Blind Your Ponies Page 20

  “Now don’t forget to plug Trilobite in at night, even during the day if it gets cold again. Eat at the Blue Willow so you get a square meal. I’ll only be gone two days. You got enough money?”

  “You ought to go see your friend every week, you’ve given me money three times,” Pete said and forced a laugh.

  “Hope it’s warmer in Billings, sidewalks’ll be dry; I can get some roller-blading in.”

  She slammed the unwieldy door and cranked down the window.

  “Don’t kill yourself,” Pete said.

  “Nonsense. You take care of yourself, sweetheart.” She turned to Hazel. “Hit it, we’ll miss the bus.”

  She waved as the old Caprice rumbled away, tilting far to port, a listing ship whose cargo had shifted during a heavy storm. A bumpersticker read IF YOU LOVE JESUS, HONK! Pete watched until they pitched out of sight around the corner beyond the Blue Willow. His chest ached. For days he’d wished he’ be getting on the Greyhound with her and staying on all the way to Saint Paul.

  With a howling emptiness he turned for the house. He didn’t know how long he could stick. He grabbed his ball and slammed the door behind him, dribbling up the street, left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, a cross dribble he knew once perfected would blow him by any defensive player in the state. After practice he’d cram the VW with kids and go cruise the drag in Bozeman. Tom was staying overnight with him until Grandma came back. He wondered who would stay with him until Kathy came back.

  SATURDAY MORNING, THANKFUL he’d made it through another Christmas with the help of basketball videos and sleep, Sam drove the all but-empty blacktop to Three Forks on his way to Bozeman. Besides stocking up on groceries, he had a personal shopping list, things he’d buy for himself in after-Christmas sales. He still caught himself anticipating some unexpected gift from Amy; she always would come up with something he loved but never would have thought of. He glanced at the snow-covered Madison range and realized he was getting better. He could remember little things like that without sliding into the sadness. Amy rode gently on his mind.

  That’s enough, let it go.

  He’d worked the boys obsessively all week and thought they all needed the weekend off. The dog collar was working and Olaf was improving. But it bothered him how often he thought about Diana, how he found himself missing her, and it frightened him. He gazed across the winter ground to her little frame house, a half mile off the highway, and his heart skipped a beat remembering their night of bliss in its cozy shelter. A familiar pickup flew past him headed toward Willow Creek, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror his heart tried to leap out of his mouth.

  It was George Stonebreaker, and he was slamming on his brakes and turning around!

  Sam planted the gas pedal on the floor and his four-cylinder Ford strained to outrun the big V-8 coming from behind. With one eye glued on the rearview mirror, Sam could see Stonebreaker’s battered pickup hurtling at him over the frost-heaved blacktop like a heat-seeking missile. He could see the man’s large, alcohol-reddened face, feel the man’s rage, and by the way the pickup was veering and weaving, figured he was drunk.

  Sam had whipped his Tempo up to almost eighty, racing for Three Forks, when the madman rammed him from behind. Sam’s head banged against the headrest, the glove box flew open, and he nearly lost control, swerving toward the deep ditch on the right and bringing it back within inches of rolling. The blow left several car lengths between them but the berserk rancher was closing in fast. Instantly covered with sweat, Sam thought for a second it was a beer truck from the Land of Sky-Blue Waters.

  Stonebreaker slammed into him again, like a great battering ram. The air bags exploded, the horn blared, the car filled with smoke. Sam bounced off the ceiling and wrestled with the steering wheel. The jolt almost carried him into an oncoming car that swerved off on the left shoulder, missing a head-on by inches. He shoved the deflating air bag out of his way and struggled to stay on the road. The windshield was shattered but intact.

  As he flew past the talc plant he knew he couldn’t make the curve into Three Forks at eighty miles an hour and he slammed on the brakes. With a great sledgehammer blow Stonebreaker rammed him again, going into the curve, and the little Ford bounced wide, over the shallow ditch, just missing tons of concrete blocks stacked in the brickyard, across someone’s lawn, and back onto the street. Terror filled his throat and a mounting rage in him wanted to stop the car, wait for the maniac, and shoot him squarely between the eyes. But he had no gun.

