by Marvin Kaye
“Up on the edge, man,” Braeburn said, indicating the nearest piling. I obediently obliged.
Braeburn nodded. “You did a good service for all; your family, your country, yourself.”
“I did good, as the Americans say,” I shrugged.
“Any last words for Corbella?”
“Yes.” I looked down at the churning waters of the Thames, then met Braeburn’s eyes. “Good-bye,” I said, then pulled the trigger of my pearl-handled pistol one last time.
Braeburn’s blue eyes filled with blood. I glanced over my shoulder at the line of black MI5 vans approaching, then stepped out into nothingness, a cold fog cloaking me as I fell into liquid grey absolution.
THE OUTBURSTS OF EVERETT TRUE, by Condo
THE HOT STOVE LEAGUE, by Janice Law
I’m already seated, and Mal, my producer, is yakking in my ear about the points he wants me to cover, while Luis fiddles with his cameras and fusses as always about too much light on my face. I can’t help it if I am going bald; he’ll just have to deal with it. Drink of water, my mouth is dry. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time, preparing, you might say, since I was nineteen. Was nineteen right? Yes, it was winter, the winter I turned nineteen and played on the first line with Roman Martineau and Tom Delacort.
How long ago that seems. I count off one to ten and run through the start of my introduction: Good evening hockey fans. This is Andy Becker with tonight’s Hot Stove League. I could do that intro in my sleep and probably do, complete with the rising intonation starting with “tonight.”
Mal gives me the thumbs up. This is an important program, the kickoff for the new season, and Delacort, my old junior teammate, is an important interview. He’s just been elected to the Hall of Fame, and everyone is remembering his long and distinguished career: Two Stanley Cups, three times leading scorer, a perennial top ten points leader, a prince of the ice, for sure.
I’ve been remembering him, too, not that I had ever forgotten him. No way that was possible. I watched his career professionally, I’ve called his games, I can even say, honestly, that Tommie has haunted my dreams. And in a few minutes he will come through the studio door and sit down opposite me for a chat.
About some great old games—that’s our format. We show clips from the classics, followed by a condensed version of a home team game from the previous season. Not that many people will want more of this last season, which was not a vintage year by any means. But with careful editing we can make a bad year look better. There are always good goals, exciting saves, big hits, plus a few fights for savor.
That’s our formula and the station would have our heads if we departed from it. Don’t tinker with success, I say, but tonight is special. This is a night I’ve been waiting for since I was nineteen, and now I’m bald enough so that Luis is calling for a little more powder and adjusting the lights.
What have we got on tap tonight? Just the usual with a twist. I’ve tracked down some films, that’s how ancient we’re talking here, with some nice footage of our junior team, when we were all eighteen or nineteen and set to conquer the world—or at least pro hockey. I think Tommie will be surprised.
Of course, we have our usual game in an hour, too, a little stinker from last November when we pulled out a win at the last moment. I remember it was a rotten game, full of hooking and holding and giveaways and every mistake in the book—even some that they invented on the spot.
We could shrink this one to fifteen minutes, and it would still be too long by ten, so I don’t think there will be complaints if the interview runs longer than usual, not if it’s as interesting as this one is sure to be. Even after all my years in the booth and on the set, I am excited about this one.
Mal’s in my ear again and now he holds up his five fingers to give the lead-in signal. Five, four, three, two, one: “Good evening, hockey fans. This is Andy Becker with tonight’s Hot Stove League. Our November 5, 2009, game against the Flyers is coming up later, but first we have tonight’s guest, Tom Delacort.”
I stand up and turn toward the entrance to the studio. There’s my old junior linemate, a dubious human being but an icon of the sport and six feet of mighty fine hockey player. I clasp his hand and he gives me a hug. That was Tommie; there was a disconnect between what he was and how he acted. I’m told he is beloved in his hometown, which just goes to show you.
“Tommie!” I say, and he sits down and crosses one leg over the other as cool as can be. How many interviews has he done over the years? Thousands, absolutely, and he is master of all media arts. I know a pro when I see one.
