Stella's Game: A Story of Friendships

By John D Beatty

Young Romance in the style of Fern Michaels; Adventure in the tradition of JA Vance; Thrills like John Grisham...Stella's Game has it all!

The Cold War; friends moving away; assassinations; deaths in the family; the

• Language: English
• Publisher: JDB Communications, LLC
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645506980

John D Beatty

John D. Beatty is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, living and writing in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Also from John D. Beatty

Crop Duster: A Novel of World War II

Sergeant’s Business and Other Stories

The Stella’s Game Trilogy

Stella’s Game: A Story of Friendships

Tideline: Friendship Abides

The Safe Tree: Friendship Triumphs

Copyright © 2019 by John D. Beatty and

JDB Communications, LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be directed to JDB Communications, LLC at [e-mail].

Paperbound 978-1-64550-694-2

PDF 978-1-64550-697-3

E-Book 978-1-64550-698-0

First Edition

Sitting

Lyrics by Cat Stevens

Copyright © 1972 A&M

The Needle and the Damage Done

Lyrics by Neil Young

Copyright © 1971 Reprise Records, a Warner Company

Love the One You’re With

Lyrics by Stephen Stills

Copyright © 1970 Stephen Stills

Suicide is Painless

Lyrics by Michael Altman

Copyright © 1969 Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

For Clare

The Brown-Eyed Girl

Who held my heart

From the instant we met.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Apologia

Cast of Characters

Not That Long Ago

1963

November

1967

June

July

September

December

1968

January

February

April

May

June

July

August

November

December

1969

January

April

July

August

September

November

December

1970

March

April

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

1971

March

May

June

July

August

September

November

December

1972

January

March

May

June

July

October

December

1973

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

1974

January

March

APOLOGIA

The Stella’s Game Trilogy—of which this is the first part—is a group of interlinked stories told through four narrators; other characters come and go like wraiths. Since the whole story takes place over the course of nearly a quarter century and starts with young children, this is a narrative necessity.

Historical events punctuate our lives. The characters in this story saw some remarkable history unfold. Some of those events both anchor and influence their stories.

. . .

To the residents of metropolitan Detroit, I offer my sincere apologies for twisting your real estate—and adding some things—for story-telling purposes. Birmingham, Bloomfield, and Bloomfield Hills lines were redrawn three times in the twenty-four years I lived in that area, so I drew the borders my way.

To my fellow alum and friends of the real Brookfield/Greenbrier: I had to bend our stories more than a little. Thanks for the beautiful and true memories, and for our Brown-Eyed Girl, Clare, whose family saved me from myself.

To my family, who I dearly love, my sincere apologies for the liberties I take with you and with our story, but our real story’s nobody’s damn business. We all know that the original Charlie had elements of truth and fiction as I have here…and we ain’t saying which is which.

To Pilgrim Congregational Church at Adams and Big Beaver: my family were members; my father, mother and grandmother were eulogized there, and my sister was married there. That little limestone church will always be meaningful to me.

To the Special Ed pioneers of the ‘60s and their families who had to deal with the fear, prejudice, ignorance and rejection of the normal kids: depicting a few of you here, and giving you acceptance, is too little tribute, but it is what I could work in.

To the real Wolverine: I got nothin’.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Narrators

Mike Dietz: linguist, worker with his hands

John Jacob JJ Elrath, Junior: builder, thinker, survivor

Claudia Ann Mueller: swimmer, origami artist

Leigh Taylor: painter, swimmer, martial artist

The Dietz’s—Mike’s Family

The Elrath’s and Parkinson’s —JJ’s Family

The Mueller’s—Ann’s Family

The Taylor’s—Leigh’s Family

Dramatis Personae

South Hills Junior High¹—Leigh’s, Mike’s and Ann’s School

North Hills Junior High—JJ’s School

Wolverine Military Academy—JJ’s 10th Grade School

Bloomfield Hills Central High—Ann’s and Leigh’s High School

Brookfield—Mike’s and JJ’s High School

---

¹ Until 1971, 7th through 9th Grades were junior high in southeastern Michigan.

