The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  Bobby Orr would get the cover of Maclean’s. I almost got the cover of Police Gazette after the Billings incident. My rep was made. The North Bay Nugget’s nickname for me, Frankenstein, spread throughout the league. I had my own posters in Kitchener; there were threats in Kingston and spray-paint messages on our bus in Sault Ste. Marie; late, frantic calls at the Demers house from squeaky young things wanting to speak to the “monster.”

  They didn’t know me. I didn’t know myself. But I loved being talked about in the same conversations as the white brushcut from Parry Sound. Orr they spoke of as if he was the Second Coming—they sounded like Poppa praising the Madonna on the church in Warsaw; for me it was the same feeling for both Orr and the Madonna — I couldn’t personally see it.

  Orr had grown since I’d seen him first in Vernon, but he was still only sixteen in 1964 and seemed much too short to be compared to Harvey and Howe, as everyone was doing. He’d gone straight from bantam to junior, but Gus Demers still said he was just another in a long list of junior hockey’s flashes-in-the-pan. Another Nesterenko, another Cullen.

  We met Oshawa Generals in that year’s playoffs, and the papers in Oshawa and Sudbury played up the Batterinski-Orr side of it. “Beauty and the Beast,” the Oshawa Times had it. The Star countered with “Batterinski’s Blockade,” pointing out that the Hardrocks’ strategy was to have Batterinski make sure Orr never got near the net, though no one ever spoke to me about it. I presume it was understood.

  On March 28 we met on their home ice, the advantage going to them by virtue of a better record throughout the season. I said not a single word on the bus ride down, refusing to join Torchy in his dumb-ass Beatle songs, refusing even to get up and wade back to the can, though I’d had to go since Orillia. My purpose was to exhibit strength and I could not afford the slightest opening. I had to appear superhuman to the rest of the team: not needing words, nor food, nor bodily functions.

  If I could have ridden down in the equipment box I would have, letting the trainer unfold me and tighten my skates just before the warm-up, sitting silent as a puck, resilient as my shin pads, dangerous as the blades. The ultimate equipment: me.

  I maintained silence through the “Queen” and allowed myself but one chop at Frog Larocque’s goal pads, then set up. Orr and I were like reflections, he standing solid and staring up at the clock from one corner, me doing the same at the other, both looking at time, both thinking of each other. We were the only ones in the arena, the crowd’s noise simply the casing in which we would move, the other players simply the setting to force the crowd’s focus to us. Gus Demers had advised me to level Orr early, to establish myself. Coach Therrian wanted me to wait for Orr, keep him guessing. I ignored them all. They weren’t involved. Just Orr and me.

  His style had changed little since bantam. Where all the other players seemed bent over, concentrating on something taking place below them, Orr still seemed to be sitting at a table as he played, eyes as alert as a poker player, not interested in his own hands or feet or where the object of the game was. I was fascinated by him and studied him intently during the five minutes I sat in the penalty box for spearing some four-eyed whiner in the first period. What made Orr effective was that he had somehow shifted the main matter of the game from the puck to him. By anticipating, he had our centres looking for him, not their wingers, and passes were directed away from him, not to someone on our team. By doing this, and by knowing this himself, he had assumed control of the Hardrocks as well as the Generals.

  I stood at the penalty box door yanking while the timekeeper held for the final seconds. I had seen how to deal with Orr. If the object of the game had become him, not the puck, I would simply put Orr through his own net.

  We got a penalty advantage toward the end of the period and coach sent me out to set up the power play. I was to play centre point, ready to drop quickly in toward the net rather than remaining in the usual point position along the boards and waiting for a long shot and tip-in. Therrian had devised this play, I knew, from watching Orr, though he maintained it was his own invention. I never argued. I never even spoke. I was equipment, not player, and in that way I was dependable, predictable, certain.

