Blind Your Ponies (32 page)

They needed him here, he counted for something. He thought he’d burst with the joy of it.

S
AM HAD WATCHED
coach Fred Sooner and his Gardiner Bruins swagger into Willow Creek. State Champions two years ago, the Bruins still wore the confidence and self-assurance such achievements breed. Sam had hoped that his five could give them a game, knowing in his head that that was highly unlikely. Denise Cutter, Dean’s cerebral-palsied sister, sat in her wheelchair at the end of the bleachers, watching. He couldn’t remember seeing her at a game before.

Olaf fouled out halfway through the third quarter and Fred Sooner showed his sportsmanship by having one of his players simply stand on the court in front of their bench without participating in the game, playing four on four.

In the last minute of the third quarter, with Gardiner ahead by fourteen, Curtis was called for his fifth foul. They were down to three; they were beaten. Sam felt the utter absurdity of his hopes, heard the voices ridiculing and mocking his expectations as if he were the lunatic knight in Cervantes’ imagination. He conceded and sat quietly on the bench.

Then, like a Willow Creek ghost, Peter trotted across the floor out of nowhere, in uniform and ready to play. Was he dreaming?

Now they had four players, and it was four on four when the fourth quarter started, but after Peter hit five straight shots, Gardiner’s sportsmanship had soured and their fifth player was no longer just standing in front of the bench. Their fifth player was double-teaming Peter, who was playing like they’d insulted his mother.

Mervin Painter, who had become one of their most boisterous fans, thundered from the bleachers, “You can’t beat us man for man! You can’t beat us even-Steven!”

Rob hit a nice turnaround jumper, bringing the Broncs within three. Sam wanted to believe. The Willow Creek fans were on their feet, daring to hang their hearts out one more time, but Sam couldn’t join them. It hurt too much.

They lost by seven. Peter Strong had come too late. Sam praised his boys
in the locker room, though there wasn’t much to say anymore. They were 1 and 7. While all the other boys circled around Peter, asking about his journey to Minnesota and looking for assurances he was back for good, Sam approached Dean, who slumped on a bench and pulled off holey socks.

“You played well, Dean,” Sam said, patting him on the back. “Did you have some fun?”

“Yeah, but I stunk,” the freshman said, crunching up his nose.

“No, you did great, and your mother and sister were here. I hope they’ll come again.”

“Mom says they can’t afford the tickets,” Dean said.

“Oh,” Sam said, taken back. “We always have some extra tickets lying around. You tell them to come. We need all the fans we can get. I’ll take care of the tickets.”

G
RANDMA DROVE THE
VW bus up the blacktop for Three Forks after Pete told her he had to get his things at the Conoco station. He sat quietly for a while, hurting over the immediate loss which seemed to magnify his greater loss.

“How’d you get to Willow Creek?” Grandma said.

“I hitched a ride with a nice lady. Her name was Maggie.”

“Maggie Painter?” Grandma said.

“She didn’t say.”

Grandma wondered if it was indeed Maggie Painter. What was she doing driving around Willow Creek at night? Grandma had heard tell when she first arrived in Willow Creek that Mervin’s older brother had stolen Maggie from him when they were young sweethearts. The latest word was that Maggie, who was pretty sick, had taken a turn for the worse.

“Well,” Grandma said, “what did you find out back in Saint Paul?”

“No one wants me back there.”

“Well, that’s hunky-dory with me because there’s lots of us who want you here.”

“Kathy’s going with some senior jerk. She said she was sorry.”

“How about your mom?” Grandma said, swinging down Main Street in Three Forks.

“I think she has a boyfriend, she was always talking on the phone like she didn’t want me to hear. I was in her way. She always had some place she had to go.”

She pulled into the station and Pete threw his stuff in the back. She turned for home.

“How about your dad? Did you see him?”

“Yeah, stayed with him a couple nights, but he said it was a bad time, that I’d have to stay with you until summer.”

“Well, at least you didn’t lose a hand in the deal,” Grandma said, trying to lighten his load, “or other body parts.”

“Does a heart count?” He stared out the side window.

“Peter, my lovely grandson, you’ll discover that the heart is a very resilient muscle.”

