Blind Your Ponies

by Stanley Gordon West

  “Dean takes Miller,” Sam said. “Rob, you play Tom’s position. Dean, you hound Miller wherever he is on the floor. Stay in his face, ride in his jock, stick to him like sweat. The rest of you stay in the zone.”

  “If anyone can stick to him like sweat,” Pete said, “Dean can.”

  “You got that right,” Rob said.

  And he did. Dean never stopped running, causing the Twin Bridges boy to shove him away in frustration once—Dean missing the front end of the one-and-one. With Tom on the bench wearing Dean’s slightly-singed maroon cap, Twin Bridges pulled ahead. But Dean held Corky Miller, their best outside scorer, to one field goal, fouling him twice in the first few minutes of the third quarter.

  “Get ’em, Dean!” Diana yelled.

  They battled against nine other boys who were being rested and coming into the game fresh. In the absence of his powerful teammate, Olaf elevated his game and began hurting them inside, first going to his right, then to his left, eyes ablaze. On one lunge to the basket and a resounding stuff, he unintentionally caught Stone in the head with an elbow.

  “Yeah!” she hollered, leaping up with a fist in the air, her scorebook skittering onto the hardwood. “Nail him!”

  Coach Long had the paint clogged in the second half. Curtis and Dean kept loitering beside the paint and passing the ball high to Olaf. Rob and Pete began knocking blades out of the windmill with their outside shooting, twos and threes winging resplendently overhead while the Falcons were preoccupied trying to bottle up Olaf.

  Then, scaring the wits out of them, Olaf picked up two quick fouls and Sam had to take him out. With fire in his eyes, Tom threw his warmup jacket aside and charged onto the court. With Olaf’s inside threat parked at the curb and Tom hobbled, Twin Bridges could concentrate on Willow Creek’s two hot-handed guards. Showing their experience and maturity, the gifted Falcons went on a 12–3 run closing the third quarter.

  Down by four, Sam didn’t know how far he could let them extend the lead before returning Olaf to the game. Olaf steamed on the bench, begging, promising he wouldn’t foul out. With Dean and Curtis on the floor, Willow Creek couldn’t match up with their well-coached opponents, and Twin Bridges exploited the Broncs’ weaknesses. Sam called time out. They were down seven with just under four minutes. He could wait no longer.

  Sam took Olaf by the shoulders. “You’re going in the game. Stay in there.”

  Sam turned to the boys, who were guzzling water and toweling their dripping bodies.

  “Get the ball to Olaf if it’s there. Tight zone. Make them shoot from the pasture. No foolish fouls! Olaf, watch for the long outlet when you get a rebound. I think you can catch them asleep, if it’s there, run!”

  It was there. Miller missed a fifteen-footer over Curtis and Olaf snatched the rebound. He fired a strike down the floor. Rob caught it on one bounce and put the quarter in the jukebox.

  Curtis picked up his fourth foul, but Harkin only hit one free throw. Later, Pete lofted a flawless alley-oop for Olaf. Olaf went up and hammered it through the rim, bringing a thundering roar from the crowd. But when he came back down, he landed on Stone’s foot and turned an ankle. He grabbed his foot and his face was lined with pain. The referee stopped the game. Olaf struggled to his feet as Sam and Diana met him on the floor.

  “How is it?” Sam asked.

  “I must play,” the wincing boy said, tenderly stepping on his right foot. Diana examined the ankle.

  “It’s going to swell,” she said. “To the bench I am not coming,” Olaf said, and he hobbled away from the startled coaches and referee.

  The official signaled Twin Bridges’ ball out and the game resumed. Down by four, Olaf slapped Stone’s turnaround off course. Rob picked it out of the air and hit Pete streaking down the floor, catching the Falcons flat-footed. Pete went high and deposited the ball gracefully with a finger roll. Corky Miller arrived too late and was whistled for the foul.

  “In their face!” Diana hollered, “In their face!”

  Pete went through his ritual on the line, and Sam could see that he was talking to himself. Then he rattled home the free throw with thirty-seven seconds left. They were down by one. Sam called time out. While Diana taped Olaf’s ankle in a stopgap manner over his sock, Sam yelled fiercely over the crowd noise.

