Aura Jefferson sees the man surging up from the crush of bodies in motion but, too late, she’s airborne, free-floating, the ball curling from her fingertips for the backboard. Nothing to be done but give in to gravity and here’s the midair collision and now she’s falling, sprawling, sliding on her backside to a sweaty rest out beyond the baseline.
The twitchy white kid with the peach-fuzz moustache, Van Something-or-Other, blows his whistle and cries “Foul!”
The basketball bobs into the bleachers.
“Sweet Jesus,” says the man standing over her, “I’m sorry about that.” He extends a helping hand.
Aura ignores him. She hauls herself from the floor, heavy-grunting. The gym swims.
“Two shots,” Van says.
Aura says, “I need a few.”
The man follows her to the sidelines.
“That was a pretty rough tumble,” he says. “Are you okay? I sure didn’t mean to floor you like that.”
“And yet,” Aura says, “here I am. Floored.” She takes a seat in the bleachers.
The man offers his hand again. “I’m Nate Franklin.”
Aura looks up at him, shakes the hand.
“You’re the new preacher over in Langston. How are you liking our little midnight league?”
Nate smiles, jocksure of himself, white teeth bright against skin a few shades darker than Aura’s own.
“It’s a wonderful thing! And you must be Aura. Your style on defense . . . it reminds me of Carl’s. You know, I used to watch him play. Back when he was at Oklahoma State. Seems like I’m up against your brother out there tonight.”
Aura covers her head with a towel and mops her face dry.
“He was . . . wow. Carl Jefferson was talented. A natural-born swingman.”
Her hooded stare.
“Was.”
Nate pulls a face. “I heard about his . . . his murder, Aura. I am so sorry.”
Aura puts on her shrug, tries to ignore the spasm in her heart, looks out from the safety of her shroud.
“They caught the boy who killed him a few nights ago,” she says absently. “He was living in his car.”
The corners of Nate’s mouth turn down. “It’s all so awful. Is there anything I can do?”
“Get back to your team Nate. I’ll be back in the game soon enough.”
It’s after midnight on a slow, summer Saturday and the regular kids have scattered, back to Guthrie and Cushing and Perry and Drumright. Just a few stragglers left hangdogging around, latchkey types with no place to be, cutting up in the dim and bleachered gym perimeter. The adults have ventured out onto the court now, Aura and Nate and Waldrop and the other coaches, winding down the night with a good-natured game of pick-up. Worn joints crackle and pop like kettle corn as aging cagers jostle and whoop under the hoop, everyone moiling away at some strained muscle memory, searching for the glory days.
This midnight basketball is a good program, one of several bright stars carried over from the original thousand points of light. Aura’s been volunteering here every weekend without fail since her brother Carl died, herding packs of thin-limbed hoop dreamers about the court for a few hours of fun. Bullet-skulled aspirants to the NCAA, CBA, USBL. The NBA. USOC. Dream Team. Large-lettered initialisms spelling out bigger and brighter futures than are written in this place. The backwatered suburbia known as home: Stillwater, OK, U.S.A.
She stands a sixteenth-inch shy of six feet tall, with a slick jab-step crossover drive that hasn’t failed her yet, even at thirty-three. She plays the one spot some nights but mostly the two, point or perimeter, depending on the need. The only woman on staff. And a registered nurse, to boot. Proud member of the esteemed RN league.
The guys tried pigeonholing her as mother hen at first. Mender of skinned knees and bruised egos. But after a week spent tending the weak and wounded Aura’s got no patience for frailty come Saturday night. It’s the ex-cons like Van over there, the ex-cops like Waldrop, who seize onto the teachable moments. Any night now and Nate will be out there with them, extolling the benefits of sober living and goal-setting. Faith and forgiveness and redemption and the like. Like half-drowned men clutching at flotsam. Waldrop—Stillwater PD, retired—says his nights here make the days go a little easier for his buddies still on the force.
“Life doesn’t forgive the big mistakes,” Waldrop likes to say before dismissing the kids. “That’s God’s job. So don’t screw up out there this week. I’ll see you all next Saturday.”
She convinced Carl to tag along with her once. A few years back, it must have been. Midwinter. Some snow-white Saturday night. There’d still been something of him worth salvaging then. Some pure and sapient slice of her brother would surface from the front he’d assembled, the signs and the tics and the doublespeak. Slangin’ and bangin’. For a moment they’d talk, in plain and simple language. The way real-live people do. Then Carl saw the rinky-dink facilities here, the fledgling talent, the blank and needy faces.
“Amateur hour,” he’d called it.
Aura’s burnout brother laughed and fell back into his pusherman front. End of conversation.
But Carl was playing at an altogether different game. The rough and tumble rhythms of midnight basketball are sufficient for Aura’s needs. Tomorrow she’ll wake in a body writ with bruises, a blue-black play-by-play of the night before. But she’ll keep coming back. For that sense of escape from the steady festerwork of time. For that feeling of being absorbed.
Aura comes up from the bleachers for her frees and when the second shot clips the rim a crowd of ballers go elbowing for the rebound. Van calls a jump ball and now she’s bent into the whistlestop bustle at center circle, players spreading fanwise in expectation of the tip-off. Aura crouched into pistol position, hipshot and ready to run. Nate Franklin swats the rock above the scrum but she lays hands on it midair and now the ball is hers. Whipsawing goalward through the brick-footed bunch of them all, Waldrop and Nate and the rest, dribbling out and around and through, the basket beckoning. Nate trundles slantwise into the paint but Aura’s ready for him this time, twisting ’round high-shouldered to draw the foul now there’s the release, the ball sliding down the glass and into the net for two plus one, everyone plunging, reckless and giddy, toward the floorboards.
Nate trips, stumbles, falls. Falls hard. Van blows his whistle and cries foul.
Aura extends her hand, helps the man to his feet.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nate says, rubbing at his elbow. “Probably my . . .”
“Shake it off,” Aura says. “It won’t hurt long.”
The preacher looking a little dazed. He smiles and nods, shuffles back to his teammates.
She comes here to forget.