Playing Without the Ball by Rich Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

walk along Main, which is empty of people and traffic. I walk the four blocks to the river against a stiff wind, then cross over to Park Street and head toward the cliff. I pass the YMCA and cross the bridge over the creek, then follow a short dirt path until it starts to climb. You have to use your hands here for a few feet, pulling yourself up with roots and handholds. Then you’re on a real path that circles through the woods, up the hill, toward the cliff that overlooks the town.
    I turn off onto another path about three-quarters of the way up, following a ridge that heads into deeper woods. The maple leaves are long fallen, curled brown and frozen underfoot. There are tiny flakes of snow coming down, just on the snow side of frozen rain. The wind is icy. It feels like winter.
    “You should have gone down to New Jersey.” He sounds disappointed, but concerned. My father.
    “I had no way to get there.”
    “Oh, come on. She would have driven up. You know that.”
    “I didn’t feel like it.”
    “Please call her.”
    “I will.”
    “I mean now. As soon as you hang up with me.”
    “Yeah.”
    There’s a long silence. I’m in the tiny hallway between the bathrooms at the diner, standing next to the pay phone.
    “Jay.”
    “Dad.”
    “You want to come out here?”
    “No.” I don’t say it as strongly as I feel it. “Not really.”
    “You can come now. Finish school out here.”
    “Screw that.”
    “You’re still coming when you graduate?”
    “If I graduate.”
    “What do mean, if?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think school’s the place for me anymore. I got cut from the basketball team.”
    “So you want to quit school because of basketball?”
    “Not just that.”
    I hear him take a big breath and an exhale. “Listen. This isn’t the best time to talk about all this. You’re upset because you got cut and you’re alone on a day that we’ve always been together. Things will be looking better by the weekend, I’m sure.”
    He’s probably right. “I know,” I say.
    “They will. Now call your mom. Call collect. And call me back in a couple of days. Okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I love you, kid.”
    “I know.”
    “Keep your chin up.”
    “See ya.”
    I hang up. The diner is virtually empty—who eats at a diner on Thanksgiving? But I’m starving and I don’t feel like having Cheerios again. So I take a booth.
    There are two old burnouts way down the end of the counter drinking coffee, a guy about my father’s age at the register, and the new waitress. We’re the only people in here.
    The waitress smiles at me and comes over with a questioning kind of look on her face. “Hi,” she says. Her name tag says Brenda.
    “Hey.”
    “Just you?” she says.
    “Uh, yeah. Just need a quick bite.”
    “Oh. You need a menu?”
    “Nah.”
    “Okay. Well we have turkey and stuff. Maybe you already had enough of that today?”
    I smile and nod, lying with my gestures. “I think I’ll get chicken salad on a roll. With, um, fries and a Coke.”
    “Sure. You want cranberry sauce? We’re giving it away.”
    “Nah. Maybe a salad, though.”
    “Okay.”
    She comes back two minutes later with the Coke and a big bowl of salad. There’s extra things in it like raw broccoli and carrot sticks. The waitress is wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans, and her ponytail is starting to unravel.
    “The sandwich’ll be ready in a minute,” she says.
    “Thanks.”
    She walks away nicely and I feel the kind of pang I’ve been getting a lot of lately.
    After she brings the sandwich, she goes to the end of the counter to check on the coffee guys, then comes back down to my end and sits at a booth in the corner. There are about twenty small clear salt shakers on the table, and she starts filling them from one of those big cylindrical containers, leaning way over so she doesn’t spill any. She’s more or less on the periphery of my vision, so I can watch her without being obvious. When I glance up, the guy