Blind Your Ponies (37 page)

“We’ve never beaten those cocky ass— ” Tom paused. “Turkeys.”

“It’ll be fun. How’s the knee?”

“Okay.”

“Do you think your mother will come to a game?”

“No.” Tom sobered. “She wouldn’t dare.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, wishing he hadn’t asked. He took a drink of water. “You boys keep surprising me. Know what I found when I got to school this morning?”

“No.”

“Curtis. I came over early to do some class work. He was in the gym, in his school clothes, shooting from his corner. I asked him if he’d done this before. He said he had. I asked him if he didn’t think I worked you hard enough at practice. He said, ‘Yeah, but after Tom came through the blizzard, I just thought I could practice a little before school.’ See what you’ve done? It’s catching. That great kid, going an extra mile because you’re a great kid.” Tom glanced into Sam’s eyes and then quickly turned away.

“You’re all going to be superb tonight,” Sam said. “It’ll be one to remember.”

Sam placed his hand on Tom’s muscular shoulder and squeezed.

“How about some ice cream?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, clearing his throat. “Thanks.”

W
HEN
D
IANA AND
Sam brought their clipboards to the bench long before the game started, he noticed Dean’s mother wheeling Denise into the gym. He’d given Dean four tickets he said were extras in hopes that the family would come. For some unknown reason he felt good that the girl was there. Mervin and Claire Painter were already camped in the bleachers directly behind the team bench. Sam stepped up into the stands and leaned close to Mervin as fans from both sides were straggling in.

“What are you going to do with the tractor?” Sam said.

Mervin tried to smile at the coach but his face seemed frozen in a mask of utter trepidation. He gripped the edge of the wooden seat with his work-hardened hands as though an unbearable disappointment might momentarily blast him to smithereens. “Do you
really
think we could do it?” he asked Sam.

“We’ve had a good week of practice. They’re as ready as they’ll ever be.”

“The Cutter boy still out?” Mervin said.

“Yeah, until next week.”

Mervin sighed from somewhere deep inside, a faint shadow of doom across his leathery face.

Carl Painter arrived twenty minutes before game time and sat with a flood of Eagle fans that quickly overwhelmed the bleachers and spilled over to standing room only. Some of the Christian fans slid into the few remaining seats on the Willow Creek side until the stands on both sides creaked. The small gym buzzed with the excitement and anticipation of a tournament game. The Manhattan Christian followers had brought with them an uneasy anxiety about the Norwegian beanpole—remembering their narrow victory a month ago—as well as their itching curiosity to be among the first to see who would end up with the Painter family John Deere “D.”

Once the contest started, Sam flinched at the ferocity of the game. Both teams crashed the boards, banged on picks, hounded on defense tooth and nail, and neither gave an inch. They rotated three boys on Olaf from off the bench in an attempt to wear down the thin giant, elbowing and shoving him as much as the officials would allow and taking the ball to him with drives to the basket on offense.

At the end of the first quarter, Christian led, 19 to 12, and though the large hometown crowd had sustained uproarious cheers, it seemed evident that Willow Creek was back on its heels and hanging on.

“Okay, we’ve gotten the butterflies out,” Sam said as the team rested on the bench, draped with towels and guzzling water. “Now, After we score, pick them up all over, they won’t be expecting it. Tom, you’ll be open if you stay out on the wing. They think Olaf has the ball.”

The first time Willow Creek went into their full-court press—unheard of by a team without a substitute that wanted to protect its five starters from exhaustion—they caught the Eagles napping. Tom picked off a pass and
threw a clothesline to Rob, who swished it. Immediately Christian called time out, giving the Broncs another much-needed rest.

At halftime Willow Creek led by one, 37 to 36. Olaf had three fouls. The team retreated to the locker room.

The Painter brothers clung to their bleacher seats with white-knuckled grips and the fans on both sides sighed with the relief halftime brought. Grandma Chapman and Andrew were hoarse from shouting and it seemed that Amos Flowers had appointed himself Tom Stonebreaker’s personal cheering section, standing and hooting whenever Tom scored or snagged a rebound. The band, with Rob and Curtis in their sweat-sodden uniforms, played the school fight song, and many of the fans found themselves singing along with unexpected strains of hope showing up in their voices.

