Blind Your Ponies

by Stanley Gordon West

  “I didn’t know if they’d still be open,” Sam said.

  They got out of the Tempo and climbed the two steps onto the porch. Someone had plastered a large hand-lettered sign on the front door: open all night after the game in honor of the Broncs. Inside, Axel and Vera were bustling around the place, decorating with gold and blue crepe paper, ribbons, and balloons.

  “Oh, I forgot to put up the Closed sign,” Vera said.

  “Looks like you’re planning quite a celebration,” Diana said.

  Axel laid aside a stapler and a roll of gold crepe and turned to them. “The biggest Willow Creek ever saw,” he said. He winked at Sam. “We’re stocked like an ocean liner.”

  Vera scooted to the door and turned the sign around so that the closed faced the street.

  Sam said, “We thought we’d get some lunch, but if you’re—”

  “Sit down, sit down,” Axel said, pulling out a chair for Diana. “We’ve plenty of time, plenty of time. With that woman we could decorate the field house by game time. Besides, if I don’t keep busy I’ll go crazy.”

  “I know the feeling,” Sam said.

  “Where you two been?” Axel said as Vera careened into the kitchen.

  “Out to see the dinosaurs,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, I hear there are lots of their bones around here,” Axel said, rubbing his meaty hands together. “Well, that’s nice, take your mind off the game.”

  “It did until you reminded us.” Diana laughed.

  They ordered and ate turkey, Swiss, and sprout sandwiches on whole wheat while Axel and Vera hung the place in blue and gold.

  Sam finally made himself say, “What if we don’t win?”

  “That won’t matter,” Axel said, “won’t matter a bit. You and the boys have done us proud, one of the top two teams in the state of Montana, and come hell or high water, we’re going to celebrate tonight no matter what.”

  “Tell ’em about the lady,” Vera called from the kitchen.

  “Oh, yeah. Had a funny thing happen here this morning,” Axel said, up on a short stool with his back to them, stringing balloons above the antique-bathtub salad bar. “Tall, slim lady came in around eleven-thirty. Snazzy-looking gal, big pretty eyes.”

  “Sad eyes,” Vera said.

  “Said she wanted to sit at that table over there.” Axel nodded with his head, tying balloon strings with both hands.

  “What’s so strange about that?” Diana asked.

  Axel stepped down off the stool and turned to face them. Invigorated by their journey in the field and still feeling its serenity, Sam had found his appetite and was in the process of destroying his sandwich.

  “Well, we had three tables open, but she waited until the Harringtons finished.”

  “I’ve done that,” Diana said. “When I eat out, I wait for a spot I’d like.”

  “Tell ’em about the bike,” Vera called while scooting back to string ribbon. “Well, she wanted to know about the bicycle built for two, you know,” Axel said, “why it was sittin’ out there on the porch and all. Vera told her a little bit about it.”

  “Next time I came into the dining room, she asked me if it would be all right if she rode it,” Vera said.

  Sam bit the side of his cheek.

  Vera said, “I told her, ‘That’s what it’s there for.’ In that lovely silk dress and all. I thought it was kinda funny.”

  “Did she ride it?” Sam asked, tasting blood inside his mouth.

  “Yeah, by golly,” Axel said, stretching an uninflated balloon in his hands. “When she paid up—left Vera a five-dollar tip—she went out and rode the bike down toward the school. I watched her for a minute, kinda wobbly at first, but she got the hang of it, looked kinda pretty ridin’ that old thing all alone.”

  Sam dropped the remnants of his sandwich on its plate. “Did she give you her name?” he said.

  “No,” Vera told him. “Never did, said she was passin’ through and had lived around here once.”

  “Did you see her car? Her license plate?” Sam said.

  “What is it, Sam, who is she?” Diana asked with a frown.

  Axel said, “I checked out her car after she went ridin’ the bike. Connecticut plates, a white sports car, not sure what. They all look the same nowadays.”

  “Sam, what’s wrong?” Diana asked.

  “Nothing, nothing, did she say where she was going?”

