Blind Your Ponies (65 page)

The inn exploded with applause and Axel banged on an empty pan from the serving window. Grandma passed the paper around, the article becoming smeared with maple syrup, bacon grease, and coffee stains. People kept showing up, those who had never come in for breakfast, until the Blue Willow bunch was lost in the happy smorgasbord of fans. Grandma scanned the crowd. One of them was missing. Amos’s weather-sautéed hat was nowhere in the inn.

A
T THREE THEY
gathered in the gym. The cheerleaders, Scott, and Diana stood in for the Rocky Boy players as they went through offensive sets in their street clothes. Curtis languished on the sidelines with a cast that had been autographed by half the population of the county. Dean was jittery at finding himself on the starting five. When they had gone over a few new plays, they sat in the stands and Sam attempted a matter-of-fact demeanor.

“They’ll play eight to ten boys, they run to keep you unsettled, off balance.” He glanced at Pete. “We must keep our cool. They can’t match up with Olaf. We’ll use him to bring the ball up at our pace, control the tempo of the game, work our half-court offense, and eat the clock. Remember, they can’t run if they don’t have the ball.”

When Sam finished, Tom pulled on a beat-up Kamp Implement cap he’d concealed under his jacket. Dean lit up and quickly felt his head to see if
his
cap was in place. It was. Then the other boys brought similar caps from out of hiding and pulled them on with the visor over one ear. They all laughed and cheered.

“Where’d you get them?” Sam asked, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Kamp Implement doesn’t have this kind anymore,” Rob said. “They’re like three years old, so my dad called around and found them. We figured now that since Dean’s a starter we all ought to look alike. It’ll make us run faster.”

Dean brightened like a full moon, and Sam shook his head at the unending surprise of these boys.

The team had an eager, confident manner as they strolled down the blacktop toward the Blue Willow where Axel and Vera, with Grandma’s help, had a pregame dinner set for them. The Dirty Half-Dozen ate calmly
at the festive table that was decorated in blue and gold. The inn was closed to the public, who were all in Bozeman anyway, and the low-lit, peaceful ambience was just what Sam wanted. Diana had requested pasta salad and Axel had insisted on some red meat for the boys, serving them ten-to twelve-ounce tenderloins along with fruit and juice.

When they were nearly finished, Sam pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’d like to tell you a story.”

The boys went silent and all eyes focused on him.

“I’ve always been haunted by the Indian legend I first heard when I came to Montana. Crow Indians were camped along the Yellowstone River near present-day Billings. Warriors, returning from a long hunting trip, found the camp decimated by smallpox, their wives, mothers, children, all dead. They were so overcome with grief, sure they would join their loved ones in another life, that they blindfolded their ponies and rode them off a sixty-foot cliff.”

Sam paused. No one spoke.

“I’ve always been amazed at the incredible confidence of those Indians. They had no doubt that they would join their loved ones and they probably went over that cliff shouting. What courage, what faith. They believed!”

Sam glanced at their faces, hanging on his words, and he hoped his words were worthwhile.

“That’s what I want to say to you tonight. Believe. Go for it. Make that leap of faith. Believe that you will play the best basketball of your lives and shout as you go over the cliff.”

They finished their meal in hushed conversation and Tom explained to Dean what the coach was talking about. Then Tom added, “If we don’t win this game, we’ll feel like we went over a cliff.” Then Sam announced it was time to leave. They would arrive in Bozeman in time to watch the first half of the Roberts–Seely-Swan game. The boys headed out the door, out of the serenity of their little town, into the unrelenting inferno of fast-break basketball.

T
HE PREVIOUS NIGHT
, Diana had watched the kids from Rocky Boy shoot the lights out of the scoreboard while scoring ninety-four points, and now, as she watched them warm up in maroon, gold, and white
uniforms that didn’t quite fit, they appeared ragged, shooting the ball from all haunts of the floor without form. But she remembered Cervantes and the problem of appearance and reality and she wouldn’t be conned by appearance. Ninety-four points in a thirty-two minute game is a pace of scoring that would send college and NBA teams sneaking out the alley door. Playing Rocky Boy would be like stepping in front of a locomotive just beyond where you’d greased the tracks. There were only two possibilities. Either your game plan would stop them, leaving them harmlessly spinning their wheels, or you would be run over and flattened like a penny on the track.

