Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  Fear in airplanes is a terrific phenomenon. It is ripe for a giant statistical study. I’d like to see a study based on factors like race and sex. The deepest things. Although I guess you’d also have to consider national origin, religion, and income bracket. Age would be one of the things that’s beside the point. In a plane flying through a blizzard, there are no adults.

  I get the impression from all the air miles I’ve logged that poorer people do a lot of the worrying. This seems unfair, and it could simply be that they show it more. People who carry shopping bags onto the plane. People who don’t know how to use the toilets. Just locking yourself into one of those stainless steel toilets can be a culture shock, I imagine, for someone who’s never dealt with this kind of tightly packed efficiency—efficiency so compact and stainless-steel-like that a person could easily believe he is in there to be tortured or driven mad. How little we must think of ourselves, a person might conclude, to be able to jettison our waste so instantly and efficiently with a. blue chemical chaser.

  But maybe the darker people, the poorer people, are simply closer to the roots of their own fear than are well-to-do people, who have painted over their fear with graduate school and being able to order in French. That’s why we need this study. To discover how much fear is lying buried in expensive Glen plaid and cashmere and crushed leather.

  Religious people impress me with the maturity and ripeness of their fear. They don’t have panicky fear. It is more a quiet trembling. Priests are good at fear. They are close to death. They expect it any time. All their training since childhood has given them a huge awareness of death, and when you mix in a little hell and a little eternal suffering, you have some tight-lipped, trembling men and you have some men who are listening intently to every shift in the engine noise for some evidence that things are about to get a lot worse.

  People are always ultrapolite on planes. I think this is because our awareness of death is at a higher level than it is when we’re on a bus or ferry boat. You don’t push or shove when you’re moving down the aisle of a giant, gleaming death machine. With a couple of priests aboard, and all the mature death content they project with their shiny black suits and talcumed faces, we might find ourselves at an all-time high as far as morbid awareness is concerned. We don’t feel the same way about nuns, I don’t think. Nuns are cute and amusing, like Japanese.

  Again, maybe religious people just show their fear more than others. It could be that the middle-aged, white businessman who flies two or three weekdays out of every five, all year around, who carries an American Airlines Admirals Club card close to his heart (“Guests are welcome only when accompanied by an Admiral”), who knows all the little tricks of air travel down to wrapping different items of small clothing in separate plastic baggies and how to get a bulkhead seat and exactly when to arrive at the so-called baggage carousel—maybe this man is simply a master of hiding his fear, and has learned over the course of four hundred thousand miles of flying how to appear crisp and businesslike in the face of burnt-out engines, jagged streaks of lightning, and ski-masked, religious-fanatical hijackers with explosives strapped to their crotches. You need people like this on a rough flight. They are Admirals, whether they’re faking their crispness or not. I’ve never flown with a planeload of pilgrims going to Mecca, but I’ll bet that a computer-parts salesman from Grand Island, Nebraska, couldn’t help but settle that bunch down in a spot of heavy weather. The industrial nations still have a lot to impart. Sure, it may all be masterful concealment. The Admiral may be shaken to his very nerve endings, but as long as he imparts confidence and steadiness, he is doing the intelligent thing. This may be the whole point of Western civilization. How to be afraid intelligently. How to get more out of your fear than the other fellow gets out of his.

  Martini drinkers are fearful people. They strike me as people who consider hysteria a form of self-expression. You see Scotch, wine, bourbon drinkers, and you can’t be sure how they’ll behave when the stewardess starts dropping words like flotation device and fetal position. With martini drinkers, you sense an inward cringing. They are hard-faced and fearful. There is something about the combination of gin and dry vermouth that points to cowardice. If you sit next to a woman drinking martinis on a plane, you are definitely in the presence of fear. These days we are not supposed to use the word hysterical when we discuss women, but there is a certain hysterical element in the drinking of martinis by women on airplanes. I can’t stand the drink myself, so I don’t know firsthand what the connection is, but they are definitely a fear potion, martinis, and they are not meant either to calm hysteria or to induce hysteria. They are simply part of the ritual of hysteria that accompanies leaving the earth in a silver bird, in my opinion.

