I phoned up Dessie to see if she could take the boys for the day, since Alan Ray had a basketball game in the afternoon and he’d asked me to come along to watch. I did not want to bring those boys to the Moose Lodge to see the game; who knew what kind of people sit on a barstool all day at a place like the Moose, and besides, it seemed like a good way to break this cabin fever after being a shut-in all week. I got the boys dressed and fed and packed a couple of extra of everything, socks, tees, bibs, underpants, pj’s sweatshirts, hats, mittens, the little Tonka dump truck and the Hot Wheels that my folks got the boys for Christmas, in a grocery sack for the day. Bertie liked Oodles of Noodles, AJ liked Skippy and saltines; Santa had put packages of instant hot cocoa into the boys’ stockings, and I’d set those back for a special occasion, but I threw them into the sack too, enough that all the kids could share some, a thank you to my sister.
Dessie was a good sport about watching the boys, but six kids running around could get old fast, and I didn’t want to ask her too often unless I could return the favor. She was still sorting out after moving back down the hollow, still living out of boxes. I’d meant to head up to her place to help her. I made myself a promise that I’d get over there once this weather broke. Alan Ray spent the morning digging out the driveway, again, and the boys and I trudged across the field, or really, I trudged across the field and they raced up to the trailer like their pants were on fire, so happy to see their cousins.
Dessie opened the door, just a crack, to keep the warm air in, and hustled us into the house. “Alan Ray has got a what? A basketball game?” Dessie’d asked, her eyes squinting, trying to keep from laughing and looking at me for confirmation. “He a bit old for that kind of thing?”
“He don’t think he is,” I answered. “Might keep him from chasing women, I guess.” Dessie shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess! Since you’re going, you can keep an eye on him.” She gave me a look, and I knew that she knew that this was exactly what I’d been thinking. “Let me know how it goes,” Dessie added, scooping up the boys, one in each arm. “Hope they beat the pants off those old drunks from the Moose.”
THE SNOW blew drifts across the road, and I never did get that one wiper to work right, but Billie hopped up into the truck and we headed for town, no boys, some spare change, some rock and roll on the radio, ZZ Top, Allman Brothers, just the two of us out on the town, taking it slow, not much traffic on the snowy roads. She even said she’d be my cheerleader, and I had a good laugh, both of us long out of high school, but hey, look at Jerry West, playing ball for all those years, high school, college ball, and fourteen years in the pros, older than me and still making his shots. I don’t know why we never did this kind of thing in all the years we been together. Seems like one thing or another, and then the kids came along, and Billie always wanting to have the kids with her wherever we go, and one or the other gets to screaming or throwing a fit, must have a candy bar, you’re taking up my side of the seat, no I ain’t either, and that nonsense can kill a perfectly good afternoon in town.
When we got to the AmVets, the snow drifts were a foot deep, and some of the boys who said they’d be able to play could not make it out of their driveways. Turned out seven of us showed up, plus the coach, enough to play and rotate a couple guys from the bench. We sat at the bar, having a shot of whiskey for the road, and Coach Campbell handed out the jerseys, red, white, and blue, sponsored by the Fairchance AmVets with help from the squad. I couldn’t have been prouder than if I was back in active duty, just the sight of that eagle with its wings spread wide across the chest, my number 4 on the back in honor of the greatest basketball player who ever lived.
Then we geared up and got on the road. Coach’s station wagon led the way, most of the other guys in a car or pickup with their friends or their girls. We drove down to the Ohio River, taking it slow, past Dallison Lumber, past Sistersville, Paden City, Tyler county seat, glass factories, feed stores and Dollar General stores, trainyards; the little towns along the way, wood or coal smoke coming out of the chimneys, looking like Christmas cards come to life. For some crazy reason, people seemed friendlier in the snow, old-timers and shopkeepers leaned on their shovels, waving as we passed.
The Loyal Order of the Moose, Lodge 931, stood three stories tall in the heart of downtown New Martinsville, a block from the courthouse and about three blocks from the Ohio River. It was a red brick building, about ten times the size of our Quonset hut AmVets. But we know what they say in the Guard, “It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog!” We might’ve been the few, but we were also the proud! On the streets of town, every block looked empty as downtown can be on a snowy Saturday afternoon, streetlights changing from green to red without a single car lined up to watch, just some tire tracks and footprints down the middle of North Street.
