Power Forward

by Sylvain Hotte

  I nodded okay and then left to go home.

  Tommy came in on the bus that night. Larry went to pick him up at the station with Nathalie, who told him he needed to get his Jeep out of the garage as soon as possible because she wasn’t going to be providing taxi service much longer. My coach’s sister was pretty hard to take. But I must admit that it made me laugh to see him always respond like a dog that’s peed on the carpet. Dogs don’t really have a sense of right and wrong, but they can tell when they’ve messed up, just from their master’s facial expression and tone of voice. And Larry always answered “yes” to Nathalie, head down, tail tucked between his legs.

  Chapter 4

  I was glad to see Tommy. I’d only been there three days and already I was sick of Larry and his sister. There was only one thing I wanted: for the hockey season to start, to hit the road and get out of that place as quick as I could. But he barely said hello as he came in, looking disdainfully over his new digs. He tossed his hockey bag down and threw his suitcase onto the bed. He turned to face me, hands on hips. His acne had spread and the pimples on his face were more swollen than before. His muscular arms threatened to burst through the sleeves of his light blue t-shirt. I asked him if he was all right, but he didn’t answer. He asked me if a guy named Vincent had been by to see him the night before.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he leave anything for me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He seemed relieved. Not missing a beat he stuffed his gym clothes into a small backpack and left, saying he was off to the gym. It was nine in the evening. Larry reminded him that camp would start early next morning with tests designed to evaluate the new players’ condition and that it might be better for him to conserve his energy. He replied that he was going to keep doing what he had been doing, which so far had gotten results. And I swear, right then, he shot me a glance. As if to make a point.

  I’d make him pay for that, for sure.

  That first morning we met the coach, the manager and the coaching staff. Pictures of players and teams who had worn the club’s colours in earlier years hung on the locker room walls. We took turns introducing ourselves, like back in grade school. There was a lot of goofing around, some of it pretty funny. There were some serious comedians, real goofs. It lightened up the atmosphere, which was pretty heavy seeing as how we were all rookies. As usual, I didn’t have a lot to say when my turn came.

  “Hello, I’m Alex. I’m a hockey player.”

  When the assistant coach asked me if I had anything else to say, I shrugged my shoulders and said no. Everybody cracked up.

  Actually, all the guys seemed friendly and easy-going; happy, in any event, just to be there. Everybody except Tommy that is. When his turn came, he blurted out some incomprehensible gibberish. The guys just stared at him. It was the first time I’d ever seen him like that; a guy who in all the time I’d known him had carried himself with supreme confidence, always on top of the situation and never letting anything get to him. Now, he was as red as a tomato and his glistening face made his unsightly acne stand out even more. He scratched his head vigorously, as if he was going to tear his hair out, as he introduced himself, so nervous it was like he was about to faint. The room was silent when he finished; no one could think of anything to say. The discomfort lasted until the assistant coach told us to head over to the weight room for the evaluations.

  I did pretty well on the exercises. I was worried how I’d stack up against the other guys, but I could tell that Larry’s unorthodox training program had paid off. Because I finished well above average. But it was Tommy who came out on top, far and away. Growling like a demented animal, he worked the treadmill, the stationary bike and the weights longer, faster and with heavier loads than anybody else in camp. In fact, someone told Larry that none of the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds had racked up such impressive results. Really. And while the whole gang was admiring what seemed to them to be an exceptional athlete, when I looked at my buddy, I thought I was looking at the Incredible Hulk.

  We were invited to a lunch prepared by volunteers at a banquet hall. The room was decorated with bunting and photos of players who had played for the old Nordiques, most of whom I barely knew since I was just two when the team moved to Colorado. Casually, I checked out the old photos, until my eye fell on one of the largest, my father’s favourite player. His hero was a guy from Péribonka, number sixteen, Michel Goulet. Louis, who was a Quebec City fan, told me with a gleam in his eye about the time when a Quebec-Montreal game would get the entire town all worked up. Now, by him, it just wasn’t the same anymore. Hockey players were money-making machines that managed their careers like businesses. “There’s no heart left in the game.”

