Middle Men (2 page)

“Good practice?” he said.

I nodded. We had a real father-son thing going. Before dinner, I worked on my ball-handling. On the back patio I had set up an old full-length mirror and I spent an hour in front of it, trying to shake my reflection. My mom called me inside and we ate Costco lasagna, a bottomless pit of goo that had lasted for three days. After dinner, my dad came outside with a beer and watched me shoot my requisite two hundred jumpers. Twenty years ago he had been a second-team all-league selection at Mayfair High School. Now, he finished his beer, dropped the can on the lawn, and signaled for the ball. After missing his bank shot, he picked up the empty can and walked back inside. My little brothers had to rebound for me—it was on their chore wheel. Everything in the Linehan household revolved around the development of my midrange game. Even after my exile from Trinity, we were all operating under the assumption that I would eventually fill out and earn a scholarship somewhere. My mom kept assuring me that I was a “late bloomer.” When I finished my drills, I granted my brothers use of the ball and went inside to watch tape. In 1986, I recorded the Big East Tournament final between St. John's and Syracuse, and since then I had watched it approximately seven million times, studying Pearl Washington's exquisite crossover.

After everyone went to bed, I put on another tape, an illicit Cinemax movie I managed to record just before the cable company cut off our service. The story dealt with the tribulations of an heiress. Most of her personal conflicts were resolved in poorly lit drawing rooms, among hirsute Europeans. The
nonpenetrative frolicking didn't serve as masturbation material because I didn't masturbate. Ever. I'd just sit there, piously erect, a disciplined connoisseur of nipple and thatch. Even by apostolic standards, my repression was freakishly quaint, but I also remember enjoying these long passages of dreamy adoration. I've since read of Gnostic heretics in Asia Minor who, in abhorrence of their own bodies, sought a higher form of pleasure through the practice of
coitus reservatus
. Maybe that's what I had going on. Whatever the case, it meant that I was fifteen and still having wet dreams. At night I would sneak into the backyard and bury my soiled boxers in the trash can.

•  •  •

Coach Boyd handed out our summer schedule. First we had our rinky-dink Catholic league, and then the big tournament in Ventura. With a note of apology in his voice, he told me that St. Polycarp was in the same round-robin bracket as Trinity Prep.

“Will that be weird for you, Pat?”

“No,” I said, feeling my stomach drop.

“Their loss is our gain,” said Coach Boyd. “That's the way I look at it.”

Before he took over in the spring, Coach Boyd had been a substitute teacher at St. Polycarp, and a volunteer assistant coach. During that first week, he kept arriving late to practice. He blamed his Volkswagen Thing, which had a tricky ignition. “You have to get it just right,” he told us, jiggling an imaginary key.

I expected him to install some sort of offense, but every day he just rolled the ball out. “This summer,” he said, “I want you guys to play free.” I didn't want freedom. I wanted guys to
run their lanes. I wanted to come off a pick with a second and third option. We had several “Big Wallys”—my dad's term for big, clumsy white guys. Tully wasn't a Big Wally, but he was the laziest guy I ever played with. This killed me, because he was actually pretty good. Now and then he'd drop step and dunk on someone, but otherwise he rarely made it below the three-point line on either end. Coach Boyd yelled at him a few times, and made us all run for his sins, but it didn't make a difference. I dove for a loose ball once and Tully started clapping.

“You're a coach's dream, Higginbottom!”

Overton was just as useless. He had the curse of the two-footed jumper: he was a highlight reel in warm-ups, but could never gather himself enough to dunk in an actual game. His dad, an Air Force mechanic, lived in Victorville, the high desert. Overton hated going out there—he referred to it as “Tatooine”—and he once brought a tumbleweed to practice to symbolize the desolation of his weekend. His dad wanted him to join the Air Force, but after graduation Overton planned to get a job in Hollywood as “one of those guys who do lighting and shit.” He and Tully usually got high before practice. I never used drugs because I didn't want to make the same mistake as Len Bias, throwing away my golden future for one night of partying.

