Blind Your Ponies

by Stanley Gordon West

  With a cocksureness in their faces, Seely-Swan came storming with their shooters: Thomas, Boyd, Cooper, and McHenry. Rob played the wing where Curtis usually scrambled, and Dean chased the ball out front with his fire-alarm intensity and his barbed-wire endurance. Diana was so proud of them she could hardly bear it. She was torn between trying to enjoy this magnificent moment and her desperate hope that the boys would win, feeling like a stowaway witnessing a great sea battle, helpless to influence its outcome.

  The outlandish gang on the bench were a sight to behold: a perspiring, balding man, shaped like a fire hydrant, in a tight blue suit; a skinny, lop-eared sophomore with his arm in a sling and wearing a shopworn cap; a chubby freshman with a matching cap; and a gnarly, snow-haired woman with a brown fedora on her head, a three-legged cat in her jacket, and a parrot in a gym bag under her seat.

  The cheerleaders wore blue pleated skirts and gold jerseys and, with the help of their placards, had thousands volleying to their lead.

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

  Both teams played in-your-face basketball, showing a stonelike determination that would not back down, displaying grace and quickness and athletic moves that even surprised Diana. Rob and Pete were making Seely-Swan pay by arcing glorious long-range bull’s-eyes overhead, while the Blackhawks were preoccupied in a shadow dance with Olaf. Diana would have been giddy on the bench had it not been for the fact that Tom was hurting badly. He couldn’t move well laterally or jump well, and though he tried to conceal it, his knee appeared to be punishing him unremittingly.

  At the quarter, Willow Creek led, 19 to 16. The players caught their breath on the bench, and Diana iced Tom’s knee. Sam hadn’t used a timeout, deciding instead to save them.

  “Rob, Pete,” Sam shouted, “keep burning them until they loosen up on Olaf.” He looked into Olaf’s eyes. “How’s the ankle?”

  “I am not feeling the ankle.”

  “All right, be patient,” Sam said. “Your time is coming.” He regarded the others. “You’re playing perfectly. How did you get so good?”

  “We didn’t forget our balls,” Dean said.

  Sam smiled and shouted above the din, “You’re right, you guys never forgot your balls! Have fun!”

  In the second quarter it became a classic game between two teams who could run if the opportunity was there and play excellent half-court basketball when it wasn’t. They had done their homework and they put on a clinic of disciplined teamwork: bodies colliding and banging in the paint and shooters coming free around picks and screens to demonstrate their fine-tuned touch and flawless eyes.

  The deadeyes Thomas and Boyd were keeping Seely-Swan close from outside while Olaf was making life miserable for Lapp around the basket. McHenry, their lean, quick forward, was beginning to have his way against Tom as though he knew the infuriated bull rider couldn’t stay with him any longer. With gnashing teeth, Tom was conceding the sixteen-to eighteen-footer and the gifted McHenry began hitting. But as the Seely-Swan coach released his guards to come out on Rob and Peter, who were killing them softly, Olaf set up housekeeping inside. With room to move, he sucked Lapp into immediate foul trouble and the 6'4" center had to retreat to the bench with three. Sam burned a timeout with less than three minutes in the quarter. Tom wouldn’t make it to halftime without a break.

  “You want to sit out for the last few minutes?” Sam asked Tom.

  “I can’t. They’d slaughter us,” Tom said.

  “Yes, you can,” Sam said. “We can play four-man zone.”

  “We can hold ’em,” Pete shouted.

  That Tom would even consider it gave Diana some understanding of the exorbitant price the knee was exacting. Tom glanced at his teammates and paused. The horn sounded. They all regarded Tom.

  “You guys just want to have all the fun,” he said. “I can wet-nurse my knee the rest of my life!”

  The boys held their ground with deliberate execution and defense. Olaf rejected Lapp’s turnaround and Dean found the castaway ball in his hands. Before he could pass off to a teammate, Cooper clobbered him, trying to steal it back. With great deliberation at the foul line, Dean aimed through his sweat-smeared prisms and rattled in a garbage shot. The sea roared. His second attempt hit the backboard and came high off the rim. Somehow Tom outmuscled McHenry for the rebound and banked it down the well. When time ran out in the first half, the court shook with the adulation of the standing thousands. Together, the Broncs hauled their four-point advantage to the locker room.

