Postseason Elimination

The bus pulled up to the arena, an enormous oval building with banners draped from its sides that alternated between celebrating current players and past championships. While its size was grand, Rondo was surprised at how simple its gates were. Some were simple iron fences offering glimpses of a grimy concourse, unlit and inactive, within. Others were pull-down metal doors of the type you’d see on a storefront closed for the night, positioned where the masses of spectators would flood through on game day. In between, unspectacular and undecorated windows with blinds fully closed represented ticket booths. Rondo doubted these were used much even on game days now with electronic ticketing and phone apps making paper tickets obsolete for anyone but scalpers.

He’d dreamed of coming here for years, even though he knew there was no way his family could afford the price of admission. In his dreams, there was some kind of school contest that his class won, or some kind of lottery prize, and he and his friends would come — no parents — and get to stand on the floor being announced during warm-ups. Not knowing what warm-ups looked like because the TV never showed that part, he imagined players taking turns doing spectacular half-court trick shots and doing elaborate dunks all around him while he and his friends stood with free sodas and free hot dogs and free hats and free t-shirts. He knew from TV that the lights would be swirling and music pumping. In his dreams, his blood would pump along with the heavy bass. In his dreams, the full crowd was there for warm-ups, already cheering at full volume.

Today was not a game day. The season had ended two months ago, with his team not even in the playoffs, as usual. Its glory days were in the past, lore that his father would wax poetically about, spouting names that had to attach themselves to made-up faces in Rondo’s mind. He preferred his own made-up faces to the real ones that occasionally cropped up on TV broadcasts or commercials, faces that now were too old and swollen and bleary-eyed to belong to true superstars. He refused to believe in old men performing feats of glory. Instead, he populated the familiar uniforms with unfamiliar strangers, lithe and sweating and making every bucket in stark contrast to the mediocrities that wore the colors these days. “I don’t even know how you can be a fan anymore,” his dad would say, shaking his head at the latest religiously watched loss. But the losses only made Rondo love his team even more. He knew that wins would be twice a glorious when they finally arrived: unexpected, exciting, electric, his.

One of the metal garage doors was open, with security guards and people in yellow vests manning the turnstiles. There was a long, slow line of people massed on the sidewalk along the arena’s wall, each of them carrying something large and misshapen: trash bags, sleeping bags, pillowcases, duffel bags, backpacks. His own school backpack was at his feet, stuffed to the gills with whatever essentials he could imagine for this overnight stay. His mom had forced him to pack a toothbrush and his dad had insisted on a laptop for homework, which necessitated a charging cable. The rest was books and a Switch and a bag of candy and other things Rondo could squeeze into various pouches and pockets.

The bus pulled up near the end of the line and disgorged its passengers, Rondo’s neighborhood. It had arrived with a handful of others, city buses far afield from their usual routes, repurposed for the evacuation and providing orderly transport block by block for Rondo’s neighborhood. Police barricades prevented cars from using the cross-streets and bus lanes. The news had told his parents not to drive. Nobody was supposed to drive anywhere. Only the buses could navigate the treacherously wet streets, at least for a little longer. The atmosphere was one of laconic emergency. People were obeying the “don’t run, don’t panic” mantra blaring at them through bullhorns, but their muscles were still tense enough and faces determined enough that if running suddenly became necessary, the whole crowd could break out into an impromptu flight. Still, in this orderly evacuation, there was the tell-tale slowness of official activity, the timeless and lazy proficiency of government action. Things were happening, but at a pace seemingly calculated to be frustrating and endless.

That was the way of the line, which Rondo and his four sisters and his parents joined in a family globule, chaining up with innumerable family globules ahead and behind. His youngest sister, Cassia, started to wander and was hooked back by the efficient hand of his mother. “Airport rules,” she said firmly, evoking the one time they flew to Mexico for their grandmother’s funeral and were told not to stray even a little while going through security.

The last person off their bus was one of the yellow vest people. They had a clipboard and were going up and down the line with instructions that they repeated verbatim to every family globule. Rondo heard it completely three times before she arrived at his family and said the same thing: “We’ll need identification for adults and you’ll write down the full names of every child at the gate. You’ll be assigned a section number and a row. Find your section and row on the main floor. If you don’t have enough cots in your assigned place, please raise this yellow flag I’m giving you. This is also how you ask for medical attention. Please obey all signs and instructions from people in vests like mine. Do you need these instructions in Spanish?”

