The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  “Danny,” I say. I am not crazy. I know he is not there but I say it anyway. I just want to feel his name in my mouth again and to see him the way he was.

  To see me the way I was.

  To feel it coming again. Not sure what to expect but success. Why, tell me why — why is success so much sweeter in the future, where it may not exist at all, than in the past, where there is no argument?

  “Ugga-bugga, pal,” I say softly and close my eyes, pulling thuds and cracks and whistles and cheers and moans of the godforsaken area about me like a comforter.

  When the team comes in with a 6–5 victory, I am asleep.

  Later, in the banquet hall bar of a squat hotel, I sit nursing a beer, my mood peculiar. A band is on stage, identical straw-haired pipe cleaners in thin black ties, white shirts and slacks so desperately tapered their toes couldn’t tap for choking. And no wonder: a cross between ABBA and a polka band, they manage to make “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” even worse than the original.

  But I am quiet, alone. Pekka, drunk first on his hat trick, is now drunk on koskenkorva, thrown back neat and then cooled with a beer chaser. Several of the others are staying with him. Never have I seen Tapiola Hauki so — sorry, Bobby — “gelled.” We feel completely comfortable together, a unit.

  Timo begins strength exhibitions, taking a bite out of a glass and happily chewing it while everyone, me excluded, applauds in astonishment. Timo looks at me and I nod in approval, then stand as the table goes silent. I reach over toward Pekka and pick an empty beer glass. Then I take up Pekka’s nearly empty koskenkorva bottle and pour out a short ounce, causing Pekka to hoot with derision. I hold up my hand, silently calling for patience. My mood is strange and I am not quite sure what it is that’s making me do this, but instead of going for more alcohol to prove the point, I suddenly find myself pulling at my fly as I stand there. In front of the entire table, I whip it out and slowly pee several more shots into the glass. Then, zipping back up, I raise this yellowed, sparkling liquid toward the chandeliers, cut off my breath and quickly drain the glass to the bottom.

  “Hakkaa päälle!” Timo shouts.

  “Hakkaa päälle!!!” The table, Pekka included, erupts.

  I say nothing. Delicately, I place the glass down. Arrogantly, I walk away, leaving their continued cheering and applause. No can believe what I have done, but there is a rationale to such apparent insanity. There has to be. To them, it looks as if Batterinski has gone out of control, but appearances are deceiving. I have simply taken shock and manipulated it. Those who witnessed the act will be saying that, come morning, I had better not remember it; if I do, I will be aghast. But they are so wrong. I will not only remember it; I will be proud of it.

  A rep is not something you acquire and take with you. It is something you must be forever creating. As it suits you.

  And this act is not done to serve me in the bar, but on the ice.

  Erkki is already aboard the plane when Pekka and Timo and I make it up the ramp, one of us on each side of Pekka, who has thrown up twice on the bus ride out to the tiny airport. I leave Pekka’s fate to Timo and the airplane’s thin waxed bags, halting in front of Erkki and his empty seat of scattered newspapers. He moves them and I can see by his fingernails how badly he is disturbed by what he has read. As I sit, he drops the best shot in my lap, nearly a quarter page on the front of the first section, of me paying the spitter back in kind.

  “Did they get the score right?” I ask.

  “It is not so funny to me,” Erkki says.

  “It wasn’t so funny to me, either. That’s why I did it back to him.”

  “The board will not be pleased.”

  I imitate him “‘The board will not be pleased.’ Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean, Erkki? We won, didn’t we?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Tell me then, Erkki — just what is the point?”

  Erkki flees to a thumbnail, ripping a thin tortured ribbon free so two small flecks of blood can rise in the whitened crease. Erkki sucks on it, gaining nourishment from his own fears, gathering himself before he dares.

  “This was an exhibition match.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it does not count.”

  “It seemed to count for them — as long as they were winning, anyway.”

  “But not so much as to justify your attacking a fan, surely.”

  “Me attack? I say indignantly. “Who spit first?”

