Playing Days by Benjamin Markovits Read Free Book Online

hardly touched; he nursed his bottle for most of the afternoon. Over lunch he showed me photographs of the house he was building outside Chicago, towards the Michigan border. That’s where he ‘lived,’ he said. He spent every off-season with a few buddies adding to it. His father had worked in construction, Charlie practically grew up on building sites, and his dad was doing a little job for him now, digging the foundations for a tennis court at the back of his yard.
    â€˜Somewhere to retire to,’ I said, ‘at the age of thirty-five.’
    He thought he’d have to wait longer than that. His face seemed almost hidden beneath the rough scars of acne; it was capable of keeping a great deal back. He said, ‘I don’t suppose you’re in it for more than a year or two. You got other plans.’
    â€˜What are those?’ I asked, smiling.
    But it seemed the wrong note, and he didn’t respond. I told him eventually that I wanted to be a writer, that I thought basketball might be an interesting way to pay a few bills. Besides, I could always write something about the experience.
    That’s right, Charlie nodded. ‘I guessed you had something else on your mind.’
    â€˜What do you mean, something else?’
    â€˜Something other than basketball.’
    In the course of the afternoon, he had quietly attended to his flowerpots, deadheading the late roses, looking for slugs, etc. and he stood up now to fill the watering can from a tap in the outside wall. ‘I’ve played with guys like you before,’ he said, ‘stuck inside they own head. So you let all these bullies push you around. I know, I’m one of them. You got to stand up for yourself.’ He lowered his voice a note or two and put on his angry face, his ‘black’ voice. ‘I’m talking about Milo,’ he said. ‘Don’t let him be teaching you nothing. You ain’t his A student. He ain’t your teacher. Next time he tells you what to do, I don’t care what it is, just cold cock him.’
    He slapped a fist against his hand. After a minute, he added, ‘You’re giving me that look again. Like you’re taking it all in.’
    The watering can was empty, so he returned to fill it. And began to explain himself, as he made his parade among the flowers. He had been in this country ten years now. The first job he took was in Gelsenkirchen, which reminded him of parts of Ohio, prosperous, industrial. At that time, the club was in the fourth division. They didn’t have the money to pay him a full wage. Part of his job was looking after handicapped kids. He was twenty-two years old and had rarely been out of the Midwest. The homesickness was as bad as pneumonia; it all but put him to bed. He had never dealt with disability before, and the experience came at a difficult time: he was young and healthy and full of himself. And beginning to doubt himself, too – a bad combination.
    â€˜I hated those kids,’ he said, ‘didn’t want to look at them. But I took them swimming, got them changed again. Cleaned up they poopy diapers. Some of them four, five years old. Most of them happier than me.’
    He had expected, if nothing else, that the basketball would be OK – he could put up with a lot so long as the basketball was OK. He figured on teaching the Germans how to play. Instead he discovered that there were a lot of guys who could shoot better than he could shoot, jump higher than he could jump, run faster than he could run. If someone had asked him back then, would he last till Christmas, he’d have said, hell no.
    â€˜I’m hoping to make it to Hanukkah,’ I said.
    He looked up at me then. ‘Oh, you’re not that bad,’ he said. ‘That just shows how much you know.’
    There was a garden attached to the clinic, and he used to help out the nurse responsible for keeping it up. Gardening was supposed to be very