Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO FRANK SNAKE CHURCH?

Frank’s heart fibrillated as he walked along a tree-line trail on the northern slope of Mount Rainier. He staggered, leaned against a small pine tree for balance, but tumbled over it instead, rolled for twenty or thirty yards down the slope, and fell over a small cliff onto the scree below. A moment later, Frank’s arrhythmic heart corrected itself and resumed beating normally, but he wondered if he was going to die on the mountain. He was only thirty-nine years old and weighed only eleven more pounds than he had when he graduated from high school, but he’d been smoking too many unfiltered Camels, and his cholesterol level was a dangerous 344, exactly the same as Ted Williams’s career batting average. But damn it, Frank thought, he was a Spokane Indian, and Indians are supposed to die young. Thirty-nine years is old for a Spokane. Old enough to join the American Association of Retired Indians. Frank laughed. Bloody and hurt on this mountain, his heart maybe scarred and twisted beyond repair, and he was still making jokes. How indigenous, Frank thought, how wonderfully aboriginal, applause, applause, applause, applause for me and my people. Still laughing, Frank pushed himself to his hands and knees and sat on a flat rock. His heart beat slow and steady. He breathed easily. He felt no tingling pain in his chest, arms, or legs. He wasn’t lightheaded or nauseated. He seemed to be fine. Maybe his heart was okay; maybe it had missed only one dance step in a lifetime of otherwise lovely coronary waltzes. He was cut and scraped, a nasty gash on his arm would probably need stitches, but none of his wounds seemed to be too serious. He didn’t have any broken bones or sprains. So there was the diagnosis: His heart had played a practical joke on him — how terribly amusing, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha — and he was bruised and battered and had one hell of a headache, but he’d live.

Carefully, painfully, Frank crawled back up the slope to the trail. Once there, while still on his hands and knees, he took a few deep breaths and promised himself that he’d visit a superhero cardiologist as soon as he got off the mountain. He’d promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain. Frank stood, tested his balance, and found it to be true enough, so he resumed his rough trek along the trail. He felt stronger with each step. He was now convinced he was going to be okay. Yes, he was going to be fine. But after a few more steps, an electrical charge jolted him. Damn, Frank thought, I have a heart attack, fall down a damn mountain, and then I crawl back only to get struck by lightning. Frank imagined the newspaper headline: HEART-DISEASED FOREST RANGER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Frank was imagining the idiot readers laughing at the idiot park ranger when another electrical bolt knocked him back ten feet and dropped him to the ground, where a third lightning strike shocked him again. Damn, Frank thought, this lightning has a personal vendetta against me. He felt a fourth electrical charge shoot up his spine and into his brain. He convulsed and vomited. He kicked and punched at the air, and then he couldn’t move at all. As he lay paralyzed on the trail, Frank thought: This is it, now I’m really dead, and I have crapped my pants; I’m going to die with half-digested pieces of mushroom and sausage pizza stuck to my ass; humiliation, degradation, sin, and mortal shame. But Frank didn’t die. Instead, as the electricity fired inside his brain, Frank saw an image of his father, Harrison Snake Church, as the old man lay faceup on the floor of his kitchen in Seattle. Harrison’s eyes were open, but there was no light behind them; blood dripped from his nose and ears. In great pain, Frank understood that he hadn’t suffered a heart attack or been struck by lightning. No, he’d been gifted and cursed with the first real vision of his life, and though Frank was one of the very few Indian agnostics in the world, he accepted this vision as a simple and secular truth: His father was dead.

How much can one son love one father? Frank loved his father enough to stand and stagger five miles to the logging road where he’d parked his truck. He knew he should get on the radio and call for help. He was exhausted and in no safe shape to drive. But he also knew that his father was lying dead on the kitchen floor. Covered with blood and food, half naked in a ratty bathrobe that his father called a valuable antique, Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil lecturing on the television. Frank needed to be the first on the scene. He needed to restore his father’s dignity before the proper authorities were called. Perhaps his father’s spirit was waiting for him. But Frank didn’t believe in spirits, in souls, in the afterlife. Why was he thinking about his father’s soul? Mr. Death, Frank thought, you have entered my house and rearranged the furniture. But it didn’t matter what Frank believed. With or without soul and spirit, Harrison was lying dead on the kitchen floor and should be lifted, cleaned, and covered with old quilts. Frank needed to perform burial ceremonies. Harrison needed to have his honor restored, and Frank was the only one who could, or should, do the restoration.

So Frank drove his truck dangerously fast along fifteen miles of logging and undeveloped roads. He didn’t need a map; he’d been a forest ranger at Mount Rainier for ten years and had driven thousands of miles on these roads. As he drove, Frank thought of his father and wondered how the old man should be remembered. As he traveled toward his father’s dead body, Frank composed the eulogy: “Thank you all for coming here today to say good-bye to my father. For those of you who know me, you know I’m not a man of words. But I do have a few things I’d like to say about my father. Harrison was a beloved man. Beloved. I guess you’re supposed to use words like that at a funeral. Fancy words. But I guess I should just say it simple. Most people liked my dad, and quite a few loved him. He was an active member of St. Therese Church. He was always a good Catholic, maybe the only Indian of his generation who went to Catholic boarding school on purpose. That was a joke. I don’t know if it was funny or not. But I’m an Indian, and Indians are supposed to be funny at funerals. At least that’s what it says in the Indian Funeral Handbook. That was another joke.

“Here at St. Therese, my dad volunteered for the youth programs, and he was one of the most dependable readers and Eucharistic ministers. He read the gospels with more passion and pride than the Jesuits. Ay, jokes. Sorry about that, Father Terry, but you know it’s true. Ay, jokes.

“My dad, Harry, he was fond of telling people how he would’ve become a priest if he hadn’t loved the ladies so much. And there were always a few ladies who would have loved him back, and you know who you are. You’re the ones crying the most. Ay, jokes. But of course my loyal dad has been chaste since his wife, my mother, Helen, died of brain cancer twenty-one years ago. So maybe my dad was like a Jesuit, except he didn’t have sex, unlike most of the Jesuits. Ay, jokes.

“My mom died only three days after I graduated from high school. It was a terrible, ugly death. And my dad was never really happy again and never looked to be loved again by another woman, but he stayed active like a shark: Don’t stop moving or you die. Ha, he was the Great Red Whale, my dad. Ay, jokes. Maybe my dad and I were the Great Red Whale together. We were always together. I’ve lived in the same house with him all of my life. I guess, in some real way, my father became my mother. Harrison was Helen. He adopted some of her mannerisms, you know, like he scratches his head whenever he’s frustrated, just like she does.

“Listen to me. I keep talking about them in the present tense. And then I talk about them in the past tense. And I was never any good at English grammar anyway. So you can blame my high school English teacher for that. Sorry about that, Ms. Balum. Ay, jokes.

“After he got old, my dad was the crossing guard at Thirty-fourth and Union and knew the names of all of his kids. Since they were all Catholic kids, they only had twelve names. Or maybe eleven, since nobody has named their kid Judas since Judas was named Judas by his folks. Ay, jokes.

“My old man was strong for an old man, you know, and he could still hit ten or twelve of those long-range set shots in a row. Basketball was always my dad’s passion. He was Idaho State High School Basketball Player of the Year in 1952. He loved the Lakers when they played in Minneapolis, and he loved them more after they moved to Los Angeles. Elgin Baylor. Gail Goodrich. Jerry West. Wilt Chamberlain. Happy Hairston. Those guys won thirty-three in a row in 1973.

“After my mother died, my dad and I watched thousands of basketball games on television and in person. Sometimes, on cold Saturday nights, he and I would drive for hours to watch small-town high school teams, not because we knew any of the players but because they were playing a small-town version of basketball, and it was ragged and beautiful and passionate and clumsy and perfect. Davenport Gorillas. Darrington Loggers. Selkirk Rangers. Neah Bay Red Devils. Toutle Lake Fighting Ducks.

“And now my father is gone, and my mother is gone, and they’re gone together, and I’m a thirty-nine-year-old orphan. I didn’t even say good-bye to my father before I left the house on the day he died. I never really said good-bye to my mother before she died. I will have to live the rest of my life with a failed son’s regrets. I don’t even know what I’m going to do now.”

As he drove off Mount Rainier and through the park, Frank knew his eulogy was inadequate, incomplete, and improvisational. He knew he would have to sit and write a real eulogy. He would fill a dozen notebooks with draft after draft. Every word would perfectly capture how much love and pain he felt for his father and mother. Harrison and Helen Snake Church deserved poetry, not the opening monologue of an indigenous talk show. Mr. Death, Frank thought, you are a funnyman, but I will not laugh. Frank sped out of the park. Ignoring the risk of speeding tickets, he drove west on two-lane highways, north on Interstate 5 through Tacoma into Seattle, east off the James Street exit, and ran red lights twenty blocks into the Central District, where he and Harrison lived on Thirty-seventh Avenue. Frank drove his government truck onto the front lawn, leaped out and raced up the front steps, struggled with the front door, threw it open, rushed into the kitchen, and saw his father sitting at the table. Harrison was drinking coffee and eating Grape-Nuts. He ate breakfast for every meal.

