You Could Believe in Nothing

by Jamie Fitzpatrick

  The new issue of Backbone included two letters in support of Jill the Slut:

  The workplace still sees the woman as willowy angel (cue domination fantasy) or hardcore ball-buster (cue submission fantasy). These unrequited fantasies continue to drive all decisions made by male superiors, as sure as if she were down on her knees.

  We all know grown men who can’t shed their attachment to silly games. Sad, really. I guess childhood was the best of them, and it’s been all downhill ever since.

  A more direct assault had appeared a few days before in the Telegram, under the heading “Blasty Boughs.” Derek rifled through the stack and found it. The columnist tilted his head to one side, as if straining to pick up a signal. His shirt collar was askew, and the crease down the middle of his forehead might have been cleaved with a hatchet.

  The shattering beauty of this island, the sheer resolve and bracing wit of her people, such strengths are unassailable. But complacency and ignorance continue to blight this land, too often skewering our nobler aspirations.

  To watch CBC’s “Citywide at Six” last Friday was to see the Newfoundland male at his worst. Reporter Allan Marleau’s feature on a coterie of “regular guys” and their weekly hockey match was a celebration of infantilism. This sampling of middle-aged men, with their passion for hooliganism and the mind-numbing qualities of strong drink, offered what I fear is a true portrait of the state of our consciousness.

  “I don’t believe in traditional Newfoundland,” proclaims one fellow, encapsulating the astonishing ignorance and disrespect typical of his generation. I can only assure the gentleman that traditional Newfoundland—not to mention those who fight to preserve its bruised and battered heart—does not believe in him, either.

  We are a people who sold our birthright for a baby bonus cheque. Beyond a vanguard of the serious minded, Newfoundlanders remain stupefied, oblivious to the crisis that engulfs us, disciples of bourgeois vulgarity with its baubles, bangles, and beads. “Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter my sober house,” cries the Merchant. But he cries in vain. Is it any wonder that we have so often landed ourselves in trouble, or that the dream of nationhood remains far, far beyond our grasp?

  Derek motioned to Jo-Jo and showed him the article, watched for his reaction as the black eyes darted down the page.

  “That guy.” Jo-Jo tapped the tilted head with his smoker’s finger. “I know that guy. He been here.”

  “That’s us he’s writing about. Me and Brian and all the guys who come here with us.”

  “Ha,” said Jo-Jo. “Fucking guy.”

  Hubert LaForge is a political analyst and consultant. He served as an independent MHA for the district of Cape St. Francis from 1996–1997.

  Derek leaned back in his stool and watched the hockey game. It was playoff hockey, to be sure. The players had that Bobby Hull look, pinched and discoloured.

  Jo-Jo propped the door open and stood smoking, spitting bits of tobacco on the sidewalk.

  “All the boys coming tonight?”

  “Probably not,” said Derek. “I imagine they’re gone somewhere to watch the game.”

  “Game?”

  “The hockey game.” Derek pointed to the antique twenty-inch television.

  “Fucking Canada,” said Jo-Jo. “Hockey up your ass.” He pointed a thumb at his buttocks and shoved it to his pants with a loud grunt.

  Derek sipped his beer and brought his legs together, so that his thighs supported his crotch. Jo-Jo was right. Hockey was up your ass in this country, freighted with all kinds of bullshit.

  It was a funny old spring, not many people about in the evenings. Leaving downtown and taking the curve up Church Hill, Derek passed no more than half a dozen revellers heading in the opposite direction. The breeze, stale as old water, had changed direction, coming straight at him.

  At home, he turned on the television and stood at the front window to watch two men push a stalled sedan from the curb. They leaned almost horizontal to put their full weight into it, and generated motion with slow, determined steps. The car rolled out of sight before its engine sputtered to life. The pushers raised their arms in the air and shouted in celebration. It reminded Derek that his status on Mullock Street was tentative. He might stay here all his life without the slightest rebuff from long-established neighbours. But he would always cede common areas to the men who commanded the street as their own.

