Despite the July heat I raised the car windows, stretched both arms, and manufactured a casual yawn. Then I locked the door with my left elbow. I was delayed in Detroit, at a stoplight on a corner overrun with street people. The air-conditioning had crapped out ten miles from the airport, and now, mid-morning, damp ovals spread under my arms. Doubling back to the Avis counter to berate a clerk and trade cars was not an option. This was supposed to be a hit-and-run affair, and I wanted out of Detroit that evening.
The night before I had phoned a man named Tree Turner, and he told me about a young player. When Tree talked, I listened. He talked, as always, from Detroit. I had been listening in Las Vegas, where it hadn’t rained in nine months. Tree’s rec center was a magnet for good players, and he knew the kids better than their high school coaches. He had been a resource for years, worth more than any scouting newsletter. He found sponsors for the city’s elite summer team, but he never traveled with them, hadn’t left his hometown in years.
The player, Tree said, was Jamal Davis, who had not yet turned seventeen. Jamal wasn’t playing in Las Vegas, but Tree said he might one day be better than any of his other kids I’d been scouting all day. I’d never heard of Jamal Davis because he’d been hurt most of his junior year. Hardly anyone knew of him. Tree used the words wingspan and untapped and God-given. Here was the interesting part: no other college coach would see him play all summer, since Jamal wasn’t playing with Tree’s team. Jamal had made a commitment to work as a counselor at the New Beginnings camp for kids. That got me excited. You don’t hear words like commitment and employed when it comes to basketball recruits. I was already tossing clothes into my Nike bag when Tree said the kid was 6'5" but wore size eighteen shoes.
The summer “evaluation period” sucked—every assistant coach rode the bleachers for a month in Las Vegas, Orlando, or Chicago, sometimes for twelve hours at a stretch, and this would be a chance to duck out, at least temporarily. I booked a midnight flight to Detroit.
I was one of the few white coaches Tree would speak to, because I’d paid attention to him before he got to be important. And for some reason he liked my new boss at State, Jack Hood. Tree knew details that could give you an edge in recruiting his Detroit kids. “You can sign him,” he might say, “but unless you bring his girlfriend you’ll never see him.” Or, “Talk to his father all you want, but he only listens to his grandma.” Or, “He’s a talent, and he’ll be the star player in your state penitentiary.”
Tree’s gym was a model facility—new lockers, a redwood floor with a Detroit Pistons logo at center court, every light blazing. He achieved this by maintaining a wide circle of friends. He could tell you the names of the children of each member of the Park District Board, and he’d inquire after them regularly. When he appeared before the Board and listed his players now attending college on basketball scholarships, it was a formality—his audience was already convinced. But his fundraising didn’t stop there. A sympathetic CEO who loved hoops provided his girls’ team with uniforms. A big-time drug dealer sponsored the boys traveling teams.
Tree told me there would be little competition to challenge Jamal at this New Beginnings camp. It was a neighborhood program for children of all ages, games and crafts, all kinds of sports. That was fine. I could watch Jamal shoot around by himself at some point, which might be enough. I was already thinking ahead to signing him to a National Letter of Intent in November, before anyone saw him play a game as a senior, locking him in so Michigan or Michigan State couldn’t scoop him up in April.
Understand that in July, a coach can’t speak to a prospect in person, only on the phone. But as soon as I got to the New Beginnings camp, I’d yank on my coaching gear with “STATE” emblazoned across the chest. I’d hang out at the camp for an hour or so to make sure that Jamal Davis saw my shirt. He would know that I’d come a long way. I might even meet friends of his or people with influence who I could talk to.
Jamal’s mother had answered when I phoned from the airport that morning. Within three minutes I knew that she was clueless and wouldn’t be a factor. When she said, “Whatever college he wants to go to is fine with me,” I put a thick line through her name. She was one of those displaced Southern Baptist ladies who had moved to the big city to work in the auto plants as a teenager.
“You’re going to be disappointed Mr. Pentel,” she said. “Jamal’s working. At the New Beginnings camp. In fact—”
“It’s Pytel,” I reminded her gently. “Coach Pytel.” She told me the New Beginnings Center was down the block from where they lived. She said something more about the camp, but it sounded like a religious pitch—I tuned her out, jotting the Center’s address down and putting another line through her name.