When Rondo’s father gazed emptily at the little yellow yard flag he’d been handed, she repeated, “¿Necesita estas instrucciones en español?” He shook his head. Rondo gave the vest lady a glare. His parents were Puerto Rican and spoke English at home. He had a chip on his shoulder about being confused with Mexicans who needed everything in Spanish. Rondo himself barely spoke any Spanish beyond the basic nouns for the food he ate. But he knew not to say anything, because his parents said nothing and he was taught to be respectful of adults until adults showed it was okay to be otherwise, like at the protests last month. The lady in the vest moved on and repeated her instructions to the next family.

The line took two hours. For the first hour, buses kept arriving and swelling its size until it bent around the arena and out of sight, but at some point either everyone had been evacuated or the roads became impassible. Minutes would pass with nothing, then everyone would shuffle forward a few inches with all their bags. As time passed on, children became unruly and parents loosened their grip, so that roving packs of kids began racing up and down the sidewalk playing their obscure games. Parents would whistle them back occasionally. With no traffic on the road and barriers placed along the curb besides, everyone gradually accepted the sidewalk as perfectly safe. The steam of absorbing their parents’ and grandparents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ stress was finally allowed to blow off in a great big playground free-for-all that only calmed toward the front of the line where the end of the waiting was finally in sight and kids were reined back in. Rondo ignored all of this. He was twelve. He felt a semi-adult responsibility to stay close to his parents and behave.

But his mind was as unfettered as his younger siblings’ bodies. Gradually, he found he was no longer worried about the flooding, the unusual circumstances, the protests, the government, the general sense of unease and apocalypse enfolding his young life; gradually, he became excited to finally, actually, really be entering the arena and standing on the floor he’d so long dreamed of.

His imagination was hampered by the reality of the circumstances around him, to be sure, so he’d have to incorporate these globules of families, these sleepy adults, these mountains of overnight bags filled with stuff. Still, he pictured the floor, decked out in the pristine hardwood with all the painted lines and the team logo and the scoreboards. He pictured the stands. Empty at first, because Rondo was a pragmatist, but then he decided to fill them with these families, who would all take seats up into the highest unknown tiers. Maybe they’d get some concessions. Maybe there’d be cheering. Maybe it would just be Rondo’s family assigned to the sidelines, and the team would come to play an exhibition game to cheer the neighbors up. He could see them in his mind, and feel the strong hollow thump of the basketball pounding in his chest. At first, it would just be a goof, a pickup game not unlike the ones that took place across the street from his school everyday, with insults traded and hard fouls and laughter and expletives. But gradually, the moment would overtake the players. The importance of cheering up their fans in the midst of this tragedy would imbue them with all the purpose of a championship clincher. In Rondo’s mind, a rival team appeared in mustard yellow jerseys. Now it was a game. Now there were referees and lights and music and a mascot waving his hands around. And Rondo was courtside, in a folding chair, his face right up against the action with such proximity that he could smell the sweat and hear the labored breathing. He could hear the grunt of a pick-and-roll, the hard shhhh of a ball falling cleanly through the net. Gradually, the game in his mind acquired a score, a tight one, and the many fast breaks and hard dunks and soaring threes kept that score bouncing from one team’s lead to another, the crowd’s energy and mood swinging wildly with the numbers. The clock seemed to always be racing through the final seconds, resetting whenever Rondo wanted to prolong this mental moment just a little longer.

He dared to dream a time-out and the team gathered just in front of him, practically including him in the huddle. He was in with their faces and listening intently to the coach’s hurried plans for a quick score. He clapped along with them when it was time to break. The moment was so tense, so full of juice, that Rondo replayed it in his head a dozen times while his forgotten body shuffled forward a few more inches on the pavement. Rain had started to fall in reality, sending up a groan from the line and increasing the agitation at the slowness of the process. Umbrellas went up in spots where people had been smart enough to bring them. Ponchos went on. Rondo’s dad whistled back the girls while his mom unfurled her mighty sun shade from the back patio, a last minute addition she included “so the kids would have some privacy if needed.” All this was happening while Rondo stayed in the time out huddle.

