I looked around. Just about every table had a pint or a fifth on it. Obviously, not a temperance ship. Just when I was going to ask mackinaw-mustache about the captain, I decided better. If Kinney's two paragraphs were any guide to the island, this chap was probably the captain's older brother, or at least a first cousin. Probably just Ostenson's quirk; he must have suddenly decided that he didn't like my face.
I was on deck again to observe our landing. The dark form of the island was very close now and I could see lights farther up the channel. They seemed to outline the dock. We passed a channel buoy frozen in the ice at a drunken tilt and wearing a snowy beard. The wind swept in from the lake, even harsher and stronger than before, then calmed a little as we came in. The engine went half speed, then silent, and came on loud again in reverse. I saw the wooden pilings of the dock, illuminated by a hanging string of yellow bulbs. I heard a shoe scrape on the stairway behind me and I turned.
It was the hunchback, just starting down to the deck. "I seen 'em, too," he said in a low voice.
"The kids in the car?" I said. "Yeah, what about it?"
"It's the old team," he whispered. "It's the old team still tryin' to make it." He was suddenly scuttling down the stairs to his duty with the ropes.
Clannish, inbred—but Ed Kinney had forgotten to tell me that I might run into some slightly loony ones, too.
Comfortable, warm, old-fashioned and presumably by the side of the lake, Lakeside Cottages struck me as a good omen. I was the only guest, yet a neat path had been shoveled from the lodge down to my small cabin (number nine) and a boy named Roger Nelson carried my bags. He turned the lights on and showed me where the radio was.
"Are you visiting up here?" he asked. "I wouldn't want to be nosy, but we almost never get an overnight guest in the winter."
"No. I'm a reporter. I came up a day early, but I'm really here to cover the big game tomorrow night."
"That's great," he said, smiling. "You from Life?"
"No, just from Green Bay, I'm afraid." He handed me my key.
"I'm one of the assistant basketball managers," he said. "Means I carry stuff around a lot—though you'd never guess it from the important-sounding title."
"I won't tell a single soul in Green Bay what you really do," I said. He started to leave. "Well, good luck against Fish Creek," I said.
He smiled and shook his head. "It's Ephraim," he said. "The game's against Ephraim. Fish Creek wasn't even in the running this year."
"Of course. How could I be so forgetful? Good luck against Ephraim," I said. He smiled again and closed the door behind him.
Sure, it was Ephraim Bay. We'd even had a feature story on Kevin O'Hara, their six-foot-six, high-scoring center. Why had I said Fish Creek? I lay on the bed with a couple of fingers of whiskey in the bathroom tumbler, blowing fancy smoke rings. Then it came back to me. Simple.
The kids crossing the ice in the old car had BEAT FISH CREEK painted on its side. The slogan was probably a leftover from the baseball or football season.
After a while, I stirred myself and got the notebook from my jacket pocket. First I'd get something to eat, then I'd get in a little work on the background for the feature story. I found the page with my notes on the briefing Ed Kinney had given me. On the second page, with a star beside it, was the name "Edward Maier."
"Ed coach fr abt ten yrs. Now retired. One of best small-school coaches in state. Runner-up three, four years in row, then champion team around 1947. Small town wild abt basketball. Maybe 60 kids in the high school, 59 of 'em b. b. players. Tall Swedes. Local disaster sometimes in 40s or 50s. School fire? Anyway, several children died, including team members. Quick check in our files draws blank, but ask Ed, who will know all abt it." There were several other entries but I decided to try Maier first.
There were all of four pages in the phone book. Edward Maier's number was a quaint 32-B. Then I had to turn a crank on the phone to ring the operator. I was back in the 1920s. "Please give me 32-B," I said.
"There's somebody staying at Lakeside," I heard the operator say to somebody with her. "He's calling Ed Maier." Then I heard her say, "How should I know why he wants to talk to Ed?"
"Operator, honey," I said in my coziest voice. "My name is Charley Pope. I'm a sports reporter on The Green Bay News. I get a hundred and thirty dollars a week. I'm forty years old, six-foot-one, 185 pounds, married and the father of two. I'm here to cover the game tomorrow night. And now, operator, honey, please ring Ed Maier for me."
