Time Flying (11 page)

Thelma laughed and answered immediately. “You were a man that day, Richie. A dumb-ass boy the day before, but you walked in the house the day you cut school, a man. Everything about you was different.”

Thelma smiled at me, and continued.

“I figured out pretty quick what I needed to do different when I got the chance. What are YOU going to change? What HAVE you changed, Richie?”

Like I hadn’t been thinking about that, I thought.

“A few things,” I answered hesitantly. “I’m working harder in the gym this summer. Hell, I didn't even GO to the gym all summer my first time in 1976. My leg hurt too much.”

“Mmm Hmmm,” Thelma responded, in her slightly sarcastic way. “The way I figure, you whined through the next several years, let your messed up leg keep you unhappy, didn't do what you darn well knew you should do, and ended up with a load of regret.”

Thelma’s words started to sting a little bit, like I had a big red target on my chest and dart after dart, each tipped with truth hit me. 

“You probably settled for a wife, a job and a life and regretted all of it.” The darts kept coming, but the last one was a full sized arrow, but did not represent the truth at all. At least I didn’t think so.

“I have a wonderful wife, Thelma, and a daughter, Samantha, both I love more than life itself!” My loud, angry voice had upset Katie, who had stopped playing, a Barbie hanging from her right hand, and looked puzzled. 

“You have a wife, Richie?” she asked, not understanding.

Ah crap.

“It's okay, sweetie,” Thelma called to my sister. Shaking her head, she said, “Your brother's practicing the lines for one of his plays. That was good, Rich!” she said, pretending to critique my performance. Katie went back to her dolls and Thelma, looking over at my sister, her voice softer now, said, “I didn’t say your character doesn’t love his family, but earlier in the play he settled, didn’t he?”  She paused, and continued to gaze at me.

Silence.

“In the play, he wanted something different,” she went on, “or at least thought he did, and he settled. Didn’t he? Because he didn’t think he was worthy of what he really wanted.”

I looked away, gazing at the hoop on the half basketball court my Dad had built for me three years ago.

“Yes,” I finally answered. “You're right. I…He was incredibly lucky and married well, but settled for something different from what he thought he wanted. And I’m enormously guilty about that. Congratulations, Thelma, you unmasked me as a complete ass.”

Thelma laughed in derision, snorting. “Oh,
please
!” She exclaimed. “I thought you'd grown up!” On seeing my puzzled expression, continued. “I tell you, you children of plenty are something else! You have everything, and that seems to be quite distracting, because you fret over the least little things. You're so worried about settling for something less than you deserve, you don't deserve what you settle for!”

She smiled now, shaking her head in with an intensity making it clear she really, really wanted me to listen. “Richie, this is real, but not real. You can have whatever life you want here, with a loving wife and little girl waiting for you when you wake up from all this.”

The look on my face must have indicated to her I didn’t understand, so she continued. “Do what you think you should have done all along while you're here, because you won't be here forever. Take your life off into whatever direction you think you should, but be ready to set this one free because you're not going to have this forever. I felt myself nodding slightly, and was starting to understand.”

“Look, a smart man told me one time that everything that could ever happen, does happen, and sometimes, we get a chance to jump the tracks to another route. Ride that as long as you can, make sure it's pointing in the direction you want, because one day you'll jump back to your own track, and this train will continue on.” Thelma sat back and folded her arms as if to say I’m done.

I took a breath after a few seconds and answered her. “So, you’re saying we can sometimes travel to alternate realities and influence how events play out, that an entire universe exists for every possible outcome of every possible event, and we can just…surf them?”

“Okay, I suppose,” Thelma responded, shrugging. “I’m not sure how much control, if any, we have, but okay.”

“So when my consciousness leaves this reality,” I continued, “a copy is made and goes along, not even realizing I'm not along for the ride any more?”

Thelma shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I just woke up, back in my own body, in my own time, in this body when my trip in time was over and went on with my life. I'd done the things I always wanted to do and didn't ache for the things I'd only wished I'd done.”

I considered this, and it somehow seemed right. I hadn't died, and I wasn't in some drunken fever dream from a drug overdose. “How long were you away? How long before you returned to your old life?”

Thelma gave me a grim smile that didn’t touch her eyes, which held something I realized was sympathy.

