Night Hoops (7 page)

Afterwards Luke and I walked home together. Most of the way we didn't talk; we were both too down. But just before he peeled off, Luke motioned toward Trent, who was a block ahead. "He's probably got a better chance of making the team than I do. He rebounds well, chases down everything, never quits."

I scoffed at that. "Come on. The guy's a wrestler, not a basketball player. He'd foul out of a real game in about three minutes."

Luke snorted. "Yeah, well, better to be a wrestler than to be nothing, which was what I was." We lapsed into silence. Then Luke forced himself to smile. "It was only one day. We've got four more."

"Right," I answered, trying to pump myself up, "we'll show them tomorrow."

At dinner, Scott was full of talk about his jazz band. They were going to Port Townsend for some competition, and if they did well they'd end up in Monterey, California, over Christmas. "The school will pay for the hotel," he said, "but I have to come up with airfare."

"Don't worry," Mom reassured him. "We'll find the money. And if you make it to California, I'm going with you."

After dinner I was brooding upstairs about my own future when I heard a knock at the front door. I thought it might be Dad, coming to check on how tryouts had gone, so I hustled downstairs to get the door. But when I opened up Steve Clay was on the porch.

"Can I talk to your mom?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, then I half-closed the door, leaving him out on the porch in the dark. Mom was downstairs working on the computer. "I wonder what he wants," she said as she stood up.

Back upstairs, she opened the door wide and invited him in. I went to the kitchen where I could hear, but wouldn't have to say anything. Steve Clay wouldn't sit down until my mom asked him three times. Even then he wouldn't take anything, not coffee, not a Pepsi, not even water. Upstairs in his room Scott hit a high note on the trumpet and held it for what seemed like forever. From where I sat I could see Steve Clay smile. "He's good."

"Yes, he is," my mother answered, pleased.

He coughed. "Listen, what I'm about to ask is pretty strange, and I won't be angry if you say no. In fact I'm expecting you to say no." He stopped.

"Go on," my mother said.

I leaned forward to listen.

"Well, for the last few months Trent has shown an interest in basketball." He motioned toward me and I quickly looked away. "That's probably because of Nick. Trent wouldn't admit it, but he admires Nick, especially the way Nick can control the whole basketball court, run things." He laughed, a dry laugh. "Maybe that's because Trent can't control much of anything. But I feel if he could make the varsity, it might turn him around. He might learn some discipline, dedicate himself to something..." His voice trailed off.

I didn't know what he was driving at and neither did Mom. "I'm glad Trent is interested in basketball," she said, "and I'm glad he admires my son, but I'm not sure what you're asking."

Steve Clay breathed in deeply, exhaled. "Well, here it is. Last week I got a job with Microsoft. It's just custodial; I don't know anything about computers. But that's not the point. The point is that by the time I get off work, it's late. I've been taking Trent to the junior high to shoot around,
but it's pitch black where those courts are. What I'd like to do, if you'd let me, is shoot around with Trent in your back yard when I get home from work. An hour or so is what I was thinking."

I could see the startled look on my mother's face. "We don't have light in our back yard either," she said.

He shrugged. "You've got a floodlight over your garage. And there's the moon. We could see well enough."

I knew how Mom felt about the Dawsons. There was no way she was going to have Trent in our yard. No way at all.

"I admire what you're doing," she said. "Trent has needed someone like you in his life. You're welcome to use our back yard."

My mouth dropped open.

Steve Clay smiled broadly as he made his way to the door. "Thank you. Thank you very much."

After he'd left, I stormed into the front room. "Are you crazy? You're going to let Trent Dawson shoot around in our yard!"

"With Steve Clay, I am. Yes."

"That is so unfair. It's my back yard, my hoop, and you won't let me shoot around after dinner. But Trent Dawson can?"

"You need to study, Nick."

"I need to study? Well, if I need to study, then he needs to live in the library. The guy is flunking everything. And have you thought about all the stuff in our shed? Because he's a thief, you know. He'll steal anything. And what are you going to do if Zack starts—"

"That's enough, Nick." Her mouth was drawn tight and her voice was cold with fury, but I was plenty angry too.

