The Last Season (3 page)

One of the sayings was meant for me in particular, and I knew that for certain because he gave it only to me, all folded over and placed in an envelope with my number on it. “The unforgiveable crime is soft hitting,” it read. “Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but
never
hit softly.” Underneath was this name, Teddy Roosevelt, which sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I didn't have the nerve to ask.

The other guys straggled in, Terry LeMay, the goaltender, Powers and his sidekick, Bucky Cryderman, then Danny.

“Hey, Bats,” Cryderman said, laughing, “you want I should call your old man in here to tighten your skates?”

“Screw off,” I said, closing the issue. Danny was a loudmouth.

Ten minutes before warm-up Sugar was ready for his talk and slammed a stick into the equipment box for our attention. “All right, then,” he began. “We should be ready. You all remember Parry Sound from the exhibitions, so you forwards know if you get a chance you shoot. Goalie's weak on long ones to the stick side; but don't try to suck him because he's good in tight and flops well. So keep it simple and make your first shots count. I'll be juggling lines to keep Powers' line away from their checkers, so if I touch your shoulder that means
you
are on, not necessarily your line, so just keep track of yourselves, okay?

“These guys like to carry the puck and they like to make the pretty play, but they don't seem as keen when the going gets rough. Batterinski?”

“Yah?”

“You set the pace, you understand?”

“Uh huh.”

“Sprague Cleghorn, remember. Now the rest of you are going to be seeing a very small player out there and though he's a defenceman they'll probably play him up front ‘cause he's only peewee age.”

“A
peewee
?” Powers said, falling into giggles.

“Laugh once and get it out of your system,” Sugar said, eyeing Powers with the black left ball. “His name is Orr and I've seen him and he's already a better player at twelve than any of you are at fifteen. Understand that? Don't let his size fool you and watch him. Defence, I want you to stick to him like snot to an over door, understand?”

All around the room we grunted that we did.

“Cryderman,” Sugar called, kicking at Bucky's skates stuck out in front of him like he was about to take a nap. “What's the toughest fish in the ocean?”

“Huh?”

“Come on. You guys think you're all big fish in a little pond. What is it?”

“I dunno,” Bucky said. “A shark, I guess.”

“That's very good, Cryderman. Now there's something special about sharks that I want you all to consider. There's one thing that makes sharks different from all other fish … anyone care to guess what it is?”

“The fin,” said Powers.

“Nah.”

“The teeth,” Danny shouted, showing his.

“No.”

Sugar waited, scanning the room, then he smiled. “A barracuda's teeth are just as nasty, maybe worse. What makes a shark truly unusual is what he
doesn't
have. And that's a swim bladder.”

Someone laughed. Powers, probably. Or Bucky.

“Go ahead,” Sugar said. “Laugh. But let me tell you first what it means. A shark has to keep moving constantly. A shark does not float, like other fish. A shark can't float. He has no swim bladder, see. He can't let up for a minute and that's what makes him top dog. You think about that awhile, okay?”

Sugar walked out the door and closed it silently and no one said a word. No laugh, no burp, no fart. No one would dare destroy Sugar's pregame silences because they worked. We were leading the league.

Danny and I could hardly believe it when we first got here. We were used to Father Schula's prayers that no one got hurt, but so far this year we had had Sugar read aloud from
Tom Sawyer
, quote John Kennedy and Winston Churchill and some Chinese guy I'd never heard of and give lectures on everything from why water droplets scoot on a hot pan (“Keep the puck away from the traffic”) to how vultures in Egypt break open ostrich eggs by dropping small stones on them (“You can't do it all yourself”).

By tradition, I went onto the ice first. Number seven was the first sound in the arena always, first scrape on the ice, first slice of the corner, first stick on the puck, first crash of puck against the boards. In a way I created the game, just as I so often finished the game. With my hands.

I didn't see Poppa until “God Save the Queen.” The record always skipped slightly and Al Willoughby, the arena manager, had piled so many pennies on the arm the record had slowed to a near growl. But no one sang along anyway, so it didn't matter. I quickly scanned the seats, skinny Wilemena Bowles, Sugar's wife, in her usual seat, clutching the gong of her cow bell so it wouldn't sound, and behind her a plastic golf hat held over a heart.
Poppa
. And he was singing along, or trying to. The only one in the arena fool enough to even try.