"Well, it's nice meeting you, Mr. Pope," she said. "We don't get many visitors in the wintertime." I heard a whispered aside to her friend, "Newspaperman, and he sounds real nice. No, I don't know why he's calling Ed Maier."
When she finally did get the call through, there was an answer almost immediately at the other end. It sounded like a hiccup.
"Is this Mr. Ed Maier? I'm up here to cover . . ." and I went on through my introduction. There was silence for almost a minute.
I knew that Ed Maier was still conscious, though, because I could hear a deep and regular breathing over the line. "Listen, Mr. Maier," I finally said, "if it's more convenient, I can come over to see you tomorrow. But I'd rather make a short call this evening, if it's OK."
More deep breathing. Then he spoke one word in a hoarse voice. "Hurry!" And then he had hung up.
Thumbtacked to the wall of my cottage was a postcard-sized map of the island. I studied it until I thought I'd worked out my route from Lakeside to Town Line Road, where Maier lived. It was now almost seven. I'd talk with the old boy for about an hour and try to get back to get some dinner around eight. I went out to my car.
The map was probably OK, but the snow and the scarcity of signs tricked me, because the next one I saw read GUNNAUGSSON ROAD, which was a dirt road that didn't appear on the map at all. I wandered from that onto another road that turned out to be Detroit Harbor Road. This did appear on the map running the length of the island south to north. My only trouble was that I didn't know which way was north. After a couple of miles of rough going through the snow, a red neon savior gleamed out of the dark. God bless Gus' Bar. Eats, Beer, Mixed Drinks.
And there they both were, just as advertised. The one, massive old-fashioned dark wood; and the other, behind it—massive old-fashioned barkeep. A jukebox was sobbing at the top of its voice when I went in.
"Ed Maier?" said the bartender, shaking his head slowly, as if this were just too much. He mopped the bar for a while, "Ed Maier," he finally said reluctantly, "you mean coach Ed Maier?"
"Yes, I mean coach Ed Maier on Town Line Road. Can you tell me how to get there?"
"Guess I could," he said. He started to polish some glass beer steins. "What do you want with him?"
"I want to offer him a job in the movies," I said. "Now, where do I find him?"
"Well," said Gus reflectively, "when you go out the door, point yourself right. Go about twenty-five yards. Then go left on Town Line right down to the very end. That's where Coach lives."
As I was going out the door, he said, "If you're a reporter on the Green Bay paper and you get a hundred and thirty dollars a week, how come you tell people you can get them in the movies?"
"How come you sell poisoned beer?" I asked and left.
But the directions were right, anyway. I found Maier's ramshackle little cottage in a winter-bare birch grove. There was a pile of firewood outside the front door, a little drift of smoke from the chimney and a dim light inside the window. The door was opened even before I could get out of the car.
Ed Maier was one of those people who look about 30 from a distance of 20 yards. Blond hair combed straight back, very fair skin, athletic build and no pot. At half the distance, he had added 10 years, maybe 15. He wore high boots, heavy pants and a plaid windbreaker. You began to see the creases in his face, the jowls, the round-shouldered middle age in his stance.
When you got right up there to shake hands, you saw, by the lamplight in the doorway, the undertaker's next. Or at least th
at was the way he struck me at the moment. The blue eyes were glazed. The face was a Rand McNally of varicose veins. The flesh looked like puff paste. Ed Maier seemed to be the victim of one of those diseases that age a man too rapidly.
He invited me in and offered me coffee. He had two cups ready and one of those old conical coffeepots steaming on one of the hot flagstones of the hearth. On the littered table there was a plate with some thick slices of bread and cheese. I made myself a sandwich and sat across from him in a rocker near the fire. I meant to ask him why he'd said "Hurry!" that way, but I didn't quite know how to put it.
He began, "Well, you can quote me as saying we've had a great season. No, sir, I won't be coy about that. The boys have marvelous spirit and we've been getting near onto seventy percent of the rebounds. Thank Red Hockstader for that. Six-four and a natural for all-state. Best center I've ever coached."
"But, Coach," I said gently, "I never heard of Red Hockstader. The Nicolet Island center is a kid named Kris Holmsund."
