The Last Season (48 page)

“You know, my view of European hockey, that sort of thing.”

“You fix that lie about you spitting, eh?”

“I fixed it Poppa, don't worry.”

He scratches, thinking. “I couldn't sleep.”

“Go back to bed, then,” I say, more crossly than intended. I am instantly sorry.

“We could easily have another fire here, eh?”

“Don't worry about it,” I say. “You won't.”

“But we could. And I'm thinking about what we got left of Jaja's memoirs we should do something about. There's a machine at the newspaper office in Renfrew. I'd like to get copies of your letters and maybe leave them with Jan, what do you think?”

Think!
What do I
say
?

“Sure, Poppa. But let me do it for you, okay?”

Poppa's face settles. I tap him on the good shoulder and bound by him up the stairs and into the room where I will dress, dig out Pekka's number and try to figure out how long I can continue lying to Poppa.

Poppa is outside hacking trenches with his one good arm to drain off the hollow in front of the bait shed. I can hear the steady chop of the axe in the late ice: I can imagine Poppa's face turned up against the spray: I can see him flinch with every blow, but satisfied with my great lie about Jaja's letters. How ironic that I am in here demanding the truth, shouting thousands of miles at poor Pekka, who keeps insisting that there is nothing for me to be worried over.

But I am. “
How
do you know that?”

Pekka laughs. “Because old man, Pia just got back from seeing her.”

“Is Pia there now?”

“No. She is out shopping. But she will tell you the same thing, I assure you of that.”

“You're sure she's all right then?”

“Positive, old man. Pia says they may let her out tomorrow. Is that not proof enough?”

“Where is she?”

“The Kirurginen Sairaala.”

“How do you spell that?”

“Don't bother. It's the surgical hospital.”

“Surgical!”

“I have told you — women's troubles. But it is nothing, obviously. Here, let me get you the number, please ... Pia has it written down here somewhere ... yes, here — one seven ... three seven one.”

I scribble quickly. “What does that mean, ‘women's troubles'?”

I hear shouts in the background, the line hissing through the distance as Pekka muffles the sound. He comes back on.

“Pia just came in. She'll talk to you.”

The receiver is put down, picked up clumsily. Pia sounds either out of breath or nervous. “Hi Felix, how are you?”

“Fine. What's with Kristiina?”

“Pekka told you. She was not able to end that sickness. There was some minor surgery and she is just fine now. I have seen her. She was asking about you.” A giggle. “Of course, everybody's asking about you now.”

I respond with sarcasm. “So I hear. Look, what precisely was wrong with her?”

But Pekka has pulled the receiver away, shouting. “Hey, Bats, you're big news over here, old man, did you know that?”

“I heard.”

Pekka's old laugh ripples through. “You got Erkki in some hot air — water — you know, ‘trouble,' old man. They fired him this afternoon. It was just on the news. You remember Voitto down at the
Sanomat
? He really did a large story on you both. Erkki came out looking like a liar and you like a German SS officer. I think the team's going to be disbanded.”

“You'll be out of a job.”

“It's just a game — who cares?”

I care you stupid fucking Finn!
It is
not
just a game! “Yah, true enough.”

“You cannot imagine the coverage here. Front page. Television. Half seem to want to toss you and Erkki in prison, half are saying you're telling the truth and, of course, Finns don't want to hear it.”

“It
is
true.”

“It must be true. I was just talking to Timo and he's had offers from both Tampere and IFK if Tapiola folds. I had a call yesterday from Lahti. Everybody wants to find out just what Batterinski did to pull us up so high. What'll happen to you, old man?”

If I only knew.
“I don't know. I got next year's contract, so I presume they'll honour that. Right now there's a lot to do here.”

“Everything's okay there?”

“Yah, fine. I just got things to do.”

But when I hang up I realize I have only things to
un
do. Poppa still works on the trenches, every wet thunk telling me his energy comes from the knowing I have salvaged all his work on Jaja's memoirs. Somewhere Danny is talking about me and laughing. We're not kids anymore, are we? And Kristiina — what's with her? What does she feel about my note?

