Edenville Owls

by Robert B. Parker

  We were all breathing hard. We had no subs. We played the full game every time. But we weren’t breathing as hard as we used to.

  “We gotta do something about twenty-two,” I said.

  “Double-teaming him doesn’t work,” Russell said.

  “We gotta put someone on him that has no other assignment. Whoever guards twenty-two doesn’t have to score or rebound or help bring the ball up. He just stays with twenty-two.”

  “Worth a try,” Manny said.

  “Who?” Billy said.

  “Nick’s the best athlete on the team,” I said.

  Everybody nodded. All of us, including Nick, knew that was true.

  “I’ll take him,” Nick said.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll basically forget about you on offense. If you can score too, fine. But your job is to stay right in twenty-two’s face the rest of the way.”

  “Gonna ruin your scoring average,” Russell said.

  “Then it’ll be down with yours,” Nick said.

  “Don’t get caught fouling him,” I told him. “We got nobody else, remember. You foul out and we’re screwed.”

  Nick nodded.

  “And if he wants to pass, let him,” I said. “What we want is the ball out of his hands.”

  “I’m on him,” Nick said. “He’s a dead man.”

  We brought the ball in at midcourt. I got it to Manny in the corner, who passed into Russell, who shot over his man with a little turn around. We were within two.

  Number 22 normally brought the ball up, and when Alton passed in to him under their own basket, Nick was right up on him, in a crouch, arms extended, eyes focused on the middle of 22’s stomach. It’s nearly impossible to fake with your stomach. It has to go where you go. Number 22 tried to go around him, and Nick kept his feet moving and stayed in front of him. He tried the other way, dribbling with his left hand. Nick stayed with him. Number 22 got frustrated and ran straight into Nick, and the referee called him for charging and we got the ball.

  I brought it up, and when we got to the top of the key, we went into a four-man weave without Nick. Nick was staying next to 22. Which meant that 22 had to guard him, so the rest of us were four on four. Billy put up another set shot. It rimmed out, and Manny got the rebound and put it back up, and we were tied.

  And that’s how it stayed. Back and forth so that with two minutes left we were still tied. Number 22 had not scored in more than five minutes, and he was clearly tired. During breaks in the game he would stand bent over with his hands on his knees. Nick bothered him so much that Alton had someone else bring the ball up. Nick stayed up on 22. Once 22 tried to cut to the basket without the ball and Nick blocked his way. Then 22 shoved him. Nick stepped away smiling.

  “Now, now,” he said.

  Number 22 took a swing at him. And missed. Nick backed away, still smiling, with his hands raised, palms forward. The referee stepped in between them and threw 22 out for fighting. Nick, grinning, waved bye-bye to him as he went to the bench.

  Nick hit both his foul shots, and, without 22, Alton folded. We won the game by eight points, and when it was over, we charged Nick, all the Owls. I got there first and hugged him and then we all piled on him, hugging him, pounding him on the back.

  In our run for the tourney we were two and oh.

  CHAPTER 19

  IT was late afternoon on Saturday. I was in the town library reading The New York Times. I’d never been to New York. But reading the Times allowed me to feel like I knew something about a world of excitement I had never seen. I could read box scores for the Yankees and the Giants and the Dodgers. I could read about famous actors in plays I’d never seen, and famous singers and comedians in nightclubs I’d heard about on Manhattan Merry Go Round. I could read about Toots Shore’s, and Jack Dempsey’s, and the Stork Club, and fights at Madison Square Garden and St. Nicholas arena. I knew what Tammany Hall was. I knew where Billie Holiday was performing, and Duke Ellington. I knew who was at Carnegie Hall. I knew about Greenwich Village.

  Joanie came in and sat down at the library table beside me.

  “What are you reading?” she said.

  “New York Times,” I said.

  I liked telling her that.

  “You ever been to New York?” she said.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “But you will,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m not staying in Edenville the rest of my life.”

  “You want to move?” she asked.

  “No. But even if I stay here to live,” I said, “I want to travel and stuff.”

  “What kind of work do you want to do when you’re, you know, a grown-up?” Joanie said.

  “I want to be a writer,” I said.

  “Like for a newspaper or something?”

  “No,” I said. “I want to write books.”

  “Books?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow,” Joanie said. “I never heard of anybody wanting to write books.”

  “Well, now you have,” I said. “How about you? What do you want to do?”

  “I’m supposed to marry a nice man, live in a nice house, have enough money, have nice children,” she said. “You know?”

  “Stay here?”

  “I guess so,” Joanie said. “I think I’m supposed to go where my husband’s job takes us.”

  “You sound funny about it,” I said. “You want to get married?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t want to be an old maid.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You want to get married?” Joanie said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What if you don’t?”

  I was quiet for a time.

  “Maybe,” I said, “if you didn’t get married, and I didn’t get married by the time we were, like, thirty-five, we could go someplace and live together.”

  “Where?” Joanie said.

