LEN BIAS: CROSSOVER
A novel
By: Michael D. McClellan | September 19, 2010
The limo driver opens the door and carefully unhooks my leg from the makeshift harness. He helps me out of the vehicle and onto the crutches. I stand there on the sun-baked drive, waiting for Emily to get the house unlocked, already sweating from the heat, my eyes surveying the flower garden and my mind running over the same two words for the umpteenth time since leaving the hospital: What next?
That question was a lot easier to answer in the days following my come-to-Jesus meeting with Alice and Dr. Smithson. I had wanted to die. Begged for it. Everything that had been within my grasp was suddenly gone and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. Len Bias had passed away from that foolish cocaine overdose and time had coldly marched on without him. My parents had grown old. Jay Bias had been shot and killed. Eric and Michelle had grown up and started families of their own. Each new counseling session with Alice brought with it a new revelation, a deeper depression, a grayer hopelessness. The way Lefty had been forced out as coach at Maryland following my death. The thought of him old, infirmed, his brash and stubborn persona worn down by the passage of time. The injury-depleted Celtics trying valiantly to repeat without me. Michael Jordan winning six world championships in the 90s without me there to match his greatness. Jordan soaring to unimaginable heights while I maintained a far lower profile, resting six feet under in that Suitland cemetery, forgotten, a cautionary tale of youth, drugs, arrogance and ignorance.
Jordan.
Always Jordan.
Somehow I had managed to make it through the past three weeks alive. Still, thoughts of suicide are never far from my mind. Free will, right Alyssa? The ESPN article that Alice had shown me, the one with the picture of Jay's Suitland grave three feet from my own, had been the closest I'd come to cutting my wrists and bleeding out right there in my hospital bed. I loved my little brother so much. If I had just trusted my instincts and stayed away from Brian Tribble then none of this would have happened. If only I hadn't been so easily influenced I would still be alive and I could have protected Jay, and he wouldn't have been anywhere near the jewelry store in that mall that December afternoon in 1990. Instead he had been cut down in a hail of gunfire, all over a girl and all because of some jealous thug who thought Jay had been flirting with her from the other side of the counter. Crushing guilt had suffocated me as I had read the article three weeks ago, and it tortures me as a I stand here now. So much so that I know a second death, this time achieved deliberately and not accidentally, would be the only relief from the grief clawing away at my soul.
And yet somehow I'd fought through it. Maybe it was the Bias stubborn streak. Or maybe it was the sound of my mother's unmistakably dominant voice in my head, urging me to persevere and to see that God's will be done. Or maybe it was the thought of another crossover, of having to face the very real possibility of eternal damnation. Whatever the reason, I had backed away from the dirty business of ending my life - and now here I stand, a pair of crutches jammed into my armpits, a whole new universe of questions about to fly all over me.
"Okay," Emily says, returning from the porch. "Let's get you inside and off that leg."
The three of us go up the front steps together, and I labor for every breath. Old, injured and white - a black stud no more. The door is open; I step through the entranceway and get my first look. The inside of the Schuler's farmhouse is as inviting as the outside. There are hardwood floors throughout the lower level, a large sunken living room, spacious kitchen, open dining room. I pause to look at all of the photos sitting about. There is one of me and John, both of us much younger, posing with a tall white man in dark slacks, blue shirt and and Herringbone sport coat. The man is bald, except for the patches of gray around the temples. A pair of large framed glasses seem to take up his whole face. He stands between us, stiff and rigid, his arms at his sides. He is smiling but doesn't appear comfortable with it, as if he'd never acquired a feel for its warmth.
"That's your father," Emily says, moving over to me. "He was six-six, so you can see where you got your height.."
"How long ago was this taken?"
"I believe you were twenty. That would make John twenty-three. So you're father would have been forty-nine when that picture was taken. It's an Easter photo Easter, 1995."
"He doesn't look like he wants to be there."
"I think everything changed when you're mother died. He never got over what happened."
"You said she died from shock?"
"Septic shock. She was a farmer's wife, so she worked hard to help take care of the animals and tend the field. There's a stable out back; horses were her passion so she worked hard at that, too. And then there was the big yard and this house to keep up . It was a lot of work. Her back paid the price."
"So she had back surgery."
"A disc was putting pressure on a nerve. She was in constant pain. She went in for the surgery and ended up with septic shock, and passed away three days later. From the stories I've heard, your father was never the same after that." She points to the large photo on the opposite living room wall. "There, that's your mother."
I lean on the crutches and move closer. The woman in the photograph appears to be in her mid-thirties. She has a fair complexion, strawberry hair that looks naturally curly, thin lips and high cheekbones. She's standing in a dirt-filled arena beside a copper-colored horse. A young girl sits in the saddle holding a large trophy, beaming. The trophy is almost as big as the girl.
"That picture was taken at the Morgan Grand National Horse Show in Oklahoma. The horse's name is Big Red, the girl's name is Kathy. It's her horse. Your mother trained Big Red, and then they took it halfway across the country to compete in nationals."
"They won?"
"You don't get a trophy that big for coming in second."
