“Don't even
know
? Some dude give me a whip like that, I'd remember his fucking name. Whatchoo mean, you don't know?”
“I don't
know
, man!” said Congers. “I'm getting dressed after practice, and I'm putting my pants on, and there's a set a car keys inna fucking pocket, and hanging off of it is this little thing”âhe made a shape with the thumb and forefinger of his right handâ“about like this. Know'm saying? And on one side of it, it says Vernon Congers, and on the other side of it there's a number, a license plate number. Know'm saying? And so I be walking outta here, and right there at the curb's this car, and it's the one. Got the same number. Know'm saying? The doors was open, so I get in, and I be looking around ⦠and there's the registration and this title thing, and both'm's got my mama's name on it. Soâ”
“Shhhhh!” said Charles with an exaggerated look of alarm on his face. “Don'tchoo be telling anybody about thisâ”
Jojo didn't listen to any more of itâCharles making fun of Congers â¦
What he had heard was already too much to take. Congers, a freshmanâhadn't even played for Dupont yet, and the boosters had already given him a car ⦠a
hot
car, no less ⦠a Viper ⦠Obviously the word was out everywhere, even among the alumni groupies. The ascension of the freshman phenom ⦠the descent into oblivion of Jojo Johanssen ⦠He had never felt lower in his life. His own teammates avoided looking at him, his oblivion was so embarrassing. Or was he being paranoid? He still couldn't believe it, but it had happened. His entire purpose for being on this earth was to play in the League. Jojo Johanssen's purpose had just been deleted. And yeah, yeah, don't give up, just play harder, suck up your guts, and the tough get going, and so forth and so on.
Over the next few minutes, no doubt, would come stage two of his decline and fall. The game was three days away, which meant that today and tomorrow the first team would scrimmage with the second team. The second team would be nothing but sparring partners, mimicking the Cincinnati offense, running Cincinnati's plays and setup patternsâin other words, serving as dummies for the benefit of the fabulous ones, the starting five. He would no doubt be impersonating Cincinnati's power forward, Jamal Perkins, known in the sports columns as “the Disciplinarian” because of his “physical” game, meaning rough and dirty. He would be playing against his nemesis, Congers, in the scrimmage, but if he got rough with him in Jamal Perkinsâstyle, he would look spiteful and resentful. Roughhousing and reboundingâto sharpen up Congers's game ⦠Great.
Out of the corner of his eye Jojo saw a shimmer of Dupont mauve enter the locker room. He didn't need to look straight at the man to know it was Coach in his starter jacket. Wellâit would be okay to look at Coach, he decided. Besides, he couldn't resist. Nobody could. At any given moment Coach was about to explode with angerâor turn into a stern but loving father appealing to your better self. So Jojo turned his head. There he was, Buster Roth, in a deep mauve nylon starter jacket emblazoned with DUPONT in gold letters. Behind him were two assistant coaches, Marty Smalls, who was white, and Skyhook Frye (“Sky” for his height, “hook” for his favorite shot as a center for Dupont ⦠back when), a towering black man. All fourteen players were looking at Coach. His eyes were narrowed, and he had folded his eyebrows in toward one another, but it was still impossible to read his face. He stopped a step or so from where his players sat on the benches in front of their lockers and put his fists on his hips, which
was not a good sign. He rocked back on his heels and drew his chin down toward his clavicle, which seemed to widen his already thick neck and make his head look as if it had erupted from the throat of the canary yellow polo shirt he was wearing. That was not a good sign, either. Then he ran his eyes over his flock slowly, one by one. The silence became a mounting pressure.
He motioned to Marty Smalls to wheel the blackboard over to where everyone could see it, which he did.
“Marty, gimme some chalk.” Which he did.
“And gimme a red, too.” Which he did. “Okay. Okay. Cincinnati's got two new players. I've seen them at the camps. They're tall, and they're quick, but nothing's gonna make Garducci change his offense. For a start, he'll still run the back door.”
Whereupon Buster Roth started drawing an elaborate diagram on the blackboard in white and red, showing the Cincinnati strategy of overbalancing its offense on one side of the court and then suddenly looping a pass to a forward or a guard driving toward the basket down the other side, coming in through “the back door.”
“They've still got Jamal Perkins,” Coach continued, “and he'll be down there holding, elbowing, stomping, and generally fouling the shit out of whichever one of you's closest to the basket.”
Reluctantly, woefully, Jojo paid close attention to what Coach had to say about Perkins's role. Soon would begin stage three of the demise of Jojo Johanssen: the moment he stepped out onto the court playing the role of a dummy representing Jamal Perkins for the benefit and greater glory of the Viper-driving Vernon Congers.
