Mr. Hibma,
Rosa and I can’t play anymore. We wanted to beat Pasco and we did that. We’re going to states in shot and discus and that’s priority. Thanks for being our coach. Thank the girls for being our teammates.
Sherrie
Mr. Hibma let the girls mill about, let them run their layup lines. He could tell they were wondering about Rosa and Sherrie, hoping they’d had a flat tire or woken up late from a nap, hoping they’d bustle through the double doors any minute, polishing off some tacos, yanking off their warm-ups. The Citrus fans — an ever-growing contingent of boyfriends, a few parents, a smattering of bored elderly — were also worrying about Rosa and Sherrie. The other team was looking down toward Mr. Hibma; they’d noticed, too. The Dade Chargers: solid and unspectacular. They’d advanced to the semis by making free throws and not turning the ball over. This was how they won; they showed up with their sound fundamentals and waited for something to go wrong with the opponent.
When there were twenty minutes to tip, Mr. Hibma pulled his team into the locker room.
“They’re not coming,” Mr. Hibma said. “So there it is. This is no time for looking around and blinking. Rosa and Sherrie are off the team. And that, just then, was the last time we’re ever going to mention them.” Mr. Hibma allowed a moment of silence, a period of grief. When he spoke again, his girls would know they were expected to be recovered from the loss of their largest, meanest comrades.
Mr. Hibma knelt in front of his point guard, his hands on her bony knees. “I want you to push the ball every single time you get it. Even if you’re one on five, you push all the way into the lane and figure out what to do when you get there.”
The point guard nodded. She liked having a lot asked of her.
“Under what circumstances will you walk the ball up?”
“None,” she answered.
Mr. Hibma moved on to the fast girl, told her she was going to be the star of the game, that she was going to make a dozen layups. He told the three-point-shooting twins to stay right next to each other the whole game, to set screens for one another like a revolving door. Mr. Hibma had instructions for everyone. His troops were captivated. He stood back and addressed the whole team.
“You all know what’s going to happen on Thursday,” he said. “We’re going to run into Ocala. We’re going to be outclassed. We’re going to be outcoached. Ocala is in better shape than we are and they possess a killer instinct.” Mr. Hibma jabbed his finger in the air. “But,” he said. “But tonight, we will pummel these spineless Dade Chargers. We will be a dizzying storm of audacity.”
The girls didn’t know what audacity was, but they knew they were about to embody it. Mr. Hibma wanted the Dade Chargers to lose in the worst way. He wanted their parents to scream at the refs. He wanted their coach to feel powerless. Mr. Hibma, for the first time since he’d been a coach, was not faking. He wasn’t acting like what he thought a coach would act like, but was speaking from his guts.
“There will be no chatter once we leave this locker room. Not one word. No smiling. No looking at boyfriends. I’m going to sit on the bench silently with one leg crossed over the other. You are a silent avalanche.”
Mr. Hibma paced, letting his words get heavy and sink to the floor and settle. His players had frenzy in their hearts. They were trembling.
And they triumphed. Mr. Hibma had never seen a team so thoroughly psyched out as Dade. After the final seconds ticked off the clock, all the voice Mr. Hibma’s players had held inside exploded into the gym. The fans wailed. Even the other coach, it seemed to Mr. Hibma, understood that the good guys had won.
Mr. Hibma guided his car along the roads that led to his villa. He stopped at the grocery store and picked up wine, hummus, pickles, salami. He ran his car through a car wash then pulled around to get gas. Mr. Hibma was leaning on his car, the trigger of the nozzle locked in place and pumping steadily, when an SUV pulled up across from him and the most curvaceous woman Mr. Hibma had ever seen stepped down from it. She was wearing a purposely tattered T-shirt, overmatched shorts, and canvas shoes. She was not from the area. Her ankles and knees and waist were delicate and in between those points was bursting, fecund flesh. Her face was an arranged jumble of plump cheeks and full lips and dark eyebrows.
When Mr. Hibma’s tank was full, he replaced the nozzle on the pump and screwed on his gas cap. He fondled his keys in his pocket. He stepped around the pump and emerged next to the woman’s SUV. She was facing away from Mr. Hibma, kicking some hosing out of her way, fixing up a place to stand. Her calves were flexing preposterously.
“Miss,” Mr. Hibma said.
The woman turned, caught off-guard. It was night and she was at a service station in a redneck county.
“When a man sees the sexiest woman he’ll ever see, he knows he has received a gift that will enrich him and curse him. You have broadened my notion of feminine allure. Because of you, this gas station will be one of the places in the world most dear to my heart.”
The woman giggled breathily. She gave Mr. Hibma a look that meant he ought to know better.
The woman’s nozzle clicked, her tank full, and Mr. Hibma did not miss his chance for a well-timed exit. He backed out of the woman’s sight, slid into his car, and pulled away from the gas station. The whole way home, he kept looking at himself in the rearview, wondering about himself, doubting very little that the person he saw in the mirror was a cold-blooded killer, doubting very little that he could pull off a grand act that would transform him. It wasn’t that complicated. Your mind told your body to do things and your body obeyed. If he needed to coach, he could coach. If he needed to charm a sexy woman, he could charm a sexy woman. If he needed to kill Mrs. Conner, he could kill Mrs. Conner. He could sit long hours in his storage unit and let his soul curdle. Mr. Hibma wasn’t stuck in his life. He was cocked and loaded, ready to blow his life apart.
On the way into his villa he checked the mail and, he should’ve known, there was a letter from Dale waiting for him. The address of his PO Box in Clermont was written in Dale’s hand, and beneath that a yellow sticker had been affixed which directed the envelope to Citrus County.
Mr. H,
Write me once more, to let me know where to be and when to be there. I’m game, as you’ve gathered. At the very least, as game as you are.
After school, Toby and Shelby walked past a trailer park where only old people were allowed to live. They went into the woods and passed a hill of tires and kept going until they reached the old warehouse, the one with all the statues leaning against it. Toby had walked past it a bunch of times but had never tried to venture inside. The door didn’t have a knob. Shelby lifted the thin rod out of its setting and Toby gave a shove and they were looking at the dim immensity of the place. Boxes were everywhere, none of them closed. Bibles and shoes. Heavy, glossy leather bibles and plain black shoes. And that’s what the place smelled like, brand-new rubber and old, old words. Shelby started kissing Toby and he was ready. He could enjoy kissing her now. He wanted to do nothing but kiss her. In two days he was going to put everything right and his mind would be empty and ready for brand-new inventory. He wasn’t using his faulty instincts anymore. He was thinking. He was thinking of the new day that would dawn, when everyone would wake up where they were supposed to. Shelby wouldn’t come to Toby’s house and he wouldn’t come to hers but the rest of the county would be their stomping grounds, their kissing grounds.