The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  “It almost ruined yours,” I said.

  “To hell with it,” he said. “I’m quittin’ anyway.” I stared at him, not following.

  “School!” Danny shouted. “I’m quittin’ school, asshole.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Fucking right I can. You just watch me, lad.”

  “When?”

  “Soon’s I’m sixteen.”

  “You tell your family?”

  “I’ll tell ’em over the holidays.”

  I stared between his legs. “They going to let you out of here?”

  Danny just smiled. “I already got my bus ticket — and half a dozen safes to boot.”

  I giggled, couldn’t help myself. “What the hell for?”

  “Lucy Dombrowski, arsehole.”

  Danny looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d question it. I looked at him like I couldn’t believe he’d imagine it.

  “Look,” he decided to explain. “Sugar told you he thought you could play injured, didn’t he?”

  He was dead serious.

  Danny made the bus home for Christmas, as promised, and he never stopped talking about what was planning to do to poor Lucy until the bus passed into high hills east of Algonquin Park. Here Danny fell asleep, leaving me to sit staring into the bush and seeing nothing but Lucy Dombrowski’s marvellous ass wiggling back at me. Danny couldn’t possibly be thinking he’d get her, could he? He’d be damned lucky to get a hand on her tit in the condition he was in.

  Still, a tit was a tit, and more than Batterinski had touched at fifteen years of age. I was beginning to worry about the chances of going through an entire life pretending you’d done it all when in truth the closest you’d come was National Geographic. What if everyone flew around nude in heaven and you didn’t know what to do? Would they send you down?

  All I wanted was a tit to hold. All I’d wanted for as long as I could remember was to grab one, and I’d never even seen a real one. Lots of pictures, but I didn’t even know what one would feel like. A cow’s udder? Soft and cool like when I stabbed my hand into the bitch’s flour bin? Or firm and hot like the Rileys’ hot water bottle?

  Hard to believe, but the first set of bare tits I ever saw were at Jaja’s funeral. Well, not precisely at the funeral, but outside, in Uncle Jan’s latest car, a Meteor, I think, and they weren’t real tits that you could touch or anything, but you could sure see them when you put your eye up to the plastic steering knob Jan had bought and fitted onto his steering wheel.

  Will I ever forget that day? We were supposed to have a squirt practice that morning — it had to be squirt, I was nine — and Jaja said he’d gather up my eggs for me so I could get in, but when I got there the ice was nothing but scab and muck, so Father Schula cancelled and sent us home. Danny and I goofed at lot on the way back trying to open up Sabine Creek early by dropping boulders off the bridge, and by the time I got back for dinner, they had Jaja completely wrapped up tight in a camp blanket on the couch, and Doc Rafferty was sitting at the dining room table filling out papers as calmly as if he was doing a grocery list. And thank Christ he was there too. The bitch lunged at me out of her room screaming, “Vjeszczi! Vjeszczi!” — which means something idiotic like “monster” — at me and by the time Poppa and old Doc pulled her away she’d already ripped my neck half off. He had to clean me up with iodine and four stitches, which hurt worse than the original. And there was blood all over my sweater, which I wanted left on so Danny could see.

  Uncle Jan was good to me that night. I was upstairs crying about Jaja and moaning about my neck when he came up and scooped me up and took me out to where he already had the Meteor warming up. On the front seat were a couple of Cokes for me and some beer for himself, and while Jozefa, Ig’s and Poppa’s only sister, and the other women were inside getting ready for pusta noc, the empty night, we sat out and listened to the Detroit-Leaf playoff game fading in and out from Toronto, Foster Hewitt in the gondola, which was to me even holier than the heaven I knew Jaja was off to. Uncle Jan grinned through his big moustache, gunned the car, showed me the steering knob and my first set of tits with the interior light, and cursed Lindsay and Howe like we were both grown men and the words were every bit as much mine as his, though of course I never used them. Ever since, when I think of Jan I think of that night, the heat puffing out from under the dash, the sour smell of beer — and tits. I must have forgotten about my neck because I fell asleep before Detroit wrapped up the series. Jan must have carried me up and put me to bed.