“You’re alive,” said Frank, completely surprised by the fact.

“Yes, I am,” Harrison said as he studied his bloody, panicked son. “But you look half dead.”

“I had a vision,” Frank said.

Harrison sipped his coffee.

“I saw you in my head,” Frank said. “You’re supposed to be dead. I saw you dead.”

“You have blurry vision,” said Harrison.

One year and four days later, Harrison died of a heart attack in the QFC supermarket on Broadway and Pike. When he heard the news, Frank wondered if his previous year’s vision had been accurate, if he’d foreseen his father’s death. But there must be a statute of limitations for visions, Frank thought, there must be an expiration date for ESP. Beyond all that, Frank didn’t believe anyone could predict the future. His supposedly psychic vision of his father’s death bore some general resemblance to his real death, but the details were different. Harrison was shopping in the produce department when he coughed once, rubbed his tingling left arm, and died. “Probably dead before he hit the floor,” the coroner had said. When Harrison fell, he knocked over an artfully arranged display of bananas, which was appropriate and funny, since Harrison had always hated the taste of what he called “the devil’s evil yellow penis.” Frank buried his father beside his mother’s grave in the same Seattle graveyard where Bruce and Brandon Lee were also buried. So, hey, Frank figured his father was lying with damn good company, and if there was an afterlife, then Harrison was probably learning jeet kune do and making love to his wife, Helen, for all of eternity.

At his father’s graveside, overlooking Lake Washington, Frank stood to give the eulogy he’d carefully written but found he couldn’t read the words on the page. Grief turned him into an illiterate. He tried to remember what he’d written so he could recite his eulogy by memory, but he discovered he couldn’t speak at all. Grief turned him into a mute. Finally, after five minutes of silence, as the assembled mourners shook with collective embarrassment, Frank finally remembered how to say four words: “I love my father.”

Afterward, Frank shook the hands and accepted the hugs of dozens of his father’s friends and family. He couldn’t remember any of their names. Grief turned him into a stranger in his own tribe. Finally, Frank recognized an older woman, his mother’s aunt Margaret Marie, who kissed him hard on the lips. She tasted like salt.

“Your father was a ballplayer,” she said. “He could have played in college, you know? You should have said something about that.”

Frank laughed. What kind of person offered constructive criticism at a funeral? What kind of literate mourner had the nerve to deconstruct a eulogy?

Harrison had been a very good basketball player, but he’d never been good enough to play college hoops, not even at the community-college level. He’d been a great shooter but was never much of an athlete — too short and slow and tentative — but Frank, a genetic freak at six feet six (making him the seventeenth tallest Spokane Indian in tribal history), had always been a truly supernatural baller, the kind of jumper and runner who ignored physics when he played. He’d averaged forty-one points a game during his senior year at Seattle’s Garfield High School and had received 114 scholarship offers from colleges all over the country. He’d signed a letter of intent with the University of Washington and had planned to major in environmental science. But then his mother died. To honor her and keep her memory sacred, Frank knew he had to give up something valuable. He had to bury with her one of his most important treasures. So he buried his basketball dreams. On the morning of her funeral, Frank walked to the local park and shot one hundred jump shots and made eighty-five of them. He left the ball at the park, helped bury his mother that afternoon, and had not played the game since. For the first few years, Frank had almost died whenever he thought about basketball, but the acute pain turned chronic, and then it was a dull and distant ache, and then it was the phantom itch of an amputated limb, and then it was gone.

Now he was forty years old, and his life could be divided into two almost equal halves: He’d been a star basketball player for eighteen years — he was a hooper right out of the womb — and a non-basketball player for twenty-two years.

After his father’s burial, Frank went home alone and stood in the quiet house. He had not yet cried for his father, and he wondered if he would ever cry, but his grief grew so suddenly huge that it pushed him to the floor. He lay on the living room carpet and wept huge and gasping tears. He screamed and wailed for ten minutes or more. He didn’t know how to sing and drum, but he pounded the floor and wailed tribal vocals: Father, way, ya, way, ha, Father, way, ya, way, ha, Father, way, ya, way, ha. He sang himself hoarse and fell asleep on the carpet. When he woke, he crawled upstairs to his father’s bedroom and lay in his father’s bed. The sheets still smelled like Harrison. Frank pressed his face into the pillow and breathed in his father’s scent. And then Frank gathered his father’s hair, so different than Frank’s graying crew cut. His father’s hair was still black and two feet long on the day he died. Frank found long black hair on the pillow, in the sheets, tangled in a comb, stuck to the bathtub porcelain, clumped into a wet ball in the drain stops, and scattered in every corner of the house. Frank gathered all of the hair, rolled it into a ball, and ate it. He felt split in two, one crazy man eating hair and one rational man watching a crazy man eat hair. He chewed and swallowed the last pieces of his father’s life. He felt like he was building a museum of pain, a freak show, where he was the only visitor viewing the only mutant screaming the only prayer he knew: Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy.

Frank howled. He slept. Woke and howled again. Slept again. Woke and howled until his lips and tongue were bloody. Slept again. Woke and wondered if his grief would ever end. He didn’t know what to do, but he needed to love and be loved, so he opened his father’s closet and stared at the basketball waiting inside. A couple times a week for many years, Harrison had gone alone to the neighborhood park to shoot baskets, so the ball was worn and comfortable, low on air. Trying to move exactly like his father, to honor his father through muscle memory, Frank picked up the ball, dribbled it around his back, between his legs, bobbled it, and knocked over a chair. Clumsy and stupid with grief, he grabbed the ball, left the house, and walked then ran to the neighborhood park. Once there, he stood at the free-throw line on the northern end of the basketball court. He stared at the iron rim with its chain net. He had not taken a shot in over two decades. He’d given up this game to honor his mother, and now he was reclaiming it to honor his father. He wanted both of them to rise from the dead. Frank dribbled the ball once, twice, three times, stepped back to the three-point line, and rose into the air for a jump shot. He missed the basket completely. Frank watched the sacrilegious air ball bounce away from him and roll quickly across the manicured grass, until it finally slowed to a stop at the tennis court on the other side of the park.

A week after he buried his father, Frank quit his job as a forest ranger. He’d saved tens of thousands of dollars over the years, and the house was completely paid for, so he wasn’t worried about money. But he was worried about being alone. For most of his life, he’d loved solitude. Walking through the deep woods, he often imagined he was the only person left in the world, the only survivor of a nuclear war or a smallpox epidemic. During these fantasies, Frank lived alone for fifty years until the day when he curled into a ball at the base of a beautiful pine and died like an old dog, whereby the human race ceased to exist. Inside and outside of this fantasy, Frank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants. He didn’t have any close friends and had probably shared more conversations with the redheaded clerk at the university bookstore and the blond cashier at the QFC supermarket than he did with anyone other than his father. As for romance, Frank had dated a few women over the years but found them to be too inconsistent and illogical, so he dated a few men and found them to be even more random and frightening. For a while, he had paid for sex with men and women, then women only, but he eventually grew disgusted with the desperation of such acts and, for many years, had lived as chastely as his father had lived. All along, Frank understood that he was suffering from a quiet sickness, a sort of emotional tumor that never grew or diminished but prevented him from living a full and messy life. At the end of every day, Frank thoroughly washed away the human funk of the world, but now, with his father’s death, he worried that he would never feel clean again. He needed to take control of his life. He needed to organize his grief; he needed to compose a mournful to-do list: Bury your father, visit your mother’s grave, cry, eat hair, play basketball again, lose weight. Of course he felt banal. In a time of extraordinary pain, why was he worried about something as ordinary as his body-fat percentage? He only knew for sure that he needed to keep moving, get stronger, build, and connect.

So he picked up the Yellow Pages, looked up personal trainers, and dialed the first one on the list.

“Athletes, Incorporated, this is Russell.”

The next day, he walked thirty blocks into downtown Seattle (why not start training immediately?) and met with Russell, a thin and muscular black man who looked more like a long-distance runner than a weight lifter.

“So,” said Russell as he sat across the desk from Frank.

“So,” Frank said.

“What can we do for you?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never done this before.”

“Well, why don’t we start with your name.”

“I’m Frank Snake Church.”

“Damn, that’s impressive. A man with a name like that is destined for greatness.”

“If my name was John Smith, you’d tell me I was destined for greatness, right?”

“Well, I’m supposed to help you be great. That’s my job. Stronger body, stronger mind, stronger spirit. That’s our motto.”

Frank stared at Russell. Silently studied him. A confident man, Russell was comfortable with the silence.

“Are you a serious man?” Frank asked him.

“I’m not sure I understand your question.”

Frank stood and walked around the desk. He knelt beside Russell and spoke to him from inches away. Russell didn’t mind this closeness.

“Listen,” Frank said, “I know this is your job, and I know you need to make money. And I know a large part of what you do here is sales. You’re a salesman. And that’s okay. You need to make a living. We all need to make a living. And hey, this job you have is a great way to make money, right? You get to wear T-shirts and shorts all year long. And you’ve probably helped a lot of people get healthy, right?”

