What kind of an animal am I dealing with? Betty-Jo wondered, as she watched Jim Bob saunter toward her. Is this a pussy cat or a wild cat? Possibly a pussy, but he's acting kind of weird, and after his behavior at the Park the other evening, I can't rule out wild. I'm out of here.
She ran hard at the far corner of the chain-link fence, leapt, grabbed hold and then struggled upward. But it was slow going, because her shoes slipped repeatedly on the chain links. Jim Bob was going to get to her before she could get over the top.
* * *
Jim Bob watched as Betty-Jo tried to scale the fence.
Didn't want t' scare her that bad, but it serves her raht fo dumpin' me. He strolled across the two courts. No need t' rush—she'll nevah make it.
"You're mahn now," he shouted. But by the time he got to her, she had one foot on the top of the fence, and he couldn't reach her. He backed up, and then took a running leap up the fence. His hand brushed her sneaker, but he couldn't hold on.
* * *
Betty-Jo was being as careful as possible because the top of the fence was a series of jagged wire ends, not the most appealing obstacle to be traversing, especially when you're not wearing panties. One slip, and I really will be Pussy Nomore.
Getting over the top of the fence, without injury, became even trickier when Jim Bob started to shake it. Where is that lover of mine when I need him? Somehow, she managed to get an arm and a breast over the top.
The fence shook again. "Come on down, B-J. Ah jus wana talk."
"Strange behavior for a guy in a talking mood."
She managed to get her other arm and a leg over. Then she pushed away with her other foot. I'm safe! Or so she thought until her tennis shirt caught on one of the wire ends. On the drop down the far side of the fence her shirt ripped to the hem—which unfortunately held. She was strung up on the fence, her face covered by her shirt, and the rest of her temptingly on display.
"Ah can't believe ma good fortune," Jim Bob said.
She struggled to free herself but couldn't. "I've decided to hang with you for a while," she said.
Jim Bob laughed. "From where ah'm standin', it looks lahk you've already been the victim of at least one panty raid today, 'cause B-J, yo bloomers aren't where they're sposed t' be."
Darn you, Brad, and darn your ease of access obsession!
"There's a sayin', B-J," Jim Bob continued. "It goes, 'from the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first'. Remember it, an yo squirrel 'll be modestly dressed from now on."
God, this is embarrassing. "Obviously you don't know about no-panties-Monday." If the Wart Hog buys my no-panties-Monday bull, I'm going to become a professional poker player.
Jim Bob laughed again. "Any day's a good day fo no panties when yo with me. Now don go away. Ah'll be ove t' check yo out, in a two shakes of a houn' dog's tail. Then we can look fo yo missin' undies together."
As Jim Bob climbed the fence, he paused to grope her through the mesh. "Wart Hog!" she growled. Then she drew up her legs, and pushed against the fence as hard as she could. The hem gave, and she fell to the ground—winded. By the time she caught her breath, Jim Bob was coming over the top. She looked at the bushes that surrounded her. Bad place to be caught by a wart hog, she thought. Without thinking she grabbed a handful of sand and pebbles, aimed for Jim Bob's head, yelled "Hey, Poo Breath," and threw. Then she turned and ran—past the football field and down Tom Trout Drive. She checked behind her as she crossed the parking lot. Then she slowed to catch her breath, and knot her tennis shirt, as she skirted Singleton and the Kimbel Library. She was still catching her breath as she entered the Student Center where Brad was waiting for her.
* * *
Brad was sipping a Coke, and chatting with the Fox, when Betty-Jo threw her arms around him. When she'd stopped shaking, she said, "So where were you when the Wart Hog almost got me?"
Brad looked at his Tawny Cat. She was a mess. Her tennis shirt was held together by a knot in the front, her legs were cut and bleeding, and tears were running down her cheeks. He wiped away her tears. Then he kissed and held her.
"Jimbo did this?"
"Not really. He had me trapped on the tennis courts behind the football field—I did this to myself, when I was getting away from him."
"Is he still there?"
"Maybe. I don't know." She clung to him.
"Stay here," Brad said. "I'm going to have a chat with the boy." He tried to ease away from her.
