Edenville Owls (12 page)

IT
was too cold for the bandstand, so we went into the Village Shop. We had three nickels left from the phone call, so I went to the jukebox while Joanie ordered two black cows from Alice at the soda fountain. I played an Andy Russell record, one by Eddy Howard, and Johnny Mercer singing “Personality” with the Pied Pipers.

We took our black cows to the far back booth and sat down.

“Wow,” I said. “You were like Barbara Stanwyck or somebody.”

“I know,” Joanie said. “I thought I might actually cry at one point.”

I’m laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, ’cause I’m still in love with you.

“I love Andy Russell,” Joanie said.

“I know,” I said. “Girls do. That’s why I played him.”

“The guy at the VA was nice,” Joanie said.

“Yes,” I said. “I played Eddy Howard too.”

“Oh good,” Joanie said, “which one?”

“‘To Each His Own’.”

“He does that great,” Joanie said.

We listened to Andy Russell for a moment

Friends see me out dancing, carefree and romancing…

“How bad is it to be a deserter?” Joanie said. “Isn’t that pretty bad?”

“I think they can get the death penalty,” I said.

Joanie widened her eyes and pursed her lips and blew out her breath.

“Yowch,” she said.

“So you can see why Krauss would want to be somebody else.”

“You think that’s what happened?”

“He was in the same outfit that Oswald Tupper was. I say he deserted. Knew about Tupper dying and getting a medal. So he took his name.”

“Wouldn’t he have been smarter?” Joanie said. “Not to take a guy who won the Medal of Honor? I mean, other guys must have gotten killed too, that no one would ever hear of.”

“Maybe Tupper hadn’t gotten the medal,” I said, “when Richard Krauss took his identity. Maybe Krauss is a little crazy. You heard him talking to Miss Delaney.”

I ate some of the ice cream out of my black cow with the long spoon that came with it. The Andy Russell song was over. Eddy Howard was on.

…or its lovely promise won’t come true,…

“Do you think they’d actually execute him?” Joanie said.

“They’d do something,” I said.

“God,” Joanie said. “If we turned him in and they executed him…wouldn’t you feel weird about that?”

“I don’t think we’re going to turn him in,” I said.

“So what are we going to do?”

To each his own, I’ve found my own. And my own is you…

“I don’t think we have to turn him in,” I said. “If he knows we know, maybe he’ll leave Miss Delaney alone.”

“Or we’ll turn him in?” Joanie asked.

“I guess so,” I answered.

“It’s like we’d blackmail him,” Joanie said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“But what if he…did something to us.”

“We’d have to be careful,” I said.

“If a bunch of people knew…,” Joanie said.

“He couldn’t do something to all of us,” I said.

The third record came up on the jukebox.

When Madame Pompadour was on a ballroom floor…

“But we promised Miss Delaney we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Actually,” I said, “I promised, and then I told you.”

“Telling me is different,” Joanie said.

Said all the gentlemen “Obviously, the madam has the cutest personality.”

“Because?”

“Because we’re best friends,” Joanie said. “We tell each other everything.”

I nodded.

And when Salome danced and had the boys entranced…

“But she’ll know what we’ve done,” Joanie said. “Maybe she won’t like it.”

“We gotta tell her,” I said.

“Together?” Joanie said.

“If you don’t want to,” I said, “I can do it alone.”

Joanie nodded and put her hand out suddenly and rested it on my forearm. She smiled, and I felt as if I might start on fire or something.

“We’ll do it together,” she said.

What did Romeo see in Juliet?

Or Pierrot in Pierrette?

Or Jupiter in Juno?

You know!

IT
was snowing again. We stayed after class until everyone else had gone, and then I said, “Miss Delaney, can we see you?”

“Of course,” she said. “Come down front.”

I got up and went and closed the classroom door. Miss Delaney smiled.

“Are we going to have a confession?” she said.

Joanie and I sat at the two desks in front of Miss Delaney. Outside the windows, the snow was different than the last snow. The flakes were small, and the wind was blowing the snow around. I looked at Joanie. Then at Miss Delaney. I took in a big breath.

“We know about Mr. Tupper,” I said.

Miss Delaney didn’t move. Her expression didn’t seem to change, but somehow her face got sort of sharp and hard, and she looked kind of pale.

“What do you know about Mr. Tupper?” she said.

I felt very small and stiff. I felt like if I moved quick, I might break.

“We know he was married to you. We know about your son.”

Miss Delaney’s voice was as flat as the top of her desk.

“
We
is you and Joanie?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Anyone else?”

I shrugged.

“Mr. Tupper,” I said.

“Besides him.”

“No.”

Joanie was completely still at the next desk. I wanted to reach out and touch her. But I didn’t.

“I thought we had a promise,” Miss Delaney said.

“We had to break the promise,” I said. “So we could help you.”

