Finnie looked at me and then down at the floor. “It will never work out.”
“Why not?”
“It just won’t. We both know it.”
“You’ve talked about it?”
“Yes. There’s nothing either of us can really do. Maybe if things were different, well, then things would be different.”
“That’s a lot of bullshit,” I said.
Finnie shrugged. “Maybe it is. But that’s the way things are.”
His attention had reverted back to the cages. He was staring at one in the upper right-hand corner, mentally weighing its potential contents. Slowly he moved toward it. He reached up and opened it. His hand disappeared inside it. When it emerged, it held the jumper cables.
“Jesus, Finnie. How do you do that?”
“I don’t know. It all just somehow makes sense.”
On Boxing Day of 1990, Finnie, Sarah, Louise and I set out to the reservoir. It would be Sarah’s first time on the rink and she was more than a little eager to try out the skates I had given to her the day before. It was cold, but there hadn’t been any new snow for a couple of days, so we wouldn’t have to clear the ice. My mother bundled Sarah tightly against the cold, swaddling her in two sweaters, a thick winter jacket, mittens, a toque and scarf and bulky snow pants. Sarah had a heck of a time getting her life jacket on over all this, but she managed. With this added protection she seemed secure against the bumps and bruises that go along with learning to skate. We drove up to the Walsh sawmill, shut down for the week on account of the holidays, and proceeded to the reservoir on foot. Wrapped up as she was, Sarah couldn’t really walk properly; she sort of waddled, like a Christmas goose. She was having trouble keeping up with us, so I slowed down and let Finnie and Louise go on ahead. It took Finnie longer to change into his gear because there was so much more of it. Besides, I had missed Sarah while I was away and hadn’t spent any time alone with her since returning.
“How’s school going?” I asked her.
“It’s okay. Mrs. Sweeney’s pretty nice.”
I had forgotten that she was in Mrs. Sweeney’s class. Sarah was the same age Finnie and I had been when we met. That seemed like such a long time ago.
“I was always scared of Mrs. Sweeney,” I said.
“She’s not scary,” Sarah said. “She’s just gruff.”
“Gruff?”
“Yes. She’s only pretending. It keeps the bad kids from trying anything.”
I laughed. Sarah’s evaluation made a lot of sense.
“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked me.
“Sure.”
“You have to promise not to tell Dad.”
“I promise.” My interest was piqued. I had never known anyone to successfully keep a secret from my father.
“Pal has a new claw.”
“What?”
“He got it before Halloween. He only wears it at school. Well, maybe he wears it at home. But he didn’t tell Dad about it and he doesn’t wear it when he comes to the house. He made me promise not to tell Dad.”
“Why doesn’t he want Dad to know about it?”
“Pal says that he has a big obsession.”
I couldn’t argue with that. When he had been hunting the one-arm bandit, my father had been driven to a singular purpose. Since he had given up the hunt, however, he had been calmer, as if some outstanding issue had finally been settled.
“Know what else? It’s been two months and Pal still has the claw. He doesn’t even lock it up.”
“You’re kidding.”
Sarah looked at me very seriously. “I wouldn’t joke about the one-arm bandit, Paul.”
We turned the corner to witness the last thing in the entire world we would have expected. But there it was, plain as day.
“Holy shit,” Sarah said.
Beside the old pump house stood Finnie and Louise. They were holding each other close and they were kissing. Like they were possessed. Either they didn’t know we were watching, or they didn’t care, because they sure didn’t stop. I just stood there, bewildered, my jaw agape, until Sarah intervened. She inhaled as mighty a breath as her lungs could hold and blew into the whistle. The quiet was obliterated by its shriek. It scared the pants off Finnie and Louise, though thankfully not literally. Louise banged her lip on Finnie’s chin, causing Finnie to bite his tongue.
“Jesus Christ, Sarah,” Louise yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Sarah scuttled behind me, using me as a shield.
“What does it look like?”
“Looks like you and Finnie were kissing,” I said.
“Well, then, does anyone have a problem with that?” she asked.
“No,” I said. For some reason I was a little frightened of Louise at that moment.
“I guess not,” Sarah said. “But it’s gross.”
“Then that’s settled. Finnie and I were kissing and no one has a problem with that, so for the love of Christ, Sarah, lay off that whistle before it kills someone.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said.
Finnie had remained quiet until then, perhaps because of his bitten tongue. “Anyone want to skate today?”
This sounded like a good idea to me — anything to relieve the tension. We all put on our skates and after 15 minutes the whole thing was old news. It all made perfect sense, really. Louise had been after Finnie for years, or at least since the night he’d knocked out Frank Hawthorne’s eye. Even when they were kids, they always had a strange mutual understanding. It wasn’t like Finnie and Joyce; there were no sparks, no magic, but Finnie and Louise just seemed like a natural fit. Getting used to the idea did not require much time. I mean, Louise was my sister and Finnie was my best friend, but even though one might think that would be awkward, it wasn’t. Of course, I was young and more than a bit naïve, so I didn’t understand that things that are obvious and simple are rarely easy or timeless.
