The Moves Make the Man (6 page)

You probably wonder why the first thing I did wasn't check out the basketball tryouts. Well, I knew that at Parker hoops tryouts did not start until football season was over, which is to say about late November. But then one day after school, when I had stayed after with Madame Dupont in French to get my reflexive verb action down just right, I was walking to my locker and I felt it in the soles of my feet: bammata bammata bammata. Somewhere down that hallway, someone was dribbling basketballs.

Naturally I wanted to go check it out. It is in your body when you love ball. Your hands start to curve and spread, your wrists feel like oiled metal, your feet want to kick up off the ground and you just know you are light and trim and can get up in that sky and stay there. Man, I love it and I was very excited all of a sudden that day.

Lucky, I had worn my high blacks to school instead of my loafers, which I usually do until it's too cold out for canvas which lets the wind whistle through. I had on a pretty old pair of corduroys, getting a little snug, but floppy down at
the feet which was bad, and a sweater with a T-shirt underneath. Usually I hate T-shirts and do not wear them under shirts, but with sweaters you got to have something to keep the wool off your skin. Very quickly I thought out what I could do to get in playing shape with my clothes, and then I went quietly down to the place where the dribbling came from and saw, sure enough, that it was the gym. There were two double doors. There was something else too:

Thumbtacked up on the left-hand door was a manila folder opened up and written in crayon BOYS' BASKETBALL TRYOUTS WEDNESDAY THURSDAY. This was Wednesday. I was right on time, baby.

Very fast now, because I heard somebody blow a whistle inside, I ran back to my locker, shucked off my sweater, tightened my laces, and ran into the first classroom I could find.

Sitting behind the desk was old Egglestobbs.

He looked up at me, and smiled one of those smiles that people give you when they think they know just exactly what kind of foolishness you are up to, and you don't know it is foolish yet, being dumber than they.

Scissors, I said. He pretended not to hear me, and leaned back and put his fingertips together under his chin and pooched out his lips, which I guess was his way of studying someone, but to me looked like a pretty weird bunch of body signals.

High excitement, he said, as if he were talking to some great scientist standing beside him. Haste. A great hastiness—notice the angle of the torso.

Notice the fact that I ran in here panting, I said. Any scissors in that desk, Mr. E.?

The spread of the feet is revealing too, he said, nodding slowly and dropping his eyebrows. They enclose an acute,
rather than an obtuse, fan of degrees. This of course denotes physical anxiety and not a little emotional disconfidence. He raised his brows and put on this fakey smile which I knew meant he was going to include me in the conversation now. Feeling a little inadequate, are we? Though probably, he said back to his ghost scientist, primarily in a physical sense.

Feeling very late for basketball tryouts, I said, trying not to get sassy, completely in a physical sense. Also feeling the need for a pair of big fat school scissors which I bet you got in that desk drawer if you would just let me check.

I went over and pulled open the drawer, bopping his tummy just a tiny bit, which he probably took as a symbol of my need to disbowel him like the Zulus do in movies, there being all that African stuff in my blood. Especially when I said Hah! and yanked out the big scissors with the red handles and held them up to show him. His eyes got a little wide. But I was already sitting on the floor going to work on my pants.

What are you doing? he said.

Cutting off my trousers.

The abuse of clothing is, of course, symbolic of the will to abuse the corporeal self.

The abuse of these pants legs is so they don't flop on my feet when I go flying past those boys' face in there on my way to a double spin reverse finger roll.

He made a yucky face. Deceit! he said. Bald deceit.

I was through with one leg and started on the other. I heard a whistle again down the hall, and the balls all stopped bouncing. Man, I had to get there!

Basketball, of all games, is the one most dedicated to physical lying, he said.

I never knew anybody who could play while lying, I said,
finishing off the leg and pulling the raggedy end pieces off over my sneaks. Most people play it on their physical feet.

He said nothing. I chucked the ends in the trash can, handed him the scissors, which he winced and took with a frown, looking at them like they were a Zulu spear covered in water buffalo blood.

