in early May. Jimmy picked Thoreau's favorite haunt for its proximity to Chillingham and the hope that there would be few people around to watch. Fortunately, the morning sun warmed the air to seventy degrees. At the end of the month he would be taking a similar plunge for real much further north. This day was a test to determine if his hard work was paying off.

He didn't know what to expect when he donned the new wet suit that made him look like a commando. The suit clung to his limbs, confining the areas around his joints. Yet, its purpose, to protect his body from the cold, was the primary reason for this test. He pulled the head covering down over his chin and tucked it under the neckline of the neoprene torso jacket. He made sure the leggings were sealed and fastened securely around the soles of his feet. When he was done only his face, hands and toes were left unprotected. He eased himself into the black water and began to kick, slowly at first, then with more power as the strictures of the suit eased. Soon, he settled into a rhythm. The suit did its job. As blood hastened through his veins, his face and extremities gave up their protest. Long before his swim was finished, he knew he'd be okay.

It was weeks since George irritated him with his questions. The one-time Kendall Academy janitor was right. Jimmy never gave the school a chance. He hated the place. That was his private choice and, for good reason. Did it matter what George believed? It was long over. What difference did it make if the episode with Bucinski was still with him all these years later? He tossed George's words from his thoughts, climbed out of the water and ascended the slippery shore beneath the oaks across the roadway to the parking lot.

Days later, George appeared on line, plate in hand. He smiled and put his hand on Jimmy's shoulder.

“C'mon over after you finish.”

When he joined George at his table, the shelter was nearly empty. “I was just thinkin',” the older man said, as Jimmy pulled out a chair. “That game against Prep in their big gym, remember?”

“Sure, why do you ask?”

“I dunno, just came into my head as you was walkin' over.”

“I'd rather forget those days.”

“Jeez, you had a nice touch. You play anymore? I mean, after?”

“Never played organized ball again.”

“Nothin' up there in Vermont?”

“No.”

“That's a shame.”

“I shoot around after dinner at the house.”

“That what you're doin' with yourself when you ain't here at the kitchen?”

“Getting in shape.”

“The drinkin'?”

“An occasional beer, but nothing more.”

“Good. What about your music?”

“There isn't any work. There's a half triathlon up in Vermont next month. I'm going there.”

George's eyes lit up. “You're gonna compete at somethin'?”

“It's not a competition. Just a test of my conditioning.”

“What's the drill?”

“Swim two miles, bike fifty-six, run thirteen.”

George whistled. “No stoppin'?”

“That's the challenge.”

“You tryin' to kill yourself?”

“Just something to focus on.”

“You got a woman in your life?”

“Same as the band. We split up.”

“Nobody to cheer you on?”

“Not anymore. It's been four months.”

“Then what, after the race?”

“Lots of questions today.”

“You don't volunteer much. Besides, I don't wanna go too deep into opinions since you don't like 'em much.”

“Bucinski? Say what you want. It doesn't bother me.”

“Well, in that case, I got a few thoughts.”

“Shoot.”

“I'm thinkin' you never handled the stuff at Kendall right. Maybe it's a part of the reason you're hangin' around now.”

“I thought about what you said, just high school stuff. Who cares?”

“Right, but like I said, it's how you handled things. The whole point a Kendall was you kids gettin' on the right track to bein' adults.”

“I've done fine until lately.”

“I'm not tearin' you down. You was just a kid who left a few things unfinished.”

“At Kendall?”

“That's the only part I know somethin' about.”

“I didn't have a chance.”

“Then tell me what happened, boy.”

“Bucinski happened.”

Peter Bucinski, forty years old, taught English and coached basketball at Kendall Academy. He stood six foot four with a large belly. He played college ball as a forward for a local division two school. Word was that he distinguished himself as a tough competitor, unafraid to mix it up when the game was on the line. He had an olive complexion beneath close-cropped, sandy hair. A protruding nose stretched out from the rest of his face, creating a thoroughly ugly beak beneath angry eyes. He ruled both his classroom and his practices with an iron fist. No one messed with Bucinski, not even Tomasz Markoski who found a way to disrupt every other classroom. Bucinski terrorized his students.

George broke Jimmy's thought. “Shame he missed out on Coach of the Year.”

“You think I had something to do with that?”

George raised his eyebrows. “You think you didn't?”

“He didn't deserve any awards.”

“When you left the team in the middle of that playoff game folks got to wonderin'. You know, maybe he had a problem. After all, there we was, at the most critical point in the season, and he couldn't hold his team together.”

“Just me. He had the rest of the team.”

“You never gave a reason for quittin'.”

Jimmy's voice rose. “You want one?”

