“Where’s the Hockey Section?” I demand.
“The other end.” Duane-o points down a long hall filled with booths, exhibits, and incessant chattering, even though the place is largely empty. Whose bright idea was all this recording of voices? We start off down the hall, but Duane is like a little kid. “Check this out!” he cries, and then he hauls Hallie over to a booth. I hobble up behind them and listen to the voice. It tells me that Babe Ruth once played baseball in Toronto.
“I knew the Bambino!” says I. “He was great buddies with Blue—” I hush up about Blue Hermann. It was all his own fault, attacking me with his oaken walking sticks, mouthing gibberish all the while. I launch off again toward the hockey exhibit.
“Hey!” Now Hallie wants to go look at a skiing exhibit. Skiing is foolish, if you want my pronouncement. If you want to go down a mountain fast, hurl yourself over the side.
You couldn’t get a mountain steep enough for Clay B. Clinton. He’d don sunglasses and a long scarf and launch himself with abandon. I’d wait for him at the bottom of the mountain, usually shivering.
“Now that, you see, is the difference between thee and me.”
For a second I think this is one of the recorded voices, so I pay it no mind.
“You see my point, Percival?”
Clinton has apparently found some beyond-the-vale hooch, because his face is ruddy and he is weaving slightly. “That is to say, you like to go fast under your own steam. I, on the other hand, am willing to give myself over to gravity.”
“There’s a great many differences between me and you, Clayton. That strikes me as one of the less consequential.”
“I see. Quite the blow you dealt the Blue man, Percival, my porcupine.”
“It was his own damn fault. And what’s this about you making him promise to beat me up?”
“Did he tell you about that? What a naughty liar-liar-pants-on-fire.”
Up ahead stands Manfred A. Ozikean, transfixed by a video pertaining to golf. Manny never played golf, but it doesn’t take much to transfix him. “Hey!” he says as we draw near. “This guy shot two holes in one on the same day. Sumpin’, eh?”
“I shot a hole in one” remembers Clay.
“You never. The ball nestled about three inches away from the cup. You got there before anybody else and toed it in. I seen you do it, Clay.”
“What’s three inches in the grand scheme of things?”
“Football!” hollers Duane-o, and he and Hallie are off again. The football exhibit is huge, Canadians being very fond of the sport, willing to play it in all sorts of ghastly weather. I’ve watched games where you couldn’t see nothing but formless masses slurping around in mud and drizzle.
I say, “We ain’t got no time for football!”
Killebrew is shouting along with various voices. “And Faloney goes back, back, and then he throws the ball!” Hallie pretends to be the receiver and she highsteps away, reaching heavenward with a long arm. Her sweater hikes up and you should see what I just saw.
“Touchdown!” Duane and Hallie shout together.
“Hey!” Manfred has become transfixed by something else, in this case, curling. Listen, people, curling is not a sport. There might be winners and losers, but anything that travels that slowly don’t qualify as a sport.
Duane and Hallie come up behind me and both throw an arm around my scrawny little shoulders. “Almost there,” says King Killebrew.
“I built the Gardens in nineteen forty-seven,” says Clay.
“Yeah, yeah, we know all about it.”
“I started assembling the Glory Teams of the fifties.”
“Shovel it harder, Clinton! It was me done that, director of hockey operations!”
Clay doesn’t stop for my interruptions. “We won nine Stanley Cups,” he says, and I detect a metallic edge to his voice. I realize that I have been listening to a recording. It has an airy echo to it. Clay is already at the exhibit, melting with emotion. His recorded voice trails off, the music swells, an announcer says, “Yes, Clay Clinton was certainly one of the prime architects of Canadian sport!”
I go over and look at the setup. They got two pictures of the Toronto Gardens, one when she was first built, one as she looks today. They got some photos of the various Maple Leaves teams. They got a big rendition of the picture you’ve all seen, the one where Clay is pouring champagne over my head. This was one-nine four-nine, and we’d just won our first Stanley Cup with the Leaves. We were two happy geezers in that photo. For historical purposes they got a picture of Clay as a boy, the little lad staring at the camera insolently; they got him as a young man in his officer’s uniform, his Cracker Jack decorations covering his breasts; and they got a wedding photo, him and Janey.
Manfred takes a look at the exhibit and smiles oddly. He is not transfixed. “Hey!” He is entering the Hockey Section proper. “There’s Howie!” Manfred walks over to view a photograph of Howie Morenz. Clay stays to hear his own life story one more time.
The Hockey Section is where most of the people are. There’s as many as twelve or thirteen milling about, not counting tykes, which is far too many for my purposes. There’s even a security guard, which could be real trouble, except he looks to be seventeen years of age and stupid to boot. “Duane,” says I, “I need your help.”
“You got it, Perce.”
“You got to distract these people away from here, down to the other end. I need to be alone for a few minutes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I just need to be alone.”