"What do you mean, 'That's enough'?"

"I mean that I'm aware this is a risk. Okay? But I'm willing to take it. And you're old enough to figure out why. So take yourself up to your room and do it."

She walked past me and back downstairs. I stood, still in shock, for a long moment. Then I climbed upstairs to my own room.

Studying was out of the question. There was nothing on the radio; nothing on the television. I picked up a
Sports Illustrated,
flipped through it, threw it down on the ground.

I decided to call Dad. I wasn't sure what I was going to say, whether I'd tell him about Trent or not. I just wanted to talk to him.

We have a phone upstairs in the hallway between Scott's room and mine. I punched in Dad's number. The phone rang once, twice. But instead of his voice, I heard a woman's. "Hello." Her voice was bright and sunny.

The blood drained out of me. I stood still, holding the receiver tight. "Hellooooo," she repeated, laughing. "Anybody there?"

I hung up without a word.

The next day my legs felt heavy and my mind dull. But oddly enough, I played better; maybe I was just too tired to be jittery, too brain-dead to care. Whatever the reason, I saw the whole court. And that's what playing point guard comes to—seeing the court. When I'm on, it's as if I'm going at full speed while everyone else is moving in slow motion.

Luke was playing better too. I was getting him the ball where he could do damage, and his outside jumper was dropping. Swish!...Swish!...Swish! When the defenders tightened up on him, he cut back door and I hit him with bounce passes for driving lay-ins.

It wasn't as if I purposefully froze Trent out. Luke had the hot hand so I kept feeding him the ball, which is what you're supposed to do. But I'll admit that I could see Trent was getting frustrated; I could see it in his face, see it in the elbows he started tossing around. And I'll also admit I didn't do anything about it.

The explosion came just before the final scrimmage ended. We were playing the Gold team, and we were crushing them. Trent grabbed a defensive rebound and burst out of the pack, dribbling hard down the right side of the court. I took the center lane and Luke was to my left. Trent should have given me the ball, but he probably figured he wouldn't have gotten it back, and he was probably right.

When he reached the key, he did a spin move on the first guy and blew right by him. But Matt Markey was clogging the middle, holding his position. Trent bowled him over—totally flattening him—just as he threw up his shot, an incredible spinning lay-in that tickled the twine as the two of them crashed to the ground. It was the shot of the day, but O'Leary blew the whistle. "That's a charge!" he called out. "No basket."

Trent climbed to his feet. "You suck, old man," he muttered, just loud enough for O'Leary to hear him.

"What did you say?" O'Leary demanded.

Trent glared at him. "I said, 'You suck.' And I'll say it again: 'You suck.'"

Coach O'Leary's face and ears went bright red. "Off the court, Dawson. Off the court right this instant. And don't come back unless you bring a letter of apology and a better attitude. I don't need you, kid; you need me."

Trent pointed his finger at O'Leary. "Let me tell you something, Fatso. I don't need you." Then he looked around at all of us. "I don't need any of you. This whole thing sucks!" He grabbed the basketball from Markey and slammed it down. It bounced at least thirty feet in the air. With that he stormed off the court. A couple of guys laughed nervously. But O'Leary glared at them, and they went quiet.

Practice ended about ten minutes later. In the locker room evidence of Trent's fury was everywhere. The trash cans had all been tipped over and kicked around. Any clothes or shoes that had been left out had been thrown every which way.

"There's one less guy to worry about," Tom McShane said as he righted one of the garbage cans. "And I'll tell you, I'm glad he's gone. I didn't like playing against him. The guy never let you breathe."

"That's the truth," Carlos Fabroa chimed in.

On the walk home I expected Luke to be falling all over himself thanking me. After all, he'd scored about fifty points, and forty-eight had come on assists from me. His chances for making the team had soared, yet he was strangely quiet. "What's eating you?" I asked at last.

"I've been thinking about what Tom and Carlos said."

"That they're glad Trent quit? I guess just about everybody feels that way."

"No, not that."

"What then?"

"About how they said they hated to have Trent guard them."

