Rules For Becoming A Legend Part 1

Rules for becoming a Legend.

a novel.

Timothy S. Lane.

for Tiffany Leigh, of course.

Like all legends, the legend of Jimmy "Kamikaze" Kirkus starts as an actual event and grows bigger than that. It grows like everything seems to grow in the Pacific Northwest rain. Tall and tangled. Slick and tricky. Changing all the time. Eating and rotting and molting-but always growing.

Part One.

Rule 1. Value Those Who Keep Your Secrets.

Monday, December 17, 2007.

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD-MOMENTS UNTIL THE WALL.

Look at this kid in the high tops. Purer kid you never seen. Pure in his intentions, pure in his eyes, and most important, oh top of the list for the 8,652 residents of Columbia City, Oregon: pure in his jump shot.

Jimmy Kirkus, alone in this gym. This old sweat-soaked gym people call the Brick House. This basketball cathedral tucked away to be forgotten-like the loose hair gathered behind Jimmys ear before he shoots foul shots-in the hilly, green folds of his small town. Forgotten, that is, except during winter: basketball season. In those coldest months the Brick House really heats up. Pulls people from a fifty-mile radius to duck in from the rain and the fog. To scream and love their team. To stomp their feet in the detritus of past games: stale popcorn, sticky candy wrappers, and crumpled game-day programs. To GO, FIGHT, WIN. Ever since four kids from Columbia City High went on to lead University of Oregon to the NCAA championship in the 1930s-and earn the nickname the Tall Firs-this town has been all about the dribble, dribble, shoot. Basketball to Columbia City is ma.s.s to church: a weekly expression of faith.

And Jimmy Kirkus was once anointed savior.

Jimmy-look at him-its like hes floating in the yellow light on the edge of the three-point arc. Outside the gym hes a fish out of water, but here and now, kids in his ocean. Flashing out in sparkly jumps, splashing down ball after ball.

Somethings wrong though. His eyes are filled to the brim. His nose is runny and his throat catches on every breath.

He goes and finds the breaker box. Turns off all the lights. There are far-off clicks from within the walls. Goodnight, goodnight, they say, and the whirring of fluorescent light slows and then stops. Then darkness.

The only thing lit anymore is the EXIT sign. Shines on and on. Enough light so he can still see the names hes written and rewritten over the years on his gray basketball. One is darker and thicker than the others. Three letters. Painful to see. He grunts and throws the ball. It sails over the bleachers but bounces off something metallic. Stubbornly, it rolls back and stops a few feet away. Wont leave him, not yet.

Right under the hoop is thick blue padding, so Jimmy lines up to the left, where bare red brick wall starts. He kneels into sprinters position. Puts his fingertips on either side of the out of bounds line. Its his runway and hes cleared for takeoff. He explodes a few steps. Then slows, then stops. He turns around, hands on his head. Back at midcourt, every sound he makes-breath or step-echoes. Its like someone is in the gym with him, whispering something, and he can never turn fast enough to catch him.

He drops to the floor and does ten quick push-ups. He leaps to his feet. Once again into sprinters position. Once again an explosion of speed for a few feet and then let up, slow down, stop.

He cant do it. Hes crying now. Face is slick with water. The wetness catches the shiny red of the EXIT light. Hes coughing and his nose wont stop running. He takes off his shirt. He rips it in two. Listen how he screams so the echoes of the gym rise up to join him. The cold air touching his chest helps. A little. So he takes off his shorts. Over his shoes. Just in his underwear he crouches to the gym floor. Hes shivering worse than ever but hes breathing still. If kids got nothing else, hes got determination.

Up onto fingertips.

Toes dug in.

There he goes. Away from being Jimmy Soft and toward becoming Kamikaze Kirkus. Squeak, squeak, swish, swish, away with the old and in with the new . . .

It takes him fourteen full-out strides at the fastest he can muster to get to that brick wall. He plans on meeting it with open eyes. But. Some things you cant plan for. Sweat for one thing. Automatic reflexes for another. He closes his eyes at the last second, puts up his hands-the coward. Jimmy Soft. His head does. .h.i.t the wall, but not full on. It hurts, but not enough.