For the last game of the semifinals, the field house was nearly filled, well over six thousand—partly due to the fact that the media had spread the word that a five-man team would be trying to survive against the run-and gun Northern Stars. The drama of a team without substitutes had gripped the hearts of many, and they had given up other Friday night plans to witness this extraordinary confrontation. Seely-Swan had knocked off Roberts in the first game, but Diana couldn’t afford a moment’s concern about something as far-flung as tomorrow.

Dean Cutter was the first Bronc introduced. After slapping hands with the team and coaches along the bench, Dean rambled out across the floor with his knotty legs and cock-eyed cap and intrepidly ran the steps of the bleachers up to the balcony, where he gave his wheel-chaired sister “five,” and then scampered back to the court. Tom also ran the bleacher stairs and gave Denise Cutter “five,” though he left his cap at the bench.

The boys huddled around Sam at the bench. “All right,” he said. “Stick to our game plan, don’t let them rattle you, that’s
their
game plan. Keep your poise. We give nothing inside, five rebounders on defense. I’ll get a timeout when you’re hurting. Have fun and learn something. Let’s go!”

They cheered and the five of them stepped out onto the launching pad. Sam felt as though he might break, as though an arm would snap off or an eyeball pop out. John Two Horse lined up to jump with Olaf. The 6'4" Native American boy appeared overweight and without the manner of an athlete. The spectators roared, the referee tossed the ball into the air, and Olaf easily controlled the tip, flipping it to Rob on the side. Rob one-armed a long bounce pass between several Northern Stars that kissed the floor at the free-throw line and found Peter’s hands at the instant he left the hardwood. He soared through the colored space and rang the bell.

Under the peal of the crowd’s applause, Willow Creek backpedaled swiftly into their zone. The Northern Stars, with their galaxy of shooters, came headlong, wide open, finding the Olaf-anchored defense blocking their path to the backboard, ripping the ball around the perimeter until Little Dog snapped a shot so quickly Sam had to blink. It hit nothing but net, the kind of shot you feel a kid could never do again, a metaphor for the first half, and the game quickly turned into Sam’s most dreaded nightmare. The Broncs, with Dean Cutter starting, were following Sam’s game plan perfectly: playing excellent zone, avoiding sloppy fouls, giving nothing inside, allowing no offensive rebounds, and making them shoot from downtown. Trouble was, Rocky Boy
could
shoot from downtown; there
were
no rebounds! Rocky Boy hit its first seven shots, three of them three-pointers, seventeen straight points before a miss, and when the torrid first quarter ended, the Broncs panted on the bench, down 25 to 16.

“Okay, okay,” Sam told them. “Let’s not panic. You’re playing well. Stick
to the game plan, work for the good shot.” He glanced at Diana who was checking the tape on Olaf’s ankle. “What are they shooting?”

“Almost seventy percent,” she said, shaking her head.

“How about fouls?” Sam asked.

“Dean one, Rob one… pretty clean.”

“Good, play our game. No team can continue to shoot seventy percent,” Sam said, attempting to sound convincing. “When their tires cool, we’ll still be on their back bumper and we’ll go by them like smoke.”

Rob asked, “Should we go out on them?”

“No,” Sam said, gambling. “Let’s sit in our zone for a while longer.”

They linked hands, Grandma and Axel included, shouted their cheer, and stepped back on the tracks where the Northern Stars locomotive was steamrolling them. Sam hoped that the quarter break would cool off the incredible shooting of the boys from the reservation who had—for lack of much else to do—made a vocation of tossing bull’s-eyes from anywhere in the yard. Rocky Boy’s coach started the second quarter with three substitutions and they picked up Willow Creek in a zone press. The Broncs broke the press repeatedly, getting several easy layups, but it was costing the boys in energy spent and the break hadn’t tempered the Northern Stars eagerness for lighting up the scoreboard.

Little Dog had a square, ungainly body, bowed legs that would challenge Dean’s, long black hair held in a pony tail, and Sam had never seen a boy shoot like this kid. When he caught the ball he was already in his rhythm to shoot. The boys were playing well, doing everything he had asked of them, but when they limped to the locker room at the half, the score was Willow Creek 32, Rocky Boy 50. The majority of the fans had been taken out of the game by Rocky Boy’s uncompromising express. From the Land of Sky Blue Waters, a beer truck was backing over them.