The one old lady behind the desk inside the New Beginnings Center seemed impervious to the heat. I announced who I was, mentioning Southern Arizona State twice. I was there, I said, to observe their camp.
She looked at me over the top of her glasses. She wasn’t expecting a visitor. “The New Beginnings Center Camp isn’t here,” she said. “The camp itself is near Freeland.”
“Freeland?” I asked, feeling for a pen.
She unfolded a huge Michigan map. Two or three hours to Freeland. Past Saginaw.
I didn’t curse or let on that I was upset. This lady might come in contact with Jamal Davis; she could be a friend of the family or an aunt. Anyway, it wasn’t her fault that my day had just gotten longer. I could still get there well before dark, and Jamal would be even more impressed that I’d gone through the trouble. And I’d be checked into the Marriott by midnight.
My thirst was giving me a headache, but I wasn’t going to stop until I was out of Detroit. On the highway, I decided I could save valuable time by not stopping for a Gatorade or the piss break it would necessitate. I’d just hang on as best I could.
A couple hours later, I rolled past the hand-painted sign that announced the New Beginnings Camp. I parked next to an old yellow school bus and put on a fresh State shirt. A flock of kids was playing softball. On the other side of the field, a handful of kids shot baskets at a bent wooden backboard on a dirt court. One looked pretty tall. I walked toward him, but a graying black man with mutton-chop sideburns and long, ropey muscles intercepted me halfway there. He had a whistle around his neck, and a Bible next to his clipboard. He was 6'3".
“I’m Reverend Oliver,” he said in a tone you’d use to get someone off your property. “What do you need?” The Reverend looked like he’d played a little ball in his day. He wore a moderate Afro and probably had since the seventies.
“I’m Steve Pytel, a college coach.” I turned square to him so he could see the lettering on my shirt. “I understand that Jamal Davis is here working, and I’ve come up to see him.”
“This isn’t a basketball camp,” he said. “He won’t be playing any games here, he’s one of our counselors.”
Jamal was very important to us, I told him, and I’d been tracking his progress for the last two years. I couldn’t actually talk to Jamal in person until September, I explained. Reverend Oliver didn’t seem interested. In fact, he looked angry. I asked how long he’d known Jamal.
“I used to play ball with his father. His pop and I grew up together, and the young man needed someone to look up to.”
I imagined the dinging of a Las Vegas slot machine—Jamal’s father figure. We walked through centerfield of the softball game. Midway, Reverend Oliver stopped to face me. He was a serious guy, probably a ferocious rebounder and defender in his day—the kind of player who knocked you on your ass, but would gladly hoist you back on your feet. “Are you watching the flood?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry?” I said. I didn’t quite hear him with the bells in my head still going off. Watching what flood?
“I said, Are you washed in the blood? Have you seen the light?”
“Well, yes. Of course.”
He reached out to shake hands again. Then he pulled me in, my right hand still locked in his, and hugged me hard with the other. Our faces touched, and I felt the sandiness of his cheek.
We continued our stroll until we came to what was being used as a basketball court. Jamal Davis—it must have been him—was goofing with a handful of grade-schoolers. Each dribble brought up a puff of dirt; any missed shot shook the plywood backboard. They played one-on-one, took turns using typical playground rules—make it, take it. If you scored, you kept the ball, stayed on offense, and another defender came out and got his chance. These rules—a sort of cutthroat, rich-get-richer system—are used by city kids everywhere. Jamal held court, laughing—not at the boys, I could tell, but with them. Nobody could stop him from scoring, not that this was any kind of test, because he was at least a foot taller than anyone else.
After a few minutes, Jamal must have gotten bored because he put up a shot from ridiculously far. He missed, and the ball caromed long. The small defender, who was plenty fast, doubled back for the ball. Long rebounds often hit the ground, where being tall becomes a disadvantage. Jamal angled forward and they got to it at the same instant. Rather than grab the ball with two hands and power it away from the boy, Jamal stretched for it with just his left hand as it bounced. He snapped it into a between-the-legs dribble. Then, as the boy lunged for it one more time, Jamal spun back in a reverse pivot as he recovered his balance and went right into a jump shot—all in one fluid motion. The shot missed, but that didn’t matter. It was a maneuver of breathtaking grace and agility, the kind I would have gladly replayed on a game film.
