Winning the City Redux

by Theodore Weesner

  CHAPTER 11

  “MORNING,” DALE UTTERS, PLEASED TO BE THE FIRST student to enter the lighted room where Miss Furbish is at her desk, preparing for the day. Alas, to be in her presence and experience the warmth she raises in his heart.

  “Dale . . . I hope you’re feeling better today?”

  On a glance, proceeding to his desk, Dale finds himself affected all the more by the warmth of her smile. Calling up his vaguely rehearsed words, he gets out, “I want to thank you for helping me. I’ve been wondering if there isn’t something I could do for you, like paint your kitchen or something.”

  On a laugh, she says, “You thought my kitchen needed painting?”

  Dale laughs, too. “Anything helpful . . . like clean erasers or wash the boards. Or wash your car. I could do that.”

  She sits looking at him before saying, “Dale, come here to my desk for a minute, will you. There’s something I want to tell you.”

  As Dale goes to stand at her desk, she maintains her expression, glasses hanging on their lanyard and lips making him think, in a flash, of the rose petals that belong to Zona Kaplan. Bowing her head to speak confidentially, she says, “I’ve been thinking . . . and I believe it’s best that we don’t mention being in my kitchen. Or in my car. It was an emergency, a desperate time for you . . . but I’m not sure everyone would understand.”

  Dale nods.

  “It’s something teachers aren’t supposed to do. Some students could see it as favoritism . . . you know?”

  “I understand,” Dale tells her.

  “You do?”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  She smiles, whereupon Dale confides, “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to do something to sort of make up for how nice you were when I lost it.”

  “What you’ve said is already more than enough.”

  “I’m not being as honest as I should be,” Dale confesses as emotion rises within. “I like you a lot as my homeroom teacher and I’d like . . . to clean erasers . . . anything . . . to be where you are,” he adds.

  Miss Furbish continues smiling. “You’d like to be friends? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’d like that a lot.”

  “We can do that. We can be friends. Let me think of ways we can work together, in school, as friends.”

  There again, to Dale, is that certain beauty in her smile, her eyes, in their color and movement, the depth into which he is being admitted. “Thank you,” he says, and ducking away, returning to his desk, knows that she has little idea how much it means to him to have a friend like her.

  # # #

  NINTH GRADE. BEING the oldest and biggest. Going to high school in the fall. It’s everything to most students while Dale keeps harboring ideas about want vs. need. Until now he’s been content being where he is. His old gray-blue notebook is under his hand. There are its index tabs for Social Studies, English, Math, History, Metal Shop, and throughout, all over the golden divider pages, sketches of hoop shots and stars, of automobiles, and of hearts, too, with initials pierced by arrows. Thereupon—his own heart pierced in fact—he lets his eyes rise enough to see that Miss Furbish, eyes down, is engaged at her desk, unaware, he guesses, of what he is feeling for her.

  # # #

  AS A SCATTERING of students enters, including dark-haired Zona, Dale allows his eyes to pass again over Miss Furbish at her desk. Returning his gaze to his notebook, acting as if he’s previewing his day, what Dale knows is that he would do anything for his teacher, while he wonders if what he feels for her is what others feel for their mothers. Or their sisters? Even their girlfriends . . . none of which female objects he has ever had or known.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Zona asks in a whisper if he’s heard about the mouse that married the elephant? Pleased to be teased by Zona, Dale says, “That joke is so immature,” and draws a flash of dark eyes that has him making, he can see, more hay with her than all the taunting he’s tried with her since school opened in the fall.

  CHAPTER 12

  LOOKING INTO HOMEROOM AT DAY’S END—EAGER TO DO ANY possible thing for Miss Furbish—Dale finds the room empty except for three students working at desks. “Where’s Miss Furbish?” he asks, only to receive hunches indicating, ‘How should we know?’

