Finnie Walsh (16 page)

Roger Walsh recovered quickly and was soon back at work, able to walk forward or backward with equal ease. From time to time he experienced a slight numbness on the left side of his body, but other than that there were no lasting side-effects. His doctor put him on a strict diet and exercise regime, which was more of a bother than the stroke itself.

The summer of 1988 passed in the blink of an eye; before we knew it Labour Day weekend had arrived. Joyce was to leave for
university in a few days, so Finnie was throwing a goodbye party for her at his house. His father was on his annual fishing trip with his buddies from college, a 30-year tradition. He was determined that a mild stroke wasn’t going to ruin his perfect record of attendance. I’m not sure Finnie had his permission to throw the party. I’m not even sure he needed it.

More people than expected showed up. I suppose that the prospect of a rare glance inside the house of the wealthiest family in Portsmouth outweighed any fear of Finnie’s temperament. The guests’ concerns were totally unjustified; Finnie proved to be the perfect host.

By the time everyone was gone, Finnie was a drunken slobbering mess. He became violently ill. Joyce and I tried to comfort him, to keep him company, but he sent each of us away, asking only to be left alone with his misery. Mercifully, he passed out and Joyce and I carried him to bed. As we were leaving the room, he mumbled something neither of us could understand. Joyce asked him to repeat himself and with great effort Finnie managed to gurgle out an intelligible sentence, “I’m going to need an eraser.”

I was confused and tried to coax an explanation out of him, but none came. Joyce just shrugged and opened two fresh beers, passing one to me. We sat behind the house, on a deck that overlooked the grounds of the estate. I guess I appeared worried, because Joyce tried to reassure me that Finnie would be okay. “He’ll live,” she said.

“I know.”

“Finnie doesn’t like people to see him when he’s hurt.”

“No one does, I guess.”

“Finnie more than most.”

“Finnie feels a lot of things more than most.”

“Yes, he does.”

I’m not sure why I asked Joyce, but suddenly I needed an answer. “Why are you leaving?”

“Because I have to. There’s no future for me here.”

“Finnie’s here,” I said.

“Yes, but he’s two years younger than me, Paul, and still has a couple of years of school left. I need an education. I need to get out of this town.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“No, it’s not. I’ll probably be back someday. But I can’t live here my whole life. Going away, it’s my ticket, like Finnie’s ticket is hockey and your ticket is…” Joyce paused. She didn’t know what I was going to do with my life anymore than I did. Maybe I had a shot at being a hockey player, maybe I didn’t.

“I guess I understand what you’re saying,” I said. Portsmouth was no place for a girl like Joyce.

We sat quietly for a while drinking our beer and then she spoke again. “Hey, Paul, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Why does Sarah wear that life jacket all the time?” “Finnie never told you?”

“He wouldn’t. He said I wouldn’t understand.”

“He might be right. I’m not sure
I
understand it.”

“It has to do with her visions, right?”

“Yes. She thinks that she’s going to drown.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. No one really knows.”

“Not even Finnie?”

I paused. “He might. I’ve never asked him.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to know. I wish Sarah wasn’t the way she is. What’s she going to do, wear that life jacket her whole damned life?”

“What if she’s right?”

“Then we’re all fucked.”

“Maybe we are anyway.”

Joyce went away to McGill a couple of days later. She came back on holidays and she and Finnie spoke over the phone fairly regularly, but long-distance relationships have their reputation for good reason. Oddly enough, though, it was Finnie who gave up on the whole thing. They held on until April of 1989: eight months. When Joyce told Finnie that she would be staying in Montreal for the summer to work instead of returning to Portsmouth, he thought it best to end their relationship. He was a wreck for the rest of the summer.

During the previous hockey season, 1988–89, Gretzky’s first season in Los Angeles, the Great One showed that he was a commodity worth paying for, scoring 54 goals and 114 assists, a total of 168 points. In the playoffs, Gretzky and his Kings knocked out his former Edmonton Oiler teammates in the first round, rallying back from a 3-1 deficit. They were swept by the Calgary Flames in the second round.

Peter Stastny collected only 85 points that year and had the highest number of penalty minutes in his career. The Quebec Nordiques were tied for last place in the league and did not make the playoffs for the third season in a row. When Peter Stastny was traded to the New Jersey Devils during the 1989–90 season, Finnie didn’t say a word. He just shook his head.

The 1988–89 season had treated Finnie and me more favourably. Finnie was once again voted team
MVP
and my hard work continued to pay off. Our team won the provincial championships; even Coach Hunter seemed to be happy with our performance. The 1989–90 season would be our
last season of city league play, after which we could go to the WHL, which meant leaving Portsmouth. We hoped we would be drafted by an NHL team that summer; we would turn 18, making us eligible.

