“Cal …” Aggie tried to put her arms around Cal, and he pushed her away.

Aggie had called Cal’s father and he arrived a few minutes after we did. The only time that Cal had mentioned his father was when we were going through his scrapbook. One picture had him standing with a tall guy and I had asked him if that was his coach. He told me that it was his father and he turned the page real quick and I thought that maybe he didn’t want to talk about his father because he was dead.

When his father came in, Cal looked at him, shook his head, and turned away. You could tell there wasn’t any love lost between them.

His father, whom Aggie called Pop, tried to exchange a few light words with Cal, but Cal wasn’t buying. From then on, it was like they were two dogs, each waiting for the other one to make a move and start the fight.

Cal got up and went to the cupboard. There was some rum there and he poured himself a half a water glass and downed it.

“You can’t get ready for the big game like that,” I said.

“My big games are gone,” he said.

“Son.” His father started to speak. “These people are—”

“Yes, dad?” Cal put the drink down and turned to his father. “What is it, dad? Do you have some fatherly advice for your son after all these years?”

In a way I understood about the hurting going on between Cal and his father. When you’re little and you get hurt it’s bad, because when you’re big it’s too late to make a comeback. What was bugging Cal was not that his father had done him wrong, but that his father had done wrong to a kid that had later become Cal, and the man couldn’t forgive his father for what he had done to that kid. I could understand that.

“Hey, man, do we get to know what happened?” I asked. “I mean, if you just going to be nasty, then we might as well find out what’s happening.”

“What happened?” Cal poured another glass of rum. Aggie screwed her face up as she watched the glass fill. “What happened was my dear wife smiled at me and brought her warm body up against mine and I forgot everything I ever knew. I forgot about leaving my game somewhere in Chicago. I forgot about all the years in between then and now. Yeah, I forgot.

“But several gentlemen had the kindness to remind me of those things. They came to me and said, ‘Nigger, who you think you are?’ They said, ‘Ain’t you that nigger that used to fix ball games in Chicago? We can make some money off you. Yeah, all you got to do is what we tell you.’ ”

“Oh, Cal!” Aggie slammed her palms down on the table. “Does it ever end?”

“They said they wanted me to do them a little favor.” Cal was talking and smiling like he was crazy. “Everybody wants Cal to do them a little favor. O’Donnel wants Cal to do him the favor of dropping out of the tournament so he don’t get embarrassed. The gamblers want me to mess with the score so they can make enough chump change to buy somebody else’s life. ‘If you don’t do this for us, we’re going to have to make life hard for you,’ that what this clown says to me in the car the other night. Then I hit him. I hit him, and hit him, and kept on hitting the sucker until the cops stopped me.