“I suppose.” Duane doffs his cowboy hat and removes his mirrored sunglasses. He takes a few steps into the Hockey Section and all hell breaks loose. It’s the tykes that notice him first, and they attack his kneecaps like a swarm of bees. The grown-ups are a touch more shy, and they wander over, affecting only the slightest curiosity. There’s one mook who’s downright disdainful. He casts a haughty look at Killebrew and shrugs his shoulder, no big deal. Then he remembers something, namely, that he forgot to pay more attention to whatever exhibit is right by Killebrew, so he snaps his fingers, gives his forehead a tap, and heads off.
The tykes are pressing Duane-o for autographs. “I’ll sign,” he tells them, “but it’ll have to be away down there.” And Killebrew leads them, security guard included, back down to Baseball.
And left alone, I prowl through the Hockey Section of the new Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.
I give a nod to Howie Morenz, who I once pretzeled in a play-off game. He could have been the King, maybe, except for his heart wasn’t strong enough. By that I don’t mean that his left ventricle blew, I mean that when he found himself out of the game at the age of thirty-five (busted leg) he just died. Some people say he died of a broken heart. I know I’ve said that people can’t die of a broken heart, but I’m changing my opinion some. Maybe Howie did. Maybe Manfred did too, except for there was so much blood and booze around no one could tell.
Lookee there. Sprague Cleghorn made the Hall of Fame. I thumb my nose at his photograph. Way to be, Spray-goo. You son of a bitch.
Newsy Lalonde. Cyclone Taylor, my hero when I was a lad of seven. (Oh, Mr. Taylor, why did you forsake us for the Renfrew Millionaires?) The Conacher Boys. Aurèle Joliat. Francis Clancy. All in the Hall of Fame. All dead as well. Except for me, and I’m feeling poorly. Hey there, the Chicoutimi Cucumber, good old Georges Vézina. Goalers, you know, are crazy men. Why would you stand there and let people pelt you with rock-hard rubber? I dig my hand into my pocket and wrap it around the crucifix. Lookee. Eddie Shore. He took a run at me, came at me bullish, but I held him off. Tough man, Eddie was. Another son of a bitch. I take a quick tally. Fully three-quarters of the men in this Hall of Fame are sons of bitches! That’s a mind-boggling statistic.
You take this fellow right here. A boy of twenty-one or-two, staring at the camera, a brash young cocker. Couldn’t weigh more than one-forty, but he thinks he’s got a firm grip on the world’s gobbles and he ain’
t about to let loose. He’s a son of a bitch, don’t you just know it. His jersey has a big O on it, standing for Ottawa, and in the middle of that O is a shamrock. This is a joke, you see. His team is called the Patriots, but because most of the men are Black Irish like this pup, people call the team the Paddies, and the shamrock is their emblem. And, oh yes, the lad has a C stitched over his puny heart. And that means a lot to this fellow. I wouldn’t smile so much if I were him; which, of course, I am.
What else we got in this display case? An action photo of me in my New York Americans garb, scoring a goal on—let me have a closer look—scoring a goal on Tip Flescher. In this photograph I am airborne. I loved being airborne. You look at fifty action photos of the old King, I bet I’m off the ground in thirty-five of them.
That there is a photograph made in 1915 of the All-Ontario Boys’ Hockey Champions, from the Bowmanville Reformatory. That’s Brother Isaiah the Blind. There’s Theodore, Andrew, and the huge unsightly creature is Brother Simon. I am circled, sitting in the front row because I’m a touch on the short side. Towering above me, grinning into the camera, with no circle made around him, is Manfred Armstrong Ozikean.
A picture of the Maple Leaves throwing me a birthday party. It was only my sixty-fifth, but the boys didn’t figure I had many left, ha, ha! In this other photograph, Clay and I are standing in the doorway of an airplane and waving either good-bye or hello. I don’t remember any such occurrence.
Now this is an interesting article. It is a New York Amerks jersey, as you can see. The design of the sweater was based on the Yankee flag, which is why it’s covered with bars and stars and is red, white, and blue. But, you see them little rust brown spots that cover the shoulders? You know what that is? That, my friends, is dried blood, and it came from my crown, and it leaked in the year one-nine two-six, which is when that bastard Sprague two-handed me. As I told Blue Hermann so many years ago, he didn’t hit me hard enough.
My spine tingles like it’s made out of fur. There is the one-nine one-nine lumber, that is to say, there is the very selfsame stick with which I scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal. Cy Denneny took Odie Cleghorn out along the boards. Kaboom! The boards sounded like thunder in the mountains! The puck comes out to me, Little Leary.
“And Percival, my own, perseveres up the ice!”
“Yeah! And then I saw Lalonde coming at Percy!”
He came at me like he wanted to put me in an envelope and mail me to his great-aunt in Cleveland. And then I heard, pssst!
“Pssst, Percy!”
I drop the rubber between my pins. I’m escaped. I hear a sound like the world is blowing apart. That’s Manfred and Newsy colliding.
“And a more gruesome, barbaric exhibition I have never seen.”
“Lalonde had his elbows up high,” remembers Ozikean. “Well” remarks Clay, “it marked the end of your face as we knew it.”
