Rules for Becoming a Legend (30 page)

“Jimmy, baby, how I missed you,” Shooter yelled as he came.

Then Jimmy saw Dex setting up a screen to the left of Shooter. A little glint in his eye. Baby bro was going to be Jimmy's rock, and a bad second choice to Shooter's hard place. Jimmy jabbed to his right, which he knew Shooter would anticipate, knew the big, cocky farm kid would be ready to go full-steam to the left, and so Jimmy went full on to the left too. Led his man right into Dex's bricked-up body. Shooter moaned when he hit. Screen? Naw, this was a playground
pick
. It picked inside Shooter's body, jangled up his organs, stole all his wind. Left him coughing, spitting, broke. Hurt so bad his grandkids would be sore. Freed Jimmy up completely. He was practically floating. Pulled up from so far beyond the three-point line, he might as well have been shooting from a different state. Redraw the territory lines 'cause Jimmy claimed it Kirkus Country. Splash. Three points. Game on.

With Dex taking up so much attention in the middle, it freed Jimmy to skate the perimeter, free and clear. Nobody could keep up with Jimmy long enough to knock him off his rhythm. The Fishermen clawed their way back into the game. The small contingent of Fisherman Faithful were dancing in the aisles after every shot made. Shooter quit his talking to concentrate on his breathing.

Then, with ten seconds left in the game, score tied at sixty-three, Jimmy had the last shot. He had the ball. Had the open look. Then there was Shooter, barreling at him, seething. And Jimmy glanced
around. Dex was tangled below the hoop. No help for him this time. And Jimmy—images of his pops's career ending, his meltdown last year, all mixed in his head—flinched. Tried a halfhearted pass. Shooter got a hand on it. Up, up, up in the air. Somehow, Dex disentangled himself. The crowd held their breath. Dex ran for the ball. Threw his body after it. Clock winding down.
Five, four, three
—he got a hand on it and tapped it back to Jimmy. Shooter, his momentum carrying him past Jimmy, screamed. Jimmy caught—
two
—and released—
one
—as time expired and Dex, getting to the ball had been too much, careened into the bleachers. The shot was a little wrist-flicker that nestled in the very bottom of the net like it lived there and was just going home.

The Columbia City fans rushed the court—Seaside's home floor—to mob Jimmy. Everyone loves a comeback story.
Hope springs eternal
and
In Jimmy we trust
. The chants of “
Dad-dy's bet-ter
” forgotten. Not only had the Kirkus boys done well enough to make it seem silly, they'd proven there would need to be an addendum in the legend surrounding the Kirkus family. Maybe, in truth, Freight Train was the second, or even third best Kirkus to ever play ball. In the center of the packed court, Coach Kelly found Jimmy and shouted in his ear, “We're gonna let this Kirkus train roll, baby, roll.”

“Yeah, Coach,” Jimmy said.

“You guys play like this, and we're talking state titles. That's plural. We'll be getting calls from all over the country on you two. Nike Hoops Summit invites. Draft chatter.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

Jimmy tried to turn away but Coach Kelly wrapped an arm around his neck, roped him in. He didn't like to be dismissed. That's the way it was with Coach Kelly. Basketball, basketball, basketball, always and forever, one more detail, always one more detail, to discuss. “We just gotta get you tough. You should've waited on that last shot. Shooter would have fouled you.” It was exhausting.

Jimmy pulled out of his coach's grip, squinted at him like,
What the fuck, we just won, why the hell you telling me now?
“Whatever, we got them,” he said.

“Listen to me, kid, the body's an amazing thing. I know, I teach health class. Your head, your skeleton, your hands, your feet. They're meant for this kind of shit. Pardon my French. You just
can't
run fast enough into a wall to really hurt yourself. Impossible. Bodies are meant for it. Look at Dex, he ran straight into the bleachers for the tip, and he's fine.”

Each of Coach Kelly's words was a small amount of weight bringing him back down to earth. So Jimmy left him, filtered into the crowd, looking to reclaim some of the jump he'd felt after burying the game-winner.