Thanks, Mr. E. Check you later. Keep a cool torso.

What a weary web we weave when we practice to deceive, he said, as I ran out to the hall to get in some deceive-practice. You'll see, boy—the body will be avenged for its servitude to untruth! He might have said more but I didn't hear it, for I had made it to the gym and busted in through those double doors.

I had not been thinking too much about manners and entering nicely, being half worried about what Momma would say when I came home with ruined britches and the other half worried about getting into the gym before the coach made teams up for practice games or whatever he was doing while the balls were quiet. So I just crashed in through the doors, thinking only too late that this was maybe a little reckless. And it was, too.

For there, standing at attention in a row facing me, were a dozen white boys in red and white uniforms and there, turned around to see who was busting down his doors, was this fat white man with a butch haircut wearing white shorts and a red nylon jacket with the collar turned up and a whistle in his mouth. I stopped dead. Everybody was staring hard at me. There was no sound except the doors behind me bonging as they flapped back and forth, slower and slower, until they stopped.

At first the boys' expressions had been all fearful, like the coach had been yelling at them, but they soon got relieved
and then very fast got all smug and entertained. In fact a couple of them actually smiled, big private grins, like Here comes a good time.

The coach never smiled. From the start he looked peeved. He looked peeved that someone interrupted him, peeved that it was not Red Auerbach come to observe his coaching method, peeved that instead it was a black kid in ravelly corduroys and a white T-shirt. I began to think he would stare me into the floor unless I said something.

This basketball tryouts? I said. One of the boys let fall the basketball he was holding and grinned. The ball bounced itself down slowly and rolled over towards me.

No, the coach said. This is a meeting of…of…He was trying to think of something sarcastic. One of the boys helped him out.

Of the Ku Klux Klan, the boy said.

Of the Future Nurses of America, said the coach, ignoring the kid. What does it look like to you? He talked without taking the whistle out of his teeth.

Looks like I'm a little bit late to get a uniform, I said. Sorry, Coach. I was staying after with my French teacher.

Parlez-vous français? said one of the boys and for some reason all of them thought this was marvelous funny and cracked it up. His accent was awful.

You don't walk in here and just GET a uniform, said the coach. He jerked his head towards the kids with the red and white satin on. You earn the right to let your skin touch one of these.

Practice only been going for five minutes, I said. They must earn pretty fast.

He smiled. We scout the P.E. classes and know ahead of time where our talents lie. As a matter of fact, these are not
what you would call open tryouts—the most promising prospects are specially invited to participate.

My P.E. class has been playing dodge ball for the two weeks since school started, I said. How is anybody supposed to see what I can do with a basketball?

He shrugged and smiled. One of the kids said, Maybe you'll be invited when the dodge ball team holds tryouts, and they all laughed.

So are you saying I can't try out for the team? I said. I bent down and picked up the ball at my feet, very casual.

I'm afraid it looks that way, the coach said, still talking around his whistle, which tooted a little with the ks at the end of looks.

Well how does this look? I said, twirling the ball in my hands and going straight up, straight as high and trim as could be, waiting until I got to the top to check out the hoop which must have been twenty-five feet away, then cradling the ball and at the last minute pulling my left hand away like Oscar Robertson and snapping that lubricated right wrist and knowing, feeling it right straight through from the tips of the fingers that had let fly the ball and touched it all the way to the last, straight down the front edge of my body to my toes just before they hit the ground again, that the shot was true, feeling the swish and tickle of the net cords rushing quick down my nerves, and landing square and jaunty in time to watch, along with everybody else, as the ball popped through the net without a single bit of deceit, so clean it kicked the bottom of the cords back up and looped them over the rim, which is called a bottoms up and means you shot it perfect and some people even count them three points in street games.