Theres a weakness in him and he wants to shake it loose, bang it out. He stands back up. Dumb kid. Gonna try it again. Same spot he started from as before. Sprinters position. Just twelve long strides this time. Eyes open. Brick wall coming. He does it. Keeps them open the whole while. Hands down at his side, helpless to help. Amazing, his eyes stay focused on the wall as long as they do. Cracks and textures of it. From four feet, from one, from six inches.

Crack.

Boom.

Light.

Let there be light . . .

Hit is something he hears and doesnt feel. Or the other way around? He cant tell. It scrambles his senses. Makes a shape in his head bone he thinks he can smell as metallic. He feels blinking white light rain from every eave inside his head. Like when his pops spent an entire curse-soaked Sunday cleaning out the gutters of their house. Everything that had ever been blown up there came down. Then, on accident, he knocked the Christmas lights down too. They blinked on their way to the ground.

It all drops. And so does he. A knife of hurt thrusting into the front of his head so big his skull cant hold it. Not even close. He rolls to his back and stares up into the blackness, vents some of the pain in a crying jag. Theres a security camera somewhere in the Brick House, but Jimmy thinks with the lights killed, its too dark to pick him up.

After three times into the brick wall, Jimmy moves slower, but hes figured it out. There is always a moment before he hits when he can still put up his hands. If he gets past this moment then bravery has nothing to do with it. The hit is coming. He gets good at getting past this moment. His head throbs and the blood hesitates at his eyebrows before mixing with sweat and running faster to his chin. Everything is red. He cant focus. Hes singing to himself, a Paul Simon song of all things. Hes tuneless and spotty with the lyrics. "People say shes crazy, got diamonds on her shoes. Lose them walking blues." A teenaged dude singing Paul Simon? Must be something very wrong with him.

Back at midcourt he spits b.l.o.o.d.y, mucus-filled saliva onto waxed wood floor. Lines up, runs again. Slips a few steps in and slides painfully on his bare chest. Worst Indian burn you ever saw. Turns the skin see-through to the blood and muscle beneath, some of his chest hair ripped off. Hurts in the same rhythm as his heart.

He stands up and tries to blink his vision clear enough to see the brick wall. Hes only five or six steps from it. Theres something wrong with his balance though. He sways. He coughs but vomit comes up. He tries to keep it down by closing his mouth, and it erupts through his nose. Mixes with the blood of his chin and then dribbles to the floor.

Oh d.a.m.n, our kids a mess.

He shouts up into the blackness. "With Dex Kirkus in the. Middle. Jimmy outside. The Fishermen, Fishermen are a lock for Clatsop t.i.tle! And Jimmy Kirkus shoots. He shoots. He SHOOTS, he SCORES!" Hes crying harder. Its for everything. For Dex, his mom, and even himself. "f.u.c.king sand toads," he murmurs, "all bitten up from sand toads."

He decides, f.u.c.k it. Runs from there. The wall is in the ether distance. Hes determined to give it the beat down. Give it the knowledge. He runs at it, as fast as he can. A dogged trot, hes a pub brawler gearing up for a head b.u.t.t. This wall. This stupid, f.u.c.king wall. He brings his head forward at full speed. Crunches into the red stone. Forehead, poor forehead, smashes the bricks and the cut grows bigger. Big enough to swallow. Jimmy falls for the final time that night. Shes got diamonds on the soles. His brain too haywire to instruct his hands to save him. He smacks the back of his skull. Feels like frayed wires are trying to pa.s.s electricity inside his head. Explosion of sparks. Jimmy gone down.

Rule 2. Come from Nowhere.

Friday, December 20, 1985.

JIMMY KIRKUS NOT YET BORN-TWENTY-TWO YEARS UNTIL THE WALL.

Todd Kirkus drove Genny Mori way out to Area C on the jetty and parked. They were young and it was a Friday. Out here, past areas A and B, they had privacy-and the starry sky. This far down the alphabet the beach was too hard-chewed by the Pacific to get any tourists outside the occasional treasure-hunter. And at night? May as well been Todds bedroom. The stars, meanwhile, were the excuse. It was how he got all his girls to come out here with him. "Youve got to see the stars from the jetty. Theyre beautiful. Its like that swirly painting by the guy who lost his ear? You know."