  “We go into our zone press. If they get it across midcourt, go man-for man and get on them tight. They’ll try to burn the clock, so if we don’t get a steal in the first ten or twelve seconds, foul!”

  The cheerleaders had the crowd roaring.

  “Go, Broncs, go! Go, Broncs, go! Go, Broncs, go!”

  The arena shook. All spectators were standing. Twin Bridges fought through the trapping press and got the ball into the front court. Willow Creek picked them up all over the floor, hawking the ball. Corky Miller looked one way and then passed the other, a tendency Pete had picked up on. Pete gambled, left his man, and slashed into the passing lane, picking off the ball. He sprinted downcourt with Miller and Neely in desperate pursuit. With the grace of a gazelle, he went high and made sure. A soft bank off the glass that cranked the scoreboard to read WILLOW CREEK 74, TWIN BRIDGES 73. Twenty-six seconds.

  The stands shook with elation, but the Falcons came winging swiftly, cutting, setting picks, weaving around the Broncs’ barricades. With eight seconds on the clock, Travis Neely faked a shot. Rob and Pete lunged toward him, leaving Corky Miller open. Neely bounced the ball to his teammate, and the stocky senior guard poised to shoot. Olaf hobbled out at him. Miller dished it off to Stone who was momentarily alone under the basket. With Tom coming on desperately, Stone went up sure-handedly and canned the layup.

  Twin Bridges 75, Willow Creek 74.

  With the team momentarily stunned, Tom had the presence of mind to shout at the official.

  “Time out! Time out!”

  The clock stopped with three seconds.

  Stone shook a fist in Olaf’s face and grinned with the dragon’s smile. The Willow Creek fans fell deathly silent, crushed under the foot of a fate they could never seem to escape, refugees in a high-fenced compound along the border where they could see into the land of victors but would never have the proper credentials to be admitted. Their last hope was gone.

  The boys staggered to the bench. There were no more chances, no more challenges. Their dream had three seconds to live. The team slumped on the bench, devastated. He went down on one knee in front of them, a furnace of anger roaring inside of him.

  “Listen to me! Listen to me!”

  He shook Tom by the shoulders, swatted Rob on the thigh.

  “Damnit, listen to me! It’s not over! Are you going to lie down and quit? You going to give up? Fight it, fight it, don’t quit!”

  Pete crouched on his knees in front of them and pounded the floor, shouting.

  “Listen to him, damnit, listen to Coach! If there’s one chance in a million, we’ve got to go for it!”

  They came out of their slouching surrender and looked to their coach, daring to entertain hope for the infinity of three seconds.

  “All right,” Sam said with a measure of calm. “We’ll run that out-of-bounds pick play we’ve practiced. Remember? Rob you take it out. We can only pray that they’ll try to hassle you.”

  The buzzer blared.

  “Pete, don’t set the pick until the ref gives Rob the ball,” Sam said. “Don’t let the kid see you.”

  The referee came to the bench. “Bring ’em out, Coach.”

  “Rob, if they don’t fall for it, if they don’t guard you, throw the ball to Olaf. Olaf, catch and shoot, catch and shoot.”

  They huddled up and shouted, “Win! Win! Win! Win! Win!”

  Diana prayed that they would put a man on Rob and that the ref would have the moxie to call it. The Willow Creek followers stood, ashen, unable to breathe, bracing themselves.

  The Broncs took their positions on the floor. Rob was at the far end with a referee, standing out of bounds to the left of the basket. Pete loitered nonchal
antly around the free throw circle. Obviously in pain, Olaf planted himself on the free-throw line at the opposite end. Tom in one corner, Curtis in the other. The Falcons surrounded Olaf except for Travis Neely, who trotted to the other end of the court to guard Rob, ready to harass him when he tried to inbound the ball. Diana felt a tingle of hope—they were falling for it! The official blew his whistle and handed Rob the ball. Rob whacked the ball with his right hand, starting the play. Just inbounds, crowding Rob, Neely waved his arms in the air.

