“If you getting this way from that stuff you drinking, you don’t have to pour me none,” I said. “In fact, it’s getting kinda late, so maybe I just better get going.”

“No, wait a minute,” he said. He got down on his knees in front of an old trunk and dug in a pile of clothes until he came to one of those books that people keep their family pictures in. He handed it to me.

“It’s a scrapbook.”

“Yeah. I’m going to let you look at it, Lonnie,” he said. “I don’t want you to say nothing to nobody about it, you understand?”

“I ain’t mouthy,” I said. “You don’t want nobody to know about your scrapbook, ain’t nobody going to know.”

“You’re right about one thing,” he said. “It is scrap. That’s my life you got there in your hands. Scraps. Pieces of things stuck in an old book that nobody knows about.”

I opened the book, and it was like one of those old black-and-white movies you see on television sometime. The pictures were almost all cut from newspapers, and were turning yellow. They were all about basketball games.

“This you?” I asked. “Spider Jones?”

“Used to be … what game you on now?”

“DeWitt Clinton.”

“I scored fifty points that game—”

“Says here forty-eight!”

I went on and saw that he had played for City College. The more I read, the better he was getting. The first few pages were about high school games, and maybe there would be a paragraph or two or just a few lines. Then there were tournaments and college games. They had pictures of him holding a Most Valuable Player award over his head. He looked different then, skinny, with long arms and legs. I could see why they called him Spider.

The magazine pieces were the best. They had him on an All-American team. He was in color, too. The picture made him look darker than he was, but you could still tell it was him if you looked close.

“I ain’t taking nothing from you, man, but how come you didn’t turn pro?” I asked.

“Mostly because you didn’t turn enough pages,” he said.

I turned a few more pages. There were pictures of him playing in the NIT and the Rucker Tournament. And then there was a headline that said: “Big O burns rookie!” There he was, holding Oscar Robertson! I didn’t believe it! Cal had played pro ball. I couldn’t read fast enough. He had played with the best in the world. I kept looking up at him to see if it was the same guy.

“You played pro!”

“I played pro!”

“What happened?”

“You heard about Davey Blue?” He reached over and got the bottle again. “Same thing happened to me.”

He turned a couple of pages and pointed to a small article. He had underlined some words: “associating with known gamblers and behaving in a manner detrimental to the interests of the National Basketball Association …”