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“Go back to your game,” said the social worker. “I have to talk to your mother.”
Like his mother would hear her, while she was twirling her head looking everywhere to make sure they were okay.
Round ball! Coming at him. Hustling downcourt, the Garden a wall of hollering faces. Shorty O’Tool, fast break down the lane. Takes it to the rack.
Shaq yells, “Your daddy was a zoomer.”
“You lying. You don’t even know my daddy.”
“My cuz at Queensbridge tole me.”
Home. The Queensbridge project. Shorty wanted to give up and die. No way to get away. Seemed like everybody knew somebody somewhere. He looked over at the fence. The social worker was talking. His mother’s head was ducked down like a turtle. But she was watching the street.
“Cuz tole me your daddy was a zoomer.”
“My daddy never sold fake rock.”
“How you know that?” said Shaq.
“Mama told me he was a thoroughbred.”
“Thoroughbred?” Shaq laughed in his face.
Shorty’s shoulders sagged even as he forced himself to step close to the taller boy. “I’ll bust you in the grill, Shaq. My mama don’t lie.”
“Why you callin’ me Shaq? My name’s Junior.”
“Knuckle up!”
Junior Brown laughed again. “Knuckle up? Who you kidding, Shorty? You can’t scrap a lick.”
“I can’t care how big you are, Junior. Knuckle up. My mama don’t lie.”
“Oh yeah? Well, tell me this, before I clean your clock. If your daddy was a thoroughbred that sold good dope, how come he got popped?”
Shorty couldn’t speak. It was like the wind got kicked out of him. And suddenly he needed help so bad he could cry. He looked around.
The ref was curled up under a broken bench, hugging an empty bottle of Colt 45. He looked at the other kids, looked for a friend. But he was newjack, and they didn’t know him. They were scoping his tears and gasfacing him, waiting to watch Junior Brown wax his ass. Junior stood a head taller. He had fists all knuckly, sharp-edged like crushed beer cans.
“My mama don’t lie,” Shorty said. Trembling, he raised his fists.
A big kid rolled up. Twelve years old, too old for B-ball with the little guys. He had a smooth round face and a kind smile. He’d had his head shaved for lice, bald as Michael Jordan. “Yo, Junior, give the little guy a break. All of you. Just play ball and chill.”
All the kids stared at him. Nobody moved. Till Michael Jordan lifted Junior Brown off the court by his shirt and said in his face, “Get out there and hoop!”
Junior, Lester, Enrique, and Shawn ran onto the court. Shorty hung back, trying to see where his mother had gone. Michael Jordan nudged him, whispered, “Go on, get out there. I got my eye on you. Me and Magic Johnson are starting a new squad. All-Star All-Stars.
“The best of the rest.
They dream on my team.”
“All right!”
Shorty pulled the game back around him like putting on a coat. Fans were hollering, getting wild. Up in the project walls, the windows were melting into a cheering blur. Roaring, louder than the bus and the fish trucks.
Round ball! Coming at him, fills his hands like his hands and basketballs were made in the same factory, like computers shaped them to fit, like he was born to jump.
Missed. Rim ball. Shorty’s there for the rebound, drives around Shaq, takes Scottie Pippen to the rack. Up and… Dunk!
Can’t hear himself think over the cheering. “Shorty!” they’re hollering. “Shorrr-tee! Shorrr-tee!”
He waves up at the stands and sees twenty thousand fans going wild. All but one. One’s just staring.
“Mama!” He looks for his mother. She’s watching the other way.
One out of twenty thousand is still as ice. Watching, tracking him, tracking Shorty O’Tool like he’s a cat and Shorty’s a rat. A face so still that all the other faces seem to dissolve and blend into one thin sheet of cloth, like curtains blowing from an open window.
Shaquille O’Neal yells, “Look out. Where he going?”
The big Lincoln Navigator is circling the court, rolling right through the stands. People are ru
“Shorty! Run!”
His mother screams. He sees her on the edge of the court, clawing the chain-link fence, screaming, “Run, run,” so hard that she doesn’t see another scarface creeping up behind her.
The fans throw themselves under the broken benches, yelling, “Gun! Gun! Gun!”
The ref sinks into the body of the drunk again. Shorty’s friends the All-Stars-Shaq and Webber and Houston and Pippen-scatter with Junior, Lester, Enrique, and Shawn. And Madison Square Garden goes dark as a busted TV as the big Navigator turns into a rusty yellow deuce-and-a-quarter Buick filled with the gangstas who killed his father.
“Run, Shorty, run.”
“Mama!”
When at last Shorty runs he runs toward his mother. He hears the Tec-9 going buyaka-buyaka.
Just like when they capped Daddy. The bullets hit like punches, knock his eighty pounds through the air, smash the air out of his chest. The asphalt’s jumping at his face.
But suddenly the fans are going crazy, screaming, lifting him with their cheers. He’s flying, rising over the court, over the garden, searching for that open place.
Something happening behind the chain-link fence. Frantic, desperate motion. Then the boo-yaa, boo-yaa thunder of the twelve-gauge Mossberg pump. Then cops all over, ru
The boys in blue too late for you.
Too late for us.
But his mother is rising, too. She’s coming with him. The court’s wide open. He sees his shot.
Gimme the rock.
Shaq to Magic to Michael Jordan.
To Shorty.
Jumper.
In!
BUBBA by Stephen Solomita
The way it goes down, I’m more than ready. The moron’s been riding me since the first minute of the first quarter. He does not shut up, not for a minute. You got nothin’, you white bread bitch. You can’t handle my shit. You slow. You old. You ain’t now and you never was.
And me, Bubba Yablonsky, I’m trying to keep the game close because at the end, when we make our move, I want everybody worked up. So I’m letting the moron go by me and I’m missing my shots and this inspires him to even greater rhetorical flights. Where’s yo game, white bread? You leave it with yo mama? Ah think she done stuck it down her panties. ’At’s ’cause it stinks.
I put up with it because I’m basically a goal-oriented guy and because I’ve learned to control my anger.
We’re well into the fourth quarter, the game tied at 38, when their point guard takes a jump shot that comes off the far side of the rim. I box out the moron, who compensates by twisting his knuckles against my spine, then go up for the rebound. The ball drops into my hands, but I don’t catch it. I tip it, instead, toward the sideline.
Spooky Jones, our small forward, is closest to the ball and he fears after it, leaping over the sideline and into the third row of benches. While he’s in the air, I slam my elbow into the moron’s chest, then scrape the heel of my Nikes against his shin. As expected, the moron begins to throw punches, and a moment later both benches empty. Now all eyes are on the combatants, all eyes except those of Road Miller’s wife, Louise. Her eyes are on her work as she yanks at the waist of Spooky’s shorts and jams a small package down into his crotch. The package is bound with double sided tape and molds so nicely to Spooky’s abdomen that when he finally pulls himself up and dashes off to the locker room, nobody notices a thing.
I don’t see the rest of it, of course, because the moron has me by the throat and one of the screws is pounding on my back like I’m the one who won’t let go. But the plan is for Spooky to dump the package beneath a pile of dirty towels in the hamper, then come back on the court. Later, Freddie Morrow will push the hamper to the prison laundry, remove the package, and bring it to yours truly.