  Fear grabbed Diana by the throat. Pete moved swiftly up to the baseline to Neely’s right. Coach Long, seeing the play, stood screaming at Neely, but in the volcanic roar the boy never heard his coach’s warning, focusing tenaciously on Rob. Rob took a quick step to his right. Neely reacted, taking a quick step to his left to stay in front of Rob, his arms waving in the air. Then Rob took off running to his left along the baseline, still out of bounds. Neely instantly sprinted after Rob. He never saw Pete, who stood just inbounds with his feet slightly spread, facing the Falcon defender. Neely smacked into Peter like a stampeding bull hitting a wire fence, flattening Peter and crashing on top of him.

  The referee hesitated, caught off guard.

  Call it, call it, have the guts!

  Then a whistle, the arm signal, the foul called.

  The bewildered Willow Creek fans broke out of their despair with an escalating uproar. Sam leaped from his crouch with a fist in the air.

  “Yes! Yes!”

  Travis Neely picked himself off the floor with an expression of utter shock. The Twin Bridges section went deathly silent. Without taking a second off the clock, Willow Creek was shooting a one-and-one.

  The Falcons called time out. At the bench, neither Diana nor Sam could look Pete in the eye. They realized what unbearable expectations they had placed on their splendid guard—the overwhelming pressure that singled out Peter Strong. No one could help him now. He was absolutely alone. They would win, tie, or lose by how he stared back into the callous, unforgiving face of that pressure.

  “After the free throws,” Sam said, as calmly as he could, “everyone fall back quickly into a tight zone. They’ll have to pitch it from the outhouse. Don’t foul. No matter what, don’t foul.”

  Pete toed the line and took his time. He went through his ritual and silently mouthed several words. Then he flipped the ball into the hope-drenched atmosphere. It fell as faithful as moonlight. 75 to 75.

  The Willow Creek crowd enjoyed a moment of pandemonium and then quickly hushed as Pete got set for the back end of the one-and-one. The Twin Bridges fans, in total shell shock, tried ineffectually to muster a disrupting noise. Pete turned and glanced to the other end of the court. It would appear he was conscientiously checking to see that Rob and Curtis were back, guarding the house. But Diana discerned that he was gazing into the face of Denise Cutter. With Tom and Olaf crouched along the lane, Pete took a deep breath, exhaled, moved his lips as if he were talking to himself, and turned the ball loose. It rotated unflinchingly through the noise and hopes and dread of those watching, disdaining the iron rim and nesting in the nylon arms awaiting perfection.

  Willow Creek 76, Twin Bridges 75.

  Diana erupted from the bench. “We did it! We did it!”

  The unexpended three seconds still languished on the clock. With panic in his face, Corky Miller heaved a rainbow toward Harkin and Stone. Olaf slid in front of the two Falcons. The ball descended and he outreached them for it, having caught fifty similar passes every day at practice. Olaf held it high and the buzzer blared. The Willow Creek bench and fans broke into a frenzied celebration. Diana stood dumbfounded for a moment, until the outpouring crowd swept her away.

  CRAIG STONE STOOD in the paint, stunned, his face pale. Olaf turned to him.

  “You could beat us, you turkeys were thinking?” Olaf shoved the ball into Stone’s hands. “This is a basketball!”

  Stone slammed the ball on the floor and formed a fist as Tom limped up beside Olaf.

  “Try it, dipstick!”

  “I could whip both of your asses,” Stone said.

  “That’ll be the day,” Tom said, curling his own fist.

  Then, quickly the cascading throngs washed Stone aside, and the bull rider embraced his limping teammate and shouted, “I love you, you big crazy Norwegian!”

  In an instant, the team was swept away in an unending flow of the euphoric and redeemed denizens who claimed allegiance to the flag of Willow Creek, Montana.

  CHAPTER 74

  On the journey home, Olaf rested his leg up, across the bus aisle, with his ankle wrapped in ice. A seat up, Tom’s knee was receiving the same treatment. Fans, diehards old and new, piled in their cars and trucks and followed the little carrot-colored bus.

  They were going to the State Tournament!

  In some strange way he’d known it all along and yet now, when it was fact, he found it hard to grasp. The incredible win over Twin Bridges tempted him to believe that—though he knew he’d be credited with brilliance under fire—they were on a course guided by some mysteriously benevolent hand. But, by all indications, Olaf’s sprain was severe. It blew up when they removed the shoe and tape, even though they immediately iced it. He couldn’t put weight on his right foot and Andrew had rounded up crutches, the tallest he could find. Still, Olaf had to bow toward the earth to make them fit.

