Frank stopped bouncing the ball and threw it hard at Preacher, who easily caught it and laughed.
“Man oh man,” Preacher said. “I’m getting to you, ain’t I? I’m hurting your ballplaying heart, ain’t I?”
Preacher threw the ball back at Frank, who also caught it easily, and resumed the trick dribbling, the thump, thump, thump, and thump, thump.
“I play ball because I need to play,” Frank said.
Thump, thump.
“And I need yearly prostate exams,” Preacher said, “so don’t try to tell me nothing about needing nothing.”
Thump, thump.
“I’m playing to remember my mom and dad,” Frank said.
Preacher laughed so hard he sat on the court.
“What’s so funny?” Frank asked. He dropped the ball and let it roll away.
“Well, I just took myself a poll,” Preacher said. “And I asked one thousand mothers and fathers how they would feel about a forty-year-old son who quit his high-paying job to pursue a full-time career as a playground basketball player in Seattle, Washington, and all one thousand of them mothers and fathers cried in shame.”
“Preacher,” Frank said, “it’s true. I’m not kidding. This is, like, a mission or something. My mom and dad are dead. I’m playing to honor them. It’s an Indian thing.”
Preacher laughed harder and longer. “That’s crap,” he said. “And it’s racist crap at that. What makes you think your pain is so special, so different from anybody else’s pain? You look up death in the medical dictionary, and it says everybody’s going to catch it. So don’t lecture me about death.”
“Believe me, I’m playing to remember them.”
“You’re playing to remember yourself. You’re playing because of some of that nostalgia. And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you are. You’re just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.”
Frank moaned — a strange, involuntary, and primal noise — and turned his back on Preacher. Frank wept and furiously wiped the tears from his face.
“Oh man, are you crying?” Preacher asked. He was alarmed and embarrassed for Frank.
“Leave me alone,” Frank said.
“Oh, come on, man, I’m just talking.”
“No, you’re not just talking. You’re talking about my whole failed life.”
“You ain’t no failure. I’m just trying to distract you. I’m just trying to win.”
“Don’t you condescend to me. Don’t. Don’t you look inside me and then pretend you didn’t look inside me.”
Preacher felt the heat of Frank’s mania, of his burning.
“Listen, brother,” Preacher said. “Why don’t we go get some decaf and talk this out? I had no idea this meant so much to you. Why don’t we go talk it out?”
Frank walked in fast circles around Preacher, who wondered if he could outrun the younger man.
“Listen,” said Frank. “You can’t take something away from me, steal from me, and then just leave me. You have to replace what you’ve broken. You have to fix it.”
“All right, all right, tell me how to fix it.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know it could be broken. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.”
“Hey, brother, hey, man, this is too heavy for me and you, all right? Why don’t we head over to the church and talk to Reverend Billy?”
“You’re a preacher.”
“That’s just my name. They call me Preacher because I talk too much. I ain’t spiritual. I just talk. I don’t know anything.”
“You’re a preacher. Your name is Preacher.”
“I know my name is Preacher, but that’s like, that’s just, it’s, you know, it’s nothing but false advertising.”
Frank stepped quickly toward the old man, who raised his fists in defense. But Frank only hugged him hard and cried into the black man’s shoulder. Preacher didn’t know what to do. He was pressed skin-to-skin with a crazy man, maybe a dangerous man, and how the hell do you escape such an embrace?
“I’m sorry, brother,” Preacher said. “I didn’t know.”
Frank laughed. He released Preacher. He turned in circles and walked away. And he laughed. He stood on the grass on the edge of the basketball court and spun in circles. And he laughed. Preacher couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He’d known quite a few crazy people in his life. A man doesn’t grow up black in the USA without knowing a lot of crazy black folks, without being born to and giving birth to the breakable and broken. But Preacher had never seen this kind of crazy, and he’d certainly never seen the exact moment when a crazy man went completely crazy.
“Hey, Frank, man, I don’t like what I’m seeing here. You’re hurting really bad here. You maybe want me to call somebody for you?”
Frank laughed and ran. He ran away from Preacher and the basketball court. Frank ran until he fell on somebody’s green, green lawn, and then Frank stood and ran again.
After Preacher’s devastating sermon, Frank didn’t play basketball for two weeks. He didn’t leave the house or answer the telephone or the door. He ate all of the food in the house and then drank only water and fruit juice. He was on his own personal hunger strike. Mr. Death, you are an obese bastard, Frank thought, and I’m going to starve you down until I can fit my hands around your throat and choke you. Frank lost fifteen pounds in fifteen days. He wondered how long he could live without food. Forty, fifty, sixty days? He wondered who would find his body.
Three weeks after Preacher’s sermon, and after dozens of unanswered phone calls, Russell found Frank’s address in his files, drove to the house, crawled through an unlocked window, and found Frank dead in bed. Well, he thought Frank was dead.
“You’re breaking and entering,” Frank said and opened his eyes.
“You scared me,” Russell said. “I thought you were dead.”
“Black man, you keep crawling through windows in this gentrified neighborhood, and you’re going to get shot in your handsome African head.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Well, aren’t you the full-service personal trainer? You should be charging me more.” Frank sat up in bed. He was pale and clammy and far too thin.
“You look terrible, Frank. You’re really sick.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to call for help, okay? We need to get you help, all right?”
“Okay.”
Russell walked into the kitchen to use the telephone and hurried back.
“They’ll be here soon,” he said.
“What would you have done if you’d come too late?” Frank asked. “You know, part of me wishes you’d waited too long.”
“I did wait too long. You’re sick. And I helped you get sick. I’m sorry. I just wanted to believe in what you believed.”
“You’re not going to hug me now, are you?” Frank asked.
Both men laughed.
“No, I’m not going to hug you, I’m not going to kiss you, I’m not going to recite poetry to you,” Russell said. “And I’m not going to crawl under these nasty sheets with you, either.”
An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.
“Because, well,” Frank said, “I know you’re gay and all, and I care about you a bunch, but not in that way. If we were stuck on a deserted island or something, or if we were in prison, then maybe we could be Romeo and Juliet, but in the real world, you’re going to have to admire me from afar.”