  Everyone was eating sandwiches, drinking sodas and talking. I didn’t talk much; mostly I listened. All the noise around me was giving me a headache. Like my father, crowds and tight spaces got on my nerves. But I was also kind of anxious about my upcoming interview with the newspaper. It seemed huge. Papers in Montreal and Quebec had already printed some short articles about me. But this would be the first time I’d be meeting face to face with a journalist, and not some guy from the Nord-Côtier or the other weeklies down home. This would be a real interview. I’d have to carry my weight. Except I felt like I didn’t really have anything to say. And I didn’t think that the newspaper guy was going to find my “hmms,” and shrugs terribly interesting for his article. I barely heard what people around me were saying, looking around me, trying to avoid focusing on anybody in particular. Now it was Tommy who was putting on a show; the same guy who was dying of anxiety a couple of minutes before was now speaking with a strong, self-assured voice. Proud of his achievements, he moved onto centre stage. Maybe a bit too much. Because the rudeness that had come over him in the past several months quickly came to the surface. In a loud voice he asked the guys who were listening to him if they’d like to find a place to knock back a couple of cool ones.

  Again that feeling of discomfort settled over the room. I guess it was a specialty of his.

  For sure the assistant coach and the rest of the coaching staff heard what he said. The guys all quickly shook their heads no; don’t count on me, I told him. These were sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, the camp was their chance of a lifetime. You’d have to be a total jerk to think that after day one of training camp they’d want to go out boozing and partying. And it was on that sour note that our first day of rookie camp came to an end.

  I left the banquet hall with him, sure that we’d be pegged as the two hicks from the Côte-Nord. When he asked if I was heading back to the apartment, I told him I was expecting a journalist. No sooner said than the journalist showed up, introduced himself and extended his hand. By the time I turned back around, Tommy had walked off without so much as a nod.

  The interview went well. In fact, I had worried for nothing. The reporter, who could have been trying a little too hard to seem friendly, was actually very accommodating. His questions were simple and to the point, and he jotted down all my answers in his notebook. It was no big deal. We talked about one thing or another: my life on the Côte-Nord, my family and my Aboriginal roots. He took a couple of photos with the Colisée rink in the background, and that was it. The next morning, I found out that I was a star player carrying high expectations on my shoulders. In addition to hockey, I loved trout fishing and off-trail riding on my 4 x 4. Wow! What amazing news! I wondered who could be interested in such nonsense. Especially my face in big close-up that covered three quarters of the page.

  I spent the rest of the day wandering around, hung out at the mall, then grabbed some poutine at a snackbar. I didn’t really feel like spending the evening with Tommy and Larry. It was dark when I got back to the apartment. As I came up the sidewalk to the house, I could hear a woman yelling. I immediately recognized Nathalie’s voice. I paused before opening the door; the living room window was open.

  “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, you’re out of here! Do you hea
r me, Laurent?”

  Laurent didn’t reply. But I could see him in my mind’s eye, with his head bowed whenever his older sister chewed him out. After I heard the kitchen door slam and felt sure that scary Nathalie wasn’t waiting in the wings, I decided to go in. One thing for sure, I didn’t feel at home in the tiny apartment.

  Larry was slumped on the couch. He was holding a beer and seemed upset. I didn’t have to ask him what had happened. He volunteered.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. I could see your head through the window.”

  He sighed before taking a sip of beer. But it didn’t seem to do anything for him because he put the bottle on the floor and frowned. His red hair was sticking out in all directions. He’d traded his blue jogging suit for jeans and a t-shirt. Usually, when he wasn’t wearing sweats it meant he’d been out on a big date.

  “I saw my little girl today,” he told me with a catch in his voice, like a child who had misbehaved.

  “Your daughter? Isn’t she in Montreal?”

  “Not any more. She lives near here, just a few streets over. I was hanging out close to the school hoping to see her, but her mother, my ex, spotted me. Since she and Nat are good friends, she called to tell her.”

  Really, I didn’t know what to say to Larry. I knew he wasn’t allowed to see his daughter. Things like that really make me uncomfortable. All I could do was sit beside him on the couch, and offer him some support just by being there. I think he appreciated it, because he said so, giving me a tap on my thigh as he would have done to a good friend.

