The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  Several times I frightened myself, twice coming across partridge scratching in the fog, and having them explode in my face, twisting toward the spruce, and once I almost landed on two fox kittens who froze in terror as I materialized suddenly and then was gone, re-entering the fog.

  On the final morning of my ten days back home, the fog lay stubborn along the swamp trail. But I had come to like it this way, the fog like a defender hacking away at me as I picked up speed to stay just out of reach, eyes alert to whatever might spring from the fog, knees ready to pivot instantly, no matter what the surprise. It was hockey. I had to have my arms alert to push off spruce and drooping raspberry. I fancied I might come across a mother bear ready to swat me away from her cubs, perhaps a wolf standing over a rabbit, thinking I had come to swipe the kill. This unknown gave what would have been an otherwise boring run the dimension it lacked: a test of reflex. Rather than running, as others did, to raise my heartbeat to some ridiculous number minus my age, I ran to keep up with my heart.

  Your strength has become your weakness. Wasn’t that what Sugar had said? What did it mean? And Teddy Roosevelt? Something about a big stick. Walk softly and carry a big stick. Is that what it was? What did Sugar mean? If my strength had been — what? — my ability to take charge when need be, how could that have become my weakness? Was I taking charge just to take charge? Walking loudly carrying a little stick?

  That’s it — walking loudly with a little stick. Sugar knew. Like the water spider, I have become less than the impression I give. And he saw that, the son of a bitch. Did it happen all the way back in Philadelphia when we played the Russians?

  How long, then, before everyone knows?

  I ran a little faster, still lagging behind my heart.

  I knew I was coming alongside the middle of the swamp because I could smell it. The stench clung heavily along the path and there was the light click of frogs diving for safety. Here the fog was so thick it was as if I floated through the clouds, me alone, with the sound of my breathing and the crunch of the Nikes, the smell and the bracing wash of fog on face, chest, forearms, thighs, a touch as light and startling as chilled cobweb.

  Ahead of me, just where the road would rise to the cedar knoll heading up to a rock face overlooking the swamp, a sun pocket lay in waiting. But I did not see it until I entered. It was like passing into a small room of dazzling light and heat. Four long strides and I was through — a light switched on at night, then instantly off — and the higher fog was already swallowing me when I spun in mid-stride.

  Batcha had been standing there!

  My ankle caught and I stumbled, skidding along the grass embankment along the side, falling heavily to my knees in the gravel and stopping on all fours, my palms pounding the loose stone through.

  I felt my heart catch. The pounding began slowly, heavily, and rose quickly to slide down like a hand over piano keys, the notes darkening. I lifted my hands and hit them together, blood and stone falling, pain rising.

  “Batcha?”

  I called, but no answer. I stood up, the gravel announcing itself now in my knees, and I buckled back down on one and checked the other: more blood, small stones clinging like buckshot. I rose and stretched the knee, feeling it lock, and stepped uneasily back into the spreading pocket of sunlight.

  “Batcha?”

  But nothing. I looked at all sides of the strip of bright morning. There was the path, wet and glistening, the silver poplar trunks. Dew in the cedar, some dry blueberry bushes, the sky in a narrow gap above, the fog banks on all sides — but not Batcha.

  Yet I had seen her. She wore her heavy black wool shawl, held over her head as if it were raining and pinched tight to her neck. She had stared at me as I came through the fog, her head bowed but tilted so her eye could greet me with gathered hatred. There was no way she hadn’t heard me coming. She had been waiting.

  I called, louder. “Batcha!”

  Nothing.

  I stepped back into the fog bank and followed the path several yards, but there was no sign of her. The fog felt ice-cold after standing out in the sun, welcome on my palms and knees but causing my legs to stiffen. I turned and ran back the way I had come passing again the sun pocket, and thinking, for a moment, I might overtake her on the path. But there was nothing. I limped passed the cedar and on toward the small platform Poppa used to use to pile pulp and flushed a partridge, assuring me no one else had passed this way recently. Where had she gone?

