Edenville Owls

by Robert B. Parker

  Russell reached over and punched me in the ribs.

  “Miss Delaney’s talking to you, Dumbo,” he said.

  “Thank you, Russell,” Miss Delaney said.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Delaney,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said the education is going on up here. There’s nothing to be learned out the window.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Have you read Gulliver’s Travels, Bobby?”

  “I saw the movie,” I said.

  Several people in the class snickered. Miss Delaney shook her head.

  “The book is better,” she said. “Marilyn, have you finished the assignment?”

  “Yes, ma’am…”

  I concentrated on the snow again.

  Nick and I hadn’t been quite as easy with each other since I started being friendlier with Joanie. He was my friend, but Joanie was too. Even though she was a girl, I liked her better. The snow came straight down, and quiet. It wasn’t a blizzard or anything, just the quiet steady downfall of big white flakes. If I helped Miss Delaney, the reverend would hurt her. If I didn’t help her, the reverend would hurt her.

  The thought that Miss Delaney had been married was kind of odd. She had a kid. That meant she’d had sex. That was almost suffocating to think about. I thought about sex a lot when I thought about Miss Delaney. I never thought about sex when I thought about Joanie. I daydreamed about her. I thought about rescuing her from kidnappers or finding her when she got lost in the mountains and killing a grizzly bear to save her. In my daydream I killed it with a knife. She was very grateful.

  I looked at Miss Delaney. I looked at the snow outside. My mind kept jumping around. I had to concentrate. Forget about killing grizzly bears with a hunting knife. I had to concentrate on saving Miss Delaney from Oswald Tupper.

  CHAPTER 32

  AFTER school Nick asked me to come across the street to the bicycle shed with him so we could stay out of the snow and talk.

  “Joanie says she doesn’t want to go out with me anymore,” he said when we alone in the shed.

  I kept my face still.

  “How come?” I said.

  “She says she’s too young to get serious about dating.”

  I nodded.

  “I guess we all are, probably,” I said.

  “She been dating you?”

  “No.”

  “I asked her out twice last week,” Nick said. “And she said she couldn’t and then the second time I saw her later, you were walking her home.”

  “I just ran into her,” I said. “And we were talking and I walked to her house with her.”

  It was funny how words were, I thought. Walking her home seemed to mean the same thing as walking to her house with her. But it didn’t.

  “Are you going out with her?” Nick said.

  Sometime, way back, the bike shed had probably been some kind of horse stable. It still smelled sort of horsey.

  “No,” I said. “We’re friends.”

  “She likes you,” Nick said.

  “I like her,” I said. “We’ve known each other all our lives, you know.”

  “So have we,” Nick said.

  “Yes.”

  “We played ball together since we were little,” Nick said.

  I nodded.

  “I showed you how to shoot a jump shot,” Nick said.

  “Except you showed me wrong,” I said.

  “Okay, so it was off the wrong foot. But you were still trying to shoot both hands before me.”

  I nodded.

  “Joanie likes you,” I said. “She told me you were cute and nice, and not grabby.”

  Nick smiled. He looked embarrassed.

  “Can you talk to her?” Nick said. “About me?”

  “I don’t know if it will do any good,” I said.

  “You could try,” Nick said.

  “Sure,” I told him. “I’ll try.”

  We both were quiet for a time. The snow kept coming steady and quiet. It looked like some kind of white curtain across the open front of the shed.

  “Joanie is pretty sure about stuff,” I said. “She makes up her mind, it’s kind of hard to get her to change it, you know?”

  “Do you not want to talk to her about me?” Nick asked.

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. “But I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”

  “I know that,” Nick said. “And if you don’t want to talk to her about it, that’s okay.”

  “I do,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Because I think you’re hot for her too,” Nick said.

  “We’re friends,” I said.

  “That’s crap,” Nick said. “You’re as hot for her as I am.”

  I started to say something, but Nick pushed past it.

  “And that’s okay. You got a right. We’re friends. We been friends all our lives. If I don’t get her and you do, okay. We’re friends, we’ll stay friends.”

  “Nick,” I said. “I…”

  “Forget it.” Nick was shaking his head. “I said what I wanted.”

  He put out his hand. I shook it.

  “Owls for all,” Nick said, “all for Owls.”

  And we laughed.

  CHAPTER 33

  IN the school yard at recess, Joanie was with her girlfriends and I was leaning on the wall with the Owls. She saw me, and waved for me to come over. I walked over. I could feel Nick looking at me. She met me halfway.

  “Meet me at the bandstand after school,” Joanie said. “I got things to tell you.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Want to come back to my friends with me? We’re talking about boys.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “We were talking about girls.”

  Joanie laughed and went back to her friends.

  “You say anything to her?” Nick said to me in a half whisper.