"Brad, don't go!" She clung to him even harder.
"I should have settled the score with Jimbo at the Park. This is the last time that sick, old dog will come sniffing around you." He kissed her again, released her hold on him, and strode purposefully out of the Student Center. The Fox ran to catch up.
"Where do you think you're going?" Brad said.
"I'm coming with you—in case you need help."
"That's a nice thought, Fox, but you're not invited." With women around, fights were always bloodier than they needed to be, because face-saving retreats were impossible.
"Then you're not going either." she said, and stationed herself behind Old-yellow. Brad was unable to back out of his parking space, unless he was prepared to road-kill her.
"I don't have time to argue with you, Fox. Get in."
He glowered at her as they drove down College Boulevard. She leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't be mad," she said. "Today's one of my days to have you anyway."
"One of your days to what?"
"B-J didn't tell you?"
He looked directly at her. "Tell me what?"
"Oh dear...but maybe it's just as well."
"You really are a trouble making fox, aren't you?" He drove across the tennis court parking lot, and stopped beside Jim Bob's Jimmy.
Jim Bob opened his Jimmy's passenger-side door, got out, and strode toward Brad. He looked dreadful. One eye was swollen shut, and it looked as if he could barely see out of the other, but he was still the aggressor. It was Jim Bob who swung first. Brad easily blocked the blow, moved in tight, and hit him twice in the mid-section. It was all over, but for good measure, Brad threw an upper cut that snapped Jim Bob's head back. Jim Bob staggered away, and collapsed against the tennis-court fence.
"Don't worry, Jim Bob. I'll save you from this crazy!" The Fox leapt onto Brad's back, and then wasn't easily dislodged. When he was finally able to pull her arms from around his neck, she let go with her legs, and slid down, pressing her breasts against him as she went.
"Enough Fox," he said. "You get B-J's racquets, while I have a chat with Jimbo."
"You get them," she retorted. He took a step toward her. "On second thought, maybe I'll get them after all."
Brad walked over to Jim Bob, drew back his foot, and said, "What's your preference, castration or campus security?"
"Ah can't believe B-J did this to me."
"Say what?"
"She nearly blinded me."
"And you did nothing to her!"
"Ah didn't know she'd try t' climb that fence. All ah wanted t' do was talk—try t' get her back."
"Your approach sucked."
"It wasn't an approach. It jus happened. Ah finished ma practice an' there she was. Ah can't ged her outta ma head. She's all ah thank about."
Been there, done that, Brad thought. Damn it! I kind of like this guy.
The Fox returned with Betty-Jo's gear. "Jim Bob, you shit-for-brains asshole!" she said. "You are so lucky. If I hadn't been here to save you, this Crazy would've crippled you."
"Is it okay with you if ah kill er now? Painfully," Jim Bob said.
Brad grinned. "Be my guest. The more pain the better."
Jim Bob struggled to his feet, and slowly took out after the Fox. She let out a shriek, and ran.
When Jim Bob returned to his Jimmy, he threw Brad the A-okay sign. Brad returned it.
The Fox was livid. On the drive back to the Student Center, she kept trying to hit him. He used one arm to ward off her blows. "I thought Jimbo w
as going to catch himself a fox, and skin it," he said between chuckles.
"You guys would bond in the gutter," the Fox replied, as she changed her tactics, and shoved her breast into his arm. "But I'll forgive you, if you'll kiss and make up." She swung in front of him, and kissed him on the mouth—firm, inviting.
He pulled away. "Would making up without kissing be an option?" he said.
"You know what your problem is. You're the kind of guy who wouldn't recognize paradise if he was holding it in his hand." She took his hand, and placed it between her legs.
He quickly retrieved it. "You're wrong, my foxy friend, but I am the kind of guy who never goes fox hunting without a permit."
The Fox moved back to her seat, and moped. "Ask me if I care. Better a real man in my hand, than you in my bush anyway."
He grinned at her. "That's the spirit, Fox. You stick with your wolverines."
Back at the Student Center, the Fox lost no time in telling Betty-Jo what had happened—at least she told part of the story. She told how Brad would have killed Jim Bob if a brave Fox hadn't intervened to save him. She also mentioned that Brad was a total jerk.
