by Diana Wieler
Keep it moving, he thought. Just get through this. Get through this and you’ll be okay.
When they pulled into the parking lot, A.J. could feel how early it was. There were hardly any cars and in front of the paling sky, the arena loomed. To A.J. it looked like an island. There were people in there, and something to do. He knew he couldn’t hold on here much longer.
As soon as the engine was off, A.J. moved to get out. But Tully sat like a statue, the keys in his hand.
“Wait a minute,” he said. A.J. caught his breath, but he paused, his eyes locked on the door handle he was gripping, in pain.
“Let’s cut the bullshit, okay?” Tully said softly. “I was up all night thinking about this. Last night… was an accident. I never meant for you to find out like that. But I guess, I’m, you know, relieved because I was going —”
“Don’t.” A.J. cut him off, his nerves twitching. “Don’t tell me anything, Tul. I don’t want to know.”
“Look — do you think this is easy?”
“Shut up, Tully!” A.J.’s voice strained and snapped. He pushed his way out and stumbled into the parking lot. He leapt towards the arena in a blind rush, the car door hanging open behind him.
Coach Landau was pleased. He leaned against the boards beside the bench, and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Smiling was black luck for a coach, and doubly worse now, so early in the season. But the feeling was there. It was a team studded with promises.
Al Weitzammer was one of them. He had the softest hands Landau had ever seen. Weitzammer caught a pass with a butterfly net, not a stick. And precise. Never mind picking corners for shots. You could divide the goal into thirty-two squares and the boy would take out the one you asked for. Landau knew this was Weitzammer’s last year before he was scooped for Junior, but it didn’t matter. He would use him while he had him.
And there were others, less obvious, maybe. Landau skimmed over them with his eyes, checking them off mentally. Lavalle and Pilka were good together. Landau could see a rhythm developing, a one-two passing punch when it worked. McEwan and Zarich were coming close, too, and Gord Rudachuk was a devil of a mucker. No blistering hotshot on open ice, but could he go to the corners! He was a worker, as tenacious as a bulldog, and about as smart. Landau liked Rudachuk.
Millyard, Brown; Landau nodded unconsciously. His gaze caught on A.J. Brandiosa, and he watched. And watched.
Geez, he’s a mess today, the coach thought. He’d been cautiously hopeful about the husky defense. Brandiosa was solidly entrenched in bulldozer hockey, but every now and then Landau had seen glimmers of something better. A.J. could focus and he could react. When he did, the hit or play was naturally smooth, dead on. It was the kind of instinct that could make a coach’s heart beat fast.
But it wasn’t there today. Today the boy looked like a marionette cursed to a bad puppeteer. When he moved, he jerked and flopped, but too often he was motionless, drifting.
He’s asleep or he’s stoned, Landau thought.
A.J. wasn’t asleep, he was falling. He kept clutching his stick, hoping that the fresh pain in his hands would prop him up.
And he talked to himself. It was only a scrimmage, but he followed the play inside his head, like a sports caster. The words crowded him. He needed to be crowded.
… Rudachuk in the corner, gets it out, Rudachuk to Pilka, Pilka’s looking for Lavalle, over the blue line, still looking, pass to Mendel …
Oh, God.
… back to Pilka, who goes straight into the boards! Good check by Zarich! Scooped up by Millyard who takes it over centre ice. Pass to Weitzammer, to Millyard, to Weitzammer …
In his house. In his car. But he never touched me. I swear it. I swear to God.
… tied up at the boards. Play is whistled dead. Weitzammer and Grummett at the face-off, Weitzammer has it — shoots! — off the goal post. Caught up by Rudachuk, who takes it behind the net. He’s looking, looking, Rudachuk passes to Grummett…
That’s it. He’s gone. Cut him loose, the queer bastard! He’s lucky I don’t kill him.
… Grummett at centre ice, Weitzammer trying to intercept, he’s on him, he’s on …
Three years. How didn’t I know? I should’ve known. But he didn’t touch me, I swear —
And Bill Grummett slid past A.J. to within kissing distance of the goalie and neatly flicked the puck into the right-hand corner of the net.
