Me and Mar are basically strangers again, not even dapping in the halls. Whenever I try to apologize, to explain myself, to invite him over, he recoils. Every time I take a step in his direction, he takes a step back. That crack between us—it busted all the way through. There’s a gap now. We’re separate shards.
The rest of school fades out like the bonus track of a wack album. I almost miss the drama of the early days. Now the King just feels like any old boring school. Angel’s so shook of getting stomped again, he won’t even come near the White Bitch Bench. Nobody, not even Kaleem, clowns my outfits. I don’t even get called white boy anymore. I just get ignored. That’s how I finish sixth grade: left alone but lonely as hell.
Mar keeps good on his vow to pull out of Wilderwood and I decide to sack up and go anyway. Once I get there, I discover that everyone’s already friends and no one’s interested in making new ones. Meghan apparently has a man, too—this CIT who’s fifteen—and now she acts like we never even had history. On the first day, I sit around whittling sticks and write a long letter to Mar about the Celtics and how amped I am about the fact that Reggie’s doctors cleared him to play again and how smart Mar was to ditch this camp and how P.S. I’m mad sorry and hope we hang when I get back.
That night I can’t sleep and I’ve got a bladder full of Tang. Going to the boy’s bathroom means leaving the bunk and walking through a wooded path. I get out of bed, creep to the door, and push it open. The trees are blocking out the stars, and the darkness is deeper than any I’ve ever been in. I pee through the slit in the door and end up getting half on my pajamas. In the morning, I call Ma and ask for a rescue. She arrives that night in the Whale and we beam our way through the narrow, unlit roads back to the highway. When we finally see the signs for Boston, I ask her if she can get off at the exit near Fenway so we can swing by the Citgo sign. I just want to make sure it’s still on and it is, burning bright and red as it always has.
I END UP spending the summer the usual way, going to free city camps and kicking it with Benno in the late afternoons. I should be getting excited for Latin, but without Mar there I can already see what’s ahead of me: an endless, friendless slog. I can tell Benno misses Mar, too, maybe as much as I do. He took the tent down a while ago, but he made a clay sculpture of the three of us under it, poking our heads out to watch the C’s.
On the night of July 27, I get a call from Kev.
“You heard about Reggie?” he says.
“Don’t tell me he got traded.”
“Turn on the TV.”
“If you’re just joining us,” says the anchor, “Celtics captain Reggie Lewis collapsed this afternoon during a light workout at Brandeis University. He was rushed to Beth Israel Hospital, where attempts to resuscitate him failed. He was twenty-seven years old.”
This must be some kind of hoax. I change the channel.
“An emotional Celtics family mourns the death of Reggie Lewis,” says another newscaster.
I grab my clock radio and turn on WEEI.
“First Len Bias. Now this?” says a caller. “We’re cursed.”
“What does God have against this city?” says another.
I call Mar but he doesn’t pick up, so I run into the Arbs, right up to the cork tree, kick it as hard as I can, and then collapse under it, cradling my foot and crying from the pain.
The next day, in the Globe, one of the columnists wonders if Reggie’s heart went bad from “self-abuse,” and a couple days later another Globe writer says that the doctors who examined him are worried about drugs, too.
“What’s goin’ on here?” one caller says on WEEI. “Twenty-seven-year-old world-class athletes don’t just die of heart attacks.”
I keep thinking, Holy shit. Curse of the Coke.
I try calling Mar again.
“You were right,” I say on his answering machine. “The Curse of the Coke. I can’t believe it.”
Still no reply, so I call him again the next day and leave another message: “Mar—it’s Dave. I don’t know if you got my letter from Wilderwood? Maybe I sent it to the wrong address. I don’t know where you’re at, I’m sure you heard by now, but Reggie died. Me and Benno are gonna go to the funeral if you wanna roll with us. Also, I heard the Aquarium’s doing whale watches, right out of the Boston Harbor. My mom said she’d take me and Benno before the school year starts. Maybe you can come, too. Hit me back.”
