King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

  On Christmas Eve the temperature fell about forty degrees. The brothers rushed out with buckets and hoses. They stayed out there all night, and to keep themselves amused they sang. They sang strange songs with words I didn’t understand. All night long the monks watered the world, and the winter air turned the water to ice. Blue-silver ice, hard as marble. On Christmas morning the round rink was ready. Brother Simon was out there skating, his face even uglier, reddened by lack of oxygen, his carbuncles polished by the stinging wind. For a huge, monstrous man he sure could dance out there on the ice! He had some figure-skating moves, dips and twirls, his arms raised slightly, the hockey stick acting as a balancing pole. And as I watched him, Brother Simon the Ugly became airborne. It seemed he was up there for a whole minute, and during that time he pirouetted lazily. This stunt robbed me of my breath and made my knees quiver. I determined right then and there to learn how to do that. It would be some months before I did, and it would take a couple of years for me to refine it and come up with the spectacular St. Louis Whirlygig.

  Brother Andrew, the one who looked like both the fireplug and the bulldog that might employ it, was streaking up and down, dodging invisible opponents. Whatever he was doing, it made my hardstep look like a cakewalk. I said to myself, Leary, if you could do that, no one could ever stop you. It took me some months to learn to skate like Brother Andrew the Fireplug. I call it Bulldogging. Miles Renders, who is currently coaching the Toronto Maple Leaves, calls it “achievement through perseverance and mental imaging,” and I say that one of the reasons the Leaves are faring so poorly is that Renders would call Bulldogging something like that. All it is, is, you are at point one. You want to be at point two. The shortest distance, as every schoolboy knows, is a straight line, but there are no less than four big johnnies blocking the way. The secret is, don’t give a tinker’s cuss, just go, man. Just go.

  Brother Theodore the Slender, who seemed on the verge of evaporation with all the rink-building activity, stood in the center of the round rink, his eyes half-closed, his pale lips moving slightly in silent prayer.

  And some of the other monks (there were twenty-odd monks at the reformatory, regular fellows, especially in comparison to the four I knew best) were taking shots on Brother Isaiah.

  I have never in my life seen such a good goaler as Brother Isaiah, and I have seen everyone from the Chicoutimi Cucumber to that tall slender fellow who looked like a schoolteacher and played so well for the Montreal Canadiens in the seventies. Yet I am convinced to this day that Brother Isaiah was blind as a bat, though he denied it. Isaiah might occasionally admit to being “a tad shortsighted,” but you’d have to catch him walking into a brick wall. But the other monks couldn’t get a shot by him. Isaiah would just reach out and grab them in his glove (and gloves back then didn’t amount to much), or else he’d get the toe on them, or the chest in front of them, or bang them away with his stick. Brother Simon the Ugly tried to jimmy one by him, dancing right up to the goal crease, flipping the puck off his backhand as he made one of his ballerina twirlabouts. Brother Isaiah flicked it away with his wood. Then Andrew the Fireplug comes barreling along the wing, taking out a couple of bystander brothers just for style, and he unleashes a slapshot even though the damn thing isn’t even invented back then! Brother Isaiah the Blind raises his left shoulder maybe a quarter inch and the rubber is dancing harmlessly behind the net.

  But there was Brother Theodore standing in the center of the huge silver circle, and his eyes were popped open all the way and his mouth had ceased working. In front of him was a puck. Brother Theodore the Slender brought his stick back real slow, and then, with a motion that cut the air like a knife, Brother Theodore whacked the rubber. I swear to Jesus he hit that puck harder than Bobby Hull ever hit one, and it didn’t even look like he was trying. Brother Isaiah didn’t hear it or feel it, or however else he detected pucks, as I believe with all my heart that the man couldn’t see the sun if it tumbled into his backyard.

  There was a small smile on the face of Theodore the Slender.

