The Lords of Discipline (50 page)

VMI’s center controlled the jump. Mance received the ball and slowly began bringing it up the court. “What’s the joke?” he repeated above the noise of the crowd.

“It’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard,” I answered as he turned his back to me and began backing me toward the basket. He failed to see Johnny DuBruhl leave the man he was guarding and sweep around Mance’s blind side, tipping the ball toward the scorer’s table. I broke for our basket and called for the ball.

The pass was too long and I sprinted for it as hard as I could run. It hit the floor in front of me and bounced high above the basket. I reached it in midair and shot the ball at the same instant, laying it against the painted white square of the glass backboard. I knew the shot was good before I saw it go in. When you are playing as well as you can play, there are times when you do not have to watch your shots strike the cords of the net. Experience and touch and instinct tell you that the shot is good as soon as it leaves your hand.

When I reached Mance, I taunted him, “On that last play, All-American candidate Jimmy Mance looked like horseshit. Everybody’s laughing at you, Jimmy.”

“Tell me the joke, McLean,” he threatened, keeping a wary eye on Johnny, “or I’m going to score every single time I come down the court. And you know I can come damn close to doing it.”

After issuing this statement, he pumped in a perfect twenty-five-foot jump shot that robbed the crowd of its exultancy and confidence. I quickly told him the only joke I could remember on the spur of the moment. “A cadet’s definition of an intellectual is anyone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.”

“That’s not funny, McLean,” he said, glowering angrily at me. “That’s the worst joke I ever heard.”

“You had to be there, Jimmy,” I answered, receiving the in-bounds pass from Johnny and bringing it up the court.

When I reached the front court, Reuben and the forwards cleared out of the middle; Johnny moved to the left of the court and stood directly in front of our bench.

“Drive him, Will,” Johnny called. “Drive his ass off.”

The right side of the court was left open for me to maneuver Mance.

“You’ve got three fouls, Jimmy,” I said, eyeing the big men of VMI dropping off their men to protect their star. “Be careful. The pro scouts want to know if you can play defense. If you can’t guard me there’s a chance you won’t be able to handle Jerry West and Oscar Robertson.”

“Come on, Will,” Mance challenged, sweat dropping off him in clean, hot drops.

I broke hard for the basket, beating Mance in a quick first step, put my body between him and the ball, and drove past him with all the speed and skill earned in a ten-year apprenticeship in the sport. But I felt him recover, match me step for step, straining to retrieve the last essential angle, which I refused to surrender. When I left my feet, I felt his breath and hovering presence and knew that he foolishly was going to try to block the shot. I showed him the ball and saw his long, muscled arm slap at it. He slapped my wrist instead as I pump faked, and with my eyes still on the basket and traveling full speed I was in the midst of doing what I did the best in my game. I laid the ball in softly, perfectly, with an underhand sweep that barely eluded a leaping VMI forward who had sloughed off Doug to help Mance.

I made the foul shot and the score was tied. For the next fifteen minutes, the play was spirited and furious, but with three minutes to play Johnny hit a jump shot that tied the score for the thirteenth time in the game.

Mance came down the court with his eye fixed to the clock. Picking him up at half court, I tried to make him surrender the ball or give up his dribble. But he was too good and quick, and he taught me some lessons about ball handling as he moved me toward the key.

I could sense that the other VMI players were setting up a series of screens behind me.

“Pic right, Will,” I heard Johnny cry out.

“Pic left,” I heard Doug’s voice and I knew that Mance was making his choices and taking his time.

I moved to my left, overplaying his right hand, his best hand. With a beautiful crossover dribble he drove to his left past the first pic, but kept his eye on me for a second too long. He did not see Johnny anticipate his move and jump into his path, establishing a solid defensive position. He did not see Johnny until he ran right over him, his shoulder catching Johnny in the midsection. It sounded like the collision of steers, and Johnny somersaulted across the court. The referee put his palm behind his head and signaled a charging violation. There was bedlam in the crowd as the buzzer sounded and the official score-keeper indicated that the great Jimmy Mance had fouled out of the game.

