THE AWAY GAME
Two weeks before we played Edgewater, my wife left me. Stacy had met a man online, she said, an activist from Valdosta, and she told me that they had clicked, before adding, apologetically: “No pun intended.” Afterwards, she picked up her duffel bag and walked out, the door whisking shut behind her with a decisive slam.
I was at the breakfast table grading papers on Reconstruction for my third period American History class, trying to keep myself interested in rereading the same facts and dates and names regurgitated thoughtlessly onto the page. I circled a B at the top of one paper, and then took a drink of my coffee. The ceramic mug warmed my hands. Stacy’s car idled in the driveway, and I checked my watch, waiting for her to return.
She was back inside a moment later.
“Can you move your car, please?”
“Not the big dramatic exit you pictured, I bet.”
“Just move your damn car. Please.”
I nodded.
She had run off on me plenty of times before, usually just to her mother’s in St. Cloud for a few days until she got over whatever it was we were fighting about, thought things through rationally. But once around Halloween a few years back, she shacked up with some kind of florist, a man she’d met selling orchids out of his garage. By Thanksgiving, she was home. She showed up wearing a modest outfit—loose jeans and a turtleneck sweater, a deliberately conservative ensemble that denied her figure to the world—and she carried with her a store-bought pumpkin pie as an apology.
I had missed her. Once a week had passed without a phone call I was convinced she was gone for good, and I couldn’t concentrate on teaching class or coaching the games, too busy questioning my possible missteps. Had I been too hard on her? Raised my voice too much? Focused too much on the team? I was relieved when she came home. Despite everything, Stacy and I worked well together. We matched. I loved her adventurousness, her recklessness. And her sense of humor: dark and ironic and sometimes vandalistic. She once, a grown woman with a managerial job at a department store, keyed a Mercedes Benz with a bumper sticker that read KINDESS MATTERS. It didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, either—honey-colored hair, flared-out hips, legs as slender and long as a small forward’s—and that her sexual appetite stood somewhere this side of satanic. Again, I loved her recklessness. When properly channeled.
We hugged for a long time on the front porch that day she came home, Stacy sobbing into my chest, the foil ring of the pie tin cutting into my ribs. I kissed the top of her head and carried her luggage inside.
The following evening, in order to forgive her, I went out and had sex with a prostitute. I’m as permissive as the next guy—real quick to let things go that can be let go—but I’m no saint. Marriages cannot survive without equality. There must be a mutual division of guilt, a balance of wrongs, to make a relationship work. I knew I would be unable to consider her feelings on anything or look into her face without feeling cheated until we had both been hurt. After the hooker got out of my car, I headed to a bar where I spent the rest of the night watching the local basketball team lose to competition they had no business losing to. It was just one of those games where they could do no right. When I finally came home around twelve that night, feeling more sick than buzzed, I told Stacy, “Now we can go get tested together.”
That last time she had left to be with the florist, she wrote me a note and took off while I was teaching class, a move I interpreted as her inability to say she wanted to go, and so as I picked up my keys from the counter and said, “I’m not going to take you back when you get tired of this one,” I expected a similar reluctance to leave. I thought she would reconsider her choice. Instead she said, with much more conviction than I’d anticipated, “Believe me, I don’t plan on it.”
The game versus the Edgewater High Eagles was the last of the year, and I expected us to win. Until that point, the season had been a disaster, my worst as head coach, and I had no real reason behind my prediction, just the same vague hope that kept me getting dressed every morning and showing up for work on time.
I wasn’t delusional; I knew it would be tough to pull out the W. The Eagles were one of the best varsity basketball teams in Orlando, favorites to represent our division in the state championship tourney at the end of February, and my own squad, the Oak Hill High Pioneers, had not yet won a single game away from the accommodating hoops of home court. We were the only team in the city to hold such a woeful road record, a distinction that had earned us the nickname “Choke Hill,” which opposing teams’ cheerleaders chanted joyously throughout games.
It was a mental thing, I was certain, but not one that I had any sort of answer for. How the hell do you convince a group of twelve teenagers who’d met nothing but failure any time they stepped into another team’s building that the next game would be any different? You don’t. You tell them to try their best, keep doing what they’ve been practicing all year, and pray to the basketball gods that it eventually works. I’ve heard insanity described that way before.