We start out easy, talking about the Hall of Fame. This was the first year he was eligible, and, of course, he was a shoe-in, but Tommie’s modest—or pretends to be. “I left everything up to the voters,” he says. I wonder if politics are in his future.
“Well,” I say on cue from Mal, “we can show the fans the evidence. Remember this?” It’s a clip from his first season in the NHL. The picture is a little grainy, but there is no mistaking the Northern Express tearing down the left hand side. He was slower off the mark than his old center, Roman, but once Tommie got going there was no stopping him.
No stopping that slap shot, either. “Whew!” I say. “You don’t see too many shots like that.” And we’re off, reminiscing. That’s the essence of our Hot Stove show. The geezers love it, and the kids look at the old champs and pick up a tip or two or think how much smaller they were without the aid of modern pharmaceuticals and weight training. Those we don’t discuss.
No, straight to the Stanley Cup triumphs. There’s Tommie lifting the cup. Big smile—you can see the gap where he’s missing a few teeth. That’s Cup One. By Cup Two, he’s playing with a mouth guard and has expensive dentistry. I notice stuff like that; I have an eye for detail that has kept me employed among the statisticians and analysts.
Time to go back a little. “You’ve seen Tom Delacort in the NHL, but let’s see where he came from. Remember this, Tommie?” It’s a clip from early in our last season, and I had to get the technical people to work over the film to produce a decent few minutes. There’s our line, me on the right, Tommie on the left, and, in the center, Roman, one of the gods of sport.
Oh, yes. If Tommie was the prince, you had to go up the ladder a few more rungs to get to Roman. Big, but agile, fastest man on the team, and what a sweet shot! While Roman was on the team, the scouts had eyes for no one else. For sure, they knew Tommie was good and that I was fine at that level, but Roman was something else.
A good something else, too. Sports are tough. You grow up getting cheered—or booed—and nothing you do off the ice seems as important as what shows up on the scoreboard. It’s easy to think you’re the most important guy in the world or to get seriously down or involve yourself with easy, exciting activities you’d been better to leave alone. I know.
Roman was great without vanity, a generous soul who inspired love as well as admiration. We all wanted to be him as a player, big and brave and skillful. And in our secret hearts, we wanted his goodness, which seemed, on days when we were feeling mean and envious, an added, unfair gift, as if the gods not only play favorites but enjoy rubbing our noses in it. I think Tommie, the only one who really approached his talent, felt that the most.
I keep my eye on him as the screen fills with our youthful selves. It was a big game against our traditional provincial rivals. There’s Tommie breaking up an attacking rush. The puck’s momentarily loose, then Roman’s on it, one stride, two, a pass to yours truly, who knew well enough to give it right back so that Roman could rifle it into the upper right corner of the net. Sticks in the air as our teammates on the bench pound the boards.
“A great play, a great game,” I say. I don’t add, as I could well have, that that’s what genius on ice looks like.
“For sure,” Tommie says, but he doesn’t look comfortable. “Roman”—and he hesitates as if he’d actually forgotten the name. No way.
“Martineau,” I say, perha
ps a mistake, for he recovers himself in that instant. Tommie always had quick reactions.
“Modern fans won’t know Roman,” he says, “but he was a great player.”
“He’d have perhaps been the number one draft pick off this sort of play.” Roman’s on the screen again, muscling the puck out of the corner; he’s half knocked off his skates, but still well balanced enough to make a pass to Tommie who’s in front of the net. “He made everyone look better,” I said.
“The best junior center I ever saw,” said Tommie. Emphasis on junior.
Well, who can blame him for that? “Roman Martineau’s still remembered at home,” I say. “Did you know they’ve named the new rink for him? The opening was a really nice ceremony.”
“I didn’t. I wish I’d known. I’d like to have gone.”