The boys caught their breath and were ministered to by Sancho and the “coaching staff.” Sam prowled the locker room like a trapped animal, searching in his head for an ounce of dynamite to blow a wheel off the Rocky Boy freight train. He knew there had to be something if he could only lay his hands on it before the game was irretrievably lost. It kept hitting him in the chest like a box car. They were behind by
eighteen points!

He gathered them a minute before they had to return to the inferno.

“I know you boys,” he said, glancing into their grim faces. “If Rocky Boy thinks the picnic is over, if they’re already hoisting their flag, we’re going to shoot it down.”

He found Diana’s eyes and felt her willing him the words that would rally them, but seeing also that the burden of the huge deficit seemed too great for dreams, an unbearable weight that stomped its boot on fairy tales.

“I’ve never knowingly lied to you,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “Exaggerated a bit maybe, asking you to do things I didn’t think you could. But then you went out and
did
them.”

He paused.

“My wife was murdered six years ago.”

Sam glanced from face to face, allowing it to sink in.

“When that happened, I quit believing in anything; in winning, in God, in life. I was afraid to bet my heart on anyone because I didn’t think I could stand being shattered again. But right now I believe in you boys; right now I’m betting my heart on you. I believe as surely as I’m breathing that if we give everything we have, somehow we will win—some crazy, unbelievable way, we will win. I’m asking you to
believe,
to give everything you have, and to
believe.
We’re not going to let it end here.”

Grandma and Axel stood somberly off to the side, and the boys riveted their attention on their coach. Sam turned to Diana.

“How are we doing with fouls?”

“Dean two, Rob and Olaf one, Pete and Tom none.”

“Good, good,” Sam said with a rush of emotion in his voice. “Pete, you take Little Dog man-for-man. The rest of you in a four-man zone. Pete, with or without the ball, I want you not only in his face but in his head, in his imagination; I want him to think he’s grown a Siamese twin, I want him to think he’s in a house of mirrors, I want him to think you two are married. Wear him out physically, wear him down mentally. If you let the air out of his tires, we can beat them home.”

“They’re killing us, they’re running over us!” Tom shouted. “Is this what we worked so hard for, to get our asses whipped?”

“No-o-o-o-o!” they responded, standing and huddling around Sam. They were veteran actors, wearing their masks and playing their roles,
willing to go out for the third act in front of a packed house when they knew the stage was on fire.

O
LAF CAME AROUND
a double screen Sam had diagramed, caught an alley-oop from Pete, and jammed it to start the second half. The Willow Creek followers rose to their feet with a revitalized rumble.

When Little Dog got the ball racing upcourt, he found Pete in his socks, sticking to him like yesterday’s gum. He had to pass off to a teammate. The Willow Creek boys dug in. Pete stalked Little Dog wherever he went, frustrating the dead-eye. They hadn’t wilted as Rocky Boy might have expected, and the teams traded baskets as the quarter wore on. Then, trying to get the ball to their premier shooter, Rocky Boy became careless. Peter cut off a pass and went coast to coast, scoring an uncontested finger roll. Again the crowd exploded, looking for a thread of hope to cling to, gazing at the clock with growing dread. Willow Creek was down by fourteen.

Little Dog got loose for an instant around a screen, something Rocky Boy did little of with their run-and-gun offense. Peter reached around and grabbed the shooter’s arm. The ball sailed harmlessly into the bleachers and Little Dog was awarded two free throws. To Sam’s surprise, he missed both and a light came on in Sam’s head. Double-teamed, Olaf dished off to Tom at the other end and he banged home the buck. Rocky Boy took the ball out. Rob dashed back and intercepted the long inbounds pass they were in the habit of throwing. He took two dribbles, squared up, and rattled home a three. The crowd erupted. Curtis stood hollering, “You can do it! You can do it!”

They were down by nine when the quarter ended.

The boys fought off fatigue on the bench. The fans stood, hurling their vocal support and encouragement.

“Go, Broncs, go! Go, Broncs, go! Go, Broncs, go!”

The field house shuddered, and the team was visibly puzzled at the overwhelming outpouring.