  I moved slowly back along the return path to the house, and by the time I reached Jaja’s old potato patch the fog had lifted entirely and the day was steaming off the roof tiles. I sat down on a soaked, rotting car seat back of the shed, checking my knees and hands. The bleeding had stopped. I knocked the remainder of the small stones free and tried to press the flesh back into its previous form, but it was no use. Small rinses of blood rose in each crater and settled just under the top layer of skin. By tomorrow I would be in a knee brace of bruise and scab.

  Inside, Poppa was leaning over the double boiler, stirring the porridge. He looked up as I came in, smiled, then saw I was limping.

  “What the heck happened?”

  “I fell.”

  “Fell? You okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “Nothing broken?”

  I shook my head. “Just scrapes.”

  “There’s Mercurochrome in the cabinet. Make sure you put some on. All over.”

  I took down the small bottle, removed the cap and dabbed at the hurts with the glass stem, highlighting the damage in orange.

  “You want a bandage?” Poppa asked

  “Nah. I’ll let the air work at them.”

  “Suit yourself. Here,” he said, moving toward me with two bowls of porridge. “You better eat something.

  He set the bowls down and opened the bag of sugar. I sat in my place, moving my legs under the table with some difficulty. Poppa got the milk, and then, on second thought, began dishing up a third bowl.

  “Batcha!” he called. But there was no answer.

  “Batcha!” he shouted. “I got your breakfast out!”

  Still no answer. I was about to speak when I heard some movement in her room, the springs knocking as she eased herself from the bed.

  She came to the door and pulled it open, hobbling into the kitchen. She moved so slowly, so weakly, that it would have taken her a month to get that far back in the bush.

  “Good morning!” Poppa called out cheerfully. She’s a beautiful warm day out.”

  Batcha said nothing, staring straight at me, her lips turned to disgust. When she got close enough, she nodded. But whether in greeting or confirmation, I could not say.

  Management was furious. Two guys reported to camp overweight. Another had a blood disorder they figured was mono. But all of this was predictable, all of this was part of training camps everywhere. But not Batterinski. Batterinski arrived in camp looking like a two-year-old who had yet to master running. Great scabs had formed over my knees, making me move like a short man on stilts. Infection had set in on my palms and I couldn’t even put on my gloves, let alone hold a stick.

  But the biggest change in the Kings’ camp went right by management. Torchy Bender found God. When I woke up on the first Monday back the dildo was gone from his bedroom door handle; inside the trapeze was down, the posters stripped, the drawers emptied. The small cigarette case of cocaine vanished from behind the bar, as well as the grass from the kitchen cupboards. All because of Tracy.

  She had been waiting in the lower exit from the Forum business offices one afternoon after practice. Torchy figured she was just another nubile looking for the legend and went up matter-of-factly and told her he’d been waiting for years for her to walk into his life. It was line #325 from the Torchy Bender hustle repertoire.

  Tracy took it as a sign.

  She went back to the house with him on Friday and on Monday moved in permanently.

  She made the house over in her own image. Cut flowers on th
e dining room table. The furniture reeking of lemon oil. Windows clear as baptismal water. She stood at the sink, arms buried in white bubbles, humming things that had last been in Julie Andrews’ throat. I was fascinated by the curl of her blond hair, by the smallness of her nose and by the enraptured tilt of a mouth that seemed to be leaning toward a communion chalice. Tracy looked like the angel opposite the confessional at St. Martin’s. All she needed was a skull to stand on.

  She turned. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “My goodness you boys have let this place run down.”

  She sounded like Mrs. Cleaver. “Yah,” I said. ”I know.”

  I could tell she wanted me to say what the place needed was a woman’s touch, but I couldn’t.

  “Dry?” she asked, nodding to a towel.

  “There’s a dishwasher, you know.”

  “This gets them cleaner,” she said, as if we were involved in serious, scientific conversation. “We’ll cut through the grime first, and then see what’s best.”