  And this is why the airplane is the perfect laboratory for a study of fear. You are cut off from the earth, from all the things that console you or support you. Your fear is pure. It is pure fear. It is naked and isolated and pure. You sit there helpless and practically shining in the purity of your fear. It is a kind of sainthood. It is that pure.

  Anyway, we went bucketing over western New York and I was wishing the pilot would just set it down anywhere and then taxi the final thirty-six miles to the airport. I was in a window seat, darting wild looks at the weather, and steady defenseman Nils Nilsson was on the aisle, pretending to read a magazine, with the seat between us full of debris from the overhead compartments, when who comes edging past Nils Nilsson’s knees and onto the pile of blankets, coats and sweaters but Ranger coach J. P. Larousse, his eyes full of pure fear.

  “You are not afraid?” he said.

  “I am afraid.”

  “You don’t look.”

  “I may not look, but I’m afraid. Any sane person would be.”

  “I have always hated this to fly. But it has to be. This is the world we have made, eh? It is foolish. It should be a game for kids with sticks on a frozen lake. What are we doing up in this white air, five hundred miles from home, stiff with terror? I am stiff with terror.”

  He shrugged and laughed, half boyishly. Steef with terrour, he said. I liked the way that sounded. He stroked his small, dark, squarish jaw, and lit up a cigarette, although the no smoking light had been aflash for at least fifteen minutes.

  As usual, Jeep was wearing a dark knit V-neck sweater under his suit jacket, which always made me think he belonged in a café somewhere in Europe, taking tiny sips out of a demitasse cup and arguing about politics with three other men in knit sweaters. He reached down under him and pushed all the blankets and things onto the floor. Next to him. Nils Nilsson continued to pretend to read, not realizing that he was crumpling the magazine in his effort to hold it steady.

  “It is not easy for a man to tell a woman he is afraid,” J.P. said.

  “There’s no one to practice on.”

  “Being afraid is easy. Telling a woman, this is not easy. When you are my age, and French, and have three or four children, eh, and a house with so much snow on the roof that it is terrible what could happen, then it is not easy to express what you are feeling.”

  He was a passionate smoker of cigarettes. You’ve seen these people. It is a performance. The way they light up. The way they inhale. The way they hold the cigarette. Every time Jeep blew out smoke, it was the French Resistance all over again. It was that dramatic. I thought the German tanks were making a left turn past his mother’s house. Between the sharp, dramatic gestures of smoking, and the smoke itself, and his genuinely soulful and half-world-weary eyes, I definitely had the feeling this was a life-and-death conversation, and every time the plane bounced and heaved this feeling grew stronger.

  J.P. put his hand on mine, which surprised me. It’s not the usual coach-player gesture.

  “This is the life we have chosen,” he said. “It is a nightmare life in many ways. I am sick to my body to think of my children without a father for eight, nine months of the year, and all that snow on the roof. Who can I get to come and shovel the snow from a
pitched roof? You don’t mind that I talk to you this way, one of my players? It is the danger. It brings people close, eh? We spill our guts. All the lonely times on the road. The bad taste of defeat, eh? No one to speak French to, which you can’t understand, this disaster, for a French person, beyond belief. But I talk to you with my heart, which none of the other players it can happen, because men do not speak this way with men. It is the danger.”

  He looked at me with immense soulfulness, mixed with the saintly fear brought on by the blizzard. It is the donjaire, he said. I liked the way that sounded. I am steef with terrour. It is the donjaire.

  He gripped my hand tightly.

  “You hear this noise?”

  “What?” I said.

  “The plane, eh? It gets worse.”

  I listened carefully.

  “Very close to us,” he said. “You hear this? Like a crack in the hull. Or a piston is missing.”