  “This afternoon,” I said.

  Nick nodded.

  “Who we playing Saturday?” Billy asked.

  “Wickford Junior High,” Russell said. “They’re undefeated.”

  “So are we,” I said.

  “So far,” Manny added.

  The bell rang and we went back in. I could never decide if I hated school most in winter. In winter it was hot in the classroom and everything reeked of the steam heat in the banging iron radiators. The windows were all closed. Your clothes were too warm. The teachers, even Miss Delaney, seemed locked into hell with you and droned on while you thought about other stuff.

  Eventually it was over, and I walked down through the clean white landscape to the bandstand. It was pretty now. Most of the snow was still fresh. In a few days it would be ugly. But not yet.

  No one had shoveled a path in, so I had to wade through a foot of snow to get there, and had to wipe off a lot of snow to sit on the bench. Joanie came a few minutes after. She was always later because she went home to change into play clothes. She came in through the snow, carefully stepping in the trail I had broken, and sitting on the bench where I had brushed away the snow.

  “I went to the library and asked Old Lady Coughlin if there was a list of Medal of Honor winners from the war,” Joanie said as soon as she sat down. “I told her I was doing a special project in school. And she said that she didn’t think the library had a list, but she was pretty sure The Standard Times would have one. And I asked how I could get it, and she told me I could call the research department at the paper. I asked if they would give it to a kid, and Old Lady Coughlin said maybe not, and she would call for me, and she did.”

  “And they sent you the list?”

  “Yes. She called my house last night and told me.”

  “What?” I said. “Is he there?”

  “Yes,” Joanie said.

  “Oswald Tupper?”

  “The medal was awarded to Oswald Tupper…posthumously.”

  “Yeah, but…” I stopped. “He’s dead?”

 
“Yes.”

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “That’s what it said on the list,” Joanie said. “That’s what posthumous means.”

  “And he didn’t get it as Richard Krauss?”

  “Richard Krauss wasn’t on the list,” Joanie said.

  “So who was Oswald Tupper?” I said.

  “And how did the reverend get his medal?” Joanie said.

  “And his name?” I said.

  A seagull came and landed in the snow a few feet from the bandstand and looked at us, tilting his head one way and then the other. He had eyes like black BBs. The end of his beak had a little hook in it. We looked at him and didn’t say anything, and I thought about what Joanie had found out.

  “You have any idea what to do now?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Maybe if we talk about other things…,” I said.

  “Okay,” Joanie said.

  “I talked with Nick,” I said.

  “About me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he tell you?” Joanie said.

  “He said you broke up with him.”

  “I couldn’t break up with him,” Joanie said. “He was just a cute boy I went to a party with. He was getting too serious.”

  “That’s what he told me,” I said.

  “Was he mad at me?” Joanie said.

  “No. He was a little sad, I guess.”

  “How about you,” Joanie said. “Was he mad at you?”

  “No. He said we were friends all our lives and we’d keep on being friends. He was pretty nice about it.”

  “Yes,” Joanie said. “He is nice.”

  “You and I been friends all our lives too,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “You’re the only girl I was ever friends with,” I said.

  “I know,” Joanie said. “Why is that, do you think?”

  “I guess I’m kind of shy with girls.”

  “Except me,” she said.

  The seagull must have decided we weren’t going to feed him. He spread his wings quite suddenly and flew off.

  “What if I got serious?” I said.

  My voice sounded kind of small to me. I didn’t look at Joanie. I watched the seagull head out across the harbor.

  “We’re different,” Joanie said.

  “But what if I did?” I said.

  “Are you getting serious?” Joanie said.

  “No.”

  I stopped watching the seagull and looked at her.

  “But what if I did?” I said.

  Joanie smiled.

  “We’ll see what happens when you do.”

  There was something in her face that made her seem completely grown-up.

  CHAPTER 34

  WE played a bunch of preppies from the Phillips Country Day School. They were pretty slick. At the end of the first half they were beating us by ten points. They had a center as tall as Russell, and Russell wasn’t so good against people his size. Both their guards were better than I was. But they were all sucking air when the first half ended.

  “Okay,” I said before the second half. “They’re probably better than us. But they’re in lousy shape. And we’re not.”

  “So we run them,” Nick said.

  “Every time we get the ball,” I said. “Run like hell. We throw the ball away some, we can live with that.”

  “Defense?” Manny asked.

  “Press,” I said. “All over the court. We’re in shape. They’re not. We give up a couple layups, we can live with that.”

  “Besides,” Billy added, “it’s the only chance we got.”

  “My man can’t keep up with me now,” Russell said. “By the time the game’s over, he’ll be puking on the floor.”

