The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  Why can it not be as simple for me? These kids haven’t the slightest worry about reps. They arrived already defined: Pomeranians. And I could have stayed one if —

  “Aren’t you Felix Batterinski? The curly-haired one says.

  “That’s right,” I say, putting my hands into my jacket pocket and smiling. The hockey player’s sheepish pre-autograph pose.

  “I’m Tommy Shannon.”

  I look at him. Yes, but grown. He has Danny’s hair. That’s where it went.

  “Danny’s young lad?” I say, already knowing.

  “That’s right,” he says. The same words I used, but here no hands-in-the-pocket humility. I find my own hands fidgeting. What has Danny told him about me? He plays with a button and pulls back his shirt. “I still got it,” he says, reeling out my old sharks tooth, the gold chain slightly green. I smile, warming to him.

  “Your daddy’s my best old pal, you know?” I say. The other kids look at Tommy, impressed.

  But Tommy isn’t particularly. “You and my dad used to play together in junior, eh?” he says, smiling.

  Junior? The closest Danny ever got to junior were the letters I wrote him from Sudbury.

  I have the power to hit back at Danny now. I can get him for the crack, get Tommy even. All the kids are looking at me, awed.

  “That’s right, Tommy,” I lie. I cannot hurt Danny, no matter what he had done. I pull my hands from my pockets and run one through his hair. “You play?”

  “He’s our best!” a boy in a torn grease-red ski jacket says.

  “Who’re you?”

  “Danny Dombrowski — he’s my cousin.”

  Danny? Danny. Danny is the hero here. They even name their children after him. Where is Felix?

  “What’s your team?” I ask.

  “St Martin’s.”

  “You’re not still playing in that old rink,” I say, indicating with my thumb the shack in the distance.

  “Nowhere else to play,” Tommy says.

  “Who’s your coach?”

  “Father Schula,” the new Danny says proudly.

  “Father Schula! For God’s sake!”

  “We’re in first place,” Danny says. “Except we got no more ice. We’re playing Renfrew Saturday for the district, eh?”

  “Renfrew. They’re good, I guess,” I say.

  “We already beat them good,” the new Danny says. “Tommy got four goals.”

  I look at Tommy Shannon and he is staring down, hammering a toe into the muck with pride. I cannot believe this. Father Schula’s St. Martin’s boys are still playing Renfrew. And winning! And because of a Shannon!

  Danny is here twice. A son. A nephew. Where is Felix? How can they play Renfrew without Batterinski?

  “You got anybody tough on your team?” I ask, kicking my own muck.

  “No,” Tommy says.

  I smile, staring down so they won’t see.

  “There’s no body contact,” the new Danny says.

  No body contact! Outlawed for all groups below bantam. Every two years it goes up a level. At that rate in eight more years it would reach the NHL. No body contact. Strike Schultz and Williams and Batterinski from the record books forever. We need more pages for Gretzky....

  I drive around but there is no place to go. The pub is open but I am afraid of talk. The woods are too wet for walking, the back roads too mucked for a six-cylinder, rear-wheel-drive rented shitbox. There is really only the highway, both directions leading out of town, both leading back in. With not even a ten-mile drop in the speed limit in honour of Pomerania, the highway does not even acknowledge that the place exists.

  I drive slowly up over the hill toward the church with my window open, the cold promise of spring in the air. I can smell the earth where it rises in a driveway, and everywhere there is water, rippling fast and clean down the centre of the road, trickling brown and slushy along the sides. Let them talk of robins arriving to herald spring; they do not speak for Pomerania; here, spring is the first sound of rubber on asphalt. But when I try for it, the rented car does not have the horses.

  At the hardware store there is a large green truck with its gate down and the driver is jockeying out a mattress. He is jacketless, wearing only a black T-shirt, and when I double-take on the absurdity of dressing this way I realize I am looking twice at Bucky Cryderman, my old teammate from Vernon.