* * *
Betty-Jo took a hard look at the Fox. You're too mad at Brad, she thought. The only time a woman gets that angry at a guy is when she has a thing for him.
Later, when Brad told her what had happened, minus a few of the bad Fox details, she was more certain than ever that the Fox had fallen for her lover. But she momentarily forgot about the Fox when Brad told her what Jim Bob had said.
"The nerve of that wart hog. He said he couldn't believe that I threw sand in his eyes?"
"He's in love with you."
"Whose side are you on?"
"Tawny, ask yourself what you'd do to get me back if you lost me? I was wondering, as I drove back here, what I would do to try to get you back if you left me?"
"Oh—I see what you mean."
"That doesn't excuse Jimbo's behavior, but perhaps it makes it understandable. Actually, I kind of like the guy."
"Maybe the Fox is also acting up because she's in love with you."
"I doubt that love is the reason for the Fox's antics. She just enjoys stirring up trouble from time to time."
"You don't know the Fox like I do. She never quits 'til she gets what she wants."
-33-
BRAD RAIDEN
A Hex on Happiness
"Who'd have guessed that a woman like Tawny Cat would be unable to get enough of me?" Brad asked PussCat. "Today, if I were a rabbit, I'd be the envy of every one of those furry critters. He knew that he was as well known around campus for being B-J Chance's boyfriend, as he was for his hockey prowess. But so what? With Betty-Jo in love with him, Brad was confident in his ability to accomplish anything—to make the impossible, possible.
"Nothing like a Tawny Cat who loves you, to make a guy feel special—'give him a sense of the infinite,'" he told Betty-Jo. But she was more interested in giving him a sense of the here and now. It wasn't unusual, with almost no time before an economics class, for her to decide that a quickie would be nice. And once she decided she needed instant loving, she would effortlessly convince him that he needed it at least as much as she did. Then she would crank up Wagner's colossal 'The Ride of the Valkyries'.
"I'm sure The Ride was written for instant loving," she said.
"Instant loving?"
"Yeah—jiffy sex. Like now, when there's only twenty minutes before our two o'clock class, and I've convinced you that you need to do me."
"Nothing like jiffy sex with you and The Ride. It's shades of Apocalypse Now—the 10th cavalry on their helicopter gun ships, coming in low over the Pacific."
"And you're right there with them, Bad Brad, your heat seeker armed, and about to be embedded in a Tawny Cat, who's moving ardently beneath you, to the call-to-the-hunt of the French horns."
* * *
Brad's game was coming along nicely. He was the second line center, and the number two goal scorer for the varsity 'Gray Ghosts'. The Gray Ghost name came from the legend of a young British nobleman who, in 1773, was riding to propose marriage to his true love when he was thrown from his horse, and swallowed by quicksand. Later, he appeared to his lover as a gray ghost, and warned her of an approaching hurricane. She convinced her family to go inland, and all were spared. After that, before every hurricane to hit the Grand Strand, the gray ghost had appeared to a beautiful woman, and warned her of the impending disaster.
The hockey Gray Ghosts were similar to their namesake in that they appeared from out of nowhere. But unlike their namesake of yore, they gave their opponents no warning of the fate that was in store for them.
Thanks to Coach Alister Wylie, Brad could picture himself playing in the NHL more clearly than ever before. "My dream is close to becoming reality," he told Betty-Jo. "Now all I have to do is work like hell for it."
Coach Wylie, or Coyote, as he was known, may have been nicknamed Coyote because his last name was Wylie, because he was wily like a coyote, or because he was from the Coyote State—who knew? What was known, was that Wylie's passion for hockey was almost a religion. It was a religion that he constantly proselytized.
The Coyote knew his hockey. He emphasized not only skill and physical fitness training, but also the cognitive or mental training that was so necessary at a competitive level. In the four years of the hockey Gray Ghost's existence, three Ghost players had gone on to play in the NHL. That was a remarkable achievement, given that most of the NHL hockey talent still came from Canadian feeder teams where players saw more ice time than American college players.
