The Last of the Lumbermen (34 page)

“Put two and two together,” F
reddy answers for us. “You can handle that.”

“Never
mind that silly shit,” Jack tells them, then spends ten
minutes explaining the density and extent of the shit for
them without commenting on its lousy odour. “Anyway
,” he concludes, “a lot of things can happen befo
re next fall. We've got a game to play
in fifteen minutes, so let's concentrate on that. These musicians aren't going to be pushovers.”

That isn't all Jack has to say. He continues
with a rah-rah speech while we finish getting r
eady, one that's so good it even has me
convinced that the tournament is the centre of the
universe. As I'm heading out to the ice, he
stops me. “You take it easy out the
re,” he warns. “We may have to play a
second game before the day's out.”

I'VE UNDERESTIMATED WENDEL. FR
OM
the first face-off he's flying, and I let myself
be swept up in his turbulence like a piper cub
in the jetstream of an
F-18
. I play mo
re with that than I play against the Murder
Squad, letting it create open ice for me, and
for my right winger, Lanny Becker, even though he's too dumb to see it.

But there's a problem.
By mid period it's apparent we've got just one
defenceman with a full deck. That's Gus, whose deck
isn't exactly the standard one to begin with. Bobby
Bell, Dickie, and Gus's partner Pat Horricks are still
wrecked from last night, or dazzled by
the Murder Squad's fame, or, most likely,
both. Whatever it is, they're running around
in our end whenever the Murder Squad is
on the attack, and they're hanging back when
we're in their zone. We're going to have
to win this one with our forwards.

Artie is
on his game, and he scores one goal and
sets Freddy up for another without Freddy
really catching on until it's too late to do
anything but put it in the net. Not that Fr
eddy appears to be under the weather. He's up
to something all his own. He's teasing one of
the Murder Squad's defencemen, a scrawny little guy I
assume must be one of the drummers. It's de
finitely teasing, but to the crowd it looks
like Freddy is trying to kill him. At least
five times he lines the drummer up and
crunches him against the boards. Only we can
see how careful Freddy is. He keeps hi
s elbows down, and makes sure the drummer
is right against the boards when he hits him
so that the boards absorb the force, no
t the drummer. It isn't long before it gets to the little guy. After the fifth or sixth hit, he loses it
and jumps Freddy from behind. What Fr
eddy does next gets both benches laughing: he skates ar
ound the ice with the little drummer draped a
round his shoulders. Eventually the linesman drags the dr
ummer off and escorts him to the penalty box.

I go
out with Wendel and Gord for the powerplay,
win the faceoff, and push the puck to
Gord, who drills it around the board
s behind the Murder Squad's net. Wendel picks it
up on his wing and carries it behind the
net, drawing three players with him. He stops
on a dime, ties all three of them up,
and throws the puck into the slot as
I arrive there to put it away. Two
shifts later, I intercept a clearing pass in
exactly the same spot and find myself with another
clear lane to the net, and I ring it in
off the inside crossbar.

We
go into the dressing room ahead five-four,
with Junior cursing a blue streak at the lousy
protection he's getting. Number
13
scores all
four of the Murder Squad's goals. None of our
defencemen have any answers, except maybe Gus, who's played
his sanest and cleanest period in weeks. We're ahead,
and no one is too worried that we'll lose this game.

Artie scores another beautiful
goal early in the second, and after that the
game slows down and our defencemen clean up their act
a little. Jack has two forwards staying back and
keeping the Murder Squad from getting anything
together between the bluelines. The game isn't penalty-free, but
there's no malice on either side, and no
one loses his mind except the little drummer bo
y, who Freddy keeps crunching against the boa
rds like he was trying to turn him into an accordion.

He's picked the
right guy to torment. The drummer is evidently
their designated goon, crazy as it sounds, and he goon
s it up on every shift they let him out
for — which isn't too many once they catch on
to what Freddy's game is. I'm having troubl
e figuring out how the Murder Squad makes decisions. There's no coach behind the bench, and no one else seems to be in charge. I give the problem to James, but he can't
solve it either, except to detect that about
every three shifts they end up with seven players
on the ice. What the hell. I already knew
democracy is a flawed system, and with a two-goal
advantage we can live with a few political transgressions.

Between the
second and third periods, Stan begs Jack to le
t him play a few minutes. He's pretty g
reen around the gills from the last
two days, but after Wendel and Freddy score
on succes- sive shifts to give us a ten-to-six lead
around the ten-minute mark, Jack puts him on
the ice. Stan lets in two goals and drop
s his cookies into the back of the net after
each one, but putting him in is the right
thing, except maybe for Alpo and the cleanup crews.

I leave the dressing room without bothering
anyone with more of my parental advice,
and Esther drives me home, stashes me in bed, and
joins me. I doze off in her arms and
sleep like a baby while the Raiders turf the Drillers
from the tournament nine to one. That's the
score Jack gives me when he calls at seven
PM
to tell me I'm supposed to be on the
ice in exactly one hour to play the Roosters.

