Rules for Becoming a Legend (13 page)

The car honked back happily.

All in all, $2.75 dropped to the street around him, and he sung as he collected the coins: “We will, we will, ROCK YOU!”

•   •   •

Coach Kelly was down in his health class, thinking about what a bunch of bums he had going into next season. Diane, the sports reporter at the
Columbia City Standard
, was scheduled to call him in a few minutes to talk about the Fishermen's chances in the upcoming season. What chances? What he wouldn't give for another player like Todd Kirkus. He would have literally, no exaggeration, given his kidney. Who needs two kidneys anyway? He went out to the hallway pop machine to buy a Pepsi before his students came. Instead of cola, out came a beer. A practical joke by some Van Eyck Pepsi deliverymen.

Ha ha, the joke's on them
. It was just what Coach Kelly needed. He put in a few more coins, made sure that the next can out was Pepsi, and went back to his classroom. He poured the beer into his empty coffee mug and then crumpled the can and buried it beneath papers in the wastebasket. He sat at his desk and sipped, waiting for the call.

Diane's first question was “We can't be too good next year, can we Coach? Tillamook and Scappoose look awful strong.”

Coach Kelly blamed the beer for how he answered. “You know, before we got Freight Train Kirkus, we were terrible. One stroke of luck can turn the boat around.”

The next day the newspaper ran an article with the headline
Coach Kelly Waits on Next Star Player
. Coach was furious.

“That's not what I meant!” he shouted across the breakfast table.

“Then next time, be sure to say what you mean,” his wife told him.

•   •   •

In his tiny house on Youngs River, James Berg and his wife were in exhausted reset after another fight. They hugged, weeping. He
promised to find a better job, she promised to spend another week thinking about the letter she'd just received. When they met in college neither of them pictured themselves living on the edge of a river, feeling always wet, getting by from paycheck to paycheck on what a custodian made. She had been an English major with dreams of going on to get her doctorate and that would never happen in Columbia City. Too small, too isolated, the cloud cover a suffocating cap, but that very afternoon a break in the gray—an acceptance letter from the University of Washington's graduate program.

“Do you mean it?” he asked.

“Yes, I'll think about it for another week,” she said. “But you and David could come up to Seattle. A new start.”

“I know, but David has his friends here and his grandfather and—”

“Todd's here too.”

Really, she'd already made up her mind to go, they both knew that, but it felt good to pretend for a while that she hadn't. Not for himself but for David. A small flock of raindrops expired on their kitchen window, pushed fatally off course by a gust of wind.

“Oh, wow,” she said, walking away, “it's raining again, what a surprise.”

•   •   •

David couldn't catch our kid Jimmy before the recess bell rang. After all, what sort of a legend would it be if he did? Jimmy went into class, chest heaving joyfully, and he sat with the ball under his chair. Later, when Principal Berg called him into the office he said, “Bring the ball too.”

The class said, “Ooh, you're in trouble.”

The teacher said, “Quiet now.”

Pedro said, “Viva la revolución.”

•   •   •

Principal Berg sat Jimmy and David in his office. David was squeezing out sobs. Berg wondered again if it was a sin to hate
your own grandchild. And if it was a sin, how bad? All his life he'd struggled with the gap between how he knew he should feel and how he actually felt. He remembered his son's junior year, when Freight Train was still the hero, pushing around opposing teams and sending shock waves into the bleachers and out into streets beyond. All of Columbia City had bobbed with it, acknowledged that,
yes, this is US, this is OUR team
. A feeling that had strangely been absent during and after the championship game the following year when Todd was suspended for his troublesome drinking and James finally got the chance to be the hero.
Why hadn't James been enough
? He had found even himself missing the electric feeling of the first championship season as his own son held up the trophy for the second. What kind of father did that make him?

Principal Berg made the boys wait, as was his usual strategy, and took a framed picture from off his desk. He turned to look out the window and down to the street below. Fog choked everything. It had rolled in shortly after the rain. From his office window it was easy to imagine the school as a ship and the fog the sea. The photo was of the Fishermen championship team his son's junior year. He slid his thumbnail into the small crack between the glass and the wood frame, the boys watching him intently. He pulled up the glass and then the picture too. Behind it were yellowed newspaper clippings, two or three of them—letters to the editor he had written. They were thin and brittle and with one good breeze they'd be no more. He sighed and he could have sworn that he felt all of Columbia City sigh with him.

