Ex-Basketball Player
Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with
the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it
has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth's Garage
Is on the
corner facing west, and there,
Most days,
you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.
Flick
stands tall among the idiot pumps —
Five on a
side, the old bubble-head style,
Their
rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One’s
nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes
An E and O.
And one is squat, without
A head at
all—more of a football type.
Once Flick
played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was
good: in fact, the best. In ’46
He bucketed
three hundred ninety points,
A county
record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him
rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home
game. His hands were like wild birds.
He never
learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil,
and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag,
he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of
us remember anyway.
His hands
are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no
difference to the lug wrench, though.
Off work,
he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.
Grease-gray
and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes
those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick
seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her
face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco
Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.
-- John Updike