“You and Joanie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Delaney leaned back in her chair and the sharpness kind of went away. She put her hands over her face for a minute. And rubbed her eyes. Then she took her hands away and rested them on her desk.

“What have you done to help me?” she said finally.

“I…we…we know Mr. Tupper is really Mr. Krauss.”

She nodded silently. She seemed tired, like too tired to fight about it, like she had given up.

“We know Mr. Krauss is a deserter,” I said.

Miss Delaney stopped nodding.

“What?”

“The army wants him as a deserter,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. I never knew why he took another name.”

“Oswald Tupper really did win a Medal of Honor,” I said. “But he got killed in the war. He and Mr. Strauss were in the same place in the army.”

“And Richard took his name,” Miss Delaney said.

The snow outside was getting blown all around, so that sometimes it was going sideways, and sometimes it even looked like it was going up.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?” Miss Delaney said. “Anyone?”

I wanted to lie.

“I told the Owls a little about it,” I said. “They’re ready to help.”

Miss Delaney stared out at the snow blowing around outside the second-floor window. Then she looked up at the ceiling.

“My gang,” she said.

“They won’t tell,” I said.

Miss Delaney nodded. She seemed very sad.

“What do you think of all this, Joanie?” she asked.

“I think Bobby was right to try to help.”

Miss Delaney nodded again.

“If he weren’t a fourteen-year-old boy,” she said.

“He’s very smart,” Joanie said.

Miss Delaney put her elbows on the desk and her fingertips together and rested her fingertips on her chin. She tapped her chin gently and didn’t say anything. Then she took a big breath and blew it out.

“I met Richard in college,” Miss Delaney said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Colby College.”

She looked at Joanie.

“That’s why you wanted my yearbook.”

Joanie nodded.

“He was a hero in college,” Miss Delaney said. “Football star, very handsome, good student. The other boys looked up to him. Girls all wanted to date him.”

Joanie and I were very quiet.

“We began dating in our junior year, and we got married the day after graduation. Three months later I was pregnant and he was in the army, overseas. My son was born June 5, 1943. His name is John Strauss. I lived with my parents during that time. Richard was in Italy then, and we wrote each other often, and I sent pictures of Johnny. After Italy he went to England, and in 1944, he was in the Normandy invasion. And then one day he wrote me a letter saying
good-bye.
No explanation. Just
good-bye for a while.
He hoped he’d see me again. I wrote back. But I never got an answer. I wrote the War Department and never got an answer. My parents didn’t have much money. My father couldn’t support us forever. I had a baby. I didn’t know what had happened to my husband. I started looking for a teaching job. I didn’t want to tell them about the baby, for fear they wouldn’t hire me. I didn’t know what to tell them about my husband. So I pretended to be single, and I used my maiden name.”

It had started to get dark outside, the way it does in the winter before the afternoon is even over. It was as if we were closed up in this little lighted classroom, and the only people in the world were Miss Delaney and Joanie and me, surrounded by snow and darkness forever.

“In January 1945,” Miss Delaney said, “I got the job here, starting in September. And a month later my husband showed up. It was as if I didn’t know him. He had a new name. He was angry. He wanted a divorce. And he wanted custody of the child.”

Miss Delaney shook her head.

“He didn’t even know Johnny. He’d never seen him before. I asked him what had happened. He said I wouldn’t understand. It was the war, he said. If you hadn’t been in the war, you couldn’t understand. He barely looked at Johnny when he met him. He just wanted custody. Like of an object. Like
I want that lamp.
”

She sat thinking about it.

“So you got divorced?” Joanie said.

“Yes. But no custody. He said it didn’t matter. He would take the child anyway. I couldn’t take this job and take care of Johnny too. My father took a job in another city. Not much of a job. My father is a laborer and spent everything he had to get me through college. They moved there and took Johnny, so Richard couldn’t find him. I send them money every month. It’s why I need this job.”

Miss Delaney smiled kind of sad.

“Johnny has been with them since he was born,” she said. “He’s comfortable with them. I probably miss him more than he misses me.”

“And you took this job,” I said.

“Yes, as soon as my parents left with Johnny. A month later Richard moved to the next town and started his church of whatever. And began badgering me about Johnny.”

“He hit you,” I said.

“Yes,” Miss Delaney said. “He has threatened to kill me. But he doesn’t know where the child is, and I don’t think he would kill me unless he did.”

“Then he would?” Joanie said.

Miss Delaney shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know him. Whatever happened in the war, he’s no one I ever knew. He seems crazy.”

“And you couldn’t tell the police,” Joanie said.

“Tell them what?” Miss Delaney said. “That he hit me or threatened me? I can’t prove it. Just my word against his.”

“How about how he changed his name?” I said.

“Oh, I suppose,” Miss Delaney said. “But everyone would find out about me in the process. A divorced woman with a child, who lied to get this job?”