As for Sarah, I don’t think she much cared either way, so long as she didn’t have to watch. Besides, Sarah was able to adjust to almost anything. That was one of her greatest qualities.
The first time Finnie tried to stop a shot, he fell down, sliding right out of the net and into the corner. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“You fell on your ass,” I said. “What’s not to believe?”
“I forgot to sharpen my skate. I’ve totally lost the edge on this one.”
“Nice going.”
“Yeah. The other one’s fine, though. I could shave with it, if I wanted.”
“That’s not going to do you a lot of good.”
“No, it’s not.”
After that we gave up taking shots, because every time he moved too fast or shifted his weight to the dull skate, he fell. Louise and Sarah were both poor skaters, so we concentrated on teaching them. Finnie was more patient, so he taught Sarah, while I gave Louise some pointers. Unlike Sarah, Louise had been skating before, but she was out of practice. After a while her legs came back, though, and it wasn’t long before she was gliding around with a fair degree of proficiency.
“Good job,” I said, skating ahead of her.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m not the natural skater you are.”
I remembered I hadn’t been much of a skater until Joyce Sweeney had given me lessons. I felt a fresh rush of gratitude.
Louise lost her balance and fell, which elicited a look of concern from Finnie, but she was fine. She got up off the ice and resumed her tentative strides around the rink.
It had started to snow, light, fluffy flakes. Before long it was really coming down. It was about two in the afternoon and even though the sun was hidden it was still fairly bright. The trees were blanketed; several inches of snow covered the ground. There were footprints and indentations around the rink, evidence of the people who’d been there since Finnie had rebuilt it, but they were being erased and only a few metres beyond us the snow was untouched.
Finnie and Sarah were off in
the far corner of the rink. A layer of snow covered the ice and hampered our ability to skate. It made it harder to control your motions; if you fell down, you slid a lot farther. They were playing tag, Finnie skating past Sarah while she tried to tag him. She seemed to be having a great time, as did Finnie, but Louise and I were tired, so we went and sat down at the far edge of the rink. Our mother had given us a thermos of hot chocolate, but it wasn’t hot anymore, so we just sat there and watched them.
As Finnie skated past Sarah, she reached out and tagged him, but she lost her balance and fell. Finnie coasted past her, stopping in the centre of the rink. Sarah lay just outside the goal crease, laughing. Then her laughter stopped suddenly and she looked down at her life jacket. A mitten went up to her mouth. She looked around the rink, eyes wide. She started to scream. Louise and I stood up, thinking that she had hurt herself and had only just realized it.
Finnie skated over to her as fast as he could. It took him only seconds to reach her. As he dug his skates into the ice to stop, he slipped. Maybe it was because of his dull skate blade, maybe it was because of the snow on the ice, or maybe he just fell. He tried not to land on her, sprawling out toward the empty ice, but in an instant he was on top of Sarah, who’d stopped screaming and had closed her eyes.
From where I was standing, I couldn’t see exactly what happened. Finnie could, though. He immediately clamped his hand over her throat. By the time Louise and I got to them, a thin line of red was oozing through his fingers. Sarah’s eyelids fluttered and she passed out.
“We have to go for help,” Finnie said, preternaturally calm. “Her throat’s cut. I don’t know how deep it is.”
“Can we move her?” Louise asked. Her voice cracked a little.
“I don’t think we should,” I said.
“We have no choice. If we stay here, she’ll either bleed to death or drown in her own blood.”
Louise and I cringed.
Finnie took control of the situation. “Paul, go get our shoes. Louise, help me get her life jacket off.”
When I got back, Sarah’s life jacket was off and so were Finnie’s skates. There was more blood coming through his fingers and Sarah’s breathing made a sickening, gurgling sound. I helped Louise with Finnie’s shoes and then we put our own shoes on.
With one hand firmly clamped over the gash in her throat, Finnie scooped Sarah up with his free arm and raised himself to his feet. He adjusted her dead weight and began to jog toward the path that led to the sawmill. Louise and I followed.
Slowly, like a train going down a hill, Finnie began to pick up speed. His jog turned into a run that turned into a long-distance, full-speed gallop. It was all I could do to keep up with him and I wasn’t the one carrying Sarah. I thought Louise wouldn’t be able to keep pace, but she did, just barely. By the time we reached the sawmill, we had covered ground that normally took at least 15 minutes to negotiate in less than 5 minutes.
My hands fumbled in my pockets for the car keys, but my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t get the key into the lock. Louise took them and with steady hands she opened the doors. I got into the front seat with Louise and Finnie got into the back with Sarah.
We spoke little on the way to the hospital. Louise concentrated on driving, Finnie tried to keep his hand in place and I think I must have gone into some sort of shock. It wasn’t until the next day that I even noticed that I’d sprained both my ankles on the way to the car.
When we reached the hospital, we were engulfed. Doctors swarmed around Finnie and Sarah, shouting at him not to move his hand. They were ushered through doors, but Louise and I were prohibited from following.
My parents were called, I assume, by Louise. My memory of those hours, during which there was no clear indication that Sarah would live, is a blur. Her lungs had filled with blood, restricting her breathing, and she had lost too much to be sure she’d live.
