my_little_town

MY LITTLE TOWN

T hough some twenty-five years ago, the memories that I have of upstate New York still have such piercing intensity…

I began high school in 1968, the year of the student riots and strikes in Paris, France, yet, in my isolation, those events, and the rest of the super-mythical Sixties, were as if occurring in another universe. My hometown was a small, depressed rural town. Most of my classmates were the sons and daughters of hard-working, struggling-not-to-go-under, farming families. Many had been further reduced to “weekenders” with the Eisenhower-era social engineering arrival of an IBM think tank.; the Great Corporate Father had acquiesced to the wish to escape into some kind of pastoral fantasy of city folk like my foster-family. So not only had these new, mostly urban arrivals doubled the size of the town—greatly changing it’s cultural makeup—but too, many of the original population of a couple thousand had found work in the accompanying chipboard manufacturing plant.

The hubbub beginning of my tenth grade I decided— having shot up to 6’2”— that I was going to play basketball for our school team. I wheedled out of my folks a hoop and net from the mail-order catalog of Sears & Roebuck, my annual fall clothing lifeline as well, and, out of the various pieces of scrap lumber haven fallen about our once-functional farm, mounted the hoop on a backboard and raised it onto a wooden platform. In the middle of the hayfield that, after the summer cuttings by neighboring farmers, doubled as my archery range.

Given the fall chill the ball of course would not bounce. The act of shooting, too, was made difficult when the frosts caused moisture to glaze up the ball. My practice time was the steadily diminishing light remaining after my hour-plus ride home on the Football players team bus; after zig-zagging through the district’s dilapidated farms—most acrid with ammonia from chicken manure—our driver Mr. Whalen would hand crank the door open, bid me, the last one, a good night and head back to the bus garage…

When the oak’s brilliant red and gold plumage had faded into darkness for my ride home Basketball season had arrived. Our coach was the inimitable Mr. Murphy—not the drinking kind of Irish but an ex-Marine drill sergeant and here to tell you all about it.

Our first practice Mr. Murphy—failure to address him as Mister got you ten wind sprints right away—held a basketball in his hands and said, “Gentlemen, this is the ball. Take a good long look, as you men won’t be seeing another for two weeks.” No smile broke his face, no sardonic grin, just straightforward imparting of the news.

After all these years, I’m one of the few proud ones who was able to say, At least I didn’t puke my guts…We did nothing but conditioning exercises for two-and-one-half hours, with pathetically short wind breaks, during which absolutely nothing but breathing hard and harsh was allowed, as the theory was that water would bloat us and make us sick.

Most of those trying out for the team dropped, as the locals had a habit of saying, like flies on manure. Primary culprit was the dreaded wind sprints, gentlemen!…toes touch the foul line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the mid court line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the over-and-back line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the opposite foul line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the three-feet line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the far baseline, turn back and finish baseline…last one in the group runs with the next…

Or if you missed a line with your toes—or if Mr. Murphy thought you needed an attitude correction—you’re up again son…Now!

So engrained were the protocols of the drill routine into my consciousness that just three years later, when I tried out for the State University of New York at Buffalo team as a freshman (all teams together) I had a coach tell us, the first day, to run the weave and everybody but me, with practiced ease, lined up to run the drill…

I’d already felt a bit intimidated, as most of the kids were from New York City—a tight clique that already knew and had played against each; furthermore, my flat, neutral accent gave me away as a despised upstater (said like hinterlands).

As my turn among the 100 or so assembled approached, my brain went on standby; I asked, “Coach, how exactly do you want me to run?”

Immediate raucous laughter broke through the ranks.

Coach said, “The weave, son. You never did this drill in High School?”

“No sir,” I blurted. “Our coach was long on windsprints and conditioning.”

With a slightly incredulous look on his face, he then told me, “Pass, cut outside and around; receive inside, take a dribble, turn and hit the cutter, continue, and, if you’re in the position, take the lay-up. Got it?”

I said Yes and, managing to calm myself, ran the drill. Towards the end of the court I could see that I’d be doing the lay-up so I mentally readied for a show-off dunk (my growth had continued to 6’4”, 185 pounds with weight training).

Then, with a look in his eyes that I’ll never forget—an icy-blue spiraling of sorts—a beefy, crew-cut, football player deliberately stumbled into me with a forearm shiver. So, just as I’d begun focusing on my redeeming slam-dunk, I was instead knocked asprawl to the shiny wood…

I was used to this kind of hostility. My senior year in High School I’d gone from looking, in my yearbook picture, like the president of the Young Republican’s Club to having (perhaps) become the Fifth Beatle—stodgy, black-framed glasses replaced by cool new wireframes, my short Princeton haircut grown out as long wavy hair…Though white and straight, I was thus tagged in my rural area as Spearchucker–some players even took to hitting me with some harsh elbows and chuckling, Hungawa, which they mispronounced as Swahili for gotcha ; when my long-haired hip-pii freak friends and I  went to the few clubs playing “our music,” we were often in danger of being jumped by the greaser gangs—always nearby, mulling around the fast-food joints looking for some female hawg banging.

So, that tryout day, I picked myself up off the floor and stayed cool. Nobody said anything.

Upon arriving to the next day’s practice, my gut tightening, I checked the cut list. My name wasn’t there…

I threw myself into the workouts, recovering my poise, shining on defense when I picked clean a couple of the hotshots…At week’s end, the Coach and an assistant motioned me over after practice.

Where’d you go to High School, son? the Coach asked, telling me, too, that he’d never heard of a Coach that didn’t run the weave. I told him the school was tiny, “Class C,” but that we’d been a powerhouse in the State Sectionals. He chuckled and told me that I was the best natural defender he’d ever seen, and that’s something you just can’t teach, you either have it or you don’t…I was to report for special weight raining session to an assistant and start eating 10,000 calories a day, son…

Riding a bus, a big yellow “Blue Bird” school bus, on our way to Cincinnatus, a tiny little town the farthest distance from my little high school in our athletic conference, almost to Syracuse. Scrunched into the dark green seat, smelling of new car—bus #50, brand new, the biggest in our fleet, even equipped (the only one) with a cassette tape deck…My knees pebbling from the protuberated metal seat back directly before me as I awaited my music…(Mr. Whalen, our driver, had said he’d play the cassette I’d brought as soon as we got rolling; our new coach, Mr. Ryder, had said we could listen to music as long as we won…)

Then the plaintive flute and lamenting voices of “Simon and Garfunkel,”…I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail…Yes I would…. If I only could…I surely would…”

As I quietly sang along, lying low in the seat, a teammate popped his head over the seat in front of me. “Tom, you are singing. Is this the tape you said you were going to bring?” Joey, our good-natured off-guard, my best ally on the team.

“Yeah,” I said, made self-conscious. Joey and I usually played one-on-one to warm up before practice; he was the only teammate who’d still play me, as I always won and the others grumbled about my taking everything too seriously.

I mumbled something to him about the singing loosening me up for the game; his broad-faced easy grin only grew wider…

“La-dee-dah” crashed the sounds of the new song’s chorus, as the duo sang of a “boxer in the clearing all alone…la-dee-dah-da-dah-da-da-la-dee-da-da-dah…”

At the school we were to play awaited my old Boy Scout summer camp friend Jeff. For both of us, the month that we’d spend along the shores of Cayuga Lake as young boys was just the escape we needed. Both of our families qualified as what is now called “dysfunctional,” but in those days that wasn’t considered “the norm,” like now; most adults we encountered—never talking about one’s homefront difficulties—truly wished to see one succeed. Just as at my first winter campout, when, a mere lad of eleven, I went out with my patrol into a 13-degree-below-zero snowfall and returned after the weekend—guided by our kindly Scoutmaster Mr. Sibley in such manhood matters as building a pine branch lean-to—I’d gush Neat!