A FEW DAYS later Ma brings me and Benno to the memorial service for Reggie at Northeastern. It’s our first funeral ever. When we get inside the stadium, I borrow the Handycam from Benno and pan across the crowd looking for Mar but can’t spot him. We leave early so we can watch the hearse procession. Reggie’s being buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery in J.P., and they’ll be passing right by the corner of our street. We’re stuck in mad traffic and I turn on WEEI. They’re saying ten thousand people are still packed into the stadium—the biggest funeral in Boston history.
We make it back in time, and there are people lined up all along the street holding Celtics flags and RIP signs. As we pass by the Shaw Homes, Benno spots Mar. He’s in a crowd of PJ kids. Some of them are still sporting Hornets gear, but Mar’s wearing the C’s jacket.
“Mar!” I holler out the window. “Hey, Mar—over here!”
“Mar!” one of the PJ kids mocks. “Over here!” he says, extra-white.
Benno gets it all on film. I can see from the flip-out screen that he’s zooming in on Mar’s face. Mar looks in our direction for a second, then turns and walks back into the crowd.
MY NEW LITTLE brother’s gonna arrive any day now. I need something to get my mind off Reggie, so Benno and I decide to make a video for him. I want it to be an advice video, something he can peep when he’s a little older, something that can help him avoid all my swiss moves and failures. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that the key to coming up, for dudes at least, is the ability to ball. Me and Benno can’t ball, and look how we ended up. Being the kind of dudes who make videos about how to ball.
I broke the nasketball hoop after one too many rim hangs and we still haven’t gotten it fixed, so we head down to these brand-new courts, farther down Centre Street, that haven’t had the nets stolen from them yet. I’m wearing a Reggie jersey Pops just copped for me. Benno films from his tripod while I go over the fundamentals: dribble drives, the Mikan drill, the proper way to box out. For the box-out scene, I ask Benno to step in front of the camera and stand a few feet away from the hoop. I shove my butt into him and crab-walk backward in the direction of the camera. We do a couple more takes, and as we’re wrapping up the last one Kev and Simon roll up. This is where they come to blaze. I stop the action and stand there until they finish laughing.
“Keep going, yo!” says Simon. “You teaching little man how to box out? Lemme film it for you.”
“We’re all set,” I say.
“Is that a Torah pointer around your neck?” says Simon.
“Looks like it’s pointing to his dick, right?” says Kev.
“Look this way,” Simon says in a circus emcee voice. “World’s smallest dick!”
I tuck it inside and feel the cold metal finger tapping my bitch heart.
“Fuckin’ fake Jew,” says Simon.
“Chill,” I say. “We’re trying to make a video for our brother.”
“The one who’s on the way?” says Kev. “Aw. It’s cool you’re doing this for him. Keep going.”
Simon grabs the camera and says, “Take two…Annnd action!”
I box Benno with all I’ve got.
Simon does a British nature show voice into the camera mic: “This is the mating ritual of faggots in the wild.”
Kev cackles and I reach for the camera. Simon pulls back.
“He’s just fucking with you,” says Kev. “Keep doing the video. It’s a good idea. I’m serious, yo. Swear to God. You know how I am when I say that shit.”
Kev never goes back on a G-dash oath. That’s his thing. So I go to the next drill: foul-shooting form.
“Okay,” I say, making a decisive-looking chop motion into the camera. “The key to foul shooting is to bend your knees. That’s the only way to create enough lift and momentum without jumping.”
I bend slowly and Kev narrates, “This is how to get ready for some fudge-packing.”
I grab the camera from him, and as we’re walking off a kid rolls past us dribbling a ball. He’s wearing purple and teal cutoff shorts and a matching sleeveless denim jacket. He’s got lines shaved into the back of his head and he looks about Benno’s age—nine or ten. I’ve never seen him before. I wonder if he’s from Moss Hill or is one of those gentrifying motherfuckers.
“Oh shit,” says Kev, squeezing Simon. “It’s the Machine!”
The kid passes us nervously, eyes on his ball.
“Lemme see that camera,” says Kev, snatching the Handycam and resetting it on the tripod.
“Yo, D,” says Kev. “You need to take that shit back.”
