Blind Your Ponies (48 page)

When he jerked open the door that had swollen against its jam, he was confronted with a shadowy apparition. When Sam’s eyes focused,
the apparition became a misplaced person with a ratty leather suitcase in hand.

“Amos?”

“Sorry to bother at this ungodly hour, but I figured you’d do a favor.”

He stood as though he’d grown there, his large ears curled down by the wide brim of his Tom Mix hat. His handlebar moustache drooped.

“Come in, come in.”

Sam backed into the kitchen, and Amos followed him with his strange burden, closing the door behind him. He set the suitcase down. It had two leather straps that were buckled on top, and the handle was worn down to the metal in spots.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”

“Oh… well, a few of us have been celebrating.”

“Them boys done good,” Amos said.

“Would you like to sit—”

“No, no, only be a minute.”

Sam had the impulse to ask if he could take his hat, but felt it would be like asking Amos to undress.

“May be leaving soon, want to leave something for Tom, thought you would do it for me.”

“Why, yes… I could do that, but why don’t—”

“Can’t give it to him until spring, until he finishes school. Told me he was thinking of goin’ in the service. What he really wants is to ride rodeo. Told him he ought to go to college and ride on the rodeo team. Said he couldn’t afford it unless he went in the service first. There’s some things in here of mine: bridle, lariat, spurs. There’s some money, enough to help him get started in college, keep him out of soldiering, but no one can know about that except you and Tom. That mean son of a bitch that fathered him would try to get his miserable hands on it. That’s the favor.”

Amos stood without emotion in his eyes, the patina of worn leather on his face.

“Well, sure. I’d be glad to do that, but you could give it to him. He’d want to thank—”

“Won’t be here much longer.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away.”

“Will you be here long enough to see the boys in the tournament?”

“That’s the only reason I’m still here, stay as long as they’re in it. I want Tom to know I’m there pullin’ for him.”

“I know how much that means to him. I’ve seen him look for you in the crowd.”

Amos turned and dragged open the sticking door. He stepped out quickly and then turned halfway and regarded Sam.

“You’ll see that he gets it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Nobody needs to know about it, just Tom and you.”

“Just Tom and me.”

Amos walked out the door and melted into the darkness so quickly Sam could hardly believe it. He stood in the open door and scanned his overrun back yard. Nothing. Then the dry, leafless lilacs clacked as someone passed through.

Back inside, Sam inspected the suitcase. The initials
GLH
could still be recognized on a tarnished brass plate. About to leave it where it stood and hit the sack, he thought maybe he should hide it. Sam picked up the suitcase, surprised by its weight, and shoved it on its side under his bed.

Settled in bed at last, he caught the scent of her lingering on him. Try as he may, he couldn’t help but wonder what was in the luggage. And how had Amos come to town? Sam had seen no pickup, no horse. He tried to fall asleep against the overwhelming temptation to open the puzzling treasure that was buried beneath him.

He was thankful the team had two days to catch their breath and rest before the Monday night game. He realized he was back in it with his unguarded heart, daring to believe they could win. It scared him. And it scared him when he thought about his feelings for Diana. In a half-sleep he sensed that whatever he’d been hanging onto so desperately these past years was not so precarious any longer, as if now, somehow, he was hanging on with both hands.

Sunday morning Peter was lounging at the kitchen table when Grandma hustled in the back door. Tripod nested in his lap. “Oh, shucks, I wanted to be here when you woke up. You usually sleep another hour or more when you don’t have school.”

“The phone woke me.”

She hung her coat on a peg in the cluttered entryway but kept her brown felt topside.

“The Blue Willow is buzzing this morning. You boys have this whole end of the valley more excited than I’ve ever seen.”

“Whata gas,” Parrot squawked from the front room.

“Did you hear that?” Grandma said with an astonished expression on her face.

“Yeah. So what?”

“He said, ‘Whata gas.’ Imagine.”

She moved to the doorway and peered at the caged bird.

“He said, ‘Up you ass,’ ” Peter said.

“I don’t believe it. After forty years that bird has changed its tune.”

“I think your hearing is shot.”

Grandma reached for the refrigerator door, which looked like a clippings board in a newspaper office.

