4

DON’T SMILE! JUST don’t smile! I got to walk off this court with a straight face. People need to think this is nothing for me. That I make those kinds of plays every day. Kids can give me high fives all they want, my face isn’t going to move a muscle.

Greene and his posse are standing on chairs, cheering. And every time they throw their arms up, the crowd screams, “Hold the Mustard!” till even the trees start to shake with my name.

That’s how it was when Nike shot their TV commercial here with Vinsanity, the most vicious dunker in the NBA. He played in the Olympics, too, and even jumped over some foreign dude from head to toe on a dunk.

Vinsanity came to Rucker to play in a tournament game a few years back, and everybody was stoked to see him. Only the sky opened up and it poured buckets, so the game got moved inside, to a junior-high gym.

The place was mobbed, but J.R. and me fought our way into the first row. People came in soaked to the skin and were dripping puddles on the floor. The windows were stuck closed and the whole gym smelled like wet dog, but nobody minded.

“I just wanna see Vinsanity lay down some insane move,” said J.R.

A couple of minutes into the game, Vinsanity picked off a pass and streaked to the hoop alone. Stove back-pedaled his ass off to keep close to him and probably had the best view of anybody.

“¡Dios mío! This is it!” said J.R., like it was his birthday and Christmas rolled into one.

Vinsanity climbed some invisible ladder and didn’t stop till his knees were as high as Stove’s head. Then he brought the rock back down for everybody to see, before he pounded the rim with it.

I swear, the roof jumped five feet off of that gym from all the noise.

“It’s like going to church, and seeing God,” I said, after I got down off my toes.

Lots of people must have felt that way, because Nike made a commercial about that slam. Only they shot it at Rucker Park, and not the gym.

They dressed everybody up “old school,” like back in the days when lots of the pros took their summer vacations at Rucker. Vinsanity had on a throwback jersey and a big Afro wig. Stove played the ref on the court, and J.R. and me even got twenty-five bucks apiece to be part of the crowd.

Vinsanity copied the same move he made in the gym, and everybody went wild for the cameras. They made him do it maybe ten times, and we screamed on every one.

“No matter what they do, nothin’ can match the way it felt that night,” I told J.R. while they were filming. “ ’Cause after somethin’ like that, everything else is just pretend.”

But the championship game, and everything else I’m feeling here tonight, is too real.

This is my time. I got to be the man out here right now. Before it’s over, I might have to play bad for a while to keep this game close. I’m not even sure I know how, without everybody in Rucker Park figuring it out. But I can change my mind, too. I can keep on scoring, till we win by fifty points. The crowd will be all over me after the game, and Fat Anthony won’t be able to get close. Then I’d just lay low for the next year and take a college scholarship out of state. I’d cut Anthony a fat check from my first pro contract, and we’d be square. . . .

Screw that shit!

Non-Fiction just needs to pump their game up, so I can stay on top of mine.

The rest of our squad jumps up off the bench, so the starters can sit and catch a blow. Mitchell kneels in front of us with a clipboard, and everybody circles around.

“Don’t get caught up in how easy this is,” says Mitchell. “They’re a good team, and they’re gonna make adjustments.”

Mitchell’s drawing Xs and Os, and everybody’s eyes are glued.

But I hear the crowd and my mind goes to the times J.R. and me pretended there were people lined up outside this fence to see us play. We’d make our own crowd noise by cupping our hands over our mouths and screaming loud. Only that was nothing compared to the way it sounds right now.

J.R. would count down the last seconds: “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”

Then he’d pass me the ball, and I’d heave it up from half-court.

While the shot was still in the air, we’d be finishing counting together: “Two . . . one . . . buzzzz.”

If the shot was good we’d run around the court and go crazy, like we’d just won the championship. If it missed, we’d start over with J.R. taking the next shot. We could spend an hour going back and forth getting it to come out right. And we wouldn’t even think about quitting till it did.

Look at that fuck’s face.

He thinks I’m his boy. That I’m going to put money in his pocket and keep my mouth shut about what he did to J.R., too. I hate how much he thinks I’m under his thumb, because I’m not.

I never snitched on anybody in my life. And if I did now, it would be all over the TV and newspapers. Everybody would know how I screwed over my best friend and sold out my team for money. Then I could never show my face at Rucker Park again.

Mitchell jumps to his feet, and everybody’s moving. The time-out’s over.

J.R.’s pops is waiting under the basket, flipping the ball up at the rim with one hand. It goes straight in, and the crowd gives him a cheer.

Stove got his tag playing in the tournament, too.

