The final score is seven to three, and we clamber over the boards to shake hands with the Roosters. Even the one year we made it to the league finals nothing like this happened. But tonight things are different. There’s respect between these two teams now, and a certain amount of regret — although no one is willing to own up to the latter.
“Next year,” Neil Ratsloff says to me as we’re shaking hands.
“For sure,” I answer. “Come on up this summer and I’ll take you fishing.” I don’t have the slightest idea where that one came from, and from the look on his face, neither does Neil.
“You serious about that?” he asks.
“Offer’s genuine. Just don’t push me out of the boat, that’s all.”
“Well,” he says, “I might just take you up on it.” He skates away with a dumbfounded smile on his face.
I DON’T RECOGNIZE HOW dog-tired I am until we’re in the dressing room, and I can’t seem to muster the energy to take my skates off. So I sit there, gazing happily around the room like I’m senile, until Esther appears and takes charge.
“You’re coming with me,” she says. “For a back massage and a good night’s sleep.”
There’s no point arguing with her, although I’m tempted to when I catch Wendel mimicking her behind her back, the smart- ass. She’s probably right, anyway. I may have felt like a twentyfive-year-old this morning, but I’m feeling my age now, and then some. We could have two games tomorrow, possibly three, if the Lions win tonight. Given that they’ve already beaten the Raiders back in the opening round, odds are they’ll win this one. That’ll leave two undefeated teams, and in a double knockout tournament, that means a best-of-three final.
THERE’S AN UNSEASONABLY WARM breeze blowing across Cran- berry Ridge when we arrive home. The same breeze has been blowing for three days now, and it’s melted the last of the snow in town and much of what’s left up where we are. But until this moment I haven’t acknowledged that there’s been any world beyond the tournament, and so I’ve missed three sunny spring days the breezes have brought with them. Spring is still a month off, but whatever this is, it isn’t winter.
“I think,” I say to Esther as I’m unlocking the front door, “I’ll take the dogs out for a ramble.”
“Mind if I join you?”
I don’t mind, and the dogs don’t either. Bozo has already gotten used to walking with Claire and Esther, who have taken to long Saturday walks so they can discuss their schemes without my father and I teasing them. Fang, of course, is being himself: boing, boing, boing. I pull both pairs of gumboots from the closet along with the replaced Maglite, and off the four of us go.
The cycle of the moon is close to full, but the orb is still low in the sky, leaving the skies to the stars and the hydrocarbon haze from downtown. The faint band of the Milky Way over us reminds us, if we want the perspective, that an infinity of hockey tournaments are being played out there, together with an infinity of everything else.
The dogs range ahead of us, Bozo leading sedately with her still-tender hip, Fang bounding around her like a spotted yo-yo. Esther and I walk beside the ribbon of unmelted snow from my winter snowshoe trail, silent as the dogs but holding hands, drinking in the familiar redolence of mud and last fall’s ferment- ing poplar leaves. It’s one of those annual perfumes that life smears across your sensorium around here, and it took me a long time to decipher the message. Life, it suggests, doesn’t start anew each year. It percolates and composts everything that came before, and out of that comes the rebirth.
“Andy, where are the dogs?” As always, Esther is in the real world.
I play the Maglite’s powerful beam across the landscape until it finds them at the edge of a thicket of Russian willow. They’re motionless — Bozo with her nose to the earth, Fang alert, one paw lifted from the ground. Curious, I widen the flashlight’s sweep and find a pair of coyotes not more than forty metres from them, equally alert. The coyotes seem uncertain, and it’s hard to say what they think they’re on to. Their noses are telling them that it’s domesticated dogs, but their eyes are telling them they’ve got a black bear hanging out with a rabbit or a rat.
Startled, I flick off the beam. Now that I know they’re there, I have enough light to follow them without the beam. Or so I think. I’m expecting the coyotes to slink off now that they know we’ve seen them, but either they’re habituated to human presence or hunger is making them bold. For a brief moment I lose sight of them, and when I flick on the Maglite it’s just in time to see them closing in on the dogs. Before Bozo senses they’re around, the lead coyote darts past her and picks up Fang by the scruff of his neck and disappears into the willow thicket.