“Brilliant,” I
answer. “I take it you've set us up for
two games in eight hours to prove that we're manly men.”

“I did it because
so far we've had the best draw in the tou
rnament,” he snaps. “And because if I didn't we'd
be making the Raiders play consecutive games.”

I apologize, hang up, and drag my sleep-sodden bones out of bed and away from Esther's warmth.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I
'M LAST ONTO THE
ice for the pre-game warm-up,
but not because I'm late getting to the Coliseum.
On the drive down, the all-too-familiar tightness in my lower
back tells me I'm closer to forty-five than
twenty-five. I listen, and stay in the dressing
room to stretch the muscles.

Through most of this tournament
I've been first man on the ice, or near
to it. And no, I'm not a born-again keener.
The pre-game skate has been my chance to size
up the skaters on the opposite side of cent
re. But that's hardly necessary here. I've seen
the Roosters so often in the last seven years I practically know their dick sizes.

The good news is
that most us don't appear to have gone to the
bars after the game with the Murder Squad the
way I thought they would. Gord tells me
a few took naps, and the rest hung ar
ound the Coliseum to watch the game between Battleford
and the Drillers.

The exception is Stan, who slipped his collar
and trotted after his heroes. As he
suits up, it's plain to me he's still pissed out
of his lips. When he veers into a doorjamb on
the way out for the warm-up and nearly knocks
himself cold, everyone else gets it too. It's funny,
but if anything happens to Junior during the game we're in trouble.

I'm not alone in the dressing room while I
stretch. Gus stays behind, but he isn't ther
e to keep me company. He clears the equipment
from a corner of the room, parks his
noggin on an old seat cushion he's found, lifts himself
into a headstand against the wall — skates and all — and begins to moo like a pregnant cow.

He
holds both the posture and the mooing for close
to three minutes. When he comes down, his
face — and his bald head — most resembles a
huge beet. He shakes himself like a dog, lets f
ly with a blood-curdling scream, then picks up
his gloves and stick and heads for the passageway to the ice.

“Stress management,” he
stops to explain on his way by. “Learned it from some
Tibetans while I was in medical school.”

“Sure thing,” I answer. He's gone by
the time I realize why he was doing it.
He's petrified of the Roosters.

GUS HAS HIS
FEARS
under control by opening face-off. Through
the first period he's a model of concentration, determined, efficient, and
deathly silent. He unloads the puck quickly each time he
gets it, quickly but accurately, and without a trace
of panic. Few Roosters get close enough to try to whack
him, and when one of the twins goes out of
his way to throw an elbow, he telegraphs
it and Gus is long gone when the elbow arrives.

The Roosters are game, but it's our game
they're playing, not theirs. From the first
whistle they're back on their heels, reacting. Jack
is sending the wingers deep to pressure their
defencemen, who respond by trying to move the puck
through centre. About four minutes into the game
Artie picks off a pass just inside their
blueline, dekes Lenny, and scores. JoMo is playing
pretty sedately while Artie's line is on the ice,
and so is the big cousin they've flown in
from Medicine Hat for the tournament. But when m
y line is on, both of them are beating
the crap out of Lanny, and they're doing
the same to the third line even while Wendel's double-shifting.

It makes no difference, and it isn't a
defence against motion. Chris McBride scores a rare
goal for us with a wrist shot on a puc
k he intercepts in the slot, and Freddy
, seconds before the buzzer, puts both the
puck and JoMo past Lenny in a goalmouth scramble.

Th
rough the second Jack reverses tactics, sending the cen
tres deep and holding the wingers back so they
can obstruct the neutral zone. I take a r
egular shift as I did in the first period, bu
t this is much harder work. I spend much
of the period behind the Roosters' net dodging their attempts
to splatter me on the boards. I'm a
little battered as the period winds down, but I've
managed to put the puck onto Wendel's stick often
enough that he scores twice.

Artie scores
his second goal of the game on an end-to-end rus
h that begins behind our net, circles theirs twice,
and has everyone's jaw down around their knees
by the time the puck plunks down behind Lenny.
It's the prettiest goal I've seen in a lon
g time, and as Artie skates to the bench I
see Alpo standing on top of the Zamboni jumping
up and down and screeching his brains out.

I lean over to Artie after he settles on the
bench and point at the Zamboni. “Didn't think I'd ever see that,” I say.

Artie grins. “Yeah,”
he agrees. “It's kind of weird, ain't it.
The old guy's come around. Elsa and I
have been staying with him the last couple of
weekends. He's still the same miserable old shithead he's always been. But he's my miserable old shithead.”

WE
GO BACK TO
the dressing room up six-one.
The game is closer than the score, but it's
ours now, and Jack's main strategy for the rest
of it is to head off a brawl. He
stops short of suggesting we give up a couple of goals
— and thus put the Roosters back in the game — but I can tell it's in the back of his mind.