  Poppa made the bitch apologize in the morning. He took me to her in the death room. She was already in Jaja’s rocker, and her not even his real wife, Poppa’s and the other’s mother. She wasn’t even one of us, just a replacement Jaja had brought out from the old country, and now she was acting like she was in charge. She had her black hair back in that tight bun covered with the net, and her lips were shaking like she was about to spit. But she did apologize, even if the words meant nothing compared to the stare of those wolf eyes. I knew she blamed me. And Poppa knew too. He even had Doc Rafferty take me aside and explain how the heart attack could have come at any time, picking eggs or even asleep, that it was no one’s fault, and that as far as he was concerned, it was the best way to go, because he’d seen them all. It didn’t help through. Batcha hated my guts, plain and simple.

  Christ, but I wish Danny had seen Ig that day of the funeral. He wouldn’t have made all those cracks at practice if he had, because Ig looked and acted magnificently. But Danny wasn’t there to see. Ig had taped-on hair that was a perfect match for his own grey-red horseshoe—you’d almost think Hatkoski the barber had been saving up his sweepings for a special occasion—and Aunt Josepha had taken the time to fold the tape over neatly for him so for once it wasn’t shining through. God, he looked great.

  I could still feel him poking me on the march in to the cemetery. Feelie, Feelie, Feelie, will ya ask, eh? Will ya ask? Until finally I hurried up to Father Kulas and Father Schula and the pallbearers and asked Poppa if Ig could have a turn carrying. Ambrose Dombrowski, Lucy’s father, dropped out, I remember, and Poppa took one side of the head and put Ig on the other, even though he could barely reach the box. Down the dirt road toward the village they went, five men solemnly carrying, Ig hopping along beside them like he was hanging from his fingertips, giggling, shaking his head, his mouth wrapped in a smile that would have you think he was bringing a bowl of fresh-picked raspberries back to the house, not carrying his own father to his grave. But Ig’s mind was on the carrying, not the contents. One thing at a time for Ig.

  And Batcha earlier walking up to the open casket with Jaja’s eyeglasses and standing there cleaning them with her hankie before she put them on him. Worried about smudges in heaven. Acting like St. Peter’s come down with the flu and left her in charge. The bitch.

  And her again, pushing me up and half in with him. Do it, Felix Kiss your grandfather. Remember, you’ll never fear the dead once you’ve touched them. I’d rather have touched him than her, any day.

  But it is Ig who deserves remembering, not the bitch. Ig running up to the barn when he found out how it had happened, and Ig trying to hurt the hens with their own eggs. Yolk splattered on the beams and straw and all over the dirt floor. And Ig screaming at them until Poppa came in and did what he always did at these times, held his brother’s arms down and tight and used his own chin to squeeze Ig’s head in tight to his chest, the two of them standing like that until it was over. Ig and his muffled screams. Poppa as expressionless as if he were waiting for an engine to cool before he took it apart.

  And Ig at the cemetery, not knowing what to do when Poppa took Batcha’s arm and led her back toward the church. Which left me to bring along Ig. Poppa had a snapshot Uncle Jan had once taken of me when I must have been about three, and I have this harness on that Poppa put on me when the creek was high with spring runoff, and the picture is of Ig walking me like I’m his dog, and Ig is laughing. But Jaja was dead, I was nine and i
t was Ig who needing leading. Him crying for Jaja and bawling because Poppa has pointed out my own Matka’s grave, dead giving birth, which I sometimes think is why Batcha really hates me. I have him by the hand and we are moving back toward the church when Ig suddenly stopped and asked me to kiss him and pat his back, which I did. And from that moment on, we had changed positions. My uncle asking for a harness, for the nephew to care for him the way you might a dog. Now me the master, him the pet. But so what, Danny Shannon—big fucking joke. Brainless or not, there is no one on earth I love more than my Uncle Ig. So stick it with your big laughs with Powers and the rest of this half-assed team.

  If I thought leaving Pomerania was a shock, it was nothing compared to the return. The bus dropped us at the White Rose two days before Christmas, and Danny and I walked up the highway together and turned off onto our road, which hadn’t been ploughed. We had to highstep past the rink — Danny groaning with every lift — over the tracks, past the bluff and the gravel pit and the cedars. The snow had stopped falling but it was still higher than our knees. We passed Dombrowski’s, where Danny holding a mitten to his crotch like he’d just blocked a shot, had the nerve to suggest we sneak up and see if we could catch Lucy undressing, an idea I talked him out of when I pointed out we’d leave tracks, and on the past the other poor shacks with their single, weak lights in the kitchen, and on until we got to Shannon’s, where the windows burned almost as brightly as those in a Vernon home.