  Going on to Scholastic team practice under Coach Burke, hurrying back into the hallway afterwards with shower-wet hair, Dale finds his favorite teacher’s room dark and locked, making his heart cascade a bit. Catching his breath before the dark glass in her door, walking away, he sees that he’ll have to come up with a better way of impressing her if he expects—as he’s been hoping all day—to really become her friend. Show up early in the morning? Look to catch her in homeroom during lunch hour? Maybe, he thinks, knock on her apartment door after school with something to offer as a gift? A token of my appreciation . . . to thank you for saving my life when I lost it in the parking lot? I wasn’t able to say so at the time but you have no idea how much it means to me to be friends . . . the inspiration you excite in me as my favorite teacher . . . ?

  What gift? How, even on hitting up his father, to pay for something that would be perfect? Would it be uncool to show up with a gift? Would it turn her off?

  # # #

  IN THE UNFAMILIAR garage house, standing to eat a can of cross-cut Franco-American and drink glugs of milk, Dale looks up ‘Bartell’ in the telephone book, thinking to appeal directly to the boy whose reputation is equal to Sonny Joe Dillard’s, if rather as a thug-jock with a DA than as a superstar with a crew cut. Taking down the phone, Dale grows anxious with what he’s doing. Why would Lucky Bartell and his teammates—hillbillies who smoke cigarettes and hang out, who wear sharp clothes and get into fights—why would they be open to some outsider joining their team? It doesn’t make sense, and the notion is bringing home to Dale yet again the depth of what has been done to him in being scratched from what he regarded as his own team. How could he be replaced for working hard and becoming a better athlete? As it did earlier, the reality of what has happened grips his heart, reducing him to glossy eyes and a pit in his stomach, a feeling of resentment and confusion, a need to stop himself from bawling yet again like a dumb baby.

  The giant man, walking into their school and taking what he wants. You get clobbered like that and, fourteen or not, you don’t just get up and go on your way. The pain might fall asleep, but then it awakens and stabs you in the heart all over again. Rejected for being too good? Because his father drinks? Because he doesn’t have a mother at home?

  No telephoning for the moment. Checking himself against breaking, Dale sits at the kitchen table and gazes down his shirt-front. A gasp escapes his throat as he keeps looking down. Tears fill his eyes. That cheater, he cries to himself. That dirty cheater.

  # # #

  TELEPHONE RECEIVER IN hand, finding two Bartells in the book, Dale overrides his anxiety and dials the first number. How will he come off as anything other than an ass kisser? he wonders as the telephone rings on the other end. A brown noser, a suckass, a loser. In his world they’re the worst things to be and are things, he knows, he’s never been before. He’s never been chicken, or an ass kisser . . . and look at him now.

  “Shoot, man, I know you, course I know you, you mother-fucker!” Lucky Bartell says on being called to the phone by his father—one Andy Griffith voice following another—in their bungalow in Little Missouri. “Thought Dadda had figured out some new way of bullshitting his handsome son.”

  Dale cannot help grinning, for who if not Lucky Bartell would curse like that in the presence of his father? “How you doing?” Dale gets out.

  “Shoot, okay. How you doing? Man, what’s happening?”

  “Oh, I got a problem,” Dale says, all at once wanting not to be on the phone. “See, what happened,” he adds when there is no reply. “What happened is I got screwed over in City League. Got squeezed off the team I thought was my team! You know? This guy who’s plant superintendent at Plant Ten, where my old man works . . . th
is guy . . . he came to our school . . . has two sons and a sponsor and everything. He came to our school and signed up Joe Dillard and everybody except me because . . . coach Burke told me this . . . because he didn’t want someone on his team who could beat out his own son as playmaker guard! So I been screwed is what it is, squeezed off what was my own team . . . leaving me on no team at all! Looking to hook up somewhere else . . . you know.”

  Dale pauses to let his message take, whereupon, after a moment, Lucky Bartell says, “That is one raw deal if I ever heard one. Sonofabitch.”

  “Yeah,” Dale says. “His kids already won the Soap Box Derby. They live on some horse farm in Fenton Meadows and now their old man—he played for the Pistons or something—wants to give them a ready-made team like a Christmas present!”

  “Hung your ass out to dry, is what he did,” Lucky says. “The sonofabitch.”

  “You’re telling me,” Dale says, noting a similarity between his father’s voice and diction and the voice coming over the line.

  “You’re looking for a team?”

