The Book of Joe

a whoop and turns Wayne’s wheelchair around, running back downcourt toward one of the newly lowered backboards, and Carly chases them, dribbling the ball much too high in the exuberant and deliberate manner of an uninitiated female. I’m touched by Dugan’s gesture, and then pissed at myself for being touched, because does he really think this one kindness, this one minuscule act, can make up for everything, and then I think, Is it really any different from what I’ve been trying to do since I got to the Falls, and I answer that Yes, it is different, because he’s an asshole, and then I remember that I am too.
    I move to join them at the far end of the court but find myself suddenly frozen in place, a potent wave of largely un-formed emotions overwhelming me. It feels like my blood is being heated before it’s circulated, threatening to melt my veins. What paralyzes me is the sudden, certain realization that I’m standing in the exact spot where my father fell in his last conscious moments. I look at the top of the key and mentally count the paces to where I stand, confirming that I am in fact standing in the right spot. “Come on, Joe!” Carly calls to me from the other side of the gym. I use two fingers to brush away the hot wetness that has suddenly formed on my cheeks, and then I shake it off and step decisively out of Arthur Goffman’s sweet spot.
    Now that the lights are on, I can see that the ink from the ancient signatures on my father’s basketball has been rubbing off onto our sweaty hands and comically splotching our faces where our ink-smudged hands made contact, making us look like quite the wild bunch. We stay for around a half hour, Carly, Jared, and I shooting around while Wayne sits in his wheelchair at the foul line, a happy smile on his face.
    Every so often he stands up and we toss him the ball for one or two perfect foul shots.
    Later Jared is handily defeating Carly and me in a loose two-on-one when I happen to glance at Wayne in his wheelchair. He’s sitting upright and absolutely still, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Wayne?” I say, stopping in mid-dribble. He doesn’t reply; gives no indication that he even hears me.
    “Wayne!” I call again, this time a little louder. “Oh, my god,”
    Carly whispers, and I feel her nails dig painfully into my forearm, denting it like clay. “Is he ... ?” The two of us approach him apprehensively as if in slow motion, the basketball slipping out of my grasp and bouncing noisily off to the side.
    “Wayne?” I say again, this time softly, the sound of my own voice ringing hollow in my ears. I feel Carly’s arm trembling against my own. We’re a step away from him when he blinks and grins. “Just a little gallows humor,” he says.
    Carly collapses into me with a gasp, and behind us, Jared hoots hysterically and claps his hands.
    On the short drive home, Wayne announces that he wants to be cremated so that we can do something meaningful and dramatic with his ashes, like they did with Debra Winger’s in Terms of Endearment. “You remember that?” he says. “Shirley MacLaine is just sitting there, carrying that urn around, trying to figure out what the hell to do with those ashes. That’s what I want. For the two of you to come up with something meaningful and dramatic for my mortal remains.”
    “You want to at least point us in the right direction?” I say.
    “I’ve already offered to be incinerated,” Wayne says. “Jesus, do I have to do everything?”
    Once home, after depositing Wayne safely with Fabia, I’m headed for the shower when I see Carly through the open doorway of Brad’s room, sitting on the bed, still dressed in the jeans and sweatshirt she wore for our earlier excursion, looking thoughtfully at her ink-smudged hands. “What’s up?” I say.
    She lowers her hands and looks up at me. “More than forty years ago those boys signed that basketball, trying to preserve something that was meaningful to them. They knew even then, from the second they won that championship, that time was making it less and less relevant with every passing minute. Their names stayed on that ball for over forty years, and then, in a matter of an hour or so, it was all over my hands, and yours, just another brick in the crumbling wall of their posterity.”
    I step into the room and lean against Brad’s old desk, with its Led Zeppelin and Rush stickers frozen in time under the glass blotter, along with pictures of Brad and Cindy