by Jon Hassler
“Such weather, Miles, for this late in the year.”
“Is that so? Then it’s going to rain. I don’t know how she can tell, but she’s always right about rain. She’s very rain-conscious.”
“She can tell by the wind.”
“Miles, have you ever watched ‘The Turning of Our Lives’?”
“No, I’m in school when it’s on.”
“Well, if you ever get a chance to see it, don’t miss it. I tell you it’s life to a T.”
“Is that so?”
“I mean it’s a story you’ll never forget. It’s so lifelike it makes you want to cry. And laugh too, of course, but mostly cry. This week in one installment—Wednesday, I think it was—they had a pregnant virgin and a recovery from epilepsy.”
“Our coffee will be ready in a minute,” said Miss McGee, coming out from the kitchen. She had put on a fresh apron and tied, against the breeze, a gauzy scarf under her chin.
“Agatha, I was telling Miles about ‘The Turning of Our Lives.’ On Wednesday they had a pregnant virgin and a recovery from epilepsy.”
“Oh shush, Lillian. That’s a program for idiots. The only thing on TV I ever cared for, besides the news, was Perry Como. Miles, who will be at the Workmans’ party tonight?”
“The same old faces. The Stevensons, the Gibbons—mostly faculty.”
Lillian Kite said, “Superintendent Stevenson is knocking on death’s door. Imogene says it’s a bad valve in his heart. She told me the percentage of people who the of it. I forget, but it’s a great many.”
“Poor man,” said Miss McGee.
“And the Gibbons! You know what they’re saying about Stella Gibbon, don’t you? Well, I guess it’s more than rumor. Imogene says it’s out and out infidelity. Doc Oppegaard is the one. Stella Gibbon is Doc Oppegaard’s assistant, you know, and they say it’s so open. What does Mr. Gibbon think, I wonder.”
“Poor man,” said Miss McGee.
A party of robins on their way south descended into the back yard and hopped about for a minute, then flew away.
With coffee, Miss McGee served cake and chokecherry jelly. It was noon before Lillian Kite went home and Miles carried the ranger uniform upstairs to his room.
Saturday afternoons Miles went walking. He called it hiking but it was not hiking. For one thing the figure he cut was not that of a hiker. He was an awkward man, pale and tall and tending to corpulence, and he owned no boots. For another thing, he walked not for the sake of getting somewhere but because walking helped him think. Long ago he had discovered that the gears of his memory and imagination were set in motion by putting one foot in front of the other, and the gears were slowed by sitting down or standing still. This explained why in the classroom he was more often on his feet than behind his desk, and it explained why he was so often seen strolling, strutting, trudging, stalking, or skimming the streets of Staggerford—the shape of his thoughts dictating the shape of his walk. Miles owned a car, an old Plymouth with a cracked windshield, but he never used it unless traveling out of town. During the past five summers he had driven the Plymouth to the Grand Canyon, to the Ozarks, to New York City, to Banff, and to graduate school in Colorado, but during the school year it was seldom out of Miss McGee’s garage.
Today as he walked, his thoughts were on school, and because he could visualize his lesson plans as far ahead as Christmas, his walk was a glide. A week of book reports, two weeks of Othello, a week of Robert Frost, two weeks of composition, then Christmas. In his old tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches he glided down Main Street and into the Hub Cafe, where he sat on a stool and told Beverly Bingham he wanted a cup of coffee with cream and a piece of blueberry pie.
Beverly said, “God, Mr. Pruitt, I was just thinking about you. I’ve got something to tell you.”
Until his conversation with Miss McGee last night, Miles had not realized that Beverly was part Indian; but now in the Hub he studied her for vestiges of the Chippewa nation and he found them in her hair, her complexion, her voice, and in the shape of her face. But in Beverly each Indian trait seemed to have been softened, modified, improved upon. Her long hair was almost black and almost straight, but not quite. It came together under her chin and framed her oval face. The rose tinge in her cheeks, which Miles had assumed was a perpetual blush, was actually a hint of the copper complexion so common in Sandhill. Miles had long been fascinated by Indians’ voices, which despite their high and even pitch seemed to be emanating from someplace farther back in the throat and deeper in the soul than other people’s voices. Why, when an Indian spoke, did he sound farther away than he actually was? Beverly’s voice, too, had that high-pitched, distant quality, but it carried more expression than the typical monotone of the reservation.
Beverly wore the Hub uniform, the orange slacks and the orange zippered top with the vertical blue stripe over the left breast. She was the only one on duty during this quiet hour of the afternoon, and after she served Miles she came around the counter and sat next to him on a stool.
“You know who’s home, Mr. Pruitt? Greg Olson. He’s home from the air force for two weeks, and he was in here last night after the game and he asked if he could take me home.”
“Yes, I saw him at the game.”
“God, is he good-looking. He’s gotten better looking since he went into the air force.”
“It’s the uniform.”
“He asked if he could take me home, and I was so surprised I said no. But how could I say yes? For one thing I had driven the pickup to work and I had to take that home, and for another thing I don’t want any boy to see where I live.” She lit a cigarette. “Mr. Pruitt, can you imagine what it’s like to be ashamed of where you live? You’ve never seen our place in the gulch, have you?”
