I called the hospital from the Mahoney Gym and found out that Mary-Ann was going to be okay. Everybody was relieved to hear that, and uptight at the same time. I found myself watching every move that Cal made. I told myself that if he pulled something dirty on us, I’d kill him. And for the first time I really meant it.
We got dressed, and Cal told us just to play the best we can. “You go out there and give it everything you got,” he said, “and you have to win. Because what you got is more than what they got.”
I didn’t really want to hear it. A guy came in and said that there were ten minutes to game time. We all went out, and Cal told me to sit on the bench and put a towel around my legs like I was hurt or something.
“If I ain’t going to play, what I got to be here for?” I asked.
“Sit on the bench like I told you,” he said. “And look around the stands for cats that look out of place.”
“Now what does that mean?” I asked as he walked away.
They interviewed Cal on television. I heard part of it, where they were asking him what the tournament meant to the players. Only they were giving him the answers right along with the questions.
“Besides a chance to be seen by college scouts and, perhaps, a chance to get into a college,” the announcer said, “what other benefits does this tournament hold for these fine athletes?”
“For most of them,” Cal said, “it’s going to end right here. The chances of them making it into college ball are slim at best. It’s a fun thing, and that’s primarily how it should be looked at.”
“Well, of course it’s fun,” the announcer said, pulling the mike away from Cal, “and though there won’t be chances for college ball for all of the players, they will all have had the opportunity to show what they can do.”
It went on for a little while longer, but mostly they stayed away from Cal. Then the television guy came over and said that they would be ready in ten minutes. The refs came and told us that, and Cal took us back in the locker room for a final talk.
“Okay, here’s the starting five,” he said. “Roy in the middle, Paul and Ox up front, Breeze and Jo-Jo in the backcourt. Jo-Jo’s going to be on Tomkins. We got to play tough defense and a careful game. No run-and-shoot stuff. Everybody got that?”
“How come Lonnie ain’t starting?” Ox asked.
“Because I said so,” Cal came back. “Now let’s get out there and play some ball.”
They all started out but Jo-Jo. He held Cal and me back until everybody had left.
“What’s up?” Jo-Jo asked. “You know I can’t play with that Tomkins. I want to play real bad, but you got me on their best man, and I know I can’t handle the dude.”
“I got a reason,” Cal said. “Lonnie will tell you all he can about the guy. What I want you to do is just to stop him any way you can. Keep the ball away from him. Hang on him, foul him, get him mad. Just don’t let him bust loose. You got something going for you that you didn’t have in the first game. You got all these television cameras. He’s going to try to look pretty instead of just playing his best. You take that away from him, and you might just get his game. Don’t worry about fouls; don’t worry about scoring. Just mess with Tomkins. You got that?”
“Yeah.” Jo-Jo looked at me, and I gave him a little punch. I told him about how Tomkins shot off his left dribble and passed off his right and everything else I could think about. I told him he could stop him, even though I didn’t believe he could.
We went back out, and there was a wall of noise that was unbelievable. Manhattan had a whole cheering section. Joni and her girls looked okay, too, and I was glad for them. The Sweet Man was there, with his shoulder bag on, and he came over and said something to the Manhattan coach; then he said something in passing to Cal. Whatever it was, it made Cal smile.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Same thing he used to say when we played ball together years ago,” Cal said. “Kick their butts!”
The television guys came over and told us to keep the time-outs to a minimum. The game was being taped, so they didn’t need them. Then the buzzer went off, and the game started.
The first play of the game went wrong. Roy got the tap and sent it to Jo-Jo. Jo-Jo brought the ball across court, and Tomkins took it from him and went for the lay-up. Jo-Jo tried to stop him and fouled him. We were behind by three, and we were only six seconds into the game.
Cal went up and down the bench, yelling for everybody to play defense.
“Fall back! Fall back!” he shouted.
They scored the first ten points of the game. We finally got on the scoreboard when Ox hit a jumper over Tomkins. But Tomkins brought the ball down and got it right back.
Then Jo-Jo got on Tomkins and started keeping him away from the ball. He got two quick fouls and looked over to the bench. Cal gave him a clenched fist. I looked at Cal, I couldn’t believe what he was doing.
“You making Jo-Jo take your weight?” I asked.
“No,” Cal said. “You’re going to take all of it.”
“I sure ain’t taking it sitting on the bench,” I said.
“There he is, third row,” Cal said. “You see him over there?”
I looked over to where Cal was looking and saw Tyrone sitting with Juno and another one of his boys. The other cat had a bandage around his head.