  Torchy’s play, at centre, was to shoulder the Oshawa centre out of the face-off circle while Chancey, playing drop-back left wing, fed the puck back to me, breaking in. A basketball play, really, with me fast-breaking and Torchy pic-ing. The crowd was screaming but I couldn’t hear. I was listening for Orr, hoping he might say something that would show me his flaw, hoping he might show involvement rather than disdain. But he said nothing. He stared up at the clock for escape, the numbers meaningless, the score irrelevant. He stood, stick over pads, parallel to the ice, back also parallel, eyes now staring through the scars of the ice for what might have been his own reflection. Just like me, once removed from the crowd’s game, lost in his own contest.

  The puck dropped and Torchy drove his shoulder so hard into the Generals’ centre I heard the grunt from the blueline. Chancey was tripped as he went for the puck, but swept it as he fell. I took it on my left skate blade, kicking it forward to my stick, slowing it, timing it, raising back for a low, hard slapper from just between the circles. I could sense Orr. Not see him. I was concentrating on the puck. But I could sense him the way you know when someone is staring at you from behind. I raised the stick higher, determined to put the shot right through the bastard if necessary. I heard him go down, saw the blond brushcut spinning just outside the puck as he slid toward me, turning his pads to catch the shot. His eyes were wide open as his head passed the puck; he stared straight at it, though it could, if I shot now, rip his face right off the skull. He did not flinch; he did not even blink. He stared the way a poker player might while saying he’ll hold. Orr knew precisely what my timing was before I myself knew. I saw him spin past, knew what he was doing, but could not stop; my shot crunched into his pads and away, harmlessly.

  The centre Torchy had hit dove toward the puck and it bounced back at me, off my toe and up along the ankle, rolling like a ball in a magician’s trick. I kicked but could not stop it. The puck trickled and suddenly was gone. I turned, practically falling. It was Orr! Somehow he’d regained his footing even faster than I and was racing off in that odd sitting motion toward our net.

  I gave chase, now suddenly aware of the crowd. Their noise seemed to break through an outer, protective eardrum. There were no words, but I was suddenly filled with insult as the screams tore through me, ridiculing. It seemed instant, this change from silently raising the stick for the certain goal, the sense that I was gliding on air, suspended, controlling even the breath of this ignorant crowd. Now there was no sense of gliding or silence or control. I was flailing, chopping at a short sixteen-year-old who seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Batterinski was coming for him.

  I felt my left blade slip and my legs stutter. I saw him slipping farther and farther out of reach, my strides choppy and ineffective, his brief, effortless and amazingly successful. I swung with my stick at his back, causing the noise to rise. I dug in but he was gone, a silent, blond brushcut out for a skate in an empty arena.

  I dove, but it was no use. My swinging stick rattled off his ankle guards and I turned in my spill in time to see the referee’s hand raise for a delayed penalty. I was already caught so I figured I might as well make it worthwhile. I regained my feet and rose just as Orr came in on Larocque, did something with his stick and shoulder that turned Frog into a lifesize cardboard poster of a goaltender, and neatly tucked the puck into the corner of the net.

  The crowd roared, four thousand jack-in-the-boxes suddenly sprung, all of them laughing at me. Orr raised his hands in salute and turned, just as I hit him.

  It was quiet again, quiet as quickly as the noise had first burst through. I felt him against me, shorter but probably as solid. I smelled him, not skunky the way I got myself, but the smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. I gathered him in my arms, both of us motionless but for the soar of ou
r skates, and I aimed him carefully and deliberately straight through the boards at the goal judge.

  Orr did not even bother to look at me. It was like the theory you read about car accidents, that the best thing you can do is relax. Orr rode in my arms contentedly, acceptingly, neither angry, nor afraid, nor surprised. We moved slowly, deliberately, together. I could see the goal judge leaping, open-mouthed, back from the boards, bouncing off his cage like a gorilla being attacked by another with a chain. I saw his coffee burst through the air as we hit, the grey-brown circles slowly rising up and away and straight into his khaki coat. The boards gave; they seemed to give forever, folding back toward the goal judge, then groaning, then snapping us out and down in a heap as the referee’s whistle shrieked in praise.

  I landed happy, my knee rising into his leg as hard as I could manage, the soft grunt of expelled air telling me I had finally made contact with the only person in the building who would truly understand.

