The Last Season (52 page)

But nothing else. I poke Christ into all the corners, but there is nothing left. Yet I know better. Marie said she dragged some of the memoirs out into the shed. She might also have taken the boxes from under the bed.

Perhaps I went up in ashes. Perhaps her main reason for lighting the fire was to burn the caul. To make it so I could never fix things. The
bitch
. I wish I had the sound of her box-crushing on tape, the way Torchy used to tape his sex sessions. I'd listen and I'd applaud. And then listen again.

I come back into the kitchen but cannot find the flashlight. There is only the old hurricane hanging on the spike. When I shake it there is a splash of coal oil, so I take it down and set it on the table, checking first on Poppa's snore — still regular — and then the time: 5:35 a.m. The glass is filthy with dust and I have trouble lifting it and wiping it clean, frightened of breaking the mantle. I pump it, open the release valve, lift the glass again and strike one of Poppa's long wooden matches and insert it. The lantern bursts, shards of flame shoot through the vents and wrap themselves in deep blue and yellow around the entire glass. I am afraid I have pumped too hard, or else the flame is working down the delivery tube, but suddenly the larger flame tapes high and vanishes into thick black smoke. I adjust the mantle and the pin glow grows to a tight wrap around the entire cloth. It clears the glass and fills the room with its light, a better glow even than Christ gave off.

As quietly as possible I pop the back door and step out and down, into the shell of the back shed.

There is a flutter under the eaves, then movement, swooping. A bat!
Sme
n
tek!
It twists through a missing wallboard and disappears into the night. Good! I place the hurricane down where it will be best protected, but the night wind still finds it, toying with the flame so my shadow sways through the remaining walls like black fire.

There's a burned trunk I do not remember off to the far side. It might be blue, but there is more black from the fire than whatever colour it once was. It is behind the crates I know held Jaja's memoirs. Poppa might have pushed it there so he could concentrate on Jaja's stuff. There is so much extinguisher powder around that it sifts like fine talcum and has actually formed drifts around the base. But there might be a chance.

Poppa has piled things on the trunk, all of them useless. One of Jazda's workhorse collars for the pub hauling, two tractor wheel rims, some twisted, rusted and now charred cable. I clear them quietly, glad there is enough ash and snow and paper char on the floor to soften any blow. The top of the trunk is badly burned, almost as if this was where she had poured her coal oil. I pull and the cardboard tears. I lift up the lamp and tilt it so I can see inside.

Poplar crosses! There must be thousands of them. How they failed to catch is beyond me, they feel so dry and old to the touch, but the flame never made it quite through the surface. There is only some drifted ash inside; otherwise it has been untouched.

There are some books inside, all Polish, all incomprehensible. And several tins, some containing beads, some buttons, some empty.

But nothing else. I yank the box so it comes completely free, and as it turns I notice on the side mostly badly burned there is a hole, but whether caused by a fire or by Poppa's rats I cannot be sure. Several bottles have broken and spilled against the framework of the shed; they might well have slipped from the box as poor Poppa kicked it aside to get closer to the doomed memoirs.

I get down on the floor and sift among them with my bare hands, touching very lightly for fear of broken glass. The jars are badly charred and my hands become inked with the coating. Some are broken. Some contain nails. More buttons. One has coins ... And one is neither clear nor burnt. It is blue ceramic, about eight inches tall, flanged in the middle untouched.

I reach and grab the jar, lifting it like a chalice. It has a ceramic top with a cork base built on, all held in place by an attached clamp. The clamp is fastened tight and rusted in place. Probably for years.

But it seems empty. I weigh it and it seems no heavier than what can be seen. I shake it and nothing. I shake it again, my ear riding with it, and I think I can hear something ever so vaguely. Something light as powder. Light as dried skin!

Clutching the jar I grab up the lantern and make it back into the kitchen, where I close the valve on the flame and set the jar down carefully on the oilcloth, smudging everything. There is a washcloth hanging on the old pump. I take it off, wet it under the tap and clean up the soot, wiping the table clean, moving the scrapbook and the Walesa book and placing the ceramic jar dead centre, where I can take a good look at it.

But I do not want to see it. I want to see inside. I
have
to see inside. I can barely negotiate my own fingers. They grab badly at the clamp and the jar nearly slips from my grasp. I grab again, holding it with both hands and push on the clamp with my thumbs, but it does not give.

