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  Praise for An African Rebound

  “With his familiar world of college and professional basketball as a backdrop, Dan Doyle’s An African Rebound weaves a tapestry of success, failure, joy, pain, grief, and redemption as a seasoned basketball coach searches for his meaning in life and finds it in Africa. There’s something for every reader: philosophy, psychology, religion, literature, and history. Not surprisingly, the themes of non-violence and anti-prejudice are prominent, given Dan’s personal energy in promoting those two causes through his Institute for International Sport.”

  — Darrell J, Burnett, PhD, Clinical Psychologist,

  Youth Sports Psychologist, author of It’s Just a Game!

  “The love of sport can overcome the sadness and selfishness of human problems. In this remarkable novel, Dan Doyle shows just how true this can be!”

  — Judy Cameron, Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer,

  President, All American Red Heads Alumni Association

  “I’ve long regarded Dan Doyle’s Are You Watching, Adolph Rupp? as the best basketball novel I’ve ever read. With his new book, Doyle, a gifted storyteller, has crafted a coach’s tale of redemption within the milieu of the game’s recent globalization. Any serious basketball fan is bound to find this novel an interesting and compelling read.”

  — Tom Konchalski, HSBI Report

  “This novel takes us into a reality that most in the world of sports turn away from: failure. This culture likes winners. . . . In An African Rebound, Doyle makes his deepest concerns incarnate by taking us into the world of Jim Keating and forcing us to cheer for this ‘loser.’ As we follow Keating’s struggle toward a redeemed life, we are led to reassess what really matters.”

  — Jack Ridl, author of Losing Season

  and Broken Symmetry

  “Do you hurt hard and long when the world confronts you with unfairness? Coach Keating weaves you into his struggle with fate as he enlightens you with his encyclopedic knowledge of the competitive basketball arena. Can we transcend the frustration that crushes our self-worth, supports guilt and depression, and fuels the harmful violence we abhor? Get wiser and happier as you grow your mental-spiritual strength with Coach Keating.”

  — Donald Pet, M.D., world peace activist

  An African

  Rebound

  An African

  Rebound

  A Novel

  By

  Dan Doyle

  Copyright © 2013 by Dan Doyle

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments,

  organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of accuracy and

  authenticity. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are from the

  author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner

  without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of

  brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to

  Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special

  discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or

  educational purposes. Special editions can also be created

  to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse

  Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or

  [email protected].

  Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse

  Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

  www.skyhorsepublishing.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Doyle, Daniel E., 1949-

  An African rebound : a novel / Dan Doyle.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-62087-794-4

  1. Basketball coaches—Fiction. 2. Americans--Burundi--Fiction. 3. Hutu

  (African people)--Fiction. 4. Tutsi (African people)--Fiction. 5. Burundi-

  Ethnic relations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.O95474A47 2013

  813’.6--dc23

  2012049794

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  My Dream Team

  This book is dedicated to a group of individuals who enhanced my love of the game. Most are from my early youth, the others I have come to know in adulthood. All have helped me develop an appreciation for the many wonderful benefits of basketball.

  ♦Chi Rho League Coaches and Administrators: Father Donald Gonyor, “D” O’Donohue, Dan Sullivan, and Don Jubinville

  ♦Jerry Alaimo

  ♦Charlie Bibaud

  ♦George Blaney

  ♦Tommy Burns

  ♦Bob Cousy

  ♦Bob Devlin

  ♦Jack “The Shot” Foley

  ♦Paul “Frosty” Francis

  ♦Chuck Hamblet

  ♦Ray Handlan

  ♦Noel Keating

  ♦Joe Lane

  ♦Richard Lapchick

  ♦Larry O’Brien

  ♦Dee Rowe

  ♦Buster Sheary

  ♦George Wigton

  ♦My six favorite players: Matt, Andy, Meg, Carrie, Julie, and Charlie

  ♦My parents and my Uncle Matt

  ♦My brother Mike and my sister Jo

  ♦The teams I played for and coached

  Contents

  I Heading Home

  Chapter 1 Cherry Hill, New Jersey (Fall 1989)

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5 (1969–1976)

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7 (1977–1982)

  Chapter 8 (1985–1987)

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  II Hope

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  III Uncommon Surprises

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  IV The Game

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42 Christmas Eve

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  V Seeking the Truth

  Chapter 53 Johannesburg, South Africa

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  VI Finding Light

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Acknowledgments

  I

  Heading Home

  1

  Cherry Hill, New Jersey

  (Fall 1989)

  Jim Keating decided to pass on a final walk-through, one sellers often t
ake to evoke nostalgia. For Jim, painful memories had smothered any pleasant remembrances, and he could not leave the house soon enough. He continued loading the last of his modest belongings into a car that looked to be on the critical list, moving as quickly as his weary body would allow. The last suitcase was the heaviest, and he had to heft it on his thigh to get it in the trunk. He went back, slammed the door, locked it, then saw his lawyer pull up.