"Think I don't know that?" said the old man. "I thought you said you wanted to talk about the championship team. That was 1947." I would have sworn that the brew in his coffee cup came more from Kentucky than from Brazil. He took a long swig.
"They really had her fixed up," he said. "The old American Legion Hall. Flags, bunting, more smorgasbord than you ever seen in your life. Couple barrels of beer. Band all in new uniforms. Vee for victory. Big sign read, WELCOME TO OUR CHAMPS. Broke my heart." He drifted off into silence. "They were all my boys, you know. Just like sons."
I wasn't getting anywhere. We were drifting pretty aimlessly in the old man's memory, though we seemed to be skirting the edge of that disaster—school fire or whatever it was—Kinney had told me to check on. I made a guess and tried again.
"So they never showed up at the American Legion Hall for the victory celebration? Is that the way it was, Coach? Remind me just how it happened, will you?" I poured myself some more coffee and made another cheese sandwich. The fire burned hot in the fireplace, but so many of the windowpanes were broken and patched with cardboard that I kept feeling an intermittent draft.
"My wife Julia was alive then. The whole thing broke her up terrible. And Sally run off to Milwaukee and married a bum. Drunken bum, I heard. Not that I've ever thought of her for twenty years."
Now we were really lost in the fog. Might as well give it up for tonight, I thought—but I decided to try once more. "Coach, tell me how it all came about. What happened first that led up to . . .?"
He nodded. "Well, you know," he said patiently, as if repeating an oft-told tale. "You know we won by four points in the overtime. And when we got back to Blackrock, the ferryboat was late. No sign of her. And all the boys crazy mad to get back to the celebration. And me half out of my head myself, I guess . . .
"Well, anyhow, I said wait, by God. Red said no. He was going to drive it alone. I said he was a damn fool. He said it wasn't snowing. I said it was going to any minute and, though the ice was thick enough, still, there were probably weak spots in it here and there. So I took him out back of the smokehouse, where the others couldn't hear, and I talked Red out of it. Thought so. Then I went down the road to a house to use the telephone. When I came back, the whole damn team had left. It was beginning to snow then . . ."
I suddenly understood the old tragedy of Nicolet Island. The champions were all dead, the triumphant team wiped out. But, of course, it was a lot more than that. Everybody on the island was related to one or more of the seven or eight boys on the team. But something was bothering me and I had to explode.
"Why in God's name, then, do the people of this place still let their kids toot around on the ice in old cars? You'd think they'd learn something from what happened. Why, just tonight, coming over, I saw another bunch in a car, chugging along across the strait."
As the old coach stared at me, the merciful potion from his coffee cup began to take hold. The lids seemed to fall over his eyes like the lids of dolls' eyes, pulled down by gravity. His head slowly sank to his forearm and he was silent.
"Coach?" I said experimentally. He didn't move. I debated whether to haul him off to his bed, but then I guessed that he probably spent a good many winter nights in the old easy chair in front of the dying fire—and the ancient phrase was a perfect literal description—in his cups.
I got into bed early and opened my book. I'd brought along Alan Moorehead's The White Nile, which I'd been saving to read and which now seemed to me a good faraway kind of thing to dissipate all the nonsense I'd encountered that afternoon. Because now, in a quiet moment, it seemed to me that the whole business was nonsensical. And, by the time I got sleepy enough to turn out the light, I'd succeeded. I was deep in Tanganyika with Livingstone.
I was shaving the next morning when I heard a knock at the cabin door. "Come in," I yelled, and Roger Nelson pushed open the door. Hearty good mornings on either side. I was feeling refreshed and hungry. "How are the pancakes up there at the lodge?" I asked.
"Great," he said. "But you've got an invitation to breakfast—out. Mr. Ostenson sent me down to ask you."
"Him?" I said to the mirror. "On the ferry on the way over, he took an intense dislike to my looks. Just about threw me in irons. What does he want now?"
"Oh, Axel," Roger said. "He was probably just in a bad mood because he was dying for a drink. Gets that way late in the afternoon. No, this is Nels Ostenson. He's the mayor here. Businessman. Rents out cottages and deals in real estate. He's a very nice guy, you'll see. I think he probably wants to make friends with the press. And you couldn't get better pancakes than they make at the Ostensons."