“Almost 30 years.”

FIVE

Time Passages

Thelma's story had hit me hard. 30 years. Holy shit, what if I'm back here for 30 years? Or more? I'd always figured I'd be out of here and back to 2007 in a matter of days, weeks at most. What had happened in the gym earlier had reinforced my belief in that and showed 2007 was a breath away.

But 30 years is a long, damn time. The thought of spending the next three decades living the 70s, 80s and 90s all over again didn’t hold much charm, especially since it could end at any second. But how is that different from how we live our lives anyway? We expect it to go on and on, but if we think about it, we are aware of our mortality. 

By the time I got back to the gym a few minutes after 6pm, 12 guys were already on the court, split into two groups. Several basketballs bounced and were shot as everyone warmed up. Usually, the teams tended to split by whatever end of the court players found themselves on. Will Curry warmed up at the far basket, so I walked toward him. As I tossed my gym bag onto the courtside bleachers, I noticed Amanda sitting down in the bleachers a few rows up from courtside. Our eyes met and she gave me a little smile. I waved back, and turned to see Will looking at Amanda, then me. I nodded at him, and Will threw me a ball, which I caught, dribbled once and shot a 22 footer that slipped through the hoop, not touching the rim. Several of the guys exclaimed their appreciation, and one of them, Tommy Walsh, another friend since 7th grade smiled and snapped the ball back to me.

Tommy, tall and skinny, had to be 6 foot 4 but I'd have been shocked if he weighed more than about 160 pounds. I caught the ball again, didn't bother dribbling this time, but spun the ball in my hand so the Spaulding trademark was visible, set both feet and let loose another jump shot that sailed through the basket exactly like the first. I could tell I had a good night coming. 

Boy, was I right.

I turned to glance behind me to see the other ”team” moving our way. Will punched the ball out of Tommy’s hands and bounced it a couple times before shouting, “Shoot for possession,” and snapped the ball to me, which I caught. My eyes scanned the other team and saw it was heavy with guys who had graduated in the past couple years, including Mark Daniels, Paul Dumont and, just as Amanda promised, Steve Collins, who was dribbling a ball while doing his best to ignore me. I stood at the top of the key, and again not taking a dribble, popped a jumper almost without leaving my feet. The ball swished through, not touching the rim.

The tradition had always been hit the shot and your team gets the ball, but plays skins. Plenty of reversible jerseys were stacked in the equipment room, but wearing them would be evidence the team was practicing outside of the IHSAA rules and so we went “shirts and skins.” I didn't mind, being in much better shape than a few months ago. It was a hot and humid night, so it would be cooler without a shirt.

We had seven on our side of the court, so Tommy and Larry Kinsey sat down, while our opponents discussed who to start the scrimmage with. The five staying out on the court to play us were Steve, who had graduated in May, Paul and Mark, who along with Jimmy Harkins had graduated two years before and Shane Mathey, another senior, like Will and me. On the bench sat Ned Conner, an incoming Junior and Nicky Collins, Steve's brother, a sophomore this year. Nicky was huge, a chubby kid already 6 foot 2, who idolized his brother Steve, and was considered by just about everybody, an arrogant ass. I hadn't kept in touch with any of these guys after I left high school, not even Will, and had a moment of regret over it, as while we walked back from depositing our shirts on the bleacher by my gym bag. Will, who was four inches shorter than me, pointed at my chest and said, “Yech, what's that?”

My gaze followed his finger down, only to have him run it up and over my nose. “HA! Every
time
, Girrard, God, you'll never learn,” he laughed as he shoved me toward our basket, and went the other way to get the inbound pass and start walking the ball up the court.

On our team, besides Will and me, we had Alan Glazer, a solid 6-5 center, Tom Porter and the only black guy on our team Phil Moore. Phil, a Junior in the fall, stood about the same height as me. He played well in high school, but grew another 4 inches by the time he graduated, and was recruited by Indiana, playing four years for Bobby Knight. He didn't go pro, but his scholarship paid for a degree, and thanks to the basketball funded education and Coach Knight’s way of pushing his smarter players to take every advantage of the books and classrooms at IU, he followed up graduation with med school, becoming an orthopedic surgeon. A few years after my accident, I'd consulted Phil about my leg. In reality,I'd been hoping a new doctor who had been a friend and teammate would be an easy mark for painkillers, but I’d been wrong, and seeing him here today, even though none of that had happened in 1976, made me feel a little guilty.

