After school Scotty headed to G's and they, along with two other guys made their way up to the basketball court. It seemed that every young man in the ghetto had the talent to make the NBA and that included Scotty. He was a beast on the basketball court—but mainly because hitting the court, playing stickball and touch football was free and therefore the thing that everyone could do well. Scotty would watch the Harlem Globetrotters on television and then see dudes doing the same routines the very next day.
He and G teamed up against their companions, Martray and Kenya. They played hard, shedding their sweat soddened shirts within the hour. The basketball court in question wasn't really that. It was the parking lot of the abandoned complex where a dead little girl had been found. Someone had climbed two opposing utility poles and suspended a makeshift basketball hoop. The hoops were missing nets but did have backs although that part got knocked down every blue moon when someone tried to play as if they were Kareem and dunked too hard. When that happened there would be an outcry of trying to 'show off' until someone made the climb to replace the back or the hoop.
The complex had been emptied several years ago as a company purchased up the land above Winton Terrace in order to build the modern homes of Garden Hilltop. This level was supposed to be stage three and the buildings were supposed to be demolished long ago but the EPA had gotten involved and were forcing the company to pay a tremendous amount of money to protect the surrounding community from the resulting fall-out. So now it was just a waiting game to see who would win out; the fight against urban blight or government red tape.
Even though it was early October, the weather was hot. Preparing for the coming winter and trying to get as much Vitamin D as possible, more people were out and about. Several people had gathered around the 'court' to watch them play; because again, watching guys playing basketball was free entertainment. Then some older guys came along and took over the court. Normally that didn't happen when Scotty was around because for the most part people knew that Tino was his brother. But on this occasion Tino was one of the older guys that took the court from them--and not just the court, but Kenya's ball.
As the younger boys left, moping and talking shit under their breaths Kenya mugged Scotty in the back of the head.
"You going to get my ball back from your brother!" Kenya said with fire in his eyes.
Scotty swung around and pushed him hard in the chest. "Don't put your hands on me." His voice threatened violence and Garry stepped between them, placing a calming hand on Kenya's shoulder.
"Whoa, dude, watch yourself."
"Man, fuck you and your white boy!" Kenya smacked at G's hand and then looked like he was going to cry as he stormed back down the hill to his home, talking loudly about 'not being able to have nothing in this place without somebody taking it'.
Scotty, G and Martray understood that. You get a mitt, a baseball bat or a football and then somebody bigger stole it. You go home without your gear and your ass got whupped by your parents. You try to get it back and your ass got whupped by the bigger kids. It was a no win situation. He had even seen one boy go home and tell his father about the big kids taking his things. The father came storming up to the court but when he saw that the gang of guys playing with his son's gear was bigger than even him he turned around and took his dumb ass right back home—and then whupped the kid anyway.
They were cutting across an empty field when Scotty spotted a little girl running as if she was being chased by the devil. G looked at him.
"Isn't that one…"
Scotty gave him a swift side eye.
" … um … " G looked away. Some topics were never to be spoken of, even between friends; things about Scotty's mother and things about Scotty's father…
Martray didn't really know the score but he knew enough not to ask. They began the walk back down to Winton Terrace, their humor and energy a stark difference to the joking boys that had first come up the hill forty minutes ago.
Scotty heard a song with no music. It sounded good and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn't a song playing on someone's radio or stereo at all, but the familiar voice of a little girl singing a song about loving someone always and forever ...
He stopped. "I'll meet you down there." G looked at him curiously. "I'm going to check on something."
"Aiight, man. Meet me at the crib."
"Yep."
He walked up the hill towards the hilltop using the shirt that was now hanging from his back pocket to mop away the sweat from his face. He was nearly there when he looked up and saw Vanessa standing on the edge of the parking lot, peering down the hill. He had already rounded the sharp curve that would lead to the parking lot so she wasn't looking in his direction but in that minute he thought about a book that he had read last year in American Novel.
It was called The Catcher in the Rye, and in it there was a guy named Holden Caulfield that was as nutty as a fruitcake. But Scotty understood that kind of nuttiness. It was the crazy that people and circumstances made you if you let it … and down deep he understood that it was the nuttiness that probably every person in the world possessed.
Scotty could get with Holden on one thing; they both had a similar desire, only Scotty had not been able to put words to it until reading the book. Holden had this fantasy about saving the children that played too close to the edge of a rye field from falling off the edge. Scotty wanted to do the same thing for himself and his brothers and sisters; not a fall from some rye field, but a fall from innocence.