In the third quarter, Pete and Rob found their touch and brought tears to Grandma’s eyes with graceful long-range arcs that swished the ball flawlessly through the white nylon net and added to the scoreboard in increments of three. Tom took pressure off his Scandinavian teammate by scoring from the baseline, and the Willow Creek fans rose to their feet and roared as Curtis Jenkins—left alone in the Eagles’ attempt to overplay the scorers—drifted along the baseline, caught a quick pass from Pete, and nailed a layup, his first basket of the season.

With the combination of Olaf’s great zeal to win and his growing exhaustion from fighting off three rotating players, he slapped a shot away but picked up his fourth foul a minute into the fourth quarter. Pete and Rob did what they could to slow the game down and stay close. With three minutes to go, Tim Volk, a knotty little guard, scored, giving Christian a six-point lead. Sam signaled for a time out, feeling the familiar doom he’d learned to expect at this point in the game. The boys huddled on the bench.

“You’re playing well. Run number four, number
four.
Get Olaf the ball when he comes open.” Sam looked into their believing eyes.

Diana clapped her hands. “Let’s get the tractor!”

With fifty seconds to go, having closed to within one point, Olaf faked going across the paint and pivoted the other way, open for a second behind his man. Pete delivered a hard, high pass and Olaf jammed it. A whistle. Traveling! But he hadn’t, in Sam’s eyes. His gawky body and graceless motion had deceived the referee into a bad call. The Willow Creek stands erupted
in boos, led by the dignified and usually restrained John English, who unabshedly seemed caught up in the cause he had so vehemently opposed.

“Get in the game, ref!” Diana shouted, leaping up and threatening to step out onto the court.

Christian brought the ball up the floor. Sam signaled the team to stick it to them, but Curtis couldn’t contain a quicker boy, and his man broke clear behind Olaf and made a layup.

Eighteen seconds.

Down by three, Pete brought the ball up quickly. With a cross-dribble he caught Manhattan’s Van Dyke back on his heels and sliced into the paint, drawing Rob’s man for a moment. Pete stopped short, and without turning, bounced the ball behind his back to Rob, momentarily unguarded beyond the three-point line. Never blinking, Rob followed through with fingers and wrist as the ball arced toward the basket. Heads and eyes turned with the spinning sphere. For an instant there wasn’t a sound. Sam went down on one knee in front of the bench, and all spectators were on their feet, holding their breath.

HOME 66. VISITORS 66.

“Yeah!” Diana and Sam shouted simultaneously, leaping to their feet and nearly knocking Scott and Dean off the bench.

The visiting crowd fell silent, the hometown throng erupted. The contest would go on, overtime! Sam winced as he looked into their dripping faces, finding doggedness and exhaustion and a will of iron. He rested his weary and breathless drove as long as possible, stalling for time in every way he could imagine. Hazel couldn’t get the time clock set at three minutes and Sam suspected she was purposely buying them precious time. Finally the referee came to the bench and herded them onto the hardwood.

“Have fun,” Sam said, “learn something.”

“And bury them!” Diana shouted.

During the overtime, while tracking the course of a loose ball, Sam glanced into the face of Denise Cutter and was momentarily captivated by the palsied child in the wheelchair at the end of the court, excited and animated, pulling for Willow Creek underneath the burden of a body that wouldn’t obey, with soft blue eyes that would. For an instant nothing else seemed to matter, no one else was present. He thought of Amy, saw her face.
No! He whipped his attention back to the contest as the Eagles continued driving into Olaf, trying desperately to nail him with that elusive fifth foul. Twice, when they surrounded Olaf, he passed to Tom who slid down the baseline and called a time out.

Twenty-two seconds were left. The Broncs had possession of the ball. Christian led by one.

“Okay, okay, listen,” Sam said over the noise of the crowd. “Olaf, go into the middle. Get him the ball high. Curtis, come across and set a pick on Tom’s man. Tom, cut backdoor. Olaf, if your man tries to close it, go for it.”

The fans on both sides were on their feet shouting when Olaf caught Rob’s high pass. He planted both feet and kept the ball above the Christian players. Tom sliced down the baseline and Olaf motioned with the ball toward him. The 6'3" Bill Dorn slid from behind Olaf, skillfully blocking Tom’s path to the basket.

Only problem was Tom didn’t have the ball.