“Jimmy,” Principal Berg said, “David tells me you stole his new basketball.”

David stopped crying to watch how it would play out and Principal Berg took this the wrong way. Bratty little tattletale. He knew David had a hard home life with his mother and father always fighting, but why couldn't the kid have a spine?

“He threw it at my head when I wasn't looking,” Jimmy said, solemn faced. “He threw it really hard,” he added, softer.

“David?” Principal Berg asked.

With the attention turned to him so quickly, little David accidently answered with truth. “Yes, Pop-Pop, but it's no fair 'cause—”

Principal Berg held up one finger to stop the red-faced David's blubbering. Another thing that grated on him about his grandchild: the nickname Pop-Pop. He'd never chosen it, had never agreed, and yet David insisted. “So you tried to throw the basketball at Jimmy's head?” He tsked under his breath. He knew David had been swindled, he just wished it had been the other way around. Jimmy was this quiet kid who seemed to only ever think about basketball—basically an idiot savant. How had he managed to trick David? Principal Berg could have restored justice, got David's ball back for him, but he wanted to foster in the child a backbone. Some spunk. Perhaps this would make him try and get the ball back on his own, not always go running to the adults. He turned to Jimmy. “Won't you leave my grandson and me alone for a moment?”

So Jimmy left, basketball in hand.

•   •   •

Later, when James Berg heard the whole story, he dropped his spoon in his bowl of soup. “Goddamn Kirkus,” he said. He got up, intending to make a call, make things right, happy for the distraction from his suddenly wifeless household, but then paused. “It's just a ball, Davie. We'll buy you a new one tomorrow. Now come on, eat your Campbell's.”

“No fair,” said David. “I don't want another basketball. I hate basketball and I hate soup and I hate you.” He ran up to his room, slammed the door.

James listened to the bang and then got up and dumped the rest
of the soup down the drain. He called out for pizza that night. Pepperoni pizza might make telling David about his mother easier. The kid loved pepperoni pizza.

•   •   •

When Todd came home from a long shift, his lip still hurting from the coffee burn, he looked in on his boys. There was Jimmy, curled around the basketball, sleeping the intense sleep of children. Wait, a basketball? Todd didn't know. He just didn't know. The house felt invaded, and somehow temporary. A wind could blow it down. The things you fear the most, and prepare for the best, are never solved or banished for good. They are in constant need of shoring up and will never be put completely to rest.

He went to bed and woke Genny Mori. Put his hands all over her. Rough, ready, somehow he persuaded her to have sex. Shared
this
with her when he couldn't share anything else.

“Doctor,” she said in her sleepiness and Todd didn't notice.

•   •   •

So Jimmy Kirkus had his basketball. It wouldn't leave his side for many years to come. No one could tell for sure how Jimmy knew to spin around at just the right moment before the ball hit him in the head. Kid was a natural, that was it. Had a sense. An intuition. The Force was strong in him. And on and on.

The Catch became a part of the Kirkus legend.

Friday, December 21, 2007

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD—FOUR DAYS AFTER THE WALL.

J
immy leaves Peter Pan Market with the Boston Baked Beans and MoonPies for the Flying Finn crinkled in a paper bag, mind fizzy on Carla. He's so distracted that he doesn't even consider going around the block, coming back to his grandpa the back way, avoiding those two hecklers, until he's halfway there and they've already seen him. Turn now and he'll make it worse. The two Subway minions resume their teasing, “How'd you hit your head, huh Kamikaze?”

“This kid is in serious need of a straitjacket, right, D? The orderlies know you're out in public?”

Jimmy stops walking. There's something crackling inside his body. A bigness he didn't know he had. “Shut up,” he says.

He takes in the men. There are details he didn't notice before. Like one of them is older by a few years. And the younger one is punk for sure. Kid who normally wears black eyeliner, earrings, and leather with conical, metal studs. But he looks silly today because he's wearing the green and tan Subway uniform so the only way you can tell he's punk is from his black eye makeup and his stringy, black hair.

