“You be careful out there, Weston,” one of the prison guards calls out. “Sounds like you’re looking to lose some rec privs.”
There’s ooos on the court, everyone stands a little taller like it’s basic training with the drill sergeants. We’re all smart-asses, yeah, until the guards start talking.
Brian steps off the court, keeps his hands folded out in front of his pants like a good little schoolboy. Someone bounces me the ball.
Even just to touch it. Been a long time, feels like, since I had this. All that time I was back in Spokane after I got cut: I didn’t touch no basketball, not once I wasn’t dressed with the team. I figured that was it, all retired from basketball, and then once I was slipping—beers in the parking lot, buds and late nights, all the television couch time, no running—I didn’t want for feel what it would be like, me all slow and heavy on the court.
But now I got the basketball in my hands like what. And I feel the flow the second I’m holding it. Like all my muscles are ready for the jump, every part of me. Like some sort of lion. King again, me across the water. Only this time I wonder if I can really listen, if I can reach from here to there.
“You don’t check the ball in and you don’t bring it up,” Toni says to me. Toni the haole dude with his gorilla-hair chest, wannabe pretty-boy face. “You play center, tall boy. Pass it here, I’ll start us up the court.”
I smile. “Why don’t you clear on up there,” I say, waving up the court. “I’ll bring it.”
“Give me the ball,” he says.
“Clear on up there, boy,” I say, and there’s some other guys on the team, some brothers, and I know they see something and smile, because they’re telling him the same, Clear on up, let the man go, let’s see how it rolls. You can’t pass for shit anyway, someone tells him.
I get started.
Maybe I’m slow somewhere still, yeah, but not on this court, not right now. I’m liquid, is what I am. We go for another twenty minutes and I’m all over the court like I ain’t never missed a day of practice, like don’t no one understand how it feels. I get the ball and cut between two boys, shoulder off their hack fouls, tomahawk the ball in so hard it almost bounces back up into my face and I hang on the rim. I thread passes down low to the brothers and even Toni, slip it between suckers’ legs, even get a crossover. Kids are slow in here, too many drugs, too many forties, too many weights and not enough running, and now they’re all mine. I fadeaway-jumper kiss it in off the glass. I find my three-pointer and I murder ’um with it whenever I feel like it. Automatic. Yeah, I miss a few, okay, more than a few, and soon enough there’s heat and ache in my knees and back, like I’m an old man for the first time, but whatever, it’s nothing. I’m here. I’m now.
Everyone knows who I am when I leave that court.
* * *
DAYS GO A LITTLE EASIER AFTER THAT. At the tables, on the work crews, guys is nodding at me, giving me space, and since I don’t run my mouth or pull any stupid stunts, not beating my chest like some moke or getting smart, there’s respect. It comes on silent and steady and sometimes it even sounds like disrespect, when guys is all jawing at me, saying this or that about the court, but even then I know they say it because I’m the one to get after now, yeah. Even some of the guards is like that. There’s a couple that work the yard more than others, Officer Trujillo, he’ll nod and say some stuff low to his friend when I pull my slick cuts and drop a fadeaway. I see him nodding and all that.
Which I think is what helps give me the other idea. Later, I’m back in the cell and it’s those three and a half steps again, all the memories like obake haunting me, and I’m tuning my shins on the sink again. Three and a half steps, do it. Three and a half steps and make my bones sing on the steel.
Matty goes, “What you need is some OC. You could kick that sink all night and not feel a thing.”
I stop kicking. “Already getting so I don’t feel nothing. Or it’s like my brain sees the pain coming and shuts it up.” I can feel the flex in my jaw, though, from gritting my teeth, that’s for sure. But I don’t tell Matty that.
“On that OC, though,” Matty says. “You ever did it?”
“That’s that show with haole girls and boys, yeah? Rich ones or whatever in Hollywood.”
Matty laughs. Like he fully cackles after I say it.
“Oxy, son,” Matty says. “I’d give my left nut for some in here. Just one run of it, man, I swear. Flatten this whole place out into one quiet line I can sleep through. I miss it more than my mom.”
“You telling me you can’t get that in here?” I say. “You ask around?”
“First thing I did when I saw somebody,” Matty says.
“Back in the day, like high school? I’d get you that easy,” I say. “And I don’t even know what it is. But still I coulda got it for you.”
He snorts. “Look who’s dreaming of being Santa Claus.”
“I coulda got it,” I say. “I swear.”
And just like that it’s there, the whole concept. Trujillo nodding after my game, Matty hurting for some drugs. Whole idea falls in my lap.
* * *
SO THE NEXT TIME we’re on the yard and Officer Trujillo is the one getting the game shut down at the end of rec time, I’m the one holding the ball that gets to hand it back to him. I went like ten for twelve on the floor, had this mean reverse near the end that had everyone like oooooooh. Officer Trujillo is standing there and he says, “Time for the ball, Flores.”
Him in his khaki uniform, mustache and goatee like every hair is exactly where he wants it, eyebrows and all, marine-style haircut. All I need is a little friendliness. Used to be I could make anyone friendly.
“You guys work real hard in here, you know that?” I say.
“The ball,” Trujillo says.
“I mean I bet the hours is long, guys like us giving you a hard time all day,” I say. “I only seen a little of the crazy, guys shitting and pissing on the floors and stuff, fights and all that. Heard Crazy Eddie tried to give one of you guys hep C by spitting on you.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Trujillo says.
“I’m from Hawai‘i,” I say.
“The ball,” Trujillo says, holding out his hand.
“I’m from Hawai‘i,” I say.
“Don’t make me ask again,” Trujillo says.
“What I’m saying is, like, when was your last vacation, yeah? I know all about vacations, what they cost and all that.”
“Flores,” Trujillo says, like he’s tired and I’m in between him and his bed, but he’s not angry and he’s listening, and that means I done it right. Okay, I never won a trophy in Spokane. Not the Big One, after all those years. All those hours and palu and sweat and hurt. Me and Mom and Noa with that fight in the kitchen, all the silent fights after. Me flying off to that goddamn ice storm of a state, all for basketball. All for number one. In the end there wasn’t nothing to show for it. Long time in here I was sorry—sorry Mom sorry Dad sorry Noa. That’s what I was saying in here every day in my head until now and there’s no sorry left anymore. I got other things to win.