Indian Horse (11 page)

They came at me right away. My head was at chest level for most players and they pushed me out of their way. When I tried to move ahead they held me back with their sticks. They hooked my sweater. They were unbelievably strong. They tripped me and laughed when I sprawled spread eagle on the ice. They knocked me into the boards, and pinned me there with their bulk. But there was teaching in all of it. They showed me what to expect, and I let the game flow through me. I skated loosely and waited.

Nobody would pass to me, so when the puck went into the corner and three players battled along the boards for it, I skated in and poked the puck loose with the toe of my stick. I spun on one blade, pushed off and was suddenly in open ice in front of my own goal. I stepped into my stride, crossed to the far boards and headed up ice. Virgil, on the far right wing banged his stick on the ice for a pass. I waited. When I crossed centre and approached the blue line, the biggest Moose defenseman committed. As he moved to try to check the puck from my stick, I saw Virgil angle for the hole he’d created. I snapped the puck under the defenseman’s outstretched stick. Virgil had open ice. He put the puck into the low stick-side corner.

I skated to the bench and took a seat.

“Nice pass,” Virgil said.

“Try that shit again, kid,” the defenseman said bitterly when he cruised by. Fred Kelly grinned behind the boards.

After a whistle, I took centre for the faceoff. I lost that draw but the puck had little momentum and I snatched it and was gone in three strides. I knew the defense would try to pinch me off in the middle, so I drove straight at them. When they’d committed I leaned onto my blades and made a sharp, veering turn, the puck cradled on my stick. Our other forward poured full-steam into open ice on the other side. I hit him on the button with a drilled pass and he was away and in the clear. He failed to score, but I gobbled up the rebound from his slap shot. I was twelve feet out, and as I closed the distance to the net I deked to the right, then quickly back to the left, and lofted the puck up under the crossbar. The defense banged their sticks on the ice in frustration.

As I skated back to the bench again, the whole team was staring at me. Virgil slapped my shin pads with his stick. The rest stayed where they were and as I slumped down on the bench there were some low mutters of appreciation.

It got harder after that. Every time I touched the puck, someone was on me. They used their size to take the ice away from me. They forced me to the boards and held me there with their weight and bulk. They slammed their sticks on the shaft of mine or they just reached in with their strength and lifted the blade of my stick off the ice. They made me work harder than I had ever had to work. For a while they completely restricted my movement and I grew frustrated and angry. They gave catcalls when I sat on the bench and hooted when my progress was stalled anywhere on the ice. My body hurt. But my pride hurt more.

Eventually, it made me better. Instead of following the play, where I could be bashed and bothered, I moved into open ice, and they would not follow me away from the flow. From there I could ratchet up my speed. I dashed into the play and they couldn’t hit me or hold me because they couldn’t catch me. I whirled and danced and darted with the puck. I didn’t score another goal but I made three or four pinpoint passes that resulted in goals. I also didn’t take another hit. There was no fear in me. There was no anxiety. There was only the magic of the game.

When the whistle blew the team gathered at the boards nearest the shack. They leaned on their sticks and heaved great clouds of breath into the bitter cold. Fred Kelly tapped a clipboard against his thigh and looked over to where I stood by the net, uncertain about what to do or where to go. Finally, Virgil banged his stick on the ice and stepped aside to make room for me. Everyone else shunted over. I skated slowly to them and stepped into that empty space and Fred began to talk. He highlighted things he wanted us all to pay attention to. He spoke to specific players about specific plays. When he got to me he just smiled.

“Welcome to the Moose,” he said.

Virgil thumped me on the back and they all rattled the blades of their sticks on the ice and we thumped across the snow to the shack.

We sat in the blistering heat created by that woodstove, towels wrapped around our necks, drops of sweat making a marsh on the thick rubber mat. My teammates sucked greedily at pop and water. Here and there someone fired up a cigarette. Skates and other gear dropped to the floor. They sat in varying degrees of undress. Boys, almost men, the feel of them languid, loose and easy now. Virgil handed me a soda and I lifted the bottle and took a long draught. It felt and tasted magnificent. When I set it down under the bench and sat up to peel my jersey off, they raised their own bottles to me silently and drank. No one said a word. They didn’t have to. I stripped off my jersey and sat there breathing in the atmosphere of that small wooden shack. I was a Moose.

26

The Moose travelled
to games in a pair of broken-down vans that Virgil worked his mechanical magic on to keep running. Fred’s shifts at work made it almost impossible for him to go with us as our coach so Virgil did that as well as captain the team. Our gear was stacked on the roof. We were crushed together, except for Virgil, who did the driving, and the front-seat passenger. We’d doze off to the smell of feet and sour breath and the sounds of snoring on those long, pitch-black northern drives, some of them three hundred miles or more. We existed on fruit, chocolate bars and sandwiches prepared for us by someone’s mother or girlfriend. It was my job as the rookie to clear out the van at every stop. We’d leave on Friday night, right after the work whistles blew at the mills or the mines. In the fading light of the sun we’d follow the dim, humped white of the snowdrifts at the road’s shoulder into the northern bush.

Because I was the smallest one on the team, I always found myself scrunched between two larger players. They’d cut cards to see who got to sit beside me: I took up less space, so there was more room for those on either side to get comfortable. Often, while the others were sleeping, I’d look out the window and watch the land flow by. Some nights there would be a moon, and the shadows it created were spectacular. Trees became many-armed creatures looming across the road. Lakes were shining phosphorescent platters. Ridges and scarps were fortresses capped with snow. Rivers were serpentine swaths of a deeper black. I loved every inch of it. I’d largely given up mourning the loss of my early life, those days on the land with my family. But the sadness filled me at times as we drove through the night.