NOT THAT LONG AGO

Hasn’t changed that much in forty years.

Franklin Road wasn’t paved when he lived in the sprawling ranch house on Round Lake; part of it was now, but the asphalt was crumbling in Michigan’s harsh weather. As he drove up the house’s driveway he glanced around, thinking: apple trees still neither sprayed nor picked. Smells like apples every time we cut the grass. As he got out of the car, he looked back across Franklin Road at a disfigured tree—alone in the middle of the big empty lot across the street—and at the sign next door on what had been his grandmother’s front lawn, announcing the new proprietors: Kent and Associates. Good for you, sweetheart, he smiled.

The young people working in what had become the complex’s office were surprised when he told them that the building had been his home, that they were working in what was once his living room. He led them on a tour, pointing out the bedrooms (offices now) and where the den had been…and the closet where his mom hid hundreds of magazines before his dad found them. Never knew a human being could BE that angry.

In the basement, the wet bar was still there, unused and disconnected. So was the bomb shelter (really a large pantry) his father built during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It kept Dad busy while we waited for the bombs to fall.

He gazed through the glass doors of the old dining room—now where prospective residents met to talk money—at the lake, glinting in the sun. The playground that occupied the football-field-wide swath of grass between the house and the lake had swings and slides and climbing frames in full use that sunny day, and people were playing softball on a diamond where his grandmother’s house had been. The new beach, too, was fully populated. That beach almost looks like it belongs there.

At last he stood in what had been the family room, next to the red brick fireplace—now painted white—dominating one wall, smiling at the old tree on the other side of Franklin. The world changes, but that old tree doesn’t.

I can hear Mom shuffling cards at the big round table…

1963

November

Friday

RECESS! Last one out’s a rotten egg!

It was warm for late November in southeastern Michigan. The scudding clouds rolled in a chilling northerly breeze that whispered the threat of a cold—if late—winter.

The playground behind Round Lake Elementary was a busy and loud place at lunchtime, full of kids-at-play sounds. The squeaking steel swings with rubber sling seats that blistered hips, the squealing teeter-totters with deep craters where little feet pushed, and the creaking merry-go-round surrounded by half-buried gravel were all in full, noisy use by jubilant youngsters making up their own rules for their games.

Gotta pass FAST! Big Boy Johnny Elrath and the Red Sticks were behind two to nothing when he stopped the ball in mid-field, looking around quickly. Blond-haired, fair-skinned and blue-eyed Johnny slapped it across to Gordy, who shot it at Billy, who passed it to Bobby, who ran down-field with the ball. Because he could run faster than anyone else in the 3rd Grade on the ratty playing field (that made whiffle balls fly in unwanted directions), Johnny could avoid the monsters—bullies—who tried to trip him with their plastic hockey sticks.

"Yay, Johnny" Claudia Mueller shouted. Johnny was her friend, and she knew he wasn’t very good at games. Claudia had dark hair and pale skin that contrasted with her bright and warm brown eyes in her heart-shaped face. She was bigger than every other girl in the 3rd Grade and growing up so fast she needed a girl’s bra at eight. Some of her friends weren’t as nice to her as she was to them—but Johnny was always her friend.

But Claudia was a Yellow Stick that day: cheering for a Red amounted to 3rd Grade treason. Betty (a Yellow) swung her stick at Claudia. She dodged that but caught a jab in the back from Debbie, another Yellow, just as Yvonne jammed her stick between Claudia’s legs. Claudia went down screaming face-first into a patch of cold, dusty weeds in mid-field.

Johnny heard her, forgot all about the game, and came running.