And suddenly Jimmy sees it. It's David Berg and the bigger guy is Ray. Ray Atto. Used to be a big shot on the team. Was a senior Jimmy's freshman season. He's gotten fatter since high school. Rounder. A certified townie. Find him down at Desdemona's the
second his shift ends. What an odd alliance. Just two years ago and a high school hotshot, Ray would have been shoving effeminate Goth David into lockers. Now here they were, teaming up to mock Jimmy.

“The fuck you say?” Ray says.

“Why aren't you in school?” Jimmy asks David.

David shrugs. Giggles. “Work study.”

“What the
hell
you just say?” Ray persists.

Jimmy shakes his head. “Nothing.” He keeps walking. He's got Mr. Berg's eyes on his mind. First thing he saw coming out of the ether after banging the wall was a set of those Berg eyes. He's surprised to see the same ones live in David's head.

“Hey Kamikaze!” Ray shouts.

Jimmy doesn't turn around but he feels the ball hit him hard in the back of his head. Jolts his vision like the DVD skips. He halts. The contact with the basketball, the leather and air, it touches him deeply. Into his brain, down through his organs. Reaches within his sore head, finds the switch for pain, and then rips it from the wall. Forces him to take account of it. No wonder catch this time, no miracle.

“You want to play a game?” Ray taunts. “Old time's sake and all that?”

Jimmy turns and picks up the ball. He can feel his energy run down through his hands and into the basketball. He spins it on a finger and warmth spreads throughout his hand, back up his arm. That newfound crackling bigness is in him again. It threatens to burst him at the seams. He can't understand this. When he was little, basketball was so easy Jimmy's come to see that time as the setup for his fall. Life can't be easy, that's his new theory. But even when basketball was easy, it never felt like this. He'd always felt small, in deference to the game. Now here he is, big old spirit springing up. The game a thing to use. If it's not this then it'll be
something else. And how strange, to feel bigger than a game that once seemed enormous. Still, he's got to play or he'll punch Ray or he'll scream like a lunatic. No, ball will be better. If it hurts, it hurts. He's felt worse. Just put Ray in his place, that's all he's got to do. “Yeah, let's play, OK?”

“Hey look,” Ray says, and walks up beside him. “I'm a beat the once-upon-a-time Jimmy Kirkus.” He lowers his voice, pretends it's just between them. “Buckle up.” For those with a life not going according to plan, a game against the once great Jimmy Kirkus—Jimmy
Soft
as he's been recently known—can cure all. So look how Ray elbows Jimmy in the ribs when he reaches for the ball. The air seeps out. It hurts, but Jimmy smiles for the license the pain gives him. He's been knocked enough to do some knocking of his own. Finally.

“OK, let's play,” Jimmy says again.

“Let's play, let's play!” Ray blubbers sarcastically. “That the only thing you can say since you hit your head, retarded? You're
still
Jimmy Soft.” Ray thinks he knows the keys to beating Jimmy Kirkus, just like every other guy in the state. Knock him around a little and there goes his shot. It's common wisdom. Doesn't take much to rattle him.

Thing Ray doesn't know is that this isn't the same Jimmy anymore.

Of course Jimmy makes the shot to get the ball first. Kid can still shoot. Ray tents his hands before him, like all the kung fu movies he's seen on TV, and bows.

“This how they do it in your country, Kamikaze?” Giggling, like it's the wittiest thing ever done, he looks back at David on the bench. “Shao Lin!” he shouts.

“Just check,” Jimmy says, passes him the ball.

Ray dribbles hard a few times, between the legs, behind the
back. Skills are still there for sure. “You know, only thing good came from Japanese is pork fried rice.”

“That's Chinese, you dick.” Never has Jimmy wished violence on a person as much as he wishes it on Ray right now.

“Whatever, same thing. This is a favor, me playing you. I could get the Kirkus Curse rubbed off on me.” Ray passes Jimmy the ball. He had once worked at Van Eyck with his pops. Then he got fired for taking product home. Now he's stuck making sandwiches, minimum wage, at the Subway. Plastic gloves, would you like a drink with that? “Look, maybe with this head injury and all you'll just sit the fuck out this season, jump back in it once we're down in 4A, playing with the children. That's more your speed. Don't have to embarrass yourself.”