Russell could feel Frank’s desperation and sense of purpose, the religious fervor that needed to be directed. Russell had met a thousand desperate people, all looking to rescue or be rescued, but this Indian man was especially radiant with need.

“I keep a scrapbook of the clients who’ve meant the most to me,” Russell said. He’d never told anybody about that scrapbook and how he studied it. If exercise was his religion, then the scrapbook was his bible, and every one of his clients was a prophet. Russell never spoke aloud of how proud he was of the woman who lost five hundred pounds and kept it off, of the man who recovered from a triple bypass and now ran marathons, of the teenager paralyzed in a car wreck who now played professional wheelchair basketball. Russell fixed broken people, and sometimes the repairs lasted a lifetime. But he could not say these things aloud. In order to be taken seriously, Russell knew he had to pretend to be less than serious about his job, his calling. He could not tell his clients that he thought his gym was a church. He’d sound like a crazy fundamentalist, an idiot parody of a personal trainer. He couldn’t express sentiment or commitment; he was forced to be ironic and cynical. He couldn’t tell people he cried whenever clients failed or quit or trained too inconsistently for the work to make a difference. So he simply repeated the tired and misleading mantra whenever asked about his work: It’s better than having a real job. But now, after all these years, Russell somehow understood that he could tell the truth to this sad and desperate stranger.

“I remember everybody I’ve worked with,” Russell said. “I remember their names, their weights, their goals. I remember the exact day when the quitters quit. I keep a running count of the total weight my clients have lost.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s just for me. It’s a sacred number.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “I think it’s good to remember things that way. Very good. I admire that. So, with my admiration clearly expressed, I want you to answer my question. Are you a serious man?”

“If I said this aloud to most of the world, they’d laugh at me,” said Russell. “But I think I have one of the most important jobs in the world. That’s how serious I am about what I do. So yes, in answer to your question, when it comes to this work, I am a very serious man.”

Frank stood and looked out the window at the Seattle skyline. With his back to Russell, he spoke. It was the only way he could say what he needed to say.

“My father died a week ago,” Frank said.

Russell had often heard these grief stories before. He knew five people who’d come directly to the gym from funerals and immediately signed up for full memberships.

“What about your mother?” Russell asked.

“She died when I was eighteen.”

“My mother died of sickle cell last year,” Russell said. “My father was killed when I was twelve. He was a taxi driver. Guy held him up and shot him in the head.”

Frank honored that story — those tragic deaths — with his silence.

“How did your father die?” Russell asked.

“Heart attack.”

Frank and Russell were priests and confessors.

“Listen to me,” Frank said. “I used to be a basketball player, a really good basketball player, the best in the city and maybe the best in the state, and maybe I could have become one of the best in the country. But I haven’t played in a long, long time.”

“What do you need from me?” Russell asked.

Frank turned from the window. “I want to be good again,” he said.

Russell studied the man and his body, visually estimated his fitness levels, and emotionally guessed at his self-discipline and dedication.

“Give me a year,” Russell said.

For the next twelve months, Frank trained five days a week. He lifted free weights, ran miles on the treadmill, climbed hundreds of stories on the stair stepper, jumped boxes until he vomited from the lactic acid buildup, and climbed ropes until his hands bled. He quit smoking. He measured his food, kept track of all of the calories and the fat, protein, and carbohydrate grams. He drank twelve glasses of water a day. Mr. Death, Frank thought, I am going to drown you before you drown me. Frank’s body-fat percentage, heart rate, and blood pressure all lowered. Every three months, he bought new clothes to fit his new body.

During the course of the year, Frank also cleaned his house. He removed the art from the walls and sold it through want ads and garage sales. Without ceremony, he piled up all of the old blankets and quilts, a few of them over eighty years old, and gave them one by one to the neighbors. He gathered financial records, wills, tax returns, old magazines, photograph albums, and scrapbooks, and stored them in a large safe-deposit box at the bank. After that, he scooped all of the various knickknacks and sentimental souvenirs into cardboard boxes and left them on the corner for others to cart away. One day after the movers carried away all of the old-fashioned and overstuffed furniture, other movers brought in the new, sleek, and simple pieces, so there was only one bed, one dresser, one coffee table, one dining table, one wardrobe, one stove, one refrigerator freezer, and four chairs in the entire house. He pulled up the rugs, hired a local teenager to haul them to the dump, and sanded the hardwood until the floors glowed golden and sepia. Near the end of the year, he found enough courage to give away his father’s clothes and the boxes of his mother’s clothes his father had saved. Frank gave away most of his clothes as well, until he owned only black T-shirts, blue jeans, black socks, black boxers, and black basketball shoes.

Frank kept all of the books, three thousand novels, histories, biographies, and essays, and neatly organized them on bookshelves he built into the walls. He read one book a day. After he disconnected the telephone and permanently stopped the mail, his family and friends worried about him and came to see him, but he turned away all visitors, treating loved ones, strangers, salespeople, religious crusaders, and political activists as if they were all the same.

Frank knew his behavior was obsessive and compulsive, and perhaps he was seriously disturbed, in need of medical care and strong prescriptions, but he didn’t want to stop. He needed to perform this ceremony, to disappear into the ritual, to methodically change into something new and better, into someone stronger.

“Make me hurt,” he said to Russell before every training session.

“All right,” said Russell every few weeks. “I want one thousand sit-ups and one thousand push-ups, and you’re not leaving here until I get them.”

Sometimes Frank overtrained, ran too many miles or lifted too much weight, and injured himself. Russell would chase him out of the gym, tell him to lay off for a week or even two or three, give his body a chance to recover, to heal, but Frank kept pushing, tore muscles and dislocated joints, broke fingers and twisted vertebrae. He stopped training only when he couldn’t get out of bed, and if he found the strength to crawl into a hot shower, he’d warm his muscles enough to lift what he could. At his strongest, he bench-pressed 350 and leg-pressed a thousand pounds. At his weakest, when he was injured, he could lift only paperbacks or pencils, but he’d still do three sets of ten repetitions.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” Russell said to him again and again. “I can’t keep doing this to you. It’s malpractice, man. If you get hurt again, I’m quitting. I’m banning you from the gym forever.”

But Russell never quit on him, and Frank never quit on Russell. Joined, they were not twins or friends; they were not lovers or brothers; they were not teachers or students; they were not mentors or apprentices; they were not monks or sinners. They remained mutable and variable, sacred and profane. Mr. Death, Frank thought, we are your contraries, your opposites and contradictions, your X factors and missing links, your self-canceling saints and self-flagellating monks, your Saint Francis and the other Saint Francis, and we have come to blaspheme your name.

Away from Russell and the gym, Frank played basketball.

Seven days a week, Frank drove the city and searched for games. He traveled from the manicured intramural courts at the University of Washington to the broken-asphalt courts of the Central District; from the violent and verbose games in Green Lake Park to the genial and clumsy games at the YMCA; from the gladiator battles under the I-5 freeway to the hyperorganized leagues at Sound Mind & Body Gym. He played against black men who believed it was their tribal right to dominate the court. He played against white men who wanted to be black men. He played against brown men who hated black and white men. He played against black, brown, and white men who didn’t care about any color other than the green-money bets placed on every point and game. He played against Basketball Democrats who came to the court alone and ran with anybody, and Basketball Republicans who traveled in groups of five and ran only with one another. He played against women who endured endless variations of the same dumb joke: Hey, girl, you can play, but it’s shirts and skins, and you’re running skins. He played against former football players who still wanted to play football, and former wrestlers who wanted only to wrestle. He played against undisciplined young men who couldn’t run a basic pick-and-roll, and against elderly men who never missed their two-handed set shots. He played against trash talkers and polite gentlemen. He played against sociopathic ball hogs, wild gunners, rebound hounds, and assist-happy magicians. He played games to seven, nine, eleven, and twenty-one points. He played winner-keeps-ball and alternate possessions. He played one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, four-on-four, five-on-five, and mob rules, improvisational, every-baller-for-himself, anarchist, free-for-all, death-cage matches. He played against cheaters who constantly changed the score, and honest freaks who called fouls on themselves. He played against liars who bragged about how good they used to be, and dreamers who would never be as good as they wanted to be. He played against Basketball Presbyterians who refused to fast-break, and Basketball Pagans who refused to slow down. He played against the vain Allen-Iverson-wanna be punks who dribbled between their legs, around their backs, and missed 99 percent of the ridiculous, driving, triple-pump, reverse-scoop shots they hoisted up but talked endless and pornographic trash whenever they happened to make even one shot. He played against the vain Larry-Bird-wanna be court lawyers who argued every foul call and planted themselves at three-point lines and constantly called for the ball because they were open, damn it, more open than any outsider shooter in the history of the damn game, so pass the freaking rock!

Frank played so well that he earned (and re-earned) a playground reputation and was known by a variety of nicknames: Shooter, Old Man, Chief, and Three. Frank’s favorite nickname was Oh Shit, given to him in July by a teenage Chicano kid in MLK, Jr. Park.

