Travel Team (17 page)

To Ali he said, “I didn't know what to get you.”

“You got me all you needed to get, Rich.”

To Danny he said, “First game back, we're going to use this ball as our gamer. I have a feeling it's going to change our luck. Then if it works, we'll save it for the next time we need our stinking luck changed.”

Danny put out a closed fist. His dad touched it lightly with one of his own.

Richie said, “On account of, our luck is due to change.”

They all stood near the front door while he put on his Syracuse jacket. Ali said that he should drive carefully. He smiled at her. “I always do,” he said.

“Now, anyway,” he said, with that shy duck of the head he gave you sometimes.

He opened the door, turned around.

“This was a good Christmas,” he said to both of them. “Been a long time since I had a good Christmas.”

“Drive carefully,” Ali Walker said again.

“See you at practice,” Richie said to Danny, and then walked slowly on the slippery walk toward his car, looking more like an old man than ever.

Danny and his mom went and stood on the porch in the snow, watched the car pull away from in front of the house, watched it until it made the turn on Cleveland Avenue and disappeared.

He had the basketball under his arm.

When they got back inside, she took it from him.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Huh?”

She grinned at him and dribbled the ball twice on the floor in the foyer. Not really dribbling it so much as slapping at it, as though trying to squash some bug sitting on top of it.

“Go ahead,” she said, handing the ball back to him.

Danny tricky-dribbled around her and then past her down the hall and through the kitchen and into the dining room.

Dribbling through the house like he was a young Richie Walker.

H
AVING THE NAMES OF
S
TOCKTON AND
K
IDD ON THE BALL DIDN
'
T HELP
.

“Stockton and Kidd
handling
the ball, now that would help,” Bren Darcy was saying.

“We need
that
Kidd, not the kids we've got,” Will Stoddard said.

“No
kidding,
” Danny said. “Get it?”

Will said, “Okay, we have to stop now.”

They tried the new ball in the first game back, against Kirkland, and lost by six points. Tried it again the next day, played well for three quarters against Piping Rock, the best team in the Tri-Valley with a record of 8-0 coming in, but ended up losing by ten.

Colby missed a couple of shots in the last two minutes, and after the second one, Bren made a face. Danny called a time-out, and when they got to the huddle, Will told Bren that he could make faces when people missed as long as
he
never missed, and Bren said that Will should be worrying more about winning the game than sticking up for Colby. Before Danny knew it, they were nose-to-nose and Danny had to get between them.

“You guys have been buds as long as I've been buds
with
you guys,” he said. “So cut it out.”

Will said, “Tell him to stop making faces.”

Bren said, “Tell
him
to mind his own freaking business.”

“Hey!”
Danny said. “Both of you. Zip it now. We're getting better, let's not blow it now.”

They
were
getting better.

Matt Fitzgerald, in particular, was starting to look like a real center, the private work he'd been doing with Richie finally starting to pay off. Colby got better every game. Will was taking basketball seriously—or as seriously as Will could take anything—for the first time in his life.

No team, no matter how big, wanted Danny and Bren Darcy harassing them in the backcourt.

“It's like being chased by freaking
bees,”
one of the Kirkland guards had said the day before.

They just couldn't win a freaking game to save their lives.

It was the middle weekend in January now, about a month from the start of the play-offs, and their record was 0–9. They were kidding about Jason Kidd in the layup line, getting ready to play Seekonk at St. Pat's.

Colby showed up a little late, and the minute she walked through the door, everybody spotted her new kicks:

Old-school Converse high-tops, white, yellow toward the heel, some purple in there, too; even guys their age knew these were the ones Magic Johnson used to wear for the Lakers.

Danny had known from the start how cool Colby Danes was, not that he would have admitted that to his buddies. Now it was official.

A girl in Magic's Cons.

“Girlfriend is
stylin
',” Will Stoddard said.

Bren slapped him five on that, their fight at the end of the Piping Rock game already ancient history.

Oliver Towne, their only black kid, said, “Stoddard, you are, like,
pathetically
white.”

“Oh,” Will said, trying to act hurt, “like you have to rub my pasty face in it.”

