The Last of the Lumbermen

by Brian Fawcett

  Before I leave, I give Wendel and five or six other players who’re sitting with him strict instructions not to go drinking after the game. I don’t have much faith that they’ll pay any attention to me — least of all Stan, even though he’s sitting there with the same bucket he kept between his knees through this afternoon’s game. He looks at me bleary-eyed and wants to know who appointed me his father.

  “You just do what you’re told or I’ll turn you in to the cops,” I tell him. “You and your girlfriend there. You asked her to marry you yet?”

  Stan starts to say something, then either forgets what it is or thinks better of it. It’s my job to tell them what they ought to do, but I suppose it’s their job to ignore me. I just hope we don’t have to play the Murder Squad next if they win this game.

  But when we go home and I fall asleep instantly, I don’t have nightmares about playing the Murder Squad, nor do I dream about pissed-off loggers or bears dripping PCBs from their jaws. I dream about cruising through centre ice with the puck on my stick. On my left side, darting toward the blueline, is Mikey Davidson.

  ESTHER AND I ARE back at the Coliseum by noon, coming in just as the game between Chilliwack and the Roosters is ending, which the Lions win four to two. Of course the Murder Squad won their game last night, and of course we’re playing them this afternoon. In the three AM game the Drillers got a team that wasn’t quite as easy as the Cowboys, but they beat them five to two anyway. That leaves six teams in the tournament: we’re undefeated, and so is Chilliwack, while the Saints/Murder Squad, the Drillers, the Battleford Raiders, and the Roosters are two-and-one.

  The Roosters are using our dressing room, and there’s something almost sweet about the exchanges between our players and the Ratsloffs as they troop in. Those of us who arrived early enough to watch the last part of the game talk about good plays they’d seen the Roosters make. Even Junior gets in on it, consoling Lenny Nakamoto even though he’s scared silly of him. The rest of us imply, casually but somehow sincerely, that the Roosters lost the game because of bad bounces and bad luck, not because they were playing against a better team.

  It’s true and not true. The Lions were the better team and everyone knows it. But the Roosters weren’t outclassed. Between two teams like this, a couple of pucks bouncing one way or another can always change the results. Anyway, we’re extend- ing a courtesy to them, not undermining the whole of human reality, and the Roosters return the courtesy through their body English as they move amongst us, subtly trying not to infect us with their bad luck.

  It’s weird, and sort of impressive. These men aren’t quite the Ratsloffs who’ve been pounding on us all these years, but that isn’t what impresses me. It’s a reminder that for all the competitive crap and violence in the world — and in this hockey league over the years — decency is kind of, what’s the word? Ubiquitous.

  One thing’s for sure. This tournament is more civilized than the ones I played here twenty years ago. The boozing is less frantic, the games more skillful and less nasty. Or maybe what I’m mistaking for a small advance in civilization is the shortening of my own self-centred radius. Until everyone’s gone home, and we get the damage reports from the hotels and motels they’re staying in, the jury’s out on all of it.

  On us, meanwhile — the Lumbermen and the NSHL — judge, jury, and executioner have come in. While we’re suiting up, Don Young, Sr. crashes the dressing room waving the Saturday paper. On the lower half of page one, it has the announcement of an agreement to move Victoria’s Major Junior franchise to Mantua for next season.

  “Lemme see that,” Bobby Bell says, grabbing the newspaper.

  Nearly everyone, including the remaining Roosters, crowds around him to read over his shoulder, but I don’t need to. Neither do Jack or Gord. Jack catches my eye and shrugs: Snell’s timing is impeccable. It’s about what you’d expect from a guy who has his nose stuck that deep in the crack of the corporate sector’s ass. They’ve probably promised to install a gin pipeline to his office at City Hall.

  Bobby, meanwhile, has finished reading, and tosses the newspaper in the air. “Someone ought to fit Snell with a pair of D9 treads for ankle bracelets and see if he can swim across the river to InterCon’s office.”

  It’s an interesting suggestion. Bobby looks at the three of us for confirmation, and the lights come on. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” he says.