“I wasn’t good enough for her, or cool enough or something.”

“You feeling… ugly?”

“Yeah, like there is something wrong with me… ugly.”

He didn’t speak again until they were almost into Willow Creek.

“Grandma, do you ever get lonesome?”

“Lonesome? Well, I’ll tell you. Lonesome is a sly bugger. It crouches behind every memory, it lies in ambush in every drawer, it hangs in the closet like old clothes, ready to waylay you when you’re least expectin’ it. But one thing I’ve found, it’s slow, it’s sure slow. It can only grab you if you’re giving in to life, sittin’ around thinkin’ too much. I just keep moving so fast it can never get its stinking hands on me.”

She stopped in front of the house and pulled on the hand brake.

They were home.

When most of the fans had filed out of the Blue Willow, Sam and Diana remained huddled at a small table near the antique black-iron stove. The bar was busy, and a few couples danced to country and western music out of the jukebox. After they had traded their feelings from losing again, mitigated by the joy of having Peter back, Diana shared her excitement over a teaching position she had applied for near San Diego.

“They even have a course in oceanography for the high school students,” she said.

“Sea turtles?”

“Yeah.” Her face brightened.

Their conversation had slowly circled their Beartrap Hot Springs excursion until Sam finally jumped head first into it.

“When are we going hot-potting again?”

He toyed with the salt shaker, trembling inside that she’d say Never.

“That was a surprise,” she said. “I don’t know what got into us.”

“Well, whatever it was, I hope it gets into us again.” He laughed.

“It was good, wasn’t it?” Her eyes smiled warmly.

“Milk chocolate.”

“Milk chocolate?” she asked.

“Yes, you ruined everything.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“When I was a young boy I couldn’t go off our block. That was my boundary. On the other side of our block and across the street there was one of those filling stations that sold more pop, junk food, and cigarettes than gas. My parents were super strict about candy. I only got it on rare occasions like holidays or birthdays.”

“Was this before you started school?”

“Yeah, maybe I was five or six. Well, there were these three girls in my
neighborhood, about my age or a little older, who didn’t have like-minded parents. They hauled candy out of that store like looters in a riot. We’d sit on a cement-block wall in the alley and I’d watch them feed their faces: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, licorice twists, Milky Ways.”

“Good night, you two!” Andrew called on his way out. “Great to have Peter back!”

“Yes,” Sam said, and Diana waved.

“Back to our gang,” she said.

“Well, at first they shared some of their candy with me. One of them, a kind of pushy little girl, always got Hershey bars, and I became addicted to milk chocolate. But it wasn’t long before they figured out I never had any candy of my own and that I wasn’t allowed to have any. That got them started. They’d bribe me, offering me one little square of milk chocolate if I’d do something ridiculous like roll in the dirt or sit up like a dog and bark—humiliating things.”

“Would you do it?” she said, then grinned.

“Oh yeah. Boy could I do a good dog imitation. And they enjoyed this wondrous power they held over me. Then, After a while, they turned it up a notch to cruel. They’d make me run around the block. When I was finished, they’d say it wasn’t fast enough, and around I’d go again, faster. They’d make me shinny up a telephone pole and when I’d slide down, full of slivers and creosote, they’d say I didn’t go high enough. Up I’d go again, anything for a square or two of milk chocolate.”

“Those dirty little creeps,” Diana said.

“I started to hate those girls, teasing me, hoarding their glut of candy and making me beg, using me for their cheesy entertainment. One day I finally had enough. I began telling myself I hated candy, especially milk chocolate. I wouldn’t take it if they gave it to me. I would repeat it over and over: I hate candy, I hate candy. And you know, I never performed for them again.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah, but that’s only the half of it. When I was in my teens and early twenties, girls had something I wanted—affection, sex, love, pleasure—and they wouldn’t share it with me. I’d trip over my tie being nice and polite and kissing their pretty round asses in hopes they’d share their candy.”

“Like the little girls in the alley,” Diana said.

“Like the little girls in the alley. Women seemed to sense the power they held over me. They taunted with their big, beautiful eyes and their delicious-looking lips and their suntanned legs, like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey bars and licorice twists.”

