Although Louise was still the subject of a good deal of attention, she no longer went out on dates. She hadn’t since that night Jennifer Carlysle poked Frank Hawthorne’s eye out. She still went out with her friends, in groups, to parties, but she was a far cry from the Louise of days gone by. I was actually relieved; it’s very traumatic to have your sister go out with guys you know. Sometimes, though, an expression of agonizing sadness faded across Louise’s face and I wondered what could possibly be causing her so much trouble and why she didn’t do something about it.
It was hard to worry too much about Louise, who handled her problems quietly and independently, when there was Sarah, who handled hers loudly and required as much help as possible.
We were interrupted one lazy morning in late August by screams from Sarah’s bedroom. Both my mother and I came running and when we got to the hall Sarah nearly knocked us down, moving as fast as her little yellow legs would carry her.
“What in heaven’s name is going on?” my mother asked, grabbing Sarah by the arm to keep her from running away.
“We have to find Finnie,” she said, panting.
“He’s coming over in an hour or so,” I said.
“We have to find him,” she repeated.
I telephoned Finnie’s house, but Finnie wasn’t there and Clarice didn’t know where he was. I then phoned Joyce’s house, but Joyce wasn’t home either. For the next three-quarters of an hour, Sarah wouldn’t talk to anyone; she just sat on the front steps waiting for Finnie to arrive. I waited outside with her, at my mother’s request. Sarah was quite a high-spirited girl and scenes like this one were by no means unusual.
When Joyce’s beat-up Honda pulled into the driveway, Sarah sprang from the steps, blowing frantically on the whistle attached to her life jacket. The shrill noise startled Joyce, causing her, momentarily, to forget she was driving. She remembered in the nick of time, stopping inches from the garage door.
“Sarah!” I said sharply, also startled by that damn whistle.
She ignored me and ran up to the passenger door.
“What’s the matter, Sarah?” Finnie asked.
“Something bad is going to happen,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. The lamp showed me your dad walking backward.”
“Walking backward?”
“Yes, I saw him walking backward in a circle. Something bad is going to happen.”
Joyce looked at me as if to ask if she was really seeing a little yellow seven-year-old girl in a life jacket standing in the driveway warning Finnie of impending doom. I shrugged. It was dangerous to dismiss Sarah out of hand; sometimes she was right.
Joyce and I followed Sarah and Finnie into the house. They went straight to the kitchen, where Finnie picked up the phone and called his father. Roger Walsh was at the sawmill, in a meeting with some raw-log suppliers. He was somewhat inconvenienced by Finnie’s call and was undoubtedly even more so when he discovered that his son was calling him to see if he was okay. He said that he was fine, as far as he knew.
Somehow Sarah’s fatalism had rubbed off on me; I could hear my father’s voice ringing in my ears, over and over, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Finnie asked me.
“He knows I’m right,” Sarah said.
“You look pale,” Joyce said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” Finnie said.
“No, I don’t. There is nothing wrong with me. You talked to your dad, right, and he’s fine. It was nothing, Sarah. You were wrong,” I said.
Sarah shook her head. “I saw him walking backward.”
“So what? That doesn’t mean anything. People walk backward all the time.” I walked backward around the kitchen table. “Look at me, I’m walking backward. Is something going to happen to me?”
“No. It’s not the same.”
“Look, Paul, let’s just forget it, okay?” Finnie said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah, sure. I’m sorry.”
Sarah stood looking at the floor, her shoulders slumped. “I saw him. I’m not lying.”
“I know. It’ll be OK.”
Sarah, never one to stay mad for long, looked up and smiled. Finnie put his hand on her head and tousled her hair. “Hey Sarah, Joyce and Paul and I are going to go to the movies this afternoon. You want to come?”
Joyce and I simultaneously looked at Finnie; we’d made no plans to go to the movies. Finnie gave us a look that said we were going.
We piled into Joyce’s rusty car and set off to the theatre. Joyce and Finnie were in the front and Sarah and I were in the back. Everyone was uncomfortably quiet during the ride. I was still preoccupied with the voice in my head, Sarah was waiting for something bad to happen, Joyce was probably wondering how she had managed to get mixed up with us and God only knows what was going through Finnie’s mind.
About halfway through the picture, I looked over at Finnie. He was staring blankly at the screen and his hand, perched awkwardly on the armrest, was shaking. Joyce quietly took his hand in hers and Finnie looked at her, his eyes wide with fear. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and then pressed his head onto her shoulder, where it remained for the rest of the movie.
On the ride home we were assaulted by a barrage of questions from Sarah about the movie. She always did this. It’s not that she didn’t know what was going on; she did. She just wanted to make sure she was right about what she thought was going on, to see if anyone else had seen something she hadn’t. Normally I didn’t appreciate her interrogations; I saw movies and television as a kind of escape and thought that overanalyzing their content negated that effect. I also felt stupid much of the time, still do, because I can never remember the names of characters in, or plots of, books and movies, anything at all, for more than 10 or 15 minutes. If it’s real, I can remember it forever. It’s good, in a way, because it keeps my head from filling up with useless crap.
