The Last Season (8 page)

Sugar nodded in approval. “Good. Good. How do you see yourself as a player?”

I shifted, uncomfortable with the questions and miserable with the rubber tubing across my legs. They were asleep, singing with blood.

I cleared my throat and sneaked a look at Sugar. I knew he was waiting. So was I.

“I don't know.” I said. “Good puck sense, I guess. Never caught out of position.”

Sugar grinned. “Never?”

“Well, not since Parry Sound much, anyway.”

Sugar stopped the Studebaker outside the arena and leaned his shoulder heavily into his door; it opened with a loud crack. “I'd like to show you something personal, son,” he said.

I crawled out after him, my legs collapsing and now stinging. Son? Sugar never called anyone
anything
but their last name. He led me around to the side entrance and pulled his key from the sliding holder clipped to his belt. It hissed out and easily into the lock, turned and then snapped back with a metallic ring. The door opened on my favourite smell: the arena, empty and waiting. Only the night lights on, making the lobby shadowy and cold and the ice beyond dark and rippling red where the distant exit lights bounced along the surface. Sugar reached without looking, tripped a switch and the lobby lights went on. I could see the dried swirls where the mop had gone over the cement floor, could smell the Dustbane. For me, coming into the arena was like crawling back in under the bed covers.

Sugar walked through the lobby up toward the turnstiles at the entrance, stopping under a long row of old pictures. He tapped the third one from the end.

“You see this here?”

I walked over. I saw the usual two rows of players, coach seated between the goaltenders, trophy complemented by crossed sticks out front, a few leeches in business suits and hockey jackets diving in from the sidelines. And old picture, by the haircuts.

“This here,” Sugar said, continuing to tap the glass with a thick knuckle. “That's me. Same age as you. See.”

I looked but could not see Sugar. The man he was tapping was smiling and sharp-eyed, the face thin and full of cockiness, the hair split dead centre and slicked down tight to the skull. He wore the team captain's “C” and sat to the right of the goalie.

“The year after this was taken,” Sugar said, “I played at St. Mike's. Straight into junior ‘A', you understand. No midget, no junior ‘B', nothing, straight into the second-best hockey league in the world. You understand?”

I nodded.

“Sixteen years old I made second-team all-star. That's up against Fern Flaman, Doug Harvey, Alan Stanley, a half-dozen others who went on, right?”

“Yah.”

“I lost my eye in the all-star game.”

Sugar turned to face me, almost as if he thought I might not have noticed before. I glanced quickly through him and then back at the picture. It was impossible. They couldn't even have been distant cousins. I read some of the names underneath. Carrington, C., Wilson, R., Cox, W., LaCroix, J., Bowles, E. (capt.).

“You think that's a sad story, I guess,” Sugar said.

I was getting afraid he was going to start crying.

“Well…”

“Bullshit it is!” Sugar shouted. He rapped the picture again, this time the knuckle slamming into the face of a good-looking guy on the back row, left side, “This here's the real tragedy.”

I had no idea what to say. I said nothing and soon sensed that Sugar was staring at me, waiting.

“You know who this is?” he asked.

“No.”

“Archie Cargill, that's who.”

I had no idea who he meant. It must have shown.

“You know him,” Sugar said impatiently. “If this was a side view you'd recognize his nose.”

I looked again. Archie Cargill … Archie —
Archie
! From the hotel desk. The leech. No way. Impossible.

“Archie Cargill was the finest prospect ever came out of this one-horse town. Could shoot both ways, just like Howe. Could make the puck dance like he had a string on it. Beautiful skater. Archie went off with me to St. Mike's and three weeks later I put him on a bus home crying his eyes out.”

“Why?”

“Homesick. Scared. Gutless. Same as your pal, Danny. No heart. Archie Cargill had no heart. I'm going to tell you one thing, Batterinski, and I want you to remember it: talent is what begins hockey games, heart is what wins them.”

I looked at him, not sure whether to cheer or be hurt.

Sugar smiled. “Don't worry son. You've got talent. You've got to have that to start with or there's no use even talking about it. But Powers has probably got as much talent as you, and maybe even your buddy Shannon has too. But they won't make it. You will because you want it, you understand.”

“I guess.”

Sugar laughed this time, once and loud. “Maybe you won't ever have the kids dreaming about you, Batterinski, but you sure as shit'll have the general managers.”

I had no idea what he meant.

Not then.

“Ugga-bugga!”

Danny could hardly contain himself. “You only got five minutes to get ready!” he shouted over the phone. I pulled it tight to my ear worried the Rileys might hear all the way down in the television room. “Powers got the bottle, just like he said he would. Bucky Cryderman's got his old man's car. And I'm supposed to pick Maureen the Queen up later at the Mug Shop.”

“You're sure,” I said, uncertain.

“Ugga-bugga!” Danny shouted and hung up on me.

They came by for me at seven. Bucky's old man drove an Edsel, the only one in Vernon, a massive chrome-plated brown and white two-tone that infuriated Bucky when people joked about it. But we did it because Bucky and the car were opposites. Bucky was fat and ugly, with teeth like one of the Jaja's old stone fences. The car was exquisite: huge, plush seats of real leather, electric everything, more dials than a jewellery store. They had the bottles tucked into the glove compartment, a cherry whiskey and a lemon gin, and Powers made us each hand over two bucks before he'd even show them. Once we'd paid, Bucky drove cautious as a priest's housekeeper out past the golf course to the gravel pit, where he tucked in behind a fresh bulldozed bank and sat with the heater blasting full. Danny pulled free the cherry whiskey, giggled, skidded the cap off right through the seal by rasping it across the full palm of his hand, pushed down the window button and tossed the cap outside into the snow as if he'd spent his entire Pomeranian youth drinking expensive booze in fancy cars.

