A Shoe Story

In front of the whole class, she laid hands on that coach and asked if he wanted her to swat him.  He just stood there, always a weakling and a coward when not intimidating children.
 
Fortson's shoe was a gift from my brother.  Sports are important between us.  Basketball says things that words cannot.  Nobody understands why he bought me Danny Fortson's shoe, even after I explain it to them.  I explain it to women as a sort of test, to see if they "get it."  They don't.  Kind of like when I was in my twenties and I would have women read "Fisher's Hornpipe" and see if they laughed at the right places.  They never did.

See, the thing is that it doesn't have to be Danny Fortson's shoe.  It could be almost anybody's shoe.  As long as they aren't a superstar or my favorite player or something like that.  It needs to be the shoe of somebody who is kind of anonymous now, almost a nobody.  But at some point, at some level, they were a star.  They meant something in the sports conversation if you were paying attention.  They remind us of a specific time and place because they never went anywhere else.  Danny Fortson was a BEAST at Cincinnati.  He's an undersized, overpaid hothead now.  These things are important in my world. If someone understands who Danny Fortson is, then I know they are in my tribe.  Do you see?

The shoe could be Ledell Eackles' (which would be way cool!), or Jerald Honeycutt's.  It could be Chris Washburn's or maybe Derrick Chievous' or the crown jewel, Fennis Denbo's.  It just has to take you to a place that few can go.  Do you see?

In Arkansas lore, it would be Lawson Pilgrim's or David Scott's or Trey Trumbo's.  Maybe James Crockett's or Ray Biggers'.  Do you see?

I love the echo of a dribbled basketball.  It is the sound of footsteps in Valhalla.  When I close my eyes to sleep I see a crowded gym.  Two dozen balls are bouncing at random.  I try to synchronize their beat until it is a syncopated rhythm.  Do you remember that?  When it would happen ever so briefly?  All the balls being dribbled in unison.  Maybe one just slightly off so the sound was like that of heart valves closing—perfect, but not simultaneous.

And then the rhythm breaks down and it all becomes random again, and I wonder if I imagined it to begin with.  In some ways that  is basketball to me.  Or maybe that is life to me.  I get confused sometimes.

Danny Fortson's shoe is a bridge to things, a bridge to basketball, to my brother, to humility, to the tribe of sport.  Sports are a bridge as well.  Not a wall, not a moat, they are no kind of barrier.

Does this mean I'm looking for a Cinderella to fit into Danny Fortson's shoe?
 

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