Finnie Walsh

by Steven Galloway

  When people looked at Sarah, which was often, they saw a gangly, yellow child who was far too old to be constantly wearing a life jacket. My mother had tried several times to get her to take it off, but Sarah put up such a fight that my mother gave up and the life jacket stayed on. Various teachers had attempted to persuade her to remove it as well, in particular her gym teacher, who thought that it gave her an unfair advantage at dodgeball and other sports that use fear of being hit to motivate. The life jacket was, however, an ideal garment for a kid like Sarah, who was always falling down and bumping into things. Its padding protected her from bruising, which she was overly susceptible to, perhaps on account of her unusual pallor. Thankfully, Sarah hadn’t had any of her premonitions since she’d seen Roger Walsh walking backward.

  My mother had been working as a secretary in a law office downtown for almost 10 years now and she’d recently been promoted to the position of office manager. The promotion came with a fairly substantial pay raise, which eased our family’s financial burden somewhat. It was, however, a much more demanding job, taking up more and more of my mother’s time. Louise and I were fine with this; Sarah missed her, though, as did my father.

  In a time when at least half of the kids I knew had parents who were divorced, my parents enjoyed what appeared to me to be an ideal relationship. They disagreed, but they didn’t fight. They seemed to enjoy spending time together and both did their fair share of the work. My father had made the transition from breadwinner to homemaker without major incident and my mother had entered the workforce with equal ease. The new demands on my mother’s time meant that my father only saw her for a few hours each day, if he was lucky. This was hard on him, since he’d always relied heavily on her; she was one of a very select group of people willing to put up with his peculiarities.

  And, of course, just when my father was in this weakened state, the one-arm bandit struck again. Mr. Palagopolis had followed almost all of the proper procedures, but to no avail. He was overly apologetic; he knew that he wasn’t supposed to remove the claw while at school, for any reason. My father forgave him this tiny indiscretion, knowing somewhere in his heart that Pal had tried his best.

  My father was beaten. The one-arm bandit had won. “If I were you, Pal, I wouldn’t get myself any more claws,” he said.

  For once in his life, Mr. Palagopolis was speechless.

  A week before the draft, Joyce came back to town. She was out of school for the summer and had a few days before she started her job. Although she wasn’t dating Finnie anymore, she called him up. He called me and the three of us went to see a movie, then to the reservoir. Things between Joyce and Finnie were a bit tense at first, the conversation filled with terse sentences, but it didn’t take long for the awkwardness to disappear. To her credit, Joyce didn’t make us feel like we’d been left behind. She could have gone on and on about her two years in Montreal, all the new friends she’d made, all the things she’d learned. She could have looked down on the two of us, uneducated small-town hicks that we were. But she didn’t. Good old Joyce Sweeney.

  She was still driving her beat-up Honda, which had gotten progressively rustier. I was surprised when she dropped Finnie off first, though it made sense, geographically speaking. When she pulled into my driveway, she set the parking brake and turned off the engine. “So, how have you been?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I wondered where she was going with this; we had already had this discussion.

  “I guess what I really want to know is how Finnie has been,” she said.

  “He’s been fine. He had a tough time, when you first broke up, but he’s better now.”

  “Is he seeing anyone?”

  I hesitated. Finnie had seen a couple of girls, off and on, since his breakup with Joyce, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to tell her that or not.

  “It’s okay, Paul. I’m not asking because I want to start anything. I just want him to move on.”

  “He has,” I said, wondering if it was true.

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, everything’s fine. We both know that it’s over. We’re just not the right people for each other.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “Right. Finnie understands that. It’s just that, well, you know Finnie. He has a strange way of dealing with problems.”

  That much was true. In fact, it was an extreme understatement. I was still thinking about Finnie’s problem-solving skills when Joyce leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my toes curled.

  “You know, Paul, you’re going to make a great husband one day,” she said, releasing the parking brake, my cue to get out of the car. As she backed out of the driveway and drove down the street, turning left at the end of the block without signalling, I knew that I had just done something that I shouldn’t have done, something very, very wrong. It wasn’t the fact that she had kissed me, harmlessly and without any hint of impropriety; it was that when she had kissed me I had wanted to kiss her back. Even though she was one of my best friends and Finnie’s ex-girlfriend, for whom I suspected he still had feelings, something had happened. I knew then and there that I was in trouble, real trouble. My life had just become a lot more complicated.

  In the days that followed, I tried my best to push these feelings to the back of my mind, a task made easier by the upcoming NHL draft. Finnie and I killed the time any way we could — entertaining Sarah, listening to my father and Pal out on the back deck, getting drunk — anything to avoid thinking about what would happen if we weren’t picked. Finally the day came and we gathered around the TV at Finnie’s house. We had considered attending the draft in person, but it was somewhere in the United States that year and a long way to go. Roger Walsh had recently invested in a satellite dish, so we would be able to tune in live.

