I plop down next to my little brother. “What’s banging, D?” he asks, but doesn’t look up. He’s deep into a game of NBA 2K13, taking the sticks with the Thunder against the Heat. I cling to beliefs that the Pacers will break through some day, but Jay’s a front-runner, and as I finish my dinner he throws an alley-oop from Westbrook to Durant.
I pick up the other controller. “Start it over,” I say.
“Naw, D,” he says. “Lemme finish this.”
I nudge him with my elbow. “Start it over. I’m gonna run you off the floor.”
He laughs, cocky. “Bring it,” he says. There’s nothing better than spending time with my little brother. As soon as the season starts, though, we don’t get to hang as often so he’s excited to get a little attention. “I got the Thunder!” he calls.
“Take ’em,” I say. “I’ll run with whoever you want and I’ll still take you.”
He laughs again, then locks me in with New Orleans.
“Fine with me,” I say. “I can drop fifty with Gordon.” That draws more laughter from Jayson, but it’s not far from the truth. Being a young point guard from Indianapolis, I heard that name—Eric Gordon—whispered more than a few times last year. As in: That kid’s the next Eric Gordon. Sure, I know the line—I’m supposed to be the first Derrick Bowen, not the next anyone else—but I’ve followed Gordon’s rise in the league. Even slicing through his defense with Gordon, though, it’s not long before Jayson opens up a lead on me and starts talking trash.
“You too slow on the sticks,” he says.
“You got no skills,” he says.
“Oooh, I’m goin’ by you again,” he says.
I have no problem with my little brother running smack. He sure runs enough from the stands when he’s watching me play. Last year I swear he almost made the kid guarding me cry.
Finally, at the end of the first quarter, he looks up at me. “How’d your first practice go, D?” he asks.
For a second, I think about telling him about Coach Bolden getting on me, but then I realize I shouldn’t worry him. It made enough of a mess between my parents so no reason to drag Jayson into it.
“Let’s just say this,” I say. “All those things you do in the game with Westbrook? I’m gonna do that in real life.”
“Cool,” he says. As he looks up at me, I can see his imagination spinning out, envisioning all the buzzer-beaters and championships in my future. His excitement is so infectious it kind of puts things right for me again.
We turn back to the game. For a while, the only sounds are our thumbs on the sticks and the play-by-play on the television. At timeouts, though, I can hear my parents droning in the other room. They’re not yelling at each other, but I can tell they’re hashing out some serious stuff.
I ignore them and turn back to the game, but even as I do it, I know that those conversations won’t wait forever. As much as I resent not being treated like an adult—by my parents, by guys like Brownlee down at the park—I know that when I enter that world, it won’t be just games anymore.
4.
Wes and I walk down 34th toward school. My parents both have to be at work early, and my mom takes Jayson to the same school where she teaches, so Wes and I hoof it. In some ways, I like it. Wes lives two doors down from me on Patton, and when it’s just us walking these streets—these blocks we’ve known our entire lives—it feels like we own the city. That creepy old house on Patton with the two cement lions spray-painted black and gold manes, guarding the porch: ours. The old apartment complex on 34th where Wes and I used to explore abandoned units before the city boarded it up: ours. All that traffic flying down Central—the buses wheezing along, the businessmen hustling through what they think is a shady part of town—that’s ours. And, amid all that, these old houses here and there that have been kept up nice—no peeling paint, no rusting scooters or overturned wheelbarrows or piles of bricks in the yards—they belong to us too.
“So why’d Bolden get so pissed?” Wes asks. He shivers inside his big coat when the wind whips around the corner. The sky is watery gray and there’s just a drop of rain now and then. It feels like it could sleet, lay down a sheet of black ice.
“Who knows why coaches do what they do?” I say.
He elbows me in the side. “C’mon Derrick,” he says. “You don’t have to put up some front. Why’d Bolden jump you?”
“Honestly, Wes. All I did was show off my hops. But, you know, coaches have to prove their points.”
Wes laughs but tells me I better not mess around, that he doesn’t want to hear noise for four years about Coach this and Coach that.
We go another block and then he says, “We got time.” He’s got that tone he used to get when we’d search through those old apartments when we were kids. I’d think we were going to get caught, but he’d always egg me on: Nobody’s coming, he’d say, let’s hit one more unit. Bet we find a TV left behind!
“Naw,” I say now. “No time. Place isn’t even open.”
“Hell, yes, we got plenty of time,” Wes says. And with that he’s off, down 34th. Instead of stopping at the Marion East campus, he goes on to Central and up the street. I know where he’s going. 38th. Window shopping. There between the Domino’s and a payday loan place is Ty’s Tower. Not much of a tower, really, just two stories, but it’s the nicest place on 38th, and in that front window Ty’s got all the fresh new kicks on display. Wes might not ball, but he’s a sneakerhead extraordinaire, and when I catch up to him he’s got his hands wrapped on the metal gate, his nose between the bars, checking out the displays.
“Those,” he says, “are butter.” Wes is always looking for something new. He comes down here weekly to stare at the same pair of Lunar Hyperdunks, even though he can’t even dribble with his head up.
“You don’t even play.” I give him a little punch in the arm.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t need new flavor for Christmas,” he says. He points up to some sharp Timberlands. “Those are what I need.” If he had his way, his closet would be waist-high in kicks, a fresh pair for every day of the year, but we both know he’ll be getting just one new pair for Christmas when his dad makes it in from St. Louis and swings up here with Wes—best day of the year for both of them.
I don’t really care about window shopping in near-freezing weather, but it’s just cool hanging with Wes, killing 10 minutes before first bell.
Yes, this is our part of Indianapolis. Like my mom, I love it. It doesn’t matter that those old apartments are boarded up—that’s where Wes and I played when we were kids. And it doesn’t matter that for every house on Patton that’s kept up there’s another that’s beat to hell—that’s my street.
But, like my dad, I know what’s beyond Fall Creek, beyond 38th. How can you not? I mean, you get across Fall Creek on Central now and the first thing you see is a fancy coffee shop and a yoga center. Not that I want to ever set foot in a yoga center, but there are times when I can see my dad’s point: somebody high up decided to care about those blocks. The world doesn’t end at our neighborhood, and what’s outside of it has plenty of promise.
For now, though, even Wes knows it’s time to get back down to school. We run. I lengthen my stride to pull ahead of Wes, who’s hilariously slow with his choppy little steps, so I slow back down so we’re step for step up the stairs to Marion East.
The grip on my shoulder is tight, and I flinch under it,