“We all knew he was a tough guy, but you, jeez, I'm hearin' rage.”

“He was abusive and violent.”

“So, what happened?”

A week before he entered Kendall, a toolbox fell from a shelf in the garage, breaking two fingers on Jimmy's right hand and voiding his chance to play football. He spent the fall running cross-country, hoping his hand would be ready for basketball season. During tryouts he didn't do well, but an occasional burst of shots that swished the net got him the last spot on the freshman team.

In the weeks that followed, the broken fingers gradually regained their dexterity. With each practice he steadily improved and, when the schedule commenced, he was the starter at off-guard. Most of his teammates were raw, just beginning to understand the fundamentals, but Jimmy was a natural, able to see the floor better than his peers and capable of taking over a game at any time. With Jimmy doing most of the scoring, the team breezed through its first two games. Meanwhile, on the larger circuit, Kendall was being manhandled. By the time Jimmy had single-handedly destroyed the opposition in the freshman team's third game, Bucinski had him practicing with the varsity.

In the varsity's fourth game, down twenty points in the last quarter, Bucinski gave up on his starting five. Jimmy was among the bench jockeys sent in to finish the expected loss, the first freshman Bucinski had ever played. In three minutes, he put twelve points on the board. His defense, aided by remarkable quickness, shut down the opposing team's best player propelling Kendall to a one-point win. The stunning victory left the small crowd applauding for several minutes after the final whistle sounded.

That performance resulted in a formula that Coach Bucinski employed thereafter. His bias against freshmen would not permit him to install Jimmy on the starting five, but he saw playing time whenever the scoring dipped, which was often. Each time, Jimmy restored order with his deadeye shooting and smothering defense. Kendall won six in a row.

Most seasons Kendall basketball received little ink from the Liston Observer, but one Saturday sports page carried a headline:

Kendall's On the Move
Catholic Conference Takes Note

A freshman has picked up the pace of Kendall basketball. Barely 6 feet tall and weighing a mere 140 pounds, Jimmy Buckman, from nearby Chillingham, a high school powerhouse in its own right, has brought a winning season within reach, something the tiny school hasn't seen in years
.

Regardless of what happened during the games, Jimmy knew his place. He was still a freshman among his older and mostly bigger teammates. Often he struggled in practice, trying hard to fit in, afraid to be too aggressive and careful to keep his mouth shut. The last thing on his mind was making waves but, as his star rose, Bucinski wouldn't leave his only freshman player alone. No matter what Jimmy did it wasn't good
enough for the mean-spirited coach. From the moment each practice began and throughout the two grueling hours of drills, he kept up his taunts, yelling at all his players, and reserving his sharpest criticisms for Jimmy. As the weeks passed, he came to hate practice, dreading the moment he would have to don his practice uniform and come onto the floor to the endless growling of his coach. He turned his attention back to George.

“I was scared to death of Bucinski. Being the only freshman, with no real friends on the varsity squad, I never felt comfortable. His practices were brutal. After the Liston Observer wrote about me he started to treat me like a whipping boy. Everyday he singled me out for some punishment, whether it was running wind sprints until I dropped or getting drilled every time I went inside for a lay up.

“Why didn't you talk to him about it?”

Jimmy shot George a look. “I was a fourteen year-old kid. What did the Brothers tell us the first day? ‘Keep your mouth shut and do your work.' Then they backed it up with their fists.”

George nodded. “Keep talkin'.”

Jimmy looked around the shelter. “Closing up, Clancy's is around the corner.”

They found seats at the bar. “So finish the story.”

“We squeaked into the playoffs as the last cede because of our five losses.”

“I remember. First time in years.”

That meant we had to play Central in the first game on their floor. They were bigger than us, but slower. All those wind sprints paid off. We came out running from the opening buzzer. I didn't get in until the second half, mostly because we had a lead all the way. In the end, it was one of our easiest games. Prep came next. Before the game, a reporter from the Observer called the house. He said he wanted to interview me.”

George took a sip from his beer. “What'd you tell him?”

“I knew Bucinski would kill me if I got more ink. I said I couldn't talk to him, but he persisted. Wanted to know why. Just to get off the phone I told him the truth, dumb.”

“Why?”

“It got back to Bucinski. The reporter must have called him.”

“Fillin' the blanks. I'm gettin' the picture. What'd he do?”

“The next day, at practice, he demanded to know why I said he wouldn't let his players talk to reporters. We had no relationship by then. I didn't trust him. I walked away when he wouldn't stop yelling. He yanked me back. By that point, I'd had enough. I jerked away and hustled out of practice, him screaming at the top of his lungs as I went out the door.