Swagger (5 page)

“Come on, Levi. Jam it like you mean it, like you would in a game.”

Levi frowned. “Coach Knecht doesn't let us dunk. He says it's showboating.”

“Well, Coach Knecht isn't here now. So do it for me, your new friend.” It was a dumb thing to say, but from the start I sensed that Levi would do anything for anybody if it was in the name of friendship.

He backed up to half-court again, but this time he came like a tornado. He took off just inside the free-throw line and raised the ball—cupped in his huge hand—above his head, his arm fully extended. He seemed to hang suspended in midair, but then the ball came down, a powerful tomahawk jam that left me slack-jawed. I stared at the rocking backboard for a while before I looked back at Levi. His eyes were wide open; he seemed as amazed by what he'd done as I was.

On the walk home, I asked if he'd made all-league.

“No.”

So then I asked him if he was the leading scorer on the team.

“No.”

“Second leading scorer?”

“No.”

“What does your coach have you do?”

“Rebound and set screens.”

“He doesn't run any plays for you?”

“No.”

I shook my head. “I'm telling you, Levi, if you were on my team in California, Coach Russell would run the offense through you. Knecht doesn't know what he's doing.”

Levi didn't say anything, but his eyes flashed with anger. It was the first time I'd seen him angry.

E
VERY AFTERNOON FOR THE NEXT
week, Levi and I played basketball at the Good Shepherd Center. I would have gone straight to the courts, but when I knocked on his front door, Levi always asked me in.

Stepping inside his house was like entering a different world. Religion was everywhere. Above the front door was a sign that read:
THIS FAMILY BELIEVES
. Over the back of a beat-up rocking chair was a blanket with a design that showed three stark crosses on the top of a barren hill. Written on the blanket, in old-fashioned lettering, were the words:
An emblem of suffering and shame
. All of the rooms had a cross on the wall, and the only book I ever saw in the house was a Bible.

The place was dark and messy, with too much stuff crammed into too little space. Two of Levi's sisters must have slept in the front room because two mattresses were leaning against a wall in the corner. The worst thing, though, was the smell—a mixture of cooked ground beef and dirty towels.

The one room that didn't fit the house was Levi's bedroom. My room isn't a sty, but there's usually a pile of dirty clothes in a corner, a
Sports Illustrated
open on my bed, and some stray papers on my desk or on the floor by the trash can.

Levi's bed was perfectly made; his tiny desk was completely clear of clutter; there wasn't a scrap of paper on the floor. His walls were bare—I don't think there was even a pushpin hole anywhere. One day he opened a drawer to get a sweatshirt. He had only four shirts, but each was perfectly folded as if it were about to be displayed on a table at Nordstrom.

Levi's mother was a tiny woman with dull eyes and dull red hair pulled back into a short ponytail. She always said hello to me in a weirdly hollow voice before going into the kitchen to mop the floor or wash dishes. His father wasn't around much, which was fine with me. He was a bear of a man, with wild eyebrows, gray-black wiry hair, and fierce black eyes.

Levi had a mob of younger sisters. Rachel, the oldest, was fifteen. She was a goddess—a tall blonde with sky blue eyes and a body that made me look at my shoes so I wouldn't stare. One time, with me standing there, Levi's dad yelled at Rachel, telling her that her shirt was too tight. “Go back to your room and change your clothes. A woman who creates lust in the heart of a man is sinful.” Rachel's mouth twisted in anger, but when she left two minutes later, she was wearing an oversize UW T-shirt.

Levi's other sisters were much younger than Rachel. They followed him around, tugging on his shirt. Before we could go to the basketball court, he'd have to take them into the backyard and swing each of them in a wide circle, while they laughed and laughed. To speed things up, a couple of times I offered to swing Maddie, the youngest of the girls. She let me, and she said thanks when I stopped, but she wasn't satisfied until Levi had twirled her.

Eventually Levi would break from his little sisters, and we would leave his house. Then, it was a ten-minute walk to the Good Shepherd Center, where we'd go one-on-one. Occasionally I'd catch fire and beat him, but 90 percent of the time he shut me down. When we were exhausted, we'd play a handful of games of Horse, and then I'd beat him every time. I'd like to say that evened things up, but Horse is just Horse.

