I felt a little shiver along the saddle of my back. "Yeah," I said, "I understand."
"I couldn't do anything wrong. I couldn't even make myself do anything wrong. It was like I was drunk on basketball; all I could think about was the game, making the moves, making the shots, doing all the things I'd always wanted to do but had never been able to do. Nothing else mattered; there wasn't anything else." Rolfe swallowed heavily. There was sweat on his face now. "It wasn't until the game was over that I realized I'd blown the point spread. That I realized what that one great game, those few minutes of real excellence, was going to cost me."
I let out a breath. "What happened with the gamblers?"
"What do you think happened?" he said. His mouth twisted bitterly. "They did what they'd warned me they would do. They broke both my legs with a baseball bat."
There wasn't anything to say. I picked up my drink and finished it.
"I didn't go back to Chicago after the game," Rolfe said. "I ran instead—packed up my things at the hotel and bought a cheap car and drove out here to Wisconsin. A couple of weeks later I got in touch with the Wildcats and had them send my share of the championship money to a bank in Madison; I used that and borrowed the rest to pay off the six thousand I owed the gamblers.
"But it wasn't any use and I knew it. They found me inside of a month. One of them visited me in the county hospital afterward and told me I was through playing basketball. I knew that too. But he could have saved himself the trouble because my right leg never did heal properly; that's why I walk with a limp. I've got that limp to remind me of my one great game every time I take a step. Every step for the past twenty-one years.
"But that's not the worst of it. Waiting all these years for someone like you to come along. Listening for footsteps out of the pastthat's not the worst of it either. The worst of it was all the years of wondering if that game really was a fluke or if the moves and the shots and the excellence would have been there for me in other games; if I could have been great some day. I'll never know, Brady. I'll never know."
Outside, rain began to fall; I could hear it drumming against the roof of the tavern. The day had turned dark—but no darker than it was in here, or than it was inside Alex Rolfe.
He ran a hand across his face, as if to wipe away emotion as well as sweat. When he took the hand away his expression was weary and resigned. "So now you know the whole story," he said. "Go ahead and write it if you want. I just don't care anymore."
"I'm not going to write it," I said.
He stared at me as I got off my stool. "That's why you came here, isn't it? To get the truth so you could tell the world what happened back in 1957?"
"Maybe it is. But I'm still not going to write the story. It's something that happened twenty-one years ago; nobody cares anymore, nobody remembers—you were right about that. Except you and me, and we've both got to keep on living with ourselves."
I turned my back on him because I didn't want to watch his reaction, didn't want to look at him any longer, and hurried to the door and out into the warm spring rain.
But in my car, on the way back through the village, the image of Rolfe's face remained sharp in my mind. Full of guilt, that face, full of torment and loss. Full of all the same things as that other face, the familiar one in the backbar mirror.
I had come to Harbor Lake to confront Rolfe with the truth, yes; but I had not sought him out for the sake of justice, not planned to write the real story behind the CBA championship game for public-spirited reasons. I had done it instead for the sole purpose of making him pay, even after all these years, for what I'd convinced myself he had done to me.
Because I had not, as I'd told him, found out about the point-shaving weeks after the game. I had found out about it the day before the game, through a personal contact in the gambling syndicate. And instead of breaking the story, blowing the lid off the whole sordid affair, I had withdrawn my wife's and my entire savings of $8,000 and bet it all on the New York Sabers.
Yet it was not Rolfe who had cost me my savings, and as a result my marriage; it was me who had lost them, me who had robbed myself. I could admit that now, after all this time. I was no better than Rolfe; we were two of a kind. Just as he had had his moment of greatness in 1957, so had I had my moment. Just as he had fallen from grace because of one terrible mistake, and lost a career full of promise and a chance for fulfillment, so had I.
Alex Rolfe had lived in his own private hell for twenty-one years; he would go on living in it for the rest of his life.
And so would I in mine.