The Pioneers were an unrecognizable team during away games. At home, in their own gymnasium, surrounded by supportive fans, their shots were on target and their passes crisp, the ball zipping around the perimeter from player to player until they hit a cutter slashing into the lane for an easy two. We possessed a respectable record of four-and-three at home. On other teams’ courts, however, the players fell apart. The hostile and stentorian crowds rattled them. They bricked uncontested lay-ups, clanked free-throws, and sailed passes into the bleachers with inexplicable frequency.
Still, we had as good a chance to win as anyone. Each game, I told them, as we bussed across town to Edgewater’s campus, started with a score of zero-to-zero for a reason. It was its own self-contained event, independent of the past, ignorant of the future.
Tip-off was in thirty minutes, and I was putting the team through some light shooting exercises, a basic lay-up line, when my cell rang. Inside my duffel bag, through the mesh material, the lighted display of my phone pulsed like a heart. I’m not embarrassed to admit it; every time I heard a phone ring since Stacy had left the sound clawed at me with the hope of getting back together.
The team ignored it and continued their orderly procession to the rim, their sneakers chirping against the waxed surface of the court, their bodies swimming inside their green-and-gold jerseys as though they were wearing pillowcases. One after the other they extended their arms towards the basket, kissed the ball off the glass, and dropped it through the net with the satisfying whisper of a swish. Their focus encouraged me. The Eagles athletically outclassed us at every position, but if we came out sharp we might catch them napping.
I told my assistant coach, Ed Buckner, to take over for me for a minute. Earlier in the year, Ed had visited me in my classroom after school and begged his way onto the team. He was offering his time to any extracurricular activity that would take him—student government, dance committees, Four H field trips—whatever kept him out of the house and away from his wife’s mother, who had been staying with his family since her stroke. I explained that since I ran the practices and called the plays, the job consisted mainly of herding players on and off the bus on time and chipping in on the post-game pizzas. It was why my last assistant took over heading the JV Girls’ team; the position was nothing more than a glorified chaperon. No one wanted the job. “Hank,” he said, idly spinning the globe on my bookshelf, blurring the borders of the states and countries into one colorful smear. “She may not be able to sign her name or boil a pot of tea anymore, but she’s still one hateful old bitch.” I told him that the first practice of the season was next Monday at four o’clock.
Ed cracked the nylon cord of his whistle and mimicked the snap of a whip as I trotted over to the bench to answer my phone. “Tell the missus hi for me,” he said, and it required all my restraint not to deck him. I hadn’t told anyone Stacy had left, feeling somehow that once I did, her absence would become permanent, official. Ed could not have known. He thought it was Stacy calling as she always did before games, to wish me luck, to say she hoped we’d win. Since I could not hit him, I settled for clandestinely flipping him off, low and out of sight of the parents and siblings who formed Oak Hill’s tiny cheering section behind the score-keeper’s table.
I reached into my duffel bag. The school’s mascot was emblazoned across the front, Pioneer Pete in a combative pose, his raccoon hat cocked purposefully to one side.
I did not recognize the number on the phone’s display: a Georgia area code.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
I lost sensation in my hands. Eleven years Stacy and I had been married, and over that time I had tuned my ear to the idiosyncrasies of her voice: the jump in pitch when she talked about old friends or exotic travel destinations; the dark edge that entered around the holidays when work got crazy; the sudden, precipitous flattening, as though an anvil had crushed it, whenever I crossed some invisible boundary in an argument. One word was all it took to rid me of any thoughts of reconciliation. One word communicated from an unknown number and stripped to the barest components of her voice, and I knew she was gone.
Practicing jumpers now, our starting point guard—a lanky junior named Danny Kearns, a boy with a murderous crossover who was earning a generous B in my second period—elevated for a shot that ripped through the net. It sounded like ligaments tearing, like parts shredding at their seams. From the second row of the bleachers, his parents applauded.
“Where are you?”
“At a payphone. I don’t want you to have my new number.”
“I meant why?”
“I didn’t call to argue with you. This is only a courtesy.”
“No one’s arguing.”
“I spoke with an attorney. She’s going to mail you the divorce papers.” The noise on her end of the call quieted, a quick hiccup over the line as an automated voice instructed her to deposit more money, and it felt as if someone were gossiping about me behind my back. A feverish sensation moved up my neck. “I’m out of quarters. Anyway, I just wanted to say good luck.”