Weaver was the only guy I liked playing with; he understood when to cut and he could glide past guys, but he was high-strung, and if he missed a layup, or did anything wrong, he would slap his head and scream at himself and sometimes burst into tears. I asked Overton what was wrong with Weaver. “He's a Jehovah's Witness,” he said, as if that explained everything. Coach Boyd spent a lot of time with his arm around Weaver, telling him not to be so hard on himself.

Pham graciously conceded his starting point guard position. “I'd quit,” he told me, “but basketball looks good on college apps.”

I dreaded summer league, playing teams that actually ran sets. The Trinity game was in three weeks, but I was already having trouble eating and sleeping. I'd stay up late, imagining miracles. I would play the game of my life and Coach Washburn would beg me to come back to Trinity. But these visions would give way to the nightmare of getting destroyed, over and over, by guys who were actually getting recruited by Division I schools.

One day after practice I expressed my frustration with the offense. Coach Boyd didn't have an office, so we sat in the bleachers.

“In the spring I tried to put in a flex,” he said, “but it got too confusing and I started yelling at the guys. I hate it when I get like that. Then we had the riots and there was no use having practice. I don't know about you, but I spent two days in front of the TV, watching the fires, and all that . . . I really don't think it was anger. It was
pain
. Do you know what I mean?”

“At Trinity we ran motion,” I said. “It's just down screens.”

“I'm not good with systems,” said Coach Boyd. “That's why I left the Jesuits.”

I was planning on taking the bus home, but Coach Boyd offered me a ride. For ten minutes I sat in the passenger seat while he wrestled with the ignition.

“Come on, baby. Come on, baby . . .” He said it like a prayer, with his eyes closed. Finally the key turned over and the engine coughed to life. “Beautiful!” He put a tape in the stereo. “Have you heard the Minutemen?”

“No,” I said, as something crunchy and propulsive rattled the speakers. The singer wasn't singing, just talking.

“What kind of music do you like?” Coach Boyd asked.

“I don't know.”

“I used to see these guys live,” he said. “I sort of knew the drummer.”

For the rest of the ride he talked about the Minutemen. Apparently their lead singer had been killed in a car accident. “I cried when I heard the news,” admitted Coach Boyd, who seemed to care way more about music than basketball.

•  •  •

Later that week, on my sixteenth birthday, my mom dropped me off for a job interview at K-Mart.

“Tell them you can start today,” she said.

The guy who did the hiring went to our parish. My mom said I was lucky to have these kinds of connections. After I nailed the interview, they gave me a red smock and sent me to the checkout aisles. The woman I shadowed on the register kept looking at me funny. I thought it was because I was having trouble counting back change, but then she said, “Are you Dustin Tully's little brother?”

“No.”

“You look like a kid who works here.”

Pretty soon Tully strolled past the registers, pushing an empty hand truck. He didn't even blink when he saw me.

“You got something in your teeth, Higginbottom.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Don't let them fuck you on your breaks,” he said, leaning in close. I could smell beer on his breath. “Take your second break consecutively with your lunch, so you get forty-five minutes. They'll tell you not to, but you can do it.”

A couple hours later, on my way to the employee lounge, I
saw him standing in Electronics, leaning on his hand truck and watching TV. “How do you like it so far?” he said, following me. “Do you want to kill yourself yet?”

We passed the Layaway counter. The girl working it, Jessica Ortiz, had gone to my parish school. She was speaking Spanish to a guy who wanted to buy a kid's bike. She handed him the slip and took the bike, which would remain behind the counter, in Layaway limbo, until he
finished
paying his installments. It was an insane way to do business. In junior high, Jessica always sprayed her bangs into an adamantine bubble, but now she had her hair pulled back in a slick ponytail. She had beautiful brown eyes and I used to spend a lot of time not masturbating to her.

“Jessica!” said Tully.

“Fuck off,” she said, and then looked at me. “Hey, Pat.”

“Do you know this guy?” said Tully.

“Is this your first day?” she asked.

“Yeah. I'm on the registers.”

“Have you two dated or something?” asked Tully, as I stood there, blushing like Galahad.

“
No
,” she said.

“Did he break cherry on your cherry?”

