Winners (6 page)

“Dunk that shit, nigga.” The sideline chips in. Shane’s heart is galloping, stampeding against his chest. He looks over at Jimmy and sees it in his brother’s eyes as well. This is fucking basketball. Who have they been kidding all this time? They cross paths, Jimmy and Shane, slapping hands softly at half court.

“You good?”

“Yeah.” The gym has gotten loud: sneakers, balls, voices, television. Shane can feel his heart still pounding. He tries to think of someplace he’d rather be.

“Let’s keep it going.”

“Do our thing.”

The next team comes on and Shane catches Jimmy’s eye, slides over to set a pick and is run over immediately. The aggressor stands tall victorious lording over his fallen body for a moment. Jimmy steps quickly to him, reaching down to hoist him up.

“What the hell is that?” Shane says.

“Better get outta my way,” the guy says, and Shane figures something has to happen until Jo Jo steps in, waves everyone away.

“Come on, come on, play ball y’all. Fuck this shit, come on.” He pulls Jimmy and Shane aside. “Don’t worry about Rashon. That boy’s crazy.” He shakes his head at Shane. “And don’t set no picks, that shit don’t play out here.”

“All right.” Shane looks at his shoes and at the ceiling, anywhere but at the guy he wants to kill, wants to stick a shard of glass through his throat. Jo Jo’s still got him by the arm and releases only when he gives him the nod that says he gets it. You’re not going to win that one, Jo Jo’s eyes are telling him, you’re never ever going to win that one up here, white boy. They’re gonna knock you down and get in your head and everything. All you got is your game, ’cause the minute you open your mouth, you lose.

“Okay. I’m cool,” Shane says, quietly.

“Let’s put ’em away.” Jo Jo slaps him on the ass, nods. “Check ball,” Jo Jo says.

After Rashon and company, the sailing is fairly smooth, and when they eventually lose after five games it’s from absolute fatigue. Jo Jo takes it hard, though, swearing to himself, looking annoyed. Shane sits down next to him on a bench at the end of the court.

“Man,” Shane says. Jo Jo shrugs, puts out a fist and they do the up-down bump.

“Yeah,” Jo Jo says. “I can’t believe we even let those chumps score basket one. After all that.” He calls out to one of the other players passing nearby. “That right, I’m talking ’bout you, nigga, you’re weak, bitch, you are weak.”

“Beat your fat ass, nigga.”

“Beh put your diary, mothafucker, wait ’til leap year.”

“That’s why you sittin’.”

“Talk to me you run five straight.” The other guy laughs, struts on back to the court. “Shit,” Jo Jo says, watching him go.

“You run like this every Saturday?” Shane says.

“This ain’t shit, man. They got butchers and America’s Most Wanted here today.” Jo Jo turns to him, shaking off the game. “There always something though.” He watches Jo Jo hesitate, then decide to grant Shane a conversation. “Most of the time, these thugs don’t run.” He points out on the court. “Lex, Cliff, Dare, Show, they all gentlemen, we don’t need that shit, we just come up to play. During the week, it’s pretty civilized. But I can’t come during the week no more, working nights, so I up here most Saturdays, if I can. When the once and future convicts come on out.”

“I never played up here before.”

“Yeah, huh. Where you play at?”

“I’m usually outside, but I’m trying to get back indoors. Concrete’ll beat you up after a while.”

“Yeah, I don’t even mess around with that.”

They sit in silence for a second, watching the next game in progress.

“My brother and me, this guy we play with told us about up here,” Shane says, finally. “I think he plays here all the time.”

“Who’s that?”

“This guy Sam. Kind of skinny, tall, pretty good hops. Likes to takes it to the hole, not really a shooter. Long arms. Shot blocker.”

“Huh.”

“Kind of half white, I dunno, funny looking, almost like freckles all over. Like brown hair.”

“You talking about this dude Sauce,” Jo Jo says, nodding to himself now, satisfied. “Yeah, I know who you talking about. But he don’t really play up here. I mean he shoot around, you know, but he don’t play with nobody.”

“He doesn’t play?”

“Nah. He in here all the time, but he just shoot around.”

“I thought he played. I thought I’d see him up here.”

“I ain’t seen him for a while.”

“Me neither. He used to come up and play over my other game, like three times a week. He stopped coming, though. He left a bag up there, too, with a cell phone and stuff. Just been sitting in my van, waiting for him to come back.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

“You think anyone knows where he lives, like?” Shane says, his heart beating a little fast like he’s doing something wrong.