He got to the brawl just as Yvonne swung her stick down at Claudia’s head. He knocked Yvonne down with his shoulder, plowed into Betty with his stick, and was pushing Debbie away before old, rail-thin Miss Crowfoot pulled him away with surprising strength. Matronly Mrs. Hutton (nicknamed Mutton) picked Claudia up and took Debbie’s stick away from her just as Miss Anderson (who had the figure and the nerve to wear a risqué mini-dress above her knees) blew her whistle, ending the game.

Claudia was taken to the school nurse—really one of the secretaries with some first-aid training—who applied mercurochrome to her scraped knees and elbows in the quiet room with posters on lockjaw, and who wiped the tears and smudges of dirt from her face.

Johnny was taken to The Office—a terrifying place for 3rd Graders—to see Principal Cox, a stern-looking grey-haired gentleman who always came to work in a dark three-piece suit and subdued tie. Johnny, frightened, wept silently while secretaries busily typed and wrote, filed and chatted while preparing for the impending Thanksgiving holiday. He had never been sent to The Office before and thought it smelled like the stuff his dad used to fix his Uncle Murph’s artificial leg.

The Round Lake Elementary School office was a working museum, occupying the remnant of a stone-and-log structure that was the oldest surviving schoolhouse in Michigan. Octavia Crowfoot had attended that school as a girl, and had stoked fires in the enormous hearth that was now being used as a bookcase. Plaques outside the building proclaimed it both a state and a national landmark. The log walls were covered with shiny layers of varnish, pictures, diplomas, and awards.

Is there anything you’d like to tell me about this afternoon? When Mr. Cox spoke to Claudia in the infirmary, he moderated sadness out of his voice as best he could. What no one else at the school knew then was that the district superintendent had just told Mr. Cox on the telephone that President Kennedy had been shot, and the schools were closing.

Well, Claudia sniffed, nursing bruised ribs and distracted by the over-loud ticking of the wall clock, I saw Johnny pass the ball and cheered for him. Then those other girls started hitting me. Johnny doesn’t…

Yes, I know: he doesn’t play well. And he’s your friend. Mr. Cox also spoke to Jenny Jacobs, a husky blonde 3rd Grader. What Jenny saw of the incident agreed with what Claudia said. But Debbie, Betty, and Yvonne told Mr. Cox that Johnny had just started hitting them because he was mean and a twerp and weird.

Finally, Mr. Cox called Johnny into his office. Only two small glass block windows in the log walls and an oval one in the door behind Mr. Cox’s desk let in any sunlight to add to the harsh fluorescent glare from overhead.

The principal listened patiently as Johnny wept and stammered his way through his explanation. Something had to be done because Johnny had hit other children. That aside, Mr. Cox had more important things to do than punish an eight-year-old for coming to the aid of a friend.

Johnny, Mr. Cox sighed, you know hitting others is wrong, but because the other girls were hitting Claudia, there was a reason for it. Do you understand?

I didn’t want those girls to hit Claudia, so I stopped them. Something I read said: never have so many owed so much to so few. Keeping them from hitting Claudia makes me one of the few.

"Yes, but you should have told a teacher."

Teachers are slow, and telling is bad. No one likes a tattle-tale.

"Sometimes telling is good. Next time something like that happens, run as fast as you can to a teacher, and it will be all right. Do you understand?"

Yes. That’s what you want to hear.

The buses arrived just as Johnny got back to his classroom. Miss Anderson was crying as the children left. Because it was early in the day and news of the president spread unevenly, many children were confused. Some were frightened, remembering the duck-and-cover drill they’d had the week before. Teachers went among the mobs and lines of panicky kids reassuring them that they were in no danger. Because so many grownups were distressed, they weren’t always convincing—even kindergarteners can smell fear and sadness, loss and foreboding.

Was it bad? Did you get in trouble, Claudia asked Johnny on the bus, watching out the window.

Don’t worry. No. Cox just said I should have told a teacher, he shrugged. "That’s what all grownups say."

"Yeah. I hate Yvonne. Debbie and Betty were just being mean. She watched the cars out the window. When they went home at the usual time earlier that week it was too dark out to play, but today there would be some afternoon light. Want to play?"