  At the Blue Willow Inn, Axel carefully set the second-place Divisional trophy on a high shelf above the glass pastry counter where everyone could see the shining brass basketball player, like an Oscar, holding a basketball high in one hand. It outshone the many dull and tarnished antiques displayed throughout the inn. Sam observed the celebrating people. They couldn’t squeeze one more body in the building, and yet the grateful fans made ample room for Olaf and Tom to keep their painfully strained limbs up on chairs and properly iced.

  The Willow Creekians couldn’t get over the extraordinary win. They reminded Sam incessantly that he had clearly outcoached Jeff Long—there never should have been a Twin Bridges defender anywhere near where he could potentially foul.

  He was praising Peter again for his two flawless free throws when Grandma fought her way through the mob. “I wanted to ask you what you said just before you shot the free throws?” she asked Peter.

  “ ‘As long as she swims, I will cook,’” he said.

  “What a sweetheart. Well, you were sure cookin’, Grandson. I never saw two prettier shots in all my born days. I don’t know how you did it with all the people and noise—”

  “And hurricane sea?” Peter said. He paused and glanced at Sam. “I owed them hot coffee after Friday night.”

  Sam had no idea what they were talking about, but sensed it might be something to do with her illness, and he didn’t dare remain longer to find out. With a nod at them both he escaped into the swelling assemblage of delirious camp followers.

  Diana checked the ice packs from time to time, removing them at intervals. She wormed through the crush and settled in Sam’s lap for a few minutes, as though announcing to the community what they already knew. Sam thought he would burst like a balloon with sunshine.

  The Painters sat near Olaf and were as proud of “their boy.” Sam heard talk that Mervin Painter was trying to convince Olaf to go to college at Montana State University in Bozeman and continue living with them. Sam watched the kid in a giant’s body, at the center of Willow Creek’s universe and taking it all in. He had become the fearsome offensive weapon that Sam always believed he could become. The unpretentious school boy had undressed Craig Stone, had poured thirty-five points down Stone’s throat like cod liver oil. Sam only hoped that someone on the opposing teams at State would stick an elbow in Olaf’s ribs or worse, if in fact Olaf could play with that ankle. But if this was his last game, he had done it in bronze.

  Amos sat beside Tom for a spell, one arm around the back of the bull rider’s chair, listening to Tom and Rob and Pete exuberantly relive the game with expressive faces and excited voices
. Then, by chance, Sam caught the roan Tom Mix hat ducking out the kitchen. Sam pushed his way through the boisterous crowd and met Axel by the serving counter.

  “Did you talk to Amos?” Sam asked.

  “No, no.” Beads of perspiration glistened on his balding head. “Never got a chance.”

  Sam hurried through the narrow kitchen and out the back door. The darkness blinded him. He stood a moment, peering across the field behind the inn. After a moment he could vaguely distinguish a distant figure moving west toward the tracks.

  “Amos!” he called. “Amos!”

  Sam ran cautiously through the dried weeds and grass, nearly tripping over an old car engine, but Amos had disappeared. He stopped and scanned the back side of town. There was the abandoned concrete one-room jail off to the south, and then Harrington’s house on its own gravel road down a block. But north and west there was only open ground to the tracks and beyond, except for the cemetery with its rows of evergreen sentinels. Sam continued west.

  “Amos, it’s Sam,” he called. “I need to talk to you.”

  When he hit the railroad bed, he stopped.

  “Here,” Sam heard to his right.

  He turned to find Amos standing beside the tracks.

  “Oh, good, I thought I’d missed you.”

  Sam scrambled up the slight embankment.

  “Axel wanted me to warn you. There’s been a man asking about you, or someone like you, a Granville Hamilton. Axel thinks he’s a detective or something.”

  Amos sighed. “Only a matter of time.”

  “Who is he? Is he looking for you?”

  Amos squatted wearily and sat on the rail. Sam settled beside him.

  “Do I have to worry about the money… I mean… the things you left for Tom?”

  “Did ya have yerself a little peek?”

  Sam’s natural tendency was to lie, to deny any wrongdoing, but Amos’s question had none of the guilt-laden righteousness Sam had been used to. He went for honesty.