Hot Shot (8 page)

He laughed and threw his cigarette into a can half full of water on the floor, and the cigarette went out with a little hiss. “Well,” he said, “that’s up to you, and probably you’ll get fifteen rahs and a couple of cokes for your effort, but I was thinking if you played all the games but the last one you might make a good thing of it,” and I said, “How good?” and he said, “Like I mentioned, this fifty now and a hundred later,” and I said, “That’s all right, but I don’t like the idea of looking like a God-damn monkey by getting beat in the finals. I got my reputation to think of,” and he said, “You’re a smart kid with brains, so why the hell don’t you use them? You won’t look like any monkey, but just the opposite, because you’ll get sick and not be able to play at all, and everyone will say just see what happens when old Scaggs isn’t in there. The first game old Scaggs doesn’t play, the God-damn crummy team loses,” and when I came to think of it, I knew it was true and that’s just what everyone would think.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’ll look pretty fishy, me getting sick that way at the last minute,” and he said, “Hell, kid, everyone’s got the right to get sick. It would be too big a chance to have you throw it on the floor, because, besides hurting your reputation, you’re too God-damn green to get away with it without making it stink to the rafters. Remember, though, you’d have to get sick right at the last minute, in the locker room or something, because otherwise the news would get out and change the odds, and if you lose before the finals the whole thing’s off, but you can keep the fifty for your trouble.”

I sat there and thought about it, and it sounded pretty good, not only the one-fifty but the idea of everyone saying that stuff about see what happens when old Scaggs isn’t in there, and I got a bang just thinking about old Mulloy tearing out what little hair he had left and beating his God-damn chest, the son of a bitch, and it was almost as good as poking him in the mouth. After a while I stood up and took the five tens off the table and put them in my pocket, and it was the most money I’d ever had at one time, and you could see it was just like pulling five of Gravy’s God-damn back teeth, and he said sort of slow, “Remember, kid. Don’t try any tricks. I got ways of handling, smart bastards who try to cross me,” and I said, “You just have the God-damn hundred ready, that’s all, and don’t bother trying to scare me with any crummy threats because in my opinion you’re just a fat slob with a big mouth.”

I went home then and put the fifty in my shoe and went to bed, and I thought that the returns from this basketball stuff were sure picking up and that it was a God-damn shame it was so close to being all over, and that was the first time I really began to wonder if there wasn’t some way I could go on with it.

The next morning I got up and got ready to go to Stockton for the tournament, and when I went out in the kitchen for breakfast, the old man was sitting at the table and the old lady was frying his egg at the stove. The old man stood up and bowed like he’d met a God-damn king or something, and he said in this snotty voice, “Well, well, if the God-damn hero ain’t honoring us with his presence. It’s damn generous of you to come out and sit down with common folks,” and I said, “Ha, ha, you kill me. You’re about as funny as a lousy crutch,” and he said, “What with being a God-damn hero and having your name and picture in the paper and running around with a bank president’s daughter, I don’t suppose you’ll be having much of anything more to do with your old man and your old lady,” and I said, “What the hell’s the matter with you? What the hell you want to start this bull first thing in the morning for?” and the old lady spoke up at the stove and said, “Just the same, I notice you haven’t brought your fine girl friend around to see your old folks,” and I said, “You think I’ve lost my marbles or something? Why the hell would I want to louse everything up by bringing her to this lousy dump with you and the old man raising hell all over the place?”

The old man said, “Well, maybe we ain’t good enough for you any more, but I notice you’re around regular enough when your God-damn belly’s empty,” and I said, “As far as I’m concerned you can take your God-damn slop and feed it to the hogs,” and then he started around the table after me, so I got the hell out of there and walked uptown and had breakfast at a diner, using one of the tens I’d got from Gravy Dummke to pay for it, and when I got to the school, the bus was parked out front with a big crowd around it and the band playing, and there was a hell of a big banner fastened on the bus that said, ALL THE WAY, FELLOWS, just like it had been saying in the paper.