Finnie, on the other hand, never forgot the slightest detail. Sometimes I wondered if he actually knew the difference between fact and fiction. I think he did, but often chose to ignore it.
Finnie and Joyce answered Sarah’s questions the whole way home and even after they dropped us off, Sarah didn’t let up. I told her I was tired, which I was, so I went to my room to lie down. I fell asleep; I don’t know for how long. I awoke with a jolt when my door opened. My mother stood in the doorway.
“Paul, there’s someone on the phone for you.”
“Tell them I’ll call them back,” I said groggily.
“I think you should probably take it.”
I rushed to the phone.
“Paul?” Joyce’s voice came over the line.
“Joyce? What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Walsh is in the hospital. He had a stroke.”
“Is he okay?”
“I think so. He’ll live at least. The doctors aren’t saying much right now, but they think that it was a mild one.”
“That’s good,” I said, relieved.
“There’s more, though.”
“There is?”
“Yes.” Her voice was shaky, almost a whisper. “No one knew what was wrong with him at first. He had the stroke in his office, I guess. His secretary only realized something had happened when she saw what he was doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“She went into his office when he didn’t answer her on the intercom. He was pacing around his desk.”
“So?”
“He was walking backward, Paul. He could only walk backward.”
Across the kitchen Sarah stood very still, looking at me. I dropped the phone.
“I told you I saw it,” she said. Then she scuttled over to me and wrapped her tiny yellow arms around my leg.
We never discussed the accuracy of Sarah’s prediction. What was there to say about it really? Sarah knew things she shouldn’t. All we could do was try not to think about it too much.
Roger Walsh recovered quickly and was soon back at work, able to walk forward or backward with equal ease. From time to time he experienced a slight numbness on the left side of his body, but other than that there were no lasting side-effects. His doctor put him on a strict diet and exercise regime, which was more of a bother than the stroke itself.
The summer of 1988 passed in the blink of an eye; before we knew it Labour Day weekend had arrived. Joyce was to leave for university in a few days, so Finnie was throwing a goodbye party for her at his house. His father was on his annual fishing trip with his buddies from college, a 30-year tradition. He was determined that a mild stroke wasn’t going to ruin his perfect record of attendance. I’m not sure Finnie had his permission to throw the party. I’m not even sure he needed it.
More people than expected showed up. I suppose that the prospect of a rare glance inside the house of the wealthiest family in Portsmouth outweighed any fear of Finnie’s temperament. The guests’ concerns were totally unjustified; Finnie proved to be the perfect host.
By the time everyone was gone, Finnie was a drunken slobbering mess. He became violently ill. Joyce and I tried to comfort him, to keep him company, but he sent each of us away, asking only to be left alone with his misery. Mercifully, he passed out and Joyce and I carried him to bed. As we were leaving the room, he mumbled something neither of us could understand. Joyce asked him to repeat himself and with great effort Finnie managed to gurgle out an intelligible sentence, “I’m going to need an eraser.”
I was confused and tried to coax an explanation out of him, but none came. Joyce just shrugged and opened two fresh beers, passing one to me. We sat behind the house, on a deck that overlooked the grounds of the estate. I guess I appeared worried, because Joyce tried to reassure me that Finnie would be okay. “He’ll live,” she said.
“I know.”
“Finnie doesn’t like people to see him when he’s hurt.”
“No one does, I guess.”
“Finnie more than most.”
“Finnie feels a lot of things more than most.”
“Yes, he does.”
I’m not sure why I asked Joyce, but suddenly I needed an answer. “Why are you leaving?”
“Because I have to. There’s no future for me here.”
“Finnie’s here,” I said.
“Yes, but he’s two years younger than me, Paul, and still has a couple of years of school left. I need an education. I need to get out of this town.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“No, it’s not. I’ll probably be back someday. But I can’t live here my whole life. Going away, it’s my ticket, like Finnie’s ticket is hockey and your ticket is…” Joyce paused. She didn’t know what I was going to do with my life anymore than I did. Maybe I had a shot at being a hockey player, maybe I didn’t.
“I guess I understand what you’re saying,” I said. Portsmouth was no place for a girl like Joyce.
We sat quietly for a while drinking our beer and then she spoke again. “Hey, Paul, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Why does Sarah wear that life jacket all the time?” “Finnie never told you?”
“He wouldn’t. He said I wouldn’t understand.”
“He might be right. I’m not sure I understand it.”
“It has to do with her visions, right?”
“Yes. She thinks that she’s going to drown.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. No one really knows.”
“Not even Finnie?”
I paused. “He might. I’ve never asked him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to know. I wish Sarah wasn’t the way she is. What’s she going to do, wear that life jacket her whole damned life?”
“What if she’s right?”
“Then we’re all fucked.”
“Maybe we are anyway.”
Joyce went away to McGill a couple of days later. She came back on holidays and she and Finnie spoke over the phone fairly regularly, but long-distance relationships have their reputation for good reason. Oddly enough, though, it was Finnie who gave up on the whole thing. They held on until April of 1989: eight months. When Joyce told Finnie that she would be staying in Montreal for the summer to work instead of returning to Portsmouth, he thought it best to end their relationship. He was a wreck for the rest of the summer.
