Searching for Terry Punchout

by Tyler Hellard

  One night in the middle of Grade 11, Dave put together a sort of double date for us with Stephanie and Gail McGuigan. We ended up drinking cheap vodka in the dugout at the baseball field on the north side of town. It was almost spring, but the nights were still cold and what snow was left on the ground was hard and icy. Dave and I passed the vodka back and forth with our mitts on, drinking straight from the bottle, trying our best not to blanch at the taste in front of the girls.

  I’ve always been uncomfortable around women, doubly so back then, when sex was still a mystery, but I think we were having fun. We were teenage boys trying to impress teenage girls, doing the best we could to show off. Years later, after many mistakes and occasional successes, I learned there are two kinds of showing off: confident and obnoxious. Dave was at ease with girls. More importantly, he was at ease with himself. I wore life like a hand-me-down suit, struggling to fit inside my own crippling self-awareness. Sitting there with Stephanie and Gail, Dave was calm and easy-going. I was loud and desperate to impress everyone around me. The girls saw Dave and they saw me and they saw that we were different in a way that meant if we paired off in couples, the girl who ended up with me would be considered the runner-up. I didn’t care. I just wanted someone to make out with.

  Dave found a long stick and stood at home plate, batting rocks and clumps of ice into the outfield. I kicked a snowbank to gather up more baseball-sized chunks and pitched them to him, soft at first, which he smacked hard, then with as much force as my shoulder could manage, which he hit even harder. In the dugout, the girls tittered and cheered with each hit.

  “Okay, throw to me,” I said, hoping to redeem myself. Dave shrugged, dropped the stick, and headed to the mound. I took my place at the plate and swiped at the air a few times, feigning a warm-up, wiggled my ass, and leaned into an exaggerated batter’s stance.

  Dave tilted back and came with a hard inside pitch that grazed the arm of my coat. I flinched, then whistled to play it off. “Okay, now give me something I can actually hit,” I said, and stepped back in, this time staying more upright. The next pitch came inside again, even harder, and I ducked out of the way before it hit me.

  “Asshole,” I shouted, but in a playful way. My plan was to make contact and trot the bases no matter how far it went. I just didn’t want to whiff with the girls watching.

  Another chunk of ice came toward me, this time low, hitting the ground just in front of my feet.

  “You couldn’t hit the ocean from the beach.” I taunted him for missing the plate, but in the moonlight, I saw a look on his face that suggested his pitches were going exactly where he wanted them to.

  He picked up another piece and stood tossing it up and catching it, waiting for me to step back in the box, which I did cautiously.

  “One more inside and you walk me,” I said, challenging him to throw a strike. I figured he was setting me up to miss when he finally sent one down the middle. I was ready. The girls went quiet. The entire world went quiet. This was my pitch.

  Dave cocked, lifting his leg like a big-league pitcher, and took a long stride toward me as he threw. My ear exploded in pain. The feeling was so intense I couldn’t move or hear or see. I was sure my ear was gone, the right side of my head numb around the hot crater where it used to be. I don’t remember falling down, but I could feel the frigid ground through my jeans. I don’t know how long I sat there, in agony and shock.

  “Are you okay?” one of the girls asked, her voice barely audible over the shrill ringing in my head.

  I couldn’t bring myself to touch my ear. “Is it bleeding?” I asked.

  Dave laughed. “No. Get up,” he said. “Let’s go drink beers in Mac’s garage.”

  I sat, dizzy and nauseated. Tears welled in my eyes, and as they started to spill down my face, Dave muttered, “Jesus Christ, fucking crybaby.”

  “Fuck off, Dave. It hurts,” I yelled.

  “So, it hurts. Don’t be such a pussy.”

  I’d seen this from him before, directed toward unlucky losers and geeks at school. Most of the time Dave was just Dave, unfuckwithable. But he could also be mean. When he decided to break a person, they were helpless to stop him. There was real cruelty inside him.