  “She’s going to call the cops on me if I do it again. But I’m not sure I can stop myself.”

  “You don’t have any choice, right?”

  “Maybe I’d be better off going back to the Côte-Nord.”

  I agreed. That’s why he’d come to the village in the first place. It’s true a coaching position had opened up, but it was mostly because a court order had prevented him from seeing his daughter, for reasons that nobody could understand. I wasn’t really in a position to press him for the details, but I could see that the situation— living with an overbearing sister who was also his ex’s friend, with his daughter not far away —was more than he could put up with. And I could understand the hangdog look. The shame. This wasn’t the same Larry I knew.

  When I asked him where Tommy was, he looked at me as if to say, “where do you think?”

  “At the gym?”

  “Yeah. I went by the famous gym this morning. It’s not too clean, that place. I tried to tell him what I thought of it, but he just laughed in my face.”

  “He broke all the records today.”

  “He made sure I knew it, too. I don’t want you hanging around there. It’s bikers that run that dump. It’s nasty. I’d better phone his parents.”

  I went into my room to pack up my gear. I passed back through the living room as quickly as I could. Larry was up on his feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to work out at the gym.”

  I was afraid he was about to freak out. As I closed the door behind me, I could hear him cursing from the other side. I took off on the run; no way I wanted to deal with him. I absolutely had to speak with my buddy.

  On edge, I opened the door to the gym. A blast of moist air and music cranked up to the max hit me in the face. A video of some stupid pop group was playing on all the monitors. Monday was a busy day, it seemed; the place was humming. All the machines were in use. Sweat was oozing out of every pore and the big windows facing the street were all fogged up; all you could see were the headlights of the cars going by on Rue Saint-Joseph.

  It was my second visit. When he saw me, the cranky little guy at the reception desk was surprisingly friendly. He even got up to shake my hand. Don’t worry about how crowded it was, he said. It was past nine o’clock, the place would soon empty out and I’d have the weight room to myself. Did I want an energy drink? It was on the house. I took a pass, thanked him, and walked slowly to the locker room, looking around the weight room as I passed through, but Tommy was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t in the locker room, either. The guy at the reception desk was right. The gym emptied and everyone converged on the lockers. The small room was soon packed with muscular guys, fat guys, skinny guys. It was impossible to move. The place stank of cheap perfume and sweat. I wedged into a corner near three rusty old lockers, next to a steel door beneath a red Exit sign. I stood in my corner with my back to the crowd, facing the dirty yellow wall. Overhead hung neon lights, their electrical connections drooping from the missing tiles in the drop ceiling. What was I doing there, I wondered. I was suffocating, dizzy. The air was stale. There wasn’t any space. I closed my eyes and imagined tall black spruces at the summit of a large hill that I had to climb by grabbing hold of the roots protruding from the ground. A big oaf who was admiring his muscles pushed me aside as if I weren’t even there. I hadn’t noticed I was standing in front of a mirror; I felt totally ridiculous. Unable to tolerate my surroundings for another moment, I pushed on the exit-bar of the steel door, quickly closed it behind me and left.

  I found myself in a dark hallway lit by a single red bulb. There was a large hamper full of towels. Off to the side were some black garbage bags, cardboard boxes, and tools scattered on a table. On my left, a door opened to the outside. As I headed for it I heard voices on my right, and noticed a staircase leading to the basement.

  That was when I realized I’d left my backpack in the locker room. But the sound of voices from below diverted my attention. I edged down the stairs on tiptoe, my hand sliding along the steel handrail. At the very bottom, a narrow shaft of light shone through an open door. When I recognized Vincent’s unpleasant voice, I froze, unable to take another step, terrified of being caught by the sniffling brute who spoke like a retard. My heart began to hammer in my chest when, in answer to a question from Vincent, I heard the voice of my friend Tommy reply.

  Right then, I couldn’t figure out the nature of their conversation nor what they were talking about exactly. But this is pretty much what I heard:

  “It’s your liver. Your cousin gave you some pills to take. They’re hard on the system. With intramuscular injections, you’ll give your liver a break and your symptoms will disappear, you’ll see.”