  In the rearview mirror Sam could see that Stonebreaker had recovered from the collision and was coming like a wrecking ball, the pickup bouncing and veering wildly on his tail. Sam swerved to the right down a residential street, pulled the automatic transmission into second gear, and floored it. He turned north again at the first intersection. If he kept turning, he’d have a chance, evening the odds against the pickup’s superior power.

  He wove through the small town, striking fear into more than one driver and pedestrian, hoping someone would call the sheriff. Stonebreaker narrowly missed him at several intersections and overshot. When Sam turned west on Ash Street and headed for Main, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Pulled in at the Conoco station on the corner was a beautiful shiny Montana Highway Patrol gassing up. Sam jammed on the brakes and came skidding into the station in a cloud of dust.

  “There’s some drunk chasing me and ramming my car!” Sam shouted as he jumped from his Tempo and pointed.

  Stonebreaker came roaring down the street, aiming his truck like a gun. Just when Sam was about to leap behind his car, Stonebreaker veered up the street, swerved around the Sacajawea Inn, and headed for the freeway, not so drunk he couldn’t recognize the large gold badge on the patrol car’s side door.

  The patrolman slammed the gas hose in its housing and jumped into his cruiser. He peeled out of the station, his lights and siren came on, and Sam, with wobbly legs, flopped back into his car. His hands trembled, his chest heaved. He was back in the Burger King, back in the outhouse, back in the berserk world of chaos and violence, and he felt his anger overcoming his terror. He sat for a while until his heartbeat and breathing returned to something near normal. He hated that bastard, that monster who could reach into his life with his rage and violence. He hoped they’d hang him.

  He got out and looked at the rear of his car. Trunk and taillights and bumper all mangled, but nothing terminal enough to keep him from driving. He conjectured that Stonebreaker had run out of car insurance a long time ago and that there was no hope there. He drove for the freeway. He wanted to see if the officer caught up with that sonofabitch and hopefully, if Stonebreaker resisted arrest, shot him.

  Eight miles down the freeway he was in time to see the highway patrolman shove the handcuffed Stonebreaker into the backseat of the cruiser. He pulled over and answered the patrolman’s questions as the officer filled out his report. Stonebreaker had failed the sobriety test, his fourth DUI on record for starters.

  “Why was he after you?” the officer said.

  Sam stood beside the Ford. He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  The patrolman waited as though giving Sam time to think about his answer.

  “Do you know him, owe him money, do business with him?”

  “I teach at the high school in Willow Creek,” Sam said. “I coach the basketball team.”

  The officer glanced up from his metal clipboard and grinned knowingly.

  “That could be it, maybe he’s a disgruntled basketball fan.”

  Sam nodded and managed to smile back. Was the patrolman serious?

  Sam dared a glance at Stonebreaker in the backseat of the cruiser while the patrolman took notes on the damage to Sam’s car. It seemed that the alcoholic’s furious glower would melt the window glass, and Sam turned away. When all necessary information was exchanged and the patrolman told him to drive directly to a body shop, Sam drove away.

  He sighed. He wouldn’t have to worry about Tom’s father for a while. He hope
d until after the basketball season, and he tried to laugh at a joke from his college days. After hours of testing and therapy, a guy sits in a room waiting for the psychiatrist’s evaluation. The psychiatrist comes in and sits behind his large desk.

  “Well, Mr. Wilson, I have good news for you. You’re not paranoid.”

  “Whew,” Mr. Wilson says, wiping his brow. “I’m sure glad to hear that.”

  “Yes, well, the tests definitely show that the world is out to get you!”

  Sam laughed. Then he drove home slowly, admitting to himself a strong leaning toward paranoia.

  CHAPTER 33

  The following Monday morning, December thirty-first, Mervin strode into the café in Manhattan with the swagger of a gunfighter who knew he could outdraw anyone in the place, having savored this moment in his mind for a lifetime. He hung his insulated canvas coat on a hook at the end of the booth and stood for a moment as the three Monday morning regulars broke off their conversation and regarded him. They didn’t seem to notice his confident posture or the confident smile hovering on his face as they looked up from half-eaten doughnuts, Coffee cups, and spiraling cigarette smoke.

