Blind Your Ponies (15 page)

Grandma turned from the window. She had faked it all of her life: that she was happy, that her life was in order, that it all meant something. And all this changed when she saw that brown fedora in the window and walked into that men’s store and bought it. She pulled it on her head and never again valued herself by the opinion of others. She only wished that she had been strong enough to live her whole life that way.

She recognized the anger that drove Peter to pour himself lock, stock, and barrel into basketball. Whether he was on the way to or from school, cold or warm, he was always seen dribbling a basketball. And when he wasn’t dribbling, he tucked it under one arm. She calmed her worry with the hunch that once her grandson released some of that anger in a basketball game and showed the town his skill, he wouldn’t need any other credentials in the eyes of his peers, or in his own.

Wise enough to respect the wild forces of young love and old enough to fear that any minute her grandson might impulsively hop a Greyhound going east, Grandma suggested to Carter and Louella with deliberate subtlety that Peter might not be as taken as they were first led to believe. Dating a boy a grade below you was something to avoid in general, but Grandma suspected that Peter’s sorrowful blue eyes might draw their affection like a sponge.

As the days passed, she encouraged Peter to take Trilobite out more often and do things with the juniors and seniors of Willow Creek High, grasping that a teenage boy is seriously hurting when he’d rather dribble a grubby leather ball than drive around in a cool VW bus with a bunch of spirited teenagers. She worried a little less one morning when she couldn’t get the eggs out of the tray in the refrigerator door, breaking two in the process. She finally discovered Peter had set each of them on a drop of Krazy Glue the night before while she was absorbed in a
Waltons
rerun.

At five minutes to four, the team was loaded in the stumpy carrot-colored bus, a vehicle that appeared as though some enterprising mechanic had taken an acetylene torch and cut the back three fourths off an ordinary school bus and slid the rear axle forward. Rolling along the highway, it gave the impression that some kids were playing school. Besides the team and three cheerleaders, Grandma Chapman and Hazel filled out the roster, with Sam driving. The sixteen-passenger GMC was full, due to the fact that Hazel and Olaf each filled space designed for two.

Strapped in the driver’s seat, Sam closed the doors. A chill slid down his spine. For the first time he was driving out to a game with a chance to win … no, it was more than that … he was daring to expect to win. He started the engine, revving it several times and the passengers let out a cheer.

“Be off, Rozinante, O great steed!” Sam shouted.

No one seemed to pick up on the name of Don Quixote’s cadaverous horse, and they all remained silent. Diana sat directly behind Sam and she leaned forward to his ear.

“Nervous?”

“You ever read
Fear and Trembling
?” Sam said. “Kierkegaard wrote it just before he took his basketball team on the road.”

Diana sat back and laughed. Sam wheeled a U-turn and headed out of town, honking as he passed the Blue Willow. Rip waved and shouted from the front porch rocker, camped beside the bicycle built for two, but Sam couldn’t hear what he yelled with all the noise the bus made. As they headed north up the narrow highway, the Old Yellowstone Trail where pilgrims ventured generations ago, a tempest developed in Sam’s stomach. With his young green horses, he was off on the adventure into the forest, off to do terrible combat with unknown forces and unexpected foes.

Behind him, Louella and Carter tutored Dean in the basics of English
and algebra in an attempt to keep their one substitute eligible to play. Dean’s enthusiasm for basketball had mushroomed while his interest in class work remained a dead seed in barren ground. Amid the hum of conversation and the girls drilling Dean, Sam caught Rob’s voice above the others.

“Olaf, Carter and Louella wanted to know how
thick
”—Carter and Louella screamed and tried to reach back and prevent Rob from continuing—“the malts are in Norway.”

“There are two hundred and ninety-three ways to make change for a dollar,” Curtis informed them, out of the blue, as he was accustomed to do with information that had absolutely no bearing on the present conversation. Everyone but Olaf was laughing.

Nearly an hour later, darkness shrouded the valley as they left it behind, crossing the Bozeman Pass, descending into another valley, a little bus sallying forth, down into the dark uncharted night.