BLACK WIND
It was one of those freezing, late-November nights, just before the winter snows, when a funny east wind comes howling down out of the mountains and across Woodbine Lake a quarter mile from the village. The sound that wind makes is something hellish, full of screams and wailings that can raise the hackles on your neck if you're not used to it. In the old days the Indians who used to live around here called it a "black wind"; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that if you listened to it long enough, it could drive you mad.
Well, there are a lot of superstitions in our part of upstate New York; nobody pays much mind to them in this modern age. Or if they do, they won't admit it even to themselves. The fact is, though, that when the black wind blows, the local folks stay pretty close to home, and the village, like as not, is deserted after dusk.
That was the way it was on this night. I hadn't had a customer in my diner in more than an hour, since just before seven o'clock, and I had about decided to close up early and go on home. To a glass of brandy and a good hot fire.
I was pouring myself a last cup of coffee when the headlights swung into the diner's parking lot.
They whipped in fast, off the county highway, and I heard the squeal of brakes on the gravel just out front. Kids, I thought, because that was the way a lot of them drove, even around here—fast and a little reckless. But it wasn't kids. It turned out instead to be a man and a woman in their late thirties, strangers, both of them bundled up in winter coats and mufflers, the woman carrying a big, fancy alligator purse.
The wind came in with them, shrieking and swirling. I could feel the numbing chill of it even in the few seconds the door was open; it cuts through you like the blade of a knife, that wind, right straight to the bone.
The man clumped immediately to where I was standing behind the counter, letting the woman close the door. He was handsome in a suave, barbered city way; but his face was closed up into a mask of controlled rage.
"Coffee," he said. The word came out in a voice that matched his expression—hard and angry, like a threat.
"Sure thing. Two coffees."
"One coffee," he said. "Let her order her own."
The woman had come up on his left, but not close to him—one stool between them. She was nice-looking in the same kind of made-up, city way. Or she would have been if her face wasn't pinched up worse than his; the skin across her cheekbones was stretched so tight it seemed ready to split. Her eyes glistened like a pair of wet stones and didn't blink at all.
"Black coffee," she said to me.
I looked at her, at him, and I started to feel a little uneasy. There was a kind of savage tension between them, thick and crackling; I could feel it like static electricity. I wet my lips, not saying anything, and reached behind me for the coffeepot and two mugs.
The man said, "I'll have a ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye bread. No mustard, no mayonnaise, just butter. Make it to go."
"Yes, sir. How about you, ma'am?"
"Tuna fish on white," she said thinly. She had close-cropped blonde hair, wind-tangled under a loose scarf; she kept brushing at it with an agitated hand. "I'll eat it here."
"No, she won't," the man said to me. "Make it to go, just like mine."
She threw him an ugly look. "I want to eat here."
"Fine," he said—to me again; it was as if she weren't there. "But I'm leaving in five minutes, as soon as I drink my
coffee. I want that ham-and-cheese ready by then."
"Yes sir."
I finished pouring out the coffee and set the two mugs on the counter. The man took his, swung around, and stomped over to one of the tables. He sat down and stared at the door, blowing into the mug, using it to warm his hands.
"All right," the woman said, "all right, all right. All right." Four times like that, all to herself. Her eyes had cold little lights in them now, like spots of fox fire.
I said hesitantly, "Ma'am? You still want the tuna sandwich to eat here?"
She blinked then, for the first time, and focused on me. "No. To hell with it. I don't want anything to eat." She caught up her mug and took it to another of the tables, two away from the one he was sitting at.
I went down to the sandwich board and got out two pieces of rye bread and spread them with butter. The stillness in there had a strained feel, made almost eerie by the constant wailing outside. I could feel myself getting more jittery as the seconds passed.