I didn’t really know what Finnie’s prospects were; Finnie was the best goalie I knew, or had ever played against, but there were a lot of good goalies out there. A WHL team would want him, but I wasn’t sure if he would play in the junior leagues. He might play for an NHL farm team if he had to, but Finnie was picky and, like all goalies, a little defensive when his skills were called into question.

As for me, I was pretty sure that this would be my last season. I hadn’t been approached by scouts from any of the WHL or university teams and certainly no NHL scouts had been sniffing around. Maybe I would play in a recreational league after this, a beer league. The prospect of my hockey career going no further didn’t really bother me.

The night before the first game of the 1989–90 season, I had the dream again. It was the same dream I had been having every couple of months since 1981, since the day Joyce taught me how to skate. It was different this time, though, more detailed.

I was in an arena, a large one. The stands were filled with screaming, cheering people. My skates were fast under my feet and my stick was weightless. A teammate passed me the puck at centre ice and I skated into the opponent’s zone. Something grabbed the back of my jersey. The air around me was charged. A few of the other players stopped following the play and glided away from me; then I lost my balance and started to fall. Somehow I managed to get a shot off and as I fell to the ice I saw the goal light go on and then the crowd exploded. The players on the other
team skated over to the referee, complaining about something. The players from my team skated toward me to celebrate the goal. I was in a state of euphoria, as happy as I’ve ever been, when I heard my father’s voice echo in my head, that haunting phrase that I seemed to be unable to escape, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.” I couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone was choking me, their grip firm around my throat. My arms and legs were twitching and I felt the vomit rising, but there was nothing I could do. My limbs became very heavy and the noise around me began to fade. As my vision blurred and wavered, I saw Finnie standing above me, smiling. His eyes were nearly closed, but one joyful tear rolled down his cheek. It landed squarely in the middle of my forehead, making a noise like a hammer striking tin. Then I woke up.

The last year of high school flew by; we had graduated. Suddenly, we had the rest of our lives to think about. The NHL draft would take place in several days. Finnie was certain to be drafted, probably in one of the early rounds. There was a chance I could be chosen in the later rounds if I was very lucky. This was small comfort, though. Being drafted by a team and playing for it are two very different things. Even if I was drafted, odds were that I would be cut from the team at training camp and would spend the rest of my short career in the farm leagues, never even seeing NHL ice.

This didn’t upset me too much. Although I would have done almost anything just to play one game for a big-league team, I was a realist first and foremost. I began to look through university calendars and brochures in an attempt to keep my options open. My grades weren’t great, but they were respectable so I had a greater chance of getting into a decent school than of becoming
a professional hockey player. One thing was certain; I would not be working in the Walsh sawmill.

My father had just celebrated his 50th birthday, yet he acted like an 80-year-old curmudgeon. He had become increasingly frustrated by the continuing disappearances of Mr. Palagopolis’ prosthetic arms. Pal was 62 and would retire in a few years. The prospect of life without work did a lot to ease the torment of his vanishing claws, but my father, who for all intents and purposes had been retired for going on 10 years, was as antsy as ever, hot on the trail of the one-arm bandit. On several occasions my father had come close to catching his prey, but each time the one-arm bandit had eluded him by the narrowest of margins. The whole thing was absurd, really. Poor Pal was a nervous wreck half the time.

Louise was still working at the grocery store and still living at home. She had no real plans to leave and my mother appreciated her help with Sarah, a very energetic eight year old. There was something different about Louise; she was neither shy nor outgoing. It was like she was in a holding pattern.

Louise still wasn’t dating, much to the disappointment of the local male population. I was often asked what was wrong with her and to tell the truth I thought, even though they didn’t know it, they were dodging a bullet. Louise was definitely not what they were looking for. They rarely saw it that way, though. All they saw was a pretty face.

When people looked at Sarah, which was often, they saw a gangly, yellow child who was far too old to be constantly wearing a life jacket. My mother had tried several times to get her to take it off, but Sarah put up such a fight that my mother gave up and the life jacket stayed on. Various teachers had attempted to persuade her to remove it as well, in particular her gym teacher, who thought that it gave her an unfair advantage at dodgeball and other sports that use fear of being hit to motivate. The life jacket
was, however, an ideal garment for a kid like Sarah, who was always falling down and bumping into things. Its padding protected her from bruising, which she was overly susceptible to, perhaps on account of her unusual pallor. Thankfully, Sarah hadn’t had any of her premonitions since she’d seen Roger Walsh walking backward.