  “That’s my stomach, Jeep. It makes that sound when I’m hungry.”

  “It’s not a piston, this noise?”

  “It doesn’t rumble, my particular stomach. It sort of buzzes. That’s my stomach you hear. Stay calm.”

  He eased his death grip on my hand, and shrugged and kind of smiled, and then a stewardess came along and asked him to extinguish his smoking materials, and the pilot on the intercom said we would be landing real soon, the Good Lord willing.

  When it was over, and we were all filing down the aisle toward the nose exit, it was interesting to see how quickly we all forgot that we’d been stricken by the purest fear just minutes ago, all of us white-lipped and a little dry in the throat. We didn’t even show mild relief. That seemed strange to me. Were we concealing it, or had we truly forgotten? It seemed to me that if you experience intense fear for a period of fifteen or twenty minutes, your sense of relief on finding yourself safe and sound should last at least that long, if not for days and weeks afterward. But our relief didn’t seem to last more than half a minute, if that.

  What was the big hurry to resume normal living? Shouldn’t we have had a four-day, hell-raising party to celebrate the fact that we were still alive? What was the special appeal of normal living that we should want to get back to it so soon?

  At the exit, two stewardesses and a large, pink-faced, impeccably shaven fellow, with eagles, condors, and ribbons all over his uniform and hat, stood smiling at the departing passengers, and wishing them well.

  I felt an urge to talk to these people, to ask them human questions about fear, danger, and survival. But I knew it was useless. Why disturb their smiles? What could they say, anyway?

  “Thanks for flying Condor-Eagle.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  “Enjoy your stay on the north slope of Mount Everest.”

  After an hour and a half of tire-spinning, fishtailing, and terrific skidding, our bus went into a 355-degree slow-motion swivel, coming to a stop about five blocks from our hotel. We got out, got our luggage, and trooped the rest of the way through five feet of snow.

  The game with the Sabres wasn’t until the following night. There was a practice scheduled for this afternoon, but because of the weather Jeep decided we’d never make it to the arena and called it off.

  In my room, I read a page or two of The Desert Nectar of Wadi Assad, a selection from his early writings. But either I wasn’t in the mood or his youthful stuff was just too fortune cookie-ish, and I put the book aside and stood by the window watching the snow blow around in great, colorless, swirling masses that went in seven directions at once. Of course, what you want in a snowfall is a slow, even, regular rhythm. But I knew I’d get into an even worse mood if I started going into snowfall standards with myself or listing snowfall criteria or recalling the feathery Badger snows.

  The phone rang, to my relief. It was Glenway Packer in New York, New York. He said he was trying to set up the first Kelloid shooting for Los Angeles the day the Rangers were scheduled to play there. He would let me know for certain in a day or two. He assured me that the script was acceptable and even offered to read it to me over the phone. I told him that wouldn’t be necessary. No company that’s located in a place called Battle Creek, Michigan, would ever allow suggestive lines to get into their scripts or show an athlete’s cleavage.

  “Have you heard from Floss?” I said. “Any word at all?”

  “I received a telex from Hong Kong, two cables from Caracas, and a phone call from Acapulco. The Hong Kong telex simply said she was on her way to Caracas. ‘En route Caracas.’ The first cable from Caracas reported her arrival there. ‘Arrived Caracas.’ The second cable said she was on her way to Acapulco. ‘Due Acapulco.’ Then, just minutes ago, I received a phone call from Acapulco. Finally, I thought, we will find out what is going on here. We are not only associates, after all. Floss is an old and dear friend. Very dear.”

  “What did she say, Glenway?”

  “I don’t know. She was incoherent. She wept for two solid minutes. She was speaking as she wept, but I wasn’t able to make out a word. She was incoherent with grief, I suppose. I thought at first it was madness that was making her incoherent. But there was no rhythmic sobbing. She wept freely and incoherently, without pattern. This is cause for hope, I believe.”

