Slam! Page 4

  I might marry her after all.

  In the morning a boy came into the room and gave Mr. Aumack, my homeroom teacher, a note. Aumack read it, and then called me to the front of the room.

  “Go to the office,” he said.

  I went out of the room with the kid from the office.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “Your parents are in Mr. Tate’s office,” he said.

  I thought something had happened to Derek. Maybe he got hit by a car or something. Then I thought that maybe Grandma had died. I ran down the stairs two at a time and got to the office as soon as I could.

  I went through the reception area and right into Mr. Tate’s office. My moms was sitting there with a black guy, but it wasn’t my father. He looked like somebody who worked in an office. Moms wasn’t crying or anything so I figured nobody had died.

  “Greg, I’d like you to meet Richie Randall,” Mr. Tate said. “I’ve known Richie for a long time. He’s a graduate of Howard University, and a working engineer. He’s also with the Guardians.

  “The Guardians volunteer some of their time to tutor and counsel young African Americans. I’ve talked it over with Richie, and with your mother, and we think that you can benefit quite a bit by having Richie tutor you in math.”

  “I understand they call you Slam,” this guy says to me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, Slam, I would like to work with you to get your math grades up,” the guy said. “You think we can work together?”

  “No, man,” I said.

  “Mr. Tate doesn’t think you can continue playing ball if you don’t get your grades up,” Moms said.

  “I don’t need nobody working with me,” I said. “Nothing wrong with me.”

  “That’s not the point,” Mr. Tate said. “The point is you need to improve your grades, pure and simple. If you expect a decent life — nice family, house, car, couple of kids — then you have to get a good foundation. And here’s where you start. Right here in Latimer.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “That’s a good idea,” the engineer dude said. “Maybe we can get together some time and have a soda.”

  The bell rang and I could hear the kids changing classes in the hall. I didn’t want to be standing in the office, and I didn’t want this guy looking at me, and I didn’t want to even look at my moms.

  “You better think hard, son,” Mr. Tate said.

  “You ain’t my father, so don’t be calling me ‘son,’ ” I said. Then I walked out of the office and went outside and sat on the steps. It was cold but I didn’t care.

  Like what was I supposed to be, stupid or something? Mr. Tate talking all that mess about how my life is going to get messed up and about what kind of family I’m going to have. What did he know about what kind of family I was going to have?

  I didn’t need people talking about me like I was some kind of thing they was studying in science. A thing, and not even a person. They were talking about me like I was nothing. Ain’t nobody wants to be nobody. Mess just made me feel like hitting something.

  Then my moms is coming out the door and she sees me sitting there and she comes over and puts her arm around me.

  “Mr. Tate just wanted you to meet Mr. Randall before you and me talked about him,” she said. “He looks like a nice guy.”

  “What did Pops say?”

  “We haven’t talked about it yet,” she said. “But I think he’ll see that it’s for your good. He’ll go along with it, honey. Will you at least give it a chance?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  The thing was that anytime somebody was talking to me they was telling me what I was doing wrong. Hearing how you’re wrong all the time gets old in a hurry. Everybody telling me how they talking to me for my own good. Yeah, all that’s good. But if I can’t fly don’t be taking me to your cloud.

  Pops was laid off again and sitting around the house a lot. Ed’s Auto Electric Shop was starting a cab business and was looking for drivers but you had to pay your own insurance and we didn’t have the money for that. I asked Moms if she had talked to Pops about the guy we had met in school. She shook her head.

  “You can’t even tell him that you bringing in another dude to take his place,” I said. “How you think I feel about it?”

  “I’m not bringing in another dude to do anything!” she snapped back at me.

  “Then what you doing?” I asked.

  There wasn’t any reason to wait for her answer. I knew what she was going to say, what she always said, that what she was doing was about making it in the real world, the world past Billy’s bike shop and past Akbar’s dog and past the small hills of garbage and dirty snow that would just end up as dirty water running down the streets nobody cared for.

  Pops didn’t really make a difference in the set. When it got time to get real he wasn’t making it and she felt she had to get somebody else in, somebody who graduated from college and could talk like he knew people had to listen to him. It was about math and it wasn’t about math. Because after we had dealt with the math there would be something else. All you had to do was to look around the hood. All the math in the world wasn’t changing the hood.

  Pop’s brown skin was my brown skin. The way his hair grew was the way mine grew. He couldn’t play no ball but there was something in the way he moved, something in the way he walked, that was me. I could feel it more than say it, but I knew it was true.

  “Okay, let’s set the big picture.” Mr. Nipper had his foot up on a chair. He was wearing a suit and tie with sneakers. He looked okay. “Because of the budget problems in some of the schools we’re going to have a short regular season this year and then go to the championship rounds. Maybe next year we can get back to the regular schedule. The way they’re trying to make it fair is to make more divisions. There are eight teams in our division and I think we have a chance of doing well. Goldy, you have the list of schools?”

  “Regis, St. Peter’s, Trinity, Country Day, Hunter, Harlem School of the Arts, Carver, and us,” Mr. Goldstein read off the list.

