Hot Shot (12 page)

“You’re crazy as hell,” I said. “They don’t pay me anything during the summer,” and he said, “They sure as hell paid you something during the winter, and you better have some of it left if you expect me to fill your belly any longer,” and then the old lady jumped in and asked the old man who the hell he thought he was to be throwing her only son out of the God-damn house without asking her anything about it, and he was surprised at that, and so was I, to tell the truth, and he said, “Who the hell pulled
your
string?” and she said, “He cusses me and abuses me and breaks my heart and is a bum in general, but he’s my own flesh and blood and poor Eddy’s own brother, and I won’t have him thrown out of the house,” and he said, “Well, mother, maybe you’d like to pay for the God-damn chow he’s going to eat,” and they kept at it back and forth and forgot about me, and I went out in the kitchen and ate and got the hell out of there for a while, and the old man kept threatening to throw me out off and on all summer but never did.

I had an idea I’d pick up again with Marsha Davis, which would have made the summer something to tell about, but the high school had quit two weeks earlier than Pipskill, and by the time I got home she’d already gone off somewhere with her old lady, to some God-damn lake or somewhere, and she never got back while I was there, and as a matter of fact I never did pick it up again, and I guess it was just as well in the long run, but I didn’t think so at the time. For a while I loused around with old Bugs, as much as I could stand him, and the truth is, he was always making snotty remarks about big shots and stuff and how some guys got swelled heads over nothing, and it was a lot of crap in general because I made a special effort not to break it off in him, feeling kind of sorry for him because he was too damn dumb to go to college, but finally I got sick of it and knocked him on his tail, and that was the end of it. After that I shot a little rotation and stuff and went out to the high school and got permission to sharpen up my eye in the gym while no one else was using it, and nothing much happened until just a few days before it was time to go back to Pipskill, and it was then I got even with Gravy Dummke, and I’ll have to tell about it.

It was one morning about nine o’clock, and I was walking along the street and just happened to look down this alley that went in back of Gravy’s cigar store, and there was old Gravy up on a ladder looking over the edge of the building at the roof. I guess he’d been up there doing some work or something, and maybe had just stopped at the top of the ladder on his way down to see how it looked from there, but anyway he was just standing there, and I went down the alley fast and quiet and got between the ladder and the building and pushed the God-damn ladder over backwards. Old Gravy screamed like a crazy woman, honest to God, and you could have heard him a mile away, and he came down like a barrel of lard on the bricks, which is what the alley was made of, and I was a little scared at first because he didn’t move, and I thought I’d killed him sure as hell, but it turned out he only had a concussion and broke his God-damn arm and was only in the hospital a couple of weeks.

Considering Gravy and everything, it was a good thing it was time to leave town, and I left and went back up to Pipskill and got set in the frat house with Micky, and we went around and reported to Barker Umplett in the field house when the time came. Most of last year’s team had graduated, which was good riddance of bad rubbish, but there were a couple of guys left over who were seniors and pretty good, and it was plain enough right from the start that the first five would be them and Micky and old Carboy and me. Old Carboy had practiced all summer on his hook shot, but it hadn’t done him a hell of a lot of good, and usually when he tried to hook one over it was just the same as throwing the God-damn ball away, and old Umplett would stand him up like a kid in grade school, all seven feet of him, and he’d look at him for a while with his little eyes like a couple of nasty smears in his face, and then he’d start in a low voice to chew old Carboy out, and when it came to chewing old buller Mulloy and even Dilky had been sissies compared to Umplett. He always talked low and never bellowed or threw himself around like Mulloy had done, but he never had any prejudice against cussing, and more than anything he actually said, it was the tone of his voice that counted. He
sounded
like he hated your guts, and his little eyes
looked
like he hated your guts, and as a matter of fact he sure as hell
did.
I found out about that a couple of weeks after we’d started practicing, and this is the way I found it out.