“You do that?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Cal said. “And if your team can keep the score close, that’s going to be some light stuff.”
The coach from Manhattan called time-out and complained to the referee that Jo-Jo was mauling Tomkins. The refs told Cal to have Jo-Jo ease up. He called Jo-Jo to the bench and told him to keep up the good work.
The score was 26–18, their favor, and we couldn’t seem to get any closer.
“Keep an eye on those guys up there,” Cal said.
Paul got hot, and we brought the score within three points. Cal called time-out and got the team over to the bench.
“It’s almost half time,” Cal said. “I want to go into the locker room either tied or ahead. Go out and get the ball. Take a chance if you have to, but get the ball!”
The whistle blew, and they went back out on the court. It didn’t make much sense to me. The refs were blowing the whistle against us so much that half the game seemed to be them on the foul line racking up points. The score was close, but we had so many fouls that they could walk on us in the second half. They inbounded, and the ball went to Tomkins. Jo-Jo had held him to fifteen points, seven of them from the foul line. He was still getting his stuff off, but he was looking raggedy doing it. He came down with the ball and put one of the sweetest moves on Jo-Jo that I had ever seen. He started right and then faked a pass. Jo-Jo went for the fake, and Tomkins got the step. Jo-Jo fouled him as he went by. The whistle blew, and the buzzer sounded from the scorer’s bench. We were in a three-for-two situation. Tomkins didn’t need it; he hit the first two, and it was half time. We were down by five points.
The locker room was death valley. Everybody was out there playing their hearts out. Paul was playing his best game ever. We were still down by five points, and we had a mountain of fouls against us.
Cal went from guy to guy, saying how good they were playing. Nobody thought that we had a chance. They didn’t ask again why I wasn’t playing—they knew something was up. When they went out at the beginning of the second half, Tomkins didn’t start. They started McDade instead.
“Okay!” Cal said. “Okay!”
“What you ‘okaying’ for?” I asked. “They just figure that they don’t need Tomkins to beat us.”
“No, that’s not what they’re thinking,” Cal said. “They’re thinking McDade is going to foul out Jo-Jo. They see you sitting here with that towel wrapped around your legs, and they think you can’t play. So when McDade fouls Jo-Jo out, Tomkins is going to have a field day. Keep your eyes on those dudes over there, Lonnie. If one of them makes a move, let me know.”
McDade came in, and he started playing his raggedy game. He fouled Jo-Jo with an elbow in the mouth. Jo-Jo was cool and made the basket. Then Breeze intercepted a pass and fed Jo-Jo on the break. Jo-Jo had the step and started up for the shot when McDade tripped him. They called it a nonshooting foul. Cal went up in the air about a foot and a half, then sat back down.
“You ain’t going to say nothing?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Jo-Jo was mad and looked towards the bench. He blew the shot, and McDade got the rebound. Jo-Jo went after him and fouled him. He was out of the game.
Cal called Lenny over and told him to go in for Jo-Jo. I was disgusted. Some of the guys were looking over at Cal, but he wouldn’t let them catch his eyes.
“One of the dudes with Tyrone just got up,” I said.
“This is it,” Cal said. “The score is close enough for him to make his bet. He’s seen me put Lenny in, and he figures that the spread is going to be just what I told him. Watch the cat that got up; make sure he didn’t just go to the bathroom or nothing.”
The Manhattan team had put Tomkins back in, and he was doing his thing. He was feeding, hitting from the outside, everything. I didn’t see what the guy that went was doing. He went outside of the gym. In the meanwhile, they were beginning to pull away. The lead, which had been down to as little as two points, was back up to twelve two minutes after Tomkins got into the game.
“He’s back!” I said.
Cal looked over to where Tyrone was sitting, and Tyrone nodded to him and smiled. I looked at Cal, and he was grinning. It was the biggest damn grin I ever seen in my life.
“He’s got his action,” Cal said. “And from what I heard in the street it’s big action. Now let me tell you something, Lonnie. I’m going to put you in the game, and you got two things you can do. You ready to hear this?”
“I’m ready.”
“You can go out there and do nothing and throw away the game,” Cal said. “Then Tyrone takes his action, and me and you are just a couple of niggers with our pants down. Or you can go out there and play like you know you can, and we can take this whole thing. We bust Tyrone’s action. I can’t do it, man, but you can. What you think, you think if I put you in, you can get Spider some class after all these years?”
