Rules for Becoming a Legend (28 page)

Friday, February 29, 2008

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

A
fter home games, Jimmy goes straight to the parking lot without showering or changing; doesn't even stay for postgame recap from Coach Kelly.

Not since LeBron James has a high school player created such hype. From sea to shining sea college coaches are making their early pitches for Jimmy Kirkus to join their team. Be a bronco, a buc, a bumblebee. Be a blue devil, a muskrat, a tiger. Join a storied team with pedigree and fistfuls of championship rings. Be the one to bring a program to glory, national renown. Unlike LeBron—a golden boy with a big grin and easy laugh who went straight to the NBA before the rules changed and college became required—to consider Jimmy is also to consider his darker history, his slump, his family. And still, these people come. These college scouts and recruiters attend games, wear bad hairdos and sunglasses indoors. Make notes on legal pads, text in scores after each period on their cell phones. They frequent Dairy Queen and Pig'n Pancake. Bad chili and big bellies. Favor large Cokes and even bigger mugs of coffee. They are overweight and sweaty. They are the greasy paper holding the food. They all claim to have Jimmy's best interests at heart. They call him, send e-mails to his supposed account, are seen in cars idling in parking lots just so they could say, “I've been there for you all along.” All to bring him to a school so that school could win more games. Jimmy, however,
ignores them all. He brushes past each buddy-buddy scout with the shoulder-draping half hug and maintains his privacy with resolve. He also never answers questions from the reporters who are growing more numerous with each game. The most they can get out of him, with a nod to Rasheed Wallace, is a “both teams played hard.”

“Pretty good game,” Todd always says when Jimmy climbs in the idling van.

“I played OK.”

“Better 'n OK! You are the cream in the quiche!” Grandpa says from the back.

“There's no cream in quiche, you old idiot.”

“Oh, there's plenty of cream in my quiche!”

“Let's eat,” Jimmy says. It's their routine.

The three of them get dinner at the Dairy Queen, away from fans and reporters, and they talk of nothing, really. Whose turn it is to do the dishes, the laundry, the lawn. Anything that's not The Thing is fine. The Flying Finn's plans of opening a new restaurant. Todd's reluctance to join on. If it doesn't include a brick wall, basketball, or Dex and Genny Mori, then it's fair game.

“Come on, Toddy-boy, we call it Kirkus's Smorgasbord.”

“What in the hell's a smorgasbord?” Freight Train asks.

“It's like a buffet, Pops,” Jimmy says.

“How the hell do you know the word ‘smorgasbord,' old man?” Todd points a chicken strip at the Flying Finn. “Wait.” He turns the greasy fried chicken on Jimmy. “How the hell do
you
know?”

Jimmy shrugs. “Studying is all.”

“It's a moo point,” the Flying Finn says. “I don't like the name no more.”

“Goddamn, Grandpa. It's ‘moot point,' there's no cows involved.”

“I know there's no cows involved!”

Then James Berg comes in with Sarah Parson, RN, hot new couple in town, and they order cones, hers strawberry dipped, his plain.
Berg turns and sees the Kirkus men with his tongue already deep into the first lick. He does a sort of snorted laugh, and then holds up his cone in greeting. The Flying Finn and Todd wave back.

“Sundays, four o'clock,” Berg calls. It's an old man's pickup game he's setting up.

“I'll be there,” Todd says.

Sarah Parson winks, and Jimmy knows it's just for him. After they leave, Todd is smiling. Good to see the man relax, let's Jimmy relax to.

“The old hound dog,” he says.

The kid is close to happy when he's eating DQ with the Flying Finn and his pops. It keeps him close.

•   •   •

Jimmy's a loner most of the time, but he tracks down Carla once the notebook is full with his life, all sprouted from her poem, thinking it's the right thing to do. She steered him toward this new, tentative thing he's doing called writing. He thinks if he can share it at all, it will be with her. She is pretty, maybe she is love. They can break this whole only-phone thing wide open. Why not?

He finds her at work behind the counter of Peter Pan Market. Already her appearance has changed since that night she spoke with him and he went out to beat ten in a row. When he grabbed her arm, it grabbed something else inside her. Activated it. She wears makeup badly. Her eye shadow arcs too high and her lipstick cakes too thick, but the effort hints at an adult sexuality, and that's enough for Jimmy to feel a pulse in his loins.

