The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [0]
Ivan Doig
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Harcourt, Inc.
Orlando Austin New York San Diego London
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Also by Ivan Doig
FICTION
The Sea Runners
English Creek
Dancing at the Rascal Fair
Ride with Me, Mariah Montana
Bucking the Sun
Mountain Time
Prairie Nocturne
The Whistling Season
NONFICTION
This House of Sky
Winter Brothers
Heart Earth
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Copyright © 2008 by Ivan Doig
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact
or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
www.HarcourtBooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doig, Ivan.
The eleventh man/Ivan Doig.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Ex-football players—Fiction. 2. Montana—Fiction.
3. World War, 1939-1945—Fiction. Title.
PS3554.O415E43 2008
813'.54—dc22 2008010046
ISBN 978-0-15-101243-5
Text set in Minion Pro
Designed by Linda Lockowitz
Printed in the United States of America
First edition
K J I H G F E D C B A
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To Becky Saletan
editor extraordinaire
1943
1
Never much of a town for showing off, Gros Ventre waited around one last bend in the road, suppertime lights coming on here and there beneath its roof of trees. As the bus headed up the quiet main street toward the hotel, where the lobby served as depot, Ben Reinking saw the single lighted storefront on the block with the bank and the beauty shop. Of course. Thursday night. His father putting the newspaper to bed after this week's press run.
"Here will do," he called to the driver.
The bus driver jammed on the brakes and heaved himself around to take a better look at this final passenger. Using all the breath he could summon, the man let out slowly: "I'll be goddamned. You're him. Awful sorry, Lieutenant, I didn't—"
"I'll live." Most civilians could not read the obscure shoulder patch on his flight jacket, and any camouflage he could get anytime suited Ben.
Right there in the middle of the street, the driver laboriously dragged out the duffel bag from the luggage bay and presented it to him. The man looked tempted to salute. Ben murmured his thanks and turned away toward the premises of the Gros Ventre Weekly Gleaner. Well, he told himself as he swung along under the burden of his duffel, now to see whether his father had picked up any news about the repeal of the law of averages, as it apparently had been.
Habit dies hard, even the military variety that never came natural to him; he caught himself surveying these most familiar surroundings in terms of ambush and booby trap, and with a shake of his head sought to change over to observation of a more civil sort. Storefront by dozing storefront, the town still looked as if the world of war had nothing to do with it, yet he knew better. It was simply that buildings don't read casualty lists. He tried to put that thought away and just come to terms with being home. Gros Ventre, he'd learned growing up here, was the same age as the tree rings in the mature cottonwood colonnade along its streets, and altered itself as slowly. Only the season had changed appreciably since the last time he had to do this, early evening unrolling a frosty carpet of light from the front of the Gleaner building now as he approached.
He stopped to read the window as he always did. Posted beneath the gilt lettering on the plate glass were handbills announcing a war bonds box supper and a farm machinery auction on lower English Creek. Both were set in the familiar exclamatory typeface his father called Visual Braille. Fooling around as a printer paid for the indulgence of being a small-town editor, Bill Reinking liked to say. Just this moment, Ben spotted him there at the