  “Yeah,” Vera said, tying a gold ribbon on the post between the tavern and the dining room. “Said she’d gone to the University in Missoula and was going up there to look around for a few days, said she’d stop by again on her way back. I think she liked the food.”

  Sam wiped his mouth with his napkin and pushed back from the table. He looked into Diana’s puzzled face. “Listen, I have to run, we’re meeting the boys at school around three, we’ll go over the game plan before we eat, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay, but where are you going?”

  “I have something I have to get done before then. Everything’s great for tonight. See you at three.”

  Sam turned and dashed out the front door. Outside, he realized Diana didn’t have her car. He hurried back in. “You take my car, I can walk.”

  He tossed her the keys and spun out the door. He raced up Main Street like Dean Cutter, as if his pants were on fire, though he knew the fire was in his heart. Past the Volunteer Fire House and Willow Creek Tool, past United Methodist, then he swerved east, around Grandma Chapman’s picket fence, down the dirt road where he’d first glimpsed Andrew on his shadowed ride. He cut through the vacant lot where he and Diana made love in the Volvo and turned south on Broadway, past Bremers’ abandoned outhouse, where Tripod led the boys to Parrot that bitterly cold night.

  Harrington’s hound Bonzo joined him as though something was up, and Sam dashed along that graveled road with an unbearable joy in his bursting chest, sprinting, the lop-eared hound bounding alongside. At the far end of town, where the fields and trees surround and take hostage the few houses, he turned into Andrew Wainwright’s drive and raced to the door of the newer ranch-style home. Up on the step he pounded with both fists as though attempting to knock down the door of the world’s sadness—to tear away the vermin-infested curtains and cobwebbed sorrow that shrouded Andrew’s heart, allowing love’s bright warmth to stream in; to break into that land where young elephants and sea turtles are free to live their lives, where wildebeest calves have mothers who never give in to the wild dogs; to break into that place where kids leap out of their wheelchairs to run and dance, where people shed the grinding, incapacitating burden of loneliness, and where basketball teams with only five players win championships.

  Then, with Harrington’s hound kangarooing and barking excitedly, he noticed the attached garage was empty, the white Town Car was gone. There was no one home.

  THEY HAD GATHERED in the gym at three o’clock, all of them waiting when Sam hurried through the door. In street clothes they walked through offensive sets and talked strategy, allowing Tom and Olaf to rest their wounded limbs in the bleachers. Axel had come, and Grandma, and with Scott and Curtis they stood out on the floor impersonating Seely-Swan defenders. Sam had a few new wrinkles for the team that had beaten them a week ago, a fact he accepted as Willow Creek’s advantage. They not only knew the team they were about to face, but they were also favored by the psychology of the underdog, where overconfidence can erode the concentration of the team who previously won. Sam kept track of the time, wanting to stay on schedule right up to the tip-off. Before they left the gym, Sam huddled them out on the floor.

  “This could be the last basketball game Willow Creek High School ever plays,” he said calmly. “Let’s make it a great one—a game that will always make you and the people of Willow Creek proud. Have fun and learn something.”

  “Why do we have to learn something?” Dean said. “It’s our last game.”

  “For the rest of your lives,” Sam said.

  No one spoke for a moment as they all
seemed to reflect on Sam’s words.

  Then Tom broke the spell with his perfect imitation of a cow.

  “Mooooooow!”

  “Let’s go chip ice!” Pete shouted.

  “Yeah!” the boys responded, and they linked hands.

  “Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win!”

  In the lengthening daylight of early March, they strolled up Main Street to Sam’s house, where Diana and the cheerleaders were preparing food. The landscape surrounding town, alive with promise, lifted Sam’s spirit. With their choice of any movie they wanted to watch, Sam had suspected there wouldn’t be much discussion, and while they sprawled around the rummage-sale living room watching Man of La Mancha, the girls kept a steady stream of pizza coming from the oven, to be washed down by fruit juices. At the end, when Cervantes and his squire, Sancho, climbed the stairs of the dungeon to face the Inquisition, the boys headed out the door for Rozinante to face the last team in the state who stood in the road to their underdog dreams.

