Blind Your Ponies (55 page)

“Olaf, move up to a high post. That’ll open it up along the baseline,” Coach told them. “You’re doing good, doing good. We need to be the aggressors, go at ’em, don’t hang back. You can play with these boys.”

They joined hands.

“Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win!”

On his side of the zone, Pete guarded Thomas, a wiry 6'1" kid Pete figured might be quicker than he was.

Play him a little loose, give him the long stuff, cut off his driving lane.

He could gamble some, knowing Oaf was behind him with his long, sledgehammer arms to pile drive layups into the floor drain. Pete leaped out at Thomas as he lifted an eighteen footer. The shot dropped. Pete got whistled for his second foul. Damn! Thomas rattled the free throw in.

Pete brought the ball up, starting to get into the flow. He lobbed a high pass to Oaf at the edge of the paint. The Blackhawks swarmed around him as if he were dead meat. Oaf flipped the ball back to Pete. Wide open, he squared up to the basket and let his instincts do the rest—wrist and fingers following through. It milked the net. The referee held up both hands. A three-pointer. Confidence rushed through him. They could play with these dudes, all twelve of them, and he loved it: the squeaking shoes, the grunts and shouts, the way his body ran the floor, the joy of scoring, the look in a teammate’s eye.

At the end of the first quarter Seely-Swan led 17 to 14, and Coach brought
Dean into the game, giving Tom a break on the bench. Seely-Swan had good athletes, lots of them, and they kept coming off the bench fresh, hustling, until Pete couldn’t keep track of them. It seemed they were all blond, 6'2" or 3”, and could shoot from anywhere on the floor. Shortly before the half, Pete saw an opening. His instincts took him to the basket. He went high, banked the shot, and crashed into the 6'4" well-built Lowell Lapp. Both of them hit the floor. Whistle. Offensive foul. His third. He sprang up. Bogus call. The shot was waved off.

Damn ref.

At the half Willow Creek led by one, 38 to 37.

The huge locker room made it seem as though they had forgotten a team-mate or two out on the court.

“Keep getting the ball to Olaf,” Coach Pickett said. “Don’t fall in love with your jump shots, trust Olaf with the ball.” Miss Murphy iced Tom’s knee and read the stats to the team.

“Pete, you have to watch it. You have three fouls, Olaf, two. Rob, two. Dean, two.”

Just before they went back onto the floor, Coach shouted at them, surprising Pete. “We’re one half away from the championship game! Do you want it bad enough?”

“Yeeaaahhhh!” they all shouted and slapped hands.

“Are you willing to give everything you have?”

“Yeeaaahhhh!”

“Let’s go chip ice!” Pete shouted.

Coach Pickett’s strategy began to work. They kept lobbing the ball high to Oaf. He was great. He kept Seely-Swan guessing, showing how quickly he was catching on to the fine points of the game. One time he’d fake a pass to Tom and give it back to Rob for a shot. The next time he’d fake a pass back to Pete and dish it off to Tom. Then, when they’d anticipate either of those moves, he would fake the pass and pivot to the basket for a jam. Pete felt an unexpected happiness as he ran back on defense, proud as hell to be playing for Willow Creek, Montana. A minute later, when Pete stole the ball, ripped it to Tom hustling down the side, wide open for the layup, he was overcome with a rush of affection for all of them.

“Yeah!” Pete shouted under the thunder from the Willow Creek section.

“Great pass!” Tom said as he hobbled by and Pete knew they would win.

In the fourth quarter, Pete felt grooved, confident. His body was in a dance and he knew all the steps. Confounding his man, stealing the ball, getting the ball to his teammates with humming passes, leaving a kid frozen in his tracks. He was the quick, unpredictable player he knew he could be. Living it to the hilt, he gambled to intercept a pass and crashed into Thomas, his fourth foul. Thomas made the one-and-one. Their lead had dwindled to two. The coach called time out.

“We can’t do it without you in there, Pete,” Coach Pickett said with fire in his eyes. “We’ve got five minutes to go. Give a little, back off an inch. Rob, you and Pete take the three if it’s there, they’re giving us the long stuff and choking off the inside. Run number two. Let’s go!”

They ran a play, Pete was open and he followed through. The ball had found its way home. Coach held his two arms high to symbolize the three-pointer as Pete ran by the bench. The roar of the crowd was a constant drone, surrounding him, upholding him, loving him. He set himself on defense. He could knock down as many more of those as they needed. He felt it. His instincts couldn’t miss.

