Twenty Miles

by Cara Hedley

  I turned around.

  ‘You could borrow my tiara,’ Sig said.

  I followed behind as Sig pulled herself along the railing, up to the top, and moved toward the door. She looked back at me and grinned.

  ‘Jesus. What took you so long?’

  She opened the door and stepped aside to let me haul my suitcase through, into the hallway. A red tinsel garland strung sloppily down one wall. Gavin’s door was open a crack and he had Marilyn Manson cranked.

  ‘Garbage,’ Sig said toward the music as I got the keys out. When I opened the door, my books were still spread across the desk, pen angled over a half-full sheet of notes.

  I heaved the suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. Sig and I dug into the stacks of clothing with our hands and carried them to the dresser until the suitcase was empty.

  Later, when she’d fallen asleep in her hotel room, snoring quietly, her eyes without glasses shrunken into impossibly tiny lines, I sat in the dark before heading back to Rez and watched highlight reels on TSN. One announcer explained that a member of the Calgary Flames had lost his father that morning. Lost, he said, as though the father had gone missing somewhere in the red throngs of fans. The player scored three times, a hat trick. ‘Keeping it off the ice,’ the announcer pronounced valiantly. Then the player’s three highlights in a row, his body frozen into ice for a second at the end of each, when his team-mates swarmed him, throwing themselves at him like reunited lovers, the player ducking his head modestly, a bashful six-year-old grin, both front teeth missing. Two of the highlights froze him in this violent embrace. The last goal, he fell to his knees in front of the net, cross-checked from behind by a fed-up defenceman on the other team. In this highlight, they froze him there, puck in the net behind his kneeling figure, peering up, arms spread as though in rapturous prayer, toothless mouth forming a reverent O.

  I fell with him then, to my knees on the beaten plum carpet of the motel room floor. Sig’s breath rattling through the room.

  This must have been his plea to the refs, cross-checked from behind after the whistle, and what injustice, him down on the ice, a hit borne of frustration, of envy. But the highlight froze him there, before any call was made, there on his knees, so he could have been protesting, or celebrating. He could have been mourning. Impossible to tell.

  I saw Hal on the path as I walked across the parking lot to Sam Hall. She pushed out with one foot and slid along the icy downhill parts, the soles of her runners grinding against silence hung in the trees. She wasn’t wearing a hat, and her ears flamed red as she slid, rough hair lifting out behind her.

  We met by the pines that led to the rink, a straight row of tall ones that dropped into a staggered line with the legacy trees closest to Sam Hall. Her face began to flush when she saw me, two red bulbs setting light to stars of freckles up across the bridge of her nose and down to a brightened scab at the tip. The bruises under her eyes hadn’t shrunk since the last time I saw her. But her face was tighter, dipping a sharper slope beneath her cheekbones, chin whittled down, so her eyes emerged with tired awareness.

  ‘Iz,’ she nodded.

  ‘Hi.’

  We walked together for a bit. Hal snorted as we neared the end of the trees and jerked her thumb toward the smallest one. A stone block at its feet was inscribed with Terry’s name. It was a Charlie Brown tree at best, with denuded, crooked branches, and a slight hunch, as though favouring a geriatric spine. Hal stood in front of it, hands on her hips. She snorted and shook her head.

  ‘Shittiest tree I’ve ever seen,’ she said with wonder. It was.

  ‘Pretty bad,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to come one night and cut it down – it’d be a hilarious Christmas tree,’ she mused. She turned and walked toward the rink door, propped open with a pylon, where Toad and I had released the grocery bags.

  I sucked a breath as we walked in. The ice surface had been transformed into a messy triage chamber, littered with tangled hoses and rusted machines. Melting had begun, small puddles spitting out dead ringers of the lights overhead, hanging the surface with a dim chandelier of jumping bulbs. Mouths of the hoses lay directed into the hearts of puddle. Vague sucking sounds vibrated off the remaining boards – they were being taken down, missing parts here and there as though some small bomb had left these random wounds. As I watched, frozen in the door, the puddles grew. Those near the hoses diminished. New ones bloomed, slow and luminous. On the far side of the rink, Ed was bent over, his back to us, examining one of the machines, prodding it with a long finger.

  Hal looked over her shoulder for me and stopped.

  ‘They’re taking the ice out over Christmas, doing some renovations,’ she said. ‘It’s about time.’ She walked over a square of board, inert, in her path and stood still for a moment on the small platform, looking through its portal onto the sweating ice, and then back to me.

  ‘Good thing we like it messy,’ she said and barked a single laugh. She raised her eyebrows and waited until I began to pick my way across the fallen boards behind her.

  The rink smelled like spring at home – choking, blooming air full of old ice and new water, a smell signalling the death of outdoor shinny, and the promise of diving boards and cannonballs. Ed straightened slowly, a hand on his back, and turned. I put up my hand and he nodded his head, started to smile.

