Redemption Time

I wasn’t praying.

            The thought had crossed my mind, but with some people, prayer just doesn’t work.

            “You’re destined to be one of the greats, glory to God.”

            Pops. Him and the same garbage he had poured into my head since I was old enough to pick up a basketball.

            “You will thank me later for all this. Just remember Proverbs.”

            Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.

            Mother effer.

            “Excuse me?” came his voice from what felt like high above, maybe heaven.

            “Nothing,” I replied, catching myself a bit too late, wondering if the octave of my whisper had been too high.

            “Nothing who?”

            “Nothing, sir. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

            Of course I did.

            There was no logical reason for this exercise. I never believed Pops was God’s agent to make a point to the world. 

            He begged to differ.

            “When you reach the NBA, you can use that platform to spread the Word of God.”

            Here’s the deal: Once upon a time I was a high school basketball star, all-state my senior year, conference MVP, almost led my team to a state championship. Accolades galore.

            I was part of Pops’ master plan. He had me pegged as a global messiah figure, all because I could make shots with relative consistency. I think he found meaning in his life through that.

            But here’s the problem. While I was good, and really, really good sometimes, I wasn’t elite. Not in the way Pops saw me in his mind’s eye. Not in the way college coaches assess prospects.

            Of course, I never made it to the NBA. Hell, I never even made it to a high-major college gig, unless you consider East Beach State in the tiny Daytona Beach suburb of Lester, Florida, a destination program. That came after I put in two years at Southern Illini Junior College in the one-horse town of Prestonville, Illinois.

            I went there because I realized my talent, and my fair-to-midland grades, wouldn’t cut it at a high-major school. I figured, put in two years on the farm, then jump to a blue blood.

            Maybe.

            Pops never forgave me for that decision. In his mind’s eye, he saw me suiting up for Kansas straight out of high school, and in a perfect world, eventually for the Chicago Bulls. Anything less would be disrupting the Lord’s grand master plan for saving folks from the coming wrath.

            His belief was that I was the chosen one. His only son. 

            Hence, why I was on my knees that New Year’s Day 2005, Saturday, January 1.

            The rule was simple. If I scored less than twenty points in a game, I had to do 10 pushups per point to make up the deficit. So do the math: If I scored seventeen points, I was responsible for thirty pushups.

            He called it redemption.

            My predicament: I only scored ten for Nelson Allgren High in a 47-45 win—yes, we won the game—for the title of the Chicago New Year’s Eve Classic, a who’s who tournament that was played at the massive United Center. I had nailed a dribble-drive jumper in the lane with 0:03.2 seconds to go that caused utter pandemonium, high school girls’ high-pitched screams that carried into the dark recesses of the facility’s upper deck.

            The funny thing was, I knew the ball was in once it left the tips of my fingers. I felt some otherworldly strength, even though I was so tired I could have collapsed on the Bulls logo at center court. Was it God? Despite the fact that I haven’t talked to Pops in years, not after what he called the Southern Illini JUCO debacle, I still like to think so.

            There was a loud rap at my bedroom door the next morning. I was absorbed in a dream about her, basking in the afterglow of fantasy worlds and parallel universes. At that age, I thought she was The One, like Pops thought I was The One.

            We were both wrong.

            “It’s time!” came a Chipper Charlie voice.

            Pops.

            “Redemption time!” he said with a freakish grin and bad teeth as he entered my room, standing next to an in-action poster of Kobe Bryant. Kobe’s partially squinted eyes appeared to stare him down and ask him just what the hell he thought he was trying to prove.

            Kobe wasn’t God, but on the court? Maybe. After he died back in 2020? Quite possibly. At least mythical in status.

            Come on, it’s New Year’s, I mumbled, the fleeting thoughts of her fading into the darkness.

            “Excuse me?”

            “I’ll be ready in a minute. Sir.”

            A-hole.

            I didn’t say a word as I drove us along Chicago’s narrow side streets to Allgren High, cluttered with cars and neighbors and a stray tabby cat. I had a key to the gym, thanks to my celebrated status as probably the best hoops player to come through the school in its history. That’s not really saying much, since Allgren had never been known as a true Chicago basketball dynasty, not in the sense of Simeon or Morgan Park or a few other Chicago Public League schools.

            That was the reason I went to Allgren, Pops once told me. The competition I needed was there, not at a rich kids’ private school on the north shore, several of which wanted me bad coming out of eighth grade. No, Allgren gave me opportunity to hone my skills against “the future NBA,” he had said when I was an eighth grader. I personally think he and Ma didn’t send me because they couldn’t afford it, even with financial aid. They believed strongly in tithes and offerings like any obedient fundamentalist church-goin’ people.

            Belief ran unbridled through the bedrooms and musty basement of my childhood bungalow, where four of us existed in a sort of fake serenity. If Pops and Ma only knew the shit my younger sister and I had pulled over the years…

            Preacher’s kids are the worst, always testing the limits for a means of escape. Pops wasn’t even a preacher, though he thought of himself as one.

            Redemption time was my time to do the pushups necessary to understand that my twenty points were a sort of tithe, my ten percent off the top that would guarantee favor from the Lord. Anything beyond that wasn’t gravy, but an offering.

            “You’re doing this for Him, not for me,” he would say.

            My tally for New Year’s Day was a hundred pushups, followed by two hundred jump shots, two hundred free throws, and then time in the weight room, before heading home for film study and to watch the Bulls-Magic game, my reward for all that hard work. Pops frowned on TV unless it was to watch basketball.