After grabbing a defensive rebound, Rob lobbed the ball to Oaf on the high post. Oaf faked a pass back to Rob and snapped it to Pete. Boyd leaped toward him. Pete caught it and shot it in rhythm and the shot soared, out of reach, snapping the net in a moment of almost perfect silence in his mind. Then Rob was giving him five, the referee was holding two hands over his head as though someone held a gun to his back, and Coach and Miss Murphy were dancing up and down in front of the bench. Pete glided downcourt. He felt strong, he felt the warmth of belonging, the glow of being important to someone,
to matter
. This was his ground, his game. He couldn’t miss and there was nothing Seely-Swan could do about it.

He hustled on defense. They moved the ball out in front of him. Boyd poised to shoot. Pete moved up quickly, his hand in the shooter’s face. The stubby kid drove to his right. Pete reacted to his left and collided with Thomas, who had slipped up behind him and set a pick. He flattened the blond boy, who seemed to go down too easily. The ref whistled the foul.

Son of a bitch!

The buzzer pointed out his screwup. He moved numbly off the court and slammed his body onto the bench. Dean timidly handed him his rag-tail cap and he jerked it on. They were up by six with three minutes and twenty-three seconds to go. Scott wrapped a towel around Pete’s shoulders and offered his timid condolence with a light pat on the back. Kneeling, Coach Pickett took Pete’s head in his hands and looked into his eyes.

“You put us ahead. Now we’re going to win it, don’t give up.”

Those last three minutes clawed at his stomach. Thomas coolly made the one-and-one, cutting the lead to four. They trapped Rob and got a turnover when Dean lost Rob’s pass. McHenry cut it to two with a jumper near the key, and they tied it with a minute and ten seconds on two free throws by Lapp. All the spectators were on their feet, blistering the arena walls with their roar.

“Volleyball! Volleyball!” Coach shouted.

Pete agonized on the bench and kept repeating as though a prayer, “As long as she swims, I will cook. As long as she swims, I will cook.”

In the face of a press, Rob dribbled into the front court. Olaf came to the high post and Rob lobbed it to him. Oaf faked a pass to Tom and then flipped it behind his back to a surprised Curtis, who was virtually alone on the left side of the court. Forget Me Not dribbled the ball once and lifted his favorite shot from the side. Pete came off the bench as the ball rattled home.

They were up by two with thirty-six seconds.

Pete felt helpless, aching to be out there with them. He kept searching for Denise Cutter’s face in the stands as though she could save them. The Black-hawks brought the ball up smartly and ripped it around the zone, down by two. With eleven seconds on the clock they got it to the quick Jay McHenry on Curtis’s side. McHenry faked a shot and got Curtis in the air. The lean kid went around Curtis and pulled up for a short jump shot. Olaf got there too late. The ball was in flight when Olaf chopped McHenry’s arms. The shot was perfect, tying the game, and the arena rocked. The Blackhawk forward would get one free throw with two seconds on the clock.

“Time out after the shot!” Coach Pickett shouted to Rob.

The Seely-Swan player accepted the ball from the referee. The Willow Creek fans shook the sports center with their cheers. The boys crouched
along the line, arms up. McHenry bounced the ball once, eyed the basket, and shot the ball. Pete held his breath. It was flat, no arch, a brick. But it hit the front rim, hesitated as though it didn’t have the strength to get over, and then rolled into the net softly.

Damn!

The Willow Creek crowd groaned, the Seely-Swan fans leaped and cheered.

Rob shouted at the ref, “Time out, time out!”

They came to the bench and Pete struggled to muster his enthusiasm. He couldn’t find his voice. He tried to encourage them by offering them water, a towel, helping Scott prepare them for two seconds of life that was no life.

“We have one chance,” Coach Pickett said to Pete’s stunned teammates. “We’ve practiced this a thousand times. Olaf, set up on the free throw line. Rob, hit him with the high post pattern. Olaf, you’ll only have time to catch it and shoot. They might foul you. Go do it.”

The referee handed the ball to Rob. Seely-Swan had Thomas waving his arms in Rob’s face and the rest were camped back under the basket. Lapp stood behind Olaf with Cooper crowding in front. The clock wouldn’t start until Olaf touched the ball.