There’s an outburst of snarls and yelps, followed by a highpitched scream of pain. Fang trots out of the thicket and into the beam of the Maglite with his eyes glowing red and his mouth clogged with coyote fur. A Jack Russell terrier, the coyote has learned, is no bunny rabbit. Bozo lopes over to greet him, and then follows him as he canters proudly to us to be congratulated.
It happened too quickly for either of us to be frightened for Fang’s safety, and he’s unharmed except for a small cut at the back of his neck where the coyote picked him up. He’ll need a rabies shot as a precaution, and probably something stronger to deflate his canine ego.
We walk on for another half kilometre before turning back, and this time the dogs, at Esther’s insistence, stay closer to us. It’s a good thing. The long winter is giving up its gruesome treasures, and not all are as pleasant as the perfume of mud and poplar leaves. Fang finds a dead badger by the trail, and is just about to roll himself in its decaying gore when Esther grabs him. She has to carry him half the way home before he forgets about the badger and tries to lick her face.
We’re almost at the door when the coyotes start howling, no doubt telling and retelling the legend of the terrible spotted rabbit that looked like a rat, hung out with a bear, and fought like a wolverine.
They’re still telling the story as sleep closes in on me, joined by a raven as their colour commentator, and my alpha waves tune in on the conversation and ride it.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE TELEPHONE IS JANGLING, and I reach across Esther to pick up the receiver.
“What is it now?” I demand irritably. I’m pretty sure it isn’t the Queen calling at this hour, so I don’t care who I snap at.
It’s Jack, and he’s all business.
“How’s the backside this fine morning?”
“Gord’s my doctor. You’re supposed to be my accountant. And I can answer a phone, so it must be okay.” I check the window, and he’s telling the truth about it being a fine morning. “Your dog tangled with a couple of coyotes last night.”
“I hope the coyotes are okay,” he answers, unconcerned. “Lis- ten. I’d like you down here in about an hour.”
I check my watch. It’s already ten. “How’d it go last night?”
“Chilliwack won.”
“Oh, shit. So we have to play them at least twice today?”
“Well, maybe not. I got a call from them this morning suggesting we might want to make it a single game, winner take all.”
Esther’s awake, staring at me with her eyebrows lifted. “Jack?” she asks softly.
I nod, and lean over to kiss her. She grimaces and turns away. “Your breath smells like you ate that dead badger from last night.”
“I did,” I answer. “Snuck out after you were asleep.”
Jack interrupts me. “Pay attention,” he hollers in my ear. “Are you still in bed?”
I confess that I am. “Get your butt out of there and meet us in the Alexander Mackenzie at eleven,” he says, and hangs up before I can whine.
I’M FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE, and never mind why. I’ve got Esther’s cell phone in my coat pocket so I can call her with the game times.
A single-game final would be a
piece of luck, if we can swing it. I’m not sure why Jack didn’t just say yes to the offer, because it’s to our advantage. The Lions are younger than we are, and probably better conditioned. If we end up playing three games, they’ll toast us.
When I wander into the coffee bar and see most of my teammates there, I understand why he didn’t accept the offer outright. Jack’s a democrat at heart, and he wants everybody there for a team decision. I sit down, order coffee, and listen.
Typically, the younger players would like the whole set of games. They want to win the tournament, but they also want to play as much hockey as they can. It’s a tougher decision than I thought. Gus makes the point that given Snell’s announcement yesterday these may be our last games as a team, and maybe we should play as many as we can.
Gord answers that one. “I don’t believe we should think that way,” he says. “And if we want the team to have a fighting chance next year, we ought to do our damnedest to make it hard for Snell to boot our asses out of the Coliseum. If we win this tournament,” he adds, “it’ll make him think twice. So which way do we have the best chance?”
