Sam’s Bar-B-Que, one of these eastside institutions, had set up in the church parking lot. There were beef ribs and sausage, brisket and mutton, potato salad, mac ’n’ cheese, yams and baked beans laid out on temporary tables, with a white paper tablecloth underneath. Food had to be covered; flies hovered already. People said, we’re so lucky with the weather.
The pastor let Marcus Hayes use his office, this is what he told me. “A man like that always has business to conduct, there are no days off.” We talked briefly about basketball and I asked him where he played. He gave me a shrewd look.
“Southwestern,” he said. “Div three.”
I saw one of the security guys walk past carrying a plate of food and a bottle of Shiner Bock into the church. So I followed him, through the double doors and along the red-wine-carpeted central aisle toward the stage. You had to climb up to get to the office; the door was behind the altar.
Inside, French blinds blocked out most of the sunshine. Cigar or cigarette smoke filled the air, and the walls were covered in signed certificates like a dentist’s office, from Georgetown Baptist Seminary, etc., and photographs of the congregation at different festivals and occasions, including pictures of forty or fifty people sitting down to a meal on a bright sunny day on tables covered in paper tablecloths in the middle of the parking lot.
I recognized some of the people, like Joe Hahn. Steve Henneman was there, too, executive vice president of basketball operations for the NBA. The man sitting behind the desk in the pastor’s office chair, and spinning restlessly on his feet, wasn’t Marcus Hayes, but Taffy 31Laycock, the Seattle businessman, who at that time owned part of the Supersonics and various other sports-related enterprises.
But there were other people hanging around as well, too many to count. Jerry de Souza, Marcus’s golfing buddy, and his personal trainer, Brad Weldt. Ted Myers, the Nike rep, who used to coach at Grambling and still looked like a coach, in loose chinos and an old sweatshirt. Amy Freitag, Marcus’s long-time assistant, poured out coffee from a ridiculously large bright red thermos into crinkly little plastic cups. She asked me if I wanted one and I said yes, because it’s my policy to say yes in any social professional situation to anything offered. Marcus himself sat in a leather armchair next to the desk, with his long legs kicked out; he looked like he was asleep. His face had the faint sheen and puffiness of the recently fat man.
“Is somebody going to wake him up?”
“Is that you, Brian?” Marcus didn’t open his eyes.
“Take off those glasses and maybe you can see.”
“I take them off when there’s something I want to look at.” But he took off the Oakleys anyway. And underneath what you saw was something like his father, a big gentle black man. He sat up, too, with some difficulty. “I had an early flight, I didn’t sleep.”
“Join the club.” And I turned to everyone else. “You know, the first time we met I beat him in a free throw shootout.”
“Why you make that stuff up?” Marcus said. But other people came in, they wanted to pay their respects. Old teammates, including Lamont, Caukwell’s nephew, and for them Marcus pushed himself out of the leather chair and gave them the ballplayer’s hug—where you clasp hands first and pull the other man toward you.
“He talked about you all the time,” Lamont said. “I mean, senior year—that was the only time he went to state. I don’t think it bothered him but he wanted to win that one.”
“Me, too,” Marcus said. “I can tell you everything that happened the last five minutes.” 32
“He said, for someone like me, I only get one chance.”
“Every play.”
“He was real proud of you.” People came up to talk to him but they didn’t want a conversation, they just wanted to say their piece. Marcus was just the chorus. “He said, I never saw anyone work harder for what he got than Marcus Hayes.”
“He coached us right.”
“I don’t know,” Lamont said. The piece was over. “Uncle Mel didn’t know a damn thing about basketball. He was a football guy.”
And then you got passed along, Amy was good at that. She gave you a cup of coffee or asked for your personal details, and a few weeks later, you might get an autographed picture in the mail, or a Christmas card, if it was Christmas.
But I didn’t want to hang around all day. “Marcus,” I said. “I’m writing a story on Coach Caukwell. Maybe you could give me some time.”
“It’s a funeral, take the day off.”
“That’s what I’m here for, to write the story.”
“I thought you were here for Coach.”
After a moment, I said, “That, too.”
“I’m flying out tomorrow morning.” He lay back again and stretched out, with his glasses on. “Where you staying?”
“At the house. Betsy lives there now.”
“How’s your old man?”
“He’s all right. Trying to lose weight. He moved in with me a couple of years ago.”
“Give Amy your number. We’ll try to work something out. Say hi to Betsy for me.”
And that was it. I was dismissed, he had other business to attend to, other people to deal with. He’s like the uncle with a piece of candy. When you get the candy, you’re supposed to leave him alone—that’s what it’s for. So I left him alone.
*
33Lamont and a couple of other guys were clearing one of the tables away when I stepped outside. I figured you may as well help so I helped. It was covered in paper plates of food and stained with sauce and bits of mac ’n’ cheese and meat rinds, soda cans and crumpled plastic cups. They set it down in the grass and walked back toward the parking lot.
