The Way Home

NINE

On a cool, cloudy Saturday in May, a three-on-three basketball game was in progress on the asphalt court out in the middle of Pine Ridge’s muddy field. Chris Flynn, Ali Carter, and Ben Braswell were in maroon, up against Calvin Cooke, Milton “the Monster” Dickerson, and Lamar Brooks, all wearing gray. Lawrence Newhouse stood out of bounds, as did a boy named Clarence Wheeler, wearing navy blue. They had called next and would choose one from the losers of this game to round out their team. A rotund guard, Mr. Green, stood on a weedy patch of dirt, observing, a two-way radio in hand.

Chris had the ball up top. He was being covered by Lamar Brooks, a quiet boy who had no offense but whose darting hands were quick. Lamar was trying to slap the ball away, but Chris had turned his hip and was protecting the pill. Down below, Ben had boxed out Milton, a kid in on multiple drug charges, who was Ben’s size. Ben had his hand up and was calling for the ball.

Out beyond the imaginary three stood Ali, loosely matched with Calvin Cooke, the Langdon Park boy who had lately been mugging and shoulder-brushing him in the auditorium and cafeteria. Cooke wore his hair in small twists and had flat eyes and a smile of pain. He was in on a firearm conviction, having beaten a murder charge in court. The prosecution’s witness, too frightened to testify, had muted up on the stand.

Chris faked a chest pass to Ali, then bounced one around Lamar and in to Ben, who caught it, turned, and hooked it up. On a normal hoop it would have dropped, but this iron granted no favors, and the ball bounced off the back of the rim. Ben threw his ass out on Milton, got his own rebound, and passed it to Ali. Ali was the shortest man on the court but had the greatest vertical leap. He went up, way over the outstretched hand of Calvin, and put one through the chains.

“All right,” said Chris.

“You gonna play defense on that retard?” said Calvin to Milton. “Or you gonna let him pick apart your candy ass?”

“Wasn’t my man made that bucket,” said Milton.

“Mini Me lucky,” said Calvin.

Chris walked the ball to the top of the key and looked at Lamar.

“Checked,” said Lamar.

Chris bounced the ball over to Ali. Chris clapped, and Ali tossed it back. Lamar was three feet away, playing him loose, so Chris went up and gunned it. From out here, he knew it had to be all net or a kiss off the backboard. It felt right as it left his fingers, and the chains danced.

“Splash,” said Ben.

“Luck,” said Calvin. “None ’a these bitches can play.”

“Six-nothin,” said Ali, and Ben grinned.

Mr. Green’s radio crackled. He listened to its message and his face told the boys that it was urgent. He said, “Copy that,” and turned to the inmates. “Ya’ll play on. I got an emergency situation I got to attend to. I’m gonna be right back, hear?”

The boys watched the overweight guard jog laboriously across the field toward one of the unit buildings. They could see heightened activity there. Guards streaming in, a guard posted at the door. It meant that there had been some kind of violence.

“Now that Tubby the Tuba gone,” said Calvin, “we can play for real.”

“Look to me like they been playin,” said Lawrence Newhouse.

“I ask you somethin?” said Calvin. “Take a pill and dream you a man, Bughouse.”

Lawrence, his eyes glassy from his meds, smiled at Calvin Cooke. A wind came up and whipped at the boys’ shirts and cooled their sweat.

“Ball up top,” said Chris.

“Checked,” said Lamar.

“Cover that Gump,” said Calvin to Milton.

“I got him. Get your mans, too.”

“He too scared to come inside,” said Calvin.

Chris dribbled and faked a move to the left. In his side vision he saw Ali slashing into the lane and he put English on the rock and bounced it in. Ali took it and put the ball down on the asphalt and made his move, driving toward the basket with Calvin in front of him. Ali did a jump-step thing and elevated, and as he went up, Calvin threw a forearm into Ali’s shoulder. Ali released a shot as he fell back. He landed hard, and the ball clanged off the back of the iron.

“Don’t even walk past the front of my house,” said Calvin.

Milton pounded his fist. “Eastside.”

“Ball,” said Chris.

“That wasn’t no foul, White Boy,” said Calvin. “Your boy flopped like Reggie Miller.”

Ben reached down, grasped Ali’s hand, and pulled him up off the asphalt.

“You all right?” said Ben.

“I’m straight,” said Ali. “Play it.”

“See?” said Calvin. “Your own man say that shit was clean.”

