On the Line, page 2
“You? Help me? Between setting hard screens, continually drawing a double team to give you open shots and cleaning up your misses, I’ve been carrying you for the last seven years!”
“You carrying me! My back hurts just thinking about carrying a load as big as you. Do you know how much work I do?”
“The only thing you’re working is your gums.”
He chuckled. “My gums? That’s the best you can do?”
“It’s late. I’m tired.”
“Trash talk has always been the worst part of your game,” he said.
Junior did know my game. Better than anybody. We met almost seven years ago, as six-year-olds on the same house-league team. We were on the same travel team, in the same school, in the same class some years, and we had been best friends all those years.
“Okay, so why did you call?” Junior asked.
I hesitated. Was I really going to tell him I called because my parents were fighting?
“Did your parents get into it again?” he asked.
I laughed. Why had I thought he wouldn’t know?
“Yeah, but what else is new.”
“Not new, but more often. Don’t you think?”
Junior would know. He spent a lot of time at our place. It wasn’t unusual for him to have dinner with us at least twice a week. An added bonus was that my parents never openly fought in front of him. It was more subtle or silent.
“But it’s over, right?”
“My father went for a drive.”
“Oh, then I better get off the phone and get ready,” Junior said.
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to be picked up. Didn’t you know that when he takes off, he comes over and takes me for a drive? I’m sort of the son he wishes he’d had…smart, tough, good ballplayer, smooth talker.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“That’s the jealousy talking.”
He was just joking, of course, but really, he was as close to a second son to my dad and a brother to me as a person could be.
“I really do love that Camaro,” he said.
“It’s pretty good.”
“Pretty good?” he exclaimed, sounding offended. “That car is much more than pretty good. It’s your second-best chance.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask. My second-best chance for what?”
“Of ever, and I mean, ever, getting a girlfriend.”
“And my best chance?” I asked.
“Me, of course. We have to hope that someday you’ll learn from me.”
I wasn’t even going to argue this. He was as comfortable with girls as I was uncomfortable. He was smoother with them than he was with a basketball, and that was saying a lot, because Junior was a baller. He said it was because he was raised by a single mom, but really it was because Junior was fearless with them.
“Of course, if you could read women the way you read a defense, you’d have no problems,” Junior said.
“Women?”
“Don’t get technical with me. Girls become women long before boys become men.”
“Now you’re sounding like my mother,” I said.
“Who do you think I learned that from?” he asked. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“Sure, I’m fine.”
“You know you can come over here to get away from it. Anytime.”
“I know.” Not that I would. “I just wanted to say hello.”
“That’s never a prob.”
“Problem is too long to say? I’m hanging up. Good night.”
“Sure. Night. Talk to you in the a.m.”
He hung up, and I put down the phone. I really did need to get to sleep, and now maybe I could.
The house smelled of cinnamon and yeast. My dad was back home. I knew it before I was even really awake.
Since the announcement that the plant would be closing, my mom worked earlier or later whenever she could, and my dad had taken on more of the house stuff. Shortly after the announcement, he’d taken up baking. It turned out he was really good at it.
He began with muffins. He started with classic sweet ones, then moved on to things like provolone and prosciutto with fig. He made some killer muffins. After that he became obsessed with bread. He even brought home an old scale from the plant to weigh everything out, and he made his own sourdough by letting the bacteria in the air get into some flour and water left out for a few days. He kept and fed the mother yeast in some old glazed earthenware jars Mom found for him at a garage sale. It seemed weird to me to feed bread, but it was what he did.
Dad was hunched over the counter, his body rocking as he kneaded the dough, when I came down the stairs.
“Good night’s sleep?” he asked as I pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the counter from him. “Careful, those muffins are still hot.”
I took one and peeled off the paper. The steam escaped from it and disappeared.
“Not bad,” I answered, pretending the previous night hadn’t happened.
“I added some cardamom and ginger. Let me know what you think.”
He was pretending too. We sat in silence, him stopping his kneading every so often to check the time and take sips of his coffee. Bread had to be kneaded only so long, and Dad was precise. Sweat beaded on his temples. He wiped it away on the back of his forearms.
“They’re good,” I said.
“Better with the extra spices?” he asked.
“I think you could use even more.”
He opened the oven door, pulled out a plate piled high with pancakes and put it down on the table.
“Blueberry, lemon–poppy seed and pumpkin.”
“Pumpkin?”
“Don’t knock it until you try it. Besides, you usually put on so much maple syrup that I could feed you cardboard and you’d ask for seconds.”
He went to the fridge, pulled out the syrup and set it on the table.
I examined the pancakes. It was easy to identify which was which. I took two pumpkin to start and poured on the syrup.
“This is really good,” I said.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
Dad finished with his dough, shaped it into a big ball and placed a bowl over it so it could rest and rise. He poured some milk and slid it across the counter to me. I liked being alone with him like this, where we didn’t need to say too much.