Personall
y, I don't see a brawl happening. If they can't
win the tournament, the Roosters would prefer to see us win, and I figure there's enough functioning brain cells on their bench to
put the brakes on their other instincts for once. Then
I remember that a couple of months ago these
same Roosters came within a hair of burning Okenoke, and wonder if I'm kidding myself.

If
a brawl starts, it won't be Gus who starts it.
As Jack finishes his pep talk, Gus gets to
his feet and bangs his stick loudly against one of the lockers.

“Listen
up, you guys,” he says. “Be cool out there.
I've never won anything in my life, and I
goddamned well want us to win this game and this
tournament. Anyone who starts goofing around out
there is going to find me in their face.
So keep your lips buttoned and don't take chances.”
For a moment he looks as if he's finished,
but he's not. “If you see any of those animal
s trying to injure Artie or Wendel or the
Old Guy here” — he points his stick
at me — “feel free to take their heads
off right around the kneecaps.”

On our way
back to the ice for the third, I tap
him on the shoulder.

“Thanks for the compliment, asshole.
You really know how to tune up a guy's ego.”

He grins
but doesn't turn his head. “No slur intended,” he answers.
“If you want your ego returned to its original
inflated condition, come see me in my office
next week. This is hockey, not therapy.”

THE ONLY ONE ON
the bench who doesn't heed
Gus's advice is James. He starts in on JoMo with his
sharp, high-pitched needle the moment the period starts, and jabs
it into him mercilessly whenever he's on the ice. JoMo
ignores him for a while, but when James
rams it in up to the hilt after JoMo carries
the puck over our blueline offside, JoMo skates over and
flicks the puck toward him.

I lunge across the bench
at it, but I'm too far away. Stan, who's had his bucket between his legs thr
ough the first two periods and has looked as
if he's in a coma, calmly reaches across and
picks the puck from the air an inch in front of James's face.

JoMo doesn't get away
with the stunt, either. Freddy decks him befo
re he can take two steps, cracking the face shield
he's been wearing since Gord broke his nose.
I look over to the Roosters' bench and see Old Man
Ratsloff yanking players back off the ice.
The ref sends both of them to the penalty box,
JoMo for unsportsmanlike conduct and Freddy for roughing, and
the moment passes.

I motion James over. “Stuff a cork
in it,” I say. “You heard
what Gus said.”

James does what he's told, at least until the Roosters
score a couple of quick goals. When they let
JoMo out of the penalty box I notice Old Man
Ratsloff chewing him out, and JoMo doesn't make it out on the ice for the rest of the game.

The
final score is seven to three, and we
clamber over the boards to shake hands with
the Roosters. Even the one year we made it to the
league finals nothing like this happened. But tonight things ar
e different. There's respect between these two
teams now, and a certain amount of reg
ret — although no one is willing to own up to the latter.

“Next year,” Neil Ratslo
ff says to me as we're shaking hands.

“For sure,” I answer. “Come on
up this summer and I'll take you fishing.” I don't have
the slightest idea where that one came from, and fr
om the look on his face, neither does Neil.

“You serious about that?” he asks.

“Offer's genuine. Just don't push me
out of the boat, that's all.”

“Well,” he says, “I
might just take you up on it.” He skates away
with a dumbfounded smile on his face.

I DON'T RECOGNIZE HOW
dog-tired I am until we'
re in the dressing room, and I can't seem
to muster the energy to take my skates off. So I sit there, gazing happily around the
room like I'm senile, until Esther appears and takes charge.

“You're
coming with me,” she says. “For a back massage and
a good night's sleep.”

There's no point arguing with her,
although I'm tempted to when I catch Wendel mimicking her
behind her back, the smart- ass. She's probably right,
anyway. I may have felt like a twentyfive-year
-old this morning, but I'm feeling my age now,
and then some. We could have two games tomorrow
, possibly three, if the Lions win tonight. Given that
they've already beaten the Raiders back in the opening
round, odds are they'll win this one. That'll leave
two undefeated teams, and in a double knockout tournament, that means a best-of-th
ree final.

THERE'S AN UNSEASONABLY WARM
breeze blowing
across Cran- berry Ridge when we arrive home. The
same breeze has been blowing for three days
now, and it's melted the last of the snow in
town and much of what's left up where we
are. But until this moment I haven't acknowledged that
there's been any world beyond the tournament, and so I've
missed three sunny spring days the breezes have
brought with them. Spring is still a month off, but whatever this is, it isn't winte
r.

“I think,” I say to Esther as I'm unlocking
the front door, “I'll take the dogs out for a ramble.”

“Mind if I join you?”

I don't mind, and
the dogs don't either. Bozo has already gotten
used to walking with Claire and Esther, who
have taken to long Saturday walks so they can discuss
their schemes without my father and I teasing them. Fang,
of course, is being himself: boing, boing, boing. I pull
both pairs of gumboots from the closet along with the replaced Maglite, and of
f the four of us go.