  “Well, now, seeing we’re playing Willow Croak this week, I didn’t think you’d show up this morning,” his brother said.

  Mervin regarded his big brother Carl, a rock of a man, fifty-nine years of standing up and spitting in life’s face, two hundred and thirty solid pounds on his frame, a face as resolute as the land. Though his complexion appeared to be eroded out of sandstone, it was his cold, gray eyes that caused everyone to back down. Mervin slid into the booth across the table from him.

  “Let’s see now. You’ve won one game already. Maybe you ought to give me odds,” Carl said. He wore a green John Deere cap that looked as though it had gone through the transmission of a John Deere tractor.

  “Yeah, they beat Lima,” Lute Jackson said, a heavily built, unhurried dairy farmer. One of Carl’s sidekicks, he wore the solemn-eyed expression of his Holsteins.

  “Oh, yeah, Lima,” Carl said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Is that the Lima Beans?”

  The three men roared, getting their Monday morning kicks, as usual, at Mervin’s and Willow Creek’s expense.

  “Say,” Carl said with a serious squint, “how’s the scourge of Norway’s fishball league?”

  The cronies laughed with big brother.

  “I remember when we beat Willow Creek in the sixty-nine Divisional Tournament,” Sandy Hill said, a scrawny retired railroad engineer who used to highball Northern Pacific passenger trains through Manhattan at such speeds that the travelers would miss the town if they sneezed. “Randy Whitt hit a shot from the corner with three seconds on the clock. You had a ball club that year.”

  “Yeah, and I remember when gas was thirty cents a gallon,” Carl said. “Willow Croak hasn’t beaten us since they invented plastic and they never will again.”

  Without uttering a sound, Mervin reached into the upper pocket of his bib overalls and pulled out a neatly folded, brand-new, one-hundred-dollar bill. He set it on the table in front of his blustering sibling.

  “Well, what have we here?” Carl said.

  “A bet,” Mervin said, tipping his brown wool cap back on his head.

  “The man has lost his marbles,” Lute said.

  “You want to bet a hundred dollars on the game?” his brother said.

  “That’s why it’s on the table,” Mervin said.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little bit heavy? We always bet five dollars.”

  “What’s the matter, you chicken?”

  “We’ve heard about your Norwegian totem pole,” Sandy Hill said. “We’ll saw him down and split him up for fire wood.”

  “One hundred dollars,” Mervin said, no longer smiling at his brother.

  “I don’t want to take advantage of you,” Carl said, blowing smoke in Mervin’s direction.

  “You’re not afraid of little ol’ Willow Croak are you?” Mervin said.

  Carl’s face flushed as he studied his little brother’s swagger, a demeanor he hadn’t seen in Mervin.

  “All right, by God, it’s a bet!” Carl said. “I’ll have to write a check.”

  He snuffed his cigarette in an ashtray.

  Per tradition, Lute Jackson held the money. Then every Monday after the game, Lute would ceremoniously present the winnings to Carl in Mervin’s presence, usually two five-dollar bills, while the three and whoever else was in the cafe would roast the Willow Creek team.

  With that semi-annual ritual taken care of—the teams played each other twice during the season—the four men settled into their usual discussion of less important matters such as foreign trade policies, the prime rate, and organic farming. But the two brothers remained preoccupied. Mervin wanted to get the hell out of there so Friday night would come quicker. Carl was restless, baffled by this uncharacteristic confidence in his little brother, and all of it revolved around that beanpole kid from the fjords.

  “How’s Maggie doing?” Sandy asked Carl, and Mervin tensed, attempting to keep his face expressionless.

  “Not good …not good.”

  “It’s a shame,” Lute said, then shook his head.

  When Mervin first heard Maggie had cancer, he wanted to drive straight to their farm, throw open her door, and beg for her forgiveness. But he knew he was too late, thirty years too late.

  On his way home, Mervin knew things were all tangled up, but he was glad he’d suckered that sonofabitch into the hundred-dollar bet and he knew that the bet had to do with a whole lot more than the basketball game.

