A few weeks after Betsy flew back to Ohio, the Vance family, Mom and Pop and Shelley and her brother Scott, showed up at our door. They all wore church clothes, including Scott, who was still in junior high but wore a little-man suit with loafers and a blue tie. Marcus was ready for them. He had to borrow a shirt and jacket from my dad, which almost fit, although Marcus had to wear it “English style,” as my dad called it, with the cuffs riding up on his wrist. It was a Pierre Cardin tweed with a blue thread running through. My dad said it was a “shooting cut.” I don’t know where he got this crap from.
The Vances waited outside on the porch while Marcus got ready—he didn’t know how to tie a tie. So my dad had to stand behind him, with his arms around Marcus, in the kitchen. Mom invited them in but they didn’t want to impose. It was a mild drippy winter morning, where the clouds hung over the trees, like sheets on furniture. Mr. Vance was a tall sort of ass-less presence, one of those men who opts out benignly from family occasions. Shelley’s mom did most of the talking.
“Don’t you look a prince,” she said, when Marcus finally came out. Shelley, in a Laura Ashley yellow dress, which made her red face redder, stood smiling with her hands behind her back.
The whole thing was deeply uncomfortable. Like a weird kind of handover, where we transferred the black kid from one white family to another. Mrs. Vance said, “What’s your usual church?” and Marcus stared at her. His only black shoes were his new Air Jordans, which at least were all black, except for the bright red Jumpman logo on the heel. But even when he stood slouching on the porch, in badly fitting clothes, you felt, like, the immanence of grace—just the way he held himself back. 162
He said, “My granma used to take me to Mount Zion.”
“Did you like going to church?”
“I liked the cookout.”
And Mrs. Vance laughed. “I guess you don’t get much chance these days.”
Afterward, when we closed the door behind them, my dad said, “Was that a Jewish dig?”
The truth is, I didn’t understand why Marcus went along with it. And I felt jealous—because of Shelley. Maybe he liked her more than he pretended to, or maybe in fact even though I couldn’t see it, he was drifting, too, homesick and just … unanchored. Living with strangers, while his mom shacked up with some guy a three-hour bus ride away, and going through the complicated process of turning yourself into an asset, which is what everybody wanted to do to him. For Shelley it was like coming out of the closet. I don’t know what she said to her mom. Maybe she even said, he’s living with a Jewish family. Hyde Park Baptist is an evangelical church—they’re in the recruitment business, too.
*
Meanwhile, there were coaches in contact with Marcus’s mom in Dallas, and somebody even drove out to Killeen to see Mr. Hayes. I think they dangled an assistant job in front of his eyes, because every time Marcus phoned his dad, they had a conversation about Stephen F. Austin, in Nacogdoches, near the Louisiana border. SFA was offering him a full ride and a guaranteed starting spot freshman year, which doesn’t mean anything. Because once they put you on the bench, what can you do?
Todd Steuben was one of the guys who talked to my dad. He was just a kid himself, maybe twenty-five years old, an assistant at UT, and part of what he had to overcome is the fact that Dick Menzes, the Longhorn head coach, didn’t think it worth his while to come himself. 163
Marcus asked him, “Where’s Coach Menzes, when do I get to meet him?”
“That’s up to me,” Todd said. “If I tell him, you need to see this kid.”
My mother commented, after he left, “That’s the most Texan person I ever met, I mean, just the epitome,” but actually Steuben grew up in Long Beach, was voted Mr. Basketball his senior year, ended up going to UCLA, where he turned out to be … a really good high-school player. He could shoot in space, he played hard, he knew the game, but he was three inches short and a step slow, and what he knew didn’t count for much. Until afterward, when he got into coaching.
I liked Steuben. He was still young enough that the person he became later hadn’t totally colonized him. Like Al Pacino before The Godfather, where he was still a good actor but hadn’t figured out yet how Al Pacino acts.
The first time he came to the house, he noticed the hoop over the garage outside and roped my dad into playing against Marcus and me. They beat us two out of three. I guarded Dad and Marcus guarded Steuben. He was wearing cowboy boots, with hard leather soles, and clicked and slipped on the concrete drive; but he was grabby and physical, too, and if Marcus complained, Steuben said, You gotta be tougher than that. On offense he waved my dad over to set picks and stepped around them and knocked down twenty-footers. I mean, he basically didn’t miss, which brought home to all of us a new level of awareness of what the people who take this game seriously expect to be able to do. If he wanted to get Marcus’s attention, he got it.
We won the third game because they got tired, and Marcus broke free for a couple of dunks, where he could take out pent-up frustration on the old Rawlings rim. But maybe also Steuben let him win.
Afterward, we sat on the porch and had a glass of iced tea. It was late November weather, sunny and cool. Steuben said, “Let me tell you what’s gonna happen for the next six months.” 164
The first signing deadline had passed, a week before Thanksgiving—Marcus was just coming onto the national radar and the general consensus was, he should wait. The next was mid-April; Marcus couldn’t technically make a commitment until then. One complicating factor was that legally a parent or guardian needed to sign, too, and for a while my dad even talked about becoming Marcus’s legal guardian to expedite the process, but then it just became clear this wasn’t necessary. Steuben suggested it because he wanted to contain the number of responsible adults he had to appeal to.
Here’s what people are going to say, he said. They’re going to tell you, you can’t shoot. They’re going to tell you, you’re just a shooter. Somebody will say, Hayes needs to put on thirty pounds. Somebody else will say, you gotta lose weight. He’s a killer, he’s soft, he can’t pass, he can’t handle, he’s just a passer, he dribbles too much, he’s a second option, he needs to have the ball all the time. He can’t rebound, he’s just a banger. They’re going to say all these things and you shouldn’t pay attention to any of them. The reason Coach brought me in is player development. It’s my job to make sure that if you come to Texas, when you leave, you’re ready for that next level. If that’s what you want, I can get you there.
“That’s the only thing I want,” Marcus said.
“I know we’re not your first option,” Steuben told him. “Even if we’re your best option. But you’re gonna wanna talk to Kentucky, you’re gonna wanna talk to North Carolina, to Kansas, to UCLA. And all of those people are going to talk to you, and say nice things, they’re going to sit on your porch and drink iced tea, and then one day you’re going to go four for seventeen and you won’t hear from them again. And when that happens, I’m still going to be here.”
My dad told me afterward, I bet he says this to all the girls.