Camp was the same way—shale creek-beds, long ago cut by glaciers, to explore, the archery rang,. waterfront and sailboats. Thick green Army “surplus” tents, treated with moisture repellent that smelled strangely when warmed by the sun, that were erected on wooden platforms equipped with four metal-tubed bunks—the kind one always had to check to see if a prankster had set the ends hanging on platform edge for a bang of a surprise…All kinds of “merit badges” to earn that were actually a lot of fun…

I was one of the youngest in our state to earn the highest rank—Eagle Scout. I never missed a Monday night meeting; held in the basement of the large, made beautiful with stained glass windows, Presbyterian Church, it was where I attended Sunday School as well. We were in transition, from bubbling kids rushing to the nearby Italian Deli for Cream sodas and licorice to more measured young adults. Community Service was not only a required merit badge but too a quality now expected of us…

As such I became the Flower Power Patrol Leader for my local troop—despite the adult leaders’ trepidation at the choice of name—then the Owl Patrol Leader for the 13^th World Jamboree, an international gathering in Japan, where we camped for a month, at the base of Fujijama…

At our game, on the sidelines, pregame, I managed to talk a bit with Jeff. We mostly joked about how we almost became the first Boy Scouts “86’ed” from a World Jamboree—you see, we were both 16 and a wee bit rambunctious, so one night we scaled the Tokyo Olympic compound’s fence—after tossing over bags with out “civilian gear”—and went exploring in the night districts; at 6′3″ we were a good foot above the crowds milling about us…The few places we wandered into had no difficulty with serving us beer; fascinated local prostitutes fed us sake as well… Soon we were walking about miles away from our compound…Some curious locals—down one of those very clean residential streets (there was no litter in Tokyo anywhere)—ventured “Hello” to us, and, trading bits and pieces of language back and forth, we managed to talk well into the morning…Our new hosts even called a cab for us and pre-paid the driver—with a wagging admonition to him not to cheat us…

Upon our return, however, not more than fifty feet after rescaling the fence, two security guards nailed us. Our absence had been noticed during bed-checks, we were hauled off to a high-level interrogation…

Courtside, that night in Cinncinatus, the memory—as well as the flush of glee at how neither of us “cracked” in our separate interrogations—brought such laughter that each of our Coaches frowned our way, each motioning for us to rejoin the team warm-ups…

During the game I exploded into action. By halftime I had 18 points, most of our production and pretty good given the slow pace of our games—patterned offense, deliberate play.

In the locker room our Coach was upset—despite our double-digit lead—and was holding forth like a country preacher “You all think you’ve got this game won; well I’ve got news for you: only one man is playing with intensity and carrying the load for the rest of you and that’s Tom.”

His words surprised me as much as they did Joey, sitting next to me on the uncomfortably narrow wooden benches. I was known as the team rebel and shunned for my aloofness…Because I’d refused to close crop my long, wavy “hip-pie freak” hair—in those days we even had to wear suits and ties to away games—I was demoted from starter to having to enter the game, 2nd and 4th quarters, and save their butts…I would sit a good six feet or so down from the others at the very end of the bench…Coach would get furious with, after saying, “Noonan, get in there,” he’d have to shout it down the bench at me…Of course the locals would laugh, upsetting him more…

In fact later that season I would quit the team, allegedly over my refusal to cut my hair—but in reality over what I felt was shabby treatment for the team’s best producer. My specialty was those all important “boards” or “rebounds” of missed shots; when we were allowed to open things up, my snagging and whipping out the outlet pass often meant an easy bucket on the other end…

Something that I could not help but notice lacking when I watched—from the stands, as a spectator—our team lose in the state sectionals to a team we’d beaten when I was still playing earlier in the season. Enraged, our Coach punched Joey in the locker room after the loss—yelling at him, “I don’t want to see you ever hanging out with that traitor out there again!”

And what I did not know at that time were two developments of major import. Just up the road from where we were playing was Syracuse University—with a new Head coach, Jim Boeheim, who’d been hired from a junior college close to my little town. The other matter was that my real parents—a matter unknown to me then—were sitting in the stands, right next to Coach-to-be Boeheim…

That night, all that mattered to me—what I remember still—is that sheer immediacy that just seems to go on and on… Just like the when I ran those most-difficult-to-master 120-yard High Hurdles for Varsity Track season. That following spring, after a half-dozen races in which I’d lost concentration and broken stride, I finally ran a perfect race. My body, made awkward by growing leaps and bounds, had finally seemed to settle, for a while,  into place.  We were at our arch-rival Spencer Van-Etten, and, before my race, were behind. My three strides over the ten yards between hurdles had never before found such degree and order as I glided over each black-and-white striped barrier; I was bereft of time, space, distance—even sound. My time, 15.6 seconds, was a school record—still not beaten—though some grumbled that it was “Wind-aided’ and therefore didn’t count.

The first of many times since I’ve found some kind of grace, that state of just being. On the court, not only becoming beyond an opponent’s anticipation but too alive with this panoramic awareness expanding and sharpening details with astoundingly subtle clarity. No end, no beginning…

Every once in a while some guttural roar from the crowd or screech of sneakers making a sudden halt. Other than those interruptions, one long smooth flow. Hands arched around the ball with fingertips as points of light guiding the shot…

all net…

T hose hoop drills that our Coach had us do, over and over again in practice, came to life that night. One in particular—where you had to drive to the hoop, from one sideline first, then the other, and, at about eight feet from the hoop, take off, twist to the right around one stationary teammate, then twist to the left around the other positioned teammate…finishing with a full extension of the ball hand to gently make the hoop…

Driving through the lane that game, threading the defenders, seemed effortless. As a big man I was not expected to shoot the ball—especially in our patterned offense, where the other low post man and myself would cut to the high post/ shooting guard area on either side only for the sake of making a pass to the cutter down the middle. But the other team had started out collapsing and leaving me open, so I’d taken the shot, as we’d been instructed, to draw out the defenders and free the lane. When they came out on me I spontaneously went into the drive…That sudden half-step quicker, no matter who defended…

So at half-time that night I’d been very surprised not to be criticized by Coach Ryder. He had a habit of calling “time-out” during our games for the express purpose of hitting a numbskull over the head with a clipboard for being a hot dog. Joey was his favorite target—the clipboard often breaking, causing him to reach for a court-side stack of about a dozen reserves he always brought.

When we took the court again, after our warm-up shots, I readied myself to win the jump ball tap. I never lost, our Assistant Coach had taught me to start really low in a cat’s crouch before springing, then reaching to flick the ball at the last moment to one of my guards I’d sense behind me.

The crowd booed me as I entered the tap circle. I was used to this treatment, as well; for holding a rival star to just two buckets the whole game an opposing coach, quoted in our local paper, termed me, The Animal. He swore, in print, that they kept me in a cage all pre-game week and fed me raw meat.

On offense I was confronted with a “box-and-one.” One defender was assigned to me, man-to-man, wherever I went, while the rest played a rectangular zone. I was playing “team ball,” making my passes in our set plays disguised and crisp…

Yet, at one point, my teammates not hitting, our point guard dribbled down towards the baseline corner where I was posted for the play we were supposed to run, and swung a half-pivot for screening my defender, tossed me the ball and implored me to shoot!…One of my only two buckets that half.