A
FTER A COUPLE OF HOURS
of basketball, we'd get a drink of water and then sit on the grass and talk. Levi told me that back in Arkansas he'd hunted and fished and hiked and basically lived outdoors as much as he could. As he described his life in the mountains, I kept thinking of the kid in
Where the Red Fern Grows
. When I asked him why his family had moved, his face soured. “There are meth houses up in the mountains. My dad tried to bring the word of God to the people who lived there, but they wouldn't listen. After the police arrested one family, my dad said it wasn't safe for us to stay. He packed us up in a day, and then we were gone.”

His father had been a minister in Arkansas for eighteen years. He wanted to be a minister again, but it was hard to establish a new church in a new city. During the week, his father worked as a mechanic at a Ford dealership, but on Sunday he preached in a rented room at the Phinney Ridge Community Center. Levi said that slowly the number of people attending had grown, so that now about forty people were at the service every week. “Last January my dad signed a lease for a store on Kenwood Place, and we're turning it into a church. When we finish, Dad will go back to preaching God's word full-time.”

I'm not much of a talker, but Levi had been so open with me that I had to tell him a little about why we'd moved to Seattle. Once I'd started, something about him made it easy to keep talking, so I ended up telling him not only about my dad losing his job, but also about my hope for a scholarship to Monitor College.

Then we talked hoops. I'd done an Internet search on Harding's basketball team, so I knew their leading scorer was a long-faced black kid named Cash Washington, and that their point guard was Donny Brindle, a white guy who'd averaged six points and four assists a game. I wanted to ask Levi questions about Brindle's weaknesses, but Levi wasn't the kind of person who'd run down a teammate, and I wouldn't have wanted him to anyway. So instead I tried to get a feel for the coach.

“Coach Knecht is a good man.”

“Sure, sure. But tell me about him. Young? Old? Tough? Easygoing?”

“He's old, and he's got arthritis in his back, which makes him bent over. But he's tough. You play solid defense for Mr. Knecht or you don't play.”

“What about the offense? Does he have you run set plays or do you freelance?”

Levi shook his head. “Not much freelancing. We're structured on offense.”

I didn't like the sound of that. Coach Russell ran a freewheeling, fast-breaking offense. “But you fast break sometimes, right?”

“Sure, but only if we have the numbers and a clear path to the hoop.”

That night, watching television, I chewed on what Levi had said. I'd never played at a slow tempo, and Brindle had three years' experience running Knecht's offense. How could I beat him out for the starting spot? And if I couldn't beat him out, what chance did I have to impress Coach Richter?

G
OING ONE-ON-ONE AGAINST LEVI WAS
okay, but by the middle of July, I was itching for more. My game is seeing the court, making passes, running a team. I needed to play five-on-five, full-court basketball.

“I read online that there are good pickup games at Green Lake,” I said to Levi one Tuesday during a break. “Do any Harding guys go there?”

“Donny Brindle plays on a select team in the summer, but some Harding guys are probably there.”

“Maybe we could go to Green Lake tomorrow.”

“All right,” Levi said, sounding like he was making an appointment with the dentist to get a tooth pulled.

For the rest of the afternoon, he was a step slow. I beat him three straight games—and I'd never done that. Something was definitely up with Green Lake.

“We don't have to change anything,” I said on the walk home. “We can keep playing one-on-one at the Good Shepherd Center.”

“No, we'll go to Green Lake. Coach Knecht would want us there.”

 

When I stopped by Levi's house the next day, he was lying on the floor playing Candy Land with his three little sisters. I was eager to get going, but he had me help Maddie move her marker around the board. When the game ended, he hugged each girl a couple of times and told all of them that they were princesses. I didn't think we were ever going to leave, but finally we made it out the door. It was a full hour after I'd left my house before I finally pushed open the door of the gym at the Green Lake Community Center and stepped inside.

Immediately I loved the place. Old hardwood floors, exposed wood beams, and close walls—you could just feel the thousands of games that had been played there.

