Staggerford (8 page)

Beverly wore the Hub uniform, the orange slacks and the orange zippered top with the vertical blue stripe over the left breast. She was the only one on duty during this quiet hour of the afternoon, and after she served Miles she came around the counter and sat next to him on a stool.

“You know who’s home, Mr. Pruitt? Greg Olson. He’s home from the air force for two weeks, and he was in here last night after the game and he asked if he could take me home.”

“Yes, I saw him at the game.”

“God, is he good-looking. He’s gotten better looking since he went into the air force.”

“It’s the uniform.”

“He asked if he could take me home, and I was so surprised I said no. But how could I say yes? For one thing I had driven the pickup to work and I had to take
that home, and for another thing I don’t want any boy to see where I live.” She lit a cigarette. “Mr. Pruitt, can you imagine what it’s like to be ashamed of where you live? You’ve never seen our place in the gulch, have you?”

Miles admired Beverly’s profile as she blew smoke across the counter. Was that an Indian nose? “No, I’ve seen your mailbox on the highway, but I’ve never seen your farm.”

“Very few people have, thank God. It’s between the highway and the river, and it can’t be seen from the highway because it’s in the gulch and it can’t be seen from the river because of the woods. There are a few people from town who drive out and come into the yard to buy chickens, and whenever they do I’m so ashamed I don’t want to go to the door. In the summer we have that produce stand on the highway, you know, and that’s different. I like selling tomatoes and squash and onions. But to have people coming right into the yard—God, I can’t stand that.” Beverly, a beginning smoker, was handling her cigarette like a stick of lead. “All our buildings are leaning over like they were about to collapse into the river. I don’t know what’s holding them up. And the house. The house is a two-story place that hasn’t been kept up, and we’ve shut off the upstairs because all the windows are broken up there and birds fly in and out. And the yard, God, you should see the yard. Except I wouldn’t want you to. It’s a dump. It’s full of rusty cars that my dad used to bring home, and do you know what’s living in the upholstery of the cars?”

Miles shook his head.

“Rats.”

Miles frowned into his coffee.

“We shoot rats with a twenty-two rifle, my mother and I. Rats kill chickens.”

A long silence, then: “I’d like to marry Greg Olson.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“What’s stupid about that? I’m old enough. I’ve been
old enough to quit school for two years. I don’t know what I’m doing in school anyway.”

“It’s stupid to tie yourself down to a husband at eighteen. Your life is just beginning. What you have to do is get yourself enrolled in a college next fall and get out and see what the world is all about.”

“Who says?”

“I do.”

“Mr. Pruitt, your trouble is you never married and now it’s too late and you don’t want anybody else to have any fun either.”

“I’ll have some more coffee.”

“What’s the matter? Am I getting too personal? Does the truth hurt?”

“Beverly, the truth is that I am by nature a cautious man, and if I marry, which is still a possibility despite my extreme age, I will not marry someone I met the night before the wedding, as you seem to be threatening to do with Greg Olson—whom I remember as the numskull of last year’s senior class.”

“I didn’t just meet him. I’ve known him for years.”

“How well?”

Beverly got up and poured Miles more coffee. “Don’t talk to me about college,” she said, hoping he would.

“You’ve got the second-highest grade average in the senior class. If you don’t go to college you’ll be sorry all your life.”

Beverly sat down again. “For college you need more than grades. You need to have all your shit together. You need to be from someplace better than I’m from.”

Coach Gibbon came into the Hub. He was wearing a red jacket that said “Coach” on the front and “Staggerford” on the back. Beverly stood up and Coach took her stool. He ordered coffee.

“Nice game last night,” said Miles.

“Aw, that goddamn Fremling. I never should have had him in there at center. If it wasn’t for him we’d’ve won. But who else did I have?”

“What’s so bad about a tie with Owl Brook? They
haven’t been beaten for a year and a half. If I were coach, I’d be proud of a six-six tie with Owl Brook.”

Coach Gibbon had a long face with dark brows and a long, pointed nose. He turned to Miles and studied him closely from two or three angles, the way a woodpecker examines bark for bugs. “Are you crazy? You’d be proud of a tie? A tie proves absolutely nothing!” He turned away in disgust. “I’d rather lose than tie!”

“Let’s talk about something else,” said Miles. “We’ve never been able to agree on the subject of athletics.”