Miles admired Beverly’s profile as she blew smoke across the counter. Was that an Indian nose? “No, I’ve seen your mailbox on the highway, but I’ve never seen your farm.”
“Very few people have, thank God. It’s between the highway and the river, and it can’t be seen from the highway because it’s in the gulch and it can’t be seen from the river because of the woods. There are a few people from town who drive out and come into the yard to buy chickens, and whenever they do I’m so ashamed I don’t want to go to the door. In the summer we have that produce stand on the highway, you know, and that’s different. I like selling tomatoes and squash and onions. But to have people coming right into the yard—God, I can’t stand that.” Beverly, a beginning smoker, was handling her cigarette like a stick of lead. “All our buildings are leaning over like they were about to collapse into the river. I don’t know what’s holding them up. And the house. The house is a two-story place that hasn’t been kept up, and we’ve shut off the upstairs because all the windows are broken up there and birds fly in and out. And the yard, God, you should see the yard. Except I wouldn’t want you to. It’s a dump. It’s full of rusty cars that my dad used to bring home, and do you know what’s living in the upholstery of the cars?”
Miles shook his head.
“Rats.”
Miles frowned into his coffee.
“We shoot rats with a twenty-two rifle, my mother and I. Rats kill chickens.”
A long silence, then: “I’d like to marry Greg Olson.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“What’s stupid about that? I’m old enough. I’ve been old enough to quit school for two years. I don’t know what I’m doing in school anyway.”
“It’s stupid to tie yourself down to a husband at eighteen. Your life is just beginning. What you have to do is get yourself enrolled in a college next fall and get out and see what the world is all about.”
“Who says?”
“I do.”
“Mr. Pruitt, your trouble is you never married and now it’s too late and you don’t want anybody else to have any fun either.”
“I’ll have some more coffee.”
“What’s the matter? Am I getting too personal? Does the truth hurt?”
>
“Beverly, the truth is that I am by nature a cautious man, and if I marry, which is still a possibility despite my extreme age, I will not marry someone I met the night before the wedding, as you seem to be threatening to do with Greg Olson—whom I remember as the numskull of last year’s senior class.”
“I didn’t just meet him. I’ve known him for years.”
“How well?”
Beverly got up and poured Miles more coffee. “Don’t talk to me about college,” she said, hoping he would.
“You’ve got the second-highest grade average in the senior class. If you don’t go to college you’ll be sorry all your life.”
Beverly sat down again. “For college you need more than grades. You need to have all your shit together. You need to be from someplace better than I’m from.”
Coach Gibbon came into the Hub. He was wearing a red jacket that said “Coach” on the front and “Staggerford” on the back. Beverly stood up and Coach took her stool. He ordered coffee.
“Nice game last night,” said Miles.
“Aw, that goddamn Fremling. I never should have had him in there at center. If it wasn’t for him we’d’ve won. But who else did I have?”
“What’s so bad about a tie with Owl Brook? They haven’t been beaten for a year and a half. If I were coach, I’d be proud of a six-six tie with Owl Brook.”
Coach Gibbon had a long face with dark brows and a long, pointed nose. He turned to Miles and studied him closely from two or three angles, the way a woodpecker examines bark for bugs. “Are you crazy? You’d be proud of a tie? A tie proves absolutely nothing!” He turned away in disgust. “I’d rather lose than tie!”
“Let’s talk about something else,” said Miles. “We’ve never been able to agree on the subject of athletics.”
“No, I’d like to hear you explain what’s good about a six-six tie. A tie proves absolutely nothing, except that Lee Fremling is a fat-ass weakling.”
“Look, Owl Brook has been the best team in this conference since I was in high school, and if I were the coach of a team that played the Owls to a tie, I would take it as a sign that my team was equal to the Owls. And I would be very proud of my players. And I would tell them so.”
“That’s why you aren’t made of the stuff coaches are made of.”
Beverly served Coach Gibbon his coffee, rang up his money, then took the stool on the other side of Miles. She lit another cigarette.
“Let’s talk about wrestling,” said Miles. “What does your wrestling team look like for this winter?”
“Looks good. I’ve got Lawrence Winters at a hundred ninety pounds, and Willy Samuels at a hundred eighty, and Clyde Albertson at one seventy, and Bill Clifford at one sixty, and John Innes at one fifty, and Jack Worley at one forty, and Charlie Zeney at one thirty, and Doug Smith at one twenty, and some little pipsqueak of a freshman at one ten. Now, what I’d like to do is take ten pounds off Lawrence Winters and wrestle him at a hundred eighty, and take ten off Willy Samuels and wrestle him at one seventy, and take ten off Clyde Albertson and wrestle him at one sixty, and take ten off Bill Clifford and wrestle him at one fifty, and take ten off John Innes and wrestle him at one forty, and take ten off Jack Worley and wrestle him at one thirty, and take ten off Charlie Zeney and wrestle him at one twenty, and take ten off Doug Smith and wrestle him at one ten, and take ten off that little pipsqueak of a freshman and wrestle him at a hundred.”