  If it would stop there, the game would be perfect. But I knew, having taken my best shot, I would have to deal with the rebound. My hope was to clear it quickly. I pushed Orr and began to stand, only to be wrapped by the linesman trying to work a full nelson around my shoulders. I went to him gratefully, shifting with false anger, yanking hard but not too hard, according to the unwritten fighter-linesman agreement. He was talking in my ear the way one does to calm down a dog who has just smelled porcupine.

  “Easy now, fella. Just take it easy now, okay?”

  I said nothing. I pulled hard; he pulled back hard. He twisted me away; I went with him, scowling, delighted.

  “Get the trainer!” I heard the referee shout to one of the Generals.

  I twisted back. Orr was still down on the ice. The other linesman stood above, waiting to embrace him, but Orr just lay there, eyes shut, face expressionless.

  “Chickenshit!” one of their larger players yelled at me and then looked away quickly, afraid to own up to his words. I lunged toward him, but gratefully let the linesman reel me in.

  “Just easy now! Easy, easy, easy,” he said in my ear. I felt like barking, just to throw him off.

  The referee signalled to the linesman to get me to the box, and I let him wrestle me over with only a few stops and twists. Some of the crowd was hanging up over the glass and screens, throwing things, spitting, screaming. They looked like the muskrat Danny had once taken on a tip trap and failed to drown; we’d put it in a box and stabbed cattail stems through the cardboard at the little fucker until it ran at the screen we’d placed over top, screeching at us as if it would have torn us to pieces if it hadn’t been blocked from us. These rats seemed voluntarily caged. Unlike the muskrat, they welcomed their confinement. If they broke through and got to me they’d have trouble finding the courage to ask for my autograph.

  Orr did not return to the game. We won 4–1 on Torchy’s hat-trick. I scored the fourth on a desperate empty-net attempt by Oshawa, and the slow slider from centre was booed all the way into the net, making it as sweet as if I had skated through the entire team and scooped it high into a tight corner as the last man back slashed my feet out from under me. I even asked the linesman for the puck, just to rub it in.

  But such sweetness never seems to last. The X-rays went against us, Orr returned for game three and after six we were out of it, retired for the season. Orr scored or set up seventeen of the Generals’ twenty-two goals over this stretch. I scored twice, set up three and spent sixty-two minutes in the penalty box, twelve of them for boarding him. But Orr and I did not make contact again until May 19, 1974, when Eddie Van Impe, Moose, the Watsons and I set up the defensive minefield that even the Great Orr with perfect knees couldn’t have penetrated. Philadelphia 1, Boston 0. The Flyers take their first Stanley Cup in six games.

  Thinking back on it now, I don’t know why I went home that summer. I think I told Torchy and some others it was so I could get in shape, work out, add some upper-body strength, but it was a lie. I think really I had some vision of Batterinski returning as the conquering hero. But how to do it? Could I walk up and down Black Donald Hill carrying my scrapbook, wearing the three team jackets, pointing out the new teeth, carrying the team trophy for top defenceman? I had no idea. I was just going home for the first summer back since my first year in Vernon. No more wrestling with the front-end loaders at the mine. No swelter in the smelter. Just Poppa, Ig and me.

  And Danny.

  Shit, and Batcha.

  At twelve noon on June 4 the Pembroke bus pulled in to the White Rose at Pomerania. I checked on my new Timex with the date and “The Hardrocks” where there should have been numbers. A gift from Gus to the team. I wondered who would notice first.

  Outside the air-conditioned Grey Coach the air was thick and humid, a haze turning Black Donald Hill into a ghost where the church began and the steeple vanished. I felt foolish not having a car. Torchy and I had become so used to the white Valiant that we had come to regard it as personal property, much like Lucille. I had a suitcase, a duffle bag and that cursed two-mile walk ahead of me.

  No thoughts of a glorious parade through town now, only that of trying to slink home without being seen. The big jesus hockey hero, carrying his own luggage, walking. Oshawa had given Bobby Orr his own car so he could race back home to Mommy and Daddy in Parry Sound. Gus had given me a watch, so I’d know how long it would take to walk.

