Chemistry and Other Stories

Overtime

Luther comes up to me right before quitting time. He wants to go over to Holly Oak Park in Shelby and play some ball. I’m thinking how dog tired I am now and how much tireder I’ll be tomorrow if I play. But it is Thursday. You can always get through Friday, no matter how tired, sick, or hungover you are. It’s like getting to the fourth quarter and knowing you just got to gut it out a little longer.

“What time you want me to pick you up?” I ask. His old lady works the suicide shift at the 7-Eleven, so she’ll have the car.

“Seven,” he says. “I’ll get us a six-pack for after.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I say, but I know he does. He’s too proud to just bum a ride, especially from a white guy.

We walk to the trailer to clock out, moving slow to make sure it’s not a second before five o’clock when we get there. Luther gets his card and punches it. His hands and arms are no more black than mine are white. Since we mix mortar all day, we’re mostly gray from the shirtsleeves down, like a new race of people.

Luther walks on out to where the hourly workers park, and I follow him. Even from the back you can tell he’s still in shape. No spare tire. Still wiry strong. When he played safety in high school, he was only five-eight and 135 pounds, but man could he hit. In the Burns game my senior year, their fullback ran right by me and everybody else on the line. Our linebackers were blitzing, so it was just Luther and this two-hundred-pound fullback who wasn’t even going to try to run around Luther, just plow right through him. They had to carry that son of a bitch off the field on a stretcher. Luther cracked three of his ribs. That guy spent the rest of the game on the bench, moaning and spitting up blood.

I GET TO Luther’s place right at seven. It’s not much, a double-wide, a few scraggly-assed pine trees, and a lot of red dirt for a front yard. But unlike me he at least owns his place. That’s something. An old woman peeks through the curtains. Luther’s five-year-old comes out, runs up to my window.

“Daddy say he’ll be out in a minute,” she says. Then she runs like hell back to the trailer, maybe to finish her dessert or watch a cartoon. I sit and think how we haven’t done too bad, me and Luther. At least we aren’t inside Calhoun Mills sucking up cotton dust all day and coughing it back up all night, like our daddies did. And unlike most of the guys we played football with in high school, our knees aren’t zippered and our backs aren’t hurting all the time.

Luther finally comes out. He’s got a six-pack of Miller in one hand and shoes and socks in the other.

“Sorry,” he says. “Got stuck at the bank after work. You ever seen one of them loan applications?”

I tell him I have, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to talk about it, probably didn’t even mean to bring it up. He looks out the window and I concentrate on navigating the washed-out piece of shit the county calls a road.

When we walk into the gym, nobody else white is around. Which isn’t any big surprise, Holly Oak being on the black side of Shelby. But I work with a couple of the guys, played football with a couple more, and I’m with Luther, so everything is cool. They’re playing half-court, which is fine by me. I smoke too much to have any wind. Two guys in the bleachers say they’ve got the next game, but they take us and one guy off the losing team. I walk over to a side basket to stretch a little and shoot a few baskets, but I’ve barely got my sweats off when it’s our game.

Winners get the ball, so their point guard, a guy I don’t know, dribbles out to half-court. Luther guards him. This guy takes about two dribbles before Luther picks his pocket, wings me a pass, and I lay it in. After that I set a few picks and pull down a few boards, but it’s Luther’s show. He’s pushing thirty-two, but he’s still quick as lightning and slick as owl shit. As good as Luther was in football in high school, he was even better in basketball. A lot of people thought he was second best on the team our senior year. Luther played basketball like he played football, all out and physical, elbows and knees like raw hamburger from diving after loose balls.

We’re up 13–3 when Cedric comes in. Their big guy has the ball and I’m guarding him close, but he just stops dribbling, stares over at the door like he’s just seen a ghost.

I don’t recognize Cedric at first. He’s skinny, skinnier than in high school. Cocaine can do that to you. He’s got on an NBA sweat suit, the kind you can’t buy at a sporting goods store or even order from a catalog.

He’s carrying a gym bag in his right hand. Then someone says, “Cedric,” and I know for sure.

“Let’s play,” says Luther, snatching the ball from their center’s hands, throwing it to their point guard a little too hard. “Take it out.”

They do and I get a rebound, Luther hits a jump shot, and a drive, and the game’s over. The losers walk over to Cedric, and a couple of the guys on our team join them. I walk over to the water fountain. Luther’s out at midcourt. He bounces the ball hard against the floor.

“Let’s play,” Luther yells, but nobody’s listening.

