The Last of the Lumbermen

by Brian Fawcett

  “What else?”

  “That’s about it. Freddy told them a religious group up there wanted to meet with them for a midnight prayer jamboree. We dropped them off with the refreshments and told them we were off to pick up the group they were to meet with.”

  “You planning to retrieve them or anything?”

  “Didn’t think about that,” he admits, his grin suddenly sheep- ish. “We just wanted to get the Murder Squad a game, that’s all. I mean, they did drive all this way.”

  It’s the first time in a long while I’ve seen Wendel without a contingency plan, and the first time he’s ever acted like a goofy kid.

  “I’ll try to straighten things out with them. We’ll probably have to refund their entry fee, and it’s hard to say what the Bears will do when they find out they’ve been mugged by a bunch of pansy rock n’ roll musicians.”

  “They know,” Wendel says. “That was Blacky I was talking to on the blower. The Murder Squad wore their own jerseys for the third period. The Bears don’t mind. It was a better game than they were expecting, and it isn’t as if they’re strangers to losing.”

  The Saints could make a major stink about this, but something tells me they won’t. They’ll get another game if they want it, and they can go home and tell their pastor they won a hockey game, which is something I’m pretty sure they haven’t been able to do before unless they snuck into a Bantam tournament. That’s confirmed half an hour later when the coach of the Saints shows up looking sheepish rather than righteous. I think he’s decided that Mantua is too full of agents of the devil for his boys, and he just wants to get them out of town and back home. He doesn’t even want a refund of the entry fee.

  I get Gord on his cell phone, explain what’s happened, and tell him to get Wendel to talk to the Murder Squad about continuing to play in place of the Saints. I don’t think they’ll have a problem with that.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’M BACK AT THE Coliseum to find that the Drillers have sent the hopeless Cowboys to the bar for good, and that the Roosters, in surprisingly good shape after whacking the Cowboys at three AM, have won their game.

  Jack and Gord are standing at the entrance when I pull the Lincoln into my regular spot by the door. They’re talking animatedly with someone wearing a black and grey jacket that looks like it belongs to the Hinton Locomotives. I’ve already let them know about the deal I’ve made with the Saints, and when I join them they’re trying to sell it to the Locomotives’ coach. He isn’t too happy to hear his team will have to face a gang of crazy rock n’ roll musicians who can play hockey instead of the skinny Bible-slappers they’d been expecting.

  I’ve done enough negotiating with morons for one day, so I hang back and listen until it’s clear that Gord and Jack are going to make their argument. Then I pull Gord aside while Jack finishes.

  “Good news,” he tells me. “We don’t play until noon tomorrow.”

  I’d already figured this out, more or less, from listening in on their conversation. “Good thing. I’m a little wiped out. Anything else going on?”

  Gord shrugs. “I talked to Blacky Silver. He was pretty decent about the game with the Murder Squad. I think he’s already gone home, and so have most of the rest of the Bears.”

  “I don’t think their hearts were really in this one.”

  “Yeah,” Gord agrees. “Kind of a sorry situation, really. Good chance we’ll never see a lot of those guys on the ice again. Oh. Before you disappear into Esther’s lap for the evening, I want you to do a little pub crawl with me.”

  “Clear the chilluns out of the bar?”

  “Something like that. Your kid is on his way to the Columbia. Those yo-yo musicians have really got him wound up.”

  It’s my turn to shrug. “Wendel’s pretty sensible about drinking. Did Esther get James home okay?”

  “They hung around to watch part of the Roosters game, and then your dad picked him up, I think.”

  “I’d better call her and let her know I’ll be late, and get her to call Claire about tomorrow’s game. She’s expecting me about now.” I look over to Jack and see he’s concluding negotiations. He’s smiling, so things have come out as he wanted them to. I duck out and go to one of the payphones to call Esther. Maybe I’ll collect Wendel from the bar and bring him home for a decent meal.

  I’m thinking like a parent all around.