Years later now, I still have such perfect memory of that moment…You see, I never even got to meet Coach Boeheim—let alone my real parents—the matter tossed away by my foster father, a mean drunk who muttered over the phone to Boeheim something about the kid’s not worth your effort and forbade him from contacting me—the “rules” in those maybe more ethical days followed very strictly…

The old man had tried the same stunt with my Varsity Track coach in High School. My track Coach, a devout Catholic who believed heavily in the concept that not living up to your potential was a sin against God, had shown up at his place of work, and—not intimidated by all the suits and ties in the old man’s engineering department—had picked him up and put him against the wall, saying, Your kid’s got God-given talent and he’s going out for my team, understand?

These matters all gone in the swirl of memory…would have’s and could have’s and should have’s all signifying nothing now…

I still play hoop, even at age 43. My right leg aches a bit from the compression plate I still have from a career-ending accident my college freshman summer…

I was riding a motorcycle from my one job as a lifeguard to swing-shift at the IBM circuit-board manufacturing factory—nice humid, late summer richness of a day—when a woman in an old station wagon broadsided me, dead in her sights, at a crossing in a county road…

I woke up, groggy, laying on my back in the middle of a two-lane shimmering country highway–connecting Binghamton and Ithaca in upstate New York…The thought came to me, What in the world am I doing flat on my back, super-heated tarmac beneath me? I tried to stand and discovered why: the bones of my lower leg shot raggedly through my once invincible right leg–now spaghetti and hazy remains…I collapsed but, like a wounded animal, dragged myself to the side of the road…

The next time I awoke I was in the hospital.  Heavily sedated, I asked the doctor when he visited, Hey Doc, you gotta get me out of here…Next month is hoop practice at my college and my Coach will kill me if I’m not there…

A very skilled pro who specialized in the local pro hockey team’s orthopedic disasters, he just kind of smiled, in that sad way that catches up to men sooner or later, and said, Son, I got some news for you…I don’t think you’re ever going to walk right again…

Back at Buffalo that fall, hobbled still by crutches, both my College hoop and track Coaches went ballistic when they saw me: What in the world were you doing on a motorcycle? My track Coach had taken me on as a pentathlete candidate–and he’d been impressed with my progress on handling the different events…I don’t need to tell you how upset my hoop Coach was…

I transferred to Cal my junior year…As one door closes, another opens, as my new found Buddhism taught…My leg had recovered, and not only was I playing hoop like a regular gym rat but too I’d taken up martial arts…I had the wingspan of a condor and the speed of a hawk, but, like too many young men, not the maturity to handle it…Maybe a chip on my shoulder, too; at parties, when drunken frat boys would give me a hard time, I’d put both hands lightly behind my head and ask, Which hand do you want me to hit you with?  The dude and his buds would laugh, he would get all so-called ready and nod, then, in complete amazement to him and his buds, find himself flat on his back on the beer stained floor…Funny party trick, but, after having been lucky in a few scrapes with the law–a huge bar brawl at the old “Horse & Cow” in Vallejo, two ships full of pent-up sailor boys (including my brother-in-law, whom I was visiting) getting in after six months at sea & a bout in North Beach,  with a guy who turned out to be the Yale Boxing Club President, got his jaw broken and had the chuztpah to try and sue me (both matters over pool games I’d won and, of course, the presence of  females )–and, too,  sorrowed by the nonsense men put each other through, the  wisdom of the Dalai Lama’s philosophy of non-violence  began, like the Great Eastern Sun, to dawn…

Getting a good run in these days is often difficult. The younger crowd all style themselves after the pro thug ball game—trash-talking, trying to intimidate. Though few have the talent, let alone rep with those necessary referees, to get away with it. Most wonder What are you doing on the court?, especially given how I’ve regrown my hair long, into a yogin’s ponytail.

Too, since my days playing A City League, kind of a tune-up for semi-pros on circuit and still hungry for the big time, at 6′4″ I’d gone from the biggest player on the court to often the smallest…

As one ages, you learn to make up for the decrease in your kinesthetic output with an increase in court sense. When I’d drive, I’d use my body to shield the ball…Get hit once, swivel around, wait for the second hit, lay it in… Though I don’t have the time or inclination to explain the matter, I could tell the youngsta’s how I’ve beaten such pro players as Michael Cooper—who played with “Los Angeles Lakers.” When we played he’d just finished at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. My college sweetheart and I were visiting her sister. While they caught up on old times, I’d wandered off looking for a game. Finding the University’s big athletic fieldhouse, I’d walked onto the game court and called Winners. The first looks of disbelief were dispelled when but then my three beat Cooper and his teammates, first game. Second game, him yelling at his teammates not to fuck up, they won. Rubber match, game point, I drove down the lane—with which I’d been scoring, then veered left and faded away, like a Larry Bird baseliner–just out of reach of Cooper’s attempted block… Fifteen footer. All net.

In the silence he’d angrily said to me, You ain’t from around here, are you, Well this is my court, so don’t dome back…

Too, I’ve bested players from the local team “Golden State Warriors” in pick-up games—some on the very same court on which we play, right next to the new “Haas Pavilion” built for our Cal team. I miss the old “Harmon Gym,” though. For a period of about ten years you could not get a better game anywhere in the Bay Area. Despite the court time being limited to lunch hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (sometimes an extra hour) everybody who was anybody would show. The picking of teams was so competitive that often somebody would call Winners and, instead of picking up an asking newcomer, would wait and snag ringers off the losing team on court. Thus, the joke became—when three or four players mulling around had all the next games locked up—So where’s your team, coming in on the bus from Sacramento or something?

Games were fought hard—usually the first one lasting a half-hour or more—and any “calls” hotly disputed. One time a guy, nicknamed “Crazy Dave,” who could leap for days but had absolutely no touch on his shot, walked off the court in

rage after having his version challenged. After stopping at his ‘Stang illegally parked outside–in the handicapped zone, of course– to pick up his “45,” he walked nonchalantly back onto the floor, right up to the guy who’d made the call on him, and put the piece upside his head, asking, Who right now?

The very surprised guy—a Cal student—blurting and raising his hands with the others in unison, You the man, Dave, you the man…

So, like everybody who’s ever played the game, I suppose instead of playing I could tell ya all about it. (Crazy Dave met his demise by the same ploy in a playground argument a few years later, by the way). Instead, I just try and get a good run in—making sure that I get the ball at the point guard position, the source of most difficulties in casual games, and demonstrate How to pass the ball. Especially in to the big man, a trick of disguise requiring dexterity and quickness; for some reason, most guards in pick-up games assume the big man is “slow” or something and telegraph the pass inside with such woeful obviousness that “my grandmother could steal it,” as the court banter goes. And, as even the supertanker pro centers like to show—especially during the All-Star games, there’s a point guard inside every big man just waiting for the chance to play…

Of course, when I return to working the paint, the big man’s turf, I still never get the ball…

But no one can take away or screw up that feeling, standing on the foul line, all alone, just like on the court that day in my High School game…My buddy Joey on one side, the point guard Bobby on the other…Two great teammates (Bob’s the High School Principal now) the likes of whom, like those days, I’ll never see again…

A couple of bounces of the ball…Shake out the looseness in the feet, set them shoulder width for stability, then, just like our Assistant Coach Hinell used to say—you gotta make yourself tough, give yourself a rock-solid foundation. Gathering the ball at your solar plexus, where your breath is centered, make your shot all one motion, ball leaving your hands and arcing from the graceful wrist snap—perfectly into the hoop, a sound never forgotten,

swish…

my_little_town

MY LITTLE TOWN

T hough some twenty-five years ago, the memories that I have of upstate New York still have such piercing intensity…

I began high school in 1968, the year of the student riots and strikes in Paris, France, yet, in my isolation, those events, and the rest of the super-mythical Sixties, were as if occurring in another universe. My hometown was a small, depressed rural town. Most of my classmates were the sons and daughters of hard-working, struggling-not-to-go-under, farming families. Many had been further reduced to “weekenders” with the Eisenhower-era “social engineering” arrival of an IBM “think tank.”; the Great Corporate Father had acquiesced to the wish to escape into some kind of pastoral fantasy of city folk like my foster-family. So not only had these new, mostly urban arrivals doubled the size of the town—greatly changing it’s cultural makeup—but too, many of the original population of a couple thousand had found work in the accompanying chipboard manufacturing plant.