“I broke it on your mother's dick, you fucking homo.”

“Jessica, I think we need to have an adult conversation about the integrity of your hymen.”

“Do you have any weed?” she said.

“Meet me on the loading dock in ten minutes.”

I went to the lounge, where a television was the only source of light. Two middle-aged women sat at a table, sharing an ashtray and watching the evening news. The lock on the employee bathroom didn't work, so you had to hang a sign on the
doorknob that read, “Occupied/Ocupado.” Later, at the register, as I waited for a price check, a strobe light flashed and bells started ringing. At first I thought it was some epic Blue Light Special, but it turned out to be the fire alarm. The whole store evacuated. As the fire trucks arrived, I looked across the parking lot and saw Tully wheeling Jessica around on his hand truck.

•  •  •

Coach Boyd usually ended practice with an inspirational quote. He liked Buddha, Lao Tzu, Saint Francis, all the barefoot mysticism of yore. The day before our first game, he switched things up a little and handed us each an old paperback copy of
The Call of the Wild
. He wanted us to read it by the end of the summer and write an essay about what it meant to us.

“I read that in fourth grade,” said Overton. “It's about overcoming adversity.”

“Okay. Maybe you guys are ready for something a little more . . .” Coach Boyd folded his arms and took a deep breath. “I don't think the administration will be too happy about this, but have any of you heard of a book called
On the Road
?”

“I've read that,” said Tully.

“No, you haven't,” said Coach Boyd.

“I'm serious. I love that book. I love its beauty.”

“You've actually read Jack Kerouac?”

“Who?”

Coach Boyd turned to the rest of us. “I'll give you guys a choice. You can read
The Call of the Wild
or
On the Road,
which you can probably get at the library. Actually, you can read any book that seems interesting to you. And don't worry about the essay. Just read
something
, okay? That's your assignment.”

•  •  •

St. Polycarp had a van that could safely seat nine people, and the next day Coach Boyd used it to drive all thirteen of us to Bishop Osorio High School in Watts. We tightroped up the 110, avoiding the hood for as long as possible, but eventually we had to get off and make our way to Central Avenue. There was no shade anywhere. A phosphorescent haze hung over the streets, making the sky feel like a wall. We passed an abandoned shopping center. All the windows were boarded up and in the middle of the parking lot there was a burned-out Fotomat. We stopped at a light and a few black kids our age were standing on the corner in front of a liquor store. They didn't notice us until Overton opened a window and screamed:

“Nigger!”

This must've been planned in advance, because Overton and the other black guys on our team immediately ducked down, leaving the black guys on the corner staring at a van full of white supremacists. We all ducked, except Tully.

“I remember that kid,” he said. “He played at Osorio last year.”

“Don't point at them!” said Coach Boyd, hunching over the steering wheel. Overton was laughing his ass off.

“Hey, man!” said Tully, waving. “Remember me?”

I heard obscenities coming from the corner. A soda can hit the window.

“Come on, baby, Come on, baby . . .” Coach Boyd was trying to will the light to change. I kept my head down until we started moving.

Everyone on Bishop Osorio was black, except for one Samoan. I felt buoyed walking into their gym with our black guys,
who, in turn, seemed embarrassed to be on a team that was predominantly white. In the layup lines, Overton and Weaver only talked to each other. The Big Wallys rebounded in deferential silence. It was about ninety degrees in the gym. Our mesh jerseys were soaked and we spent most of our time wiping dust from the bottom of our shoes. Before the tip, Coach Boyd gathered us together and we put our hands in a stack.

“Play the man!”

Early in the first half, I crossed over Bishop Osorio's point guard and all his teammates laughed at him. It didn't happen again, and for the rest of the game it was hell just bringing the ball up the court. The whole summer would go like that: flashes of glory overshadowed by long stretches of competence. In this game, Tully actually played hard, or harder than usual; every time he got a rebound, he'd swing his elbows and yell, “Get the fuck off me!” Whenever possible I got the ball to Weaver, who had his little baseline floater going all game. We lost by ten, but played better than I expected. I never came out of the game.