“Hi,” he says when the doorbell trips and announces his arrival. The market is empty. It is always empty. It's just another mystery in small town magic. A store can survive with seemingly no business outside of the random grade school kids coming in with their grubby-palmed pennies. “Thanks for the poem. It was . . . it made me do this.”

She looks confused and Jimmy looks away because of this, sees the Boston Baked Beans and MoonPies on a lower shelf and this feels nostalgic. The bloated notebook in his hand feels offensive. He wishes she'd just take it.

“I don't know. It's that.” His heart is racing. It seems like she has no idea what he's talking about. He feels cheated, defeated, and a little bit horny despite it all.

“Thanks, I mean, whatever,” she finally says. She looks behind him and he realizes she's making sure they're alone. All the ease of their talks on the phone has vanished. She doesn't reach for the notebook, just brushes it politely with her eyes.

Jimmy presses on, hoping he's not being made a fool, hasn't been expecting too much from this. “Your poem meant a lot to me.” He looks her in the eyes, notebook rolled in his hands, trying to show her, to relate to her. The last chance.

Carla looks nervous and says the Wrong Thing. “You're so good at basketball. 6A, it seems easy to you.”

Jimmy deflates. He'll not show her the notebook after all. She doesn't understand anything. “Hey, thanks,” he says.

And then two honks and her pops the preacher is outside. Steaming in the driver's seat. Jimmy knows he's been labeled a Bad Seed. He's even heard that Carla's father speculates in his sermons about whether Jimmy and the brick wall smacks of possession by the devil. Jimmy wants to scream at the nervous little preacher man, “You think I'm gonna get her high, knock her out, and then knock her up? Well fuck off!” He doesn't though. Of course he doesn't.

“I got to go, but we can hang out sometime, if you want,” she says, batting her eyes with their questioning makeup.

Jimmy is too stunned to makes sense of her. “OK,” he says.

On the way to the car, in full view of her father, she kisses him on the mouth. She presses too hard and he feels her teeth through his lips. Blood, must be his own, comes into the equation. She
leaves him standing there, wiping his mouth. Her father's car squeals off. The man who took over the cash register for Carla whistles. “Well, damn.”

Jimmy leaves the store. She didn't want the notebook, but said they could hang out sometime. Has played coy but kissed him on the lips.

Later he calls Sarah, catches her in a hurry to go someplace.

“What's up with girls, they're so weird.”

“Can't talk, Jimmy, but I'll tell you something about girls, every single one is the wrong one until you find the right one. Over the next ten, twenty years you'll shoot like point zero one percent on girls. It's not like basketball, Jimmy.”

“I never said it was.”

“Gotta run.”

“Have fun with Berg.”

“
Very
funny.”

•   •   •

Meanwhile, the town grows rapturous with basketball glory as the wins keep piling up in the wake of this new breed of basketball kid—Kamikaze Kirkus.

Hail Jimmy, full of grace . . .

They come out in droves to witness little—
not so little anymore
—Jimmy “Kamikaze” Kirkus blur across the floor. Fans will forgive anything if their team is winning and Fishermen fans are no different. They forgive the letdown of the previous two seasons and the strange way he's been acting this season. People have seen him at Tapiola Courts, screaming taunts at the river; running miles around town late at night; making circles on the counter with his coffee cup at Dooney and Steve's café, staring to the distance. And before each game, instead of participating in the “mandatory” pregame
warm-ups, Jimmy sits on the sidelines—hood on, earbuds in. He holds his ancient gray ball with names written all over it. He rubs the name written biggest and darkest of all with his thumb. Three letters—D-E-X—the rest of the names he's allowed to fade.

The basketball is with thee
.

His classmates start coming to games wearing helmets of all kinds as a nod to the Flying Finn and also Jimmy's encounter with the wall. They call themselves the Crash Dummies. Jimmy's reckless style of play is their drug.

Blessed art thou amongst Ballers.

