One-on-One

One-on-one by Ron Wheeler

It was night, and we were caught in the middle of a horrendous thunderstorm. As the small, 1940s-vintage DC-3 shook violently, I looked out the cabin window at utter darkness, save for streaks of lightening. Every time the lightening came, it briefly revealed the terrified faces of the passengers across the aisle. We were traveling from Kuching to Sibu in Borneo, a part of Malaysia. I was a 22-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer fresh out of college. I thought about my hometown, where I had spent my whole life, and from where I had always wanted to escape. I was half way around the world fulfilling my dream, but now I kept wondering if the next second would be my last. I thought about my mother, a single parent, who had struggled hard to raise me, her only child, and I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me, and I thought about the friends I’d known there, including Benner.
……………

Seven years earlier, as I walked across town from my place to Benner’s mansion on the hill, I had asked myself what am I doing? I’d gone by his house many times during the construction, and so had everybody else. It was a massive three-story white structure with a front portico overlooking an expansive yard and gardens. When they finally finished the place it had at least ten times more living space than the average 1950s rancher, which is what most well-to-do people lived in.

I stood in the drive wondering whether I should go up to the door. I had hated Benner ever since I could remember. I first met him when I was five years old and we both lived in another part of town. Mom and I had just moved into a wood frame house that had been converted into apartments. We shared a bathroom down the hall with some other tenants. My father had left us, and Mom worked fulltime in a shoe store, which meant I often had to fend for myself. Benner lived across the street in a large two-story house. His father was a big shot at a company that manufactured metal products, and his mother stayed home and looked after him and his sister. Desperately searching for some kids to play with, I ventured over to Benner’s house, but he already had a friend who lived next door, and their idea of fun was to pick on me. After getting bullied around and chased back home a few times, I wised up and stayed on my side of the street, but I never forgot what a jerk he was.

If anybody had told me that ten years later I’d be headed to Benner’s to play hoops, I would have laughed. When I first got to high school, I tried to avoid him, which wasn’t that hard to do because he was a loner. He missed school regularly, and after a two-week absence, rumors spread around the school that his parents had sent him off to a military academy because of his poor grades. When he reappeared one day, word was he had busted out, hitchhiked back, and talked his parents into giving him one more chance. I couldn’t wait for him to get kicked out for good.

But his grades improved, and we ended up in study hall together sitting at the same table. After spending several days ignoring one another, we finally struck up a conversation about sports and discovered that we were both obsessed with basketball. He liked the St. Louis Hawks, while I was a Boston Celtics fan. Benner knew I was on the high school basketball squad, and he finally got around to telling me he was the better basketball player, which made me laugh out loud. I told him that when it came to sports, he was just a big screw up, which explains why I was at his door. Benner wanted revenge. He wanted to beat me one-on-one.

Benner led me down to the horse barn. His father had created a lighted, half-court arena with regulation basket and backboard in the hayloft over the stable. The original loft floor was covered with smooth plywood and the sidelines and free-throw line were painted black.

That evening we played twenty-one for hours. Benner had the edge physically. Although only an inch taller than me, at slightly over six feet, he could jump high enough to dunk the ball. But I had a decent jump shot, and our games were hotly contested battles. Benner was the Hawks’ Bob Pettit, up against his nemesis, the Celtics’ Bill Russell. We kept up a constant stream of chatter: Good ball pressure by Russell, but Pettit drives for the basket. Pettit with the step! To the reverse! What an acrobat! We played often that year and the next, until graduation. Then we went our separate ways.

…………..

My mom called and told me of Benner’s death. The obituary in the newspaper did not include information about the cause, and when I talked to his sister on the phone, she didn’t disclose any details either. Only after I finally reached a mutual friend of ours, did I find out he had taken his own life. In early March, 1976, at the age of 35, Benner drove to a secluded nature preserve, sat down in the underbrush, and slashed his wrists.

During the search for Benner, they looked in the hayloft. That’s where they found his shirt lying on the hay bales, the sleeves spread out in the form of a cross. Pinned to the shirt was a poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

I grow old…I grow old…I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
……………
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

When I see kids playing hoops in their driveway, it puts me back in a time that seemed like it would last forever. We all try to remain boys as long as possible. Maybe that’s why Benner did what he did.

After all these years, I can’t remember who won any particular game, but I do remember certain moments, like when Benner was dribbling to the basket, sweat streaming down his face, and I reached in and scooped the ball away, then spun around and fired a jump shot. Somehow Benner leaped high enough to block the ball in midair. That’s a play I’ll never forget.