  I followed Hal into the drafty hallway. It echoed with voices, laughter, from behind the shrinking line of doors, box-car dressing rooms vibrating invisibly beyond. The noise bloomed as we neared the dressing room: bass swelling voluptuous, hum of voices growing, Toad’s crowing laugh breaking through it all.

  I’d thought they’d have gone already for Christmas holidays, scattering into corners of the city, or down identical white highways to towns I’d never been to – towns people passed on the highway but never visited: Birtle, Deloraine, Headingley, St. Rose. They had other, unimaginable lives there that waited for them – like Sig and Jack and my small, worn bed still waited for me.

  Hal checked over her shoulder, hand on the doorknob. She smiled a bit, as though trying to fight it, and opened the door, their voices spilling out. I stepped into the doorway behind her.

  Someone had been throwing baby powder into the air again, a dressing room ritual now for any celebration, and the air was still hazy.

  I stood there in the doorway, on the edge of the room’s small storm and began to forget leaving.

  Hal stalked in ahead of me.

  ‘We found Iz,’ she called, triumph in her voice.

  The door closed behind me. It was easy then to forget anything beyond our yellow door, our red walls. The ice melting in the next room. Winter turning.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Department of English and Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Calgary and the A. T. J. Cairns estate for financial support during the research and writing of this book.

  I extend huge gratitude to two editors: Aritha van Herk, the original coach. And Alana Wilcox (Coxy), architect of the final draft. Both went above and beyond.

  How do I begin to thank players and coaches on the University of Manitoba Bison Women’s Hockey Team, seasons 1997 to 2000? Their voices and stories are in these pages; I owe them an ocean of beer. In particular, these former teammates and friends fielded ‘research’-related questions in recent years and provided much inspiration: the Doerk, Houdie, Shmange, G, Rath, Warnick, Nano, Boris, Trash, Tetreault, Chukles, Bones, Romm (Amy Doerksen, Kim Houde, Andrea Keating, Jennifer Botterill, Trina Rathgeber, Alana Warnick, Nancy MacDonald, Lauren MacMillan, Trish Faurschou, Alison Tetreault, Karen Mamchuk, Jennifer Everard, Amber Rommelaere).

  To my Calgary T.E.A.M.-mates, Jill Hartman and Brea Burton: thanks for letting me play hockey with their pirates and belly dancers. Thanks also to these 598 classmates at the University of Calgary (for their generous suggestions toward initial drafts) and other friends in Calgary and the writing community: Chr
is Ewart, Paul Kennett, Jeremy Leipert, Xay Saysana, Jessica Grant, Kathryn Sloan, Jane Grove, William Neil Scott, Phil Rivard, Heather Ellwood-Wright, James Dangerous, Jani Krulc, Lee Depner, Andre Rodrigues, Jason Christie, derek beaulieu, Travis Murphy, Brett Smith, Angela Rawlings, Jordan Scott (for collaboration) – and so many other poets, writers and friends who helped make the vibrant Calgary writing community home for me while I was there.

  Finally, I’d like to acknowledge and thank my family and Winnipeg friends for their incredible support: Liz, Eric and Emily Levin; Mar and Carrlon Appleby; Billie, Steph, Katie and Melinda Appleby; Pat, Doug, Mike, John and James Finkbeiner; Kaiya and Tawnee Hedley; Glen Eliasson; Preston Mandamin; Raechelle Mudray; Tanis Brako; Erin Fitzpatrick; Renee Read (for cover inspiration); Barb and Ryan Brako (for a space to write in last winter). Grandparents Bill Appleby and Shirley Hedley have provided me with so much encouragement along the way. This book is enriched, as well, by the memory of Amma (Connie Appleby) and Uncle Sir (Doug Hedley), whose strength and stories live on. My sister, Anne Hedley (former Bison Captain), has supplied me with ongoing inspiration and stories for the Scarlets and a million laughs. Lastly, I offer deepest thanks to my parents, Jim Hedley and Cathie Eliasson, for their unwavering support and encouragement.

  Cara Hedley grew up in Winnipeg and on Coney Island, Lake of the Woods. After playing three seasons with the University of Manitoba Bison women’s hockey team, Cara moved to Calgary, where she completed an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing. She’s been a member of the dANDelion magazine editorial collective, performed as part of a poetry ensemble in Calgary, Toronto and Scotland, and worked on a number of films in Vancouver and Ontario. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta.

  Typeset in Dante and printed and bound at the Coach House on

  bpNichol Lane, 2007.

  Edited and designed by Alana Wilcox

  Cover design by Rick/Simon

  Author photo by Kim Houde

  Coach House Books

  401 Huron St. on bpNichol

  Lane Toronto on M5S 2G5

  416 979 2217

  800 367 6360

  mail@chbooks.com

  www.chbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Appendix