"Okay," Ferrol said slowly. "Okay. I see the—" He stopped. "Look, ma'am. Even if I see it. It's chalk. It's a board. It's not a contract. I can't arrest a man for writing his name twice. And I can't make four guys walk off a court for one kid when there's three other—"
"Third," Perpetua said. "And this is the one I brought you over here for, so please pay attention, because I'm going to ask you to read it out loud." She lifted her hand and put one small brown finger, very gently, on the strip of old white paint above the Court 4 rectangles. On the faded red capitals. SAT 8-10 CT 4 YOUTH HOLD. And then she moved her finger down to the smaller black letters underneath.
"Read that," she said.
Ferrol read it. He did not read it out loud. Ruel saw his lips move.
SPONSOR F-217. ASK AT DESK.
Something happened in Ferrol's face. It did not happen all at once. It happened the way a bruise happens, slowly and from the inside, a color coming up from somewhere deep.
"Where'd you—" he said, and stopped.
"I didn't get it anywhere," Perpetua said. "It's been there. It's been there for sixteen years. I've walked past it every morning for ten. You know whose number that was. I didn't, not until last spring. I had to go to the library and ask the girl at the reference desk to find me the 2010 Merriam police department annual report on the computer, and there it was, page eleven, a little picture. Community Youth Officer. Police Athletic League, Saturday tennis and basketball, Wick Park Recreation Center. Badge F-217. There's a picture of you in front of this board with a paintbrush. You had hair."
Ferrol did not say anything.
Ruel looked from the strip of paint to the officer and back again. He felt the whole morning tilt under him, like a boat when someone stands up too fast.
"Desk," Perpetua said, and pointed past the courts to the boarded-up recreation building with the old poster on its door. "That desk. The one in the front room of that building, where a city police officer used to sit on Saturday mornings with a clipboard and a box of donated rackets and a list. Any kid in Merriam could walk in and say I want to play, and you'd give him a racket and walk him out here and write his name in this spot, and if anybody from the ridge came down and said that's our court, you'd point at this paint. That's what I read in the newspaper archive. They did a story on it. Officer Ferrol says the program is simple. Kids from the east side shouldn't have to fight for a court. When I was a kid, they had to."
Ferrol's jaw moved. He looked away from the board for the first time, out toward the parking lot, the paved-over place where the basketball courts used to be.