Ten Little Indians (28 page)

“My driver’s license says I’m Frank Snake Church.”

“Your social security card, library card, unemployment check, and the tattoo on your right butt cheek might say Frank Snake Church,” Preacher said, “but you, sir, are an imposter; you are a doppelgänger; you are a body snatcher; you are a pod person; you are Frank Snake Church’s evil and elderly twin is what you are.”

Preacher closed his eyes and hit a blind shot from the corner. Frank closed his eyes and missed by five feet.

“That’s an ‘S’ for you, as in Shut Up and Learn How to Play Another Game,” said Preacher. “God could pluck out my eyes, and you could play with a microscope, and I’d still beat you. Man, you used to be somebody.”

“I am now what I always was,” Frank said.

“You now and you then are two entirely different people. You used to be Frank the Snake, Frank the Hot Dog, but now you’re just a plain Oscar Mayer wiener, just a burned-up frankfurter without any damn mustard to make you taste better, make you easier to swallow. I watch you toss up one more of those ugly jumpers, and I’m going to need the Heimlich to squeeze your ugliness out of my throat.”

“Nope, Frank now and Frank then are exactly the same. I am a tasty indigenous sausage.”

“You were young and fresh, and now you’re prehistoric, my man, you’re only about two and a half hours younger than the Big Bang, that’s how old you are. And I know you’re old because I’m old. I smell the old on you like I smell the old on me. And it reeks, son, it reeks of stupid and desperate hope.”

Preacher hit a Rick Barry two-handed scoop-shot free throw.

“I can’t believe you took that white-boy shot,” Frank said. “I’m going to turn you in to the NAACP for that sinful thing.”

“Honey, I believe in the multicultural beauty of this diverse country.”

“But that Anglo crap was just plain ugly.”

“Did it go in?” Preacher asked.

“Well, it went in, but it didn’t go in pretty.”

“All right, pretty boy, let’s see what you got.”

Frank clanged the shot off the rim.

“My shot might’ve been ugly,” Preacher said, “but your shot is missing chromosomes. You want me to prove it, or you want to lose this game all by yourself?”

“Here begins my comeback,” said Frank as he took the shot and missed again.

“Spell it out, honey, that’s ‘H-O-R-S’ and double ‘E.’ Game over.”

“Man, I can’t believe I lost on that old-fashioned antique.”

“Sweetheart, I might be old-fashioned, but you’re just plain old.”

Frank felt hot and stupid. He tasted bitterness—that awful need to cry—and he was ashamed of his weakness, and then he was ashamed of being ashamed.

“Age don’t mean anything,” Frank said. “I walk onto any court on this city, and I’m the best baller. Other guys might be faster or stronger, maybe they jump higher, but I’m smarter. I’ve got skills and I’ve got wisdom.”

Frank’s heart raced. He wondered if he was going to fall again; he wondered if lightning was going to strike him again.

“You might be the wisest forty-year-old ballplayer in the whole city,” Preacher said. “You might be the Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates of Seattle street hoops, but you’re still forty years old. You should be collecting your basketball pension.”

“You’re twenty years older than me,” Frank said. “Why are you giving me crap about my age?”

Frank could hear the desperation in his own voice, so he knew Preacher could also hear it. In another time, in other, less civilized places, desperate men killed those who made them feel desperation. Who was he kidding? Frank knew, and Preacher should have known, that desperate men are fragile and dangerous at all times and places. Frank wanted to punch Preacher in the face. Frank wanted to knock the old man to the ground and kick and kick and kick and kick him and break his ribs and drive bone splinters into the old man’s heart and lungs.

“I know I’m old,” Preacher said. “I know it like I know the feel of my own sagging ball sack. I know exactly how old I am in my brain, in my mind. And my basketball mind is the same age as my basketball body. Old, old, ancient, King Tut antique. But you, son, you’re in denial. Your mind is stuck somewhere back in 1980, but your eggshell body is cracking here in the twenty-first century.”

“I’m only forty years old,” Frank said. He bounced the ball between his legs, around his back, thump, thump, between his legs, around his back, thump, thump, again and again, thump, thump, faster and faster, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Basketball years are like dog years,” Preacher said. “You’re truly about two hundred and ninety-nine years old.”