Coach finally completed his discourse and turned away from his chalkboard and said, “Okay, you got that?” Nods all around. “Anything else you need to know?” Fourteen silent faces. “Okay. Let's get started. Charles, Mike, Cantrell, Vernon, Alanâyou're Cincinnati. Marty?”
As Marty Smalls stepped forward with a freshly laundered stack of yellow practice shirts, Jojo sat catatonically on his bench, paralyzed by conflicting waves of wonder and belief. If Congers was playing for “Cincinnati,” then Jojo Johanssen must be on the starting fiveâor had he missed something? Or once they got on the court, would Coach see he had gotten it backward and have them exchange shirts again? Now he couldn't resist looking at the others, although he did it sidewise. Mike was slipping his yellow
shirt over his head, whereupon he looked straight at Jojo with his head cocked, his eyes popped open, and a twisted little smile on his face, as if to say, “You and all your blubbering about the end of your career. Are you happy now?”
Congers was on his feet but motionless, holding a pressed and folded yellow shirt absentmindedly and staring at Coach, not with hostility or even bafflement but with yearning, as if begging Coach to say, “Wait a minute, what are you doing with a yellow shirt?” But Coach was already leaving the room with Skyhook Frye. Marty Smalls was now busy distributing yellow shirts to the three swimmiesâHolmes Pearson, Dave Potter, and Sam Bemisâand mauve shirts to Treyshawn, André, Dashorn, Curtisâand, without so much as a comment or a change of expression ⦠to
him
. He still couldn't believe there was no catch to what was taking place.
By now most of the others had put on the shirts and were leaving the room. Oh, fuck! If he didn't get a move on, there would just be him and Congers in the locker room. That would truly be embarrassing. Jojo slipped the mauve shirt over his head and his torso as fast as he could. Congers's back was turned. He was facing his locker, looking straight ahead, and still holding the yellow shirt. Holy shit, the guy had some build. The muscles of his broad brown back seemed sculpted by light and shadow. His upper back was as wide as a door. Congers could annihilate Charlesâor Jojo Johanssenâif he ever found the courage to do it. Jojo slipped out of the locker room. Congers hadn't turned around once.
When Jojo reached the floor of the Buster Bowl, the mauve shirts and the yellow shirts had already begun warming up. The sound of basketballs bouncing or rattling off hoops in a huge empty arena like this always stirred Jojo. The only lights were the fields of LumeNex floods at the bottom of the bowl.
Out of nowhere came Buster Roth, who motioned to Jojo to follow him to a shadowy stretch near the stands, directly behind the great goosenecked stanchion of one of the backboards.
He clapped Jojo on the upper arm and said, “Jojo, I've been riding you pretty hard for the past couple of weeks, haven't I?” Jojo didn't know what to say, but Coach didn't seem to expect an answer. “I wouldna done it without a reason.” Buster Roth was in his stern but fatherly mode. “Jojo ⦠you've been ⦠tentative out there, preoccupied ⦠worried about something. You don't have to tell me. That part don't matter. What matters is, I had to do
something to get that”âhe clenched his teeth and brought his right fist up in front of his heart and tightened it until it shook from the hyper-contraction of the musclesâ“back into your solar plexus. You can't just tell a player he's gotta get his juice back. You gotta put him in a position where he either gets it back or he don't. Nobody's good enoughânobodyâto be complacent at this level or so distracted that he loses thatâ” He did the shaking-fist semaphore again. “Okay. Don't think about it anymore. Just keep on showing me you got it. Now, go get 'em.”
Jojo knew he should say thanks, Coach, but he couldn't get those words out. Thankful wasn't what he feltânot thankful, not victorious, not elated, not relieved, nor anything else he could put a name to.
Messed
with came close, but that wasn't quite it, either. This shirt he had on seemed in some way counterfeit.
He and his tainted shirt headed on out to the court. Thanks to the precision of the LumeNex lighting systems, the transition from the gloom to the court, with its futuristic backboard stanchions at either end, was like stepping out of the wings onto a stage on which awaited a glory the whole world could see. Or the whole TV-watching world, anyway. This is the only place I'm happy, he said to himself, and the weight of the past two weeks began to slide from his shoulders. If Congers himself came up to him right now, it wouldn't faze him for a second. Down at this end, the starters were warming up; at the other end, “Cincinnati.” The percussion of innumerable basketballs bouncing became the only sound in the universe. Treyshawn was doing his Kareemas, as he called them in the name of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, hook shots and fadeaways from just outside the lane. André was pumping in three-pointers from down in the left corner. Dashorn was indulging in the typical point guard's fantasy, pump faking a jump shot from beyond the three-point line and then slashing down the lane through all the giants and vaporizing them with a layup. The court was raining basketballs.
