Hot Shot (6 page)

I fooled around the house almost all day Saturday and started out for the school about two hours before time for the game to start, and the old man was home at the time and said, “Where the hell you off to now?”

“I’m off to school to play basketball, if you want to know, that’s where I’m off to,” I said, and he said, “I thought I told you to quit that God-damn foolishness,” and I said, “Who the hell pays any attention to what you say?”

“I’ll damn well show you who
better
pay some attention to what I say,” he said, “and I’ll tell you something else right now. You get home here early tonight and don’t go lousing around Beegie’s pool hall or bumming the streets, and I don’t want any other old bastard like old Beacon telling me you been talking filthy or doing some other God-damn thing to shame your family.”

I laughed right in his fat face and said, “Shame my family! If that’s not a belly laugh I never heard one. What the hell could I do that would shame this lousy family? Just tell me what I could do, and what’s more, I probably won’t be home until one or two o’clock, or maybe even three, because I’m going to a party at the Country Club.”

He looked at me and said, “Don’t be trying to impress me with any of your God-damn lies, because I know you’re a damn liar and wouldn’t tell the truth if you were getting paid for it by the hour,” and I said, “Who the hell’s trying to impress you? I don’t give enough of a damn about what you think to even bother thinking up a lie for you, and if you don’t believe I’m going to the Country Club, it’s all right with me, and you can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

He kept on looking at me, and I could tell he was beginning to believe I was telling the truth, and then he began to laugh sort of soft with his big sloppy beer-belly shaking up and down, and he said, “Well, damn! Ain’t he getting to be a big-shot, though! A regular God-damn plutocrat, going to the Country Club and everything!”

He kept on laughing that way, like he thought it was a hell of a good joke on the other people who went to the Country Club, which maybe it was, come to think of it, and I turned and started to leave again, but he stopped me before I could get out the door, and he’d quit laughing all of a sudden. “By the way,” he said, “where the hell you getting the money to go to the Country Club?” and his eyes were narrow and pretty mean, and I could see that he was remembering the fin that had disappeared from his stinking pocket, so I said in a hurry, “Who the hell needs money? You so God-damn ignorant you don’t know that a guest of someone whose old man is a member doesn’t have to pay for anything? I’m going with Marsha Davis, and no one has to pay for anything because her old man’s a member.”

Well, that part about my going with Marsha Davis really broke off in him, and he sat there gawking at me with his nasty mouth hanging open, and I got out before he could close it and start in on me again. I walked across town to the high school, and all the rest of the team were already in the locker room when I got there, because I’d lost so much time jawing with the old man, and old Mulloy was pacing up and down like a God-damn cat on hot rocks.

I got into my suit and sat down on a bench, and outside in the gym you could hear all the maniacs raising hell and giving fifteen rahs for this and that, and the band was playing these snappy marches that make you lose what little God-damn sense you might have had to start with, and it got into you a little, at that, even though you knew you were a creep for letting it and should have had your tail kicked up between your shoulders. Just before time to go out on the floor, old Mulloy got out in the middle of the locker room and raised his arms like some evangelist or something who was trying to get everyone to pay attention, and when we were quiet he still didn’t say anything but just stood there with his shoulders sort of stooped a little like he was tired as hell, and the silence kept stretching on and on until you wanted to jump up and yell at him, for Christ’s sake, and then finally he said in this low, tired voice, “Fellows, this is where I get off. I’ve done my best for you, I’ve taught you all I know, and now it’s all up to you. All I’m going to say is, I know you’re going to get out there and give me all you’ve got.” Then he turned and walked off to his crummy little office in this God-damn awful silence that was like a damn funeral or something, and his shoulders were stooped this way that seemed to say that it was all pretty damn hopeless, and he walked like every step damn near broke his back, but he wasn’t fooling me any, and I knew it was just a corny act that was supposed to get us all juiced up and ready to run our guts out just to show him we could beat this other team, and probably he’d read about some big college coach doing it sometime or other, because, as a matter of fact, I don’t think he had the brains to think of it all by himself. I’m bound to say it worked with the rest of the team, though, the God-damn spooks, and when old Mulloy was gone they all jumped up and started banging each other around, including me, and saying, “Let’s go, gang! That’s the old pepper, gang! Let’s show Coach we can do it! Let’s get this one for old Coach!” and I thought, Horse manure! I’ll get it for old Skimmer, that’s who I’ll get it for.

