The Book of Joe (27 page)

After a while Wayne falls asleep again, and Jared goes upstairs to instant-message some of his friends with the computer in my father's room. “I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Carly says. “We were telling stories, and it just popped into my head.”

“No, it's fine,” I say. “I had just forgotten about that night.”

“So you're saying sex with me is forgettable?”

“Hardly. But I've been carrying so many different memories of us around for so many years, and I guess there's some sort of rotation. Some get pulled up more frequently, and others get buried under the bottom of the pile for a while, and you forget they're there.”

“That's good to know.”

“What?”

“That you've got piles too,” Carly says, looking away from me. “I didn't want to be the only one.”

         

I boil water and cook some spaghetti while Carly cuts a salad, and the four of us eat dinner together in Wayne's room. We all pretend not to notice that Wayne's food is going largely uneaten. Fabia will supply him with whatever nutrients he requires intravenously, until the time comes that he no longer requires any nourishment. While we're eating, Wayne seems to fall asleep, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with even, shallow breaths. Carly, Jared, and I continue to speak in hushed tones when, without any warning, Wayne opens his eyes and sits up in the bed. “I want to shoot a basketball,” he says.

We all stare at him. “Say that again,” Carly says.

“I don't think I've touched a basketball since high school.”

“What, you mean that night before you left?” I say. “When you scored like fifty points?”

“Fifty-two points,” Wayne says.

“That record still stands,” Jared says.

Wayne looks at him sharply. “No shit?”

Jared nods. “No shit.”

Wayne lies back on his pillow, lost in a moment's reflection. “I want to shoot another basket before I die.”

“Maybe tomorrow, if it's warm enough, we can take you out to the driveway,” Carly says dubiously.

“No. Not tomorrow, and not on some stupid backyard hoop. I want to do it in the gym.”

“The high school gym?”

“Yes.”

“It's past eight,” I say. “The high school's closed.”

Wayne frowns, and turns to look at Jared. After a moment, Jared grins and nods his head. “No problem,” he says.

         

We take Carly's car, which she insists I pull up to the front of the driveway and leave running with the heater on for ten minutes before we bring Wayne down. Jared throws the wheelchair, which arrived courtesy of Owen, into the trunk while Carly and I help Wayne into a second pair of sweats and a large overcoat of my father's that I find hanging in the front closet. As we escort Wayne toward the front door, Fabia gets wind of what's going on, and her eyes fly open in alarm. “What in the hell you think you doing?” she yells at us. “That man, he cannot go outside, you know. It be the death of him!”

“It's okay, Fabia,” Wayne says. “We're just going on a quick trip.”

“You catch a cold, you dead,” she says, planting her considerable frame between the front door and us.

“And what if I don't catch a cold?” Wayne says to her. “What then?”

Fabia looks at him for a moment and then nods slowly. “Okay,” she says, darting into his room. “But you cover yourself with this.” She brings out his comforter and drapes it over his shoulders. “One hour, you hear me? One hour.”

“You got it,” Wayne says, and we head out the door and down the steps.

I drive, Jared rides shotgun, and Carly sits in the back with Wayne. “How are we getting in?” I ask my nephew, who is humming along absently to the radio.

“Buddha will provide.”

“Has it occurred to you that since I got here, you and I have fallen into the habit of breaking the law together on a regular basis?”

“What's your point?”

“I just wonder if your father's right. That I'm not being a good uncle to you, you know? A proper influence.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was doing shit like this before you ever showed up.”

“It does, thanks.” I'm quiet for a moment. “Don't do drugs.”

“Thanks for the revolutionary tip.”

“And speaking of tips, always wear a condom on yours.”

“Condom,” Jared says. “Got it.”

“Smoking causes cancer,” Carly chimes in.

“Don't drink and drive,” Wayne says.

This goes on for a little while. “Seriously,” I say. “If we get into trouble again, your parents will have me shot.”

“Chill. I do this all the time.”

“You do what all the time? Hang out in the gym after hours, or breaking and entering in general?”

“Yes.”