  There was a huge cedar wreath on the door and his sisters had sprayed the windows with canned snow in the shapes of snowmen, Santas and reindeer. Danny asked me in but I said no. He fairly ran to the door, jumping through the snow so he left funnel-shaped holes behind him, and when the door opened the lure of the Shannon home poured out: the collie barking, Beatrice, Colleen and Terry shouting at him, the sound of Christmas carols on the old wind-up Victrola. I saw Danny drop his duffle bag as the family pounced and the door slammed shut, suddenly silent, leaving me alone.

  I half wished Danny’s pants would mysteriously fall down so they’d see the hickey Old Man Morgan’s Fairlane had left. That’d shut them all up.

  It was like I’d gone deaf once the door closed. No one to make jokes about the team, no one bragging how he was going to get Lucy Dombrowski over the holidays. Just me with myself, alone. I walked down across the flats and over Sabine Creek, where a rifle crack made me wonder if it was the bridge, the ice or just a maple sounding the cold. Not like Vernon. Here it was dark and lonely and threatening, like a wolf might burst out of the bush at any corner. In Vernon, coming home from a late practice, it was like moving in perpetual daylight, the snow so white and clean, the street lights, the porch lights, the glow in every window, the blue flutter of a television form the living room. And the cars, always the cars, their chains growling, their headlights sweeping between the banks and around the corners. But here, here there was nothing. No cars had been on the road for days and it probably didn’t matter to anyone. Where was there to go?

  Up ahead through the spruce I could make out a single light as it winked through the weighted branches. At least Poppa had thought to hang the lantern. I could make out the shadows of the shed and the barn. I knew if it were daylight and I were a stranger I would have to look twice to tell which building was the house. Unless there were smoke from the woodstove I wouldn’t even be sure anyone lived there. No aluminum siding here. No window trim. No reds, yellows, browns or blues — all black, black or nothing. Tar-paper along the north, west and east sides. Grey, sun-baked slabs along the south, cracks filled with straw, horse manure and river clay.

  Puck started barking as I neared the door. Some name, Puck, but Poppa said when I left he needed someone besides Ig to do things with. So I had been replaced by a black mongrel from the mill cookery, supposed to be part of Labrador, but more accurately, partly there. Like Ig.

  The door gave a bit, caught and then opened with a stubborn grind. Poppa stood beyond, scowling and holding Puck by a rope until he settled down, and behind them stood Ig, complete with a new head of Hatkoski’s hair, Irish red, and the old mouth-open smile. He was cheering and punching the air with his fist—“Hip, hip, hurray! Hip, hip hurray!” — like I’d just scored a goal. Puck, once he’d realized it was me, began wetting himself all over the floor. Poppa booted him in the side, which made him pee all the more, and the dumb dog yelped and skulked quickly to his mat beside the wood box.

  “Welcome, home son,” Poppa said, smiling and putting his hand out like he was about to jimmy a jammed axe. His hand was scrubbed and shining, the week’s work scraped and ignored on every finger.

  Ig slapped my back, squealing. “Feelie! Feelie! Feelie! Did we ever miss ya! Holy old smokes, Feelie!”

  I made as if to hug Ig but he stuck out his own hand in the same manner as Poppa. I took it and we shook violently, continuing the shake until Ig started giggling and I screamed “Uncle!” and he let go. I wondered if I was still four or five or eight years old in his eyes, or whether he was capable of such memory. I remembered once wondering if Ig had any understanding of time and then being pretty sure he hadn’t. But he’d missed me, obviously; this wasn’t a greeting for an eight-year-old coming in from a late practice.

  Poppa had coffee on and some crisp apple placek sitting in a bowl on the table. Ig had one in my hand as soon as I shook free of my coat and boots. “Batcha made ‘em special for ya, Feelie!”

  “Where is she?” I asked Poppa.

  “Asleep.”

  Ig pressed his palms together and held them to his cheek, closing his eyes and snoring through a wide grin.

  “She doesn’t have a lot of strength these days,” Poppa explained. Deez — I could see myself falling instantly back into Pomeranian talk. “She wanted to stay up to see you home, Felix.”

  I just bet. She was probably lying at this very moment in her room counting off her rosary and praying I’d be gone by morning.

  “Where’s your hockey stick, Feelie?” Ig asked.