While I sliced ham I watched the two of them at the tables—him still staring at the door, drinking his coffee in quick angry sips; her facing the other way, her hands fisted in her lap, the steam from her cup spiraling up around her face. Well-off married couple from New York City, I thought: they were both wearing the same type of expensive wedding ring. On their way to a weekend in the mountains, maybe, or up to Canada for a few days. And they'd had a hell of a fight over something, the way married people do on long, tiring drives; that was all there was to it.
Except that that wasn't all there was to it.
I've owned this diner thirty years and I've seen a lot of folks come and go in that time; a lot of tourists from the city, with all sorts of marital problems. But I'd never seen any like these two. That tension between them wasn't anything fresh-born, wasn't just the brief and meaningless aftermath of a squabble. No, there was real hatred on both sides—the kind that builds and builds, seething, over long bitter weeks or months or even years. The kind that's liable to explode some day.
Well, it wasn't really any of my business. Not unless the blowup happened in here, it wasn't, and that wasn't likely. Or so I kept telling myself. But I was a little worried just the same. On a night like this, with that damned black wind blowing and playing hell with people's nerves, anything could happen. Anything at all.
I finished making the sandwich, cut it in half, and plastic-bagged it. Just as I slid it into a paper sack, there was a loud banging noise from across the room that made me jump half a foot; it sounded like a pistol shot. But it had only been the man slamming his empty mug down on the table.
I took a breath, let it out silently. He scraped back his chair as I did that, stood up, and jammed his hands into his coat pockets. Without looking at her, he said to the woman, "You pay for the food," and started past her table toward the restrooms in the rear.
She said, "Why the hell should I pay for it?"
He paused and glared back at her. "You've got all the money."
"I've got all the money? Oh, that's a laugh. I've got all the money!"
"Go on, keep it up." Then in a louder voice, as if he wanted to make sure I heard, he said, "Bitch." And stalked away from her.
She watched him until he was gone inside the corridor leading to the restrooms; she was as rigid as a chunk of wood. She sat that way for another five or six seconds, until the wind gusted outside, thudded against the door and the window like something trying to break in. Jerkily she got to her feet and came over to where I was at the sandwich board. Those cold lights still glowed in her eyes.
"Is his sandwich ready?"
I nodded and made myself smile. "Will that be all, ma'am?"
"No. I've changed my mind. I want something to eat too." She leaned forward and stared at the glass pastry container on the back counter. "What kind of pie is that?"
"Cinnamon apple."
"I'll have a piece of it."
"Okay—sure. Just one?"
"Yes. Just one."
I turned back there, got the pie out, cut a slice, and wrapped it in waxed paper. When I came around with it she was rummaging in her purse, getting her wallet out. Back in the restroom area, I heard the man's hard, heavy steps; in the next second he appeared and headed straight for the door.
The woman said, "How much do I owe you?"
I put the pie into the paper sack with the sandwich, and the sack on the counter. "That'll be three-eighty."
The man opened the door; the wind came shrieking in, eddying drafts of icy air. He went right on out, not even glancing at the woman or me, and slammed the door shut behind him.
She laid a five-dollar bill on the counter. Caught up the sack, pivoted, and started for the door.
"Ma'am?" I said. "You've got change coming."
She must have heard me, but she didn't look back and she didn't slow up. The pair of headlights came on out front, slicing pale wedges from the darkness; through the front window I could see the evergreens at the far edge of the lot, thick swaying shadows bent almost double by the wind. The shrieking rose again for two or three seconds, then fell back to a muted whine; she was gone.
I had never been more glad or relieved to see customers go. I let out another breath, picked up the flyer, and moved over to the cash register. Outside, above the thrumming and wailing, the car engine revved up to a roar and there was the ratcheting noise of tires spinning on gravel. The headlights shot around and probed out toward the county highway.
Time now to close up and go home, all right; I wanted a glass of brandy and a good hot fire more than ever. I went around to the tables they'd used, to gather up the coffee cups. But as much as I wanted to forget the two of them, I couldn't seem to get them out of my mind. Especially the woman.
