Hot Shot (13 page)

When we got back to the university station on the train, the band was there and about a thousand people, and they made a hell of a fuss about damn little, it seemed to me, but I was glad they did because it reminded me that this basketball racket was a pretty big thing and worth taking care of, and old Umplett made a speech on the platform about how last year had been a long dry spell as far as basketball was concerned, but this year looked like being a hell of a lot greener.

Well, he was right about that, and it sure as hell was, and after the Christmas holiday, which I spent at the frat house again, we got started on conference play and won two fast games. There’s not a hell of a lot of use telling all about the games we played, as far as I can see, because basketball may be fun to watch, especially if you got a band playing and some good-looking dolls leading cheers and stuff and giving you a chance to raise some general hell, but I can’t help thinking it would be pretty damn dull reading about, and to tell the truth I wouldn’t spend a minute myself reading about a lot of guys running up and down a court trying to throw a ball through a hoop. Anyhow, I’ll just tell you that we went through the damn conference like a dose of salts and never lost a game, and when the season was about half over we were rated number one team in the entire country by those so-called experts who go in for that kind of stuff, the sports writers and spooks like that, but to tell the truth I wasn’t much impressed by it because it seemed to me they just sat around and waited to see who won most of the games and then made a big production out of saying these were the best teams, and as far as I can see almost anyone could be a God-damn expert at something like that.

Winning the conference meant we got to play in the regional tournament after the regular season and got to go on and play in the national finals if we won the regional, and the closer we got to the time to play the meaner old Umplett got in the way he acted and talked, and he said he didn’t see how the hell we’d ever get past the first game, and the only reason we were in the tournament in the first place was because the conference had been so God-damn weak, and it just made him sick to his crummy stomach to think what jackasses we were going to look when those sharp teams from the other conferences turned loose on us, but none of us believed a damn word he said, and he didn’t, either. We had almost two weeks between the last conference game and the tournament, and the last week of practice was pretty light because old Umplett was afraid we might go stale if we overdid it, and it was during this time I met this guy named Arnold Hamshank, and since I got a good job for the summer and a little red Crosley out of him, I better tell you why it was.

The simple truth is, he was a God-damn fool about basketball, and as a matter of fact he was probably the biggest fool about basketball I ever met, and I guess I’ve met them about as big as they come. The way I met him, I went into the city with old Carboy and Micky one evening to see a doll named Zalita at a burlesque show who was supposed to be hot stuff, but the truth is, she must have been someone’s grandmother at least, and she reminded me of the doll in the joke who tried to shoot herself under the left breast and blew off her kneecap. After the show we went to a place to buy a steak and sneak a beer, and this Hamshank was there and came over to our table.

“Aren’t you Carboy, Spicer and Scaggs?” he said, and we said we were, and he said, “Congratulations on winning the conference championship,” and we said thanks, and he said, “Now for the national championship, and I know you can do it because you’ve got the best damn team in the whole country, which is the same as saying in the whole world.”

The way it turned out, he sat down at our table and began talking all about basketball and stuff, and he knew all the good players from back when they first started playing the Goddamn game, including all the statistics for practically anyone you cared to mention, including me, and as a matter of fact he was a real God-damn maniac about the crazy game, and a funny thing was, he didn’t particularly look like he would be. I mean he was a big fat guy with a lot of gray hair and a kind of dignified look about him, except for being a little red in the face, and you might have thought he was a lousy judge or someone who didn’t go in for light stuff like basketball, but the truth was, he had an automobile agency and sold Packards and Crosleys. After we’d talked a while, he picked up the check and said he’d pay it, and we told him he didn’t have to do it but didn’t argue a hell of a lot about it, and he said he really wanted to do it as a kind of gesture to three of the greatest little old players in the country, and what was more, he was ready to give a brand new red Crosley sports car to the man on the team who wound up high point man in the tournament. I thought at first the old son of a bitch was drunk, but I couldn’t smell anything on him, and I decided that he was really serious, the goofy bastard, and that I’d sure as hell have that red Crosley or my name wasn’t Skimmer Scaggs, which it sure as hell was.