  “Carver handled us pretty easily last year,” Mr. Nipper said. “But they’re in the league and we have to deal with them and everybody else. We’ll play each team one time. At the end of the round robin tournament the two teams with the best records will play each other for the division championship. The division champions will then play for the City P.S.A.L. championships. I’m going to try to schedule a couple of non-league games in, too. Just for the experience.

  “So every game is going to be important. If we beat the best teams and lose to the worst we’ll still be hurting our record. We have a pretty good squad and we can be there at the end if we play together as a team. We’re down to ten players and I’m going to stick with the ten unless somebody gets hurt. That way everybody gets to play. Jimmy’s going to be our starting center. Frank and Tony will be at the forwards and Nick and Trip will be the starting guards, but everybody on the team is important and everybody will get a chance to play.”

  I was still ticked off because I wasn’t starting but I figured that once I got to play in a game things would turn around.

  Our first game was at home against Regis and when we got out onto the floor they were already warming up. They had some size on us but it didn’t look that bad. We ran our warm-up drills and then sat down to wait for the tip-off.

  The Regis cheerleaders were looking like they just fell out from a magazine they looked so good. They had the same color outfits as the ballplayers and they all wore these big red-frame glasses with no glass in them.

  Our cheerleaders had a few nice cheers but they weren’t as sharp as the ones from Regis. Plus, the people who came to see Regis play had a big banner in the stands. They were looking good.

  I thought I heard my name and looked up and saw about five guys from the hood, including Ice. He made a fist and held it up in the air and I held mine up. That just made me feel worse about not starting.<
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  “I want everybody on the bench to stay alert and be ready to go in,” Goldy said.

  The game started and Regis got the opening tap. The guy that got the tap dribbled right past our whole team and made a layup. That happens sometimes when you first start a game so I didn’t think nothing of it.

  Trip brought the ball in to Nick and the Panthers had their first offensive play. Nick made a signal and everybody forgot everything they had been doing in practice. Guys were running all over the place and Nick was out there near the top of the key looking for somebody to get open. Finally, he passes the ball in to Jimmy and Jimmy turns and starts a little hook. The center from Regis went up and slapped Jimmy’s shot away and the Regis fans were cheering.

  Regis got the ball and came downcourt fast. They passed the ball to one of their forwards coming along the baseline and he passed it to their center. The center went up, made the deuce, and got the foul. Jimmy held his hand up because he had fouled the guy.

  Their center made the foul shot and we were behind by five.

  Regis was playing a zone but it didn’t look that tough because they were just standing around. They kept their hands up but nobody on our team was really challenging their zone. That let them collapse under the basket and box out for the rebounds. We were getting one shot at a time and they weren’t even the best shots. The coach put in Glen for Tony Fornay and he moved a little more than Tony did but not enough to change the game.

  At the end of the first quarter the score was Regis 18 and Latimer 9. By the half the score was Regis 30 and Latimer 21.

  The way it looked was like either school could win. Regis wasn’t that good, but the only players on our team who were doing anything was Nick and Trip. Jimmy was standing around the paint so much he got called for two three-second violations, and our forwards looked like they were just throwing the ball toward the backboards and hoping for the best. I looked up at Ice and he just shook his head.

  The coach gave a big speech about how we were still in the game and how he wanted every loose ball. We went back out to warm up for the second half and Ice came over to the side of the court and called me over.

  “How come you ain’t playing?” he asked.

  “The coach don’t like me or something,” I said.

  “Tell him I said you need to get some game,” Ice said.

  I know I needed to get some game. I had been looking forward to playing all day and now I was just sitting on the bench.

  “Hey, Greg! Come here!” the coach called me over.

  “What’s that guy’s name?” the coach asked me. “The guy you were talking to just now.”

  “Benny Reese,” I said, using his real name.

  “They call him Ice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s who I thought it was,” he said. Then he walked away.

  Hey, that blew my mind. My coach had heard about Ice. Probably had even seen him before.

  The first five minutes of the second half was real sloppy. We stunk and so did Regis but they got up by twelve points. Then, when one of their players got fouled, the coach took out both Glen and Frank, moved Jimmy over to forward, put Jose at center and put Trip at the other forward.

  “Greg, get in.”

  At first I didn’t even realize he was talking to me but then Ducky pushed my arm and I woke up. I went over to the scorer’s table and reported in.

  When I got on the court my homeys started whooping. It made me feel good.

  “Yo! Slam! Slam! Slam!” That was from my man Ice.

  There hadn’t been one dunk in the whole game but I knew there was going to be one soon. I inbounded the ball to Nick and he went down the center, threw a little head fake on his man, and ran him into a pick. He looked like he was in the clear but when he went up to take his shot their center, who was knocking everything down, pinned his stuff against the boards and then pulled it down.

  On the way downcourt Nick gives me this funny look like he was embarrassed that the Regis center had thrown away his stuff.

  “I’m going for the pill,” I said. “Get him if he spins.”

