Authors: Stanley Gordon West
“I decided last summer that I wouldn’t coach another year.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Mental illness. Dementia. Lunacy, you name it.”
Axel’s face brightened like a Coleman lantern. “Why do you think we get so wrapped up in it?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I’ve wondered about that a lot.”
Sam felt an affinity with the thickset man, knowing that, win or lose, like it or not, Axel was already in the susceptible soup.
“I guess it’s just wanting to win at something,” Axel said and Sam detected a note of defeat in his voice.
“How’s it going with this place?” Sam said. “You making out okay?”
Axel leaned closer and spoke in a hushed tone.
“I don’t think we’ll make it, Sam. I had high hopes when we came here, but … well. The last place I tried, a gas station outside Boise, went under.
Before that, a convenience store, and we were doing fine until an Albertson’s supermarket went up two blocks away.”
Amos Flowers walked in and Axel nodded at him.
“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know what I keep doing wrong. My life has been one long string of losses.”
It was as though a curtain had been pulled aside for an instant and Sam caught a glimpse into Axel’s soul.
“The wife and I thought it would be different here, but I don’t know how long we can hang on. We’re eating up our savings …” His voice trailed off and he sat in silence for a moment, gazing at the checkerboard tablecloth. Then he stood and squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Thanks for your ear, but please keep this under your hat.”
Axel tugged at his suspenders, put on his everything’s-just-great face, and headed for the corner table where Amos Flowers had settled. Sam recognized his own hiddenness in Axel’s, and he couldn’t answer the question of why he was getting wrapped up in this again, but he desperately cautioned his heart against it.
Amos Flowers was a wizened loner of unknown age who came from the foothills of the Tobacco Roots and had adopted Willow Creek as his social center, which meant the townspeople saw him once or twice a month. Rumor had it that though he had a bundle, he never paid taxes, had no mailing address, and was a fugitive from the IRS, which made him somewhat of a local folk hero. More than one person had confided to Sam that Amos kept his money in the Sealy Posturepedic Savings & Loan. Sometimes he’d ride his horse into town and tie it up in front of the inn, a big gray gelding whose color matched Amos’s handlebar mustache.
Sam had greeted him on occasion and Amos had only nodded distantly, as though Sam were a treasury agent or worse. How did a person end up like that in life, so estranged and solitary? With a rush of fear, Sam realized that on his current path, he might well find out.
Worldly matters never seemed to interest Amos much, and he was never one to notice a basketball score, but the newborn enthusiasm among the Blue Willow bunch dry-gulched him. He listened to the mushrooming reputation of the unproved exchange student from under his oil-treated duster
and his oversized roan-colored Tom Mix hat that rested on his eyebrows and large ears.
It always appeared as though Amos had been born in and grown down out of his hat, like a snail out of its shell. The seasoned, sweat-stained wide-brim with a Montana crease seemed to have a life of its own and the thin, gnarled, tobacco-colored cowboy simply lived in it. No one had ever seen him without his trademark and no one could ever remember hearing Amos say, until now, that he thought he’d come over some night to see the boys play.
And as winter poked around the edges of the valley, Sam felt an expectation thickening the air like pollen, and he saw how people found it easier to smile.
Diana realized it wasn’t by chance that she hadn’t crossed paths with Sam since he stumbled upon her stark naked in the girls’ locker room, but she wasn’t sure why he was avoiding her. In a school that size he had to be a magician to have pulled it off that long. She admitted she liked the man; there was something warm and inviting about him in spite of his obvious unwillingness to get better acquainted. Did he have a girlfriend somewhere? Was he attracted to women? It was just as well … but she was confused and she warned herself to keep her distance; she didn’t want to stockpile any more freight in the storehouse of unbearable sorrow.
Because it was a small school and because she was trying to keep one eye on Olaf and see that he was adjusting well to his new environment, she had stumbled on another drama, being acted out among some of her favorite kids.
