On the Devil's Court

Joe gives a systematic rundown of his classes in this chapter, which are all solids except for physical education (PE), the last class. At lunch, he sees John and other kids playing basketball and is amazed at how good they are. He had assumed the team would not be worthy and now begins to wonder if he is worthy of the team.

He likes his young, pretty English teacher, Miss Mitchell. She picks up on Joe’s last name and asks if he knows the Doctor Faustus story. She says they will read Marlowe’s play and that the drama club will perform it later in the year.

In PE class he encounters the thuggish ex-Marine instructor, Mr. Raible, who baits him and makes Joe call him “sir.” John informs him that Raible is also the basketball coach.

Joe returns home from school to find a media gathering in front of his house, interviewing his father. As Joe tries to sneak in through the back door, a beautiful young woman introduces her as a reporter. She tells him his dad won the Albert Lasker Award for his work on recombining sliced genes. She takes him to the park and interviews him about his family. Encouraged by the woman, Joe begins to discuss his discontent with his father and relates that his mother makes sculptures of nude young men. Joe goes home to find his parents are very excited about the award. They tell Joe to be cautious and not to speak to anyone who might be a reporter.

The next day at Eastside, Joe discovers he is something of a celebrity. He deflects questions about his father, and by the end of the week, he has returned to being a nobody. Sunday night is rainy. Monday morning he stumbles at everything he tries and has to run in the rain to make the bus. Drifting off to sleep, he is awakened by John, who shows him a supermarket tabloid with the headline: “Lasker Doc A Devil!” (62). The story compares Joe’s father to the legendary Faustus. A Christian professor compares Dr. Faust’s work to that of Hitler, saying the original intent was to create a master race. The second half of the story contains the interview with Joe. His words are used to imply his father is an uncaring white racist who condones sexual promiscuity in their home.

Filled with shame, Joe believes everyone at school is ignoring him. He cannot concentrate and tries to be alone. At lunch, he sits alone near the windswept playground. Two students, wimpy Ryan Blake and Mary Staraska, sit near him and begin rehearsing a scene from Doctor Faustus.

John asks Joe if he wants to play basketball. Joe’s game is off, and he makes many uncharacteristic mistakes. In English, the class starts their study of Doctor Faustus by discussing whether there is a devil. The general opinion is that there is no devil. Miss Mitchell asks the class to remember the mindset of 16th-century people who explicitly believed in the devil.

Playing basketball in PE for the first time, John selects Joe for his team, though Joe’s game is terrible, and he plays miserably. 

Joe rides home on the bus full of dread. His mother, smoking a cigarette—which she had given up—and drinking red wine, is waiting for him downstairs. She has disconnected the phone. Joe tries to explain how he was tricked by the reporter but cannot adequately express what happened. Going up to his room, he stands in front of the mirror and perceives himself to be an abject failure in every respect, despite all his parents have done and the abilities he possesses. Joe begins to read Doctor Faustus again and decides that Faust was brave to depart the traditional path and make a deal with the devil. Joe’s father comes up to his room. They discuss the reporter briefly. His father predicts several difficult months for all of them.

The next day, Joe’s father keeps him out of school and takes him to his office at the university. He shows Joe the window from which he can see the bridge over which Joe rides to Eastside each day and says he often wonders which bus Joe is riding. Joe’s father opens up, saying he always wanted the best for his son and cannot understand why Joe would say such terrible things about him to the reporter. When Joe does not say what he wants to—that he cannot be and does not want to be like his father—his dad takes him home and then goes back to work. Joe starts reading the portion of Doctor Faustus that occurs after the doctor sells his soul to the devil. Faust is ecstatic, and Joe wonders if he will ever experience such ecstatic joy.

Joe gives a synopsis of the abuse the family experiences as a result of the tabloid story: They are picketed by fundamentalist Christians who are filmed by TV crews, briefly dogged by a paparazzi, and vandalized. The police tell the family that Joe is responsible because of his interview. Joe asks his parents if he can hold a press conference and take back what he said. His parents tell him that will only start the cycle again and the best thing they can do is stick together.

At Eastside, Raible the basketball coach introduces new leather balls in PE class so the kids can break them in. Joe expects to have a great day with the new balls but instead does quite poorly. He stands on the court after everyone leaves, feeling he does not know basketball anymore.

In English, Miss Mitchell asks the class what it would take for each of them to sell their souls to the devil, after which she asks what they would lose in return. Joe responds that Faustus did not believe in heaven or hell and consequently did not think he was losing anything. Concerning Faustus’s soul, he says, “Faustus is smart to sell it for power” (77). When Joe gets home, he is surprised to find his father is home with a migraine.

Joe’s father begins to suffer frequent migraines. Physically, his appearance suffers as well, with dark bags growing under his eyes. Joe begins to take long walks around the neighborhood. In his explorations, he comes upon the old, boarded-up Ballard Boys and Girls Club. Breaking in, he finds an undisturbed basketball court and seizes it as the perfect place to work on his game alone.

The following Saturday, Joe sneaks back into the gym and starts working on the basics of his game. He feels his abilities and his confidence returning as he imagines playing against the NBA greats and schooling all of them.

Joe believes his slump is history. Raible calls out the guys who want to try out for the basketball team. Sizing them up, he takes Joe and two others aside and tells them they are going to the junior varsity team. Joe responds to working more on his game. He practices one-on-one against Sharkey, a good player, while Raible watches; he is doing well until he gloats for a moment, at which point Sharkey dribbles past him and Raible walks away. Joe goes to the gym to practice harder. 

On the evening of Halloween, a Friday, Joe hands out the candy to trick-or-treating children. The first one to show up is dressed as the devil. That night he stays up late reading Doctor Faustus. He hears a car pull up and sees four guys get out and erect a cross in his front yard. He sees them douse it with gasoline and set it afire, then throw a rock through the picture window, get in the car, and drive away. Joe recognizes that one of them was Ross. When the police come, Joe tells an officer he recognized Ross. Afterward, he begins to feel as if he were partly responsible. Previously there were times he and Ross did bad things that he might have stopped but instead participated in. 

Depressed, Joe rides the bus to school the next day. At noon he lies on the ground looking at the clouds and falls asleep. It is already time for English when he wakes up and sneaks into the back of his English class. Miss Mitchell asks why Faust wanted 24 years of power. Joe responds that it corresponds to the hours in a day and would give a beginning, middle, and end to Faust’s adventure. The teacher compliments him on his insight and tells him he is grasping the play.

In Joe’s last period, when the basketball coach offers packets to boys wanting to play junior varsity basketball, Joe cannot bring himself to pick one up. He rides the bus home and goes straight to his secret gym, where he endures a brutal workout before going home. That night it grows dark and begins to rain, comforting Joe with a feeling of oblivion.