The Squared Circle (26 page)

“You can't leave like this, Sonny, the party's for you.”

“No, it's not.” Zipping the coat, he turned around to face his uncle straight on. “It's not for me, Seth, the party's for the brokers. It always is.”

“You're not really leaving.”

“Please tell Aunt Jane good-bye for me. I'll call her later.” Sonny went outside, closing the door firmly behind him. As soon as he started the car, he scanned for K-SHE, the funkiest nighttime rock 'n' roll he could find. He spun gravel on the way out the drive. It was a climactic moment; he didn't know how, exactly, but he knew that's what it was.

9

It wasn't thinking, but somehow it was still knowing all the same. The rim had to be turned on its side.

After he brushed his teeth, Sonny got dressed and went downstairs. He tiptoed past Sissy's room so as not to wake her. In the kitchen, he drank several swallows of orange juice rapidly from the carton. The open refrigerator emitted enough light to illuminate briefly the burnished plaque, which was still propped there on the kitchen chair. He knew the plaque said 3500 points, but he paid it no attention.

The light at dawn was so faint and, around the barn, where the huge sycamores and oaks stood, it was nearly eclipsed. He could tell the haymow door was swung open on its hinges because it made a rectangle darker than the siding. But he had to get closer to make out the rim and the net, fastened lower down.

He needed the toolbox from the Bronco and the stepladder from the studio. More light would have made it easier, but because of his height and his long arms, he could reach from the second step. Even though it was cold, it was calm; he could finish the job long before his fingers began to go stiff.

Lag bolts held the rim in place. As soon as Sonny began to loosen them with the socket wrench, the startled barn swallows set up a shrill racket. They flurried in and out, even swooping at times near his head. They were a surprise, but not a distraction; as soon as the bolt on the right side of the base was removed completely, he was able to pivot the rim upward. He used a vertical seam in the barn siding to line it up. There would have to be a pilot hole to reset the bolt, so he reamed one with his strong hands and a gutter spike.

When he drove the bolt, its large threads chewed out small slivers of the weathered siding, but it was a quiet process. The only noise came from the swallows, who lost interest shortly after Sonny stepped down from the ladder.

Looking up, he tried to comprehend the results of this project: the rim anchored firm in the vertical position, the net hanging limp like butterfly netting from top to bottom. A ball could only pass through it from one side to the other. Instead of a backboard, there were now
sideboards
, one on the right and one on the left. And where would you measure the ten feet? To the bottom, or the top? To the middle maybe?

But even sideways, a basket on a barn and memories were awash down the channels of Sonny Young-blood's inscape. The ineffable surge within when the undersides of your forearms pounded the rim, driving home a two-handed dunk so pure that the ball exploded straight down a line absolutely vertical, hitting the floor almost before there was time to pull your hands back. The countless days and nights on the playground courts, even Uncle Seth's barn, on metal backboards and wooden ones, nets of steel chain, nets of cotton like string mops, nylon nets and no nets at all, straight rims and bent ones. Still shooting baskets after your friends were gone, and the streetlights were on, and your freezing hands were numb way past the point of pain, but your fingers still worked. Somehow.

The puddles in the low spots were fringed with ice. Sonny put his cold hands in his jacket pockets; he looked again at the incongruous, perpendicular goal, and straight on through to the east at the brightening sky behind the silhouette of bluff and timber. Incongruous and urgent at the same time,
But don't ask me why
, he said to himself. “It just needs to be this way,” he said aloud but quietly. “It belongs to
me
this way,” he said, wondering all the same what he meant.

When he put the ladder away in the studio, he didn't pay attention to the new section of fresco Sissy was working on, but he did notice the thermometer at only 55 degrees and how low the woodbox was. He put the three remaining logs inside the Franklin stove and dampered it up to a full blaze. On the way to the woodpile, he thought briefly of Uncle Seth's treachery.
So what does it matter really if they retire your number?

Sonny called it the hax because it was about three-quarters, too long to be a hatchet, but too short to qualify as an ax. Its blade was lodged so firm in the chopping block he had to use both hands to work it loose. The first dozen logs, mostly pine and sycamore, were easy to split. The sharp blade halved them in only two or three of his long strokes, the cold steel clunking the chopping block like a stone, making its hollow echo in the still morning air.