Carter Walker and Rob Johnson had been friends since they were in diapers, their family ranches sharing fence lines, hay baling, and branding parties before Carter and Rob could walk. Carter and Louella Straight, being good old country girls, had fallen on the common subject that had been tickling their curiosity for weeks—having grown up amid the magnificent thrusting bulls and obliging heifers in heat.
Daring, finally, to share it as girlfriends, it got them no closer to the truth and only seemed to compound their frustration and feed their fantasies. Carter approached Rob with their riddle, and Rob listened with a mask of serious concern. What the girls had been wondering since day one was—and Carter found it difficult to confide in Rob—were all of Olaf’s parts that enormous? With a frown of dedication on his face, Rob promised he would find out.
A few days later, when Olaf, Carter and Louella were eating in the lunch-room and visiting with Diana, Rob hollered over the bustle and din from a table away. “Hey, Olaf! Carter and Louella want to know how l-o-n-g …”
The two girls sprang from the table, scattering their half-eaten lunch, and almost maimed each other dashing through the door as Rob continued.
“… the
nights
are in Norway.”
From then on, when least expected, as the three of them might be walking in the halls, Rob would amble up behind and inquire with full voice, “Olaf, Carter and Louella were wondering how b-i-g your …” at which time the girls would shriek to cover “…
hometown
is?”
It was usually the most exciting thing that happened all day for the two girls, and as abashed as they were to think that Olaf might figure out they actually wondered about such things, he seemed oblivious to what was going on, laughing at their fickle flight and always answering Rob’s questions with seriously considered facts and figures. Unintentionally, Rob was learning a whole lot about Norway, but unfortunately the often-embarrassed girls were learning nothing new and startling about Olaf. And Olaf had his own questions about life in the United States on the order of, Why did so many Americans sell their garages? or How did they manage to sell their yards?
F
RIDAY NIGHT
, S
AM
studied basketball videos with a vengeance. His recurring dream had startled him and driven him from his sweat-soaked sheets. He turned on every light in the house and paced from room to room, choking back the sobs and trying to breathe. To drive all memory from his brain, he turned on a basketball video, with the volume so loud it sounded as though the game were taking place in his living room. He hoped the neighbors wouldn’t be awakened.
In the dream, he was always in a car and Amy was entering a building, sometimes a Burger King, sometimes a supermarket, a movie theater, or a shopping mall. He tried frantically to stop her, to warn her. He tried to open the car door but it wouldn’t open. He’d try to roll down the window but there was no handle or switch and so he’d try to break the door open with his shoulder or smash the window out with his fists. He’d try to yell but nothing would come out of his mouth and Amy would disappear. No matter how he tried he couldn’t save her. He was afraid to go to sleep.
And into the muddle of his life—his struggle to claw his way out of the past and into some portion of the present—came Diana Murphy. As
difficult as it was in a high school of eighteen students, he had managed to duck any direct encounter with Diana, afraid that he would blush an array of shades if he had to look into her eyes. She was often gone, off to visit Ellie and Randolph Butterworth, a couple she had met who ranched over toward Cardwell. Part of him lived in terror of the moment when they would finally speak of how he had seen her that night. Another part of him longed for it, that intimate confidence shared, something intriguing and mystifying, something breathing a carnal and scary possibility.
The door rattled. Sam looked away from the TV for a moment, listening.
The knock came again, more distinct. He put his notepad aside and left the taped basketball game running.
The light bulb on his porch had burned out weeks ago and he opened the door without immediately recognizing her in the gusty darkness. In a gray, quilted down coat and a crimson matador hat she held in place by the brim, Diana stepped into his house, her wind-kissed cheeks flushed and glowing.
“Hi, Sam, it’s really howling out there.”
She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair.
“I saw your light. Am I interrupting anything?”
“Oh, uh … no.” Sam nodded toward the television. “Just basketball.”
Diana entered the living room and settled on the sagging sofa amid books, magazines, and stacks of videos. She watched the game in progress.
“Is this on now?”
“No. I’ve got it on tape.”
