Rules for Becoming a Legend (9 page)

“Are you laughing?” Teresa asks. “I don't think that after all your boy put himself through you should be laughing. You should be getting him some professional help.”

Todd stops because there it is. Gummy Hass already knows about what Jimmy's done. Hell, the whole town probably woke themselves up by hollering down phone lines like, “You're never gonna believe what that Kirkus kid did.” Worst part is that at the heart of it, they're probably talking basketball. About how with Jimmy crazy, the Fishermen aren't gonna be any good this year. Last year in 6A and it's going to be a fiasco. Like that's the thing that matters the most.

“He's got a goddamned headache, Teresa, and NO, I can't goddamn speculate on if he's gonna play ball this season or not!”

As Todd recalls, Teresa hated him after he stopped their lunchtime dates. He had started going with another girl and then after that, Genny Mori. That's the way it always was for Todd—anyone who couldn't have him, hated him.

“I didn't ask about basketball, Todd. You're not the only one who cares about Jimmy. You should see the line we got here to see Mrs. Cole. Students are really taking this hard.”

“The guidance counselor?” Todd's voice is thin and bitter.
“Kelly Cole? And I'll bet she's wearing a low-cut shirt too. Let me guess, it's mostly boys lined up.”

“Todd, that's no way to talk.”

“What're you vultures gonna do when there aren't no Kirkuses left? Huh?” And then more bitterly, “No way to talk!” He slams the phone down.

•   •   •

Later that day Teresa takes a concern to Principal McCarthy. The man is shocked by the accusation that what these boys are doing with Mrs. Cole is anything but profoundly mourning the almost loss of their dear friend. That is until he walks in on one counseling session to see that weird Pedro kid getting hugged fiercely into Mrs. Cole's enormous chest, his boner making a micro tent in his sweatpants.

Walk-in counseling is shut down.

The next three days Jimmy doesn't come to school. Teresa doesn't bother calling the Kirkus household. She just fills in the forms herself.
Absent—Jimmy Kirkus—headache.

Monday, September 9, 1996

JIMMY KIRKUS, FIVE YEARS OLD—ELEVEN YEARS UNTIL THE WALL.

A
ll day Jimmy hadn't said a word to Mrs. Lilly or anyone else in the class, out of an instinct for self-preservation. Even when Mrs. Lilly promised Jimmy the honor of leading the lunch line he refused to speak. He was still spinning from the events of the morning. Father walking him to class, not saying a word. His mother at home sleeping off last night's shift at the Seaside hospital. Taste of strawberry yogurt and toothpaste mixing ugly in the back of his mouth. One squeeze on the shoulder and then the big man gone. People looking at his father, whispering to each other. The other kids all with their moms, or their moms
and
dads, getting three, four hugs. Some of the parents even camping out on the sidelines of the classroom during morning meeting, there just in case. Jimmy with no one. No just in case for him.

Speak? Naw that wasn't for him. Not on this first day of kindergarten. He needed every bit of himself and giving away words counted.

Then at lunch, as he pulled out a peanut butter and banana sandwich, an apple and a baggie of chips, the black hair clip he had taken from the many in his mother's nightstand fell out of the bag too. His mother's hair. Such a symbol of her. Every night she sat at her bedside table and combed her hair while the news of the day was grimly told over the radio. When it was all combed out she clipped it in place with clips—so many clips! To have one with
him was to have her with him, even when she wasn't, even when it was becoming clear to him that she didn't want to be.

The kids at the table laughed at his clip, at him.
Aren't those for girls
? So he threw it in the trash—a thin, rare thread that connected him to a deeper part of his mother, gone.

Then recess and salvation. Outside, he saw two classmates passing an orange ball—a basketball—back and forth. Of course he'd seen basketball played from the back seat of his father's van driving through town, flickers of it while flipping through channels on TV, but he'd never actually played it himself. If someone were playing it at the park his father led him into a new game, if it came on the tube, his pops turned the dial.

Right then though Jimmy was alone, and couldn't help but be drawn in. That ball, suspended briefly in the air, seemed magical—something worth chasing until he could hold it. Once held, it seemed big enough to anchor him, at least until he was home again. He was a year older than Dex, but more comfortable drafting off his wisecracking sibling than leading things himself. The background was a place Jimmy preferred. It was from there he was let into his mother's affections most often. From a quiet game played on the floor he could watch her as she talked on the phone, sucked salted
edamame
skinny, discarding the green husks until a small mountain crowded her plate, crossed off check numbers in her checkbook, one ear to the phone, painted her nails or watched daytime television—
Judge Judy
her favorite. Through this study from his blind of shyness he had spotted the rare flash of her smile on occasion, stalking across her face like the deer that sometimes high-stepped into their yard, trembling and ready to bolt. A thrilling peek into what it might be like to always be loved by your mother. And with boisterous, banging, always talking Dex in the picture, Jimmy's contrasting quietness went unnoticed all the more. Alone and trained for anonymity,
basketball suddenly seemed like a tempting way out. Just shoot the ball, just pass the ball, just dribble the ball and you were doing it right. It seemed perfect and it overrode his instinct for shyness. He walked right up to boys he'd never met before in his life.