We park in the lot by the gymnasium, alongside three sets of double exit doors. They are fire doors, the sort that can be opened only from the inside, by pushing in the waist-high access bars. “So,” I say to Jared, cutting the engine. “What now?”

“Now we wait,” Jared says. “He'll be here in a minute.”

“Who?”

“Drew.”

“Who's Drew?”

“The key master.”

A moment later Jared's pager goes off. He pulls it expertly from where it's clipped to his unused belt loop and looks at the screen. “Drew,” he says with a nod, pressing a button on the pager and returning it to his waist as he looks expectantly out the window. Moments later, a black Volkswagen Beetle speeds into the parking lot and comes to a screeching halt a few spots away from us. A sticker on the car's rear bumper reads
I SELL COCAINE FOR THE CIA.
Jared gets out and jogs over to the car. Drew turns out to be a tall, skinny kid with sideburns of Elvis proportions. He's dressed in baggy jeans that are kept from falling down around his ankles by some undetectable special effect and a black zip-up sweatshirt, also a few sizes too big. I recognize him as one of the boys from our recent paintball outing. He climbs out of the Beetle and he and Jared perform a complex handshake before walking over to the exit doors. On the way, Drew tugs on a thick silver chain that hangs from his belt loop and disappears into one of the gaping front pockets of his jeans, producing a comically oversized key ring. He inserts one of the keys expertly into the last fire door and pulls on the key after he turns it so that the door swings open a little, his manner indicating that it's not the first time he's done this. Jared leans a rock against the doorjamb and walks Drew back over to his car, where they execute another convoluted handshake before the kid gets back into his car and peels out of the parking lot. Jared saunters back over to our car and flashes us a thumbs-up. “We're golden.”

I wrestle the wheelchair out of the trunk, along with a basketball, signed by the championship Cougar team of 1958 that we've liberated from my father's trophy case and pumped back up to regulation. I feel funny about borrowing the ball, but I reason that my father is gone and Wayne's still alive, and basketballs are meant to be played with, not to sit inactively in showcases. Besides, I'm pretty sure that Arthur Goffman would have understood Wayne's imperative to return to the scene of his past glory one last time, even if he would have frowned on my act of petty pilferage.

The waxed wood of the gym floor glistens pristinely in the dim orange glow of the exit signs and emergency lights as we wheel Wayne in, our footsteps echoing momentously in the cavernous room. Wayne's eyes are wide with excitement. “Can we get a little more light?” I ask Jared.

“Afraid not,” he says. I now see that the two main fiberglass backboards are suspended thirty feet above us on either side of the court. “The switches for the lights and lowering the hoops are in Dugan's office, and no one can get in there but him.”

“It's okay,” Wayne says. “We can use the side baskets.”

All along the gym walls, bolted into the elevated running track, are the standard white wooden backboards with orange targets and rims. These are the baskets everyone in the school uses except for the team. As a point of pride, Dugan reserves the use of the regulation-size, retractable fiberglass backboards for Cougars only.

Wayne pulls himself up into a standing position in front of the wheelchair and tosses off his comforter. Alarmed, Carly steps forward, but I catch her arm and hold her back. Jared helps Wayne off with his overcoat and then hands him the basketball. He stands in the half-court circle, spreading his fingers out and pressing them along the seams of the ball, closing his eyes and swaying from side to side almost imperceptibly, the way skyscrapers supposedly do. The room is filled with the kind of loaded silence particular to large, empty rooms, like the simmering instant before an explosion that never comes. “Man,” Wayne says, his voice soft and tremulous. “It feels exactly the same. Like I could open my eyes and be eighteen again.” I feel a hot pressure build up and lodge itself in my throat. He begins to dribble the ball, and the sound reverberates loudly in the empty gym. Even in Wayne's decrepit condition, devoid of any real strength, you can see the shell of his once remarkable athleticism in the way he bounces the ball back and forth in front of himself, his wrists loose, his fingers fanned out, and in the way he slowly moves toward one of the painted foul lines on the side, dribbling all the while. He stands at the line for a moment, studying the backboard, holding the ball up to his chest. “Let's see,” he says, more to himself than to any of us. He bounces the ball four more times, bends his knees, and releases a foul shot. His form, even after all these years, is perfect, and it's a graceful shot, right on target, but three or four feet too short. “Air ball,” Wayne mutters. “I don't believe I shot a fucking air ball.”

