Blind Your Ponies (31 page)

“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.

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 though 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.”

“To be coming to USA I did not want.”

The boy paused and Sam was surprised, always assuming it had been Olaf’s idea to be an exchange student.

“I must be coming my father said. Understanding America and this language is necessary to do well in business.”

“Is that what you want to do—business?”

“No. To be a teacher.”

“Doesn’t your father want you to teach?”

“No, to make a good living, he says, be in business and finance.”

Sam rounded the curve into Willow Creek and chuckled at the irony. If Olaf grew another inch or two and kept improving at the rate he had in the past four months, he would likely, After college, make more money
playing basketball
than his father ever dreamed of making in the world of business.

During almost an hour of watching basketball, Sam noticed Olaf’s attention waning, his eyes drifting off on occasion. After hurrying him home to bed, concerned that they were wearing the boy out in their eagerness to forge another win or two, Sam wondered if he was using Olaf as Mervin might be, or was he helping the boy to grow and learn and experience one of the grandest times of his life? He didn’t know, and he recognized that he could never understand, truly, why he did anything. If Mervin was wagering on Olaf for a victory over his brother, what was Sam’s bet?

All his hope had amounted to nothing. They were 1 and 6. Other than the one narrow victory they were right where they always were.

F
OR THE REST
of the week, like two children who had played with matches and nearly burned down the house, Sam and Diana shied from each other as though neither wanted to admit they had a strain of pyromania in their nature.

When the Greyhound pulled up along Main Street in Three Forks, Peter was the first one off. With his backpack and duffel in hand, he trundled across the street to the Conoco station. He called Grandma on the pay phone, but no one answered. He realized where she was now—at the game. They were playing Gardiner that night and he would’ve made it with time to spare if the bus hadn’t had mechanical trouble. They had to transfer onto another bus in Bismarck.

Inside the Conoco station, he asked the stoop-shouldered man behind the counter if he could leave his stuff until he came back for it with a car. The man glanced over the
Guns & Ammo
magazine he was reading and nodded. Peter crossed the street and ran through downtown, three blocks, then out the road to Willow Creek. There was a cluster of cars around each of the several bars, but nothing moving. He quickly put the five or six blocks of residential neighborhoods behind him. As he followed the curve at the edge of town out past the brick yard and talc plant, he was winded. The blacktop aimed the six miles to Willow Creek as straight as an arrow. There were no cars on the road, it seemed everyone was at the game. He slowed to a walk and held his watch up to his face. Eight-thirteen. They would be into the second half. He started running again, pushing himself. He knew he could make a difference.

Headlights appeared coming around the curve behind him. He turned, hung a friendly smile on his face and stuck out his thumb. The car swung to the other side of the highway, slowed, and went past him several car lengths before stopping. Pete ran to the passenger window, which was down.

“Thanks for stopping, are you going to Willow Creek?”

It was a woman, maybe fifty years old.

“I’m supposed to be playing in the basketball game tonight and the game’s already going and—”

“Hop in,” she said.

Peter opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. It was a big car, a Buick or Oldsmobile.

“So you go to Willow Creek, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. Are you going to the game?”

“No… just driving around, remembering… making my getaway.”

Pete didn’t understand. With only the light from the dashboard he noticed she had a bathrobe on under her winter jacket, and slippers.

“What’s your name?”

“Peter… Peter Strong.”

“I used to live around here, grew up on our ranch west of Willow Creek, the Taylor place now.”

She sounded sad, really sad. Pete looked at his watch. Eight-twenty.

“How come you’re late for the game?”

“I was visiting someone in Minnesota. I was supposed to be back in time but the bus broke down.”

She didn’t seem to hear him.

“I went to school in Willow Creek a long time ago,” she said. “We had a few good teams back then, even went to State once.”

“Did you win it?”

“No, didn’t win a game, but we sure had fun going.”

“We have a kid from Norway. He’s six foot eleven.”

“I’ve heard all about
him.
I live over east of Churchill, had two boys play basketball for Manhattan Christian.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard all about
them.
I missed our first game against them when I was back in Minnesota.”

Pete could see the meager lights of Willow Creek and he prayed he would at least make the fourth quarter.

“You know, even when my boys were playing for Christian, in my heart I’d be rooting for Willow Creek.”

Pete thought of Kathy and the hurt rose up in his chest. “When you went to school here, did you have a boyfriend?” he said.

“Yes…”

“Did you get married?”

“No…” she said, “we never did.”

“Why not?”

“We got mixed up and confused and lost.”

Pete didn’t know what she meant. “Did you love him?” he said.

“Yes.”

She stopped in front of the school.

“What’s your name?” Pete said with his hand on the door latch.

“Maggie.”

“Thanks for the ride, Maggie.”

He opened the door and got out.

“I still do,” she said.

“Still do what?” he said, about to shut the door.

“I still do love him.”

“I gotta run,” he said, and wondered if she’d been drinking.

He shut the door and turned for the school. The car window purred down.

“I hope you win!” she called. “I hope
someone
wins in Willow Creek one of these times.”

Pete dashed for the school door.

When he came through the lunch room and across one end of the gym, the action was at the other end and no one seemed to notice him. The scoreboard had visitors 49 home 37. He knew he had at least twelve points in him. In the locker room he found his jersey and trunks hanging where he’d left them as if they expected him back, as if they knew better than he that he’d return. He had no jock. He’d wear his underwear under his trunks. His game shoes were in his duffel but the shoes he had on would do. He glanced in the steel mirror to see if he was all together, took a deep breath, and ran out onto the court.

The teams were at their benches, it was the end of the third quarter. Fans in the bleachers saw him coming first and after a blink of the eyes, they were standing, clapping, and shouting. He waved at Grandma, whose mouth hung open so far she nearly fell out of the stands. The boys turned from their huddle around Coach Pickett and Miss Murphy with astonished faces, and Peter ran into their arms like the one lost sheep. They hugged him and shouted and laughed, growing wide smiles on their exhausted, sweaty faces. Coach Pickett beamed as if he’d swallowed the sun.