Whether our destination was Gull River, Longlac, Red Rock, Whitesand or Ginoogaming, we were welcomed into the community and billeted with families who took good care of us. Sometimes five or six players would hunker in with a family of twelve in a small clapboard reserve house, bodies sprawled around the woodstove or laid out in rows across the main room. They served us rabbit, beaver and moose. When the time came to play, we’d all tramp through the snow to the rinks. Sometimes we played on rivers, or lakes or ponds. More often the rinks had been set up behind the band office or community centre. There would always be a wooden shack that both teams shared to suit up in. Those shacks were incredible. Lit by the brightest of light bulbs and warmed by stoves with a chimney pipe that stuck up through a hole in the roof, they had gouged plywood floors that you could see the ground through. The benches had to be replaced every year, because someone always made off with the benches from the year prior to use for firewood. When we clomped down the plywood ramps onto the ice, our skates sounded like thunder rolling across the vast whiteness. The rinks were much the same wherever we went. Wooden boards braced by two-by-fours. Chicken wire stretched across each end behind the nets. Three or four strings of light bulbs draped across the blue lines and centre ice, with maybe another yard light mounted on a hydro pole. Sometimes there were bleachers, but for the most part the crowds stood shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter, ducking when the puck flew over the boards. But the ice was always smooth and well tended. Each host community took great care to prepare it. People loved the game. It might be thirty below with a wind whipping across the surface of the rink and stinging their eyes, but they would stand there and stamp their feet and lean closer to each other like penguins. They’d stand for the length of the game, then scurry into the community hall or the nearest house to warm before the next game started. They were the hardiest and most devoted fans you could ever wish for. We played our hearts out for them.

Those games were spirited contests and gruelling physical feats. The white people had denied us the privilege of indoor arenas, the comfort of heated dressing rooms, concession stands, glassed rinks, scoreboards and even a players’ bench. We stood behind the boards, stamping our skates in the snow to keep our feet warm. In the coldest weather we took turns heading to the shack for warmth, leaving just six players from each side on the ice. The goalies would take turns too. But we played each game out. No game was ever called because of weather. We skated through blizzards, deep Arctic freezes and sudden thaws that turned the ice to butter. The game brought us together in a way that nothing else could, and players and fans alike huddled against whatever winter threw at us. We celebrated every goal, every hit, every pass. Sometimes there were fights as there are so often in the game, but they were never bitter, never carried on beyond the next faceoff. We came from nations of warriors, and the sudden flinging down of sticks and gloves, the wild punches and wrestling were extensions of that identity. A fight would end and both players would shake hands. The crowd would cheer and clap and stamp their feet, and the game would carry on.

Everywhere we went I was greeted with laughter because I was so young and so small. We played five games at the end of that first winter. At the beginning of each game I hung back as Fred Kelly had asked me to do. But when I had seen enough, I jumped in and the laughter died away. The higher level of play with these bigger and better teams did not stall me. Instead, it pushed me to greater heights. By the end of that first winter, I was an essential part of the Moose.

“Our secret weapon,” Buddy Black Wolf said.

“A bag of antlers,” was how Ervin Ear described me. “But fast.”

27

Every reserve in
the North had a team. Indian boys grew up in those communities knowing that when they got old enough and good enough they could wear the sweaters of their home reserve. Whenever I saw younger kids racing around in decrepit skates with broken sticks, chasing a ball or a sawed-off tin can filled with dirt, I remembered horse turds and hockey sticks stuffed in a snowbank and I smiled. The teams were their communities’ pride and joy. We paid about ten dollars each to play those tournaments and the winner team took home a small purse. Mostly you won enough to cover the gas to get you home and people were happy with that. The first game was held late Friday night as soon as the first teams arrived, and games ran all day Saturday. The championship game was early enough on the Sunday morning to allow everyone time to get home and be ready for work the next day. Everybody stayed to watch the final outcome. Everyone wanted to be a part of the celebration at the end. We lived for the crush of bodies and the yelling and the clapping and the tumult that greeted the champions regardless of who won.

The first part of our journey home was raucous. We replayed every shift, every pass, goal and rush. We teased each other over losing the puck or taking a hit. We laughed at lapses in thinking or sudden misadventures. We praised each other for things well done. When we finally fell asleep it was to dreams of hockey. It was the same for every team, I believe. We came together every weekend with the same anticipation, waiting for the release that happened when our skate blades hit the ice. The rink was the place where our dreams came to life.

It couldn’t really be called a league. But there was a network of reserve communities flung across the North and each team captain took it as his responsibility to get the word out before freeze-up about when his community would host its tournament. The news travelled by moccasin telegraph. The spring, summer and fall were the times for players to train, to run, to lift weights and get their bodies ready for the new season to come.

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we’d won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.

Fred and Martha Kelly were good to me. They didn’t try to be parents. They settled for being friends, and Virgil and I grew close. He was my greatest ally. I’d never done homework before or had teachers pay any attention to me. The idea of school as a process of grades and expectations was new and frightening. Virgil sat up late with me and helped me with my lessons. He taught me how to understand school, how to present myself in class, how to fit in with the other kids, and tips and tricks to help me learn faster. School became a pleasure with his help. At home I was asked to help out with household chores. I’d been trained to work at St. Jerome’s. Anything the Kellys asked me to do, I did smartly and well. The first time they thanked me for my efforts I had no words. Because of their own experience with St. Germ’s, they understood. Home life became an easy thing and I got comfortable quickly.