Across the field a trumpet sounded and the games ended. A swift river of black boys rushed by us, and I nearly reached for the Reverend’s shoulder to keep from getting swept away. Some kids were arguing about the last inning of the baseball game but when they got close to Reverend Oliver they quieted. Jamal herded his little crew along, and as he got close he noticed me, then looked at Reverend Oliver, and back at me. He had a bounce to his step, as though at any instant he could rise up and slam a ball through a hoop. I clasped my hands behind my back to offer an unobstructed view of my shirt. He was closer to 6'6", with huge hands. Like the young campers, his face was smooth and innocent.
“Jamal, this gentleman is a college basketball scout,” the Reverend said. “He’s come a very long way to spend time with us.”
I grinned and started to introduce myself but Reverend Oliver cut me off. “But he’s not allowed to talk to you now.” The younger kids continued to stream around, between, and behind us.
“That’s right,” I agreed. “I’m not allowed. NCAA rules.”
Jamal smiled sweetly. He checked out my shirt again and walked off with the parade. The moment was worth a hundred recruiting letters. I could have departed that instant and the day would have been fruitful.
Reverend Oliver told me what a good kid Jamal was, and I agreed again. The kids had all disappeared inside a cinderblock building up the hill. “We have our quiet time now, with Bible study and prayer,” he said. “It’ll take a couple hours. But you’re welcome to stay around and join us for dinner in the cafeteria at seven,” he said, and pointed up the hill. “The evening service starts at eight and you’d be welcome at that as well.”
I didn’t want to drive all the way back to Detroit after my short bump with Jamal—I felt lucky and wanted to learn more about him. But I wasn’t wild about the idea of a three-hour wait for cafeteria food. “I’ll join you for the service at eight,” I said, “if that’s all right.” I’d skip the meal and relax. Jamal would see me again at the service, where I was sure to stand out.
I could use the time to clear my voicemail, phone the office, and update our mailing list by adding the name Jamal Davis. I’d check in with Tree Turner, let him know I’d arrived. But back at the car I remembered that the air-conditioning was shot, and my cell phone insisted I was outside the customer service area. I tossed the phone back in the car and slammed the door.
Four hours. I wandered the campgrounds, keeping in the shade of the cottonwoods, alone with the humidity and the Michigan woods. Cheap cabin-type barracks where the children must have slept were clumped together. Not a soda machine or water fountain in sight. A cluster of picnic tables sat between the overgrown baseball diamond and the bent basketball goals where most of the grass had been worn away. I went to the exact spot where Jamal had done his astonishing move and tried it myself in slow motion. Even with an imaginary defender and ball it was impossible to do without losing my balance. I knew I wouldn’t see Jamal play in a real game, but it didn’t matter. That kind of nimble dexterity was exceptional, simply could not be taught. This kid looked like a player and I trusted my instinct.
At one edge of camp, near a shallow river, I found a massive rock in a shady spot. With nobody in sight, I took off my coaching shirt and rolled it into a pillow.
I had been an assistant coach for over ten years. Despite the regime change, I still had a job. Not the greatest job, but still, I enjoyed certain benefits, things that guys my age in other professions didn’t have. Like the glamour that came with the big crowds and TV games. Of course, nobody came to see the assistant coach, but I could easily imagine the thrill of being the boss. That was where the big money was and every assistant aspired to that position. Free gear, too. I hadn’t paid for shoes or athletic apparel in years. And I could golf for free, if I had the time or the interest. The courtesy car, there was that. I could get it washed for free whenever I wanted. I’d traveled to most of the fifty states. I’d never seen the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon, it was mostly Holiday Inns and high school gymnasiums. But still, they were free trips. Also, any employee at my college could enroll in one free class every semester. I thought about that quite a bit and planned to take advantage of it soon, maybe even that September.
A friendly breeze kept the bugs off me. Exhausted from the early flight, I dozed off on the rock. The angling sun woke me a couple hours later. I was disoriented for a moment, I’d slept that hard. My shirt was too wrinkled to smooth out.