Jo Jo hesitates. “I don’t stay down there no more. I know his momma’s up in there, F-3 I think.”

“Where’s that.”

“That’s the projects, man. Right over here.”

“Maybe I’ll go down there.”

Jo Jo laughs. “You go, but it ain’t recommended.”

“I bet. I just want to get his shit back to the man.”

Jo Jo nods, thinking. “I don’t stay there no more,” he repeats.

“Yeah, I understand. I guess I could leave the bag up here, it’s just, I don’t know, it’s got like some valuable stuff, you know.”

“Naw, don’t leave it here.” Jo Jo stands up. “I know what you’re saying, that’s old school, take care of your boys.”

“He’d do the same for me.”

Jo Jo nods. “Yeah. Well I’ll show you, you want.”

S
HANE AND
J
IMMY
catch up to Jo Jo and a friend on the sidewalk where the pavement meets the grass of the baseball diamond. Jo Jo doesn’t say anything as they drop into step, just keeps walking, four abreast now down the third-base line. No baseball today. The infield’s dry and overrun by dogs, while out in the wide expanse of right center field a coed soccer game is under way. White men and women kick the ball north then south then north again.

Jo Jo heads for the chain-link behind home plate, where the fence gaps and gives way to a dirt trail through grass and trash, crashing down between the buildings below. Trash everywhere: tiny crushed Bacardi Lemon bottles, impacted plastic forks and cups, cigarette and Cheetos wrappers, digging hard into the hill like ticks. Shane can see the roofs up close now, checkerboards of Spanish tile holding the concrete barracks together, glowing in the afternoon light like a distorted dream of Stanford or Seville. He counts the metal vent spouts by habit. City contract. Even the projects have their cheap little chimneys. He wonders who does the work up here.

“All right now,” Jo Jo says, implying something serious.

They follow him into the dark crease between two buildings, ducking under long clotheslines where a few white sheets dry slowly in the shade, hanging abandoned like old surrender flags. The path dumps them into a parking lot that looks like it’s been bombed. The parked cars are furniture, their hoods weighed down with girls hanging out in the sun, weaving each others’ hair. But it’s not the girls he’s watching. There are some scary-looking motherfuckers here, their shirts off, pants low, acres of black torso mock beating the crap out of one other. This is somebody’s worst nightmare, and suddenly Shane feels like that somebody might be him. Guys suspend their beer cans in mid-drink and halt their bitch-slap fists of fury to stare. Shane tries not to look at anyone. He looks at the cars instead: shiny blue sports cars with bumper bras, rusted pieces of crap held together by silver duct tape. A black SUV shines out across the asphalt like a gun dropped in the sand.

Something jumps at him. Shane flinches, trying to get his hands up, but there’s no collision, just two kids whipping by him chasing a third at cataclysmic speed, shouting and laughing and almost falling down. Two older women sit on concrete patios in plastic folding chairs, shaking their heads at Shane. He pictures a jagged bottle thrown from a window, sinking its green triangle teeth into the firm white meat of his thigh.

“S’up nigga, where y’at!”

“G.I. Jo Jo!”

The calls come out from three guys sitting on a stoop, two big silent types and a skinny talker, his thin arms poking out of the cavernous sleeves of a pale blue football jersey, number 27. Tennessee Titans. Shane can’t tell how old he is, older than fifteen, less than twenty-five. The quick, intelligent big brown eyes flick quickly between Shane and Jimmy, doing arithmetic, picking apart this passing puzzle fallen in his lap. Jo Jo is shaking hands now, explaining something but not quite stopping forward motion, and Shane and Jimmy follow as close as they can. Shane can feel those eyes still rubbing curious against his spine as they leave the busy lot behind.

They round the corner of another building and Jo Jo stops. Shane stands close against the wall, feels the heat coming off the concrete onto his cheek.

“His momma stay in there,” Jo Jo says. He tilts his head at the nearest door.

“All right,” Shane says. “Hey, thanks for bringing us down.” He doesn’t know what else to say. “See you on the court.” He hopes he sounds calm. He hopes he sounds like he knows what he’s doing.

Jo Jo points at the door. “Watch your ass,” Jo Jo calls out as he steps away. Then Shane and Jimmy are alone.

“Damn-it-feels-good-to-be-a-gangster,” Jimmy sings playfully, smiling at Shane.

Shane steps towards the door.

“This one,” Shane whispers.

“Cool.”

“I really hope someone’s home.”

