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By B.G. Kelley

盛開 選注

It’s funny how friendships begin.

One day on a basketball court in Philly I was chasing after a loose ball, and the opponent going after it with me swung an elbow that caught my lip.[1]

I wiped away the blood with the shirt-tail of my jersey, but I wanted payback.[2] With 15 seconds remaining in the game and the score tied[3] at 78, I had the ball in my hands. The same guy bellied up hard on defense.[4] I went up for the game-winning jump shot[5]. As he leaped to block my shot, I fended him off with my left forearm and released the ball at the buzzer.[6] Swish[7]. Walking off the court, he came up to me, and introduced himself.

“Smooth game you got,” he said.

“Can’t say the same,” I said.

“Sorry about the lip.”

“Forget about it.”

We went for a Coke[8].

Other than basketball, Flash Gordon and I had nothing else in common.

Flash grew up in a home for boys—his father had run off when he was 4 or 5 and his mother was too sick to rear[9] him. The boys’ home wasn’t the cleanest or quietest place. The food didn’t put a warm feeling in his belly. But there was a tiny gym[10] on the third floor. Basketball became his best friend. On the other hand, I had it middleclass comfortable: concerned parents, a hot dinner every night, a car at my beckoning[11]. Any problems were illusions. Basketball was my passion, too. So, for Flash and me, there was never any reason to fuss with metaphysics[12] when a game could be had. Basketball became an overarching theology that seemed to order things in our lives.[13]

The court was the one place where we were both completely at ease, where we could release ourselves in a reverse spin dribble past a defender, or in a high-arching, high-speed spinning jump shot that dropped through the basket.[14]

We played together everywhere: All around Philly, in the Poconos, at the Jersey Shore, up on Cape Cod bay, even in Quebec in Canada. We became well-known as Flash Gordon and Billy the Kid. Especially the game this particular March night when we would write our basketball oeuvre[15] as teammates.

The team on which we were playing was vying for the championship in a semi-pro league in Philly.[16] In warm-ups, Flash said to me, “Shoot the lights out as only you can and we’ll whip these hotshots.[17] I’ll take care of the rest.” That meant Flash would hustle after every loose ball, bang bodies under the boards for rebounds, and play Velcro-like defense.[18] We were the decisive underdogs[19], not only because we were both 36 years old, as was the rest of our team, but also because we were going up against a bunch of young, former college stars—20-somethings—who had gone unbeaten in winning the regularseason championship.

The referee’s shrill whistle signaled game time.[20] Flash, fired up, uncoiled his lithe 5-foot, 8-inch frame and hustled hard to track down the tip. He grabbed the ball, whirled, and whipped a pass to me at the top of the key.[21] Swish. I hit my first eight shots and we jumped to a 32-20 lead.

“Keep shooting,” he shouted to me. Flash has always been my biggest booster[22]. He had come to almost every game I had played as a starting point guard for Temple University, including the game I played in the NCAA Tournament, aka “March Madness.”[23]

I kept shooting and he kept “doing the rest,” and we went on to collect the gold and glory that night. At the final buzzer, Flash raced over, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, “See, buddy[24], I told you we’d win.” His lips peeled back into a huge smile. It was his first-ever championnship—there were no championships growing up in that boys’ home.

In that giddy blush of triumph we promised like some Philadelphia Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer to play the game side by side forever, to remain, as the poet Schiller wrote, “true to the dreams of thy youth.”[25]

Vocabulary

1. court: 球場；Philly: 費城，美國城市Philadelphia的俗稱，下文中還出現了一些地名，不一一作注；swing: 揮動拳頭（或手臂）打擊。

2. shirt-tail: 襯衣下擺；jersey: 運動衫；payback: 報復。

3. tie: 打成平局，得相等比分。

4. 還是那個家伙使勁揚起身體準備防守。

5. jump shot: 跳投。

6. fend off: 抵擋，擋開；at the buzzer :（ 尤指籃球的比賽）結束。

7. swish:〈口〉漂亮的。

8. Coke: 可樂。

9. rear: 養育。

10. gym: 體育館。

11. beckoning:（用手或頭的動作）示意，召喚。

12. metaphysics: 空談，空頭理論。

13. overarching: 支配一切的，首要的；theology: 某種宗教信仰。這兩句話都表示兩人酷愛籃球，將之擺在首位。

14. 籃球場是我們兩人唯一可以完全放松的所在：我們經過防守隊員時反轉運球，或者在投籃時大弧度地快速跳投——在這中間我們釋放著自己。

15. oeuvre: （一名作家或畫家的）全部作品。

16. vie for: 為……而競賽；semi-pro: 半職業的。

17. warm-up: 熱身賽；shoot the lights out: 擊滅燈火，此處用比喻義，表示“投進每一個球”；whip these hotshots: 徹底擊敗那些高手（好手）。

18. 那意味著弗萊士要去追趕每一個丟了的球，撞開對手的身體去搶籃板球，并實施魔術貼般的防御。

19. underdog: 失敗者。

20. referee: 裁判；shrill: 尖銳刺耳的。

21. 熱情高漲的弗萊士，伸直他那輕巧自如的5英尺8英寸的身體，奮勇搶球。他抓住了球，轉身，在千鈞一發的時刻迅速把球傳給了我。

22. booster: 熱情的支持者。

23. NCAA Tournament: 男子籃球錦標賽，又名“三月瘋狂”（March Madness），是全美收視率最高的運動盛事之一；aka: =also known as。

24. buddy:〈俚〉家伙，老兄。

25. giddy: 令人眩暈的；Huck Finn:《哈克貝里?芬歷險記》里的主人公；Tom Sawyer:《湯姆?索亞歷險記》里的主人公，兩部書都是美國作家馬克?吐溫的作品；Schiller: 席勒（1759—1805），德國詩人、戲劇家和文學理論家，與萊辛和歌德齊名，同為德國古典文學的創始人。

（來源：英語學習雜志）