We all sat quietly for a time. It was like Miss Delaney had said everything.

Finally, I said, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Delaney said. “Do you?”

“I think so,” I said.

IT
was Saturday. We had our final game of the regular season against a junior high school team from Fall River. Our record was fourteen and oh. So was theirs. One of us would go on to be in the state tourney. Changing in the high school locker room I was so nervous, my stomach was rolling. These guys were good. They were part of a feeder program for Durfee High, which was a basketball powerhouse in the whole state, not just eastern Mass.

Warming up before the game I felt stiff and awkward. The ball felt heavy. We were all nervous. Even Manny looked a little pale. Russell kept swallowing, his Adam’s apple moving every time he did. Their coach was one of the high school assistants, and the Durfee coach himself had come to watch. He was so famous, I recognized him from his picture. The Fall River guys gathered around their coach before the tip-off and he talked to them. The five of us kind of stood together, but none of us knew what to say really. If we won, we were in the tourney. And all of us were so tight that it was hard to talk.

There were even a few spectators. We never had spectators. I glanced up at them.
Joanie!
It felt like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket. She was there, sitting by herself in the first row. Big tan skirt, pink sweater, a small round white collar showing. She saw me see her and she smiled and waved. I nodded.

Usually when a game starts the nervousness goes away and you are playing. This time it didn’t. We threw the ball away. We missed layups. I lost my dribble twice. The guy from Fall River just took it away from me. Russell was taller than their center, but the Fall River center was heavier and was pushing Russell around like Russell was made of straw. Billy was missing badly from the outside, Nick lost the ball when he drove to the basket, and, at least twice, put up air balls while trying to shoot a layup. Only Manny seemed normal. He did what he does. He rebounded. He put back some of the rebounds for layups. He set screens for Billy and Nick. He kept his man from scoring. He dropped off his own guy sometimes to help Russell with the Fall River center.

Fall River must have been more nervous than they looked, because at halftime they were only five points ahead of us. They should have been up thirty. In the locker room we sat around looking at each other.

“We’re blowing this,” Nick said.

Russell was unusually quiet. He still looked pale, as if he had stomach flu or something.

“You see Joanie Gibson is here?” Billy said.

“She brought four friends,” Nick said. “They could probably beat us.”

“We got another half,” Manny said.

Everyone was quiet. All of them looked at me. What the hell was I supposed to do? Win one for the Gipper? I thought about Joanie. I thought about Miss Delaney. All of them kept looking at me. We had a half a game to make it or break it.
Win one for the Gipper.

“They’re not that good,” I said.

“Better than us,” Nick said.

“But they’re not,” I said. “We’re just playing awful.”

“Awful,” Billy agreed.

“Because we’re choking,” I said. “Because this is the biggest thing we’ve ever had happen to us.”

“You’re nervous too,” Russell said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I am. But we’re thinking about this wrong. This is a big deal to us because we’re all fourteen years old, and we don’t know much.”

They didn’t like what I was saying, but nobody had much to say about it.

“Lemme tell you about somebody who has a real problem,” I said. “Not some basketball game.”

“It gonna help me make a layup?” Nick said.

“Might help you relax a little,” I said. “You know I told you about a guy bothering Miss Delaney?”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“Here’s the story,” I said, and told them everything I knew about Miss Delaney and Richard Krauss, and Oswald Tupper and Miss Delaney’s little kid. At first they looked a little annoyed, and then they looked interested, and then they began to look mad.

“He might kill her?” Billy said.

I shrugged.

“She thinks he could,” I said.

“God,” Manny said.

“We gotta do something,” Russell said.

“We will,” I said. “After we beat the ass off these guys in the second half, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about Miss Delaney.”

“Joanie’s been in this with you,” Nick said.

“Yes.”

Nick nodded.

“You see her in the stands?” Nick said.

“Yes.”

It was time for the second half. I walked to the locker room door. I grinned at the other Owls and opened the door.

“Let’s go, girls,” I said.

“Screw you and Knute Rockne,” Russell said as he went out to the court. But he didn’t look so pale anymore.

As the second half developed, Russell stopped trying to push back against their center and was now rolling off him and cutting for the basket. Nick sank two outside shots behind Manny’s screen, and when his man started playing up on him, Nick would dribble past him for a layup. He even hit one layup left-handed. Looseness was contagious. By the middle of the fourth quarter we were ahead by twelve points, loose and happy, and having fun. Fall River didn’t know what to do with us. We won by fifteen points.

In the locker room afterward we kept walking around saying how we’d won, saying how we were going to the tournament, saying how good we were. Then Russell stood up on one of the benches.

“Okay, we won!” he yelled. “We’re good. We’re going to the tourney. Now, what are we gonna do about Miss Delaney?”

“Lemme tell you,” I said.