I Remember, Part 1:
October of 1998

My name is Louis Neacappo. My official papers say my name is Louis J.G. Neacappo. As a coach, I’m known as the Basketball Emperor. But before I was in a wheelchair, back in the days when I was terrorizing the gymnasiums of other communities, they called me Big Bird!

Just this past tournament, a six-foot-tall 17-year-old guy from another community, Mistissini I believe it was, came up to me outside the gymnasium and said: “You’re the Big Bird! I used to watch you play when I was little!” As he said this, he put his hand somewhere below his waist, indicating how little he used to be. Later that very day, another mandow (out-of-towner), not much older than the first, said something else: “I remember you! You were good! You were mean!”

The gift those two youngsters gave me that day was the feeling of having left my mark somewhere. Could it be that I had inspired them to be just that much more of a basketball player? The mere fact that I could ask myself that question was good enough for me. For a brief and precious moment in time, I wasn’t a cripple, I was Big Bird again! I was the guy that came to your town and crashed the living hell out of your boards! I was the guy that let you know how bad you were losing as Storm lit up the scoreboard! I was the villain they would boo in Eastmain! I was the man, but not anymore. Thank you guys, whoever you were.

Chisasibi’s annual basketball tournament isn’t just a weekend to me. It’s a religious observance that honours four boys lost to us. Patrick “Boy” Neacappo, Theodore Sam, Frederick Shem and Tommy Tapiatic were only boys; boys on the verge of manhood. I coached Theodore, Frederick and Boy in the last tournament they would ever play. It was in Mistissini.

Originally, I wasn’t supposed to coach their team. I was going to coach another Chisasibi team competing in another division. I simply happened to walk in during those boys’ first game. They were starting to lose badly, but only because they were intimidated. They were trying all wrong, if you’ll pardon the expression. I had to step in.

They were down by a good 15 points when I walked over to their bench and called a time-out. The refs working the game knew I coached other teams, so they must have assumed I was also the boys’ team coach, thus granting me the time-out. I quickly gathered them and said the following: “Never mind the score. You came here to play basketball the same way you go to open gym in Chisasibi to play ball. There’s no difference. When you go back out there, I want you to play like when we scrimmage back home. Don’t be afraid to try something or push someone out of the way under the basket.” This particular speech struck hard and instantaneously. I knew I had said the right thing.

As the game progressed, lo and behold, the Chisasibi boys mounted a comeback. They started playing with smiles on their faces. “Boy” dribbled the ball behind his back to get by his defender, and as he passed the ball off to an open teammate, he said: “Ne-Mama-chee-tin!” Which of course means: “I’m a fancy dude!”

Theodore battled a kid far taller than he was and was out-rebounding him. On two occasions he boxed his bigger opponent and put back missed shots to keep the game tied. Frederick’s skills at the time were not spectacular, but I found times and places for him to play. His charming smile glowed like no other when he eventually scored a basket a few games later.

But for now let’s get back to the comeback. At the end of the game, the boys had lost by no more than three or four points, having actually held the lead very briefly. I don’t think they won a single game, but I do remember them following me around Mistissini all weekend. I felt I had done well in stepping in as their coach. And they made me feel like a wanted mentor.

Sadly, they would not make it back to Chisasibi. The road would claim their lives on the way home. I was driving back to Chisasibi in another vehicle following a different road. I was with Chisasibi’s second men’s team, whom I’d also coached that weekend. There was no way for me to know what had happened.

When we got to km 381 at the Eastmain gas bar, one of my players, Raymond Spencer, called home to check in. It was night, and the crash had already occurred earlier that day. When he got off the phone with his mother, he proceeded to tell the rest of us that there had been a crash and that we had lost two boys: Theodore and “Boy”.

As we gathered our devastated selves and prepared for quite possibly the longest drive home ever, I looked upon my wrist that was resting on the steering wheel and saw that I was wearing Theodore’s watch. He had given it to me before one of their games. When I had offered it back to him after the game, he told me to hold on to it for a while longer. I was trapped in that moment in time the entire drive home to Chisasibi. “Keep it,” he had said. “Hold on to it for me.”

I drove no faster than 70 km/hr from the km 381 gas bar to Chisasibi. In order to avoid a dreadful silence in the vehicle, I played the only non-violent music we had on hand, my Tom Cochrane cd. We slowly drove down the road, wiping away tears that would only get bigger when we would reach home and be embraced by our loved ones.

You see, at first the town of Chisasibi didn’t know which vehicle had crashed, only that there was a Chisasibi vehicle involved in an accident that resulted in casualties. For an undetermined amount of time, the entire town was waiting to hear names. Parents and families were praying and bracing themselves for the worst possible news; that their own had not made it.

Uncertain grief was in Chisasibi. Grief that a son might have died. The relief folks must have felt at the news that their son, brother or friend had survived (or hadn’t even been involved in the accident) would have changed into something terrible. “He’s alive, thank God,” must have been replaced by selfish guilt for theirs’ being spared, and others’ not.

We buried Boy and Theodore together in the same plot, with a basketball between their coffins. We took turns filling in the earth, and soon only the basketball was visible. I knew I could have finished covering it, but I couldn’t. My friend Clavin House did it for me. He too had been their coach in previous tournaments.

Later that week, Frederick was taken off life support, which he had been on since the accident. His injuries were irreparable. I sincerely wish I could have been there to lay him to rest also, but by this time, I was drinking and smoking drugs at a destructive pace.

Only a few weeks later, during the liquor and marijuana purging of my body, I got in a party vehicle headed for Radisson on an early morning beer run. Everybody was already drunk, including the driver, my good friend Tommy Tapiatic.

I had coached him a few years earlier when he was still playing for the boys’ team The Hurricanes. I can remember Chisasibi’s first-ever basketball tournament in 1995 when Tommy was playing for me. Back then, he had not yet had his growth spurt, but he had shown potential as a shooter. I would always make sure he was on the floor for the final minutes of every half, because of his shooting ability.

One time there was maybe 10 seconds left in a game we were comfortably winning. Tommy knew there was little time left, so when he caught the ball at near half-court, he turned and heaved a beautiful and technically sound shot from at least five feet behind what would have been an NBA 3-pointer. I knew there was still time to get a closer and better shot, so as Tommy let the ball fly out of his hands, I yelled out: “Tommy! No!” Right away he felt bad for shooting from so far and put his head down. But then to my utter amazement, the ball arced high and went through the hoop with a resounding “swish,” popping the mesh upwards, which is what a perfectly centred ball through the hoop does. The entire Hurricanes bench laughed and cheered as I sheepishly threw my hands in the air and sat down with a big smile on my face.

On the way back home from the big R with Tommy, replenished with beer and drinking it all the while, our Suburban went off the road. Tommy lost his life and I woke up in a strange hospital, surrounded by machines. I had tubes going in and out of me all over. I wasn’t even able to move; my legs would not respond and my hands were tied to the bed. I wasn’t even able to breathe for myself. A machine was pumping oxygen in and out of my collapsed lungs through a hole in the front of my neck.

All I knew at this point in time was that I had to live. The sacrifices made by Theodore, “Boy,” Frederick and Tommy gave me the strength not to quit. To tell you the truth, as saddened as I was that I would never walk again and that the rest of my life would be a complicated mess of emotions and situations, in spite of all the misery in store for me I felt lucky. And happy to be alive!

Thank you Theodore. Thank you “Boy”. Thank you Frederick. Thank you Tommy. When I get there, wherever you are, we five got next game on the Big Court, ’cause I really miss playing basketball!

Louis Neacappo