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.
CHAPTER 39
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.
CHAPTER 40
IT was March. There were still patches of snow, but it got warm sooner on the south coast than anywhere else in Massachusetts. It wasn’t being south so much; we were only about forty miles below Boston. I was told it was because of the Gulf Stream. Whatever it was, it was warm enough again to sit in the bandstand, which was where Joanie and I were sitting. Some boats had gone back in the harbor already, bobbing pleasantly at their moorings. And some little kids were catching blowfish at the end of the wharf.
“When does the tournament start?” Joanie said.
“Next week,” I said. “Runs until spring vacation week.”
“You were so much better in the last part of the game than you were at first,” Joanie said.
“I gave them a pep talk,” I said.
“A pep talk?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like Knute Rockne.”
“Who’s Newt Rockne?” Joanie said.
I shook my head.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Thing is, I got the idea from seeing you.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told them about Miss Delaney.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth,” she said, “did you do that?”
“We were too tight,” I said. “Scared. I thought maybe if they saw how much less important this game was than a lot of things, we might relax. Give us something else to think about.”
“And it worked,” Joanie said.
“Something worked,” I said. “We’re going to the state tourney.”
“That’s wonderful,” Joanie said. “You’re so smart, Bobby.”
“Yes,” I said. “So are you. Let’s talk about the plan.”
“To save Miss Delaney?”
“Yeah.”
“The Owls are in?”
“All the way,” I said. “They can’t wait.”
“Miss Delaney says we shouldn’t do this, you know.”
“I know.”
“She says it might be dangerous.”
“There’s five of us,” I said.
“Six,” Joanie said.
“Oh, yeah, of course. I just…you’re a girl, you know?”
“And I can run as fast as you can,” she said.
“I know you can,” I said.
In fact, I thought she could probably run faster, but I didn’t like to admit that.
“It’s just that you don’t think about a girl doing something dangerous,” I said.
“I can help,” Joanie said. “I’m in too.”
“Okay.”
“Miss Delaney says she can’t allow us to do this,” Joanie said. “It’s dangerous and probably illegal.”
“She can’t stop us,” I said. “And we’re the only hope she’s got.”
“We could tell Mr. Welch,” Joanie said.
I shook my head.
“He may be an okay guy,” I said. “But he’s the damn school principal. She’s gonna get fired.”
Joanie nodded.
“I agree,” she said.
“So it’s us or she’s got no way out,” I said.
“I guess it’s us,” Joanie said.
CHAPTER 41
ON Sunday afternoon, with the sun out and the melting snow making the highway shiny wet, I rode my bicycle up to Searsville and went to Reverend Tupper’s youth group meeting.
He had on his tan uniform. He greeted each of us by name. He seemed so pleasant when he did it, it was hard to remember the Richard Krauss we had heard in Miss Delaney’s house. Maybe it was just because I knew about Richard Krauss, but as he said hello to everybody, I thought of a casket salesman who had come to our house when my grandmother died. The salesman was all condolences and niceness, and like dead inside. I knew that inside of Reverend Tupper was Richard Krauss.
“Is there anyone in the room,” Reverend Tupper said when we were all settled in, “who doesn’t know the facts of life?”
A kid in front said, “You mean sex?”
“Don’t speak out, Tommy,” Tupper said. “Raise your hand. When called on, stand up and speak directly. It is appropriate to call adults sir.”
From his seat, the kid said, “Yes, sir.”
Tupper stared silently at him, and I thought I saw Richard Krauss peeking out. The kid looked confused, a guy next to him whispered, “Stand up.” And he did, quickly.
“Better,” Tupper said. “Repeat your question.”
“Sir,” the kid said, “when you say ‘facts of life,’ do you mean sex, sir?”
Reverend Tupper was now very sweet.
“Yes, Tommy,” he said, “I do.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tommy said.
“Do you know the facts, Tommy?” the reverend said.
“Yes sir.”
“Everyone?”
He raised his hand, all of us raised ours.
“Anyone who doesn’t?” the reverend asked.
He raised his hand again. Nobody raised theirs. There were kids in there who were sixteen years old. Everybody knew.
“Good,” he said. “Today the subject for discussion is the movie The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell. Has anyone seen it?”
He raised his hand. None of us raised ours. Russell had gone with Billy to see it, when it came to the local theater, but they couldn’t get in. Nobody would sell them a ticket. Russell blamed Billy. Because he was tall, he thought he looked older, and he claimed it was because Billy had such a baby face.
“Good,” the reverend said. “It is a disgrace. It corrupts the great story of America, the conquest of the west, where men stood alone motivated by honor and the spirit of independence to bring law and order to an uncivilized wasteland.”
I wanted to see the movie because of the ads showing Jane Russell in a blouse with a very low neck.