  They won the tip to start the second half, and we surprised them with our press. So much so that one of their guards lost the ball out of bounds. We brought it in from the side and surprised them again. The whole first half we’d brought the ball up at a normal pace, looking to set up our weave, trying to set up some screens, trying to get Russell free of his man on a roll to the basket. This time Manny threw the ball in to me and I went full tilt up the court, running as hard as I could, in only about half control of my dribble. But it worked. I blew by everyone and laid the ball in. Then they took it in from the end line, and we stayed right up there with them. Face-to-face. Fighting them on every pass. Bothering them on every dribble. When we got the ball, all of us ran for their basket like a Chinese fire drill.

  Occasionally we did lose the ball. I lost my dribble a couple of times. Nick threw it away once, trying to hit Russell. Manny got a rebound and threw it the length of the court to Billy but overthrew it. On defense sometimes, one of their guys would break past one of us and go in to score.

  But as the half moved on, we also began to get layups, and they began to lose the ball more and more. Hurried passes. Double dribbles. Bad shots. Russell was getting to the basket ahead of his man and getting layups. Phillips took all their time-outs, and when they came back, we were right up against them again. We’d played with only five guys the whole season. All of us were tired. But none of us were exhausted. The Phillips guys looked like all they wanted to do was go sit down.

  With two minutes left in the game, we were tied and they ran out of gas. We scored the last eight points while they sort of walked up the floor after us. When the buzzer sounded, they all did go right to the bench and sat on it, heads hanging, gasping for breath, too tired even to shake hands or tell us we were just lucky.

  We weren’t lucky. We were in shape.

  CHAPTER 35

  I was with Joanie in the bowling alley, sitting in the back row of benches, having a Coke, watching them bowl.

  “I went to see Miss Delaney,” she said.

  “You did?”

  “After school,” Joanie said. “The day after we found out about that guy Richard Krauss.”

  “You didn’t say anything did you?”

  “Nothing bad,” she said. “I told her I was starting to think about college.”

  “College?” I said. “We’re in the eighth grade.”

  Joanie ignored me.

  “And she said that was wise, it was never too early.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “So I told her I was wondering where she went,” Joanie said.

  “Miss Delaney?”

  “Yes, and she told me Colby College.”

  “Where’s that?” I said.

  “In Maine someplace,” Joanie said.

  “Who wants to go to college in Maine?” I said.

  “And I said did she have a yearbook or something I could look at, and she gave me hers. She brought it in the next day.”

  “Her college yearbook?” I said.

  Joanie reached into her book bag and pulled the yearbook out. It was white. On the cover in blue letters it said “ORACLE,” and down lower the year, 1942. We sat together on the leatherette bench in the bowling alley and read it. The student photographs were alphabetical, and there she was, Claudia Delaney. There was a list of things she’d been in, and some phrases that were probably funny if you knew, but didn’t mean anything to us.

  “She looks the same,” I said.

  “Yes,” Joanie said. “Except her hair’s different.”

  “She would have been what, twenty-one, I guess.”

  “Now look at this,” Joanie said, and turned to the K listings. There, between Kantor and Kroll, was Richard Krauss.

  “It’s Tupper,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s from Lynn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Miss Delaney from?” I asked.

  Joanie flipped back to Miss Delaney’s page and said without looking, “Marblehead.”

  “They must have met in college,” I said.

  Joanie flipped back to Krauss.

  “He played football,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “If they graduated in June 1942,” Joan
ie said, “the war started during their senior year.”

  “He probably went in the army after he graduated,” I said.

  “And they probably got married before he went,” Joanie said.

  “So the kid could be like three years old,” I said.

  The alley bowled duck pins. Sometimes when I was broke I used to set pins in the alley. Sit on a little shelf behind the pins. Jump down, step on the pedal to raise the spikes. Set the pins on the spikes. Take your foot off the pedal, and jump back up on the shelf. Sometimes some jerk would bowl while you were still setting the pins, but if you kept your foot on the pedal, the ball just ran into the pins and stopped. Sometimes the pins would get bent and they’d have to close the alley, but that wasn’t my fault, and it was better than getting a bowling ball in the face.

  There were mostly men in the bowling alley. Some grown-up women. Some guys our age. Not many girls. But Joanie didn’t seem to mind. She always seemed comfortable wherever she was.

  “So why did he take somebody else’s name?” Joanie asked.

  “Maybe he did something wrong,” I offered. “Maybe he knew the guy who died and he had done something bad, so he pretended to be him instead of who he was.”

  “How would you do that?” Joanie said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was probably pretty confusing during the war.”

  “What do you think he did?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It would have to be pretty bad.”

  “How are we going to know?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said.

  EVERY Friday night during the school year, we went to dancing class in the Grange Hall. It was a big old building with some sort of churchlike tower on it. I wasn’t really sure what a grange was, but I knew it had something to do with farmers.