The Last of the Lumbermen (33 page)

THIRTY-SIX

B
EFORE WE LEAVE THE
bar, Gord and
I let the musicians know they've got a game at
eleven o'clock. I know these guys are supposed to
be a bunch of brick-headed drug addicts, but they'
re also amazingly organized. After a two-second conference
one of them skips the set to round up
the rest of the team, and the other four
prepare to play the set they've promised.
Wendel, who still isn't fully aware of how
close he came to getting his skull bashed in,
decides to hang around. I'd have preferred
him to come with me, but with all the bikers
around to keep things civil he can do
what he likes. They'll no doubt escort him and the
musicians to the Coliseum for the game, and anyway,
by that time the loggers will be too shitfaced
to punch their way out of a green garbage
bag. Or maybe they'll go to the game. Anything's possible.

We send off Bobby and Dickie
to scour the other bars — and to park
Stan somewhere where he won't be stepped on
— while I drop off Gord and
Jack at the Coliseum before heading up Cranberry Ridge.

Esther has ordered Chinese food, and it arrives
just as I'm getting out of the shower.
I haven't eaten since breakfast, which means Bozo will
get about half her normal ration of chow mein.
Jack has parked Fang with us for the tournament, and Bozo's too occupied with the little pest to car
e that I'm taking food out of her mouth. In
fact, she parks herself beneath my chair and dozes o
ff while I'm eating, hoping I'll keep Fang off her for a few minutes.

“What's wrong with her?”

Esther laughs. “She's exhausted f
rom walking around the house with that silly
little mutt hanging from her collar. I love
the little monkey but I'm glad we don't own him.”

I look down and see Fang chewing on
one of Bozo's ears. Reaching down, I push him away. He growls at me possessively.

When I
look up again, Esther is eyeing me with a calculatin
g expression on her face. “How tired are you?” she wants to know.

“Surprisingly alert. You want
to go down there and watch those musicians play hockey
, don't you?”

“I wouldn't mind. I've been hearing so much about
them I've gotten curious.”

“About which parts?”

“Don't be silly,” she says,
giggling like a teenager. “I'm old enough to
be their mother. Besides, I want to watch them
play hockey, not go partying with them afterward.”

I'm as curious as she is,
so we watch the local news on television.
— Most of it feeds from the networks, including
the sports, which is ninety percent
NHL
video and
financial reportage on this year's baseball spring
training holdouts and ten percent about the tournament. It's
lazy and depressing coverage, but it's what you'd
expect from a small station owned by a conglomerate.
And I'm in too good a mood to be dep
ressed about anything short of all-out nuclear war.

THE
BLOCK OF SEATS
reserved for the tournament players a
re good ones, right behind the visitor's bench.
I spot one or two players from the tournament teams,
but most are filled with Wendel's new biker friends.
Considering that it's close to mid- night and the game is being played between two out-of-town teams, it's a big crowd — and a noisy
one. Then I remember that one of the teams on
the ice has made themselves into local heroes by playing music in every bar in the city the last two days.

Esther
and I locate a couple of empty seats three
rows above the players' bench, and settle in to watch.
I have to admit that the Murder Squad are
a pretty fabulous looking bunch in their white-on-black LA
Kings-based uniforms with a huge skull and crossbones for a crest.

“Look
at that, Andy,” she says. “Every damned one of
them is using the number 13.”

It is funny, but I
don't get to enjoy the joke for long. Seconds later the
puck flies into the crowd and Mayfield, whose team
is occupying the visitors' bench for the game, spots me
in the crowd and motions me and the ref
over for a conference. Neither Jack or Gord
are at the game, so he decides to appoint
me commissioner in charge of complaints. He
doesn't think the number 13 gag is funny in the least.

“Look at these assholes, Bathgate,”
he shouts. “They're all wear- ing the same
number. It constitutes an unfair advantage. Isn't there some r
ule about this?”

“What's the advantage?” I ask. “You don't know these
guys from breakfast anyway.”

He keeps on whining that it's
unfair, that his players can't tell who's who.
He's right, sort of, but there's nothing I can
do about it.

“Okay,” I say, finally. “You
want me to have them pin pieces of paper on their
backs telling you what they like in bed or what
instrument they play or something? Make a real request here.”

Mayfield glares at me sullenly. “Well, do something.”

Esther is
close enough to hear most of this, and she's rolling
around in her seat laughing.

“Look,” I tell him. “The big ones are
the guitarists, the skinny ones are probably drummers, and they're all perverts. Is that good enough? Now play your game and stop whining at me.”

Mayfield shakes his head in disgust and turns back to
the ref. “Forget the whole thing,” he says to no one in particular.

When I sit down, Esther is still laughing.