The brightening sky along the timber ridge meant there would be sun; cold as it was, it was still March. It would be warm by noon. Using the hax with his right hand only, he split another dozen of the small pine logs until his shoulder ached and his cold fingers were going numb.

He could switch to his left hand, though; he wasn't ambidextrous for nothing. The next log was seasoned oak. Its irregular shape made it awkward to balance, so Sonny clamped it with his right hand to stabilize it. Somewhat clumsy, though, with the semistiff fingers. If he could hold the log steady to frame it up for a strong blow with the left hand, just to get the blade in two or three inches, then he could hoist it back up with both hands and bring it down to bust it.

Cutting his fingers off wasn't part of the plan.

When the bad-aim blade came flashing down, it only grazed the log. It cut off his thumb and index finger complete, along with the middle finger at the second knuckle and the ring finger at the first knuckle.

The only damage to his pinky finger would turn out to be a bruised nail.

Since the impact was more like a blow than a cut, he felt immediate disbelief when he looked at his own cleaved digits resting on the chopping block like butcher shop offal. The hax was there, too, on its side. Sonny sucked in his breath; this was nothing at all like slamming your fingers in the car door.

At the first surge of nausea, he sat down light-headed in his dumb shock. He was in two places at once; it was him with his butt on the pea gravel, but that was him on the chopping block as well. The pain came fast and furious, but it fascinated him how some part of his brain maintained an informational function: It was for sure he wouldn't be playing in the UCLA game; this wasn't like a broken nose where you could put on a protective mask and just go for it.

Sonny's elbows were clenched in tight against his stomach. The sun was high enough to peek above the treetops, causing him to squint. The conundrum of rim on its side, backlit suddenly like a production number, had its own hypnotic effect; he stared at it and right on through it for several moments. Even took long enough to track the vertical column of smoke from Winslow's cabin beyond the ravine. Rim on its side and fingers on the chopping block,
Those aren't me anymore
, he thought to himself.
Those fingers aren't mine now
.

The elements of hypnotic disbelief that threatened to paralyze him gave way to fiercer pain and an increased flow of blood. For the first time, he felt panic. He had to find Sissy for help, because he knew all of a sudden that he could die here. He could bleed to death in the lassitude of his state of shock.

He shoved the savaged hand down inside his jacket pocket to stem the flow of blood, but when he tried to get to his feet, he was too dizzy. He fell on his back without losing consciousness. A three-legged crawl for about 20 yards with the shakes and the chills and a swimming head.

Ferocious as the pain was, the fear of passing out was greater because if he did, he would bleed to death before Sissy could know he was at risk. He couldn't die alone. He recovered sufficiently to make it to his feet, and stumbling hunched over with his left arm holding down on the right elbow, he made it clear to the house. Even to her bedroom. He must have made noise, because she was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed in her white flannel nightgown. Her sleepy face was quickened by startled confusion. Sonny sat heavily on the bed beside her, slumped over, gasping for breath while the raging pulse pounded in his head. Her arm was around his shoulders. “My God, Sonny, what's the matter?”

With slow, clumsy movements, he used his left hand to lift the right one out of the jacket pocket. He couldn't look when he laid the bloody hand softly in her lap.

“Oh, God no,” she whispered, but didn't look away.

Doubled down, Sonny was resting his face on his knees.
My mother will never really know about this
, he thought to himself,
because she won't be able to know
.

“How did this happen?” Sissy was pleading. “Tell me what happened to you.”

He just shook his head back and forth. He didn't feel the strength to talk and, anyway, she would know her own answer. His chills and cold sweats were accelerating, which served to increase the nausea.

Sissy got to her feet suddenly and pulled the nightgown off, up over her head. When she sat down, she carefully wrapped it around the wasted hand several times. The clump of flesh and flannel now rested in her lap. From the corner of his eye, Sonny could see her large, brown nipples.