“Every time the old Indio shoots and makes one of those crazy thirty-footers,” the Chicano kid had said, “his man be yelling, ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!’”

Frank was making a comeback, though he hated that word as much as Norma Desmond had hated it, and just like her, he preferred to call it his return. After all, over the course of the year, a few older players had recognized Frank and remembered him as the supernatural Indian kid who’d disappeared from the basketball world two decades ago.

On the basketball courts of Seattle, Frank was the love child of Sasquatch and D. B. Cooper; he was the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby, the building of Noah’s Ark, and the flooding of Atlantis; he was the mystery and the religion and the outright lies.

During one legendary game at the University of Washington Intramural Activities Building, Frank caught the ball in the low post and turned to face Double O, the Huskies’ power forward. He was a Division I stud slumming among the gym rats, a future second-round draft pick destined to be eleventh man for the Cleveland Cavaliers, which didn’t sound glamorous but still made him one of the thousand best basketball players in the world.

“Oh Shit, you better give up the rock,” Double O taunted. “I ain’t letting you win this game.”

Frank faked the jumper and dribbled right, but Double O, five inches taller and seventy-five pounds heavier, easily pushed Frank away from the key.

“Oh Shit, you’re an old man,” taunted Double O. “Why you coming after me? I ain’t got your social security check.”

Frank dribbled the ball between his legs, behind his back, then between his legs again. He didn’t know why he was bouncing the ball like a madman. There was no point to it, but he wanted to challenge the trash-talking black kid.

“Oh Shit, you got yourself some skills!” shouted Double O. “Come on, come on, show me the triple-threat position. That’s it. That’s it. I am so bedazzled, I cannot tell if you’re going to shoot, pass, or drive. Oh man, you got them fun-da-men-tals. Bet you learned those with the Original Celtics!”

Distracted by the insulting rant, by its brilliant and racist poetry, Frank laughed and almost lost the ball.

“Better make your move, Old Milk,” taunted Double O. “Your expiration date is long past due.”

Frank faked right, dribbled left, and scored the game-winning hoop on an archaic rolling left-handed hook shot that barely made it over Double O’s outstretched hands.

Frank screamed in triumph and relief as Double O howled with disbelief and fell backward to the floor. All the other players in the gym — the eyewitnesses to a little miracle — shouted curses and promises, screamed in harmony with Frank, slapped one another’s hands and backs and butts, and spun in delirious circles. People laughed until they were nauseated. Nobody held anything back. Because he had no idea what else to do with his excitement, one skinny black kid nicknamed Skinny, a sophomore in electrical engineering, ran out of the gym and twenty-four blocks to his house to tell his father and younger brother what he had just seen. Skinny’s father and little brother never once asked why he’d run so far to tell the story of one hoop in one meaningless game. They understood why the story had to be immediately told. In basketball, there is no such thing as “too much” or “too far” or “too high.” In basketball, enough is never enough. At its best and worst, basketball is all about excess. Every day is Fat Tuesday on a basketball court.

“Did you see that? Did you see that?” screamed Double O as he lay on the floor and flailed his arms and legs. He laughed and hooted and cursed. Losing didn’t embarrass him; he was proud of playing a game that could produce such a random, magical, and ridiculous highlight. There was no camera crew to record the event for SportsCenter, but it had happened nonetheless, and it would become a part of the basketball mythology at the University of Washington: Do you remember the time that Old Indian scored on Double O? Do I remember? I was there. Old Chief scored seven straight buckets on Double O and won the game on a poster dunk right in O’s ugly mug. O’s feelings hurt so bad, he needed stitches. Hell, O never recovered from the pain. He’s got that post-traumatic stress illness, and it’s getting worse now that he plays ball in Cleveland. Playing hoops for the Cavaliers is like fighting in Vietnam.

In that way, over the years, the story of Frank’s game-winning bucket would change with each telling. Every teller would add his or her personal details; every biographer would turn the story into autobiography. But the original story, the aboriginal hook shot, belonged to Frank, and he danced in fast circles around the court, whooping and celebrating like a spastic idiot. I sound like some Boy Scout’s idea of an Indian warrior, Frank thought, like I’m a parody, but a happy parody.

The other ballplayers laughed at Frank’s display. He’d always been a quiet player, rarely speaking on or off the court, and now he was emoting like a game-show host.

“Somebody give Oh Shit a sedative!” shouted Double O from the floor. “The Old Indian has gone spastic!”

Still whooping with joy, Frank helped Double O to his feet. The old man and the young man hugged each other and laughed.

“I beat you,” Frank said.

“Old man,” said Double O, “you gave me a trip on your time machine.”

If smell is the memory sense, as Frank once read, then he was most nostalgic about the spicy aroma of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Whenever Frank smelled Kentucky Fried Chicken, and not just any fried chicken but the very particular and chemical scent of the Colonel’s secret recipe, he thought of his mother. Because he was a child who could not separate his memories of his mother and his father and sometimes confused their details, Frank thought of his mother and father together. And when he thought about his mother and father and the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Frank remembered one summer day when his parents took him to the neighborhood park to picnic with a twenty-piece bucket of mixed Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a ten-piece box of legs and wings only, along with a cooler filled with Diet Pepsi and store-bought potato salad and apples and bananas and potato chips and a chocolate cake. Harrison and Frank had fought over which particular basketball to bring, but they had at last agreed on an ABA red-white-and-blue rock.

“Can’t you ever leave that ball at home?” Helen asked Harrison. She always asked him that question. After so many years of hard-worked marriage, that question had come to mean I love you, but your obsessions irritate the hell out of me, but I love you, remember that, okay?

On that day, Frank was eleven years old, young enough to sit on his mother’s lap and be only slightly embarrassed by their shared affection, and old enough to need his father and be completely unable to tell him about that need.

“Let’s play ball,” Frank said to Harrison, though he meant to say, Prove your love for me.

“Eat first,” Helen said.

“If I eat now, I’ll throw up,” Frank said. “I’ll eat after we play.”

“You’ll eat now, and if you throw up, you’ll just have to eat again, and then you’ll play again, and then you’ll throw up, so you’ll have to eat again. It might go on for days that way. You’ll be trapped in a vicious circle.”

“You’re weird, Mom.”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “And weirdness is hereditary.”

“I’m weird, too,” Harrison said. “So you got it coming from both sides. You don’t have a chance.”

“I can’t believe you’re my parents. Did you adopt me?”

“Honey, we certainly did not adopt you,” Helen said. “We stole you from a pack of wolves, so eat your meat, you darling little carnivore.”

Laughing, feeling like an adult because his parents treated him with respect and satire, Frank sat between his mother and father and almost cried with happiness. His chest tightened, and his mouth tasted bitter. He cried too easily, he knew, and sometimes had to fight school-yard bullies who teased him about his quick tears. He usually won the fights and usually cried about his victory.

Sitting with his parents, Frank closed his eyes against his tears, blinked and blinked and thought of the utter hilarity of a dog farting in its sleep, and that made him laugh a little. Soon enough, he felt normal, like a kid made of steel and oak, and he could breathe easily, and he quickly ate his lunch of Kentucky Fried Chicken, but only wings and legs.

“Okay, I’m done,” he said. “Let’s play ball, Dad.”

“I’m too tired,” Harrison said. “I’m going to lie down in the grass and fall asleep in some dog poop.”

His father was always trying to be funny. He was funny sometimes, maybe most of the time, but nobody could be funny all of the time. And being funny was sometimes a way of being dishonest.

A few years back, Harrison had told Frank’s third-grade teacher that Indians didn’t believe in using numbers, that the science of mathematics was a colonial evil.

“Well,” the mystified teacher had asked, “then how do Indians count?”

“We guess,” Harrison had said with as much profundity as he could fake.

Okay, so maybe Harrison was funny because funny was valuable. Maybe being funny was usually a way of being honest.

“Come on, let’s play ball,” Frank pleaded with his father, who had flopped onto the grass with a chicken leg and a banana.

“I’m going to eat and sleep and fart,” Harrison said.

“Dad, you said you’d show me something new.”

“Did I promise you I would show you something new?”

“Well, no.”

“Did I sign something that said I would show you something new?”

“No.”

“That means we don’t have an oral or written contract. We don’t have an implied contract, either, because you don’t even know how to spell ‘implication.’ So that means I’m going to eat chicken until I pass out from a grease overdose.”

“Mom, he’s talking like a lawyer again.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I hate it when he does that.”

“And I can, too, spell ‘implication,’” Frank said.

“Okay,” Harrison said. “If you can spell ‘implication,’ your mother will play ball with you.”

“I don’t want to play ball with Mom, I want to play with somebody good.”

“Hey, your mom is great. Why do you think I fell in love with her?”

“Mom, he’s lying again.”

“I’m not lying. Our dear Helen was a cannibal on the basketball court.”

“Is that true, Mom?”

“I used to play,” she said.