“What's so funny?” I ask.

She chokes out an answe
r. “Men,” she says. “You get around a
rulebook and it turns you into ninnies.”

We leave at the end of the
second period with the score tied four-four.
The Murder Squad are the bigger and slightly
better of the two teams, but they keep taking
stupid penalties — more for what look like practical
jokes than for anything nasty, and it costs
them. On two of the ensuing power plays, the Drillers score.

Before I leave, I give Wendel
and five or six other players who're sitting
with him strict instructions not to go drinking
after the game. I don't have much faith that they'll
pay any attention to me — least of all
Stan, even though he's sitting there with the
same bucket he kept between his knees through this
afternoon's game. He looks at me bleary-eyed and wants to
know who appointed me his father.

“You just do what you'
re told or I'll turn you in to the cops,
” I tell him. “You and your girlfriend the
re. You asked her to marry you yet?”

Stan starts
to say something, then either forgets what it is
or thinks better of it. It's my job to
tell them what they ought to do, but I suppose
it's their job to ignore me. I just hope
we don't have to play the Murder Squad next if they win this game.

But when we go
home and I fall asleep instantly, I don't have
nightmares about playing the Murder Squad, nor do
I dream about pissed-off loggers or bears
dripping
PCB
s from their jaws. I dream
about cruising through centre ice with the
puck on my stick. On my left side, darting toward the blueline, is Mikey Davidson.

ESTHER AND
I ARE
back at the Coliseum by noon, coming in
just as the game between Chilliwack and the Roosters is ending, which the Lions win four to two. Of course the Mur
der Squad won their game last night, and of course we'
re playing them this afternoon. In the three
AM
game the Drillers got a team that wasn't quite as easy
as the Cowboys, but they beat them five to two
anyway. That leaves six teams in the tournament: we'r
e undefeated, and so is Chilliwack, while the Saints/Murder Squad,
the Drillers, the Battleford Raiders, and the Roosters are two-and-one.

The Roosters are using
our dressing room, and there's something
almost sweet about the exchanges between our players and the
Ratsloffs as they troop in. Those of us
who arrived early enough to watch the last part
of the game talk about good plays they'd seen the
Roosters make. Even Junior gets in on it, consoling
Lenny Nakamoto even though he's scared silly of him.
The rest of us imply, casually but somehow
sincerely, that the Roosters lost the game because
of bad bounces and bad luck, not because they
were playing against a better team.

It's true and not true. The
Lions were the better team and everyone knows it.
But the Roosters weren't outclassed. Between two teams
like this, a couple of pucks bouncing one way or
another can always change the results. Anyway, we'r
e extend- ing a courtesy to them, not undermining the
whole of human reality, and the Roosters r
eturn the courtesy through their body English as they
move amongst us, subtly trying not to infect us
with their bad luck.

It's weird, and sort of impressive. These
men aren't quite the Ratsloffs who've been
pounding on us all these years, but that isn't what
impresses me. It's a reminder that for all
the competitive crap and violence in the world —
and in this hockey league over the years — decency
is kind of, what's the word? Ubiquitous.

One
thing's for sure. This tournament is more civilized
than the ones I played here twenty years
ago. The boozing is less frantic, the games mor
e skillful and less nasty. Or maybe what
I'm mistaking for a small advance in civilization is the
shortening of my own self-centred radius. Until everyone's gone home, and we get the damage reports from
the hotels and motels they're staying in, the jury's out on all of it.

On us, meanwhile
— the Lumbermen and the
NSHL
— judge, jury
, and executioner have come in. While we're suiting
up, Don Young, Sr. crashes the dressing
room waving the Saturday paper. On the lower
half of page one, it has the announcement of a
n agreement to move Victoria's Major Junior franchise to
Mantua for next season.

“Lemme see that,” Bobby Bell says, grabbing the newspaper.

Nearly everyone, including the remaining
Roosters, crowds around him to read over his shoulder, but I don't need to. Neither do Jack
or Gord. Jack catches my eye and shrugs:
Snell's timing is impeccable. It's about what you'd expect
from a guy who has his nose stuck
that deep in the crack of the corporate sector's
ass. They've probably promised to install a gin
pipeline to his office at City Hall.

Bobby
, meanwhile, has finished reading, and tosses the news
paper in the air. “Someone ought to fit
Snell with a pair of D
9
treads for ankle
bracelets and see if he can swim across the
river to InterCon's office.”

It's an interesting
suggestion. Bobby looks at the three of us
for confirmation, and the lights come on. “You
knew this was going to happen, didn't you?” he says.

“There were rumours,”
Gord confirms. “We were hoping it
might be the year after next.”

“So,” Dickie wants to know, “what does this mean for us?”