I wanted to take a minute to soak up the atmosphere, but before we had taken three steps, a tall black kid called out: “Hey, it's Dumb-Dumb!” Immediately Levi looked over at me, his face reddening.

Then they were all around him. Three guys. I recognized the tall, wiry black kid—Cash Washington. I wasn't sure of the names of the other two—a stocky black guy and a red-haired kid with bad acne. All three punched Levi on the shoulder, shook him this way and that. “Good to see you, Double D. Where you been hiding?” the stocky kid said.

The whole thing had a weird feel. They called him “Dumb-Dumb,” yet they liked him. I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices. Eventually the redhead guy with the zits nodded toward me. “Who's your buddy, Double D?”

I stepped forward. “Jonas Dolan. I'm going to Harding in the fall.”

“Hey, Jonas,” each said in turn, bumping knuckles with me as they introduced themselves. The muscular black guy with the cornrows was DeShawn Lewis, and the acned redhead was Nick Masar. Cash told me his name last, and I pretended it was new to me. Everybody was all smiles, but they were sizing me up. How quick was I? How well did I shoot? What kind of defense did I play?

We shot around on a side court, waiting for a chance to play on the main court. As we warmed up, the other guys asked Levi what he'd been doing and why he hadn't been to the gym until now. Nick and DeShawn continued calling Levi “Double D,” which is better than “Dumb-Dumb,” but not by much. Cash always used “Dumb-Dumb.”

Finally it was our turn to play. “Can you handle the ball?” Cash asked me as we stepped on the court.

“I started at point guard for my team last year.”

“Okay. You take the point. Just remember, I'm the scorer on this team; everything goes through me. Understand?”

I
UNDERSTOOD. AND I DID IT
, even though I didn't like it. I'd bring the ball into frontcourt; somebody would set a screen; Cash would come off it; I'd feed him the ball; he'd shoot. Our variety—if you could call it that—came from where the screen was set and who set it. Sometimes it was Nick on the right side, sometimes DeShawn on the left, and sometimes Levi at the top of the key.

Cash was on fire early, and we jumped out to a 6–3 lead. But once our opponents figured out that Cash was our whole show, they double-teamed him. Instead of passing out of the double team, Cash forced up bad shots, and we ended up losing, 11–8.

We trudged to the sideline, waiting our next turn. We got lucky when one team disbanded, but it was still a long time before we were back on the main court.

In the second game, our opponents double-teamed Cash from the start. Cash drained a couple of amazing jump shots to keep us close, but little by little the game was slipping away.

I hate to lose, and I hate even more having to sit around waiting to play. So, with the score 7–4 in their favor, I faked a pass to Cash coming off the screen and instead fed the ball to DeShawn. DeShawn bobbled the pass for an instant, but then gathered himself and drove to the hoop for a lay-up. After that I shared the ball, setting up everybody for shots, not just Cash.

The game turned around.

A ball hog is tough on everybody. It gets old running up and down the court without ever having a chance to shine. Some guys can give 100 percent anyway—Levi was like that—but most players can't. Once I started feeding Nick and DeShawn, they stepped up their games. If Cash was open and I fed someone else, he would clap his hands and scowl. But we won, so how much griping could he do?

It wasn't just that game that we won. Once I started moving the ball around, we dominated the court, winning three straight. We finally lost, but only because we were so tired that we couldn't make our legs move.

That defeat ended the afternoon. Levi and I headed back to Tangletown, with me asking Levi about the guys on the other Green Lake teams and Levi telling me that most of them played for Ballard or Nathan Hale or Ingraham. “All those schools are in our league.”

“And we took it to them,” I said, whacking him on the shoulder. “We ate their lunches.”

Then we both fell quiet. I could sense that he was thinking the same thing I was thinking. Finally I spoke. “What was all that ‘Double D' stuff?”

His mouth twisted and he looked away. “My classes in Arkansas weren't any good, but I'm lousy at school anyway. Last year I flunked two classes, so I couldn't play the last month of the season. The guys razz me about it, but they don't mean anything.”