  I learnt how to do that, too. Some people (like scrawny Hermann over on the next bed) say that shooting was the weakest part of my game, but in my prime I could whistle the rubber like nobody’s business. I scored on every goaltender there was in my day, and they’ll tell you that I had one of the hardest shots going. Unfortunately you can only ask Hugo “Tip” Flescher, because he’s the only one still breathing. What’s more, you better hurry. But Theodore the Slender gave me the gam on shooting, which is this: shooting is more mental than physical. You just practice so much that you can feel the puck, like the blade of your lumber was the palm of your hand, and then you just inner-eye that puck into the back of the net. “See it there first,” Brother Theodore was wont to say, “and then put it there.” In other words, wham, bingo.

  The monks left off playing long enough to tell us that there were plenty of skates in the recreational hall cupboards, so us puppies ran off to lace up. I had my own pair with me, of course. I’d brought them from Bytown, even though I’d had to leave out most of my clothes to get them into my suitcase. I was the first one on the ice with the Brothers of St. Alban the Martyr, and I commenced to hardstep. I flew around the circle. I got my speed up so that ice formed in my eyebrows. When I finally stopped, I saw that all of the other delinquents, and all of the black-robed monks, were staring at me.

  Brother Simon the Ugly puckered hideously and made the following pronouncement. “It would seem,” he said, “that Percival is something of a natural!”

  The phrase just tickled me. One time I even asked my wife, Chloe, to put that on my grave marker: PERCIVAL H. LEARY, SOMETHING OF A NATURAL. But Chloe died many years back, done in by more diseases and ailments than I could count. I can’t recall what it says on her gravestone.

  Andrew the Fireplug divided us boys into two teams, and we had some shinny scrimmages. Periodically Isaiah would stop us and give us such coaching tips as, “Who through faith wrought righteousness, he quenched the violence of fire and waxed valiant in fight!” We quickly learnt how to nod politely (us little boys nodding at a blind man!) and then we’d get back to playing. I was the best pup on the ice, scoring four or five goals in as many rushes. Then I stole the puck from a boy named Billy and smashed him into the boards. Theodore the Slender rendered a two-finger toot that almost ripped the ears off my head.

  “Leary,” he intoned somberly. “Expulsion!”

  “What?” I screamed.

  All of the monks droned “Expulsion” in unison. It sounded like their strange singing.

  “You mean I can’t play anymore?”

  Theodore the Ugly said, “You weren’t playing.”

  I was mortified. I threw away my stick and left the ice.

  You see what they were trying to tell me, don’t you—that hockey is a team sport. I had forgotten that, because I was so damn much better than anybody else.

  SEVEN

  BROTHER ISAIAH WAS THE HEAD HONCHO MONK. No one ever said as much, for theirs was an order that disbelieved in head-honchoness, but if there was deciding to be done, it usually got left to Brother Isaiah. He also did much of the actual teaching. There is a rumor that aside from the game of hockey I don’t know a hell of a lot. But Brother Isaiah the Blind taught me all sorts of things. He taught me how a bird flies, for example, but it’s too complicated to get into. He taught me history, mostly Roman stuff, great battles and whatnot. He made me read books, all sorts of them. Back then, I recall, there were books about a baseball player named Frank Merriwell. I read those all the time. He was a handsome do-gooder and always won the ball game with a grand-slam homer. They never did have any books starring a hockey player, at least not until they come up with the Clinton & Leary Farting Around series, which were pretty good. Here’s how they used to go:

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the winter air.

  “Egad!” exclaimed Clay Clinton. “That sounded like Meredith Potter!”

  “Faith and begorrah!” piped u
p Leary, his Irish blood at a boil. “It must be the blackguard Pierre LaFrance is arter her, t’be sure.”

  “Come on, Leary!”

  Clay Clinton, his blond hair flying in the wind, ran off in the direction of the Potter home.

  I only heard Clay say “egad” once. He had his arms wrapped around a toilet bowl, and I think it came up by accident along with a gallon of bad whiskey.