So it's after a game and Jimmy sneaks out when his pops and the Flying Finn fall asleep after arguing long and hard about Kirkus's Smorgasbord: Salty Snacks and Sweet Treats. The Flying Finn saying they should have all kinds of different food. His pops being like “A restaurant should have an identity.” Jimmy takes the van keys straight out of his pops's jacket pocket. Nobody knows where Jimmy is, and he likes the feeling. Windows down, headed for the beach, for the jetty. He parks in the same parking lot he remembers from so long ago. Area C. He gets out and looks around. He's alone. He climbs up the dunes and down to the water beyond.

Blessed are the games you play.

He's wrong about being alone, though. Up in the dunes, unseen, David Berg is smoking a cigarette, contemplating life. End of it mostly. He's walked from Sunset Beach, about twenty miles in total, to this violent, rock-strewn jetty. His feet bleed—he's worn the wrong shoes. His black cape flaps restlessly in the wind. He's realized lately that all his friends are just raw nerve endings searching for Novocain. That's what all the getting high and dressing in
black is about. That's what he's about. He also feels bad about the security tape. He was the one who stole it, digitized it, e-mailed it around anonymously. First because he didn't think Jimmy had actually done it, later because he actually had. The grainy tape cast a spell over him. It's the reason he finally spoke up for Jimmy in front of Ray at Peter Pan Park. Jimmy's epic sprints at the wall were like everything he'd been feeling personified. For all the drugs and piercings, the black tape and metal spikes, Jimmy was pushed to do something that was real and painful. It made all David had done seem childish.

David's attention is grabbed by a dark figure walking over the dunes toward the beach. It's Jimmy. So David stops his contemplation and instead he watches over him. He doesn't know it but watching over Kamikaze is also watching over himself. He leaves him be, but makes sure he doesn't drown.

He keeps his secret safe, too.

Blessed is the life you live.

Jimmy rolls back and forth in the cold, soupy sand like he had seen his pops do so long before. Tastes the salt on each incoming wave. He tries to taste what his father tasted. He wants it to be the same, but how can he be sure? The sand is gritty, abrasive, black. It sticks in his teeth, catches under his tongue and in the hollows of his cheeks. It burns against a canker sore he has on the inside of his lip. Been there forever, it seems.
I used to have a sister
, he thinks,
a mother too
.
I had a brother once
, he knows this well.

The salty water feels tacky against the back of his throat and he coughs and sputters; he spits and squirms. The water that comes over him with each incoming wave, steady and strong, still feels cold, even after he's numb.
The fuck's getting numb about if I still feel it?
He gets weighted down deeper and deeper into the soupy sand. How long will he stay in this watery bed being built around
him? How far will he sink? Past the sand fleas and crabs. Past the sand toad.

Hail Jimmy, player of ball.

Jimmy stays until he is too tired to stay any longer and climbs back up the dunes. Great chunks of black, wet sand fall off of him like icebergs at the end of a glacier, like the excess of a creature sloughing away as he is more minutely formed, and he walks up the sand dunes and into the parking lot. He starts the van, squeals away, heater going full blast.

Safe again.

Play for us sinners.

The stars are out like embers and David of the Dunes cashes out his cigarette. He decides to go home again, if only for the night. He starts the long walk back to Sunset Beach where the car is parked. He'd walked so far because he hadn't intended on walking back. Each step hurts.

Now and at the hour of death.

His junior season, Jimmy Kirkus—who by this point even the newspapers call Kamikaze—leads the league in steals, points, rebounds, and guts. Kid loves the floor more than staying upright. Runs into the stands, flies through the air. Busts his elbow and cracks his chin. Wears his injuries like a Boy Scout's medals. Doesn't miss a game. Lets the hurts shape him. Points are an afterthought. Pleasant side effects to the gritty part of playing he's come to love. Everyone has forgotten about Jimmy Soft.

Amen.

Friday, December 8, 2006

JIMMY KIRKUS, FIFTEEN YEARS OLD—ONE YEAR UNTIL THE WALL.