  “You make your old Poppa very happy, Felix. You know that, don’t you?”

  Dat. Yes, Poppa, I said to myself, I know dat only too well.

  Poppa chewed on a pig’s knuckle while I nodded in agreement. I had forgotten. He’d written and asked me to consider coming home for the summer, for him and for Ig and for Batcha. Perhaps the decision hadn’t been mine to make at all. No wonder I’d been confused as to why I’d ever come back.

  Poppa looked happy, if older. Every second seedling on his face was now white and the effect was a deathly look, much like the bums in Sudbury’s Borgia district back of the Nickel Inn. But Poppa had probably shaved in the morning. I’d forgotten how black and tight his skin was, and how the beard always looked like he’d be better hammering it back rather than shaving.

  Ig sat beside me. Same table. Same dishes. Same scraps, for all I could tell. The only improvement I could make out was that Poppa’s damn whining Puck was now housetrained and no longer pissed all over the floor. Ig had a tin of Nestlé’s Quik open and was spooning the crystals directly into his dry mouth. He suddenly seemed aged himself, like he’d gone to sleep last night a happy little boy and had awakened in the morning slow and senile. Ig had Jaja’s liver spots now, and neck wattles. His hand shook as he worked the spoon up and down, in and out. He no longer bothered with the Scotch-tape hair; he wore a red-and-white-striped Ivy League cap now, a bit too large, pulled down nearly to his eyebrows with the front snap open, and it was filthy.

  But it was Ig, with the same milk-clear eyes and, as always, totally delighted to see me. Batcha had said hello crisply and then gone immediately to her room to lie down. To hell with her — I hadn’t come for her anyway.

  “There might be some work with the highways,” Poppa said, still chewing. He meant painting craphouses for the tourists, but this made it sound more respectable.

  “I’ve got nearly four hundred dollars,” I said. Pretty impressive considering Gus Demers was only forking out thirty a week.

  “Four hundred dollars,” Ig repeated, still spooning chocolate. “Holy Moley, that’s a lot, Feelie.”

  Poppa took another knuckle out of the pickle jar. “I’ll be drawing later. You can help me cut if you like.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Be good for the forearms.”

  “Pulp’s down this year.”

  Dis. I nodded. I didn’t care.

  Ig pinched my arms and shook his head, giggling. Did he want to see if I was awake?

  “I might not be able to pay you,” Poppa said.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  Poppa nodded, picked with a fork
at his teeth. Until now, the fork hadn’t been used. He held the fork out to look for success, then stared at me through the prongs.

  “When do you find out?”

  “I’ll get a letter.”

  “And?”

  “And if I get invited to camp I’ll be gone.”

  Poppa picked without thinking. “What are the chances of that?”

  Dat.

  “Good.”

  “How good?”

  “Very good. Excellent.”

  Poppa wasn’t satisfied. In his book no one dealt with strangers without getting screwed.

  “And how does this ‘contract’ work?” he asked.

  “They pay me while I’m at camp, and then if I make the team I get more. It depends on what level I make or whether I make it at all, I guess.”

  “And if you do make it?”

  “All the way?”

  “American league, say.”

  “Maybe $10,000. Maybe $15,000 if I stay with the top team.”

  Ig whistled and hit my shoulder with delight. It could have been fifteen thousand chocolate crystals, for all he cared. He just liked long-sounding numbers. He had no comprehension of how they got there.

  Poppa wiped the grease off his mouth onto the back of his hand, the back of his hand onto his pants.

  “Who is taking care of all this?”

  “Mr. Wheeler.”

  The name meant nothing to Poppa. Hadn’t he read my letters?

  “You know, the guy who wants to represent me.”

  “Uhhh.”

  “Vincent Wheeler, the agent,” I added impatiently.

  “Can you trust him?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “New York City.”

  I loved the way it came off my tongue. Like an answer to a quiz, like a secret, like a prayer. Once I said New York City Poppa was convinced. Wheeler must be the best. Poppa couldn’t comprehend another human getting by in Sudbury, let alone surviving in New York City. Obviously, Wheeler knew what he was doing.