Well, when I walked up there was a big God-damn cheer and everyone started yelling, “Scaggs, Scaggs, Scaggs!” and there was a guy with a camera there from the paper, and he took my picture, and Marsha was there, too, and she wanted to get in the act just like these damn girls always do, which was all right with me, and she put her arms around me and gave me this big kiss that must have lasted a whole damn minute at least, and damned if the guy from the paper didn’t take a picture of that, too, and it came out in the paper that evening with some big black printing under it that said, A WARRIOR’S FAREWELL. I got on the bus then, and everyone razzed me about the kiss and said pukey things like, “Oh, you dog!” and “How do you do it, Casanova?” whoever the hell he was, which I got the idea he must have been hell with the women, and old Mulloy pranced up and down the aisle and said, “The old pepper, fellows, the old pepper,” until you wanted to tell him to sit down, for Christ’s sake, and shut up, and the truth is, the crazy bastards kept it up all the way to Stockton, which was damn near a hundred miles, and it’s a wonder the driver didn’t run the God-damn bus in the ditch and kill us all.

We had three rooms in a hotel in Stockton, and I was in a room with Tizzy Davis and another guy and old Mulloy himself, which was a God-damn lousy break if I ever had one, because he was one of these sloppy bastards who sing in the bathtub and slop water all over the place and leave their God-damn crappy shaving stuff thrown all over, and every time you turned around or wanted to sneak a cigarette or something, there the son of a bitch was. Besides, he kept going on and on all the God-damn time about what we’d have to do to win the tournament, and what we’d have to watch out for when we played this team or that one, but how he knew we could do it and nothing was going to stop us now that we’d got this far, and I couldn’t help thinking that all the other teams had got this far, too, and probably felt the same way about it, and altogether he was such a pain in the ass that I got to thinking again about how he was going to feel after the last game, and I had a hell of a good time thinking about it.

After we were settled, he got us all together in our room and delivered a God-damn lecture about athletes being gentlemen and not destroying private property, meaning the hotel, and I could tell from the way he said it that he’d had some pretty bad experiences with things like that, and he went on to tell us we had become famous and had acquired a moral obligation to set fine examples for all the kids who admired the hell out of us, and he wasn’t going to snoop or anything but was going to put us on our honor and have perfect faith in our integrity and trustworthiness and crap like that. Then he wound up saying, “Now, fellows, on to the state championship! The old pepper, the old spirit!” and everyone jumped up and yelled and beat on each other, and Tizzy Davis said, “Three cheers for Coach,” the brown-nose creep, and they gave the cheers, and a couple of guys got old Mulloy up on their shoulders and started to march around the room with him, but the fat bastard was too heavy, and they dropped him, and it sounded like he was going right through the floor, and as a matter of fact it looked to me like they’d started to tear up the God-damn hotel already.

Well, we played our first game that evening, and we won going away, and there’s not a hell of a lot of use going into it any more than that, or any of the other games in our bracket, either, except to say that we won all of them, and I was high man in every damn one, and we had to play Stockton in the finals, because they won all the games in their bracket, too. They were pretty good, all right, and they had this guy who played center and was about as tall as a God-damn building and was practically a freak, as a matter of fact, and old Mulloy was in a regular sweat about it, because he knew this guy would be all over old Tizzy like a dirty shirt, and old Tizzy wouldn’t be able to hook any shots over his head, and it looked like it was going to be all up to me outside the keyhole. I didn’t tell him that I had what was left of fifty bucks in my pocket that said I wasn’t going to be there, and I had it all figured about pretending to get sick, just how I was going to do it, and the evening of the game we were all lying down in our rooms resting, which was something old Mulloy made us do, and when he came in, saying, “All right, fellows, time to go, this is it, the old pepper,” I got off the bed and started to sway a little and hold my head, and he said, “What’s the matter, Skimmer,” and I said, “Nothing. I’ll be all right. I just felt a little dizzy for a second, that’s all.”

He grabbed me by the arm and held me up like I was a lousy drunk or something, and he said, “Here, now, fellow, you can’t go getting sick on us just before the big game,” and I said, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry,” and he said, “Well, I hope so, for your sake as well as the team’s. I wasn’t going to tell you about it, because I thought it might make you nervous and throw you off your game, but as a matter of fact there’s a scout down here from Pipskill University just to watch you play this game, and if you’re sharp he’ll probably offer you a big athletic scholarship or something. I’ve known for a long time they had their eyes on you, and this is it, fellow, this is the one that will make or break you.”