Mom came into the kitchen, and I held my breath, waiting.
“Good morning, honey,” Dad sang out.
“You too.” She came over, stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
I let out my breath. Everything was normal—or, at least, appeared to be normal.
My mom’s hair was still wet from the shower. She was dressed for the office. She worked at the big-box store one town over.
“You’ve been busy,” she said as she got herself a cup of coffee.
Dad opened the fridge and pulled out the cream. He poured it into her mug.
“Jordan needs to load up on some carbs before the big tryouts. I’d rather he put something half-decent in him.”
Mom picked up a muffin. “With all the wonderful baking you’re doing, I should be careful.”
Dad looked my mom over. “You’ve never had an issue looking good, Mandy.”
Mom stood a bit taller as she sipped her coffee. I saw her smile into her cup.
It was all gross to me, but my parents flirting a little was better than them fighting a lot. In fact, when they weren’t fighting, they usually got along so well that I wondered— were they acting when they weren’t fighting or when they were? What I knew this morning was that it had all blown over. They actually seemed to be good with one another.
Mom finished her coffee. “I should get going. I’ll take the truck and fill it up.”
I was sure she said that to make peace.
“I have to get going too,” my dad said. “There’s a meeting at the plant.”
“But isn’t this your day off?” she asked.
“There have been some issues with quality control.”
“More than normal?”
“Up by almost 200 percent.”
“With the plant closing, I guess you can’t blame people.”
“That’s no excuse,” my dad stated. “We’re dealing with people’s lives. People’s families. People pay good money for their cars and rely on us to produce safe, quality ones.” He turned to me. “If you’re playing a game and you’re down by twenty points with two minutes left, how do you play?”
“The best you can. The same as you always do,” I answered.
“I guess I get a little worked up and emotional about this stuff,” my dad said.
“It’s one of the things I love about you, how much you care,” my mom said.
My dad cleared my plate. “The meeting is at seven thirty, so unless you want to walk, Jordan, I’ll have to drop you off at school early.”
“Can we still pick up Junior?”
“Doesn’t that go without saying? I half expect him to be sitting in the car when we get out there.”
“I’ll let him know.”
I got up and grabbed a couple more muffins to put in my backpack, one for me, one for Junior.
Three
“I can’t believe you don’t hear it,” my dad said.
“It sounds fine.” I didn’t hear anything wrong.
My dad revved the engine.
Junior leaned forward from the back seat. “I can definitely hear it. It sort of flutters.”
“Exactly! There’s something off in the carb’s air-to-fuel ratio. I’ll adjust it tonight.”
He pulled away from the stop sign, and I felt myself being pushed slightly back into the seat as he accelerated.
“Keep pushin’ it, Mr. R!” Junior yelled.
My dad shifted into second. The car jumped in response. He pushed it harder and harder and then shut it back down to regular speed.
“Don’t you ever want to open it up all the way?” Junior asked.
“Too much power. Not enough road.”
“Come on, Mr. R. If anybody can handle this car, you can!”
Junior reached over the seat. The two of them exchanged a high five. My dad liked Junior a lot. I thought Junior liked my father even more. Junior had never really gotten to know his dad. My dad more than made up for that.
An oncoming car approached. The driver waved. My dad waved back. That happened all the time. Dad had lived here his whole life. He knew people and people knew him—and his car. And because so many people knew him, they also knew me. I heard “Hey, you’re Chris’s boy, aren’t you?” a lot.
“What do you know about your new coach?” my dad asked.
He was asking about Mr. Tanner, who had just transferred to the school, taught math and had agreed to coach the team.
“He’s a good enough guy,” I said.
“I know lots of good guys. Does he know basketball?” Dad asked.
“We’ve talked basketball with him,” I answered.
“Yeah, he knows stuff,” Junior chirped from the back seat. “Not like you, of course. But for a school coach.”
Mr. Tanner was a basketball fan, but he’d never coached a team before. Junior and I were keeping that on the down-low from my father. We knew he’d make a big deal about it. School ball was different than travel ball. Most of the school coaches were nice people who knew a little bit of the sport. You couldn’t expect any of them to know basketball the way my father knew the game.
We pulled up to the school. There was nobody in the yard, only a couple of cars in the parking lot. Neither of them belonged to Mr. Tanner.
“Sorry about getting you here so early. This meeting is important.”
“Is it about the closing?” Junior asked.
“Everything is about the closing.”
“Thanks for driving us, Mr. R. You’re the best,” Junior said. “Being early is no problem. We’ve got a ball. We can fool around on the outdoor hoop until somebody lets us in the building.”
We climbed out. Before I closed the door, my father leaned over so he could see us. “Remember, practice the way you play.”
“Yes, sir,” Junior said. I nodded.
My father winked at me, tapped two fingers on his chest above his heart and pointed at me—his silent way of saying “I love you.” I did the same before I closed the door, making sure not to slam it. He drove away while we stood and watched.
