He wakes in his trailer, the quiet sound of the desert wind rustling the curtains hanging above his bed. The light filters in like flour, falling to rest gently upon the rise and fall of a threadbare blanket. The neighborhood is quiet these days. It’s been some time now since the crunch and squeal of gravel on the old court wrenched the man from his slumber, but the echoes still linger.

Out of respect for the dead or perhaps just gone, he moves about silently. He pulls a worn and fraying pair of overalls over tired knobbly knees and sits for a moment on the edge of the bed. Dust has grown like moss across the bedside table where his wire-rimmed glasses rest, a garden unto itself. He musters a breath and blows hard upon the lenses, dispelling the cloak of haze. Assessing their clarity, he grunts in resignation and slides them onto his face, squinting at the resolution of his world.

A weatherbeaten and faded cap rests upon the man’s head as he surveys the path from his trailer to the old basketball court. Poorly maintained at the best of times, it is now a legend, the dirt and tenacious grass clumps hidden to those without the sacred knowledge of days past. In another age, the man himself once ran like the dickens to that concrete slab with the ghosts in his memories to prove his manhood and worth. Now the path has become a quest, and the man a lone knight on his way to fulfill the king’s command. The stones underfoot crunch and crackle as he takes step after weary step toward the gray plateau.

An old trash can sits at the corner, and the man smiles at it. He was already old when it appeared, and it brings him joy to think that he may outlive it yet. His hand runs over familiar cracks and gouges from years of rowdy youth in their wrath and exultation. A ball lays in the grass like a rabbit in hiding, its ears laid back in terror. He looks up at the basket, ascendant like the steeple of a church.

Its net moves stiffly in the breeze, the blaze of orange still a challenge to haughty young men in their desperation to prove Herculean valor. Nothing has passed through this net in an era, but the man still cleans its temple each week. Some kind of reverence must be lodged deep in the soul, for the lone believer.

The man moves suddenly, as though grasping at a fleeting opportunity, a stranger in passing. He picks up the ball in the grass, its cries unheard as arthritic joints submit to a necessary genuflection. Through creaks and groans, he stands, wrinkled and bent fingers finding familiarity in the bumps and grooves of the talisman. For a moment, he feels the heroic rush of a day he’d all but forgotten.

“Mary Lou, you just watch, I’ll make it this time, I swear!”

“Sure you will Richie, and my pa’s pigs will fly over the full moon tonight!”

The giggling and chatter made his cheeks flush, just as Mary’s smile had seconds before.

“Well, if I land it, you gotta come with me to the soda bar tonight. A date.”

He remembers her nod, and the swish of the net just after.

It’ll be 25 years since she went home next week.

He takes a deep breath, willing away the gathering rainstorm in his heart even as pricks of drizzle gather between his eyes. Lifting tired arms, his muscles bunch and tense, the shakes making it hard to aim as he once did.

With a cry, he springs up in a hop, his hands pushing the ball forward and into the air.

He lands, a white and blinding light obscuring all senses as his foot alights upon the forgotten handle of the broom and twists. No sound escapes his mouth as he collapses to the concrete, teeth gritted against the onslaught of an empire’s army of pain. He lays there, unable to see if he succeeded in his mission.

But he will swear to anyone that asks that he heard the swish of a net.

Night falls shortly, and he watches the stars from his place of supplication before the altar.