The first high school game I ever played was against Copperas Cove. Marcus wanted to show up early before school, to get some shots up, and persuaded me to come along. Coach Caukwell agreed to open the gym, so my dad dropped me off at a quarter to seven.
Sunrise in Austin in late October is almost eight o’clock. We didn’t know how to turn on the lights. The basket came down from the roof, and behind the stanchion was a tall rectangular window made of small subway-style panes of glass. It cast a kind of bright shadow across the court. Just the bounce and echo of the ball made me feel nervous. A cold front was moving in but the heating hadn’t come on yet. I could see my breath. Marcus warmed up by running suicides while I practiced free throws. Then we took turns feeding each other jump shots, from elbow to elbow, along the baseline, and afterward moving along the three-point arc.
“Do you think I’m gonna start?” he kept asking. “Coach say something to you?”
“I don’t know, Marcus.”
“He better start me. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Or what? What are you gonna do to him?”
No answer. And then, a minute later, “He better start me.”
In the end, I just let him shoot, while I rebounded and passed him the ball. Then the bell rang, and when I got my backpack to go to class he was still moving around the gym, chasing his own misses.
*
Copperas Cove is about an hour away. The bus that drove us there was just an ordinary shitty school bus, with peeling leather seats and 37stuffing coming out of them and gum on the window. I didn’t know anyone on the team except for Marcus. He took a seat by the window and I followed and sat down, but then he put his headphones on and before we even left the parking lot fell asleep.
You take 183 North the whole way. The landscape you go through is just really not there. Grass and trees and telephone wires. I pulled out my homework, some of the kids listened to music, some of them played video games. Coach Caukwell sat in front with the driver. After about forty minutes he stood up in the aisle and started talking to us; we had reached the outskirts. The sun was setting, against the window on my side of the bus, but if I squinted a little I could see single-story houses in small yards with chain-link fencing around them, broken sidewalks and a few stumpy trees.
Caukwell took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He tended to mumble when he made speeches, not like he was nervous but like he didn’t see any reason to raise his voice, unless we wanted to give him a reason. “First game of the year … I want to try out a few different things … I might change my mind …” And he read out the names on the list. “Tony, Josh, Gabe, Marcus—Brian,” and for a second I thought I was one of the names. “Take off Marcus’s headphones.”
“It’s not the headphones, he’s asleep.”
“Well, wake him up.”
So I pushed him a little, and then pushed harder.
“Is he awake?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know how to wake somebody up?”
“Yes.”
“So wake him up.”
Eventually Marcus opened his eyes, and Coach started again. “Tony, Josh, Gabe, Marcus—nice of you to join us,” he said. “I know you’ve had a long day. Breon.” And he folded up the paper again and put it in his pocket. 38
Marcus whispered, “What’s he doing? What’s he reading out?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The starting lineup.”
Lamont called out, “Uncle Mel, Uncle Mel,” and Caukwell looked at him, stony-faced. “You mean you not gonna play me?”
The kids around him were cracking up.
“Do you want to call me uncle?” Caukwell said to him.
“That’s what you are, aren’t you?”
“Is that what you want to call me on this bus?”
“Do you have like a different name for everything we driving?”
“What do you think you should call me on the bus?”
And somebody said, “Coach, call him Coach,” and Lamont said, “Uncle Coach?”
“No. You are not starting, Lamont. Your ass is riding the pine. Does that answer your question?”
And the kids were still laughing. He punked you, he punked on you. Lamont didn’t seem to care. We pulled into the high-school parking lot, which was huge, like a Safeway lot. Everything was flat. You could see nothing for miles, just cars and empty parking spaces and a few houses and those stadium-style lights over the football field. Sunset going on, a clear sky, a bit of moon. Caukwell stood in the bus aisle, looming, as solid as a tree. He said, “I’m only going to say this once. We come here to play basketball. We did not come here to shoot our mouths … or engage in anything extracurricular … with the fans or with the players or with the refs. What we’re going to do is go in, warm up, kick their butts, and go home, and that’s all we gonna do.” He added, “I don’t care what they say to you.”
And then we filed out into the cold, stiff from sitting, but also, like a bunch of boys let out after a long ride, kind of high and lighthearted and scared as hell. Even before we went inside you could hear the noise from the gym; it was full and warm and bright under the lights.