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, so would every player on every other team, wouldn't they? Dawson plays tough defense, really in your face, nonstop."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I hope Trent does come back tomorrow. We'd be a better team with him than without him."

"You've got to be kidding. The guy thinks only of himself. He has zero commitment to his teammates."

"Come on, Nick. As if you do."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that we're all the same out there, looking out for ourselves, trying to shine for Coach. Me, you, Trent, everybody."

"All right," I admitted, "that's true enough. At least now, during tryouts. But after tryouts, I'll change and you'll change, but Trent wouldn't."

"You don't know that."

"I do know it."

We walked for a while in silence. I could tell he was angry.
"Look," I said, "I don't know what we're arguing about. You heard O'Leary. He's off the team unless he apologizes, and there's no way in the world he will. So let's just forget about him. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Luke answered, but we never did get talking about anything else.

That night at dinner I kept going over the scrimmage in my mind, seeing times when I could have fed Trent a nice pass but hadn't. Just a couple of hoops, and he might not have blown up.

"Something wrong, Nick?" Mom asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

Up in my room, I thought about the woman who was living with Dad. I didn't want to meet her or even see her. I couldn't imagine having to live the way Trent did—with different guys in the house all the time. Having different men eat at the table, shower in the bathroom, sit on the sofa in the front room, and then go to bed with my mom—I couldn't take that.

I got so sick of thinking about Trent that I was actually glad when I remembered I had homework to do in geometry. I opened my book and started in.

The problems at the top of the page were easy, but the word problems at the bottom were killers. They were all about picture frames and gardens with borders and rectangular swimming pools with square decks and circular spas.

I'd been working about thirty minutes when the gate leading to my back yard creaked open. That was followed by the steady
thump thump thump
of a basketball being dribbled on concrete. Beneath me, in the darkness, were Steve Clay and Trent.

It's crazy how life is sometimes. A day earlier I'd been angry at the thought of his shooting baskets in my back yard. A few hours earlier I'd been telling Luke that we were better off without him. But now I found myself hoping he would return to the team. If he'd quit entirely on his own, it wouldn't have mattered so much. But I didn't like thinking that my selfishness drove him off the team.

I stood at the window watching them play, watching the way they moved in the milky darkness. Steve Clay was different from my dad, quieter. There was no coaching going on, no teaching at all. Every once in a while he'd say, "Nice shot" or "Good move," and Trent would smile, a crooked little smile I'd never seen before. It was peaceful, watching them, and it must have been peaceful to play that way.

Not that Trent was just throwing stuff up, not caring. That wasn't it at all. He was methodically working on bank shots from ten to fifteen feet out. His jumper was pretty good, too. In the summer he'd shot line drives. Now he was squaring himself up, getting a nice arc, and putting backspin on his shots. And they were going down, one after the other. I wondered where the change had come from, and then a dizzying thought hit me: his shot looked like my shot. He was copying me.

They stayed for an hour. I didn't watch the whole time. Instead I went back to my geometry problems. Hearing the basketball bouncing outside was soothing, and I was able to concentrate and get them done.

Around eleven I went to bed. But instead of sleeping I found myself staring at the ceiling. A rush of loneliness grabbed me and held me, and when it finally let go, another feeling—equally strange, equally unexpected—took its place. I was jealous of Trent Dawson, jealous that he had Steve Clay—who wasn't even his father—shooting hoops with him, watching out for him.

Trent was back at tryouts the next day. As soon as he took the court, he handed a note to Coach O'Leary. I saw it, a scrawled thing in sloppy handwriting and in pencil. O'Leary looked at it for about one second, then started sputtering. "What language is this? English? Spanish? Chinese? Nobody can read this slop. Nobody." He pulled a pen out of his pocket. "You go in my office and write this over again so that I can read it, and when you've done that, you come back out and I'll take another look."

Trent stood stock-still for a moment. I thought it might be over right then and there, but he took O'Leary's pen, and while we shot lay-ins, I could see him at O'Leary's desk, head down, rewriting his letter of apology. Finally he came out, handed the apology to O'Leary again.