  Dave and the girls left without me. I walked home by myself, my ear hot and aching, my wet face stinging in the bitter cold.

  The next morning, we had early hockey practice. My ear was still red and sore to the touch, but Dave said nothing. He didn’t even acknowledge me, just put on his gear, joked around with some of the other guys, and went on like nothing had happened. The longer practice went and the more nothing was said, the more I seethed.

  In any break-up there’s history and hurt feelings and, often, a strong desire to see bad things happen to the other person.

  We were running dump-and-chase drills, and Dave got to the puck ahead of me. He was in the corner, his back turned, and, without thinking about it, I took a hard run at him. He was fine, but it was a dangerous thing to do and, from anyone else’s perspective, completely unprovoked. The coaches were livid that I’d tried to injure their star player. I spent the rest of practice bag-skating. Afterward, in the dressing room, they reamed me out again before leaving my fate to the rest of the team.

  “What the fuck was that?” Dave yelled after the adults were gone.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” I barked back, my voice shaking with rage and fear.

  Dave shoved me, I shoved him, and then his fist connected with my cheekbone. Puberty is fickle and inegalitarian. I got zits and mood swings. Dave, meanwhile, had turned into a hairy beast with the kind of grown-man strength that made him impossible to knock off a puck. He had a good fifteen pounds on me. I managed to hit him exactly one time before he forced me to the ground, sat on my chest, and slapped the shit out of me. My teammates saw it as a beating I deserved and let it happen.

  It was my father who pulled Dave off. I should have been grateful, but I was too humiliated, both because he saw me getting beaten up and because I clearly needed him to bail me out. The team finished changing back into street clothes and quietly left, Dave included. My father stayed in the room until it was just the two of us. He sat quietly, grey wool toque in hand. That air of disappointment only parents emit hung between us. It was probably the most fatherly moment of his life, sharing that disappointment. Considering he’d made a career of beating people up and I’d just gotten my ass kicked, I thought maybe he’d give me some advice, a couple tips that would help me in future fights. He didn’t. He got up and left without a word, leaving me wounded and angry and alone in a room that smelled like sweaty teenage boys.

  I quit after that morning and haven’t played hockey since. Whenever I hear a retiring athlete talk about leaving the game on his own terms, I’ll think, “Yeah, that’s what I did. I totally left hockey on my own terms.” It’s a pretty stupid thing to think.

  •

  The fight that ended my father’s career was legendary. It wasn’t on any Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em videos and they never showed highlights of it on Hockey Night in Canada, but people liked to talk about it. Around Pennington, that fight was regarded as no less than the greatest fight in the history of hockey. Shitty used to tell us he’d seen it—that his cousin in Newfoundland had it on VHS—but after a while, when he kept failing to produce a copy, it was clear he was lying. The fight became mythical—to hear people talk about it, you’d swear Terry Punchout slew a dragon, conquered a continent, and died the noblest of deaths. The very thing that destroyed his career was also his crowning achievement. Even J.J. Johnstone, constantly banging his drum about how bad my father was for the sport in the pages of the Record, couldn’t diminish the glory of Dad’s final battle in local hearts and minds.

  Of course, that’s because nobody had actually seen the fight. The game wasn’t televised in Canada, and the country’s first specialty sports channel was still two years away from existing. I wasn’t un
til the internet came along that video of the fight finally surfaced and everyone, including me, got to see it.

  It was soon after I got to Calgary that a co-worker sent me an email with the subject “HOLY SHIT!!!” Inside there was a link to a website that specialized in collecting hockey fight videos.

  The video, likely digitized from a tape that had been sitting in someone’s basement for years, was grainy and choppy. It took me a few seconds to work out what it was I was even looking at. The fight didn’t start out like much of anything. There was a scrum near the benches, a few players shoving and jawing at each other, and then I see my father, young again, in the thick of it.

