The Squared Circle (5 page)

“Okay, I guess.”

“Have you received midterm grades yet?”

“Yeah, we got them.”

“And how's your progress? Are you doing well?”

Sonny thought of his English Comp and the Intro to Anthropology. These questions seemed personal and embarrassing. But when he looked at Gardner, he was smiling comfortably. “Go ahead, Sonny, you can answer their questions.”

“Can I have some water?”

“Sure.”

After he drank half a glass, Sonny said, “I need to pull up my grades in a couple of courses.”

“Not flunking anything, are we?”

“No.” But he wasn't positive.

“Have you declared a major yet?”

Sonny shook his head. “I don't have a major. Just general studies.”

“Fine,” said Quackenbush. It seemed to be a word he liked. The questions turned to recruiting. Burns asked him if any coaches or institutions ever offered him any illegal inducements.

Sonny wasn't precisely sure what the question encompassed. “I doubt it,” he said.

“Did anybody buy you anything or offer to buy you anything? Think before you answer.”

“No, I don't think so.”

“You're not sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure.” Sonny glanced sidelong again at Gardner, who was amusing himself by twisting rubber bands.

“Did any coach or institution promise you anything if you signed a letter of intent?”

It seemed like the same question. Sonny thought for a few moments. “Most of them told me I could start if I came to their school.”

“We don't mean that,” said Quackenbush. “Were you ever promised cash, or a vehicle, or special living privileges? That kind of thing.”

“No.”

“Sonny, do you have adequate spending money?”

“I guess so. I don't buy much. Just drugstore stuff, maybe a few meals.”

“Girls? Dates?”

“Not very often. Probably more if I had the time.”

“But you have enough spending money to meet your needs.”

“I'd say so.”

“And where does it come from?”

“Mostly from my uncle Seth. I have a savings account, but it isn't much. I didn't earn a lot of money during the summers because I was in so many camps.”

“You're talking about basketball camps.”

“Yeah. The Nike camp, the Prairie State Games. You know.”

“Yes,” said Quackenbush. “We do know. How much money does your uncle give you?”

Sonny felt like his privacy was being invaded, and why were they trying to make him feel guilty? It was annoying, but apparently not to Gardner, who seemed utterly placid. Sonny decided not to mention the Toyota. He told them, “It varies. Sometimes he gives me a hundred.”

“This is a generous uncle,” observed Quackenbush.

“I guess he is. Is there something wrong with it?”

“Probably not.”

“I've lived with him and my aunt since my sophomore year.” He needed some more water.

Quackenbush poured himself a cup of coffee before he continued. “Sonny, when did you decide you were going to enroll at SIU?”

“I signed my letter of intent last November.”

“That's what we have on record. What I mean is, when did you make up your mind?”

He had to think before he could answer. “By the time I was a junior, I was pretty much decided.”

“Pretty much?”

“I was decided. My mind was made up.”

“Fine. Did you make official visits to UCLA and the University of Illinois last fall?”

Gardner interrupted for the first time: “It doesn't seem in very good faith to ask him what you already know.”

“Okay,” nodded Quackenbush, “fair enough. When you made those campus visits, Sonny, did you tell those coaches that you had already made up your mind to go to SIU?”

“Not exactly. I told them I was leaning, but they wanted me to come for the visits anyway.”

“Why UCLA?” asked Burns.

Sonny provided the only answer he knew, “I always liked the Bruins on TV, and I wanted to visit the campus.”

Burns looked up quickly from his notes. “You wanted a free trip to California.”

Sonny blinked. The way everything seemed to have a double meaning added to his tension. “I wouldn't exactly put it that way.”

“How would you put it, then?”

“I already told you how I put it.”

It was Gardner's turn to make another interruption: “Let's be fair here. Sonny was entitled to five official visits, but he only made three. Lots of prospects sandbag their way on a much bigger scale than that. Let's be fair.”

Burns seemed impatient. “Why the U of I?” he wanted to know.

“When I was a sophomore, that's where I wanted to go,” Sonny told him.

“Why?”

“I wanted to play in the Big Ten. It seemed big-time, almost like the NBA.”

“Did University of Illinois coaches make you any offers of cash or other gifts?”

“No,” answered Sonny. “I thought I already told you nobody offered me anything illegal.”

Quackenbush said, “You wanted to play in the Big Ten, and then you chose to come to SIU. What changed your mind?”

It was the easiest question yet. Sonny told them, “My uncle Seth is an SIU alum. It was important to him for me to play here.”

“So you chose SIU to please your uncle?”

“It's not quite that simple. My mother's in the state hospital in Anna. My aunt pointed out how I wouldn't be able to visit her if I went away from home too far.”

“Family loyalty then, primarily?”

“That was a big part of it, but I like Coach Gentry and the players, too. It meant a lot to me when I found out Luther Cobb was coming here.”

“You wanted to play with Luther Cobb?”

“Sure. Who wouldn't?”

Then Quackenbush asked, “Is it fair to say that you wanted to go to the U of I, but your uncle exerted enough influence to change your mind? Is that a fair statement?”

They are twisting this
, Sonny thought to himself.
And why do they care so much about Uncle Seth?

Gardner complained, with unconcealed impatience: “Would you expect a high school sophomore to have his mind made up about college plans? Especially one who's getting pressure from college recruiters day and night on the phone?”

Sonny appreciated the supportive intervention, but Quackenbush simply said, “Fine. Is it fair to say you accepted free campus visits to the U of I and UCLA after you had your mind made up to attend SIU? Is that fair?”

It seemed so argumentative that Sonny felt defensive. He looked at Gardner, who simply smirked and gave it a wave of his hand. Which Sonny interpreted to mean,
It's all just a matter of routine, so go along
.

