Blind Your Ponies Page 24

  “The clouds are telling stories,” she said so softly he barely heard.

  “Do they have a name?”

  “I hate to label them with technical names. It takes all of the mystery out of them.” Diana pointed. “Those are fair-weather cumulus.” She pointed another direction. “Those are stratus.”

  From where they stretched out on the ground, Sam could see no sign of civilization: no power lines, no fence, no road, no sound of machinery, nothing but the unspoiled creation. He pointed out over the mountains.

  “How about that one?”

  “Oh… that’s a lenticular altocumulus.”

  “A what?”

  “Lenticular altocumulus. They form over the mountains when we’re in high pressure.”

  She rolled up onto one elbow and he caught a poignant look in her eye. She gazed at the bright, saucerlike cloud.

  “I used to think they were God’s skipping stones.”

  “Used to?”

  “Now I know they are hearts that have been betrayed, sailing off to a land where those you love are never wrenched from your bloody arms.”

  Sam felt a shudder of sorrow as though he were watching her tattered heart making sail for another world. He had an instinctual urge to take her in his arms and comfort her, wishing he had an epoxy for her heart, or an anodyne that would enable it to overlook its fractures. In his moment of hesitation, she was up and ready to move on.

  On the circular passage back to the cars they spooked two white-tail deer out of the dense underbrush. Soon After, they caught a fleeting glimpse of a red fox streaking across the meadow, one, she assured him, they had undoubtedly disturbed. Sam came out of the field with a fresh perspective of the living miracles drenching him. He came out with a sense of the fullness of the land and the incredible web of life on it, a vision through Diana’s eyes of this earth and cosmos, a universe that he was part and parcel of, mingled with its sinew, blood cells, and bone marrow.

  When he saw the cars he realized that she had led him less than two miles from the gym. She had taken him to a world altogether oblivious to basketball games, winning and losing. It was a much more profound awareness of just being alive, and all of this right in his backyard.

  “That was really something,” he said as they scrambled out of the barrow pit and onto the road.

  “You ought to see it come spring. Things are popping alive so fast you have to duck.”

  When she drove away, saying she was off to visit Randolph and Ellie Butterworth, he lingered a while longer and looked off to the mountains to watch the distant passage of the lenticular altocumulus gliding over the Spanish Peaks.

  ON SUNDAY, OLAF worked in the barn with Mervin, who hammered away with a grim but unflagging resolve. Claire made several sorties with food and liquids during the day, but the two would not come to the house for their traditional Sunday dinner.

  That evening, a carload of kids stopped to pick Olaf up. Outside the barn Olaf told them, in confidential tones, that he had to stay and help Mr. Painter work in the barn.

  “Come on, please,” Carter said.

  “C’mon, you turkey,” Tom called from the backseat of Louella’s four-door Mercury.

  “Building we are… a-a-ah… to hammer he is teaching me.”

  His puzzled friends drove off for Bozeman without him, and Olaf turned for the barn.

  Monday morning, gray and mild, Mervin Painter nudged his 1990 4×4 Ford pickup toward Manhattan, recalling his long personal history of defeat. When he was young, his big brother Carl used to win at everything because of his size and age. And then as Mervin began catching up and would nearly beat him at something, Carl would cheat and do anything to win. When Mervin would call him on it, Carl would punch him in the stomach, hard, or in the ribs, and then, as they both got older, in the head, several times knocking Mervin out cold. One time he woke up and found himself lying on the ground in the apple orchard and the last thing he could remember was confronting Carl for stealing his money. He had always felt it dishonorable to tattle to his father about his big brother’s down-home sibling brutality, as though any son worth his salt should be able to take care of himself.

  Nearing Manhattan, Mervin muddled over how the same damn thing continued in his adult life, over bad luck or the unfairness that Willow Creek, the town nearest the family farm, should have the basketball team that could never win, and that Manhattan Christian, the school closest to his big brother’s spread, should have the abundance of boys and the excellent program for a winning basketball tradition. Mervin attempted to disguise how deeply it incensed him with an aw-shucks, good-old-boy exterior. He turned off the interstate and approached the café as one would approach hemorrhoid surgery.