The hubbub beginning of my tenth grade I decided— having shot up to 6’2”— that I was going to play basketball for our school team. I wheedled out of my folks a hoop and net from the mail-order catalog of Sears & Roebuck, my annual fall clothing lifeline as well, and, out of the various pieces of scrap lumber haven fallen about our once-functional farm, mounted the hoop on a backboard and raised it onto a wooden platform. In the middle of the hayfield that, after the summer cuttings by neighboring farmers, doubled as my archery range.

Given the fall chill the ball of course would not bounce. The act of shooting, too, was made difficult when the frosts caused moisture to glaze up the ball. My practice time was the steadily diminishing light remaining after my hour-plus ride home on the Football players “team bus”; after zig-zagging through the district’s dilapidated farms—most acrid with ammonia from chicken manure—our driver Mr. Whalen would hand crank the door open, bid me, the last one, a good night and head back to the bus garage…

When the oak’s brilliant red and gold plumage had faded into darkness for my ride home Basketball season had arrived. Our coach was the inimitable Mr. Murphy—not the drinking kind of Irish but an ex-Marine drill sergeant and here to tell you all about it.

Our first practice Mr. Murphy—failure to address him as Mister got you ten wind sprints right away—held a basketball in his hands and said, “Gentlemen, this is the ball. Take a good long look, as you men won’t be seeing another for two weeks.” No smile broke his face, no sardonic grin, just straightforward imparting of the news.

After all these years, I’m one of the few proud ones who was able to say, At least I didn’t phewck my guts…We did nothing but conditioning exercises for two-and-one-half hours, with pathetically short “wind breaks,” during which absolutely nothing but breathing hard and harsh was allowed, as the theory was that water would bloat us and make us sick.

Most of those trying out for the team dropped, as the locals had a habit of saying, like flies on manure. Primary culprit was the dreaded wind sprints, gentlemen!…toes touch the foul line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the mid court line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the over-and-back line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the opposite foul line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the three-feet line, turn back to the baseline, toes touch the far baseline, turn back and finish baseline…last one in the group runs with the next…

Or if you missed a line with your toes—or if Mr. Murphy thought you needed an attitude correction—you’re up again son…Now!

So engrained were the protocols of the drill routine into my consciousness that just three years later, when I tried out for the State University of New York at Buffalo team as a freshman (all teams together) I had a coach tell us, the first day, to run “the weave” and everybody but me, with practiced ease, lined up to run the drill…

I’d already felt a bit intimidated, as most of the kids were from New York City—a tight clique that already knew and had played against each; furthermore, my flat, neutral accent gave me away as a despised upstater (said like hinterlands).

As my turn among the 100 or so assembled approached, my brain went on standby; I asked, “Coach, how exactly do you want me to run?”

Immediate raucous laughter broke through the ranks.

Coach said, “The weave, son. You never did this drill in High School?”

“No sir,” I blurted. “Our coach was long on windsprints and conditioning.”

With a slightly incredulous look on his face, he then told me, “Pass, cut outside and around; receive inside, take a dribble, turn and hit the cutter, continue, and, if you’re in the position, take the lay-up. Got it?”

I said Yes and, managing to calm myself, ran the drill. Towards the end of the court I could see that I’d be doing the lay-up so I mentally readied for a show-off dunk (my growth had continued to 6’4”, 185 pounds with weight training).

Then, with a look in his eyes that I’ll never forget—an icy-blue spiraling of sorts—a beefy, crew-cut, football player deliberately stumbled into me with a forearm shiver. So, just as I’d begun focusing on my redeeming slam-dunk, I was instead knocked asprawl to the shiny wood…

I was used to this kind of hostility. My senior year in High School I’d gone from looking, in my yearbook picture, like the president of the Young Republican’s Club to having (perhaps) become the Fifth Beatle—stodgy, black-framed glasses replaced by cool new “wireframes,” my short “Princeton” haircut grown out as long wavy hair…Though white and straight, I was thus tagged in my rural area as Spearchucker ; when my “long-haired hip-pii freak” friends went to the few clubs playing “our music,” we were often in danger of being jumped by the greaser gangs—always nearby, mulling around the fast-food joints looking for some female hawg banging.

So, that tryout day, I picked myself up off the floor and stayed cool. Nobody said anything.

Upon arriving to the next day’s practice, my gut tightening, I checked the cut list. My name wasn’t there…

I threw myself into the workouts, recovering my poise, shining on defense when I picked clean a couple of the hotshots…At week’s end, the Coach and an assistant motioned me over after practice.

Where’d you go to High School, son? the Coach asked, telling me, too, that he’d never heard of a Coach that didn’t run the weave. I told him the school was tiny, “Class C,” but that we’d been a powerhouse in the State Sectionals. He chuckled and told me that I was the best natural defender he’d ever seen, and that’s something you just can’t teach, you either have it or you don’t…I was to report for special weight raining session to an assistant and start eating 10,000 calories a day, son…

Riding a bus, a big yellow “Blue Bird” school bus, on our way to Cincinnatus, a tiny little town the farthest distance from my little high school in our athletic conference, almost to Syracuse. Scrunched into the dark green seat, smelling of new car—bus #50, brand new, the biggest in our fleet, even equipped (the only one) with a cassette tape deck…My knees pebbling from the protuberated metal seat back directly before me as I awaited my music…(Mr. Whalen, our driver, had said he’d play the cassette I’d brought as soon as we got rolling; our new coach, Mr. Ryder, had said we could listen to music as long as we won…)

Then the plaintive flute and lamenting voices of “Simon and Garfunkel,”…I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail…Yes I would…. If I only could…I surely would…”

As I quietly sang along, lying low in the seat, a teammate popped his head over the seat in front of me. “Tom, you are singing. Is this the tape you said you were going to bring?” Joey, our good-natured off-guard, my best ally on the team.

“Yeah,” I said, made self-conscious. Joey and I usually played one-on-one to warm up before practice; he was the only teammate who’d still play me, as I always won and the others grumbled about my taking everything too seriously.

I mumbled something to him about the singing loosening me up for the game; his broad-faced easy grin only grew wider…

“La-dee-dah” crashed the sounds of the new song’s chorus, as the duo sang of a “boxer in the clearing all alone…la-dee-dah-da-dah-da-da-la-dee-da-da-dah…”

At the school we were to play awaited my old Boy Scout summer camp friend Jeff. For both of us, the month that we’d spend along the shores of Cayuga Lake as young boys was just the escape we needed. Both of our families qualified as what is now called “dysfunctional,” but in those days that wasn’t considered “the norm,” like now; most adults we encountered—never talking about one’s homefront difficulties—truly wished to see one succeed. Just as at my first winter campout, when, a mere lad of eleven, I went out with my patrol into a 13-degree-below-zero snowfall and returned after the weekend—guided by our kindly Scoutmaster Mr. Sibley in such manhood matters as building a pine branch lean-to—I’d gush Neat!