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“I’m still a player,” Frank said. “I’m still playing good and hard.”

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“But why are you still playing so hard?” Preacher asked. “What are you trying to prove? You keep trying to get all those years back, right? You’re trying to time-machine it, trying to alternate-universe it, but one of these days, you’re going to come down wrong on one of your arthritic knees, and it will be over. What will you do then? You’ve bet your whole life on basketball, and playground basketball at that, and what do you have to show for it? Look at you. You’re not some sixteen-year-old gangster trying to play your way out of the ghetto. You ain’t even some reservation warrior boy trying to shoot your way off the reservation and into some white-collar job at Microsoft Ice Cream. You’re just Frank the Pretty Good Shooter for an Old Fart. Nobody’s looking to recruit you. Nobody’s going to draft you. Ain’t no university alumni lining up to financially corrupt your naive ass. Ain’t no pretty little Caucasian cheerleaders looking to bed you down in room seven of the Delta Delta Delta house. Ain’t no ESPN putting you in the Plays of the Day. You ain’t as cool as the other side of the pillow. You’re hot and sweaty, like an orthopedic support. You’re one lonely Chuck Taylor high-top rotting in the ten-cent pile at Goodwill. Your game is old and ugly and misguided, like the Salem witch trials. You’re committing injustice every time you step on the court. I think I’m going to organize a march against your ancient ass. I’m going to boycott you. I’m going to boycott your corporate sponsors. But wait, you ain’t got any corporate sponsors, unless Nike has come out with a shoe called Tired Old Bastard. So why don’t you just give up the full-court game and the half-court game and enjoy the fruitful retirement of shooting a few basketballs and drinking a few glasses of lemonade.”

Frank stopped bouncing the ball and threw it hard at Preacher, who easily caught it and laughed.

“Man oh man,” Preacher said. “I’m getting to you, ain’t I? I’m hurting your ballplaying heart, ain’t I?”

Preacher threw the ball back at Frank, who also caught it easily, and resumed the trick dribbling, the thump, thump, thump, and thump, thump.

“I play ball because I need to play,” Frank said

Thump, thump.

“And I need yearly prostate exams,” Preacher said, “so don’t try to tell me nothing about needing nothing.”

Thump, thump.

“I’m playing to remember my mom and dad,” Frank said.

Preacher laughed so hard he sat on the court.

“What’s so funny?” Frank asked. He dropped the ball and let it roll away.

“Well, I just took myself a poll,” Preacher said. “And I asked one thousand mothers and fathers how they would feel about a forty-year-old son who quit his high-paying job to pursue a full-time career as a playground basketball player in Seattle, Washington, and all one thousand of them mothers and fathers cried in shame.”

“Preacher,” Frank said, “it’s true. I’m not kidding. This is, like, a mission or something. My mom and dad are dead. I’m playing to honor them. It’s an Indian thing.”

Preacher laughed harder and longer. “That’s crap,” he said. “And it’s racist crap at that. What makes you think your pain is so special, so different from anybody else’s pain? You look up death in the medical dictionary, and it says everybody’s going to catch it. So don’t lecture me about death.”

“Believe me, I’m playing to remember them.”

“You’re playing to remember yourself. You’re playing because of some of that nostalgia. And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you are. You’re just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.”

Frank moaned—a strange, involuntary, and primal noise—and turned his back on Preacher. Frank wept and furiously wiped the tears from his face.

“Oh man, are you crying?” Preacher asked. He was alarmed and embarrassed for Frank.

“Leave me alone,” Frank said.

“Oh, come on, man, I’m just talking.”

“No, you’re not just talking. You’re talking about my whole failed life.”

“You ain’t no failure. I’m just trying to distract you. I’m just trying to win.”

“Don’t you condescend to me. Don’t. Don’t you look inside me and then pretend you didn’t look inside me.”

Preacher felt the heat of Frank’s mania, of his burning.

“Listen, brother,” Preacher said. “Why don’t we go get some decaf and talk this out? I had no idea this meant so much to you. Why don’t we go talk it out?”

Frank walked in fast circles around Preacher, who wondered if he could outrun the younger man.

“Listen,” said Frank. “You can’t take something away from me, steal from me, and then just leave me. You have to replace what you’ve broken. You have to fix it.”