  Another thing about Brother Isaiah the Blind. When a new boy would come to the reformatory, Isaiah would tell us the night before about the lad’s arrival. He’d stand up, his strange eyes looking at nothing any of us could see, and he’d say how a new tyke was coming (he wouldn’t say his name) and then he’d say what crime or crimes the fellow had committed. (A lot of the pups, by the by, were arsonists. I was sort of a hero for having ignited a house with dog dirt.) I think Brother Isaiah’s reasoning was that we’d hear of the misdeed—robbery, say—and we’d get a mental picture in our minds of a Bill Dalton sort, and when the boy came in he was always just an apple-cheeked scallywag like the rest of us, so in that way we learnt not to tag people.

  This one night, Brother Isaiah climbs to his feet and says that a boy is coming who was found guilty of car theft. Car theft might be pretty common stuff nowadays, but back then it was quite the caper. For one thing, only rich people had automobiles, so stealing one never seemed like a particularly good idea. Brother Isaiah said there was some evidence to suggest that the young fellow had need of the automobile, a family emergency of some sort, but we all thought, They’re shipping us a dope. Brother Isaiah went on to say that when the fellow was apprehended he’d beaten the tar out of four or five peace officers. Aha, we thought, they’re shipping us a Big dope.

  So I for one wasn’t that surprised when the four monks came back from the train station with Manfred Armstrong Ozikean in tow.

  All us inmates gathered around to gawk at him. Manfred had grown a bit, which made him the biggest boy in history. He smiled at us, but his eyes were watering and his lips trembled. Most of the other boys were nervous around him, even outright frightened, so I decided to show off a bit. I stepped to the front of the crowd and gave a little wave, saying, “Ho there, Manfred!”

  Manfred gave forth with one of his “Hey!”s. This scared the boys, not only because the “hey” was loud, but also because I don’t think they’d figured on Manny being capable of speech. “It’s my friend Percy!” Manfred told the trembling assembled.

  “Percival,” asked Simon the Ugly, “are you acquainted with Mr. Ozikean?”

  “Sure thing,” I answered. “We’re both from the old Bytown. He plucked me out of the canal.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Brother Andrew the Fireplug, “you could take him under your wing.”

  “I’ll do that.” I waggled my fingers at Manny, and he came with me like a monstrous puppy dog. The lads gave us wide berth, and I reckoned I’d improved my status considerably.

  “How’s things in Ottawa?” I asked Manny.

  Manfred thought about that for a while. He finally said, “Clay is fine.”

  Even at Clay Clinton’s funeral, people were a bit guarded with their praise. The minister, for instance, said how Clay was a fine man, but how we likewise shouldn’t forget that he was usually under a lot of stress. That’s playing it pretty close to the vest for a eulogy. I was the man’s best friend, his bosom companion, and even I have on occasion had a hard time saying something nice about him.

  This wasn’t the case with Manfred. To hear Manny tell it, and by jim he told it, Clay Clinton was perhaps the finest human being that God ever assembled.

  It started that first night at the Bowmanville (Annex) Reformatory. We all went to bed in the bunk hall, but instead of talking about girls (which we didn’t know anything about) or hockey (my favorite) or baseball (I was an excellent infielder, you know, and likely could have played in the major leagues) Manny Ozikean regaled us with tales of the great Clay Clinton. He said as how Clay was the best friend a guy could have. Manfred came from a huge family, one with aunts and uncles and kids in the double digits, and Manfred told us they might have starved to death if not for Clay Clinton bringing them food. (Likely stealing it from some other poor family, I thought.) It was sickening. We had to listen to how Clay played Rover-Come-Over with Manfred’s baby brother, Oliphant. We had to listen to how Clay took Manny’s sister Winnifred to the parish hall dances. The other pups listened, their eyes bugged and their jaws on the ground, like we were discussing King Arthur or Lancelot, not some teenage porker from Ottawa. But that’s the way it was with Clay. People always talked him up.

  Manfred Ozikean set up a little private altar before he went to sleep. He took his statue of Christ, the one where the wound in His side was so gaping that innards were slipping out, and nailed it to the wall. Manfred had a little model of the Virgin, which he set on his bedside table. He took the huge silver crucifix from around his neck and laid it down gently beside. Then Manfred took candles, five or six of them, and arranged them in a circle on the floor. He lit the candles, but everything seemed to get darker. Manfred took a photograph, a purple one with dog-eared edges, and set that in the middle.