“No, I’d like to hear you explain what’s good about a six-six tie. A tie proves absolutely nothing, except that Lee Fremling is a fat-ass weakling.”

“Look, Owl Brook has been the best team in this conference since I was in high school, and if I were the coach of a team that played the Owls to a tie, I would take it as a sign that my team was equal to the Owls. And I would be very proud of my players. And I would tell them so.”

“That’s why you aren’t made of the stuff coaches are made of.”

Beverly served Coach Gibbon his coffee, rang up his money, then took the stool on the other side of Miles. She lit another cigarette.

“Let’s talk about wrestling,” said Miles. “What does your wrestling team look like for this winter?”

“Looks good. I’ve got Lawrence Winters at a hundred ninety pounds, and Willy Samuels at a hundred eighty, and Clyde Albertson at one seventy, and Bill Clifford at one sixty, and John Innes at one fifty, and Jack Worley at one forty, and Charlie Zeney at one thirty, and Doug Smith at one twenty, and some little pipsqueak of a freshman at one ten. Now, what I’d like to do is take ten pounds off Lawrence Winters and wrestle him at a hundred eighty, and take ten off Willy Samuels and wrestle him at one seventy, and take ten off Clyde Albertson and wrestle him at one sixty, and take ten off Bill Clifford and wrestle him at one fifty, and take ten off John Innes and wrestle him at one forty, and take ten off Jack Worley and wrestle him at one thirty, and take ten off Charlie Zeney and wrestle him
at one twenty, and take ten off Doug Smith and wrestle him at one ten, and take ten off that little pipsqueak of a freshman and wrestle him at a hundred.”

“You’re always trying to take weight off your wrestlers. I can’t understand that.”

“It’s the name of the game. If you take off ten pounds you can wrestle in a lower weight division.”

“But what’s the advantage of wrestling in a division below your normal weight?”

“Use your head. The advantage is that when you lose ten pounds you don’t normally lose any muscle. All you lose is fluid and fat, and in the lower division you might be wrestling an opponent who is wrestling at his normal weight and who hasn’t lost fluid and fat and—zingo!—he’s pinned. Fluid and fat never win. Muscles win.”

“Then how come we don’t win more wrestling matches?”

“Because all the other coaches take ten pounds off
their
wrestlers too. Balls, if I didn’t know any more about sports than you do, I’d be ashamed to open my mouth.”

“That’s why we’re now going to move on to a different subject. Are you and Stella going to the Workmans’ party tonight?”

“I’ll bet you were never much of an athlete, Miles. I’ll bet your fluid and fat go back to your high school days.” (Conversations with Coach Gibbon seldom took an unexpected turn. They proceeded and backed up along the single track that had been running through his mind since he began coaching.)

“As a matter of fact,” said Miles, “I played on the Staggerford football team for two years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You can look it up in the Stag yearbooks from the fifties. I won two letters.”

“You’re kidding. What did you play?”

“Guard. I was right guard for two years, but I wasn’t very aggressive. I was sort of the Lee Fremling type. I think if I had ever played a whole game I might have been pretty good, but it took me half the game to get indignant
at my opponent and by that time the coach always replaced me. What I really liked much better was basketball.”

“You played basketball?”

“No, I never made the team, but I tried out every year. I think I could have been pretty good at basketball. I had the size and the endurance. I wasn’t quick, but my wind was good.”

Coach Gibbon obviously didn’t believe any of this. He shook his head and sipped his coffee.

Two women entered the Hub and sat at the table in the front window, where they could watch shoppers pass on the street. Beverly served them coffee.

“Are you and Stella going to Workmans’ tonight?” Miles asked once more.

Coach nodded. “You?”

“Yes, unless my toothache gets worse. I’ve had a toothache off and on since last night. I was eating a raspberry sundae—”

“A raspberry sundae—you were at Stevensons’.”

“That’s right.”

“How can you stand going to Stevensons’?”

“They’re very hospitable.”

“They’re spooks. She’s a prude and he’s no more superintendent than my dog. He’s an absolute zero. Did you know the school board cut my athletic budget by twenty percent and he never went to bat for me?”

“He’s not well.”