Poppa always has penetrating oil around and I find it on the sill. I try to pour it on, but my hands are shaking too badly. I have to put the jar down, smear the oil on my fingers, then work the oil in along the clamp, using the washcloth again to clean up. And then I have to let it work in. I take my pulse because I do not know what else to do. One hundred and forty beats per minute. A five mile run. I take the scrapbook up but find I have no stomach for it: each picture is like one of Danny's lies, serving a momentary purpose but then gone. I cannot look back on what I should still be looking forward to. And damn! I've gotten oil on it anyway. I get the cloth again but the oil has caught in the newsprint of the scrapbook pages, spreading out, spreading back, the smudge being passed from one page to the next.

Goddamn it all to hell!

I try the clamp and it budges. A deep breath, a second effort, and this time it gives completely. The cork lifts free of the ceramic neck and a stale putrid smell wafts lightly and is gone. I stare immediately down the throat but it is pitch black inside the bottle, and no matter how I angle it to the overhead light I cannot see because of my own shadow.

From the cupboard I take down a cereal bowl. I place it in front of my own chair and then pump the ceramic jar like a ketchup bottle, tapping the neck and then the bottom with the edge of a straightened finger. For a moment I panic, convinced there is nothing inside. But then a grey, matted powder trickles out. Nothing else.

What would I look like?
If I am thirty-seven years old this powder should also be thirty-seven years old. I don't even have a clue what a fresh caul would look like, let alone one that's thirty-seven years old.

Thirty-seven ... the number seven ... I am still seven ... it is not too late.

I am afraid to touch. I grab one of Poppa's wooden matches and dab at the powder and some of it sticks to the match. I pick it up and stare at it, the match head an inch or so from my eye. It is nearly transparent, layered, more dust then skin, but like something that has been deliberately powdered. Like I was.

It has to be me!

One long, two short. The fucking phone! At this time? I jump for it, worried about Kristiina, worried about Poppa.

“Hello!”

The voice at the other end seems surprised at the speed. He chokes for words. Not Kristiina! Shit, shit shit,
shit!

“...Would this be Walter Batterinski?”

I find I am hissing, an angry goose. “I'm his son. What do you want at
this
hour?”

“I'm sorry, sir. This is Constable Dupuis with the Renfrew detachment of the OPP. We've had a case of vandalism overnight, sir at the cemetery.”

“Yes? What?”

“A grave on your site, sir. It was somewhat damaged, I'm afraid.”

“By who?”

“We don't know sir. We were wondering if you had any ideas or whether this was just a case of random vandalism.”

“Well, I'm sure I have no idea who would do something like that. You're sure it was in the Batterinski plot.”

“Yes sir. A recent grave. Mrs. Karol Batterinski.”

“My grandmother.”

“I'm sorry, sir. I —”

I hang up the receiver, smiling. Then lift it off again quietly so they cannot call again. I have work to do.

What do I do with this stuff?
Say I follow through with what Old Frank said and eat it. Will that prove the bitch was right? She
had
to be right — I'm surrounded by proof. But what can doing it now do for the thirty years since I was seven?

It can't bring back Jaja. Or Ig. Or Philadelphia. Or even Helsinki.

But maybe Kristiina. Perhaps it can still save Kristiina for me. Perhaps it can still save me. What the hell — what have I got to lose? So what if it can't fix the past. It just might save tomorrow.

Look, there's the dawn, pink and full of promise.

But how will I eat this?
It's already in a cereal bowl, so perhaps that's a sign. I look in the cupboards and come up with a huge plastic bag of rolled oats. I put on the double boiler, heat the water and dump in some salt and two cups of oats. I turn it slowly, no longer even thinking, entranced by this new calm. It is like a fight I am winning. I no longer feel fear. Nothing. I know from the cop call I really was at her grave. It was not a dream. I know also that I have picked the right jar.
I have found myself.

Porridge is perfect. The oats burp big circles of steam and the mix thickens. I turn off the stove and hold the pan under the tap, letting cold water run along the sides to cool it, then I drop four tablespoons of it into the bowl with the powdered caul, turning it over and over until the grey powder is no longer visible through the light brown and white of the porridge. I won't even see it.

Nor taste it. The secret here is brown sugar. I take Poppa's big jar off the high shelf and spoon in three giant scoops, tossing and turning it through the mix until it glistens with sweet mica. Then some cold milk and I am ready.