  Erkki taps the paper. A blood bud falls from his finger, spreading. “Hauki dos not appreciate bad publicity.”

  The flight is rocky. We seem to be boring straight into turbulence as we head out over the water. We do not crash, but only because when I walked back from Erkki I checked the seatbelts. Pekka does not laugh this time. He lies alone in a double seat, blind drawn, pillows under and over his head, moaning. Matti sits alone as well, near the back of the plane, and untouchable. He is unshaven and scramble-eyed, staring at me like a hungry dog on a short chain. I ignore him.

  The flight smoothes, a new sky rising clear and bright over a thick mattress of flattened cloud. I set my seat back and closed my eyes, imagining what it will be like to be back with Kristiina tonight, whether she will have heard, what she will think.

  Something bumps my chair, a sharp jolt that cracks my head against the window.

  “Sorry.”

  I look up. It is Matti, his comment and expression contradicting.

  “Fuck off,” I say, closing my eyes again.

  He bumps again.

  “Sorry.”

  I sit up and turn as he leans over. I can smell the booze. Matti reaches and slaps with an open palm, hand open, and the sting floods my eyes though it does not hurt much. I am startled. I have been hit by a man, kicked by a man, choked, bit-speared, tripped and nearly knifed by a man. But slapped? I can do nothing but laugh.

  “You think it is funny, Batterinski?” Matti asks.

  “Not really,” I say. “That’s about what I would expect of your type — a woman’s slap.”

  Timo rises behind Matti, waiting. He puts a hand on Matti’s shoulder, gently, suggesting, but Matti shakes free more than is necessary and leans again toward me.

  “You fucking Canadian!”

  “Forget it, Matti,” I say, trying to remain reasonable. “You’re off the team. Let him be, Timo. Matti, go on back and lie down. Get some sleep. You need it.”

  Matti lunges, a nail catching under my eye and stinging off my cheekbone. He is both too weak and too drunk to fight. I grab his hands together like he’s a child throwing a tantrum and stand up, throwing him into the empty seat while I still hold on to him.

  I look straight into his tortured eyes. “Are you going to settle down now?”

  He twists angrily, grunting. I slap his face back.

  “Lars,” I shout back at the trainer. “A roll of tape — quick!”

  Lars has his jacket pocket full of them and tosses a roll immediately. I catch the tape, bit the loose end up and, holding it in my mouth, yank a long squawk of tape free. Letting it drop from my mouth, I work it loose with one hand until it catches and then wrap it tight, around and around and around Matti’s arms as Timo pins him. He barely bothers to struggle but begins to curse me in Finnish.

  “Kovanaama!”

  “Perkele!”

  “Vittu paska!”

  “Bully, bastard, fucking shit.” He has exhausted my own Finnish comprehension by the time I decide to finish off the roll of tape by doing Matti’s mouth as well.

  “There,” I say gently into Matti’s burning ear. “That should hold you until we get home.”

  Timo carts him off to the applause of the team and by the time we land I have forgotten Matti. There are far too many other concerns. Erkki is waiting smugly by the luggage carousel, lightly slapping the afternoon Helsinki Sanomat against his palm as if waiting for a fly to light. The front page belongs to Batterinski.

  He hands me the paper and turns away, waiti
ng for me to read. As he rocks on his feet, hands rip nails behind his back. For comfort he stares into the deep hole of the carousel, closing his condemning eyes only when they settle on the arrival of the first luggage: Matti, taped, twisted and terrified as he rises on the rubber treadmill and rolls down the steel plates, circling twice before Erkki, alone, hauls him off like a flopping, massive muskie. No one moves to help as we gather up our equipment and depart, for the first time a true team.

  Kristiina was not home. I called fourteen times from five o’clock on but no answer. Finally I showered, shaved and dressed anyway and walked from the hotel over to the Viisi Pennia for a few brew and compliments, but the evening did not sit well with me. I talked while silent inside, laughed while sulking beneath, drank but was dry to the pit of my gut. Three times more I called, but still no answer. No Kristiina.