Without saying a word to the other mauve shirts or even looking at them, Jojo began practicing short jumpers. One clanged off the front of the rim. Jojo leapt up, took the rebound from below the level of the rim, kept ascending, and dunked it, stuffed it, all in a single fluid motion. He had just landed on his feet when he happened to look over and see ⦠Coach ⦠over there in the shadows ⦠same place he had taken him aside ⦠arm around a big man in a yellow practice shirt. Congers, of course.
The court was Jojo's refuge from all that was impure. There were rules, there were lines, and they couldn't be moved, twisted, cajoled, or flattered.
He had never before felt suspicious or cynical here on the holy golden stage. But at this moment he
just knew
what Coach was saying to his freshman phenom: “Look, Vernon, I can't humiliate old Jojo by not letting him start in the first game of his last season here, especially since it's at home. But don't worry, you'll be on the bench in name only. I've had you playing with the other starters for two weeks now, right? You already fit in better with them after two weeks than old Jojo does after two years. You're gonna get so many minutes, the only player who's gonna maybe get more is the Tower. And next yearâhey, it's
all
yours. So don't worry about Jojo. You have to be gentle with a faithful old horse.”
Jojo was standing stock-still on the golden stage holding the ball with both hands, the blond mesa atop his noggin a-dazzle in the LumeNex lights, when the word he was looking for came to him:
manipulated.
S
TATIC::::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC choked the Buster Bowl, choked it here on the LumeNex-floodlit polyurethaned blond wood floor of the court, choked it up up on and up the cliffs of seats, choked it all the way to the domeâ
choked
itâbut Jojo could hear every word the black giant, Jamal Perkins, said as Perkins and his 250 or so pounds bellied him from behind.
“Yo, Tokenâyo' white ass better hope the man don't th'ow it to you, 'cause yo' token white ass gon'
fuck up
, Token! Yo' fucking fingers made a
china,
and you shaking like a fucking cup, Tokenâ”
So Jojo backed his own 250 pounds even harder into Perkins's midsection, all the while watching the orange ball, which was now the center of the world, as Dashorn, the point guard, was dribbling it way out beyond the three-point line, looking for an opening in the Cincinnati defense ⦠and the crowd, the full fourteen thousand, sold-out, was roaring, but Jojo no longer heard it as a human sound. The roars ricocheted off the cliff until they somehow fused and became sheer ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: in Jojo's
ears, and the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: enveloped Jojo and the other nine players on the court and shut out everything else in the worldâGeorge III, resentful professors, smart but weak tutors, Sleeping Beauties who wouldn't give him the time of day, brothers barreling down the track to parentapproved success as lawyers and investment bankers :::::::::: STATIC : : : : : : : : : : Only when enveloped by the ::::::::::STATIC did Jojo feel
alive
and
in his realm and fulfilled
in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of battle, where the boundaries are clearly the boundaries and the rules are clearly the rules and the tally of battle is up on an electric board and is clearly the tally and smart mouths and the insidious strategies of weaklings mean nothing. Jojo's greatest dread was the sound of the horn,
the horn,
whose bray would signal a time-out, a substitution, the end of a quarterâand the play would stop, the static would turn back into human voices, and
just like that
he, Jojo the Athlete, would be back in the world where small people with shrewd purposes would once again have the power to humiliate him.
Still out there beyond the three-point line ⦠bounced the orange ball. Dashorn passed it to André, who bent at the waist, holding the ball low with both hands about knee level, swinging it to this side and that, looking for a way to fake his man out and drive around himâgave up and passed it back to Dashorn, while Jamal Perkins was trying to get inside Jojo's head.
“Wuz all 'at wiggling yo' token white ass, Token? The
bitch
coming out? Hunnh?âthe
bitch
coming out, Token? Four at home and five on the roadâshit, you ain't gonna last five minutes in
this
game. This game rightcheer, right now! Old Buster gon' yank yo' white ass and put in Congers! Oh yeah, yank yo' flat-footed white ass and put
Congersâ”
Jojo was stunned. How did a Cincinnati player like Jamal Perkins know about his Vernon Congers problem? And if
he
knew, then the rest of the Cincinnati squad knew it, and if they knew it, then every team on the schedule knew itâ
âand Jamal Perkins had now
done
it. He had gotten inside his head. He was messing up his mind ⦠and now
all
the trash he'd been talking began to sting. Not that Perkins was some unknown black monster from the deep. Jojo played against him last yearâplayed against him in the AAU leagues and at the shoe-company camps before thatâbut now this big bastard had gotten inside his head, and he couldn't remove himâwhich meant that now he couldn't let the bastard get away with talking about the bitch coming out, could he, since that was exactly the same as calling him a faggot,
wasn't it, a
faggot
, andâthat
bastard
!âyou couldn't just
take
shit like that, could you.