  THE THREE OF US head to the Columbia. On the way over Jack seems preoccupied, even a little worried.

  “Something bothering you, chum?” I ask.

  “Something Mayfield said while I was browbeating him into accepting the game with the Murder Squad,” he says after a moment’s thought.

  “What’d he say?”

  “It was something one of his players overheard in the Columbia. About Wendel.”

  “Somebody probably shagged them with a story that he’s rocket-boosted or something.”

  “No,” Jack says. “This wasn’t about the tournament. It was about your community scaling yard. Apparently there was some sort of union-industry pow-wow a couple of nights ago to try and stop it.”

  “What did you expect? If it flies, the yard’s a major bucket of piss in their lap. But how did Wendel come into it?”

  Gord interrupts. “I think you’d better pay attention to this. Some of those U.I. fallers who hang out down at the Columbia have decided Wendel’s right up there with Karl Marx as the head of the Communist Menace.”

  “That’s idiotic. There isn’t a Communist Menace anymore.”

  “Well, half of them haven’t ever read a newspaper, and the other half won’t ever believe the commies are gone so long as there’s even a Liberal party. They feel a threat to their pickup payments and start seeing commies in the woodpile. It’s bred into them.”

  “Anyway,” Jack continues, “A bunch of them were supposed go drinking in the Columbia tonight, and who knows what they’ll do if Wendel shows up.”

  The parking lot behind the Columbia is full when we pull in, about half rusty pickups and the other half Harleys. The bar is packed to the rafters as we enter, and I notice a couple of bikers removing the stripper poles from the stage. No Wendel, so far.

  I stop one of the waiters. “You seen Wendel Simons around here?”

  “Not bloody likely,” he answers, jerking his thumb in the direc- tion of three or four crowded tables of beefy guys near the entrance. “And I hope he doesn’t show up.”

  “What’s happening on the stage?” Gord wants to know.

  “Some guys from Vancouver are coming in to do an acoustic set. Real famous, I heard. Okay by me.” He points to the back of the bar. “You’ll probably want to take those boys with you when you go.”

  It’s Bobby Bell and Dickie Pollard with somebody else who’s face down on the table. It’s no great deduction figuring out it’s Stan.

  I point them out to Gord, and he rumbles off to perform the roust. Meanwhile I’ve got to think fast. I’m betting big money Wendel is going to show up with the Murder Squad, and that’s guaranteed trouble.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jack wants to know.

  “That Wendel is going to appear any second?”

  He nods. “Let’s just hope Freddy’s with him. This could be ugly. We don’t have a lot of friends in this bar.”

  I glance around the room. He’s right, but I’m not frantic with regret about that, and neither is my liver. There’s no time for any other regrets, because a roar goes up as five burly musicians enter through the front, each packing a guitar, trailed by an entourage led by Wendel. Freddy isn’t with them, damn it.

  Wendel isn’t three steps inside before I hear a rumble from the yahoos by the door, and the scraping of chairs being pushed out of the way.

  For a split second I experience the same sinking sensation I felt when I saw that bear coming over the hill toward me �
� another obligation to respond to, lousy tools to work with, and no time to think.

  I calculate the trajectory of the loggers and block the path of their leader about midway across the floor. I’m staring into a set of bloodshot blue eyes without anything to say to them but “Stop.” So I raise my arms in front of him and say it three times, loud as I can.

  The leader recognizes me. “Get out of the fucking way, Bathgate,” he says. “We don’t have any beef with you.”

  “Wrong,” I say. “I know what you’re up to here.”

  “You don’t know jack shit about nothing,” someone behind the leader shouts.

  “Wait a minute here,” I answer, loud enough for all of them to hear. “I know I’m supplying the land for that scaling yard that’s got you all wired up. And the kid you’re planning to pound on happens to be my son.”

  “Okay, fine,” a voice calls out. “We’ll bust your ass too, fucker.”

