Ron Rash - Chemistry and Other Stories

The ball arcs toward the basket, so high you don’t think it’s ever coming down, and then it does, touching nothing but net. He does that four straight times, and for a few moments it’s like all the bad things have been wiped away — the five-million-dollar contract he’d snorted up his nose, the injury, the arrests. It’s like his sophomore year in high school again, that first game of the season, when nobody really knew how good Cedric was because he’d just played JV ball his freshman year. He’d scored thirty-seven points in that game, going head-to-head with a guy who was supposed to be the best player in the conference. We’d all felt good that night, not just for Cedric but for ourselves because he was one of us. We’d been in school together since the first grade. His daddy worked at the same mill as Luther’s daddy and mine.

Later, after high school, after I’d started working construction, I’d watch him play on TV, first college, then pro. And it was like watching Cedric play made it easier to go into work the next morning, just having known him. The guys I worked with — Luther, Jo-Jo, all the ones who’d gone to school with him — they were like me. They watched the games on TV, checked the box scores in the newspaper. We’d talk about the games at lunch break, what Cedric had done the night before. Any maybe some of the guys were jealous, especially after he signed the five-million-dollar contract, but if they were I never heard it. We were proud of him, like he was our own flesh and blood.

After the fourth shot, Luther chests up to Cedric even more, so close you couldn’t slip a piece of toilet paper between them. “That all you got?” he says to Cedric. Then again, “That all you got?”

Cedric gets the ball and doesn’t even bother to fake. He just holds Luther off with his right arm and heads for the basket. I’m under the goal and I jump when Cedric jumps but I’m not even in the same time zone. Then before he can jam the ball through the net Luther cuts Cedric’s legs out from under him. Cedric lands hard on his back. Then it’s like nobody’s breathing.

Cedric gets up slow, making sure he’s not hurt.

Luther’s next to him, the ball in his hands. “You want a foul, superstar?”

Cedric’s up now, and Luther’s not backing, so I get between them.

“Get out of my way,” Luther tells me. “This ain’t got nothing to do with you.”

He doesn’t add “because you’re white,” but that’s what he’s saying. And it’s bullshit. When Cedric first started losing his game and you kept hearing about him missing practices, taking himself out after the first quarter, some of the guys at work, guys who’d know, said it was drugs. It was Luther and me who kept telling them no way, that Cedric was too smart to screw up what he had going. Even later, when the rumors weren’t rumors anymore, we kept believing it was just a matter of time before he got his act together.

“I don’t need this shit,” Cedric says. He turns from Luther and walks over to the bleachers to get his sweat suit and gym bag. Then he disappears out the door.

Charles comes up to Luther. “What’s the matter with you?” he asks. Then Charles walks over to the bleachers and picks up his sweats. The rest of us follow.

In the truck Luther pops the top on one of the Millers.

“Sorry I lost my cool,” he says, handing me the beer.

I take it, but I’m not about to let a warm beer and a half-assed apology end it.

“You don’t think I understand what was going down with you and Cedric? You don’t think it has anything to do with me?”

Luther doesn’t say anything for a minute. He’s looking out the window. I remember how hard Cedric worked in high school, shooting free throws after practice, running dirt roads in the summer, lifting weights. But Luther and me had worked just as hard. We’d stayed after practice, run the dirt roads every day in the summer, lifted weights. We’d won the hustle awards, paid the price. Nobody practiced or played harder, but Luther didn’t have the size and I didn’t have the talent to go beyond high school. Only Cedric had that.

Luther turns and looks at me. He meets my eyes for a second, long enough.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re apart of it.”

THE CABLE COMPANY hasn’t unhooked my cable for nonpayment yet, so as soon as I get home, I shower, heat up some leftover chicken, and turn on TBS. The Hawks are playing the Bulls. The announcers are talking about how great Jordan is, swearing nobody has even come close to him. Maybe I’m wrong but I’m not seeing anything Cedric didn’t do eight, maybe ten years ago. Maybe not as flashy as Jordan, but close, damn close.

I get tired of hearing the announcers, so I turn down the sound and put my scratched-to-hell copy of Eat a Peach on the turntable.

The first notes of “One Way Out” blast out of the speakers. More ghosts. Ole Duane Allman, playing that slide guitar like he knew he wouldn’t be around long. Berry Oakley, dead now as well. Gregg Allman, who tried his damndest to join them but is still around. I saw him last April in Charlotte. He looked like he’d just been paroled from hell, but he could still sing and bang the piano. They say he’s clean now, so maybe some people do get a second chance. By the time the album ends I’m too tired to get up and turn it over. I close my eyes.

When I wake up the game is over. I’m not sure how long I’ve slept but it’s long enough to have a dream, a dream about Cedric. We’re in high school and Cedric’s playing ball again, the way he used to, no bloodshot eyes, no knee brace. He swoops in from the foul line for a dunk and we are all watching, me and my daddy and momma, and Luther’s daddy and momma, and our brothers and sisters, and Luther’s kids. Everything is in slow motion. Cedric keeps gliding toward the basket, and we start shouting, screaming, and praying he won’t ever come down.

She did not dream about him. Anna dreamed about the others, the ones who died. They came at night and lay beside her, crowding the bed, pressing their cold bodies against her. She’d wake trembling, turn her face toward the night-light that lit the lower wall. She would lie there, her eyes open, and this was when she’d think of Josh Triplett.

They had brought him in on a heavy day of fighting, the helicopter descending slow as a vulture each time it delivered a fresh supply of torn flesh and shattered bones. He was so slick with blood they used their fingers as much as their eyes to find the wounds. It was early in her tour of duty, early enough that she could still be amazed at how much blood a body held. She and the doctor found four wounds, one that mangled his arm, one in the neck, two lesser ones in his chest. They stanched the wounds, but his blood pressure still dropped.

Anna had been the one who unlaced his boots, the right one pouring blood when she pulled it off and found the fifth wound, a slashed artery above the ankle.

“This lady saved your life, soldier,” the doctor told him the next day as they stopped at his bed during their rounds. Private Triplett looked up from the cot and raised his hand and she held it. He squeezed her fingers, tears welling in his eyes. The throat wound kept him from speaking, but his mouth formed a thank you.

“I can write your family, let them know you’re okay. Do you want me to do that?” she asked.

Triplett nodded, freed his hand, and pointed to the pen in the doctor’s shirt pocket. Across the doctor’s pad he scrawled,

Mrs. Lawson Triplett

Aho Creek Road

Route 4

Boone, North Carolina

“I’ll write her tonight,” she said.