Frank looked at his mother. Sure, she was tall (five feet eight or so, the same height as Harrison), and she was strong (she grew up bucking hay bales), but Frank had never seen her touch a basketball except to toss it in a closet or down the stairs or into a room or out the door, or anywhere to get that dang thing out of her way.

“Mom, are you lying?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“You told me I was raised by wolves.”

“Okay, have I ever lied to you twice in one day?”

“Mom, be serious.”

“She is being serious,” Harrison said. “She used to play those girls’ rules. Three girls on defense, three on offense. Your mom was the shooter. Damn, I saw her score fifty-two points once. And then the coaches decided to play boys’ rules. They didn’t have to, but they wanted to see what your mom could do in a real game. And she scored seventy-three. I missed that one. If I’d seen that game, I would have proposed to her on the spot.”

“I love you, too, sweetie,” Helen said to her husband.

Frank couldn’t believe it. He looked at his mother in her denim skirt and frilly blue top, with her lipstick and her beaded earrings and her scarf all matching perfectly, all of her life and spirit and world color-coordinated and alphabetically organized. How could his mother, who washed her hands twelve times a day, ever have played a game so fundamentally sweaty and messy?

“Mom, did you really play ball?”

“It was girls’ basketball,” she said, “so it doesn’t really count.”

She was being sarcastic, Frank knew, because she’d taught him how to be sarcastic.

“For the rest of your academic life,” she’d told him on his first day of kindergarten, “whenever any teacher tells you that Columbus discovered America, I want you to run up to him or her, jump on his or her back, and scream, ‘I discovered you!’”

He’d never been courageous enough to do it, but he always considered it. He always almost did it. He almost always ran home and told Helen how close he’d been to doing it, how he was sure he could do it the next time, and she hugged him and told him how smart and good and handsome he was. Helen was loving and crazy and unpredictable and gentle and voluble and bitter and funny and a thousand other good and bad and indefinable things, but she was certainly not a liar.

“Are you telling the truth?” Frank asked her. “Were you really a good basketball player?”

“People said I was good,” she said and shrugged. “If enough people say you’re good at something, then you’re probably good at it.”

“Okay, cool,” Frank said. “Do you want to play ball with me?”

“Remember, you have to spell ‘implication’ first,” Harrison said.

“It’s spelled ‘D-A-D I-S A J-E-R-K,’” Frank said.

All three of them laughed. They were always laughing. That was what people said about the Snake Churches. People said the Snake Churches were good at laughing.

“Okay, okay,” Helen said. “Let’s play ball. But I’m not making any guarantees. It’s been a long time.”

So mother and son took to the court and played basketball. At first, she practiced shots while he rebounded her makes and misses and passed the ball back to her. She had a funny shot, a one-handed push, and she missed the first ten or twelve before her body remembered the game, and then she rarely missed. From ten feet away, then fifteen, then twenty, and twenty-five feet, she shot and made it and shot and made it and shot and made it and shot and missed it and then shot and made it and shot and made it and shot many times and made many more than she missed.

“Wow,” Frank said to his mother as she shot. He kept saying it. It was all he could think to say. This was a new ceremony for them, for this mother and son. They’d created and shared other ceremonies. They baked cookies together; they told stories to each other at night; they made up love songs while she drove him to school; they gave silly nicknames to strangers in shopping malls; they made up stupid knock-knock jokes and laughed until milk sprayed out of their noses. But they’d never played a sport together, had never been this physical, this strong and competitive. Frank looked at his mother, and he saw a new woman, a different person, a mysterious stranger, and a romantic figure.

“Mom,” Frank said. “You’re a ballplayer.”

Oh man, he loved her, and he felt like crying yet again. Oh, he was young and worshipful and sentimental, and he didn’t know it, but his mother would always want her son to be young and worshipful and sentimental. She prayed that the world, filled with its cruel people and crueler philosophies, would not punish her son too harshly for being so kind and so receptive to kindness.

“Mom,” Frank said. “Show me something new.”

So Helen dribbled the ball toward the hoop, dribbled across the key, and shot a rolling left-handed hook that bounced around the rim and dropped in.

“Oh, sweetie! I love you!” Harrison shouted from the grass and sprayed chicken and banana into the air. “That was her favorite move, son, she never missed that one! And nobody ever stopped it. Hell, I never stopped it!”

“Do it again,” Frank said.

So Helen shot the left-handed hook again. She shot it twenty times and made nineteen of them.

“She’s beautiful!” Harrison shouted and ran to join his wife and son on the court. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Frank wondered if this was the best day of his whole life so far, if he would ever be this happy again. Those were extreme thoughts for an eleven-year-old, and Frank, though he was that eleven-year-old, understood he was being extreme, but it was the only way he knew how to be. It was the only way he’d been taught to be.

So mother, father, and son played basketball for hours, until it got dark enough for the streetlights to blink on, until it was too dark for even the streetlights to make any difference, until Frank could barely keep his eyes open, until Helen and Harrison took their exhausted son home and put him to bed and watched him sleep and breathe, and inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale.

On the first anniversary of his father’s death, Frank stepped outside to see what kind of day it was. He cursed the rain, stepped back inside to grab his windbreaker, and walked to the covered courts over on Rainier Avenue. On a sunny day, fifty guys played at Rainier, but on that rainy day, Preacher was shooting hoops all by himself; he was always shooting hoops by himself. Two or three hundred set shots a day. One day a month, he closed his eyes and shot blindly and would never reveal why he performed such an eccentric ceremony.

“Honey, honey, honey,” Preacher always said when asked. “Just let the mystery be.”

On that day, Preacher’s eyes were wide open when Frank joined him for a game of Horse.

“Hey, Frank Snake Church, what ever happened to you?” Preacher asked. He always asked variations of the same question when he saw Frank. “Tell me, tell me, tell me, what ever happened to Frank Snake Church, what the hell happened to Benjamin Franklin Snake Church?”

Preacher hit a thirty-foot bank shot, but Frank missed it. Preacher hit a left-handed hook shot from half-court, but Frank threw the ball over the basket.

“Look at me,” said Preacher. “I’m a senior citizen and I’ve given Frank the ‘H’ and the ‘O.’ Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas. But wait, I must stop and ponder this existential dilemma. How could I, a retired blue-collar worker, a fixed-income pensioner, a tattered coat upon a stick, how could I be defeating the legendary Frank Snake Church? What the hell is wrong with this picture? What the hell ever happened to Frank Snake Church?”

“I am Frank Snake Church in the here and now and forever,” Frank said and laughed. He loved to listen to Preacher rant and rave. A retired railroad engineer, Preacher was a gray-haired black man with a big belly. He stood at the top of the key, bounced the ball off the free-throw line, and off the board into the hoop.

“That was a garbage shot,” Frank said. “You’d never take that shot in a real game. Never.”

“Every game is real, every game is real, every game is real,” Preacher chanted as Frank missed the trick shot.

“That’s a screaming scarlet ‘R’ for you,” said Preacher and called out his next shot. “This one is all net all day.”

Preacher hit the fifteen-foot swish, and Frank also swished it.

“Oh, a pretty little shot by the Indian stranger,” said Preacher.

“I ain’t no stranger, I am Frank Snake Church.”

“Naw, you ain’t no Frank Snake Church,” Preacher said. “I saw Frank Snake Church score seventy-seven against the Ballard Beavers in 1979. I saw Frank Snake Church shoot twenty-eight for thirty-six from the field and twenty-one for twenty-two from the line. I saw Frank Snake Church grab nineteen rebounds that same night and hand out eleven dimes. Yeah, I knew Frank Snake Church. Frank Snake Church was a friend of basketball, and believe me, you ain’t no Frank Snake Church.”

“My driver’s license says I’m Frank Snake Church.”

“Your social security card, library card, unemployment check, and the tattoo on your right butt cheek might say Frank Snake Church,” Preacher said, “but you, sir, are an imposter; you are a doppelgänger; you are a body snatcher; you are a pod person; you are Frank Snake Church’s evil and elderly twin is what you are.”

Preacher closed his eyes and hit a blind shot from the corner. Frank closed his eyes and missed by five feet.

“That’s an ‘S’ for you, as in Shut Up and Learn How to Play Another Game,” said Preacher. “God could pluck out my eyes, and you could play with a microscope, and I’d still beat you. Man, you used to be somebody.”

“I am now what I always was,” Frank said.

“You now and you then are two entirely different people. You used to be Frank the Snake, Frank the Hot Dog, but now you’re just a plain Oscar Mayer wiener, just a burned-up frankfurter without any damn mustard to make you taste better, make you easier to swallow. I watch you toss up one more of those ugly jumpers, and I’m going to need the Heimlich to squeeze your ugliness out of my throat.”

“Nope, Frank now and Frank then are exactly the same. I am a tasty indigenous sausage.”

“You were young and fresh, and now you’re prehistoric, my man, you’re only about two and a half hours younger than the Big Bang, that’s how old you are. And I know you’re old because I’m old. I smell the old on you like I smell the old on me. And it reeks, son, it reeks of stupid and desperate hope.”