  “Is that so?” I hear Gord say from behind me. “I’m this man’s personal physician, so I guess you’ll have to dance with me and my nurses here.” I glance behind me and take in four of them counting Stan, who cancels himself out when he staggers backward and lands in the lap of a biker who’s turned in his chair to watch the festivities. Wendel is on the stage helping the musicians set up, oblivious.

  I turn back to the leader, and we make eye contact. If a brawl is in the offing, my best bet is to make him think I’m unafraid and wait for him to make the first move — and hope to hell he telegraphs it with his eyes. I keep my hands up in front of me, close to my body, partly because if I touch him he’s going to drive me, and partly because it puts me in the best position to hit him first — and partly because I’m scared shitless and don’t want to move.

  I’ve been here before, but not for about ten years. Still, you never forget what a real fight is like. Not like the action movies, which make it look like the fighters are dancing acrobats, not animals out to wound one another. Hockey isn’t much help here because when you’re fighting on the ice your skates keep you from getting much leverage on a punch. A real fight is an ugly, graceless thing: a human fist slamming into flesh and bone makes the kind of sound you hear in butcher shops, not the canned whip-cracks they lay onto movie soundtracks. I don’t want to hit another human being ever again, but …

  “Leave Simons alone,” a menacing voice I don’t recognize intones from behind me.

  When I turn around to look there are fifteen or twenty bikers standing behind Gord, and some are big enough that he doesn’t block the view.

  “This isn’t about you,” the leader of the loggers says, sounding less sure of himself.

  “Sure it is,” one of the bikers answers. “The kid’s okay. You want at him, you gotta take us first.”

  “He’s a fucking commie,” screams someone just behind the leader. “He wants to screw us out of our jobs.”

  The big biker is contemptuous. “Gimme a break. If you ass- holes were working you wouldn’t be in here. You think Inter- Con’s going to give you a job for whacking this guy, you’re even stupider than you look. They’re not giving anybody jobs anymore.”

  “Anyway, fuck you,” another biker chimes in. “We wanna see Simons play in the tournament.”

  One of the loggers steps forward, but his aggression is gone. “If Simons and those other commies get what they want, we’ll all end up tied to a team of horses, trying to cut down trees with a pair of scissors with one hand and holding a shovel in the other to scoop up the horse shit.”

  It’s such a great line I laugh out loud. “Well, better that than parking your sorry asses in a permanent welfare lineup,” one of the bikers snaps back. “Simons and his friends make more sense than those InterCon flacks who’ve been fucking with your heads — or the Forest Service. Or the IW-fucking-A.”

  If a brawl was going to happen, the crack about the union would have been the flash point. But the loggers are cowed. One of them yells out that the bikers wouldn’t know what value- added industry looked like if it walked up and bit them on the ass, and what ensues is, I swear to God, a technical argument. When we collar Wendel they’re still at it, flinging around ideas like Sustained Yield and Equivalent Community Value like they were born with them in their mouths. It’s not quite the rebirth of civilization, but it’s better than sitting in front of a television set listening to why we’re going to get screwed no matter which way we turn, and a damned sight better than me and Wendel getting killed for our so-called communist ideas.

  THIRTY-SIX

  BEFORE WE LEAVE THE bar, Gord and I let the musicians know they’ve got a game at eleven o’clock. I know these guys are supposed to be a bunch of brick-headed drug addicts, but they’re also amazingly organized. After a two-second conference one of them skips the set to round up the rest of the team, and the other four prepare to play the set they’ve promised. Wendel, who still isn’t fully aware of how close he came to getting his skull bashed in, decides to hang around. I’d have preferred him to come with me, but with all the bikers around to keep things civil he can do what he likes. They’ll no doubt escort him and the musicians to the Coliseum for the game, and anyway, by that time the loggers will be too shitfaced to punch their way out of a green garbage bag. Or maybe they’ll go to the game. Anything’s possible.