Jimmy catches the ball and the game starts. Ray drapes himself over him, poking at the ball however he can, scraping with his sandwich-oiled fingernails. He rips another elbow to his gut. Jimmy absorbs the blow. Feels it push out all the air in his lungs. His head is rolling. He spits up a little. Bends over and brings the ball close to his hips. He feels the pain pulse out of his body, feels that crackling bigness inside him.

Look! Jimmy's smiling to himself again. He brings the back of his head up sharply into Ray's sternum. Ray grunts and steps back, surprised, Jimmy can tell. He isn't the same Freshman Jimmy who was thinner than a ghost and eager to please. Jimmy takes the space opened up and drives hard for the hoop. Dunks neatly for the lead.

Ray can't help himself, says, “holy shit,” at Kamikaze's hops.

From then on, every point scored by Jimmy needs to go through Ray's body. A layup past the point of his chin. A turn-around jumper with a knee-jab into his crotch. A runner with an elbow into the soft, fleshy part of Ray's bicep.

Ray's wheezing so hard that he steps back to call time-out and find his lungs. Soon he's doing it every time Jimmy scores. The Flying Finn comes out of the bushes with our man Jimmy up seven to zip. He finds the bag of MoonPies and Boston Baked Beans Jimmy left lying on the sidelines. Rips open the packages and chomps down greedily until there's thin, brown-red paste covering his lips and dribbling down his chin. He's giggling and saying over and over again,
Thanks, Jimmy; thanks, Jimmy; thanks.

And meanwhile, see, a strange thing is happening. The news that Carla ignited is spreading throughout town. From phone to phone it jumps. Text messages and voice mails. “You'll never guess.”
Kids in school are counting down the moments until the end of class, coordinating rides, whispering routes. Adults are making sure they're in the neighborhood so they can stop by and see. Peter Pan Courts are halfway to everywhere in Columbia City so it doesn't take long. Even before the game with Ray is half over, people are showing up. They come to see famous Kamikaze Kirkus breaking down, and instead they find some real round ball. The small lot for Peter Pan Market is completely jammed with cars. They're walking down to the court in small groups. Quiet, respectful still, but their chatter creates a rustling. They're mostly adults at first, like the mailman stopping mid-route, or gray-haired Officer Aight keeping peace and looking on from the hood of his car.

Ray holds up his hand for time, gathers himself, and in this action Jimmy remembers Ray exactly as he was in high school. The Great Ray Atto. He was all-league every year he played for the Fishermen. His face is so disguised in layers of the sweaty salami he sneaks into his fat mouth during his shifts at Subway that Jimmy didn't really see Ray as he used to see Ray until just now. That senior on the team when Jimmy was a freshman coming up. A used-to-be stud jealous over Jimmy's flash.

“Wait,” Ray says. “I got to get back to my shift.”

“Oh, come on, Ray,” someone calls, “Let the kid finish you off.”

“Finish me? I was just getting ready to—”

“Ready to what?” crows the Flying Finn, his Adam's apple hard at work pushing up words through that skinny neck. “Meaner basketball player I's never seen.” The Flying Finn's rounding into fine form, to the old shouting promoter he once was with Todd. “Kirkus blood runs hot and strong. Hot and strong. Sorry Ray
Eat-Toe
, you don't got chances in hell.” The Flying Finn runs around the court flapping his arms and growling though his teeth. Hopped up on MoonPies and Boston Baked Beans. Dangerous. Jimmy looks on, surprised to find he's not embarrassed by the old eccentric like he used to be; this is his grandpa, this is his family. Stand up now, stand up together.

The crowd—'cause now, see, there's enough people that it's a legit crowd—laugh with the Flying Finn, jeer for Ray to play on, and vibe on the general energy.

Jimmy sees them all seeing him and it's like a hug. An envelopment that pulls him tighter into himself, calms his flailing soul. He doesn't want to be soothed by it—fuck them—but he finds he can't help it. He hears them whispering to one another, feels that spark.

Look it here.

Who's that?

That Jimmy Kirkus?

Kid got big.

Head doesn't look as bad as they say.