“Yikes!” she yelled and leaped back a step, her felt fedora flipping off her snowy hair. “What the—that damn icebox has a short.”

Pete roared with laughter.

“Just trying to keep you out of the paint. Now you know how Olaf learned so fast.”

He revealed the remote-control unit of the Lightning Commander in his lap, under Tripod. When she looked closely, she found the shock collar Scotch-taped to the refrigerator door, camouflaged by newspaper clippings.
Grandma picked up her hat and stuck it on. Then she swatted Pete lightly on the top of his head.

“You! A body can never relax with you around.”

“Or you,” he said.

“Now then, if you’ll let me in the icebox, what would you like for breakfast?”

“I’ve had some milk and a peanut butter sandwich.”

He set the remote-control transmitter on the table in plain sight.

“Land sakes, that’s no breakfast for a boy who’s going to knock the cheesecake out of Gardiner tomorrow night. Let me fix you some eggs or pancakes.”

She opened the refrigerator and began setting food out.

“Pull a ship,” Parrot cackled.

“Hear that, boy?”

“Yeah! He said, ‘Pull a ship.’ I don’t believe it,” Pete said, looking toward the front room.

“He must be getting senile,” Grandma said, “losing his memory, can’t remember which are his lines and which are mine.”

She broke eggs into a bowl.

“Who was on the phone?”

“Oh, the doctor’s office, said you should call them. Isn’t it kind of funny to be calling you on Sunday?”

“Ha! Probably wants to skin me one more time before he dies. They’re always pestering me about something. You got your things packed?”

“Yeah. I’m not taking much,” Pete said.

“I can’t remember when Willow Creek was playing in the Monday night game. We always played Friday afternoon and then slunk home with the watermelon seeds knocked out of us.”

“Not this year,” Pete said and wondered what it would be like to stay another year, to graduate from Willow Creek. He thought his grandma was slowing down and she might need him. No one needed him in Saint Paul.

“You’re right. Not this year.” She paused and regarded him. “Are you doing all right?”

“As long as she swims, I will cook.”

“Attaboy. Are you glad you stayed?”

“Yeah,” Pete said, “I’m glad. I’m
really
glad.”

“Listen to me, grandson. There isn’t any other life but what we have right now, this minute, so live it to the hilt.” She banged a fist on the countertop. “That’s my word to you. Live it to the hilt every day and you’ll have few regrets.”

“I’m trying, Grandma.”

“I know you are, sweetheart, and doing a bang-up job of it, too.”

She fired up the gas stove.

“What do you think of the coach now?”

Pete thought for a moment. He wanted to say he loved him but couldn’t get those words out.

“I really like him.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Whata gas,” Parrot squawked.

S
UNDAY NIGHT SAM
sat at Diana’s table as she set a steaming bowl of spaghetti noodles and another of homemade sauce in front of him. He had slept late into the day and now looked forward to this intimate time with delicious anticipation, trying to put the Monday night game out of mind for a while. Diana brought French bread and slid into her chair beside him.

“Are we going to win tomorrow?” she asked calmly.

“Yes. We’re going to win.”

“I hope Tom will stay off that leg,” she said. “I still can’t figure what they were up to Saturday afternoon in Butte. Pete’s left hand was swollen and something hit Curtis in the mouth.”

“He told me it happened in the morning game.”

“Huh. He told me they were roughhousing in their room,” she said. “We’ll probably never know.” She regarded him with a frown. “You don’t think they’d fight,” she said. “I mean really try to hurt each other?”

“Never, and I’d bet my life on it.”

He covered his spaghetti with the garlic-scented sauce.

“This smells fantastic.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I’m famished—more for you than your cooking.”

They traded smiles as she helped herself to the food. “Then would you characterize our lovemaking as dessert?” she said.

“No… never. It’s a staple, the stuff of life, the main course.”

“Then we’re having the appetizer?”

“I don’t need an appetizer,” he said, watching her suck a noodle across her lip. “Being around you all week is more appetizer than I can handle.”

She broke off a piece of French bread and passed it to him. “Are you going to coach again, wherever you end up?”

Sam thought a moment. He didn’t want to look ahead to a time when they might not be together. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Oooh, you ought to, you’re so good with the boys.”

