by Bob Leroux
“Dad, please,” Billy pleaded, “couldn’t you just boil it down to one question? Maybe that would help.”
His father rubbed his chin for a moment, then said, “Okay, let’s put it this way. What you really have to choose between is the world you know, Munro Mills and all your friends . . . are you with me?” When Billy nodded, he went on, “So that’s it, you have to choose between the world you know . . . and the world you dream about.”
Billy considered that for a long moment, then slowly nodded his head. Finally, he looked up, with a grin on his face. “I think I knew that.”
Angus Campbell wound up to deliver a retort, then realized once more he was being teased, the same way his wife had often accused him of teasing her. He hoped that meant his son was growing up. “Good,” he finally came back with, “let me know when you make up your mind. I’ll need some lead time if I’m going to rent your room out.”
They both laughed, guarding their feelings by making a joke out of the possibility that Billy might be leaving home for good at the tender age of seventeen.
As the weeks passed, Billy took to wandering off alone through the fields across the road from home. Sometimes his mother would watch him from the parlour window, worrying about her troubled young man as she saw him pick his way through the pasture and disappear over the hill above the grove, where the pond was, and the old tree fort the boys had built and rebuilt so many times. She wondered what was taking him back to his childhood playground, suspecting it might be the prospect of leaving it all behind. But she knew it was something he would have to work out on his own.
He tried, as he walked the familiar ground, imagining life in a big city full of strangers at the same time as conjuring up images of the good times he would miss here at home. Some sunny afternoons, when he reached the hill above the pond, he would find a warm spot in the grass and lie on his back for a long time, soaking up the sun and staring at the changing sky, thinking about the good old days, when all he had to worry about was how soon there would be ice on the pond. He knew he had outgrown pond hockey, that those careless days of childhood were over. But more often than not, he would slip into a dream, a dream that took him back to his childhood, back to the boy he once was, back to the magic of the grove.
And that was how he knew. Each time he dreamed the dream he awoke knowing the answer: that he would have to leave his family and friends to play the game that he loved. It was the game that called to him, always the game.
“Where are you off to, young fella?”
The boy stood at the kitchen door, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding the hockey stick and skates slung over his shoulder. He slipped a hand off the stick to push the woollen toque from his eyes, and looked back at the smiling faces behind him. His mother was standing by the kitchen sink, a bowl of vegetables and a paring knife in her hands. His father was sitting in the white rocking chair by the old, brown oil heater, a newspaper opened across his knees. His big brother was there, too, grinning at him from his favourite spot at the kitchen table, his long legs stretched lazily out in front of him. “The ice is froze on the pond,” the boy almost shouted, “we’re getting a game up.”
“Froze, eh?” His father laughed. “You mean the water’s frozen, don’t you?”
“Huh?” He pushed the toque back up his forehead and opened the door a crack.
“Wait a minute, now,” his father protested. “How do you know that the ice is thick enough?”
The boy had his answer ready as he started through the door. “We broke it with a rock. It’s fine. Almost three inches.”
His father looked at his mother and calmed her with his eyes. “Okay, then. If you checked it.”
As the boy passed through the door, his mother called after him, “Mind you get home in time for supper.”
The boy barely heard her as he slammed the door behind him and pounded down the steps. In no time at all, he was across the road and at the fence on the other side. He threw over his stick and skates and began to climb the wire fence, using the weathered grey post for leverage. Swaying with the creaking wire, he balanced one foot on the top strand and pushed off the post to land in the tall grass below. He broke through the thin crust of snow and was reminded of his good fortune. An early freeze-up with little snow, just what he and his friends had prayed for.
He retrieved his gear and took off across the pasture. He ran and he ran, fairly floating as he jumped over gullies and sprang from rock to rock, already high on thoughts of the game to come. When at last he reached the hill above the pond, the boy looked down and saw that his friends awaited him.
“Hey, Billy. Hurry up and get your skates on. You’re on my team.” It was his best friend. “Hurry up,” his friend called again as he turned and started up the ice with the puck, “the ice is perfect.”
The boy ran down the hill to the old stump and spent a fevered few minutes jamming on his skates and lacing them up as tight as he could get them. He shivered as he shoved his freezing fingers back into his leather mitts. It was two short steps to the ice. He whirled in a tight circle and skidded to a stop. He looked down at the blades on his feet and laughed with joy. The magic was back, the pond was his kingdom, and his feet were wings. He could fly again, swirling and swooping over the ice until he was once again under the spell of the silver pond.
“C’mon, Billy,” his friend urged, “get in the game.”
The game! The boy’s heart swelled with gladness and his face split into a wide grin. He reached up once more to push his hat out of his eyes, then tightened his grip on the stick and started up the ice. He was home.
About the Author
Bob (J.R.) Leroux was born in 1945 and raised in Alexandria, Glengarry County. At the age of thirteen, his family moved to Ottawa, where he attended high school and university. Taking a break from his studies, he spent some time working on the Mid-Canada Line in northern Ontario and Quebec. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts and his Masters in Education, he taught for a few years before beginning a twenty-year career in personnel management in the federal government. He took early retirement in 1995 to finish building a family home on the Ottawa River and to try his hand at writing novels. This is his fourth novel. His first novel, Murder in the Glen, was published in 2003, followed by a second “Big Charlie Belisle” murder mystery in 2006, Dead in the Water. His third novel, The Second Son, a story of love and betrayal in a small town, was published in 2010.
Bob Leroux can be reached at: [email protected]