“Or at least steal on him for biting your steez,” says Simon.
“For real,” says Kev. “That’s the fucking Machine, yo!”
It’s not the Machine, but it’s close. And a serious part of me wants to teach this little bitch a lesson. I mean, who the fuck does he think he is, wearing those colors around here? This little fronting fuck has no clue. Coming through here in those colors, right after Reggie died? Hell no.
“Where’d you get that suit?” I say to the kid.
“I don’t know,” the kid says. “My mom got it for me.”
“You shouldn’t be wearing those colors,” I say.
“Tell ’em, D. Tell ’em!” cries Simon.
“You need to steal on this fool,” says Kev.
I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I feel myself getting softer by the second. What if I hit him so hard he smacks his head on the concrete and dies? I’m not trying to smoke a nine-year-old. Walk away, I hear Pops and Dr. Jackson saying.
“He’s rocking your shit, D,” shouts Simon. “Steal on him!”
What’s the point of stepping? Just walk. Then again, I’ve been walking my whole life. Where’s it gotten me? Where did all the walking get Martin Luther King? Jesus, Gandhi, whales: Nothing soft stays alive.
“Why you hesitating?” says Simon.
I don’t want to fuck him up. I want to be under the tent with Mar watching Reggie play preseason games on channel 68. We match up in a million soft little ways—why can’t we just be boys again? It should be so simple. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we were meant to be shards from the start. Not just me and Mar—everyone. Look around. Look at the Shaw Homes. Look at Moss Hill. Everything Skip Taylor said was true. The force is everywhere, prying us apart.
“Fuck his ass up already!” says Kev.
I walk up to the kid and stare into bitch-blue eyes. Reggie’s dead. Coke killed Len Bias and may have killed Reggie, the captain, my favorite player of all time. Coke is killing all kinds of people, all the time, cursing this whole damn country. Who the fuck does he think he is, wearing those coke-boy colors?
I will be surrounded by dudes like this for the rest of my life. White boys and white girls who grew up behind whitewashed fences, who grew up with no idea, for the rest of my life. The force preordained it: Not only will I be surrounded by them, I will become one of them, the thing I hate and can’t escape. Not a white boy or a whitey or a white bitch, but a white person.
I walk up to the kid, cock my fist, and let loose—into his stomach. The kid doubles forward and holds his belly. It wasn’t that hard of a punch, but he’s gasping.
“Hit him in the face, you faggot,” says Simon.
I wind up again and Benno grabs my sleeve. He’s sobbing for me to stop.
“Tell your faggot-ass brother to shut up,” Simon says.
“Fuck it,” says Kev. He walks up to the kid and pops him in the nose. He shakes his fist and cackles, then sticks his face into the camera.
“You see that, little man? That’s how you get it done. Don’t grow up to be a soft-ass bitch like your big brothers!”
That’s when I finally do it. I fly up to Kev and sling my fist into his jaw. It actually kind of hits the bottom part of his chin, more like his neck. But it’s a blow, and it’s on camera for my little brother to witness someday. The next thing I know, Simon is pounding my brain black and blue. I’m lying on the concrete and Kev is kicking me in the side with his Air Force 1s and Benno’s screaming and pulling at them pointlessly. Some whitey passerby yells “Hey!” and the blows stop and I hear sneakers squeaking against the pavement in escape. The Machine kid scoops up his ball and staggers away. Benno crouches next to me and checks my pulse.
“Help me up,” I say, reaching out my hand. I’m not hurt so bad. I could definitely get up on my own, but I’ve always wanted to limp off a battlefield held up by a brotherly crutch.
On our way up the hill, I curl up my tongue and let my nose blood pool into my mouth.
“You like the taste of your blood?” Benno says.
“Yeah,” I say, acting like it’s no thing. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak in over a year.
“Me too,” he says.
IT’S NOT UNTIL we get home that I realize my jersey is ripped and ruined from the fight. I figure I’ll buy another one. The stores are selling Reggie jerseys for seventy-five percent off now, the same way they do when someone gets traded to another team and they still have mad leftovers. Before I toss it, though, I scissor out this bloodstained spot and give it to Benno as a war souvenir. Benno’s back to silence, but he motions to the Arbs from our attic and I can tell he wants to dig up his box and put the patch in there.
