John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

"Style and pride?"

Waterbug stopped a good thirty-five feet out and picked up the ball. The crowded gym was still as everyone waited for him to raise a finger or call out a color. "Say now," one of them yelled into the silence, "what ever happened to Waterbug?"

They hardly saw the shot. That's how it was when he had a notion and he took it — like a snakebite. The ball swished and Brian felt Coach's hand on his neck.

"You go in there, son," he said, "and settle the boys down. Show me what you can do."

Brian crouched by the scorer's table, waiting for a whistle that would allow his substitution, and for a moment caught Waterbug's eye. Bug smiled and shook his head slowly.

Bug took the ball down the court and felt the ball alive in his hands. Felt the eyes of all the players and all the spectators on that ball and knew for now he had control of the game. He took the game and ran with it, feeling the pressure of Coach, the pressure of Brian, the pressure of all his careful, defensive games driving him forward through the snatching hands, felt it chasing him desperately around the floor. Bug listened hard for the rhythm of it, listened to the hard rubber kissing of sneaker soles on the floor, saw everything clearly written in feet, the distribution of weight, the leanings and balances, feints and retreats, and he was a half-step ahead of them all. He snaked through the other nine bodies to the basket, then left the crowd-roar hanging and dribbled past it and on out to open floor again. He teased the players with his ball, played the growing cheers and whoops of his audience in and out, in and out, handling the ball with breathless speed, offering it out for a dozen near-steals and snapping it back from the brink. He heard the crowd-sound building to a payoff and the tension for release building inside him and cut hard for the far corner, whipping away, back to the basket using up every bit of old asphalt flash-and-dazzle left to him, then jumping, turning, lofted a soft, slow, impudent shot as he flew out of bounds, a shot that said there's nothing you can do, there's nothing any of you can do about the Bug but watch and wait as it floated to be swallowed by the hoop.

People were laughing and clapping and slapping five in the stands and at first when he heard the buzzer Brian didn't want to move. But he trotted on and tapped Waterbug on the shoulder. "Have fun," said the Bug, "it's all yours."

Brian took the ball back and went hard left again on Preston, then switched right for another lay-up. Preston's bandaged leg didn't plant when he had to change directions. 20-1 g. Brian faked right, went two long strides and stopped dead. Preston tried to dig in but the knee buckled. He knelt on the floor and saw the last point go in. 21, game.

"They'll always figure that it was luck, or cheating, or anything but the simple fact that you're better than they are and always will be." Thirteen-two-nine, off the cushion to kiss the five ball in. "Let em. Let em believe anything their hearts desire if it makes em feel better and keep coming back for more. But you've won, Sport, and that's the name of the game."

Brian was alone in the showers until Lucius and Preston came in and walked past him to the far end. Preston wore his medal in the shower. Preston had won the medal for getting a hundred on a test in Confirmation class. Brian and Preston and Lucius had played wall-ball against the chapel at St. Thomas after class every Wednesday, played until the nun from the Children's Home came and honked.

There wasn't much warm water left but Brian stayed under till the two had finished and walked past again. When he heard their locker doors slam he turned the shower off. He liked to be alone in the locker room sometimes, he liked the echoes he made. Like being in a church after everybody had gone. Brian dried himself on the way back to his locker. The five dollars were crumpled and sitting on his pants. His Con verse All-Stars were gone. No idea who it could be, he would say. What can you expect from them, Coach would say, and order him a new pair.

"That's the way it is, Sport. The way to be a winner. You and me both know there's only one place that matters, and that's First Place. Am I right?"

At about quarter to five Sweeny would start clearing his throat and looking over to the pool table and making little dusting motions on the bar-top. Jockey would pay no attention. But at exactly five, without looking up at the clock, Jockey would sweep the balls into the pockets with his hand. He'd unscrew his cue into sections and put them in their leather sheath. He'd pull the green cap with the Hibernian insignia from his back pocket and jam it on his head. Sweeny would pass the push broom and the dustpan over the bar to him.

"Another day," Jockey would sigh, "another dollar."

UFFALO.

Cleveland and Toledo.

On to Chicago. Gangsters sprawl, twitch and die, gunshot on the sidewalks. Cattle end their long western exodus and hang bleeding from hooks. Wind comes cutting off the Lake.

The country lay on the kitchen table, riddled with pinprick fissures, cake crumbs dwarfing the Rockies. As a boy Brian used the map for a dart board, closing his eyes, flicking. Wherever it hits is where I'll live. Flick — Vermillion, South Dakota. Maybe the best two out of five.

Peoria, Hannibal, Kansas City. Mail-order towns, jumpingoff towns. Stock up the wagon and kiss the safe life good-bye. Brian was trying to write his mother a good-bye note. Nothing much to say, nothing that he really believed or that didn't sound sappy. Good-bye, I'm going west. Lighting out.

He had been as far west as Buffalo once, on a basketball trip. As far south as Jamestown on one school field trip, and to New York City after the World's Fair on another.

La Crosse, Albert Lea, Sioux Falls. Poor, one-blanket Indians building fires to survive till morning and the woolly black herds pushed back off the land they had covered like a robe. Sometimes it was hard to believe.

It had to be a note, not a letter. A last small word, something final. Like the boy in the Mexican War who drew a black bean — "Mother, in one half hour my doom will be finished on this earth." This wasn't a trip, a vacation, he wasn't off to CYO summer camp with her waving at the depot and name tags sewn on his underwear. He was leaving for good.

Dear Ma. Or better, just Ma. He wondered if there was still such a thing as Western Union. Like in the movies. As a boy he always thought of famous sayings coming by Western Union telegram.

DEAR SIRS STOP HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT STOP JPJ

He wondered if he should go north along the Lakes and through the Badlands or slide down south first. Roanoke, Knoxville, Chattanooga.

MA STOP KILLED ME A BAR TODAY AT THIS TREE STOP D BOONE

He heard creakings down the hall, his mother's insomnia. He tried not to rustle the country. She could never leave him alone if he stayed up late, she'd toss and turn and go to the bathroom and finally come out squinting and shivering and say oh, are you up?

They had never talked much, but only since the old man was gone was it so obvious. What had ever possessed them, at their age? His third-grade teacher on Open House night, complimenting them on their grandson's imagination.

He would leave her a note.

Ma — I wrote to school, the refund should be in the mail. I'm not going back.

He heard the toilet flush down the hall. The bathroom held her odors, he used to wait to use the ones at school in the morning.