Racing the Rain (15 page)

“But how can I stop you?”

“You can't.”

“But . . .”

“You'll get bigger and quicker and better. I'll get older and slower. Time will even things out, believe me. What you can do right now is get smarter. And better. You do that by practicing what you need to practice. By working relentlessly on what I showed you today.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cassidy saw Trapper just coming in the back door. He looked back to Lefaro. “When can we get together again?” Cassidy said.

“Don't worry about that,” said Lefaro.

Cassidy lost the grin. “But what . . .”

“I'm not taking you to raise. I'm just pointing you in the right direction. This is all stuff you're going to have to work on yourself. I'm talking hours and hours of practice, every day if you can. For weeks and weeks, months and months. Sorry, but that's the hard truth. Most guys won't do it. They'd rather just come out and play three-on-three, couple games of horse, have a few laughs with their buddies, and go shoot pool at the service club. You notice how many people are out here this morning, working on their weak sides?”

“Yeah,” said Cassidy. “It's empty a lot when I'm practicing.”

“I know,” said Lefaro. “I've seen you. Like I say, it's why I'm here. That, and that big galoot over there.”

Trapper was jingling the keys to his Jeep as he walked to the edge of the floor.

“Lieutenant Lefaro,” said Cassidy, “thank you, sir . . .”

“Call me Ron. And don't worry about it. Just keep working and I'll see you around the campus.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We'll play some horse or something. Just no one-on-one. Not for a while, anyway.”

“Lord, no.” Cassidy laughed.

“Hey, you guys,” Trapper said, “what's so funny?”

“This kid has a helluva move to his right,” said Lefaro.

I
n World War II, the cavernous building that became the gym where Cassidy played had held a massive sand table where they planned the invasion of Normandy. If some bright OSS cartographer had had the foresight to glue on some tough little HO-scale hedgerows, it might have helped the Allies win the war quicker.

A corporal named Lafollette, whose maternal grandmother lived in Sainte-Mère-Église, tried to tell his superiors about the “gnarly-ass hedges” he knew only too well (he had visited her in the summers and spoke French fluently). But they had bade him shut up and ordered him back to gluing down miniature trees and church steeples. They thought the big problem was going to be finding recognizable landmarks, not a bunch of bushes big enough to stop tanks.

Thus the allies found themselves “bogged down in the hedgerows,” and a few thousand more American boys would now remain forever teenagers slumbering under white crosses, row on row, in the quiet fields of Brittany.

The sand table was many years gone now and the building had been turned into a gymnasium where the Air Force officers came to play badminton or take a steam, and the enlisted men and “dependents,” children of servicemen, would play pickup games on the gleaming hardwood floor. This floor, with its splendid glass backboards, was Cassidy's home court.

They were soon to be sophomores in high school, and Cassidy had grown in the past year. He wasn't over six feet like Stiggs and Randleman, but he was closing in on it. And while the other two could now—with a little run-up—touch the rim, he could with great effort get to the third or fourth row of knots in the net. He was far too skinny to be very effective under the backboard like the other two, but he occasionally got his timing just right and snagged a surprising rebound that would have Stiggs staring at him in exasperation.

He had been at the gym since ten that morning. After lifting weights, he played some pickup games with a couple of airmen who weren't very good, then rode his bike over to the cafeteria for lunch. Cheeseburgers were twenty cents; for less than half a dollar you could walk out pretty much stuffed, a condition that might last an hour. In no time he was back in the gym working on left-handed layups.

Stiggs and Randleman showed up midafternoon. Randleman and Cassidy were official “dependents,” but Stiggs had no military status at all. Still, he hardly even slowed down his bike at the gate. He was so familiar to the guards they just waved him through. For dependents the base was a paradise. They could swim at a lake at the officers' or NCO club, go to a movie, shop at the BX, even play a round of golf. Sometimes when they were feeling brave they would shoot pool at the service club until someone noticed they weren't old enough to be servicemen, and they were booted out. But the gym was where they lived.