Preacher hit a Rick Barry two-handed scoop-shot free throw.

“I can’t believe you took that white-boy shot,” Frank said. “I’m going to turn you in to the NAACP for that sinful thing.”

“Honey, I believe in the multicultural beauty of this diverse country.”

“But that Anglo crap was just plain ugly.”

“Did it go in?” Preacher asked.

“Well, it went in, but it didn’t go in pretty.”

“All right, pretty boy, let’s see what you got.”

Frank clanged the shot off the rim.

“My shot might’ve been ugly,” Preacher said, “but your shot is missing chromosomes. You want me to prove it, or you want to lose this game all by yourself?”

“Here begins my comeback,” said Frank as he took the shot and missed again.

“Spell it out, honey, that’s ‘H-O-R-S’ and double ‘E.’ Game over.”

“Man, I can’t believe I lost on that old-fashioned antique.”

“Sweetheart, I might be old-fashioned, but you’re just plain old.”

Frank felt hot and stupid. He tasted bitterness — that awful need to cry — and he was ashamed of his weakness, and then he was ashamed of being ashamed.

“Age don’t mean anything,” Frank said. “I walk onto any court in this city, and I’m the best baller. Other guys might be faster or stronger, maybe they jump higher, but I’m smarter. I’ve got skills and I’ve got wisdom.”

Frank’s heart raced. He wondered if he was going to fall again; he wondered if lightning was going to strike him again.

“You might be the wisest forty-year-old ballplayer in the whole city,” Preacher said. “You might be the Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates of Seattle street hoops, but you’re still forty years old. You should be collecting your basketball pension.”

“You’re twenty years older than me,” Frank said. “Why are you giving me crap about my age?”

Frank could hear the desperation in his own voice, so he knew Preacher could also hear it. In another time, in other, less civilized places, desperate men killed those who made them feel desperation. Who was he kidding? Frank knew, and Preacher should have known, that desperate men are fragile and dangerous at all times and places. Frank wanted to punch Preacher in the face. Frank wanted to knock the old man to the ground and kick and kick and kick and kick him and break his ribs and drive bone splinters into the old man’s heart and lungs.

“I know I’m old,” Preacher said. “I know it like I know the feel of my own sagging ball sack. I know exactly how old I am in my brain, in my mind. And my basketball mind is the same age as my basketball body. Old, old, ancient, King Tut antique. But you, son, you’re in denial. Your mind is stuck somewhere back in 1980, but your eggshell body is cracking here in the twenty-first century.”

“I’m only forty years old,” Frank said. He bounced the ball between his legs, around his back, thump, thump, between his legs, around his back, thump, thump, again and again, thump, thump, faster and faster, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Basketball years are like dog years,” Preacher said. “You’re truly about two hundred and ninety-nine years old.”

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“I’m still a player,” Frank said. “I’m still playing good and hard.”

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“But why are you still playing so hard?” Preacher asked. “What are you trying to prove? You keep trying to get all those years back, right? You’re trying to time-machine it, trying to alternate-universe it, but one of these days, you’re going to come down wrong on one of your arthritic knees, and it will be over. What will you do then? You’ve bet your whole life on basketball, and playground basketball at that, and what do you have to show for it? Look at you. You’re not some sixteen-year-old gangster trying to play your way out of the ghetto. You ain’t even some reservation warrior boy trying to shoot your way off the reservation and into some white-collar job at Microsoft Ice Cream. You’re just Frank the Pretty Good Shooter for an Old Fart. Nobody’s looking to recruit you. Nobody’s going to draft you. Ain’t no university alumni lining up to financially corrupt your naive ass. Ain’t no pretty little Caucasian cheerleaders looking to bed you down in room seven of the Delta Delta Delta house. Ain’t no ESPN putting you in the Plays of the Day. You ain’t as cool as the other side of the pillow. You’re hot and sweaty, like an orthopedic support. You’re one lonely Chuck Taylor high-top rotting in the ten-cent pile at Goodwill. Your game is old and ugly and misguided, like the Salem witch trials. You’re committing injustice every time you step on the court. I think I’m going to organize a march against your ancient ass. I’m going to boycott you. I’m going to boycott your corporate sponsors. But wait, you ain’t got any corporate sponsors, unless Nike has come out with a shoe called Tired Old Bastard. So why don’t you just give up the full-court game and the half-court game and enjoy the fruitful retirement of shooting a few basketballs and drinking a few glasses of lemonade.”

Frank stopped bouncing the ball and threw it hard at Preacher, who easily caught it and laughed.

“Man oh man,” Preacher said. “I’m getting to you, ain’t I? I’m hurting your ballplaying heart, ain’t I?”

Preacher threw the ball back at Frank, who also caught it easily, and resumed the trick dribbling, the thump, thump, thump, and thump, thump.

“I play ball because I need to play,” Frank said.

Thump, thump.

“And I need yearly prostate exams,” Preacher said, “so don’t try to tell me nothing about needing nothing.”

Thump, thump.

“I’m playing to remember my mom and dad,” Frank said.

Preacher laughed so hard he sat on the court.

“What’s so funny?” Frank asked. He dropped the ball and let it roll away.

“Well, I just took myself a poll,” Preacher said. “And I asked one thousand mothers and fathers how they would feel about a forty-year-old son who quit his high-paying job to pursue a full-time career as a playground basketball player in Seattle, Washington, and all one thousand of them mothers and fathers cried in shame.”

“Preacher,” Frank said, “it’s true. I’m not kidding. This is, like, a mission or something. My mom and dad are dead. I’m playing to honor them. It’s an Indian thing.”

Preacher laughed harder and longer. “That’s crap,” he said. “And it’s racist crap at that. What makes you think your pain is so special, so different from anybody else’s pain? You look up death in the medical dictionary, and it says everybody’s going to catch it. So don’t lecture me about death.”

“Believe me, I’m playing to remember them.”

“You’re playing to remember yourself. You’re playing because of some of that nostalgia. And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you are. You’re just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.”

Frank moaned — a strange, involuntary, and primal noise — and turned his back on Preacher. Frank wept and furiously wiped the tears from his face.

“Oh man, are you crying?” Preacher asked. He was alarmed and embarrassed for Frank.

“Leave me alone,” Frank said.

“Oh, come on, man, I’m just talking.”

“No, you’re not just talking. You’re talking about my whole failed life.”

“You ain’t no failure. I’m just trying to distract you. I’m just trying to win.”

“Don’t you condescend to me. Don’t. Don’t you look inside me and then pretend you didn’t look inside me.”

Preacher felt the heat of Frank’s mania, of his burning.

“Listen, brother,” Preacher said. “Why don’t we go get some decaf and talk this out? I had no idea this meant so much to you. Why don’t we go talk it out?”

Frank walked in fast circles around Preacher, who wondered if he could outrun the younger man.

“Listen,” said Frank. “You can’t take something away from me, steal from me, and then just leave me. You have to replace what you’ve broken. You have to fix it.”

“All right, all right, tell me how to fix it.”

“I don’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know it could be broken. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.”

“Hey, brother, hey, man, this is too heavy for me and you, all right? Why don’t we head over to the church and talk to Reverend Billy?”

“You’re a preacher.”

“That’s just my name. They call me Preacher because I talk too much. I ain’t spiritual. I just talk. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re a preacher. Your name is Preacher.”

“I know my name is Preacher, but that’s like, that’s just, it’s, you know, it’s nothing but false advertising.”

Frank stepped quickly toward the old man, who raised his fists in defense. But Frank only hugged him hard and cried into the black man’s shoulder. Preacher didn’t know what to do. He was pressed skin-to-skin with a crazy man, maybe a dangerous man, and how the hell do you escape such an embrace?

“I’m sorry, brother,” Preacher said. “I didn’t know.”

Frank laughed. He released Preacher. He turned in circles and walked away. And he laughed. He stood on the grass on the edge of the basketball court and spun in circles. And he laughed. Preacher couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He’d known quite a few crazy people in his life. A man doesn’t grow up black in the USA without knowing a lot of crazy black folks, without being born to and giving birth to the breakable and broken. But Preacher had never seen this kind of crazy, and he’d certainly never seen the exact moment when a crazy man went completely crazy.

“Hey, Frank, man, I don’t like what I’m seeing here. You’re hurting really bad here. You maybe want me to call somebody for you?”

Frank laughed and ran. He ran away from Preacher and the basketball court. Frank ran until he fell on somebody’s green, green lawn, and then Frank stood and ran again.

After Preacher’s devastating sermon, Frank didn’t play basketball for two weeks. He didn’t leave the house or answer the telephone or the door. He ate all of the food in the house and then drank only water and fruit juice. He was on his own personal hunger strike. Mr. Death, you are an obese bastard, Frank thought, and I’m going to starve you down until I can fit my hands around your throat and choke you. Frank lost fifteen pounds in fifteen days. He wondered how long he could live without food. Forty, fifty, sixty days? He wondered who would find his body.