“Most of this stuff can probably go in the trash,” I said.
But it turns out they weren’t clearing up, they were making space. At the far end of the lot, away from the church, a wooden pole stuck out of the ground with a backboard and hoop. A few loops of net hung from one of the rings. The pastor had parked his vintage maroon Saab 9000 under the hoop, but I saw him get in the car and turn the engine on. People were standing around, he edged his way out, leaning on the open window, and talking—eventually he gave a little toot of the horn. Then he parked across the lot next to the caterer’s truck.
“What are we doing, are we playing ball?”
“You want to get in on it?” Lamont asked.
“Isn’t it … I mean, this is a funeral.”
“You think Coach is gonna mind?” He had his uncle’s solid jawline and blank bald forehead, and the same way of looking at you like he’s waiting for you to say something stupid.
“What about the pastor?” I said.
“He’s playing, too.”
And in fact Pastor Rencher, when he got out of the car, disappeared into the church for a minute. Five or six guys were taking off their jackets and ties; they laid them over the backs of fold-out chairs. A little crowd gathered, too. They stood on the bit of lawn between the lot and the street. Across the road, over the chain-link fence, you could see the cemetery stretch out flatly under the sunshine.
Caukwell’s sister was walking up and down, in a fret. “If I wasn’t wearing these shoes,” she said. She wore red high-heeled shoes and a tight black dress, which moved with her and showed her long legs. “I can’t play barefoot on this tarmac. Lamont gonna step on my feet.” 34
The pastor came out with a cheap rubber basketball. “It’s a little flat, but it’ll serve.”
Lamont said to me, “You gonna play?”
“I haven’t played in fifteen years.”
But I took off my jacket anyway and pulled the shirt-ends out of my belt.
“Let me warm up, give me the ball.”
Somebody passed it to me and I shot from about ten feet. I always hated shooting with those rubber balls; they stick to your hand, and the ball banged off the rim and skittered away across the parking lot.
“Close enough,” the pastor said.
After that, he split us into teams; his spiritual authority seemed to carry over. We started playing, Lamont checked the ball and I gave it back to him. It was me, Gabe Hunterton, Ben Silliman (who I also went to Hebrew school with), and Josh Ramirez, against Lamont and Pastor Rencher and a couple of other guys I didn’t know. We were banging and bricking, it was old man basketball, shooting from the hip, breathing heavy and cursing, a lot of shits and fucks. Rencher could still play but he was taking it easy. Just once he sort of moved into space and went up for a fifteen-footer, with a funny kind of motion, bringing the ball up fast and hard to the side, and centering it high above his head before releasing—the kind of shooting motion you develop when you play against people who can play. The ball ended up in the grass because it slipped through the rim without touching anything.
“Did it go in?” he said. “Did it go in? I don’t have my glasses on.”
“It went in.”
Mel’s sister kept walking up and down, rubbing her hands on her thighs, like a kid who has to pee. “It kills me I can’t play.”
Gabe said, “I’ve got a pair of running shoes in the car.” In high school, he was like a Southern cracker, a big Texas kid who lived out of town and wore cowboy boots and drove an El Camino. Now he had skinnied up—I think he worked in Dallas for the McKesson Corporation; they sold medical supplies. 35
She said, “Will they fit me?”
“What do you wear?”
“Size 9—I got my daddy’s feet.”
“You can try ’em.” So that took a couple of extra minutes, too. I said to Lamont, “I don’t know why I stopped doing this. This is more fun than the rest of my life.”
“See how you feel tomorrow.”
The shoes didn’t fit but they were close enough. Mel’s sister’s name was Jackie and she knew how to play—she had big hips and didn’t mind swinging her elbows, and guys got out of the way. She could finish with either hand. She caught me in the neck once and this was her apology, “You gotta bring some to get some,” which is what Coach used to tell us. After that we started trading Caukwell-isms. Knucklehead. Bonehead. Been playing with yourself last night—if the ball slipped through your hands. We tried to keep score but there were too many arguments. A lot of water breaks, too, except a bunch of the guys drank beer.
Lamont said, “The only way you get Mel to church was to kill him.”
“That’s not so,” but his mom was laughing.
At one point I looked over at the church. The office was on our side of the parking lot, and I could see a hand pull down one of the blinds. It was Marcus, you could recognize him by the Oakley shades, and he watched us play for a minute then let go of the slat.
Afterward, Pastor Rencher handed out his card. I told him I lived in Connecticut but his company had offices there, too, he said. They sold insurance. It was a three-block walk to the rental car, which gave me a chance to cool off. What always happened every time I played, I went over in my head the shots I missed and tried to count up the ones I made. I hadn’t done this in fifteen years but did it again anyway. Then drove to my sister’s house, which is really the house I grew up in.