Long Shot (2 page)

He quietly walked over to the water fountain to get himself a drink before they started up all over again.

Joe Sutter, when he did talk, liked to say that the best thing about his buddy Pedro was that he knew who he was. He never needed to be a star, on any team he’d ever played for. He didn’t need to put himself out there, to say to everybody,
Hey, look at me
.

He just wanted to win the game.

 

 

 

Even though it was November and soccer season had just ended for Pedro’s town team, it hadn’t ended for him and his dad.

For the two of them, on Saturday mornings at least, soccer season didn’t end until there was snow on the ground.

For Pedro, the best part of soccer Saturdays wasn’t running around on his school’s soccer field, it was being with his dad. Because more than any professional athlete, Luis Morales was Pedro’s hero.

They were on the field at Vernon Middle even earlier than usual because Luis had to work later that day. The way he had been working every day lately, getting ready to open his own restaurant in Vernon’s downtown district.

The restaurant was going to be called Casa Luis, and Pedro knew it was so much more than a restaurant to his dad. It was the dream he had carried in his head from the time he had come across the border from Mexico—legally, he always pointed out to Pedro—with his own parents as a teenager.

He had lived in Tucson, Arizona, first and then moved to New York City, because that had been another dream of his when he envisioned a better life for himself in America.

Once he got to New York he worked as a busboy as a way of putting himself through cooking school. Then he had worked his way up to being a chef, finally becoming head chef at Miller’s, the best restaurant in Vernon, where Pedro was born and had lived his whole life.

Earlier this year, Luis Morales had found a space he could afford, after saving up for a long time, and now he was about to open Casa Luis. He’d been working so hard at it, day and night, wanting everything to be just right and look just right, that Pedro hadn’t been seeing very much of him lately.

Pedro had even told his dad at breakfast this morning that he could skip soccer today if he was too busy at the restaurant.

His father looked across the table at him with eyes as dark as Pedro’s, but which seemed to see so much more, as always.

“Boy,” he said, “I would sooner give up eating one of my own desserts before I would give up my soccer mornings with you.”

Luis Morales had been the best player in his town in Mexico as a boy. And one of his boyhood dreams had been to play for Mexico in the World Cup when he got older.

“But that is the funny thing about dreams,” Pedro’s dad liked to say. “Just when you are sure you have a good one, an even better one comes along.”

By the time he had left Mexico at the age of fifteen, he’d also left behind whatever big ideas he had about being a World Cup soccer star. Now soccer was a passion more than a dream, but a passion that Luis always made time for. He watched games from all over the world thanks to satellite television, and even played in what he called an “old man’s league” in Camden, the next town over from Vernon, in the fall and spring.

Pedro had watched his dad play some of those old man games, watched him and thought that
his
old man was the most dazzling one out there, running rings around the other players, almost playing a different game than anybody else.

And even with all that, Pedro never thought he was seeing the very best of Luis Morales.

It was as if his dad saved that for Pedro and their Saturday mornings together.

What Pedro really saw from his dad, what he was seeing again today as they passed the ball to each other and tried to take it away from each other or took turns in goal, was this:

The boy in Mexico who was going to play in the World Cup someday.

Pedro felt like he’d traveled back in time so he and his dad could be the same age for a little while.

Pedro was quick. His dad, even now, was quicker. Pedro, whose normal position in soccer was midfielder, could do a lot with the ball.

His dad could always do more.

Luis Morales even had this trick—it really seemed like a magic trick to Pedro—where he would lean forward and balance a ball between his shoulder blades and remove the T-shirt he was wearing without the ball falling to the ground.

He did that now on the soccer field at Vernon Middle when they took a break.

“It’s like something I saw on a television show once, Papa,” Pedro said. “A man pulled a tablecloth off a table, but the glasses and silverware and plates stayed where they were.”

His dad smiled.

Another thing that made him look young, like a boy, to Pedro.

“Anybody can do
that
,” his dad said. “But only your papa can do what I do with this soccer ball.”

“I believe you,” Pedro said, smiling back at him.

It was all right for his dad to take his shirt off because the November sun was warm this morning. They were both on their backs now, using their soccer balls as headrests, both taking the sun full on their faces.

Luis Morales said, “Are you absolutely sure of this thing you tell me, that you love basketball more than soccer?”

Pedro said, “It’s not that I don’t love soccer. I just love basketball more.”

“How could such a thing happen?” his dad said. Pedro turned his head slightly and saw that his father was still smiling, his face as bright as the morning.

“It just happened,” Pedro said. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Ahhh,” his dad said. “It’s like a prettier girl has come along to steal your heart.” He sighed and said, “So the Americanization of my boy is complete.”

“You always tell me that you can be anything you want to be in America,” Pedro said. “Well, I’ve decided I want to be a great basketball player.”

His father sat up now. “Then you must work at it, my boy,” he said.

“You know I work, Papa,” Pedro said. “Not as hard as you. Nobody works as hard as you. But I work at sports and I work at school. I want to make you and Mom proud of me.”

His mother, Anne, had been born in Vernon, had spent her whole life there except for college, and now worked a few days a week at the best clothing store in town, True Blue. She wasn’t Mexican-American, just what Pedro thought of as American-American, with blond hair and blue eyes.

“It is a fine thing, wanting to make your parents proud,” Luis Morales said. “But it is much more important to make yourself proud.”

It was another thing that Pedro loved about Saturday mornings. It was as if he and his father saved their best talking for the soccer field.

Pedro sat up now, because he wanted to make sure his dad knew that he had his full attention, like this was his favorite class and Luis Morales was his favorite teacher in the world.

