© 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983784-5-5
Mrs. Glover was the first teacher I had who realized I loved writing at a young age and encouraged me to do it. Mr. Welsh was my high school creative writing teacher who taught me to write sincerely and not be afraid of where it might lead. I have never forgotten either of you.
And a shout out to my late childhood friend Golan, who inspired one of the characters in this story.
Rock on, buddy.
The Deep Six Players
Alex Bucco…The Captain
Mike Hill…The Big Chief
Eddie Mark…The Little Pest
Isaac Banion…Mr. Big Time
Matt “The Cat” Richards…The Goalie
Curtis “Garbage Goal” Lewis…Goal Scorer
Ken Hornsby…The Coach
Author’s Note:
The Tournament is set in the city of Toronto.
The Old Arena Gardens and the Great Lodge, though inspired by real places, are fictional. All other specific locations mentioned in the story are real.
Contents
Part One: The Calling
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Part Two: The Round Robin
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Part Three: The Playoffs
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PART ONE
The Calling
1.
Alex Bucco sat in the front pew of the church. His mother’s coffin was elevated on a gurney. He did not want anyone near him, and every one of the hundred or so people attending the funeral knew it. Anyone who witnessed the very public blow-up he had with his Aunt Irene at the viewing the other night was afraid of approaching him now.
His aunt had insisted on an open casket. Alex said no. She said something about the importance of traditions, and Alex said he didn’t care about that…with all due respect. Aunt Irene carried on about how they had to respect their family’s faith and values. Alex replied that his mother would not want people to see her body in its current state: lifeless, discoloured and ravaged by disease.
“What will people say?” Aunt Irene had asked.
“I don’t care and neither would she,” Alex responded.
“We all loved your mother, Alex,” his aunt said. “But we have to do this the right way.”
“Please stop,” he asked her.
“You can’t just put your mother in the ground and throw some dirt on top!” she blurted out.
That was it. Enough.
Alex had stood in front of his mother’s casket. He informed everyone in the room that at no point would her coffin be opened before, during, or after the funeral. One of Aunt Irene’s sons, Alex’s younger and considerably bigger cousin, stepped forward, presumably ready to defend his own mother. Alex rocked back and forth on his feet and glared at him. His cousin and Aunt Irene both stepped back and left the viewing room.
He had nothing to lose, and they sensed it.
Now the service was moments away from starting. The mood in the church was predictably sad, but also tense. Alex did not greet anyone, and after the incident with his aunt no one wanted to risk coming up to him and having him explode. He wouldn
’t even turn around to look at the guests.
Many who attended the funeral rationalized this, Alex knew, by talking about how close he was to his mother and how devastating this was for him. That was true enough, but Alex truly detested these people, most of whom had disappeared after the tragedy involving his father so many years ago and were here now for his mother’s funeral. It was phony and he had little patience for it.
A priest appeared and gave Alex a warm, sympathetic smile as he stood by the church’s main podium to begin the service. Alex closed his eyes and felt a wave washing over him. He tried to concentrate on his breathing. When he reopened his eyes, he focused on the casket as though he were trying to catch one last glimpse of his mother. Each time he tried to process the fact that he would never see her again, he felt his entire body go numb.
“This is a solemn occasion,” the priest declared, “but everyone who loved Maria has to look past the sadness of her passing and celebrate her life!” He then turned to the subject of sin: Maria Bucco’s sins, his sins, everyone’s sins. It seemed the church was crowded with row after row of sinners. Alex looked away and stopped listening. His mother never harmed another living soul. Ever. She had been forever loving and honourable.
Alex felt like he was in a free fall. No matter how bad things seemed or how much they struggled, his mother had always made young Alex feel like everything would be okay. Years later when they learned that she was sick, he was determined to pull out all the stops to get her treatment and make her better. When the doctors said her recovery was not a realistic possibility and presented doomsday scenarios (“three to six months, maybe a year with any luck…you never know…”), Alex prayed and searched for a miracle. Even when it was obvious to everyone else and even when Alex’s mother began to see the writing on the wall, he never stopped believing she would beat her illness until the very end. Now as he sat in the front pew of the church, Alex became light-headed.
Everything felt surreal and deep down he knew…they had lost.
2.
Freddy Rozelli sat in the reception area of his agent’s office bored out of his mind. He had been waiting for twenty minutes and was becoming more irritated by the second. He knew why his agent had called, and he was prepared to hear him out only because this particular agent was the first one to see Freddy’s extraordinary potential as a hockey player.
By the time Freddy was ready to be drafted everyone else could see it too, but this agent, Greg Sloane, managed to secure a rookie deal that was incredibly lucrative. Freddy quickly lost track of how many zeroes were tacked on to the contract: guaranteed money, bonus incentives, opportunities for endorsements, no-trade clauses…it went on and on. As long as he avoided catastrophic injury, he never had to think about money again. All he had to do was play hockey.
He shoots, he scores. He could do that.
Freddy’s parents were hard-working immigrants from Italy and held multiple jobs to support his hockey. They sacrificed for him, an only child. His father wore the same shoes until his toes were sticking through and his mother wore the same few dresses until they ripped or the fabric’s colour faded away – all of this to ensure Freddy always had the best equipment, the best coaches, the best everything. When he went pro and the big payday finally came, his mother and father held each other and cried.
Friends and family felt as though they catered too much to their son, and as Freddy grew older the proof was in the pudding. Everyone he played against hated him, and most of his teammates couldn’t stand him either. However, for all his persona l flaws, Freddy had an exceptional skill set in hockey. One of his junior coaches called him “Freddy the Flash” and the nickname stuck.
Greg Sloane opened his office door and invited Freddy to come in.