Pretty soon we ran out on the floor in a line behind old Tizzy, who was captain, and the second we showed up everyone began to jump up and down and raise the God-damn roof, and the band broke into the school march that was really some college song they’d swiped and just changed the words some, and the guys and dolls in white pants and white skirts ran back and forth waving their arms, the dolls flashing their butts, and we began running in for setups and passing the ball around and doing the things we were supposed to do to get warmed up. After a while everyone got off the floor except the referees and the two starting teams, and the game got started, and I’ll tell you one thing, however full of bull old Mulloy was about practically everything else, he was sure right about that damn team being sharp as hell and hard to beat, and to tell the truth, I thought for quite a while we weren’t going to do it. They were really tall, in the first place, a bunch of God-damn goons, and in the second place, they played firehouse basketball, just like we did, and they could run like wolves, and it’s a fact that they were leading us by three points at the damn half.

Well, you can bet old Mulloy had forgotten all about his corny act by that time, and in the locker room he was so damn mad he was slobbering at the mouth and really chewed the hell out of us.

He said we weren’t doing anything right, and the other team was making monkeys out of us, and as a matter of fact we were playing like a bunch of stumble bums who’d never seen a basketball before, but this was bull, too, and the truth is, we were playing a damn good game, but the other team was playing just as good and in fact, so far, three points better. We went back out on the floor for the second half, and it’s a good thing we went when we did because I was on the verge of telling old Mulloy he could play the rest of the God-damn game himself if he thought we were such bums, and it just happened that we got the ball right away and banged it into old Tizzy, and Tizzy banged it out to me, and I jumped and pushed just as one of the guys on the other team hit me like a freight train, the dirty bastard, but the ball went through the hoop anyhow. This gave me a free-throw besides the bucket, and I made it, and we were all even. Old Mulloy over on the bench started yelling, “Go, go, go!” and that big mouth of his was just like a diesel horn, and the crowd picked it up and started yelling, “Go, go, go!” like a God-damn chant or something, and we went. For a while it got into you in spite of yourself, and you kept going like you’d sure as hell be shot at sunrise at least if you didn’t, but then it began to get pretty damn thin, and you just wanted to sit down on the lousy floor and let all the loud-mouths come down and go themselves for a while and see how they liked it, the sons of bitches. By that time, though, we’d run those goons down to where they were about two inches high and had built up a ten-point lead, and we never lost it, and I was high point man again with twenty-seven points.

In the locker room was the same old bull again, everyone horseplaying and slapping tails and old Mulloy strutting back and forth and gobbling like a God-damn turkey. He’d changed his tune again, now that the game was won, and he said he’d never doubted for a minute that we’d win it and that this little old team wasn’t going to lose a game all season, and as a matter of fact it was true, and that’s the way it turned out, but I’ve got my own opinion about how much he had to do with it. I’ll say one thing, though, and that is, I’m damn glad we
did
win all our games, and I’d sure as hell hate to play on a team coached by that bastard that
didn’t
win, because all this stuff he was full of about clean play and sportsmanship was a lot of bull, and all he wanted us to do was win, and he started getting mean as a damn alley cat every time it looked for a while like we might not do it.

I was just about dressed when old Tizzy came over and said, “I’ve got the old man’s car, Scaggs, and you and Marsha are supposed to ride out to the Club with Marion and me. You about ready to go?” I said I was and hurried up and finished dressing, and Tizzy and I walked out in the hall together, and Marsha and Marion were waiting there. Marsha grabbed me by the arm in that way she had and began telling me what a great game it was, and how wonderful I’d been, and how she was just simply limp from excitement, and I thought, Well, Skimmer, it looks like a big night, and as a matter of fact it was.