Rob fired a perfect pass the length of the floor. In one fluid motion Olaf moved to his left, went up above the reaching defenders, caught the ball in stride, and gently lobbed it at the basket as the buzzer detonated. It had a chance! Pete stood, suffering in the suddenly silent building, tracking the softly arcing ball as it hit the backboard, bounced down onto the rim, careened around the front of the iron, and fell to the side.

They had lost!

The Seely-Swan team and fans leaped and shouted and smothered one another, a lava flow of wild jubilation. The Willow Creek boys walked numbly toward the bench. Pete had no words for them. They looked at the floor and wiped their eyes. He couldn’t believe it. They could have beat those guys! He kept looking at the blurring scoreboard.

SEELY-SWAN
64,
WILLOW CREEK
63.

He had lost it for them. Two foolish, stupid goddamn fouls and he would have been in there at the end. He could have buried another two or three, he could have …

Coach Pickett came to him and put his arm around him. Pete couldn’t look into his face, knowing how much the coach wanted to win. Pete had wanted to win it for him so badly, he
should
have won it for him, for his team, for the town. The dream was over. Willow Creek would be losers after all. Somehow Pete had believed he was sent here to change that. He didn’t understand what was happening.

Numbly he shuffled through the line, shaking hands with the happy Seely-Swan players, accepting their crummy compliments. Then they huddled on the floor. They grasped hands in the center of their circle but no one could speak. He crossed the court with his eyes on the floor. He was glad Grandma wasn’t here to see this. He wanted to tell her that he had tried to bring his teammates hot coffee in this terrible storm, but he couldn’t get a fire going. The stove had been dumped over and it was under water. He hurried to the locker room to hide his face in the howling waves of shame.

In the locker room, each endured his solitary grief. They showered and dressed, cadavers impersonating the living. Somehow the celebrating Seely-Swan team could be heard through heating ducts and false ceiling, echoing through floor drains and shower heads, the dragon’s voice laughing heinously, jabbing a bony finger into their open wounds.

Fans hung around outside the locker-room door with the redeyed cheerleaders as though waiting in a hospital corridor for the doctor’s word that their relative had died. Sam was shattered. Had it all been a cruel hoax, this dream of his? He was a loser after all. He could not raise his voice in the face of their utterly devastating defeat, staggering around in a daze, picking up bloody bandages, amputated arms, detached eyeballs in a dispensary for those who had been mutilated by loss. He offered an ice pack to Tom but the thrown cowboy only said, “What for?”

When Sam, afflicted beyond recognition, couldn’t come up with a thought, Diana took over. She found her direction when the rest of them had been blasted into disorientation. She hurried ahead of them to the motel with Andrew and the three girls. Sam and the boys followed a half hour later, catatonic and straggling out of the sports center while the other game raged on in the arena.

Diana was magnificent under fire, magnificent when Sam went flat-footed in any attempt to glue things together. With Miss Murphy’s menu and Andrew Wainwright’s wallet, a quiet private room awaited the Dirty Half-Dozen when they limped into the Colonial Inn. In the lobby, well-meaning fans threw wilted verbal bouquets …

“You did the best you could.”

“You boys played hard.”

“You came a long way, further than anyone expected.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

… cliches that touched nerve endings with the subtleties of a dentist’s
drill. When the twelve of them were seated in the cozy and softly lit room, two waitresses began hauling in food. The clinking of silverware and the tinkle of glass dominated the glum silence, and they passed spaghetti, ravioli, macaroni, and salad.

The calm atmosphere and wholesome food helped them all slowly find their voice.

“No sense eatin’ any more pasta. We’re dead,” Tom said.

“You got that right,” Rob said. “We should’ve beat those guys by ten points.”

Peter didn’t lift his head. He picked at his food, unable to look at his teammates.

“They are having so many players,” Olaf said, shaking his head slowly.

“Eat lots of pasta, boys. You’ll need it tomorrow,” Miss Murphy said.

“Yeah, for the losers’ bracket,” Tom said.

They ate in silence as if no one could think of anything to say.

“You know, elephants are the only animal that can’t jump,” Curtis said.

The boys groaned and Sam laughed. He felt his feet touching ground again. One of the waitresses brought Sam a note. He didn’t open the folded white paper, setting it beside his plate. He cleared his throat and all eyes swept down the table toward him.