  “Hey, Bucky!” I yell out the window.

  He stops, still not recognizing, then: “Holy shit! Not Batterinski?”

  “It is!” I get out and we shake hands warmly, both sizing up. If we went by volume, it would take me twice as long, for Bucky is even fatter than Danny, but he is also the same Bucky: same hairstyle, not a touch of grey or the sixties, seventies, eighties, same boyish tough face that wouldn’t faze a rabbit. What change does he see in me?

  “I seen you on television the other night,” Bucky says, black teeth finally showing his age.

  “Me?” I say, laughing but clinching inside.

  “You in Sweden.”

  “Finland.”

  “Wherever. You sure got them D.P.s pissed off at you, lad.”

  “So it seems.”

  Bucky laughs, the laugh of the night with Maureen. “Fuck ’em, eh, Bats?”

  “That’s what I say. How you been, anyway, Buck?”

  “Good! Pretty good!” Bucky practically shouts, perhaps in defence. He pulls a package of cigarettes from under one sleeve and pinches one free — I imagine he still calls them weeds.

  “You got a family?”

  He lights up, hand shaking. “Five kids. Only one boy, though.”

  “Five!”

  “Maybe six now,” he says, laughing. “I left at sunup.”

  “Who’d you marry?” I ask.

  “You wouldn’t know her,” he says. But in the way he glances toward the safety of his cab, I think perhaps I do: Maureen the Queen.

  I change the subject for him. “You see much of Sugar lately?”

  Bucky looks back from the cab to me, and I know instantly that Sugar Bowles is dead.

  I have not prayed in so long that I hardly remember how. I am sitting — no, kneeling — in the Batterinski pew, but it is not the pew that I grew up in. Poppa has been moved further back to a smaller pew. The Batterinskis are fading and they no longer need the space. Soon Poppa will need only a folding chair at the rear doors, one of those Danny and I used to put out for the Christmas midnight mass. Soon Poppa will no longer be sitting in his beloved St. Martin’s. For his last visit, they will let him lie down.

  It is so quiet in here that I can hear the ice melting and sliding off the southeast corner. I sit listening like a doe with a spring fawn, worrying about every creak in the floor and draft in the curtains. I do not wish my tears to be seen by anyone.

  But I cannot stop crying. I have tried to imagine this God listening, but it does not quite work. What can I do? Pray for Sugar? He’s dead and hardly needs a late reference from the likes of me. Pray for Jaja, Ig, Matka? Does God continually have their souls monitored to see if enough prayers are being said in their favour? And what of someone like me? If I die and leave no one to pray for me, am I then doomed? And if not, then what is the use of ever praying for anyone?

  Yet I can pray for Kristiina, the living. But I can’t concentrate. My thoughts feel like they are in Kristiina’s blender, each turning into the next, one cutting another.

  In the end I am just a Pole. Alone. All I can truly pray for is Felix Batterinski, the poor dumb bastard. But pray for what? It is beyond my comprehension how so much could possibly have gone wrong. Right from Leningrad on. No, not there, from Sweden on. In Helsinki. Hell, with Wheeler in L.A. In Philadelphia, I suppose. No, in Sudbury, the summer Ig got it. When Batcha turned on me the day Jaja died. Maybe when Matka died, right from the first.

  What was it that Batcha called me?

  I cannot remember the word. Just the translation. Monster.

  I cannot believe I even have such ludicrous thoug
hts in my head. If this is part of prayer, then prayer is for fools.

  I get up and leave, determined not to bow or genuflect or even act impressed. I got into this my own way. I will get out on my own. Alone. Just like always.

  On the far side of Black Donald lake is a picnic site, the tables stacked under the high white pines, the orange garbage containers turned upside down for winter, the washrooms locked. There is also a pay phone, filthy with caked snow and spray from the winter’s snowploughing. I pull off as far as I dare onto the shoulder and leap the ditch, sinking to my knees in hard-packed snow. There is a ghost of a winter trail to the booth, probably a motorist who slid off the road months ago calling for a tow truck, and I use the hardened parts of the trail for footing. I half expect the phone to be ripped from the box, but the old Danny is now too old and respectable, the new Danny and Tommy too young, and the phone sits intact and working, waiting for a quarter.