“Since the Jews took over our country, morality has plummeted, and The Outlaw is a perfect example of a movie that the Jews have promoted to distract us from their plans to slowly turn us over to the Communists.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what Communism was. I knew it had something to do with our Russian allies, but I didn’t know what it had to do with the Jews. I also couldn’t think of anybody in the government with a Jewish name. President Truman wasn’t Jewish, certainly. Neither was Senator Saltonstall.
“Each of you boys is a defiance of that attempt. Each of you contains the clean white blood of your ancestors. Each of you worships the one true God. You must not defile yourself. You must never succumb to the wiles of someone not of your heritage. To finally repel the Jews, we need an uncompromised line of white Christian men, generations of them, staying strong, keeping the faith.”
He churned on like that, getting kind of worked up, shaking his fist, stomping around up in front of his flag. What a jerk. Everybody sat and listened. I wondered if anybody took him seriously. They must have. Why would they come if they didn’t?
After the reverend was through, we all stood and said our pledge about being white and Christian, and we put our fists over our hearts, and that was it. Reverend Tupper went to the front door to shake each of our hands good bye. I hung around so that I was the last.
“Before I go,” I said. “I have a message for you.”
“Really?” Reverend Tupper said.
“From my eighth grade teacher,” I said. “You know her. Miss Delaney?”
Reverend Tupper stared at me. He didn’t seem so pleasant.
Finally he said, “Give me the message, please.”
“Sure,” I said. “She wants to meet you tonight, seven o’clock, at the bandstand in Edenville, down by the wharf. Do you really know her, sir?”
“Is there anything else?” Reverend Tupper said.
“That’s all she said, sir.”
He nodded and turned back into the meeting hall.
“You gonna meet her?” I said. “Sir?”
He didn’t look back, he just walked into the hall and shut the door.
CHAPTER 42
I stood behind some trash barrels, in the shadows behind the package store. I heard his footsteps before I saw him as he came down the little walkway between the package store and the Village Shop toward the bandstand. He paused when he saw her on the bandstand, sitting on the rail, her head turned, looking at the harbor. She was wearing a camel’s hair coat with a dark scarf on her head. As he passed me, I came out from the shadows and walked very quietly behind him. The moon was out and nearly full. You could see pretty well, but everything looked sort of pale. It was kind of chilly. But there was no wind.
When he reached the bandstand, he said, “Claudia?”
She turned.
“You’re not Claudia,” he said.
“My name’s Joanie Gibson,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” Tupper said.
His voice was getting that sound again.
“Waiting for you,” Joanie said.
“Where’s Miss Delaney?” Tupper asked.
“She doesn’t know anything about this.”
Tupper stood motionless at the edge of the bandstand, with one foot on the step. I was ten feet behind him, but he didn’t know it.
“Young lady,” Tupper said with the jagged edge sound in his voice. “You will tell me right now what you are up to.”
He stepped up onto the bandstand. Joanie swung her legs over the rail and jumped down outside the bandstand.
“If I have to chase you, young lady, you will be very sorry.”
“You can’t catch me,” Joanie said.
Behind him I said, “Your name isn’t Oswald Tupper.”
He whirled toward me, standing now in the middle of the bandstand.
“Your name is Richard Krauss,” I said.
He stared.
“Bobby?” he said.
“And you’re a deserter,” I said.
“Am I?” he said.
His voice seemed very calm all of a sudden.
“We know all about you,” I said.
“You’re a good kid, Bobby,” Tupper said. “And I’m sure that’s true of your little girlfriend. But you’ve got it all wrong.”
“No, we don’t,” Joanie said. “And I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Look,” Tupper said. “Let’s all sit down on one of these benches and I’ll explain it to you.”
Neither of us moved.
“You owe me a chance to explain,” he said.
I walked closer to the bandstand, but didn’t go up on it.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“It’s a mistake that has been made before. There was a man named Richard Krauss in my outfit, and he was killed. I went to him when he fell, and saw that he was dead, and that he wore no dog tags. I wanted him to have an identity, so I put mine on him, planning to correct the matter when there was a lull in the battle. But somehow, in the heat of battle…”
He seemed to be lost in the memory of it, walking slowly around on the bandstand. He seemed sweet and sorrowful at what had happened. The way he had seemed jolly and kind when he’d first welcomed me to his youth group.
“They thought I had died and he had deserted.”
“You’re Krauss,” I said. “We’ve seen your picture in your college yearbook.”
He stopped walking for a minute and looked at me. Then at Joanie. He was closer than I thought, and he was very quick. He reached out all of a sudden with his left hand and got hold of my jacket and dragged me toward him onto the bandstand. With his right hand he took a big jackknife out of his pocket and pressed something, and the blade popped open. I felt like I might pass out. At the same time, the little part of me who always sat and watched was thinking, This is real fear, this is what people must have felt in the war. It was the kind of fear that made you sick. I would always remember it.
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