Unexpectedly, she took his head firmly in both her hands, and twisted his neck to drive his face into her sternum. She locked her chin down on top of his head till it seemed like her flesh was engulfing him. Her voice quivered: “Not your fingers, Sonny, not those fingers.”

Helpless as a baby, what could he say? It was an accident.

“No, Sonny, not your fingers.” Sissy locked down all the tighter with her chin, while Sonny tried to breathe inside the breast flesh swallowing his face. Then he could smell her sweat; she had tremors of her own. As if to quell them, she began to squeeze him even tighter. He couldn't trust his own sense of time, disoriented as he was on the threshold of unconsciousness, nevertheless he couldn't help asking himself,
Shouldn't we be driving to the hospital?

It was almost like she was trying to give him the release of a quick euthanasia. It might be okay to die like this in her arms, she would know what to do. Anyway, would it be worth living if you couldn't play basketball?

He couldn't be sure how long she held him that way, sweating and shaking; it could have been no more than a few seconds. But it seemed like a long time. Desperately, he pulled himself free.

The sweat was gathered on Sissy's forehead and temples, but her eyes were clear. She told him, “I'm going to put something on now and get the keys to the Bronco.” He stared dumbly at the blood in her loins, but then he realized it was his blood, not hers. It was soaking clear on through the saturated nightgown.

It only took her a minute to slip into a T-shirt and a pair of overalls; she emerged from the kitchen, clinking keys. When Sonny started to get up she put her hand on his shoulder. “Sit still, Sonny, I'm going to back all the way down here to the porch.”

He stayed put on his butt. He was trying not to lose consciousness, but then he wondered why. If he went unconscious, the pain would be gone.

Since the hospital had a large menu of codes vis-à-vis public access to patients, Sonny had a good deal of control. He took no phone calls, and the only visitors on his approved list were Aunt Jane and Sissy. It usually worked out that his aunt came to visit in the after-noons, and Sissy in the evenings. Sometimes Aunt Jane reported a list of people who wanted to visit him, everyone from Rick Telander of
Sports Illustrated
to Pastor Roberts of the Abydos Baptist Church. But Sonny declined them all.

By the third day, he cut off floral deliveries, which threatened to avalanche him; his room was so banked with sprays it smelled like a greenhouse. One of the nurses told him the flowers could go to other patients who didn't get any, and it sounded fine to Sonny.

But it wasn't until the third day that he had any clear recognition of this data relative to hospital procedures. So much of the time he traveled in and out of consciousness. The drips of morphine that entered his veins by means of his IV line, the frequent shots of Demerol, those things that mitigated his pain also sedated him so thoroughly that reality was as elliptical as his suffering.

The steady flow of cards and letters. A lot of them were from young kids he didn't know, well-wishers who were avid Saluki fans. If he was in a lucid head, he read the letters or listened as they were read to him. They were touching but painful. He didn't answer them, but asked Sissy to save them. How could he write letters as a left-handed person?

So many flower smells. The great, huge dressing that swallowed his hand like a snow-white oven mitt was in traction much of the time. Was it attached to him or was it some kind of grotesque mobile suspended above his bed? There were hallucinations to transfigure his welter of dreams and memories: Once Sissy propped beside him on his pillows. She lilted her shirt to free up her right mamma, the swollen surface laced with tracer veins, the rigid brown nipple framed between her first two fingers. “You turned the rim vertical,” her voice declared. “We can pitch the ball through it when you get back home. If I beat you, though, it's off with your head.”

Pitch the ball
. He turned on his side to correct her terminology, only she wasn't in his bed anymore, she was in the chair by the window. “You don't pitch the basketball, you shoot it,” he reminded her.

Only it wasn't Sissy at all, it was his aunt Jane. “What's that, dear?”

Without answering, he turned over and went back to sleep.

On Saturday, with Aunt Jane and Sissy both in his room, Sonny watched the UCLA game on television. The Salukis lost, 92–83. They were eliminated from the tournament. Although he dozed intermittently, Sonny could track the game well enough to know that his teammates ran out of gas in the second half. Luther Cobb had to sit out long portions of the final 20 minutes in foul trouble. It was the first loss of a sensational season, but it was the end of the road.