Blind Your Ponies Page 32

  He cupped his hands and howled, imitating the wild creatures as best he could. Then he held his breath, listening, hoping for a reply, a reply of acceptance and healing. It came, a coyote off to his right, a barking, howling song on the wind, but Sam couldn’t understand the words, couldn’t translate the message. Was it a note of joy or a word of warning?

  On the bus Sam noticed tears trickling down Dean’s face as though his fishbowl lenses were leaking. Sam realized he had held out on the young boy, only expounding half-truths when he talked him into coming out for basketball. He had neglected to tell the fledgling about how bad you feel when you lose, and worse, how ashamed when you believe it was your fault. Sam tried to soothe the pain by announcing they would stop at McDonald’s on the long trip home, but not even a Big Mac with fries would stem the young boy’s sorrow. Like it or not, he was growing up.

  CHAPTER 53

  Mervin was up early Saturday morning, tinkering with the John Deere “D” , trying to find some fault with his brother’s maintenance, trying to shake the residue of the Gardiner loss from his head and heart. He felt damn proud of Olaf, who had played like a warrior, only to be cheated out of a chance to win by that goddamn referee who shouldn’t be allowed to work a grade school game. It had been worse than that professional wrestling on TV, the way the Gardiner boys faked being hit and flopped all over the floor. As long as they played dirty to get Olaf out of the game, Mervin wished Olaf had coldcocked one of them and got his money’s worth out of his fifth foul.

  He knew something else was stuck in his craw that he couldn’t shake. Olaf, who was still sleeping in the house, would be leaving in a few short months and Mervin didn’t know how he’d take that. He realized he’d grown to love the boy, and something more he’d never admit to a soul. He figured he loved the boy more than he’d ever loved his four daughters. Something had grown up between him and the boy, something he never had with his girls. He dreaded losing Olaf come summer, and he tried not to think about it.

  He had made room for the old tractor in a back corner of the metal machine shed he had built seven years ago, a godsend in winter and bad weather days when he had to work on a piece of machinery.

  Mervin had drained the crankcase on the “D” but, to his disappointment, found the oil fresh and clean. He was removing one of the steel wheels when he felt a presence in the metal shed. He turned and started! Claire was standing there in her winter coat, watching him. She wasn’t smiling and he realized he’d never seen the expression on her face that she showed him now.

  “I want to say something to you that I’ve wanted to say for thirty years,” she said and she moved closer to him.

  Mervin felt his throat tighten. He laid down the heavy wrench and wiped his greasy hands on a rag. Something in him wanted to run.

  “When you courted me, I realized you weren’t a romantic man. But I came to think it was more than that, that there was something broken inside you, muffled,” Claire stepped closer to him.

  “And there was something frantic in you, like you were trying to gather frogs in a wheelbarrow. I heard stories over the years, hints and slips of the tongue, people trying to be kind by whispering or dropping the subject. I learned that you loved Maggie, planned to marry her. Through the years I’ve realized you still do love her, always have ever since I knew you. I’ve never said a word, figured it would pass with time and we’d become closer. That never happened.”

  “I never wanted— ”

  “Let me finish,” Claire said, wringing her hands. “I heard at the grocery store this morning that Maggie is real bad. She’s at the hospital in Bozeman. She’s dying. I want you to go in the house, clean up, and go see that woman before she’s gone.” Claire’s voice broke. “I’m afraid if she dies before you see her, we’ll have her ghost between us for the rest of our lives. I’ve never told you what to do in all our married days, but I’m telling you now. You hightail it to that hospital as fast as you can!”

  Stunned, Mervin set the rag on the tractor seat and walked past Claire out of the machine shed.

  In his Sunday suit and Stetson, Mervin turned onto the freeway toward Bozeman. He pushed his Ford up around ninety, and after driving forty miles in twenty-five minutes he left the car in a No Parking space, tightened his jaw, and hurried through the automatic hospital doors. A receptionist told him how to find Maggie’s room, and when he got off the elevator, his heart was racing. He turned a corner in the corridor and found his brother with several other men and women in the hall outside Maggie’s room. He didn’t hesitate.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Carl said, stepping in the way of Mervin’s march toward the door of Room 234.

  Mervin stepped up to Carl, chest to chest, and spoke in a low, steady voice.

  “You stole her from me thirty-five years ago and now, by God, I’ll have this time with her alone or I’ll tear your throat out!”

  Carl glared back, his cold gray eyes never blinking. Mervin figured he’d rather face a jail term for assault and battery than have to face Maggie in her dying moments.

  Time seemed to stand still. Mervin clenched his fists. Carl’s face flushed. Then he nodded and stepped back.

  Mervin opened the door and stepped in. A nurse passed Mervin on the way out, and whispered, “She’s very tired.”

  Mervin moved to the side of the bed and forced himself to look into Maggie’s withering face, forced himself to see the tubes and tape and needles, forced himself to look into her haggard eyes. He tried to find the sweet girl he’d loved so long ago.

  “Hello,” Mervin managed to say, but his voice broke.