  Midnight and I think I see her through the smoke. She stands at the front door, swaying as she winces through the bad air for me. She is not alone. Her hand uses a man’s arm like a pole to swing from as she searches, the other hand pressed to her silken bangs, scouting. I want to shout but I cannot; I cannot even look at her properly because of him — who is he? what is he? He stands tall beside her, nearly my height and it is difficult to make out his build for all the bulk, lamb jacket, scarf, black Russian hat. He grins the smile of the horribly uncomfortable, teeth like a champ on a pipe so curled and whittled that I wait for a soap bubble to drift across the bar and burst on my table: this late-night, late-drink, late-thought nightmare finished.

  But it does not burst. She sees me seated with the usual leeches, waves frantically and heads through a crowd, tugging her uneasy giant behind. It is clear he is not used to bars. He smiles a welcome the way frightened dogs expose their bellies, unaware that others turn not to greet but to leer. On other nights, with Kristiina on this same walk, picking up imaginations the way Poppa’s magnet pulls nails from the laneway, I have been proud, knowing they all see Batterinski between the hard thought and the soft comfort of her body. But not this night. I stare as well. But not at her. At him Who is he?

  “Hi,” she says, the tone tentative, hopeful.

  I am glad she spoke first. Sensing defence, I am free to lag the puck, letting her commit herself first. I pick up my glass and raise it in a toast which says, and is supposed to say, nothing. The leeches clear out, knowing Kristiina; from their hands on my shoulders and back I know they are wishing me well and content just to touch. I am to them what Paavo Nurmi is to me: a charm. And I am as aware of them as the statue is of me. Kristiina, though, is another matter.

  She smiles enthusiastically. “Felix. I would want you to meet a friend of mine from where I work. This is Jorma. Jorma, I would like you to meet Felix Batterinski, please.”

  I rise not out of good manners but to show him my size. Yet it does not work. He is not as tall, he is taller, and when his hand comes down off the pipe — white clay, the bowl like a full-breasted woman with vents for nipples — and reaches for mine, it is as if I am putting on a hockey glove. His grasp is huge, the fingers long and strong, and if the flesh seems soft it is only a false covering over hydraulic bones. We both grip hard and shake once, up and down. An egg held between would have splattered to the ceiling.

  “I have read much about the Great Batterinski,” Jorma says. His voice is soft also, equally deceptive. It does not sing like most of them. He sounds like an Englishman, one of the snotty ones. Behind the voice I look for sarcasm, but cannot be sure.

  “We have all today read so very much of the Great Batterinski,” Kristiina says, her sarcasm open, obvious.

  “Sit down. Sit down,” I say, suddenly the perfect host. I signal to Thomas to bring over a round of beer.

  We sit and Jorma immediately begins to clean his pipe with a large, elaborate jackknife, the blade left exposed and threatening on the table between us. Kristiina catches me staring at it as Thomas sets down the beer.

  “Jorma is one of the architects for your new ice hockey stadium,” she says.

  “That so? At Tapiola?”

  He relaxes visibly, comforted by his work. “We are doing what we can, you see, considering the laws they have there concerning what you cannot build. If they had their way, old man, your centre-ice line would be a bicycle path — very difficult to deal with.”

  “When will you have it completed?”

  “With no strikes, maybe we shall see progress by this time next year.”

  “How many seats?”

  “How many seats do you want, old man?” he says, smiling from behind the pipe.

  “One.”

  Jorma is not sure whether to laugh. “One?”

  “One.” I nod toward Kristiina. “For her.”

  Kristiina blushes. Jorma laughs, pulls his pipe free and reaches on through several inches of sweater wool to drag out a leather tobacco pouch. He unzips it and loads up his pipe, staring back and forth at Kristiina and me as if we are a tennis match.

  She serves. “I am not so sure I should want to be there after this.”

  I return. “After what?”

  “They are talking about you all over Finland. Do you not know that?”

  “Good,” I say, turning to Jorma. “Better go for twenty thousand anyway. I’m a draw.”