“Then what’s he doing in that job? I tell you, talking to that man is just like playing to a six-six tie. You don’t win, you don’t lose, you don’t settle a damn thing. He doesn’t say yes, no, or kiss my ass. He just looks out his window and says, ‘See my secretary about it.’ Now, what right has that old battle-ax of a secretary got making the superintendent’s decisions? She’s got all the power of a superintendent and what is she?—a former shoe-store clerk. Did you know that, Miles—she was a shoe-store clerk before she was hired at school?”

“Of course. I’ve known her all my life.”

Coach Gibbon crumpled his paper napkin and threw it
at the wall. He was full of the smoldering anger that always burned hot and clouded his vision for several days after a lost game. Beyond that, he was said to be losing his wife. “If I was the school board I would fire Stevenson so fast it would make your head swim, and I would put Wayne Workman in his place, and we’d all be better off.”

“Wayne Workman?”

“Yes, Wayne Workman.”

“I don’t think I could work for Wayne Workman.”

“What do you mean? You already work for him.”

“Well, I don’t think of myself as working for the principal. It’s the superintendent who hires and fires and signs checks.”

“That may be, but when old Stevenson steps down Wayne Workman is going to step up.”

“What makes you think Wayne Workman wants to be superintendent?”

“Balls, where have you been? Everybody knows Wayne Workman is just biding his time until he can take over old Stevenson’s job. What do you think keeps him in a dump like Staggerford? With his talent, he could be running a lot bigger high school than ours.”

“I don’t think I could work for Wayne Workman.”

“The day is coming when you damn well better work for Wayne Workman, or pack your bags! He’s our next superintendent or my name isn’t Coach Gibbon!”

Coach Gibbon, whose name was Herbert, finished his coffee and stood up. “I hate ending the season with a tie! It’s a hell of a nagging feeling to end a season with a tie!”

He left, rattling the glass in the door as he slammed it.

Beverly, at Miles’s side, said, “Do you know what I like about Greg?”

“About who?”

“About Greg Olson.”

“No, what do you like?”

“He’s in the air force.”

“Why is it that girls think so much of a uniform? Why does a uniform make a man seem anything but uniform?”

“It isn’t the uniform. It’s the travel. A guy in the air force is probably going to travel all over, right? I mean, if there’s anything in this world I could use, it’s a little travel.”

“Me too.” Miles stood up and buttoned his tweed jacket. “I’m going hiking.”

“Where?”

“Out along the river.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know. Out past the cemetery.”

“As far as my place?”

“I doubt it.”

“I get off work at three. We could meet out there in the gulch and we could talk.”

“What about?”

“About my future. Plus whatever you want to talk about. But especially about my future.”

“I don’t know, Beverly. I’ve got to get back to town and get ready for a costume party. We’ll talk in school on Monday.”

Miles left the Hub. Beverly stood at the door and watched him until he was out of sight. She was certain that she could not wait until Monday.

The Badbattle River flowed west from Staggerford, past the cemetery (one mile from town), past the gulch in which the Bingham farm was hidden (two miles), past Pike Park (three miles), and across the boundary of the Sandhill Indian Reservation (four miles).

Along the south bank of the river was a footpath already old when Zebulon Pike walked it in 1806 and described it in his diary. So many and bloody were the skirmishes along this path in the nineteenth century—the Sioux trying and failing to defend it first against the white man and next against the Chippewas—that the Minnesota Historical Society could not be certain which battle the river had been named for. Now, of course, all was peaceful. The traffic had moved from the path to U.S. Highway 4—two lanes of concrete running parallel to the river
and leading west to Fargo and east to Duluth—leaving the path to birdwatchers and families on picnics and strollers like Miles.

Miles went home for his binoculars, then followed the river path out of town. As he walked he thought about Coach Gibbon and Wayne Workman. Coach and Wayne were close friends of each other and of no one else. Coach’s time on the Staggerford staff went back seven years. Wayne’s time went back a little more than one year. Wayne had come to town and swept Thanatopsis off her feet (Miss McGee’s term for it) and married her. As principal of Staggerford High, he maintained a high profile (Wayne’s term for it) and, according to Coach, dreamed of being superintendent. He was both efficient and officious. He got things done, and in doing them he got into people’s hair. Strange, thought Miles, that I didn’t realize Wayne had designs on the superintendency—but no more strange than my not realizing a year ago that he had designs on Thanatopsis.