There was no crowd, but Grummett did his victory dance anyway. A.J.’s side of the rink let out a collective sigh of disgust. Mendel sidled past the de-fenseman and jogged his shoulder, not nicely.
“Are you nailed to the freakin’ ice? Wake up — or get the hell off!”
A.J. turned abruptly and headed for the boards, his face on fire. He wanted to crawl onto the bench and hide, but Landau was in the way.
“I don’t know who that was,” the coach said, “but you tell him to quit borrowing your jersey.”
He flipped the words at A.J. lightly, but his face was taut. It was a warning.
A.J. spun around and started for the locker room. He could almost feel Landau’s glare burning his back. He knew this was insolent and insubordinate, but he was past caring.
Inside he stripped off his uniform mechanically and padded across the floor, a towel wrapped around his hips. The empty room was too quiet, unnatural. He was desperate to be gone. But just before the showers, he stopped.
The posting was still up — Landau’s final roster for the team — no one had ever taken it off the wall. A.J. stood, a tingle crawling over his scalp, unable to keep his eyes from sliding down over the numbers to the name.
19 — Derek Lavalle.
It was not a name he knew. Derek Lavalle didn’t go to Riverview. A.J. couldn’t ever remember playing on any teams with him. He kept reading it over and over, hypnotized by the black letters on the white paper, as if that would explain something. Maybe why. Maybe how.
Until he realized what he was doing. A.J. recoiled and fled for the showers. He cranked up the temperature and scrubbed himself until his skin was stinging. It’s over, A.J., he told himself. You don’t care why, you don’t ever want to know how. It doesn’t matter.
Except for the thought that dug into his heart like a splinter. For three years I told him everything, and he didn’t tell me this.
EIGHT
“WELL, well. Meet my son, Sleeping Beauty.”
There was a giggle. A.J. could only hear with one ear, but it was undeniably a giggle. A female sound. In this house?
His eyelashes brushed upholstery. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, his face pressed into the crevice behind the cushions. He rolled over and pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking.
“How nice. It’s alive,” the giggler said.
It was a woman, a small woman in a man’s blue ball jacket; the sleeves came to her knuckles. She had frizzy mouse-brown hair and cheeks as round and smooth as Gravensteins. Standing beside her, all dark hollows and leather lines, Decco looked a hundred years old.
A.J. sat up. Who was this? What was she doing here in the living room with his father?
“What time is it?” he croaked, his voice hoarse with sleep.
“Around seven,” Decco said.
A.J. jumped. He had to be on the ice in half an hour. He swung his feet over the side of the couch and tried to leave, but his father stopped him with his eyes.
“June, this is A.J. A.J., this is June.”
A.J. stood up, swaying slightly. His hand enveloped hers. He could have crushed it, it was so small. A child’s hand.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father beaming at the both of them.
“Gotta go,” he mumbled. “Game.”
In the bathroom, his mind stumbled forward. Who was this June? Why was she here? They had guests so seldom; occasional relatives or someone from the dairy, and Tully. The thought snapped at him but he shrank from it, before the bite.
June. Set-up city? he wondered, splashing water on hi
s face. Once or twice his father had introduced him to the daughters of his co-workers, at company barbecues and such. But this June was too old for him. She was in her twenties, at least.
There wasn’t time to puzzle it through, not now. By the time he hit the hallway he was flying. Shoes. Jacket. Gear. He was going to sneak out through the kitchen, but he felt a tug of conscience. Better say goodbye, he thought, and leaned into the living-room doorway.
They were on the couch watching TV. Holding hands. A.J.stepped back, as if from a cliff edge. He backed up through the kitchen, conscious of every breath, every rustle. Then he was through the door, his cheeks burning in the dark night air.
So that’s what she was. She was a date. Or something. His father had had dates before. Nice ladies with square-heeled shoes and tiny lines around their eyes. The kind of ladies you called ma’am.
A.J. felt sick. That person on the couch was a kid. He calculated quickly. Even if she was twenty-five, she was young enough to be his own sister.
