'like Being Slugged In The Gut'

Foss would never have that feeling, the one so memorable and familiar to the majority of kids who have played school ball. "I don't know what it would be like to go through four years of high school and not win a game," said Kim Meyer. "It's hard for me to relate to them that way. They don't know the feeling of coming into the locker room and saying, 'We won!' If they could only know how good it can feel!"

That's history now, and dimmer tomorrow than today as time passes. Schilling has his fishing rod—he knows the secrets of the Shell Rock River—and his bow and arrows for hunting deer out by the buffalo fields. Foss has his piano and Bach, Hall his cows. And Flatness and Broitzman and all the others, their feeder pigs. "We're not losers," Flatness says.

There is much to do in Glenville, a way of life to be claimed every spring and reclaimed every fall. Games and farms might be lost, but they'll be found again. This is Glenville, after all, the land of survivors like Otto Ziebell's wife.

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