  “Writers can live anywhere they want,” I said.

  “If you didn’t live here, where would you live?” Joanie said.

  “I’d like to live in New York,” I said.

  “New York City?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d be afraid to live in New York City,” Joanie said.

  “Even with me?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be scared there with you.”

  “And I wouldn’t have to go to New York,” I said.

  “Because of me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to make you go someplace you didn’t want to go.”

  Joanie smiled and shook her head.

  “You’re not like other boys, Bobby,” Joanie said.

  I was wading pretty deep into waters I didn’t know much about.

  “Is that good or bad?” I said.

  “Good,” Joanie said. “I just hope growing up doesn’t change you.”

  “It won’t change me,” I said. “At least not about you.”

  “We’ll always be friends,” she said.

  “Forever,” I said.

  “Yes,” Joanie said. “Forever.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I was alone, standing out of the light, near some bushes, in front of Miss Delaney’s house when the man came again. He parked his car and got out and walked up to the door and rang the bell. In a minute Miss Delaney let him in and the door closed behind them and everything was quiet.

  I felt helpless, like a little kid.

  Figure it out. You’re smart. Figure it out.

  I walked slowly around the house. Maybe there was a way to get in. If I got in, I could hide and maybe listen to them next time the man came to talk with Miss Delaney. Miss Delaney lived upstairs. Old Lady Coughlin lived downstairs. She had some kind of little furry black and white dog with a sharp nose and thin legs. As I walked around the house, the dog started yapping and Old Lady Coughlin came to the back door and looked out. I stopped stock-still in the shadow of some bushes and she didn’t see me, and after a minute she went away. I kept movin
g around the house, staying in the shadows and behind bushes. In back of the house there were two porches, one above the other, one on the first floor and one on the second. Above the second-floor porch was a window. Probably to the attic.

  Back out front, I looked at the man’s car and had a thought. No one was on the street. I walked toward the car and looked at the house. I didn’t see anyone in the windows. I tried the car door on the passenger side. It was open. Nobody locked up much in Edenville. I opened the door, opened the glove compartment, and took a peek. The car registration was in a small leather wallet in the glove compartment. I took it and closed the glove compartment, closed the door, and ran like hell.

  Under a light on the wharf, I opened the registration. His name was Oswald Tupper, and his address was 132 County Road in Searsville, which was the next town north of Edenville. I always carried a pencil stub and a little notebook in case I saw something I needed to write down. I took them out, wrote down the name and address, put them back in my shirt pocket, and threw the wallet with the registration into the water. It floated for a while, bumping with the little waves against the foot of the wharf, and then, as the water soaked in, it sank.

  I walked up to the bandstand and sat in the dark with my hands in my pockets and my collar up. Searsville was just up County Road a few miles. I could ride my bike there. Across the harbor I could see the lights from Edenville Neck. I was too far to see anything except the lights. But I liked them. I liked looking at the lights of ordinary people, while I was alone, mysterious, outside, in the night.

  There was a big old empty house on Pearl Street, with the windows all boarded up. Last summer the Owls decided it would be a perfect spot for a clubhouse. So I climbed up a telephone pole and jumped to a small second-floor roof, and crawled in an open third-floor window. I had to hang from a rafter and drop into the darkness to get in. Afterward it scared me to think about it. What if they had ripped out all the floors? I would have fallen three stories. But they hadn’t, and I landed on a solid floor. The other Owls were impressed.

  I went to the first floor and opened the back door from the inside and everyone came in and we hung around in there for a while. But pretty soon we decided it was kind of boring in there and we left and never went back. We really just liked breaking in, I guess.

  What was I doing? I was fourteen years old, and I was sneaking around in the night spying on a couple of adults, even though Miss Delaney had made me promise not to. I must have been reading Dime Detective too much. I looked around the dark, empty bandstand. It was a school night. Joanie would be home. She wouldn’t be coming down here in the dark. What did I think I was going to do? I was going to save Miss Delaney. And how did I think I was going to do it? I didn’t know yet. But I knew I was going to do something.

  I’d have to figure it out.

  CHAPTER 21

  WE were trailing against Pinefield by one point with seventeen seconds to go when I got fouled and went to the line for two free throws. I was a good ball-handler, but I was a terrible foul-shooter, and all of us knew it. If I hit them both, we would take the lead. I missed them both and felt like I wanted to crawl in a hole. The Pinefield center, a guy named Lou, got the rebound and fired a pass downcourt to one of his forwards for the insurance basket. Nick intercepted and passed to me, alone downcourt, still near the foul line, wanting to die. I took two dribbles and laid the ball in and we won. Nick had saved me. He and I ran to each other and hugged. The other Owls joined in and we did a kind of little dance in the middle of the court, while Pinefield walked sullenly off.

  Afterward we hitchhiked back to Edenville.

  Nick said to me, “You still friends with Joanie?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You?”

  “We’re still going out,” Nick said.

  “Anything hot going on?” Russell said.