  Halftime became an emotional storm of expectation and dread. Diana applied the ice and the boys jabbered excitedly about what was working against Seely-Swan, their confidence swelling along with Tom’s knee. Grandma, with Tripod’s head poking out of her Twins jacket, moved among the boys with praise and encouragement. Following her instincts, Diana nodded at Grandma.

  “Would you like to say something?”

  She paused, glancing around at the boys. Then she bent slightly with her hands on her knees and squinted into their faces.

  “This is no time for generosity. You got to give ’em Biblical law.” She shook a fist. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” She straightened and pointed her hatchetlike chin. “That trophy belongs in Willow Creek and if it doesn’t get there tonight, it never will forever and ever, amen.”

  “Let’s get it!” Rob yelled.

  “Okay!” Sam shouted, “we’re one half away. Let’s finish it!”

  They rallied and shouted and some of them loped back to the arena. Some of them limped.

  Time accelerated in the reverberating field house, the atmosphere dripped humid with hope. Diana felt as though she would be swept away with the heart-pounding exhilaration. Seely-Swan came with four rested substitutes and they attempted to get a running game started. Willow Creek played them an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and effectively throttled the ploy by dominating the boards and not allowing them to get out running. The fresher Blackhawks had obviously been told to be more aggressive on offense, driving slapdash into the zone and looking for the whistle. It worked to a degree. Olaf and Rob slapped away several attempts, but Pete and Tom each picked up their third foul. Gauging the weariness in their faces, Sam burned a timeout in the middle of the quarter, leaving two in the bank.

  “Get your bodies in front of them,” Sam shouted, “and don’t slap at the ball, they’re trying to put you on the bench.”

  Late in the third quarter, Dean didn’t see a pick and collided with Thomas. It was his fourth foul. But the boys demonstrated a seasoning and savvy that made Diana smile with pride, slowing the pace, circulating the ball outside the Blackhawks’ fence line, patiently looking for the good shot while subtly milking the clock. In the closeness of their daily work, she had missed how very good they had become. Despite Dean’s precarious state, she couldn’t prevent confidence from seeping into her pores and bloodstream. When the boys came to the bench at the end of the third quarter, they were up by seven and were controlling the game.

  “You’re playing great, you’re playing great!” Sam shouted as they flopped in the chairs.

  They dried their faces and sloshed water. Sam knelt in front of Dean and gently took the kid’s face in his hands.

  “You have to lay off. Watch out for the picks, play it loose. We need you in there, okay?”

  Dean nodded. “I’m not scared anymore,” he said.

  “Good, that’s good,” Sam said. “All right, we’re one step from home, I can see the light in the window!”

  Diana could hardly breathe as the fourth quarter began. Seely-Swan, with the well-rested regulars, jumped on them with their zone press. But the Broncs expected it and with disciplined finesse repeatedly used Olaf to break it. Peter hit a scintillating jumper from the paint and Rob put back an Olaf miss.

  “Run ’em off the floor!” Diana screamed.

  In the breathtaking ebb and flow, Willow Creek held a seven-point advantage.

  “Go, Broncs,
go! Go, Broncs, go!” the crowd pealed.

  Olaf was hobbling and Tom limping, and seconds seemed to hang to the clock. Boyd outquicked Rob. Pete slid over in his driving lane. The Black-hawk guard went for the layup. In the collision, Pete was whistled for the foul, his fourth, and Diana’s stomach moved up a notch toward her throat. Boyd canned both free throws.

  With the Broncs on the attack, Tom slipped to the floor reaching for Rob’s bounce pass. McHenry grabbed the ball and heaved it upcourt to Thomas, sprinting along the sideline. Dean raced to plug the leak.

  “Let him go!” Diana shouted. “Let him go!”

  Thrashing like a runaway penguin and using most of the speedometer, Dean intersected Thomas’s line of trajectory and went up with him, trying to block the shot. He took the Seely-Swan guard tailspinning into the first row of bleachers, and the ball sailed into the crowd. The ref blew his whistle and pointed at the scrappy freshman. It was only then that both Dean and the roaring partisans realized the consequences.

  It was his fifth foul! Dean was out of the game.

