Taking Sides: Chapters 3–4

For the coach, watching his players was as exhausting as playing. He ran up and down the court, shouting plays through cupped hands and slapping a clipboard against his thighs when a play was executed poorly.

The basketball echoed in the Columbus Junior High School gym, where banners of the team’s championship years—1980, 1987, and 1989—hung from the rafters.

“Bukowski, breathe on him. Maneuver left—now cut, Grady! Press!”
Shoes squeaked as the players hustled up and down the court.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and the heater blew warm, dusty air.

He came down hard, jamming his already-hurt toe. He stopped for a moment, grimacing, then hobbled after the other players, a spark of pain flashing in his foot.

He came down hard, jamming his already-hurt toe. He stopped for a moment, grimacing, then hobbled after the other players, a spark of pain flashing in his foot.

The cheerleaders, oblivious to the game, raised their arms and screamed.

Lincoln trotted slowly to the bench, where he took a seat between the two remaining players, both second-stringers with skinny legs, and smothered his face in a towel.

The hair on his thighs was matted to his skin.

He took off his left shoe and sock and rubbed his toe gingerly.

A-team was up by seven, 22-15. Coach is gonna be upset, Lincoln thought. The A-team should be clobbering the second-stringers.

In the second half the A-team pulled away in spite of James’s one-man show of four more buckets. Lincoln scored only three buckets during that half, and he trudged up the floor, toe hurting.

Lincoln wondered about surfing, a gavacho pastime.

He realized a knife was not a sentimental gift, but he liked the way it looked, with a black handle and a dime-bright blade so sharp it could split a hair nine ways—or so he imagined.

Lincoln had seen white people cook with chrome- or copper-colored fry pans, but every Mexican mother Lincoln knew cooked her groceries into savory delights in black cast-iron pans.

Franklin was a poor school, grim and sad because the kids were poor—but scrappy, like the Warriors.

He didn’t like Roy, who was shorter than his mother. He drove a baby-blue BMW—a girl’s color, Lincoln thought—and was, like Mr. Schulman, pudgy and pale.

His mother chewed slowly and, after clearing her throat, said, “He’s still in Los Angeles. He’s still a parole board officer.”

Lincoln caught up with James, and since they were early they stopped at the 7-Eleven for an apple pie, which they tore in half and wolfed down.

“He’s a surveyor.”
“A surveyor?” Lincoln asked, surprised. He had expected to hear “a doctor” or “a lawyer.” Everyone in Sycamore seemed to have a fancy job.

Mr. Green wet his lips and, behind the glint of thick glasses, stared at him, hard.

He smiled as he pictured hordes of white-throated chickens clucking over sand dunes and taking boats up the Nile to Alexandria.

“Were they chickens like today’s chickens?” Andy, the A-plus-in-everything-but-P.E. student, asked. His pen was poised and ready for Mrs. Wade, the teacher, to answer.

“What am I gonna say to her?” he muttered to himself. He looked in the cafeteria, but she wasn’t there amid the din of forks dropping and students laughing and yelling.

“Brussels sprouts,” Monica mused. “That’s another one I can’t stand.”