Most of the seats for the evening service were taken, although I arrived plenty early. Five rows of folding chairs were perfectly aligned, about twenty across. I took my place in line at the water fountain, but Reverend Oliver escorted me away, took me by the arm to a middle row. “You’ve decided to join us,” he said. “That’s good.” A dozen youngsters stood or slid their legs sidesaddle so I could squeeze through. The cool steel of the chair felt good on my back. I was surrounded by black faces.
An organ flanked the pulpit, with an old man, barely alive, seated behind it. Reverend Oliver took his place next to him. The organist began a slow number, and the sound bounced off the cinderblock walls and settled over us. We were jammed in so tight that I touched arms with the boys on both sides of me, but they didn’t seem to mind.
The choir walked to the front, arranged by height, decked out in purple robes, moving with a slow confidence, as though they were the team to beat at a tournament. They must have been counselors like Jamal Davis. They were humming along with the organ. Of course, Jamal was last. The music stopped. Jamal noticed me—how could he not?—and smiled. I was glad I’d stuck around.
Reverend Oliver stepped forward to the pulpit. He was angry again.
Using that same “get off my property” voice from earlier in the day, he said you could fool yourself but not fool God. He talked about being in the world but not of the world. He said that all the riches of the world would be dust one day, and I could tell he meant it. “I’ve never seen a hearse with a U-Haul on the back,” he said, and we all laughed. If he said something he really meant, he’d say it twice, but much louder.
He said that we all had to account for what we’d done in this world. I felt like the room was getting smaller; the boys squeezed against me, the temperature rose. I was surprised they could sit still. One boy stood while Reverend Oliver was speaking, and he yelled, “Tell us the truth!” and another rose behind him and called out, “That’s what I’m talking about now!” Many of the boys around me started to holler too, in a way that would have landed them in the principal’s office if they were at school. They all agreed with Reverend Oliver and pounded on the metal seats. Most of the kids were smiling, but he still looked angry. He made his point again about not fooling God. “Nobody in this room can deny that,” he said. One at a time, he pointed at several different kids, ones who had probably been in trouble, and bellowed, “You can’t deny it!” He pointed at me last. “You! You can’t deny it either.” I couldn’t. I don’t think he could have said anything that I would have denied.
He nodded to the old man behind the organ, who jumpstarted a rollicking number. The boys next to me started to move in time to the music, bumping into my shoulders, and I had to move with them and sway in long rhythmic shifts. The music got louder and the boys began to clap on the upbeat. We all rocked to the same cadence, the way I’d seen the fans at black high schools move as one. The row in front of us rocked in the opposite direction, as did the row behind us, and a lot of them had their eyes closed, their heads tilted back. I was the only one not clapping, and that felt odd, so I clapped too. Everyone glistened with sweat although I was still dry. Jamal Davis smiled, his eyes shut, his face drenched.
Reverend Oliver shouted over the music and our clapping, shouted about sacrifices. That made me think about some of the things I’d sacrificed because of coaching. My job wasn’t grueling, like working construction, but it was time-consuming. My wife says we are awash in misunderstanding largely because I was a coach. She said that I “ascribed varying values to human beings depending on their height.” But even if that were true, was it so unusual? Did stockbrokers pal around with guys who declared bankruptcy? Did real estate agents befriend the homeless? What stung worst was when she implied that I had no identity without my job. “If you peeled away the coaching,” she asked, “what would be left?”
The choir started a call and response, and sang, “Are you going to be ready to go?” and we sang back a resounding, “God’s gonna ease my troubling mind.” That was how we answered every one of the choir’s challenges; when they changed the call to, “Can you walk the straight and narrow?” we had the same answer. Next they asked, “Will you meet Him by the riverside?” A couple of kids jumped up and stood on their chairs. Soon everybody did, and I don’t know why but I stood on my chair too, and rode on the wave of the organ and the clapping and singing, and the sound built up, and then the organ player stood as well, but continued to pump out the song, hunched over, doing a little two-step in place. We all kept clapping, swayed back and forth and back, when a strange lightheadedness seemed to lift me. Jamal Davis was now the only choir member with his eyes open, and he was weeping. Heat radiated from the front of the building, and I felt the warmth in my face and something broke in me and I finally began to perspire too.