•   •   •

In the bedlam, Dex had been forgotten except by those people he pummeled through in their seats. He'd landed shoulder first on a bleacher's edge. He was bleeding and swollen and sitting in the first row. Someone had brought him a handful of concession-stand napkins. He had the bloody wad up against his bottom lip and took it away to spray water from a plastic squeeze bottle into his mouth, letting it drip pinkish down his chin, laughing in joy at the celebration.

•   •   •

When the final buzzer sounded, Genny Mori, as if floating on a cloud, made her way through the mobbing fans to her son. She brought Jimmy into a tight hug. He pushed away at the odd display of affection from her.

“Jimmy,” she said, “Jimmy.”

Then Dex came up, bloody napkins still held tightly to his lip. He'd procured an icepack somewhere and this was strapped to his already purpling shoulder.

“Oh, Jesus, Dex, what happened?”

“Tough last rebound.”

She turned to McMahan, little man of her dreams almost lost among the height, athleticism, and sheer joy of his surroundings. “Well we've got a doctor right here. What do you say, Doc?”

McMahan stuttered. “Well, I.” He lifted the edge of the napkin wad. “Might take him to the hospital for a look, just to be completely certain.” He touched the throbbing shoulder, “Yep, we should definitely check this one out.”

“Dex, mind if I ride the bus?” Jimmy asked. He looked over at Naomi, the cheerleader who had ignored him for the past year but was right then staring smoldering eyes at him—game-winning shots can be
very
sexy on some people.

“Jimmy's got a girlfriend,” Dex said in a high voice.

“Shut up,” Jimmy said with no malice. He hugged his mom one last time, punched Dex soft in his good shoulder, and then walked over to Naomi. She led him to the team bus.

“Pretty good playing out there, Dex,” Doc McMahan said. “I used to play a little out in Colton for Country Christian.”

Dex straightened up to his full six-foot, three-inch height. He puffed out his chest and looked far down at little McMahan. “Guess they're pretty desperate for players that far out.”

•   •   •

There was a traffic jam in the parking lot after the game. Cars honked happily to one another. All, even the Seaside fans, still under the spell of the Kirkus boys' display of greatness. Fishermen fans because it meant another uptick in the basketball quality of life, and Seagull fans because they had just witnessed something truly transcendent. The Fishermen bus edged through the lot foot by foot as traffic allowed, while smaller vehicles slipped by and honked to the players. Jimmy sat in the back of the bus, game ball in hand, Naomi at his side, just waiting for the
darkness of the open road to cover them. Waiting for the future. Waiting to be the Jimmy Kirkus the town wanted him to be.

•   •   •

In McMahan's car, Dex sat in the back and traded texts with teammates and Pedro. He was weighed down with fatigue. More so than he'd ever been in his life. And while he could have been on the bus trying to get with his own lady, doing that awkward wrestle with her on fake leather bench-seats, smelly adolescent boys all around, all he wanted to do was sleep for a million years.

The world was spinning pleasurably. The Doc had given him some wonderful pain relievers. Large, white pills that found the pain occupying his banged-up shoulder and then revoked its right to vote. Peace once more in the body of Dexter Kirkus. The start and stop traffic lulled him. He put on his headphones. Huge, black things with half-inch of donut cushion on each side. He slumped his head against the window, watched scenes play out in the cars stuck in traffic beside him. Kids and parents. Sing-alongs and fights over seats. Cell phones and radio dials.

He was about to press play on his CD player, finger on the button to import the fat beats of Pharrell into his skull, when he noticed his mom and the Doc both glance back at him through the rearview mirror at the same time. On a hunch he didn't press the button, but started to nod his head as if he had. He closed his eyes, pretending to drift off to sleep.

•   •   •

The moon was out, and just before Arch Cape, the traffic cleared and McMahan stepped on the gas. Genny Mori and him were having a whispered conversation. Kind of thing that seemed light enough to float away on the night, but that was only because it was too dark to see all the heaviness it carried. “Come away” was said a lot. “With me,” too. “Please” was everywhere and “I don't know” splattered the space between knee and stick shift and knee again.