“All right, all right, tell me how to fix it.”

“I don’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know it could be broken. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.”

“Hey, brother, hey, man, this is too heavy for me and you, all right? Why don’t we head over to the church and talk to Reverend Billy?”

“You’re a preacher.”

“That’s just my name. They call me Preacher because I talk too much. I ain’t spiritual. I just talk. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re a preacher. Your name is Preacher.”

“I know my name is Preacher, but that’s like, that’s just, it’s, you know, it’s nothing but false advertising.”

Frank stepped quickly toward the old man, who raised his fists in defense. But Frank only hugged him hard and cried into the black man’s shoulder. Preacher didn’t know what to do. He was pressed skin-to-skin with a crazy man, maybe a dangerous man, and how the hell do you escape such an embrace?

“I’m sorry, brother,” Preacher said. “I didn’t know.”

Frank laughed. He released Preacher. He turned in circles and walked away. And he laughed. He stood on the grass on the edge of the basketball court and spun in circles. And he laughed. Preacher couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He’d known quite a few crazy people in his life. A man doesn’t grow up black in the USA without knowing a lot of crazy black folks, without being born to and giving birth to the breakable and broken. But Preacher had never seen this kind of crazy, and he’d certainly never seen the exact moment when a crazy man went completely crazy.

“Hey, Frank, man, I don’t like what I’m seeing here. You’re hurting really bad here. You maybe want me to call somebody for you?”

Frank laughed and ran. He ran away from Preacher and the basketball court. Frank ran until he fell on somebody’s green, green lawn, and then Frank stood and ran again.

After Preacher’s devastating sermon, Frank didn’t play basketball for two weeks. He didn’t leave the house or answer the telephone or the door. He ate all of the food in the house and then drank only water and fruit juice. He was on his own personal hunger strike. Mr. Death, you are an obese bastard, Frank thought, and I’m going to starve you down until I can fit my hands around your throat and choke you. Frank lost fifteen pounds in fifteen days. He wondered how long he could live without food. Forty, fifty, sixty days? He wondered who would find his body.

Three weeks after Preacher’s sermon, and after dozens of unanswered phone calls, Russell found Frank’s address in his files, drove to the house, crawled through an unlocked window, and found Frank dead in bed. Well, he thought Frank was dead.

“You’re breaking and entering,” Frank said and opened his eyes.

“You scared me,” Russell said. “I thought you were dead.”

“Black man, you keep crawling through windows in this gentrified neighborhood, and you’re going to get shot in your handsome African head.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Well, aren’t you the full-service personal trainer? You should be charging me more.” Frank sat up in bed. He was pale and clammy and far too thin.

“You look terrible, Frank. You’re really sick.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to call for help, okay? We need to get you help, all right?”

“Okay.”

Russell walked into the kitchen to use the telephone and hurried back.

“They’ll be here soon,” he said.

“What would you have done if you’d come too late?” Frank asked. “You know, part of me wishes you’d waited too long.”

“I did wait too long. You’re sick. And I helped you get sick. I’m sorry. I just wanted to believe in what you believed.”

“You’re not going to hug me now, are you?” Frank asked.

Both men laughed.

“No, I’m not going to hug you, I’m not going to kiss you, I’m not going to recite poetry to you,” Russell said. “And I’m not going to crawl under these nasty sheets with you, either.”

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

“Because, well,” Frank said, “I know you’re gay and all, and I care about you a bunch, but not in that way. If we were stuck on a deserted island or something, or if we were in prison, then maybe we could be Romeo and Juliet, but in the real world, you’re going to have to admire me from afar.”

“Yeah, let me tell you,” Russell said, “I’ve always been very attracted to straight, suicidal, bipolar anorexics.”

“And I’ve always been attracted to gay, black, narcissistic codependents.”

Both men laughed again because they were good at laughing.

One year after Russell saved Frank’s life, after four months of residential treatment and eight months of inpatient counseling, Frank walked into the admissions office at West Seattle Community College. He’d gained three extra pounds for every twelve of the steps he’d taken over the last year, so he was fat. Not unhappy and fat, not fat and happy, but fat and alive, and hungry, always hungry.