The walls around the door are marked by barebones graffiti: no bubble letters, no pictures, no colors, only cryptic symbols, statements, and brief proclamations in simple black on gray. Niggas be acting like bitches. God help us all. He can hear his own breath pushing quickly through his nose. His mouth, he realizes, is clenched shut as if he’s trying not to speak. This feels like a place where if horrible things haven’t happened yet, they’re definitely about to.

Jimmy and he both lean forward to knock, then Shane withdraws his fist, which stays balled tight, hanging like a big rock against his side. His brother knocks twice, softly, the true stranger’s knock that never brings good news.

Inside, beyond the door, voices, first high then low.

“Who’s at?” Deep down but a young voice, right against the door. A boy trying to sound like something else. Talking to them.

Shane leans in near the door. “It’s Shane,” he says, as if that explains something. “Friend of Sam’s,” he adds. “We got something belongs to him.” He stops for a moment, listens. Nothing. From somewhere on the other side of the building comes a loud solid sound, like a plank of wood dropping onto concrete from a height. Sam’s bag feels heavy in his hands. Jimmy stands quietly beside him, staring calmly at the door as if he knows it’s about to open and reveal friendly faces awaiting them inside. Invite them in for a spot of tea.

“What you got?” A woman’s voice, now, flat and factual, calibrated to penetrate the wood.

Jimmy leans in toward the door. “Yeah, this guy we know, Sam? left his duffel bag up on the basketball court? Where we play? It’s got a butt-load of stuff, cell phone, buncha stuff. They told us he lived here, me and my brother. Green, it’s a green bag.”

“You can leave it right there.”

“He lives here, right?”

“Leave it there,” the voice says.

“Listen,” Jimmy says, “I don’t wanna, you know, I mean, I just want to get the thing back to him, you know.” Jimmy takes a breath, gets ready for the next long meaningless sentence when the door clicks sharply and swings open into the room.

The woman is tall, five eight or nine or maybe ten. Her face is smooth as a glazed pot, not a wrinkle in sight. Late twenties, Shane thinks. Wide brown eyes looking out from brilliant whites. Long lashes, painted, light silver eye shadow, eyebrows carefully directed in thin arched lines. Her deep brown flesh flows from tight jet-black short shorts, the legs well scarred above one knee. Thin arms lost in an oversized red T-shirt. Her short crinkled hair is molded back tight against her head, frozen into tiny waves.

She glances quickly at their hands and then their faces and then all up and down. A tall young boy stands at her hip, killing them with his eyes. Ten years old, maybe more. At the window beyond, a younger boy and a little girl look on with absolute curiosity.

Jimmy glances at Shane and she follows his lead, both of them waiting for an answer.

“We’re friends of Sam’s,” Shane says.

“Friends,” she says, exhaling, half laughing at them. “Sam.” The older boy shakes his head, scowls.

“This is his duffel bag, isn’t it?” She looks at the bag as if it’s the carcass of a skunk. “Left it up there at the court.”

“Court what,” she says, and then shakes her head as he opens his mouth again, waves her hand in dismissal. “All right, all right, come on in here a minute.” She opens the door one notch wider and steps back aside, and they slip into the new and welcome space.

“Thank you,” Shane says, as she closes the door behind them, quickly, and locks it.

The house smells like old carpet and artificial cheese. The ceilings seem low enough to reach up and touch, and light trickles into the main room ahead of them through thick dark blue shades. She points and they walk ahead of her, the boy slipping around to let them pass. The younger kids stay against the window, holding to the sill as if they’re keeping it in place.

“Well, sit down,” she says, motioning to a couch of no particular color on one side of the room. “Demetrius, go watch your sister. Go on.”

The oldest boy grabs his little sister’s hand and hauls her off to another room, while the younger boy, seven or eight, stands like a statue of curiosity, staring at them with his mouth slightly ajar.

She crosses to an armchair as they sit. The springs of the couch are shot, and they sink so low into the cushions it makes Shane feel like a little kid. The rag fabric is slightly rough like rashed skin. From their sunken vantage on the couch, she lords over them, leaning back in her chair, her legs crossed at eye level. The effect is disconcerting, the two of them slumped like couch potatoes, necks craned back, trying not to look at thighs.

“So you all mister and mister who?”

“Shane and Jimmy McCarthy.”

“Which one which.”

“Shane.”

“Jimmy.”

“We’re brothers. We both play with Sam up at his regular court, over at the Firehouse.”

“No one call him Sam,” she says, examining her nails which are long and smooth and painted red.

“That’s not his name?”

“Naw. The kids up here they call him Sauce if they call him but his Christian name Samson. Yeah,” she says, watching their eyes. “Samson.”