I was on my way to practice, and I stopped in this place called the Pink Pig, which was a place just off the campus where a lot of us guys hung out and bought malts and stuff, and I happened to run into this girl I knew, name of Ellen, and I set up a malt for her, and she said, “I just happen to have the old man’s car at school this week, Skimmer. How about running out to the Barn for a couple of beers?” Well, the Barn was a place out on the highway about a mile, and I said, “I haven’t got time. I got to get to basketball practice,” and she said, “Basketball practice? You rather go to basketball practice than out to the Barn with me? I must be slipping,” and I said, “It’s not that. It’s just that old Umplett gets pretty mean when you miss practice,” and she laughed and said, “Oh, if you’re afraid of getting your wrist slapped, you can just forget I asked you.”

“Who the hell’s afraid?” I said, and she said, “It looks to me like you are,” and I said, “Well, I’m ready to go out to the Barn any time you are, and I’ll tell you right now you better have more than a couple of beers to offer, too,” and she laughed and said, “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. Rough and ready,” and that was no lie, because she did like it and was pretty much that way herself, and whenever you were with old Ellen you could count on going on from a couple of beers to other things, and she always knew what she wanted and didn’t mind letting you know it, a lot like Marsha had been and nothing at all like old Sylvia, who had been a cry baby besides being crazy.

Anyhow, I went on out to the Barn with Ellen and missed practice, and when I got back to the frat house that night, old Micky was flopped on the bed looking at some cheesecake in a magazine, and he said, “Where the hell you been?” and I said, “Out with Ellen, and if you want to put your asbestos ear muffs on, I’ll tell you about it,” and he said, “Asbestos ear muffs, hell! You better have an asbestos tail at practice tomorrow, because old Umpy’s going to chew it good.”

“Well,” I said, “if he messes with me, he’ll think he’s got a God-damn wildcat by the tail,” but I didn’t put much heart in it because, as a matter of fact, I didn’t feel much, and when I went around to practice the next afternoon I’ll have to admit I was as nervous as a pregnant spinster. Old Umplett didn’t look at me or say anything or do any God-damn thing at all, and that made it even worse, and all the time practice was going on I kept wondering when the hell he’d start in on me, and what with thinking about it all the time, I fumbled some passes and missed some easy shots and was pretty lousy altogether. He still didn’t say anything, though, even when I loused up the plays, and afterward in the locker room I got to feeling easier and began to think maybe I was going to get away with it all right, and of course that’s just when the son of a bitch reached out and grabbed me.

I’d just finished dressing, and he stuck his bald head out the door of his stinking little office and said, “Come in here, Scaggs,” and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but go. I went in and stood there with my teeth hanging out, and he sat down in the chair behind his desk and slumped down on the back of his neck and looked at me through his God-damn eyebrows and didn’t ask me to sit down or drop dead or anything at all. He just sat there looking at me like it made him sick to his stomach to do it, and after a while I got to feeling all squirmy inside like I was full of worms, and I said, “You want to talk to me, Coach?” and he said, “No. The last thing on God’s earth I want to do is talk to you, so I’m going to make it short and to the point.”

I could see then that he was feeling pretty mean, which wasn’t anything unusual, and pretty soon he said, “Where the hell were you yesterday?” and I said, “I had something else I had to do,” and he got a little smile on his face and kept looking at me with his nasty eyes that looked half asleep, and after about a full God-damn minute, he said, “Now isn’t that interesting! Isn’t that just about the most interesting God-damn thing you could imagine! Well, Mr. Scaggs, I’m sure an important fellow like you just has a lot of things to do that might interfere with basketball practice, so I think I’d better tell you how I feel about it. To put it bluntly, Mr. Scaggs, if your God-damn grandmother dropped dead at your feet at five minutes to three, I’d expect you to be to practice at three sharp as usual. Is that clear? While I’m at it, I might say that I’ve been in this business more years than I can count, and I’ve had my head on the chopping block more times than I care to remember, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot of things a man has to know to stay hooked to a contract, and one of the things I’ve learned is the smell of a sharp little opportunist like you. By God, you’re just barely dry behind the ears, and you’re already making a business out of what was once meant to be fun. So it’s a business. It’s business with you, and it’s business with me, and there’s no God-damn fun left in it. You’re getting paid to come to school to play basketball, and you wouldn’t ever come to school at all if you
didn’t
get paid to play basketball, and so you’ll God-damn well
play
basketball. You’ll come to practice after this on time and every time, and you’ll run and you’ll sweat and you’ll hate my guts, and the more you hate them the better I’ll like it, and don’t ever expect me to treat you like anything but the hired sharpshooter you are. You’re paid to win games, and that’s exactly what I expect of you and nothing more, and God help you if you don’t. Is all this perfectly clear, Mr. Scaggs?”