I rejoined the team. Ed read the change in my mood—the set of my jaw, the flare of my nostrils, the tension of my movements—and he rumpled his brow with concern, as if to say, What’s up, man? his whistle bobbing from his lower lip like a miniature diving board. I shrugged, waved my hands as if to say, Nothing, not a thing, let’s just play some goddamn ball. Really, at that moment, that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted the distraction of the game, the leathery smack of the ball on the hardwood, the frantic shuffling of players, the percussion of feet stampeding down the court and replacing all the thoughts in my head, the feelings in my chest.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just saw who’s reffing today is all.”
With a nod, I directed Ed’s attention to Edgewater’s bench, where the official, Derrick Wright, was conversing with the Eagles’ coach, sharing a laugh. Derrick—an ex-athlete long out of game shape—had officiated some of the Pioneers’ most devastating losses. The most recent came against the reliably awful team from the Methodist academy, the Lions. Everyone beat them, as though they lost out of some kind of exercise in Christian charity. But Derrick had whistled our best players for cheap fouls early and kept them on the bench for almost the entire game. I implored the other ref to call it fairly, but he just turned his back and jogged to the other end of the court. Then, on the final play of the game, with the Lions down only one, Derrick called our center, Jeff Summers, for a phantom foul that sent the Lions to the stripe where they won the game. That call had robbed us of our first road win of the year.
After chatting with Edgewater’s coach, Derrick crossed the court to Ed and me. He adjusted his gray referee’s shirt—the only neutral thing about him—and said, “Five minutes and your guys need to be ready for the jump.” He turned to walk away, but then caught sight of the whistle hanging around Ed’s neck. “FHSAA rules state that there can be no whistles out during a game except the officials’. Put yours away. Don’t want it accidentally going off.”
“It’s not a gun,” Ed said, taking it off and tucking it in his pocket.
“Rules are rules.”
“He took it off already.”
“Five minutes.”
I assembled the team by the bench. My pre-game pep-talks usually focused on the practical: defensive assignments, offensive schemes, which players to double team and which to leave unguarded. I wasn’t one of those coaches who gave big, showy speeches on tired sports classics like teamwork, hustle, and heart. I hated giving them as much as my players hated hearing them.
But that day, I looked out into the stands at the students, full of school spirit, their faces painted with the numbers of their favorite Edgewater players. They carried handmade posters with calls for violence written on them—BEAT CHOKE HILL, PUMMEL THE PIONEERS—and I thought of Stacy, up in Valdosta with her activist, probably writing out slogans for some hippy rally on the back of my divorce papers. I clenched my hands.
“When I first came to Oak Hill,” I began, sweeping my eyes over the players, who noted the seriousness of my tone and quit smiling for their parents’ camcorders, “our mascot, Pioneer Pete, he looked a little different. He still had his raccoon hat, but he also carried a rifle. Before games, he’d fill it up with smoke cartridges and fire them at halftime to pump up the fans. Over summer one year some parents got together and complained to the school. They thought he was too violent. Pete sent the wrong message to you kids in the wake of all the school shootings. And the faculty caved. The pantywaists.
“I don’t go in for the whole superstition thing. What happens on the court is what matters. But since the school disarmed Pete—what was that, like six years ago, Ed?—we haven’t made it to a single championship game. We have barely had winning seasons. I’ve got to wonder if the school didn’t take away more than our firepower. I’ve got to wonder if they took our fire. It’s the last game of the year, men. Some of you may never play a game of basketball for a team again. How do you want to go out? How? Do you want to lie down without a fight? Or do you want to play with some passion, some anger, some fire. All right, put your hands in. Pioneers on three.”
The players piled their hands on top of Ed’s and my own. Our arms formed an asterisk, as though something exceptional were about to happen. Then, on the count of three, the team shouted in a unified voice that cut through the din of the crowd and rang out in the acoustics of the gym: Pioneers!
I never hit Stacy, but once I had tried. It was during the middle of a silly argument; I had forgotten to refill the ice trays after I had emptied them out, as I was in a hurry to get back to the game before the commercials ended. When I came back into the living room, Stacy said, “I didn’t hear a faucet. How many times have I asked you to not leave the trays empty? There are other people in this house, you know.”
The game had started, a close match-up between the Heat and Spurs. I watched the television from my periphery as Dwyane Wade coasted to the rim for a dunk. “Damn. What?”
“You’re not even listening.”
“Maybe I’d hear you better in the tranquility of my orchid garden.”
Stacy’s voice flattened, the lines in her face went slack. “He always heard me just fine wherever we were. Garden, kitchen, bed.”