Sam turned down the volume and picked several newspapers and magazines off the carpet, trying to cover his dirty dinner plate before she noticed it. He tripped and knocked a stack of books off an end table.
“Sorry about that. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
He sought refuge in his tattered upholstered chair, praying that she wouldn’t ask to use the bathroom. Thankful for a diversion, he picked up his notepad, glancing at the TV with a businesslike manner.
“I wanted to catch you at school,” she said. “But you seemed to disappear all week.”
He loved her throaty voice.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, catching a strong scent of Diana’s lavender soap. “I’m watching a lot of basketball.”
“I’d like to help out. You don’t have enough players to scrimmage. I played basketball in college and I could play defense or whatever you needed, I’d be another body.”
Sam feared he visibly shuddered at the “B” word and he had difficulty finding his voice. Another
body.
How could he concentrate with her promenading her shapely anatomy around the gym floor while he tried to instruct his boys on a give-and-go? How could any of them?
Here, Tom, you move up and screen Miss Murphy and try not to notice her sumptuous proportions as she rubs past you.
He’d have to put Tom’s eyes out first.
“Well, that’s good of you to offer. Maybe … now and then …” Sam said, trying to avoid her stare.
“Why don’t you ask a few other people? I’m sure there’d be some who’d like to help and give the boys a team to practice against. I’ll bet some of the recent players would, if they weren’t working.”
“Not many kids stay around here after high school,” Sam said. “No work.” He nodded at the game. “See that? A back pick on the center and Olaf rolls free for a backdoor slam.” Sam reversed the tape and they watched the San Antonio Spurs spring David Robinson for an easy slam.
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “You need some
bodies
out there if you’re going to practice five-man basketball.”
She put on her matador, tilted in an alluring manner. “I’ll be at practice Monday. I think you’ve got something here. I can see why you’re excited.”
“Wouldn’t you like something? A Coke? Some coffee?”
“No, thanks. It’s late.” She laughed and glanced around the littered room. “What are you doing, passively defying Superintendent Truly?”
“No, my mother.”
“I tack up posters off -centered,” she said, “just to see him grit his teeth.”
She walked to the door and opened it, ushering in southwesterly squalls into the stuffy house. Sam followed her to the door and halfway out she paused, her face shadowed under her tilted hat. “Oh, and I’ll try to remember the lights in the girls’ locker room.”
Sam caught his breath and tried to study her eyes in the darkness for
signs of a rebuke or understanding. He caught them for an instant in a small shaft of light. He felt hot blood flowing through his face and ears.
She smiled. “The shower out at my place is a joke.”
When she left, he paced through the house again, stepping around and over things, forgetting all about the basketball game. He could hear the barren lilacs tapping Morse code on the faded siding and unwashed window panes. He stood motionless, listening. He’d never interpreted the signs correctly; he’d never heard the Muses clearly.
Dousing the TV and lights, he fumbled out of his clothing and felt his way to the haunted bed. The wind rocked the house to sleep as he lay awake, and he heard the tapping on his soul. He couldn’t detect if it was a warning against hope or the dancing lilacs in Diana’s inviting garden.
In class, Sam was utilizing the film
Man of La Mancha
to spark his students’ interest in Cervantes and his absurd hero, Don Quixote. Among the many posters on his classroom wall was one that advertised the film, depicting the lunatic knight attacking a windmill. The entire junior and senior class, eight of them, watched the video on the TV Sam propped up on his desk.
Some of his students had shown only mild interest at the beginning, occasionally whispering to each other during the movie. But now, viewing the second half of the film, most of them quietly watched. Sitting off to the side, Sam observed their faces. As the story concluded, the kids hardly seemed to breathe, caught up in the drama of the peculiar old man following his quest with his fat little squire, Sancho.
Aldonza forces her way in to see Don Quixote in his deathbed. He is failing and confused and Aldonza pleads with him. “You spoke of a dream. And about the Quest!”
“Quest?” Don Quixote whispers.
“How you must fight and it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose if only you follow the Quest.”
“The words. Tell me the words,” he says.