  Roger Walsh was out of town on business, my mother was working, my father and Pal were at the library settling a longstanding argument about porpoises and Louise had taken Sarah to the mall. Finnie was drafted halfway through the third round, 67th overall. He went to a good team, a team with a reputation for snagging hot young goalies, and he was more than a little pleased. After the initial celebration, we settled down and waited to see if I would be as lucky. By the time the final round came, I was thoroughly convinced that I was out of the running. Finnie remained optimistic. “Nothing’s over until the buzzer sounds,” he said.

  My heart nearly stopped when, with only three picks remaining, I heard my name called. I was even happier when I realized that the team that had picked me was the same team that had picked Finnie. Of course, being picked 256th overall meant that I was unlikely to ever play in the NHL, or even on the farm team, but it was better than nothing. I had been drafted into the NHL.

  My father was so excited when I told him that he almost had a stroke. Louise and my mother were happy for me too. Sarah was not happy at all. “This means you’ll be going away?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I’ll be back. I’ll probably get cut after camp.”

  “That’s no attitude to have, Paul,” my father said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “What about Finnie?” Louise asked.

  “He’ll likely get signed to the farm team, but he probably won’t get to play in the NHL for a couple of years.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the ground.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Sarah said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe you should just stay here.”

  “Are you kidding?” my father said. “Paul’s going to that training camp if I have to drag him there myself.”

  Roger Walsh was also pleased when Finnie told him he had been drafted. Of his four sons, Finnie was the only one who still had a chance at making something of himself, although both Patrick and Gerry had survived their run-ins with the law. Patrick had served only six months in a minimum-security facility that had reminded Roger more of a country club than a prison and Gerr
y got off with a suspended sentence. Patrick was now somewhere in Asia, on something of a spiritual quest, or so he said, and Gerry was working in Toronto as a baker’s assistant. As for Kirby, he was still in jail in New Orleans, his sentence having been extended after a prison-yard altercation in which he had seriously injured a guard.

  Finnie, however, seemed to be on a fast track to success, wealth and the happiness that is supposed to follow. His temper appeared to be well under control. No one knew where the Walsh boys got their tempers from; Roger had never been in a fight in his life and the late Mrs. Walsh hadn’t had a mean bone in her body. Perhaps they were the product of a household without a female role model.

  My father and Roger Walsh stood side by side at the airport when we left for training camp that September, each of them sporting a goofy grin. My mother had to work and wasn’t able to come, but Louise and Sarah were there.

  I was almost more concerned about the flight than I was about where we were going. It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. Of course, the flight passed without incident; people who worry about plane crashes almost never die in them. Actually almost no one dies in plane crashes and if you have to die it seems to me that there are worse ways to go. What turned me off the idea at the time was the prospect of mass death.

  Finnie didn’t agree with me. He thought that if you die under these circumstances you become part of something larger, something that renders you anonymous. “It makes a bigger bang if you’re anonymous,” he said.

  I had no idea what he meant.

  Third Period

  Any notions I had entertained about what training camp might be like were tossed out the first day. Even though several of the team’s best players weren’t there, either because of contract disputes or because they just plain thought that they didn’t need to be, the skill level on the ice blew me away. Finnie felt it too; the shots were harder, the players were faster, they turned quicker, skated better and made picture-perfect passes 9 times out of 10. It was unbelievable. These were NHL players, the best in the world.

  Much to my surprise, we both made the first cut. I had fully expected to be dropped from the roster at the earliest opportunity. I had even packed my bag. But when the team posted the roster my name was on it. I guess someone in the organization liked my play. Finnie had improved noticeably, his confidence growing every day. I fully expected him to make the second round.

  To my disbelief, we both made it. There were two more sets of cuts to go, but whatever happened I was almost assured a spot on the minor league farm team, which was, as far as I knew, a paid position.

  When the third set of cuts came, my name was on the list. The general manager told me, if I wanted, I could play in the minor league and develop my skills. In a year or two I might earn a spot on the NHL team. I signed a one-year contract for next to nothing and my professional hockey career began. It wasn’t the NHL, but it was hockey and that was good enough for me.

  Finnie was disappointed to see me go; he had hoped that we would both make the team. I had three weeks off before the season started, so I got on a plane and headed back to Portsmouth. Three days later Finnie showed up; he had been dropped from the roster in the fourth and final set of cuts and had been offered the same deal I had signed. He had accepted it; we would be spending the season together.

  “I couldn’t let you play for just any goalie,” he said.

  “Well, at least now you’ll have decent defence.”

  “That’s why I signed. You and me, we’re a unit.”

  That is exactly how we played for the first half of that season. We were both at the top of our game; we had something to prove, not just to everyone else, but to ourselves. We knew that the NHL was within our grasp and given the right circumstances we could make it. That’s what Finnie said anyway. Truth be told, I was pretty happy staying where I was. The play was challenging, but nothing like it had been at training camp; Wayne Gretzky and Peter Stastny don’t play in the minor leagues.