  “Yeah . . . only if you guys have room, you know.”

  Upon a pause, Lucky says, “Man, we got nine. I think we’re all set.”

  “Yeah . . . I guess I knew you would be,” Dale says. “Thought I’d give it a try, on the chance. They just . . . anyway, I know what you’re saying. You don’t have room, you don’t have room.”

  “Man, I wish we did. Their team ain’t gonna be as good without you, I know that.”

  “I was dreaming of winning the City . . . you know?”

  “Assuming you’d get by us,” Lucky says.

  “Yeah,” Dale says, trying to laugh. “That’s why I called. I know you guys are gonna be good. Anyway . . . thanks, you know.”

  “Didn’t do nothin’ to be thanked for,” Lucky Bartell tells him.

  “Anyway . . . good luck, man, in City League.”

  “You, too. Take care. Sorry I can’t help.”

  Receiver replaced, Dale sits over the phone trying to steel himself against his fate and not give in to an urge he is feeling to do something stupid that would really sink his ship and make them all sorry. He gets to his feet, determined to do something, anything to keep himself on an even plain.

  That’s that, he tells himself. It was all the begging he was going to do. He’ll walk downtown, he tells himself. He’ll walk around, maybe go to a movie to get time to slip by without doing something stupid, like stealing a car or breaking a window. Play it cool, he tells himself. What choice does he have . . . aside from doing damage to himself and giving the Flintstone Truckers ammo by which to justify not having him on their stupid team?

  Don’t be a fool, play it cool . . . even when the going gets tough. Like show some class . . . give the storm a chance to pass. As if it will, is Dale’s afterthought. For he may be a dreamer, but he doesn’t want to be a dope, too.

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THE BATHROOM, DALE IS RELUCTANT TO LOOK AT HIMSELF in the mirror, in fear of seeing a loser and having even more confidence depart his mind and body. Just when he was believing he might be okay . . . he had to make that call, and here he is on the downside of feeling helpless again.

  Slipping on his jacket, he sees that he has to let more time slip by—to avoid doing something crazy—when the telephone rings. His first thought is to head into the night and let it ring behind him. Why practice or do any school work, if this is what it comes to?

  “Hey Wheeler, Lucky Bartell,” the voice says.

  “Hey.”

  “Man, listen. Talked with Dadda, and he said . . . hell, man, you’re on our team if you wanna be. Dadda said it sounded like you got a royal screwing and why didn’t we take you as an added player, ’cause people do get sick and all that. Dadda’s right, I’d have to admit. Ain’t usually anywhere near right, but this time he hit it on the head. You can be on our team, if you wanna.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure.”

  “Jesus, thanks to your father. You’re sure it’ll be okay?”

  “I’m the fucking captain. I say it’s okay, okay is what it is.”

  “You don’t have to run it by your players?”

  “Man, they know you’re good. They ain’t gonna complain. Dadda’s got a point, how somebody might get sick and you might save our ass in the playoffs or something.”

  “You’re saving my life,” Dale says. “Thought I was a goner.”

  “Well, we just coach ourselves, no sponsor, none of that crap. This guy’s some big shot, this rich guy . . . really played for the Pistons?”

  “Yeah. Coach Burke rolled over and let him have the school gym for practice at night.”

  “Man, people like that . . . tell ya, just once I’d like to meet some rich person wasn’t an asshole. Dadda thinks they exist though he’s never met one his-own-self. This guy comes along, takes the whole team and gives it to his sons like a Christmas present?”

  “That’s what he did.”

  “Sonofabitch. And they’re letting them use the school gym to practice City League? How’s that fair to other teams? Anyway, man, ‘Little Ms’ it what we call ourselves. The Little Ms of Little Missouri!”

  “My dad’s from Arkansas,” Dale tells him, feeling pride in something he had never paused to take pride in before.

  “Knew there was something redneck about you I liked,” Lucky says. “Anyway, welcome to the Little Ms. We stick together. Rough and tough and hard to bluff. Can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff!”

  Dale smiles, feel as if he’s returning home at last.