T
HE TEAM STRETCHED
and warmed up in the Big Timber Civic Center, an all-purpose concrete building, where a basketball floor had been crow-barred in between the back wall and the stage. Front row bleachers, which ran along both sides, meant sitting with your feet on the playing floor, and where inattention could mean a trip to your orthodontist or chiropractor. Close to a hundred curious and buzzing spectators witnessed the Broncs displaying their power center. The six boys seemed terribly vulnerable in their faded gold and blue uniforms and distracting mixture of playing shoes, even though Olaf dunked the ball each time he approached the basket, to the utter amazement of the wide-eyed Reedpoint players.

Reedpoint was a small village much like Willow Creek, bypassed by the world’s traffic out on the interstate, but they had accumulated several athletes from the larger Big Timber school district, boys who for one reason or another were moved by their families to the smaller Reedpoint system with its exemplary reputation. They had ten boys in uniform, six of them with several years experience, though their tallest was only 6'3", and their strong suit was a front line of three husky sandy-haired boys, Olson, Olson, and Olson, two brothers and a cousin, who could rebound and score.

A small covey of Willow Creekians gathered behind the players bench: the Johnsons, the Painters, Andrew Wainwright, and Curtis Jenkins’ mother.
Axel complained that he couldn’t get away from the inn on Friday night, so these few, with those in the bus, made up the total visiting delegation in this valley where the Boulder and Sweet Grass rivers give up their souls to the Yellowstone.

“All right, men, we’re starting a new tradition tonight,” Sam told them as they gathered at the bench. “After you shake hands with the other team at the end of the game, win or lose, we huddle up. I always felt bad last year when we straggled off alone. We’re a team, and regardless of the outcome, we’re in this together, and at the end of the game we walk off together.”

A
S
S
AM HAD
asked, they walked off together—sweat-drenched, exhausted, and beaten. Again.

Sam stood at the far end of the civic center, waiting for the boys to shower and dress. He attempted to maintain his composure and manifest a posture that didn’t give away the fact that he felt like an engineer who’d designed a prototype car that in its first public showing not only had the wheels come off, but the doors, the hood, and the roof as well.

On the ride home the cheerleaders attempted to coin small tokens of good humor. The game had been a colorful party balloon with a slow leak. Reedpoint had beaten them, 76 to 60, a score that looked much better than it was, with Olaf fouling out in the middle of the third quarter and only Rob and Peter keeping it respectable with their outside scoring. Still, they were going home again with the same tedious results, their flag in the road tar.

“I told you so,” Sam had heard Hazel say to Grandma as they walked to the bus.

Crestfallen, Sam felt worse than he had over any of his long history of defeats because, for the first time, he had dared to believe. But they’d been thrown off the porch again, and this time he took it personally, as if he’d been thrown off with them, and this despite the effect he warned himself to stay detached. It was his job to send them up on the porch but not allow his heart to go with them. There were good signs, he reminded himself, as he guided their battered chariot along the freeway, and after all, it was only the first game for this newly molded team.

The highlight of the evening was Dean, leaping pell-mell to block a shot and landing on the stage behind the backboard. He slid out of sight under
the heavy curtain. The crowd roared with delight and then went deathly silent as Dean failed to reappear. Sam guessed the boy was too humiliated to show his face when suddenly the stubby little freshman hustled out from behind the curtain and jumped down onto the court, an exasperated expression on his young face. The crowd applauded and the game went on.

Sam didn’t want to admit it to himself, but Olaf, the linchpin of their hope, had been the shattering disappointment, not because of his performance as much as Sam’s and everyone else’s expectations. Sam made the same miscalculation that the whole community had: that merely because he was such a towering specimen he would be able to do well on the hardwood even though they all knew the fledgling had no previous experience with the American game.

Sam sighed. Now he had to ask them to turn around tomorrow and drive back to Big Timber to play Lavina, a team that had little height but several fast, experienced boys who loved to press you all over the court. Sam wondered how in less than twenty-four hours he could rebuild the scaffolding around Olaf’s crumbling confidence—a confidence that he’d been nurturing for over three months. The somber exchange student brooded in a backseat and no one, not even Carter or Louella, attempted to break in on his solitude.

“We were diseased,” Pete said.

“You got that right,” Rob said.

“At least the score was close,” Mary said. “That’s a lot better than last year.”