And then finally, “Yes.”

Genny Mori knew something and she smiled to herself. This was where the tide shifted. The Doc would be hers and a second act of her life was set to begin. No more highs and lows courtesy of blustery Todd Kirkus. She had made up her mind and the Doc had too. Decision reached, it seemed so easy and she wondered why they hadn't done it sooner. She had an urge to celebrate. Go somewhere and plan a whole new life. They were headed to the Columbia City hospital to have Dex's shoulder looked at, but after that, who knew?

“Hawaii, what about Hawaii?” McMahan said.

The idea seemed so big Genny just laughed, but then again, now that her two boys were back to being friends, back to their old selves on the court, she felt free to let her mind roll. “Like Hawaii, Hawaii?”

“Like aloha.”

She squeezed his knee and yipped and he shushed her, Dex was in the backseat after all. Genny giggled, did a poor job of covering it up. Life was an exciting, huge thing and she had love for everyone and everything in it, but especially those monstrous headphones that she knew from experience blocked out any incoming sounds to Dex's ears. She was chiefly thankful for those.

McMahan really had the car going when he reached the curves leading up to the cove. He seemed jumped up, heady on the conversation they were having. A sort of thing that felt like it was stamped all over with
LAST CHANCE
and yet they'd made it just under the wire.

•   •   •

The bus—loaded with Fishermen players sleeping or listening to their iPods, or, in the case of Jimmy Kirkus, about three hundred taste buds deep into Naomi's mouth—was a few cars ahead of McMahan's and troubled with the steepness of the hill. The bus
slowed as the driver shifted into a lower gear to take on the steep grade. Doc McMahan's car went boldly into the oncoming lane and around the bus, lit off like a UFO.

“Fucking hell, punk,” the bus driver muttered.

•   •   •

Tuned in to his mom's conversation with the Doc, Dex almost missed the headlights barreling down the hill at them. The Doc was leaning toward his mother, not looking at the road, entering sacred airspace, and Dex was trying to concentrate hard enough to get his hands to release their death-grip on the seat cushion and instead wrap around the scrawny little man's neck. The headlights were too much though. They demanded notice. Through the fog of the painkillers pumping in his blood, he registered what was happening. The oncoming Toyota pickup, jacked easily a foot above regulation, came roaring down around the curve and drifted into McMahan's lane. Dex screamed in a hoarse way, his voice mostly gone from the game. It caught the Doc's attention and he tried to turn away from the truck, but it wasn't enough because it was too much. His mom's voice entered the fray. One word, repeated again and again. The Doc's luxury car tumbled over the shoulder of the road, tripping on the guardrail, pivoting and flipping so the back hit the metal ribbon upside down. The in-dash navigation computer cried danger. The guardrail skinned the back end of the car and the big, muscled Dex within, flat. Then the car glanced off one tree and wrapped its nose around the next. It was so sudden, violent, and final that when the car settled and silence quickly followed, it was almost as if it had never happened. Two or three seconds was it.

All three dead on the scene.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD—EIGHTY-TWO DAYS AFTER THE WALL.

T
he radio is blaring.

Hunter:
Welcome to Eugene, Oregon, sports fans, for the 2007 Oregon 6A state basketball championship. Columbia City versus North Bend. This is one for the record books. All because of one young Jimmy Kirkus from Columbia City, Oregon. I'm Hunter Smith, on behalf of Craig Lang, we're happy to have you with us for what will surely prove to be classic basketball tonight.

Craig:
That's right, Hunt, but you gotta get your names right. McArthur Court is The Pit and Jimmy Kirkus is Kamikaze Kirkus.

Hunter:
My partner in crime is right. Here in Eugene it's a federal offense to call it anything but The Pit, and the star of the show, Jimmy Kirkus, he's not only transformed his play this year, but his name as well.