It’s been months since we’ve visited the box, and when Benno opens it something new’s inside. It’s a thick rectangle, wrapped in notebook paper, bound by a rubber band.
“You came here without me?” I ask him.
He shakes his head.
I pick it up and I instantly know what’s inside: the Bird-Magic.
The notebook paper has two words, all in caps, written across it.
NEVER SELL.
I CAN’T TELL if it’s an opening or a closing. I decide to try Mar one more time. I know I can’t just leave another message on his machine. I’m gonna have to get up the stones to roll into the Shaw Homes, knock on his door, and see him in person. The problem is, I’m still just as scared of the PJs, just as shook of the Hornets boys, as I’ve ever been.
I promise myself I’ll do it before I set foot in Latin, and on the very last day of summer break I make my way down the hill, past Pops’s garden and through the big blue doors. The hallway is hot and dark and I can’t find a directory. An old black man watches me walking back and forth from his doorway, comes out into the hall, and asks, “You looking for someone?”
“You know which unit Marlon Wellings lives in?”
He scratches his head.
“How about Alma Wellings?” I ask.
“Six D,” he says. “Elevator’s busted, so you gotta take the stairs.”
I thank him and he says, “You one of them religious volunteers or something?”
“Just a friend,” I say.
I head up the stairs and see a group of boys—one of them’s wearing a Hornets hat—standing around a boom box in between the first and second floors. I turn right around and walk back to the main entrance, and the old man pops his head out again.
“Don’t worry about those boys in the stairwell,” he says. “You just mind your own and keep on walking.”
I take a deep breath and head back up the stairs. I don’t know why, but as I pass by the boys, instead of minding my own like the man instructed or staring at my feet and peeking over at them like I usually do, I just make eye contact and nod, and no one says, Fuck you lookin’ at? or anything. One of them even nods back. I walk at a normal, nonracing pace up the rest of the flights and knock on Mar’s door. Alma answers.
“David!” she says, squeezing me in a hug. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“Who’s there?” yells a voice from the back. It’s Mar’s mom. She sticks her head out the door, hair fraggled as usual, and inspects me.
“It’s all right, baby. It’s just Marlon’s friend David. Go on back to your program. Everything’s fine.”
Alma turns back to me.
“Marlon’s out right now.”
Doing what? With who?
“You want me to pass him a message or something?” she says.
“Actually,” I say, “maybe I could just write something and leave it for him?”
“Sure, sweetie,” she says. “Come on in and let me get you some paper.”
Mar’s crib is small but tidy. The kitchen floor’s made of linoleum sheets, but they’re not peely like Jimmy’s. There’s some Bible-looking pictures on the wall, one that’s definitely Jesus, walking with a lion and a lamb. There’s a bookshelf full of novels—one level looks like it’s all mysteries, another is mostly fantasy and science fiction.
“The mysteries are mine,” Alma says. “All that Lord of the Rings stuff is Nina’s.”
Mar’s mother’s name is Nina.
Alma hands me a little spiral notebook and a pen.
“You want to go on into Marlon’s room?” she says. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
I walk in. His closet door’s open and I take a quick peek at his clothes—the church suit, the flannels, the C’s jacket wrapped in plastic. There’s a small shelf next to his desk lined with some library books and his C’s tapes in chronological order. On top of the shelf there’s an old Larry Bird Wheaties box, and next to that a small framed photo of Mar when he was little, holding hands with his mom and dad. It’s winter and they’re all bundled up in big puffy coats, smiling.
Mar’s bed is pressed up against the only window in the room. I sit on it carefully, because it’s made tight, and look out at the view of Pops’s garden. On the wall beside the window, next to a bunch of taped-up Celtics cutouts from the Herald sports section, is the big red flag from our canning triumph: HARVARD CLASS OF 1972.
I lie down for a second, close my eyes, and think about what I want to say to him. Then I sit up and start writing: Dear Mar, Here goes. If you read this, I just hope you can feel me.