  I took a gander at the photograph. It was blurry and filled with strange clouds, because no one was much good at making pictures back then. It was a photograph of a girl. I understood why Clay had become so friendly with the Ozikean clan. I knew this was Manny’s sister Winnifred, and I also had a pretty good hunch as to why her photograph was lying there in the candlelight.

  Well, I have to tell you that the team from the Bowmanville (Annex) Reformatory was one hell of a hockey team, mostly because of me, Little Leary. The year before we’d won the county championship pretty handily, and that was against a team with near adults and everything. We took hockey pretty serious, we did, so the day after Manfred’s arrival we practiced, which is what we did every day.

  We were in for another surprise. It won’t be as much of a surprise for some of you people, seeing as the name Manny “The Wizard” Oz is almost as well known as mine.

  We divided teams for shinny, which is how we warmed up for the weird drills and maneuvers that Brother Isaiah would put us through. For some reason Isaiah named his drills after flowers, the Rose and the Tulip and such. I once tried to put the Ottawa Patriots through the Rose when I was the coach and I damn near had a mutiny on my hands.

  So we divided for a warm-up game, and no one picked Manfred until the next-to-last call. He and I ended up on opposite sides.

  Manfred looked mighty clumsy waiting for things to get started, his ankles all trembly, his upper body having to twist every so often so that he wouldn’t pitch forward. It looked as if Manfred had trouble even standing in skates and, of course, that’s entirely correct. Manfred had trouble standing in skates.

  Brother Isaiah skated to the middle of the ice. His eyes looked like stones left over from digging a grave. Isaiah held out a puck over what was likely dead center of the round rink. He put two fingers into his mouth and tooted. We commenced.

  I scooped the face-off. Down the boards I went in a Brother Andrew Bulldog. I mowed down two lads, stepped around another. Then I saw Manfred waiting for me. Well, my only concern is that he doesn’t fall on me. I decided I’d take him out with my (still rudimentary) St. Louis Whirlygig. I went into the move, and all of a sudden I was arse over teakettle, and Manfred was waltzing down the ice like a ballerina. He out-skated Brother Simon the Ugly! Manny spent more time in the air than he did on the ground. Every so often Manfred would set a toe to the ice, but it was more like how every so often a whale has to break surface to breathe. Manny cranked up to shoot and the goaler dropped his stick and covered his head, not that I could blame him. Manfred just floated the puck over the lad’s shoulders, and his team was a point to the better.

  Those four monks stood there looking like they’d died and gone to heaven. Even skinny Theodore was grinning. Manfred looked bashful. You might remember that look if you’ve got any great age t
o you. I recall when the Patriots tied up the Stanley Cup finals with Toronto in one-nine two-five. Manny scored the tying goal, one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and while the crowd went wild, Manfred stood there looking like he’d just shit his drawers.

  So we had another face-off. I won it, flipped the rubber backwards to a teammate, and then I hardstepped toward the other end. Manfred was nowhere to be seen, which I found a mite puzzling. I took a position near the side of the net, and all of a sudden I hear this cheer. I spun around, and down at the other end the goaler was flipping the puck out of the net. Manfred wore the expression of a dog who’d just buried something disgusting in the backyard.

  Well, it wasn’t all bad that day. I did score two or three goals, but at dinnertime no one wanted to talk about me, they all wanted to talk about Manfred. Except for Manfred, who wanted to talk about Clay Clinton. I shoved some peas around on my plate and then went to bed.

  EIGHT

  “WHAT I DON’T SEE,” says the gormless Clifford, cradling his monumental belly, “is what a castle was doing there near Bowmanville.”

  “A rich fellow named Jensen built the castle as a present to his wife,” I answer. “It cost him nearly every penny he had, and when it was finished, the missus decided she didn’t much care for it, and she took a scamper. Jensen had to sell the castle to the municipal government, and they annexed it for the reformatory.”