Coach kicked chairs over. Coach threw chalk. Coach told them they weren't a bunch of sandlot kids anymore, they were a disciplined team and should act it. He told them not to let a few lucky buckets go to their heads, if he had to make substitutions he wouldn't hesitate. Waterbug sat through it all without speaking or looking up, sat and rubbed his legs with the baby oil they used so their legs wouldn't look all smoky. Jumpin juice they called it.
"You've got to keep them under control," Coach said to Brian as they walked out for the second half. "They've got no self-discipline. That's why they're the sprinters and never the long-distance runners. Get yourself good and ready, son."
Waterbug went back to the patterns and tried to stick with them. He was poker-faced down the floor, raising fingers and passing off, dropping back to face the inevitable fast break from the other team. The game slowed, the crowd grew quiet. They went down by six points. It was Lucius who started.
"Hey Bug," he called out from the end of the bench, "lemme ast you a question. What ever happen to run an gun?"
"That's right, that's right." Dukey Holcolmb picked it up. "What ever became of stop an pop?"
"Scoot an shoot?"
"Jump an pump? Shake an bake?"
Most of the bench had picked it up, calling out as Waterbug dribbled the ball down the floor.
"Hey Bug," they called, "what ever become of slip an slide?"
"Float and flutter?"
"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."
Buffalo
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.