Three weeks after Preacher’s sermon, and after dozens of unanswered phone calls, Russell found Frank’s address in his files, drove to the house, crawled through an unlocked window, and found Frank dead in bed. Well, he thought Frank was dead.

“You’re breaking and entering,” Frank said and opened his eyes.

“You scared me,” Russell said. “I thought you were dead.”

“Black man, you keep crawling through windows in this gentrified neighborhood, and you’re going to get shot in your handsome African head.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Well, aren’t you the full-service personal trainer? You should be charging me more.” Frank sat up in bed. He was pale and clammy and far too thin.

“You look terrible, Frank. You’re really sick.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to call for help, okay? We need to get you help, all right?”

“Okay.”

Russell walked into the kitchen to use the telephone and hurried back.

“They’ll be here soon,” he said.

“What would you have done if you’d come too late?” Frank asked. “You know, part of me wishes you’d waited too long.”

“I did wait too long. You’re sick. And I helped you get sick. I’m sorry. I just wanted to believe in what you believed.”

“You’re not going to hug me now, are you?” Frank asked.

Both men laughed.

“No, I’m not going to hug you, I’m not going to kiss you, I’m not going to recite poetry to you,” Russell said. “And I’m not going to crawl under these nasty sheets with you, either.”

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

“Because, well,” Frank said, “I know you’re gay and all, and I care about you a bunch, but not in that way. If we were stuck on a deserted island or something, or if we were in prison, then maybe we could be Romeo and Juliet, but in the real world, you’re going to have to admire me from afar.”

“Yeah, let me tell you,” Russell said, “I’ve always been very attracted to straight, suicidal, bipolar anorexics.”

“And I’ve always been attracted to gay, black, narcissistic codependents.”

Both men laughed again because they were good at laughing.

One year after Russell saved Frank’s life, after four months of residential treatment and eight months of inpatient counseling, Frank walked into the admissions office at West Seattle Community College. He’d gained three extra pounds for every twelve of the steps he’d taken over the last year, so he was fat. Not unhappy and fat, not fat and happy, but fat and alive, and hungry, always hungry.

“Can I help you? Is there anything I can do?” the desk clerk asked. She was young, blonde, and tentative. A work-study student or scholarship kid, Frank thought, smart and pretty and poor.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling damn tentative as well. “I think, well, I want to go to school here.”

“Oh, that’s good. That’s really great. I can help. I can help you with that.”

She ducked beneath the counter, came back up with a thick stack of paper, and set it on the counter.

“Here you go, this is it,” she said. “You have to fill these out. Fill them out, and sign them, and bring them back. These are admission papers. You fill them out and you can get admitted.”

Frank stared at the thick pile of paper, as mysterious and frightening to him as Stonehenge. The young woman recognized the fear in his eyes. She came from a place where that fear was common.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Frank,” he said. “Frank Snake Church.”

“Are you Native American?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, they have a Native American admissions officer here. Her name is Stephanie. She works with the Native Americans. She can help you with admissions. You’re Native American, right?”

“Yes, I’m Indian.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, it’s a personal question, but how old are you?”

“I’m forty-one.”

“You know, they also have a program here for older students, you know, for the people who went to college when you were young — when you were younger — and come back.”

“I never went to college before.”

“Well, the program is for all older students, you know? They call it Second Wind.”

“Second Wind? That sound like a bowel condition you have when you’re old.”

The young woman laughed. “That’s funny. You’re funny. It does sound sort of funny, doesn’t it? But it’s a really good program. And they can help you. The Second Wind program can help you.”

She reached beneath the counter again, pulled out another stack of paper, and set it beside the other stack of paper. So much paper, so much work. He didn’t know why he was here; he’d come here only because his therapist had suggested it. Frank felt stupid and inadequate. He’d made a huge mistake by quitting his Forest Service job, but he could probably go back. He didn’t want to go to college; he wanted to walk the quiet forests and think about nothing as often as he could.

“Hey, listen,” Frank said, “I’ve got another thing to go to. I’ll come back later.”

“No, listen,” she said, because she was poor and smart and had been poorer and was now smarter than people assumed she was. “I know this is scary. I was scared to come here. I’ll help you. I’ll take you to Stephanie.”

She came around the counter and took his hand. She was only eighteen, and she led him by the hand down the hallway toward the Native American Admissions Office.

“My name is Lynn,” she said as they walked together, as she led him by the hand.

“I’m Frank.”

“I know, you already told me that.”

He was scared, and she knew it and didn’t hate him for it. She wasn’t afraid of his fear, and she wouldn’t hurt him for it. She was so young and so smart, and she led him by the hand.

Lynn led him into the Native American Admissions Office, Room 21A at West Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington, a city named after a Duwamish Indian chief who died alone and drunk and poor and forgotten, only to be remembered decades after his death for words of wisdom he’d supposedly said, but words that had been written by the mayor’s white assistant. Mr. Death, Frank thought, if a lie is beautiful, then is it truly a lie?

Lynn led Frank into the simple office. Sitting at a metal desk, a chubby Indian woman with old-fashioned eyeglasses looked up at the odd pair.

“Dang, Lynn,” the Indian woman said. “I didn’t know you like them old and dark.”

“Old and dark and bitter,” Lynn said. “Like bus-station coffee.”

The women laughed together. Frank thought they were smart and funny, too smart and funny for him to compete with, too smart and funny for him to understand. He knew he wasn’t smart and funny enough to be in their presence.

“This is Mr. Frank Snake Church,” Lynn said with overt formality, with respect. “He is very interested in attending our beloved institution, but he’s never been to college before. He’s a Native American and a Second Winder.”

The young woman spoke with much more confidence and power than she had before. How many people must underestimate her, Frank thought, and get their heads torn off.

“Hello, Mr. Frank Snake Church,” the Indian woman said, “I’m Stephanie. Why don’t you have a seat and we’ll set you up.”

“I told you she was great,” Lynn said. She led him by the hand to a wooden chair across the desk from Stephanie. Lynn sat him down and kissed him on the cheek. She came from a place, from a town and street, from a block and house, where all of the men had quit, had surrendered, had simply stopped and lay down in the street to die before they were fifteen years old. And here was an old man, a frightened man the same age as her father, and he was beautiful like Jesus, and scared like Jesus, and rising from the dead like Jesus. She kissed him because she wanted to pray with him and for him, but she didn’t know if he would accept her prayers, if he even believed in prayers. She kissed him, and Frank wanted to cry because this young woman, this stranger, had been so kind and generous. He knew he would never have another conversation with Lynn apart from hurried greetings and smiles and quick hugs and exclamations. She would soon graduate and transfer to a four-year university, taking her private hopes and dreams to a private college. After that, he would never see her again but would always remember her, would always associate the smell of chalk and new books and floor polish and sea-salt air with her memory. She kissed him on the cheek, touched his shoulder, and hurried out the door, back to the work that was paying for school that was saving her life.

“So, Mr. Snake Church,” Stephanie said. “What tribe are you?”

“I’m Spokane,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. But he wasn’t. He covered his face and cried.

She came around the table and knelt beside him.

“Frank,” she said. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here, I’m here.”

With Stephanie’s help, Frank enrolled in Math 99, English 99, History 99, Introduction to Computer Science, and Physical Education.

His first test was in math.

The first question was a story problem: “Bobby has forty dollars when he walks into the supermarket. If Bobby buys three loaves of bread for ten dollars each, and he buys a bottle of orange juice for three dollars, how much money will he have left?”

Frank didn’t have to work the problem on paper. He did the math in his head. Bobby would have seven bucks left, but he’d paid too much for the bread and not enough for the juice. Easy cheese, Frank thought, confident he could do this.

With one question answered, Frank moved ahead to the others.

Three weeks into his first quarter, Frank walked across campus to the athletic center and knocked on the basketball coach’s door.

“Come in,” the coach said.

Frank stepped inside and sat across the desk from the coach, a big white man with curly blond hair. He was maybe Frank’s age or a little older.

“How can I help you?” the coach asked.

“I want to play on your basketball team.”

The coach smiled and leaned toward Frank. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Forty-one,” Frank said.

“Do you have any athletic eligibility left?”

“This is my first time in college. So that means I have all my eligibility, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought so. I looked it up.”

“I bet you did. Not a whole lot of forty-one-year-old guys are curious about their athletic eligibility.”

“How old are you?” Frank asked.

“Forty-three. But my eligibility is all used up.”

“I know, you played college ball at the University of Washington. And high school ball at Roosevelt.”

“Did you look that up, too?”

“No, I remember you. I played against you in high school. And I was supposed to play with you at UW.”

The coach studied Frank’s face for a while, and then he remembered. “Snake Church,” he said.

“Yes,” Frank said, feeling honored.

“You were good. No, you were great. What happened to you?”

“That doesn’t matter. My history isn’t important. I’m here now, and I want to play ball for you.”

“You don’t look much like a ballplayer anymore.”

“I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last year. I’ve been in residential treatment for some mental problems.”

“You don’t have to tell me this.”

“No, I need to be honest. I need to tell you these things. Before I got sick, I was in the best shape of my life. I can get there again.”