  “There were rumours,” Gord confirms. “We were hoping it might be the year after next.”

  “So,” Dickie wants to know, “what does this mean for us?”

  “Put two and two together,” Freddy answers for us. “You can handle that.”

  “Never mind that silly shit,” Jack tells them, then spends ten minutes explaining the density and extent of the shit for them without commenting on its lousy odour. “Anyway,” he concludes, “a lot of things can happen before next fall. We’ve got a game to play in fifteen minutes, so let’s concentrate on that. These musicians aren’t going to be pushovers.”

  That isn’t all Jack has to say. He continues with a rah-rah speech while we finish getting ready, one that’s so good it even has me convinced that the tournament is the centre of the universe. As I’m heading out to the ice, he stops me. “You take it easy out there,” he warns. “We may have to play a second game before the day’s out.”

  I’VE UNDERESTIMATED WENDEL. FROM the first face-off he’s flying, and I let myself be swept up in his turbulence like a piper cub in the jetstream of an F-18. I play more with that than I play against the Murder Squad, letting it create open ice for me, and for my right winger, Lanny Becker, even though he’s too dumb to see it.

  But there’s a problem. By mid period it’s apparent we’ve got just one defenceman with a full deck. That’s Gus, whose deck isn’t exactly the standard one to begin with. Bobby Bell, Dickie, and Gus’s partner Pat Horricks are still wrecked from last night, or dazzled by the Murder Squad’s fame, or, most likely, both. Whatever it is, they’re running around in our end whenever the Murder Squad is on the attack, and they’re hanging back when we’re in their zone. We’re going to have to win this one with our forwards.

  Artie is on his game, and he scores one goal and sets Freddy up for another without Freddy really catching on until it’s too late to do anything but put it in the net. Not that Freddy appears to be under the weather. He’s up to something all his own. He’s teasing one of the Murder Squad’s defencemen, a scrawny little guy I assume must be one of the drummers. It’s definitely teasing, but to the crowd it looks like Freddy is trying to kill him. At least five times he lines the drummer up and crunches him against the boards. Only we can see how careful Freddy is. He keeps his elbows down, and makes sure the drummer is right against the boards when he hits him so that the boards absorb the force, not the drummer. It isn’t long before it gets to the little guy. After the fifth or sixth hit, he loses it and jumps Freddy from behind. What Freddy does next gets both benches laughing: he skates around the ice with the little drummer draped around his shoulders. Eventually the linesman drags the drummer off and escorts him to the penalty box.

  I go out with Wendel and Gord for the powerplay, win the faceoff, and push the puck to Gord, who drills it around the boards behind the Murder Squad’s net. Wendel picks it up on his wing and carries it behind the net, drawing three players with him. He stops on a dime, ties all three of them up, and throws the puck into the slot as I arrive there to put it away. Two shifts later, I intercept a clearing pass in exactly the same spot and find myself with another clear lane to the net, and I ring it in off the inside crossbar.

  We go into the dressing room ahead five-four, with Junior cursing a blue streak at the lousy protection he’s getting. Number 13 scores all four of the Murder Squad’s goals. None of our defencemen have any answers, except maybe Gus, who’s played his sanest and cleanest period in weeks. We’re ahead, and no one is too worried that we�
�ll lose this game.

  Artie scores another beautiful goal early in the second, and after that the game slows down and our defencemen clean up their act a little. Jack has two forwards staying back and keeping the Murder Squad from getting anything together between the bluelines. The game isn’t penalty-free, but there’s no malice on either side, and no one loses his mind except the little drummer boy, who Freddy keeps crunching against the boards like he was trying to turn him into an accordion.

  He’s picked the right guy to torment. The drummer is evidently their designated goon, crazy as it sounds, and he goons it up on every shift they let him out for — which isn’t too many once they catch on to what Freddy’s game is. I’m having trouble figuring out how the Murder Squad makes decisions. There’s no coach behind the bench, and no one else seems to be in charge. I give the problem to James, but he can’t solve it either, except to detect that about every three shifts they end up with seven players on the ice. What the hell. I already knew democracy is a flawed system, and with a two-goal advantage we can live with a few political transgressions.