            One hundred pushups, I thought. You can do this, Jimmy. You’ve done it before. I knelt at center court, on top of the Allgren’s navy Fighting Stallions logo with red and white trim, charging into my consciousness like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. 

            The steed of Victory, with the ability to rise up and vanquish the enemy with a bombardment of three-pointers.

            “Before you begin,” Pops said, as he stood with his arms crossed, sporting his wire-rimmed glasses and an Allgren hoodie with the fifth horseman logo, khakis and Air Jordans, a basketball tucked under his right arm.

            “It is a New Year and you are shortly going to be eighteen, so I have decided to increase your pushup total from ten to fifteen. That said, your total this morning will be one hundred fifty pushups.”

            There was a moment of silence.

            Shee-it.

            “But…”

            “Ah, ah, ah! Remember your future. It is not just about you, son. Think of the souls that will be harvested because of your commitment to the Lord now.”

            A pause, and then he added, “You will balance out the heathen you will encounter in the NBA, both on and off the court.”

            Of course.

            I didn’t move. I just knelt there.

            “What are you waiting for? Get to work.”

            I considered standing and walking. I really did.

            But like any father and son, we had butted heads before and I knew that there was nothing in this world or the next that would find some semblance of compassion for the day, the year or my present physical state. 

            “Do it,” he hissed.

            He’d always been a cold-hearted, aloof, command-and-control bastard.

            And yet, even now, I miss him on some level.

            I placed my hands on the cool, varnished hardwood, and stared into the eyes of the Fighting Stallion, which I now noticed had tiny crimson pinpricks for eyes.

            I imagined Pops with crimson eyes behind his bifocals, staring down at me.

            Math was never my strong suit, but I didn’t have to worry about losing count as I conquered my first pushup, then the second, the third.

            He counted for me. Out loud.

            “Fifteen,” he said. “That is one point. Keep going.”

            Nope. He wasn’t going to win. 

            The beginnings of sweat were dampening my forehead and underarms as I made my way through twenty pushups. I was on my own count.

            By one hundred my pectorals and forearms were in agony, feeling as if I had a pair of shipyard cranes dangling from my torso, but I kept going like a trip hammer. At one-fifty, Pops stopped the count.

            I kept going, and I imagined him frowning. Mind over matter, baby.

            “What are you doing?” 

            I didn’t even stop, the first drops of accumulated sweat from my swollen pores hitting the floor.

            He wants fifteen pushups per point?

            F him. I want twenty.

            So that’s what I did. He kept counting until we got to two hundred pushups. 

            I would not show weakness.

            I concluded my experiment in some sort of rebellion by getting on my knees, my heart racing and my nose full of snot. A drop of sweat entered the corner of my mouth, and it tasted irony, like blood, not salty.

            I looked up and could tell he was doing mental math.

            Two hundred pushups, divided by ten points.

            “I’m impressed,” he said. “Twenty it will be going forward.”

            Great.

            Just dandy.

            “That should be proper motivation for you to put the ball in the hoop.”

            I always argued, lightly, that my ability to score was predicated on a lot of factors outside of my control. The defense, for example. A zone is traditionally tougher to break than a man defense. Teams constantly threw three-two zones us just to get the offense—me—off balance.

            “You shoot over a zone, praise God,” Pops said. “Your ability to shoot is your greatest asset. It will put bread on your table and the Lord in the hearts of millions.”

            I was averaging over thirty percent made from three-point land. That’s decent, but Pops always implored to shoot more, no matter the play that had been called.

            Then there was coach’s gameplan. It might be more efficient for him to use me as a decoy, thus opening up someone else to shoot, especially when I would get double- or even triple-teamed or trapped at half-court. In fact, that was the opposing coach’s plan in the waning seconds of the Chicago New Year’s Eve Classic title game, but the final play broke down and with seconds to go in a prestigious tournament, you know who’s getting the ball.

            “That there is the reason for the pushups,” he said, “so you have the upper-body strength to escape a double-team.”

            My shooting arm was an anchor, but I still did my two hundred jumpers and free throws, along with my weight-room work. I didn’t make any small talk as I drove us home, but Pops had a pronouncement.

            “Since it is New Year’s Day, and you were willing to go the extra mile with your pushups, I am willing to waive film study until this evening, after the Bulls game,” he said.

            My eyes widened, but I said zero.

            I had a whole afternoon to myself.

            “But we will reconvene after supper to shore up the mistakes you made yesterday. Is that clear?”

            “Yes sir.”

            I pulled up to the front of the house, but I didn’t cut the engine.

            “Going somewhere?” Pops said.

            “Over to one of the guys’ houses.”

            Pops almost rolled his eyes at my suggestion of frivolity. 

            “I would have thought you would have decided to watch other NBA games this afternoon,” he replied. “The Knicks play the Nets.”

            His disappointed voice faded out, but he did add one thing.

            “Remember, be ready for film study after supper.”

            And then he was gone, disappearing into the front door of our cream-brick bungalow. I could see the teak-wood cross over the piano in the living room as he passed by. 

            I pulled the car forward, avoided an errant cardboard box and a ditched Christmas tree, and drove about four miles.

            To her house.

            Emma. The dream girl.

            Pops didn’t know about her. He also didn’t know what we did together, the few chances we were alone. I was into her, so into her. I now wonder once in a while what happened to her.

            Pops never would have understood.

            Jezebel, he would have said.