Well, I might as well tell you right off that we didn’t win the national tournament that year. Maybe you remembered it and how it was, but if you don’t, it was this way. We won the regional, all right, and went right on through the national finals to the last game, and damned if we didn’t get beat by a lousy team that no one had thought would even get out of the regionals, let alone win the finals, and the reason was, they were just as hot as God-damn firecrackers, and that’s one of the goofy things about basketball, especially in tournaments. What I mean, a team that ordinarily wouldn’t show a chance will catch fire and play over their heads for a few games, and in a tournament a few games are plenty, and that’s the way it was with this team. It seemed like they couldn’t miss the Goddamn bucket for any reason whatever, and every time someone grabbed the damn ball and fired away from practically any place on the court, it just dropped through with a little swish of the net, and altogether it was enough to break your damn heart. They beat us by six points and were national champions, but I was high point man of the game and of the whole damn tournament, as a matter of fact, so I didn’t feel as bad as I might have otherwise, and I planned to go around to Arnold Hamshank’s place just as soon as I got back to find out if he really meant it about the red Crosley or was just a damn liar.

The truth is, he was a hell of a windbag, especially when he got onto basketball and started telling you how you should have done something this way or that way or any God-damn way but the way you did it, but he wasn’t a liar and had meant what he said and came across with the Crosley like it was nothing but a scooter. I went down to his display room a couple of days after I got back, and it was a real fancy place right downtown on a corner with three slick Packards and a lot of green plants and things behind about a million square feet of plate glass. When I went in a guy came up to me rubbing his hands together, and he asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to see Mr. Hamshank, and he said he was sorry but Mr. Hamshank wasn’t in right then but would be back soon. I said I’d wait and went around and looked at the three Packards and thought to myself that maybe I’d have one myself one of these days if this basketball racket kept on growing the way it had been so far, but for the time being I was just concentrating on that God-damn red Crosley. It was maybe half an hour later when Mr. Hamshank got there, and he saw me looking at the Packards and recognized me right away and came over and said, “Well, well, Skimmer, welcome, my boy. Tough luck about the tournament, but better luck next year.” I said hello and that I was glad he remembered me, and he said how the hell could he forget the best forward in the country who was on practically everyone’s All-American team even as a sophomore, which I was, and he asked me to come into his office and sit down, and we went in and did.

“How the hell did it happen?” he said, and I said, “What?” and he said, “Why, that last game. How the hell did that scrub team ever happen to beat you?”

“It was just one of those things,” I said. “They just got hot and couldn’t miss the basket any way they tried, and you know how it is with a team like that, there just isn’t anything you can do to stop them, because if they bent over and fired the damn ball between their legs it would still go in,” and he said, “That’s the damn truth, but just the same, if I’d been coach instead of Umplett …,” and then he went on telling me what he’d have done if he’d been coach, and it was a lot of crap, of course, and it took him damn near a half hour to get through with it, and I’d just about decided that he was just giving me a Goddamn runaround and was trying to talk about anything but the red Crosley he owed me, but then he wound up saying, “But however it might have been, it’s water under the bridge now, and the fact is, you were high point man of the tournament and have won the Crosley sports car.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t expect you to give me anything as valuable as a Crosley sports car. Besides, I never thought for a minute you really meant it,” and he said, “The hell I didn’t mean it. When Arnold Hamshank says he’ll do a thing, he’ll damn sure do it, and the car’s greased and oiled and full of gas and ready to go in the back room right now.”