  Between the second and third periods, Stan begs Jack to let him play a few minutes. He’s pretty green around the gills from the last two days, but after Wendel and Freddy score on succes- sive shifts to give us a ten-to-six lead around the ten-minute mark, Jack puts him on the ice. Stan lets in two goals and drops his cookies into the back of the net after each one, but putting him in is the right thing, except maybe for Alpo and the cleanup crews.

  I leave the dressing room without bothering anyone with more of my parental advice, and Esther drives me home, stashes me in bed, and joins me. I doze off in her arms and sleep like a baby while the Raiders turf the Drillers from the tournament nine to one. That’s the score Jack gives me when he calls at seven PM to tell me I’m supposed to be on the ice in exactly one hour to play the Roosters.

  “Brilliant,” I answer. “I take it you’ve set us up for two games in eight hours to prove that we’re manly men.”

  “I did it because so far we’ve had the best draw in the tournament,” he snaps. “And because if I didn’t we’d be making the Raiders play consecutive games.”

  I apologize, hang up, and drag my sleep-sodden bones out of bed and away from Esther’s warmth.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I’M LAST ONTO THE ice for the pre-game warm-up, but not because I’m late getting to the Coliseum. On the drive down, the all-too-familiar tightness in my lower back tells me I’m closer to forty-five than twenty-five. I listen, and stay in the dressing room to stretch the muscles.

  Through most of this tournament I’ve been first man on the ice, or near to it. And no, I’m not a born-again keener. The pre-game skate has been my chance to size up the skaters on the opposite side of centre. But that’s hardly necessary here. I’ve seen the Roosters so often in the last seven years I practically know their dick sizes.

  The good news is that most us don’t appear to have gone to the bars after the game with the Murder Squad the way I thought they would. Gord tells me a few took naps, and the rest hung around the Coliseum to watch the game between Battleford and the Drillers.

  The exception is Stan, who slipped his collar and trotted after his heroes. As he suits up, it’s plain to me he’s still pissed out of his lips. When he veers into a doorjamb on the way out for the warm-up and nearly knocks himself cold, everyone else gets it too. It’s funny, but if anything happens to Junior during the game we’re in trouble.

  I’m not alone in the dressing room while I stretch. Gus stays behind, but he isn’t there to keep me company. He clears the equipment from a corner of the room, parks his noggin on an old seat cushion he’s found, lifts himself into a headstand against the wall — skates and all — and begins to moo like a pregnant cow.

  He holds both the posture and the mooing for close to three minutes. When he comes down, his face — and his bald head — most resembles a huge beet. He shakes himself like a dog, lets fly with a blood-curdling scream, then picks up his gloves and stick and heads for the passageway to the ice.

  “Stress management,” he stops to explain on his way by. “Learned it from some Tibetans while I was in medical school.”

  “Sure thing,” I answer. He’s gone by the time I realize why he was doing it. He’s petrified of the Roosters.

  GUS HAS HIS FEARS under control by opening face-off. Through the first period he’s a model of concentration, determined, efficient, and deathly silent. He unloads the puck quickly each time he gets it, quickly but accurately, and without a trace of panic. Few Roosters get close enough to try to whack him, and when one of the twins goes out of his way to throw an elbow, he telegraphs it and Gus is long gone when the elbow arrives.

  The Roosters are game, but it’s our game they’re playing, not theirs. From the first whistle they’re back on their heels, reacting. Jack is sending the wingers deep to pressure their defencemen, who respond by trying to move the puck through centre. About four minutes into the game Artie picks off a pass just inside their blueline, dekes Lenny, and scores. JoMo is playing pretty sedately while Artie’s line is on the ice, and so is the big cousin they’ve flown in from Medicine Hat for the tournament. But when my line is on, both of them are beating the crap out of Lanny, and they’re doing the same to the third line even while Wendel’s double-shifting.

