Chapter Seven

The Game

The darkened apartment was suddenly flooded with light from the hallway as the door slowly opened and Ron Benson stepped inside. He was unusually casual as he turned the light on at the door, tossed his basketball in the recliner, removed his jacket and hung it on the cloak stand. He turned CNN on in the living room as he moved to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door and took out a partial gallon of milk, and quickly gulped seven or eight mouthfuls of the soothing liquid straight from the container to appease his aching ulcers.

As he leaned on the kitchen counter to watch the news, the TV announcer is excitedly broadcasting an amazing event that had happened at the 2010 NBA championship game between the Knickerbockers and the Lakers earlier in the evening. He glanced over at the time on the microwave - the clock read 1:12a. While he stared blankly at the TV screen, he started to drift off into his own thoughts.

He began thinking back to when his father, Ralph, was a twelve-year old, sitting transfixed on the edge of the lower bunk in a small back bedroom he had shared with an older and a younger sister. He was all alone in the room. The grainy image on the old B&W Silvertone TV is broadcasting the details of the killing of an American President and the arrest of the black-eyed assassin blamed for the crime as the police drag him out the front doors of a theatre in a place called Dallas. Tears were rolling down his cheeks even though he couldn't possibly fully comprehend at that tender age, the ramifications of what he was watching.

He knew who President Kennedy was. He was the man responsible for the space program. His entire elementary school was herded into the school auditorium one morning to watch John Glenn rocket into outer space for the first manned spacecraft mission on a little TV someone had put on the apron of the auditorium stage. President Kennedy was a great man who pushed the space program. America was a great country. His dad was proud to be an American and to be part of all that was going on in America. His world had expanded beyond his home, church and school to frontiers, pioneers and outer space. Now, somebody had killed all of that and in his own little mind, his dreams and fantasies had suddenly turned into nightmares and stark realities. He was too young to take all that in. America was too young to take all that in. It just wasn't fair to take all that away.

"If only Pop was alive to have seen this day", Ron thought to himself. "He'd be jumpin' all over the house like a frog in a fire."

He was smiling a small, justified smile as a police siren outside his second-story apartment window jarred him back from his thoughts to the news broadcast on CNN. A security advisor to the president was tap-dancing around the hard-hitting, probing questions of the interviewer, denying any government involvement, while promising a full investigation into the event at the game.

As the interview continued on the TV, Ron drifted back to the basketball game earlier in the evening, going over it in his mind as he had witnessed it just a few hours earlier. He couldn't believe he did it. Better yet, he couldn't believe he did it and got away with it.

It was the bottom of the 4th quarter. The Nicks were ahead by a one point lead in a long-anticipated game with the Lakers, the scoreboard was reflecting numbers that looked more like a football game than a championship basketball game. Even though the few hard-earned points in the game had been made through tough sacrifices and flaring tempers on the court, the crowd still cried for more. It was probably the most exciting game in World Series history and a thrilling end to a long season with the winning team in the balance as the Lakers could still salvage this neck-to-neck game.

The Nick defense was holding its own as the ball was being passed back and forth between the Lakers offense just outside the half-court circle. The ball finally made its way to a Laker who had been frantically jumping and yelling at the hoop for a while now, only to be swept out of his hands by a Nick defender, but landing back in the hands of another Laker who was close to the penalty line in the corner of the court. Two Nickers were all over him blocking any chance for a shot, so he couldn't try the rebound, and as the buzzer went off signaling the end of the game, he passed the ball like a pitcher would throw a fastball to a Laker who was dead center in front of the goal, almost at mid-court. He caught the ball as the buzzer went silent and from somewhere out of desperate instinct, he took the shot anyway.

The ball left the tips of his fingers and with a backward spin, it loftily rose through the air in an arc that every fan watching knew would be a no-net sinker through the hoop - albeit in vain as the game was already over. But what a dying effort it was. It was picture-perfect as it made it's way to the goal. Through the roar of the crowd, the path of the ball was traced by the TV crews, everyone in the stadium and the millions watching at home and sports bars and family gatherings all over the country as the ball slowed to a stop half-way to the goal some twenty feet up - and stayed there, just spinning in mid-air.

For the next ten seconds or so, the echo of the roar of the crowd died down to the quiet of a cemetery on a cold, still night as the ball held its position in mid-air, then slowly started spinning in a small wobble like a gyroscope that was winding down, but instead, was gaining speed as it went. It's path widened and got bigger and bigger until it was moving in a circle parallel with the floor about ten feet in diameter - still out of reach, some twenty feet in the air over the heads of the stunned players. It made a full eight rotations around the players, then just as quickly as it had come to a stop, it flew like a rock from a slingshot over the bleachers through a rafter window, crashing through and scattering shattered glass down on the heads of the Laker fans standing on the upper rows as the ball left the building into the night sky outside, vanishing from sight.

The silence continued for another few seconds before the crowd, in unison, reacted with an audible gasp that was in so much contrast with the cheers and roars that had been heard throughout the game. In the sports bars across the nation, the only sounds that could be heard were the electronic sound effects of video games. Family rooms were dead silent. Radio and TV announcers reporting the plays of the game for the past couple of hours were, for the first time in their professional careers, at a loss for words - their mikes were keyed with a death-grip on their mike stands, but the air-waves were silent. Across America and around the globe, for every person who was sitting in front of a TV screen watching the championship game, their own little individual worlds came to a screeching halt with just one thought on their collective minds - "What in the hell was that?"