This is a patent lie, but I let it slide. The naming of the rink is safe ground for him. “It was much deserved,” I said, although Mal is hollering in my ear that the interview is Tom Delacort, not some kid no one’s ever heard of fifty miles outside of Ottawa. I ignore him and recall Roman’s junior career stats. “What a first line we had that championship year. Sixty goals for Roman, forty for you; I kicked in ten or eleven myself.”
“You’re not kidding. He’d have played NHL for sure.”
“And when you think that Roman never finished the season. What was he—three weeks short?”
“Three weeks, I think. I think it was late February—or even early March?”
“The mildest spell on record. I remember that,” I said. We’d never have been out at the lake otherwise, and the little tavern where we tanked up on beers and shots would not have been open, either. But it was a mild day with ice fishermen out, and we went to the lake to drink and to fool around on the ice with our sticks.
Kids were used to playing outdoors then. With the team set to clinch the division and challenge for the Cup, our coaches would have thrown a fit, worried about twigs and branches half buried in the ice and stones on the surface, all good chances to turn an ankle or take a bad fall. We thought of nothing but the chance to sneak a few beers and spend the afternoon goofing off in our favorite way on a super big sheet of ice.
I mention outdoor skating, the ancestral memory behind the new craze for the outdoor Winter Classic, and though I can see Tommie is uneasy, he’s brave, I’ll always give him that. “Oh, sure,” he says, “best skating in the world.”
“The lake was the best,” I say. I can see it now, a great, blue white sheet extending to the horizon. Get up a head of steam on that and you felt that you could glide forever, free of everything. We set up two four on four teams with a pile of coats at each end for the goals, and pretty soon we were red faced, but not cold at all. A beautiful day.
“Good ice,” says Tommie.
“Mostly,” I say now, because it was the mildest late winter anyone remembered, and there were patches where the black water was visible beneath thin crusts of ice like cracked sheets of glass. “The thaw came early that year. I think it was after Dougie put his skate through that we went to the Fish Shack.” That was the tavern, a crumbling log cabin with a pot-bellied stove and welcome kegs of Labatts.
“We had a few drinks there!” he laughs. Tommie thinks fast; he didn’t get those Stanley Cup rings for nothing. He’s off about sneaking booze on the team bus and after hours beer parties when we were on the road. Hot Stove stuff. “For you juniors out there, not the best idea!” he says.
Not for us, either. I’m not sure how it started, not after all these years, and back in the moment, our heads were too full of suds and self-importance. Anyway, there we are still in our skates, standing around the stove with beers in our hands when in come—now just who were they? Emissaries of Fate, sure, but in their earthly form, ice fishermen? Hikers? More skaters? Must have been. They had skates with them in any case. Or maybe the tavern rented skates. I ask Tommie, but he doesn’t remember. “Maybe,” he says. “And there was a place nearer the main road.”
That’s right. Put our memories together and we’ll work it out. We will. Mal’s in my ear and the lights of the studio are in my eyes, but I’m back at the tavern, watching the red eye of the stove and listening to Tommie brag about our prospects in the Cup. He’s got us winning our division already, which sets off the newcomers, who are older, bigger and stronger, too, I’d guess.
One thing leads to another and there’s some pushing and shoving before Claude, that’s the bartender, told us to go settle it outside. Some evil genius suggested a game, though the light was fading and the floodlight in front of the tavern didn’t extend very far, and we’ve all had more beer than was good for us.
Tommie’s remembering, too. He looks pale but determined. “It was a game, a friendly pickup game. But they’d been drinking.”
“Us, too.” And I think, in vino veritas.
Same set up, coats for goals, but close to the shore for the benefit of the light. To the west, the sky turned gold and sank into purple streaks, and the ice reflected blue and rose. It was a rough game. No boards, of course, but lots of open ice hits. Our opponents were bigger, but not nearly as skilled, and Tommie was showing off by eluding their checks and using his quick stick work to trip up their forwards.