“He always said his name was Sam.”

“I ain’t surprised.” The younger boy moves over to her, stands next to her with his fingers resting delicately on the arm of the chair. Something about the way the boy’s hand rests there, the way he stands both protecting and protected, tells Shane that she is not a sister or a cousin or anyone except for a mother. She is the boss of this boy and this house and anyone else who lives here. This is Sam’s mother. Shane stares, as he estimates her age and does the calculations. Late twenties is impossible. She is older than she looks.

“He ain’t here,” she continues, staring back. “When he leave that bag?”

“A month ago,” Shane says. They all look at the bag together, sitting there on the coffee table between them.

“It’s all in there,” Jimmy says. “Cell phone, CD, you know, he’s got some stuff in there he must be missing.”

“So you just go through it.”

“Sure,” Jimmy says. “I mean, wouldn’t you?”

“We were looking for an address or something.” Shane tries to pull her stare away from Jimmy, but they’re deep in some eyeball contest now. “We just wanted to get it back to him. We just wanted to be sure he’s all right.”

She snorts at Jimmy and Jimmy smiles as she turns her sights on Shane. “Okay? I don’t like people in my business.” Her eyes are dark and angry and he should look away. “You hear me? That’s the first and end of story, so I stay out of yours I appreciate you stay on out of mine.”

“Give me a break,” Jimmy says. “We’re just trying to help.”

She keeps her eyes on Shane. What does she see sitting here? What is he, anyway? “I’m sorry,” he says. “I understand. We just wanted him to get his stuff.” He struggles to get up out of the black hole of the couch.

“What I give a fuck about his stuff,” she says.

“Hey,” Jimmy says, “now why you mad at us? Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Jimmy.”

“He’s not here. He gone.”

“Gone?” Jimmy says.

“Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, if you a messenger, what’s the message.” She stands suddenly, steps forward, and collects the bag off of the table and disappears into the next room, the boy jerking along behind her as if attached by rope. They hear the zipper open, objects clinking against a counter. There’s a small human noise and then a moment of silence.

“All right now,” her voice calls out from the next room in a new key. “Don’t go nowhere. Lemme get y’all a drink.”

“Shit,” Jimmy whispers. “What the hell’s going on?”

“We don’t know,” Shane says quietly. “We don’t know anything.”

“She knows something.”

“Come on. Let’s just go.”

“No, sit tight.”

In the next room, now, she is chatting with her kids. Someone giggles, someone laughs. She returns alone a minute later with brown-tinted dimpled glasses, a chlorine-scented lemonade with a few ice cubes clinking around inside. She smiles. She looks like a different person. “Okay. Never did win a Miss Hospitality, huh.”

“Thank you.”

“Y’all all right, though. I, you know, I just.” She sighs. She sits back in her seat, crosses her legs again, smiles as if they’re two new neighbors she’s invited in for a spot of pie. “So where y’all stay at?” From behind her, the older boy appears at the doorway, watching them again.

“We grew up in the city, over in the Sunset. I live up in Noe Valley now, Jimmy still lives over there with our Ma.”

“That right.”

“Did you grow up in the city?” Jimmy says.

She frowns at him, shakes her head. “So you say Samson run witch y’all.”

“With me and Jimmy and like twenty other guys I guess, all different ages, Sam’s always the youngest. Samson. Sorry.” The name feels strange on his tongue.

“Uh huh. Where this at?”

“We’ve been playing at the same court, outdoors, over above Duboce Triangle, years now. I think he came up, what was it Jimmy, maybe first time five years ago?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy says. “I’d have to check my day planner.”

“There ever since. He’s a really great kid, everyone out there really likes him and respects him. You know how it goes, he’s like, one of the guys.”

“You all play basketball,” she says, as if that’s the only detail in all that worth talking about. “And Samson come down wherever to play ball witch y’all. When?”

“He never talks about it?” Jimmy says. “Or you two just don’t talk much.” She ignores him, keeps her eyes on Shane.

“Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, right around noon.” Shane speaks slowly, watching her face for a flicker of recognition. “Saturday morning, ten o’clock or so. Sam doesn’t really come out Saturday.” She nods, her face revealing nothing. They sit there for a while, sipping lemonade made from mix.

“You got me figured out, huh,” she says, finally. She’s talking to Shane. He feels like for a split second the two of them are sitting on a sandy dune at sunset, alone.

“I don’t know about that,” Shane says. “No. I don’t think so.”

“We don’t even know your name,” Jimmy says. “We don’t even know who you are.”