My father, fearing the worst, said, “Sarah was from another place. She was a sentinel. She was a catalyst.”
I believe that my father was right. She was a catalyst. She prompted us all to do things that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise done and to think about things that without her would have gone unpondered.
“She was right, you know,” Finnie said, weeks after the accident.
“No, she wasn’t. She said she’d drown. That’s not what happened.”
“You’re wrong, Paul. She did drown, sort of. It was the blood in her lungs.”
Right before the accident, before anyone could have possibly known what would transpire, she had screamed, as though she knew exactly what was going to happen. But this foreknowledge might even have contributed to the accident; if she hadn’t screamed, Finnie wouldn’t have skated toward her. Maybe he wouldn’t have fallen. Maybe.
Sarah pulled through, barely, flatlining twice on the operating table. There was a scar on her throat to mark the slice of Finnie’s skate, a scar that would fade as she grew older but would never completely disappear. Her jugular had been nicked but not severed, which, according to the doctors, was the reason she hadn’t died. That and Finnie having had the wherewithal to keep his hand locked on the wound.
There is one more thing. As Sarah recovered we realized that her pale yellow complexion, which no one had ever been able to adequately explain, had changed. She looked like a normal little girl.
Near the end of January, Finnie and I returned to the minor leagues. He bought a new pair of skates, refusing to ever wear the ones he’d worn that day, but his face drained of colour every time he looked at the blades. We were shaky our first few games, making a lot of mistakes, but by the middle of February we were playing much better.
On Valentine’s Day, Finnie was called up to the NHL team to back up its number-one goalie. The second-stringer had injured his shoulder in practice and would be out for two weeks. Finnie didn’t get any ice time, but he practised with the team and dressed for the games. Each night there was a possibility that he might play, everyone back home tuned in, hoping to see him on the ice. I watched on nights I didn’t have a game of my own and whenever the camera panned the bench there was Finnie, looking calm and collected to the untrained observer, but anyone who knew him could see that he was nervous as hell.
When the regular backup goaltender returned to the line-up and Finnie was sent back down to the minors, he played like he’d never played before. He was electric, allowing fewer goals per game than any other goalie in our league. I asked him what had changed.
“It’s the big league, Paul. It’s incredible.”
“Why?”
Finnie hadn’t talked much about his experience in the NHL since his return. “I don’t know. There’s something in the arenas, an excitement, almost a fever. Even when you lose a game, it’s amazing. I want more. I want to play.”
Finnie got his chance soon enough. He was called up again a few weeks later and halfway through the game the coach pulled the starting goalie. The team was playing against the New Jersey Devils and Finnie let in only one goal.
“I didn’t even mind,” he said to me when he returned to the minors. “I mean, it’s almost an honour to be scored on by Peter Stastny.”
Finnie’s performance had attracted attention from the press and was even mentioned by sportscasters on the evening news. Until then a lawyer who worked for Finnie’s father had been handling Finnie’s contractual affairs. Ironically enough, it was the same lawyer whom Roger Walsh had retained when the Hawthornes had sued Finnie over Frank’s eye. As yet there hadn’t been much work for him; both Finnie and I had the standard contract for rookies who would likely play out the balance of their contracts in the minor leagues. After his game in the NHL, however, Finnie was approached by several big-name agents. Finnie rejected their advances without hesitation. He believed that agents were a big part of what was wrong with hockey and he preferred to manage his own interests, using his lawyer to check contracts for legal snags.
Finnie was called up regularly that March, playin
g several more games and putting in solid performances. It seemed as though it was only a matter of time before he secured himself a regular spot on an NHL roster and, although I would miss him in the minor league, where I would certainly be spending the rest of the season, if not the rest of my career, I was happy for him. No one deserved this more than Finnie, after all he’d been through.
Things were going well with Louise as well. She visited him on the road whenever he was in a city reasonably close to Portsmouth and they talked on the phone almost every night. Finnie was determined to prevent their relationship from deteriorating the way it had with Joyce.
Louise was good for Finnie. With his popularity as a hockey player on the rise, there were many temptations open to him, temptations that might have led to trouble if he hadn’t had Louise to keep him grounded.
Of course, the whole situation with Joyce Sweeney had changed since Louise appeared on the scene. I thought about it a lot and decided that if an opportunity ever presented itself I would pursue Joyce, which for me was no small resolution. Yet I didn’t see her at all that spring and it wasn’t long before she was pushed into the back of my mind by more pressing events.
The news came suddenly. Without any warning, Finnie was traded as part of a three-way, seven-player deal. It placed him on an NHL team that already had two top-notch young goalies, which in effect meant that the odds of him seeing any ice time almost nonexistent. He’d be sent back to the minors immediately.
This was why he’d been getting called up, to increase his marketability, a move that had been calculated by our team’s management. They had been getting Finnie good press and letting him play so that he would be worth more on the trading block. It had little or nothing to do with their confidence in him or his skill as a goaltender.
“I’m meat,” he said as he packed up his equipment for the last time. His flight left later that day.
“Come on, it’s not so bad. Players get traded all the time.”
“Yeah, I know, but I never thought it would feel like this.”
Finnie Walsh Page 13