Shane Mathey met Will at half-court, comically crouched on defense. Even though Shane had always been a complete and unabashed ass, half the time I kind of liked him. For some reason, he insisted on making the aggravation of Will his prime directive in life. I never understood their relationship. They were friends, but a times, we would have to be constantly on guard, ready to pull one of them off the other to keep the peace. I circled behind Will and moved to the baseline on the right, with Paul picking me up and guarding me. Steve went to cover Phil, and Alan, being the biggest guy on the court, sauntered down the middle to a post position. Will head-faked Shane to the left, crossover dribbled to the right, as I pressed into Dumont faux-clumsy, then rolled around and backdoored him to the hoop. Will and I did this all the time, but no one ever seemed to learn. He lobbed the ball to me as Alan drew his man out away from the basket, and I had an easy layup.

The game went back and forth pretty evenly, though no one kept score. During these sessions, we’d run for an hour or so, break, shoot for new teams and go another hour. When you got tired, you'd sit down and let whoever sat on the bench have some playing time. Pretty loose, it was almost always remarkably fair, the lack of score-keeping making the whole thing work. No overall win/loss, the only goal playing well, it makes sense for fairness to become the best strategy. Only when bragging rights, won/loss records and state championships mattered did how many minutes you got to play become an issue. This trip back to my past was full of interesting surprises and revelations that I hadn’t been mature observant enough to pick up on the first time. So much goes on around us when we're young, things we participate in and take advantage of, but aren't even aware of, much like my relationship with Steve Collins.

I'd gotten a lot of attention from Amanda in the past few months, she clearly staying close, even though her relationship with Steve seemed strong. My first time here, I had been oblivious to all of it, but age and experience made me more in tune with the games she played. I can only imagine what she did on the other side of the triangle with Steve to keep him off-balance. My rival had the most to lose with Amanda, because he had possession, and I admitted to myself if the situation were reversed, I’d probably have a less than positive attitude toward him, too. But this evening was about basketball. Or so I thought.

My tolerance and empathy toward Steve and his unenviable position came to an abrupt end 40 minutes or so into our scrimmage, and it wasn't pretty.

Phil Moore and I had been running some baseline pick and roll stuff, designed to confuse the defenders and free up one of us up near the basket. When you're on defense and you find yourself being picked (or blocked), the standard defensive play is to call 'switch' and have your teammate take over guarding your man as you take his. So, from time to time, I would find myself guarded by Steve. After one of these plays where Steve found himself guarding me, Phil had gotten the ball, taken the shot, but missed, the rebound heading straight for Steve and me. He had the better position, blocking me out pretty well. We both went up, and Steve came down with rebound, holding the ball in both hands after landing. Seeing he securely had possession of the ball, I pulled both my hands back to avoid fouling him , but Steve swung his arms around to the right, elbows extended. His right elbow connected with my jaw. 

Hard.

The impact shocked me, my legs disappearing from underneath me as I hit the floor. My vision swam, a number of voices exclaiming “ooooooooo,” as they had seen the elbow thrown and me stagger backward, crashing to the floor. In my first trip through 1976, I would have been up and at Steve like a shot, but years of experience and a cooler head made me stop, feel my jaw for broken bones while still lying on the floor, and catch my breath. Don’t think I wasn't pissed, however. I'd been disrespected by this guy for more years than at this point in history we'd been alive, and now he's throwing elbows at me on the basketball court? The heat on the simmering stove representing the relationship I had with Steve Collins had now been cranked up, in danger of boiling over, but I didn't want it to boil over without effect. I wanted the experience to mean something, and as I lay on the hardwood, I knew just what to do. I rose with an arm up from Mathey, and looked up to see Amanda, now with a couple of her friends sitting with her in the bleachers. To her left, several yards away, sat Coach MacLaren, looking straight at me. His eyes unreadable, underneath the perfect flattop crewcut, and heavy black-framed glasses. I figured he was a little mystified I didn't jump up and go after Steve. Looking around, everyone else seemed surprised, too. Steve though, his back turned to me, walked casually away, dribbling. No apology or even a hand up.