I kept seeing those eyes of hers, cold and hateful like the wind, as if there was a black wind blowing inside her, too, and she'd been listening to it too long. I kept seeing her lean forward across the counter and stare at the pastry container. And I kept seeing her rummage in that big alligator purse when I turned around with the slice of pie. Something funny about the way she'd been doing that. As if she hadn't just been getting her wallet out to pay me. As if she'd been—
Oh my God, I thought.
I ran back behind the counter. Then I ran out again to the door, threw it open, and stumbled onto the gravel lot. But they were long gone; the night was a solid ebony wall.
I didn't know what to do. What could I do? Maybe she'd done what I suspicioned, and maybe she hadn't; I couldn't be sure because I don't keep an inventory on the slots of utensils behind the sandwich board. And I didn't know who they were or where they were going. I didn't even know what kind of car they were riding in.
I kept on standing there, chills racing up and down my back, listening to that black wind scream and scream around me. Feeling the cold sharp edge of it cut into my bare flesh, cut straight to the bone.
Just like the blade of a knife . . .
A CRAVING FOR ORIGINALITY
Charlie Hackman was a professional writer. He wrote popular fiction, any kind from sexless Westerns to sexy Gothics to oversexed historical romances, whatever the current trends happened to be. He could be counted on to deliver an acceptable manuscript to order in two weeks. He had published 9,000,000 words in a fifteen-year career, under a variety of different names (Allison St. Cyr being the most prominent), and he couldn't tell you the plot of any book he'd written more than six months ago. He was what is euphemistically known in the trade as "a dependable wordsmith," or "a versatile pro," or "a steady producer of commercial commodities."
In other words, he was well-named: Hackman was a hack.
The reason he was a hack was not because he was fast and prolific, or because he contrived popular fiction on demand, or because he wrote for money. It was because he was and did all these things with no ambition and no sense of commitment. It was because he wrote without originality of any kind.
Of course, Hackman had not started out to be a hack; no w
riter does. But he had discovered early on, after his first two novels were rejected with printed slips by thirty-seven publishers each, that (a) he was not very good, and (b) what talent he did possess was in the form of imitations. When he tried to do imaginative, ironic, meaningful work of his own he failed miserably; but when he imitated the ideas and visions of others, the blurred carbon copies he produced were just literate enough to be publishable.
Truth to tell, this didn't bother him very much. The one thing he had always wanted to be was a professional writer; he had dreamed of nothing else since his discovery of the Hardy Boys and Tarzan books in his pre-teens. So from the time of his first sale he accepted what he was, shrugged, and told himself not to worry about it. What was wrong with being a hack, anyway? The writing business was full of them—and hacks, no less than nonhacks, offered a desirable form of escapist entertainment to the masses; the only difference was, his readership had nondiscriminating tastes. Was his product, after all, any less honorable than what television offered? Was he hurting anybody, corrupting anybody? No. Absolutely not. So what was wrong with being a hack?
For one and a half decades, operating under this cheerful set of rationalizations, Hackman was a complacent man. He wrote from ten to fifteen novels per year, all for minor and exploitative paperback houses, and earned an average annual sum of $25,000. He married an ungraceful woman named Grace and moved into a suburban house on Long Island. He went bowling once a week, played poker once a week, argued conjugal matters with his wife once a week, and took the train into Manhattan to see his agent and editors once a week. Every June he and Grace spent fourteen pleasant days at Lake George in the Adirondacks. Every Christmas Grace's mother came from Pennsylvania and spent fourteen miserable days with them.
He drank a little too much sometimes and worried about lung cancer because he smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. He cheated moderately on his income tax. He coveted one of his neighbors' wives. He read all the current paperback bestsellers, dissected them in his mind, and then reassembled them into similar plots for his own novels. When new acquaintances asked him what he did for a living he said, "I'm a writer," and seldom failed to feel a small glow of pride.
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