Blind Your Ponies Read online

  THEY HAD ADJOINING rooms for the team, the four upperclassmen in one and Sam, with the dubious honor of rooming with Scott, Curtis, and Dean, in the other. Diana would bunk with the three cheerleaders. A little after nine o’clock, she walked through the open door of Sam’s room to find Curtis sitting on the bed watching a basketball game on TV.

  “Who’s playing?” she asked.

  “The Trailblazers and Sonics,” the shy sophomore said, glancing at her for a moment.

  “Where’s Dean and Scott?”

  “They went to get some pop.”

  “Where’s Coach Pickett?”

  “He went to round up the other boys.”

  Diana sat in the chair beside the bed and regarded Curtis.

  “Are you having fun?”

  “Yeah. It’s scary, but I’m glad there are only six of us so I get a chance to play.”

  “You’re doing great, you’ve improved so much this year.”

  The boy averted his eyes.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Curtis?”

  He blushed. “Naw.”

  “Would you like to have one?”

  He glanced into her eyes as if to see if she were kidding. “I guess so, but I’ll never.”

  “Why not?”

  “With these ears?”

  Diana thought for a moment. “Have you ever seen Clark Gable?”

  “Who?”

  “Clark Gable, he was a famous movie star. A million women would have given their… well… would have given a right arm just to meet the guy. He had ears that would make yours look microscopic. He had ears that could pick up messages from the moon. You go get rent one of his movies sometime and check out those ears. Then you’ll know your ears don’t matter to a girlfriend. They’re too busy looking in your eyes, and, Curtis, you’ve got great eyes.”

  The boy’s face flushed as though he’d run a mile. He studied his large, bare feet. Before he had to speak, Scott came bowling into the room with several cans of cold pop, and right behind him came Dean, pushing Denise in her wheelchair. The girl was glowing, hanging out with her brother and his friends, grabbing a hold of this little chunk of life the best she could. Dean’s shirt was wet with perspiration, his face dripping.

  “What have you been doing, Dean?” Diana asked.

  “Racing. Denise and me are racing Scott in the halls.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to rest… for the game in the morning?”

  “I’m gettin’ in shape for the game. Denise is helping me.”

  Diana knew when to let well enough alone. She stood and squeezed Denise’s arm.

  “Thanks for all your help, Denise. We couldn’t win without you.”

  Diana headed down the corridor knowing there was no more logic to all of this than the cow jumping over the moon. She didn’t know why, but Denise made her think of Jessica. Would she want Jessica to have survived the crash and be imprisoned in a wheelchair for the rest of her life? Selfishly, she’d take Jessica any way she could get her. But what would Jessica choose?

  SAM HAD TO search the sprawling motel for the four older boys who had unceremoniously disappeared. He located them, and the three girls, lounging around the indoor pool and jacuzzi.

  “Coach, we should have brought our swimming suits,” Rob said, he and Mary and Pete sitting with their bare feet in the jacuzzi.

  “I’d rather not have you swim. Save your energy for the game,” Sam said.

  Around eleven o’clock, Sam tiptoed out of his room and rapped lightly on the girls’ door. Diana came out quietly with her scorebook and they went down to the lobby together. They settled in deeply cushioned chairs facing each other.

  “What do you think about Tom’s knee?” Sam asked.

  “First, I want to apologize. I’m sorry if I went too far last night—”

  “No… you don’t need to, really. You made me do a lot of thinking.”

  “But it’s not my place—”

  “It’s your official place, as assistant coach, to tell the head coach when he has already taken to the lifeboats. Thanks for having the guts to tell me. I don’t think you said a word that wasn’t the truth.”

  He smiled at her and she felt herself relax.

  “I wish we’d reserved an extra room,” she said.

  “That would be nice.” Sam said, trying to hold off his aching longing for this woman. “Now, what about Tom’s knee?”

  “Let’s pray his knee will come around in eighteen hours. We’ll keep it iced off and on, but I don’t know if that will do it. It must hurt a lot. We can’t beat Shields Valley without him.”