Sure. She got off the bus two stops ahead of him. Usually, one monster or another would thump Johnny on the head and laugh after she got off, but that day no one talked to him, no one laughed at him, and no one thumped him on the head. That day they just stared at him.

Johnny got off the bus when it stopped in front of his house, crossed tar-covered Franklin Road, and ran into the big family room of the sprawling ranch house, where his mom was watching television in her Naugahyde chair with her knitting in her lap.

Mom, I’m going out to play with Claudia, he shouted, sliding his Sergeant Rock lunchbox onto the kitchen counter.

OK. His mom, Stella—blonde-and-blue-eyed like her only son—distractedly stared at the black-and-white images of Walter Cronkite in shirtsleeves on LIVE television solemnly intoning, the president…is dead.

Johnny’s and his Nana Burgess’ houses were situated on a big piece of land wedged between Franklin Road, Dakota Circle, and Round Lake. Claudia lived in a sprawling development a few minutes’ run across the street. The big vacant lot between the Chana’s and Borninchine’s stately homes—where the friends met—was just across Franklin from Johnny’s house. She didn’t have as far to go: a little strip of maples and oaks separated her back yard from the nearly-empty lot.

After a few minutes of running and tagging, she looked at him funny, and wouldn’t let go of the Safe Tree—the gnarled old apple tree with an odd split trunk that resulted in two big branches growing in opposite directions—where players couldn’t get tagged while they caught their breath.

C’mon Cloud. Don’t you want to play anymore, Cloud? He called her Dee a long time ago because had trouble pronouncing Ls, but he’d gotten over that. She liked him to call her Cloud: she wouldn’t let anyone else call her that.

What’s this feeling when I see him? You helped me, Johnny. I want to thank you.

Huh? OK, you’re welcome, I guess. C’mon, let’s play.

Johnny, I want more. "I want to be your best friend, Johnny. I want to be your best friend no matter what."

She won’t call me names then want to play like other kids. "OK. Best friends, no matter what Debbie says?"

"No matter what anybody says, I promise. She was suddenly sad. The president got shot. Promise we’ll never hurt each other."

I promise.

We need to make our promise good. When Mommy and Daddy promise stuff, they kiss each other. That makes it good. Claudia’s parents promised each other a lot.

When Mom and Dad kiss, it’s special. Yeah, I guess so.

They looked at each other not as eight-year-olds, but as friends of any age. He put his hand over hers on the Safe Tree. She leaned into his face, and he into hers. Their lips touched ever-so-lightly because, after all, they were only eight.

"When we make a promise, we’ll kiss. OK," she smiled.

As long as we can… OK, he grinned, pulling her hand off the tree. Tag, you’re it!

AUGH! "That’s cheating," she squealed, running after him.

They ran and tagged and stumbled over each other until dark. They played together every day for the next week because—for reasons beyond their understanding having to do with the president being shot—there was no school.

Sunday

OK, everyone, Stella smiled, "you know this game."

Just deal, Stella, Johnny’s dad Jake intoned. Eight players; four decks. The Elrath’s and the Mueller’s—the parents had been friends since high school—got together at the Elrath’s on the weekend after Thanksgiving to get away from the media frenzy. While Johnny and Claudia played in the basement, the grownups and the older kids chatted and played cards at the big round table in the big family room, with a wall-dominating red brick fireplace that also housed a built-in stereo and TV.

They called it Stella’s Game—a version of progressive rummy. It worked like any gin game of discarding and picking up cards—but this one passed unwanted discards to the next player, building hands well beyond the dealt ten. The first two deals played much shorter than the last two, and the score could change wildly with the fourth deal. With eight people playing, the last two deals could take all night.

