Tilt - Alan Cumyn [51]
Swish.
“That’s one!” he said.
“I didn’t say we’d started yet,” Brolin said. “Gotta check the ball first.”
But Hartleman fired it back to Stan. “That’s one, Karl! I told you the kid could shoot.”
As soon as the ball touched Stan’s hands he shot it again.
“Two!” he said, even before it went in.
“Kid can shoot! You got to play some D, fat ass!” Hartleman said.
Brolin walked the ball out to Stan and took a defensive stance close to him, hands ready. Angry breath. Stan motioned to shoot and Brolin rose above him like a sudden skyscraper . . . that Stan zipped around. A nervous layup. The ball circled the rim, circled . . .
“Please go in,” Stan muttered.
“Three! Kid’s got three!”
Everyone was crowded round now. All the other balls stopped bouncing. It was like a playground fight. Brolin shoved the ball at Stan, then slapped it away, elbowed his way to the basket. Slam dunk.
“One,” he grunted.
At the top of the key again Brolin took his own long shot. What was he thinking? No spin, flat arc, clang off the rim. Stan grabbed the rebound, scooted to the corner past the three-point line, then launched another shot before Brolin got on him.
“Four! Kid’s got fucking four!”
“What’s going on here?” Coach Burgess said. He just materialized somehow. He wasn’t a yelling kind of coach. He was worse, as far as Stan had heard — a man who never raised his voice. Never repeated himself.
“Who opened the equipment room?” he asked quietly.
Karl Brolin hung his head.
“You want to play for me, you work first. Understood?”
Someone dropped a basketball that bounced twice, like embarrassed thunder, before he could corral it again in clumsy hands. Marty Wilkens. What was he even doing here?
Burgess stared him into cold stone. Then slowly his eyes fixed on Stan.
“Where’s your gear?”
Stan couldn’t think of what to say.
“Anyone who wants to play for me respects this gym, respects the game.”
“Yes, sir,” Stan said. Then, “I have to leave anyway.”
“What?”
“My mom gets up at seven o’clock,” Stan said. As if that could explain anything.
“Kid can shoot, Coach,” Jamie Hartleman said, but in a pleading tone.
“Take your disrespect and get the hell out of here,” Burgess said to Stan. He turned his head slightly. “Brolin — a hundred pushups. Right now. I don’t care if you die doing them. Everybody else — fifty sprints. Length of the gym. Call out your numbers.”
Nobody moved.
“Go!”
21
“Mom?” Just before seven Stan stood quiet as a burglar outside her door, his chest heaving. He’d run all the way home, his fifty sprints and more, fast as spit, with no one watching.
He’d just ensured that never in his lifetime would he make the senior varsity team.
“Mom. I’d like to come in.”
He’d picked up Mr. Strawberry on the front porch to give to Lily as soon as she woke up.
“Stan?”
Flushing from the ensuite bathroom. Then he heard the closet opening and closing. She was looking for her robe.
When she opened the bedroom door she stood, so tired she was practically vibrating in her red satin robe. Her hair looked like she’d been clutching it and letting go all night long.
“Dad took off. I convinced him to leave Feldon with us. Kelly-Ann is coming to get him . . . I’m . . . sure.”
His mother looked like she was in a dream.
“Have you been out running or something? Why do you have Mr. Strawberry?” she asked.
He told her about the taxi, about saving Feldon.
“Feldon is here?” she said.
“He’s in my room. Dad was leaving in the middle of the night. He wanted to take Feldon but I convinced him . . .” It was like the remote. No matter how patiently he went over it, she still couldn’t seem to get it.
“When is Kelly-Ann coming?” she asked finally.
“When we call her, I guess.”
“You guess?” His mother looked around, lost. “And Feldon is sleeping in your bed?”
Stan took her into his bedroom to show her . . . the unmade empty bed, Feldonless.
“He was here.”