The Last Season (18 page)

I felt my left blade slip and my legs stutter. I saw him slipping farther and farther out of reach, my strides choppy and ineffective, his brief, effortless and amazingly successful. I swung with my stick at his back, causing the noise to rise. I dug in but he was gone, a silent, blond brushcut out for a skate in an empty arena.

I dove, but it was no use. My swinging stick rattled off his ankle guards and I turned in my spill in time to see the referee's hand raise for a delayed penalty. I was already caught so I figured I might as well make it worthwhile. I regained my feet and rose just as Orr came in on Larocque, did something with his stick and shoulder that turned Frog into a lifesize cardboard poster of a goaltender, and neatly tucked the puck into the corner of the net.

The crowd roared, four thousand jack-in-the-boxes suddenly sprung, all of them laughing at me. Orr raised his hands in salute and turned, just as I hit him.

It was quiet again, quiet as quickly as the noise had first burst through. I felt him against me, shorter but probably as solid. I smelled him, not skunky the way I got myself, but the smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. I gathered him in my arms, both of us motionless but for the soar of our skates, and I aimed him carefully and deliberately straight through the boards at the goal judge.

Orr did not even bother to look at me. It was like the theory you read about car accidents, that the best thing you can do is relax. Orr rode in my arms contentedly, acceptingly, neither angry, nor afraid, nor surprised. We moved slowly, deliberately, together. I could see the goal judge leaping, open-mouthed, back from the boards, bouncing off his cage like a gorilla being attacked by another with a chain. I saw his coffee burst through the air as we hit, the grey-brown circles slowly rising up and away and straight into his khaki coat. The boards gave; they seemed to give forever, folding back toward the goal judge, then groaning, then snapping us out and down in a heap as the referee's whistle shrieked in praise.

I landed happy, my knee rising into his leg as hard as I could manage, the soft grunt of expelled air telling me I had finally made contact with the only person in the building who would truly understand.

If it would stop there, the game would be perfect. But I knew, having taken my best shot, I would have to deal with the rebound. My hope was to clear it quickly. I pushed Orr and began to stand, only to be wrapped by the linesman trying to work a full nelson around my shoulders. I went to him gratefully, shifting with false anger, yanking hard but not too hard, according to the unwritten fighter-linesman agreement. He was talking in my ear the way one does to calm down a dog who has just smelled porcupine.

“Easy now, fella. Just take it easy now, okay?”

I said nothing. I pulled hard; he pulled back hard. He twisted me away; I went with him, scowling, delighted.

“Get the trainer!” I heard the referee shout to one of the Generals.

I twisted back. Orr was still down on the ice. The other linesman stood above, waiting to embrace him, but Orr just lay there, eyes shut, face expressionless.

“Chickenshit!” one of their larger players yelled at me and then looked away quickly, afraid to own up to his words. I lunged toward him, but gratefully let the linesman reel me in.

“Just easy now! Easy, easy, easy,” he said in my ear. I felt like barking, just to throw him off.

The referee signalled to the linesman to get me to the box, and I let him wrestle me over with only a few stops and twists. Some of the crowd was hanging up over the glass and screens, throwing things, spitting, screaming. They looked like the muskrat Danny had once taken on a tip trap and failed to drown; we'd put it in a box and stabbed cattail stems through the cardboard at the little fucker until it ran at the screen we'd placed over top, screeching at us as if it would have torn us to pieces if it hadn't been blocked from us. These rats seemed voluntarily caged. Unlike the muskrat, they welcomed their confinement. If they broke through and got to me they'd have trouble finding the courage to ask for my autograph.

Orr did not return to the game. We won 4–1 on Torchy's hat-trick. I scored the fourth on a desperate empty-net attempt by Oshawa, and the slow slider from centre was booed all the way into the net, making it as sweet as if I had skated through the entire team and scooped it high into a tight corner as the last man back slashed my feet out from under me. I even asked the linesman for the puck, just to rub it in.

But such sweetness never seems to last. The X-rays went against us, Orr returned for game three and after six we were out of it, retired for the season. Orr scored or set up seventeen of the Generals' twenty-two goals over this stretch. I scored twice, set up three and spent sixty-two minutes in the penalty box, twelve of them for boarding him. But Orr and I did not make contact again until May 19, 1974, when Eddie Van Impe, Moose, the Watsons and I set up the defensive minefield that even the Great Orr with perfect knees couldn't have penetrated. Philadelphia 1, Boston 0. The Flyers take their first Stanley Cup in six games.

