Ted One stepped up and rolled a strike. Dallas took the next roll, strike. Roy grabbed his 14-pounder and clipped seven, picking up the spare on the next roll. Stanley rolled a six and a gutter, causing the vein in Dallas’s forehead to swell and his neck to turn red. Ted Two nonchalantly rolled an eight-spare, nodding in cool acceptance of his teammates’ praise. The moment had finally arrived. It was Herb’s turn to roll.
Taking a long swig from his grisly concoction, Herb rose from the molded plastic seat facing the lane. He felt each woven fiber of his undershirt slide a fraction of an inch across the skin of his shoulders, heard the soft hiss as the bowling jersey realigned itself across his back, catching and sliding on the t-shirt beneath. Herb felt the muscles and tendons in his ankles and knees stretch and pull as he glided over pine planks scoured smooth as glass by decades of leather-soled shoes. Herb’s pupils made minute adjustments, dilating and contracting as his eyes scanned the lane, reacting to the varied quality of fluorescent and neon lights reflecting off of well-oiled maple boards in the heads. Further down, the triangles delineated the heads from the mid-lane like a line of stealth bombers waiting to guide his projectile to its intended target. And there, at the end, the pins waited in the pin deck. When Herb softly inhaled through his nose, he swore he could smell their fear mingled with the scent of oil, maple and pine. Moving to the ball return, he floated his palm over the vent blowing a gentle, continuous stream of cool air. The sensation was almost more than he could bear, the tingle of air on his palm sending electricity coursing through his nerves toward his shoulders, down his spine. Holding his palm over the air, he could hear the quiet whoosh change in tone and tenor as he rocked his palm first to then fro. With some effort, Herb’s attention was drawn back from the sensation on his palm, allowing him to continue his advance. Fingers slid across the slightly marred surface of his bowling ball, each tiny scratch and divot a moment with its own unique story that he could almost recall. Again, he found himself dwelling in the mystery of sensation as each fingertip sought more understanding from the polished surface. Finally, his fingers and thumb settled into the holes. Muscles contracted and the ball became a natural extension of Herb’s hand, wrist, arm. Like Steve Austin or Luke Skywalker, Herb and the bowling ball were a perfect union of man and the man-made.
Mary’s blood still singing in his ears like an aria, Herb glided forward, arm swinging back and forward like the pendulum of the clock at the center of the universe. As leather soles slid across smoothly oiled pine, a slight relaxing of the muscles in his fingers gave physics permission to reenter the equation. Circular velocity became linear velocity, mass held in sway suddenly cut loose to carve its own path through reality, and the path the ball chose was straight and true. It met the lane with a slight backspin, catching for the slightest moment as it reoriented into a furious roll. About halfway down the mid-lanes, the ball shifted minutely. The forward roll had become a rotation working slightly against the line of travel, as if the ball were only now starting to realize the impending collision and was taking hesitant steps to avoid the impact to come. Destiny had other plans for the unfortunate ball, and it connected solidly with the headpin at the perfect, slightly off-center angle. Molecules collided, springing away from one other in commensurate angles, their violent reaction played out across millions of other molecules as they reacted to the same event, creating on a much grander scale a scene of deliberate chaos as ten pins flew, spun, ricocheted, slid and finally came to rest in the pit. Strike.
“Hell yeah!” whooped Dallas, followed by a pelvic thrust toward Roy and the Teds. “How da’ya’like them apples?” Stanley grinned and his head bobbed like a balloon on a rising breeze. Herb sauntered back to his seat, an enigmatic grin playing across his stubbled cheeks as he reached for his drink.
“Uh oh,” he said to no one in particular. “Looks like someone’s gotten a little better at bowling.”
Chapter 31
It was a dream come true. Champions. Funny how such a simple word could have such world-changing implications. Dallas wore the title like a familiar coat, but to Herb it still felt funny. He could remember the evening clearly, but thinking back on the individual moments, Mary in the utility closet, rolling three perfect games, the cat fight, the punch, and now being the center of all the revelry... Herb just shook his head in bemusement. Life certainly was different as a vampire, and getting better all the time.