  When we came home for our Christmas break, Finnie’s statistics were as good as those of any other minor league goalie. Mine stacked up pretty well too. I was tired; it had been a gruelling three months and the 10 days we had off were a much-needed rest. I should have known that Finnie wouldn’t rest, though.

  By the end of the third day back in Portsmouth, Finnie had completely rebuilt the rink. On the fourth day the ice was hard enough for skating; Finnie was there from dawn to dusk every day until Christmas. We had both become minor celebrities, so there was no shortage of people to play with at the rink, which threw me a bit. Of course, those who showed up wanted to score on the great Finnie Walsh and when they did he accepted it with class and a healthy measure of sportsmanship. The day before Christmas, he had trouble with the edge of one of his skate blades, a problem that caused him to fall easily. As a result he let in a lot of soft goals, but he didn’t let it phase him. He just got right back up and stood in his crease, focusing on the next shot.

  On Christmas Eve, Finnie came over to the house to visit with my family. Everyone was happy to see him, but no one was more vocal about it than Sarah. She could have raised the dead with the racket she made.

  “It’s Finnie!” she shrieked when he came through the door. She ran up to him and grabbed his leg.

  Finnie managed to pry her off and she danced around the room in erratic circles, blowing on her whistle.

  “Sarah! Stop that!” my father snapped. He hated that whistle more than the rest of us. It always startled him, causing him to drop his book, spill hot tea onto his lap or choke on a piece of toast.

  My father brought Finnie a glass of his special eggnog. I have no idea what was so special about it, besides the rum, but he called it his special eggnog and no one was about to argue.

  “I hear you rebuilt that old rink this year,” my father said.

  “Yep. It’s nice to play somewhere where there isn’t any pressure.”

  “What rink?” Sarah asked.

  “Up by the reservoir,” Finnie said.

  “Oh. I’m not allowed to go up there.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. Louise says it’s too far.”

  “Well, Louise probably knows what she’s talking about.”

  Sarah moved closer to Finnie and tried to look as cute as possible. She did this whenever she wanted something and it tended to be fairly effective. “Maybe you and Paul could take me?” she said, smiling.

  “If it’s okay with Louise.”

  Finnie knew that I had bought Sarah a pair of skates for Christmas and so did Louise. Finnie told Sarah that we’d take her on Boxing Day. That was supposed to be our last day in Portsmouth.

  “You still wearing the number 13?” my father asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How’s it working for you?”

  “Well,” Finnie answered carefully, “I think it’s working fine. I mean, it’s not an unlucky number for me anyway.”

  “I think it’s a good number.”

  “So do I.”

  In truth, the number had been a bit of a problem for Finnie since he had reversed it following Pelle Lindbergh’s death. Whether this was just symbolic or some attempt to rewrite his own history, I’m not sure. Finnie was a collector of sorts, except that he was also a modifier. When he kept something that reminded him of a particular situation, he always seemed to change it slightly, as if to alter the actual event. When he’d changed his number from Lindbergh’s 31 to Finnie’s 13, he’d irreparably tied his own fate to Lindbergh’s. He’d doomed himself to being Lindbergh’s antithesis. I think he had already realized this on some level.

  Later, after everyone else had gone to bed, or in the case of Sarah been sent to bed, Finnie and I went out to the garage. It was pretty much the same as it had been since my father had saved us from it years ago. My mother and Louise avoided it like the plague and Sarah thought the fish were laughing at her, mocking her with their bulging eyes. My father had been forced to set up a s
mall portable heater next to the fish tube to keep it from freezing during winter nights and the excess heat kept the garage at a bearably warm temperature. Finnie stood, staring at the cages, playing the old game.

  “Find the jumper cables,” I had said, trying to give him a challenge.

  Finnie stood in front of the fish tube and assessed the situation. After a while, his gaze shifted from the cages to the garage door, where it remained transfixed. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Your dad is the reason I became a goalie.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, we kept him awake all afternoon, making all that noise, and he didn’t say anything because of my father…”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then he gave me that rock.”

  I paused. My father still gave Sarah rocks sometimes. “What’s the deal with the rocks anyway?”

  Finnie looked at me. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “There is no deal. It’s a smokescreen.”

  I still didn’t understand.

  Finnie looked back toward the cages. “Whenever your dad gave you a rock, what did you do?”

  “I sat there and tried to figure out what the hell the rock was supposed to mean and how it had any relevance to my problem and how my father could possibly think that a rock was going to make any difference.”

  “Exactly. That’s what you were thinking about. What you weren’t thinking about was the problem.”

  “You mean it was all a distraction?”

  “Sure. Most problems have a way of working themselves out. When the time comes, we just know what to do.” Finnie continued to stare at the cages.

  I just sat there absorbing what he had said.

  “Joyce’s in town,” Finnie said.

  I froze, suddenly feeling guilty. “Yeah?”

  “Yep. I saw her yesterday.”

  “How is she?”

  “Same as always.”

  I considered my options and for some reason I decided to be bold. “You still have feelings for her, don’t you?”