Thinking back on it now, I don't know why I went home that summer. I think I told Torchy and some others it was so I could get in shape, work out, add some upper-body strength, but it was a lie. I think really I had some vision of Batterinski returning as the conquering hero. But how to do it? Could I walk up and down Black Donald Hill carrying my scrapbook, wearing the three team jackets, pointing out the new teeth, carrying the team trophy for top defenceman? I had no idea. I was just going home for the first summer back since my first year in Vernon. No more wrestling with the front-end loaders at the mine. No swelter in the smelter. Just Poppa, Ig and me.

And Danny.

Shit, and Batcha.

At twelve noon on June 4 the Pembroke bus pulled in to the White Rose at Pomerania. I checked on my new Timex with the date and “The Hardrocks” where there should have been numbers. A gift from Gus to the team. I wondered who would notice first.

Outside the air-conditioned Grey Coach the air was thick and humid, a haze turning Black Donald Hill into a ghost where the church began and the steeple vanished. I felt foolish not having a car. Torchy and I had become so used to the white Valiant that we had come to regard it as personal property, much like Lucille. I had a suitcase, a duffle bag and that cursed two-mile walk ahead of me.

No thoughts of a glorious parade through town now, only that of trying to slink home without being seen. The big jesus hockey hero, carrying his own luggage, walking. Oshawa had given Bobby Orr his own car so he could race back home to Mommy and Daddy in Parry Sound. Gus had given me a watch, so I'd know how long it would take to walk.

“You make your old Poppa very happy, Felix. You know that, don't you?”

Dat
. Yes, Poppa, I said to myself, I know dat only too well.

Poppa chewed on a pig's knuckle while I nodded in agreement. I had forgotten. He'd written and asked me to consider coming home for the summer, for him and for Ig and for Batcha. Perhaps the decision hadn't been mine to make at all. No wonder I'd been confused as to why I'd ever come back.

Poppa looked happy, if older. Every second seedling on his face was now white and the effect was a deathly look, much like the bums in Sudbury's Borgia district back of the Nickel Inn. But Poppa had probably shaved in the morning. I'd forgotten how black and tight his skin was, and how the beard always looked like he'd be better hammering it back rather than shaving.

Ig sat beside me. Same table. Same dishes. Same scraps, for all I could tell. The only improvement I could make out was that Poppa's damn whining Puck was now housetrained and no longer pissed all over the floor. Ig had a tin of Nestlé's Quik open and was spooning the crystals directly into his dry mouth. He suddenly seemed aged himself, like he'd gone to sleep last night a happy little boy and had awakened in the morning slow and senile. Ig had Jaja's liver spots now, and neck wattles. His hand shook as he worked the spoon up and down, in and out. He no longer bothered with the Scotch-tape hair; he wore a red-and-white-striped Ivy League cap now, a bit too large, pulled down nearly to his eyebrows with the front snap open, and it was filthy.

But it was Ig, with the same milk-clear eyes and, as always, totally delighted to see me. Batcha had said hello crisply and then gone immediately to her room to lie down. To hell with her — I hadn't come for her anyway.

“There might be some work with the highways,” Poppa said, still chewing. He meant painting craphouses for the tourists, but this made it sound more respectable.

“I've got nearly four hundred dollars,” I said. Pretty impressive considering Gus Demers was only forking out thirty a week.

“Four hundred dollars,” Ig repeated, still spooning chocolate. “Holy Moley, that's a lot, Feelie.”

Poppa took another knuckle out of the pickle jar. “I'll be drawing later. You can help me cut if you like.”

“Sure,” I said. “Be good for the forearms.”

“Pulp's down this year.”

Dis
. I nodded. I didn't care.

Ig pinched my arms and shook his head, giggling. Did he want to see if
I
was awake?

“I might not be able to pay you,” Poppa said.

“I don't want anything.”

Poppa nodded, picked with a fork at his teeth. Until now, the fork hadn't been used. He held the fork out to look for success, then stared at me through the prongs.

“When do you find out?”

“I'll get a letter.”

“And?”

“And if I get invited to camp I'll be gone.”

Poppa picked without thinking. “What are the chances of that?”

