Blind Your Ponies (50 page)

Seven seconds.

The ball hit at midcourt and bounced away.

Six seconds.

The players on both teams stood transfixed for an instant with the bouncing, unattended ball draining the clock. The Willow Creek fans began to grasp the meaning of what was transpiring on the floor. Their roar came on like a wind storm. Two Gardiner players, with agony in their faces, raced after the fleeing ball as if it were their life’s blood. The ball bounced and bounced and then rolled away, squandering the final seconds of their life as a team.

Five seconds… four seconds… three seconds.

Ben McShane caught up with the ball just before it rolled out of bounds. Frantically he turned and fired a pass to Willy Lawrence near the center of the court. The desperate boy caught the ball, but before he could whirl and launch a shot, the buzzer cut through the thunderous uproar.

The Willow Creek boys embraced Curtis in wild jubilation while their fans went berserk. The stunned Gardiner players held their heads in their
hands and slumped to their knees before the ashen faces of their disbelieving followers. Sam and Diana hugged each other and were swiftly smothered by the outpouring of rollicking spectators. Sam thought he caught a glimmer of tears in Fred’s eye as Coach Sooner took Sam’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“Good job, Sam. Your boys deserved it. Go get’em at Divisional.”

“Thanks, Fred. You have a fine bunch of boys.”

The burly mentor plowed through the crowd, trying to keep an unperturbed exterior. Diana and Sam fought their way to the boys. They had done it! They had won on Monday night and would go on to Helena. They huddled in a tight circle, face to face.

“Hey, coach, we cleaned the sidewalk!” Pete shouted.

“For the Twin Bridges I am looking!” Olaf yelled.

“They’re slamming off their radios in Twin Bridges right about now,” Sam said. “They can’t shake us. We’ll be a reoccurring nightmare they can’t escape. We’ll be a boil on their ass. We’ll be a disease they can’t cure. We’ll keep coming and coming and coming. If we can’t be better than them, we’ll outlast them. We’ll
never
quit. We’ll
never
give up! We’ll
never
give in!”

“Yeeaaahhhh!” they shouted, and the huddle bounced along the hard-wood court. “Win! Win! Win! Win! Win!”

A
XEL SPREAD THE
word that the Blue Willow would be open until the last dog died, and everyone hurried the sixty miles through the melting slush to bring their bright victory home and unwrap it in Willow Creek. By ten-thirty it was hard to find a parking place within a block or more of the inn. Cars and pickups inundated the vacant land around the railroad tracks. During the last part of the trip the team had given in to their exhaustion, becoming quiet and allowing it all to sink in. But when Sam cocked the bus door open in front of the Blue Willow, allowing them to spill out and into the humming inn, the wild cheers and excitement that welcomed them rekindled their enthusiasm and relit their pilot lights.

“They’re here! They’re here!” Grandma Chapman shouted, plowing through the crush to her grandson. Amos Flowers slapped Tom on the back and the two cowboys regarded each other with affirming smiles.

“I told ya, I told ya, by God!” Rip shouted.

With standing room only, the game continued nonstop through instant replay in their minds, festooned with drama and flaring color, tapes that would be stored in their memories. People stood taller. Voices rang with confidence. The unacquainted smiled and chattered and laughed freely. Celebrants patted the boys on the back and praised them, offering to stuff them with anything available on the menu. The elation permeated the inn like fresh oxygen, uplifting them, giving the timid voice, the downhearted joy. Everyone within miles of Willow Creek had clambered on the bandwagon, standing on the running boards, sitting on the fenders, clinging to the roof, boasting they’d been riding there all along.

Almost speechless, Sam sat at a table people vacated in deference to him, absorbing this rare moment. He was trying desperately to enjoy this for all it was worth while at the same time frantically praying that this wasn’t the fulfillment of their quest, that they still had miles to go before they slept.

Lost in the mingling crowd for the moment, he felt numb, as though he were floating above it all, drifting, giddy, in a state of consciousness over which he had no control. For this moment in his life, he was insulated against the struggles and loss to come by the celebrating Willow Creekians and the triumph of his team. He attempted to stay in the present moment, to relish it. The sounds around him seemed far off, the milling people hazy, and time had no meaning. He was drunk. Sam Pickett was intoxicated with the true nectar of the gods, and his only thought was a plea for mercy that it would not be his only taste. For the first time he heard someone else entertain the lunacy that had recently taken root in his heart.