Pretty soon there was a nasty edge to the game, and if we’d been smart, we’d have packed it in and all had another round in the tavern like good buddies. Roman, who had the clout, should have called play dead, and normally he would have. But his weakness was that he had no head for alcohol. Not a lot of taste for it, either, though he’d have a couple of beers to go along with the rest of us and pretty soon he’d be singing Frere Jacques off key, or, in really daring moods, attempting American Pie.
So Roman was pretty well out of it, but still gliding effortlessly around the ice. I think left to himself, he’d still have brought them ’round. Anyone seeing him had to love his skating, had to love the way he moved.
Instead, there was a dust up on the ice. “You butt-ended their center,” I say to Tommie.
“He hit me from behind,” Tommie replies, not so careful now; I can see that he’s back with me at the lake in the red and purple twilight with the sound of blades on ice.
Two of them took off after him, but Tommie raced down the improvised rink, past the pile of coats and out onto the darkening lake, fast, fast. Roman saw what was happening. He pivoted and followed, his big strides closing the gap, the rest of us following behind or engaging in ice fistfights with our opponents.
“They cut me off,” Tommie says. Yes, we saw that. At least one of them was a fast skater and possibly sober. That was cheating, wasn’t it?
Straggling after them, we saw Tommie cut toward the shore, saw a group of skaters, surely more than two, three or four at least, after him, plus Roman, closing fast now. They swept near the rocks, and it looked as if Tommie lost his edge, for he tumbled to the ice. He was on his knees instantly, swinging his stick and sending one of his pursuers to the ice and another sliding against the rocks to keep his balance.
He took a nasty hit from behind, though, before Roman joined the fray. We were skating fast as we could, but they were in the shadow of the rocks and trees, and later no one could say for sure what he’d seen. Just bodies, just dark silhouettes against the night and the ice. I remember yelling—we’re coming! Or maybe a warning, and then I was grappling with some stranger—how stupid it all was, people we’d not even met before.
Roman was clearing a swath on the ice, and then he fell. “He was hit with a stick,” Tommie says. “And fell badly. He must have hit a rock. There was water, too. He was found with his face in water.”
There’s a sharp, hysterical edge to his voice; I can hear it underneath the control that comes with long experience. Mal can hear it, too, for he stops trying to direct and shuts up.
“Roman might have survived,” I say, “if we had acted quick enough.”
“It was chaos,” Tommie says, more confident now. “I didn’t realize he was hurt at first. Eve
ryone yelling. And those guys—what the hell were they thinking? They scattered all over the ice.”
“We heard their truck start up,” I say. I remember lights sweeping over the ice, for night had come down while we threw punches and wrestled around and let our friend die.
“He was lying behind—was it a rock or a big tree limb? Sticking half out of the ice, wasn’t it?” Tommie in reminiscent mode. Well, we were all at fault there. Standing around congratulating each other, until someone said, Roman made short work of them, and then we realized he wasn’t standing in the shadows with us and we started to call him, joking at first: You can come out now!
“I thought he’d gone after them,” Tommie says. “He was never afraid of a fight.”
“It must have been a good five minutes,” I say.
“At least. It was lack of oxygen in the end, wasn’t it?”
We all know that. We read the coroner’s report. Hell, we were at the inquest. “But there were questions,” I say.
“Always.” Tommie’s face is smooth; he thinks we’re over the dangerous bit, that we’ve slid past the thin ice of memory.
“No one could identify the other guys in the truck.”
“Never. I’d never seen them. Not the barkeep, either.”
“Smart of them,” I say, “given the injury. Roman had been struck in the temple. That’s why he collapsed and went through that weak place in the ice.” There had been a little stream there, and the running water kept the ice thin.
“The police did everything they could,” says Tommie, as if I’m criticizing the province’s finest. I think again that politics might be in his future, and suddenly I have no regrets at all.
“He’d been kicked, while he was down on the ice. Just once in the melee.”
Tommie looks pale again despite the studio makeup. “As you say, in the melee. People flailing around, falling, kicking out.”
“You,” I say. “It was you, not the strangers, no one else.”