I felt the snap of my elbow extending before I knew what had happened, the punch whizzing by her nose as she ducked out of the way. We both sat there, frozen, horrified at what I’d done. I stared at my fist in disbelief. Stacy stood up calmly, walked to the bedroom and locked the door.
The next morning, I tried to wake up before her and make her breakfast as a kind of apology, but she had been up since five. She showed no signs of a restless night; she was composed, businesslike. When I reached over to touch her shoulder and say how sorry I was, she stepped away. She said I shouldn’t be forgiven just because she had good reflexes and I had lousy aim. I had tried to hit her. That was enough.
“Yeah, whatever, you didn’t mean it, you’re sorry, boo hoo,” she said. “I’ve got to get ready for work.”
At first, it seemed the players didn’t respond well to my speech. After the end of the opening eight-minute quarter, Edgewater was ahead by seven points, 11-4. Their defense had smothered us, and their strong frontline players had beaten us in the post for most of their scores. In the second, though, the momentum shifted; we started double-teaming on the entry pass and getting some fast-break lay-ups. By the fourth, it was a game.
That we were even close in the end was something of a miracle, a fluke. By any historical or statistical measure, Edgewater should’ve been stomping us, routing us, running us out of the gym. The Pioneers had begun playing pesky, though, bothering shots, frustrating the Eagles with their chaotic energy. Derrick even managed to call the game somewhat evenly. Near the close of the fourth, we were only down a bucket, 37-39, with two minutes left. The home crowd was silent, nervous. Everyone in Oak Hill’s cheering section was standing to watch.
Edgewater controlled the ball. Markus Pinckney, a rangy boy with braids as lush and intricate as a hedge maze, curled off a back-screen and lofted a flat jumper that bounced off the rim. Jeff collected the rebound. It was our first chance to tie it up since the score was zero all.
“Time out, time out.”
Derrick stopped play with a blast of his whistle. The timekeeper halted the clock with a minute and a half left. My voice was hoarse, my throat scratchy from yelling from the bench, and, in the excitement of the game, I had nearly forgotten about Stacy’s phone call. Only in the lulls of action—halftime, free-throws, breaks for a player to tie his shoe—did my thoughts snap back to my wife, and my airways would constrict.
The players, sweaty and winded, jogged over to the bench. Ed handed them paper cups of water, while I diagrammed for them a pick-and-roll between Jeff and Danny. I instructed Danny to drain the clock to about twenty seconds—in Florida high school ball, their was no shot clock, so Danny could hold the ball for as long as he liked—and I told the rest of the players to box out their man in case of an offensive rebound.
Play resumed. The players wiped their matted hair from their foreheads and walked back onto the court. The Edgewater cheerleaders rustled their pompoms and led the crowd in a chant of defense, the spectators stomping their feet in unison, shaking the stands with a seismic violence.
Danny dribbled the ball above the three-point arc, face-guarded by Edgewater’s point, who crouched into a crablike stance and swiped at the ball, his hands blurs of motion. Thirty seconds rolled off the clock. A minute. Jeff hustled out top to set the screen. “Pick! Pick!” Jeff stiffened, crossed his arms over his chest, braced for the hit. Danny brushed off the screen, lost his defender, and rose for the shot.
The foul was blatant, obvious, unfuckingmistakable. Edgewater’s center switched on the screen and hacked Danny across the arms. The ball knocked loose and trickled towards half-court, where the point-guard scooped it up in stride and breezed to the opposite basket for a lay-in. 37-41. Ten seconds left.
In the footage I would later see on Channel 9’s local sportscast minute, and again at my firing, I would not recognize the man slamming his clipboard against the court and charging the referee. The man on the screen was not me. That man was in an unthinking rage, red with a psychotic blush, swearing and flailing even as his assistant coach dragged him to the sidelines. I did not recognize him as he pushed away the assistant and attacked the official once more, shoving him to the ground with both hands, calling him a cheat and a miserable goddamn liar, accusing him for the all the unfairness in the world, all the inequality. The man on the screen threw a kick to the official’s ribs, and the ref curled up like a shrimp. Then the man marched down the center of the court, fists squeezed into balls. The players on both teams parted to the side so he could pass. He pressed all his weight against one of the double doors. It was locked. He leaned against the deadbolt and shook the handle. Only then, as the man struggled with the lock, pounding his fist against the heavy gymnasium door, too caught up in his fury to try the other side, only then did I recognize the man as myself.