But the hospital will not accept my call. Someone eventually comes on whose English I can understand and she tells me that only family can call. I say I am Kristiina's fiancé and all she will do is promise me that she will check with the patient. And she will not check now, but later, after the rounds. I can call back, if I wish, in a few hours.

Poppa comes in from his ditch construction, scraping the muck off on the side of the door frame. He leaves the boots on the steps and walks out of them, gripping the first chair so his socks don't slip on the floor. He looks at me and smiles.

“What do you say then, shall we take them in?”

“Huh?” I am still in Finland. “Take what in?”

“Jaja's papers. The copying, remember?”

The papers! Who cares about the goddamn papers!

“Poppa, I'll do them, okay? I said I would.” I am almost shouting. He recoils, every part of him snapping but his eyes. They rest on mine, measuring.

“I could go in with you,” he says.

“I'll go in myself. I want to think, okay?”

The eyes blink. “Is everything all right, Felix?”

I should have more patience. “Yes, everything is just fine, Poppa. Now get off my back, okay?”

The eyes apologize. “I'm sorry son. It's been a bad week.”

“Tell me about it!”
I shout, grabbing my coat and slamming the door on him as I leave.

Outside, his trenches run like crooked spokes out from the centre of the forming pool. Six exits, only one of them open, and in that runs laughter, the runoff snickering as it passes down the Batterinski lane, across the road and onto the brown ice of the swamp, where it freezes in layers, solid, waiting for the sun.

The kids are engineering again on the Schama side road. I honk when I pull onto the main highway and when they wave back I find I am pulling over and they are standing around looking frightened, as if I might be from the highways office down in Renfrew.

“Hi, kids!” I shout in Clarkie's hospital-visiting voice.

“Hi!” they shout back, relieved.

There are five of them, four boys and a girl, and they are shy, yet friendly. Untroubled Pomeranians with nothing to prove because there is no one to notice, just yourself in another house or on another farm. Their faces are all wide, flat and solid, except for one boy whose curly hair has stuck to his head with perspiration. But even he has their eyes, eyes that reflect nothing and capture little. These kids are just another part of the landscape, even in their own minds. When they wake up tomorrow the hill will be there blocking the sun; there will be church on Sunday, potatoes for the plate, O' Malley's mill when they are old enough to work, the liquor store, the public house, fists to fit their faces, faces for their fists, trips to the used car lots in Renfrew, near fatal and fatal accidents on the way home ... and eventually the graveyard at St. Martin's.

Why can it not be as simple for me? These kids haven't the slightest worry about reps. They arrived already defined: Pomeranians. And I could have stayed one if —

“Aren't you Felix Batterinski? The curly-haired one says.

“That's right,” I say, putting my hands into my jacket pocket and smiling. The hockey player's sheepish pre-autograph pose.

“I'm Tommy Shannon.”

I look at him. Yes, but grown. He has Danny's hair. That's where it went.

“Danny's young lad?” I say, already knowing.

“That's right,” he says. The same words I used, but here no hands-in-the-pocket humility. I find my own hands fidgeting.
What has Danny told him about me?
He plays with a button and pulls back his shirt. “I still got it,” he says, reeling out my old sharks tooth, the gold chain slightly green. I smile, warming to him.

“Your daddy's my best old pal, you know?” I say. The other kids look at Tommy, impressed.

But Tommy isn't particularly. “You and my dad used to play together in junior, eh?” he says, smiling.

Junior?
The closest Danny ever got to junior were the letters I wrote him from Sudbury.

I have the power to hit back at Danny now. I can get him for the crack, get Tommy even. All the kids are looking at me, awed.

“That's right, Tommy,” I lie. I cannot hurt Danny, no matter what he had done. I pull my hands from my pockets and run one through his hair. “You play?”

“He's our best!” a boy in a torn grease-red ski jacket says.

“Who're you?”

“Danny Dombrowski — he's my cousin.”

Danny? Danny. Danny is the hero here.
They even name their children after him.
Where is Felix?

“What's your team?” I ask.

“St Martin's.”

“You're not still playing in that old rink,” I say, indicating with my thumb the shack in the distance.