"Seduced!" I said. "Be out in a minute."
Roger showed me the way. The sun was so brilliant that it almost hurt; and under the bright sky, Nicolet Island looked as I'd hoped it would—the little street, snow-covered fields, sedate stone fences and plain white farmhouses off in the distance. The snow squeaked under our boots.
"Did you ever meet Paul Hornung? What's Willie Davis like in person? Boy, and that Bart Starr! Did you interview him after that game with the Cowboys? How many counts does he take in the pocket when he sees his primary receiver is covered?" Roger kept asking me questions faster than I could answer them. We'd covered a fair amount of the Packer offensive game by the time we got to a frame office building with a sign reading, N. OSTENSON, BUILDERS, REAL ESTATE, PLUMBING & HEATING. Down the side of this, there was a cleared cement walk, between hedges, that led to a pleasant white clapboard house.
Nels Ostenson was a big, gray-haired man with a Kriss Kringle face and a ringing laugh. I liked him immediately. "By damn," he said, one hand on my shoulder, "my favorite author in person. I even read your tragedies—such as 'Colts Nose Out Packers Twenty-four to Twenty.' But we won't talk about that. I'm sure everybody you meet talks Packers until you're sick of it."
He showed me into a pleasant room, where the sun shone through the front windows and bookcases lined the walls. A table with a white tablecloth was set up and, almost as soon as we sat down, a teen-age girl brought in some orange juice ("Daughter Karen, Mr. Pope").
And the pancakes were good—big and light and golden. After a decent pause to make a serious start on them, he said, "I'm going to apologize all over the place, Charley. I think you had a bad introduction to our little town out here, and I'm sorry. Wish I'd known you were coming. First of all, Axel was snotty to you on the ferryboat, I understand. Well, you've got to know Axel to know why. He's a good boy, but he's kind of on edge these days—family trouble. Wife had an operation last summer and she's never really recovered. One kid just about in college and lots of money worries. So I think you ought to forgive him for blowing his stack. He didn't know who you were. I guess he got into one of his moods." Nels said all of this with a sort of grandfatherly grin and some wide waves of his fork. He had a snowy-white napkin tucked in his shirt collar, under his chin.
"I'd already forgotten. I shouldn't have gone poking around the pilothouse, anyway
."
"Good! Good! Now that's settled," he said. "Too bad you had to run onto two of our worst pieces of hard luck just when you arrived. I'm sorry about Ed Maier. I should say straight off that poor Ed is in terrible shape. You know, one of the things about a little community like ours is that we probably make a big mistake by being too charitable. Now, someplace else, Ed would have been put in a home long ago. But folks around here just can't stand the idea of shutting a man up if he's harmless—even if it would be for his own good. Ed's been more or less off his rocker ever since his wife died.
"Trouble is, everybody who knew Ed in the old days loves him. Why, he was practically the local hero for nearly ten years. Nobody kinder than Ed; nobody better at handling the kids. And in a basketball-crazy place like this, somebody who puts out winning teams year after year just about owns the town. Sure, nowadays, he holes up in that shack of his, has the d.t.'s, is full of crazy persecution delusions—but still it seems like nobody had the heart to commit him. Probably my responsibility, but I'm just as weak-kneed as all the rest."
"I gathered something like that," I said. "He gave me a disconnected story about his daughter running away . . ."
"And about the team?" Nels asked. He paused for a minute, looking directly at me.
"Something about the old championship team he coached, yes."
Nels sighed. "It's his worst bugaboo. He had a real crack-up back about Forty-seven, just after we won the championship. Pardon me if you've heard all this—but you have to understand something about that freak accident to understand what happened to him. You'll hear some crazy superstitious stories, but the truth is that we had one of those terrible, foolish accidents that winter and a lot of stupid rumors got started.
"What really happened is this. The team was coming back one night from the championship game at Fish Creek. Bad weather and Ed knew it was going to be worse. They got to Blackrock and the ferry was late coming over for them. We had a kid on the team at that tune, Red Hockstader—great player but a big-headstrong German kid. At Blackrock, he talked the rest of the team into driving over the ice in his old car. You know, cross the strait and surprise everybody by sailing into the welcome party on their own wheels.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 1 Page 18