I sit down in my own chair and breathe the steam of the porridge deep. I am even hungry. The vodka has worn off entirely and I am clearheaded. I pick up the first spoonful, tilting for extra milk to flow in, and raise it first to my nose. I cannot help but smile at the very idea. I hold my past in my hand, myself thirty-seven years ago. I have found Batcha's curse. I am devouring my past to nourish my future. Just like Jaja.

I take the first bite, swallowing quickly. It tastes like porridge, not Felix Batterinski. Batcha could have done this thirty years ago. For God's sake, I wouldn't even have noticed!

Think of the trouble it would have saved everyone.

I take another bite, this time chewing, enjoying.

Delicious!

“‘It's Felix,' the old man said the morning I came up to him as he stood crying at the well pump. Nothing else. Nothing else was necessary.

He did not know me. He did not even know I was coming. Yet he sent me into the house almost as if he knew that I had to see how the story would end. Perhaps he felt that someone else could better make sense of it all.

I went inside and Felix Batterinski was slumped down on the floor, his tongue twisted, blood clotted across his forehead. The kitchen table was knocked over. There was porridge all over the floor. Rolled oats. And a smashed cereal bowl.

I did not know that it was more than simple porridge. Nor did the coroner down at Renfrew know until the report came in that so stunned the world of hockey. Felix Karol Batterinski, holder of the NHL's single-game penalty record, had committed suicide by deliberately mixing rat poison with sweetened porridge and eating it. A calculated, desperate act by a troubled man.

But why had no one — myself included — seen what was happening to this simple man? Sure, the Ontario Provincial Police had called about vandals at the local cemetery. By terrible coincidence the violation had been on the fresh gravesite of Felix's beloved grandmother. And when his father found the family Bible sitting on her bed he knew that his son had been up that night reading it, remembering her. But that sad coincidence cannot explain it all, surely.

Are the still-unknown vandals any more guilty of setting Felix Batterinski off than, say, the management of Tapiola Hauki, who conspired with him in a bizarre and highly controversial scheme to bring North American blood (and guts) to Finnish hockey? And is anyone more to blame than the National Hockey League itself, which used Batterinski's fists until they were worn out and then turned him away without an explanation? Or the agent, the infamous Vincent Wheeler, who bilked Batterinski out of his graceful retirement plans?

For that matter, can there be any more guilt than that which falls on the fan? Who was it but the average fan who made of Batterinski a false god? And who turned from their worship when the god was cast down? Where were the cheers on Felix Batterinski's last lonely night on earth?

We can only pity poor Walter Batterinski, who says it is all his fault for having the rat poison where his son could find it. But of course it has nothing to do with him. Felix may have found the container in his burned shed, but we all know that, in truth, he brought the poison home with him, all by himself.

Perhaps it was not suicide at all. Perhaps it was murder. One basically good man turned evil and eventually destroyed by a callow system. And perhaps we are all to blame.

All Walter Batterinski is left with today is the scrapbook of his son's tragic life. He made me go through it with him when I stayed for the funeral and the subsequent burial in the St. Martin's plot next to his grandmother. He smiled and pointed highlights out to me right up to the second Stanley Cup the Philadelphia Flyers won in 1975, then he abandoned me to finish on my own. Beyond Philadelphia the pages were seldom thumbed. There was nothing on Finland, most certainly not the spitting incident in Sweden (see photo top right, page 22). Someone has spilled oil and neglected to clean it up, almost as if hoping the oil would somehow make the letters run in a more pleasant configuration.

The last six pages were empty. Walter Batterinski mentioned this to me when I handed him back the scrapbook. I believe he wanted me to fill them in, to complete the story of Felix Batterinski.

‘We know that hockey is where we live,' Fred Shero had once written on the dressing room chalkboard when Batterinski was still in Philadelphia, ‘where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.'

Felix Batterinski, a simple, uncomplicated man from simple roots, would have bought that idea completely. When there was no longer a time between games for him, there was no longer life. And so it ended. A simple, sad story of hockey meaning everything and in the end nothing.”

— Excerpted by permission from “Batterinski's Burden” by Matt Keening,
Canada Magazine
, June 6, 1982 (Winner of the 1982 Canada Foundation of Investigative Journalism Gold Medal)