“About time,” Freddy muttered as he trudged past Sloane into the office. “Jesus, let’s get this over with.”
Freddy had an appointment in an hour to get a massage, and his masseuse was one of the most attractive women he had ever seen. He planned to ask her out, and if she wanted to go a round with him while he lay there on the massage table half naked, that would be fine too. He carried condoms in his wallet.
Sloane closed the door and sat at his desk. Freddy plopped down in a chair across from him.
Despite the fact he’d made a name for himself as a formidable agent, Sloane wore relatively inexpensive dark grey suits with a constantly loosened tie. He never smiled and always looked stressed out, but he maintained a calm demeanour, whether he was dealing with rich owners, greedy players, pushy reporters or his own ungrateful brat kids. He threw money at his wife and children and worked long hours to stay away from them.
“Okay then,” Sloane said to Freddy. “You know why you’re here?”
“Jesus, the club-money thing.”
“The ‘club-money thing’?”
“Sloane, come on, what do you want from me?” Freddy asked.
“The club-money thing?” Sloane repeated. “Would that be the night you went to a nightclub and after spending fifty thousand dollars…”
“Wasn’t that much.”
Sloane studied the papers that were strewn all over his desk. He picked one and held it up.
“Pardon me. $47,876…and then you only tipped five percent.”
“Five percent’s a lot of money off that,” Freddy pointed out.
“So after spending nearly fifty thousand dollars, you stood in front of a cooling fan and blew stacks of hundred-dollar bills into the air? Is that what you did?”
Freddy did not respond. He couldn’t wait for the masseuse to oil up his body and start putting her hands all over him. She was so hot.
Sloane dropped the receipt back on his messy desk, grabbed his cellphone and fired up an amateur video someone took of the incident. He put it on full screen and held it up even though Freddy had already seen the video dozens of times. It had been trending on social media.
The camera moved up and down at first as the person filming was struggling to focus, but then it steadied and showed Freddy standing in front of a large cooling fan with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills in one hand and a drink in the other. After a minute or so of letting the fan blow the money out of his hands and watching all the club patrons running and diving every which way to grab the loose cash, Freddy noticed the cellphone that was filming him.
He stepped forward, held both of his arms out wide and announced:
“That’s right, baby. Freddy’s got the Flash. There’s my strike pay!”
He pointed at people who were crawling on their hands and knees grabbing as many bills as they could.
“See that?” Freddy continued. “They want some of Freddy’s Flash.”
Freddy then stuck his face as close to the cellphone as possible. For no apparent reason, he swatted the phone out of the person’s hand, and that was the end of the video.
In his office, Sloane kept looking at Freddy for a reaction. Freddy knew the expectation was that he should be ashamed and regretful, but he was neither of those things. As an elite player he constantly lived up to all the expectations anybody ever put on him. He earned the cash, and all those other people in the video were the ones crawling around for it. Some people were just better than others. Darwin’s theory of something. Freddy could not remember exactly.
“There’s my ‘strike pay’?” Sloane sighed. “Christ almighty, Freddy, in the middle of a labour dispute?”
Freddy shrugged. The lockout was ugly and had gone on long enough to put the season in jeopardy, but it would end at some point. Freddy and all the other players would come out with more money. Everyone knew that, so whatever.
“Freddy, these are the people you want on your side, the fans who pay to come to the games, who buy your jersey…”
“Come on, Sloane. Blow me.”
Sloane wanted to punch Freddy in the face. It would almost be worth it.
“Listen to me, Freddy. I will arrange for you to speak with a few reporters. You will show up in a sport j
acket, nice pants, solid colour shirt and tie. You’re going to read a brief statement that I’ll prepare for you.”
“Saying what?”
“How sorry you are for the way you acted at the club; how all you want to do is play hockey and the stress of the lockout got to you. You needed to let off steam and made some bad decisions that night.”
Freddy rolled his eyes and slumped back further into his chair. Sloane leaned forward and continued.
“How you love the fans and would never do anything to take them for granted. And you’ll finish by talking about your parents and all their sacrifices and how you have never forgotten where you came from.”
“I don’t want –”
“I don’t care what you want, Freddy!” Sloane raised his voice for the first time Freddy could remember. “This is a major screw-up. You just wrapped up a big gift for everyone who talks about overpaid, spoiled athletes, and you did it at the worst possible time. You need to fix it.”
Sloane was visibly angry and it unsettled Freddy a little.
“And if you don’t,” Sloane continued, “then go find yourself another agent. I’m serious. You think that contract you got just came out of your ass?”
Freddy mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, fine!” Freddy snapped as he got up. “Are we done?”
“Yes, we’re done. We’ll try to set this up for tomorrow morning.”
Freddy left without saying goodbye. It was time for his massage.
3.
Predictably, everyone who attended the funeral for Alex’s mother vanished after the service, including his annoying aunt. A few of Alex’s casual acquaintances tried to check in on him with the odd phone call. Some extended relatives left messages on social media, but that was a cop-out because they knew that Alex rarely checked his accounts. At least they could say they reached out to him.
Alex was in a haze and made every effort to isolate himself. He extended an unpaid absence from the community college where he taught English and was ready to live off the recently completed sale of the small house where his mother raised him. He was, of course, the sole beneficiary. The money could not last forever, but it would buy him some time.
The one-bedroom apartment where he currently lived was spacious, especially since Diana had abruptly taken off.
He didn’t return any calls and wanted to hide from everyone – including Diana, who had left him three voicemails. Each time he played back his messages and heard her voice, he quickly pressed a button to stop listening.
Alex kept his blinds lowered. The only light came from his television, which was set to programs his mother used to enjoy back at their house: game shows and daytime soap operas.
The Tournament Page 1