  Mervin took a deep breath as he hesitated in front of the Garden Café. Then, he shoved the door open and strode in with the intent of keeping cool and taking the ribbing good-naturedly. Mervin slid heavily into the booth.

  “Well, I guess you’ll never learn, little brother. You wouldn’t have been within twenty points if our boys hadn’t been a little overconfident,” Carl said.

  He wore his oil-stained John Deere cap and was fortified in his customary booth with his two cronies. Lute Jackson and Sandy Hill jauntily echoed his ridicule and added some of their own.

  “What was the score?” Mervin said, sitting next to Sandy and directly across the table from his big brother.

  “Willow Croak lost again,” Carl said, loud enough that the cook in the kitchen could hear.

  With a restrained calm in his voice Mervin said, “What was the score?”

  “Christian beat Willow Croak, so what else is new,” Carl said.

  “By one point. And you were damn lucky.”

  “We don’t need luck to beat Willow Croak, never have, never will. You were lucky to even be in the game,” Carl said.

  Lute made a showy display of handing over the check and the crisp one-hundred-dollar bill to Mervin’s big brother, and most everyone in the Coffee-scented establishment, where decades ago wrestling exhibitions and boxing matches were held, clapped and hooted.

  “If you had been man enough to have fathered a boy or two,” Carl said, having had two boys who had played for Manhattan Christian, “maybe Willow Croak would have won a game.”

  That ripped it!

  It was unacceptable for these ranchers and farmers to let on that they had accumulated much wealth, even though both Mervin and Carl had prospered at their inherited vocations. The hundred dollars had been straining the boundaries of this unspoken commandment; to bet anything larger in monetary sums would smack of arrogance and be a denial of their self-imposed, outwardly-frugal lifestyle.

  “Let’s bet on the next game,” Mervin said, trembling with a controlled ferocity.

  “Hell, that’s four weeks away,” Sandy said, tipping his cherished Northern Pacific engineer’s cap. “By the way you’re losing players, you better wait and see if you still have five boys standing by then.”

  The three men generated waves of laughter that spread until even the eavesdroppers chuckled. After all these years, Mervin was still surprised at how quickly word spread across the valley; they already knew about the Strong boy’s defection.

  “You giving me another hundred-dollar bill?” Carl asked.

  “Something bigger,” Mervin said.

  “Whoa,” Lute said, “the man has gone bananas.”

  “Bigger?” Carl said.

  “The John Deere ‘D’,” Mervin said calmly.

  “My ‘D’!” Carl said. “My ‘D’?–

  “What’s the matter? You afraid you might lose?”

  “Wait a minute here,” Carl said. “You want me to bet my tractor on the basketball game?”

  “That ‘D’ is a rare son-bitch,” Sandy said. “Wasn’t that made in twenty-nine?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Carl said, “and only one hundred of ’em built.”

  “Built in Waterloo, Iowa,” Mervin said. “An experimental model: two-cylinder, three-spe
ed transmission, all steel wheels. They shipped ’em to Montana and Arizona, mainly.”

  “And you want me to bet my ‘D’ on a basketball game?” Carl said, employing his favorite tactic of repeating something a dozen times in an effort to intimidate.

  “Our father bought the twenty-second ‘D’ from Oliver Stout Implement Company in Bozeman,” Mervin said, “serial number X67522.”

  “Can’t be many of them suckers left,” Lute said.

  “Only eight that anyone knows of,” Carl said. “Rest gone to junk and rust, and you want me to bet the ‘D’ on a basketball game? You must be outta yer skull.”

  Carl eyeballed him and Mervin felt like he was ten again. Their father used the “D” for years in the field. Took care of it like it was a living, breathing member of the family. He finally stuck it in a shed, never able to bring himself to trade it in on other equipment. Shortly before he died, their father gave the cherished “D” to the eldest son—deserving or not—the sacred symbol of family birthright. The pampered “D” still ran as good as it did the day it rolled off the assembly line in Waterloo.