Craig
: Transformed his play is right. He'd be a lottery pick in the NBA draft right now if they still let kids come out of high school. Guaranteed. I played against his dad, a heck of a player, heck of a player, Freight Train, and eh, well a lot of tragedy has befallen the Kirkus household and we here at 950 The Fan wish them all the best.

Hunter:
This has truly been one for the record books, partner. A thing of beauty. Jimmy has just steamrolled a strong team out of Canby led by the Duke-bound Ian Callert, and it doesn't seem like he can be stopped.

Craig
:
OSAA might want to reconsider sending the Fishermen down to 4A! I mean, have some mercy!

Todd Kirkus throws a half of a chewed pizza crust at the radio. He misses. “Fucking Craig Lang!” He sits up from where he'd been reclining on the couch. “Pop, you remember Craig Lang?”

The Flying Finn is on his bike in its spinning stand, fully spandexed in gear, pumping away the nerves as they listen to Jimmy play a couple hundred miles south for the state title. “No, was he in this movie
Princes of Persia
?”

Todd takes another piece of pizza, collapses back into the couch, takes a big bite and speaks through his chewing. “You're hopeless. Craig Lang was ball boy for Seaside my senior year. He never played against me.” Todd balanced the piece on his mounding belly, closed his eyes, and tried to picture what it would be like at Mac Court this very instant. This is where life has led him: not being allowed to watch his own son play for a state championship. Jimmy and his no-away-game rule. Stuck at home in Columbia City with an old man who thinks ball boys could be movie stars.

“Well, I's still think this Langy fellow might be from the movies . . .”

They both fall silent. It's happening.

Hunter:
Kirkus has the ball, and he's beat the first defender, around the second, holy cow this kid can move! Almost clear for the hoop. Ted Brown from North Bend set up to take the charge and.

Craig:
What a hit!

Hunter
:
Jimmy puts it in! Whoa Nelly, Jimmy Kirkus just laid out Ted Brown to put a cap on this game. Brown was moving his feet, and is called for the foul. A good call, although it appears Brown's the one a little worse for the wear, partner.

Craig
:
Jesus
.

Hunter
:
Bingo-bango-bongo tonight the Fishermen Faithful are going to party. Break out the champagne in Columbia City, folks. Kamikaze Kirkus has just put in fifty-six brutal points on the way to the 6A state title. The North Bend Loggers want nothing more to do with it! Send it to the presses! The Fishermen win! The Fishermen win!

Craig:
Never seen anything like it before. Never. Like he's
working
basketball, not
playing
basketball.

Hunter:
The fans have rushed the floor! It's pandemonium in Eugene! But where's Kirkus? Where'd he go?

Craig
:
Kid vanished like a ghost!

It's after one a.m., deep into nobody-o'clock, and Columbia City is deserted. Jimmy walks home from the high school parking lot alone. He told his pops and the Flying Finn that the team was staying the night in Eugene. Otherwise he knew they'd be waiting for him, couple of stooges in an idling van, and he wanted this walk for only himself. Still, everyone and their mother offered to take him home, but he said no. And they didn't persist. This is Kamikaze Kirkus after all. Guy you listen to if he decides to speak. Bringer of championship, silencer of critics.

It's cold, and the frost cracking under his foot as he walks along the river toward Dairy Queen, and then up the hill to Glasgow and his house, seems to be the only sound left in the world. Jimmy relishes it, walking slowly, letting the ice crack out over seconds of time. To him, his hearing still dulled from the packed gym in
Eugene—“Call it The Pit, boys”—this ice cracking is the loudest, best thing he's ever heard. It takes him an hour to get home when it should take less than five minutes. Looks like he's walking in slow motion. The few people who drive by honk their horns, shake their heads, smile.
There goes crazy Kamikaze Kirkus, one for the ages.

The house is dark, the front door unlocked. Inside it's warm and Jimmy breathes deeply. He sets his duffle bag on the couch and sits beside it. This house smells like home. Dust, wood, and gym shoes. His earbuds, which have been around his neck, hidden beneath his hoodie, are uncomfortable. He takes them off. They're still playing. He holds one earbud to his ear. “Diamonds on the soles of her shoes.” Song on repeat. He pulls out his iPod and presses stop. It's the only song on there.