“Big deal, close is for losers,” Rob said. “We lost.”

“That’s ninety-four in a row,” Tom said. “Maybe we should go for a hundred.”

Glumly visualizing a fresh dent in their already tarnished shield, Sam pulled off I-90 at Bozeman and parked at the Golden Arches supper club in hopes of feeding the team some McCheer and McLaughter.

Dean came out of a doze and realized where they were. “McDonald’s!”

Sam turned to the subdued company and smiled as brightly as he could manage. “I believe it’s time for some nourishment. And remember, men, we’re out here to have some fun.”

“So lighten up,” Diana said.

“Bodacious!” Dean yelled and leaped from the bus when Sam swung the doors wide. It appeared that at least one warrior had forgotten their defeat, at least for the moment. Still enamored with America’s fast-food champion, Olaf came out of his glum shell enough to add generously to the billions sold sign out on the Golden Arches. Miss Murphy sat next to Sam in a booth and the cheerleaders raised their eyebrows, elbowed each other, and giggled. Hazel ordered two Happy Meals and giggled. Sam felt exhausted and wished he could order a McMurphy to go. Tripod had a cheeseburger.

“Dean, where did you learn that impressive word?” Diana said.

“What word?”

“ ‘Bodacious,’ ” Diana said.

“In fourth grade Mrs. Martin had us all pick a word from a list and said it would be our own very special word,” Dean said. “She said we’d remember it all our life, and she was right.”

“You haven’t lived your whole life yet,” Curtis said.

“What does it mean?” Carter said.

“It means ‘outstanding and bold and remarkable,’ ” Dean said.

“Well you sure are remarkable, Dean,” Diana said.

“That’s what Mrs. Martin said,” he responded. “It’s the only thing from her class I remember.”

“Can I borrow your word, ‘bodacious,’ some times?” Sam said.

“Sure … anytime you want.”

O
N THE LONG
journey home, Sam felt all his energy drain away.

“Are you awake?” he said to Diana.

“Yes … fine, how about you?”

“I’m falling asleep, will you drive?”

“Oh … no … I couldn’t drive this thing,” she said, alarm in her voice. “Sure you could, it’s just a fat car. You just sit a little higher.”

“I’ll drive,” Tom said.

“I don’t doubt you could drive this contraption better than I, Tom, but I can’t allow it,” Sam said. “Has to be faculty.”

“Drive, Miss Murphy,” Louella said.

“No, no, please, I can’t,” Diana said. “Here, let me wake you up.”

She moved up on the edge of the seat behind Sam and began massaging
his neck and shoulders. It felt so wonderful he almost let go of the wheel in a swoon, never suspecting there was so much tension stored in those muscles. Her touch was so erotically therapeutic, another muscle began to stir.

“Does that help?” Diana said.

“Oh, God,” Sam whispered, “I may just drive to Seattle.”

Her hands worked wonders all the way to Three Forks, and as he turned off the freeway, he glanced in the wide rearview mirror to see that everyone but Diana was asleep.

“Thanks,” he said. “That was great.” And then, with his guard down added, “I haven’t had a woman touch me in six years.”

He caught himself and held his breath, not daring to glance into the rearview mirror and chastising himself for slipping. When at first Diana didn’t respond, he looked up at her face in the mirror.

“Maybe we can do something about that,” she said, a smile in her dark brown eyes.

Sam had fallen into bed emotionally drained and physically exhausted and awoke Saturday morning at nine, thankful for a long, dreamless sleep. He found his cupboards bare when he tried to manufacture a breakfast of sorts and he knew he wasn’t up to facing anyone at the Blue Willow, where optimism had sprouted like winter wheat. He felt as if he were sneaking out of town when he drove to Three Forks to replenish his meager supply of groceries.

When he came out of D & D grocery store with a bag of frozen TV dinners in arm, he spotted George Stonebreaker slogging toward him from across the street. His mind wanted to do a one-eighty back into the store but his body got tangled with indecision and caught out in the open. On the few occasions Sam had seen this hammerhead shark who preyed on lesser fish, Sam had always felt a tremor of fear. From what he’d heard and what he’d seen, George Stonebreaker was the personification of the madness, as if with purposeful intent it had found Sam hiding in this remote encampment.