Colby, who was now one of the guys on the Warriors, because she was cool
and
could play, said, “You are all sooooooo jealous that a girl has cooler sneaks than you.”

Will couldn't let her have the last word. Will would sooner leave town before he'd let somebody have the last word.

“Maybe I can borrow them someday,” he said. “If I ever grow into them, of course. Like, when I'm in college.”

But this time, Colby got him.

“You're right,” she said. “This is, like, totally messed-up. Isn't it the boys who're supposed to have big feet and the girls who are supposed to have big hair?”

The rest of the guys whooped as she took her place in line, casually high-fiving Danny as she passed.

Danny looked around and thought: We act like a team, we have fun like a team.

When do we play all four quarters like a team?

It turned out to be against Seekonk.

The Seekonk Sailors—they were the next town up from Port Madison, on the Sound—were even smaller than the Warriors. And not nearly as well coached. They didn't have anybody who could get in front of either Danny or Bren, anybody who could stay with Colby, anybody who could keep Matt Fitzgerald off the boards.

When they tried going with a two-one-two zone, Will made five outside shots in a row, an all-time personal best.

The 0–9 Middletown Warriors were ahead 18–4 after the first quarter.

They were ahead 26–10 at halftime.

They were ahead twenty points by the fourth quarter, and Richie had them making ten passes before they were even allowed to look at the basket. By then, he had the O'Brien twins in the backcourt, Michael Harden playing center, Will and Oliver Towne at forward.

Richie had taken Danny out halfway through the third quarter.

“I think your work here is done,” Richie said.

Danny took a seat next to him. “Somebody said these guys have won two games,” he said. “I don't know how they did that, but they're not going to win another one the rest of the season.”

“Don't worry about them,” his dad said. “You were worried we weren't going to win a game the rest of the season.”

“Excellent point.”

“And when it's over? You make sure the rest of the guys—and girls—act like they've won before.”

“Even though we haven't?”

“Especially because we haven't.”

It ended up Middletown 42, Seekonk 22.

Final.

Richie Walker said for the players and parents to meet at Fierro's about five o'clock, the pizza was on him.

“Is your mom here?” Richie said to Danny.

Danny nodded to the row of folding chairs up on the stage. “She came late with Tess.”

“See you all at Fierro's,” his dad said.

They tapped clenched fists.

“We're on the board,” his dad said.

They were on the board.

His dad still wasn't there at five-thirty.

“See?” his mom said. “The game's over. He thought it was a soft five.”

The Warriors and their parents had taken up most of the front room at Fierro's, pushing four tables together. They finally decided to order, a bunch of plain pizzas and a couple of pepperonis, huge greasy paper plates covered with mountains of French fries, pitchers of Coke and Sprite. They were playing oldies on the old-fashioned Fierro's jukebox as usual, but nobody could hear them over the mega-amped-up noise of the place, and laughter, and excitement, as the kids on the team replayed just about every basket of the game.

In honor of the Warriors' first win, Al Fierro announced that the ice cream sundaes were on him today.

The waitresses, all of them from Middletown High, were starting to clear away the plates and pizza platters when the pay phone on the wall next to the front door rang.

Al Fierro answered it, called out “Ali,” and motioned for her to come up there.

Danny watched his mom take the receiver.

Watched the smile leave her face.

Saw her free hand come to her mouth.

“Not again,” he heard her say.

She nodded hard a couple of times, placed the receiver back in its cradle, walked over to where Danny was sitting between Will and Tess.

“It's your father,” she said. “There's been an accident.”

S
HE CONVINCED HIM IN THE CAR THAT HIS DAD WASN
'
T GOING TO DIE
. “But he's broken up pretty badly,” his mom said, her hands gripping the steering wheel like she was holding on for dear life.

Maybe she was.

“But they can put him back together, right?” Danny said.

“They did it before, they can do it again. It's his hip again, his shoulder. One of his lungs collapsed, but they said they fixed that when he got to the hospital. However they fix things like that.”

“He must have stopped somewhere after the game,” she said. “They say he lost control of his car, right before that big curve where 37 intersects with 118. You know where that is, right? Near the Burger King and the Home Depot?”