  “Thanks for coming, Joe,” Jim said. “Here’s the key. Hope the new owners have better . . .” Halting in mid-sentence, he checked his self-pity.

  “Good luck in your new home, and be careful on the trip,” said the lawyer. “And listen, Coach, things will get better.”

  Couldn’t get much worse, thought Jim.

  Several weeks before his New Jersey departure, Jim had asked the Chevrolet dealer who provided automobiles for the athletic department to sell him a cheap but reliable car. He got a ‘78 Malibu, eleven years old with more than a few dents and scratches. But at least it was comfortable.

  The ride up I-95 to I-84 was smooth enough. Anxious to put Jersey behind him, he made only a couple of pit stops, but every exit sign triggered recollections of fast-food restaurants, entitled recruits, and blighted hope. Finally, he neared Hartford and managed to keep his concentration on a Ludlum audiotape. One more tape, just enough to get him to his old hometown.

  An hour later, as several people crossed at a traffic light, none took notice of the rickety ‘78 Malibu, idling in an agitated state, or of the man behind the wheel. That no one paid any attention to the car or its aging driver was a big change from forty-odd years earlier, when a sighting of Jim Keating would have turned every head in the Main South section of Worcester, boy or girl, man or woman.

  I’ve made it home, thought Jim.

  Before the devastating events of the past couple of years, a four-and-a-half-hour drive would have been a lay-up for the old jock. Yet so severe was his despondency that he had seriously questioned whether he could handle the trip without breaking down. And if he didn’t, then surely the damn car would. But now he had arrived safely in the city he had lorded over as a youth, where his athletic exploits, even decades later, had never been equaled.

  At the Auburn exit of the Massachusetts Turnpike, just before the turn onto I-290 into Worcester, he decided to take a slightly longer route to his new residence. He wanted to see his old Main South neighborhood. Now that he was in it, he said to himself, It’s worse than I thought. Looks like I feel.

  Homes he remembered as attractive and meticulously kept were sadly decrepit: sagging porches, boarded windows, yards full of weeds and trash. Cops patrolled Main Street with taut looks and billy clubs swinging. The high hope that had resonated from most every household of Jim’s youth was now displaced by a palpable sense of futility.

  Stopped at a red light, Jim eyed a skinny black kid with unusually long arms loping across the street in front of his car.

  Since he’d started coaching in ‘50, Jim Keating had always taken note of physical attributes that might give an athlete an edge in any sport. This kid’s arms drooped below his knees, and the image caused Jim’s face to break into a half smile, his first in some time.

  The light turned green, and the Malibu proceeded up Main Street to his new home two miles away, just beyond the border of the urban squalor that now surrounded him.

  Jim Keating drove slowly. There was nothing on his calendar.

  Turning left onto Stoneland Road, Jim rested his Malibu next to the curb and studied the scribbled notes he’d received from his landlord, Bill Perkins. “Number 14, seventh home on right, three-decker with brown shingles.”

  Rolling to a stop at Number 14, the old Coach’s eyes focused on the rotund figure seated on the front steps—a familiar face in a stranger’s body.

  “Well, if it ain’t Mistah Jimmy Keatin. Great ta see ya, Jim . . . been twenty years at least. Thought I’d wait for ya, give ya the key personally,” said Perkins in his classic Worcester accent.

  Both men noticed, though neither mentioned, how time had turned each of them into caricatures of their former selves. For his part, Perkins knew well of his old friend’s recent torment, and he was ready with an ice-breaker: “Pulled this out of an ol’ chest coupla weeks back—just after you first called me about rentin’ the apartment. Thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

  Jim scanned a press clipping that chronicled his fourth-quarter heroics in some long-forgotten basketball game. The same article was no doubt glued to a page in one of the many scrapbooks his mother had kept.

  “Let me take you upstairs, show you the place,” said Perkins. The ascent was a Kilimanjaro climb for the landlord, and as the two reached the third floor, his slack-jawed mouth gulped fitfully for oxygen.

  “Like I told ya on the phone, it ain’t much, but it’s clean and quiet,” Perkins gasped as he handed Jim the key to the one-bedroom flat.

  Perkins’s description was on the mark, but Jim had no complaints. He was glad to be home and gladder still for the space that now separated him from some painful memories.

  “Main South ain’t what it used to be, Jim. It’s fine down this end—still good people. But up past St. Peter’s, the assend of the neighborhood, it’s n—s and spics. N—s came first, then the spics, and they’re even worse. If you go for a walk at night, stay in this area and you’ll be fine. But listen to me advisin’ Jim Keating on personal safety.”