  “That’s our motto. Hey, gotta go. Fact, Dadda’s on his feet right now giving me a badass look from ten inches . . . means he heard me say a naughty word. Dadda, why you looking at me like that?! Help it I’se born so goddamn smart and good looking? Man, gotta get off the phone, kick Dadda’s sorry old ass. See you Saturday, nine a.m. Emerson Junior High. Brings sneaks and stuff, orange jersey, cause that’s our colors. Orange and black, take no flack. Always show up, always fight back! The Little Ms!”

  “Orange and black. Man, I’ll be there!”

  “Rough and tough and hard to bluff, can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff!” Lucky Bartell repeats. “See you, man. Dadda’s about to throw a punch. Means I’m gonna have to kick his hairy old ass yet again.”

  On a howl—as Dale imagines father and son wrestling onto their living room floor over in Little Missouri—the call concludes. If it’s fighting or horseplay, Dale isn’t sure, knows only that Dadda sounds like a great guy, that smartass Lucky Bartell and the life they live are uniquely different from, and uniquely similar to his own.

  Off the phone, yet in his jacket, Dale tries to absorb what has happened. Orange and black, take no flack. Rough and tough, and hard to bluff. He’s on a team! He belongs, has teammates, is going home! Joy keeps flowing into his stomach where despair had been in full control.

  The Little Ms! Dadda and Lucky. Dadda is what his own father is like and is how men should be, Dale is thinking. Not cheaters who steal life and limb from ninth-grade boys. No wonder Lucky Bartell is famous all over town. Real men. Cool guys who aren’t mindless extensions of mindless parents giving them everything . . . are tough and able to think on their feet. Little Missouri. He might as well have been taken into the pages of a book by Mark Twain, as if fate is opening to him at last, presenting a kindred soul whose father also came north to work in the factories and has strengths all his own.

  Rough and tough and hard to bluff! Can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff! The Little Ms of Little Missouri were saving him . . . helping him with Miss Furbish, too, though he can’t say exactly how. Wonderful stuff? The aroma of her perfume, her person? The look in her glistening eyes when she touched his shoulder? He keeps sensing her presence and is longing to be in her presence again . . . as a person might long to be with a girlfriend.

  CHAPTER 14

  PECK’S DRUG STORE IN LOWER DOWNTOWN—AT THE BASE OF a conce
ntration of high-rise office buildings—never closes. Thus does it serve shift workers whose production lines and swirl of existence never stop moving or sending orange sparks from the long factory buildings. Dale is looking for a gift to present to Miss Furbish, and Peck’s offers rows of possibilities. At the same time, never having bought a gift for a girl or a woman—wanting it to be just right—he walks the aisles studying possibilities and reflections from every angle. What to buy? How to give it to her?

  Back down the street from Peck’s, near an erector set bridge from which an aroma of Karmelkorn wafts during the day, next to rail cars moving stacked frames that often delay downtown traffic, are the Coney Island diners, and it’s there that Dale wants to sit at a window with a view of the street, to slip a coin into a counter jukebox and luxuriate over a gift while plotting a way to present it to her. What to buy? What would be perfect?

  When he pauses in cosmetics within displays of colognes, lipsticks, bath oils, an overall aroma of sexy women, he spurts a laugh at the inappropriate boldness of buying such a gift for a teacher who was kind to him when he lost his cool, who wept when he wept and, if she knew it or not, triggered nothing less than excited love within his virgin heart. Checking other aisles before returning to cosmetics, the idea of such a gift keeps triggering a bold urge in him of believing he is going to do it! Bath oil! Whatever it is, the bottle is beautiful, and the price is right.

  What he wouldn’t give to pour it into her steaming tub, apply it to her limbs, rub it in . . . however it gets done. Bath oil. Alone with Miss Furbish. Seeing her smile.

  He pauses yet again to study up close. The display includes a glossy photo of Natalie Wood wearing eye shadow and a faint smile. Miss Furbish bears a resemblance and, premature gray hair notwithstanding, is no less gorgeous to Dale. Photo and aroma have him pointing a finger at last and, unfolding some bills, putting forth his money. Yes, he nods, when asked if he wants it gift-wrapped. Silver paper? Yes, silver is fine.