"Jesus."

"That's the multiverse."

"Oh. That's a nice name for it."

A man by the road was selling two enormous fish.

"Listen," Hand said, "if you're willing to believe that there are billions of other planets, and galaxies, even ones we can't see, what makes this so different?"

We passed a clearing where a basketball court stood, without net, the backboard bent forward like a priest granting communion. Two young boys, stringy at ten or eleven, healthy but rangy, one wearing red and one in blue, were scrapping under it, each ball-bounce beating a rugfull of dust.

"We have to stop," I said. We were already past the court.

"Why? To watch?"

"We have to play. Haven't you ever driven past a court and -"

"Will, those kids were about twelve."

"Then we won't keep score."

This could be something. This was something that could happen; we would stop and play against these boys. Hand slowed the car and turned around and on the gravel we crunched toward them. They stopped as they saw us approach. Hand got out and called for the ball. How do they know he won't leave with it? I do not know. They threw it.

Hand bounced the ball and it landed on a rock and ricocheted away. The boys laughed. Hand chased it down and returned and did some bizarre Bob Cousy layup, underhand and goofy; the ball dropped through the dented red rim. Hand shot the ball three times from the free-throw area, without luck. Now I laughed with the boys. I gave the boy in blue a handshake, making up an elaborate series of sub-shakes involving wrists and fingers and lots of snapping at the end. He thought I knew what I was doing.

I tried dribbling and lost it, like Hand, on a rock. I got the hang of the court, its concavities and dust, and soon it was a game, us against them. They weren't very good, these kids. One was barefoot and both were much shorter than us, and while I was trying to keep the game casual, Hand knocked the ball from the younger kid's hands and scored over him without apology. It was not cool.

The light kept leaking from the sky, blue ribboned by purple and then, below, thick rough strokes of rust and tangerine. Another boy showed up, bigger and more confident. He had newish sneakers and knee-length basketball shorts, a Puma T-shirt. He was serious. He smiled at first, shook our hands – another limp grip – but then he bore down and didn't look us in the eye. It was our two against their three and there was dust everywhere. The tall boy was determined to win. The game got closer. I tried to switch teams, to relieve the nationalistic tension, but the boys refused.

It was ridiculous for Hand and I to be playing like this; we weren't the players – Jack was, Jack was the best pure player our school had ever seen, rhythm and speed impossible, it seemed, in someone we knew, someone from Wisconsin whose father sold seeds. We played with Jack, were humored by him, but when he wanted to, or when we'd made his lead less comfortable and opened our mouths to make sure he knew, he turned it up and broke us like twigs.

Very soon there were ten kids watching, then twenty, all boys, half of them barefoot, most of them shirtless. Every time the ball bounced off the court and away toward the village, there were two more boys, emerging from the village and heading toward us, to reclaim it. We were holding our own, now against four of them.

Hand was posting up, Hand was boxing out. Hand is tall, but Hand cannot play, and now Hand was out of control.

It went dark. We were passing the ball and it was hitting our chests before we could see it. No one could see anything. We called the game.

We walked back to the car and brought out the water we had left, took pulls and handed it to the boy in red. Red handed it to the tall one, who sipped and gave it to the blue boy, who finished it. Another boy of about thirteen pushed through the crowd around the car, arced his back and said with clarity and force: "My father is in the Army. My name is Steven."

And then he walked away, off the court and back to the village. Other than that, there hadn't been much talking.

Now the tall Puma boy spoke. He spoke some English; his name, he said, was Denis.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"Chicago," I said.

"The Bulls!" he said. "You see Bulls?"

Hand told him we'd been to games, even while Jordan was still active. And this was almost true. We'd been to one game, with Jordan playing the first half of a blowout.

Denis's mouth formed an exaggerated oval. Was he that good? he asked. Hand grinned: Yes. Denis said he'd love to come to America, see basketball, see his cousin, who lived in New Mexico. I told him New Mexico was very pretty. Tres bien, I said.

"But," said Hand, "Pippen is the more elegant player."

Denis smiled but said nothing. Hand said this all the time: "Pippen is the more elegant player." The rest of it: "His movements are more fluid. Pippen is McEnroe to Jordan's Lendl." It was Hand's favorite thing to say, partly, surely, because it enraged anyone in Chicago who heard it.

Denis shook his head and smiled. He didn't agree, but kept mum. Hand asked for their names. He found paper in the car and a pen and had them write their names. They all wrote them on one piece of paper:

I lost this piece of paper. I am so sorry. I can't believe I lost it.

We didn't know if we would give them money. We got in the car and debated. The kids had seemed to be expecting something. They hadn't asked, none of them had, but it seemed they knew the possibility existed, that gifts of some kind could be forthcoming. They knew we could spare it. I still had some American hundreds in my shoes, but would that spoil everything? Would it pollute something pure – a simple game between travelers and hosts – by afterward throwing money at them? But maybe they did expect money; otherwise, why would they all gather by the car after the game? Maybe this was a common occurrence: Americans pull up, grab the ball, show them what's what, drop cash on them and head back to the Saly hotels -

"Let's not," Hand said.

"Okay." The boys surrounded us, waving. We began to roll away, driving the twenty yards back to the highway, as the boys went their separate ways. I stopped the car, alongside the Bulls fan who wanted to go to New Mexico. He and two friends were crossing the highway.

I rolled down my window and said Hey to the boy. He approached the window. I reached into my sock and grabbed what I could. I handed him $300 in three American bills.

"See you in Chicago," I said.

The boy thanked us. "If I get to Chicago it is because of you," he said.

"See you there," Hand said to Denis. To me: "We should get going." We didn't have enough for everyone, and there were a lot of kids.

We said goodbye to Denis, and his eyes were liquid with feeling and we loved him but there was a man in our backseat.

"This is my brother," said Denis. "He needs a ride to Mbuu."

I looked at Hand. Hand was supposed to lock the back doors. Denis's brother was in the car and it was too late; we had no choice. Mbuu was on our way. We said hello to Denis's brother. His name might have been Pierre.

We joined the highway with Denis's brother in our backseat and his chatter neverending. We didn't like him. Mbuu was twenty minutes away, and Pierre did not stop talking, in a language Hand couldn't grasp completely and could not at first confirm was French. We got the impression, immediately, that Denis's brother had seen his brother's receipt of cash, and wanted some of his own.

Pierre used Abass's line, that he needed cab fare to get back. Hand explained his demands to me. We laughed.

"So," said Hand, turning toward him, "you want us [pointing to us, back and forth with his index finger] to pay to drive you [pointing to him] to Mbuu, so you can get back."