  “Okay,” answered Tommy. “Uh … Where are you going to stick that thing?”

  “In your ass!” replied a gruff voice I didn’t recognize.

  The same person broke into a booming laugh, which quickly transformed into a wracking cough that took a while to subside. Finally, the man cleared his throat and hawked. Vincent went on with what he was saying.

  “The injection has to go into a large muscle so that your body can absorb the dose slowly. We could stick you in the shoulder or thigh if you want. But a shot in the butt is more discreet, when it comes to the marks.”

  I’d heard everything they said, but I had to see it with my own eyes. I knew I would be taking a terrible risk by sticking my head into the room. But I couldn’t believe my ears. I had to get to the bottom of it. It all seemed so scary, so twisted. I just couldn’t believe that Tommy was mixed up in something like that.

  I slid my arm through the crack of the door … halfway to my elbow. I figured if anyone saw my hand, I could scramble back up the stairs and escape through the exit. I slowly wiggled my arm and seeing as how Vincent continued talking as though he hadn’t noticed, I held my breath and peeked through the door.

  The basement had a cement floor and there were things piled everywhere: furniture, rugs, old weight machines and exercise gear. There were different-shaped lockers, and on the ground, parts that seemed to have come from some gas-powered bicycles; a little bit as though someone had taken apart two or three Harleys and spread the parts out on the floor. In the centre of all the mess, under the murky glare of a flickering neon light, stood Vincent. Sitting in front of him on a chair was the bearded guy wearing a red, white and blue
scarf. And, standing between the two nasties, one knee resting on an exercise bench, was Tommy.

  He seemed hesitant, a bit lost. He loosened his belt and let his jeans fall loosely below his waist. Vincent took a small brown vial from a table next to him, stuck in the syringe and extracted the fluid. The black-bearded guy with the all-American scarf finished rolling a cigarette, sucking it into his mouth two or three times to moisten it. As Tommy leaned forward, exposing his right buttock to big Vincent who was eyeing the tip of the needle, the bearded man lit the cigarette, which turned out to be a very large joint. He exhaled the smoke, which began to curl upward under the neon light.

  “You want a puff?” asked the man, handing the joint to Tommy, who didn’t know what to say, being on all fours and in a humiliating position.

  “Hey, you brain-dead loser!” said Vincent to his friend. “The guy’s an athlete. He’s just started junior training camp and you want him to smoke some weed?”

  The other guy shrugged his shoulders and took another puff, while Vincent jabbed the needle into Tommy’s backside. I saw my friend grip the exercise bench, grimacing slightly. Then, suddenly, he turned in my direction.

  Our eyes met and immediately locked on one another. The horrible truth hit us, as if we both understood how serious, how grave it was; something had broken forever. I pulled my head back behind the door as Tommy let out a cry of astonishment, or maybe, of rage.

  Petrified, I couldn’t move. And in the distance, I’m sure I heard wolves howling.

  “What’s the matter?” said Vincent.

  “Uh … nothing, it hurts, that’s all.”

  “You’re crying over a shot in the bum? How are you going to handle playing in the juniors?”

  And then, as the gruesome laughter of the guy with the beard burst out anew, I flew up the stairs four at a time and pushed open the steel door at the end of the hallway.

  I emerged into a dark, quiet side street. The streetlights cast long shadows from the rubbish bins onto the grey asphalt. Without a moment’s hesitation, I took off running at full speed, up the street and then turning down the adjacent boulevard. Wolves were howling from every corner of the city, the sound rising up from the end of every alley, from every street around me. My heart was pounding deep in my chest. I ran with my head thrust back, my antlers thrust back, my warm breath steaming through my nostrils, my steps driven by the heart of a desperate animal running wild through the city. The moose I had become sprinted between the people on the sidewalk, as if dashing between the black spruce of a dense forest. And the wolves were getting closer and closer. Only at the last minute did I realize that I was about to crash into a red brick wall at the end of the street. I leaped, and extended one leg. Then I turned around, back against the wall. Looking for a way out, I spotted two police cars tearing down a side street to my right, sirens wailing.