“Let me,” Jimmy said.

The little blond-haired boy looked at him, shaking his head. “We aren't letting you, right Pedro?”

Pedro didn't miss a beat, as if it were all planned out. “Yeah, yeah! Come on, pass it to me, David!”

This boy was even browner than Jimmy, about the same shade as Dex. It made Jimmy like him even as he was being mean.

“You don't talk, so you're dumb,” David said and passed to Pedro. “We only like people who talk.”

“I can talk,” Jimmy said. “Look, I'm talking.”

They ignored him and his unassailable logic. Pedro accordioned his body down, and then unwound in a burst that pushed the ball up toward the hoop. He missed badly.

Jimmy felt itchiness in his nose and around his eyes. He might cry. All morning he carried an aching loneliness at being away from his pops and Dex, at seeing everyone else's mom come and drop off their kids, at the hair clip thrown in the trash, and now this? Also, he felt—no, our kid Jimmy
knew
—these two little boys were doing this magical thing wrong. He
knew
their playing was a sacrilege, even before he learned what a sacrilege was. Like farting in church, pissing in the pool, stepping on cracks and breaking grannies' backs. There was an itch in his bones to step up and show them. Correct it. But he couldn't because these kids wouldn't let him play. It hurt. He shifted his weight back and forth and stayed at the edge of the court while the rest of recess boiled around him.

Pedro and David kept missing badly. They shot blindly, trusting strength over aim. On one heave from David, the ball careened
off the back of the rim—a “brick,” Jimmy would soon learn—and flew right into Jimmy's hands.

“Hey!”

“Give it.”

And. Well. Jimmy gave it all right. Hell, our kid was born with the
dribble, dribble, drive
pumping in his veins. He was a natural—he was
the
natural. So Jimmy shot two-handed, somehow still beautiful with no form, and the ball arced up and into the hoop, straight and true. Dropped so clean it took the bottom off all three of their little worlds, in different ways.

“Sweet,” said Pedro. Jimmy noticed something for the first time on his lips—an accent.

“Bet you can't do it again,” David said.

“OK.”

So Jimmy teed off again. And he made it again. Our kid was lights-out. He dropped two in a row, and then extended the string to five, then seven, then eight shots in a row. With each shot he made, he got his change—another shot. A rhythm developed. Pedro kept yelling, “Give 'em his change!” and they passed the basketball back to Jimmy's tingling hands and he made another; but also each time he made a shot, David became more angry. Soon he was jumping up and down, screaming, “No fair! No fair, you're cheating!”

It wasn't clear how exactly David thought Jimmy was cheating, but he was red-faced and adamant. By the time the bell rang at the end of recess, Jimmy was squaring up for his last shot, his ninth, and David simply couldn't take it anymore. He ran headfirst into Jimmy's stomach just as the ball left his fingertips . . .

•   •   •

Back at the Kirkus house, over on Glasgow Street, Dex sat beside one of the big front windows. His parents and Jimmy were the only stars in his sky, so right then, his pops at work, his mom
flickering in the bathroom, drawing a bath, and Jimmy gone for his first day of school, the sky was dark. He tapped on the window. He knew eventually Jimmy would come back home, through the front door, and he'd see him first through this window. He tried to imagine the things that were happening to Jimmy at school. He couldn't though. He could only see the things that were really there. The tree. The sidewalk. The mailbox. So he just kept tapping on the glass, waiting for his brother. Tapped one, two, three. And again and again.

•   •   •

Genny Mori lay on her back in bed. Today would be the same as the last—spend all afternoon putting the house in order with Dex underfoot, then head off to her night shift at the hospital just as Todd was getting home. Come home later as Todd was leaving, sleep through the morning and then do it again. All told she spent maybe twelve real hours with her husband each week. She complained to Bonnie, but then Bonnie had just said, “Welcome to real life,” so she'd hung up on her.

And then there was the fact that today was Jimmy's first day of school. Todd had taken him on his way to work. Didn't even ask if she wanted to go. He was good like that, not putting guilt on her, not weighing in on what she should do, how she should divide her time. Ever since Suzie it had been like this. Fine. Just fine. But that was all. A small part of her wished he would push a little harder, demand a little more. It was too easy to hang back. She had started to feel Todd preferred it this way. Had he asked her to be there, she would have probably said no. Still, to be asked.