I glanced back at the coach, to find I had been wrong.
Not everybody had looked at the ball. For some reason he had kept staring right at me. His expression had not changed. This flustered me a little. Man, I had just hit a shot turned those white boys to jelly inside, you could see it the way they all kind of slunk at the spine when they looked back, but this burrhead fatso had not even bothered to check out my act.

Nice shot, mumbled one of the white kids, but the coach tooted on his whistle and cut him off.

I don't think it was a nice shot, the coach said. Not a nice shot at all.

But jeez, said another kid, Coach, cripes it must be twenty feet….

Typical jig trick shot, said the coach, smiling a very tiny smile behind his whistle. Fancy, one-handed, big jump. Harlem Globetrotter stuff. You like the Globetrotters, boy?

I like basketball, I said.

Trick stuff. Bet you can dribble behind your back, too. Pass between your legs, jigaboo around in the air and shoot with your flat little nose. I bet you play a lot by yourself. He jerked his chin at me. What about it, Meadowlark? You play a lot by yourself?

I play, I said, in a class by myself.

Nobody said anything. The coach chuckled softly. The boys had kind of been with me until I said that, but now I could see them straighten up again. I realized I was being a cocky nigger, true to form as Poke Peters seemed to me.

By yourself, the coach finally said, chuckling and shaking his head. Well I reckon you better get on back to your special class, then, boy, and wait until we refine our crude old five-man sport down to where we have just one-man teams. Then he turned away, picking up a ball nearby and bouncing it
once, getting ready to address his troops again.

I'll play any two of you one on two, I said. If I win I get a uniform and a tryout, if I lose I go make the Harlem Globetrotters.

The coach paused, but did not turn around. He started to ignore me and go on with his lecture but about four of the white boys said Hey Coach, let me Coach, I'll take him that is me and Tom will take him Coach, and so on. They were brave as could be at the chance of a little two on one.

The coach thought for a minute. Then he turned back around and looked at me.

Pete and Vic, he said, still looking at me. Two of the boys looked startled. They had not been the volunteers. Probably too good to worry about having to impress the coach.

Yeah Coach? they said.

Pete, you take him man to man, Vic, you zone him under.

But Coach, said one of them, tall and with pimples but he had the look in his eye of a shooter, you can tell them right away.

Come on, Ace, said the other, who was Vic, and him I liked right away because he was a ballhawk like me and wanted to play just to be playing. His eyes were big and smart and he was stocky and moved like a little lion. Stop stalling and let's play him, he said, smacking Pete on the fanny. I'll even take him man to man.

Coach snapped a bounce pass at me but made it bounce right at my feet which hits you in the shins and makes you look foolish if you don't step aside, which I did and gathered it in backhand.

Game to five buckets, he said.

Nigger ball? said Vic, by which he meant make-it-take-it. Then he looked at me, blushing. Sorry, he said, I mean…

Nigger ball, said the Coach. Win by two.

I whipped a two-handed pass at Pete the tall one and hit him in the chest and he caught it in a hug. Shoot for outs, I said. He dribbled once and sort of looked puzzled, then shrugged and dribbled a couple more times and I saw his mind come right into focus very quick then, and he flowed a couple of steps which technically you are not supposed to when someone gives you a shot for outs but what the heck. He looked at the hoop and I knew I was right about him being the shooter for I saw the look in his eye and sure enough he pumped one up and it banked through.

Yeah, he said, smiling, let's go.

Vic took the ball out behind the line and gave me a check while the other guys sat down on the sideline. I checked it back to Vic and he started to dash off to the right. I flicked the ball with my left hand and pulled back to let him pass right by where it hung in the air, his hand still making the dribble motion, then I snatched it, threw him a head as he turned, went by him the opposite way from his motion and pulled up in Pete's face while he was still trying to figure out how you played a one-man zone. I slanted it off the glass and it zipped through. I came down and slipped around him and caught the ball as it came through the cords and was about to say One-zip when I heard the big whistle.

I looked around. The coach smiled at me. Then very slowly he raised his right hand and placed it behind his neck.

Charge, he said. We'll go the other way.