“If they keep playing like this, these boys could make it to State.” Grandma Chapman wove through the crush toward him, heading for the door. “Good game, Coach. The boys done like you showed’em.”

Sam smiled at her. “You’re not leaving already are you?”

“I’m afraid so. This winning is harder on me than losing.”

Sam tracked her brown felt hat as she walked out the door. He understood.

Someone started the school song, and the cheerleaders picked up the beat and led the way with their strained and croaking voices. Many didn’t know all of the words or even some of them, but they hummed along and
made up their own. Diana made her way through the boisterous fans and slid in next to Sam.

“You see what you’ve done?” She waved her hand at the crowd.

“That’s what’s so strange, I don’t think I have anything to do with it.”

When exhaustion and the late hour finally propelled most of them toward their pillows, Axel got off his feet and dropped his body heavily into a chair beside Sam, removing his robust demeanor like an apron. He leaned close, and Sam picked up the aroma of fried onions and accrued fear. In a subdued mood, Axel spoke as though the man didn’t want others to hear.

“I tell you, Sam, I’d need a night like this every week to keep it going. Once the basketball season is over, we just won’t make it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. This place means a lot to the town.”

“Just not enough people. We’ve tried to draw them from the valley, but we’re off the beaten path, too far off.”

“What’ll you and Vera do?”

“I don’t know, it’s a worry, we’ll try to keep it going as long as we can. Maybe something will happen.” He sighed. “You know, all my life I thought something would ‘happen,’ something would come through. It never did.”

“Well, the boys’ll try to give you a few more nights like this,” Sam said, attempting to lift the brawny man out of the despair.

“Thanks, that would help.”

“The past few years I used to feel that way with the boys, when there was no way we could win, that we were just going through the motions on a sinking ship.”

“Vera and I are scared, Sam. It’s hard to get started again when you’re our age. Sometimes it seems to us that that’s all life is… just rearranging furniture and keeping house on the deck of the
Titanic.
”

They sat silently for a minute. Then Axel rubbed a hand across his bald dome.

“What the hell, Sam,” he said. “Here I am crying in my beer when you’ve just taken us to the Divisional Tournament! What more could we ask for, and by God, our boys aren’t finished yet. We’re going to kick ass up in Helena, aren’t we, Sam? You betcha, we’re going to
kick ass.
”

It was after two in the morning when Sam made his way home down the middle of Main Street. With the slush from the snow squalls melting quickly, a steady southwesterly blew in his face and a williwaw of emotion whirled in his stomach. Axel’s mood clung to him as premonition. By God, he wasn’t going to let it go down after coming this far.

Everyone at school on Tuesday trudged through the schedule of regular classes though their minds and spirits had already packed their bags and run off to Helena. At the Blue Willow things were no different. The inn, normally quiet during the day, was hopping, and quickly became a rallying point for the community.

Newspapers had taken note of the upstart team from the southwest corner of the Gallatin Valley. The
Billings Gazette
called them “a likeable underdog that didn’t have the needed troops to survive the trench warfare at Divisionals.” The Butte paper described their Monday night victory as “a courageous effort by an outmanned team that won with savvy and guts.” The
Bozeman Daily Chronicle
shared its surprise that the perennial losers had ousted the likes of Manhattan Christian and Gardiner but hinted that every year there’s a fluke or two.

A
FTER SCHOOL SAM
had several items to finish at his desk before he joined the boys in the gym for practice. He heard what sounded like two or three kids scuffling in the hall and he knew who was coming before Dean floundered through the doorway. Something was up.

“What’s the matter, Dean?” Sam asked softly, standing from behind his desk.

“I got something to tell you,” the boy said. He stared at his worn-down work boots. The silence began to suffocate Sam.

“What?”

“It’s my fault that Tom’s knee is so bad.”

“What?” Sam asked.

“It’s my fault,” the freshman insisted, glancing hang-doggedly into Sam’s face.