“I circle like a hawk, distant, above the world. The puck pops onto my blade. Up ahead is Bertie Corbeau. I execute the old Nureyev, he ends up with his jersey on inside out. There isn’t a sound in the stands. In the world. Nappy Minton moves out of his goal crease. Remember him, boys, the Little Napoleon? His eyes were different colors. Little Nap moves out, and he leaves a piece of light no bigger than a silver dollar sitting over his right shoulder. And I shoot that goddamn puck!”
“Hey!” shouts Manfred.
“Yes!” shouts Clay.
“Quiet down!” I take a long peek down the hallway. The people are still clustered around King Killebrew. He is laughing and signing autographs. I see someone moving through the front door. Oh, no. I got to hurry now.
I take Manfred’s crucifix from my pocket. “It’s all I’ve got,” I explain.
“Never mind, Percy,” says Manfred. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t deserve to be here. I was just a drunk.”
“Don’t never say that. Look at all these sons of bitches. You were a good man, Manny. You weren’t just a drunk. You were the mountain, and the wind.”
“I think it’s a very touching gesture,” says C. B. Clinton. “A trifle maudlin and mawkish, but basically touching.”
I shrug. “It’s the least I can do.” The crucifix feels cold and heavy in my hand.
He is getting closer.
I raise up my dragon-head walking stick. I take a deep breath and summon whatever strength is lying around in this wrinkled carcass.
“King!”
His shout mixes with the tinkling of broken glass. I didn’t think I’d do it first shot out of the box. My walking stick is pulled out of my hand, tugged away. Shards tumble around my arm, bouncing off my sleeve mostly, but one or two carve across my wrist. I’m startled to see blood spit out, covering the crucifix. Some of the blood spurts onto the Amerks jersey. The blood is red and gleaming. I am not alarmed by this blood, although I’m a little surprised that my puny little being holds so much. And there seems to be no end in sight, but I got no time to watch. I lay the crucifix down on top of the Amerks jersey. He is getting closer all the time, and his shouts have alarmed everyone. Now Duane-o is coming back towards me, too, him and his girlie. My finger is slick with red stuff—my whole hand is—and I reach out and draw a lopsided circle around Manfred’s face in the 1915 photograph. My walking stick is buried beneath sheets of broken glass. I grab the one-nine one-nine lumber and light out. There is a Fire Exit not ten feet away and I allow as I can make it before anybody catches me.
“King!” he shouts.
“Come on, boys!” We hustle for the big metal doors. I lay my shoulder against one, and I reckon that if I didn’t have Manny and Clay there with me I couldn’t even budge the thing. But I get through, find myself in a gray stairwell. There’s stairs leading up and there’s stairs leading down. I can’t decide. I put the hockey stick between the handles of the double doors and fall back against them. Goddamn, there is a lot of blood.
I hear a weak thud from the other side, his drunkenness making him clumsy. I hike a thumb at my friends, tell them, “Lad drinks too much.”
“King!” he shouts from the other side. “Let me through.”
I giggle, which I admit is somewhat unseemly. We are like children playing at a game. Clay laughs, too—always willing to laugh, old Clinton—and Manfred grins and shrugs, tossing off the weight of the world. I catch sight of Manny’s black eyes bearing on me. I nod, take a moment or two to catch my breath.
Iain presses the doors, but between the one-nine one-nine lumber and whatever substance remains in my blood-emptied carcass, the thing stays closed.
“Son!” I call out. This stills him. “Put your ear close to the door. I need to say something to you.”
I hear a bustling, a hard knock as he lays his muzzy noggin against the cold steel that separates us. “What?”
My lips have dried like yesterday’s worms. My tongue is little better than sandpaper, but I run it over my flappers a couple of times. It might be best to get this out as quickly as possible. “Son, because you love me, I’m asking you for this promise.”
Manny is mouthing the words along with me.
“Stop drinking this—”
“What, King?”
I raise my voice. “Because you love me, I’m asking you for this promise, that you will stop drinking this liquor that hurts you so badly.”
I struggle to my feet. Manny and Clay each have ahold of an elbow, and I couldn’t do it without them. “Do you promise, boy?”
“I promise. Now let me through. You’re bleeding.”
But I got places to go.
I run down a little flight of six stairs and punch through a door marked Emergency Exit. This sets off a fire alarm, and the building starts making a noise like a slot machine paying off big. The sunlight blinds me. The earth is melting, the snow going so quickly that it almost leaves behind steam. Up ahead, their arms around each other, their feet fairly skipping, are Clay Bors Clinton and Manfred A. Ozikean. “Boys …” comes out of my throat, but it is a quiet sound and does not carry
on the warm wind. Manny and Clay don’t slow for me. I try to dig in, but that only makes the ancient pins buckle. The snow feels good on my face. I am very tired.
When I wake, night has fallen. The sky holds a moon, a big silver moon. Everything is washed in its light. I hear my name, and slowly I climb to my feet. Over there the monks are out on the ice. Brother Simon the Ugly flies through the air, Andrew the Fireplug steams around the boards. Brother Theodore stands in the center of the ice, his eyes closed, preparing to fire the puck. And Brother Isaiah the Blind is waving to me.
I join them in the circle.
King Leary Page 23