“If I got my feet set, I could be on fire shooting the ball. That’s how they got to call me ‘Stove,’” he’d tell anybody who’d listen.

But J.R. and his mom used to snap on him all the time.

“Now that tag’s for your stomach, like a potbellied stove,” needled J.R.

“A stove that don’t throw off the kind of heat it used to, either,” she’d stick on top of it.

Stove twists the ball between his hands. His eyes are sharp like razors, and I can feel them running over every inch of me. He’s got a look on his face harder than any player’s on the court. And I know he’s challenging me with it.

It’s a look that says, Mackey, you’re a liar! And I’m not backing off!

“You’re my warrior out there, Mustard!” shouts Greene from behind me. “Be a Greenback all the way!”

But I never turn around, and his words just bounce off my back.

I set myself at the foul line to finish that three-point play, and Stove sends me the ball with some zip. But it’s like ice in my hands, and I can’t feel the grips.

I drop my head and take a deep breath. Then I raise up, and let the shot go. It doesn’t roll off my fingertips like it’s supposed to, and comes out of my hand flat.

The shot’s way short. But it catches the front lip of the basket, and spins backwards. It rolls around till it sits dead still on the rim, and can’t stay balanced there anymore. Then it falls through the hoop to the floor.

“That’s a real shooter’s roll,” announces Acorn. “It’s seven to two, Greenbacks.”

That’s when my eyes lock up with Fat Anthony’s. He’s grilling me fierce. He’s probably not sure if he can trust me. His squad’s already down by five points, and it’s mostly because of my scoring.

Fat Anthony’s always telling stories about the bets he loses. I guess that’s because if he told about every time he won, nobody would put their money up against him. He’s even got one about the Goat, a playground legend from back in the day, who skinned Fat Anthony for fifty bucks.

“Goat was only six-one, but he could jump out of his goddamn shoes,” Anthony told a bunch of us at the park one time. “He was sayin’ how he could dunk backwards twenty times straight—no problem. I pushed it up to thirty times and challenged him in front of a crowd so he couldn’t back down.”

Fat Anthony said how the Goat started out gliding, like he wasn’t even jumping. Then once he hit twenty, he started to strain. His legs turned to jelly on the last few dunks, and he just cleared the rim. But he did it. The Goat dunked backwards thirty times in a row, and Fat Anthony had to cough up the cash.

“Like always, I was the bad guy, and everybody was rooting against me. Goat didn’t even have the fifty bucks to put up. Two or three dudes helped to stake him, so they were all countin’ as my money hit his hand. And all I had was a pocketful of tens. It felt like forever. ‘Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . forty . . . fifty!’ everybody shouted. I’d have given anything to have a fifty-dollar-bill on me, just to make it go faster!” said Fat Anthony.

I thought about how it would kill Fat Anthony to pay off Greene—because I know there’s no such thing as a five-thousand-dollar-bill.

Stove told J.R. and me how the Goat got hooked on heroin and went to jail instead of the pros. The Goat was gone from around here for a long time. But years later, he got himself together and made it back to the park. It didn’t matter that he was old and his skills were used up. Kids had heard so much about his game, they lined up just to see if he was for real. The Goat died a few years back. His heart gave out, maybe from all the abuse. And the one time I got to shake his hand, I could almost feel Fat Anthony’s money piling up inside his palm.

A Non-Fiction player tries to sneak a pass by me. I reach out to steal it, without thinking. Then I remember Fat Anthony. So I slap the ball out-of-bounds instead, and Non-Fiction keeps possession.

I turn my head to see Fat Anthony. I thought he’d be happy with what I did. But he’s got a look on his face like he’d kill me if he could, right here in front of everybody.

Fat Anthony

I’ll stare that boy down for as long as it takes. He needs to understand—whatever he does for me out there isn’t good enough. He thinks this is his party, and he’s just doing a little job for me on the side. But that’s wrong. All wrong! I bought his ass, plain and simple. It took just five hundred dollars to turn his head around. Now he’s got to understand that I snatched up part of his soul, too.

He’s looking for me now. It took a while for it to start at his brain. But it finally kicked in. He won’t go thirty seconds without sneaking another peek at my face. Later on, when it gets down to crunch time, I’ll be looking for Mustard. And there’s nowhere to hide out there. If they’re still ahead, I’ll be catching his eye every two or three seconds. And if he doesn’t dump enough points on his own, that’ll wreck his concentration.

I want this fifth championship more than anything. But if I got to lose to Greene, it won’t be by more than those five points. That’s for damn sure.

There goes Mustard again, turning his head to see how I’m standing. He’s my little puppet now, and I’ll pull at every string before it’s over.