  He climbed the stairs to the bedroom, changed into dry socks, and found new emails from Curtis and Nicole. He decided on Nicole first.

  Not to sugar coat it. If it was us and you paid a woman I’d kill you.

  But maybe it’s better than an affair - if he had a mistress etc. Emotional involvement would be minimal/nonexistent when paying for it. Does that make sense to you as a guy?

  I imagine your mother won’t be leaving him at this point so the difference between prostitutes vs. affairs gives them a starting point.

  he should agree to counseling at least. Sarah knows the whole psych services field pretty well and you could pick her brain. though I imagine they would want a total stranger.

  What do you know about his past? Does he talk about it? I know you never talk about your past, and whenever I asked you I never got much. Thats a stumbling block.

  Derek read this back in Nicole’s voice. He hadn’t expected her to work it around to him. And how could she be so certain his mother wouldn’t leave?

  The message from Curtis had been copied to the whole family. The baby’s room was ready. A sheep had died. Crocuses were in bloom. He wondered how to pack for May in Newfoundland, as if it were all exotic and unknown to him. “Looking forward to it!” he wrote. “It’ll be great!”

  In the attached photo, Curtis wore suspenders and a plain, collarless shirt. The virtuous tiller of soil. He had a neat black beard, and his eyes were off-kilter, like a blind man’s. The new wife stood at his side, bleached and wizened, with the fine features of a former high school queen. Probably twice divorced, like Curtis. The deep V-neck of her fleecy sweater revealed dimpled and leathery skin. Derek wondered if his brother had reached that point in middle age when men see a different kind of beauty.

  Derek woke, his chin on his chest. Curtis and the blond wife watched him. He had dropped off for just a moment, not even long enough for the screen saver to kick in.

  As he blinked and gave a shiver, another email arrived from Curtis, this one addressed to Derek only:

  Are you sure it’s the same game. That was so long ago. I’m surprised such things still exist.

  You say my father was paged? Do you mean in the arena, for everyone to hear? I don’t recall that. But I’m seven years old. The memory is a whirlwind, everything in my life is changing at the time.

  What happened that night was I ran away. The story begins long before the hockey game. Picture if you will:

  A boy who is seven years old and happy. Then a strange man shows up.

  His mother says they have to move a thousand miles away so this man can be his new father. His real father can’t come.

  He won’t see his real father anymore. That’s just the way it is.

  Run away? What boy wouldn’t run from that?

  When his mom and the strange man take him to a hockey game, the boy sees his chance.

  His mother takes him to the washroom and says do your business while I wait outside. As soon as she turns her back he’s gone. He runs and hears the crowd cheering, like they’re cheering for him.

  Then a man has him by the arm. Then he’s in an office and a lady is asking him questions. He needs to pee badly, but refuses to wet himself, clamps his legs together and cries instead.

  Then his mother is there, relieved and also angry with him.

  That’s the way I remember it, in bits and pieces. I wanted my mother and father to be together, like any other kid. I hated Lou. I didn’t want to leave home. So I ran.

  But my
dad wasn’t there that night, unless he was and I didn’t know. Like I said, so much to sort out from that time. Painful time.

  I’ve made my peace with it, long ago. I now understand that life is a struggle. I have my faith and my wife and a baby soon. I am blessed.

  Do you know what’s funny? They didn’t even take me straight home that night. Mom cleaned me up and we went back to our seats, stayed for the rest of the game. I think Lou wanted to stay.

  There was music in Derek’s head, blowing around like trash in the street. He went to the sink and drained a glass of water, felt it rinse through to his extremities. The ache in his groin started up again, a gentle pulsing.

  He had sought out 1965 because it was a relic from Lou and Elizabeth’s valiant black-and-white youth. Now it turned out that they were blighted from the start. He couldn’t reconcile the parents he knew with the optimism and faith that must have prevailed in Detroit. How else could they have undertaken such a hopeless campaign with an unwilling boy?