I said that was sure as hell generous of him, and it was sure swell to know someone who liked basketball well enough to do something like that to encourage one of the players, and he said to think nothing of it and that he was always ready to do a little thing now and then for the boys who made the game what it was, and to tell the truth, I thought he was a damn fool to put out a new Crosley to someone like me that he didn’t even really know just for throwing a God-damn ball around. Anyhow, he asked me if I’d like to go back and take a look at it, and I said I would, and we went back and looked it over, and it was sure as hell little, just a one-seater like all sports cars, bright red and shiny as a new nickel, and I thought it was a damn sweet little job but that you’d sure never get any business done in the seat like old Marsha Davis and I had almost got done in the front seat of her old man’s Buick.

He said, “Well, what do you think of it?” and I said it was a slick little job, and we went back to his office again, and he had all the papers and everything already fixed up for me to sign and all I had to do was get a driver’s license and buy some tags and I was all set. We talked some more about other things, and after a while he said, “Where’s your home, Skimmer?” and I told him, and he said, “That’s not a very big town, is it?” and I said it sure as hell wasn’t, and he said, “It must be pretty dull for a guy like you around there in the summer,” and I said it sure as hell was.

“How’d you like to stay here in the city this summer?” he said, and I said I’d like it fine but didn’t have the money, and he said, “You could get a job, couldn’t you?” and I had to admit I hadn’t thought of that, and he said, “How’d you like to work for me selling cars?”

“Well,” I said, “I’d like that fine, but I never sold cars before,” and he said, “There’s nothing to it. A big basketball star like you would be a cinch, because people around here go in a big way for basketball players. I’d pay you fifty bucks a week plus commission,” and I said, “That sounds good to me, and you’ve just hired yourself a salesman for the summer,” and he said, “That’s the stuff. I like a guy who can make up his mind in a hurry, and I knew you could do it because you wouldn’t be the best forward in the country if you couldn’t. That’s one thing about basketball, it teaches you to make up your mind fast.”

After a while I said I had to be getting back to the university, and he said to drop in and see him once in a while, and I said I would, and he said he’d be expecting me to start work right after school was out in June, and I said I’d do that, too. He followed me back to the Crosley and watched me crawl in and start it up, and he laughed and waved and yelled as I drove out to be sure to remember to get out of the Crosley before I got into the mood, and I yelled back that I would and drove on out, and I was feeling damn good, I don’t mind admitting, not only because I had the Crosley but because I had a job for the summer, too, and wouldn’t have to go home and put up with the bull from the old man just to get a crummy meal now and then.

That was how it happened that I stayed in the city that summer, and if it hadn’t been for old Arnold Hamshank giving me the job selling cars I’d probably have gone on home and never met Candy Caldwell or Francis Z. Ketch, who was called Franzie because of everyone’s running his first name and middle initial together like one word, or any of the others that I met. Everything goes right back to that God-damn crazy game of basketball, and it just seems impossible that so much could have come of it, but that’s the way it was, and it’s a good thing for me I learned to play it. Candy Caldwell was the one I met first, and I didn’t meet this Franzie Ketch for quite a while afterward, because he wasn’t the kind of guy you met easy, and as a matter of fact you didn’t meet him at all unless you had something he wanted, which I did, and so I’ll start with Candy and work through it the way it came.

After school was out I went down and took over the job selling cars, and it was a pretty damn plush job, if you ask me, because old Hamshank didn’t seem to give a damn whether I put in much time selling or not, and every now and then he’d come around and say, “Skimmer there’s a guy I know ought to be about ready for a new Packard. This guy’s a hot basketball fan, so why don’t you run out and see him,” and so I’d run out and see this guy he told me about, and usually he’d get warmed up right away when he found out who I was and wind up a little later taking the Packard, which meant a commission on top of the fifty bucks, and altogether it was just like sitting under a tree in the shade and having someone shake apples in your lap. I got me a room in a little hotel that didn’t cost too much but wasn’t a bad place to flop, and this hotel was right at the edge of the downtown area where a lot of nightclubs and things were, and I got to going down there nights to see the shows and learned how to drink stuff like martinis and daiquiris and not always plain beer, and you’d be surprised how many people I met who knew me from all the publicity I’d got over the basketball and wanted to give me the glad hand and buy me a drink and things like that.