Blind Your Ponies (13 page)

Aldonza speaks in time with the music.

“To dream the impossible dream …
But they’re your own words.

“To fight the unbeatable foe …
Don’t you remember?

“To bear with unbearable sorrow …
You must remember!

“To run where the brave dare not go
—
”

Don Quixote remembers and stammers.

“To right the unrightable wrong.”

“Yes,” she says.

“To love, pure and chaste from afar,” he says with a stronger voice.

“Yes.”

“To try, when your arms are too weary. To reach the unreachable star!”

Aldonza takes hold of his hand. “Thank you, my lord.”

“But this is not seemly, my lady. On thy knees, to me?” He tries to rise in the bed and she holds his hand.

“My lord, you are not well!”

“Not well? What is sickness to the body of a knight-errant?” he says and sits up in the bed. “What matter wounds? For each time he falls he shall rise again—and woe to the wicked!” He shouts, “Sancho!”

Don Quixote stumbles out of his deathbed and calls for his sword and armor.

Tom held up a fist and shouted, “Yeah!”

Sam turned on the lights and raised the window shades. No one spoke.

Then Tom broke the spell. “Did that dude really live?”

“Did he ever,” Sam said. “A soldier who was seriously wounded, Cervantes spent five years in Africa as a slave, wrote over forty plays that never were successful, was imprisoned by the Inquisition and spent several terms in prison. After all this—and this is the good part—when he was old and sick and a complete failure to the world, he wrote what many have considered the world’s greatest novel, which he finished in 1615. He died a year later and no one knows where he was buried.”

The kids gazed at Sam, moved by the story of this rusting, whimsical hero.

“Does this remind you of anyone else in history?” Sam said.

The students thought for a moment.

“Mozart?” Louella said.

“Yes, many similarities,” Sam said. “Unsatisfying success while living, never giving up, dying a pauper, a failure in his own mind, dumped in an unmarked grave, his genius recognized years later.”

“Shakespeare?” Mary Shaw, the strawberry blonde junior, said.

“Strangely enough, Shakespeare and Cervantes died within ten days of each other,” Sam said. “Anyone else come to mind?”

“The Willow Creek basketball team,” Tom Stonebreaker said, his hawk-like eyes brimming with resolve.

“You got that right,” Rob said.

The bell rang and the other students flashed puzzled glances at each other, having no clue what Tom and Rob were talking about.

Sam did.

“K
EEP THE BALL
above your head!” Sam shouted at Olaf as they practiced bringing the ball upcourt with only four players. Scott, the ungainly freshman manager, and Sam played defense while Dean and Curtis did most of the running.

For lack of a better name, Sam called the tactic “volleyball.” The boys lobbed high passes to Olaf who, keeping the ball in the stratosphere, passed it to an open teammate and then ran upcourt to set up again for a high lob.

“If you bring it down they’ll take it away from you!” Sam shouted.

Olaf caught the ball on the center line as Curtis tried to leap and knock it away. Sam blew his whistle.

“Okay, hold it right there. Look at where your feet are, Olaf. Don’t set up until you’re in the front court, otherwise you’re going to get called for over-and-back. Okay. Let’s run it three against five. Pete, you come on defense.”

They ran hard. Rob, Tom, and Olaf attempted to bring the ball upcourt against five defenders, over and over, switching everyone around except Olaf. He wanted them to feel normal four against five, confident, expecting it. The boys went at each other on the court, and Sam racked his brain for every possible situation they would encounter, every possible scene he’d witnessed in his five-year history of being outclassed and outmaneuvered.

While Sam was absorbed in the scrimmage, he suddenly caught sight of Diana as she appeared from the girls’ locker room. He blinked, then sighed with relief. As if she had anticipated his worst fears, she showed up in baggy gray sweats that made her look boyish, except for the long dark brown hair she held in place with a gold headband.

Sam worked the team on offensive plays, making Diana, Dean, and Scott play defense. He paid little attention to Grandma Chapman and Hazel Brown when they entered the gym and clambered into the bleachers, followed by the hobbling cat, Tripod. Pete acknowledged his colorful grandmother with a smile and wave.

“Here are two more players,” Diana said with a lowered voice.

Sam paused. “You don’t mean—”

“Why not? They can stand, can’t they?”