The players all milled around the bar while Jasper sound-checked the karaoke system, swapping stories of heartbreak and heroics, more than a few recounting Herb’s amazing run or rehashing the cat fight or “the punch.” Such camaraderie after a tourney wasn’t unusual. There was griping and back-slapping and high-fives and stink-eyes after every night of bowling. But the championship tourney always upped the ante. Winners got the royal treatment all over town. A free round at Steinknockers, a free milkshake or upgrade from French fries to cheese curds at Ronnie’s, a free VHS or DVD (non-new release) rental at Petro Patt’s, and so on. It usually took a week or so for the glow of victory to finally fade. That week was always an interesting one, though. Alliances shifted like sands in the Sahara as people watched the champs live large around town, evaluating their current bowling mates and sizing up the other players. And then there was the infidelity. You’d think that in a town like Trappersville, folks would be pretty stable. So-and-so married such-and-such and they had a couple of critters and that was the end of it. But somehow the bowling tourneys always turned up scandal. One such patch of drama had occurred a couple three years ago. Ted Two had celebrated their team’s win with Ted One’s then-girlfriend of almost two years. The ensuing fist fight was the stuff of legends. The town paramedic still spoke of it on occasion, always with the same awed tone.
In years past, Herb had always watched as everyone else shared in the moment, looking from the outside in at the people he’d known for years but had never really been close to. Dallas, though, was a fish in water after every bowling tourney, and had even made a tradition of leading the Big Toast. Herb couldn’t recall when that had started. It just seemed like ever since he, Stan and Dallas had been rolling in the league, Dallas always led the championship toast. He’d mount a table, a chair, a couple bar stools, or if the crowd was especially unruly, the bar itself, towering over the revelers like the incarnation of old Paul Bunyan. No sir, it wasn’t officially the Championship After-Party until Dallas had kicked off the celebration.
Last year’s after-party was still fresh in Herb’s mind. He, Stan and Dallas had gotten bumped out early on, but you’d never have known it watching Dallas. Rather, you’d think he had invented revelry and drinking, so adept was he at revving up the crowd while imbibing enough alcohol to stun a grizzly bear. With a full mug of beer, lopsided grin and a wink for the barmaid, he’d let out an ear-splitting whistle and called out, “Enough, you rascals! Enough! It’s time to grab a drink - yours, the guy next to you’s, whoever’s! I mean, as long as you gotta drink in your hand, right?” A question that was answered with cheers of agreement and a few shoving matches as people grabbed drinks that weren’t rightfully theirs to begin with. Once the bedlam subsided a bit, Dallas had plowed ahead.
“To the victors... a toast!” The crowd chanted, Toast! Toast! Toast! until Dallas quieted them with a gesture.
“Here’s to doing and drinking, not sitting and thinking! We admire your skill, envy your strikes, hate your victory and love your trophy!”
Raucous cheers followed, along with more drinking and friendly backslapping. A maestro conducting a symphony, Dallas let the cheering build to a crescendo and then deftly took control again before the fervor waned.
“And to the losers, you sorry dogs. To strive and toil only to end up drowning your sorrows in your watery beer, no offense Rhonda. We know you didn’t water it down.”
“Nah, I just spit in yours, Dal,” Rhonda had shot back, spurring more laughter and a few jibes about getting his comeuppance as Dallas smiled his million-dollar smile.
Like a cannon at the start of a marathon, Dallas’s final toast unleashed a celebration that lasted well past bar close. No one really minded, though. The town sheriff was a better bowler than drinker, and had passed out in the bathroom long ago.
That night, Herb had watched Dallas with envy as he sat off to the side with Stanley, knocking back their beers in solitude while the crowd celebrated around them. Drunk, a bit depressed and feeling contemplative, Herb had wondered why someone who was so charismatic and beloved by everyone in town remained his friend, and how the friend of one so charismatic and beloved could still remain such a non-thing in the eyes of everyone else. Sensing his mood, Stanley had raised a mug and offered a commiserating belch before laying his face down on the table top and passing out.