  “Poor Floss,” I said. “Let me ask you this, Glenway. I know you don’t personally handle Archie Brewster’s affairs, but since he is a client of the firm, I wonder if you happen to know where he is playing tennis right now.”

  “Lord, you amaze me, Cleo. You are quicker than a massive migraine. I’ve just checked that very thing. Archie is entered in the Mexican Grand Slam, due to start today in Acapulco. What does it all mean?”

  “It means poor little Floss, that’s what it means. If you hear from her again, and she’s coherent, I sure won’t hate you if you let me know what she says.”

  There was a pause. But he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye.

  “Till Shalizar, Cleo,” is what he was ready to say.

  “Till Shalizar?”

  “We’re expecting you at Shalizar.”

  “Well, that’s sweet, Glenway. You did say something last time, but I didn’t know it was as firm as all that. It’s really firm, I guess.”

  “We’re expecting you.”

  “Who’s expecting me?”

  “Mother and I, of course. The family.”

  “You realize I play hockey. I play hockey, Glenway. People tend to forget. We have a fierce, demanding, split-second schedule. Games, planes, practices. This is modern hockey. We’re not talking about a game of shinny outside some prairie school in Saskatchewan.”

  “All taken care of, Cleo. All seen to. Between Los Angeles and Vancouver, the team spends two days in Atlanta, just forty short miles from Shalizar.”

  “Well, good, I guess. That’s sweet, Glenway.”

  “I will arrange transport.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Shalizar. I’ll probably need a break about then.”

  We said goodbye, and I went back to the window to look at the swirling snow. I tried to read. I tried to sleep. I tried to watch TV.

  Ferguson, McPherson, McLeod, and McCall came by to see if I wanted to go to a movie with them. There was a theater right around the corner and if we formed a human chain, we might get there with minimum loss of life. A costume epic was playing, one of those things which is based on a clash of ideas and which the entire British film industry takes part in, all in cameo roles. An intelligent costume epic. Well, good. Under the circumstances, this was an outstanding suggestion, a movie, and I put on several layers of clothes and we went stamping out into the snow. We made it to the theater in about twenty minutes of hard trekking in zero visibility, and went down the aisle, just seconds before the first showing, and piled our coats in the row in front of us, and waited for Bruce McLeod to come hurrying back from the candy counter with popcorn and soft drinks and disgusting, treacly, artificial-nut-filled chunks of brown chemical waste, and set
tled back in terrific anticipation as the house lights dimmed and the plastic curtain disappeared into the roof, when what comes on the screen but the most amateurish, jumpy, unsynchronized, beige-tinted pornographic feature in the whole history of Cinematic Sleaze.

  The Open Kimono with Seymour Hare.

  Brian McCall goes strolling up the aisle to the manager’s office, returning a minute later (as a colossal orgy unfolds aboard a houseboat) to tell us the costume epic is next week. This appears to be Sleaze Week in the Niagara Frontier.

  There I was in the mood for a clash of ideas. Royally garbed fellows with four-foot-wide puckered shoulders and one or two middle-aged women with deep cleavages, because this is a well-researched movie down to the smallest detail of Elizabethan footwear. And long, talky, literate scenes in which the major conflicting ideas are presented. And excellent character portrayals and a lot of clear pronunciation, as only the British know how to do. And trumpets.

  I don’t like pornography in the best of times. When I’m in the mood for something that’s frankly a little high-toned but all the more absorbing because of it, you can’t blame me for being upset when the management dishes up this series of beige-tinted orgies.

  Anyway, I announced I was leaving in a voice well above a whisper, and no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see something up on the screen that just about rivets me to my chair in a state of total, profound shock. Shock that won’t go away. Shock that I carry around to this day like some awful, furry thing living in my handbag.

  It was unmistakable. My brother Kenny. Kenny Birdwell, my brother, who is supposed to be a microcomputer technician in Sunnyvale, California.