Once we opened the door to the Moose, we knew where the whole town had got itself to. Men and women of all ages crowded around the bar or sat at long tables, three bartenders, barmaids about jogging back and forth with trays full of orders, kids racing in and out of the place, tossing around snowballs in the back parking lot. I’d seen the AmVets full of people, say on Veterans’ Day or after a vet’s funeral, but this was a Saturday afternoon in the dead of winter and the place was jammed. A head of a moose, must have been a yard or more long, stared out from a giant plaque on the wall opposite the bar. The damn thing was twice the size of the head on the bronze elk statue that stood outside at the Elk’s lodge. The building seemed even bigger from the inside. Me and Billie walked around the place, found the gym down in the basement. I thought I would size up the competition, but no one was shooting yet, so we headed back up to the bar to check on the rest of the guys.
Back in the kitchen behind the bar, Coach Campbell was already pitching in, circling back and forth from the fryer to the grill, each part of him in motion. “Hey, Alan Ray,” he said, “grab a plate so I can set up this order.” He shook the oil out of the fries, and before I even had a chance to think I grabbed a dinner plate off a stack. “We can split the take if we help out in the kitchen,” he said, and as the game did not start for a good hour yet, it seemed the perfect way to kill time. I bought Billie a Coke and a pack of Marlboro Lights and saw her set our stuff down at a table in the corner next to some of the wives and girlfriends from our team. I didn’t want to stand around, so I kept busy in the kitchen, lining up the orders for the barmaids. That got me some big smiles from some of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen in any bar.
Everyone seemed to know everyone else, the bar was a mile long, and cans of Miller and Iron City were fifty cents each, laid out in giant coolers just beneath the bar. At one end of the bar, two large pickle jars with signs were stuffed half full of money. One said TIPS and one said SWEARS. A couple of beers went down pretty easy, but as we walked downstairs to shoot and run drills before the game, a knot formed in my stomach that did not ease up until sometime during the first quarter.
Coach called us all together on our side of the court, right before tipoff. “I want a clean game,” he said. “We’re vets. We served our country. There’s been lots of people these days talking trash about the service. You know and I know that there could be some of them people in this crowd today, might have something to say about the Vietnam War. None of us don’t want no trouble. Now let us pray.”
We bowed our heads, each of us thinking the same thing. If any of these Moose starts a bit trouble with any one of us, we are brothers, and that is where it stands.
THE GUNNERS were standing around in the kitchen, cleaning up with the Moose guys after the game. Coach Campbell scrubbed down the grill, emptied the grease out of the deep fryer. Alan Ray wiped down the counters, limping a little. He was still peevish, I could tell, since he didn’t want to talk to anyone yet.
I watched this show of male industriousness in the kitchen. Never thought I would see the day that a man would wash a dish, much less wipe down a griddle and a fryer. That w
as surprising, but an even bigger surprise was that the Gunners made it through the whole game and won, 26–21. Crazy thing was, those Moose guys could make it up and down the court like a bunch of kids, but they couldn’t shoot to save their lives.
Alan Ray didn’t play as much as he wanted to, and I felt sorry for him about that. He took about ten shots, and three went in, one of them was when he caught a rebound by reaching higher than anyone else. That was fun to watch, but then, right after the second half started, he chased a flying ball down the court, and threw himself backward as he flipped it back inbounds. He almost looked like a pro for a second there. Too bad when he tried to save the ball from going out of bounds, he tossed the ball to the wrong team. That was the moment when he pulled something in his leg, and he had to hop out to the bench and sit out the rest of the game.
His pride was hurt, sure, but also his leg really was hurt. “Fuck, fuck, fuckit,” was all he’d say. His face was bright red, him hopping around on one foot, off balance. The whole crowd heard him, kids calling out, “Swear jar, swear jar, that’s three dollars!” “Oh Chrissakes,” he said. “Catch me if you can,” he said, and he limped off toward the bar. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. He finally came back to sit on the bench, a beer in each hand, and a little blonde-headed barmaid holding him upright as he limped to the stands, easing him into his seat. “I’ll take it from here,” I said to her, sliding over to sit next to him for the final shots of the game.
