The presence of their dead parents is still in the house, from the formal photographic portraits in nearly every room, to the inherited furnishings still sitting where Mama arranged them in nineteen-ought-fuck-all. The airless continuity of this anachronistic, nearly extinct family is comforting. Just to have a sister with whom to grow old, to share cherished memories, let alone to have beloved parents to mourn, seems as wildly luxurious as the lemon-coconut cake that is all hers at tea.
8
Pale melting windows of a thin, heatless light fall over the honey-colored floor of the meetinghouse hall. The cavernous room distorts the sound of the Cramps eloquently demanding some new kind of kick—nitrous oxide is one suggestion—from Sam’s boombox on the floor and the bop of the basketball as he takes it through a series of drills. The thermostat is set at fifty-five. He compensates with layers of sweats, a handkerchief headband and gloves with the fingertips scissored off.
Within a quarter hour, Rick Woods arrives along with several other teammates—as many as could tear themselves away from hunting or work. Joey Skouros comes all the way from Dickensfield, Andy Alquist from Lafayette. They come in their own wheels if they have, hitch rides with others if they don’t, or borrow family vehicles. The mutinous players turn up, to underline the way it should be: no pussies. Even more than usual, there is a feeling of conspiracy as the boys gather for this session. Without any discussion, no one has any intention of letting the girls ever know about it, let alone let them in on it.
It happens the Nodd’s Ridge meetinghouse hall has a beautiful floor, a court installed by Reuben Styles a decade earlier. Not coincidentally, Sam and his father maintain that floor for the town of Nodd’s Ridge, which gives Sam access to a set of keys to the meetinghouse. This serendipitous arrangement puts some or all of the boys on court another three or four hours a week, depending on whether any other events are scheduled for the hall.
With a grimace of disdain, Rick ejects the Cramps from the boombox and slots in a Shinehead cassette. The hall reverberates hollowly with the herd thunder and cacophony of the boys, the thump of the ball in and out of sync with the rap, and then reggae, of the music. It sounds a very different song than that of the Greenspark Academy gym. Sam hears it as a kind of whale song reporting auditorily the trampoline topography of the floorboards. It is a familiar lullaby.
Very early Monday morning, the day Sam has to face the Disciplinary Committee, the temperature plummets far below freezing. The new furnace has a nervous breakdown and farts oily smoke into the cellar, setting off the smoke alarms. Cocooned in blankets again, Pearl and the baby huddle in the seat of Reuben’s truck and wait for the heater to kick on while Sam and Reuben open all the windows and doors to vent the smoke.
When Pearl sees them covered with greasy soot she falls back onto the seat, shrieking and hooting and kicking her legs. On the nozzle for comfort after the shock of being wakened suddenly by the nerve-wrecking alarms, the dopey baby squeaks with surprise.
“It’s the Knights of Columbus minstrel show!” Pearl gasps.
Somehow they get the furnace started again. Neither one is exactly sure what they did but that’s how it is sometimes.
Sam needs a shower desperately and so does Reuben. Pearl volunteers for a cold one but is dissuaded by Reuben on the grounds it might slow her milk. She and the baby shower together first; then Sam takes his while his father dresses Indy. Reuben comes into the bathroom as Sam is drying off.
“How’s the water?” he asks.
“Okay so far.”
Wearing a towel around his waist, Sam loiters, slowly combing through the no-rinse conditioner that keeps his hair from being staticky.
When the icy cold water hits Reuben, he shouts in surprise. Sam laughs. An old trick but still enjoyable.
“Very funny,” Reuben grouses and then dives from the shower past Sam to grab a can of shaving cream and squirt it over Sam’s bare chest.
Sam defends himself with a tube of toothpaste and shortly they are both smeared and pasted. He winds up having to take his shower all over again, shivering in the same dead cold water as his father.
Leaving the cold house early seems providential so they go to the diner for breakfast. The truck dies in the diner lot. By the time it has taken a charge from Reuben’s Silverado, Sam is running late.
Chapin’s yellow Sunbird is in the high school lot, engine running. The Mutant hops out as Sam locks his truck. She’s inside the building before he is—no wonder considering the temperature—and at the gym doors when he arrives. Nat Linscott is next to her with a cassette in her hand. As they enter the gym, Nat passes it underhand to the Mutant, who pivots and shoots it at Sam. He plucks it from the air, pitches the Mutant the keys to the equipment closet, and slots the tape while she sheds her coat onto the floor and snags a ball from the rack. With some relief, Sam hears the outer-space Musak burble prelude to Van Halen’s “Jump.”
At center court, the Mutant flips him. Sam’s fingers close around the keys and he passes behind her, stripping her of the ball with pickpocket finesse.
The Mutant screams in outrage but when she