“Don’t matter what Holly say,” said Lawrence. “You fouled his ass.”

Lamar Brooks quietly stepped off the court. Clarence Wheeler, the boy in the navy blue polo shirt, took a few steps back and separated himself from the group.

“What you say?” said Calvin, stepping up to Lawrence.

“I said you got him. You throwin forearms ’cause you can’t fuck with Unit Five.”

Calvin smiled. “And you a stone faggot.”

“Then do somethin,” said Lawrence.

Calvin Cooke’s right fist whipped out and connected. Lawrence’s head snapped back and he lost his legs and dropped to the ground.

Calvin grunted with effort as he kicked Lawrence in the ribs. He pulled back his foot to kick him again.

“Don’t,” said Ben, moving quickly and wrapping his arms around Calvin from behind. Calvin struggled wildly in his grasp. Ben lifted him off his feet. “Don’t!” he said in an imploring way.

Milton Dickerson charged Ben, and Chris stepped in front of him. Dickerson hit Chris like a nose tackle, and it knocked the wind from both of them as they went down.

Chris broke free and rolled away. He caught his breath and got to his feet.

Ben had Calvin in a hug and was swinging him, attempting to gain some kind of control but stumbling back.

Ali shouted, “Let him go, Ben!”

Ben whipped Calvin around, and Calvin’s head caught the steel pole of the backboard. When it hit, it sounded like a bell.

Ben released him.

Calvin fell to the ground, landed on his back, and for a moment was motionless. Blood began to flow from one of his ears and bubbly saliva poured out the side of his mouth. His eyes were open and crossed, and his body began to spasm.

“Help,” said Ben, horrified, his voice soft and low.

Several guards ran across the field toward them. Chris looked at Ali, and Ali lowered his eyes and shook his head.

Chris lay down on his stomach and waited. He felt his arm twist up violently behind him. He felt a knee grind into his back.

It seemed as if it took a long time for the emergency medical technicians to arrive. When they came, the ambulance driver drove the vehicle very slowly across the muddy field, as if he were wary of getting stuck. The boys were being led toward the guards’ building then, and they watched the ambo pass.

They were taken to separate rooms and interrogated by Pine Ridge authorities and police. Warden Colvin and a visibly agitated Glenn Hill, the director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, were in attendance. When the interviews were done, Chris and the others were taken to their cells, where their dinners were brought to them. Chris did not touch his food.

They found out later that Calvin Cooke had suffered what one of the guards called “a cerebral hemorrhage caused by trauma.” It was said that the slow response time by the emergency people had allowed Calvin’s brain to swell up and that was why his condition would not improve.

In a J. Paul Sampson novel, the boys from Calvin’s unit would have been out for revenge on the boys of Unit 5. There would have been eye-mugging, shoulder brushes, talk of get-back, and maybe another minor tragedy of some kind, but in the last chapter the boys of the two units would have met in another contest on the same court where Calvin got his dome crushed, and the game of basketball would have united them. They would have agreed that revenge was a dead-end street and decided to honor the spirit of Calvin and shake hands and walk away as comrades rather than enemies.

The reality was, no one thought to avenge Calvin. The boys in his unit understood that what happened to him was an accident he’d brought upon himself, the cost of boasting and stepping to someone, and anyway, they never did like him much. Calvin did not return to Pine Ridge, and no one spoke of him. When he died two years later, of infection brought on by bedsores, he had been forgotten.

In his cell, Chris lay on his stomach, his arms dangling over the sides of his cot. On the floor in front of him was an open notebook, a pen resting on a blank white sheet of paper. Chris could hear Ben Braswell, speaking to himself and crying, from his cell down the hall. He could hear the guards out there in the hall, walking back and forth, talking and chuckling, making one another laugh to try and cut the boredom of their suicide watch.

In his mind, Chris saw a spring day down on the Soapstone Valley Trail in Rock Creek Park. Darby galloping clumsily though a carpet of leaves, Chris’s mom in a new down vest, a shade of green that was her favorite color. His father swinging out from behind the trunk of a tree, a stick in his hand, making machine gun noises, a lock of black hair fallen across his forehead. Chris jumping from rock to rock across the creek, the sun dancing off the water.

Chris picked up his pen. Across the paper he wrote: “Signal 13.”

In his bedroom on Livingston Street, Thomas Flynn woke suddenly, startled from a dream.