Hot Shot (7 page)

Marsha stamped her foot and said, “Oh, that damn Tizzy!” and I said, “What the hell would he want to do a thing like that for?” and she said, “Oh, that’s just like him, he doesn’t give a damn about anyone else as long as he’s got the keys to get in himself in case he gets that drippy Marion to come outside.”

Anyhow, the cars on both sides kept the wind off of us, and we stood there and did a lot more kissing and fooling around, and it wasn’t so bad after all, but not as good as it might have been, and Marsha said we’d been gone so long someone might miss us and we’d better go back, and so we did, but no one had missed us at all, and we might as well have stayed outside all the rest of the time we were there as far as I could see, except that it was pretty damn cold.

As a matter of fact, though, we finally got on a sofa out in another little room that was almost as good as outside, besides being warmer, the only trouble being that you had to be sort of careful and not do too much and be ready to pretend that you were just sitting there talking if anyone else came in. Marsha kept telling me how I was just what she’d always wanted, the strong type that always knew just what he was after and wasn’t like all these other guys that seemed so juvenile, and I said she was just what I’d always wanted, too, and she said she knew there wasn’t anything on earth that could keep us apart, now that we’d found each other, and altogether it was damn good stuff, in spite of being largely bull, and it didn’t seem like any time at all before one of the old dolls from the bar came in and said we had to get the hell out of there and go home.

It was about midnight then, but we didn’t go home but went to an owl diner in town instead and had sandwiches and stuff to drink and listened to the juke box. When it got time to leave, I decided I’d better pick up the check, because if I kept letting old Tizzy do it someone might get the idea I was a God-damn deadbeat, or something, so I did, and old Tizzy said I didn’t have to do it and let him pay half at least, but he didn’t insist very hard, damn him, and it cost me a dollar and twenty-eight cents with tax. We got in the Buick again and started off, and old Tizzy saying, “Well, now, how shall we work this?” and I knew what he was getting around to was, should he take me home first or Marsha, and the idea was that, either way, he didn’t want us around to cramp his style when he took Marion home.

If there’d been any way to louse him up, I’d have done it, just for locking the door of the God-damn Buick, but there wasn’t any way that I could see, so I said, “Why don’t you just let me off at your house with Marsha and then I’ll walk on home,” and he said, “Oh, you don’t want to walk clear across town this time of night,” and I said, “Sure I do, I like to walk,” and so he said well, have it your own way, which I intended to, and he drove up to his house and let us out in the driveway.

I walked Marsha up to the front steps, and we stood there in the dark and kissed and fooled around some more, quite a bit as a matter of fact, and she said, “I wish I never had to go in,” and I said I wished she didn’t either, and she looked up through her lashes and gave this little laugh and said, “Better yet, I wish you could come in and stay all night,” and I said I sure as hell wished I could, too, but that it would be a damn hot day in January before we ever got her old man to see it the same way. She said that was right and fathers were a hell of a problem when you came right down to it, and then we loved each other up pretty good for the road, because she was getting shivery and goose pimply again, like on the golf course, and so was I, to tell the truth, and besides, old Tizzy would be getting back any minute and it was time she was getting in.

I went home to bed, and I lay there thinking about what a hell of a big difference this God-damn crazy game of basketball had made in everything, and how the difference might even have been a little bigger by this time if only the weather had been warmer, but there was always another time coming up, and I began to get the idea that maybe I had something really big by the tail, a hell of a lot bigger than old Bugs or I had ever thought, and God only knew what might come of it if I really kept at it and worked it for all it was worth. I was just about to go to sleep when I remembered the change from the fin that was still in my pants pocket, and I got up and got it and stuck it in the toe of my shoe, because it would’ve been just like the old man to sneak in and go through my pockets to see if I’d really taken the fin and had anything left, the sneaky son of a bitch.