After he parked, he climbed into the back of the minivan. "Check it out," he said. He clicked the rear seats down until they were flat and he stared up at his personal sliver of sky through the rear window.

Genny Mori was a notorious prude and stayed in the front, but Todd was wearing her down, as he was known to do. "I know this trick," she said.

"Oh come on, I just want to show you the stars." The line came easy. It was well used. "More s.p.a.ce than youd think back here, Genny-baby." And it really was big back there, and charming in a way, to be so warm and cozy with winters ocean so close.

"I can see the stars fine from here," she said, though Todd knew it was a lie. To see anything from the front seat, shed have to lean uncomfortably over the dashboard and then crane her head up.

"Genny-honey, come on." Todd was whining, but he liked her reluctance-the one girl in school who hadnt come easy. Bravely he pressed on. This was their fifth date. Usually by this point Todd knew his girlfriends favorite positions and was plotting his exit strategy-so goes life for a high school basketball star in Columbia City. With Genny though, all hed got was enough heavy petting to start a campfire.

Todd also liked that she looked different than everyone else. A full-blooded j.a.panese and simultaneously the hottest and strangest thing in town. Hot because she was a dusty, dark-eyed girl blessed with full lips and a sound little shelf of an a.s.s perfect for eyes and hands to rest on. Strange because the Mori family, aside from the random Mexicans who worked their way through for fruit-picking season, was the one little splash of color in the Scandinavia-white gene pool of Columbia City. No, scratch "little splash," more like cannon ball.

Then there was the fact that she only had her mom around. A bond because he only had his dad. It was a connection that seemed obvious and trite on paper but meaningful in real life. He didnt flinch with Genny while talking about his home life like he did with the others. She knew the language, her own experience rhymed with it.

Todd heard Genny Mori blow out air and knew she was clearing her bangs from her eyes. It was a habit hed learned to love in her. So cute. She started climbing back. "This vans gross."

He helped her crawl over him to the s.p.a.ce at his side and squeezed her a.s.s on the way. She slapped his hand for it, which caused her to lose balance and tumble face-first into those utilitarian seats. She squealed.

"Uh, I think theres something wet back here," she said.

Todd knew his van was gross. It had been a place of countless hookups, impromptu lunchtime parties, and was a moldering mobile gym locker to boot. He spent all his time in that squeaky gray van because it was the one place his father, a man everyone knew as the Flying Finn, wouldnt come.

"Ill get something nicer when I hit the big times," he told her.

So there it was, and he had been the one to say it. Everyone knew Todd was going to star in the NBA someday. He was that good at basketball.

"What car will you get?" Genny was on her side, looking at him, and he could tell she was trying to keep something out of her voice. Her breath was hot with the rum hed brought them.

Todd traced her calves with his fingertips, all the way up to that gorgeous a.s.s. "Something hot," he said. "Mercedes, or Porsche."

A pause filled the close air between them and Todd wondered what she made of him. Everyone in this small town had an opinion and he was almost scared to hear hers. Maybe she was one of these girls who were frightened of him. Thinks hes all bang, bang, boom, on to the next one. She wouldnt be exactly wrong to think this-his reputation for getting with girls was exaggerated, but only slightly-but she also wouldnt be exactly right. Worse, she could be one of those chicks looking to hitch a ride. Willing to roll around with him as long as it got them somewhere. His father was always warning about girls spreading their legs to become part of the target. Todd was in the position of not being able to rea.s.sure Genny if she was the first type of girl, and being entirely uninterested in her-beyond the night-if she was the second.

Then, as if she could read his mind, in a voice so soft it tickled him, "I didnt believe that letter to the editor about you." Here it was-what she thought of him. "It isnt true. Youre good for the team."

She was talking about the anonymous letter that had appeared in the Columbia City Standard. The headline ran, Could Freight Train Derail Fishermen Basketball?, and it had become this burrowing worm in Todds thoughts ever since it was published back in November. Hadnt he already brought the Fishermen a state t.i.tle as a junior? Wasnt he leading them to a second? If he ever found out who wrote it, there would be pieces of that unfortunate man all over town.