When I stood up and took my warm-up jacket off, everybody from our neighborhood stood up with me. There was a roar that made even the players on the floor look over to see what was going on. I went over to the bench and reported in for Lenny. O’Donnel was sitting on the end of the bench; his eyes were wide, and he was looking from me to Cal. He called Cal over.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“This is a championship game,” Cal said. “Don’t you think it’s time for the champions to start playing?”
I glanced up at the scoreboard. We were down by thirteen. Okay. We had the ball.
“Let’s do it!” Paul was shouting. He held up two fingers. I rolled to the right side, ran Tomkins into a pick, and got the ball from Roy. Tomkins had recovered and went up with me. I stuffed over him, and the crowd went crazy.
Joni was leading the fans on our side of the gym. They had the ball, but all of our guys were alive. Roy knocked a pass away, and Ox scooped it up and flew. He hit a nice reverse lay-up, and the crowd went wild again.
I could feel the game. I could feel everything that was going on. It was as if every player had a string on him and the strings were all tied to me. Anytime anybody moved, I could feel it. I saw everything and knew what everybody was doing. We started coming back. The ball felt good in my hands. When I went up for a shot from the top of the key, it was as if I had never let the ball go, like I was reaching from the top of the key and directing the ball into the hoop.
They put McDade back in, and the first time I went against him he slammed me into the floor. The ball went one way, and I went the other.
Ox ran over to me to grab me before I blew my cool. But I wasn’t blowing nothing. I got up and smiled at McDade. No, fool, you don’t get my game that easy. You don’t get my game and the Spider’s game that easy. Not this time around.
I made my shots, and they went down and scored on a back-door play. We tried a break, but they broke it up, knocking the ball to the backcourt. Ox set a pick at midcourt, and I was trying to use it to get across when McDade got me again. This time he ran alongside of me and drove me into the scorer’s bench with his hip. I wound up halfway under the bench. The ref gave us the ball but no foul. Yeah. I got up, and McDade was bracing himself. He had his hands up, but I just stepped out of bounds and waited for the ball. I shot a glance over at O’Donnel, and he nodded to me.
Later for you, sucker, I thought.
The next time they got the ball they called time-out and brought Tomkins back in. The score was 81 to 75, their favor. Cal told me to look over at Tyrone. I looked at him, and he was glowering.
I was playing the game of my life. But when Tomkins came back in, he came to play. He didn’t have the moves, but he had the shot. It was me against him. If I gave him a half an inch to shoot, he’d make the basket. I was coming down on offense, and he was all over me. I had to go up higher on my jumpers, move faster on my drives, concentrate harder at every step. We got the score down to three points, but that’s where we stopped. They started matching us basket for basket.
They switched to a tight box and one defense. Tomkins was on me wherever I went. The box was cutting off my drives, and they were boxing out Roy for the bounds. I started to freak a little. I came across the middle, taking cats to one side and then spinning in the air to the other. We closed to within one point, but then Tomkins came down the lane, gave me a shoulder fake, and then went up and stuffed two-handed.
Ox answered that with a soft jumper from the corner that didn’t touch nothing but net. They brought the ball into Tomkins. I tapped the ball away from him, and he recovered it. I thought I had lost him, but he backed off, and I realized that he was looking for somebody to pass off to! He passed off and then glanced up at the clock. They were trying to hang on! Tomkins moved without the ball to the corner, and I went with him. A second later the whistle blew. I turned around, and Paul had stolen the ball and called time-out.
“We ain’t got time for two shots,” Cal said. “There’s twenty-eight seconds left, and they got three up on us. We go for the tie. Lonnie, their big man is tired. We got to hope he makes a mistake. You drive on him and try to get the foul.”
“No way, man,” I said.
“He’s tired,” Cal said. “A tired man is more likely to foul you. You can do it!”
“That ain’t what I mean,” I said. “I ain’t going for no tie. I’m going for the whole thing.”
“You don’t have time for two shots,” Cal said.
“I got the time,” I said. I looked up at the clock. “I got the time.”
We brought the ball in, and I went for the drive. I figured it might be easy because they would be thinking about not fouling me. I started my step, and then Tomkins jumped out on me. I was afraid of the charge, so I twisted away from him. The ball came up off the dribble, and I hooked it toward the hoop. It dropped.
They called time-out. I looked up and saw that there were eighteen seconds left.
“They’re going to sit on it,” Cal said. “We have to foul them as soon as they get the ball. They get the one, and we call time-out and then make a plan for the two. Lonnie, they’re going to give Tomkins the ball because he’s their best foul shot. As soon as he gets the ball, foul him! You got that?”
