Glittering with sweat and tears, the girls raise exultant faces to the boys emerging onto the floor through the gauntlet they have formed. As Sam passes Deanie, they give each other high fives.
“Come on, people,” she shouts and the others pick it up.
As the boys warm up, Sam listens to the music of the court: squeak of high-tops, thunk of the glass, rattle of the hoop, the rimshot whisper of the net, all riding the bop-she-bop beat of the ball. Each player is a unique source of percussion on the floor but also moves in relationship to the other players, as each team moves in relation to the other and the goals. He hears a tight performance building in the oiled precision of the sounds and it pleases him.
He picks his jersey away from his chest in a nervous gesture and blows air up his face. Time. It’s time. A time. One of the ones for something. Keeping and casting away, and the putting away of childish things. It seems to him the passage of time is speeding up. He is leaving something behind. He is rushing toward something else.
The Rockets’ forward, Seeds, steals the tip Sam knocks to Kevin Bither. Clutterbuck makes the first lay-up and the Castle Rock stands are immediately hysterical. Todd Gramolini takes the rebound to the Greenspark net. Seeds lopes alongside Sam, who offers his hand in congratulation.
Seeds wears Number 40. He grins and shows his braces. He is an ugly kid, loopy mouth, eyes too close together, nose like a potato, milk-blue skin that looks as if it might sunburn under a nightlight, but he also looks like a hell of a good shit. Quick, too. Come a long way during the season. He and Lucas Priest work well together.
All of the Rock’s starters seem to be in a good mood. Nobody desperate, everybody confident, ready to take advantage of anything they can get from the Indians. They’ll have to, to have a chance. Here they are, deciding a regional championship, and both teams are so loose, it seems like an exhibition.
Playing against each other during the regular season, they are familiar with each others’ strengths and weaknesses. Greenspark is, on the whole, bigger, more experienced—the Big Machine, the state champs. It has Sam Styles. The Slammer, the Sambot. Mr. God-To-You. The biggest job is to get around Sam Styles. Given this is the coda to his high school career, they expect him to be pumped for veins in his teeth. He can’t be neutralized—bigger and better teams have tried and failed—but if they can cripple the rest of the Greenspark team, they have a chance to keep up with Sam and with a little luck, that’s the game. Only need one point to take it.
Gleeful moments into it, they all know they are playing a beautiful game, a remarkable game. Castle Rock is playing over its head. Greenspark meets the challenge with delighted bravado. The Rockets lose the lead immediately to Greenspark but remain unruffled. The Indians take the ball, letting Woods, Gramolini, Bither and Kasten work the pick and roll or the outside shot, while Lucas presses Sam steadily, keeping him occupied, giving him a workout. That’s okay; when their positions are reversed and Lucas is trying to get to his own post, the Slammer’s walling it off. His own count likely to be held to single digits, Lucas grins and shrugs and takes care of business. The Rock picks up its first three fouls just trying to get around Sam, forcing the Rockets outside. Seeds and the Rock’s best three-shooter, Nick Young, summon up miracles to get the ball into the hoop.
Once Lucas tries to get by Sam at the post and loses his footing. He skids and falls against Sam, who helps him to his feet and pats his ass and the crowd applauds. At the line, Sam shoots, his hands following the arc of the ball as it drops through, and Lucas, grinning, repeats the breaking wave of the motion with his own hands, and raises an approving thumb to Sam. It is an amiable, sweet-tempered performance.
During the half, Sam sightlines Deanie in the stands, with the other girls, not far from his folks. She’s got a couple of shiners and her nose looks puffy and sore but she is radiant.
Rick’s ankle is bothering him. Mangling a pass into a turnover, he limps down court. He shakes his head at Sam. Coach flicks a wrist at Rank. Billy just about explodes off the bench, he is so eager to get into the game. It is quickly apparent that the Big Machine is still running without a hitch. Kasten, Sam notes, is working better with Rank than he does most of the time with Rick.
Eyeing the clock, Lucas begins to lean on Sam. He draws Fairbrother down to double-team Sam. Toward the end of the quarter, Lucas suddenly realizes that Sam is playing tarbaby with him. Not only is he diverting Lucas’s attention as well as Fairbrother’s, while the rest of the Indians pound away, driving up the lead, but for each of the two fouls he manages to draw Sam into, Priest is nabbed for one of his own in return.
Lucas glances at the clock. He spits out a disgusted country, “Oh shit!”
Still there is scrap in the Rockets. They come out in the fourth with a wild who-wants-to-live-forever gleam in their eyes and play the best they ever have. There