  “Won’t need it here,” I said.

  “How’s it going?” Poppa asked, pouring out the coffee. An egg-shell fell into my cup and he plucked it out with a black finger and dropped it back into the pot. Mrs. Riley would have fainted.

  “We’re in first place.”

  “Your Mr. Bowles is a good coach,” Poppa said, as if he were expert enough to judge. Sugar had called him “Sir,” so obviously Sugar could do no wrong.

  “Sugar’s all right,” I said.

  “Sugar?” Poppa said, his eyebrows caving.

  “Yah, like in sugar bowl, eh?”

  Poppa snarled, displeased. “You shouldn’t be smart, son.”

  “Danny calls him ‘Toilet,’” I said in defence.

  Ig shrieked. “Toilet! Toilet Bowl! Toi-let Bowl!”

  Poppa lightly tapped Ig’s shoulder and Ig shut up instantly.

  “Danny Shannon is an Irish,” Popp said sternly. “They talk toilet all the time.”

  Ig giggled, but a simple signal from Poppa—almost a soft crokinole shot in the air between them—put an immediate end to the joy.

  “Danny’s been dropped back to the third line,” I said.

  Poppa looked surprised. “Why? What’s his problem?”

  “How would I know? Sugar — Mr. Bowles — he thinks Danny’s homesick.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I guess he is, maybe. He talks about his family all the time.”

  “And you don’t.” Poppa looked at me, eyes steady, while I shrugged and looked at the table. He was starting to speak like old Jaja, even the same regrets. Surrounded by Polish and Irish families that bred like rabbits, the Batterinskis were slipping down some unfair funnel into oblivion. Jan childless, so far; Jozefa unmarried and not expected to ever be so; Ig impossible; Poppa with one dead wife and only one child. And me handed the name without asking or caring enough. For Poppa’s sake, anyway.

  “I made district all-stars,” I said.

  Poppa’s eyebrows we
nt up again. “Is that good?”

  “Yah, sure. In February we’re going to be playing an exhibition against the midgets from St. Mike’s.”

  “The St. Mike’s? In Toronto?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Hip, hip, hurray!” shouted Ig, pounding the table.

  Poppa was impressed. “Some of those boys turn pro with the Leafs, you know.”

  “Of course I know. There’s going to be scouts at our game.”

  “Scouts?”

  “Bob Davidson’s going to be there. He’s chief scout for the Leafs.”

  “He’ll be watching you play?” Poppa asked.

  “Yes.”

  Poppa blinked. This was almost as remarkable as the Virgin Mary herself coming down for a look. But at least you could photograph Bob Davidson.

  “We’ll pray you do good, Felix,” Poppa said.

  Ig folded his hands and bowed his head, ready to pray, but Poppa did his finger snap again. This was new since I’d left. I half expected Ig to crawl away to his mat or wet the floor like Puck, but he just reached for another placek and mashed it into his mouth.

  “I got something to show you, Feelie,” Ig said with the crumbs pouring out his mouth.

  Ig started getting up from the table. I looked at Poppa but he was in such a shock over Bob Davidson that he was spooning brown sugar absent-mindedly into his coffee and shaking his head. The Virgin Mary he could understand; this he could not. She’d at least picked Warsaw. What in God’s good name made Bob Davidson pick Vernon and his son?

  I followed Ig to the door, where he signalled me to swipe the second coal oil lamp so we could see. I picked it up, turned the wick up slightly and we started up the stairs to his room. The creaks were all the same, and the third board from the top was still so loose you double-stepped over it. And the smells. How could I have forgotten? The house smelled of grease and coal oil and must and wood smoke and old clothes and urine from Batcha’s and Ig’s potties. And probably Puck now too. Back in the kitchen you could sometimes smell the lime Poppa poured down the outhouse hold, once in a while the pumice stone Poppa liked and sometimes the turpentine he used to get the grease off his hands; but these were the only clean smells. Mrs. Riley’s kitchen always smelled of Success floor shine, the basement of Lestoil, and the cellar floor of Dustbane. She had Fleecy in her washer, pine scent in the family room and Dutch Cleanser in the bathroom. There was even a crazy thing the size of a small hockey puck hanging down the inside of the toilet bowl, white and smelling like moth balls. There, I never knew who’d been to the bathroom before me; here, I knew who, when and precisely what they’d done.