He's bone tired and sitting uncomfortably on the couch. Slouched so far half his back is off the cushions. He's still not used to how big he's become. He thinks of himself as a smaller kid. A Keebler Elf, Dex would say. He is constantly racking up bruises by underestimating his size and running into things. He's awkward anywhere off the court. He shot up to a six-foot-eight beast of muscle and power in his year alone.

His soreness is a deep, rasping thing. As if each one of his muscles was taken out and stretched to the point of breaking and then put back into his body. Any movement might snap them. Leave him limp.

He stands up with the idea of eating something. He goes slowly toward the kitchen, moving with the exaggerated motions of a child pretending to be blind. He wishes he had turned on the light when he first came in, but now he doesn't want to risk finding the switch and knocking something over, waking the whole house, having to talk.

In the kitchen, Jimmy opens up the fridge and finds leftovers.
Plain cheese pizza: fair enough. He remembers how his mom used to always make them get half the pizza BLT, which Jimmy didn't mind so much until he was in situations like this—eating cold pizza in the dark. The T in the BLT pizza always let out the rest of its water into the pie as it waited to be eaten in the fridge. Then, when you went for a bite, you got all this ice-cold, watery tomato juice dripping on you. Cheese pizza, well hell, that wasn't so bad. Cheese pizza held its own. Locked up tight.

From in his pops's bedroom, he hears the bedside lamp click on. Jimmy stops trying to be quiet—the Flying Finn would sleep through a bombing—and scrapes a chair out from the kitchen table. He sits down and waits.

Big Freight Train Kirkus comes into the kitchen scratching his bed-messed hair. He flicks on the lights. Both men squint. His pops stares at him for a few moments. Jimmy feels it on the top of his head. Brightness like rain. He doesn't look up though. He's staring at the congealed yellow topography of his pizza.

His pops goes to the cabinets over the kitchen sink and takes down a bag of breath mints. He's been cracking them nonstop to keep his mind off drinking. He stopped for good on that flashing-light day he lost Dex and Genny more than a year before. Going to rot out his teeth because of it.

His pops is so big around the middle these days, he has to sit down first and then pull the table in after. The chair creaks and Jimmy watches his plate move out with the table, and then come back in. His pops settles, yanks on his shirt so it's better spread over his ample body.

“You played good tonight, kid, real good.” He cracks a peppermint. “At least from what the radio told me.”

Jimmy finishes his fourth slice of cheese. He nods.

“Thought the announcer was going to lose his voice.” His pops cracks another peppermint. Sound crisp like a gunshot. “Let me
think. Hell, I remember, fifty-six points, twenty-three rebounds, and eleven assists, I mean, Jim-my.” He says his son's name in two pulled-apart syllables, hoping he can put some goddamn joy in it. “That's something else!”

“Thanks,” Jimmy says quietly.

His pops drums his fingers on the table. “Hey, let me drive you somewhere, get you some warm food or something.”

“No, this is fine.”

“I mean it. Let's get you something special. What does a father buy a son to eat after he's just won the state championship?”

“Really, no.”

Jimmy yawns and the two men consider the sound for a long while. His pops changes his position in the chair, and then Jimmy does the same. These chairs are too small for these large men. Everything in this house is too small for them, even their beds. They have to sleep diagonally with their toes off the end.

When he get so big?
thinks the pops.

Am I so big?
thinks the son.

“Wish I could have been there, Jimmy. Grandpa too. Would have loved to have been there.”

•   •   •

Jimmy catches something in his throat. He's coughing and he needs a glass of water, so Todd jumps up and gets some for him. He watches his son drink, his Adam's apple leapfrogging the water as it glug-glugs down his throat.