But this year, this time, things were different. Herb bowled a 300, his first ever, and one of just a handful of perfect games that had graced the lanes of the Bay City Bowlers over the decades. As if to show it wasn’t a fluke, he then proceeded to do it two more times. Even if they hadn’t won the championship, Herb would’ve still been an overnight legend. Easily half of the town turned out to watch the bowling championship. Most of the bowlers were watched by a mix of family and friends, neither of which Herb had in spades, so he wasn’t really used to rolling for a crowd. In years past, folks would watch Dallas, cheer him on and buy him drinks. Even Stanley had a few devotees, anxiously hoping to be there if he got abducted again. Herb merely got bits and pieces of spilled-over camaraderie, like a dog catching scraps around the picnic table. But after rolling a couple of back to back turkeys, it was like Herb appeared out of thin air. By the end of the night, he was a god.
After the first turkey, people shook their heads and asked one another who that guy was that just rolled a turkey. By his fifth strike, Herb’s keen ears heard his name mentioned across the breadth and depth of the lanes. In two’s and three’s, more people drifted over to take a peek at “that guy Herb or something” who just rolled five strikes. After yet another turkey, so many people were watching Herb bowl that Stanley had to push through a sea of mullet-draped shoulders to get to the bar. By Herb’s seventh frame, every strike was followed by raucous cheers and applause. Even Roy and the Teds were cheering, despite their rapidly fading odds of winning. As the tenth frame closed out, they put up a respectable 665, but to no avail. Stanley had pulled off a 180 and Dallas finished with a 210. Herb, though, had been flawless. His perfect game carried King and the Pins past the first round of the tourney, and the crowd was chanting his name.
The second round whipped by in a blur as Herb continued to shock and amaze everyone, including himself. Strike after strike he rolled, the crowd growing larger and more raucous by the frame. Fancy Dan, Dylan and sweaty Two-shirt all bowled well, but they just couldn’t keep up. Herb was incapable of not rolling strikes, and the few frames Dallas didn’t strike, he spared. Despite their amazing games, Dallas didn’t have much to say. Herb had figured he was just “in the zone,” and didn’t want to risk jinxing things by talking.
The final match-up pitted them against Stu, Wyatt and Dozer. Herb always thought of them as Bluto and the Goons, but not without fondness. In truth, he’d been a little scared of them back in school. They were big, and could’ve easily used their oversized muscles to shove Herb into any manner of uncomfortable spaces. The trio were star wrestlers in high school, due in part to an aptitude for the sport and in part to the fact that there weren’t any other kids in a six-county area even close to their size. Fortunately, they were a pretty mild-mannered bunch and paid little attention to Herb. Apparently body slamming and choking out other kids as a legitimate recreational activity didn’t leave much appetite for pummeling the weirdo after class.
After growing up together, the three now all worked at the lumber mill. For fun, they had set up their own bowling lane at work consisting of two long logs for bumpers and firewood as pins. Dozer had an old, nicked-up 16-pounder that they would hurl down the packed dirt toward the stumps. Dubbed “extreme bowling,” it was a pass-time Herb remembered them starting back in high school. It began with late-night trips to the Get’n’Gobble, where they would set up two-liter bottles of soda in the aisle and use a frozen turkey for the ball. Their pinnacle achievement was taking over a whole block on Main Street. Wyatt had scored a bunch of old pins from Bay City’s dumpster. They set up the pins at one end of the block and whipped the ball from the other end. A decent crowd was enjoying the spectacle and there was even some talk of it becoming an annual event for charity. Sadly, local authorities had to put the kibosh on the fun after a local storefront window was cracked by a careening gutter ball.
Solid bowlers all, they were a staple in the league finals just about every year. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in brute, devastating strength. League rules required men to roll with a least a 10-pound ball, but there were always a few cry-babies each year saying Dozer and his gang should be required to roll 14-pounders. None cried as loud as Bay City’s owner Slow Johnson, since Dozer in particular had a knack for breaking pins. He had finally taken to charging Stu, Wyatt and Dozer a surcharge when they bowled to offset the cost of replacing so many pins each year.