“I think it’s the boys who are good with me.”

“You’re so natural with them,” she said.

“It’s like the local folklore about the bicycle built for two. There’ll never be another ride like we’ve had here—there’ll never be another group of boys like these.”

“Listen, you’ve made me see things I never saw before, you’ve made me laugh, really laugh. You’ve taught me things I’d never imagined, things I’ll always remember, you can’t waste—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Sam put down his fork and held up both hands. “I don’t like the insinuation.
Always remember?
You talk as though I’m history,” Sam said. He felt his chest constricting.

“I’m not going to be in Willow Creek next year. You said you were thinking of applying in Arizona, I’m applying in San Diego, among other places. I just mean—”

“You just mean this is only a temporary relationship, a Willow Creek fling,” Sam said, struggling to sound lighthearted.

“Like you’re always telling the boys, we have this season, seize the present, don’t worry about tomorrow.”

Sam pushed his chair back from the table.

“I don’t want
us
to end,” he said with an ironic firmness in his voice.

The words hung there, awkward, poorly dressed, out of style, a kite without wind. She started to speak but he cut her off.

“I haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, but I know this
much. I don’t want you walking out of my life. I don’t want to leave what we have together.”

She reached over and took his hand in hers. “Sam, you sweet, gentle man. Let’s enjoy what we have now, let’s ride the bike with the boys and not get tangled in a future that may never be.”

Her eyes projected a plea for understanding.

Sam held her hand and wished he could heal her. She was the deer that had been hit crossing the road, the mother who had killed her only child, her heart shattered there in the ditch with Jessica and all of this world’s mangled and butchered victims of the madness. His throat filled. He swallowed hard and forced the words.

“I want to sit up and bark like a dog,” he said, “or shinny up a telephone pole, but I can’t.”

“No, no, don’t do that, I couldn’t bear seeing you like that.”

They sat facing each other beside the table, holding hands while the spaghetti cooled and the salad wilted. He didn’t know what to do. There were eight hundred thousand words in the English language and he couldn’t remember one. She saved him.

“C’mon.”

She stood and led him to her large brass bed. They slowly removed their clothing and crawled under the bedding together as though they had both been wounded, but they didn’t wind the music box, they didn’t light a candle.

I
N
H
IS
S
AGGING
bed Sam dreamed he was running around the block to earn a few squares of Hershey bar from the nasty little girls in his neighborhood. He was a small boy again. They were sitting on the concrete wall along the alley, laughing at him, and he couldn’t run well because his medial collateral ligament hurt and he was limping, afraid he wasn’t running fast enough. At the end of the alley Amy was rapidly cranking the Edelweiss music box—which was playing a Bach chorale—and shouting at him. “Run faster, Sam, run faster!” He could see Diana driving off in her Volvo with Andrew Wainwright. Beside him, running stride for stride, was Tom’s buckskin horse, limping also, its body full of shaved spots where thousands of stitches held the mutilated creature together.

Sam woke before he reached the end of the alley. He rolled over and tried to remember what day it was. It was still dark. He got out of bed and shuffled into the living room, squinting out the front window to see if Wainwright was sailing by on the bicycle built for two. He was exhausted but he didn’t want to return to his bedding until his mind had switched to another channel. He had no idea what the dream meant, if anything, but it left a boulder of dread in his stomach. He wanted to call Diana, but there was no sense both of them losing sleep. Finally, he crawled back into his bed and lay down, trying to relax and feel the earth rotating. He realized the bed was not lined up right; it needed to be on an axis of north-south.

He scrambled out and pulled it around so that the foot was pointing south. When he went to dive back in, he stumbled over the large leather suitcase Amos Flowers had deposited in his care. He thought to shove it under the realigned bed, but hesitated. He snapped on the light, unstrapped the bindings, pushed a brass key-holed button next to the
GLH
initials and opened it. A lariat, leather gloves, a thin Mexican horse blanket, a bridle, spurs. Sam lifted the riding gear out and pulled back a cloth partition. There, staring up at him with rubber bands across their faces, were piles of famous Americans: Jackson, Grant, Hamilton, Franklin, enough greenbacks to go to college for ten years. With a rough count Sam figured it totaled between fifty and sixty thousand.