Camp was the same way—shale creek-beds, long ago cut by glaciers, to explore, the archery rang,. waterfront and sailboats. Thick green Army “surplus” tents, treated with moisture repellent that smelled strangely when warmed by the sun, that were erected on wooden platforms equipped with four metal-tubed bunks—the kind one always had to check to see if a prankster had set the ends hanging on platform edge for a bang of a surprise…All kinds of “merit badges” to earn that were actually a lot of fun…

I was one of the youngest in our state to earn the highest rank—“Eagle Scout.” I never missed a Monday night meeting; held in the basement of the large, made beautiful with stained glass windows, Presbyterian Church, it was where I attended Sunday School as well. We were in transition, from bubbling kids rushing to the nearby Italian Deli for Cream sodas and licorice to more measured young adults. “Community Service” was not only a required merit badge but too a quality now expected of us…

As such I became the “Flower Power” Patrol Leader for my local troop—despite the adult leaders’ trepidation at the choice of name—then the “Owl” Patrol Leader for the 13^th World Jamboree, an international gathering in Japan, where we camped for a month, at the base of Fujijama…

At our game, on the sidelines, pre-game, I managed to talk a bit with Jeff. We mostly joked about how we almost became the first Boy Scouts “86’ed” from a World Jamboree—you see, we were both 16 and already tall, so one night we scaled the Tokyo Olympic compound’s fence—after tossing over bags with out “civilian gear”—and went exploring in the night districts; the few places we tried had no difficulty with serving us beer and soon we were wandering miles away from our compound…Some fascinated locals—down one of those very clean residential streets—ventured “Hello” to us, and, trading bits and pieces of language back and forth, we managed to talk well into the morning…Our new hosts even called a cab for us and pre-paid the driver—with a wagging admonition to him not to cheat us…

Upon our return, however, not more than fifty feet after rescaling the fence, two security guards nailed us. Our absence had been noticed during bed-checks, we were hauled off to a high-level interrogation…

Courtside, that night in Cinncinatus, the memory—as well as the flush of glee at how neither of us “cracked” in our separate interrogations—brought such laughter that each of our Coaches frowned our way, each motioning for us to rejoin the team warm-ups…

During the game I exploded into action. By halftime I had 18 points, most of our production and pretty good given the slow pace of our games—patterned offense, deliberate play.

In the locker room our Coach was upset—despite our double-digit lead—and was holding forth like a country preacher “You all think you’ve got this game won; well I’ve got news for you: only one man is playing with intensity and carrying the load for the rest of you and that’s Tom.”

His words surprised me as much as they did Joey, sitting next to me on the uncomfortably narrow wooden benches. I was known as the team rebel and shunned for my aloofness…

In fact later that season I would quit the team, allegedly over my refusal to cut my hair—in those days we had to wear suits and ties as well to away games—but in reality over what I felt was shabby treatment for the team’s best producer. My specialty was those all important “boards” or “rebounds” of missed shots; when we were allowed to open things up, my snagging and whipping out the outlet pass often meant an easy bucket on the other end…

Something that I could not help but notice lacking when I watched—from the stands, as a spectator—our team lose in the state sectionals to a team we’d beaten when I was still playing earlier in the season. Enraged, our Coach punched Joey in the locker room after the loss—yelling at him, “I don’t want to see you ever hanging out with that traitor out there again!”

And what I did not know at that time were two developments of major import. Just up the road from where we were playing was Syracuse University—with a new Head coach, Jim Boeheim, who’d been hired from a junior college close to my little town. The other matter was that my real parents—a matter unknown to me then—were sitting in the stands, right next to Coach-to-be Boeheim…

That night, all that mattered to me—what I remember still—is that sheer immediacy that just seems to go on and on… Just like the when I ran those most-difficult-to-master 120-yard High Hurdles for Varsity Track season. That following spring, after a half-dozen races in which I’d lost concentration and broken stride, I finally ran a perfect race. We were at our arch-rival Spencer Van-Etten, and, before my race, were behind. My three strides over the ten yards between hurdles had never before found such degree and order as I glided over each black-and-white striped barrier; I was bereft of time, space, distance—even sound. My time, 15.6 seconds, was a school record—still not beaten—though some grumbled that it was “Wind-aided’ and therefore didn’t count.

The first of many times since I’ve found some kind of grace, that state of just being. On the court, not only becoming beyond an opponent’s anticipation but too alive with this panoramic awareness expanding and sharpening details with astoundingly subtle clarity. No end, no beginning…

Every once in a while some guttural roar from the crowd or screech of sneakers

making a sudden halt. Other than those interruptions, one long smooth flow. Hands

arched around the ball with fingertips as points of light guiding the shot…all net…

T hose hoop drills that our Coach had us do, over and over again in practice, came to life that night. One in particular—where you had to drive to the hoop, from one sideline first, then the other, and, at about eight feet from the hoop, take off, twist to the right around one stationary teammate, then twist to the left around the other positioned teammate…finishing with a full extension of the ball hand to gently make the hoop…

Driving through the lane that game, threading the defenders, seemed effortless. As a big man I was not expected to shoot the ball—especially in our patterned offense, where the other low post man and myself would cut to the high post/ shooting guard area on either side only for the sake of making a pass to the cutter down the middle. But the other team had started out collapsing and leaving me open, so I’d taken the shot, as we’d been instructed, to draw out the defenders and free the lane. When they came out on me I spontaneously went into the drive…That sudden half-step quicker, no matter who defended…

So at half-time that night I’d been very surprised not to be criticized by Coach Ryder. He had a habit of calling “time-out” during our games for the express purpose of hitting a numbskull over the head with a clipboard for being a hot dog. Joey was his favorite target—the clipboard often breaking, causing him to reach for a courtside stack of reserves he always brought.

When we took the court again, after our warm-up shots, I readied myself to win the jump ball tap. I never lost, our Assistant Coach had taught me to start really low in a cat’s crouch before springing, then reaching to flick the ball at the last moment to one of my guards I’d sense behind me.

The crowd booed me as I entered the tap circle. I was used to this treatment, as well; for holding a rival star to just two buckets the whole game an opposing coach, quoted in our local paper, termed me, The Animal.

On offense I was confronted with a “box-and-one.” One defender was assigned to me, man-to-man, wherever I went, while the rest played a rectangular zone. I was playing “team ball,” making my passes in our set plays disguised and crisp…

Yet, at one point, my teammates not hitting, our point guard dribbled down towards the baseline corner where I was posted for the play we were supposed to run, and swung a half-pivot for screening my defender, tossed me the ball and implored me to shoot!…One of my only two buckets that half.

Years later now, I still have such perfect memory of that moment…You see, I never even got to meet Coach Boeheim—let alone my real parents—the matter tossed away by my foster father, a mean drunk who muttered to Boeheim something about the kid’s not worth your effort and forbade him from contacting me—the “rules” in those days followed very strictly…The old man had tried the same stunt with my Varsity Track coach in High School. My track Coach, a devout Catholic who believed heavily in the concept that not living up to your potential was a sin against God, had shown up at his place of work, and—not intimidated by all the suits and ties in the old man’s engineering department—had picked him up and put him against the wall, saying, Your kid’s got God-given talent and he’s going out for my team, understand?

These matters all gone in the swirl of memory…would have’s and could have’s and should have’s all signifying nothing now…

I still play hoop, even at age 43. My right leg aches a bit from the compression plate I still have from a career-ending accident my college freshman summer.

I was riding a motorcycle from my one job as a lifeguard to swing-shift at the IBM circuit-board manufacturing factory—nice humid, late summer richness of a day—when a woman in an old station wagon broadsided me, dead in her sights, at a crossing in a county road…

Back at Buffalo that fall, hobbled still by crutches, my College hoop Coach went ballistic when he saw me: What in the world were you doing on a motorcycle?

Getting a good run in these days is often difficult. The younger crowd all style themselves after the pro thug ball game—trash-talking, trying to intimidate. Though few have the talent, let alone rep with those necessary referees, to get away with it. Most wonder What are you doing on the court?, especially given how I’ve regrown my hair long, into a yogin’s ponytail.