T
he winter and fall of Jimmy's sophomore year were tough. Teachers pitied him, jocks reviled him, Goths mocked him, and everyone else just ignored him. At school he tried to disappear. He ate his lunch in the library with all the nerds—a little shrimp has-been. Pedro, who was becoming famous for his weed connect, made it his lunchtime routine to get kids high and tell embarrassing stories about his once-best friend. He was entering the terminal stages of a fanatic: collecting the kitsch of the celebrity in order to own his obsession so that he could then desecrate it, separate from it. In this case, stories. He fed the Jimmy Soft rumor mill with all the tales he'd been privileged to over the years. Freight Train and the pumpkin smashing, the Flying Finn and learning to ride a bike, Genny Mori always gone or going. These stories would come back to Jimmy, filtered through one or two kids, and at first all he would be able to see were the reasons they were wrong, how Pedro had changed them to make Jimmy come off worse. However, as these stories continued to circulate, their validity began to seem hard to question, even to Jimmy.

Meanwhile, the contrast in fortunes between Jimmy and Dex was striking. His kid brother ran through the halls with a booming laugh following his jokes. Rattling lockers, doling out high fives, an expert distributer of noogies and headlocks. Macking on chicks, pinned against them in corners and stalls, a true inheritor
to his father's legacy. Huge kid with a quick charm—a freshman who was treated like a senior. A rumor started making the rounds that Jimmy was adopted.

When basketball season came, Jimmy didn't sign up. That freshman season was enough. He was happy to bequeath the team to Dex. Step further into the shadows. Hope everyone could forget him and how he had become Jimmy Soft while they discovered Dex. No one questioned this move. Jimmy and ball, naw, that was done.

One afternoon on his walk home—through the front parking lot of Columbia City High School to avoid the Goths on the hill behind the baseball field—Jimmy ran into a group of ex-teammates. It was the day before the matchup with Shooter Ackley and the Seagulls, the opening of the Cowapa League regular season. Joe Looney, a senior that year, stopped him in the middle of the parking lot.

“Yo, J. Soft, we got your sweetheart Shooter tomorrow,” he said. He spit a brown spurt from his lower lip. Landed on Jimmy's feet. Our kid danced back, warm tobacco juice already turning cold as it soaked through his shoes. “Want me to give him a message for you?”

“Shut up, Joe,” Jimmy said, and immediately regretted it. The other kids in the parking lot, leaning against cars or each other, oohed, pointed, clapped once or twice. It was on. Big Joe's eyes flashed red. Jimmy could easily outrun him, but did he really want that on his reputation too?

Instead he froze and let Joe catch him by the arm. “You a weak boy, Jimmy Soft. I hear you're adopted. Makes sense 'cause your brother, he's nothing like you.” Another warm, brown stream, this time on Jimmy's shoulder. He could feel it soaking through his thick sweatshirt. The smell of tobacco and chicken fingers in his nose. Jimmy watched the brown stain on his shoulder instead
of looking Joe in the eyes. It was true about Dex. They were nothing alike. His brother was ripping through preseason with a ferocious brutality that Jimmy lacked. He was bigger, stronger, and tougher than anyone else. Plus people seemed to like him even without ball.

Jimmy pulled back and at the same time thought about whether he should go for a punch. He'd heard of weaklings getting lucky with a desperation swing. Why not him? Then in the next moment, he knew he wouldn't ever try and hit Joe Looney and a cold fear shimmered inside him because he saw the rest of his life like this. Where were the teachers to stop this, where was Mr. Berg?

Joe slapped him across the cheek and then shoved his index finger in front of Jimmy's face. “See, you're a bitch. So I slapped you, and this,” he wiggled his finger, “is me telling you.” Jimmy wrinkled his nose, furrowed his eyebrows, desperate not to cry. He stopped struggling to get out of Joe's grip. It was no use and it was embarrassing to keep trying. A crowd had gathered. “'Cause with bitches,” Joe rambled on, “you always got to be telling them.”

Then there was a flash. Joe's hand was off his arm. Someone, somewhere, let out a little scream. Jimmy was jostled back, but managed to stay standing. He looked down and there was Joe Looney, sprawled and blubbering on the blacktop, his Black Cat baseball hat crooked. Brown snuff juice dribbled from his mouth. Mixed with blood coming from somewhere. For a moment, Jimmy thought he had done it. He flexed his fingers, looked at his hand. Then he saw Dex, fist still hanging in the follow-through, breathing harder than the big bad wolf.

