| To the Hole Page 2 A few days, sometimes a week or so, later, his mother would return. She always anticipated her son�s anger, and to counter it she came home bearing gifts. Sneakers, electronics, jeans, leather jackets. Whatever. Sometimes, when she returned with a male friend, he would have gifts for Sean. Usually that meant that he would be around for a few days, sleeping late, lying on the couch and cutting up his product in plan sight of the child. Despite the gifts, Sean never forgave his mother for her frequent absences and her string of boyfriends. One evening, feeling particularly disgusted with his mom, Sean�ten at the time� watched from his room as a man with long sideburns and a beard unwrapped a package of cocaine on the glass coffee table in the living room. When the man rose and walked to the kitchen, Sean went over and tipped the coffee table onto its side, the glass shattering and the white powder spraying onto the floor. �Fuckin� kid!� the sideburned man screamed as he ran back into the room. He lunged for Sean, who maneuvered himself so that the broken shards and the cocaine were between them. �You fuckin� little bastard! Do you know how much money that is?! I�ll kill you!� Sean�s mother appeared and quickly got onto her knees and began separating the powder from the glass. Little clouds of white floated above the smashed table. �Oh no, Sean. No,� she said. �No honey, you shouldn�t have done that.� �I�ll kill that little bastard!� the man yelled. �I�ll kill him!� �Just go back into your room Sean. Just go into your room.� The boy could see trickles of his mother�s blood turning the cocaine pink. Officer Walton heard about the incident after practice one day, was pretty sure he knew who the sideburned man was and paid him a visit, warning him to stay away from the boy and his home. Walton had gone to bat for Sean on other occasions, too, including getting him into the Catholic high school, despite Sean�s middle school grades and his mom�s inability to pay the tuition. A little-known police department scholarship was tapped for that. By senior year, however, Walton had backed off. Sean turned 18 that year and was master of his own destiny, but his character had not developed at the same rate that his basketball skills had. In the middle of May, freshman Kendra Price had a picture that was the envy of all her classmates: her and Sean together at the semi. It was in her locker as well as tucked into the side of her bedroom mirror at home. A month later both photos were torn down in the wake of a visit to a reproductive services clinic for a procedure that Sean wanted nothing, financially or emotionally, to do with. Kendra�s mother initiated the filing of criminal charges for statutory rape against him, but the DA�s office talked her down. No use having her daughter relive the experience when a jury would understand that Kendra voluntarily left the semi in a limo with the senior, and that the girl�s mother had approved of the whole evening. In July, Sean started working at a garage, a job the community college coach got him. Sean was late every morning for a week and then just stopped showing up. His coach wasn�t too happy, but Sean assured him that he would come up with something else. Mike Walton found Sean at his new job one evening. It was a difficult moment as he read Miranda rights to the young man, but Walton wasn�t surprised. He had seen it coming. He had seen it coming for a while. The DA�s office had a deal for Sean that would have got him out of prison time, but the ex-basketball player would not cooperate. He knew that the sideburned man had many associates who would be very unhappy if Sean talked. So he didn�t. The judge gave him one year in the county jail, and Sean said nothing as he was handcuffed and removed from the courtroom. That day, a photograph was torn from the daily newspaper in the jail library. It was taken and passed around from inmate to inmate. It was of a young man soaring through the air to the basket, a young man with perfect lips and freckles that danced on his cheeks. |