As one ages, you learn to make up for the decrease in your kinesthetic output with an increase in court sense. Though I don’t have the time or inclination to explain the matter, I could tell the youngsta’s how I’ve beaten such pro players as Michael Cooper—who played with “Los Angeles Lakers.” When we played he’d just finished at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. My college sweetheart and I were visiting her sister. While they caught up on old times, I’d wandered off looking for a game. Finding the University’s big athletic fieldhouse, I’d walked onto the game court and called Winners. The first looks of disbelief were dispelled when but then my three beat Cooper and his teammates, first game. Second game, him yelling at his teammates not to fuck up, they won. Rubber match, game point, I faked a drive down the lane—with which I’d been scoring, then drove left and faded away, just out of reach of Cooper’s attempted block, a fifteen footer. All net.

In the silence he’d angrily said to me, You ain’t from around here, are you, Well this is my court, so don’t dome back…

Too, I’ve bested players from the local team “Golden State Warriors” in pick-up games—some on the very same court on which we play, right next to the new “Haas Pavilion” built for our Cal team. I miss the old “Harmon Gym,” though. For a period of about ten years you could not get a better game anywhere in the Bay Area. Despite the court time being limited to lunch hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (sometimes an extra hour) everybody who was anybody would show. The picking of teams was so competitive that often somebody would call Winners and, instead of picking up an asking newcomer, would wait and snag ringers off the losing team on court. Thus, the joke became—when three or four players mulling around had all the next games locked up—So where’s your team, coming in on the bus from Sacramento or something?

Games were fought hard—usually the first one lasting a half-hour or more—and any “calls” hotly disputed. One time a guy, nicknamed “Crazy Dave,” who could leap for days but had absolutely no touch on his shot, walked off the court in rage after having his version challenged. After stopping at his ‘Stang illegally parked outside to pick up his “45,” he walked nonchalantly back onto the floor, right up to the guy who’d made the call on him, and put the piece upside his head, asking, Who right now?

The very surprised guy—a Cal student—blurting and raising his hands with the others in unison, You the man, Dave, you the man…

So, like everybody who’s ever played the game, I suppose instead of playing I could tell ya all about it. (Crazy Dave met his demise by the same ploy in a playground argument a few years later, by the way). Instead, I just try and get a good run in—making sure that I get the ball at the point guard position, the source of most difficulties in casual games, and demonstrate How to pass the ball. Especially in to the big man, a trick of disguise requiring dexterity and quickness; for some reason, most guards in pick-up games assume the big man is “slow” or something and telegraph the pass inside with such woeful obviousness that “my grandmother could steal it,” as the court banter goes. And, as even the supertanker pro centers like to show—especially during the All-Star games, there’s a point guard inside every big man just waiting for the chance to play…

Of course, when I return to working the paint, the big man’s turf, I still never get the ball…

But no one can take away or screw up that feeling, standing on the foul line, all alone, just like on the court that day in my High School game…My buddy Joey on one side, the point guard Bobby on the other…Two great teammates (Bob’s the High School Principal now) the likes of whom, like those days, I’ll never see again…

A couple of bounces of the ball…Shake out the looseness in the feet, set them shoulder width for stability, then, just like our Assistant Coach Hinell used to say—you gotta make yourself tough, give yourself a rock-solid foundation. Gathering the ball at your solar plexus, where your breath is centered, make your shot all one motion, ball leaving your hands and arcing from the graceful wrist snap—perfectly into the hoop, a sound never forgotten,

swish…

1

GRACE

SOME KIND OF GRACE

The basketball spins off the rim into a crowd of hands. Beneath the basket one player is banged out of bounds. The game stops.

Picking himself up the player walks back onto the court and confronts another player. Both are tall and thin, but muscular. One is black, the other is white.

“Hey, cut the bush-league stuff,” the white says. He’s smiling, yet it’s intense. He does not seem to care that, as the only white player on the court, he would have no allies in a fight.

His opponent’s eyes flicker downward; in an attempt to be cool he grins. No one moves to step between them. One of the white’s teammates, standing at the top of the key, begins to bounce the basketball. Others raise eyebrows and move into positions. The game resumes.

Next time down on offense the affronted man calls for the ball. Holding it low to the floor, his hip to the defender as a shield, he moves the ball side-to-side rapidly then lifts up, his body extending into a smooth shot—right wrist flicking the ball away in a rainbow arch that flutters through the net some twenty feet later.

Each time on offense now the man calls for the ball. One of his teammates refuses to give it up, but the other three, sensing something of interest, pass the ball to him and then watch as his now-sullen defender has problems with this guy—who’s a bit older and seemingly no quicker yet is somehow beating him to the hoop every time. The way the man sets up; misdirection or something as he seems relaxed and off-guard, as if he has no intention whatsoever of making a move towards the hoop, and yet, as his opponent’s awareness slips just a bit, the man seizes a half-step advantage and slips by on a drive to the basket—or, as he was doing to his opponent now, veering off the drive and pulling up for a ten-foot fadeaway jump shot.

“Whoo!” one of the man’s teammates says, laughing, “Face, trick!”

Two of the defender’s teammates have angry words for him, as they have been trying to help him by double-teaming the man to cut off his drive.

At the other end of the court, the defender is out to salvage his bruised ego. He tries his favorite shot—an eighteen-foot jumper from the top of the key-but the man blocks the ball, spins around him and drives the court’s length for an easy slam-dunk —right arm swinging up, bent wrist cradling the ball as the forearm brushes against and down the rim, the ball shooting through with a resounding whoosh.

“Good game gentlemen,” the man says to his teammates, “That was last game for me.” He walks off the court towards the locker room.

Showers hiss and steam. Heat-flushed bodies scamper across the tiled floor, as naked men become little boys, snapping towels at each other, yelling ho and hee. Bare feet hurry over the cold, grey-blue smoothness to the steamy entrance of the showers.

On one of the wooden benches running between banks of grey lockers the man sits. Slowly he unlaces stiff leather sneakers—tightly crisscrossed to above his ankles. A sharp pain flashes in his knee. Already it is swelling. The broad nylon strap of his knee brace crackles as he separates the velcro fastenings, unwraps the outer gear and loosens the thin tubular frame. Splitting the mold around his knee the slips the brace off and sets it on the bench.

He knows he should get his knee ice-packed at the trainer’s room. Yet he sits, forearms on thighs, and stares at the raised vents in the lockers before him. His frame fills the bench. He is six-foot-six or so, with dark hair trimmed short yet still unruly. His high cheekbones and thin jaw-line look a bit delicate above the muscular neck and shoulders, the broad flat plane of his back. Except for his rippled abdomen, there are no abrupt bulges in his muscles. Long smooth contours. Even the legs, the thick hard thighs, are sleek as a. greyhound’s.

Fifteen minutes pass, finally he dresses. He shoulders his bag of gear, tightens his face into the stoic’s mask and strides by the faces—casting glances at him (though discreetly); some puzzled at a faint recognition.

He takes the stairs two at a time and walks onto the Columbia University campus. He’s headed towards Broadway, to the subway station and the safety of anonymity. His knee naggingly reminds him that he shouldn’t have lost his temper. It was just a pick-up game—nothing on the line. Yet when he felt the two hands push his hips while he was in the air, his hand about to drop the ball in the hoop, and instead the ball spun off the rim as his body fell off-balance out of bounds—well, that was it. He was tired of being hammered by hacks.

Recalling the incident has angered him and quickened his pace; as he rounds the corner of a building and steps onto Broadway, he bumps into a short black man wearing a dark porkpie hat and carrying a battered saxophone case, nearly knocking him down. in a flash of temper he sidesteps the man and strides away.