  She meant the same for Torchy. The garbagemen began to treat the Palos Verdes pick-up like a grab bag. The sexual devices were followed by four huge boxes of the kind of magazines that come like wrapped cheese slices, the magazines by a quarter-ton of neck jewellery, the jewellery by fishnet shirts, jockey briefs, a couple of dozen of Torchy’s prized T-shirts — I’D LIKE TO TIE YOU UP IN KNOTS, WOMEN WORKING BELOW, CAPTAIN HINDGRINDER’S FISHY STICK — and even his collection of cowboy hats and boots. Within three weeks Torchy looked like a door-to-door Mormon.

  I wasn’t sure what was worse, the old Torchy or the new. The old Torchy used to say the only way you can get the true measure of a woman is when she was on her knees. The new Torchy was himself on his knees, with Tracy, the house filled in the late evening with their mumbled prayers. Down went the posters of Marilyn Chambers. Up went pictures of Christ, the inspired scripture, the church calendars. By the end of the month the house looked like a millionaire’s version of a Pomeranian shack.

  Coincidentally, Los Angeles also started to win. We went six-four-one on a road trip, the tie against Montreal in the Forum, and back home went three straight. We were on a tear. Torchy moved from fifth in team scoring to twenty-fifth in the league, and instead of crediting Dionne, who set him up on sixty percent of his goals, or me, who kept the Plagers and Williams and O’Reillys off his case, Torchy told the L.A. reporters it was all thanks to God.

  BORN-AGAIN SCORER PLAYS FOR GOD.

  I had expected it, and was hardly surprised when Tracy came into the television room one night and asked if she and Torchy could talk to me. She had on a tracksuit with a cross over the breast. I had on Charlie’s Angels, with a thin T-shirt over the breasts.

  “Bats?” she said, voice expectant as a collection plate.

  “Yes?”

  She paused, half-distracted by the television. “Do you think maybe Torchy and I could talk to you?”

  “Shoot.”

  She eyed the set: Jill was running; as always, the motion harder on my breath than hers.

  “In the dining room?”

  She meant the chapel. I no longer even ate there, preferring the nook in the kitchen to having every bite, chew and swallow examined by a jury of Jesus Christ, Simon and Peter, Moses with the Commandments and Jacob trying to figure out his ladder.

  “Once the program’s over?” I suggested.

  She glanced at the television suspiciously, sure the devil had bought the time. “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. “We’ll be waiting.”

  I felt a fool walking in on them. I’d rather have stormed Torchy’s bedroom in the old days and found him hanging naked from the trapeze and completely covered in Dream Whip while two under-aged groupies tore at him with spoons than walk into the shrine of our dining room, with its delicate lights and inspirational music rippling from the stereo. I stopped at the head of the table and they looked up from their prayers, smiling.

  “Sit down old friend,” Torchy said.

  I sat and they sat. No offer of a beer or drink, not even of one of Tracy’s tasteless herbal teas, mandarin orange spice or some other light stain on water that was guaranteed to improve your outlook on life for a mere thirty-two cents a bag.

  “Bats,” Torchy began, “I’m worried about you.”

  I wanted to say I was worried about him, but didn’t. I waited, knowing what was coming. The only difference here was that Torchy, unlike Father Schula, didn’t have a heavy blood-red drape to keep between his envy and my fear. Fear at first; later, outrage.

  “Torchy tells me you used to be a good Christian,” Tracy said, voice as soft as a choir gown

  I smiled. “He wasn’t there.”

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned and I confess to Almighty God and to you, Father.

  How long since your last confession?

  It has been one week, Father.

  And what have you done?

  And what have you done?

  And what have you done?

  And what have you donnnnnne? ...

  Torchy smiled his friendly-uncle smile. “Bats used to be a server, didn’t you, Bats?”

  I smiled back, not answering, I thought of Danny, his tongue thick with sacrificial wine, pocket thick with offerings. If there was truly a gate to heaven, Danny would be met by a police roadblock.