They brought the ball in and got it to Tomkins, just like Cal said they would.
“Foul him! Foul him!” I heard Cal screaming from the bench. Tomkins wasn’t looking for the shot. He was waiting for the foul. I made a move toward him, and he held up, just turning his back to me. I waited.
“Foul him! Foul him!” Cal was standing on the sideline, screaming.
“Okay!” I yelled. I glanced over at Cal and saw the veins in his neck straining at his shirt collar. But this was my game, too, and this time Cal was going to have to trust me.
I faked to the right and then spun around, reaching in with my left hand. The ball spun away, and I went for it. I got to it a split second before Tomkins did and dribbled it away from him.
“Shoot! Shoot!” They were yelling from the stands.
I had the shot for an instant, but I held up.
“Shoot!”
Their center moved into the lane, and Tomkins was back on me. I moved toward the center with Tomkins breathing against the side of my face. I pulled up and put my back to their center. Breeze’s man saw me turn with the ball and came to cut off the side away from Tomkins. I brought the ball high over my head for an instant, let them reach, and then passed it over my shoulder to where Breeze should have been. I lost my balance as I let the ball go, and the last thing I saw before I hit the ground was Breeze putting the ball softly against the backboard. The buzzer sounded as I hit the floor.
By the time I got to my feet there were a hundred hands reaching out and touching me. People were handling me and hugging me. I looked up at the scoreboard. The score read: Manhattan 92–Harlem 91. Then it changed: Harlem 93–Manhattan 92. We had won!
Everybody was screaming and shouting. I felt somebody kissing me on the cheek, and I turned and it was Ox. What the heck, I kissed him back. Some of the guys were trying to lift me to their shoulders, and I felt myself half being lifted, half falling and trying desperately to stay on my feet. Over the heads I could see Cal; he raised a clenched fist, and I gave him one back. Our eyes met over the heads, and it was a great feeling.
Somebody was pulling at my wrist, and I turned and saw that it was one of the television guys. He shouted at me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He pointed to the television cameras. They wanted to interview me. I nodded my head yes. I turned to see where Cal was; this was his game as much as mine, maybe more.
When I looked back, I didn’t see him at first. When I did, he was headed towards the locker rooms. Right behind him was the bald head of Tyrone, or Jack, or whatever else the creep was calling himself. I struggled to get out of Ox’s bear hug and told him to get the police.
“What?” He looked at me again.
“Get the police!” I screamed in his ears.
I fought my way through the crowds. The television guys were interviewing some of the kids, and the rest were clamoring around, mugging for the cameras. I saw the tournament committee setting up the trophies on the side of the room.
It seemed forever before I broke away from the crowd and got to the locker room doors. At the door was the guy with the bandages on his head. I didn’t need to be told what was going on inside.
“That your money?” I pointed to the guy’s feet.
“Wha’ money?” He looked down.
I balled my fist up and used it like a hammer as I smashed the sucker right in the middle of the bandages with everything I could muster. He didn’t make a sound. He just grabbed his head, looked up at me for a second as if he was really surprised, and then slowly sunk to the ground. I ran past him into the locker room.
Juno was holding Cal, and Tyrone was punching him in the stomach. Juno had his back to me, and when he turned, it was right into my fist. The pain shot up my arm, and I just knew the hand was busted. Juno turned Cal loose to get at me, and when he did, Cal hit him. Juno fell forward on top of me. He must have weighed a ton. I hit my elbow on a bench and lost all the feeling in my arm. I was trying to push Juno off me when I heard something slam into the lockers. It was Tyrone. Juno got on his feet and headed in the direction of Cal. I thought he was going to tackle Cal, but instead, he went by him towards the door. I made a jump after Juno, and I caught him by the foot. I was on the floor, trying to twist his leg, when I heard a gasp. I turned to look, and Cal was bent over. Tyrone was trying to get away, but Cal was holding one of his hands. Tyrone was punching Cal in the face with the other. Then Cal pushed Tyrone’s other hand away, and I saw the knife. He had stabbed Cal!
Tyrone jerked his hand loose and plunged it again into Cal’s side. I went to put my hand on the floor to push myself up, and suddenly the side of my head exploded as Juno sent his foot against my jaw.
Juno went out the door and I stumbled after him. I heard screams outside and a shot.
I looked at Cal; he was sitting on the floor against the locker. I pushed myself up and got over to him.