Watching them now, Herb didn’t feel the bowel-freezing intimidation he’d felt in the past. Usually, he wanted to grab a helmet and stand about 20 or 30 feet back from the lane when the monstrous trio bowled. This night, though, he felt different. Riding the cloud of rolling back to back perfect games, Herb found himself coolly evaluating the 700-plus-pounds of combined bowling monstrosity standing across the return from him. Stu rolled first, the ball hitting the pins with a thunderclap, sending them screaming in every direction. When the calamity receded, the 10-pin wobbled and came to rest standing perfectly straight, albeit right at the lip of the pit. Stu grunted at the blowout, waiting impatiently for his ball to come back. It had barely cleared the hood when Stu picked it up and launched it back down the lane. His impatience was his downfall, the ball speeding past the pin and smacking loudly against the back of the pit. The wind of its passage actually rocked the pin a fraction of an inch closer to the pit’s edge, but it didn’t go down.
Herb was first on the roster to roll since he’d had the best game prior. Dallas glared, but Herb was too caught up in the moment to give it much thought. He walked over to the return, picked up his ball, turned to face the alley. What happened next was almost too fast for the naked eye to see. Three steps carried him down the approach with unnatural speed. In a blur of motion, his right arm swung back and sped forward in a perfect arc. The ball was released with so much velocity that it didn’t even touch the maple at the top of the lane, cruising instead a fraction of an inch above the boards and finally connecting well past the arrows. The ball hardly even seemed to roll, and instead traveled like a cruise missile toward the one-two pin pocket. The ball hit the pins so hard that the head-pin ricocheted across the lane, bounced in the gutter and flipped over the next lane, finally crashing into the center of the lane two lanes over. A stunned crowd watched the screen above Herb’s lane. The digital display lit up with dancing bowling pins marching a picket line, each carrying a sign reading Strike! The scorecard reappeared, with Herb’s frame marked with an X. In the lower right-hand corner, the speed of the ball read 32 miles per hour.
Herb turned with a pirouette and offered a half-bow toward the beefy trio next to him. Stu’s mouth worked like a guppy while Dozer stared down the lane like a great mystery was about to unfurl and he didn’t want to miss it by blinking. Wyatt finally cleared his throat and offered a gruff, “Holy hell. That was quite the roll, Herb,” as he moved toward the ball return. Dallas and Stanley sat stunned on the chairs behind the score d
esk. Stanley spoke first as Herb calmly walked back to his seat.
“I g-g-gotta start doing me some Billy Blanks Tae Bo.”
Dallas was less inclined to look for an innocent explanation. “What the hell’s going on, Herbert? A perfect game, that can happen. Folks get lucky sometimes. But a second perfect game? You? Not goddamn likely. And now you’re rolling like Arnold F’ing Schwarzenegger?” Dallas moved in close, turning his back to the crowd. Bringing his face close to Herb’s, he snapped in a hushed whisper, “Spill it, Herb. I know this finals thing is a big deal, but juicing? Are you on the ‘roids? Deer antler spray? What is it? Where’d you even find the stuff anyway? Shit, Herb, you get caught, we’re barred from the league. From the league!”
With a final finger-wag and pointed nod, Dallas walked to the lane, picked up his ball, rolled an angry strike, and returned to where Stanley and Herbert were still standing. Neither had moved in the 90 seconds or so since Dallas had said his piece. Stanley was mumbling something about not getting how “hemorrhoids could make someone bowl so good.” Herb was simply shocked to his core by the accusation. Drugs? Him? Who the hell did Dallas think he was, accusing him of using drugs? The one time, one time that Herb was actually doing something better than Dallas, and he gets accused of using steroids. Herb’s mind reeled as the other bowlers rolled, Dozer and Wyatt both trying to show up Herb’s 32 mph roll, Stanley just trying to stay between the gutters. Inevitably, Herb’s turn came around again. He looked long and hard at Dallas, who returned his stare without flinching. Eyes never leaving Dallas, Herb addressed the crowd.
“Who thinks I can roll 33 miles per hour? 34? Who wants to see this sucker hit 35 miles per hour?” A surprised cheer went up from the crowd, and one clear sultry voice carried above the rest.
Monsters in the Midwest ( Book 1): Wisconsin Vamp Page 16