Top gunner for the Ferrymen is a senior, Phil Malenfant, five-ten, playing point. Malenfant’s quick as spit on a hot stove. He wears power shorts under his uniform in the style currently fashionable in the NBA. Malenfant is nearly at the two-thousand-point mark in four years of high school play. At center is Shawn Godfrey, another senior, six-five, and not far behind Malenfant in his high school point count. Godfrey fixes lashless pale blue eyes on Sam to flash a laser challenge as the two shake hands during the introductions. The other guards are Mark Tozier, Steven Starbuck and Jesse Blood, a formidable trio of gunslingers.
Facing Godfrey for the tip, it hits Sam this kid is scared. Maybe it’s the stakes, maybe it’s him but it’s there, in the trickle of sweat at the base of Godfrey’s throat and the almost imperceptible tic in the jaw. Maybe there is an extra edge of sharpness in the kid’s perspiration that his nose is reporting to him. Sam smiles at him. Godfrey twitches like an animal on the verge of bolting. Okay, Sam thinks. Play it the way you like. They rise together fluidly with the rising ball.
From Sam’s tip, the ball falls toward Rick but suddenly he’s shoved aside by Malenfant. Malenfant drives hard for the bucket and the other four Ferrymen blitzkrieg into the Greenspark defense, intent on smashing it. Greenspark has rehearsed for this event. Recovering instantly, Rick moves with Malenfant, forcing his drive one way and then the other and slowing him down. By the time the Ferrymen’s point is at the three-point line, the rest of the Greenspark players have stuck themselves to his cohorts and Sam Styles is at low post. There is no daylight to be seen.
Malenfant hesitates, debating a try for a three, and suddenly goes for it, but Rick is right there in front of him and the instant the ball spurts from the point’s hands, Rick is up and after it, deflecting it toward Todd Gramolini, as Todd peels away from Starbuck. He receives it, spins, and passes it overhead to Sam, already rising to drive it up. Sam keeps on going with the ball and taps it through from above, to the screams of the crowd. He doesn’t touch the rim but descends, knees bent to absorb the shock, almost gently.
The ball drops with Sam; Godfrey snatches it and spins around to find Sam there, along with Tim Kasten. Godfrey goes underneath to Malenfant but Rick dives on the ball as it passes, squirts it to Tim, who lays it up. Trying to stop him, Godfrey buffets Kasten’s right ear, and the first foul is called.
Over the crowd sounds, Sam can hear the Derry coach screaming at his players: Look out for the ball! Don’t foul! D, Play the D! His own coach hunches forward in his chair, as if thrusting his head out over his knees would give him a markedly better view of the game.
Derry has spent as much time studying them and planning for this game as they have. So have other teams in the past. The Ferrymen have no new strategies, nothing Greenspark hasn’t seen before, only different players to try to make them work more effectively. They are the toughest team physically the Indians have ever encountered. While Godfrey is smaller than Sam, he is nearly as powerfully built, and a grim desperation fires his aggression. Malenfant is quicker by a small margin than Rick. Neither Starbuck or Tozier or Blood is as lithe and gymnastic as Todd Gramolini but Starbuck is an almost perfect counter to Bither and Tozier is a match to Kasten, who has turned in the steadiest performances of his career during the Western Finals. Before the first quarter ends, it is clear this game is going to be the long mud-wrestle Sam expected it would be, a hyperactive brawl driven by an almost slapstick surplus of energy.
He maintains an unnerving idiot smile for the guy in his face, the guy he is blocking, or any Ferryman who comes close enough. Relentlessly he urges the Ferryman to take it easy, offers a hand up when one flops to the floor or crawls out from under a scramble, pats a passing ass encouragingly. Rick picks it up and then Todd, and the Ferrymen get pissed at being faced with a crew who seem to think this whole deal is a big joke.
In the second quarter Greenspark holds the Ferrymen scoreless for six minutes, while edging up their own numbers with arduous effort by seven points. The Ferrymen come out for the second half with veins in their teeth. The fierceness of their attack, which evens the score and then gives them a four-point edge, costs them wickedly in fouls. Malenfant and Starbuck both take the bench carrying four fouls each. Godfrey and Blood continue to play with three, and Tozier has two. On the Greenspark side, Sam, Kasten, and Bither are carrying two each and Gramolini has another three. The Ferrymen who come in to replace the starters are good but not good enough, and the Indians tie up the game before the third quarter ends.
The fourth brings Starbuck and Malenfant back into the game. Gramolini fouls Starbuck again and Coach shrugs and leaves him in. Starbuck makes his free throws and then Malenfant lobs in a three-pointer and Greenspark has a five-point deficit. When Sam earns a third foul against Godfrey, the game is again tied. Godfrey goes to the stripe and the opposing players line up at the blocks.
When the clock starts again, there will be five minutes left, Sam notes. In this game, in this final, in his career as a high school basketball player. Five minutes.
It is a simple game, and like the music that speaks so strongly to him, it has a nearly infinite variety of expression. It can encompass head-butting brute strength and leather-lunged stamina, breath-sucking executions that require both
