Hitmen Triumph

by Sigmund Brouwer

  The train was close and coming fast. With me on the tracks.

  Louder and louder. Faster and faster.

  I braced for impact. What else could I do?

  I wasn’t that brave. I screamed.

  Suddenly something yanked me off the tracks. The train whizzed by as hands lifted me to my feet.

  The blindfold was pulled off. I was shaking so hard I had to bite down to keep my teeth from shattering.

  I saw the end of the train disappear down the tracks. I felt the spider hanging loosely from my processor. I tilted my head, and the magnetic spider landed on my skull and clicked back into place.

  “Thought you were dead, didn’t you?” Tattoo Biker said.

  Sound was back in my life. Life. What a sweet word.

  I didn’t answer. I was afraid I’d say something smart-mouthed again. Much as I hate bullies, sometimes a person really should keep his mouth shut. Especially after discovering how good it was to be alive. But I also knew I wasn’t talking because I couldn’t find my voice. All I could think of was those final seconds when I had thought a train was going to slam into me.

  Tattoo Biker and Bent Nose Biker lifted me again and carried me through the fence.

  Bent Nose Biker pulled out a switchblade. Snapped it open. He pointed the blade at me. Then he cut through the tape around my wrists.

  “We’re going,” Tattoo Biker said. “You can take the tape off your ankles. Just remember to stay away from the video place. Next time, we won’t pull you off the tracks. Got it?”

  I stared at them and said nothing as they walked away. It would not be good to make them mad again.

  chapter twelve

  Coach Jon had called me into his office. Alone. Never a good sign. I gave him my frequency monitor to wear around his neck. My FM. It hung from a thin cord and was smaller than a cigarette lighter. The FM is part of the system that lets me hear. It has a built-in microphone that sends sound to my processor.

  “Radar,” Coach Jon said, “remind me again why the Hitmen worked so hard to get you traded to this team.”

  I wanted to make a smart remark. Something about how the Hitmen were equal opportunity employers and they needed someone with a disability to get government grant money. I know that sounds cold, but what were people thinking when they set up special programs like that? From my point of view, deaf people don’t need special treatment. We don’t. Nor do we need people feeling sorry for us.

  Say you did get work because of that kind of program. Everyone around you would assume you were there only because you were different. That doesn’t get you much respect. No, the only way to get respect is to earn it. Don’t hire me because I’m different. Hire me because I can work hard, and I’m smart enough to do a job like everybody else. Period. It’s why I like hockey. No special treatment.

  Not that all of that went through my head when Coach Jon asked why the Hitmen had traded for me. All I really thought about was how maybe the Hitmen wanted government grant money. But unless someone was trying to push me around, I usually kept my mouth shut. I quickly pushed the thought away and answered his question politely.

  “I know you wanted me to play with my brother.”

  “Tell me why we wanted you to play with your brother.”

  I don’t always need the FM. I use it in noisy areas or in important meetings. It has a range of about two hundred feet. What’s really important to my hearing is the processor that hangs from my ear. It looks like a Bluetooth headset for a cell phone. I can use the fm to send sound signals to it. If the fm is shut off, sound reaches me through the three built-in microphones in the processor. There is also a mini-computer inside that sends audio signals to my spider.

  Here’s where it gets really cool. The spider stays in place outside my skull because a magnet inside the spider attaches to another magnet that was implanted in my skull during the operation. From the implant under my skull, long microfibers containing twenty-two electrodes are threaded into my cochlea, the part of the inner ear that translates sound vibrations. If the spider is not attached to my head, I can’t hear a thing. At home, when I take it off to sleep, I just attach it to the fridge, like any other magnetic sticker. .

  I answered Coach Jon’s question. “You wanted me to play on a team with my brother because together we have a good scoring record.”

  “And why do you have a good scoring record?” he asked, very patiently. “Do I need to give you a hint? Radar?”

  By the way he said my nickname, I knew he was using it as the hint. But I’d known all along what he wanted to hear.

  “Nate and I make good passing plays,” I said.

  “Correction,” Coach Jon said. “You and Nate used to make good passing plays. I’ve seen video footage of you playing together before you both began in the WHL. It gave me goose bumps. Not only are you guys good as individual players, but you are spooky good when you work together. It’s like you’re one hockey player in two bodies.”

  I’d heard that before. A lot. It used to make me feel good.

  “His scoring touch was amazing when you fed him passes,” Coach Jon said. “And every one of your passes used to hit the tape of his stick like you had radar.”

  I heard what he was saying. Had radar. Not have radar. As in it used to be there but wasn’t anymore.

  Coach Jon was shaking his head. Not mad. But still with amazement. “For the first week of practices, you guys were unbelievable,” he said. “Even that stunt you pulled at the Hitmen golf tournament showed great teamwork.”

  “Stunt?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You think just because I wasn’t there I don’t know what happened? I loved hearing about it. I would have paid good money to see Bob Jones get fooled like that.”

  Coach Jon’s smiled faded. “But now you guys are just a couple of clowns on the ice. For years—a perfect team. Then over-night—clowns. That’s why I called you into my office. I want to help you guys fix this. Whatever the problem is. But I can’t help until you tell me what happened.”

