Edenville Owls (6 page)

“WHAT
about basketball?” Russell said.

All five of us were squeezed into a booth at the Village Shop, drinking Orange Crush.

“The weather’s so crappy,” I said, “we won’t be able to practice much anyway. We know our plays. We can do our wind sprints on our own. And we can play the games on Saturday morning.”

“What about Miss Delaney telling us not to get involved?” Billy said.

“We gotta,” I said. “She’s in trouble and she’s got nobody to help her.”

“Geez,” Nick said. “You sound like Boston Blackie.”

“The other day in class,” I said. “You saw how she was all beat up.”

“Maybe she really did fall down the stairs,” Manny said.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “She needs help. You guys can help or not. But I’m going to do something.”

“Anybody else know about this?” Russell asked.

“Joanie,” I said.

“Joanie Gibson?” Nick said.

“Yeah.”

“That means Nick is ready to go,” Russell said.

Billy and Manny laughed. Nick didn’t say anything. Neither did I.

“So, who’s in?” Russell said.

“Me,” Manny answered.

Billy nodded.

“I’m in,” he said.

“You in, Nick?” Russell said.

“Sure,” Nick said.

“Hell,” Russell said. “It’s unanimous. Owls Detective Agency on the job…We’ll win the tourney
and
save Miss Delaney.”

We spent most of the rest of the afternoon planning our strategy. It was fun. Like war games when we were little kids. Or cops and robbers. And the fact that it was real and not a game made it more fun. When we got through and left the Village Shop, Nick and I dropped back from the other three.

“You trying to cut me out with Joanie?” Nick said.

“She says she’s not your girlfriend,” I said.

“I say she is,” Nick said.

“Well,” I said, “she’s not my girlfriend.”

“So what is she?”

“My friend,” I answered.

“She’s a girl,” Nick said.

“I like her,” I said. “She’s smart and she’s funny and she’s nice.”

“Yeah, and she’s my girl,” Nick said. “I want you to stay away from her.”

“I don’t want to be her boyfriend,” I told him.

I wasn’t so sure of that, in fact. I’d never been anyone’s boyfriend, and I wasn’t sure what it would mean to be one.

“Well, just keep it that way,” Nick said.

“But I’ll still be her friend,” I said.

Nick nodded.

“Like I said,” he answered.

WE
knew Miss Delaney lived on the second floor of a two-family on Water Street. The plan was to hang out near her house and watch and see what we could see. The man showed up there after a few nights, but he went straight in her door and we had no way to know what was going on. When he left, he got right in his car and drove away. We had no way to follow him.

“This is no good,” Nick said the next night. “We’re not doing Miss Delaney any good standing out here. We can’t see or hear anything. And if the guy shows up, he drives off when he’s through and we can’t follow him.”

“Maybe she screams,” Russell said, “and we hear her, we can all run in.”

“And what,” Billy said, “fight the guy? He’s a man, for cripe’s sake.”

“There’s five of us,” I said.

“And what?” Nick said. “You think you’re Robin the Boy Wonder? You’ve seen the guy. You think we can fight him?”

I shrugged. It was cold. We stood around in the dark on Water Street until we had to go home. Nobody showed up.

Nobody showed up the next night, or the next, and each night was cold.

On the fifth night when nothing happened Manny said, “This is a waste of time.”

Manny said so little that when he did say something, it always sounded kind of important.

“We’re not helping anybody,” Manny said.

“And we got a game tomorrow,” Russell pointed out. “We should be getting to bed early instead of standing around in the dark, like a bunch of dorks.”

“The Edenville Dorks,” Russell said.

Everybody laughed.

“The hell with this,” Nick said. “I’m going home.”

“Me too,” Billy said.

They began to drift away.

“You coming, Bobby?” Russell asked me.

“Nope.”

Russell stood still for a minute and then shook his head.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, and went after the other guys.

Standing alone in the dark on the empty street, I felt like a fool. My eyes teared a little. What a jerk, I thought. You thought it would be like the movies. Stake out the house and in two minutes the bad guys show up and the action starts. The movies didn’t show you the hero standing around in the cold hour after hour, needing to take a leak, wishing he had something to eat. Getting nowhere. Seeing nothing. Doing no good. And what about friendship? All those war movies where guys were heroically dying for each other. A little boredom. A little cold weather and the Owls flew away in the night. The hell with them. But I couldn’t say the hell with them. We had a game tomorrow. I looked at the blank ungrateful front of the two-family house where Miss Delaney lived. There were things you can’t do anything about. The thought scared me. It made me feel kind of helpless. But there it was. I turned and headed home.

ON
Saturday morning, at the high school, we played a team from Alton. The Alton team was a lot better than the guys we played before. They had a coach, and they knew how to play. But except for number 22, they couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean.

Russell was, as usual, taller than the other center, and we were able to get him the ball close to the basket. Billy was hitting his outside set shot from behind the screens we set up for him. And Manny was getting his share of the rebounds.

But number 22 was keeping them in the game. He was one of those kids who probably shaved in the seventh grade. He had muscles. He was fast. Sometimes he would shoot a layup with his left hand. He was deadly from the outside. But if you played up on him to stop the outside shot, he would drive past you and go in for the layup.

We tried double-teaming him. But they would spread the floor and he would pass the ball to the open man the minute he was double-teamed. Then we would run back to guard that guy and they’d pass back to number 22, and he was one on one again before we could get back to him.

In the middle of the second half he had eighteen points, and Alton was beating us by four, when we called a timeout.

We were all breathing hard. We had no subs. We played the full game every time. But we weren’t breathing as hard as we used to.