She'd be angrier if she hadn't just gotten out of a very hot bath. Genny felt the heat unfold off her in wave after paralyzing wave. Light-headed from the effort of getting out of the tub and walking the short distance to her bedroom, she could picture her heart beating in that particularly strutting way hearts have when seen
on monitors in the hospital. Fingertips and toes numb, mind dipping and vision blurred, she gave in, fell asleep.

•   •   •

. . . the ball splashed through the net as Jimmy and David tussled on the cement. Kids gathered around, taking up the universal chant, “
Fight, fight, fight!
”
It was the last fight Jimmy Kirkus would win in a very many years.

Meanwhile, Pedro was hopping around yelling in his little accent that squished the
o
on each word, “WOW! WOW! WOW!” For he was the only one to witness the miracle of the Ninth Shot while Jimmy and David fought. For even as Jimmy was getting piled into by David's huge head, the ball was dropping through the net. An improbable, impossible, incredible, nine baskets in a row.

The Ninth Shot of Jimmy Kirkus.

It was Principal Berg who pulled them apart. Father to James and grandfather to David, he was a skinny, crooked old man whose interior spring had gone shoddy with age. Hunched and lilting slightly to the left, he gave the impression of constantly being suspicious.

Principal Berg bent at the waist until he was sure the boys felt his hot coffee breath on the tops of their heads. “Against the wall,” he said. He pointed at Pedro, who had stopped jumping around, but still had his mouth wide open, like another “WOW” could possibly escape. “You too.” While the rest of the students lined up to go back into school, whispering about the fight, Principal Berg made the three boys wait in silence. Silence was the best discipline trick he'd ever learned.

He tightened the knot of his tie. The incident had made him feel loose, undone. He buttoned his suit jacket. More trouble between a Berg and a Kirkus.

When the playground was empty, he finally spoke. “Well?”

Pedro went first. “He made nine shots in the row!” He pointed
at our kid Jimmy, finger trembling. “And the last one, David hit him.” Pedro patted his own head. “With his head. And he made it still!”

“He's lying, Pop-Pop!” David shouted.

Principal Berg ignored his grandson. He knew he should think the world of little David, but he couldn't get over it—kid was a whiner. Actually, he'd always taken a weird pleasure in denying David. He was sure it was evilness inside him and so he chose not to think about it.

Principal Berg eyed Jimmy. “Did you make nine shots in a row?”

“I don't know.” Jimmy looked away. “I didn't see. He hit me.”

“He made nine in a row,” Pedro said with the firmness of a true believer.

“Pedro can't count, Pop-Pop,” David said. “He speaks Spanish.”

Principal Berg stomped his foot and the boys flinched. “Shut your mouth, David.” He took a moment to gather himself, turned and patted Pedro on the head. “It's great you're multilingual.”

Pedro ducked. “Huh?”

Principal Berg thought for a moment. “Do it again, Jimmy.”

“What?”

“Do it again, make nine shots in a row.”

So Jimmy picked up the ball and started shooting. He didn't make all of them, but he made enough, including two streaks: one of five and another of seven.

“Jesus,” Principal Berg said.

Later in his office, he started making phone calls. He couldn't help it. And new news in a small town is lighter fluid on a barbeque.

•   •   •

At Van Eyck Beverages, Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus accidently cut his thumb with a box cutter. As he took his time wrapping it with medical tape, he worried about how his son Jimmy was
doing at his first day of school. He could feel his heart through the wound in his thumb.

The phone rang on the loading dock and Todd's boss, Ronnie O'Rourke, picked up. After a little talking, the pitch of his voice rose. He put down the phone and walked over to where Todd was loading up a truck for a solo run to Fred Meyer.

Ronnie slapped him on his broad back. “What say, Freight Train?”

Todd shrugged him off. “How's that, Ronnie?”

“Just got off the phone with Shawn, and she just got off the phone with Nell, who ran into Mrs. Lilly. People are talking about your boy Jimmy. He was wowing over at Grey School today. They're saying he's a basketball natural.”

Todd had long known this was going to happen. He did. What kid in Columbia City could go to school and not play basketball? It wasn't death and taxes in this little town—it was basketball and rain. Still, gone were the hopes he could protect his boys a little longer from the game that would be anything but a game for them. Todd breathed in. Kept telling himself,
It doesn't mean anything. Stay calm, you knew it was going to happen. You knew. It doesn't mean anything.

“Yeah,” Ronnie slapped Todd on the back again. “They say he's a chip off the old block, or an apple not far from the tree, or . . .” He tilted his head slightly to see how far he could take this. Todd was grimacing, face in profile, so maybe old Ronnie mistook it as a smile, because for some reason he kept going. “Let's hope he's not
too
close to his old man.” Ronnie nudged Todd with his elbow.