“How do you figure that?”

Dean shifted from foot to foot, tugging his tattered Kamp Implement cap over one ear. “I got Curtis to go with me after the game Saturday morning.”

“What’s that got to do with Tom’s knee?”

“Well, we were supposed to go right back to the motel. I got Curtis to go to McDonald’s with me. I didn’t have any money.”

“Dean, you’re not making any sense.”

“Well, if we’d gone right back to the motel them guys wouldn’t have started to beat us up.”

“What guys?”

“Three guys. They pushed us in an alley. Scott was catching up and he saw them. They started slapping Curtis and was going to beat us up. But Scott ran and got Tom and Tom smacked the fat guy, you should’ve seen it, and then the other guys came and Pete pounded one kid to pieces and Rob smashed the other kid and they beat up all three of them until they turned chicken shit and ran away and the fat kid had bad breath—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Sam said. “This all happened in Butte Saturday
morning
?”

“Yeah, while you was at the mall, and Tom got kicked and Pete and Rob hurt their hands and I know that’s why Tom’s knee is so bad, and if I hadn’t got Curtis and Scott to go to McDonald’s, Tom’s knee would be okay.”

Sam slowly eased himself into his chair. “Why are you telling me this, Dean?”

“’Cause something bad will happen to me if I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I don’t do right, I’ll be punished, God’ll be mad at me.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“Yeah, He will.”

“Well, you didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t your fault that those goons, whoever they were, threatened you. It wasn’t wrong for you to go to McDonald’s.”

Dean stared out of his thick lenses at his coach, his self-reproach retreating from his face, and Sam felt a fierce hatred for the dehumanizing vicissitudes of life that offer no amnesty to unprotected children.

“You have done nothing wrong, Dean, so don’t worry about it.”

“Sometimes I think I’ll end up like my sister.”

“Why?”

“When I do something bad. Sometimes when I feel sick, or my legs hurt, I get scared. I think I’m gettin’ it too.”

“Dean, I don’t think you can get what Denise has.”

“They just say that so I won’t be scared, but I know I can.”

Sam rose from his squeaking wooden swivel chair and stepped from behind his desk. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and walked him toward the door.

“Thanks for telling me about the fight. I won’t mention it to anyone, but I’m proud of all of you. You are a terrific kid and I’m happy as hell that you’re on the team. We couldn’t win without you.”

Sam stopped at the doorway and squeezed Dean’s shoulder.

“You go dress now. I’ll be right down. Okay?”

“Okay.”

In his scruffy patched jeans and shirt, the bandy-legged hatchling lit out down the hallway. Sam watched him go. He was an English teacher. What did he know about confession and forgiveness and the love of God? Maybe the gullible schoolboy was closer to the truth than Sam. All he knew at that moment was that he loved the Cutter kid.

W
ITH SCHOOL OUT,
the boys were relieved to arrive at practice and reaffirm—after agonizing through the day—that they could still hit a jump shot or find out if, as they feared, they had lost all ability to do anything with the dimpled leather. Sam showed up with a new curiosity in his boys, and he observed them with a growing admiration and sense of humor.

Sam had seen the boys on the brink of debilitating exhaustion Monday night and he wanted them to recharge. At practice, he and Diana had them stretch and warm up with light running, but nothing that would wear them down and sap their endurance. Tom sat and watched much of the time. They worked through offensive sets with a spirited enthusiasm, and Sam could sense a growing confidence in them, a sense that they were a tournament team.

Though Grandma said she wasn’t feeling up to it, Diana, Dean, and Scott
played defense, as well as Axel—who showed up in those ancient black high-tops that after forty years had come back into fashion. Sam wanted to run picks and screens that would free each of the boys to positions where they were most comfortable and most consistent shooting the ball. People began drifting into the gym and settling in the bleachers. At first it was only a handful, but the stands along the east wall began filling and the spectators began clapping when a shot was made. They cheered as though the team were playing an invisible opponent in the Divisional Tournament. Most amazing to Sam was the fact that John English and Truly Osborn were sitting there totally absorbed watching not a run-of-the-mill conference game, not a tournament game, but a
practice.
He blew his whistle and gathered the boys at midcourt.