“We gotta do something about twenty-two,” I said.

“Double-teaming him doesn’t work,” Russell said.

“We gotta put someone on him that has no other assignment. Whoever guards twenty-two doesn’t have to score or rebound or help bring the ball up. He just stays with twenty-two.”

“Worth a try,” Manny said.

“Who?” Billy said.

“Nick’s the best athlete on the team,” I said.

Everybody nodded. All of us, including Nick, knew that was true.

“I’ll take him,” Nick said.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll basically forget about you on offense. If you can score too, fine. But your job is to stay right in twenty-two’s face the rest of the way.”

“Gonna ruin your scoring average,” Russell said.

“Then it’ll be down with yours,” Nick said.

“Don’t get caught fouling him,” I told him. “We got nobody else, remember. You foul out and we’re screwed.”

Nick nodded.

“And if he wants to pass, let him,” I said. “What we want is the ball out of his hands.”

“I’m on him,” Nick said. “He’s a dead man.”

We brought the ball in at midcourt. I got it to Manny in the corner, who passed into Russell, who shot over his man with a little turn around. We were within two.

Number 22 normally brought the ball up, and when Alton passed in to him under their own basket, Nick was right up on him, in a crouch, arms extended, eyes focused on the middle of 22’s stomach. It’s nearly impossible to fake with your stomach. It has to go where you go. Number 22 tried to go around him, and Nick kept his feet moving and stayed in front of him. He tried the other way, dribbling with his left hand. Nick stayed with him. Number 22 got frustrated and ran straight into Nick, and the referee called him for charging and we got the ball.

I brought it up, and when we got to the top of the key, we went into a four-man weave without Nick. Nick was staying next to 22. Which meant that 22 had to guard him, so the rest of us were four on four. Billy put up another set shot. It rimmed out, and Manny got the rebound and put it back up, and we were tied.

And that’s how it stayed. Back and forth so that with two minutes left we were still tied. Number 22 had not scored in more than five minutes, and he was clearly tired. During breaks in the game he would stand bent over with his hands on his knees. Nick bothered him so much that Alton had someone else bring the ball up. Nick stayed up on 22. Once 22 tried to cut to the basket without the ball and Nick blocked his way. Then 22 shoved him. Nick stepped away smiling.

“Now, now,” he said.

Number 22 took a swing at him. And missed. Nick backed away, still smiling, with his hands raised, palms forward. The referee stepped in between them and threw 22 out for fighting. Nick, grinning, waved bye-bye to him as he went to the bench.

Nick hit both his foul shots, and, without 22, Alton folded. We won the game by eight points, and when it was over, we charged Nick, all the Owls. I got there first and hugged him and then we all piled on him, hugging him, pounding him on the back.

In our run for the tourney we were two and oh.

IT
was late afternoon on Saturday. I was in the town library reading
The New York Times.
I’d never been to New York. But reading the
Times
allowed me to feel like I knew something about a world of excitement I had never seen. I could read box scores for the Yankees and the Giants and the Dodgers. I could read about famous actors in plays I’d never seen, and famous singers and comedians in nightclubs I’d heard about on Manhattan Merry Go Round. I could read about Toots Shore’s, and Jack Dempsey’s, and the Stork Club, and fights at Madison Square Garden and St. Nicholas arena. I knew what Tammany Hall was. I knew where Billie Holiday was performing, and Duke Ellington. I knew who was at Carnegie Hall. I knew about Greenwich Village.

Joanie came in and sat down at the library table beside me.

“What are you reading?” she said.

“New York Times,”
I said.

I liked telling her that.

“You ever been to New York?” she said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“But you will,” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m not staying in Edenville the rest of my life.”

“You want to move?” she asked.

“No. But even if I stay here to live,” I said, “I want to travel and stuff.”

“What kind of work do you want to do when you’re, you know, a grown-up?” Joanie said.

“I want to be a writer,” I said.

“Like for a newspaper or something?”

“No,” I said. “I want to write books.”

“Books?”

“Yes.”

“Wow,” Joanie said. “I never heard of anybody wanting to write books.”

“Well, now you have,” I said. “How about you? What do you want to do?”

“I’m supposed to marry a nice man, live in a nice house, have enough money, have nice children,” she said. “You know?”

“Stay here?”

“I guess so,” Joanie said. “I think I’m supposed to go where my husband’s job takes us.”

“You sound funny about it,” I said. “You want to get married?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t want to be an old maid.”

“No,” I said.

“You want to get married?” Joanie said.

“Yes,” I said.

“What if you don’t?”

I was quiet for a time.

“Maybe,” I said, “if you didn’t get married, and I didn’t get married by the time we were, like, thirty-five, we could go someplace and live together.”

“Where?” Joanie said.

“Writers can live anywhere they want,” I said.

“If you didn’t live here, where would you live?” Joanie said.

“I’d like to live in New York,” I said.

“New York City?”

“Yes.”

“I’d be afraid to live in New York City,” Joanie said.

“Even with me?” I said.

“I wouldn’t be scared there with you.”

“And I wouldn’t have to go to New York,” I said.

“Because of me?”

“Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to make you go someplace you didn’t want to go.”

Joanie smiled and shook her head.

“You’re not like other boys, Bobby,” Joanie said.

I was wading pretty deep into waters I didn’t know much about.

“Is that good or bad?” I said.

“Good,” Joanie said. “I just hope growing up doesn’t change you.”

“It won’t change me,” I said. “At least not about you.”

“We’ll always be friends,” she said.

“Forever,” I said.

“Yes,” Joanie said. “Forever.”