No More No Name by Tim Tingle

Author:Tim Tingle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Publishing Co.
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Building the Bridge

Without even thinking, I gave a quick glance to the stands, to Mom and Dad. Dad sat with his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands. Even from that distance, I swear I could see the veins in his neck, swollen and red. Mom sat by his side, hugging Faye close to her. Faye was wiping her eyes, so she had to be crying.

“Bobby,” said Bart, tossing me the inbounds pass. Too late. It bounced off my forehead and out of bounds.

As I sprinted downcourt to play defense, I saw Coach walking to the end of the bench. I knew exactly why.

Looking for my replacement.

“Coach,” I said as I passed him by, “give me one more chance. Please. One more?”

Coach turned to me with a big smile on his face.

“One more, Bobby,” he said, holding up one finger.

Hoke, so even I had to laugh now. I knew I would never hear the last of it from Johnny. We could be eighty years old and treating our grandkids to ice cream, and Johnny would tell them all about the time “your grandpa dribbled the ball with his head! Ask him to do it again.”

I made it up, hopefully, on the next play. As my man dribbled to the top of the circle, I fake-lunged at the ball. He did a cool crossover dribble and switched hands to his left, then turned around and slowly backed up. Closer and closer to the basket.

He looked over his shoulder and gave a small nod of the head.

“He’s signaling the post man,” I thought. “He’s about to lob it into the post.”

Some call it luck, but if you don’t take chances, the luck never happens. I remember hearing Clyde Drexler, a former star of the Houston Rockets, say that once, talking about Russell Westbrook. So I took the chance. And I was lucky. I timed my jump just as he picked up his dribble and threw an over-the-head pass. I swatted the pass away, grabbed it as it bounced behind him, and streaked to the basket.

That was Chance Number One, and it worked.

Chance Number Two was even riskier. No one stood between a wide-open lay-up and me. But instead of taking the two points, I stopped at the three-point line.

“Take it, Bobby,” Jimmy shouted. As I leapt into the shot, my mind did a time tumble, back to the first day I met Jimmy, Bart, and Darrell, at the park near my house. That was the day Jimmy busted Johnny’s lip, elbowing him in the mouth.

“I know you can play dirty,” Johnny had said, with his lip bleeding all over his shirt. “I want to know if you can play basketball.”

And that was how we earned the respect of our future teammates.

I remembered my first shot that afternoon. Bart was guarding me when I took a long shot from the corner. It ripped the nets clean.

Something about the memory of that summer game at the park made me relax.

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