Jojo blurted back over his shoulder in desperation, “Yeah, and outcho momma's ass, too, Jay
maulll.
Why she be calling you Jay
maulllll?
Yo' daddy a fucking A
y
-rab? Or you even
know,
Jay
maulll?
Where yo' daddy at Jay
maulll,
out butt-fucking camelsâJay
maullll
?”
Jamal Perkins went silent, as if his breath had been knocked out :::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: then a seething whisper: “Just keep on talking, you gray motherfucker. You got ass-rape on your fucking mind? We gon'
see
who's gonna get fucking ass-raped!” He dug the heel of his left hand into Jojo's left kidney.
A trill of delight! The black giant had wedged his way into Jojo's head, but now Jojo was inside of Jay
maulll'
s head, way inside, and that dumb fuck was neverâbut how did he know about
Congers
?
At that moment, Dashorn, dribbling with his right hand out beyond the three-point line, looked at Jojo and put his left hand up in the air. Then he turned his head toward André Walker, also out beyond the line, stopped dribbling, and held the ball in both hands. They had practiced this so often that Jojo didn't even have to think about it in any sequential way. He thrust himself back harder into Jamal Perkins's midsection in order to have the big man back on his heels when the ball came.
Dashorn faked a pass to André and, without looking, threw the ball inside to Jojo. The orange core of the worldâJojo had it in his hands in the :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: of fourteen thousand cheering souls. Jojo's part was to pivot away, jump as if he were about to try a short jump shot, and instead pass off to André, who would come driving straight down the lane toward the basketâor to Treyshawn, who was to muscle his way around his man and drive toward the basket from over along the baseline.
Jojo jumpedâboth hands on the ball, Jamal Perkins up with him on top of himâAndré not in the laneâpick hadn't worked?âTreyshawn ramming his way to the basket, his man all over him but a fighting chance, Jojo lowers his arm to dish off to Treyshawnânow!â
whack,
Perkins chops Jojo's forearm, the ball pops out at a crazy angle, Jojo lands off balance on his back looking up at the LumeNex lights in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: melee over the ball ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Perkins bulls his way in
got
it dismayed ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: beaten! ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Jojo rolls over ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: striped shirt referee's over him blowing his
whistle swinging his arms in a scissor fashion to halt play :::::::::: STATIC : : : : : : : : : : calls a foul on Perkins. Jojo will shoot two.
STATIC:::::::::: dies down ⦠He'd won ⦠He'd gotten inside the big fuck's head and provoked him into a blatant foul ⦠He wanted some way to announce it to the crowd ⦠give them the whole trash-talking dialogue ⦠explain how he obliterated the big fuck's delusion of domination ⦠said unspeakable things to him â¦
out-niggered
him! ⦠Yo! And you think it was just two big men fighting over a ball!
As he approached the free-throw line, a girl's voice shrieked, “Go go, Jojo!” A swell of cheers from all the cliffsides ⦠Jojo tried to pick her out ⦠The cry came from ⦠over there ⦠near the floor ⦠but no luck, even though he could pick out individual faces nowâ
He'd never been calmer at the free-throw line in his life. He'd already wonâif only everybody could know the truth of it. The others were lining up on either side of the lane. Treyshawn was giving him a big, goofy grin from down near the basket ⦠In a falsetto voice: “Go go, Jojo!” Falsetto ⦠Treyshawn knew how he'd won ⦠Jojo could
feel
this confirmation by Treyshawn The Man â¦
feel
it, even though he wouldn't have dared explain it out loud to a living soul.
He sank the first shot
just like that
, without thinking about it. The noise of the crowd swelled ⦠André walked up the lane toward him ⦠Jojo met him, and they touched fists in the congratulatory wayâ
“Twenty-four! Twenty-four!” A girl's voice, again from courtside. A couple of beats before Jojo realized that was
his
number ⦠He stared at the first courtside section of seats ⦠You couldn't miss her ⦠standing, beaming, red faced, miles of blond hair ⦠Some sort of white thing ⦠cardboard? ⦠began to rise up in front of her until it covered her face ⦠a poster with amateurish, inelegant, big, thick, unmistakable hand lettering: 24! I'LL BE YOUR WHORE! Great whoops from the other side of the arena, from those who could see it. The poster began to descend, and when it reached the floor of the standsâ
poof!
