Richard Ford - Independence Day

A pocket-size grandstand has been built just on the other side of the conveyor, and plenty of spectators are up there now, noisily ya-hooing and razzing their kids, brothers, nephews, stepsons who’re taking the ride and trying to shoot the eyes out of all the baskets.

Paul, who’s on the sidelines by the entrance gate, where there’s a line of kids waiting to get on, seems on the alert, as though he were running the whole contraption. He is, however, watching a scrappy, thick-thighed white kid in a New York Knicks uniform, who’s hustling around among the backboards, kicking trapped balls toward the suction tube gutter, tipping stuck balls out of the nets, snapping vicious passes back at kids on the conveyor and occasionally taking a graceless little short-armed hook shot, which always goes in, no matter what basket he shoots at. No doubt he’s the manager’s son.

“Did you try out your patented two-hand set yet?” I say, coming up right behind Paul and over the noise. I instantly smell his sour sweat smell when I put my hand on his shoulder. There’s also, I can see, a thick scabby jag in his scalp, where whoever authored his skint haircut made a mistake. (Where are such things done?)

“That’d be good, wouldn’t it,” he says coldly, going on watching the white kid. “That nitwit thinks because he works here his game’s gonna improve. Except the floor’s tilted and the baskets aren’t regulation. So he’s actually fucked.” This seems to make him satisfied. He has purchased no food that I can see.

“You better give it a try,” I say over the basketball clatter and the thrum the giant machine’s making. I feel exactly like a dad among other real dads, encouraging my son to do what he doesn’t want to do because he’s afraid he’ll be bad at it.

“D’you always dribble before you shoot?” someone in the bleachers shouts out at the moving conveyor. A short bald man who’s about to try a precarious hook shot yells back without even looking: “Why don’t you try eating me,” then wings a shot that misses everything and causes other people in the bleachers to laugh.

“You do it.” Paul snorts a disparaging little snuffle. “I saw some Nets scouts in the crowd.” The Nets are his favorite team to belittle, because they’re no good and from New Jersey.

“Okay, but then you have to do it.” I cuff his shoulder in an unnatural comradely way, catching another unappetizing look at his offended ear.

“I don’t have to do anything,” he says without looking at me, just watching the bright, indoor air a-throng with orange balls.

“Okay, you just watch me, then,” I say lamely.

I step around him and into line and am quickly right up to the little gate behind a small black kid. I take a look back at Paul, who’s watching me, leaning an elbow on the plywood fence that separates the arena from the waiting line, his face completely unawed, as if he expects to see me do something stupid beyond all previous efforts.

“Check out how my balls rotate,” I call back at him, hoping it’ll embarrass him, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

And then I’m up on the rumbling belt, moving right to left as the rack of balls and the little forest of stage-lit baskets, backboards and poles begins quickly gliding past in the opposite way. I’m instantly nervous about falling down, and don’t make a move toward a ball. The black kid in front of me has on a huge purple-and-gold team jacket that says Mr. New Hampshire Basketball on the back in sparkling gold letters, and he seems able to handle at least three balls at any one time, virtually spewing shots at every goal, every height, every distance, and with each shot emitting a short, breathy whoof like a boxer throwing a punch. And of course everything goes spinning in: a bank, a set, a one-hander, a fall-away, a short-arm hook like the ball boy’s — everything but an alley-oop and a lean-in power jam.

I lay hands on my first ball halfway through the ride, still not confident about my balance, my heart suddenly starting to beat fast because other shooters are behind me. I frown out toward the clutter of red metal posts and orange baskets, set my feet as well as I can, cock the ball behind my ear and heave up a high arching shot that misses the basket I expected to hit, strikes a lower one, bounces out and nearly drops in the very lowest goal, which I hadn’t actually seen.

I quick grab another ball as Mr. New Hampshire Basketball is putting up shot after shot, making his stagy little whoof noise and hitting nothing but net. I take similar aim at a medium-height basket at a medium distance, hoist my shot off one-handed, though well gyroed by a good rotation I learned from watching TV, and come pretty damn close to making it, though one of Mr. Basketball’s shots hisses through just ahead and knocks mine down off into the gutter. (I also lose my balance and have to grab the plastic escalator handrail to keep from falling over sideways and causing a pileup.) Mr. B. flashes me a suspicious look over his gigantic purple roll collar, as if I’d been trying to mess with his head. I smile at him and mutter, “Lucky.”

“You’re supposed to dribble before you shoot, you cluck,” the same idiot yorks out again amid a lot of other shouting and metallic hum and machinery smell. I turn around and take a squinty look at the crowd, which is essentially invisible because of the bright lights on the baskets. I don’t really give a shit who yelled at me, though I’m sure it’s not someone whose son is in the audience, smirking.

I complete one more wayward shot before I’m to the end — a lumpy, again off-balance one-hander that clears everything and drops behind the baskets and the wooden barrier, where basketballs aren’t supposed to go. “Good arch!” the little wiseacre gym-rat kid cracks as he climbs back to retrieve my ball. “Wanna play horse for a million bucks?”

“Maybe I’ll have to start trying, then,” I say, my heart pounding as I step off the belt onto terra firma, all the excitement over now.

Mr. New Hampshire Basketball is already walking away toward the sports-media gallery with his father, a tall black man in a green silk Celtics jacket and matching green leisure pants, his long arm over the boy’s scrawny shoulders, no doubt laying out a superior strategy for rubbing off the screen, picking up the dribble, taking the J while drawing the foul — all just words to me, a former sportswriter, with no practical application on earth.

Paul is staring at me down the length of the conveyor. Conceivably he’s been barking his approval while I’ve been shooting but doesn’t want it known now. I have in fact enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly.

“Take your best shot!” I shout through the loud crowd noise. The ball boy, off to one side now, is chatting up his chunky, pony-tailed blond sweetheart, laying his two meaty hands on her two firm shoulders and goo-gooing in her eyes like Clark Gable. For some reason, having I’m sure to do with queuing theory, no one is on the conveyor at the moment. “Come on,” I shout at Paul with false rancor. “You can’t do any worse than I did!” Only a few spectators remain in the darkened grandstand. Others are heading off to other exhibits. It is the perfect time for Paul. “Come on, Stretch,” I say — something I vaguely remember from a sports movie.

Paul’s lips move — words I just as well can’t hear. A jocose “Up your ass” or a lusty “Why don’t you eat shit”—his favorite swear words from another, antique vintage (mine). He looks behind him, where there’s now mostly empty lobby, then just ambles slowly up to the entrance in his clumsy, toes-in gait, pauses to look down toward me again with what appears to be disgust, stares for a moment at the spotlit baskets and stanchions, and then simply steps on, completely alone.