  Mervin stuck his thumbs in his armpits and moved his folded arms like chicken wings, mimicking his brother’s familiar gestures when Mervin balked at a bet.

  Carl’s sandpaper face became florid, veins bulging.

  “That tractor’s irreplaceable,” Carl said.

  “Don’t you think your pansies can luck out again against poor little ol’ Willow Croak?” Mervin said.

  “And what are you putting up?” Carl asked.

  “My ninety Ford Lariat, only four thousand on it.”

  “Yeah, and all beat to hell.”

  “It’s in top-notch shape. Course if you’re afraid you’re going to lose…”

  Mervin knew his brother cherished the polished green heirloom far beyond any monetary value and he also knew he had his big brother by the balls.

  “All right, by God, the ‘D’ against your pickup!” Carl said.

  “Done!” Mervin said and the two brothers glared at each other across the table as Lute and Sandy—and most of the other occupants of the café, who turned on their swivel stools to watch—held their breath at the escalating confrontation.

  Mervin struggled against an old but not forgotten instinct that kept shouting at him to duck, sure he could recognize in his brother’s eyes that impulse to slug his younger kin. A part of Mervin wished he would, giving Mervin an excuse to strike back with all the pent-up resentment he never got a chance to unload, using his work-hardened fist like a sledge against anvil, one thudding blow.

  “We’ll run you right out of our gym,” Mervin said, smug with the entrapment he’d finagled.

  “Ha! That lummox in a jockstrap will travel again. He doesn’t know a pivot foot from a club foot.”

  “Hey, you two, it’s only a basketball game,” Lute said, trying to hold a smile on his face with the two Painters glaring at one another.

  “That’s what you think,” Mervin said. “Should we have Lute hold the ‘D’ and my pickup?”

  “Hell no,” Carl said. “That tractor stays in the shed where it belongs.”

  “If Christian wins, I’ll bring the pickup here Monday morning,” Mervin said, “and I expect you to do the same with the ‘D’.”

  “So be it,” Carl said, slamming a fist on the table, rattling the accumulated cups and plates and everyone in the café.

  Then they all sat quietly for a minute with their Coffee, their baked goods, and their jangled private thoughts.

  “Henry Ross got one of them new chisel-plows the other day,” Sandy said, and they returned to a semblance of normal conversation, though everyone in the café secretly searched the dark wood paneling for excuses to vamoose.

  The Painter brothers had bet a John Deere tractor and a brand new 4×4 Ford pickup on a basketball game, and folks were forfeiting half-eaten doughnuts and unfinished cups of Coffee to be the first to broadcast the word. News of the unheard-of wager spread along Railroad Avenue like cottonwood seed.

  Mervin drove for home, knowing this was his last chance.

  CHAPTER 40

  Tuesday night, Sam pulled into the Painters’ yard around seven-thirty, and though light splintered from the big barn, he approached to the front door and knocked. Grandma Chapman had driven him in to Bozeman Ford to pick up his repaired car. The ride in the VW bus was an enterprise he didn’t want to repeat as Grandma ramrodded the beat-up contraption with one hand, gabbing all the way. Neither of them had mentioned Peter.

  Claire swung the door wide and Sam asked for Olaf.

  “Oh, Olaf’s out in the barn with Mervin,” Claire said.

  “What are they doing?”

  Claire regarded him with a polite smile. “Hammering.”

  “Well, I thought if he had a little time I’d go over some things with him on my VCR, but if he’s busy—”

  “Yes, they’re pretty busy,” she said, attempting to be brief, which was against her God-given nature.

  “Well, thanks anyway,” Sam said and walked toward his car.

  When Claire had closed the door, Sam snuck through the shadows, avoiding the shafts of light from the house and barn. He entered the lower level of the old structure, ripe with odors of baler twine, feed grain, and gunny sacks. He could faintly hear muffled voices. Creeping past animal-worn calf pens and rusted stanchions, he found a ladder up the wall that led to the loft. As he climbed he heard a familiar thump.