  I place the call, charging it to Poppa’s number.

  The Kirurginen Sairaala switchboard is receptive this time. I can sense my name on a sheet and almost instantly I can hear the phone ringing in Kristiina’s room. And then her voice, weak, tired, but my darling Kristiina.

  “Hi babes! Canada calling.”

  “Felix!” Her voice perks up. Good. “Where are you?”

  “In the middle of the bush.”

  “Are you here?”

  “I told you. I’m in a phone booth in the middle of nowhere.”

  “How did you find me here?” She sounds mildly irritated, typical of those who never wish to be seen to be sick.

  “Pia. Pekka. They told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “Told me where to reach you. Why do you say that?”

  “No reason. I’m sorry. I am just tired. Please.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Fine. Perfect. I’ll be out in two days.”

  I am not sure I want to ask, but: “What was it all about?”

  I can feel her pause. I wait, afraid to even breathe. “It was that infection,” she says. “It was what was making me sick. It was not important.”

  “But why an operation? Why are you in a surgical hospital? Why couldn’t they treat you with penicillin, or antibiotics?”

  Again the pause. “It was, I think they say ‘women’s problems’ ... you know.”

  When I shout I see my breath is forming in the booth. It is colder in than out. “No, Kristiina, I don’t know!”

  She laughs, but it is not quite her laugh. It is what she thinks her laugh sounds like. “Then you should not worry about it. It was nothing, really. I miss you, you know.”

  “I miss you too. But I still want to know what was wrong.”

  “Nothing. Believe me, please.”

  I say it before I even consider it. The thought forms in my mind and takes shape on my tongue, my mind recoiling from the suggestion.

  “You had an abortion, didn’t you?”

  There is no answer. But there is, too.

  “Didn’t you?” I say.

  “What did Pia tell you?” she says weakly.

  “Pia told me nothing.”

  “What makes you think it was that?” Her voice is filled with air, floating on hope.

  “I’m not stupid,” I say angrily, my own voice heavy with hurt.

  “Am I right? It was an abortion, wasn’t it?”

  Her voice is small as the distance is large: “Yes.”

  I feel as if the gloves have dropped. Time slows. Batterinski moves in, attacking, in charge. “Don’t you think it is something we should have discussed together?”

  “There was nothing to discuss,” she says, voice growing with defiance. “It was my decision. The doctors said the pregnancy was not going well. I was very sick, you may recall.”

  “My mother lay in bed for two months before I was born.”

  “Your mother died, you told me. Is that what you wanted of me?”

  “Not at all. I just think I had a right to know, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry, but what right?”

  “I was the father, damn it!”

  “Yes, if there had been a child. There isn’t going to be a child now.”

  I can feel time quickening. I must go back on the attack. “You never even gave me a chance,” I say. “We would have gotten married.”

  She laughs, this one not an imitation but the real thing. “Is that the way you fix these things where you come from?”

  “It would have been the thing to do. Didn’t you get my note?”

  “Yes. And it was sweet. Thank you.”

  “‘Thank you’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said. Come on, Bats. What’s with you?”

  I am angry again, time slowing. “What’s with you? Would you or wouldn’t you?”

  “Would I or wouldn’t I what?”

  “Marry me.”

  “Oh please — we must not talk about that now.”

  “No. I want to talk about that, okay? Would you? Will you?”

  “Not now, please. Not now, particularly. Marriage is the last thing I want right now. I just want to go home and rest.”

  “What about later, then. I love you, you know. Even after this.”

  “‘After this’? Look my Canadian darling, you must not make this look like I’ve done something wrong to you. What I do with my own life is my business.”