  “They don’t have anyone who can stand up to Olaf,” he said. “Wasn’t he something today? Only two personals, several blocked shots, and seventeen points. And how’s this for balance?” She ran a finger down her scorebook. “Pete thirteen, Rob eleven, Tom nine, and Curtis four.”

  “How many did Jimmy Hobbs have?” he said.

  She turned her scorebook over. “Eleven.”

  “That poor kid won’t sleep tonight. That’ll be with him the rest of his life. We don’t warn kids enough about the possible consequences. About what they might have to handle.”

  He looked into her eyes and paused.

  “Why did Jimmy Hobbs miss both of those free throws?” he said.

  “Why? Because the pressure was too much for him,” she said. “Because he didn’t practice enough? Because he was scared? I don’t know.”

  “Do you ever think that—”

  Andrew Wainwright came in the front door in a snappy-looking nylon sweat suit and jogging shoes.

  “Hey, you two. Can’t sleep either? What a game, great coaching job, just great.”

  Sam and Andrew exchanged a glance.

  “Are you staying over?” Diana said.

  “Yeah. That’s half the fun. I’ve already got reservations in Helena for next week.”

  “I hope you won’t be up there alone,” Sam said and laughed.

  “You have them ready, coach. Those poor Harrison boys never could figure out which gate our kids were coming out of next, at least until Pete fouled out.”

  “We were lucky,” Sam said.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. We were the better team,” Andrew said.

  “The good teams win the squeakers. If that kid made both free throws, it would have been a tragedy.”

  “We were just talking about that,” Sam said. “Why didn’t he make those two simple free throws?”

  “We’ll never know that,” Andrew said. “Just our good luck. Anyway, sleep well, a big day tomorrow.”

  Andrew hurried across the lobby.

  “You too,” Sam called.

  “Now there’s a man I can’t figure,” Diana said. “Why doesn’t he have a woman in his life, a wife or something? He’s kind, intelligent, well-heeled, and he’s gorgeous.”

  “And he enjoys looking at you.”

  “At me?”

  “Yep. He’s single, alive, and a man. In his situation I’d be looking at you, kid.” He smiled at her. “Only a blind man wouldn’t.”

  Without hesitation she kissed him at the door to her room.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said softly.

  He drew her close. “No, we need to be wakened before the chances are gone, before there’s nothing left but regret, before Lazarus is rotten.”

  He kissed her deeply.

  “God, I wish we had our own room,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She opened the door, and a chorus of male and female voices greeted her with sing-song mockery.

  “Where have you been, Miss Muurphy?”

  SAM FOUND NO healing for himself, waking suddenly from his recurring nightmare, covered in sweat and gasping. He was in the sawed-off school bus, parked across the street from the Blue Willow. The door was jammed and he couldn’t get out. Amy had gone into the restaurant to get the French fries. A Hamm’s Beer truck stood around the back and Jimmy Hobbs was practicing free throws on a basket
at the side of the Blue Willow. Sam frantically called to the boy, begging him to run into the building and warn Amy, warn her to flee! But Jimmy wouldn’t quit shooting, missing free throw after free throw. “I have to practice!” he called back. “I have to practice until I make two in a row.”

  The dull, thudding detonations went off inside the Blue Willow like the sounds of Jimmy’s poorly inflated basketball hitting the backboard. Sam was shouting, “No, no… please!” when he woke in the unfamiliar bed and darkness. From the trace of light coming at the edges of the heavy drapes, he could see Dean, sleeping next to him in the king-size bed. For an instant he thought it was Jimmy Hobbs.

  FOR PETER, THE next morning was a muddled blur and it caught him off guard. Wake early, dress, breakfast, then the short drive to the civic center before the sun came over the mountains. It was going too fast and he was scared. They were counting on him, these people who had taken him in, people who cared about him. It worried him that they might lose here and it would all be over. He wanted to win for them more than anything in the world, and he prayed he wouldn’t let them down.

  Mr. Painter caught him after the game yesterday, said Maggie Painter told him to say hello to Peter. She had died. Peter didn’t know what he thought about dead people—did they still know what was going on here? She was a Willow Creek girl and now all her chances were gone. As he dressed in the chilly locker room, he told himself there was no way he would let them lose, but he was afraid he would.