“Your dad is way cooler than you are. You know that, right?”
I was going to argue, but there wasn’t any point in encouraging him. Besides, he really did like my dad.
“That car looks fast even when it’s driving slow,” Junior remarked.
“It looks fast when it’s sitting in the garage. It sucks that my dad is too afraid to open it up.”
“When you own it, you can drive it fast.”
We walked into the schoolyard. We passed the side doors, the ones that led into the gym. I pulled at one to make sure they were locked. They were. Junior bounced the ball as we walked, putting it back and forth through his legs, crossing over, eyes up, taking a few side moves to get around imagined defenders. He was good.
Junior flashed me a pass as we hit the court. I put up a shot. It bounced off the rim and shot on a diagonal across the yard. I raced after the ball, retrieved it and threw up a second that fell short of the net completely.
A ball sailed past from somewhere behind me and swooshed through the hoop.
“Three points. Nothing. But. Net.”
I turned. There was Aaron, looking smug. He was new to the school this year. He could play some ball—he played forward too—but he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. He’d definitely make the team, but unless I really messed up, starting power forward was all mine.
His sister, Tammy, darted past me and retrieved both balls. While running, she shot each one in rapid succession. Both balls hit the backboard and sank into the net.
“Two, four. I’m in the lead,” she called. She was a year younger than us but was in our grade. She’d skipped fifth grade completely because she was gifted. Her backpack was covered with buttons from all sorts of organizations, and she talked about how backward our school was compared to where they’d come from.
Tammy had made a case to the principal that girls should be allowed to join the boys’ tryouts. That was why she was here with us. As far as I was concerned, if she was good enough to make the team, she deserved to be here.
“Air, Tam! ’Sup?” Junior asked.
“If I’m Tam, then maybe we should call you June,” Tammy teased.
Junior grinned at her. “You can call me June if you want, as long as you’re calling.” He gave her a wink that took nearly half his face to execute.
Tammy laughed. She scooped up one of the balls and passed it to him.
“How about a little competition?” she asked. “Me and my brother against the two of you.”
“You definitely got that right,” Junior said. “Us playing against you will be very little competition. But we’ll take it easy on you.”
“Not if Jordan keeps missing those easy ones,” Aaron said under his breath as he pushed past me, bumping my shoulder with his.
Junior did some fancy dribbling and started to spin, almost twirling around Tammy, who laughed as she swiped to get the ball away. But her timing was off. Aaron shook his head and ran at Junior, who passed the ball behind his back to me.
I caught the pass and had the ball only a second before I launched it from the top of the key and got a three-pointer.
“Seriously, Tammy!” Aaron barked.
Aaron scowled as Tammy laughed. She pulled her hair back and used a hair band that had been on her wrist to fasten a ponytail.
“Nice shot, but it was also a nice pass. I need to take you more seriously, June,” she said, laughing. “Otherwise my brother is going to lose it on me.”
It had been our basket, so it was our ball in—basic two-on-two rules.
Junior took the ball and started showing off. He tried some moves around Tammy, almost doing a breakdance. She swatted the ball away. Still smiling, Tammy faked a pass to Aaron, and in the few seconds it took Junior to figure out she still had the ball, she threw up a shot, and the ball dropped. It was obvious she had some game.
The doors to the gym opened. Mr. Tanner popped his head out. He waved to us. It was time to move things inside.
We were the first four in the gym. Mr. Tanner was in shorts and T-shirt, whistle around his neck and clipboard in his hands. We were getting ready to restart our game at the far hoop when he called for Junior and me to come over.
“Morning, guys,” he said. “I was wondering if we could talk for a second.”
Junior nodded. “Of course, Coach.”
“Sure,” I said.
His iPad was only partially hidden by the clipboard. I could see the article on the screen, which was titled “Twelve Basketball Drills to Evaluate Players.” Thank goodness my father wasn’t here to see this.
“You two have been playing ball for years, right?”
“Forever.”
“Good. I’ve been reading up and everything, but I was hoping you two could assist.”
“We can help for sure, Coach,” I said.
“And Aaron could help too,” Junior added.
I shot him a dirty look.
“He’s played travel ball. He knows his stuff.” Junior looked at me. “He does.”
“That would be great. Thanks, guys.”
Even with our help, things didn’t go smoothly. There were too many students trying out and too many that didn’t know basketball. Things got a little out of hand. Players arrived hungry for spots on the team but no appetite for the game.
Besides me, only Junior and Aaron—as much as I didn’t really like him—had guaranteed spots. The rest were what my father would call—from the Clint Eastwood western—the good, the bad and the ugly. I’d never seen the movie but knew what he meant. And really, on a school team, all it took was three great players to do really, really well.
I looked across the gym. Tammy fumbled a pass, recovered and tried for a basket she was never going to make. The ball bounced off the side of the backboard and out-of-bounds. She panted as she pushed her hair back off her sweaty forehead.