You had to walk across the court to the visiting locker room. The floor shined and creaked; the boards were old, and the gym was so small the bleachers came right up to the sidelines. It had a low roof, 39too; people in the top row almost had to duck under the ceiling. Some kids in the crowd started chanting “Burleson Sucks,” and the sound followed us down the corridor as we disappeared into the locker room. I didn’t see any black kids in the stands. It was a very white place, and even kids like Breon and Lamont who normally make a lot of noise and like to mess around kept their heads down.
The locker room benches were so close to the showers you figured anybody leaving their bags on them would end up with wet bags. The whole place smelled of drains. Coach Caukwell said, “Take your stuff with you, you can give it to Kia.” Kia was actually Gabe’s cousin and the team manager and scorekeeper and the only girl on the bus but nobody ever acted like that was a thing, partly because of Gabe’s personality. He was the kind of kid you didn’t piss off.
We put on our uniforms and walked out into the noise again. Kia sat at the scorer’s table, next to the bench; she soon had a pile of backpacks under her feet. Coach Caukwell said, “Where’s Marcus?” and I said, “Maybe he went to the bathroom.”
“What do you mean maybe?”
“I think I saw him go.”
“Well go get him.”
Marcus was finished by the time I knocked on the stall door; I heard the flushing sound. But he didn’t come out and eventually I knocked again. I could smell the stink of it.
“You okay?”
He didn’t answer for a second, so I said, “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Coach Caukwell told me to get you.”
“Tell him I’m coming.”
“You tell him you’re coming.” And then: “Did you just take a crap?”
“It helps me relax,” he said. I was still talking to him through the stall door.
“How relaxed do you want to get? Open the damn door. It’s game time.” 40
He opened the door and came out. But he looked funny; there was sweat shining on his forehead, under the hairline. I could hear the music coming out of his headphones, extremely loud.
“You okay?” I said again.
“I’m fine.” But his hands were shaking when he stuffed the Walkman in his bag; he had trouble with the zipper.
As we walked out through the double doors and into the gym, just for a second I put my hand on his back. I was holding one of the doors for him. There was a gap in the bleachers and one of the students called out—I don’t want to write what he said. He called me an N-lover, and somebody else laughed. Maybe it had nothing to do with putting my hand on Marcus’s back. The whole thing happened quickly and Marcus just kept walking, and afterward he never said anything about it either.
But that’s what it was like all game long, that was the atmosphere. Copperas Cove didn’t have any black players. We had five, including three starters. The refs were white, too. For the first quarter, Coach Caukwell went up and down the sideline trying to bend their ears, but afterward, in the huddle, he said to us, “I think y’all know by now we not gonna get the calls, so I don’t want to hear any bitching and moaning. Just shut up and play. If they want to play streetball we can do that, too.”
Then Gabe knocked down a couple threes, and Lamont came in and picked up some offensive boards. When he smacked the glass you could hear the contact of his hand, even over all that noise.
Marcus couldn’t hit a shot, he was too keyed up. Something else I noticed: when we practiced in the mornings before school, he used to hop a little on his jump shot but not much. He liked to keep himself under control. But in the game, with his juices flowing, he’d rise up two feet in the air, nobody could touch him. But his release had too much lift, he shot long and flat, and at halftime, Coach Caukwell told him point blank, “Marcus, you need to stop shooting.”
We were sitting on the slat benches by the dripping showers. 41Marcus couldn’t make eye contact. His leg had a loose wire in it that kept humming. Then Coach said, “I want you to take number seven. Pick him up full court. Make him feel you.”
Seven was Cyrus Millhouse, their six-four point guard who went on to play for Vanderbilt, and even made all-SEC his senior year. He was a dominant high-school player, because nobody who was big enough to guard him could keep in front of him. He had like thirteen points at halftime, six or seven boards, three assists; the score was 29–29.
Caukwell said, “Nobody gets showered after the game, nobody gets changed. When the whistle blows you get your bags and walk out. I don’t care what happens, nobody says nothing to nobody. I’ll make sure the driver has the engine running.”
Then the horn sounded and we ran back on stage.