âthe girl was gone. More whoops, laughter, and mock but lusty cheers. A ribald buzz rose in the Buster Bowl, and heads were craning this way and that. 24! I'LL BE YOUR WHORE!
That warrior, Number 24, returned to the free-throw line, and the referee tossed the ten-inch orange core of the world to him. Jojo had never felt looser at the free-throw line than he did right now. The buzz had scarcely abated. The Buster Bowl moaned from the girl's salacious proffer.
Jojo bounced the ball four times, held it in a crouch, then rose to almost his full height before releasing it. The Buster Bowl went dead silent as the ball reached the apogee of its arc toward the basket â¦
Whisk â¦
It
snapped
the strings of the net, so clean was the trajectory and so steep the descent.
A roarâimmediately rose to STATIC:::::::::::: of stupendous intensity. It hummed in Jojo's very hide as he ran down to the Cincinnati end to play defense. He had to fight off the desire to smile for the crowd's benefit. As he passed the Dupont bench, in peripheral vision he could see Coach on his feet. Buster Roth in the tan gabardine suit, the shirt and tie he wore for games. The shirts were always white, custom-made, with some kind of go-to-hell high roll in the collar, and he always wore a Dupont tie, Dupont mauve with a print of golden basketballs emblazoned with small mauve versions of the Dupont D. Coach had his own unsmiling, clench-jawed look of triumph on his face and was leaning forward toward Jojo and yelling something to him. Whatever it was, Jojo wished he could hear it. His first name wouldn't be Fucking. Coach never used Fuck Patois in approval or triumph.
Over his shoulder he could see Perkins, whom he'd be guarding, coming up behind him ⦠Not a good idea ⦠asking for it ⦠but he couldn't resist. As Jojo turned about to take up a defensive posture and play his man, he gave Perkins a sneer and a single dismissive wave of his hand. Perkins just stared at him with his lips slightly parted. No expression ⦠Oh, Jojo had gotten inside the dumb fuck's head, all right,
deep
inside ⦠Jay-
maulllll,
him and his “white ass” and “Token” and “bitch” ⦠Jojo had
invaded
the dumb fuck's head and caused him to
lose it
, commit a foul so flagrant no referee in the world could have missed it.
Perkins played inside, the same way Jojo did, and Jojo took up his position between Perkins and the basket while the Cincinnati point guard, a black guy, American but named Winston Abdulla, not much over six feet but with prodigiously large handsâeverybody who played against him talked about his handsâAbdulla dribbled about, looking for a way to get something going. Jojo immediately bellied into Perkins's back to reestablish dominance, get deeper inside the big fuck's shaved head. Perkins's delts and lats were so big, his upper back looked a mile wide through the shoulders and tapered down sharply to a narrow waist.
Jojo started in immediately. “Yo, Jay
maullll
⦠What happened, Jay
maullll?
You jes' plain-long fucking
lost it's
what happened ⦠Nome sayin', Bluhhhhhd? ⦠The white man gitchoo all choked, Bluhhhhhhd?”âand on in that vein.
Perkins said nothingâ
nothing.
He, Jojo, had crowbarred his way inside the giant's head, and the bullshit had hemorrhaged out of his fucking brain. Now Perkins was leaning back into him very hard, and Jojo began pushing back with both hands. The referees would allow that much as the big men went sumo to sumo inside. Winston passed to Cincinnati's great shooting guard, a willowy black guy named McAughton. Both Dashorn and Curtis moved in on him. Curtis covered him, and then Dashorn moved in from the side and almost knocked the ball out of his hands. Totally hemmed in, McAughton made a desperate bounce pass inside to Perkins. Jojo was all over him. Perkins held the ball up over his head out of Jojo's reach and seemed to be looking about to feed the other guard who was a step ahead of Curtis and cutting inside. Perkins brought the ball down and bent way over, as if to tuck it in his midsectionâpushed off one foot, dribbled once, took two steps, wheeled about, and leaped as high as Jojo had ever seen anybody leap on a basketball court. Jojo jumped to block him. The next instant stuck in his mind like a photograph: the orange center of the world and Perkins's black arm in a corona of LumeNex light at an apogee a full foot above Jojo's own hopeless fingertips. Perkins rammed home a seemingly effortless dunk. He sailed over ::::::::::STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: the second tallest Dupont player on the floor and made it look easy.