  “My business when you’re pregnant.”

  Her voice suddenly grows cross. “Not your business then, either. And especially not your business when I’m not pregnant. Understand?”

  “What about later?”

  “Later for what?”

  “For us getting married, Kristiina. What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. It is with you. And if you must have an answer, the answer is no.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not ready, for one thing. Because even if I ever am ready I doubt we would be right for each other. You will understand.”

  I can say nothing. I stare at the receiver. Ice has formed on the mouthpiece but it should be on my ear.

  She fills the gap. “You asked.”

  I sputter. “Okay, but what about us together. What was all that about?”

  “Fun. Fun for me. Fun for you, too, I hope.”

  “Just fun?”

  “Sure. Fun. What else matters? Look, I still love you in my own way, isn’t that enough?”

  I am suddenly back walking on the ice of Helsinki harbour with her. She has let go of my hand deliberately. You’re different, she says. Now she says fun. Batterinski is her toy — isn’t he — nothing but a goddamn fucking toy you take off the shelf when you’re bored and kick under a chair when you’ve better things to do. Enough, she says.

  “No! It is not enough!”

  I am screaming. I hammer the receiver down so hard it buckles the cradle. I can’t even phone her back to finish. I yank the receiver as hard as I can, ripping the phone and cable free from the box and sending my shoulder stiffly back against the still folded door. I turn and I kick and the door gives slightly, but the snow has packed hard around the track and it cannot shut tight. I kick again and again and the door bursts, the thick glass shattering but holding together in patches. It falls, folding, the sound like a well-greased rifle bolt accepting its charge. Which, in a way, is precisely what Batterinski is doing.

  Holding the receiver by the end of the cable, I whip it like a club against the three sides of the booth, stomping around the outside, falling in the drifted snow to my knees. The booth turns to cobwebs, the cobwebs falling in on each other.

  I take the telephone and hold it like a lariat over my head, then send it full force against the door of the washroom so it leaves a deep gash and black skid. They will have to paint that again. Just like Jaja painted the goddamn things every year for bugger-all. That blow is for him.


  I kick at the glass and turn to the sound of a logging truck gearing down for the slope. I don’t even care. I stand proudly beside my shattered phone booth and stare at him, defiantly, but the bastard does not even take his eyes off the upcoming curve. Like everyone else, he seems convinced Batterinski no longer exists.

  I know from Poppa’s eyes that he is deeply troubled. When I first drove back out I’d hoped I’d be able to cheer him up with news that the road was opening up. Anything to avoid Kristiina or all this shit going on in Finland. But I knew by the time I reached the lane that all was not quite right. No outside light for me. Just a sad glow from the kitchen where he sat with a coal oil lamp burning in a recently rewired house. Not too subtle a slap, and I did not miss it.

  He rises slowly from his contemplation of the wick.

  “You should have called. I had supper ready.”

  “Sorry.”

  Sorry be damned. This is 1982, not 1962, but suddenly I can taste toothpaste in my mouth. It is as if I have just come in from drinking in the gravel pit with the rest of the gang and I’ve squeezed the tube directly into my mouth. But Poppa always knew then. He knows now.

  “You had calls,” he says.

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “Everyone, it seems. The CBC. The Toronto Star. The Globe and Mail. Finland.”

  “Who from Finland?”

  “They left their number.”

  He picks up a piece of folded paper. I see he has been looking through my scrapbook. The paper I take from him and unfold. Voitto. The nerve of him, to call back.

  “What is going on, son?” Poppa asks sadly.

  “It’s a misunderstanding, Poppa. Same as the thing in Sweden. I tried to teach them how to be winners and now they’re trying to treat me like I’m some sort of criminal or something.”

  “Are you?”

  “Poppa! Come on now! We gave out bonus money for aggressive play, it’s as simple as that. Never for penalties. I turned a bunch of losers into winners, Poppa, and now they’re saying they’d rather be losers.”