  “Hello… what are—”

  “I had to come, I wanted to come, when I heard…”

  “Never thought I’d see you again,” she said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How did the boys do last night?” she said.

  “Willow Creek, the team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They lost to Gardiner,” Mervin said and wondered how they could be talking about the Willow Creek basketball team at a time like this.

  “I always pulled for Willow Creek. Always.” She coughed and it scared him. “I know it always seemed hopeless, but I was a Willow Creek girl and I thought that some day they would win again.”

  “They’ve won three games this year,” he said, though he wanted to get away from news, weather, and sports. He knew his time with her was short.

  “Will you say hello to Peter for me?” she said.

  “You know Peter? Peter Strong?”

  “Yes, he’s a good boy.”

  She coughed and closed her eyes for a moment. Mervin knew he’d never have this chance again.

  “Maggie, I want—”

  “I heard you won the tractor,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That always should’ve been yours.”

  “You always should’ve been mine,” he said.

  “You gave up on me.” She looked into his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me it didn’t matter that I was pregnant, that I had his baby inside me? Why didn’t you say that you forgave me for being a foolish young girl who was trying to make you jealous so you’d quit putting off our marriage?”

  Mervin moved close to the bed and leaned toward her face.

  “I’m so—”

  “I just went for a ride with him, that’s all he said it would be, a ride in his new pickup,” she said. “He raped me. He said it would be my word against his, and how would I explain being out on the old deserted Quinn Road with him in his pickup?”

  “Oh, God, Maggie,” Mervin said. He felt his heart being torn out.

  “I was so scared and humiliated and I didn’t dare tell anyone. Who could I tell? What could I say? The night you came looking for me, that wasn’t the first time. Your brother blackmailed me into going out there with him three more times after he first raped me. Each time he said once more and that would be the end of it.”

  “If I’d only k
nown, if you’d have told me—”

  “I was petrified. I wanted to kill Carl. I was a scared young girl who felt trapped. How could I tell you, what would you think? Well, we found that out, didn’t we. You just drove away, never looked back.”

  Mervin sat on the edge of her bed and took her hand in his.

  “I’m so sorry, Maggie…” He lost his voice.

  “Was it my unfaithfulness that hurt you or was it that you didn’t want to spend your life with a woman your brother had first? A woman your brother knew he had first? Was it that he got the best of you again, you and your goddamn Painter pride? Is that all you really cared about? I held my breath, praying you’d say it didn’t matter, that you forgave me, that you still loved me and would marry me. You just drove away!”

  “I’m sorry, oh God, I’ve never stopped loving you,” Mervin said, feeling the mountains coming down around him.

  “Your love was selfish and weak and small. All you cared about was your pride and how hurt you were, without a thought about what I was going through. Goddamn you. You threw away our love, my love and my life. Your feeling sorry doesn’t count anymore, it’s way too late.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. She was shutting him out. Mervin let go of her hand and stood.

  “I’ll let you rest now.”

  “You’ll let me die now, don’t you mean?” she said, opening her eyes. “Maybe you already did that thirty-five years ago.”

  Mervin sucked it up and picked up his hat.

  “Good-by, Maggie.” His voice trembled.

  “Good-by, Paint.”

  He nearly lost his balance leaving the room and closing the large door gently. Carl stood by a window with another man. Mervin waved a hand for his brother to follow him and then he walked down the corridor away from the others. When Carl caught up with him, Mervin turned and gathered himself, straining to hold back stampeding wild horses, with every nerve ending in the attack mode, his fists swelling hammer heads.

  “She told me what you did to her back then. And now it’s too late to do anything about it. But hear me well, you sonofabitch. Don’t ever let me catch you anywhere around Willow Creek, ever, or I will do to you what I would have done to you the night you raped Maggie in your pickup!”

  “Now just wait—”

  “You killed us, our life, Maggie and me. You are no longer my brother. May you rot in hell for what you did! I would kill you in the blink of an eye if it would bring Maggie back.”

  Mervin turned for the elevator and the way out. His legs felt weak and he couldn’t catch his breath and the hospital corridors seemed to blur. When he found his pickup, still in the No Parking space, he fled out of town. He didn’t know where he was going, the road was awash in his eyes, he feared the veins in his head would burst.

  He had given up on her, he had thrown it away because he was a proud, selfish bastard. Where do you go? What do you do when you’ve had your chance at life and you’ve thrown it away and when you’ve seen it go to ruin and loss? He was driving away again, away from Maggie, away from his life, from his love.

  He drove aimlessly. He prayed to God there was forgiveness in her last words, the affectionate nickname she used to call him.

  She had called him Paint.

  CHAPTER 54

  Sam arrived at the gym before anyone else on Saturday After-noon. Without turning on a light, he stood at the edge of the shadowed court. This would be their final game in this building, and an unexpected nostalgia engulfed him; the season had passed so quickly. From here on they would hold off the inevitable demise that defeat would bring to their fragile and faultless fraternity, the dissolution of their season, and their once-in-a-lifetime comradeship. They would never play here again.