“I’m not going to ask them to—”

“I will,” Diana said, and she trotted over to the bleachers.

“You want
me
to play basketball?” Hazel Brown said.

“Come on, they need us,” Grandma said.

Sam frowned as the two women—a white-haired, one-handed grandmother in brown fedora and Reeboks and her fortyish, Volkswagen Beetle– sized friend in tentlike pants and bright orange sweatshirt—walked onto the court waiting for instructions.

“Put Hazel on Olaf,” Diana whispered.

The boys exchanged sideways glances and rolled their eyes. Diana was one thing, but
this
was downright mortifying. With Grandma and Hazel it became five on five, of sorts.

Though Sam admitted that desperation breeds insanity, it wasn’t a bad idea. For a half hour, they walked through offensive plays. As the boys rolled off picks at half speed for layups, Grandma Chapman batted the ball out of Pete’s hands as he attempted a shot.

“Hey, no fair!” Pete shouted.

“Enough of this monkey business,” she said. “Let’s play ball.”

With some trepidation and Grandma’s egging, Sam had them try it at full speed. He was shocked to discover that the older, unathletic women suddenly mutated into emotional, competitive jocks who took this scrimmage very much to heart. Grandma resembled a mother hen defending her eggs against marauding predators, clucking and huffing about with wings flapping.

Hazel Brown—amazingly graceful and light on her feet for her bulk—was a load to handle and was possessive of the paint. Olaf tried to get into position, but after Sam’s instruction to shove him around, Hazel proved as tenacious as any opposing player Olaf was likely to run up against. Sam noticed that the more Hazel sweated, the more pungent her cheap perfume became. Because he allowed more contact than a legitimate ref would, the volunteers got away with murder.

“Oh, excuse me,” Olaf said after bumping into Hazel.

“Don’t you worry about being polite, boy,” she said and knocked him four feet out of the paint with a single heave of her belly.

These makeshift, patchwork defenders in street clothes, baggy sweats, and house dresses took it all very seriously, shouting to one another and rapidly developing a highly competitive esprit de corps. Their enthusiasm far outdistanced their conditioning. Though quicker and more agile, the boys were taking their lumps in this strange combat with elbowing and clawing misfits.

Sam was hoping no one else in the human race would witness this bizarre sideshow when, sure enough, Truly Osborn showed up along the sidelines. After almost ten minutes at full throttle, Sam blew his whistle with a sudden dread. He’d noticed Tom was favoring his knee. He thanked the recruits and sent the team to work on free throws.

Grandma turned to Sam.

“When do you want us back?” she asked, avoiding Hazel’s frown.

“Oh … I don’t know. Maybe if you could come around four tomorrow?” he said without much time for thought.

“We’ll be here,” Grandma said, as Tripod rubbed against her leg. She bent and scooped up her cat.

“I don’t know about tomorrow,” Hazel said, red-faced and trying to catch her breath. “I must have lost ten pounds.”

“What do you think of the Norwegian?” Grandma said as the two women shuffled to the bleachers to retrieve their coats.

“Well, he’s clumsy,” Hazel said, wiping her brow with her shirt sleeve. “But he’s slow.”

“Ha!” Grandma said.

Truly marched over to Sam. He spoke out of the side of his mouth without a pause in his step or a hint of dissatisfaction on his narrow, expressionless face.

“You gone completely out of your mind?”

Sam sputtered for a reply, but Diana saved him, approaching the two with a look of concern.

“Tom’s limping a little,” she said.

“I noticed,” Sam said. He watched Tom on the free-throw line.

“Oh, Mr. Pickett,” Grandma called. “We have a mascot.”

She held Tripod high in the air. Sam nodded and then drifted toward the boys. His team practiced against a candidate for Weight Watchers and a woman old enough to be in any hospital’s geriatric ward, and now they were a team with a three-legged cat for a mascot.
Perfect.

“Your knee hurting?” Sam asked Tom as he shot free throws.

“A little.”

Tom swished a free throw. Curtis bounced the ball back to him.

“Did you have a doctor look at it?”

“No. My dad wouldn’t pay a nickel for a doctor. Said I’d have to pay for it myself ’cause I hurt it riding rodeo. I told him I’d walk it off.”

Tom took aim.