The Norwegian hammer pivoted as if his right shoe were bolted to the barn loft floor and jammed the ball through the hoop with a vengeance. Hazel Brown jammed her thumb on the buzzer with a vengeance.

The game was over!

The guarded Willow Creek fans hesitated for a split second, holding their collective breath. Sam gazed at the scoreboard, still doubting.

HOME 76. VISITORS 75
.

No late whistle. It was true!
They had won!

The Willow Creek crowd erupted and swarmed from the stands, smothering the team with praise and affection. Standing on the court, Mervin Painter picked up his very stout wife and swung her around like a weightless schoolgirl.

Willow Creek had beaten Manhattan Christian, and better still, the John Deere “D” was coming home.

After reliving the game with the boys for a while, Sam and Diana found a table on the saloon side of the Blue Willow. The place was decked out with high-rolling Willow Creekians who claimed they’d never given up on their team on its six-year sojourn through that winless wasteland. Tom and Rob seemed most intoxicated with the adrenaline of winning after three years of being personally pulverized by the Manhattan Christian Eagles. Curtis received numerous accolades for his faultless layup and the timid sophomore—in his Future Farmers of America jacket and Tom’s black cowboy hat as a bestowed honor—basked in the glow of the sudden notoriety.

Olaf, with the intensity of the game still mainlining through him, pumped the player piano to the tune of “Roll Out the Barrel” and many celebrants sang along. Dean, acting as if he’d missed the Second Coming, had herded Carter and Louella into a corner table and with his social science book open, had the girls quizzing him, determined to never let another once-in-a-lifetime event get by him if he could help it.

After allowing the boys an hour of letting off steam and savoring the victory, Sam sent them home to bed and a good night’s rest. With the trip to Twin Bridges only hours away, none of them balked, still feeling the sapping weight of exhaustion from the night’s combat. Tom was sleeping at Grandma Chapman’s with Pete, and she promised that if the hobbled forward neglected icing his swollen knee, she’d make the kid sleep in the refrigerator.

“Did you see Mervin Painter?” Diana said.

Wearing her crimson matador hat slightly tilted over one eye, she seductively sucked cranapple juice through a straw. Sam gazed from his hamburger and grinned.

“He looked like he couldn’t decide what to do,” Sam said. “Laugh or cry.”

“He put down his wife and picked up Olaf as if he were a lollipop. I’ve never seen anyone so ecstatic.”

“I think he’s becoming awfully attached to Olaf, like the son he never had.”

Hazel approached their table. “I can’t take anymore of those overtimes, Mr. Pickett,” she said. “I thought my heart would stop before those three minutes would ever run off the clock.”

“Well, I’ll tell the boys that,” Sam said. “Win in regulation time. Oh… and thanks for the extra time to catch our breath.”

“That was that nutty scoreboard, I had nothing to do with that.” She winked and giggled.

“Well, thanks anyway,” Sam said.

“This is the best I’ve felt in years,” Hazel said. “Think of it.
We
beat Christian.”

“Yes, and you had a hand in it,” Diana told her, “with all your help at practice.”

Sam nodded his agreement.

“Go get ’em tomorrow night,” Hazel said, giggling, and then hauled herself toward the dining room with childlike glee.

Diana rolled her eyes. “Sometimes her giggling drives me nuts.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Sam said. “But I tell myself that if I’d been raised the way Hazel was and if I’d gone through what she’s gone through, I’d probably giggle a whole lot more than she does.”

“Great game, coach!” Ray Collins called as he herded his family toward the front door.

“Thanks,” Sam said and threw a little wave.

He regarded Diana.

“They’re jelling as a team,” Sam said. “They’re coming together. You can’t coach that. They’re anticipating each other, running plays, playing hard-nosed defense, and more important, they’ve got spirit and heart. You deserve as much credit as anyone. Did you
see
them out there tonight?”

“Yes, I saw them,” she said. “They were splendid. They’ll beat Twin Bridges.”

Sam caught Andrew Wainwright watching Diana from a table in the dining room. Sam put down his hamburger and looked into her eyes.

“I thought of Amy out there, right in the middle of the game. Do you—”

“All the time,” she said with a shadow in her unadorned face. “When I least expect it I see Jessica’s little face and her big brown eyes.”