“Don’t talk, man,” I said. I could see he was hurt bad. “Don’t talk …”
“You get a win … you got to talk about it …” Cal said. He was smiling. “It’s too sweet to just let it go. Talk to me. How’d it feel?”
“It felt good,” I said. The pool of blood was growing, and the bloodstain on his shirt was growing bigger every moment. I put my fingers on it and looked at it. I could hardly see it because I couldn’t stop crying.
“Tell me about it, Lonnie,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “We got it, didn’t we? It was us out there, wasn’t it?”
“I knew I couldn’t get the shot off,” I started, “and when I saw Breeze cut away from … Cal, I love you, man. I really do.”
“Tell me about the game.”
“When I saw Breeze cut away, I didn’t know for sure which way he cut, but I …”
I felt his body relax as he fell against me. I put my arms around him and tried to explain that I wasn’t sure that Breeze would be in the right place, but that I knew he had taught us that play. And if we did what he had told us, it would work out. And it had.
There were people coming into the locker room. Some of them were police. I felt myself being lifted from the floor. Aggie was bending over Cal; her body was shaking with her crying.
I turned and walked out of the locker room. Outside, the police had Tyrone and Juno and the guy with the bandages.
It didn’t seem to matter anymore. I went through the crowd back onto the gym floor. Everything seemed to blend in a jumble of noise and lights. O’Donnel was there, pushing a trophy into my hands; someone was patting me on the back, someone else asking nonsensical questions. I handed the trophy to someone and found an exit.
Five days later, on a sunny morning, Cal was buried. I sat in the second row, behind Cal’s pop, and listened to the preacher say things about how Cal had been this and that and how we all had to die sometime. Then there was the long drive out to the cemetery. When we got out there, they didn’t put the casket in the ground. They put it under a little tent with flowers all around and said that they were going to put it in the ground later that day. Then we got back into the cars and came back to Harlem.
Hey, I felt so bad leaving him out there. I felt like I was leaving the only friend I had in the world out there. I told Aggie that.
“What else you gonna do, honey?” she said. Her face had all the hurt in it that I felt, and the tears were running down over her mouth.
A week after the funeral Mary-Ann was strong enough to leave the hospital. Coney Island was open again, and I took her out there one morning, early, before the crowds came.
“You hear anything about scholarships?” she asked.
“I got a few letters,” I said. “But I’m not worried about it.”
“I thought …” She started a sentence and didn’t finish it. Instead, she just held on tighter to my arm.
“I’m going to try to get into some college, any way I can,” I said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “If basketball can get me there, okay. I got to get my game a little better first, though.”
“You were Most Valuable Player,” Mary-Ann said. “How much better can you get?”
“That ain’t the game I’m talking about,” I said. “When Cal sent me out on the floor to play, I felt real good. I was telling myself I was getting even with Tyrone and that O’Donnel cat. Whole lot of crap like that was passing through my head. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Well, after the whole deal was down, and Cal got killed, I just went for a long walk. I had my warm-up suit on and the jacket we got. I just walked and walked. And the thing came to me just like Cal was running it. The game was over. I had done my thing on the court, copped a trophy, and I still had to get on with living. Cal said he gave his game away when he sold out to the gamblers. But you know he made a comeback. He had enough of his game left, his all-the-time, off-the-court game, to give some of it to me. I don’t even think he knew how real that part of his game was. Maybe ’cause it’s harder to deal with. They don’t be keeping score so you can check yourself out all the time.
“I figure there are going to be a lot of Tyrones and O’Donnels, you know, good guys and bad guys, that I’m going to have to learn to deal with. I know I can’t win all the time, but I got to keep myself in the game, got to keep my game together, so at least I have a chance.”
“You think I can get a piece of that game of yours?” Mary-Ann looked up at me.
“You can get a tryout,” I said. “I’ll check your moves out, mama. See what you got going for yourself.”
Mary-Ann smiled just the way I knew she would and held my arm a little tighter. I had a scared feeling in the bottom of my stomach, and a little voice that said, “Hey, maybe you won’t make it anyway.” I knew that was true, but I also knew I was going to give it my best shot.
There were two kids on the boardwalk. They had a wire trash basket with the bottom beat out tied against the fence and were shooting a basketball through it. They asked me to tie it higher, and I did. They were playing one-on-one, and we watched them for a while. One of the kids missed a shot and kicked the ball. It came my way, and I picked it up.
“Try shooting like this,” I said.
I shot and watched the ball bounce off the edge of the basket.
“You don’t know nothing about no basketball,” the smaller kid said.
He took the ball, and they started to play again.