What could she possibly see in him? What did his father want from her? Sex. The word ricocheted loudly inside A.J.’s head, and he flinched, as if someone had shouted it on the street. But he was alone. For the first time Tully’s absence was palatable, as if someone had punched a hole in the air beside him.
A.J. realized he had slowed to a shuffle. He wanted to lie down and go back to sleep. He wanted to bury his face in the grass and have it all be better when he got up.
He started to jog awkwardly, the duffle bag banging into his calf with every step. He couldn’t risk another performance on the ice like this morning’s practice. He had to push everything out of his head and plow through this game somehow. Alone.
Bad timing, Tul, A.J. thought, narrowing his eyes against the wind that watered them. Bad freaking timing.
The dressing room hummed with high-voltage energy.
“All right,” Landau said, pacing a little as he prepared to brief them. “There’s not much to tell. The Terriers are 1 and 4 for the year.”
“The Terriers?” Grant Pilka muttered incredulously.
“Arf, arf!” a voice barked, and everyone laughed. A.J.’s jaw tightened. He knew it was Tully at the back of the room.
Even Landau grinned. “Right. The Terriers. They haven’t had much of a year, but don’t get cocky. Bruce Fleury is back …”
“Out on bail!” Bill Grummett called.
“No kidding? What’s the charge?”
“He murdered three wingers in O. T.,” Tully cried over the din. “You know …” “Sudden death overtime!” the room chorused.
Landau threw his pencil up and let it fall. He’d get no sense out of them tonight. He called orders as they filed out of the dressing room, but the words were lost in the exuberant noise. As A.J. passed, he reached out and patted the boy’s shoulder, just below the bulky pad. It was fatherly, forgiving. It was a gift.
A.J. didn’t pause, didn’t even raise his eyes, but the feeling rippled through him. Here in this place, with these guys, he was part of something. It was the first time he’d felt human in twenty-four hours.
Stumping off the ice after warmups, Grant Pilka whistled under his breath. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said.
“If we had ’em, I’d play ’em,” Weitzammer muttered, his mood uncharacteristically dark. But there was no mistaking what they were seeing.
These guys are in the wrong sport, A.J. thought, his eyes on the ice. Linebackers — every last one of them.
It wasn’t completely true. The infamous Bruce Fleury was tall enough, but raw-looking, unfed. A handful of others were distinctly average-sized. But the rest, perhaps two strings’ worth, looked like rectangles on skates.
“No sweat,” A.J. said, pushing the words purposefully out of his mouth. “We’ll clean up the boards with ’em.”
“Easy for you to say, Brandiosa.” Pilka shook his head. “Looks like a passing game to me.”
“All right,” Weitzammer said, scrambling to rally them. “Let’s run the S.O.B.’s into the ground. Play your partners. There’s no way they’ll keep up to us — no way!”
But he was wrong. Bruce Fleury and the first string lit out of their zone as if the ice was tilted. It wasn’t that they were fast — Weitzammer had been right about that — they were just co-ordinated. Partners. The defensemen had the intuition of twins.
Still on the bench, A.J. watched through narrow eyes, trying not to let the others see the awe in his face. Lately in practice, he’d been working with Trent Millyard, and he’d felt pretty good about the patterns they’d run together.
Amateurs, he thought now, his throat closing up. We are freaking amateurs.
And then the line changed and Rod Mendel puffed through the gate, and amateur number 27 leapt up as if someone had booted him.
A.J. was determined not to back down. He was sure that once he had a few hits under his belt, he’d settle, and this game would be like any other. But it was difficult. No one player seemed to carry the puck long enough to make contact.
They were superb headmanners. When the puck was in their own zone, the carrier didn’t shuffle behind the net, looking for a hero’s path out. The puck went zinging ahead to the next player, then up to the next — bang, bang, bang — until it was deep in the Cyclone end. And there it was delivered to Bruce Fleury. In the first period Fleury squared off against goalie Terry Frances half a dozen times. He nailed it in twice.