“I want you to go to a doctor I know in Bozeman.”

“It’ll be okay.”

Tom swished another. Curtis flipped the ball back to him.

“Don’t worry about the cost, that’ll be covered. We have to find out what’s been damaged.”

Tom took aim. “It’s just a little sore.”

“Something like that could be serious,” Sam said. “We don’t want to make it worse or do permanent damage.”

“I hate goin’ to doctors.”

“He’s just going to look at it.” Sam frowned. “No more practice until you do.”

Tom missed.

Tom arrived at the end of Monday practice. With the bull rider missing, it had felt like the team was diminished by half. His appointment with the doctor had been scheduled for two-thirty, and when he appeared in the gym in his long duster and black wide-brimmed hat, everything stopped: balls ceased dribbling, words were left half spoken, and steps froze. Tom hobbled onto the court. The little drove of hope Sam had herded together in his chest stampeded in all directions. Dread gripped him by the throat. He caught his breath and forced his words past his thumping heartbeat.

“Did you see the doctor?”

Diana and the boys gathered around.

“Yep,” Tom said without meeting Sam’s eyes.

“What did he say?” Sam said.

The answer was already broadcast in the expression of pain and disappointment in Tom’s face. “I don’t know how you’re going to take this, Coach.”

“Tell us. What did he say?” Diana asked.

“Said I’d need arthroscopic surgery.”

The faces and postures of all present sagged, the air in the gym crystallized.

“Then,” Tom continued in a monotonous voice, “maybe a year of rehabilitation before I could play on it.” He paused. “Sorry, Coach.”

The despair engulfed them. No one spoke. Sam couldn’t bear to look at anyone. They were waiting for him to speak, to say something that would make it all right, but his spirit seemed utterly void of optimistic, encouraging words.

Then Tom grabbed the ball from under Rob’s arm and went charging across the floor, dribbling like mad and shouting. “Just kidding, you wimps!”

Before he got to the far basket for a layup, the boys broke from their
stunned paralysis and were on his trail. They hit him coming back the other way. Rob took him low, Pete hit him high, crashing him to the floor. Then in a wild, spontaneous release of anxiety and disappointment, eight of them mugged Tom at center court, pounding him with affectionate relief and happy, joyous blows.

When they finally untangled and rolled away like kids off a playground hog pile, laughing, hooting, and catching their breaths, Diana spoke first.

“What did the doctor
really
say?”

“It’s a medial collateral ligament on the inside of the knee,” Tom said. “Says it’s been strained, overstretched, but it’s not torn. I can play.”

The boys cheered.

“He said icing it would help when it hurts,” Tom said.

“You pull anything like that again and I’ll ice you,” Sam said.

“I probably shouldn’t run much on it at practice.”

“Aw, sure, trying to chicken out of wind sprints,” Rob said.

“He said it heals slow. It’ll probably hurt a lot if I play.” Tom glanced at them and then focused on Sam. “I told him it would hurt a whole lot more if I didn’t.”

That silenced them. Sam’s eyes blurred as he sat there in the middle of the basketball floor with this peculiar gathering: a scrubby-looking bunch of players, his intimidating female cohort, a jolly little manager, and a misplaced cowboy who wanted to take his stand with them. They remained there for a moment, catching their breaths, and in that instant, something in Sam’s heart warned him that he was moving out onto thin ice.

“We thought we’d have to go on without you,” Diana said.

“That’ll be the day,” Tom said.

Truly Osborn entered the gym, paperwork in hand, and hesitated under the south backboard. “Can I see you a minute, Mr. Pickett?”

Sam sprang to his feet and hurried to the superintendent. Truly’s brows furrowed, and he stared at the team lounging in the middle of the court.

“You have the strangest practices I’ve ever seen,” Truly said.

“We’re stretching our medial collateral ligaments.”

“Is that important?” “It’s the most important part on our team.”

L
YING IN BED
that night Sam tried to visualize a medial collateral ligament, figuring he’d never heard of that body part. It had a musical ring to it.
Medial collateral ligament.
It would be like buying himself an early Christmas present, the doctor’s bill, and he’d pay it with a cheery “ho ho ho.” But it sobered him to realize how his heartstrings were subtly becoming more and more entangled with the boys, and maybe even a little with Diana.