One of the other boys, looking back, sees what Sam sees and laughs. “Check it out,” he says and those team members who hear him turn and look. And laugh.
“Come on, Sambo,” another boy urges, yanking at Sam’s sleeve.
The shooter on the court picks up the ball and backs casually toward the hoop. Effortlessly the ball leaves her fingertips, rises and falls behind her, through the basket.
Sam whoops and cocks a spatulate thumb high in approbation.
The mohawked girl on the court pivots away to catch the ball.
Inside, the hastily reassembled and owl-eyed Greenspark Academy Band greets the championship team with a nearly recognizable version of “We Are the Champions.” This year the band is a little drum-heavy, with ten kids on sticks.
Despite the hour, the gym is packed with parents and grandparents and siblings and schoolmates, with teachers and administrators and town officials, and with hundreds of citizens of the school administrative district which Greenspark Academy serves, sharing the team’s victory. The players are engulfed by the folks who already mobbed them on the floor of the Portland Civic Center in the delirium after the buzzer. Gradually the boys grope their way to the center of the gymnasium. Again they hold aloft the trophy gold ball, in a fireworks of camera flashes from dozens of snapshot cameras recording the event for family albums. The powers-that-be voice the clichés that on this occasion are perhaps more true than usual.
Scattered among the students are the members of the girls’ basketball team, also called the Indians, whose season ended in the Western semifinals. They had a chance at a state title too until their point guard, Gauthier, got her skinny ass kicked out of the game against Breckenfield for diving into the bleachers to punch out an abusive fan. They couldn’t quite do it without her, which didn’t make her any more popular with anybody.
The co-captains of the victorious boys’ team, junior center-forward Sam Styles and a senior guard named Scott Cosgrove, are called out. Scottie makes brief appropriate remarks and then it is Sam’s turn.
Sam easily picks his father out of the crowd. Reuben’s breadth and height make room for the woman in front of him, Sam’s heavily pregnant stepmother. She leans into Reuben to ease her back and smiles at Sam, a slow and tired two-in-the-morning smile.
From the mass of faces, another suddenly emerges; the shooter has come in from the cold. She stands against the doors, watching.
Sam blinks and gropes at the microphone Scottie has stuck in his hand and manages to make it shriek. While everyone laughs, he touches the trophy briefly and applause erupts.
“Next year,” he says, and the applause swells as the crowd assumes he is about to promise next year’s title. But he goes them one better. “Next year,” he repeats, “the girls are going to bring one home too.”
The response from the crowd is deafening. The astonished principal shakes Sam’s hand and the girls’ coach does the same. The members of the girls’ team are pushed forward to join the boys at the center of the gym. Except for the mohawked Gauthier. The doors whisper she was there.
A couple of hours later, Greenspark Academy is dark against the curdled sky. The snow has stopped and the wind come up a little more so it is miserably raw. The parking lot is empty except for the rows of yellow buses stitching its northern edge. Though one is tracked with frozen sneaker prints, the basketball courts are now abandoned.
A ten-year-old Ford van riding heavy in the back slews from the main road onto the drive. Bouncing around to the rear of the school, it comes to a skidding stop. The five boys inside fortify themselves from a bottle of rum.
The parents of four of them believe—maybe—that their sons are at a chaperoned party at the home of the firm, Scott Cosgrove. Scottie’s parents subscribe to the theory that the kids are going to booze anyway so the smart thing to do is provide the liquor in the safe environment of their home. Having invited the entire team and their female attachments, if any, to celebrate in their basement rec room, the Cosgroves have gone to bed after consuming quite a lot more California champagne than was wise.
Scott is driving—having promised to stay sober enough to take the wheel. He isn’t but he’s not quite as loaded as the others. Last out of the van, Sam Styles wraps a paw over the roof and hauls himself out of the backseat. The van rises on its springs. He gets a lungful of raw wet air. Unsurprisingly, it makes him dizzy. He’s not used to drinking and it hits him hard. He blinks into the cutting wind. The others—Scottie, another senior guard named Josh Caron, and Todd Gramolini and Rick Woods, both juniors like Sam—have stumbled to the rear of the van to open its doors.
“Come on, Samson,” Woods shouts.
In the back of the van, cradled on a nest of rope and tackle, is a cylindrical bundle about eight feet in length. Its circumference is difficult to judge in its canvas shroud but looks to be something under two feet. Sam gets a grip on one end. They all lend their strength to extract the massive thing and lower it to the ground. The others stand around and watch Sam lay out ropes and tackle on the ground and then they all roll the thing onto the ropes and he finishes rigging it.
Sam tosses another line with a grapple on it to the school’s roof. Gramolini scrambles up the line and secures it for heavier freight. Sam and Scottie use it to go hand over hand after Gramolini. It takes considerable snickering and obscenities and an occasional burst of uncontrollable merriment to get them