  Nick smiled at him.

  “You don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Bobby don’t care,” Russell said. “He’s in love with Miss Delaney.”

  “How’s that going?” Nick said to me. “You finding anything out?”

  “I’m getting there,” I said.

  “What’d you find out?” Russell asked.

  “You don’t know, do you?” I said.

  “Man!” Russell said. “Nobody tells me anything.”

  Nick and I looked at each other for a minute. But neither of us said anything.

  “You think he’s still bothering her?” Billy said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You been spying on them?” Russell said.

  “I keep an eye out,” I said.

  “You seen him?” Manny said.

  I didn’t even know Manny was interested.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He see you?” Billy said.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Whaddya mean ‘not yet’?” Russell said.

  “Nothing. I just mean he hasn’t seen me yet.”

  “You think he will?” Nick said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I mean, you hang around long enough, you may get spotted.”

  Nick looked at me.

  “You got some kind of scheme,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “You got a plan,” Nick said. “Don’t you?”

  “I’m trying to figure it out,” I said.

  “You could get into bad trouble,” Billy said.

  “If I do, you guys can save me,” I said.

  “Have to,” Nick said. “Joanie would kill me if I didn’t help you.”

  “Hell,” Russell said. “She’d kill us all.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said.

  Nick grinned.

  “Owl patrol at the ready,” he said.

  CHAPTER 22

  IT was a mild winter. No snow. The temperatures were usually above freezing. The sun was usually out. It was out on Sunday morning when I got on my bike and road up County Road to Searsville.

  Number 132 was a small white one-story building near the road with a few cars parked on the gravel parking lot in front. It looked like some kind of meeting hall. In back there was a house trailer parked next to the hall. The trailer was one of those smooth rounded silver ones, and it looked new. There was a wooden sign by the road that said “Church of America” across the top, and underneath that, “The Rev. Oswald Tupper. Service at 11, Youth Group at 1.” It was ten past eleven. I leaned my bike on the sign. My stomach was tight, and I felt like I was out of breath.

  I looked at everything for a minute. Then I took in as much air as I could and went into the hall. It was small, with folding chairs to sit on. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people sitting down, and up front, there he was. He had on a dark double-breasted suit and a red tie. He was standing at some kind of lecture stand and behind him on the wall was a large American flag with a big crucifix on it.

  I realized I was still holding in the breath I had taken. I let it out as quietly as I could and went and sat on an empty chair in the back. I knew he saw me come in. He had looked right at me. But he didn’t seem to recognize me. I was, after all, just some kid he’d chased away from his car once. He smiled when I sat down.

  “Latecomers are welcome too,” he said.

  His voice was very round and official-sounding in the church. It didn’t have that scary sound it had had when he told me to get away from his car. I looked down at my knees as if I were praying.

  “As I was telling the others,” Tupper said with a smile, “‘we are face-to-face with both disaster and possibility. The disaster is that the war is over, and the white race lost. Franklin Delano Jewsavelt and the kike conspiracy managed to defeat that struggle for racial purity. But therein lies the possibility. The war is over, all is in flux, and the energies of white America can be focused on the preservation, at least here, in this free country, of the purity of the white race.”

  Jewsavelt? Kike? What in God’s name was he talking about?

  “The Communists and the Jews,” Tupper
went on, “would have us coupling with niggers, and raising a generation of baboons who will do what the Jew commissars tell them.”

  Niggers? Baboons? What in hell was a Jew commissar?

  “That is why,” Tupper said, “it’s so heartening to see young men here. Young men who have not yet been corrupted, young men who are proud to be American and proud to be white. Young men in whom our future rests, if they will take the opportunity that lies before us. If they will stay true to what they are and what they came from.”

  I looked around the room. The men were nodding agreement with everything Tupper said. As he continued, I nodded when the men did. There were three or four other kids in the room, sitting beside their fathers. They nodded too, when the adults did.

  Tupper went on about this stuff for a long time. It wasn’t like he used words I never heard. Lots of people said nigger and kike in Edenville. I was used to it, although it always made me feel uncomfortable. But you never heard a minister say it in a church, like it was religious.

  After the sermon we waited while Tupper went to the front of the church to greet everybody on the way out.

  “This your first time here, son?” he said to me as I came out.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your name son?”

  “Murphy, sir, Robert Murphy.”

  “A fine old Irish name,” he said with a fake Irish accent. “Would you be Catholic?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Well,” he said. “No matter. I hope you’ll be joining us in youth group this afternoon.”

  “I have to go home, sir,” I said. “But I hope I can come next week.”

  “I hope so, Robert,” Tupper said. “You’re just the kind of lad I’m looking for.”

  I said, “Yes, sir,” and moved on.

  As I pedaled home along County Road, I kept glancing back to make sure no one was following me.

  CHAPTER 23

  “MY uncle John was in the war,” Joanie said. “My mother’s brother. He saw one of those Jewish prison camps.”