“I don’t just want you to look for the best in sports,” Pedro’s dad said. “I want you to look for the best in your
self
.”

“I will,” Pedro said. “You know I will.”

“The more you love something,” his dad said, “the harder you work at it. And then, if you are lucky, you finally learn the secret that I remember every time I walk through the door to what will soon be my restaurant.”

“What secret?” Pedro said.

“That being there isn’t work at all.”

Pedro could see how excited his father was, saying these things, and it made him excited, too, made him feel as if the morning sunshine had somehow gotten even brighter.

“If you have the talent and you have the will, then nothing is out of your reach,” his dad said. “When I was working as a busboy in New York City, some of the other busboys would laugh when I told them I would have my own restaurant someday. Well, if they could see me now, they wouldn’t be laughing.”

He moved closer to Pedro and put his hands on his son’s shoulders.

“I don’t know if you have greatness in you as a basketball player,” his dad said. “That is between you and basketball, because sports sorts these things out eventually, tells us all whether we are good enough to be great or not. But nobody can stop you from being a leader, my son. Just watching you on the field, I see already that you are a leader. I wish your mother and I could take credit for that, but it’s something I believe in my heart you must be born with.”

“I just do my best,” Pedro said.

“It is more than that,” his dad said. “Even the other leaders on your teams follow you.”

Pedro smiled. “You’re prejudiced.”

“No,” Luis Morales said. “I just know a great leader when I see one. And you know what I say about great leaders
,
don’t you?”

He did.

Pedro smiled again at his father, because he did know what he always said, because he knew what was coming next. He always knew, the way he knew the soccer ball would stay between his dad’s shoulder blades when his shirt came off, every single time.

“In this country,” Luis Morales said, “great leaders can grow up to be president.”

“I know, Papa.”

“I don’t want you to just know,” his dad said. “I want you to believe.”

Then his dad was pulling him up, wrapping him in a bear hug, putting his face close to Pedro’s, Pedro feeling the scratch of his beard, his dad’s face rough even though he had just shaved. Pedro felt the way he always did when his dad put his arms around him: good and happy and safe.

“President Morales,” his dad said now.

Pedro laughed.

“Do you believe?”

“Papa . . . ”

“I want to know you believe. Let me hear you say it and I will do the bicycle kick for you.”

“Fine, I’ll say it. President Pedro Morales.”

“No, say it like you believe.”

“President Pedro Morales!” Pedro said, louder this time, grinning all the while.

“That’s what I want to hear!” his father said, then stood up.

Luis Morales wasn’t big, even though he had always seemed big to Pedro. He seemed bigger than ever now, standing there between Pedro and the blue sky.

Pedro watched as his dad’s feet started playing with the soccer ball as if they had a mind of their own, left foot first then right, the ball bouncing off a knee, then off his dad’s head, then back to his feet without touching the ground.

Now Luis Morales turned his back to the goal they had been using, and Pedro knew he was ready for the bicycle kick.

Pelé’s kick.

First the left knee came up. Then his right leg, his kicking leg, was coming up, Luis Morales really looking as if he were pedaling a bike backward. Then the left leg came down as the right leg was kicking through the ball, looking as if it were one of those perfect right angles they studied in geometry.

It always looked as if his dad, as graceful as he was, was somehow going to kick himself in the head.

Only he never did.

He just buried the ball in the back of the net.

“See,” he said. “You work hard enough at something, and
anything
is possible. Isn’t that right, Mr. President?”

“Yes, Papa,” Pedro said.

They went home after that, and Pedro’s dad went off to his restaurant, getting it ready for its grand opening in about a month. Pedro had told Joe he would call him when he got back from the soccer field and they would hang out later.

But first he went up to his room, the one with the Fathead poster, like a 3-D image, of Steve Nash on his wall, the one that made it seem as if Nash was about to make a bounce pass with the ball in his right hand right across Pedro’s bedroom.

Only Pedro wasn’t thinking about basketball right now.

Or about soccer.

He was thinking about his dad.

He had heard his speech about a hundred times before, or maybe a thousand. But today it was as if he had heard it for the first time, as if his dad’s words hadn’t just gotten into his head this time, but all the way into his heart.

Pedro’s English teacher, Mr. Randolph, liked to talk about what he called the “blink moment,” which was his way of describing the idea from which great stories and great books came—a great idea being born in the blink of an eye.

Mr. Randolph said that no one ever knew when a blink moment happened. They just happened.

And Pedro knew one had happened to him on that soccer field this morning.

 

 

 

Pedro had two private places he liked best, places where he was completely happy to be alone with a basketball, places where he did his best thinking.

One was the full outdoor court at Carinor Park. The other was the miniature court his dad had built for him next to their garage. It wasn’t the size of a real half-court, but it was big enough to shoot from the corner and shoot free throws and then move back beyond the partial three-point line Pedro had drawn on the smooth cement Luis Morales had lovingly laid down himself.

This is where Pedro found himself now, working on his outside shot.

Pedro Morales was constantly working on his shooting, simply because it was the weakest part of his game.

By a lot.

He could make free throws just fine, especially when he had to. And he had made the occasional outside shot. Just not as many as he wanted to make, not as many as he knew he’d
have
to make someday to be the complete player he wanted to be.

He had always played the game with a pass-first mentality, from the time he began playing organized ball at the Vernon YMCA, and it wasn’t just because he thought of himself as a playmaker, doing what good playmakers and great point guards were supposed to do. That was just one reason. The bigger reason, and he knew it better than anybody, was that he just didn’t have the same confidence shooting the ball that he did passing it.