Danny said he knew it, but he didn't remember a big curve.

“At least he was wearing a seat belt this time,” Ali Walker said, turning her head slightly to talk to him.

They were doing it by the book today, Danny sitting in the back where he belonged.

“Coming home from a game, just like last time,” his mom said, not really talking to him now, more like she was talking to herself.

“You okay?” she said.

“I'm okay.”

He wasn't going to cry, that was for sure. Somehow crying to him meant that the whole thing was worse than he wanted it to be.

We're on the board, his dad had said.

Danny sat in the waiting room looking at the pictures in the front of
Sports Illustrated,
just so he had something to do while his mom talked to the doctors.

When they finally got into his dad's room, all he could see were tubes, coming out of Richie Walker's arm and stuck in his nose. There was a thick bandage covering his forehead.

“Did I miss a good party?” Richie said when he saw them at the end of his bed.

“We're not staying long,” Ali said. “The doctors say you need your rest.”

“Before they do their body and fender work on me in the morning.”

“Well,” Ali said, “it's not like the hip and shoulder they gave you last time around were top-of-the-line, anyway.”

Richie said, “I asked them to try something besides used parts this time.”

“Good one, Dad,” Danny said.

He realized when he took his jacket off that he was still wearing his Warriors Number 3, the jersey hanging all the way down to the knees of the gray sweats he'd put on after the game.

His mom stood on one side of the bed now, he stood on the other. Richie reached out with his left hand, the one not in the sling, and took Danny's left hand.

Danny squeezed it hard.

“I wasn't drunk,” Richie said, holding on to Danny but looking at Ali.

She said, “Rich, you don't have to—”

He said, “I know I don't. But I want to. I'm not going to lie to you, I thought about breaking the pledge, stopping for a cold one, just to toast our great victory. But I knew better this time.”

“Don't talk,” she said.

“Hey,” Richie said to her. “Did you ever think you'd be telling me not to talk?”

She said, “This is like being in class. What part of ‘don't talk' aren't you getting here, mister?” She tried to smile at the end of it, but then she got that lower lip going and made Danny afraid she was the one who was going to lose it.

But she didn't.

Danny had always known she was the toughest one of all of them.

“The doctors said they're going to fix up Dad as good as new, didn't they, Mom?” Danny said.

“Only if they're grading me against the curve, right, teach?”

“Close your eyes now,” Ali Walker said.

He did, and a few minutes later, was sleeping.

They were scheduled to operate on his right hip and his right shoulder at nine the next morning. Danny didn't want to go to school, but his mom made him, saying he wasn't going to do his father or anybody else any good hanging around the hospital and staring at the clock.

“You'd rather have me sitting in class and staring at the clock?” he said.

“You're going to school,” she said. “I'll wait it out at the hospital. The second he's out, I'll call.”

Mrs. Stoddard picked him up. Right before first period, the principal at St. Pat's, Mr. Dawes, an old guy who was retiring at what Will said was the age of dirt at the end of the school year, came over the intercom and said all students should keep Danny Walker's dad in their thoughts today, even though he was sure Mr. Walker was going to come through surgery that morning with flying colors.

They were in their English classroom by then.

Will leaned over and said, “Hem and Haw Dawes makes the operation sound like a pop quiz your dad is trying to pass.”

Danny had already decided that he wasn't going anywhere today without either Will or Tess—or both—with him.

Danny said to Will, “You're my official spokesman today.”

“Finally,” Will Stoddard said. “Finally, my brother, you have seen the light.”

They still hadn't heard anything at lunch, but Tess said that wasn't unusual for a hip operation.

“How do you know that?” Will said.

She stuck her nose up in the air. “I know things,” she said.

“You, like, researched Mr. Walker's surgery?” Will said.

“Last night,” she said. “Some people actually use Google to look up things besides somebody's lifetime batting average.”

“Mom said the same thing,” Danny said. “She said that if they were done by lunch, that would be fast.”