  MONDAY AFTERNOON THE team practiced, and Sam still hoped Diana would show up at the last minute for New Year’s Eve. She had to be back soon, school would resume on Wednesday. That morning, Hazel had followed him to the Ford dealer’s body shop in Bozeman to drop off his car for a week. Riding home in the ’76 Caprice, Sam was assailed by the odors of a chicken coop that had been sprayed with a nauseous sweet perfume. He tried to crack the window a bit but there was no handle. Though Hazel didn’t mention it, the word was that she and Mavis Powers went in to Bozeman Saturday night to see a traveling bunch of the Chippendale dancers, beautiful young men in G-strings. Hazel reportedly sat in the front row, jamming five-dollar bills in G-strings and handling the goods she found there. Sam bet she was giggling and wondered if Mavis took the curlers out of her hair for such an ostentatious event.

  Sam had ramrodded the boys all week, and with the taste of victory on their palates, they responded with fire and a willing zeal, doing all that he asked and beyond. Tom didn’t mention his father and Sam let it lie. Hazel, Axel, and Grandma had continued their lend-lease program, donating their bodies to whatever purpose Sam dictated on the court to the raised eyebrows of many in the community, particularly Truly Osborn. But with Andrew Wainwright and Ray Collins on the school board, Sam no longer had to concern himself with that flank.

  Not only did he keep the team stretching as if Diana were there, but he began working on the floor with the boys, suddenly feeling hamstrings he didn’t know he had. He arrived decked out in his new multicolored nylon sweat outfit and black low-top coaching shoes, something he’d been wanting for a long time and finally found the courage not only to buy but to show up in at practice. The boys whistled when they first witnessed their low-key mentor decked out like a high-salaried NBA coach, and Olaf attempted to compliment him by saying, “You are looking cold.”

  Thanks to Grandma Chapman’s luck and generosity, they scrimmaged three on three in their new white game shoes, to break them in, though Olaf’s hadn’t arrived yet. Meanwhile, Scott worked the transmitter on the Norwegian’s paint prompter. They played for almost ten minutes the first time Olaf, already dripping wet, overstayed his welcome in the paint. Scott zapped him.

  “Hiiiyyyyiiihh!” he shouted, leaping as if he’d been decked by a ghost.

  All play stopped in animated suspension. The boys howled and regarded their smirking manager with susp
icion. Sam checked the device and found it turned up to the maximum shocking power. He turned it down to an acceptable tickle, catching a mischievous grin infecting Tom and Pete in greater dimensions than the others. But accident or not, it apparently worked miracles. Olaf danced in and out of the paint without violating the three-second rule once during the rest of the practice. Scott lost interest when he could no longer jolt him, and Olaf ended the scrimmage by making several smooth turnaround hook shots. Only trouble was that he traveled.

  After more than twenty minutes of wind sprints in which Tom didn’t participate, Sam gathered the breathless boys around him. He shoved the glasses up on his nose.

  “Friday we travel to Manhattan Christian. Saturday we play Twin Bridges at home. We’ve come a long way since our first game and I’ve seen giant steps of improvement.”

  Sam glanced into Olaf’s eager, sweating face.

  “Now we know something we didn’t know then: We know we can win. These are the big boys, as some of you well know, excellent teams that have completely outclassed us in the past. Now we have the chance to see if we can run with them.”

  Sam caught Tom’s eyes and found a hint of doubt.

  “When we started, I asked you to do your best and you have all done that. But now I’m asking you to reach deep inside and extend beyond your best. There’s a word for it that I want you to memorize, to breathe, to carve on your heart. To transcend. If your best is to run for ten minutes, run for eleven. If your maximum is to elevate three feet, go an inch higher. When your body and mind are screaming at you to quit, go five seconds more. That’s what it will take, from all of us, if we’re going to go to the next level.”

  “Do you think we can beat Christian?” Rob asked with a note of awe in his voice, as though speaking those words aloud was so incredible it verged on blasphemy.

  “We can go as far as our hearts will lead. You boys are composing your own music, you are writing the lyrics of your life, and I want it to be a song you’ll come back to over and over again, smile with pride in the warm glow of memory.”