Hal the barber, one of the guards for the Gunners, stepped out of the doorway to the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. “Hey, Alan Ray, tell Billie why they hang a moose head on the wall of every lodge,” he said.
“Why do they?” Alan Ray shouted over the noise of the running water. “Yeah, why?” yelled Gribble, another Gunner I hadn’t met, a vet who was just back from a tour in Southeast Asia; even though he cracked a thin smile, he looked pretty grim.
“Because that moose head makes all the women in the bar look good,” Hal yelled back at me. Ha ha ha. Hal went on talking, loud enough for the whole world to hear. Next he wanted to know why Coach Campbell had number 5 on his jersey. Coach spoke up and said that it was because he was not just a coach, he’s a player too. Coach Campbell seemed to be about fifty; he was tall and skinny, a backhoe operator. He had a great outside shot during the game, but didn’t get around on the court much. He was old and slow, was the truth. He planted himself downcourt, near the sidelines, and looped one into the basket at least one out of every two times. Then Hal asked, in a voice somewhat louder than I expected, if the numbers on their backs have anything to do with the length of their dicks. Alan Ray yelled back, “Hell no, it’s how many barmaids they’ve had.” Hal shook his head. He was skeptical. Alan Ray was wearing a number 4.
If I had a number on my back, it would be 2, I thought. Times like this I think back over my life. How did I know I chose right when I chose Alan Ray? Maybe falling for Jackson Childs was the work of the devil, and maybe the devil has dogged me since. Look where it has got me to. Miles away from my boys, making more work for Dessie at a time when she could use a break herself. Who were all these people who lived their lives behind bottles of beer, their kids running into the street without coats on while they have another round? What was I doing here, this crowd of strangers, this strange place? This moose head with its big eyes seeing everything, as if it could keep all the unholy secrets and ease all of the doubt, guilt, and pain in the human heart?
On the bench during the first half of the game I sat next to Jaynelle, a couple of years ahead of me in high school. She talked up a storm, bouncing her little blond baby Freddie on her lap, a washcloth on his forehead because he felt feverish. She was engaged to Fred, number 6, for over a year now, and was waiting to set a date. I wondered whether she’d ever get a ring out of that guy. He was forty-two, six foot six, well built and handsome. I never saw that guy without a cigarette in his hand, even on the court. He only had one shot, standing two feet in front of the hoop. If someone threw him the ball, he could pop it in since he was taller than everyone else. He truly was the worst foul shooter on the team. I kept wondering if he needed eyeglasses. He swore to beat the band and cursed the refs, like they all do, but truly, the refs seemed like the only ones who knew what they were doing.
During halftime the whole Gunners team was back upstairs at the bar, smoking cigarettes with the Moose boys while the refs took turns passing, dribbling, taking layups, and shooting from the foul line, and those guys put on a real show. On the drive over, Alan Ray told me Fred’s got five daughters from five different women, and a son from Jaynelle. I knew this was true, since Jaynelle told me that she’s twenty-six, had little Freddie, five stepdaughters, and two grandchildren. “Sometimes it gets to be too much,” she said.
THE GUYS from the Moose were great sports after all. None of them seemed to have a bit of a problem with us kicking their asses and then paying up on the side bets. We raised about a hundred for the AmVets club from the food, and we each came away with about twenty dollars, not counting what we put into the TIPS and SWEARS jars. We had beer and shots, and Billie had her dinner too. I began to think I might be able to put down a layaway on a pair of high-tops, something to look forward to when my leg quit hurting.
Me and Billie were the last of the Gunners to leave the Moose, not sure where they all got themselves to, but I guess I was in the mood to celebrate. I bought a six-pack of Iron City for the road, threw it under the seat, headed out of town, and glad I had that beer since a good buzz can take the edge off. My left leg was pounding from my knee down to my ankle, but at least it was my clutch pedal foot, not my gas pedal foot. I wasn’t going to let that ruin a great night. Being on the team was more fun than I’d had since I left the Guard. If it wasn’t for that piece of shit rubber surface floor, instead of a real basketball court made of wood, I’d have never got hurt.