His name is Sean MacFinn. He’s twenty-five. On the official “New Jersey Net’s” arena program he’s listed as six-foot-seven, two-hundred-and-ten pounds,, but he knows it’s six-foot-six, one hundred-and-ninety-five pounds. Which figures are right no longer matters; he will not be listed on the upcoming season’s program. Two weeks ago the Nets cut him. His injured knee had not responded to rehabilitation. Or at least it didn’t respond well enough for the team physician, who termed it “not 100 percent redeemable.”

Where he is hurt most is on defense, when he has to move suddenly to match the player he’s guarding. The mind will sense where to move, but his knee, suffering from the shock of a second cartilage operation, lags slightly—slowing him just a fraction of a second. But at the level of the “National Basketball Association,” where every player not a superstar becomes marginal, where the filling of a team roster has become a science—in short, when the role you’ve fought for is seven minutes a game of harrying some high-scoring opponent, Sean knows a micro-second may as well be an eternity.

Because knees are to basketball players as hooves are to horses—this thought strikes Sean as he stares at the back page of the “Racing News” being read by the man across from him on the subway car.

A grimace creases his face as he pictures the team doctor plying his trade at the track—perhaps spiking the horses oats with his cure-all painkillers. Called “butes,” these drugs are quite effective; Sean barely felt his knee snap. Drifting along in that seemingly magical state of being there, he was at the peak of his game. A quality having nothing to do with the pharmaceuticals and everything to do with being smooth and natural. With some kind of grace. Time seemingly slowed. everything sharp, intense, crystal-clear.

He sways forward on the handhold as the train lurches to a stop. Eighty Sixth Street. He joins the line of people filing out and ducks through the exit.

Long slants of light greet Sean as he emerges onto the street. He turns to the right, towards Central Park. The sidewalk is crowded, a throng slowly herds. He attributes the people to a rumor that Elizabeth Taylor, Dustin Hoffman and other glitterati have decided that the neighborhood is tres chic and are snapping up the aging brownstones.

A mischievous grin breaks. “My God, it’s Woody Allen!” he says.

Several people stop and look around. Where?

Not making eye contact, looking far down the street, Sean keeps walking—his face taciturn, features inscrutable.

He crosses Central Park West and enters the park. Every morning at six A.M. he rides his bicycle here on a five-mile loop. At least he did until he was cut. When he was given the bad news from the front office by phone—by that public relations jerk Tom Wilbur, not even by the coach!—he was sitting with the bicycle directly in his line of vision and he slammed down the phone, jumped up and grabbed the bike—ready to take it to some junkyard in New Jersey and have it compacted into a small cube.

A stiff breeze sends a few leaves scraping across the sidewalk and he shrugs his overcoat tighter around him. At the fork he bears left, back towards Eighty Sixth Street, to his apartment,

Freshly-polished shoes click off large chunks of sidewalk. A closed umbrella taps in accompaniment. Sean, dressed to kill, walks rapidly. The creases of his pants snap smartly forward, cutting the night air.

From the shadows a lanky figure steps. A woman, dressed in a short skirt, her slender thighs showing a hint of baby fat as the stockings whisk back and forth. Leather boots reach just below her knees; well-polished, the shine of each boot is creased by laces crisscrossing the exposed backs.

Stopped by her “Hi there,” Sean says, “Hello.”

“What’s a hunk like you doing out alone?” She smiles, coyly.”Want a date?”

As though considering he looks at her. A slight flutter of her blouse, three buttons open, reveals an upturned breast, smooth and soft, and a nipple wrinkled like a walnut by the chill.

“I’m sure you’re worth it. But no thanks.”

Behind her he sees a bent-over woman in a faded overcoat who has stopped about twenty feet down the sidewalk.

Turning, spotting the old lady, the hooker says, “Bitch! I thought I told you to git. Damn old hag. What you want, this?” She slides up her leather skirt and flashes a bare ass.

The woman’s red eyes water with hate as she reaches down for the two overflowing bags at her sides.

“Git!” the hooker shouts. The woman turns and waddles off, a low moan escaping as her head bobs, the bags swing, sneakers plop.

Shrilly laughing the hooker turns back to Sean. “Well if you change your mind let me know; I’m usually around.”

Sean has drawn away a step. ‘Yeah.” Distracted, he stands motionless. She tilts her head suddenly and, backing off, studies him warily. He nods goodbye and walks away.

Once, he supposes, he was in love. She was a woman he kept seeing at the comer market. Something about the way she carried herself attracted him—the tilt of her chin, the poise of her shoulders, perhaps (he wasn’t sure).

He’d said hello, finally, and walked her to her building, just a few blocks from his.

At first they saw each other quite often. They found an ease of intimacy with each other neither had ever experienced before.

Yet in less than a year the romance began to founder. Everything got difficult; she was under a lot of pressure at her advertising firm; he had the frequent absences of road trips. There was never enough time, when they met the sense of urgency saddened rather than satisfied…

Ahead of Sean now is the sign for the ‘Village Vanguard.” He crosses the street and checks the club’s billboard, where reviews of the jazz trio playing are posted. He changes his mind about going to this show and walks towards the subway station.

Annoyance creases his brow. He’s thinking that in Europe, where he played ball for two seasons before making the Nets, he never had to think about what type of jazz the act was. They were all good. Many of the musicians were Americans, drawn to Europe by the better pay, better audiences. There was much camaraderie, an easy rapport. The common bond of exile.

Green and red glimmerings dance on the wet oily tarmac . Two lines of traffic, engines idling, wait at the far side of the intersection.

Exhaust fumes mix with engine steam and rise through murky shafts of headlights. Then the signal light changes, engines roar and the cars are off to the next light.

People on the sidewalk take down umbrellas and shake beads of rain from the limp folds of fabric. With brisk strides they weave between the metal poles of construction scaffolding covering the sidewalk.

Through the shutters of the ‘West End Cafe,” Eagle Russell watches people work through the rusty maze. Faces, flushed pink, hurry past the window—heads tossed back in thin-lipped laughter, the teeth glinting.

Eagle turns back towards the stage. Past the tables of patrons huddled in conversation is the service bar. Two waitresses stand, shifting weight from one foot to the other as they talk and joke with rapid gesturing of hands and gleeful looks.

To their right, on the other side of an archway, are pinball machines and video games. One man, short, balding, his feet splayed wide, ducks and bobs his shoulders as he jams a joystick from position to position on a basketball game. “Whoee!” he says, “I got more moves than Ex-Lax!”

From the stage, Eagle, his mind elsewhere, distractedly watches the man’s pregnant belly bounce around.

A waitress walks by, says, “Five minutes, Eagle.”

He checks his watch, searches the bar for his musicians. They disappeared at the end of the last set with the stage manager, for whom Eagle has an intense dislike. The manager thinks the world of Eagle, though, always acts like a puppy dog trying to please. With a faint smile Eagle remembers the time the boy offered him some cocaine. He declined, to which the kid responded, ‘You sure, I mean this stuffs as bad as your daddy’s dick.”

At the kid’s not quite getting it right Eagle had laughed.

Across the room from Eagle a thin crack of light broadens as the Manager’s door opens. Three members of the quartet, escorted by the manager, walk towards the stage.

“About time boys,” Eagle mentions.

At the sounds and motions of the band warming up the audience quiets. The manager—a tall, thin man wearing a dark, loose-fitting jacket and white sneakers—steps up to the microphone, slips it out of the gleaming pole, and, gesturing towards Eagle, says, “Welcome again ladies and gentlemen. For those of you who just got here, tonight we are proud to present one of the all-time greats in jazz…”

Eagle’s cue. He walks into the spotlight. He hates this part; he has to stand there and grin like a monkey while the kid goes on and on about Eagle’s twenty years with the Duke in that damn affected accent of his.

