Wheelchair Basketball
by Armando Ortiz
We’d been in the area before, south of Adams and somewhere in between those old two story homes made out of wood in the early 20th century. Three men were sitting out on the porch talking and hanging out. We hadn’t come to see them though, the address was for a lady who was bed ridden. I guess she was inside. We parked the white van in front of the house. The weather was hot and dry, like a clay oven, so it might have been late-September, but I can’t exactly tell that this is Los Angeles. The house was white with brown molding. The lawn was made up of green patches, but it was mostly a carpet of golden crabgrass. We stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the house. The keys, jumbled together, made sharp jingles.
“Buenas tardes,” said one of the old men.
“Buenas tardes,” we replied in unison.
“Is Betty here?” Juan asked.
I wasn’t supposed to be on the delivery, but lately I’d been tagging along after work. It was a part-time job, and afterwards I didn’t have much to do those days.
“She’s inside,” one of the old men said, quickly swinging his arm as if he was hitchhiking and aiming his thumb inside the house.
Juan went inside the house and I stayed outside with the other men. Santa Ana winds usually added hot dry air to the sunny weather.
“Where did you learn to speak Spanish,” I asked the old man.
“From my wife,” he said.
He stood up and walked towards the front door that was already open.
“That’s her picture over there,” he said, aiming at the fireplace that had been painted ochre. Above the mantle were pictures of a young couple.
I looked inside the living room towards the area pointed out. Black and white pictures of a young black couple were there along with some trophies and other family pictures. One of the photos stood out, and seemed to radiate a warm aura - they looked really happy. His hair seemed to be slicked back and she wore a very conservative dress with cotton trim. It might have been the day they got married or maybe a time when they were celebrating one of their birthdays.
“Is that your wife in the picture,” I asked.
“Yes, that was taken about thirty years ago in New York,” he said, “She moved there with her parents when she was 12.”
“Where did she learn to speak Spanish?” my curiosity seemed to reveal itself like the sweat bead on the forehead.
“She’s Panamanian,” he quickly responded, adjusting his cap. “I am originally from Harlem, but after the Nam I moved to LA.”
Here was a man who could speak Spanish and who had married a Central American woman. Now I look back and consider all the endless possibilities and strange combinations that exist out in the world. Every valley has a story to tell. I was too young to really understand this at that time.
One of his friends suddenly said something about a wheel chair not moving. I was busy looking down the quiet street. It seemed that light and heat soaked everything in sight. Tall slender palm trees bordered the edges of the sidewalk every few meters. The wind made the long palm trees gently sway and bend to the side. Most of the houses on the block looked kept, but it wasn’t like the houses up in the hills, where gardens and lawns were worked on by gardeners. Here it seemed that people had jobs and worked on their homes themselves, none of that hiring help type of thing. I turned around and woke up from my daze. The man was in a wheelchair, had a plain white t-shirt on, and wore some really dark shades.
“Where is the problem?” I asked.
“The right wheel on the front,” he said pointing straight down to the wheel.
“Hmm….lemme see.” I kneeled down and noticed a bunch of hairs that had accumulated on the sides of the wheel.
“When I come back, one of you gentlemen will have to tip him back a bit so I can unscrew the hinge off the wheel,” I said as I turned and started towards the van.
I ran to the van, grabbed the oil can, and searched inside the tool box for a 10. By the time I got back Juan was exiting the house, and said he was going to go get the new mattress from the back of the van. I returned to the man on the wheel chair, and noticed that a scar ran from his forehead all the way to his left cheek.
“I unscrewed the wheel and began pulling all the grey hairs and brown polyester fibers out of the bearings.” Suddenly his voice inquired.
“How long have you been at this?”
“Oh, just a few months,” I replied.
“Well you’re doing a good job,” he said
I looked up, smiled and said thanks. Then I noticed that the area that had the scar looked lifeless.
I immediately focused my attention on the task in hand, and wondered what it was that I had seen.
“Were you guys born in Los Angeles?” I asked as I sprayed the center of the wheel with DW-40.
“No. My buddy as you know is from New York, Jack over there, he’s from Cleveland, and I’m from Oakland. We did time in Nam, and after returning to the states we stayed in contact. We all sort of wandered into Los Angeles and never quite left.”
For a moment I imagined bullets flying everywhere and bombs exploding by the side of roads. I’d heard that people would say “hit the shit!” when attacked by sniper fire. Apparently the Vietcong didn’t put boobie traps or landmines where they took a shit though that meant that the soldiers would carry a putrid smell with them afterwards. It was either crap on their bodies or death.
“How long were you guys in Vietnam,” I inquired.
“We did two years,” said the man in the wheelchair.
The sun was hot, and even though we were in the shade the concrete steps and the work made sweat beads gather around my face like morning dew. I soon finished and put the wheel back. I looked up and told him to test the thing. I took a glance at the scar once again, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was that I was looking at. I pretended not to notice. Soon his friend helped him down the steps and now he was swiftly moving around.
“Hey Jack, throw me the ball,” he hollered.
The man who sat silently picked up an old leather basketball that was lying on the porch and threw it at him. He caught it without a hitch, and placed the ball on his legs. He had long brown arms and slender hands. He moved aggressively through the lawn and reached the garage area. His forearms were still chiseled. He began bouncing the ball and making baskets. Then he began to swirl his wheelchair round and round. I was in awe.
“Good job kid!,” he hollered, “Now I can go on whipping ass at the courts. Mother fuckers have been running their mouths about me no longer playing. I’ll show them.”
He returned, once again struggling through the dry grass. He rolled up next to me and smiled. I smiled back. One side of his face was sweaty, while the other wasn’t. It seemed that his left side had melted, but that was strange. An opaque pastiness on the surface of his left side could be seen. He turned around, faced the street and told his friend to put him back on the porch. His friend wore a mechanic’s shirt with the name Donovan stitched on the chest area. The men looked weathered, and sun beaten, but their spirit was still intact. A lot of stories must have been shared between them. The wheels bumped on the concrete steps and made a final thud once on the wooden porch. The old man adjusted something on the waxy side of his face. Up to that moment I hadn’t noticed, but his left side seemed out of place, but after he’d adjusted his sun glasses it seemed his face was symmetrical again.
Juan suddenly emerged from the house with an old hospital mattress and told the husband that the bed was as good as new.
“Le puse nuevo colchon y le ajuste los resortes con un poco de aceite,” he told the man.
I guess they already knew each other. Juan had been working for the company for ten years.
“Ah, muchas gracias amigo, hey, tienes buen asistente, mira al Damian ya puede ir al gimnasio a jugar basketball con los demás cabrones!” the old man retorted.
“What can I say, he’s learning from the best!,” replied Juan smiling and giving a couple of loud laughs.
The man in the wheelchair said thank you and gave me a thumbs up. I smiled back. We all smiled. The sun kept showering us with its rays.
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