The driveway was plowed around the New Martinsville Moose Lodge, and most of the streets were clear, though more snow fell while we were playing. Out of town, I was glad to see that the roads were empty. Probably the cold kept everyone drinking indoors. Seemed like the town police had stayed home too, which was pretty surprising on a Saturday night. Now all I had to worry about were the Staties, but there wasn’t any barracks between New Martinsville and Fairchance, and Staties didn’t usually give me a second look, a working man in a pickup, not the kind of guy who is going to be drag racing down an empty stretch of road at 110 miles an hour. Not on a night like this, especially; well maybe if I had a V-8 instead of the straight 6.
There was no need to go back through Fairchance, and I knew a back way home on county roads that could save some time. The township roads were pretty clear almost to Jacksonville, or at least in some places they were clear, but the further east I went, the harder it got to see the blacktop through the snow cover. I could tell there was ice, but I couldn’t tell much or how deep it was since the snowdrifts had covered any tracks. That one wiper on the passenger side kept getting stuck, and that made it harder to see the edge of the road. The hill rose up steep off my right-hand side, and the wind came in from the north, blowing with such a force that the gusts howled in the cracks of the fly window. Sometimes blowing snow drifted off the hillside in a ridge like a small mountain range down the middle of the road.
Finally, just before Reader, I saw some lights on and pulled over into an Amoco station under a streetlight, to fill ’er up with some of my winnings, scrape the windshield, and free that damn wiper blade. I about yanked the rubber from the blade off; the no-account wiper was coated in ice and frozen in place. I knew I would have to wait until it thawed to get it working again. I took about the longest leak of my life out back, paid for a Little Debbie and the gas, asked the guy if the roads was clear, and he said no one’s been out to tell him otherwise, so I climbed back into the warm cab of the Ford and settled in to see what the last part of the drive had in store.
The roads were plowed to the edge of town, and after that I
knew enough to hug the midline, since there was only the faintest hint of tire tracks through the gusts of snow. I opened a cold one for the last part of the drive, just to keep the buzz going. The radio was mostly static, with some weird AM station that seemed to have the news and weather from Chicago, and not a bit of anything else. I was starting to hope for a human voice to keep me company, Billie being asleep against the passenger door with her head on the armrest. Once or twice I got her up so that she could see how hard the snow was pounding down, great polka-dot clumps hitting the windshield and sliding down into slush. “Oh my,” she’d say, then settle back down, her feet curled under her butt.
Heading over the ridgetop at the county line in Pricetown, I took her easy around the first few S curves. You don’t want to give it too much gas and you don’t want to give it too little gas. Too much gas and the Ford might fishtail, too little gas, it might not make it up the hill, especially if there’s ice under the snow. I’ve seen trucks slide backward on a steep road, and ass-end-up in a ditch was not the way this little Ford was going to wind up, not on a perfect night like this.
About halfway up the hill there was this one steep curve. We called it Kiss My Ass, because that was just how narrow the curve was, switching back and forth as it climbed. Year-round, you’d hear about kids wiping out there. I slid through that one, just barely swinging the ass end toward the next switchback, and gunned it. A blur of snow came at us, full tilt, and I could feel the rear wheels slide around and grip, slide, and grip, like a giant hand had come out of the snow and grabbed hold of the bottom of the truck, and all I could do was hope for the best. The Ford headed over the top of the hill, God love it, but suddenly not a track to be seen or even the edge of the road in front of me, just white on white, snow on the ground and the snow in the air, tires spinning but not grabbing, us sliding sideways into a drift of snow halfway up to the door handle. The tires spun, but the snow was deeper than the tires, no way to tell how deep. As the man says, we was a-goin’ nowhere, fast. I did the only thing I could do. I turned up the heat, kept her idling, took a long swig of Iron City, and settled back into the seat to wait it out and puzzle out some next steps, our small red pickup on the wide white hillside, gusts of snow blasting across the hood, the wind roaring out across the ridge like a runaway locomotive, trying its best to suck the heat out of the cab.
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