  And then the game was on top of him.

  He pushed his legs and body but it seemed so unnatural this time of the morning. He had butterflies, no, lead in his stomach. He was off balance, and he couldn’t find his legs. He was winded, couldn’t catch his breath. It made him mad; he knew he was in good shape.

  Willow Creek started cold, they couldn’t hit the toilet bowl with a shotgun. Shields Valley had found their shooting eyes quickly and they were pulling ahead.

  He thought of Grandma and his mother. He wanted to make them proud. These games were hard on Grandma and he wanted to give her a lopsided win. He missed his first three shots; he was pressing, aiming the ball. He tried to get the ball into Olaf and had two turnovers. He was screwing up! What was he doing? He had to quit pressing and let his game come to him.

  Work hard on defense, move your feet, hit the boards.

  The sweat was flowing, and with it he felt his balance coming back. He blew by his man with a cross dribble and made the layup. He was back in the flow.

  They were staying even but they couldn’t make up the seven points they had fallen behind earlier. Shields Valley was playing nine guys and coming at them hard, running the floor. By the middle of the third quarter he’d focused, forgetting about the mechanics and allowing his head and body to go with his instincts. He hit two shots in a row from the outside and he felt it all coming together, that natural rhythm he didn’t have to think about. Shields Valley couldn’t handle Olaf in close and Tom was starting to hurt them from the side. Rob picked up his fourth foul near the end of the third quarter and he promised Coach Pickett, who was about to put Dean in the game, that he’d not pick up the fifth.

  Shields Valley was up by six with four minutes to go and Rob got his fifth foul, a bogus call by the ref. When Rob turned for the bench he looked into Pete’s eyes with desperation, pleading with him not to let it end here in this crappy morning game. Pete looked back as if to say, No way! He would not let them lose. In that brief moment he saw Denise Cutter in the stands, Grandma, Maggie Painter, all the Willow Creek fans from the past six years. He turned back to the game.

  Up the court fast, he drew the defense in to him and lobbed a high pass to Olaf. The Norwegian jammed it. Shields Valley missed an outside shot. Tom got the ball to Pete on the side and he lifted a three-pointer. Nothing but net. Exhaustion swarmed over him as he sprinted back on defense. He fought it off. Cutting into the passing lane, he stole the ball, raced down the sidelines, and pulled up behind the three-point arc. He buried it. He couldn’t miss. Shields Valley missed an outside shot. Tom rebounded the ball and fired a down-and-out to Pete. He took it to the arc, stopped when he could have gone in for the layup against only one defender, and nailed it. He scored nine points in the final two minutes and Willow Creek won by eleven.

  Pete leaped into Rob’s arms with his last bit of energy. The team and a small group of Willow Creek fans swarmed down onto the floor. Tom wrapped his arm around Pete and held him up.

  “You played a hell of a game, kid,” Tom said.

  “You were super sweet yourself.”

  “And we’re still standing,” Tom said.

  “Barely,” Pete said.

  Then the happy Willow Creekians, shouting and laughing, embraced everyone within reach.

  CHAPTER 59

  Tom was watching TV in the motel room, lounging on the bed with an ice bag on his knee. The others had scattered in all directions, and Coach Pickett and Miss Murphy had taken the girls to the mall. Scott burst into the room.

  “Tom, Tom, they’re beatin’ up Curtis and Dean!”

  Tom sprang up, pulling on his diamondback boots.

  “Where? Who?”

  “I don’t know, some guys from Butte.”

  Tom grabbed his duster and black hat and ran after Scott.

  “WHO GAVE YOU permission to walk on our sidewalk?” a tall, narrow-faced kid said. He wore a large silver cross dangling from one ear.

  “No one,” Curtis said, trying to hang on to his courage.

  Three of them, leather-upholstered and in black bikers’ boots, had Dean and Curtis backed into a littered alley between two vacant brick buildings. Curtis could feel the hatred in them, the tall, the fat, and the ugly.