It’s almost a rhetorical question, and he emphasizes this by lifting his left knee onto the table — or rather by trying to, and failing. I can see from Wendel’s expression that he’s rounding the corner on this one.
“What do you say, Weaver?” he asks.
“I’ll play as many games as we need to,” I say, and leave the sentence hanging.
Wendel finishes it for me. “But you think we’d have a better shot in a one-game final.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Wendel persists. “But you’re thinking it.”
“Okay.”
“Good enough for me,” he says.
Jack sees a couple of the Lions enter, including their coach, and he motions them over. “We clear on this?” he asks us.
It’s unanimous, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Wendel sits down beside me. “So,” he says, teasing, “my poppa’s a putz, is he?” Before I can answer, he drops it. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’ll come down for the game. As soon as I phone her and let her know when it starts.”
I watch as the Chilliwack coach sits down a few tables away to yak with Jack and Gord. I haven’t had a close look at him until now, and I realize he’s Neil DeBerk’s younger brother Dave. He must be in his late thirties now, but the last time I saw him he was a nasty kid playing Junior B hockey and trying to hang around with his older brother and his friends. Me, in other words.
Wendel and I talk for a few minutes, and when he decides to head over to the Coliseum I join Jack and the Chilliwack contingent. I’m introduced, and listen quietly as the deal for a one-game final is settled. Their motive, it turns out, is simple expedience: most of their players have to be at work on Monday morning, and a three-game final might not get them home in time.
With the deal concluded, Dave DeBerk turns his attention to me. “Don’t I know you from someplace?” he asks.
I shrug, feeling suddenly weary again.
“Just a move you made — the way you used the big guy as your screen in the second period against Camelot. The only other guy I ever saw do it that way used to play with my older brother before he died in an accident years back. Mind you, this kid had a different set of wheels on him. One hell of a player, but messed up.”
Gord gives me a cutting look, then stares out the window. And there it is again, one of those strands that has been dangling down the middle of my life for two decades, now resolved in my favour, even though I didn’t stop what happened and will never completely forgive myself. So do I reach out here and pull this one in with the others in front of this man? It won’t help Dave DeBerk to know that a man who watched his brother die is sit- ting across from him or that until two days ago I thought I was guilty of killing him. Esther knows. Gord knows. My father knows. Someday I’ll tell my brother and my son the story, but not this year.
So no. I’ll remain a stranger to DeBerk. To reveal myself would be imposing my own need for symmetry, and, like most private needs, it’d be cruel and selfish. It’s enough that I’m freed of it. It’s taken years for those families to heal from the losses of their brothers and sons. If I stepped out of my place in their scar tissue, all I’d do is tear open the old wounds. A totally symmetrical life is a life without others in it, and a life without kindness or real love. A real life has loose ends.
So the four of us, Dave DeBerk, me, and my two closest friends sit around making the smallest of small talk, until it’s time to get ready to play hockey. Almost as if the past had never been.
ON THE WAY OUT I punch the digits of our number into the cell phone and let Esther know we’re playing at one-thirty. “It’s one game,” I add.
“Well, that’s a relief,” she says. “What was the meeting about, then?”
“Jack did the right thing. He let all of us decide.” I feel a childish need to see her. “Can you come down to the dressing room before the game? I want …”
I can’t quite explain what I want.
She cuts me off. “I’ll see you about one,” she says.
BY THE TIME SHE arrives, I’m suited up and the need is gone, swallowed up by the dressing room’s intensity, by the sheer crazy normality of what we’re trying to do — win a stupid hockey game in a stupid tournament at the far end of a kind of hockey that’s as doomed as the dinosaurs. She comes into the dressing room, sits down beside me, and talks to Gord about some social event next week. More normality. When it’s time to go she tells me to be careful on the ice, and I give her a peck on the cheek. Then she pats my new helmet and I stomp away from her down the hallway as if I’m really going someplace important.