“Damn, you're a fat chunk of lard,” Dex said. The gathered crowd laughed uneasily and Joe got up on one knee, swaying but determined as hell not to show how much it hurt. Dex helped him stand.

“Fuck, Dex,” Joe said.

“How about you lay off Jimmy.”

Joe looked at Jimmy. Jimmy looked away. “Yeah, OK,” Joe said. He rubbed his jaw. “Ho-ly—”

“Shit is right.” Dex looked straight at Jimmy, eyes hot enough to burn. “My brother's an asshole, but see, he's kind of like my asshole, so it'll only be me doling out shit.”

•   •   •

Dex didn't come home for dinner that night. Jimmy ate microwave Hot Pockets on the couch while the Flying Finn pumped his stationary bike, watching tapes of the Tour de France. His mom was out and his pops was somewhere in the house but nowhere really. Jimmy went to bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the sounds of Dex coming in the front door. What kind of man lets his little brother protect him? He already had the reputation as Jimmy Soft on the basketball court, now he was going to have it for getting rescued by his baby bro too. He must have fallen asleep at some point for when he woke up, it was time to go to school and Dex was already gone.

Next day, kids steered clear of Jimmy. No snide remarks, no sharp elbows or stiff shoulders. Word had spread that Jimmy Soft was off limits. He saw Dex from afar a couple of times, always in a hurry. Running around the school, pulling basketball players aside to whisper in their ears. Then in the afternoon, Coach Kelly pulled Jimmy out of English class.

“How we doing, Jim?” he asked.

“We're fine?” It was the first time since the end of his freshman season that Coach Kelly had spoke to him.

“Glad to hear it. Dex tells me you can still shoot?”

“Sometimes I go down to Tapiola.”

Coach Kelly patted him on the shoulder. “Well, you think you'd be ready? Get back on the team, maybe go through the reps?”

Jimmy squinted his eyes, mind racing ahead, nosing around for the trap. “I don't know if I'm any good.”

“Oh, you're too young to know one way or the other.” Coach Kelly walked off leaving Jimmy to wonder what the hell was going on. When he went back into the classroom, all eyes were on him. Mrs. Parson stopped her lesson on similes. Silence. Jimmy realized he was frozen in the doorway—halfway in the classroom and halfway in the hall.

“Sorry,” he said, and quickly found his seat.

When the final school bell rang, Jimmy went home, lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling. The Fishermen had their game with Seaside that night. He planned to listen in on the radio. Imagine himself there. Three hours to tip off, and he wasn't even going to play, and yet his stomach was a mess of nerves.

Then his door burst open. “Get up,” Dex said. “Let's ball or something.”

“What?”

“We got Seaside tonight. Bus leaves in ten. Coach says you can play, so play.” Then Jimmy understood all the strangeness at school. Dex had been orchestrating this all day, lobbying on his behalf.

There was a pause where both boys acknowledged the space between them they'd opened up that summer to make room for the pointy edges of their fight, Jimmy's argument with Pedro, the basketball slump, shit with Mom and Pops.

“I'm no good,” Jimmy finally told him. “Not anymore.”

“Well you ain't good as me anyway.”

Jimmy's face flushed. “Why knock Looney down, anyway?” In the end, any shame he felt about being protected by Dex was burned out with the glow of love that came from knowing his brother was still in his corner.

“Dickhead was annoying me.” Dex couldn't help but smile. “Listen, I got something I was thinking on. Know that saying, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush? What if you didn't
like bird? What if all you were looking for was the fucking bush 'cause you were a vegetarian? What about that?”

Jimmy couldn't help it, he laughed. “What's it got to do with basketball?”

“Nothing, just something I was thinking about.”

“Jesus, Dex.”

“Just come on, huh? Don't be a jackass.”

And so Jimmy went. Just because it was Dex asking. He put on his sweats, packed up his sneaks. Took his gray ball and walked down to the bus with his little—
enormous
,
heroic
—brother at his side, yammering on about potential nicknames for himself.

“What about Microwave?”

“What?”

“Like, I'm going to put you on three minutes high!”

“No.”