  “You think you hayseeds can just walk into our town and go where you please?” the fat, sullen-looking boy said from his black, chrome-studded clothes. He must have weighed way over two hundred pounds, and his bare stomach bulged out between his pants and shabby leather jacket. Curtis couldn’t look into his deeply pockmarked face and beady pale eyes.

  “What about you, dimpleshit? What haystack did you crawl out from under?” the ugly guy said, jabbing a finger into Dean’s chest. The bully had long, oily hair stringing out from under a red bandanna.

  “ ‘We’re just walking around,” Dean said. “We didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “ ‘We didn’t mean to make you mad,’ ” Ugly Bandanna said in a falsetto voice, snatching the Kamp Implement cap from Dean’s head.

  “Gimme my cap!”

  “What would you want with a piece of shit like this?” Ugly Bandanna pulled out a cigarette lighter. “I think I’ll rid the world of this diseased rag.”

  “No-o-o-o, please,” Dean said.

  Fat traced the lettering on Curtis’s Future Farmers of America jacket with a stubby finger.

  “What in hell is a Willow Creek?”

  “It’s over by Three Forks,” Curtis said.

  “What in hell is a Three Forks?” Bandanna said.

  “Why don’t you let us go?” Curtis said.

  “Because, dipshit, you pissed us off,” Fat said. “We can’t just let you cow pies come slopping all over our ground. Jesus Christ, look at the ears on this shithead.”

  He flicked his hand at Curtis’s ear.

  “He’s a walking satellite dish. We could plug a TV into him and get programs from stinkin’ China.”

  Fat stepped nose to nose with Curtis, assailing him with putrid breath. “Can you get programs from China, cow pie?”

  The porky goon, who wore metal-studded leather wrist bands, slapped Curtis across the mouth. Stunned, Curtis flinched and stepped back quickly. Dean backpedaled beside him. They were inching deeper into the deserted alley.

  “I’ll call the sheriff,” Curtis said, wiping a trickle of blood from his lip.

  “He’ll call the sheriff,” Tall Earring said. “We ain’t got no sheriff, shit brain.”

  “I think we oughta torch this farmer’s jacket, too,” th
e fat thug said, and he slapped Curtis across the mouth again, harder.

  “Hit me, chicken shit,” Fat said.

  Curtis spotted Scott and Tom out on the sidewalk. Tom glanced down the alley and saw them. He came down the alley, fast. Bandanna lit his cigarette lighter and held it up to Dean’s cap.

  “What are you smiling at, dipshit!” Fat shouted at Curtis. “Why don’t you hit me?”

  “Because he’s going to,” Curtis said.

  The fat one turned, too late. Tom’s fist caught him on the side of the skull, a thudding blow that sounded like a fastball hitting a catcher’s mitt. With a grunt he dropped to his knees and then flopped face first to the alley floor, his beady eyes wide with shocked surprise.

  “Bodacious!” Dean yelled.

  “Get ’em, Tom!” Curtis said.

  Startled by Tom’s sudden appearance, the other two turned and clenched their fists.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Ugly Bandanna said.

  Then, as though they’d done this a lot, they were on him like alley cats, swarming, tackling, pinning his jabbing arms. Amid the grunts and curses and broken bottles, Tom was losing ground. Every time he zeroed in on one of them, the other would punch him from his blind side. Held in a strangling hold from behind, Tom threw a crunching elbow to Bandanna’s gut. Bandanna lost his grip and sagged to the ground. Dean and Curtis cowered from the violence.

  The fat one staggered to his feet, still unsteady. Then he drop-kicked Tom in the groin with his heavy boot. Tom’s knees buckled, he sucked for air, his eyes bulged. He doubled up on the crumbling asphalt. In a burst Curtis broke from his petrified state and leaped on the fat guy’s back, his arms around that pulpy neck. Fat turned around and around and then slammed backward into the brick wall of the building, knocking the wind out of Curtis and forcing him to give up his stranglehold. Curtis slid to the ground, slumped against the wall, thinking he would die if he didn’t find a breath of air immediately.