You ever been shot?”
“I have, actually,” Cory said.
Obviously thrown a little bit by that, Dee-Jon hesitated, then said, “Yeah, well, I have, too. That’s what put me in this chair. I was just walkin’ down the street, doin’ ma’ thing, not botherin’ nobody, know what I’m sayin’? And this car comes cruisin’, and this dude starts in shootin’—like, eh-eh-eh-eh—an’ next thing I know I’m down on the sidewalk lookin’ up at the sky, and I don’t feel nothin’. Still don’t. But, hey, I can still satisfy my woman, don’t think I can’t.”
That brought a whole barrage of hoots and comments, most of them in the kind of language Matt had pretty much gotten used to and given up trying to ban entirely. He wasn’t sure about how his big brother was taking it, though.
But Cory hadn’t batted an eye, just started asking questions, asking the kids how they’d gotten hurt, what had happened to them that put them in the chairs. In about ten seconds he had them all pulled in close around him, and was listening while each one told his story, sometimes yelling over the other eager voices, sometimes almost whispering in a respectful silence.
Ray, describing how his dad liked to beat up on him and throw him up against a wall when he was crazy drunk, and one day missed the wall and threw him through a third-floor apartment window instead.
And Dog, admitting how he’d been living up to his nickname hotdogging it on his dirt bike out on the Mojave Desert, showing off for his friends the day he’d flipped over and broken his neck. “I was stupid,” Dog said with a shrug. “Now I gots to pay.”
Wayans wasn’t stupid, just unlucky, having been born with spina bifida. And Vincent hadn’t had much to do with the automobile accident that had injured him, either, just happened to be in the wrong intersection at the exact time when a corporate lawyer on his way home from entertaining a client at a Beverly Hills nightclub failed to notice the light was red.
Frankie tried to get away with his favorite story about getting attacked by a shark, but the others shouted him down, so he had to admit he’d gotten his injury skateboarding illegally in the Los Angeles River’s concrete bed.
Matt hung back and watched his brother, the way the kids responded to him, the way he listened, not with sugary sympathy, but with his complete attention, interest that was focused and genuine, and that made people want to open up and spill things they wouldn’t normally think about telling a stranger. He could see what had made his brother a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, although the whole war-correspondent thing was still hard for him to grasp. He’d been prepared to like this newfound long-lost brother—particularly since he’d had those dreamlike memories of him protecting him from the bad scary stuff of his nightmares. What he hadn’t expected to feel was respect. Maybe even awe.
“Hey, guys,” he said, breaking into the chorus of questions now being fired at Cory from all sides, “you want to know about my brother, go home and do an Internet search on Cory Pearson. That’s P-E-A-R-S-O-N for you semiliterates. Now get out of here so he and I can spend some time together. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. Go on, hit the showers.”
The response was predictable.
“Ah, man.”
“Hey, it’s early—how come we gotta quit now?”
“Yeah, I wanna hit something.”
“You can’t hit nothin’—you a wussy.”
“I’m ‘a show you wussy—you hit like a little girl.”
The noise drifted off across the court as the six kids headed for the locker room. Matt and Cory followed, slowly.
“I see what you meant when you said it’s not each other they’re mad at. That game they were playing—it’s what they call Murderball, right?”
“Officially,” Matt said, pausing to scoop up the forgotten volleyball, “it’s called quad rugby. It’s been an official sport of the Paralympics since…I think, Atlanta.”
Cory nodded. “I’ve done some reading up on it. The rules allow them to do just about anything they can to the chairs, right? But they can’t go after the occupant. Whoever thought up that game was a genius. Gives them a chance to beat up on the thing they hate most and can’t live without. One thing, though. Doesn’t the ‘quad’ stand for—”
“Quadriplegic—yeah, it does. And most people think the same thing, which is that quads can’t move their arms, but that’s not true. There’s a whole range of motion, depending on where the SCI occurred.”
Cory glanced at him. “But you’re not—”
“No—I’m a para-T-11, to be exact.” He grinned lopsidedly up at his brother. “That’s how we refer to ourselves. These kids are mostly paras, too. Dee-Jon is the only one who’s a quad, and he’d like to try out for the U.S. Paralympic team someday. No, when I started this program, it was supposed to be wheelchair basketball. But the kids had other ideas. They were so rough on the chairs, I finally quit fighting it and went looking for some sponsorship so we could get some rugby chairs. You might have noticed, they’re built a little differently than regular chairs, even the sports models.” He slapped the canted wheel of his own chair.
Cory grinned. “I noticed. Also noticed you’re short a couple.”
“We’re working on it. Those suckers cost a couple thousand apiece. We got lucky right off the bat, because the guy that hit Vincent got his law firm to cough up the cost of the first two. The U.S. Quad Rugby Team gave us one. And…you know, it’s taken us a couple of years to get the other three, but we’ll get there. Eventually.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Cory said, so offhandedly Matt wasn’t sure he’d heard him for a moment.
Then, when he was sure, he didn’t know what to say. He bounced the volleyball once and coughed and finally said, “That’d be cool, man. Really. Thanks.” He looked over at his brother, but Cory wasn’t looking at him. Carefully not looking at him. His profile gave nothing away.
“No problem.”
They’d reached the gymnasium door. Matt swiveled his chair about halfway to facing his brother and said, “I’ve got to supervise these guys, but I’ll be free in an hour or so, if you want to…uh, I don’t know. Like…hang out?”
Okay, he’d been hanging out with teenagers too long.
Cory grinned as if he’d had the same thought, and in the spirit of the moment, said, “Okay, cool. I’ll be here.”
Matt nodded and went wheeling into the hallway, leaving his brother standing in the doorway. Halfway to the locker rooms, from which he could hear the usual racket and hair-curling language as his team got themselves and each other into the showers, he paused and looked back. The doorway was empty.
So. He was alone. Nobody to see him when he let his head fall back and exhaled at the ceiling, not sure whether he felt like laughing or crying. What he wanted to do, he supposed, was both. So instead he smiled to himself, like a little kid with a new bike. Shook his head, whooshed out more air, scrubbed his hands over his face, smiled again. Sniffed, wiped his eyes and muttered some swear words he’d never let the kids hear him use.
After
