Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

“What?” Marvin said, staring at him.

“You deaf? Go get me one of those carts.”

“One of the shopping carts?”

“What other kind of carts you see, boy?” Flicka said. “Get one and put it in the back. And flip it when you put it back there, too. I don’t need it rollin’ around, rippin’ up my upholstery.”

What the hell now? Marvin thought.

After twenty more minutes of driving around, they pulled into a storage locker joint beside a U-Haul rental place. Flicka

parked and ordered Marvin to take the shopping cart out of the back.

Marvin followed as Flicka rolled it inside the storage facility. They took an elevator up to the second floor and continued down a seemingly endless hallway lined with corrugated steel lockers.

“Two one six two. Here it is,” Flicka said, undoing the lock on one of the steel shutters and rattling it up.

Inside, it was jam-packed with moving boxes and kids’ furniture and bicycles and clothes. Box after box after box.

“We gotta get all this out to my sister’s new place in Camden,” Flicka said, handing Marvin the lock. “Fill up the ride with as much as it can hold, and then come get me. I’ll be in the diner across the street.”

Marvin stood there, staring at the boxes.

It’s official. I’m a slave, he thought. There’s no way out of this.

“Aw, don’t look so sad, little Marvin. This here’s what’s called a character-building exercise,” Flicka said, grinning. “If you get tired, don’t worry. Just think of your uncle’s smiling face, and everything will work out fine.”

Chapter 41

It was a little after nine o’clock at night, and Manhattan College’s Draddy Gym was hot and bright and packed to the rafters.

The gym was an old seventies-era airplane-hangar-looking building that was sometimes criticized by visiting sports reporters. But when the Jaspers were playing their closest rival, Iona College, the fans’ electricity in the joint could have outdone what you’d find at a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden.

Over the squeaks and squeals of sneakers on hardwood blasted the arena standard “Get Ready for This,” as Manhattan’s band and cheerleaders and dancers and student fan section Sixth Borough went batty.

They weren’t the only ones. Myself and the rest of the Bennett bunch were at the top of the bleachers at half-court going berserk as we watched my son Trent compete in the halftime high jinks.

“Go, Trent, go!” we chanted.

He was trying to put on an oversize Manhattan uniform and complete a layup while a rival little kid fan tried to get on the gear of the Gaels.

Trent was in the huge green-and-white Manhattan uniform, half a step ahead of the Iona kid, when he got tripped up by the size 13 sneakers he was wearing and fell down in a heap.

“Nooooo!” we yelled.

But then the other kid tripped as well, as Trent got up and calmly banked it in.

“Yessssss!” we yelled.

“Wahoo!” Seamus yelled, and started handing out high fives as we jumped up and down.

I turned as Mary Catherine, wearing a Manhattan College hoodie, planted one on my lips.

We stared at each other.

“You look beautiful in green and white,” I said after a beat.

“I bleed green and white!” she yelled.