Dat
.

“Good.”

“How good?”

“Very good. Excellent.”

Poppa wasn't satisfied. In his book no one dealt with strangers without getting screwed.

“And how does this ‘contract' work?” he asked.

“They pay me while I'm at camp, and then if I make the team I get more. It depends on what level I make or whether I make it at all, I guess.”

“And if you do make it?”

“All the way?”

“American league, say.”

“Maybe $10,000. Maybe $15,000 if I stay with the top team.”

Ig whistled and hit my shoulder with delight. It could have been fifteen thousand chocolate crystals, for all he cared. He just liked long-sounding numbers. He had no comprehension of how they got there.

Poppa wiped the grease off his mouth onto the back of his hand, the back of his hand onto his pants.

“Who is taking care of all this?”

“Mr. Wheeler.”

The name meant nothing to Poppa. Hadn't he read my letters?

“You know, the guy who wants to represent me.”

“Uhhh.”

“Vincent Wheeler, the agent,” I added impatiently.

“Can you trust him?”

“Of course.”

“Where's he from?”

“New York City.”

I loved the way it came off my tongue. Like an answer to a quiz, like a secret, like a prayer. Once I said New York City Poppa was convinced. Wheeler must be the best. Poppa couldn't comprehend another human getting by in Sudbury, let alone surviving in New York City. Obviously, Wheeler knew what he was doing.

“He's the guy who signed Terry Bartholomew with Chicago last year,” I added.

Ig giggled. Poppa closed the pickle jar.

“How much will he take?”

“I don't know. Ten percent, I guess. The more he gets for me the more he gets for himself. That's how it works, Poppa.”

“Only there, son.”
Der
.

Poppa was finished with agent talk. He stood, the smell of gasoline and sawdust rising with him.

“Let's go, then. Time's wasting.”

So much for the vision of my homecoming. My scrapbook still sat in the suitcase, seventy-three filled pages of clippings from the
Sudbury Star
, the
North Bay
Nugget
, the
Kitchener-Waterloo
Record
, the
Oshawa Times
, the
Peterborough Examiner
, Toronto's
Telegram
, and the
Globe and Mail
. Pictures for Ig, words for Poppa, and they hadn't even seen it yet. I couldn't just go and get it. That would ruin the effect. They should beg it out of me.

But Poppa said
Time's wasting
. Almost as if it had wasted so quickly no one had noticed I was gone most of the time over all those years. I may as well have walked in to Hatkoski's for a haircut and just come back, for all it seemed to matter. No glory, no party, nothing. It was just like I'd never left.

Even Danny Shannon was much the same. Forty pounds heavier, maybe, his walk even looser, if possible, hair thick and dandied, same smile, but everything else the same: loon calls,
ugga-buggas,
booze plans, sex jokes. He had no interest in hearing about Sudbury or about Billings or about Orr or about the new league penalty record or the all-star selection or even about my chances of making it. He wanted to stuff his green '62 Chevy with his new chums from down at O'Malley's mill — Tiny Fetterly, who couldn't have made our old Pomeranian team as stickboy, Dominic Toposki, Stan Lacha, any mix of a half a dozen others — and then he wanted to do nothing but drive around making up lies about his year in Vernon and having me verify them for him. Talking about Maureen the Queen like she was Ann-Margaret or something.

He was using me, the bastard, and I was helpless. I knew if I balked he could always tell the true side of what happened between Maureen and me, and I would rather have Bobby Orr make a goat of me in front of four thousand hometown fans than have that get out. As far as I was concerned, he could use me all he wanted as long as I got equal time. But though I waited it never came.

I had told Torchy that Pomerania was like stepping into time machine, but I hadn't realized how right I was. The sole concession to modern times was cars. The guys Danny worked with worshipped Detroit the way the older Poles thought of Czestochowa. The new confession was Household Finance over in Renfrew, undoubtedly with the same proportion of lies. Danny claimed his Chevy had clocked 117 down on the flats. He had chrome moons, Lake pipes, a modified Thrush shift and a hydraulically suspended record player that could take 45-rpm records. All this, parked each night in front of a house that only last summer got running cold water, that still used an outhouse, that burned slabs from the mill in a welded oil drum with ductwork hammered out of truck fenders, that didn't get a single newspaper or magazine in the mail, that didn't, in truth, ever get mail.