The music continued, and I looked up at the sixty-watt lights on the ceiling, then to the synchronized spontaneity below. And I thought—there’s a purity here, something real and authentic. Reverend Oliver smiled at last, with everyone in the room in agreement and entrained to the music. This was the first time he’d smiled since I arrived at the camp. He raised both fists in the air as though he’d sunk a game-winning shot. Every choir member was soaked, although I couldn’t be sure what was sweat and what were tears. These kids had something in their lives, something simple and honest that I lacked. I didn’t know whether I wanted exactly what it was they had. But I knew this: I didn’t want what I had anymore.
I fell. My temple slammed against a steel chair. Everything went dark.
Hands on my chest woke me. Kids carried me out of the building, my face to the ceiling, and they held me above their heads as if to keep me dry. The music kept going, and the choir changed their part to something about the spirit hitting you, and the kids continued to answer back. Even the ones who carried me.
The boys set me down next to the river, flat on my back. The lights from the buildings up the hill kept us from total darkness. I must have slipped in and out of consciousness, because I remember being carried out but not the trip to the riverside. My whole body ached, but in a good way, like I’d played a rough pick-up game. One of the kids cupped his hands into the slowmoving water and tossed what he could salvage into my face. I rose up onto one elbow. The ground was warm and moist, and I could see shirts, but not faces.
Moments later came a crunch of footsteps and the kids scattered like sparrows. Reverend Oliver crouched next to me with a can of something that faintly shined in the thin light. I gulped until it was gone. A soda. Orange, I thought, or maybe root beer. It’s funny, in the dark some of your senses become more acute and others you lose. He took the empty can and leaned over the river to fill it up. I would have drunk that down too, but he poured it slowly over my head.
I was lying on the ground in the dark next to a river, my head and shirt soaked, with a man I had only just met that day, yet I wasn’t anxious to move. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if Reverend Oliver asked me to stay the night, just to be safe. When he stood up, I reached for his hand, expecting him to gather me up and carry me to a soft cot in one of the cabins. He didn’t.
“That was quite a scene in there,” I said finally. “Very powerful.”
I could feel his eyes on me in the darkness. A cold dampness seeped through my khakis at the hip where most of my weight was. I began to talk, the way I do when I’ve had too much coffee, rambling on about growing up Catholic, although that didn’t mean much to me, it was just a habit. I was still uncertain about exactly who was who in the Bible. Reverend Oliver was a powerful speaker and I told him so, and how the choir and the music really knocked me out, and I laughed at my own unintended pun. Then I told him how shallow my life felt at times. I had a lot of questions for him, although I wasn’t sure where to begin. I wished then that Reverend Oliver could talk to my wife, even both of us together, and I began to tell him about my situation with her. He was squatting now, close enough to touch me.
“I haven’t believed one thing about you to be true since the minute you got here,” he said. His voice had a rough edge to it, like his cheek had earlier. But he stayed close to me, silent for half a minute. Then he walked back towards the camp. He must have stopped and turned back, because I heard him call out, “I want you out of here in five minutes.”
My damp clothes clung to me on the way back to Detroit. I checked into the airport hotel at midnight. When the alarm went off I was already awake, feet propped up on the desk, watching the morning planes and the sheets of rain. My pants, with their muddy stains, hung from the corner of the bathroom door.
A Detroit Free Press sat under my door, and I folded it into my bag for airplane reading. But when I phoned Tree Turner, he insisted I come visit him before I left town. I never made the pilgrimage to Detroit without seeing him, he said. I re-booked my flight for mid-afternoon.
Tree was outside the rec center having a smoke, staying dry in the overhang of a doorway. He had the thick arms you’d expect from a guy with his name, and his hug nearly crushed me. He laughed, showing off his two gold teeth, and we slapped palms a few times. I presented him with a new coaching shirt, still in the wrapper, a dark green polo type just like the one I had on. The shirt was my yearly offering to Tree. “My man, Coach Pytel,” he said.