Well, it sure as hell was, and I said so and left, and after that it would have taken a hell of a lot more than a few beers and what I could find in a pair of drawers to make me miss a practice, and to tell the truth, I didn’t miss another damn one, and whatever else he was, old Umplett was the best damn basketball coach that ever lived, and I’ll admit it even though I hated his guts just like he said I would.

He worked the hell out of us all through November, and we got faster and faster, and the faster we got the smoother we got, and even old Carboy quit falling over his own feet all the time and got pretty good at jumping up and ramming one through from the rafters now and then, but mostly he took the ball in the slot and fed out to Micky or me, and there weren’t any flies on that Micky, either, if you want to know the truth of it, and you could tell that God-damn Umplett was looking forward to a good season but would rather have dropped dead than say so.

Toward the end of November we had a couple of home games scheduled, and these were just with small colleges not far away and not very good, and we won them both by scores that looked like the totals in some lopsided election or something. You wouldn’t have thought a couple of crummy games like that would get much play, but anyone who thought like that just didn’t know Pipskill, and they’d have turned out for a game there if it had been with some team scraped up in a kindergarten. The field house was packed, and the band played, and all in all it was just like the old high school, except bigger and louder and even crazier. As a matter of fact, I never saw such blood-thirsty God-damn maniacs in my life, and even when we had the score almost doubled they kept yelling at us to pour it on and kept cheering every lousy point like it might make the difference between winning and losing. Lots of coaches will ease up a little when their team gets a big lead, but not old Umplett. He kept the first stringers in right up to the end, and maybe it was because the crowd wanted him to and he knew he damn well better, but it was more likely because he was just as blood-thirsty as any bastard in the crowd, and however it was, it was great stuff for your point total, and I made forty points the first game and thirty-five the second, and right after that everyone started calling me the Platinum Sophomore, which is what they kept on calling me all year, even in the newspapers.

First part of December, we made a swing through the East all the way to New York and played two games on the way and one in Madison Square Garden and one on the way back, and we won all the games but not by any God-damn lopsided scores like the first two at home. As a matter of fact we damn near lost the one in Madison Square Garden because we had a fat lead at the half and got sloppy in the third quarter while the other team was getting hot, and we were lucky to pull it out by three points at the end. Old Umplett was so God-damn mad about it that he jerked us all back to the hotel and wouldn’t let us go out and see some of the town, and Micky and I talked about sneaking out to see some of it, anyhow, but decided not to.

The next morning we started home and stopped off for the last game, and this game was with a college that hadn’t lost a game on their home court for about a million years, and I guess no one around there thought they were
ever
going to lose one, but we changed a hell of a lot of thinking on that subject before we were through with them. The God-damn people who came to watch the game were just as crazy as the people at Pipskill, and when the game was almost over and they began to realize how it was coming out, they started to boo us and throw paper and stuff on the court and raise hell in general, and damned if it didn’t look for a while like they might lynch us or something, but we got out of it all right and left town the next day. I read later on in the sports page that they said the only reason we beat them was because their star player had a stinking virus or something and was sick and played the whole game on the verge of death like a God-damn hero, and we couldn’t beat them again in a thousand years, but this was just sour grapes and a damn lie, and we proved it by beating them again in a tournament after the regular season was over, and I made ten more points than their lousy hero to boot.