It’s the second goal that panics you, A.J. thought. The first riles you, the prick of a needle. A second goal drives it in with a slam and you jump, even before the pain registers, because you know if you don’t do something, it’s going to hurt.
A.J. jumped. It was on a rebound, deflected off the goalie’s stick in the Cyclones’ end. When he had it, Pilka’s good advice about a passing game evaporated.
Go, damn it, go! his mind screamed, and he took off, although he was behind his own blue line and players teemed at centre ice like sharks.
It was a panic charge, a flat-out, two-points-behind run along the boards, and he never should have tried it. Millyard had elbowed out past his guard and was shouting for a pass. He was hardly a blur in A.J.’s right eye.
A.J. was focusing. The whole rink had become a patch against the far boards, three feet square, that he had nailed his eyes to. Just get there, his heart drummed, get to the boards and swing around the net. Someone will be there. You’ll get the assist.
And while that thought was still sweet in his mind, he heard the cry, the warning. He never knew where it came from. He only had time to move his head a quarter turn before he slammed into the boards.
There are hits, and there are hits. A check twelve inches into the boards that you half expect isn’t nice, but it isn’t awful. A.J. had flown three feet, bounced and then slammed back into the shoulder that had hit him.
There was a ripple of a cheer when he raised himself to his feet on the arm of a linesman; it was a home game. But A.J. slunk to the box. It had been a bad hit, but legal.
He averted his eyes as he shuffled to a seat.
“Go get Vic to look at you,” Landau said. “You may need to have your ribs taped.”
“After the period,” A.J. said, because he couldn’t bear the thought of crawling away in front of everyone. He glared at the rink, wincing with every breath, the words chugging like a train in his head. Stupid, stupid, stupid …
In the dying minutes of the period, the play was locked in the home end. The Terriers had the Cyclones well covered. Rudachuk skittered behind the net, trapped.
Then, an opening. From the bench, A.J. could see the path as if it were painted on the ice. He was on the edge of his seat.
“Go, Gordy,” A.J. muttered.
Rudachuk saw the opening, too. He whipped around the right-hand side of the net, then hesitated.
A.J. was wringing his stick. The opening was there! For Christ’s sake, rush it, Gord!
But Rudachuk choked. He shot blindly towards the point, a broad pass
in Weitzammer’s direction. It never connected. The Terrier line had just changed, and a fresh Fleury streaked forward, intercepted, and effortlessly snapped it into the net.
The moan seemed to come out of the arena’s beams, like a shudder. Mendel swore so loudly he startled parents six rows up. A.J. closed his eyes. This wasn’t a beating, it was a one-man war.
The period ended mercifully soon, and the Cyclones trudged off, dark-eyed with disgust. But no one said anything to Gord. Rudachuk was the kind of guy who tried so hard, all the time. He did the dirty work. He scuffled and scrambled and dug, with out complaint. He was a beautiful mucker, so you had to let the other errors go.
But Gord wasn’t letting it go. When he pushed, ashen-faced, into the locker room, A.J. knew the boy was carrying Fleury’s hat trick by himself.
A.J. waited in a secluded corner of the room, wincing under the brusque once-over by Vic, the trainer. After the pronouncement—bruised — he sat, slouched on the bench. Without the diversion of the game, the night seemed to fold in on him, suffocating. He saw Rudachuk shuffle over to the drinking fountain, his shoulders bowed.
And then, “Hey, Gord. Good play.”
“Huh?” Rudachuk looked up, a flinch, as if he expected to be struck.
“I said, good play.” Lavalle had pulled off his helmet and was towelling some of the sweat out of his hair. He grinned.
A.J. stared, frozen. For twenty-four hours Lavalle had been a faceless figure, hovering darkly at the edge of his vision. Now he couldn’t look at anything else.
Rudachuk was bewildered. The Terriers had just scored off his mindless pass. There was nothing good about the play. But Lavalle’s expression was open, engaging.
Number 19 draped the towel over his shoulder and stepped closer.
“I could see what you were setting up for, and it was brilliant. I mean, everybody was in perfect position. You at the net, Weitzammer at the point …”