  A PHOTOGRAPHER FROM Three Forks set them in a pose under the south backboard: Olaf in the middle, flanked by Tom and Curtis. Rob and Pete and Dean knelt in front. Sam stood on the outside next to Tom. Miss Murphy and Scott smiled from the other side, next to Curtis. All the players wore their bright new uniforms. They bantered and laughed as the thin, birdlike man in an undertaker’s attire fussed and aligned them with painstaking care.

  “Thanks for letting me shave this morning, men,” Sam said, revealing a slight smile on his face. He had realized the no-shaving-until-they-lost was a short-lived and corny gimmick.

  “We didn’t want you looking grubby for the team picture,” Rob said.

  “Don’t move, don’t move,” the photographer said. “You there, the boy on the outside, turn your head a little to the left.”

  Curtis turned his head slightly, and Sam figured the man was trying desperately to conceal Curtis’s ears.

  “We lost because we didn’t want Miss Murphy to have rug burn all over her face,” Pete said.

  “What makes you think I’d have it all over my face?” Diana said.

  That shut them up for a while as they pondered her meaning. Sam fought off a blush with his own interpretation.

  When their uniforms were hung neatly on coat hangers and the team was ready to leave, Sam had them sit on the bench in the little rectangular locker room. Diana leaned against the cinder-block wall near the doorway.

  “Get something to eat and be back here by six-thirty.” He paused. “You played well last night. I’m proud of you. You didn’t get beat.”

  Some of the boys exchanged glances.

  “I got outcoached. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  Sam took a breath and tried to push his missing glasses up on his nose.

  “Tonight is the last game of the regular season. We’ve come a long way since that first game. You’ve all worked hard. Now there’s one thing I want you to think about. What will you remember we accomplished after this team picture was taken when you gaze at it in twenty or thirty years? You have the opportunity to write that memory. I hope you write one that is wonderful and shining and full of joy.”

  The team spontaneously huddled around him and joined hands with both coaches and Scott.

  “Win! win! win! win! win!”

  Nine voices bombarding the concrete walls, seeping through the cracks out into the cold February Afternoon and dispersing into thin air, like their odds of winning in the days to come.

  THE SHIELDS VALLEY boys came to the wrong town on the wrong night. They’d have done better to have stayed at home. The local fans filled the bleachers on the east side of the gym and spilled over onto the west side with only a small contingent journeying from the Shields Valley. The loss at Gardiner and the losing season hadn’t seemed to discourage many Willow Creek fans as in the past five years. What was it about these boys? Was it Olaf they came to see? Sam was baffled. He couldn’t help but notice that Claire Painter was in the bleachers without Mervin, something else he’d never seen.

  Once the game got under way it turned into a party. The fans shouted and cheered and displayed emotions that had been in mothballs for many tedious years. The team played the way Sam knew they could and though it was only by five points, the boys won their final game on the home court with class.

  While Dean proudly pushed his sister around the gym, babbling to her about the game and rolling her toward the basket as though going in for a layup, Sam caught Sally Cutter pulling on her coat beside the bleachers.

  “I’m glad you were able to come,” Sam said. “I know it means a lot to Dean.”

  She nodded wearily. “Thank you for the tickets.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing, we always have a bunch we give out to some of the players’ families. Does Denise enjoy the games?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, becoming more animated than Sam had ever seen her. “She loves to come and watch the boys.”

  “Well, she’s a great fan. I hope she can come to the tournament. She brings us good luck.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we can do that.”

  “Don’t worry about transportation or tickets or any of that. If she’s able, we want her there.”

  “That’s mighty kind of you.”

 
; “And we’d like Dean’s father to come, too.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he will. He’s kinda funny about some things.”

  Dean wheeled Denise to where they stood, and Sam gazed down into her disarming face and smiled.

  “I’m glad you were here tonight, Denise, you helped us win. We need you.”

  She tilted her head and twisted her soundless mouth.

  Sam had an overwhelming desire to scoop this helpless child out of her hopeless chair and wrap her in his arms, promising her that they all would win. He stood frozen for a moment. Then he knelt in front of her chair and dared to venture into her sailing blue eyes.

  “We really need you,” he said.

  She exuded a brightness with her bearing, through her skin, as if from some light deep inside. Then her mother wheeled her away.

  DIANA HAD GONE ahead and saved a table for them in the crowded Blue Willow. When Sam arrived he noticed small outbreaks of euphoria and optimism regarding their chances in next week’s tournaments. It reminded Sam once more of the indestructible longing to win in the human breast.

  Diana looked up from her game book as Sam slid into a chair. She’d ordered his favorite hamburger but he still couldn’t eat the homemade French fries.

  “How’s this for balance,” Diana said. “Rob seventeen, Pete twenty-one, Olaf fifteen, Tom thirteen, Curtis one, and Dean didn’t score. Have you ever thought what it would be like if we had two or three more players?”

  Sam set down his hamburger and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Yeah, have I ever, especially now with tournaments. But they complement each other so well: Tom’s muscle, Olaf’s height, Rob’s consistency, Pete’s dash, Curtis’s work ethic, and Dean’s hustle. It’s like they’ve each filled a hole in the puzzle, like they each found his role.”