“Ha!” Diana clapped her hands.

Sam leaned toward her with elbows on the table.

“Hey, understand I’m not your proverbial sex fiend. I admit to the lusting little hormones, but what women don’t realize, or most men for that matter, is that the physical allurements aren’t an end in themselves, but constant reminders of a much deeper mating, that precious oneness that exists between two people in love.”

“You want anything more?” Vera called from the counter.

“Sam wants a lot more,” Diana said.

“No, thanks. We’re about to go,” Sam said.

“Don’t want to rush you,” Vera said.

Sam glanced at his watch. Eleven-fifty. He looked into his assistant coach’s eyes for some understanding.

“Okay, one day I realized I was back on the block with those little girls who had the candy I wanted. They had power over me again. So I did what I did then. I disciplined myself to give up wanting that wonder with a woman.”

“Did it work?” Her dark eyes searched his face.

“It worked… until Amy. I had learned to live alone and to do without. Some people think it not normal to go without someone to love, to go without sex, that you’re weird, that there’s something wrong with you. Yet there are millions of people who seem fated to be incapable of matching up with. They go without love and affection for long stretches of their lives, some their entire lives, and it’s not that they don’t
want
it.”

Sam leaned toward her and spoke with a hint of pain in his voice. “It’s that they can’t
find
it and they can’t
have
it. And they’ve given up running around the block and sitting up like a goddamn dog to beg for it!”

Sam sat back and sighed, calming himself. She seemed to hold her breath with his intensity.

“I thought I had found a certain contentment without it, and now you’ve gone and ruined it for me.”

“Ruined it for you?”

“Yes. You let me taste milk chocolate again. I’d forgotten how much I love it.”

They got up to leave. Diana went over to the counter and purchased something from Vera while Sam left a tip and pulled on his coat. At her Volvo she handed him a Hershey bar.

“Here. This will have to satisfy you for tonight.” She smiled.

“Will I have to sit up like a dog and beg for it?”

“Let’s see how fast you can run around the block.”

They laughed. She kissed him. Then she got in her car and drove away.

Eating the candy bar, Sam walked home through the sleeping town, knowing he was precariously close to the edge. With the taste of Hershey’s milk chocolate on his tongue tonight, he dared to believe in the promise of tomorrow.

In the heart of the Shields River Valley, two towns, Wilsall and Clyde Park—traditional, and sometimes bitter, athletic rivals—finally gave in to necessity and accepted the marriage of their high schools in the manner of the Hatfields and McCoys, making them a much more formidable power in the conference. It was the kind of wedlock Willow Creek dreaded, knowing that in its case, with Three Forks, it wouldn’t be matrimony but a common-law kidnapping. Sam slowed the bus he now fondly referred to as Rozinante as the team approached the weather-battered town of Wilsall. Diana pointed out a small hill covered with sage and crescents of drifted snow.

“There, there, right behind that ridge,” she said. “The Anzick Site, one of the oldest in North American. They found evidence of hairy mammoth hunters from over ten thousand years ago.”

Sam gazed out at the murky outline of the ridge and found it hard to visualize ivory-tusked mammoths striding into Wilsall. The night before, these Shields Valley boys had upset Twin Bridges, handing that team its first loss, and though Sam felt some apprehension as to how good these local boys might be this season, he couldn’t help smiling. This night he had a mammoth with him and he knew the natives had better sharpen their Clovis points lest they be trampled and find themselves limping for cover.

In the valley of hairy mammoths, Olaf beat back the Shields Valley Rebels, slapping shots away, clearing the boards, keeping his pivot foot on the hardwood, and clumping out of the paint in less than three seconds. When they tried to bring him down, he hit thirteen of sixteen free throws to completely shatter their final ploy. Olaf played his best game to date, dominating the Rebels, and Sam and Diana, somewhat overwhelmed on the bench, appreciated the creative ways their clever guards were concocting to get the Norwegian the ball: no-look passes, alley-oops for jams, and baseline
bounces. Pete passed up numerous shots to deliver the ball to his center, and Olaf displayed an offensive aggression that Sam could never have taught.