Well, if you were around at the time and read the sports page, you’ll remember that I went through with this basketball stuff, just like I decided to, and really made a big thing of it. I got my picture in a lot of papers in other towns, even, and stories about how I was the best damn sharpshooter anyone had ever heard of, and I guess I must have been, at that, because I was high point man in the league all season and wound up after it was all over being high point man in the whole God-damn state. In the league, every team had to play each other twice, home and home, which means once on each other’s court, and old Mulloy really sweat out the game we had to play on their court with the team that damn near beat us on ours, and he was a genuine pain in the tail, the way he kept pointing us for that particular game, as he called it, and trying to juice us up with his corny crap that was supposed to be psychology or something.

It turned out that he did all his sweating for nothing, anyhow, because we beat them on their own court easier than we had on ours, and from then on we just coasted in and were league champions going away. I kept going out with Marsha all this time, and I’m not going to say a hell of a lot more about it, except that she was a real classy doll who always knew just what the score was, and that the weather wasn’t always as God-damn cold as it was the night we had the party at the Country Club.

After all the leagues in the state had finished playing and had a champion, they divided the state into regions, and all the champions in each region played each other in what was called regional tournaments. It happened that it was the year to have our particular regional tournament in our own gym, and that was a break for us because a team usually can do a little better on its home court, and the school really made a God-damn production of it. We had these big pep rallies in the auditorium, with the cheer leaders and the band there and everyone going crazy, and old Mulloy was really in hog heaven, and you’d have thought to hear him talk that the bastard had won the championship all by himself. Every day on the sports page of the paper there was a big black headline that said ALL THE WAY, FELLOWS, and when we finally got around to playing the games, it seemed like everyone in town except my old man and old lady tried to get in the God-damn gym, and I’m bound to say that it got out of hand and pretty God-damn silly, all in all, but it was all gravy for Skimmer any way you looked at it, and who the hell was I to complain?

Anyhow, to make it short, we went through the tournament like a dose of salts and were regional champions as well as league champions, and I was voted most valuable player by the God-damn coaches, and that didn’t leave anything but the state tournament, where all the regional champions played each other, to wind it up. The school had a big outdoor rally to send us off, and they had these crazy God-damn snake dances through the streets and a hell of a big bonfire on a vacant lot uptown, and old Mulloy made a stinking speech about how wonderful it was to have such support and how no team can get anywhere without everyone behind them and urging them on to victory, and it wound up with an old wooden building catching on fire, and it looked for a while like they were going to burn down the whole God-damn town.

After a while I got tired of it and looked around for old Bugs to walk home with, but I couldn’t find him, and then I decided I’d walk around to Dummke’s and get a package of cigarettes before I went, because we were leaving on the bus the next morning for the town where the tournament was going to be played — you probably remember it was a town called Stockton — and I figured I might not have a chance to buy any afterward. When I got to Dummke’s, it was someone besides Gravy behind the counter, and he gave me the gaspers without any lip, and the two cents change from the two-bits I gave him, and I was on my way out the door when Gravy came out of the back room and said, “Hey, kid, what’s the hurry?”

That struck me as pretty God-damn fishy right away, because always before I couldn’t be in a big enough hurry to suit him, but I just stopped and looked at him and said, “Who the hell’s in a hurry? I got my God-damn cigarettes, and I’m leaving, that’s all,” and he showed all these stinking white teeth all over his greasy face and said, “Don’t be like that, kid,” and I said, “Like what?” and he said, “Always with a Goddamn chip on your shoulder. Why in hell don’t you relax once in a while? How’d you like a coke on the house?”

If I’d had any doubt about him being up to something, I sure as hell didn’t have any after I heard him say that, because any time Gravy Dummke gave anything away, even a lousy coke, you could be damn sure he was looking at it as an investment of some kind, but to tell the truth, I was curious to know what it was he had on his crummy mind, and besides, I didn’t have any objection to the coke, either.

“Well, thanks all to hell,” I said. “A whole God-damn nickel coke? You sure you can afford it?”

His fat face smoothed out the way it did when he was about to flip his lid, and his little eyes got mean for a second, but then he found his teeth again and shrugged and said, “Always kidding. Damned if you ain’t the greatest God-damn kid for a joke I ever saw,” and I went back, and he got a bottle of coke out of this crummy cooler he had at the end of the counter and took the cap off and handed it to me. I lit a cigarette and started drinking the coke, and he said, “Ain’t it against the rules for guys on the basketball team to smoke?” and I said, “Screw the rules. Besides, what the hell business is it of yours?”