Tree showed me their new locker room then chased a couple of kids away from his office door. “We got important business,” he told them. I wanted to tell him about my experience at the New Beginnings camp, how I’d been hit with something that left me to wonder what the hell we were all doing, and how Reverend Oliver had made me leave. I wasn’t exactly close to Tree, but we had helped each other for so long I figured I could talk to him.
Before I could find the words, a teenage girl in a yellow halter-top brought a stack of mail in. She sat down on his desk. Tree called her “Sugar” and told her this wasn’t a good time. Sugar, or whatever her name was, pouted, but didn’t move. He shuffled through some papers on his desk. She crossed her arms, hopped to her feet, and walked out.
“My intern,” he said, winking at me. “How did it go with Jamal Davis?”
“The camp was a three-hour drive.” I smiled, so it wouldn’t sound like a complaint. “I thought it was right here in the city.”
“Was it that far?” he said, flipping through his mail. “I’ve never been. Did Jamal see you?”
“Sure,” I said, “but that Reverend Oliver didn’t seem too cool about Jamal coming to State. He never warmed up to me. I mean, you said nobody was recruiting the kid, then this guy acts like I’m dealing rocks.”
Tree leaned forward in his swivel chair and slapped down the pile of mail. “Fuck Reverend Oliver,” he said, “and his self-righteous ass. I knew him in the old days, from way back. I know exactly who he used to be.”
“He acted like he was pretty close to Jamal,” I said. “I didn’t make too good of an impression.” I should have told Tree right then about the clarity I’d felt in the cinderblock building. About how shallow my job sometimes made me feel. Although I knew not to talk to Tree about my marriage.
“That phony fool,” Tree said, “he won’t have nothing to do with Jamal’s decision. Acting like he’s all important now and he’s different just cause he’s been to church. I could tell you about that motherfucker’s past. I’m talking twenty-five years ago, shit that the nigger should have been locked up for.” Tree stood, and it felt like he was mad at me, too. “People don’t change that much, Pytel. I know who he used to be, so I know who he is.” He patted my shoulder. “He ain’t gonna have shit to do with Jamal once they get back from that fantasy camp in two weeks. I only agreed to let Jamal go there cause he’s such a nice religious-type kid. I wanted to get him out of Detroit any old way. Even if it wasn’t to Las Vegas.”
“I guess I feel better about it then,” I said.
Tree started in again. “You stay on Jamal. Send him shit. Be nice to his mom. I’m telling you, you can sign him in November if Jack Hood likes him.” That did set my mind to rest a little bit.
Tree picked up his Free Press and waved it at me. “You read this?”
I hadn’t, it was in the rental car. Turns out that Nate Wilkerson, who had been too good for us to even imagine recruiting two years ago, was in some trouble. At 6'10", he had led the state of Michigan in scoring and rebounding as a high school senior, and was named to USA Today’s high school All-American team. Tree had told me then not to waste my time recruiting him: Wilkerson wanted to play in the Big Ten. But now, despite a great freshman season, he was looking to transfer.
“Why is he leaving school?” I asked. A player like this could revive us. And my career.
“He beat up his girlfriend.”
“That’s enough to get him put out of school?”
“Broke her nose,” Tree said. “It’s the third time he’s had a problem. And the second girl. The other times didn’t make it to the paper, so as far as you all are concerned it’s the first time. His school just couldn’t keep him.” Tree opened up his palms to the ceiling, as if he was holding Nate Wilkerson out for me. All I had to do was take him.
“Tell me about him,” I said, and clicked my pen.
“He ain’t no great kid,” Tree said. “He needs to get away. He’s too close to trouble now. You guys are perfect cause you’re a long way from his friends. A fresh start with you at State, a chance to blossom. Can you imagine how much pussy is running around at his school? Who could focus?”
I thought for a minute. This shouldn’t change anything as far as signing Jamal Davis in November. But Nate Wilkerson could be our best player the day he arrived—big men were impossible to come by. He could lift us above the rest of our league in his sophomore year—he’d have to sit out one year as a transfer.
Tree tapped his desk.
That girlfriend stuff would blow over. I could connect Wilkerson with a school psychologist through Student Social Services. We’d cover our asses at the very least in case he got worse, but maybe we could even help Wilkerson to grow up. I could spend lots of time with him during his red-shirt year to help him mature.
“Make up your mind,” Tree said.