I said, “What’s an athletic scholarship?” and he said, “Well, they pay all your expenses at the University and give you a job besides that isn’t much of a job, and they set you up in a swell frat house, and all this is just so you can play basketball on the Pipskill University team,” and I looked at him and started thinking about it and said, “No bull?” and he said, “That’s straight stuff, Skimmer, and what’s more, there are always a few loyal alumni around with a lot of money and the good of the school at heart, and they’re always making little donations to the star players and things like that.”

What I had in mind was to pull that little act about being dizzy in the hotel room just to soften them up so it would seem more like the real thing when I pulled the big act in the locker room later, but now I kept on thinking about this Pipskill University stuff that old Mulloy told me, and I’d never thought about going off to college or very much about going on with basketball, but now I could see how I could do it, and I knew all of a sudden that I was
going
to do it, and to put it plain, I wound up thinking, Well, screw Gravy Dummke. It’s every man for himself.

“I’m okay now,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me,” and it was the truth. Old Mulloy slapped me on the shoulder and said, “That’s the spirit, that’s the old fight,” and we got all the other guys and went out to the school and suited up and waited a while for the end of the consolation game, which was the game between the two teams for third and fourth places, and then we went out on the floor and warmed up, and I knew just what I was after and was as cool as a God-damn cucumber.

Just as soon as the game started, it was pretty damn plain that old Mulloy had been right in sweating this one, and old Tizzy was in for a bad night, because this God-damn goon who played center on the other team was all over him all the damn time, and he hardly ever got a chance to hook one over and had to pass out to me. Old Tizzy’s poison was my meat, though, because I got a hell of a lot more shots this way and more chances to look sharp for the scout, and as a matter of fact I was feeling good and hotter than a pistol, and damned if I didn’t wind up with forty points in the game, and in case you don’t know it, that’s a hell of a lot of points. The other team was hot, too, though, the bastards, and every time I made a bucket, it seemed like they went right down and made one themselves, and my forty points plus what the other guys could scratch out now and then were damn near not enough, and the truth is, we were ahead by the skin of our teeth, one point to be exact, when the game ended. Anyhow, we were state champions, and the school got a big cup, and the guys on the team all got little medals that were cheap as hell, to tell the truth, and I got a little cup of my own, besides, for being voted most valuable player again by the God-damn coaches.

In the locker room old Mulloy went clear off the deep end, as nutty as a peach orchard bore, and he kept running around to all us guys and saying, “Hi, champ. How’s it going, champ?” but all I could think about was that lousy scout from Pipskill University, and kept wondering where the hell he was, and I got the idea old Mulloy had been feeding me a line just to juice me up, which would’ve been just like one of his Goddamn crazy ideas, and I thought, I’ll champ you, you son of a bitch, if there wasn’t really a scout like you said. When I was dressed, though, and had just about given up, in came this guy about six and a half feet tall and shook hands with old Mulloy and said, “Congratulations, Elroy,” which turned out to be Mulloy’s first name, for Christ’s sake, and Mulloy brought the guy over and said, “Skimmer, this is Mr. Dilky, the man from Pipskill U that I was telling you about.” This guy Dilky reached down and shook my hand and said, “Well, Skimmer, that was a great game. I guess you must be pretty hungry after that, aren’t you?” and I said I was, and he said, “Suppose you and I just run downtown to a restaurant and have a steak and a little talk,” and I said that was okay with me.

We went out and got in his car, which was no less than a God-damn Caddy, and drove downtown to this fancy restaurant and had steak dinners that cost him three bucks per, because I got a look at the check, and while we were eating he said, “Well, Skimmer, I understand this is your last year in high,” and I said it was, and he said, “Have you considered attending Pipskill U?” and I lied and said I had but that Pipskill was pretty expensive and I didn’t know if I could cut it down there, and he said, “Well, I’m not going to beat around the bush, Skimmer, and I’m here to tell you right now that you can come to Pipskill if you want to.”