The Hoop Across From the School

The coach

On Tuesday morning, Brody’s coach, Tobias, a young eighth grade science teacher in a windbreaker, cut across the street on his way into school and stopped at the edge of the slab.

“This yours, Brody?” he said.

“My grandpa’s,” Brody said. “But I get to use it.”

The coach looked at me on the porch, and I lifted my coffee cup, and he lifted his hand. Then he set his bag down on my grass and stood under the hoop and started rebounding.

He did not say anything about how it got there. Brody told me later the whole team knew by then. But the coach never asked, and never said a thing about it, and he just stood there for ten minutes passing the ball back out to Brody every time it came through the net.

When the first bell rang, he picked up his bag and said, “Elbow in on that release,” and walked across the street.

He did the same thing on Thursday.

After school

On Wednesday after school, two boys from Brody’s class came across the street with a ball of their own.

I did not know them. One was a skinny kid with glasses and the other was short and round and laughed at everything. They stood at the edge of my grass like they were not sure they were allowed.

“Come on,” Brody said. “It’s fine. My grandpa doesn’t care.”

I did not care. I went inside and told Lena we had company, and she put a bag of cookies on a plate and carried it out to the porch.

They played until close to suppertime. Then the skinny one’s mom pulled up and honked, and they both went home with their pockets full of cookies.

By Friday it was four boys after school. By the next week it was six, and some of the girls from the eighth grade team, and I had to buy a second ball because the first one was getting worn smooth.

I had not set out to build anything for anybody but Brody. But I will tell you, there is a kind of sound a front yard makes when it is full of kids playing ball, and I had not heard it in that yard since Kirsten was small.