Powers won the first face-off and got it straight back to me. I circled slowly, shifted, then doubled back and cut across ice when the winger charged me. At their blueline I hit Powers with a perfect pass and he stopped, a give-and-go play. I followed through, slipping up the far wing and into the clear, and Powers put on the shift I figured he would, a shoulder dip, but when tried to thread the pass through the defenceman's skates the puck was suddenly stopped and Powers was standing there looking like a fool.

It was the
kid
! They'd
started
him for Christ's sake, and on defence too. He looked like a mascot out there, but suddenly the puck was sailing off his stick high through the air and perfectly into the glove of the winger who'd originally rushed me. I was caught up ice. Parry Sound came in two on one, a deke, a flick pass and a stab and poor old Terry didn't have a prayer. Parry Sound 1, Vernon 0.

Sugar let into us on the bench. What had he said in the dressing room about floating? Why did Powers stop? What made me so sure I could just walk away from my position? We took it all, heads down, not saying a word. Sugar waited through ten minutes of stopped time before he tapped my shoulder again.

At the start of the second period Danny got the puck back to me at the point and I slammed a low, hard one, and Danny, just like we used to practise back home, skated in front and let his stick dangle so it just ticked the shot straight down onto the ice and suddenly it was 1–1. I slapped Danny's pads and went straight back toward the face-off circle, skating bent over, stick riding both knees, looking up from the ice just once to see how much time was left. I wanted to look at Poppa, but couldn't. But I could imagine what he must have felt hearing his family name crackling out over the P.A. system. Had a Batterinski ever before known such glory?

A minute left in the second period and I was last man back with the blond kid breaking over centre, intercepting a bad Bucky pass over to Powers. He looked like an optical illusion coming in on me, too small, too compact, rushing in a near sitting position, but still accelerating too fast for me to simply ride off into the corner. I forced him slightly to my left, then stepped right, where he came, and stopped and thrust out my hip with a little bit of knee I hoped the referee wouldn't catch. I had him clean. But then I didn't. All I felt was the wind from his sweater on my face as he somehow stepped yet another way and was gone. I turned and lunged sweeping his feet out from under him, but even that was too late. The red light came on even as he flew through the air past Terry, and before he landed I could see him smile and raise his hands in victory, as if he'd somehow had control even as he sailed through the air.

MacLennan began the third period in my place, the ultimate humiliation, the first opening face-off I'd missed since arriving in Vernon, penalties excepted. I tried to convince myself it was because Sugar wanted to talk to me about stopping the blond kid. But of course it wasn't. I knew Poppa would be looking for me at every player change, but Sugar's hand never landed on my shoulder.

And MacLennan was botching things. Danny was playing his heart out, twice carrying right through the team only to hit the goal post once and fan on his backhand the other time. He was playing his heart out for my Poppa. I sat, stick handle pressed between my eyes, staring over the boards. I could feel the heat rising. I could sense every one of the eight hundred or so spectators knew that I'd been benched because of some goddamn twelve-year-old kid. I'd been made a fool of; once I thought I heard laughter from behind the bench, and since there was nothing funny about the game I knew the one thing they could be laughing at was me.

I was sweating harder on the bench than I would have on the ice. There was noise, a steady, rhythmic rap that seemed to fill the arena, until I realized it was me doing it, ramming my skate toes into the boards in front of me.

Poor Poppa. He'd come all this way for nothing. Nothing. Up at three to catch the bus; money he didn't have; and now nothing to show for it. I could see him sulking out of the Vernon arena not even waiting to see me, back by bus to Pomerania with a good word for Danny Shannon's family, and then not able to lie about me to Father Schula or the Jazdas or Dombrowskis or Hatkoskis or even the old bitch herself, Batcha. I could see her smiling, knowing all along. I could hear her tongue cluck with the disgust that seemed to fill her mouth as easily as spit.