  How could they be taking this seriously? Only someone as absurd as an Athlete for Christ would be able to see a connection between role and reward. Serve and ye shall one day serve God. Check hard and ye will keep the devil bottled up in his own end.

  “Torchy said you were raised Catholic.”

  I nodded at Tracy but I was looking at Torchy. He had trimmed his hair back to pre-expansion standards. The red flame was turning to ashes now with grey; the loose, freckled face now tightened like a beaver pelt in the sun.

  Do you no longer go to mass?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “May I ask why?”

  She spoke with a smile, but with Father Schula peeking out from behind it.

  I stared directly at her. “No.”

  Tracy looked down, hurt. Torchy’s face crinkled like cellophane as blood roared up and returned him, just for a moment, to the old carrot-head of Sudbury.

  “Hey, Bats. No need to get so touchy. Tracy’s concerned, that’s all.”

  Touchy? Who’s getting touchy?

  Tracy looked up, leaned forward as if going for the unleavened bread.

  “We just want to know where you’re coming from, that’s all.”

  I nodded, but I wanted to puke. Here I was in a Californian confessional, friends exorcising my demons.

  Confiteor Deo, omni potenti. No. I was not going to give into these two, either.

  Tracy must have felt the power, because she was willing to try again to reach the atheist. “Was it the Roman Catholic faith itself?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Did you get turned off by the church?”

  “I just stopped going. Like school, eh?”

  “But something must have turned you away, surely?”

  She was not going to give up. But I could not tell her. I could not go over Ig’s death with someone like her. Not even with Torchy. Not even with the old Torchy. I couldn’t even go over it with myself. There weren’t thoughts to ride with the feelings.

  I quoted from Revelations. “But because though art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to spue thee out of my mouth.”

  “Torchy looked up, the smile dropping, “What’s that?”

  I was amused. “How can you come on so holy all the time and not know anything about the Bible?”

  Tracy smiled. “There’s more to being a Christian than reading the Bible, Bats.”

  “And more to it than luck too.”

  She was perplexed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I laughed, too loud. “Look at your convert, for Christ’s sake.” I pointed unnecessarily to Torchy, who seemed hurt. “God is nothi
ng more than a rabbit’s foot to him. If he plays well with God he’ll hang on to God. If he goes into a slump he’ll try some new tape or a new stick or a new pair of skates — more likely a new God.”

  Tracy’s eyes were watering. “That’s not true!”

  “It is true and he knows it.” Again, I indicated Torchy unnecessarily. “You come on to me like I’m some kind of heretic or something, but look at yourselves. It’s a joke. Do you know what they’re saying about you?”

  I stared at Tracy, waiting. I wanted to stop, but couldn’t. This was like a hockey fight, time not quite slowed until I’d landed a punch, hard.

  “No,” she said, voice thin as a prayer book. “What?”

  I made it up. “That Torchy got religion just so he could get you.”

  “Cool it, Bats,” Torchy warned. It was his voice before being born-again, the old Torchy speaking.

  Tracy turned to Torchy, then back to me. “That’s not true!”

  “Bats...” Torchy’s voice was hard, threatening, like dropping gloves.

  I dropped mine and swung hard.

  “Look — I don’t give a shit what you do. Just don’t sit in judgment of other people, that’s all. And don’t try and force your bullshit religion on me, either. You watch, old friend. You run into trouble and you’ll drop this phoney shit in a second.”

  I was wrong. Torchy showed true Christian charity that night and didn’t put a chair through my head. But Tracy stopped speaking to me and barely said another word all winter and on into the spring. Without discussing it we divided up the house. They got the chapel and the whole quarter around Torchy’s bedroom. We took shifts in the kitchen. I got the pool mornings, they had it afternoons; the hot tub we split the other way around. They probably saw it as heaven and hell.

  The Kings flattened out as quickly as they’d risen. We’d dropped from second to third to forth and began worrying about the cellar. Torchy’s scoring fell off but — much to my surprise — not his prayer meetings nor his obsession with Tracy.