  Kristiina is not finished. “The radio station has started a petition against you.”

  “A what? A petition against me?”

  “Anyone who thinks you are wrong for Finnish hockey is supposed to go down and sign.”

  “Let them go ahead. They have no idea what happened.”

  “You, you —” she looks at Jorma, ‘sylki?’”

  “Spit,” he says, smiling.

  “Yes, you spit in that poor man’s face.”

  “He spit first.”

  “Must you always be the person to react?”

  “What would you have me do, kiss him?”

  Jorma is beaming as he follows our rally. I am suddenly aware of what is in this game for him. He will be the true winner. If I go too far he will be leaving with Kristiina even more confidently than he came. I soften my shots.

  “It was unfortunate,” I say. “I had no idea anyone would be there with a camera.”

  “I thought it was great, old man,” Jorma says, putting away the knife. “It’s not every day Finland gets to spit in Sweden’s face on the front page.”

  Kristiina is not amused, and deliberately changes the subject, talking directly to Jorma. I tune out, staring: she looks so lovely tonight, her teeth white as surf as she speaks.

  This Jorma’s agreeability does not fool me. I scare him. I have him. I look around. Viisi Pennia is winding down, the smoke snaking about the room as the front doors open and close on red-face, staggering patrons, each door swing silencing the bar a little more.

  “I’m sorry?” I say, dipping back into the conversation. There was something there I didn’t quite catch.

  Jorma stops in mid-sentence, eyebrows flexing, pipe smoking, the talker idling. He pulls out the pipe and stares, questioningly.

  “I don’t understand what that is,” I say.

  “What what is?”

  “This Amisty thing.”

  Jorma smiles, grateful. “Amnesty International,” he says loudly, as if the word should be as familiar to someone like me as “unsportsmanlike conduct.”

  “That’s where we were,” Kristiina says, her smile encouraging. “We had a meeting.”

  “Well,” I say, a touch belligerently. “What is it?”

  “You must have heard of it in Canada, surely,” Jorma says. “It is a world-wide organization to fight repression. Communist. Right wing. You name it, my friend, we fight it. Kristiina and I are both members. I am the national director, I think you would call it in your language.”

  I am not listening. I stare at Kristiina, who hides her awkwardness behind a sip of her drink.

  “What can you do?” I ask sarcastically. “You got guns in the closet or something?”

 
; Jorma thinks this a huge joke and laughs the laugh of those who enjoy through imitation rather than creation. It comes across false.

  “We have something much better,” he says, and winks at Kristiina. I clench my fists, wanting to lunge. I wish I were in full uniform and we were sitting in the penalty box, not here. There would be no winking there; a closed eye for Jorma, perhaps, with my blessing; but no winking.

  Jorma goes on: “There is an English saying we use here, as well. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ We write letters, you see. We have no use for guns, believe me. They solve nothing, obviously, otherwise there would be no need for us. We write reasonable, persuasive letters.”

  “Who to?”

  “To whom?” he repeats, deliberately stretching the “m.” I want to kill him. “We write to the leaders of the countries like Pakistan and Guatemala, places where people are being tortured, where they are being detained in prison without charges, convicted of crimes without trials, where they are, in many cases, being executed at the whim of the ruling party. We fight against all of this everywhere.”

  He leans back, deliberately staring down his nose at me. He thinks I don’t understand. The prick.

  “Fight?” I say. “In letters?”

  “Yes. We apply enough pressure, we hope, to force them to release their political prisoners.”

  “Through letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever write Idi Amin?”

  Jorma shrugs, now distinctly uncomfortable. “Yes, I have.”

  “Did he write back?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did he get your letter?”

  “I assume he did.”

  “Did he do anything about it?”

  Jorma only shakes his head. “We are satisfied if we win even a small percentage. We believe we’ve caused over a thousand prisoners to be released in the past year, you realize.”

  I turn to Kristiina. “And you write too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who to?” I ask, emphasizing the lack of “m” for Jorma.