Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online

You’ve seen the guy. You think we can fight him?”
    I shrugged. It was cold. We stood around in the dark on Water Street until we had to go home. Nobody showed up.
    Nobody showed up the next night, or the next, and each night was cold.
    On the fifth night when nothing happened Manny said, “This is a waste of time.”
    Manny said so little that when he did say something, it always sounded kind of important.
    “We’re not helping anybody,” Manny said.
    “And we got a game tomorrow,” Russell pointed out. “We should be getting to bed early instead of standing around in the dark, like a bunch of dorks.”
    “The Edenville Dorks,” Russell said.
    Everybody laughed.
    “The hell with this,” Nick said. “I’m going home.”
    “Me too,” Billy said.
    They began to drift away.
    “You coming, Bobby?” Russell asked me.
    “Nope.”
    Russell stood still for a minute and then shook his head.
    “See you tomorrow,” he said, and went after the other guys.
    Standing alone in the dark on the empty street, I felt like a fool. My eyes teared a little. What a jerk, I thought. You thought it would be like the movies. Stake out the house and in two minutes the bad guys show up and the action starts. The movies didn’t show you the hero standing around in the cold hour after hour, needing to take a leak, wishing he had something to eat. Getting nowhere. Seeing nothing. Doing no good. And what about friendship? All those war movies where guys were heroically dying for each other. A little boredom. A little cold weather and the Owls flew away in the night. The hell with them. But I couldn’t say the hell with them. We had a game tomorrow. I looked at the blank ungrateful front of the two-family house where Miss Delaney lived. There were things you can’t do anything about. The thought scared me. It made me feel kind of helpless. But there it was. I turned and headed home.

CHAPTER 18
    ON Saturday morning, at the high school, we played a team from Alton. The Alton team was a lot better than the guys we played before. They had a coach, and they knew how to play. But except for number 22, they couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean.
    Russell was, as usual, taller than the other center, and we were able to get him the ball close to the basket. Billy was hitting his outside set shot from behind the screens we set up for him. And Manny was getting his share of the rebounds.
    But number 22 was keeping them in the game. He was one of those kids who probably shaved in the seventh grade. He had muscles. He was fast. Sometimes he would shoot a layup with his left hand. He was deadly from the outside. But if you played up on him to stop the outside shot, he would drive past you and go in for the layup.
    We tried double-teaming him. But they would spread the floor and he would pass the ball to the open man the minute he was double-teamed. Then we would run back to guard that guy and they’d pass back to number 22, and he was one on one again before we could get back to him.
    In the middle of the second half he had eighteen points, and Alton was beating us by four, when we called a timeout.
    We were all breathing hard. We had no subs. We played the full game every time. But we weren’t breathing as hard as we used to.
    “We gotta do something about twenty-two,” I said.
    “Double-teaming him doesn’t work,” Russell said.
    “We gotta put someone on him that has no other assignment. Whoever guards twenty-two doesn’t have to score or rebound or help bring the ball up. He just stays with twenty-two.”
    “Worth a try,” Manny said.
    “Who?” Billy said.
    “Nick’s the best athlete on the team,” I said.
    Everybody nodded. All of us, including Nick, knew that was true.
    “I’ll take him,” Nick said.
    “Okay,” I said. “We’ll basically forget about you on offense. If you can score too, fine. But your job is to stay right in twenty-two’s face the rest of the way.”
    “Gonna ruin your scoring average,” Russell