"Thanks. Its bulls.h.i.t, you know?" Todd said, anger rising just talking about it.

"I never did believe it," she said.

He let out a breath, settled. "Why do you like me, Genny?"

"I never said I did."

"Youre funny."

And he was on her, and they were going. She was a river, her mouth, her tongue, and it was all rushing into him with drunken fury. Todd was surprised to feel her move in enthusiastic, if not expert ways, to have her take a certain amount of control. It was like nothing hed had with her before-worlds different from the tedious stroking shed reluctantly given him up until then. It thrilled him, pushed him on. Naked and without a condom-because Todd never guessed it would actually happen with Genny Mori, not so soon-he stopped, poised on the edge.

Then Genny Mori said, "OK, just this once. But pull out?" A permission they would both look back on, sometimes, as a mistake.

A memory flashed into Todds head. Fifth grade. Genny Mori in pigtails running to her fathers car. It was raining and there were puddles everywhere. Mr. Mori-the towns dentist for the short while he stuck around-was shouting something to her in j.a.panese and she was ignoring him. Little Genny avoided every single puddle along the way. Her father yelled louder and still she gave him no mind. Todd imagined he was telling her to hurry up, and so she was taking her time instead. Skirting every puddle instead of jumping them, or stomping through. Rebelling. She had seemed so brave to Todd. Brave and sad. He wouldnt have been able to stand up to the Flying Finn like that.

d.a.m.n, Todd thought, losing steam in the present as he got lost in the past, get it done now or its not going to get done. So he pushed in. Then it happened quicker and bigger than Todd thought it could, and he told her, shivering, "Well s.h.i.t."

And she said, "Thats OK, Todd."

So Todd said, "OK, baby," and he pulled her closer and held her long enough to feel the warm wet turn cold. He held her even when he wanted to stop just because of the way she said "Thats OK, Todd." And really in that moment it all seemed just fine because he knew she thought she loved him, and he thought it might be OK because he could do whatever he wanted back then, even fall in love with this girl. Everyone from Seattle to San Francisco knew who he was. Scholarship offers, s.h.i.t, those were a dime a dozen. Todd was NBA-bound and everyone knew it. He was bigger than U2. At least in that little green-and-blue patchwork quilt sewed with the seamless st.i.tching of fog and rain we call the Pacific Northwest he was. G.o.dd.a.m.n. Besides, who ever got pregnant from one time?

This was Jimmys father as a young man: basketball stud, biggest thing to hit town since Fred Meyers department store, and always headed for bigger, better things.

A month and a half later Todd Kirkus and the rest of the team rolled south on a yellow bus done up in streamers and washable paint. It had been a good season for Todd; hed led the Fishermen to an 18-1 record heading into the playoffs. There was greatness in the air and Columbia City decamped to Eugene to witness their beloved Todd "Freight Train" Kirkus win his second state t.i.tle and cement himself as the greatest Fisherman to play the game-even the legendary Tall Firs had only won one in high school, and had needed four great players to get it. Added to this was the heady a.s.surance that Todd was bound for fame and riches. He was the top recruit in the country, famous coaches called him by first name, and it didnt seem too big a leap to imagine him endorsing sneakers one day. Native son done good? Naw, native son done gold.

On the bus ride south, Coach Kelly got teary-eyed as he addressed the team, standing in the aisle, holding the leather bench seats for support. "A big couple of days coming up, and-" He coughed. Paused, looked out the window.

"Hold it together, Coach," Todd called out. "Cant have you crying in McArthur Court, thats for the girls."

Coach smiled, looked down the length of the bus, let the laughter from Todds joke roll off his back, and then continued. "Be sure to call it The Pit, boys." Coach Kellys eyes sparkled in reverence of the University of Oregon basketball arena. "Always call it The Pit because, because-"

And Todd interrupted him by starting the team on the unofficial cheer, not letting Coach Kelly find his thought: Three cheers for Columbia City High, you bring the whiskey, Ill bring the rye . . . and on and on.