With his head down, Mance loped toward his bench. I followed him and near midcourt I laid my hand on his shoulder. He stopped, and we faced each other wordlessly. He put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked toward his bench together. The Corps rose and paid him homage in a thunderous, rousing ovation. Before he sat down, we embraced, embraced hard, and we held it for several moments. It would be the last time we would ever play against each other, the last time we would ever duel beneath the lights. He had scored forty points; I had scored twelve.

“If I guarded you every night, you’d be an All-American for sure, Jimmy,” I said.

“If I played as well against everyone else, I’d deserve to be. Good luck, Will.”

“You’re the best I ever saw, Jimmy. The best I ever saw in my life.”

Mance walked to his seat by his coach and out of my life forever.

Without Mance, the VMI team was not nearly as good a team as we were. But there are times in athletics when that does not matter. There are times when average ballplayers transform themselves by an immense spiritual effort into athletes they were never meant to be. When we returned to the court to face the disadvantaged VMI squad for the final minutes, we figured we would win the game easily. But we had not reckoned on the possibility of these splendid transformations. The VMI team came at us with hunger and spirit and elan. They surprised us with their hunger, the fierce terror of their want, as they scrapped us from line to line. The boardplay beneath the rim was fearful and savage. Only a last-second shot by Reuben tied the game and brought us into the first overtime. VMI had found heroes in three mediocre players, and it was beautiful to watch.

Though we did not know it then, we were engaged in one of those games that would become legendary in the barracks. On this night, these two average college basketball teams would honor their sport with the irrepressible intensity of their will to win and the radiant chivalry of their gamesmanship. Each team scored nine points in the first five-minute overtime. Each team scored six in the second overtime. Each team scored seven in the third overtime. We were playing in the longest game in the history of the Institute.

As we prepared to take to the court, exhausted and feverish below the passionate crowd, we could not hear Coach Byrum’s shouted instructions for our strategy in the fourth overtime. He was losing his voice and the noise of the crowd precluded any chance or need of hearing him. Bo Maybank stroked my arms and neck with a clean towel, and the pressure of his small hands felt almost sexual as I closed my eyes and listened to the masculine chant of the Corps in all its primitiveness and lawless carnality.

I could barely move as the horn sounded to end the fourth overtime. My feet and legs ached, and my knees felt as though someone had poured lead shot into them. I winked at Abigail, nodded to the General, and knelt on the floor to tie my shoes. Johnny DuBruhl came over, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Let’s end it, Will. I’m tired as shit. If we have to go through one more overtime, I’m going to ask Byrum to forfeit.”

“I’m dying, boy,” I replied.

VMI scored two quick baskets in that first minute of play, but Doug hit a fall-away jumper in the corner and Johnny scored on a fast break. With three minutes left, VMI went into their freeze pattern and decided to gamble on taking the last shot of the game. The seconds fell slowly off the clock. I tried to pressure the sophomore guard who had taken Mance’s place, but he was a fine and cautious ball handler. I dropped back off him as he fed a pass to a forward, who had come out to the back court to take the pressure off the VMI guards. When I looked at the clock again, there was only a minute left to play, and I edged out toward the sophomore again and tried to bother him into a mistake of inexperience.

With twenty-two seconds left, the sophomore passed to the VMI center, who had broken up to the foul line. The center shoveled a pass to the forward on my side of the court. The forward’s eyes were nervous with the pressure, and I saw that he was desperately looking to get rid of the ball as soon as he could find an open man. My man moved to his right to receive an outlet pass. Doug, with his hands held high and his body taut and glistening, moved in quickly to pressure the forward. The forward pivoted cleanly away from Doug and glanced at the clock. Eighteen seconds. Seventeen. My body tensed as I felt the critical moment arrive as the game died on us. I saw the forward’s eyes search for the man I was guarding. I pulled back and let my man slide out unmolested to receive the pass. But I carefully preserved an angle between my man and the passer. I crouched and waited and I knew I was going to make a move, knew I was going to gamble, that I was going to spring into the center of action, knew that I was going to, knew I was, knew I . . . fourteen seconds, thirteen . . . and I saw the ball coming through the air as I lunged outward, my hand extended, as I tipped the ball away and chased it to the side of the court, controlled it, went behind my back with the dribble, and broke for the center, with players from both teams exploding toward the far court. Then I felt it.