  Just like at Kelly’s house, his sleep had been deep and dreamless, a void. The Nicole dream had stopped since the day Billy Wright buried his dad, when Kelly got him loaded on crap wine and he went to hockey and bashed his head. He ran the tap longer before refilling the glass, adding ice cubes, and returning to the living room. The unknown melody settled like a foul taste.

  The late game on TV was a blowout, almost over. Derek watched a scuffle erupt, with gloves in faces and fuck-yous exchanged. The crowd loved it.

  The Stanley Cup Playoffs used to hold them like a drug. Every spring Lenny’s living room was remodelled as an amphitheatre, with extra kitchen chairs and a couch from the basement. The beer at their feet in coolers packed with snow. They gathered night after night. Two solid months of it, until it was more real than the bullshit world outside. One night they stepped out to the sidewalk to watch a pair of bungalows burn down across the street. The black and blue smoke was apocalyptic, obscuring the whole sky. Flakes of soot came down around them, and the fierce heat glowed orange on their faces. They were told to wait for an evacuation order. When it didn’t come, they went back to the game.

  The living room blinds were wide open. The wind had died, leaving a stillness like the eye of a storm. Derek found himself wide awake, and furious at Nicole. I know you never talk about your past. He knew more than enough of her past, the disease-ridden skank. What was she doing up there? On her back, probably. Legs in the air and spread-eagled, stuck in that pose like a giant paperweight.

  He powered up the DVD and fast-forwarded halfway through it. He landed on a crowd shot, focused on two young men in suits with pocket squares. This was an era before adults started dressing like teenagers. He tried to imagine the drama unfolding beyond the ice, under the seats.

  Bobby Hull was in the midst of a clash, with several raised sticks waving. Penalties were called. Hull turned in circles, reluctant to back off, grinning and gesturing to an unseen opponent.

  “A gruelling struggle,” said Jim. Bill chuckled, a high, rasping laugh.

  Someone in the crowd tooted a bugle, and the arena faded from view.

  Ward, the intermission host, filled the screen with Frankenstein shoulders and the flat face of a mob boss. He chatted with Marty, who “left the game to make a great success in injection moulding and plastics.” Marty looked relieved.

  Derek was overtired, alive to every detail. He saw Ward and Jim and Bill after the game, stepping into the cool night and pulling off their ties. Enormous cars ferry them to a downtown beverage room, a safe house of polished oak, grilled steaks, and Scotch. Indignities vanish in the blue cigarette haze and troubles are wiped clean with the barman’s damp cloth.

  There was an ad exulting in “the rhythm of machinery,” with smelters afire and gears meshing, assembly lines launching product into the world at top speed.

  There is a factory in your basement that turns furnace oil into comfort! More now, more in the future, from Imperial Oil!

  Derek faltered as the third period began. Everyone wants the old heroes to stride the ice in epic tales of glory, but some of these guys could barely skate backwards. If it was like an old movie, it was an old movie with shitty special effects. It made him think of the night he came home drunk and watched The Ten Commandments, giggling at what were supposed to be fearsome acts of God.

  He wanted to be in bed when St. John’s came to light. The city was at its most oppressive in the vacant early morning.

  God help Kelly, with her strange baby fantasies and that husband, his dreamy, impossible happiness. Billy was like Lou. He heard a life music, vanishing and insignificant, and followed it. Derek figured his mother must be right. The lucky ones were oblivious.

  ELEVEN

  It began as a chill at the back of the neck and thin vapours racing the streets. Within the hour, a fog bank of biblical wonder had choked the harbour and climbed the east end. Signal Hill disappeared, then the south side, and any distinction between the city and its lowering sky was lost in blue twilight.

  From Bonaventure Avenue, O’Hehir Arena appeared to Derek as a set of bright tiles, light shining from second-floor windows. A grinding noise brought the Zamboni into view, manoeuvring the icy mists of the parking lot to dump its load.

  Inside, Gerry Whelan stood at the glass, peering through with a practiced eye.

  “Fucking awful.”