As I line up for my first face-off, I realize that I don’t much care if we win this game — at least, not for myself. It isn’t that I’m tired. I’m not. In every other sense, I’m ready to play. It’s just that I’m more interested in playing in the game than in winning it.
By halfway thorough the first period, I’ve learned something else: we may not win. The Lions are the best team we’ve faced. Man for man they’re faster than we are, they’re younger, and they bang hard enough in the first few minutes to let us know that they want this game as badly as we do.
Their best two players are forwards, and one of them is Paul Davidson, Mikey’s nephew. He has everything you can ask for — speed, puck sense, and an unpredictability you can’t buy. He makes me wonder why he isn’t in the NHL, because his skills are close to Wendel’s. The other good one is the centre on his line. He’s a tall, rawboned kid who doesn’t have great wheels, but he’s powerful and intelligent. Their defencemen are smaller than ours, but more mobile. We come off the ice after twenty minutes huffing and puffing, without either team scoring a goal.
A couple of minutes into the second, I catch Paul Davidson carrying the puck along our blueline with his head down. He’s looking for his centre, who’s snaking in along the far boards and heading for the net, and he’s completely vulnerable. I have a split second to decide: I can hit him with a clean check, and quite likely put him out of the game. Or I can dodge him and let him get by me to make the pass, in which case they’ll likely score. I do neither. He sees me at the last second, and as his head comes up I step to one side. As he’s going by me, off balance, I bring my shoulder down and clip him with it so that he loses his balance and the puck, and slides along the ice toward the far boards.
The ref sees a trip that isn’t there, and whistles me to the penalty box. It’s a bad call, but he isn’t about to reverse it because I whine, so I skate over to the open door and step in. Davidson skates past the box, spins around, and stops.
“Thanks,” he says. “You could have creamed me there.”
“You’re welcome,” I answer back. “Keep your head up if you want to keep it on your shoulders. Next time I won’t be so nice.”
> He nods, and skates away. Nice kid, which probably explains why he didn’t make it to the NHL.
Thirty seconds later the nice kid crosses the blueline, catches Gus on his heels, puts the puck between his legs and picks it up behind him, and flips it past Junior. It’s the first time in the tournament we’ve been behind.
Jack doesn’t say much during the intermission, except to instruct Gord and Freddy to crash the net more so Artie can get some skating room, and to tell Wendel to use his speed to the outside more. He knows rah-rahs aren’t going to help us, and if we get too wired up they’re likely to screw up our heads. This is a game that’ll be settled by skill and by the breaks, not with any Knute Rockne nonsense.
As we’re gathering our equipment to head back to the ice to finish it, I bang my stick against a locker. “Okay, you guys. Let’s win this one for the Gimp.”
James is standing behind me. “Oh yeah?” he wants to know. “Which one of you guys is the Gimp?”
I see Stan, who’s fully sober for the first time in a couple of days, scratching his head. “Isn’t it supposed to be ‘The Gipper’ we win it for? And what the hell is a gipper, anyway?”
Everyone hits the ice laughing.
WE HAVEN’T HAD THE tempo of this game down, maybe because it’s too tight and tense to have a tempo. But as the period reaches the five-minute mark Jack shortens the lines, and we begin to pick it up. Maybe it’s Gord and Freddy crashing the net, but the Chilliwack defencemen begin to back in, and the openings appear, small at first, then larger. Artie ties it eight minutes in with a high stickside wrist shot the goalie doesn’t see because he’s got five hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of green monsters obstructing his view.
On my next shift I lose another face-off, but Paul Davidson gets careless and banks the puck off the boards toward our zone — and right to Gus a step inside our blueline. I see the play in the same instant Gus does, and so does Wendel, who heads down right side. Gus steps over our blueline, hits me with the pass at theirs, and I’m behind their forwards with just a single defenceman to beat. I know where Wendel is going to be without having to look, and I know he’s in the clear because I hear the defenceman who’s in position move for me and I can feel the other one chopping at my forearms with his stick.
The Last of the Lumbermen Page 26