For over a week, TV and radio was a morass of repetitive Lincoln-Kennedy comparisons, hastily-made biographies and tributes that were re-run day after day, preempting everything else. Making matters worse, a flurry of newspaper-extras and special-edition magazines had come out every day, leaving thinking people overloaded. The poignant state funeral on Monday felt somehow out-of-place amid the upset and the rehashes of his assassin’s murder—LIVE on TV—just the day before.

The cards were dealt around the table. OK, three sets of three, Howard Mueller—Claudia’s dad—mumbled, "I can never win this game. Howard, a dark-haired, genial physician in his early forties, sat with his back to the fireplace. This Vietnam I hear about, Jake. What’s going on there?"

Well, Howard, the Reds are trying to take over. The French were there until just after Korea, but they gave up. Too poor to keep it. Jake, a tall, solid paratrooper-cum-salesman with brown eyes and perpetually short, graying hair sat in front of the door to the garage.

Isn’t Vietnam where the Caldwell’s oldest boy went? Claudia, you know them. Stella, with unfashionably (for her age) long blonde hair tied into a ponytail sat in front of both the doorway into the main house and the side door to the outside.

"I thought I never won," the original Claudia Mueller mumbled. Haven’t since we started playing. Claudia, a sloe-eyed redhead with a fashionable beehive, sat in front of the big picture windows. "Phil Caldwell’s in the Army, and his mother said something about ‘Special Forces,’ but I thought he was in Germany."

"You won last time, Mom," George Mueller, sitting between Jake and Stella, mumbled. At fifteen George was Claudia’s biggest brother, a year older than Johnny’s biggest sister Brenda. He had asked Brenda—with three days’ notice—to his 8th Grade formal in ’61, but had stayed friends despite the short notice…or maybe because of it.

Did not, Lois Elrath complained. "I did." Johnny’s sister Lois sat between her father and Howard. She was thirteen, smart, more than a little opinionated, and universally considered a beauty.

"You always win," Jim Mueller smiled at Lois from across the table. Claudia’s other big brother was two years younger than Lois. She put up with Jim because she thought he was cute and didn’t dare argue with her. Jim’s ambition, much to Howard’s amusement, was to join the Marines.

And I can never remember…three sets of three, Brenda was fourteen, Johnny’s oldest sister and the smallest of all the older children, but had the biggest ambitions: she decided in 2nd Grade that she would be a nurse.

The Elrath house had grown since it was built in 1954. The two-car garage had been transformed into a big family room in ‘59, and a four-car garage was added on, with a big concrete driveway sweeping around from Franklin Road. Next door was a little salt-box brick cottage where Johnny’s grandmother lived. Nana Burgess’ house still had a gravel driveway in 1963, but that drive was also tied to Round Lake’s access ramp behind her house—a concession to the lake property owner’s association so the Burgess’s and Elrath’s could keep their acres intact.

After three rounds, Stella went down with threes, sixes and tens. "There’s a special place for you, Stella: you dealt this mess. Jake cocked his head. What are those kids up to down there? I’ll go have a look. Anyone want anything?"

Jake clambered down the basement steps, holding on to the rail. His sense of balance hadn’t been the same since he and thousands of others stepped into darkness over France on that hellish night in June of 1944 and ruptured an eardrum. Johnny and Claudia were playing with hula hoops in the semi-finished basement: the block walls were paneled, and there was a wall separating the pool table space from the furnace and water heater, but little else had been done. Seeing no blood spilled, limbs broken or clothing removed, Jake grabbed more Pepsis and went back to the family room.

The game continued all afternoon amid calm chatter, kitchen runs and laughter when Howard got stuck with two jokers two deals in a row. He had his revenge, however, when he went out quickly in the fourth deal, sticking everyone with at least a hundred points. After a hot-dog-and-hamburger dinner, the little kids were tired, the big ones had homework, and the sun was going down. The Mueller’s gathered up their brood and headed for home.

After the Mueller’s left Stella dealt gin with Jake, playing quietly well into the night.

1967

June

Johnny is moving away.