The coach stood. “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He led Frank out of the office and to the balcony overlooking the basketball court. The community-college team ran an informal scrimmage. Ten young and powerful black men ran the court with grace and poetry. It was beautiful. Frank wanted to be a part of it.

“Hey!” the coach yelled down to his players. “Run a dunk drill!”

Laughing and joking, the black men formed two lines and ran the drill. All of them could easily dunk two-handed, including the five-foot-five point guard.

“That’s pretty good, right?” the coach asked.

“Yes,” Frank said.

“All right!” the coach yelled down to his players. “Now run the real dunk drill!”

Serious now, all of the young men ripped off reverse dunks, 360-degree dunks, alley-oops, bounce-off-the-floor-and-off-the-backboard dunks, and one big guy dunked two balls at the same time.

“I’ve built myself a great program here,” the coach said. “I’ve had forty players go Division One in the last ten years. All ten guys down there have Division One talent. It’s the best team I’ve ever had.”

“They look great,” Frank said.

“Do you really think you can compete with them? Twenty years ago, maybe. But now? I’m happy you’re here, Frank, I’m proud of you for coming back to college, but I think you’re dreaming about basketball.”

“Let me down there,” Frank said. “And I’ll show you something.”

The coach thought it over. What did he have to lose? If basketball was truly a religion, as he believed, then he needed to practice charity in order to be a truly spiritual man.

“All right,” the coach said. “Let’s see how much gas you have left in the tank.”

Frank and the coach walked down to the court and greeted the players.

“Okay, men,” the coach said. “I’ve got a special guest today.”

“Hey, Coach, is that your chiropractor?” the big guy asked.

They laughed.

“No, this is Frank Snake Church. He’s going to run a little bit with you guys.”

Wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and white basketball shoes, Frank looked like a coffee-shop waiter.

“Hey, Coach, is he going to run in his street clothes?”

“He can talk,” Coach said. “Ask him.”

“Yo, old-timer,” said the point guard. “Is this one of those Make-A-Wish things? Are we your dying request?”

They laughed.

“Yes,” Frank said.

They stopped laughing.

“Shit, man,” the point guard said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean no harm. What you got, the cancer?”

“No, I’m not dying. It’s for my father and mother. They’re dead, and I’m trying to remember them.”

Uncomfortable, the players shuffled their feet and looked to their coach for guidance.

“Frank, are you okay?” asked the coach, wishing he hadn’t let this nostalgic stunt go so far.

“I want to be honest with all of you,” Frank said. “I’m a little crazy. Basketball has made me a little crazy. And that’s probably a little scary to you guys. I know you all grew up with tons of crazy, and you’re playing ball to get away from it. But I don’t mean to harm anybody. I’m a good man, I think, and I want to be a better man. The thing is, I don’t think I was a good son when my mother and father were alive, so I want to be a good son now that they’re dead. I think I can do that by playing ball with you guys. By playing on this team.”

“You think you’re good enough to make the team?” the point guard asked. He tried to hide his smile.

Frank smiled and laughed. “Hey, I know I’m a fat old man, but that just means your feelings are going to be really hurt when a fat old man kicks your ass.”

The players and Coach laughed.

“Old man,” the point guard said. “I didn’t know they trash-talked in your day. Man, what did they do it with? Cave paintings?”

“Just give me the ball and we’ll run,” Frank said.

The point guard tossed the ball to Frank.

“Check it in,” Frank said and tossed it back.

“All right,” said the point guard. “I’ll take the bench, and you can have the other starters. Make it fair that way.”

“One of you has to sit.”

“I’ll sit,” the big guy said and stood with his coach.

“We got our teams,” the point guard said and tossed the ball back to Frank. “Check.”

Frank dribbled the ball to the top of the key, turned, and discovered the point guard five feet away from him.

“Are you going to guard me?” Frank asked.

“Do I need to guard you?” the point guard asked.

“I don’t want no charity,” Frank said.

“I’ll guard you when you prove I need to guard you.”

“All right, guard this,” Frank said and shot a jumper that missed the rim and backboard by three feet.

“Man oh man, I don’t need to guard you,” the point guard said. “Gravity is going to take care of you.”

The point guard took the inbound pass and dribbled downcourt. Frank tried to stay in front of the little guard, but he was too quick. He burned past Frank, tossed a lazy pass to a forward, and pointed at Frank when the forward dunked the ball.

“Were you guarding me?” he asked Frank. “I just want to be sure you know you’re guarding me. I’m your man. Do you understand that? Do you understand the basic principles of defense?”

Frank didn’t respond. Twice up and down the court, he was already breathing hard and needed to conserve his energy.

Frank set a back pick for his center, intending to free him for a shot, but Frank was knocked over instead and hit the ground hard. By the time Frank got to his feet, the point guard had stolen the ball and raced down the court for an easy layup.

“Hey, Coach,” the point guard shouted as he ran by Frank. “It’s only four on five out here. We need another player. Oh, wait! There is another player out here. I just didn’t see him until right now.”

“Shut up,” Frank said.

“Oh, am I getting to you?” The point guard turned to jaw with his teammates, and Frank broke for the hoop. He caught a bounce pass, stepped past a forward, and hit a five-footer.

“Two for Snake Church,” said Coach from the sidelines.

“That’s the only hoop you’re getting,” the point guard said and hurried the ball down the court. He spun and went for the crossover dribble, but Frank reached in and knocked the ball away. One of Frank’s teammates picked up the loose ball and tossed it back to Frank.

“Come on, come on, come on,” the point guard shouted in Frank’s ear as he ran alongside him.

Frank was slower than the young man, but he was stronger, so he dug an elbow into the kid’s ribs, pushed him away, and rose up for a thirty-foot jumper, an impossible shot. And bang, he nailed it!

“Three points!” shouted Coach.

“You fouled me twice,” the point guard said as he brought the ball back toward Frank.

“Call it, then.”

“No, man, I don’t need it,” the point guard said and spun past Frank and drove down the middle of the key. Frank was fooled, but he dove after the point guard, hit the ball from behind, and sent it skidding toward one of his teammates, a big guard, who raced down the court for an easy layup.

“What’s the score?” the point guard shouted out. He was angry now.

“Five to four, for Snake Church.”

“What are we playing to?” Frank asked. He struggled for oxygen. Lactic acid burned holes in his thighs.

“Eleven,” said the point guard.

Frank hoped he could make it that far.

“All right, all right, you can play ball for an old man,” the point guard said. “But you ain’t touching the rock again. It’s all over for you.”

He feinted left, feinted right, and Frank got his feet all twisted up and fell down again as the point guard raced by him and missed a ten-foot jumper. As his forward grabbed the rebound, Frank staggered to his feet and ran down the court on the slowest fast break in the history of basketball. He caught a pass just inside the half-court line and was too tired to dribble any farther, so he launched a thirty-five-foot set shot.

“Three!” shouted the coach, suddenly loving this sport more than he had ever loved it before. “That’s eight to four, another three and Frank wins.”

“I can’t believe this,” the point guard said. He’d been humiliated, and he sought revenge. He barreled into Frank, sending him staggering back, and pulled up for his own three-pointer. Good! Eight to seven!

“It’s comeback time, baby,” the point guard said as he shadowed Frank down the court. Frank could barely move. His arms and legs burned with pain. His back ached. He figured he’d torn a muscle near his spine. His lungs felt like two sacks of rocks. But he was happy! He was joyous! He caught a bounce pass from a teammate and faced the point guard.

“No, no, no, old man, you’re not winning this game on me.”

Smiling, Frank head-faked, dribbled right, planted for a jumper, and screamed in pain as his knee exploded. He’d never felt pain this terrible. He grabbed his leg and rolled on the floor.

Coach ran over and held him down. “Don’t move, don’t move,” he said.

“It hurts, it hurts,” Frank said.

“I know,” Coach said. “Just let me look at it.”

As the players circled around them, Coach examined Frank’s knee.

“Is it bad?” Frank asked. He wanted to scream from the pain.

“Really bad,” Coach said. “It’s over. It’s over for this.”

Frank rolled onto his face and screamed. He pounded the floor like a drum and sang: Mother, Father, way, ya, hi, yo, good-bye, good-bye. Mother, Father, way, ya, hi, yo, good-bye, good-bye. Mother, Father, way, ya, hi, yo, good-bye, good-bye. Mother, Father, way, ya, hi, yo, good-bye, good-bye. Mother, Father, way, ya, hi, yo, good-bye, good-bye.

Coach and the players stared at Frank. What could they say?

“Hey, old man,” the point guard said. “That was a good run.”

Yes, it was, Frank thought, and he wondered what he was going to do next. He wondered if this pain would ever subside. He wondered if he’d ever step onto a basketball court again.

“I’m going to call an ambulance,” Coach said. “Get him in the training room.”

As Coach ran toward his office, the point guard and the big guy picked up Frank and carried him across the gym.

“You’re going to be okay,” the point guard said. “You hear me, old man? You’re going to be fine.”

“I know it,” Frank said. “I know.”