I wanted to hit something. Bad.

Sugar barely touched me and I was over the boards as dumb-ass MacLennan stepped off. The little blond kid was no fool, obviously; figuring to catch us on the line change he sent a long pass up my side to this skinny creep whipping along with his head down. I skated backwards just to the blueline, then cut sharply, forcing skinny toward the boards. I jumped from going backwards into an instant charge and caught him flush, stick rising just as he hit the boards, rising in just under his chin and ear, and lifted with all my strength. I could hear him groan. I could feel him cave and smell him sweat, frightened. The whistle was screaming even as I lifted, stick and knee, and thrust him on over the boards, sprawling and shooting into the front row of terrified spectators.

Now I felt fine.

Just as the linesmen arrived, Parry Sound's big defenceman charged up and threw his stick down. I kept mine, which flustered him immediately. I could feel the linesman's arms around my shoulder and neck in a half nelson: it was a feeling I enjoyed, the gentleman's agreement that we would struggle, but within limits, that it would look like more than it was. I pulled angrily toward the defenceman and my linesman pulled back in agreement. The big defenceman, already toothless at sixteen, spit at me and I spit back, but the other linesman had moved in to pull on the defenceman and so neither of us landed our shots. I pulled; he pulled; they pulled; we shook; we circled. It was as if the players were heavy life-sized dolls and the linesmen were struggling to work them, unsuccessfully. I laughed at the defenceman, which made him puff up and charge like a goose. But he got nowhere.

I could hear their coach screaming. He was up on the boards, balancing and calling for a major. Good — that meant blood. Their trainer was slipping across the ice on the arms of one of the Parry Sound players and he was carrying a white towel, deliberately chosen to show the blood.

“How about somebody your own size, asshole!” the defenceman shouted. Without his teeth he lisped, so it came out “athole.”

I spit, landing on his shoulder. “Faggot!” I shouted. And spit again.

“Cool it, boys, or you're both out of here,” the bigger linesman warned.

I was willing to let things die, but not the defenceman. My spitting seemed to have him worked into a rage and he caught his linesman off guard by ducking and twisting out of his hold. He came at me swinging and my linesman wouldn't let go, so I ducked and could hear the crack of the defenceman's fist on my linesman's head. I take things like that personally. My linesman released me, perhaps deliberately, but I had time only to follow through my duck with a bear hug around his middle. I lifted him but he pummeled my head. Not that it hurt, but it looked bad; so I lifted more and pushed forward, cracking his head on the ice like a .22 short, but it didn't bother him much. He swung my face with one hand and tried to claw at my eyes with the other. I could feel the sting of a scratch. Pulling up his sweater over his head so it tied his arms, I drilled him right through the Parry Sound Shamrock's crest, a direct hit on the mouth. Twice more and I could see the sweater staining red through the crest and mercifully, both linesmen fell on me and pulled me away. My defenceman merely rolled over onto his side moaning. Finished.

Naturally the referee threw us both out of the game. As I stepped off the ice a stretcher came through — the ultimate proof that I'd won. The leeches stood six deep along the corridor, but this time they were silent and did not touch. Silent with admiration. Not touching out of respect.

The linesman escorted me to the home dressing room, waited till I sat down, then closed the door carefully, leaving me entirely alone with the sucking of the urinals and the flutter of the rubber vents over the hot air duct. I slouched back and let the sweat run freely down over my forehead, over my nose, down onto my lips, and here I drew it back inside, getting back what I'd given out. I tasted like a man.

I knew it wasn't right, but it felt great. I could feel my defenceman on my knuckles and when I touched them they stung with his jaw, just as I knew when he moved this week he would feel me and I would be with him, his better, for weeks to follow. He had my mark on him. I too had swelling and redness, but on the knuckles it shone with pride. Where he was swelling made him less, mine made me more. I tried to feel his fear of me, and in trying this, my respect for myself grew. I went to the half-shattered mirror but saw no pimples. Just
Batterinski
, hulking in his pads, solid from blade to brushcut, a man oddly at ease while others about him panic.