“None,” he said, “but I’d hate to see the star of the team kicked off the night before the state tournament started,” and I said, “That’s a laugh. That God-damn Mulloy wouldn’t kick you off for murder if he thought it might make him lose a game,” and he laughed and said, “Well, you’re safe, then, because I guess they wouldn’t have much chance without you,” and I said they sure as hell wouldn’t, and he said, “That leaves you in a pretty good position, kid, you know that?” and I said, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” and he said, “Why don’t you come on in the back room and talk it over. I hate to see a smart kid not taking advantage of his opportunities,” and to tell the truth, I thought it was just some of Gravy’s nonsense, but then I thought it wouldn’t cost me anything to listen at least, so I went.

The back room was a crummy dump a little bigger than an outdoor privy with a dirty window looking out on the alley and a few tables and chairs scattered around where the Goddamn penny-ante bastards that hung around Gravy’s could play pinochle and poker and different card games, and there was no one there but Gravy and me. He told me to take a load off my feet, which I did, and he sat down in another chair across the table from where I sat, and he asked me if I wanted another lousy coke, and I said I didn’t, and he said, “Jesus, kid, you’re really getting to be somebody. Every time I look at a God-damn sports page there’s your name or picture or something, and to tell the truth, I never dreamed all the time you been coming in here for cigarettes that you’d be such a big shot basketball player.”

I hadn’t dreamed it myself, as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t telling him that, so I said, “You can just skip the crap, Gravy. You didn’t ask me to come back here just so you could pin a medal on me,” and he laughed again and said, “You’re a pretty smart kid. That’s one thing I always knew, even if I didn’t know you were going to be a big star and everything, because I can smell a smart kid a mile away,” and I said, “So I’m a Goddamn marvel or something,” and he said, “Not quite. Not yet, anyhow. Even a smart kid’s got to learn the ropes. For instance, I bet you don’t know just how big this basketball thing can be. A lot of money changes hands on basketball games, kid, even high school games,” and I said, “Well, if you’ve been riding our God-damn team, you ought to have a potful,” and he looked at me for quite a while with his face smooth and his nasty little eyes half asleep, and then he said, “Oh, I’ve been getting
my
share. Have you been getting
yours?”

I thought about how everything had changed after I’d started playing the God-damn crazy game, about Marsha and going places I’d never gone before and everyone thinking I was a regular ring-tailed wonder, and I said, “I’ve been doing all right,” and he said, “Oh, sure, a few stinking kids setting you up to cokes and hamburgers and a few girls flipping their tails in your face because they think you’re a lousy hero, but I’m talking about the long green, kid, the folding stuff, the stuff that counts. How much of that you been getting?”

I said, “You know damn well they don’t pay you anything for playing basketball at school,” and he said, “Sure, I know it, but that wouldn’t keep a smart kid from taking care of himself,” and I said, “You give me a pain in the ass, if you want to know it, because you’re always acting like a big shot and blowing about all the lousy money you got, but as far as I can see you’re just a small town jerk running a cigar store, and I never saw you with more than a fin in your hand in my life.”

I stood up then and was going to get the hell out of there, but he dug down in his stinking pocket and pulled out a wad of bills that would’ve choked a mule, and he peeled off five of them and laid them on the table, and they were all tens, and I stood there looking at them.

“What’s that for?” I said, and he said, “It could be for you, and maybe another hundred later,” and I said, “What’s the angle?” and he said, “You want to sit down and listen, I’ll tell you. No charge for listening,” and I figured there wasn’t, so I sat down.

He got out a cigarette and lit it and rolled it around in his stinking fat lips until it was soaked about half an inch down with his nasty slobber, and all the time he kept looking at me through the smoke like he’d probably seen some big shot do in the movies or something, and pretty soon he said, “That team of yours could go all the way in this state tournament,” and I said it sure as hell could, and he looked at me some more and said, “As long as you’re playing, that is,” and I said that was sure as hell right and I was sure as hell going to be playing.