  Recent events made Jim realize first-hand how painful it was to be on the receiving end of prejudice; he wanted to challenge Perkins’s racist swill. But he just didn’t have the spirit to do what he knew he should—at least not with an old friend who had probably cut the rent in half to accommodate Jim’s ravaged finances.

  “I’ll let you get some rest, Coach. You look beat.”

  I am beat, thought Jim.

  2

  A note in Nick Manzello’s widely-read sports column in the Worcester Telegram gave notice that Jim Keating was back in town. But Jim had shielded himself with an unlisted phone number so Kirk Willar, one his favorite former baseball teammates, hadn’t been able to track him down. Then Willar ran into Bill Perkins at Gilrein’s Pub on Main Street.

  “He ain’t himself, that’s for sure,” Perkins said.

  “Think he’d want to go to the Gloves next month, Bill?”

  “Here’s the address, you can ask him.”

  A couple of days later, Willar rang Jim’s apartment bell. When Jim answered the door, Willar saw the forlorn look Perkins had mentioned. Except for some flecks of white, the crew cut was familiar. But Prozac had created a puffiness that eroded the sharp features Willar remembered, and Jim hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, which intensified his tired demeanor.

  “Kirk Willar, Jim,” he said, saving Jim from the awkwardness of not recognizing an old chum.

  “I know, Kirk. God, it’s good to see you. Come on in.”

  “Thanks, Jim, but I’m on my way to work. Saw in Nick’s column you were back. Wanted to stop by to welcome you. Also, did you know the Golden Gloves are on next month?”

  “Didn’t know that,” replied Jim in earnest.

  “It’s a ways away, but you might want to give some thought to comin’. We all remember your KO of Billy Carlos only a couple of weeks after you took up the sport. People still talk about that fight. Everyone’d love to see ya, Jim.”

  The old Jim Keating had always been outgoing, almost loquacious when trading the details of some sports event in which he participated. But now, in a lair of dashed hope, he had little interest in recalling that bout or other past exploits.

  “I appreciate you thinking of me, Kirk. Let me think about it.”

  Jim’s guarded tone made Willar think it was unlikely his former running mate would show up on fight night.

  Jim had given Kirk Willar his unlisted phone number. Willar called several times, imploring Jim to attend the Golden Gloves.

  “It’s always a great night, Jim. Your bein’ there’d ma
ke it even bettah,” was Willar’s consistent theme.

  But while Jim remained non-committal, Willar could sense that his old friend appreciated the calls and that he was beginning to give serious thought to attending the event.

  “There’s a little more spirit in his voice,” Willar said to Bill Perkins.

  Now settled back in Worcester, Jim had indeed edged away from despair, although he was still a long way from optimism. His decision to return to his hometown had been a good one, for when he arrived he surely knew where he was. Admittedly, the other end of Main South had fallen victim to social decay, but his part of the neighborhood, with many of the same Irish-Catholic families of his youth still anchored there, was largely unchanged. Its familiar homes, streets, trees, and smells gave him the footing he needed to begin what he knew could be a long journey back to stability.

  Jim’s other source of hope was Dr. Ken Rotella, a Worcester psychologist who had been recommended by his psychiatrist in New Jersey. Jim had met with Rotella once, and the two had immediately connected. Jim liked Rotella’s direct, thoughtful approach. He was especially drawn to one piece of advice: “In this first phase of our relationship, I’m going to make a recommendation: start walking every day . . . a long walk. Working on your fitness will help to revive your body and your mind.”

  I know that. I’ve just got to start doing it.

  Following Dr. Rotella’s counsel, Jim began to take daily walks around the neighborhood, staying within Bill Perkins’s safety zone. As the psychologist had predicted, it was an activity he found therapeutic in various ways. Soon, he was up to three miles a day. Despite countless hours competing on fields and courts in his youth, Jim’s knees had held up enough so that jogging was a near-term possibility. He almost joined the YMCA, but held back due to his sparse finances and reluctance to socialize.

  The walks increased his comfort level with being home. Each block had its own set of distinct associations, mostly good . . . all poignant. Further up Stoneland Road was the house where the eleven-member McHale family had lived on one floor of a three-decker. Jim recalled that each Easter Sunday, all nine McHale children would proudly sport their new shoes at the 10:00 am family Mass, a tradition many of them had carried on with their own kids. Walking down Hitchcock Road, Jim would pass the home in which a seventh-grade game of spin-the-bottle brought him his first kiss—and a mild rebuke from Mrs. McKeon, mother of Judy McKeon, the young hostess and, as it turned out, serial kisser. Jim was always certain that Mrs. McKeon had stealthily peered through the cracked kitchen door in the hope—futile as it turned out—of assuring her daughter’s chastity. The memory would often prompt a smile.