  We send off Bobby and Dickie to scour the other bars — and to park Stan somewhere where he won’t be stepped on — while I drop off Gord and Jack at the Coliseum before heading up Cranberry Ridge.

  Esther has ordered Chinese food, and it arrives just as I’m getting out of the shower. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, which means Bozo will get about half her normal ration of chow mein. Jack has parked Fang with us for the tournament, and Bozo’s too occupied with the little pest to care that I’m taking food out of her mouth. In fact, she parks herself beneath my chair and dozes off while I’m eating, hoping I’ll keep Fang off her for a few minutes.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Esther laughs. “She’s exhausted from walking around the house with that silly little mutt hanging from her collar. I love the little monkey but I’m glad we don’t own him.”

  I look down and see Fang chewing on one of Bozo’s ears. Reaching down, I push him away. He growls at me possessively.

  When I look up again, Esther is eyeing me with a calculating expression on her face. “How tired are you?” she wants to know.

  “Surprisingly alert. You want to go down there and watch those musicians play hockey, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t mind. I’ve been hearing so much about them I’ve gotten curious.”

  “About which parts?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she says, giggling like a teenager. “I’m old enough to be their mother. Besides, I want to watch them play hockey, not go partying with them afterward.”

  I’m as curious as she is, so we watch the local news on television. — Most of it feeds from the networks, including the sports, which is ninety percent NHL video and financial reportage on this year’s baseball spring training holdouts and ten percent about the tournament. It’s lazy and depressing coverage, but it’s what you’d expect from a small station owned by a conglomerate. And I’m in too good a mood to be depressed about anything short of all-out nuclear war.

  THE BLOCK OF SEATS reserved for the tournament players are good ones, right behind the visitor’s bench. I spot one or two players from the tournament teams, but most are filled with Wendel’s new biker friends. Considering that it’s close to mid- night and the game is being played between two out-of-town teams, it’s a big crowd — and a noisy one. Then I remember that one of the teams on the ice has made themselves into local heroes by playing music in every bar in the city the last two days.

  Esther and I locate a couple of empty seats three rows above the players’ bench, and settle in to watch. I have to admit that the Murder Squad are a pretty fabulous looking
bunch in their white-on-black LA Kings-based uniforms with a huge skull and crossbones for a crest.

  “Look at that, Andy,” she says. “Every damned one of them is using the number 13.”

  It is funny, but I don’t get to enjoy the joke for long. Seconds later the puck flies into the crowd and Mayfield, whose team is occupying the visitors’ bench for the game, spots me in the crowd and motions me and the ref over for a conference. Neither Jack or Gord are at the game, so he decides to appoint me commissioner in charge of complaints. He doesn’t think the number 13 gag is funny in the least.

  “Look at these assholes, Bathgate,” he shouts. “They’re all wear- ing the same number. It constitutes an unfair advantage. Isn’t there some rule about this?”

  “What’s the advantage?” I ask. “You don’t know these guys from breakfast anyway.”

  He keeps on whining that it’s unfair, that his players can’t tell who’s who. He’s right, sort of, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “Okay,” I say, finally. “You want me to have them pin pieces of paper on their backs telling you what they like in bed or what instrument they play or something? Make a real request here.”

  Mayfield glares at me sullenly. “Well, do something.”

  Esther is close enough to hear most of this, and she’s rolling around in her seat laughing.

  “Look,” I tell him. “The big ones are the guitarists, the skinny ones are probably drummers, and they’re all perverts. Is that good enough? Now play your game and stop whining at me.”

  Mayfield shakes his head in disgust and turns back to the ref. “Forget the whole thing,” he says to no one in particular.

  When I sit down, Esther is still laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  She chokes out an answer. “Men,” she says. “You get around a rulebook and it turns you into ninnies.”

  We leave at the end of the second period with the score tied four-four. The Murder Squad are the bigger and slightly better of the two teams, but they keep taking stupid penalties — more for what look like practical jokes than for anything nasty, and it costs them. On two of the ensuing power plays, the Drillers score.