It Is My Son Who Does Not Believe

SAM KOPERWAS

Ball

A flower grows for every drop of rain that falls. Don't tell me no. In the middle of the darkest night, there is still a candle that is glowing. This I believe., Glowing. If a lost person wanders in the street, somebody will come along to find the way for him. I would swear it on bibles. I believe.

It is my son who does not believe.

He stands in front of me, six-five. His arms hang down to his knees, to his ankles. You don't know how much I love him, my boy. I jump up to hug him. I press my face into his chest.

"You're a basketball player," I yell up to him. "Become a Knickerbocker, son. Listen to your father. Be a Piston, a Pacer."

I stuff vitamins into all his openings. In the house he has to wear lead weights under his socks if he wants to eat.

My son hates a basketball.

He reads books about blood circulation and heart conditions. Set shots he doesn't want to know from. I have to twist the boy's arm before he'll stand up straight.

"Floods wiped out a village in Pakistan," he cries to me. His shoulders slump like rooftops caving in. "Puerto Ricans push carts in the gutter. Beaches are polluted. Where has the buffalo gone?"

"Grow up!" I shout. "What kind of talk is this from a boy? Play basketball and make money. Practice sky hooks. Forget floods, forget buffalo-you're not even a teen-ager yet. What I want from you are slam dunks. God made you tall. Run! Dribble!"

"Pop," he sobs to me. "My boy," I say.

The kitchen tells the story. A history book of inches and feet is here. Growth is here, all the measurements right from the start.

"This is you," I holler. I point to pencil scratches on a leg of the kitchen table. "Right from the hospital I stood you up on those fabulous legs of yours." I touch one mark after another. Tallness, like a beautiful beanstalk, climbs up the broom closet, up the refrigerator, a ladder of height. The inches add up, interest in the bank.

The boy stoops over. These measurements are making him sick. He takes his size like you take a ticket for speeding.

"I can't, Dad. Rapists and inflation and tumors are everywhere."

I grab the boy by the arm. I pull him to the refrigerator, push him against the door, stand him up tall. I point with a father's finger to faint key scratches on the door.

"Nursery school!" I scream. "Right here, son. What a smoothy you were, what a natural. Slop from the table you palmed with either hand. This is your father talking to you. When I cut your bites too big to finish, swish in the garbage bag you dunked them. I saw an athlete, son. I saw a millionaire."

My boy shuts his eyes. He sees stethoscopes behind them. I see basketballs. The do-gooder, he refuses to shoot basketballs. Instead, he reaches for the encyclopedia. My son curls up to read.

Six-six, and growing every day like good stocks. This is an athlete. This is handsome, long and tall, and getting big and getting bigger.

I give him rabbit punches in the kidneys. "Son," I explain to him.

"Dad," he mumbles.

I take my boy to the school yard. Above us is a basket. I point. "Here is a ball. Shoot it!" I shout.

My son looks at the ball in his hands. Then he looks down at me. "I can't, Pop."

Tears plip on his huge sneakers.

"I don't see little rubber bumps, Dad. I see faces of tiny orphans all over the world. Instead of black lines I see segregation and the bald eagle that's becoming extinct. I see unhappiness and things that have to be stitched back together."

He drops the ball, klunk.

I chase after the ball. My boy runs next to me. Frazier does not run smoother, believe me. It breaks my heart.

I bounce the ball to my son and it hits his stomach. He doesn't move the hands that could squash watermelons.

"Wilt Chamberlain has a swimming pool in his house!" I scream up to the boy. "Your father is talking to you. In the house!"

Closer to six-eight than to six-seven and larger every day, every day shooting up like the price of gold. I need a chair to measure him.

"I won't play basketball," he cries to me. "I want to be something. A heart surgeon. I have to help people. How can I play basketball after what we've done to the Navaho and the Cherokee?"

I reach up and grab the boy's ear. I drag him to the basket. I shove the ball into his hands.

"Shoot!" I yell. "Stuff it in! Dribble like Maravich. This is your father speaking to you. Spin the ball on a finger. Make it roll down your arms and behind your neck. Score baskets, son! Make money. Bring scouts. Bring Red Holzman. I want contracts on the doorstep, I want promises."

I stand toe to toe with the boy, nose to stomach. I slam the ball into his belly.

"Son," I whisper. "Pop," he moans.

You should eat an apple every day. This is a proven fact. Every prayer that comes out of your mouth gets listened to. This also is proven. Nobody can tell me different. Somebody up there hears every single word. Argue and I'll slap your eyes out. We live in the land of opportunity.

My boy will be a basketball player.

I slip the ball into his bed at night. I put it on the pillow next to his big sad face.

The boy opens his eyes. They are round, like hoops. "Dad."

"Son."

Under his bed there are electric basketball games covered with dust. Coloring books of basketball players turn yellow in his closet. Basketball pajamas the boy has outgrown I will never throw away.

"Dad."

"Son. "

I am with him at the table when he eats. I love the boy. I marvel at his appetite, whole shipments he packs away. My son can shovel it in. Lamb

chops I set before him with gladness. My eyes are tears when he clears the table, the hamburgers and the shakes and the fries. I make him drink milk. Inside, he is oceans of milk.

"Eat!" I scream. "Get tall and taller. Grow to the skies."

My son rips through new sneakers every two weeks. Owners, managers, franchisers would kill for him right now.

"People starve," the boy says. "There are earthquakes in Peru that don't let me sleep nights. Squirrels are catching cold in the park. Drug addicts and retarded children walk the streets."