You’ll be going to North Hills? Claudia, in her new blue-and-white Speedo and sandals, stared at her feet blankly and struggled to not sound sad. As a soft breeze cooled them, Johnny and Claudia sat, silently dejected, in folding nylon-web/aluminum-tube chaise lounges on the concrete patio behind Johnny’s in the shade of the overhanging roof.

My life will be empty without you in it. Yeah, the brickyard. You’ll be at that new South Hills? Johnny, in his new blue-and-black Speedo and bare feet, glanced furtively at her.

Yeah.

Johnny had explained his family situation as well as a twelve-year-old could understand it. After returning from Brenda’s high school graduation the night before, Stella and Jake told their children that the family was being forced by circumstances to sell the big lot and move away. The lake property owner’s association, led by real estate developer/neighbor-across-the-lake Randal Fred Newhouse the Third, had sued to allow development on their uncleared land (only 2-1/2 acres of the 21 was cleared and maintained) on the big lot. Eminent domain, the judgement was called.

A big house would be too much for Stella to keep up with without help from the girls—who would be leaving soon in home-mortgage terms—even with her twice-a-week maid, so one of Stella’s friends, Charlie Parkinson, found a slightly smaller house on much-bigger Birch Lake just twenty minutes’ drive away. Brenda was bound for nursing school at Mercy in the fall: her days living with the family were numbered. Lois, a senior in high school, had always had an independent streak and was expected to go away to college the next fall.

Newhouse Properties paid well above market price to Nana Burgess, who actually owned the land. Though she struggled mightily to avoid it, Stella’s mother Helen Nana Burgess was headed for one of those senior living places: she had suffered two strokes in two years (yet still smoked like a chimney) and should not have been living on her own even as long as she had. Proceeds of the sale of the Burgess land on Round Lake would go for her maintenance and for the new house on Birch Lake.

Let’s go swimming. He glanced guiltily at her, struggling not to look at her developing body but felt drawn to it by a force he didn’t understand. Her chest is sticking WAY out. What’s THAT in my crotch?

Sure. She saw him side-glance at her from time to time. Mom says to expect that from boys, like I’m to expect my chest to hurt for a while. But Johnny looks so…

They ambled down to the quiet lake in the brilliant sunshine, hands brushing together accidentally-on-purpose. She looked at her friend’s smooth but muscular, slender and—to her—beautiful body much as he looked at hers: sidelong, pretending not to see. Her profile was that of a young woman much like his sisters, but she was not his sister.

They swerved to avoid the pile of weeds rotting on the grass just yards from the shore. The owner’s association cut and collected the lake’s weeds every spring and poisoned it every other spring: this was a poison year, leaving dead and dying plants on every shore. Jake wore himself out pulling weeds off the shore but hadn’t yet hauled them away.

If a Round Lake homeowner wanted a real beach with more than a few inches of mud by the water, they had to build one themselves. Jake had dumped truckloads of sand on the grassy shore years before. That effort had resulted in a small beach-like patch of sand ten yards wide. From across the lake, Jake’s attempt at a beach looked like a brown lump rising in defiance from the water.

The friends didn’t go to the sand because his sister was sunning herself in a barely-there bikini. Nearly seventeen, Lois was sought after by every teenage boy in town. She had a gorgeous face, a shapely body, and beautiful brown hair, but a mean, quick temper and an attitude about everything. She was also brilliant enough to be admitted to Harvard in her junior year, and was incredibly nearsighted (Read the chart. What chart? On the wall. What wall?"). Without warning, Lois had just that morning unceremoniously dumped a Stella-and-Jake-approved boyfriend she’d had since 7th Grade, instead insisting that a boy she’d just met who was getting ready for West Point was her soul mate. This preceded another stormy, protracted shouting match between her and her mother, and another one between Jake and Stella…over what Johnny never knew. All he knew for sure was that Lois, for whatever reason, acted like she didn’t want to live there.

Claudia slipped out of her sandals at the water’s edge, walking