Will and Danny had already finished eating the hamburgers they usually got in the cafeteria on Mondays. Tess cut off a small corner of hers, and chewed it carefully. As usual, she was working on her food as though it were some kind of tricky math problem.

“Can I ask a completely selfish question?” Will said.

Tess said, “We'd expect nothing more of you.”

“Or less,” Danny said.

“Who's gonna coach the team if your dad is laid up a while?” Will said.

“I knew it was going to be something incredibly messed-up lame,” Tess said. “He's not even out of
surgery
yet.”

“It's okay,” Danny said, putting a hand on her arm. “I've been thinking about it, too. Just to have something to think about
besides
the surgery.”

“You guys never cease to amaze,” she said. “All guys never cease to amaze.”

“No, really, Will's right,” Danny said. “Mr. Harden's going to be out of town on a case for the next month, Michael was talking about that at the party. Oliver's only got his mom. Bren's dad is all jammed up coaching his brothers in hockey. Mr. O'Brien's got that Wall Street job that has him in London, England, half the time. Colby said that the only time Dr. Danes ever coached her was in soccer, that he gave up coaching anything after that because he's on call so much on the weekends.”

So who
would
coach them, Danny wondered.

Fifteen minutes into Spanish, Mr. Dawes—who reminded Danny of Alfred, the butler from the Batman cartoons—appeared in the doorway, and motioned for Danny to come out in the hall.

For the first time since they'd all been at St. Pat's, Mr. Dawes was smiling.

“Your mother just called from the hospital,” he said. “Your father made it through the surgery just fine. He's a little worse for wear, but there were no surprises, she said to tell you, and no complications. She wanted me to tell you that she'll pick you up here after school and drive you over there.”

Danny thanked him, even shook his long, thin bony hand.

When he came back into class, he gave a thumbs-up to Will and Tess, sat down at his desk, and thought: His dad had been a little worse for wear for as long as Danny could remember things.

Ali Walker called off Warriors practice on Tuesday night. But after dinner that night, the whole team went to visit Richie at the hospital.

Colby brought the present they had all chipped in to buy him, ten bucks a kid:

An official Spalding NBA ball they'd all signed in Magic Marker.

“Now you've got a gamer of your own,” Danny said to his dad.

Richie still had the IV-tube attached to his right arm. With his left, he placed the ball next to him on the bed.

“Just because I'm a little stiff,” he said, “I'm going to let you knuckleheads off without making you learn a couple of new plays I've got cooked up against the man-to-man.”

There were only two chairs in the room; the O'Brien twins grabbed those. The rest of them stood at the foot of the bed so Richie could see them without turning his head. Any time he tried to move at all, Danny saw, there was a look on his father's face like somebody had punched him. In addition to everything else that had happened at the intersection of 37 and 118, he'd broken two ribs.

He let the kids do most of the talking. Will made everybody laugh—Richie included—by asking him if he'd mind just sliding over on the bed a little and handing Will the remote for the television set that came down out of the ceiling.

Richie said, “The surgery didn't kill me. But you making me laugh with busted ribs might make me do myself in.”

“It's a burden I have to bear, Coach,” Will Stoddard said. “Some people are just too funny.”

Richie promised them all he'd be back before they knew it. The room then filled with the sound of
Cool
and
That's right
and
Now you're talking, Coach.
Even though they all knew he was lying, just by the looks of him, by what their own eyes were telling them.

Finally the kids ran out of small talk and nobody knew what to say and it was at that moment, as if on cue, that the nurse stuck her head inside the door and said it was time for them to go, her patient needed his sleep.

Danny was the last one to say good-bye.

And now, after three days of holding everything in, even when he was alone in his room at night, thinking alone-in-his-room thoughts, he started to cry.

And, as he did, he blurted out something he'd been holding inside along with the tears:

“Why does this crap keep happening to you?”

In a voice that was about one level above a whisper, Richie said, “You mean why do I have to be the victim of the world?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“I'm not a victim,” his dad said. “Even though I've been playing one for a hell of a long time.”

He told Danny to tell his mom he was going to be a few extra minutes, then to come back and pull up one of those chairs, it was time for him to set the record straight, once and for all.