  CHAPTER 83

  Sam guided the carrot-colored bus along the interstate. He glanced over at Dean and Curtis jabbering in the right front seat. Curtis had his arm in a sling and both of them wore their inspirational caps pulled over one ear. Curtis was giving his younger, less-experienced teammate tips on playing defense, insights that come from trying to compete with and outwit conspicuously more-talented boys.

  “When he goes by you,” Curtis said, “reach around and slap the ball from behind him.”

  Sam could see Bozeman on the far horizon, the silver dome of the field house barely visible in the twilight. He figured that, win or lose, Olaf would be selected on the All-State team along with Peter and Rob. Tom would most certainly be second-team, and if they won, possibly first-team. But who should be on the All-Courageous team? It was one thing for boys with athletic ability to work hard and receive praise for playing well, but it was quite another to go out there weaponless, without quickness or coordination, and take a stand against boys with all of those attributes.

  He considered Curtis and Dean. None of this could have happened without their bravery and grit, and though they would never be talented basketball players in the true sense of the word, which boy had shown the greater courage? Would it be Olaf with his gigantic height and reach and heart, or Peter with his skill and grace and bravado? Would it be Rob with his natural athletic gifts, or Tom with his muscle and agility? Or was it Dean and Curtis, who had to go out naked each night with dull swords and crooked arrows, exposed in the bright light of their inability and hamstrung by their gracelessness, yet standing there on the battle line, doing what they can to help the team win. Were these not the truly heroic, who would never make an All-State Team, never be recognized with distinction by the public or press, but who had come the furthest and given the most?

  Sam turned to them again and smiled. “How’s the wrist?”

  “Okay,” Curtis said, “I wish they’d let me play.”

  “I wish they would, too,” Dean said.

  “You’ll do great tonight, Dean,” Sam said. “You’re the best runner in the state.”

  Sam turned Rozinante off the interstate and into Bozeman. They drove through town unnoticed, this unlikely, whittled-down team in their unlikely, whittled-down bus, on their last journey together. Their coach trembled somewhere inside, never forgetting he bore Andrew Wainwright’s reprieve in the vest pocket of his heart.

  THERE WAS NOTHING Sam could have done to prepare the boys for what greeted them when they ventured out into the arena to warm up. They had gone directly to the locker room on arrival and had no inkling as to the proportions of their celebrity. Word of the crazy little basketball team from Willow Creek had been broadcast like thistle seed on the winds of radio, television, newsprint, and word-of-mouth to such a degree that not only were there no seats available in the field house, but the standing-room-only crowd had pushed the gate to well over ten thousand.

  Ten thousand who generated the roar of a great ocean breaking against the land when they recognized the Willow Creek players in their cock-eyed caps loping out onto the court—Tom and Olaf, like gimpy cowboys, going directly to the basket while the other three ran a lap around the court. Sam was astonished at the noise when the coaches and Scott made their way to the bench with their gear. Seely-Swan came dashing twelve strong, circling the floor in their black and gold, and the spectators calmed and settled into their seats.

  The five of them shot layups and free throws, and Sam noticed a new addition to their bench. Under her chair in a satchel, Grandma had that motley parrot, its head sticking out like a hood ornament, the last piece of luck in her medicine bag. She also had a small radio, and its earphones protruded from under her brown fedora.

  The cheerleaders had painted some signs after their frustrating attempts to coordinate the crowd the previous night, and he could see that they’d kept it simple. Carter and Louella sorted the placards, which each had only one or two words, in bold blue and gold:

  DEFENSE! GO BRONCS GO! FIGHT TEAM FIGHT!

  With five minutes till game time, the tiny Willow Creek contingent left the arena, winding their way through the hundreds standing at ground level at the corners of the court. When they were all inside, Sam closed the locker-room door, shutting out the tempest and finding an eddy of calm. The boys sat along one bench with Sancho. Axel and Grandma had opted to stay out in the arena with the cheerleaders, as though they felt they would be infringing on this special moment that belonged to the nine of them.

  “There’s so many people,” Rob said.

  Pete settled on a bench. “And they’re rockin’ for us.”

  “They like us,” Tom said and smiled at Dean.