  What happened was that my brother was keeping something from me, and I couldn’t trust him anymore.

  I shrugged. “It’s just a slump, I guess.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Coach Jon said mildly. “I called all your previous coaches. Back to when you both started playing hockey. None of them remembers anything like this happening to you guys before.”

  Coach Jon leaned forward, his heavy forearms on his desk. “What’s gone wrong between the two of you? Is it a girl?”

  “No,” I said, “just a slump.”

  He stared at me. Good thing he couldn’t read my mind.

  Finally he sighed.

  “If that’s the way you want it to be,” he said. “It doesn’t make me feel better, but at least you and Nate are working as a team in this area.”

  “Sir?”

  “I had him in the office half an hour ago. He says it must be a slump too.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look,” Coach Jon said. “It’s obvious that you and Nate won’t let me help with whatever is wrong here. If I can’t do anything about it, then it’s not our problem. It’s your problem.”

  Coach Jon stood and leaned across his desk, his weight on his palms.

  “You guys are choosing to make it your problem,” Coach Jon said. “Fix it. Soon. Or both of you are going to see about as much ice time as the team mascot.”

  chapter thirteen

  When I looked into the rearview mirror of my car, I didn’t recognize myself. It was amazing what thirty dollars spent in a costume store could do.

  I was parked at a meter in Chinatown, just down from the video store between the two restaurants. I needed that one last look in the mirror to make sure my disguise would work. After all, if the guys in the rental place were in on whatever Nate was doing, I wouldn’t get too far if I looked nearly identical to him when I walked in to rent a movie. So I’d found a costume shop a few blocks away and spent that thirty dollars.

  I n
ow had a blond mustache, glued in place. I was wearing a ball cap with long straggly blond hair sticking out—the hair was glued to the inside of the ball cap. The hair hid my processor and spider. I wore cheap sunglasses. I even had some fake teeth in place that hurt where they rubbed against my gums.

  Good thing there wasn’t anyone around to tell me that my own mother would not have recognized me. Even all these years after sitting down in the principal’s office to hear the bad news from the minister, it hurt whenever someone or something reminded me of her.

  I pushed open the car door and walked down the sidewalk. The temperature was dropping as the sun set. A wind was coming from the west as it usually did, dropping masses of air down the side of the mountains before pushing across the prairies.

  I stopped on the street just before going inside the video store. There were no English words on the windows or the door. The movie posters taped inside the window had Chinese characters. It looked weird, seeing a Star Wars poster with writing that I couldn’t begin to understand unless I studied it for years.

  I doubted Nate understood the Chinese characters either. Or any words in Chinese. Which made me wonder all over again what he had been doing inside the shop.

  I stepped inside. A bell rang. A guy came out of the back room and up to the counter. He was a couple of years older than me. He was skinny with a buzz cut, and he wore a tight black T-shirt. His ropy arms had tattoos on the biceps.

  He looked at me for only a second. Then he sat on a stool behind the counter and pulled out a magazine. I caught a flash of the cover—some kind of motorcycle. I couldn’t read the headlines, but even from the other side of the store I saw it was in English.

  I began looking at titles. They were probably in alphabetical order, but since they were in Chinese, it was only a guess.

  I glanced back at the counter. The guy dropped his head, as if I’d caught him looking at me.

  There was no chance I could convince him that I was here for one of the movies in front of me. But I had planned for that. There was one kind of movie where it really didn’t matter if you couldn’t understand Chinese. Some of them even had English subtitles.

  “Hey,” I said to Counter Guy as I moved toward him. “Got any Bruce Lee movies?”

  “You like Bruce Lee?” Counter Guy said. “Cool.” Bruce Lee was a martial arts fighter a long time ago. One of the best. A legend. He made movies in China that became popular here. He died mysteriously in Hong Kong when he was really young.

  Counter Guy pointed to another part of the store. That’s when I got a closer look at the tattoos on his biceps. One of the tattoos was a grinning pirate’s face with crossbones. Exactly like the tattoos on the two bikers who had taken me onto the tracks of the C-train.

  I hoped I kept my face from showing any shock. I walked to where he had pointed.

  I passed a small display of movies in English. It looked like a top twenty list of movies that had just been released on DVD. I stopped and stared for a second or two. The prices on the cases looked low compared to what I’d seen in other stores.

  I felt a bit of hope. Maybe that’s why Nate had come in. He liked the restaurants around here. He liked movies. He knew about this place and that it carried recent releases. My hope faded as I wondered why Mercedes had been videotaping him. And why did the guy behind the counter have the same tattoos as the bikers?

  I wandered over to the Bruce Lee movies and pretended I was interested. I had just learned something. I didn’t know what it meant yet. I’d stay a few minutes longer so it would look like I really had stopped by to check out Bruce Lee movies.

  The bell sounded as the door opened again. I looked up. And suddenly wished I could jump over the counter and hide in the back room.

  I knew the person walking into the store. Mercedes.

  chapter fourteen

  She was wearing jeans and a Calgary Flames hockey jersey. She carried a huge purse, just like on her date with Nate. I wondered if it still held a video camera.