In the early rounds of the tournament Todd was as unstoppable as, well, a freight train. He got his shots in, clean and true; and when the defenses collapsed, he kicked it out to James Berg, a small, wily guard with a knockdown shot who only ever smiled when Todd pointed his way, slapped his back, gave him a high five.

James Berg was Todds best-only-friend on that team where the other players were disgusted by his c.o.c.kiness. The way he held up his hand after making a shot, bantered with the refs like it was all childs play, spoke of himself in the third person during postgame interviews and found scouts in the stands to nod at after big plays. James somehow saw through it to the funny, kind kid he met at the community pool one summer when they were both in third grade. Theyd debated which trucks-Dodge or Ford-were the best. This alliance despite-or maybe because of-the bad blood between their fathers that had boiled up back when the Flying Finn had inexplicably beaten Berg for a position on the City Council.

Todd and James going against their overbearing fathers by being friends was a sweet, early helping of revolt. James had been at Todds side ever since.

The wins in the early rounds came so easy, Todd usually sat out the second half, scanning the crowd for Genny and giving her looks. After games there would be a team meal and then hed sit in the hotel pool, feeling weightless. Then, after curfew, hed slip the a.s.sistant coach in charge of keeping watch and go out the service door. It was three parking lots, no roads, hurdling the hedges and crouching behind cars, until Tall Pines Motel-the place Genny was staying with her friend, Bonnie. Two twin beds. Todd and Genny on one, a p.i.s.sed-off Bonnie on the other.

"Seriously, keep it clean," Bonnie would always say.

"Im a gentleman, Bonnie. Always a gentleman." Then lights off and hed squeeze Genny close, b.u.t.t to pelvis, back to chest. Hands clasped on her belly. After a while hed trace a fingertip down her side, around her b.u.t.t, into the s.p.a.ce between the legs. It tickled her, and he liked it when she squirmed. Hed be growing bigger by then, and do nothing to hide it. Then it was all starts and stops, whispering, "Do you think shes awake?"

Todd couldnt sleep with another person on a bed so small. By the time the very first rays of light were escaping the dark womb of night, he would be gone, closing the door softly behind him, back to the hotel room he shared with James in a string of rooms taken up by the Fishermen team. Walking upright and proud along the road-too early for anyone to see him and get him in trouble.

Then another team breakfast, another soak in the pool, and his father taking him out for lunch.

"You know who call me last night," the old man whispered across the diner table. "Larry Brown!" He looked around to see if anyone was listening, like this was a state secret. In an even lower voice, comical and growly, lacing his plate of half-finished home fries with white spit, "the coach for the New Jersey Nets!"

This kind of talk from his father sank Todd and his appet.i.te. A man who could polish off whole herds of cattle at a single sitting, he only managed a few mouthfuls when with the Flying Finn.

"Well, we got a lot of offers from colleges too, old man," Todd told him.

"Let me asks the question." The Flying Finn held his fork up, as if the tines were the irrefutable proof to what he was about to say. "They pay you for the basketball in college? No, they pay nothing!"

Then it was back with the team for a pregame meeting, and later, off to The Pit for a game with whoever the Fishermen were going to roll on that night. Then the cycle would start all over. Four rounds of playoffs knocked back in a line, one after the other, and it made the fans, even seeping out into the general public, giddy drunk on the historical dominance they were seeing from Todd Kirkus and the Columbia City Fighting Fishermen.

On the morning of the t.i.tle game between Columbia City and a rough and tumble team of boys out of Madras, Genny Mori took a pregnancy test. She peed on a stick and found she was with child in the Tall Pines fluorescent-lit bathroom. Staying there without her mother, she was supposed to feel like an adult; a grown-up. There in that bathroom though, she felt younger than ever before. There it was in faint blue liquid at the bottom of a gla.s.s vial: the p.r.o.nouncement she would forever be linked to Todd Kirkus.

Never had she wanted to hear her mothers voice so much as just then; even if it was only yelling in a language she didnt understand, with a frustration that always seemed outsized. Genny never could relate to her mother-her temper, her perfectionism, her odd need to hide socks full of change around the house-but she still needed her.