My flesh and blood weeps before me, my oil well. Cuffs never make it past the boy's ankles. In less than a week any sleeve retreats from his wrists. "I'm not even thirteen," he sobs. "There's so much to do. Workers without unions get laid off. Every day the earth falls a little closer into the sun. Kidneys fail. I don't know what to do, Pop. Mexicans get gassed. Puppies have to pick grapes."

I run over to the boy. He stoops to hug me.

"You're hot property," I shriek up to him. "Listen to your father. You're land in Florida, son. Scoop shots and pivots. I'm your father. Bounce passes and free throws. Listen to me."

I run to the bedroom. I drop the ball at his feet.

"Look, son. Red, white, and blue. What more could a boy ask for?"

He doesn't pick it up. I have to put the ball in his arms. He cries. He lets the ball drop to the floor. Tears pour down on me from above.

"Son," I say. "Pop," he says.

I lead my boy to a gymnasium. I push him under a basket.

"Turn-around jumpers and tip-ins," I shout up. "That's what I want from you. I want rebounds."

"Please, Pop."

"You're just a boy," I beg. "Listen to your father." I hold the ball out for him to take.

"Pop," he says. "Son," I say.

He takes the ball.

A baby cries and I am moved. A leaf gets touched and I melt. A son bends to take a ball from his father's hands, and ... I ... know ... why . . . I . . . believe.

My son spins the ball. My son eyes the seams. My son pats the ball. My son tests the weight.

"I don't know, Pop."

I reach up a fatherly hand. I tap my boy on the chest.

"Factories murder the air. Russians steal fish." "It was meant for you, son. Try it."

My son drops the ball with just a hint of English and it comes right back to him. He spins the ball again. It bounces back.

My son smiles.

He performs, he does tricks, he experiments. The kid is Benjamin Franklin with a kite, Columbus with a boat. Tears run from our eyes. This is an athlete in front of me. He is happy and tall.

My son is bouncing the ball.

I point to the net. He squeezes the ball. He shakes it. He shoots. Swish.

My son makes baskets. Shot after shot, swish.

I love him. He sinks hook shots, jumpers from half court. "Dad," he shouts.

"My boy," I scream.

He stands up tall. He tosses in baskets from everywhere. He reaches up and drops it through. He holds it with the fingertips of one hand. My six-tenner, he dunks it backward.

He runs, he jumps. He grows. His shoulders straighten, knees straighten. My son is a tree.

He zooms up taller, my seven-footer. I love him. He is enormous.

Buttons pop. The boy tears through his clothing. He grows taller. He throws it in with his eyes closed. His head grows over the rim, over the backboard. His fingers reach from one end of the court to the other.

"Son," I call up to him. "Pop, Pop, Pop.„

He grows taller still. He blasts through the ceiling. My son stands tall and naked. His head is in the sky. I love him, my monster.

He pushes himself up higher. He skyrockets above us. The boy is taller than buildings, bigger than mountains.

"Son," I call.

"Pop, Pop, Pop," he bellows from afar. The boy is gigantic.

He pushes aside skyscrapers. He swallows clouds. He grows. He swats airplanes from the sky with either hand, crushes them between his fingers. He blots out the light.

My son keeps growing. There is thunder when he speaks, an earthquake when he moves. People die.

The boy grows and grows. "Son," I sob.

"Pop, Pop, Pop!"

He grows in the sky. He stretches to the sun. My boy leaps past stars. "Pop, Pop, Pop,„

But it is no longer a human voice I hear from the heavens. When my son speaks, it is the crashing of meteors, the four comers of the galaxy wheeling, wheeling, wheeling toward that outer horizon where the Titans themselves lob a furious ball in lethal play, and the score is always climbing. It is the playground where suns and moons careen in hopeless patterns. It is a void where victors hold frivolous service and cause thunder with tenpins, where old men shower the rain with unholy weeping, where solar systems are deployed in the secondary and every atom is a knuckle ball.

In this I sadly believe. "Son," I say.

The boy is beside me. He is a good boy, a boy who wants to help people: he is young. This boy knows compassion, tenderness, genetics. His head is not in the clouds.

I buy microscope sets for him, medical journals. I bring home tongue depressors for the boy. We dissect frogs together. We cure diseases.

"I've seen things, Dad," he tells me. "My eyes have been opened." "We'll make remedies, son. You'll heal the sick, comfort the needy." "I can't explain it, Dad. It's all more than a basketball."

"You'll patch holes in the earth, son. You'll feed Biafrans, help birds fly south in winter. You'll bring peace to the Mideast, equal rights to women." My son spins the ball in front of him. My son eyes the seams. My son pats the ball. My son tests the weight.

"You'll plug up radium leaks, son, solve busing problems. You'll put the business to venereal disease. You'll grow bananas that don't spoil. Listen to me. You'll invent cars that don't shrink, cotton goods that run on water. I am your father."

The boy does not hear. Nobody does. Babies are born every second and every one of them cries. Leaves by the millions turn brown in the street. The sky is all poisonous particles.

He shoots the ball at a basket. Swish. He spins them in off the backboard. Swish. Flips from comers. Swish.

I clutch at my chest.

"Here comes a lefty hook, Pop." Swish.

I collapse at his feet. The boy looms over me. Cancers strike at my vitals.

Seizures grip me. Plagues and pestilence and uncertainty flood my veins. Pandora’s box breaks open in my heart.

My son looks down at me. He twirls the ball on a terrible finger. I look up at a son whose hands could cradle nations.

“Son,” I beg.

“Not now, Pop.”

He bounces the ball on my stomach. Once, twice, three times for luck. He dribbles between his legs, behind his back. My son flies to the basket. My son soars to his laurels over my dead body.