I get my water, try to decide if I want to go over and say hello to Cedric. We’d known each other since first grade, played football together in junior high and been in the same classes until our junior year, when it became clear he’d be getting scholarship offers. After that they’d put him in college prep. We’d still seen each other some, mainly in the weight room. But that was half a life ago. I didn’t want to risk going up to him, having to explain who I was and then him having to pretend he remembered. I walked over anyway, but let him speak first.

“Ricky, my main man,” he says, raising his hand for a high five. “How’s it going?”

There’s not many people I look up to, but Cedric is six-six. I have to stretch to slap palms.

“What’s with the beard?” He reaches out and gives it a tug. “You trying to look like that Manson dude?” He pushes my hair back. “Gotta check and make sure you haven’t got an x carved in your forehead.”

It feels good, his kidding, his remembering me. “How you doing, Cedric?” I ask.

“Great, man,” he says. “I was telling these guys Boston wants me to fly up for a tryout. Told them I had to come home and see my momma first. Told them I need some home cooking to sustain me.”

Everybody laughs. We hope it’s true, but I’m close enough to smell liquor on his breath. His eyes are bloodshot.

“Let’s play,” yells Luther. He’s still at midcourt, but he takes a few steps toward us. “This your game, Jo-Jo?” he asks. Jo-Jo played football with us back in high school. He nods.

“Well, get your black ass and whoever you got playing with you out here,” Luther says.

Jo-Jo turns to Cedric. “You want to play with us?”

“Sure,” Cedric says. “Just give me a minute to put on my brace.”

I go out to midcourt with our other guys. Charles, who plays forward, turns to Luther.

“Who’s gonna try to guard him?” Charles asks.

I’m the tallest, the only one who is even close to Cedric’s height, but even with Cedric wearing the knee brace, there’s no way in hell I’m quick enough. He’d have to be in a damn wheelchair for me to stay with him. Charles is six feet, and he’s fairly quick, world-class speed compared to me.

“I’ll take him,” says Luther.

It takes five minutes for Cedric to get the brace on. There are all sorts of snaps and locks. Everybody, even Luther, is watching him put it on, all of us knowing how he’d hurt his knee, not on the court but outside a bar in Detroit.

Luther takes the ball out, passes to Charles, who’s being guarded by Cedric. Charles fakes left, dribbles right, and goes by Cedric for a layup, and it’s clear nobody has called or is going to call from Boston or anywhere else. Luther takes the ball out, passes it to Charles again. Charles must be wanting another story to tell his grandkids because he fakes left again. But this time Cedric just backs up, cuts off the lane to the basket. Charles pulls up for a jumper that Cedric swats into the bleachers. Even with a bum knee, he can still sky.

Luther hits a long jumper, then misses a gimme at the foul line. Cedric rebounds and dribbles out to the top of the key. Luther picks him up, covers Cedric like a second skin, bumping him, contesting every dribble. Cedric brings the ball up to shoot. Luther slaps at the ball but only gets flesh. The ball doesn’t even make it to the rim.

“My ball,” says Cedric. “Got a foul.”

Luther looks at him. “Bullshit.”

Jo-Jo throws the ball back to Cedric.

“What you mean, Luther?” says Cedric. “You saying that handcuffing wasn’t a foul?”

“Damn right,” says Luther. “Quit crying.”

Cedric bounces the ball to Luther.

“Okay, Luther, your ball.”

Jo-Jo comes up to guard Luther, but Luther just holds it, looks over at Cedric.

“You afraid to guard me, superstar?”

Cedric just stares at him, puzzled but also a little pissed off. In high school Luther had been the point guard and Cedric the power forward. They’d been the two tightest guys on the team. Luther ran down loose balls, made a few steals, and hit a couple of jump shots, but the main reason he was on the court was to get Cedric the ball when he was close to the basket, even when Cedric was double-teamed. And he had. He’d gotten Cedric the ball enough for Cliffside High to win the state 2-A championship our senior year.

“Okay, Luther,” Cedric says. “I’ll guard you.”

Luther passes the ball to Charles, gets it back, and spins toward the basket. He gets himself between Cedric and the goal, but when Luther releases the ball Cedric blocks it from behind, comes up with the loose ball, and dribbles out to the key. Luther’s all over him but it doesn’t matter. Cedric puts the ball between his legs one time, lines up the basket with his elbow, and releases.

The ball arcs toward the basket, so high you don’t think it’s ever coming down, and then it does, touching nothing but net. He does that four straight times, and for a few moments it’s like all the bad things have been wiped away — the five-million-dollar contract he’d snorted up his nose, the injury, the arrests. It’s like his sophomore year in high school again, that first game of the season, when nobody really knew how good Cedric was because he’d just played JV ball his freshman year. He’d scored thirty-seven points in that game, going head-to-head with a guy who was supposed to be the best player in the conference. We’d all felt good that night, not just for Cedric but for ourselves because he was one of us. We’d been in school together since the first grade. His daddy worked at the same mill as Luther’s daddy and mine.