  It makes no difference, and it isn’t a defence against motion. Chris McBride scores a rare goal for us with a wrist shot on a puck he intercepts in the slot, and Freddy, seconds before the buzzer, puts both the puck and JoMo past Lenny in a goalmouth scramble.

  Through the second Jack reverses tactics, sending the centres deep and holding the wingers back so they can obstruct the neutral zone. I take a regular shift as I did in the first period, but this is much harder work. I spend much of the period behind the Roosters’ net dodging their attempts to splatter me on the boards. I’m a little battered as the period winds down, but I’ve managed to put the puck onto Wendel’s stick often enough that he scores twice.

  Artie scores his second goal of the game on an end-to-end rush that begins behind our net, circles theirs twice, and has everyone’s jaw down around their knees by the time the puck plunks down behind Lenny. It’s the prettiest goal I’ve seen in a long time, and as Artie skates to the bench I see Alpo standing on top of the Zamboni jumping up and down and screeching his brains out.

  I lean over to Artie after he settles on the bench and point at the Zamboni. “Didn’t think I’d ever see that,” I say.

  Artie grins. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s kind of weird, ain’t it. The old guy’s come around. Elsa and I have been staying with him the last couple of weekends. He’s still the same miserable old shithead he’s always been. But he’s my miserable old shithead.”

  WE GO BACK TO the dressing room up six-one. The game is closer than the score, but it’s ours now, and Jack’s main strategy for the rest of it is to head off a brawl. He stops short of suggesting we give up a couple of goals — and thus put the Roosters back in the game — but I can tell it’s in the back of his mind.

  Personally, I don’t see a brawl happening. If they can’t win the tournament, the Roosters would prefer to see us win, and I figure there’s enough functioning brain cells on their bench to put the brakes on their other instincts for once. Then I remember that a couple of months ago these same Roosters came within a hair of burning Okenoke, and wonder if I’m kidding myself.

  If a brawl starts, it won’t be Gus who starts it. As Jack finishes his pep talk, Gus gets to his feet and bangs his stick loudly against one of the lockers.

  “Listen up, you guys,” he says. “Be cool out there. I’ve never won anything in my life, and I goddamned well want us to win this game and this tournament. Anyone who starts goofing around out there is going to find me in their face. So keep your lips buttoned and don’t take chances.” For a moment he looks as if he’s finished, but he’s not. “
If you see any of those animals trying to injure Artie or Wendel or the Old Guy here” — he points his stick at me — “feel free to take their heads off right around the kneecaps.”

  On our way back to the ice for the third, I tap him on the shoulder.

  “Thanks for the compliment, asshole. You really know how to tune up a guy’s ego.”

  He grins but doesn’t turn his head. “No slur intended,” he answers. “If you want your ego returned to its original inflated condition, come see me in my office next week. This is hockey, not therapy.”

  THE ONLY ONE ON the bench who doesn’t heed Gus’s advice is James. He starts in on JoMo with his sharp, high-pitched needle the moment the period starts, and jabs it into him mercilessly whenever he’s on the ice. JoMo ignores him for a while, but when James rams it in up to the hilt after JoMo carries the puck over our blueline offside, JoMo skates over and flicks the puck toward him.

  I lunge across the bench at it, but I’m too far away. Stan, who’s had his bucket between his legs through the first two periods and has looked as if he’s in a coma, calmly reaches across and picks the puck from the air an inch in front of James’s face.

  JoMo doesn’t get away with the stunt, either. Freddy decks him before he can take two steps, cracking the face shield he’s been wearing since Gord broke his nose. I look over to the Roosters’ bench and see Old Man Ratsloff yanking players back off the ice. The ref sends both of them to the penalty box, JoMo for unsportsmanlike conduct and Freddy for roughing, and the moment passes.

  I motion James over. “Stuff a cork in it,” I say. “You heard what Gus said.”

  James does what he’s told, at least until the Roosters score a couple of quick goals. When they let JoMo out of the penalty box I notice Old Man Ratsloff chewing him out, and JoMo doesn’t make it out on the ice for the rest of the game.