“You’re always trying to take weight off your wrestlers. I can’t understand that.”
“It’s the name of the game. If you take off ten pounds you can wrestle in a lower weight division.”
“But what’s the advantage of wrestling in a division below your normal weight?”
“Use your head. The advantage is that when you lose ten pounds you don’t normally lose any muscle. All you lose is fluid and fat, and in the lower division you might be wrestling an opponent who is wrestling at his normal weight and who hasn’t lost fluid and fat and—zingo!—he’s pinned. Fluid and fat never win. Muscles win.”
“Then how come we don’t win more wrestling matches?”
“Because all the other coaches take ten pounds off their wrestlers too. Balls, if I didn’t know any more about sports than you do, I’d be ashamed to open my mouth.”
“That’s why we’re now going to move on to a different subject. Are you and Stella going to the Workmans’ party tonight?”
“I’ll bet you were never much of an athlete, Miles. I’ll bet your fluid and fat go back to your high school days.” (Conversations with Coach Gibbon seldom took an unexpected turn. They proceeded and backed up along the single track that had been running through his mind since he began coaching.)
“As a matter of fact,” said Miles, “I played on the Staggerford football team for two years.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You can look it up in the Stag yearbooks from the fifties. I won two letters.”
“You’re kidding. What did you play?”
“Guard. I was right guard for two years, but I wasn’t very aggressive. I was sort of the Lee Fremling type. I think if I had ever played a whole game I might have been pretty good, but it took me half the game to get indignant at my opponent and by that time the coach always replaced me. What I really liked much better was basketball.”
“You played basketball?”
“No, I never made the team, but I tried out every year. I think I could have been pretty good at basketball. I had the size and the endurance. I wasn’t quick, but my wind was good.”
Coach Gibbon obviously didn’t believe any of this. He shook his head and sipped his coffee.
Two women entered the Hub and sat at the table in the front window, where they could watch shoppers pass on the street. Beverly served them coffee.
“Are you and Stella going to Workmans’ tonight?” Miles asked once more.
Coach nodded. “You?”
“Yes, unless my toothache gets worse. I’ve had a toothache off and on since last night. I was eating a raspberry sundae—”
“A raspberry sundae—you were at Stevensons’.”
“That’s right.”
“How can you stand going to Stevensons’?”
“They’re very hospitable.”
“They’re spooks. She’s a prude and he’s no more superintendent than my dog. He’s an absolute zero. Did you know the school board cut my athletic budget by twenty percent and he never went to bat for me?”
“He’s not well.”
“Then what’s he doing in that job? I tell you, talking to that man is just like playing to a six-six tie. You don’t win, you don’t lose, you don’t settle a damn thing. He doesn’t say yes, no, or kiss my ass. He just looks out his window and says, ‘See my secretary about it.’ Now, what right has that old battle-ax of a secretary got making the superintendent’s decisions? She’s got all the power of a superintendent and what is she?—a former shoe-store clerk. Did you know that, Miles—she was a shoe-store clerk before she was hired at school?”
“Of course. I’ve known her all my life.”
Coach Gibbon crumpled his paper napkin and threw it at the wall. He was full of the smoldering anger that always burned hot and clouded his vision for several days after a lost game. Beyond that, he was said to be losing his wife. “If I was the school board I would fire Stevenson so fast it would make your head swim, and I would put Wayne Workman in his place, and we’d all be better off.”
“Wayne Workman?”
“Yes, Wayne Workman.”
“I don’t think I could work for Wayne Workman.”
“What do you mean? You already work for him.”
“Well, I don’t think of myself as working for the principal. It’s the superintendent who hires and fires and signs checks.”
“That may be, but when old Stevenson steps down Wayne Workman is going to step up.”
“What makes you think Wayne Workman wants to be superintendent?”
“Balls, whe
re have you been? Everybody knows Wayne Workman is just biding his time until he can take over old Stevenson’s job. What do you think keeps him in a dump like Staggerford? With his talent, he could be running a lot bigger high school than ours.”
“I don’t think I could work for Wayne Workman.”
“The day is coming when you damn well better work for Wayne Workman, or pack your bags! He’s our next superintendent or my name isn’t Coach Gibbon!”
Coach Gibbon, whose name was Herbert, finished his coffee and stood up. “I hate ending the season with a tie! It’s a hell of a nagging feeling to end a season with a tie!”
He left, rattling the glass in the door as he slammed it.
Beverly, at Miles’s side, said, “Do you know what I like about Greg?”
“About who?”
“About Greg Olson.”
“No, what do you like?”
“He’s in the air force.”
“Why is it that girls think so much of a uniform? Why does a uniform make a man seem anything but uniform?”
“It isn’t the uniform. It’s the travel. A guy in the air force is probably going to travel all over, right? I mean, if there’s anything in this world I could use, it’s a little travel.”
“Me too.” Miles stood up and buttoned his tweed jacket. “I’m going hiking.”
“Where?”
“Out along the river.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know. Out past the cemetery.”