“Windmill? 'Cause I got long arms?”

Jimmy laughed. Shook his head. It felt good to laugh, be cheered up. He played along. “You
do
got huge arms, but no.”

“One Punch? One Punch Kirkus?”

“One Punch?”

“I knocked Joe Looney down in one punch!”

“Hell Dex, you'd knock most of the population down in one punch.”

When they boarded the bus, every player looked at the two brothers as if they were extraterrestrials, nervous of how to make first contact. Jimmy would've turned and fled if Dex hadn't boarded behind him.

“So Dex talked you into it, huh?” Coach Kelly said.

“Guess so.” Jimmy looked away and the music stopped. No one knew what to do next.

Dex punched through the silence in an act of gallantry on par
with punching Joe Looney in the face. He shouted, “Let's go roast us some Shooter Ackley!” and the team cheered and Jimmy found a seat. They started up the bus and headed down the coast to Seaside.

•   •   •

Excitement about the Fishermen's rematch with Shooter Ackley and the Gulls ran high like a deadly fever. It would either break in a cold, satisfied sweat or someone would die. It was that simple. Genny Mori didn't hear the end of it at work. During her rounds at the hospital, other nurses, doctors, and patients found ways to bring up her two boys and their basketball fortunes. She liked having this new buzz. She enjoyed the attention, but more than that, it helped to take her mind off Doc McMahan and his beautiful eyes, his remembered touch, those hopes she had harbored for a future, shared life together.

At first after she had broken it off he had tried to find her alone in the hospital to plead his case. Walking through the tan, brightly lit corridors she came to half expect being sprung upon from a doorway by a waiting McMahan whispering entreaties to come over to his condo, have a drink, talk. He called at night, counting on Todd to be off on his night shift, and told her how he loved her and in all the different ways, until she cut him off with phone to cradle. These little run-ins and late night calls sent her heart rocketing, but she held strong. If he wanted her—this seemed more and more clear—then he needed to go in all the way.

So on the desperate nights with Todd felling forests beside her, as she clenched her teeth, hugged her pillow, and waited for the sadness, the missing, to seep out, the colder, rational part of her brain congratulated her on her resolve: if McMahan couldn't commit to her, then she'd be doing right by her family; but, also, by making him choose she was seeing if their love was a real possibility.

•   •   •

On the day of the game, McMahan set off to find Genny Mori. He planned on cornering her in public so she couldn't blow him off. He was a new man. This was it.

For McMahan, the affair with Genny Mori had been all about passion where his marriage was all about practicality. He liked to be able to say things to Genny Mori like “I wish I could stay inside you forever” that Madeline would ridicule him for. He hadn't exactly lied all those times he told Genny Mori he was planning on running away with her, he just had a proximity problem. In Portland, in his big house with wife and kids, it was easy to promise himself he'd break it off with Genny.

Then somewhere around the turnoff for Saddle Mountain on Highway 26, on his way to a three-day stint in Seaside, everything would shift, his body would produce a chemical and pump it into his bloodstream, he would press the gas pedal farther, eager to see his sweet Genny Mori, silently vowing to leave Madeline instead.

Since Genny Mori broke it off though, he missed her all the time. Even in Portland. Especially in Portland. Madeline had gotten into cleanses. Their fridge full of different color shakes and damp, leafy greens. Never before had his wife smelled so bad. And then also she always seemed annoyed with him. Jumped up, ready to fight.

No, this was it. He'd make Genny Mori listen to him because now he had something real to say.

•   •   •

McMahan approached Genny Mori in the lunchroom while she sat gossiping with her nursing friends. He came up to their table, clicking a pharmaceutical company pen compulsively.

“Dex is the talk of the town, Nurse Mori,” McMahan said in the loud, disaffected “doctor” voice he used when talking to nurses. It came off sounding like a bad robot impression. The nurses stifled
their laughter. There were plenty of McMa-bot impressions around the hospital, but Nurse Larry had the best. Genny, though she felt bad afterward, had even tried it a few times. Despite a real suaveness when he had been alone with Genny, and an undeniable physical appeal, McMahan stiffened up when addressing a group. And, she was happy to notice, he had gotten worse since the breakup.