The three played horse until some of the better players started straggling in.

“You gennamin like a lil' friendly game a' three-on-three?” a lanky black player asked Randleman.

“Sure, House,” he said. “Shirts and skins?”

House laughed. “Don't make no difference. You all too white to mix up. Go 'head and take it out.”

The black guys all went by nicknames. Cassidy had played with “House” and “Satch” plenty of times, but he didn't know the little guy they called “Dee-troit.” The first two were over six feet and could both jump, but neither one could throw a ball in the ocean from more than five feet away. Dee-troit was quick as a mongoose, however, and had a deadly short jump shot. He got by Cassidy at the top of the key and nailed three in a row before the game was barely under way.

“That's okay,” Stiggs said to Cassidy. “Three to zip. Let him shoot whenever he wants.”

“
You
want him?” Cassidy asked. Stiggs thought about it, shook his head.

Cassidy tossed it in to Randleman coming up into the high post and then broke right around Dee-troit and flared for the basket, calling for the ball back. Randleman ignored him and backed House down into the key before wheeling into his famous hook shot, which House immediately spiked like a volleyball.

Cassidy had anticipated this and had circled out to the backcourt to watch Randleman's humiliation. It so happened that House spiked the ball right to him.

House was still doing his victory dance in the key, shaking his finger in Randleman's face and making his usual catcalls. “In yo' face, baby!” he said. “Man got
nuffin
'
! Try
hook shot
on the House-man, sheee-it!”

Cassidy stood, ball on hip, giving Randleman an inquiring look he could hardly misinterpret. It said:
Are you ready to play ball now?
Randleman nodded grimly.

Cassidy leaned around Dee-troit and one-handed a bounce pass to Randleman back in the high post, and this time cut left to the basket, again leaving Dee-troit flat-footed as the man watched the ball instead of Cassidy. Stiggs saw Cassidy coming and cleared out along the baseline, taking his man with him and leaving the hoop open.

Randleman backhanded a no-look bounce pass to Cassidy, who laid it up softly with his left hand.

The play was so quick and professional looking that it almost shut House up momentarily. “Man right-handed but shoot left,” he muttered, calling for the ball. Dee-troit lobbed it in to him at the top of the key. He turned to face Randleman, looking to take him to the hoop. But Dee-troit hadn't broken for the basket and instead just floated back out in the backcourt, leaving Cassidy to loiter around the top of the key, seemingly ignoring House.

House made a clumsy head fake left and started right, just as Cassidy anticipated, and when the ball hit the floor for the first dribble, Cassidy's fingertips were already there, flicking the ball up to Randleman, who pivoted and laid the ball in.

There followed a huge argument over whether the basket counted because they didn't take it “out” first, which in turn depended upon whether they were playing “possession” or “backboard.” It was settled, as always, by counting the basket “this time” but agreeing that on all future changes of possession the ball would have to be taken back beyond the top of the key before it could be advanced toward the goal by the opposite team.

But some kind of threshold had been reached, and from then on the airmen took the high school kids more seriously. Still, to their shock, they lost the first game 11–8. In the second game, Dee-troit again left Cassidy twice at the top of the key, first hitting his short jumper and next time dumping off to Satch, who had enough momentum and clearance from Stiggs to cram a thunderous two-handed dunk down the pipe.

So overjoyed were the trio by this stark put-down, they seemed not to notice that they lost again, this time 11–9. When the kids won the third game 11–6, the airmen walked off to the showers, high-fiving and celebrating like they had just won an NBA division title. Cassidy, Stiggs, and Randleman stood there sweating, hands on hips, looking at each other in amazement.

“What just happened?” asked Stiggs. His socks bunching up on his ankles made his calves look even skinnier. “Unless they changed the Arabic numeral system, we won every game, didn't we?”

“All they care about is Satch jamming on Randleman. Far as they're concerned, that's better than winning,” said Cassidy.

“They wouldn't be sayin' that if there was another group in the stands ready to play winners,” said Randleman. “Then they'd have plenty of time to celebrate sitting on their asses.”