I felt the Corps. They had broken with me; they had risen to their feet and I was swept forward by the immensity of their sound. They carried me forward with their noise and the power of their advocacy. I heard their thunder, their storm, the whole prodigious solidarity of the brotherhood accompanying my charge down the court.

I watched two of the VMI players, blurred images of scrambling gold racing ahead of me, trying to position themselves to contain the fast break that was forming in perfect order as I approached them, coming faster than I had ever come before, the seconds spilling off the clock. I heard Johnny filling the lane to the right and Doug calling to me from the left and Reuben trailing four steps behind me. The ball was part of me and I was confident and exultant as I swept past center court and faced the two nameless VMI players who awaited my coming.

The first player came out to meet me. It was the sophomore guard, and he came too quickly, an error of inexperience. I slowed, faked a change to my right, and switched to my left hand, passing him in a blur. He had not recognized the old trick of hesitation, the small betrayal of speed that was the essence of the change of pace.

I heard Johnny screaming for the ball to my right. I turned my head toward him, but my eye fastened on the last defender. The VMI man moved out to cut off the pass to Johnny But there would be no pass to Johnny. I left the floor, rising into the air, into the light and smoke, into the history of that night, into the death of time and the last game I would ever play. I rose up into the happiest, most glorious moment in my life, to take the shot I had awaited since I was a boy of ten. Realizing his mistake too late, the VMI forward lunged wildly toward me, but I moved my left shoulder between him and the ball, braced myself for his impact, and spun the ball softly, gently against the backboard. I did not see the ball go into the basket, but I did not need to. The marvelous noise of the Corps had turned the Armory into a vessel of unimaginable tumult.

I lay on my back, out of bounds, where the collision with the VMI forward had knocked me and stared straight up into the ceiling lights. But I was not seeing anything; I was taking in the praise of the crowd, accepting the homage of its brawling, rowdy lyrics. I heard the chant of my name. At that moment, the Corps and I were one body, one substance, one passionate, untamable force.

Then Johnny fell on me, locked me into a jubilant embrace, and we rolled on the gym floor, laughing hysterically Rising, we began leaping up and down in a delirious, primitive dance of triumph. Doug and Reuben and Dave joined us, and I was slapped, pummeled, and hugged. All five VMI players had bowed their heads in that gesture of shame and failure I had known so many times in my career at the Institute. Their faces were dispirited, beaten, and exhausted.

Going to the foul line, I lifted both arms to the crowd and the noise carried me again, entered each cell of my dazzled, inflamed consciousness, and I let it take me, seduce me. . . . I wanted my life to freeze at that exact moment, with my arms raised above me, the crowd on its feet, those thousands of human voices screaming out my name.

The referees handed me the ball and I shot my free throw, watched the net shiver with the ball’s entry, saw the long desperate pass of the VMI guard fall harmlessly into the far court, and heard the buzzer signal the end of the game.

Then the Corps was on me. I was in the center of an uproarious surge of gray uniforms; I was lifted toward the lights and found myself on the shoulders of Mark and Pig, felt hands reaching me, touching me, and I thought I would remember those hands more than anything else that night. I tried to preserve every memory of that delirious charge of the Corps onto center court. But you cannot preserve the memory of applause; it is too volatile, too perishable. Later it would astonish me that I could not satisfactorily summon back that moment. I remembered the ride to the locker room, the hands trying to reach me, the movement of the gray uniforms trying to get close to me. But it was my destiny and my character not to be able to recall the exact feeling, the exact one, of those brief seconds in the adoration of the Corps.

No, I would remember the towel. . . Bo Maybank’s towel. Precisely and completely and for the rest of my life. I do not know how he got to me, but I felt his light leaps up to my face and felt the towel warm against my brow. And his face, I would remember his face as he wiped the sweat from mine, transfigured with joy for me—his face vulnerable and febrile and anonymous—as he danced on the floor below me, as he tried to reach me, as he tried to be a part of the finest moment of my life.