  Lars Nilsen, one of the early Swedish imports to the league, barks something at my father, the two of them nose to nose. Lars smiles and turns to skate away. My father throws down his stick and gloves, spins the Swede around by his shoulder, and swings. It’s fast, and the first few punches are wild. Then, all at once, blood is everywhere. I’ve seen hundreds of hockey fights, but this was different—the violence more visceral. My father is bludgeoning Lars Nilsen. Nilsen never fights back, doesn’t even protect himself. The blood covering his face spatters other players every time my father pulls his hand back for another shot. The referees, busy breaking up other, lesser fights, let it go longer than it should. Finally, someone on my father’s own team catches his arm and pulls him away. Nilsen crumples to the ice and the video ends, freezing on my father looking at the blood dripping from his hand.

  I’m reminded of the casual curiosity on his face in that video now while watching him open a folding chair with just a quick jerk. If you aren’t watching closely, you wouldn’t know my father’s right hand barely works. He’s spent over twenty years developing coping mechanisms, using just his left hand when he can, burying the scarred right hand in pockets. He can still manage a pincer grip with his thumb and forefinger, but the other digits are useless. He’s built cheats into everything he does—opening doors, eating food, driving his Zamboni.

  “Are you sure you want to do this here?” I ask. He’s cleaned the place up in preparation, but I’m worried he still might be uneasy having me here.

  “Of course. Why not? What’s wrong with it? You said you needed a quiet place. It’s quiet.”

  “Yeah, it’s perfect. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

  “I’m comfortable.”

  “Okay.”

  We both look around the room at nothing in particular.

  “So, should we get started?”

  “Sure,” he says, “or did you want to get some fries or chips downstairs first? Or a pop?”

  “If you need something, sure, but I’m fine.”

  “Oh. Well, if you’re fine, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  If I were ranking every conversation I’ve ever had, this would be among the worst. We’re dancing around the thing we’re here to do. “Then I guess we should start,” I say.

  He doesn’t move, and I have to reach around him to pull the folding chair over so I can sit. After a beat, he perches on his recliner, though he’s at the absolute edge of the seat, rigid and tense, like he’s waiting for me to deliver bad news.

  I set the tape recorder on the end table next to his chair.

  “That thing’ll hear me?”

  “It’ll hear you fine, but please talk as clearly as you can.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “You tell me. Where should we begin?”

  “I have no earthly clue.”

  He’s rubbing the scar on his hand, same as yesterday. It’s like a nervous tic and he seems oblivious to it. I think of the fight that gave him the scar, and I want to ask him more about it, but that would be jumping to the end of the story. I haven’t figured out what exactly it is I can write about my father that’s as compelling as I need it to be. So much of what comes next for me is now riding on what’s past for him. I can’t risk him glossing over something valuable—I can’t skip ahead.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” I say, pressing down the button on my tape recorder. “Tell me about where you’re from.”

  •

  You already know I’m from here.

  …

  Well, what the hell is the point of me telling you stuff you already know?

  …

  My own words? Well, who the Christ else’s words would I use?

  …

  Fine, fine. I was born just outside of town here—the south side, in 1947. Do you need that stuff, too, my birthday and such? Maybe every time I took a shit?

  …

  So, 1947. My folks raised Cotswolds—that’s sheep—on a small farm just south of town. I must’ve been only four or five when Dad started getting me to hold the sheep down for shearing. He didn’t need to, or at least, he managed just fine before I come along, but the truth is I think he got a kick out of it, watching me wrestle with the goddamned things. He’d holler at me and I’d wrap my arms around some mutton’s neck to drag him down to the ground. “The legs, boy, get the legs,” he’d holler, but I was scared of the legs. Ever been kicked by a full-size Cotswold?

  …

  Well, it hurts something fierce. Won’t kill you, but you learn not to get kicked twice. I’d take them down by the head.