Marsha and I rode out to the Country Club in the back seat, of course, and old Marion was sitting all plastered up against Tizzy in front, and he was driving the damn car with one hand all the time and didn’t have any time to pay any attention to what Marsha and I were doing in back, and we were doing plenty and then some, and the truth is, in spite of Tizzy and Marion being all tied up in their own business, I was a little worried about the damn rear-view mirror. It didn’t take long to get to the Club, not near long enough from the way I looked at it, and we drove up this long gravel drive in front of the clubhouse, and we all got out and went inside but Tizzy, and he drove the Buick on down to park it and come in afterward. The clubhouse was built on a slope, and there was a big front veranda on the ground floor, and we went downstairs to the room where we were going to have the brawl, and it was still on the ground floor there, too, only on the back because of the slope, and there were big glass doors that opened onto another veranda that looked right out over the golf course. The doors were closed, naturally, because it was cold, but you could look out over the course that was smooth and rolling with trees scattered around over it, and the moon was up out there, about as big as a God-damn washtub and a kind of orange color, and it wasn’t too bad if you didn’t have any more to do than look at it.

There were a lot of other guys and girls there that I’d seen around school, and we went through the great game, Scaggs, routine, which was all right to loosen me up and make me feel at home, because to tell the truth, I felt like a slob right at first and mad as hell because I did, and if anyone had said the wrong thing, I’d probably have clobbered him right in the mouth. No one said anything wrong, though, and someone started a stack of platters going on a big phonograph against the wall, and Marsha and I started to dance, with her all up and down the front of me, and after that it was free going, with me loose as ashes all the way.

In the next room, which was the bar, there was a bunch of old crumbs having a party, and I guess they were really supposed to be looking after us, but as it turned out, before it was over, they needed someone to look after them. They were drinking highballs and stuff like that, and we were drinking cokes, and after a while a couple of guys in our bunch slipped in and swiped a bottle of whisky from behind the bar and brought it back, and we spiked up some cokes and passed them around, and everything was going pretty good until one doll got sick and checked her cookies in the middle of the floor, and that tore it. Three or four old guys came in from the bar next door and took away what was left of the spiked cokes and probably drank them themselves, the bastards, and I was ready to throw them right back where they came from on their tails if I could’ve got anyone to pitch in, but I couldn’t. After that, someone cleaned up the mess, and an old doll who had about three sheets in the wind and was doing her damnedest to hide it came in and said in this God-damn coy voice that fun was fun and no one wanted to spoil it but just to think about what we did before we did it, and Marsha looked at me and said in this voice that she made sound just like the old doll’s, “Well, I’ve already thought about what I want to do next, so let’s go outside and do it.”

Well, some guys may need an engraved invitation, but not old Skimmer, so we slipped out through the glass doors and across the veranda and started down across the golf course, and Marsha said, “Have you ever played golf?” and I said I hadn’t, and the truth is, I hadn’t thought much about it at all, except that there didn’t seem to be any God-damn sense in it whatever, and I’ve heard my old man say that anybody who’d carry a bag of clubs around for miles hitting a little ball in front of him must have damn little to do and be queer in the head besides. Anyhow, old Marsha didn’t really care whether I played or not, or even answered her question, and neither did I, for that matter, because we both had something else on our minds that even my old man could see some sense in now and then. We went quite a way across the grass to a big tree and sat down under the tree and began to kiss and fool around, but the wind whipped in under the tree, and it was cold as hell, and before long I could hear her teeth rattling together and feel little goose pimples all over her skin.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Let’s go find the car,” and to tell the truth, I was ready to go almost anywhere myself to get out of that damn wind, and under the circumstances, that probably gives you a pretty good idea just how damn cold it was. We went back across the grass at an angle to the parking lot and down a row of cars until we came to the Buick, and Marsha said, “This is it,” and I started to open the door, but damned if old Tizzy hadn’t locked it, the skinny bastard.