None of them were tall enough to play center, but James was always in Kevin’s ear about banging down low, and that the power was in the hips and the elbows. And he was right, as he always was. Thursday night practice was well-attended by players and spectators like it always was as they prepared for the game at the end of time.
Moonlight and moonshine, the wind smelled like fey-touched huckleberry. It was the fat part of the summer, late harvest work-days left time for leisure. In years past, that meant music and pies offered in equal parts to each other and the lord. But this spring, while the ground was still hard, even to the enterprising shovel, James saw it.
They were a healthy people. Pete had never seen James catch as much as a cold, but there he was, shambling, unshaven, cradling a shallow bowl as the invalid spitoon. The seizure caught him in the fields, supervising the gossamer nurturing of their sophomore crops. Cut down, he collapsed and shattered green stalks beneath him. Pete never really forgot what James whispered to him that day, while he carried James to bed. “Our children need to see it.”
After the frost broke, they built a dirt court where the old stock-house burned down. The children had been using the space to play house, but the silver wood beyond the clearing worked just as well for make-believe. James directed from the sidelines, while he stitched the leathers together for the ball.
Tonight, the court was a constellation in concert with the indigo sky: Aquarius. On one side, Pete and John let moonshots fly, an offering without smoke, and they tickled the net with each goal. On the other, James conducted the offense. To start, he calls for the pick, Kevin’s lopping body plants orthogonal, hips square. The defender tries to dance over the human wall. Too slow, as James sidesteps then darts towards the basket. Another body apparates in mid-air, hanging, still hanging. Adjustment, feet digging hard into the dirt to brake, and James sense the pounding sprint of Kevin, rolling beyond the reach of the new defender’s wings. Like a magnet, leather finds Kevin’s hands half an instance before his leap, and in swift motion, the ball is stuffed through the rim.
Take-two, make it take it. The defense reset. Kevin's frame became iron fencing aside James, who jab stepped rightward, rather than his previous bunny hop forward. The defender lunged, hands grasping for the rock, and another shaded towards the center of the court to replace him should James decide to crash the board. Without hesitation, the ball skipped across the air, into the waiting hands of Larry, who leapt from his set position, launching the ball through the hoop.
A rebel yell tore through the still air, but when you looked for it's source, you could only find James' snear translated onto the face of each of his team members.
This went on all evening. Lunge, repose, parry. With mechanical precision, finding the cracks in enemy armor. The crowd was hypnotized, swaying to follow the action. Bates breath, a new wrinkle. The defender ran under the screen, back towards the net, before careening again towards James. In that short window, James unlocked his hips, taking a lunging backwards step, gathered the ball, and let it fly. The twine seemed to sparkle as it twisted in agreement with the shot. The gurgling murmur of the crowd immediately erupted into thunderous uproar. The attention of the little ones had been ripped from dolls and house, and they hooted and hollered from the front of the masses.
The pale collection gave a spectral aura to the grounds, though the air was wrung out with hot sweat. In the brief out of body that occurred in the moment before and after the net rang true, James could see the future: a game for someone else’s children, watched by his own. A shiver, somewhere between orgiastic and death rattle, ended the game for him. Movement at the edge of the clearing caught his eye.
A fluttering whistle from James declared the next play. In a flash, four of the men sprinted forward down the break, shooters out wide with the big man ready to crash. A band of warriors in the night. Their foot steps pillow soft on approach, the figure yet to realize. Kevin cleared out from the dunkers spot, giving Pete space to cut through the air. After a clipped command from James, Pete leapt and in a swift motion sashayed through the bushes to find an intruder in his grasp.
A black boy, hooded. Edwin had watched, wide-eyed, this new game. He wanted to soar like those men had, now he needed to run, like he’d been warned by his grandfather before straying from their dominion. Pete could see fear from every pore, sweat, and he could hear the orchestration behind the bushy void. He loosened his grip, and Edwin unraveled, tearing into the wooded darkness.
James began a soprano war cry, the team filled the acapella space in response. The hollow trees, eaten by the bugs thinking ahead to the winter, reverberated and echoed the call. The call seemed to boomerang, pinsir movement towards Edwin. The new grown hairs on his cheek shivered, he could not stop. James sprinted the open floor, ample room to operate. The next approach emulsified: Kevin and Larry would run right, John would chase along the left, away from the cliffside, driving the boy right in an arching pattern towards the slim reapers.
Iron-blood nipped at Edwin’s throat, his pulse pounding at his ears. These were his grandfather’s woods, somewhere close is the fox hole. The rollicking slapping of feet, over stump and stone, marched a quickening pace. As if no time passed at all, Edwin took the fateful leap and dive, through the foxhole, which shot him down the cliffside they had skirted. His fall was eased by briars, tearing into his flesh with permanent marker. The team atop the cliff stopped their chase. The seal closed on the future. James said a silent prayer and led a quick jog back to their hamlet.
Edwin was returned to his grandfather’s slumbering farm by the delicate rhythm of crickets, seesawing the night into morning. Instead of spending the next day feeding the chicks, as he had for so many, he taught himself the jumpshot’s delicate arc. For that half moment while Edwin hung in the air, arms taut to trebuchet, gravity lost him. For the birds.