  The ice looked like candle wax, with water pooled in its depressions, reflecting the overhead lamps.

  “Shouldn’t flood the ice on a day like this. Just give it a scrape,” said Whelan. “High school tournament here all week, fucking chewed it up. Now it’s gone all fucking mild.”

  “Fourteen degrees today, they say,” said Derek.

  “Party’s here,” said Whelan. “Upstairs. Pittman was going to have us over to his place, but his wife wouldn’t give the green light.”

  A goaltender emerged from the washroom next to the Zamboni bay. It was a woman, her mask raised and one arm cradling a water bottle like a baby.

  “Are you guys on at eight?” she asked. “Brian’s game?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What room?”

  “Three, I believe,” said Derek.

  “Can you check and see if everyone’s decent? So I can bring my clothes in there? I don’t want to leave it in the toilets.”

  “I’ll move your stuff if you like,” said Whelan.

  The goalie narrowed her eyes. She was pretty except for the bad skin, and that was a good sign, suggesting too many hours sweating under the plastic mask.

  “Alright,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She lowered the mask and looked through the glass.

  “The ice is shit.”

  “Fourteen degrees outside,” said Whelan.

  Under the bulk a female quality remained, even as she stepped through the gate and took the goaltender’s elephantine strides. It wasn’t just the frayed copper of the ponytail flopping down her back.

  “Where’d you get the goalie?” asked Derek, when he was settled with his gear.

  “Matt says he’s got bad knees,” said Brian. “Well, Jesus, if every guy with bad knees stayed home…”

  “Is she up for it?” asked Shawn Gover.

  “Up for what?”

  Gover only shook his head, smiling.

  “You got something to say?”

  “I got nothing to say.”

  Brian turned and dug into his bag.

  “Anyway, Stacey plays in a women’s game at St. Bon’s. She’ll fill in for now, I guess.”

  He stood and moved to the centre of the room.

  “Okay, boys. Big news. I was going to wait until the party, but fuck it. Allan called me the other day. Are you ready for this?”

  “For what?”

  “Hockey Night in Canada wants the story.”

  Blank stares.


  “The TV story.” Brian tugged at his long johns. “Allan’s story. Us. They’re going to put us on. Or show some of it, anyway.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “What night?”

  “We’ll keep you informed. You guys just carry on with being local celebrities.”

  The minor shit storm triggered by their appearance on Citywide had continued, sustained by a couple of timely scandals. A high school volleyball coach on the northeast coast was up on charges for bunking with the girls. A local water polo club had suspended operations after cell-phone video from its rookie initiation exposed “mock drownings” and anal games involving marshmallows.

  “Marx was wrong,” said a letter to the Telegram. “It is sport, the most utterly banal of spectacles, that is the real opiate of the people.” Allan Marleau milked the story with a follow-up report declaring “Jocks on Trial,” smirking at a dork from the university who insisted that “reinforcing subcultures and athletic exceptionalism derails our appreciation of the innate beauty of sport.” Jill had taken up the issue again, with a column blaming sports culture for the “contraction of feminism,” and broadening her targets to include “self-despising women journalists and an enabling male-run media.”

  “What’s she look like anyway?” asked Steve Heneghan. “This one, Jill. Is that her real name?”

  Nobody knew, which seemed suspicious in itself. Heneghan said he’d like to show her “101 uses for a cracked-off hockey stick,” earning a hearty, guttural laugh that would have confirmed Jill’s worst suspicions.

  The Hubert LaForge insult in the Telegram was more sharply felt. In response they offered the usual impotent labels: prick, cunt, asshole.

  “It’s hilarious that he quoted Merchant of Venice,” said Nels Pittman. “Guy wouldn’t know Shakespeare if he crawled up his hole and died.”

  “A nancy,” said Kev Byrne. “Goes down to the Caribbean every year and hires little boys for himself. That’s what they say. Used his government allowance for it, back when he was an MHA.”

  There was some talk of a letter to the editor, but this dissolved in confusion over exactly what the nancy had been on about.