  All the oxygen seemed to be sucked from Diana’s body.

  CHAPTER 85

  The buzzer belched its note of disaster like a delinquent fog-horn to a ship already on the rocks. The scoreboard showed a bloodied “5” next to Dean’s number “32.” With three minutes and twenty-nine seconds on the game clock, Willow Creek, leading by five points, would have to continue with only four players.

  Sam called timeout as the Cutter boy, his chest heaving, came off the court dripping with the despair of his soul-searching innocence. The spectators throughout the field house stood roaring, a tumultuous tribute to the intrepid little freshman. Sam patted him on the back as he dropped onto the bench. He was crying.

  “You played great!” Sam shouted to him. “You got us this far and we’re going to win it!”

  The huge audience remained on their feet, humming over what was transpiring in front of them. The boys sagged on the bench. Sam crouched.

  “Okay, we’ve practiced this a million times,” Sam yelled, attempting to remain collected. “Bring the ball up with ‘volley ball,’ four-man zone on defense. Remember, we’ve got the advantage, you’re used to playing four on five, they’ve never done it. Be patient, use your heads, and just when they think they’ve got us, we’ll shove them in the well.”

  They joined hands in a circle and shouted “Team!”

  Then Tom said, “Each time he falls…” And the rest of them chanted, “… he shall rise again!” Then the four of them turned into the face of what remained.

  GRANDMA CHAPMAN PRESSED Tripod to her breast as a wave of sadness attacked her. They had worked so hard, had fought their way through the woods to get here, and then this happens. Everything was going against them, Hazel had been right, it was too good to be true. Despair squatted on her with the weight of her good friend, who was somewhere behind her in the stands. Just off to the right of the bench and back a few rows, she had heard loud voices shouting nonstop for Gustafson and Stone-breaker. Finally she turned to see who it was and was startled to recognize Craig Stone and Gary Harkin, along with several other Twin Bridges players, athletes who had made their road so tough, shouting their guts out for Willow Creek. She feathered the volume up on her radio.

  “… can hardly hear ourselves think with the noise of this crowd as the four boys come back on the floor… It’s deafening, this field house is rocking, folks… The teams line up at the free-throw lane… Thomas will have two shots with his team trailing, 56 to 51… This boy has played a hell of a game and his seventeen points have kept Seely-Swan close… He bounces the ball and gets set… oooh, it’s in and out… the crowd goes crazy, most of them flying Willow Creek’s banner now… He’ll get another… Thomas sets himself, shoots the ball… count it… Seely-Swan has pulled to within four, 56–52… and here we go, four against five. Wow… let me tell you, fans, I’ve never seen anything like this in a state tournament… Johnson gets the ball to Gustafson, Gustafson holds the ball high in the backcourt, looking for a teammate against the zone press… gets the ball to Strong… Strong dribbles up the side… Thomas and McHenry trap him, there’s that lob back to Gustafson just over the midcourt line… They’ve broken the press all night with their big center… Gustafson gets the ball to Johnson… Johnson wings it over to Strong… three minutes and seventeen seconds.”

  Grandma turned up the volume and hugged Tripod to her breast.

  “The Blackhawks are swarming, double-teaming, but the Willow Creek boys are using the clock and at the same time avoid being trapped… Strong guns it down the side to Stonebreaker… he whips it cross-court to Johnson… Willow Creek is moving without the ball, back cutting and going four corners, always moving, no one standing still… Their coach is only a few feet from us here at the table and I can feel the sparks coming from the man… Johnson dribbles up high… bounce passes into Gustafson… he pops the ball back out to Strong… The two Willow Creek guards are frustrating the Blackhawks with their speed and ball handling… Johnson gets it high to Gustafson in the paint, they collapse on him… the big center sends it back out to Johnson… he’s open, takes the shot… Holy cow!… He nails it!… The field house is going crazy… Willow Creek 58,Seely-Swan 52, with just under three minutes in the game.”

  Grandma jumped up, almost flipping Tripod out of her jacket.

  “The Blackhawks bring it in quickly… the Broncs fall back into a four-man zone… looks like a one-two-one with Gustafson on that bad ankle directly in front of the basket… Man oh man, this is an unbelievable championship game… Thomas gets the ball to Boyd…”

  “De-fense! De-fense! De-fense!”