The first time Cyrus took the inbounds, he tried a little left-right shimmy at his own free-throw line and Marcus picked his pocket and strolled in for a layup. The second time, Cyrus used his ass. He kept backing and shifting, like a truck in reverse, working his way up court from side to side, but then Marcus “pulled the chair” and Cyrus almost fell over. Another pick, another layup. After that, they let someone else bring the ball up.
These days Cyrus Millhouse is a scout for the Bucks; sometimes I run into him and we talk about Marcus. He remembers that game, too. He says, it’s the first time I was ever really guarded, when I even knew what that meant.
But it was still a close game, and with about a minute left, Copperas Cove started fouling. Breon missed the front end of a one-and-one, and then they came down and scored on a put-back, and the lead was four. Then Gabe missed another, and the lead was two. Coach Caukwell looked at me at the end of the bench; I hadn’t played a minute all game. There were thirty seconds left.
“You want to shoot some free throws?” he said. I was sitting on my hands to keep them warm. “Get on out there. Just remember to check in.” 42
“Should I shoot it … underhand?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, do you care if I shoot it underhand?”
He looked at me, and what he said next sounds angry but wasn’t; somehow it calmed me down. “Brian, I don’t give a fuck.”
So that’s what happened. Nobody even guarded me the first time around. Gabe threw me the ball and I put my head down and swung my elbows and hung on. Eventually the whistle blew and I could see again. Then I had the long walk down court to the free-throw line.
I had to wipe the salt out of my eyes but my palms were sweaty too so that didn’t help. Getting fouled, swinging my elbows, feeling their hands on me, had activated my fight or flight response. But I bent down anyway, bounced the ball twice between my knees, rose up, and spun it two-handed toward the basket.
Because of the adrenaline rush the ball banged hard against the backboard and because of the spin it went in. The noise dropped and in the relative quiet I could hear somebody say, “Jesus H. Christ.” One of the referees. Then I made the second one, too.
That’s all we needed. Cyrus heaved a three-pointer at the rim, which rattled out, and Gabe picked up the rebound and threw the ball in the air. The horn sounded. The building was like a balloon with the air leaking away. It was just another Friday night, after eight o’clock, and a couple hundred kids suddenly had time on their hands; they had to get home. But Coach pulled us into a huddle anyway, by the side of the court. He said, “Remember what I told you. Shake their hands and let’s get out of here.”
So we lined up at center court, and they lined up, too. One of the kids called me a faggot, I don’t know what they said to anybody else. But Coach grabbed Lamont by the neck and we followed him to the bench. Kia stood there, surrounded by bags. Somebody must have said something to her, too, because Gabe had to be restrained—this time it was Breon who held him back. “It’s just the usual bullshit,” 43he said. “Just a bunch of crackers.” Then somebody came out of the stands to go after Breon, and Coach had to separate them.
“What did I tell you? What did I just say?”
But we got our bags and walked out. Caukwell in the rear, I was a couple of steps in front of him. The other coach was standing by the door, I guess to keep order, but Caukwell as we went past said something under his breath. Then we were outside, in the cool October air, and I could feel the heat of the running engine as I got on the bus.
“What did I tell you?” Caukwell was still steaming. I don’t know who he was talking to. “You think you get through life running your mouth?” Breon maybe, who had sat down stupidly in the line of fire, two rows from the font. “You need to be smarter than that. Don’t talk shit unless you got someone to back you up.”
“You backed me up,” Breon said.
“First and last time.”
And then we were driving away, out of the lot, through the small-town Texas streets, the stop signs coming back, the chain-link fences, the low houses with the lights on now, people having dinner, and then out onto the highway, where the noise of the road softened the mood again, an hour from home. I was sitting next to Marcus on one of the bench seats. He had his headphones on and his face against the cool window—there was nothing to see out there, just dark country. Everybody stank from the game, the whole bus, with the heating on now, but Marcus still smelled of sour guts.
I said, “Cheer up. We won,” and he looked at me and lowered the headphones around his neck.
“We won,” I said again.
“Don’t act like you did something ’cause you didn’t.”
Then he put his headphones on and turned back to the window.
It was almost ten when we pulled into the lot at Burleson; my dad had waited for me in the car. “Well,” he said, as I shouldered my bag into the back seat. “You stink like you played. How’d it go?” And I knew that if I told him it would make him happier than I could bear to see.