  Then, with Diana standing beside him, Sam felt their eyes come to him in the numbing, tingling silence, expectant, hopeful, and hungry.

  “I wanted a moment with you before the game.” Sam regarded each of them, carefully, finding there the focused steel of five boys.

  “We’ve come a long way. I only want to remind you that you already have everything you need to win. You’ve worked hard. You’ve earned the right to be here, and I want you to have the fun you deserve tonight. But we’ve learned that nothing comes easy. I want you to go out and play as hard as you can play, give as much as you can give, for as long as you can stand, so that one day, when you look back, you can smile proudly. That’s the best kind of fun and it will last you a lifetime.”

  Sam’s throat filled and he fought to finish.

  “If I could have one wish tonight, other than winning, it would be that I could be out on the floor playing beside you.”

  Sam nodded at Diana.

  “I want to thank you boys for the ride,” she said. “It’s been the most fun I’ve ever had, and like Coach Pickett, I’d give my right arm to be out on the court with you. But remember, we are, all of us, Scott and Curtis and all the people from Willow Creek, we’re out there beside you and that’s why we’re going to win!”

  “Yeeaaahhhh!” the boys shouted, leaping to their feet. Neither coach could say more and Sam extended his hands. They quickly huddled around him and lifted their cheer.

  Weaving their way through the standing crowd, they found the court, enshrouded in a galaxy of human faces. A volcanic roar erupted when the fans spotted the Willow Creek boys trotting across the court. The Seely-Swan team was shooting baskets at the far end as the horn sounded, calling both teams to the bench for introductions.

  Dean was the first Bronc announced, and after slapping palms with everyone on the bench, he dashed across the floor and up into the bleachers to his undaunted sister. He gently laid high fives on her dancing hands. Then he carefully fit his cap on her golden-crowned head to work what magic she and the cap could still muster at the gate to the castle. The crowd noise dropped considerably as the spectators observed this unexpected ritual and then increased dramatically as Dean raced back down the stairs and stood at the west free-throw circle, his unruly brown hair looking as though he’d
been struck by lightning.

  The introductions went swiftly and each Bronc was knighted by the tumultuous vocal support bestowed on them by the exuberant fans. Each boy in turn gave those on the bench high fives and then ran the bleacher stairs to do the same with Denise Cutter before joining his teammates in the exclusive circle of camaraderie on the court. Sam spotted Andrew sitting beside Denise, but Andrew’s reprieve would have to wait until after the game. That didn’t seem long; Andrew had endured for more than twenty years. For now, Sam had to wipe all else out of his mind and concentrate on the game with every cell of his body. He would not be outcoached. They announced the coaches and the teams broke for their benches through a great storm of noise.

  Sam knelt in the middle; the five circled him, and Axel, Grandma, Sancho, Curtis, and Diana formed a protective shelter around them.

  “Go hard!” Rob yelled.

  “We didn’t come this far to lose,” Tom said.

  “Go, Oaf!” Pete shouted.

  They linked hands in the huddle and gave one shout in unison. “Team!”

  When they broke the circle, the four of them laid their caps on the bench. Then five of them walked onto the court together. The field house vibrated with the electricity of human emotion. Lowell Lapp, Seely-Swan’s 6'4" center, faced off with Olaf at the center jump circle. The referee blew his whistle and lofted the ball into the air.

  CHAPTER 84

  Diana held her breath, almost unable to watch. Olaf controlled the tip and Willow Creek swiftly unsheathed its weapons. Their classy opponents, whose obvious objective was to strangle anything in the paint, dropped back into a smothering zone. The Broncs moved the ball around the outside until Pete got a high pass to Olaf in the low post. The Blackhawk defense collapsed on him like a wet tent. Diana couldn’t fault the opposing coach for concentrating his troops to stop Gustafson and Stonebreaker inside, but that had become the unforgivable sin against this Willow Creek team. Up to his armpits in Seely-Swan players, Olaf snapped a pass back out to his momentarily unattended teammate. Peter promptly knocked down the open shot, and the multitudes came to their feet in an oceanic roar, and Willow Creek was on the board.