"Solid Ivory" Chapter 3Index<< Over the first few weeks of summer vacation, Jack began to think he might finally be starting to grow up. For as long as he could remember, he had been clumsy and awkward. As if, rather than belonging in his body, he was a swing shift employee at the controls of a machine he hardly understood. If it were delicate and he were holding it, it would be dropped. If it were slippery (or often, not) and he were walking, he would fall. If it were a game, and he was playing, he would lose. His lack of coordination was legendary. The few nice (and remaining) fragile items in his small house had been, years ago, transported to the highest of shelves by the increasingly frustrated Maureen Reed. Tim Downey seemed, at least to Jack, to be gifted in all the areas in which he was deficient. Tim was the uncontested champion of their nightly basketball games, which they often played until Maureen Reed began her dinner call. Both Jack and Tim had become faithful subjects of the tattered and barely netted hoop hanging in the Downey’s driveway since earlier that spring. Tim, as the youngest of three boys, was a child of constant hand-me-downs and hazing. He had rarely worn an article of clothing not passed through two previous owners. The loving torment and brotherly beatings administered by Dave and Chris Downey, rather than forcing Tim to match his ill-fitting (and often torn) attire, had instead sharpened both his reflexes and his wit to a clinical edge. While he may never have won any fights against his brothers (especially because they frequently joined forces against him), Tim nonetheless entered any physical altercation with the sole intention of doing as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible. Jack, on the other hand, never had the opportunity to develop any sort of offensive style, as retaliation against his father would possibly be a fatal mistake. Nonetheless, for every possible night since Tim’s birthday the previous April, both boys had played basketball until parental intervention or lack of light made it impossible. For his fourteenth birthday, Tim had received a brand new basketball. While both Dave and Chris maintained that it was a consolation prize for being “the runt of the litter,” it was nonetheless his and his alone. As a relative first in his hand-me-down history, Tim took great pride in sharing it with Jack. His pride did not extend to charity, however. To say that Jack was ‘no match’ for Tim implies a level of hope or a chance that simply wasn’t present. Despite his smaller size, Tim moved with a basketball as if he were born for the game. Well trained younger brother that he was, he destroyed Jack in ninety-five percent of their games. The remaining five percent of the time, he let Jack win by the smallest possible margin, fearing that without some form of reward or incentive, Jack would lose interest in the game altogether. He needn’t have worried. Jack was just happy to be out of the house. No figurative beating on a basketball court (or driveway) could possibly compare to the literal ones he experienced at home. Tim literally danced around Jack during their games; especially when he was feeling particularly vindictive. He was never short of breath; every movement deliberate, he moved up and down the driveway with a constant look of lazy satisfaction on his face. In contrast, Jack was a shambles. He lurched around as if he were assembled from spare parts – some sort of Chuck Taylor clad Frankenstein. On the rare occasion he actually managed to wrest the ball from Tim’s possession ( usually part of that elusive five percent, when Downey ‘accidentally’ let it fall from his hands), he was just as likely to trip over it as he were to dribble it in the direction of the hoop. At the beginning of that summer, however, all that began to change. With school barely over for the year, it was not quite watermelon weather yet, but the shorts were on and pumpkins and sweaters were a million miles away. |
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