“Move a little closer,” I suggest while Jared grabs the rebound.

“Give it to me again,” he says impatiently. “I just need to calibrate.”

Jared tosses him a bounce pass, and Wayne sets up for the shot again. He bounces the ball four times, and I remember that this was his ritual back when he'd played too. This time he brings the ball up from down below his waist as he bends his knees and slightly arches his back. The ball sails over the front of the rim and drops through the net with a soft, satisfying swish. “There we go!” Wayne's voice echoes loudly across the gym.

“Nothing but net,” Jared says, grabbing the rebound and tossing it back to Wayne.

Wayne smiles and takes a few more shots, sinking each one with an identical swish. “He's doing it with his eyes closed!” Jared says.

I step forward and see that this is actually true. Wayne looks at the basket between shots, but from the moment Jared tosses back the rebound, his eyes close in an almost rapturous bliss. “Foul shots are aimed with the body,” he recites. “Not the eyes.”

After a few more shots, Wayne suddenly lists to the side, and Carly and I jump forward to help him back into the wheelchair. His faced is bathed in a sheen of sweat that shines in the meager light just like the polyurethane finish on the gym floor, and his brow is furrowed with exertion, but his smile is ear to ear. “I've still got it,” he says, hoarsely jubilant as Carly lays the overcoat on him like a blanket.

“Yes, you do,” I say. “You ready to go home now?”

“Nah,” Wayne says, brushing his head with his sleeve. “Shoot around for a few minutes. I just want to rest and then take a few more shots.”

I pick up the ball, walk over to the top of the key, and put up a shot. It hits the back of the rim and bounces off to the left, where Jared catches it. He pulls it into his chest and releases a powerful line drive of a shot that swishes forcefully through the hoop, snapping the net with authority. “Nice shot,” I say, feeding him the rebound. He dribbles back and off to his right and then puts up another shot from behind the three-point arc, with the same powerful, practiced motion. Swish. Impressed, I toss him the ball again and then watch, dumbfounded, as he sinks another six shots in a row. “I thought your father said you didn't make the team,” I say.

“I never tried out.” Jared grabs my pass and launches another perfect shot from long range. “It's something of a sore point with my dad.”

I catch the rebound and hold on to the ball. “Why didn't you try out?”

He shrugs. “Couldn't be bothered.”

“Did you think you wouldn't make it?”

He walks over to me, snatches the ball from my hands, and sprints toward the basket, dribbling. As he approaches, he tosses the ball lightly against the backboard and leaps into the air, catching it as it comes down, then swinging his arm around in a windmill and jamming the ball violently through the hoop.

“So it's not a confidence thing,” I say.

“Not exactly,” he says sarcastically as the ball rolls slowly away from him and comes to rest at Wayne's feet. “Every now and then Dugan still calls me into his office for his why-you-should-be-a-Cougar seminar.”

“So, why not, then?”

Jared scratches his head and looks at me. “You know in your book, how you wrote about not fitting in with my dad and Gramps because they were all about ball and you weren't? Well, I was all about ball in junior high and when I first got here, on junior varsity. I was the best one on the team, and my father just loved it. But it got to the point where it was all he ever talked about with me, and it was nonstop, man, you know? I mean, my whole relationship with my father was just basketball. Anything else I did, anything else that I was interested in, he could care less. As long as I was the star of the team, that was all he gave a shit about.” Jared pauses and looks around self-consciously, suddenly aware that Carly, Wayne, and I are listening raptly. “Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat. “I decided that I didn't want to be all about basketball anymore. There were other things I wanted to do with my time besides going to practice and hanging out with the jocks. I figured my dad would have to find something else in common with me, although that sort of backfired, because it turns out we have nothing else in common.”