“You got a lot of basketball left in you, Jimmy. Guys on the radio said you're the top recruit in the country. Said you'd be drafted right now to the NBA.” Todd pauses. Indeed the phones have been ringing off the hook. College coaches from all across the country. “Can't expect me and Grandpa to stay away from every game till kingdom come.” There, wrapped inside this man-child, are elements of the kid he used to tell stories to, tried to protect. He
wonders when was the last time he picked his kid up. Held him, kissed him on the forehead? There had to be a last time. There had to be. He wonders if on that day he had any idea how different the future was going to be. Had he any idea how sacred that last time was?

“Dad . . .”

“Listen, kid, what happened to Mom and Dex, was an accident, plain and simple.”

“Dad.”

Outside thunder cracks and a great rain rips down. The storm the news has been going on about for the past three days has finally come. It's raining cats and dogs—if cats and dogs were lions and bears. It smears itself onto the big river-facing window, water pulsing in the gusts of wind as if they were inside a chamber of the storm's heart. Todd uses the weather to pause, to gather himself because,
hell no
, he's not going to cry this night. He speaks louder over the rain and wind outside. “We're going to be safe when we drive. We just want to see you play. Nothing will happen. We'll take a bus even, if it helps. Next year, I just want to make this clear, we're coming to your games. We're not taking no for an answer.”

Jimmy gets up and puts his dish away. He comes back to the table and sits. Tomorrow will be the best day in a long while. But it isn't tomorrow yet.

His pops tries a different tack. “Coach called but that was over an hour ago. You took your time coming home. I meant to stay up but . . .” He chuckles, trying for levity—no go. “Anyway, Coach said you left your medal on the bus. You can pick it up tomorrow.” Todd lets out his breath. “Although I bet the way you're playing, he'll gift wrap the thing and bring it up to the house on his knees.”

“Naw, me and coach got it good. He don't care if I get the medal or not.”

“Oh?”

“Dad,” Jimmy says with those serious, dagger eyes he's picked up from somewhere, “how come you drank that night in Eugene?”

Todd is surprised by this, and yet, not at all. It's too small town in Columbia City. It was a secret, sure, but one he never meant to keep. “Jimmy, it's a long thing and . . .”

“Just tell me.” Jimmy stands up. His size is impossible.

So Todd tells him, in words more ready than he ever dared to hope. “You know how it is, Jim, you get so good at something that it's like no one can ever know, you know? And then you're alone because of that, and so it's nice to just stop feeling for a second, for one goddamn second.”

“But you'd been good for a while, Pops. You'd already won the title once. Why drink on that night? You could have been playing D1. Gone to the NBA.”

Todd remembers something. This guy Chuck from work came in pale and shaking because the night before he dreamed he had died with his best friend and they both went to hell. The devil came to them and said,
Each night you will die a new way, until you've died all the ways there are to die
. So the first night Chuck died falling off a cliff and his friend died being stuck in a car, fighting for air as it sank into the ocean. It was as terrifying and sad as if they were dying for the first time. On the second night, Chuck's friend had an idea. They would take turns dying twice so the other person could get a day off. Chuck went first. He died being stretched apart by horses and also choking on a piece of steak. It was terrible, but he looked forward to his night off when his friend would do the dying. However, when Chuck went to find his friend, he was gone. Chuck had been tricked and each night he had to die twice.

Todd shakes his head. The dream has stuck with him: Try and do right and you get the short end of it. Better to just do yours.
“Look, it's just . . . see, I had this argument with your grandpa. He wanted me to get drafted, go to the NBA. Get the money. I don't know if you know this, but the Nets called.” He looks up into his son's eyes, sees if this impresses him. Jimmy's eyes are blank. “And Coach Kelly kept pushing for me to take the scholarship to Oregon, 'cause he'd get a coaching job out of it. But it wasn't only that. James'd be on the team too . . . I got into an argument with Dad about it. And you know. Going to Oregon wasn't just going to Oregon, it was helping coach and James too. And Dad didn't understand, wanted me to take the money and go pro, and he was kind of the one guy I wanted to understand me, you know? Your own father?”