  Their guard came down center court and I went after him when he got a foot from the mid-court line. He got over the line all right and spun just the way I thought he might. But Nick came up on his blind side when he saw the spin and knocked the ball away. Nick started downcourt and their whole team was after him.

  I was busting tail downcourt when I saw Nick stop and hold up the play. Trip came out to him and got the ball for a hot minute and passed it right back to Nick. But both their forwards were outside with the guards and I got loose on the left side. Nick took a step to the right and threw a hard pass to me. I turned and saw their center moving toward me.

  I put the ball on the floor for a quick beat and then took it to the metal. The pill was cupped between my fingers and my wrist, and I felt the move. It was like the whole thing was going down in slow motion and I was in it and watching it at the same time. Their center was going up, arching his back away from me so he wouldn’t get a body foul, and getting his hands up as high as he could.

  I saw his forehead and then I saw the rim and then I felt the pebble grain against my fingertips as I slammed the ball with everything I had. When my palm slapped against the rim it felt good. It felt good.

  It was like we had just been out there toying with them before I slammed over their big man. Everybody got into the defense and we started doing some serious ball-hawking. Regis had two guys who could handle the ball pretty good and we had three guys, me, Trip, and Nick, who could go get it. We stole the ball twice and got them in a backcourt violation once. The result was six more points for us and their coach called a time-out. We were only down by four.

  “See who they’re bringing in.” The coach pushed Goldy toward the scorer’s table.

  “How many fouls do I have?” Trip asked. He poured some water on one of the towels and put it on the back of his neck. You could see the excitement on the bench.

  “Only two, you’re cool.”

  “We don’t want to give them foul shots,” the coach said. “We have to make them work for everything they get.”

  “They’re putting in one of their seniors.” Goldy came back to the bench. “He’s got to be a ballhandler.”

  “Okay, listen up, guys.” The coach knelt down in front of us. “They’re probably going to try to slow the game down and draw fouls. We’ve got nine minutes to play, that’s plenty of time. What we need is board control. We can’t let them get second and third shots. Let’s go get them!”

  We got back on the floor and they inbounded. The coach was right, the new Regis player could handle the ball and they were slowing things down, working the ball in and out, looking for the easy deuce.

  My man wasn’t doing squat, just running in circles like he was waiting for some dynamite pass, but I think he just didn’t want the ball. I started playing him real loose and kept switching off on number 5, Trip’s man. He saw me coming and got the pass off to my man at the top of the key, and I turned and ran back to my man. He tried to get rid of the ball back to number 5, but Trip picked it off.

  We got downcourt with Trip on the point and Nick cutting across the lane. They picked up Trip and he bounced the ball into me and I was one-on-one with their center again and I was deep. A fake got him up in the air and I was around him and laid it up for two.

  From there on in it was like a practice session. We kept double-teaming the ball and they kept throwing it away. They had lost their nerve. We went up by six, and then by nine with a minute to go.

  I wanted one more slam and I got it when Nick and Tony, who was back in the game in Jimmy’s place, double-teamed one of their forwards. I could see he was spooked.

  “Ball! Ball!” I called to him and he just let it go to me.

  The guy who had lost the ball to me was the only one coming after me as I went downcourt. He was two steps behind when I hit the foul line, and when I took my takeoff step he was still on
the wood. I went up turning and flying and threw it down on a bad reverse slam and I could hear everybody screaming.

  They were still screaming as Regis went through the motions of walking the ball down and watching the clock tick the time off. Twenty seconds … ten seconds … five … and the buzzer went off. We had won by eleven points.

  We shook hands with the Regis players and then went into the locker room. After the showers the coach talked to us about how we had hung in earlier and how well we had played on defense. He didn’t say anything about me but I knew he had to be thinking.

  “Yo, Slam, how many points did you have?” Ducky asked.

  “I don’t know, man,” I answered him. “Check with the scorekeeper.

  It turned out that I had eleven points, exactly the amount we beat Regis by. It also turned out that everybody on the team was calling me Slam, instead of Greg.

  Nick grabbed me by the arm on the way out of the locker room.

  “You got a tough game, man,” he said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said.

  I waved to the guys as I made my way through the kids leaving Latimer. A lot of kids waved to me or called out things. The guys from the team were walking together in twos and threes and I knew they were talking about the game, and about winning. There weren’t a whole lot of times I had a chance to win anything.

  Ice was waiting for me outside. He had two okay-looking girls with him. One was wearing a nose stud and three studs in her ear, all on the right side. She was wearing some tight pants that were the same color as her skin, a light sienna, and for a second I thought she didn’t have any pants on.

  “You lit them up good,” Ice said. “What they doing, keeping you out for a half to keep the game close?”

  “The coach is a trip,” I said. “You know, he got his thing, and I got mine.”

  “We’re going out to Laurelton,” Ice said. “Come on and take a ride with us.”

  Moms expected me home but I didn’t really want to go home right away. I was feeling high from the game and I knew if I went home I would have to go back to dealing with homework and school. So I told Ice I’d go with him.