  He stuck his head above the hole and found himself just behind Mervin Painter, who passed a basketball to Olaf. In sweatshirt and jeans, Olaf wheeled around smoothly, his pivot foot never leaving the floor, and tossed in a soft shot off a new fiberglass backboard. The basket jutted from a wooden superstructure fastened to the barn wall. Olaf grabbed the rebound and flipped it back to the rancher, who was decked out in bib overalls and a worn woolen cap. The Bronc center moved in position in front of the basket and Mervin shot him a pass. Again, the boy spun quickly and banked in a soft shot, his pivot foot never leaving the wood planking, though he stretched awkwardly to retrieve the ball.

  “Good, good,” Mervin said.

  Sam watched transfixed. Inhaling barn dust and about to sneeze, he clung to the wooden rungs of the ladder and wondered how Mervin had disciplined Olaf to keep that pivot foot on the floor. After another four or five minutes, Sam found out.

  “Should we try the other foot?” Mervin asked.

  “Ya.”

  Olaf sat awkwardly on the hay-polished wood flooring. Unlacing his left shoe, he pulled his foot out of it and the shoe remained attached to the floor. He unlaced his other shoe. Mervin knelt and somehow detached the left shoe from the planking. Olaf handed him the right high-top and Mervin attached it to the pine board. Olaf stepped into it and went down on one knee to lace it. Then he stood and turned it a hundred and eighty degrees. The shoe was on some kind of a swivel; it would turn, but it wouldn’t come off the deck. Sam wanted to laugh. He watched for a few more minutes as Olaf swung to his right, making short backboard shots or shooting soft swishers, pivoting, pivoting, with his foot literally nailed to the floor.

  Sam pulled himself up the ladder and stepped into the cleared loft area that was surrounded by hay bales. Olaf spotted him first and stopped in mid-swing. Mervin turned to see what the boy was staring at.

  “Hello. I came out to get Olaf for a while. I saw the lights in the barn.”

  They looked like twelve-year-olds who had been discovered with their noses in a Hustler magazine. Mervin tried to explain.

  “We thought we’d work on that traveling business. Ever since the game on Friday I’ve been trying to figure out what could hurry the process a little.”

  He motioned to Olaf and the center unlaced his right shoe and stepped out of it. There, with a thin metal washer welded to a headless bolt, was an ingenious farmer’s method of teaching a boy to keep his pivot foot on the floor. It wasn’t tight; there was enough play in it to give the athlete some leeway, but t
hough the shoe would turn three hundred and sixty degrees freely, it would not come off the floor. Needless to say, both of Olaf’s practice shoes had a quarter-inch hole in the sole.

  “It’ll pop free with enough pressure,” Mervin said, “in case he falls.”

  Sam smiled. “It seems to be working.”

  Mervin and Olaf agreed that they had “hammered” enough for now, and Olaf, folded into the front seat of the compact Ford like a carpenter’s ruler, left for town with Sam.

  Forgetful in his preoccupation with the rancher’s inventive solution, Sam drove too fast, bouncing over the roller-coaster frost heaves and banging Olaf’s head on the car’s roof.

  “Oops, sorry,” Sam said.

  Every winter, on the highway into Willow Creek, the frost heaves reappeared like acne. The natives had learned to reduce their speed considerably or risk being bounced into the deep irrigation canal that ran alongside the blacktop. In the arid climate of summer, the heaves would settle back to a fairly level surface. But in winter, it was as though the blacktop were slamming on its own brakes, digging in its heels, bucking and heaving, knowing it was approaching Willow Creek, reluctant to arrive at the dead end that awaited it there.

  “Have you heard from your parents lately?” Sam asked.

  “Ya, from my mother a letter I am getting.”

  “Have you told them about the game we won?”

  “No… I am not writing my father about the basketball.”

  “He’d be proud of you. You can’t imagine how much you’ve improved.”

  “He does not want for me to be playing at sports. I am not good and it is a waste of time, he says. Excel at studies, he says.”

  “He’s wrong about you. I’m glad you got a chance to try. You have more athletic ability than you think.”