  Sam could feel the pulse of the crowd with every missed shot, every rebound, every turnover, a legion of voices and faces on the edge, hardly able to breathe, while five boys tried to overrun four. They swung the ball just beyond the boundaries of Willow Creek’s reach and the Broncs staked claims around the paint, conceding the outside shot. It seemed to Sam that Seely-Swan sensed they’d already won, moving in for the kill like the wild dogs of Africa, confident that they could wear them down and finish them. But they were overeager, extremely excited, over passing, out of sync. Impatient for the kill, Boyd took a quick fifteen-footer from the edge of the key. He missed. Olaf, Tom, and Rob went to the boards with bared teeth. Rob picked off the rebound. The rumbling sound cascaded off the walls of the field house and swirled like a firestorm.

  With single-minded toughness etched on their faces, the Broncs chiseled their way up the floor, whittling seconds off the clock. Olaf grunted out position in the high post and Rob got him the ball. Completely boxed in and stumbling with fatigue, he threw a leaden pass toward Pete. Boyd cut it off and streaked upcourt for an uncontested layup. Sam felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach. The congregation of the hopeful, still on its feet, sagged and hushed. The Blackhawks had pulled to within four, 58 to 54, and there were still two minutes and twenty-one seconds to play.

  Willow Creek embezzled as much time from the clock as they could while trying to escape the gambling Keystone Cop defense the Blackhawks threw at them. Growing frantic, Seely-Swan hounded relentlessly with larceny in their eyes. Pete ran a pick-and-roll with Tom and Tom broke free toward the basket. Olaf saw Tom coming and screened Lapp from Tom’s path. Pete delivered the ball and the bull rider went up and nailed it, bringing a seismic tremor from the leaping and ecstatic host. Sam threw his fists at the ceiling.

  Axel bearhugged Dean off the floor.

  Willow Creek 60, Seely-Swan 54. Two minutes and eight seconds.

  Sam saw the weariness in their faces and he wanted to call time out, but they only had one left. The Seely-Swan coach saved him; he stopped the game to calm his flustered players. The four Broncs came to the sidelines soaked in sweat and they slumped onto the bench. The noise in the arena became a tornado, willing on the gutty quartet, sustaining them, nourishing them.

  “How’s your knee?” Sam asked Tom.
>
  Tom ignored the question and Sam had his answer.

  “One more minute and I’ll call time out,” Sam said.

  They nodded, still sucking for air, seemingly too exhausted to speak.

  Then Tom said, “Let’s not give ’em the calf!”

  When the four of them went back onto the floor, the roar washed over them like a great tidal wave. In their black and gold, Seely-Swan flowed swiftly into the front court. They moved the ball to the least guarded section of the court, looking for the perfect shot. Boyd was open in the corner—the vulnerability of the four-man zone—and Tom lunged to get on him, too late. The boy snapped the net with a superb three-point shot and the arena gasped from the blow.

  One minute and fifty-three seconds. Willow Creek 60, Seely-Swan 57.

  Within three points, the Seely-Swan boys turned the screws on their zone press. McHenry and Thomas trapped Pete along the side before he could get his lob back to Olaf. Unable to pass the ball, Pete bounced it off McHenry’s leg and out of bounds. Willow Creek’s ball. Rob lobbed the ball in to Olaf and they hedge-hopped their way into the front court. Pete dribbled along the side and zipped a pass to Olaf. He looked for a teammate open and held the ball too low. Cooper got his thieving hands on the ball and tied him up. The possession arrow favored the Blackhawks.

  The Black and Gold hurried the ball downcourt as the crowd droned with an uneasy noise. Sam looked at the clock.

  One minute and thirty-two seconds.

  He could soon give them another break with their last time out. Seely Swan had uncovered the weakness in the four-man zone. Move the ball around to one side and then a quick cross-court pass to the other side. They were picking on Tom’s corner, knowing he couldn’t get out to cover the shooter. Everyone in the field house could see what was coming. The bull rider did all he could to cover the ground between him and the shooter, but the steady McHenry hit the open jump shot, a three-pointer, bringing a gasping silence to most of the arena. The Seely-Swan section erupted with joy.