From a few rows back comes, “Man, how about letting them play?” The interrupter, a man dressed in a sky-blue, silken suit—his broad upper body too big at the shoulders for the chair in which he’s tipped back—is a fresh arrival.

The stage manager pauses, glares down his nose.

Eagle nods thank you to the kid. Clarinet in his right hand, he turns to the band and motions a four-count.

They run through an old standard. Nothing very challenging. Easing into a set is what he tells the band, George, usually on the baritone sax, calls it easing through the set.

Finishing the song Eagle says, “Thank you. Now we’d like to do ‘I’m In a Bad Way and That Ain’t No Good Way,‘ also by the Duke.”

The man who interrupted before laughs and says, “Yeah, that’s the song now play it.” He twists sideways and holds up his glass. A waitress, on her way up another aisle, catches his signal, hesitates, then nods curtly and continues to the bar.

Eagle, not amused, nods to his band and they begin to play. His face is flushed; he saw that smile tighten on George’s face. The thin mustache arched in contempt. High and mighty George. He’s been with Eagle the longest—almost five years—but lately he’s been distant, perfunctory. Besides being newer, the other boys are quite a bit younger than Eagle, so he hasn’t expected much closeness with them. But with George it’s always been different. They were in the Duke’s band together. They were young, cocky and oh so cool then. Eagle can still see the faint smile of amusement on the Duke’s face as, checking the tour bus before a gig, he would ask if the two badasses were on board.

Smiling himself at the memory he wraps up the song and moves into the next one on the set list.

“Jesus.” The man sits forward, shakes his head. “Hey waitress, another Johnny Walker Black.”

Nervous laughter races through the crowd. Eagle starts the band, tilts his sax up, as if wailing, and his suit coat sleeve slides down so he can check his watch. He decides to run straight through the set list.

In his younger days he never let hecklers or drunks bother him. He always had a reserve he could call upon, what he called his bank account—all the time he put in practicing, the highs from good gigs, those were the deposits. These days, though, it’s as if a big rubber stamp, Closed for Lack of Funds, had come down hard. Too many gigs in holes like this one. Too many nights of playing—as legend had it Charlie Parker once did—to a gum-blot ground into the dance floor. Blowing at some mythical illusion, some fanciful wad that one imagined had far more sensibility than the so-called audience…

The band winds up the set and they take a break. Eagle heads by himself to the bar. He sits alone; his dark almond eyes, the set of his face, say Do Not Disturb. At a table to his right is his heckler.

“So you’re saying I made a mistake playing in that game,” the man is saying to a friend. “But it’s the third game of the playoffs, for Christ’s sake. We’re talking the motherfuckin’ N.B.A. No wimps allowed!” He takes a long sip of his drink.

His friend shakes his head and chuckles. “I’m not arguing that point. What I’m saying is that you knew your knee was banged up; you said it took a pretty good shot in practice. With one operation under your belt I would think you would know enough not to trust some team physician.”

“Aghh,” the man says, dismissing him with an imperious wave of his hand. “Easy for you to say.”

“Look, I’m your friend, I’m just telling you what I think.”

From the stage Eagle listens with amusement. He always likes to hear someone boring somebody else with talk of the glory days. Especially white boys. They always think they got it so tough.

A tap at his shoulder. George motions towards the stage. Eagle slides off the stool, they walk in silence, pick up their instruments, go through the motions of checking them out. The drummer and bassist show up. Before the manager can make his appearance Eagle launches into the last set.

They finish the song to scattered applause. Eagle sees his heckler throw a palm up, sigh with exasperation.

“It’s all a matter of being there.”

“I know what you’re…”

“No you don’t. You don’t know anything about what I’ve been saying.” The man looks to his right, sees the couple at the next table staring at him. The women leans away, the man grips the arm of her fur coat to him. Both faces are drawn tight with displeasure.

“You don’t have a clue either,” he says to the couple, shaking his head, returning his attention to his friend.

Eagle has been staring at the man, so George steps up to the mike and announces the next song. Eagle pretends not to see George and gives the cue to start.

When they wrap that number the manager and the man are engaged in a discussion about whether or not he should have another drink. Made nervous by the sudden quiet the manager says, “Well, okay, one more. But only if you pay attention to the musicians.”

“Why? These niggas can’t play.”

The man holding the woman in the fur lets out, “Oh, God.”

“God? Dr. J—Mr. Julius Erving to you, he’s God,” the man mutters, his head down. Then he raises up and looks at the couple. “What do you know about God, about being there, huh? You ever play on the same court as God? Well I did.” His eyes widen in glee. “Hah! I guarded God! What do you think of that?”

A large, tee-shirted bouncer has arrived to assist the manager, suddenly bold. “Sir, you’re going to have to leave. Now I’ve seen you here before and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ban you for life.”

“Whoo! Ban me from this hole. ” He tips his chair forward until the legs are back on the floor. “Pal, you’re doing me a favor.”

The bouncer huffs his shoulders and moves to grab the man.

Eagle, still amused, says, “No, it’s all right, he’s not bothering us.

Let him stay.”

George raises his eyebrows and stifles a grin, then busies himself with fingering the valves of his sax. The bouncer stops mid-stride. The manager looks to the stage, his mouth hanging open in confusion. “But…” He looks around. About a third of the audience has left.

“We’ll play some Coltrane, see if we can’t liven things up for you,” Eagle announces. He feels his musicians staring at him behind his back. They’re nowhere near the set list now. He picks up his tenor sax, tells the band, “My Favorite Things.”

The sax is slippery in his hands. Rivulets of sweat drip from his chin. He doesn’t know why he picked Coltrane; he’s always found him difficult, and, in fact, he usually stays closer to shore and avoids that territory—the so-called anti-jazz all the kids seem so hung up on now. For Eagle playing Coltrane is kind of like being in bed with a real fine woman but there’s this chalkboard on your back and she’s scratching her fingernails up and down on it. Beauty and the screech.

With a sidelong glance he sees the man watching him. He feels anger growing and he moves into the dark, brooding, farther reaches of Coltrane’s melody. No longer is it notes he’s reworking, it’s whole chords now—fragmenting them, shifting the tonal centers, the notes becoming fresh echoes of the whole as he finds the unfettered…

A slow dull ache, something tucked away in forgotten corners within him, begins to build. Anger and ache rumble and mix, way down inside, and then move up his spine in a now familiar way, getting cooler and lighter before reaching his mouth, finally, where, blossoming like a flower, the feeling floats away, light as a breeze.

He’s home now. He glides through the end of the composition and, his sax sweet and soulful, eases back into a ballad.

When he finishes, what’s left of the audience applauds. He turns to the band and murmurs, “Not bad. Meet me at the bar, I’m buying.” Stepping up to the mike, he says, “Thank you. Good night.”

He unclips his saxophone, disassembles it and gently places it in the case. He lets it shimmer in the stage lights a moment, then closes the top. He feels suffused with strength.

Behind him in the audience he hears a soft low whistle. It’s that man, sitting by himself. “Now that’s there,” he says to the seat where his friend used to be.

Eagle steps down from the stage and walks towards the man. His features have softened; with rapt attention he stares at the tabletop.

Then, as if struck by something, the man chuckles, raises his head.

Reaching him Eagle stops. His right hand draws back, then he pushes an open palm forward. Two hands move together, spread fingers connect, lightly, as they rise up in a high five…

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the original art work of the Titanic…

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“Ship of Fools (Redux)”…A new giclee print by Tamo (July, 2007)

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