Shot Maker
This week’s new flash fiction is about basketball and more and is dedicated to my dazzling mom who will blow out 85 candles this week.
Shot Maker
The young kid trundled right into me as I glided across the key knocking me onto my 37-year-old sacrum. Glided? Well maybe more like lurched. I may retire each night onto a figurative bed of cash, but an elbow to the ribs is still an elbow. Normally I disdain the more heavily trafficked areas of the court like a seasoned commuter avoiding Penn Station’s main concourse at rush hour. This concussive episode reminded me why.
“You move like my mama,” the punk said as I collected myself and ambled slowly to the free throw line. I had learned long ago not to engage in any hardwood discourse involving lineage. Like religion and politics at the Thanksgiving table. The ref hands me the ball.
“Two shots,” he announces, and time stops. Where did I learn to blot out 18,000 people in an NBA arena?
From you.
Everybody at the Rec center just wanted to dunk. Oh, I could throw it down. But you knew better. Old time Indiana basketball. Johnny Wooden. In this game there still is no substitute for shooting the ball. You can’t get points by jumping through the hoop.
So, we practiced.
Every day after school. You would join as soon as you could after work. Out in the driveway. Didn’t matter how tired you were. Never needed to put your feet up. Read the paper. Drink a martini. Always had time to talk me through it. The sweet stroke. Repetition.
You never had the chance, but I would.
Night after night. Faint AM radio from the garage. ‘70s music from your heyday. Leo Sayer. 10cc.
Dim light from the porch. Hour after hour. Muscle memory.
You got to my games when you could. Not easy as a single parent. Those other kids’ dads with cushy jobs could find a way to get there. The divorced dads were always there, skulking glumly looking lost and unpressed. And in that era, it seemed most moms had plenty of time on their hands. Or at least were expected to behave that way.
Now I’m back. Looking at the enemy coach. About to ruin his night.
Looking at the opposing big men lined up along the paint. Waiting for the rebound. That will never come. They are already dead they just don’t know it.
I can almost hear Pablo Cruise in the background.
I’m wearing shoes that are worth more than our car in those days.
Breathe deep.
See the ball going through the net.
Visualize.
Elbow in.
Follow through.
Bend at the wrist.
Hand in the basket.
Nothing but net.
“Lame ass grandpa let’s see you play at the cup like a man,” chirps the youthful offender.
After they found the mass, you would sit in a folding lawn chair in the garage and flyspeck my launch angle. Rotation. Concentration. You eschewed the skullcap instead embracing your bald glory. At times donning a green headband as homage to Slick Watts the idol of your bantam point guard youth. Flashing a skeletal smile as I drained one after another. Stressing that amid the hurly-burly and aerial pyrotechnics this game rewarded the canny marksman with the great gift of making time stand still for occasional opportunities to shoot “free throws” unruffled and unhurried by the mayhem. Charity stripe indeed.
I didn’t have to worry about foster care. I was good enough that any number of coaches would take me in so long as I moved to their district and played for them. Swish for my supper.
Now it’s time to repeat the sacrament for shot number two. I run through my routine like a Delta pilot with a preflight punch list.
“You shoot like a girl, old man,” says the lout who buffaloed into me a minute earlier as my second foul shot barely disturbs the twine on its downward flight through.
You’re damn right I do. Just like you taught me, mom.
Beautiful. Happy Birthday Mom. You raised a good’n