The game never truly ended, as Rondo mentally rewound the dramatic final seconds over and over with different outcomes, different plays, different heroes, even drafting in some of the imaginary greats of yesteryear’s glories. His family was nearing the front. The younger kids were calming down and huddling under family shelters. Snacks were being dug out and consumed. The big banner draped beside Rondo showed his team’s big Hall-of-Famer from the championship years, the one vintage face he knew by heart, as did every basketball-loving kid in the world. This towering giant, this undisputed GOAT, was now the recipient of a complicated inbound pass to put up the winning shot with microseconds flying off the clock, the whole scene dutifully playing out in slow motion from multiple camera angles, a shot of Rondo jumping out of his chair and screaming included for good measure as the ball fell through the net a mere moment after the blare of the game-ending horn.

“Rondo!” his dad yelled, cuffing him gently on the ear. They were entering into the turnstile area, where his mom was dealing with the form on the clipboard.

“It’s okay,” a man in a yellow vest said.

“Answer the question, boy. What school do you attend?”

Rondo blinked and mumbled, “Carver Middle.”

“No jokes? I went to Carver,” said the man. “Does the cafeteria still smell like eggs?” And he laughed, indicating that no response was needed. Rondo frowned. The cafeteria smelled more like stale tomato sauce from cheap pizza. He couldn’t imagine this big man as a kid like him. “What grade are you going into?”

“Seventh.”

“All right. Play any sports?” Clearly, this guy had appointed himself morale brigade, trying to cheer up the sheltering families on their way through the bureaucracy of the gates. His efforts were lost on Rondo, still feeling the tug of his daydreams even as he realized that things were about to become very real.

“He wants to start basketball,” his father said.

“Good! Lord knows we need more players, eh?” And the laugh again, the one that Rondo was sure only happened when the man found himself funny. “Stick to it and get very good, you hear? Grow to be seven feet tall if you can, eh?” A laugh for each one. Every sentence a joke. The rain was intensifying.

His mother had finished the form and gotten the packet of materials and orientation map, along with a small piece of cardboard telling them where to go. They passed through the turnstiles where a man with a wand swiped the parents all over with a metal detector and two other people pawed through every bag. They were thorough. Rondo could see why this was all happening so slowly.

The concourse, once they passed into it, was dank and dark, with all of the concession booths shuttered closed. A few lights were on overhead, just enough to herd them through to a large wide staircase that strangely went down. Everyone hefted their bags to their shoulders for the descent. Rondo’s mom and dad shared the burden of carrying the half-collapsed wet sun shade between them. After a long descent, they came to a roped pathway dumping them directly onto the arena’s central floor.

Rondo was shocked. There were no stands on the lower level at all. In the hazy gloom he could just make out the upper decks, but the arena itself was gutted. The floor, as far as he could tell between the cots and exploded detritus of everyone’s stuff, was slate gray and cement. There was no evidence of any hoops or shot clocks. The central scoreboard had been raised up to the highest point in the rafters, its side screens illegible from where he was down below. It felt more like a giant empty swimming pool than a basketball court.

Rondo’s family picked their way between cots, keeping an eye on the complicated numbers and letters placed on tall stanchions every so often. White tape hastily marked off segments of the floor. They walked for what felt like a mile, stepping between people was so difficult, until they came to almost the exact center of the arena. They had four cots for the seven of them. The younger girls were expected to double up. Rondo’s dad immediately held up his flag while his mom tried to figure out the puzzle of how everyone would fit. They unpacked for a long while, getting the girls settled on their cots with some juice boxes. Rondo’s dad slowly realized he was among hundreds of people holding up yellow flags. His arm slowly lowered.

“I’m going to see if I can find someone,” he said to everyone in general, then loped off toward the end of the arena where a large Red Cross sign was suspended like a championship banner.

“How long will we have to say here?” Cassia whined.

“Just tonight,” her mom said with preoccupied reassurance.

This would, in the coming weeks, turn out to have been true, but only because the arena was the first stop of many on a grinding tour inland away from the rising waters. Rondo slept in churches, rec centers, VFW halls, library basements, roadside motels, and motley other spaces that even occasionally included people’s spare rooms before they finally stopped their mandated migration at a barn. By then, the neighborhood had been scattered, and Rondo’s family had been assigned the letter “B-A-E-6” along with a few others, routed randomly by officials with vans according to no plan they were at liberty to share. When they reached the barn, with its hollow rafters that let the rains through, they were done. The morning after, the barn was surrounded by soldiers. They had escaped the flood only to reach the war, where they shifted from prisoners to casualties over the course of 48 desperate minutes, each shot at the end pouring in from a different shooter, each patch of blood adding to the final score.