Playing who? Ray Atto? No way. Just no way.

Moves pretty good, huh? Maybe he'll be ready to play this year. A real shot at 6A on the way out after all.

Look it. Look it now!

They laugh with and at Grandpa as he runs. He's a local celebrity—the famous Flying Finn. Mouth going nonstop, one
hand on the top of his green helmet and the other clutched in a fist at his side. He circles around and around the court. Big skinny dude like a blow-up man at a car lot. Air running right out the top of his head.

“Ray
Eat-Toe
, you wake the Kirkus up in young Jimmy, so now you will beat him maybe? But only if you didn't have to get back to the work?” The Flying Finn keeps turning to the crowd as he talks, like he constantly needs to be reassured they are still on his side.

“Listen, old man, can't lose a job,” Ray says, voice crackling. “My girl's pregnant. I don't wanna get fired and end up homeless and crazy just like you.”

The crowd oohs and Grandpa howls and Jimmy says, “Well,” but then something happens. Little David Berg, all grown up and punked out, priorities mixed, skipping school to work an extra shift at Subway, steps in and says, “Yo, Ray, I just called Tommy. It's cool if we stay longer.” All eyes on David now. He wilts, speaks quieter. “So you can finish the game.”

Ray hunches his shoulders like he's been handed down a death sentence—and really, he has. He's gonna be the footnote in Jimmy's legend. The first casualty of the comeback. Jimmy looks at David and wouldn't you know it, David smiles before he looks away.

Everything forgiven in a second? Hell, it could happen.

Jimmy scores the last four buckets to win right through Ray's sternum, and once, his neck. Blows Kamikaze inflicts on Ray just like he's been taking himself in every high school game he's played for the Fishermen. Little chippy stuff that might otherwise seem like dirty play, but in the realm of sport is lauded as playing tough. Hits that hurt, no doubt, but are discrete and precise enough the ref would probably never see, certainly never blow the whistle on. Jimmy's taken so many of these over the years, he gives them as a maestro.

For the game-winner, Jimmy dusts off some vintage touch. Right after he gets the check from Ray, he splashes down from almost half-court. So far out, he divorces from gravity. You keep this world, I'll take the next. Leaves the crowd gap-mouthed like fish brought to deck. His shooting arm extended up, hand pointed down, frozen in form—he's the hook.

Somebody shouts, “Hey Ray
Eat-Toe
, got something in your eye?” and everyone laughs, even Jimmy a little. Ray stomps forward toward the crowd, his fist cocked like he just might try and punch out every single person. Then he turns for a second like he'll take a swing at our man Jimmy, but Jimmy doesn't flinch like, you want me? I got more than you can take. The crowd jeers louder. Ray melts. Wanders off taking taunts, red in the ears, muttering to himself.

Jimmy laughs out loud and the people are laughing with him. Here it is, a joy in the game, the beautiful game. Used to be he was scared to mess up, now he's just loving the process. It could be this, or it could be a thousand different things.

After Ray, opponents step forth from the crowd to challenge Jimmy, and he beats every single one. Jacked-up tough and looking for a test.

School's out so the kids crowd into cars and the back pegs of bikes to come watch Jimmy beat any and every comer. It's the Friday before Winter Break and everyone's already hopped up on the short season of freedom from class to come. There's nothing holding them back. They'll stay out as long as they like. And who will stop them? Boys pinch girls and girls slap back. Someone is passing around a big bag of M&M's. Everyone, including the losers, tingle with the sense that
this
is special. Kamikaze scraps after every ball, smiling and laughing and grunting and sweating; sweating, swatting, and galloping. Scraping knees and elbows, forehead and lip, he plays on until he's in such a tornado of fury
and fun that he beats the Johnston twins at the same time. Two on one and it feels like they are the ones outnumbered. His stomach lurches and his head aches. He pushes past them. Just little things. And the kicker is this: Jimmy doesn't get scored on once. Unstoppable. He seems to levitate over the cement. He's in the zone. To the crowd he's moving with almost supernatural quickness; knows the future, gets there before it happens. To Jimmy though, it's effortless, everything slow; he's got all the time in the world. The basket as big as the ocean, it's harder to miss than make a shot.