“Aw, it was a pretty good dunk, you have to admit,” said Stiggs, retrieving his sweatshirt from where it was tucked into the top of the safety pad under the basket. He and Randleman were drenched and still breathing hard.

“You guys want to stay and do some drills?” said Cassidy. He was standing on the foul line, shirt off, breathing lightly, a sheen of perspiration on his skinny brown chest.

Stiggs and Randleman, as usual, looked at him like he had three heads.

* * *

The tall windows on either side of the court were darkened now as Cassidy drove the full length down the floor at his best under-control speed, flicking the ball out in front of him, dribbling with his head up and eyes downcourt scanning for approaching defenders or streaking allies, though the gym was empty.

The slapping of taut leather on varnished oak echoed in the far rafters of the huge place. The sweat-blackened leather ball smelled of pennies and the gym smelled of varnish and piney sawdust.

He reached the top of the key dribbling with his right hand, gave a quick glance at the rim, and brought his left hand up as if to pull up for a shot. Instead, he took a quick stutter-step, crossed over his dribble, and drove down the left side of the key, launching himself off his left foot and going up with his right hand to flick an improbable-looking reverse layup up toward the painted white square on the glass. On the way up, the ball appeared to have been overshot, landing too far inside the square and destined to cross the rim and tick off the right side and out, but there was just a hint of backspin on it, and when it kissed off the glass, its arc changed subtly. Instead of going all the way across the rim, the ball pitched slightly upward, stopped in its arc altogether, hung for a moment, and dropped gently through the net.

Breathing hard and sweating profusely, he landed and turned a hundred and eighty degrees so that his back slammed into the protective wall pad with a
whack.
He used the rebound effect to reverse direction, catching the ball as it dropped from the net and flicking it back down the court toward the other end, where he started the process all over again.

Though it was decidedly cool in the gym now, he was glistening under the lights, and sweat flew from his fingertips on every dribble.

He had already done his jump shots from around the top of the key, using a portable volleyball judge's tall stand as a substitute defender, driving toward it as if coming off a screen, pulling up into his jump shot directly in front of the wooden stand, arching backward into a slight fadeaway, and launching the ball toward the rim twenty feet away. He took care that the ball always left his fingertips with just a hint of reverse English, and that his hand flopped over into the perfect swan's neck follow-through. He had made eighty-eight out of one hundred.

Then there were the hooks, fifty on each side, using the left hand on the left side, right hand on the right side. Next there were the baseline jumpers and then the free throws.

Now he was at the end of the routine, the full-court layup drill, as hard as he could go, at least twenty of them, and some nights as many as forty. He never walked off the court without being utterly exhausted. He had made up this routine himself and he had intentionally made it so physically punishing that he was sure no one he knew would want to do it regularly, if at all. Stiggs and Randleman had tried it one night and had walked off the court halfway through, laughing at him.

His rasping breath and the sound of slapping leather were the only sounds echoing in the rafters as he drove himself down the court on the last one. He had pushed himself so hard he felt his thighs catching occasionally as if wanting to spasm, but he didn't ease up. He went the length of the court, this time stutter-stepping and veering to the right, laying the ball up perfectly at the top of his jump, trying without success to nick the bottom of the backboard with his fingertips on the way down.

This time when he slammed into the end pad, he did not bounce off. Leaning back against his own indentation in the damp canvas, he reached down and grabbed his knees and squeezed his stinging eyes shut against the sweat pouring down his face, desperately gasping as much air as he could get into his lungs.

He tried to take a few steps toward the locker room, but his vision went all hazy and he had to stop. He grabbed his knees again and gave himself a few more minutes of desperate gasping before stumbling off to the showers.

The gym manager, a corporal named Don Spacht, was making his closing rounds. His dog tags jangled against his sleeveless GI olive-drab undershirt as he picked up the ball where it had rolled up against the bleachers. He looked at Cassidy with a sympathetic smile.