  She ignored me and breezed past me to the counter.

  “I’d like to buy a DVD,” she said. She named the movie that she had just seen with Nate.

  “Sorry,” Counter Guy said. “That just hit the theaters. It’s not available yet on DVD.”

  “I was talking to a friend,” she said. “She said I could get it here.”

  “Your friend is wrong.”

  “She goes out with someone who plays for the Hitmen,” she said. “Do I need to give you his name?”

  There were a few seconds of silence. I had my back to them, pretending to study the Bruce Lee movies.

  “Maybe come back in a few minutes,” Counter Guy finally said. “I’ll phone my boss and see what he knows.”

  “A few minutes?” she asked.

  “Just a few minutes.”

  I understood what he meant. In a few minutes, when the store didn’t have anyone else in it.

  I picked up and dropped a couple of the Bruce Lee movies. The plastic cases clattered in the silence.

  “Sorry!” I said without looking back at them.

  I squatted to pick them up. With my hands in front of me, I slid my fm behind one of the DVD cases before I put them all back.

  I turned back to the two of them. I shrugged and walked out. I hoped that Mercedes hadn’t recognized my voice.

  Outside the store, I walked down the sidewalk about twenty steps. I made sure I was still in range of my FM.

  In elementary school, sometimes teachers who wore it for me would forget to turn it off when they left the classroom. In the staff-room or the washroom, I’d be able to hear them, because the fm transmitted sounds to my processor, even if I was in another room. I can tell you that it changes how you think about a sweet old lady teacher after you have heard her on the toilet talking to herself about hoping the prune juice would deliver more than a good toot. It changes even more after you’ve heard something from her on the toilet right after that. Something loud and rude, like a startled duck quacking when you step on it. Something you want to make sure you don’t smell. Yup. A good toot. That was in grade four. Every time I looked at her for the rest of the year, I giggled, and she didn’t know why.

  That’s how I knew my fm transmitter in the video store would pick up the conversation between Mercedes and Counter Guy. It would be as clear to me as if I were still standing there.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re alone.”

  “Did you see that guy’s goofy hair?” Counter Guy said. “And that lame mustache?”

  “The movie,” she replied. “You’ve got it, right? My girlfriend goes out with Nate, who plays for the Hitmen. I’m sure this is the place she was talking about.”

  “The DVD is going to cost you twenty-five dollars.”

  “That’s steep,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said. “It won’t be out on a commercial DVD for a few months. You can always wait.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “It still seems like a lot.”

  “Get a few of your friends to chip in,” he said. “Watch it together. It will still be cheaper than going to a theater.”

  “Well,” she said. “Now that you put it that way.”

  “Cash only,” he said.

  Cash. Like the cash that Nate had these days?

  “Right,” Mercedes said. “It’s in here somewhere.”

  I heard rustling. She must have found the cash in her huge bag, because the next thing I heard was the sound of a movie case being plunked down on the counter.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Don’t suppose you’re looking for a boyfriend?”

  “Wouldn’t be you if I was,” Mercedes said.

  “Hey,” he said. “I make plenty of money. We could go to a lot of cool places.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Remember your comment about that guy’s goofy hair and lame mustache?”

  “You liked him?”

  “I don’t even know him,” she said. “But I don’t like people who judge other p
eople by appearances. You might have money, but it doesn’t make up for being mean.”

  “Fine,” he said. “You don’t sound like much fun anyway.”

  She didn’t answer. A second later, I heard the bell over the door ring. Then I saw her step onto the sidewalk outside the store. She turned away from me, so I didn’t have to worry about hiding from her.

  I did have to worry about something else.

  My FM was still in the movie rental place. It was worth a lot of money. I couldn’t leave it behind. I’d have to go back in and tell the guy I’d gone to my car to get my wallet. Then I’d have to pick out one of the Bruce Lee DVDS and pay for it. I sure didn’t want him guessing what I had done or what I had learned.

  Halfway back to the door, I froze at a new sound that reached me from inside the store. The sound was loud and rude, like a startled duck quacking when you step on it. Something you want to make sure you don’t smell.

  “Dude,” Counter Guy said to himself. “Good one!”

  Then a few seconds later, he coughed and gagged and muttered, “Dude, bad one. Trying to commit suicide?”

  I decided to wait a few more minutes before I went back into the store. It was a small store. I wanted to make sure the air had cleared out before I went in for a movie. I wasn’t interested in any bonus features.

  chapter fifteen

  I went into a corner against the defenseman for the Lethbridge Hurricanes. No matter how badly he wanted to win the fight for the puck, I knew I wanted it worse.

  Five minutes into overtime, we hadn’t lost our second game of the season. Yet. The score was 3–3. Next goal won the game.

  We were playing the Hurricanes in their building. Lethbridge is only a few hours away from Calgary; it was an away game against them. We would play them on our home ice the next night.

  I couldn’t speak for the rest of the team, but I felt some desperation. We should have easily won the game already. Things seemed out of sync though. For all lines. But especially ours.

  With me at left wing and Nate at center, that left “Rooster” Joe MacAllister on right wing. We called him Rooster because he had bright red hair that no amount of hair gel could tame.