“Nowhere else to play,” Tommy says.

“Who's your coach?”

“Father Schula,” the new Danny says proudly.

“Father Schula! For God's sake!”

“We're in first place,” Danny says. “Except we got no more ice. We're playing Renfrew Saturday for the district, eh?”

“Renfrew. They're good, I guess,” I say.

“We already beat them good,” the new Danny says. “Tommy got four goals.”

I look at Tommy Shannon and he is staring down, hammering a toe into the muck with pride. I cannot believe this. Father Schula's St. Martin's boys are still playing Renfrew. And winning! And because of a Shannon!

Danny is here twice. A son. A nephew.
Where is Felix?
How can they play Renfrew without Batterinski?

“You got anybody tough on your team?” I ask, kicking my own muck.

“No,” Tommy says.

I smile, staring down so they won't see.

“There's no body contact,” the new Danny says.

No body contact!
Outlawed for all groups below bantam. Every two years it goes up a level. At that rate in eight more years it would reach the NHL.
No body contact
. Strike Schultz and Williams and Batterinski from the record books forever. We need more pages for Gretzky....

I drive around but there is no place to go. The pub is open but I am afraid of talk. The woods are too wet for walking, the back roads too mucked for a six-cylinder, rear-wheel-drive rented shitbox. There is really only the highway, both directions leading out of town, both leading back in. With not even a ten-mile drop in the speed limit in honour of Pomerania, the highway does not even acknowledge that the place exists.

I drive slowly up over the hill toward the church with my window open, the cold promise of spring in the air. I can smell the earth where it rises in a driveway, and everywhere there is water, rippling fast and clean down the centre of the road, trickling brown and slushy along the sides. Let them talk of robins arriving to herald spring; they do not speak for Pomerania; here, spring is the first sound of rubber on asphalt. But when I try for it, the rented car does not have the horses.

At the hardware store there is a large green truck with its gate down and the driver is jockeying out a mattress. He is jacketless, wearing only a black T-shirt, and when I double-take on the absurdity of dressing this way I realize I am looking twice at Bucky Cryderman, my old teammate from Vernon.

“Hey, Bucky!” I yell out the window.

He stops, still not recognizing, then: “Holy shit! Not Batterinski?”

“It is!” I get out and we shake hands warmly, both sizing up. If we went by volume, it would take me twice as long, for Bucky is even fatter than Danny, but he is also the same Bucky: same hairstyle, not a touch of grey or the sixties, seventies, eighties, same boyish tough face that wouldn't faze a rabbit. What change does he see in me?

“I seen you on television the other night,” Bucky says, black teeth finally showing his age.

“Me?” I say, laughing but clinching inside.

“You in Sweden.”

“Finland.”

“Wherever. You sure got them D.P.s pissed off at you, lad.”

“So it seems.”

Bucky laughs, the laugh of the night with Maureen. “Fuck 'em, eh, Bats?”

“That's what I say. How you been, anyway, Buck?”

“Good! Pretty good!” Bucky practically shouts, perhaps in defence. He pulls a package of cigarettes from under one sleeve and pinches one free — I imagine he still calls them weeds.

“You got a family?”

He lights up, hand shaking. “Five kids. Only one boy, though.”

“Five!”

“Maybe six now,” he says, laughing. “I left at sunup.”

“Who'd you marry?” I ask.

“You wouldn't know her,” he says. But in the way he glances toward the safety of his cab, I think perhaps I do: Maureen the Queen.

I change the subject for him. “You see much of Sugar lately?”

Bucky looks back from the cab to me, and I know instantly that Sugar Bowles is dead.

I have not prayed in so long that I hardly remember how. I am sitting — no, kneeling — in the Batterinski pew, but it is not the pew that I grew up in. Poppa has been moved further back to a smaller pew. The Batterinskis are fading and they no longer need the space. Soon Poppa will need only a folding chair at the rear doors, one of those Danny and I used to put out for the Christmas midnight mass. Soon Poppa will no longer be sitting in his beloved St. Martin's. For his last visit, they will let him lie down.