  …

  No, Dad never knew how to skate and didn’t have time for things like hockey. He was always working around the farm, and I honestly can’t say what he did with the time when he wasn’t. It was Mum who got me the skates and it was Mum who showed me how to use them. Make sure you put that in this thing you’re writing. She’d’ve liked that.

  …

  Well, just mention it somewhere in there. You didn’t know your gran, but she was a nice lady. I got the skates for Christmas. They were old brown leather things, and goddamned if they weren’t five sizes too big, so Mum stuffed newspaper into the toes and walked with me on the ice, holding my arms while I figured out my legs. I was on that pond for, Jesus, must have been seven or eight years. I hammered together a net out of old wood and would shoot at it for hours. I finally got a new pair of skates when I was about thirteen and I begged Dad to let me play hockey in town. Mum didn’t drive, so it was him who’d need to take me in for games and practices and such. He wasn’t keen on it, but he agreed. I always supposed Mum made him do it. Playing hockey came easy to me. It was those years of skating on the pond and wrestling with the sheep. I showed up and was better than the lot of ’em. I wasn’t a great puck handler, so I’d cut my stick short and cradle the puck close to my body. Then I could push my way through other kids and I always had a pretty good shot. That first year, I scored whenever I wanted to, so the next winter, they made me play with the older kids, thinking it’d be more fair. Well, I was better than all of them, too.

  …

  Mr. Asmus was the name of the man who scouted me. I never caught his first name—Dad just said, “This is Mr. Asmus and he thinks you should play hockey in Toronto next year.” He wore a sharp blue suit and smoked those cigars that are small like cigarettes. Had a big ol’ smile on his face pretty much all the time. Those scouts aren’t really scouts at all. They’re salesmen. I scored fifty-four goddamned goals that year. Most in the league. It’s not like he needed to make some kind of judgment on my talent. I was better than anyone else playing juniors in Nova Scotia, so he showed up to convince my folks to let me play juniors in Ontario. That was his whole job: convincing mums to let their sons go.

  …

  No, Mum wasn’t keen on it at all. I think Dad was mostly surprised—the idea that I’d get to Toronto for hockey, of all things. Anyways, he said it was my choice and my choice alone. There was something about the way he said it, like he didn’t think I had the stomach for it. And he wasn’t all wrong—I was scared shitless. It wasn’t something I’d admit or something any of us boys would talk about, but
I suspect we all missed our mums. I’d be damned I was gonna let him make a chickenshit out of me, though. So I told Mr. Asmus I’d love to be a Marlie and that was that. I near pissed myself when I got off the train, I was so scared. It was all so big and moved so fast. They put me in a boarding house with seven other fellas from the team, most from small towns like me, some from places I’d never heard of in Saskatchewan or New Brunswick. We got on okay, but it was still lonely at the start. Mostly we’d play cards. Can you imagine the likes of that? Bunch of kids in the big city for the first time and all we did was sit around playing euchre for nickels.

  …

  The hockey part didn’t start so good for me. I was so used to being the best guy on the ice, but I wasn’t even close with those fellas. It’s a whole league of guys who were the best players from wherever they was from. It was clear pretty quick there wasn’t anything special about me. I was smaller and slower and couldn’t buy myself a goal. It was about a month into the season, and it didn’t look like I was gonna stick. They were ready to ship me home and I was just about ready to go.

  …

  Our captain was Billy McGee. He was a big kid from Manitoba and he had the smoothest hands in the O—that’s what we called the OHA. I guess they call it the CHL now, but we just called it the O. Anyways, McGee could really fly. He went on to get drafted by the Flyers, then he broke his leg and it never healed right. Not sure where he ended up after that. I suppose back in Bumfuck, Manitoba. Anyways, like I said, he was our captain, and the best guy we had, and one game he took a stick to the mouth. Cut him up real bad, cost him some teeth. Guy who sticked him was some French arsehole, Jacques or Pierre or whatever.