Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

One afternoon in Oakland before a game with the IBM Warriors someone made the mistake of leaving the TV on in the visitors’ clubhouse. Elwood and Otis and I were sitting playing cards when a pre-taped interview with Gorman turned up on the sports channel.

The interviewer seemed to be trying to work around to the subject of race. “How’d you choose your nickname, Dunk?” he asked. “Why Vanilla, in particular? What point are you trying to make?”

Gorman shrugged. “Hey, don’t get heavy,” he said. “They call me Vanilla ’cause I’m completely smooth and completely sweet. It’s simple.”

“Why not something else, then?” said the interviewer. “Chocolate, say.”

Gorman laughed, and for a minute I thought he was going to grant the man his point. Instead he realigned his sneer and said: “Chocolate don’t go down smooth.”

“What are you saying, Dunk?”

“Nothing, man. Just that I’m not chocolate. That’s why I’m like a breath of fresh air — I go down smooth. People are ready for that, ready to lighten up. Chocolate’s sweet, but it’s always got that bitter edge, y’know?”

And then, God help me, he turned to the camera and gave it a big wink.

I got up and shut the TV off, but it was too late. Elwood had already slammed his cards down on the table and stalked out. Otis looked sick. I prayed that Gornan wasn’t in the locker room. I went through and found Elwood out on the edge of the floor, watching the Warriors take their warmups.

At game time we managed to get out on the floor without any explosions. But from the opening tipoff I knew it was going to be a bad night. When the ball got into Elwood’s hands he drove like a steamroller up the middle and went up for a vicious dunk. Then he stole an inbound pass and did it again, only this time he fouled his man on the drive. Everyone on the floor looked nervous, even the Warriors — even, for once, Gornan, who was usually oblivious.

The Warrior hit his free throws and the game resumed. The pattern came clear soon enough: Elwood was calling for every pass, and when he got it he was going up for the dunk, every time. He was trying to play Gorman’s game, but he was too big and strong, too angry to pull it off. He was stuffing a lot of shots but he’d accumulated four fouls before the second quarter. When Coach Van finally pulled him, he had twice as many points as Gorman or anyone else, but the Warriors were ahead.

He sat until halftime, and with McFront in we got the game tied. During the break Coach Van called Elwood into an office and closed the door. Meanwhile Gorman was off in his usual corner of the locker room smoking a cigarette, but he had a hollow, haunted expression on him, one I’d never seen before.

Elwood was back in for the start of the third quarter, and whatever Coach Van had said to him in his office hadn’t worked: he picked up right where he’d left off, breaking for insane inside moves at every opportunity, going up for ill-fated dunks and making some of them, smearing a lot of guys with his sweat. The Oakland crowd, which had been abuzz with expectations of seeing the Vanilla Dunk Revue, fell to a low, ugly murmur. When Elwood got called for another foul I was almost relieved; that made five, and with six he’d foul out of the game, and it would be over.

But he wasn’t quite done. On the next play he pulled down a rebound and dribbled the length of the court, flattening a Warrior on his way up. I waited for the ref’s whistle, but no whistle came. The Warrior center braced himself between Elwood and the net. Elwood ran straight at him, tossed off a perfunctory head fake, and then went up with a spinning move, his bulk barely clearing a tremendous head-on collision with the jumping center. He jammed the ball down with both hands and hit the glass so hard it shattered.

Suddenly the arena was dead silent, as Elwood and the Warrior center fell in a tangle amid a rain of Plexiglas fragments. When the two men got up unhurt the roar started. The referees called the game a Warrior victory by forfeit, and Elwood took them on singlehandedly; we had to drag him off the floor.

When we got him into the clubhouse we found Gorman already showered and in his street clothes, giving his version of events to the press.

I looked up the details on Maurice Lucas’s career once. I was working on a theory that the basketball skills you sampled contained an element of the previous player’s personality, some kind of style or attitude that was intrinsic to the way they played, something that could be imparted, gradually, to the later player, along with the actual basketball skills.

Well, bingo, as far as Maurice Lucas and Elwood Fossett were concerned. Lucas, it turned out, spent a considerable part of his career feeling misunderstood and underpaid. Specifically underpaid in comparison to the white players on his team. As a result he spent a lot of time playing angry. I mean apart from the forcefulness that came with him (and Elwood) being so big and strong; his game was specifically fueled by rage.

Another result of the conflicts in his career was that he was widely understood to have dogged it, to have played intentionally poorly, as a kind of protest, during some of the key years of his career. Which got me thinking: the skills that Elwood inherited might also contain an element of this struggle that Lucas had waged against himself, to suppress his skills, to not give the best of what he had to the company men he hated.

Elwood wouldn’t have known, either. Maurice Lucas’s career was before his time. Elwood’s interest in basketball history went back no further than Michael Jordan’s rookie year.

McFront started in Elwood’s place the next night, and Elwood went back to the lockers, got dressed, and walked out. Gornan had a great two quarters, undeniable as basketball, unsurpassable as spectacle, and in the locker room at the half he was more exuberant than usual, clowning with Pharaoh and McFront, turning the charm he’d previously saved for the media on his teammates. It was a fun scene, but it made me a little sick to see Elwood being drummed out so easily, even if he’d opened the door to it himself, with his walkout.

On the bench during the second half I scooted up next to Coach Van.

“You’re letting this team fall apart,” I said.

“Come on, Lassner.”

“What?”

“You’re not gonna start this in the middle of a game.” He sounded tired of the conversation before it had even started. “Nobody’s letting the team fall apart. This could be a championship team.”

“This could have been a championship team. Now it’s a championship Vanilla Dunk and his Dunkettes.”

He made a face.

“What does ownership say?” I asked.

“What do you think? Fishall wants Gornan starting every game. The fans want it too. As long as we’re winning I’m gonna have a tough time arguing for anything else.”

“Yeah.”

“I want Elwood out there too, Bo, but if he doesn’t even suit up—”

“I know, I know.”

“Look, I can’t make everybody like Gorman. I don’t particularly like him. But if you get Elwood back in here, he’ll see playing time. The backboard — that’s no big deal. Just more headlines, is the way Fishall sees it. But this walkout business—”

He didn’t finish his sentence. Something happened out on the floor, something that, as it turned out, would change everything. There was a crash, and a loud sigh, and the crowd fell to silence. It was so quiet you could make out the squeak of the team doctor’s sneakers as he crossed the floor, rushing towards the fallen player.

I got up and peered over the top of the cluster of players, but couldn’t see anything. So I counted heads. It was a Knick on the floor, and height — or rather, lack of it — told me it was Sal Pharaoh.