Later, after high school, after I’d started working construction, I’d watch him play on TV, first college, then pro. And it was like watching Cedric play made it easier to go into work the next morning, just having known him. The guys I worked with — Luther, Jo-Jo, all the ones who’d gone to school with him — they were like me. They watched the games on TV, checked the box scores in the newspaper. We’d talk about the games at lunch break, what Cedric had done the night before. Any maybe some of the guys were jealous, especially after he signed the five-million-dollar contract, but if they were I never heard it. We were proud of him, like he was our own flesh and blood.

After the fourth shot, Luther chests up to Cedric even more, so close you couldn’t slip a piece of toilet paper between them. “That all you got?” he says to Cedric. Then again, “That all you got?”

Cedric gets the ball and doesn’t even bother to fake. He just holds Luther off with his right arm and heads for the basket. I’m under the goal and I jump when Cedric jumps but I’m not even in the same time zone. Then before he can jam the ball through the net Luther cuts Cedric’s legs out from under him. Cedric lands hard on his back. Then it’s like nobody’s breathing.

Cedric gets up slow, making sure he’s not hurt.

Luther’s next to him, the ball in his hands. “You want a foul, superstar?”

Cedric’s up now, and Luther’s not backing, so I get between them.

“Get out of my way,” Luther tells me. “This ain’t got nothing to do with you.”

He doesn’t add “because you’re white,” but that’s what he’s saying. And it’s bullshit. When Cedric first started losing his game and you kept hearing about him missing practices, taking himself out after the first quarter, some of the guys at work, guys who’d know, said it was drugs. It was Luther and me who kept telling them no way, that Cedric was too smart to screw up what he had going. Even later, when the rumors weren’t rumors anymore, we kept believing it was just a matter of time before he got his act together.

“I don’t need this shit,” Cedric says. He turns from Luther and walks over to the bleachers to get his sweat suit and gym bag. Then he disappears out the door.

Charles comes up to Luther. “What’s the matter with you?” he asks. Then Charles walks over to the bleachers and picks up his sweats. The rest of us follow.

In the truck Luther pops the top on one of the Millers.

“Sorry I lost my cool,” he says, handing me the beer.

I take it, but I’m not about to let a warm beer and a half-assed apology end it.

“You don’t think I understand what was going down with you and Cedric? You don’t think it has anything to do with me?”

Luther doesn’t say anything for a minute. He’s looking out the window. I remember how hard Cedric worked in high school, shooting free throws after practice, running dirt roads in the summer, lifting weights. But Luther and me had worked just as hard. We’d stayed after practice, run the dirt roads every day in the summer, lifted weights. We’d won the hustle awards, paid the price. Nobody practiced or played harder, but Luther didn’t have the size and I didn’t have the talent to go beyond high school. Only Cedric had that.

Luther turns and looks at me. He meets my eyes for a second, long enough.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re apart of it.”

THE CABLE COMPANY hasn’t unhooked my cable for nonpayment yet, so as soon as I get home, I shower, heat up some leftover chicken, and turn on TBS. The Hawks are playing the Bulls. The announcers are talking about how great Jordan is, swearing nobody has even come close to him. Maybe I’m wrong but I’m not seeing anything Cedric didn’t do eight, maybe ten years ago. Maybe not as flashy as Jordan, but close, damn close.

I get tired of hearing the announcers, so I turn down the sound and put my scratched-to-hell copy of Eat a Peach on the turntable.

The first notes of “One Way Out” blast out of the speakers. More ghosts. Ole Duane Allman, playing that slide guitar like he knew he wouldn’t be around long. Berry Oakley, dead now as well. Gregg Allman, who tried his damndest to join them but is still around. I saw him last April in Charlotte. He looked like he’d just been paroled from hell, but he could still sing and bang the piano. They say he’s clean now, so maybe some people do get a second chance. By the time the album ends I’m too tired to get up and turn it over. I close my eyes.

When I wake up the game is over. I’m not sure how long I’ve slept but it’s long enough to have a dream, a dream about Cedric. We’re in high school and Cedric’s playing ball again, the way he used to, no bloodshot eyes, no knee brace. He swoops in from the foul line for a dunk and we are all watching, me and my daddy and momma, and Luther’s daddy and momma, and our brothers and sisters, and Luther’s kids. Everything is in slow motion. Cedric keeps gliding toward the basket, and we start shouting, screaming, and praying he won’t ever come down.