In his practices, the Coyote stressed basics: skating, passing, stick-handling, shooting, and hitting at game speed or faster. The players grumbled about working on skills that they already knew, but the grumbling stopped as their basic skills improved, and they began to embarrass their opponents.
The Coyote relished a run-and-gun style of hockey. He loved speed, flow, finesse, and creativity. He detested the neutral-zone-trap style of play where one forward stayed back between the bluelines, and obstructed opposing players with holding and hooking tactics—tactics that Betty-Jo loved. "I love the Trap," she gleefully told Brad when she learned about it. "I get to hold you and hook you—until you score."
"Tawny, you know that's not how the Trap works. You're supposed to hold me and hook me until I don't score."
"Not in my trap. In my trap, you always get to score."
The Coyote believed that the Trap could only be countered by aggressive skating and checking. "If you're tired, you can't launch a fearsome Ghost attack, and then forecheck and backcheck as hard as you gotta to neutralize the Trap. Hockey's a sprint, not a marathon! I want short shifts!"
For Wylie, short shifts went hand in hand with conditioning. "The secret to winning hockey games is to work harder and faster than the dolts on the other team. You gotta be in better condition than your opponents, or you're dead." To emphasize his point, he would grab the chrome-plated whistle that hung around his neck, jerk it upward until the cord was taught, and his head flopped to one side with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
From the exhausting, off-ice-conditioning schedule that the Coyote put the team through, Brad knew that none of its rivals would out-condition the Gray Ghosts.
Wylie also explained the mental part of his game plan. "The advantage goes to players who are mentally prepared—it goes to the guys who use imagery. You clowns are gonna love imagery, 'cause all you gotta do is daydream the way I tell ya to."
Imagery, Brad learned, is where a physical activity is not actually carried out. Instead, it is experienced through the mind's eye. Athletes who use mental imagery improve as rapidly as those who actually practice.
The Coyote taught his players to use imagery on their own, on the bench, and in the dressing room. Imagery gave the Ghosts the advantage of at least one extra practice a week.
"This imagery stuff is unbelievable," Brad told Tawny. "It's doing great thi
ngs for my game. Only trouble is, I'm supposed to be imagining the puck on my stick, but most of the time, I find myself imagining you on a different stick."
"That's sweet," she gleefully told him. "It's reassuring to know that you think I'm more fun than your average puck."
He grinned and hugged her. "Best puck ever," he said.
One skill that Coach Wylie taught Brad was turning him into a superstar. Wylie had given him NHL statistics which showed that most goals are scored along the ice on the goalie's stick side, but that most shots are made high to the goalie's glove side.
"A player is four times more likely to score shooting low to the stick side, than he is shooting high to the glove side" the Coyote told him. "Four times! You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out that low to the stick side is the place to shoot."
Wylie explained why it was so easy to score shooting low to the stick side. "Look right along the ice on the side that the goalie holds his stick. What's there to stop the puck?"
"Only the front of the goalie's skate blades," Brad said.
"By God, I think you've got it! That's why the goalie stands on the stick side of the net and shows opposin' players a great big hole on his glove side. He knows that if he can sucker the bums into shootin' for the hole he's showin' 'em, chances are he's gonna catch their shot."
So Brad practiced shooting low to the stick side. Ghost shots he called them, because the goalie never moved to stop them. At first it was difficult to keep the puck on the ice; he found himself fighting an almost overwhelming desire to snap his wrists and raise it. But the purchase of a new stick blade that sat straight up and down, and a conscientious effort to make his follow-through low, soon paid off. He became the team's top goal scorer.
"It's impossible," he told Betty-Jo, "but my scoring percentage has soared from twelve to twenty, and my goals per game have gone from about one to almost two."
That was a remarkable achievement, and the National Hockey League scouts took notice. They began to show up at Coastal Carolina games.
The combination of superb basic skills, excellent physical conditioning, quick line changes, and mental preparation made the Gray Ghosts a force to be reckoned with in the eight-team SCHA league. And for the first time, the winner of the Southern Grapefruit Cup had been invited to participate in the NCAA Invitational, the Super Bowl of college hockey.
The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever Page 16