But Sonny had his own impatience by this time. He said to Burns and Quackenbush, “It's a basically accurate statement, but I don't know if it's fair or not.”

When the interview was over, Sonny went straight to practice, an hour late.

After supper, he called his uncle to tell him about the
Checkpoint
interview. Uncle Seth told him not to worry. “It's strictly routine, just going through the motions.”

“Easy for you to say, you weren't there. You know about this?” Sonny asked him.

“A little. I may be an old fart, but I get around some.”

“I didn't even know this was comin',” said Sonny.

“Don't worry about it,” Seth repeated. “You need any money?”

“Not really.”

“Maybe you should. Spend a little money, have a little fun.”

“Right.” But when he hung up the phone, Sonny felt relieved.

Another walk in the rain, through Thompson Woods, heading for study table. This was cold rain, falling steady through bare branches. The occasional lamps, if they weren't burned out, lighted the path, but it was an especially dark night.

Sonny wore his Cardinals baseball cap, but it didn't prevent some of the rain from splattering his face. He thought how strange it seemed, the way things could turn ironic.
Checkpoint
was being somebody. So were press conferences, phone calls from reporters, microphones in your face, and the hot light of the Minicam. Sonny was
somebody
. When he was a senior at Abydos, they ran his picture in
Street and Smith
. He didn't care about it; he only cared about the game itself, and even that was a kind of vacuum of its own, the way he played it in his private zone of intensity that blotted out the cheering crowds and the backslappers. Maybe most of life itself.
Was basketball fun?

A tutor helped him with gerunds and participles but what little interest he had was brief. It was between 9:30 and 10:00 when he ran into Warner at the Pizza Hut on the lower level of the student center. Warner was a sportswriter for the Carbondale paper, the
Southern Illinoisan
, whom Sonny had known for a long time.

“Would you like to tell me about
Checkpoint?
” Warner asked him.

Sonny had to smile. “How come you know so much?”

“It's a reporter's job to sniff these things out. But if I knew so much, as you put it, I wouldn't need to be asking you any questions.” He was smiling.

It was a long line they were in, and they found themselves near the end of it. People stared at Sonny, but he was used to it. Warner was a tall, gaunt man with a perpetual twinkle in his eyes. He'd been covering Sonny's games since his sophomore year.

“So where's your pencil?” Sonny asked.

“I don't need a pencil for porch talk. It's too late to be on duty anyway. I tried to raid the refrigerator but there wasn't anything in it except for health food like carrots and celery.”

“They say it's just routine,” Sonny stated.

“
Checkpoint?
Yeah, that's all it is.”

“You might think different if you were there. I wonder who else they're going to interview.”

“You mean here at SIU?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody,” said Warner. “Only you. They only screen the top fifty freshmen in the country. If you're looking for recruiting violations, that's the most likely place to find them.”

“But what about Luther? He was a junior college all-American.”

“He was, but that's just it. Luther's a junior college transfer, not a freshman. If he went through
Checkpoint
, he probably went through it two years ago.”

“Well, did he?” asked Sonny.

“I don't know,” Warner answered. “Maybe not. The NCAA doesn't usually take too much interest in guys who go to junior college. Look at it this way, Sonny; it's an honor to be chosen.”

“Let's believe that.” But he wondered why this information had to come from a newspaper reporter. Why not from the basketball staff, or the athletic director's office, or the compliance officer?

It was their turn to order. “Buy you a slice of pizza?” offered Warner.

“Sure. Why not?”

Warner was smiling again, but this time in an indulgent way. “Why not is because it would probably be a violation. If I buy you something to eat, that's a gift. I'm not an SIU alum, but anybody who spends as much time as I do on this campus would be seen by the NCAA as a representative of SIU athletic interests.
Ergo
, I would be providing you with an illegal gift.”

“Okay, okay. Gardner goes over all this stuff, but it's too complicated.”

“Complicated it is. It's a game you have to play like you're walking through a minefield.”

Sonny looked him in the eye, which meant he had to look down. “It's not the game I care about,” he said. “The only game I care about is the one played on the court.”

“I believe that,” admitted Warner.

When they found a table and started eating, Warner said, “I don't want to alarm you, Sonny, but I'm going to put a bug in your ear.
Checkpoint
may be simply routine, but what's coming is not.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means an NCAA investigation. Does the basketball staff discuss this stuff with you people?”

“No, we never talk about anything like that, just the rules. Today was the first time I ever answered questions from the NCAA.”

Warner finished chewing, swallowed, and drank some of his Coke before he continued. “I probably shouldn't mention any of this, but it seems like
somebody
should. There's going to be an investigation, and I mean full-scale.”

“You mean of our program?”

“That's exactly what I mean. The NCAA is going to conduct a full investigation, which won't be routine at all.”

“How do you know?”

Warner shrugged and smiled. “I got hold of some information. Trust me on this.”

“I trust you. When will they have this investigation?”

“There's no way to tell. The NCAA is overloaded, and they're incredibly slow even when they're not.”

Sonny could feel a knot forming in his stomach.
I haven't even played a game yet
. “Are they going to have it this year?”

“They'd probably like to, if they can get their act together, but who knows? Time will tell.”

Sonny didn't say anything for a while. He ate his pizza instead, and tried to remember details of his recruiting trips or specific conversations with coaches. He remembered when Uncle Seth finally set up a separate phone line with an answering machine.

Warner said, “I really wasn't sure if I should mention this to you or not. I wouldn't want to do anything to upset you. You're a good kid, Sonny; I've always liked you.”

And what good does it do to be a good kid?
“It's okay, Warner, I'm glad you told me.”

“I hope so.”

“I'm not afraid of an investigation,” Sonny said. “I've never done anything wrong.”

“I'm sure you haven't.” Then Warner changed the subject: “Are you ready for the Big Apple?”