During the previous hockey season, 1988–89, Gretzky’s first season in Los Angeles, the Great One showed that he was a commodity worth paying for, scoring 54 goals and 114 assists, a total of 168 points. In the playoffs, Gretzky and his Kings knocked out his former Edmonton Oiler teammates in the first round, rallying back from a 3-1 deficit. They were swept by the Calgary Flames in the second round.
Peter Stastny collected only 85 points that year and had the highest number of penalty minutes in his career. The Quebec Nordiques were tied for last place in the league and did not make the playoffs for the third season in a row. When Peter Stastny was traded to the New Jersey Devils during the 1989–90 season, Finnie didn’t say a word. He just shook his head.
The 1988–89 season had treated Finnie and me more favourably. Finnie was once again voted team MVP and my hard work continued to pay off. Our team won the provincial championships; even Coach Hunter seemed to be happy with our performance. The 1989–90 season would be our last season of city league play, after which we could go to the WHL, which meant leaving Portsmouth. We hoped we would be drafted by an NHL team that summer; we would turn 18, making us eligible.
I didn’t really know what Finnie’s prospects were; Finnie was the best goalie I knew, or had ever played against, but there were a lot of good goalies out there. A WHL team would want him, but I wasn’t sure if he would play in the junior leagues. He might play for an NHL farm team if he had to, but Finnie was picky and, like all goalies, a little defensive when his skills were called into question.
As for me, I was pretty sure that this would be my last season. I hadn’t been approached by scouts from any of the WHL or university teams and certainly no NHL scouts had been sniffing around. Maybe I would play in a recreational league after this, a beer league. The prospect of my hockey career going no further didn’t really bother me.
The night before the first game of the 1989–90 season, I had the dream again. It was the same dream I had been having every couple of months since 1981, since the day Joyce taught me how to skate. It was different this time, though, more detailed.
I was in an arena, a large one. The stands were filled with screaming, cheering people. My skates were fast under my feet and my stick was weightless. A teammate passed me the puck at centre ice and I skated into the opponent’s zone. Something grabbed the back of my jersey. The air around me was charged. A few of the other players stopped following the play and glided away from me; then I lost my balance and started to fall. Somehow I managed to get a shot off and as I fell to the ice I saw the goal light go on and then the crowd exploded. The players on the other team skated over to the referee, complaining about something. The players from my team skated toward me to celebrate the goal. I was in a state of euphoria, as happy as I’ve ever been, when I heard my father’s voice echo in my head, that haunting phrase that I seemed to be unable to escape, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.” I couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone was choking me, their grip firm around my throat. My arms and legs were twitching and I felt the vomit rising, but there was nothing I could do. My limbs became very heavy and the noise around me began to fade. As my vision blurred and wavered, I saw Finnie standing above me, smiling. His eyes were nearly closed, but one joyful tear rolled down his cheek. It landed squarely in the middle of my forehead, making a noise like a hammer striking tin. Then I woke up.
The last year of high school flew by; we had graduated. Suddenly, we had the rest of our lives to think about. The NHL draft would take place in several days. Finnie was certain to be drafted, probably in one of the
early rounds. There was a chance I could be chosen in the later rounds if I was very lucky. This was small comfort, though. Being drafted by a team and playing for it are two very different things. Even if I was drafted, odds were that I would be cut from the team at training camp and would spend the rest of my short career in the farm leagues, never even seeing NHL ice.
This didn’t upset me too much. Although I would have done almost anything just to play one game for a big-league team, I was a realist first and foremost. I began to look through university calendars and brochures in an attempt to keep my options open. My grades weren’t great, but they were respectable so I had a greater chance of getting into a decent school than of becoming a professional hockey player. One thing was certain; I would not be working in the Walsh sawmill.
My father had just celebrated his 50th birthday, yet he acted like an 80-year-old curmudgeon. He had become increasingly frustrated by the continuing disappearances of Mr. Palagopolis’ prosthetic arms. Pal was 62 and would retire in a few years. The prospect of life without work did a lot to ease the torment of his vanishing claws, but my father, who for all intents and purposes had been retired for going on 10 years, was as antsy as ever, hot on the trail of the one-arm bandit. On several occasions my father had come close to catching his prey, but each time the one-arm bandit had eluded him by the narrowest of margins. The whole thing was absurd, really. Poor Pal was a nervous wreck half the time.
Louise was still working at the grocery store and still living at home. She had no real plans to leave and my mother appreciated her help with Sarah, a very energetic eight year old. There was something different about Louise; she was neither shy nor outgoing. It was like she was in a holding pattern.
Louise still wasn’t dating, much to the disappointment of the local male population. I was often asked what was wrong with her and to tell the truth I thought, even though they didn’t know it, they were dodging a bullet. Louise was definitely not what they were looking for. They rarely saw it that way, though. All they saw was a pretty face.
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