“Hey!” shouted Bucky. “What did you do that for?”

Danny laughed. “You weren't planning to save any, were you, Bucky?”

Bucky looked hurt, worried. ‘Just don't spill any on the upholstery, eh?”

Much to my surprise, after Danny took the first swig he handed the bottle back to me. Not Bucky, who owned the car. Not Powers who'd bought the stuff and was team captain. But me, Felix Batterinski. I took it and smelled first. Smelled all right. I tasted: sweet, warm, thick. But the true effect wasn't until I swallowed. It hit my stomach like flaming gasoline. I gagged, choked — choked just like Christmas Mass, when Batcha was staring at me — and started coughing madly while the others, especially Danny, laughed like it was the greatest show they'd ever seen.

The next time the bottle came around I drank slowed and neither choked nor coughed. And the next and the next. I began to feel warm, content, a bit proud when Bucky went on about how I'd sucker-punched the big goon from Collingwood on Saturday. It was nice to hear my name mentioned by friends. And me, I was talking more, not just more but better; I even told a joke about why a woman was like a stove — “With both of them ya got a lifter, the leg and poker” — and all of them laughed and Danny never even squealed that I'd picked it up from his old man. It felt good. The car was warm and glowing magically with the dash lights. The bottle came around again and I drained it. I pushed the window button, listened as it hummed down and then hurtled the bottle by the neck straight into the bulldozer blade, where it shattered magnificently in the stillness. It was my sound. My night.

“Ugga-bugga!” Danny shouted.

“Let's crack the other one,” I said.

“Just hold your horses,” powers said. “That's the one for Maureen, eh?”

“Oh yah,” I said. Had I really forgotten?

“Oooooooooeeeeeee!”
screamed Danny. “Let's get at her. I'm hornier than a three-peckered owl.”

Bucky started the Edsel, snapping on the radio at the same time and twisting the volume up —
“Pleeeeeez, Mistah Custah
…
Ah don't wanna die”
— as he spun wildly out of the gravel pit, bouncing off the far banks and fishtailing down the golf-course road like a tangled spinner.

“You better all have safes,” Danny warned. “Maureen's not exactly the Virgin Mary.”

Father Schula's face rose out in the headlights, then vanished. Blindness. Spines dissolving. Rotting forever in hell.

“I haven't,” I said.

“Huh?” Danny said, his mind racing on to Maureen.

“I haven't got a safe.”

“Aw shit, Bats. Yous guys got an extra?”

“Not me.”

“Nope.”

Danny slammed the dashboard, causing Bucky to look over in a panic. “Well,” Danny said. “We'll just have to get you one.”

“Where? I said. At the hospital? Emergency?

“Bucky,” Danny said, taking control. “Drop us first at the Shanghai, eh?”

“Sure.”

Powers whooped and slapped his knee and I looked over at him. He was looking down into his lap as if he'd just broken his neck. It seemed to be dangling side to side, in time with the music but not natural. I'd expected him to hold his booze better, but since I doubt he'd had any more practise than I had myself, I couldn't waste time worrying about him. I had other problems. How did you get a safe at a Chinese restaurant? I knew there was no machine in the washroom. Could you order it? “A Number Three to go, please?”

Bucky moved the Edsel up through town. The street lights, dancing hypnotically as they slid across the hood, were cut off by the roof and flashed again in the rear window. I realized I wasn't quite right. Woozy, kind of. Further up Main Street the show was just getting out and I stiffened at the thought of running into the Rileys coming home from
North to Alaska
. Danny, however, was going to give me no chance to worry.

“Here,” he ordered, leaning back over the seat. “Give me your finger.”

“Huh?”

“Your pointer, arsehole. Straight out like this.” Danny held his out like a gun. I followed suit.

“Now keep it still.”

Danny had a dollar bill in his other hand, all crushed and beaten with the air of a collection plate grab, and he first smoothed it out before wrapping the bill carefully around my finger until it fit tight as a Chinese finger trap.

“There,” Danny said, satisfied. “Now put it in your pocket.”

What was this, one of Batcha's tricks? Got a toothache? Simple, just suck all day on a nail and then hammer it into a maple on the night of the full moon and the ache will disappear. Need a safe? Nothing to it—just wrap a dollar bill around your finger, stick it in your pocket and your pecker'll suddenly turn to rubber.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, afraid Danny might be making a fool of me. Powers and Bucky were already giggling.

“Just you go in there and show it to Kim on the cash,” Danny said.

“Kim?”

“He's the Chink with the glasses.”

Danny turned toward the restaurant, leaned forward and rubbed the steam off the window. “There. He's on now. Get going.”

“Just show it to him?”

“Just show it to him.”

“Hurry up,” Bucky shouted. “Maureen won't keep.”

I got out of the car and realized that when I put my feet down that I had lost half of my weight. I had to concentrate completely on my walk, but I couldn't remember precisely how it was I
did
walk. I stepped too carefully, like I was walking down the tracks back home; then I tried imitating Danny. It didn't feel quite right, but it worked.

I pushed quickly through the Shanghai door into the blasting heat from the overhead fan, then through the inner doors, and suddenly found myself face-to-face with an older man who looked up from his newspaper and smiled. His teeth were as yellow as a Pomeranian bantam crest.

“Yes sir,” he said. “Can I help you with anything?”

He caught me off guard. I stared at him, not sure what to say. I had my wrapped dollar finger, still stiff, rammed into my jacket pocket and I made as if to remove it.

Kim jumped up and back a bit, his jaw trembling. He thought I had a
gun
! I had the finger and suddenly realized this might be one of Danny's sick jokes.

“Don't worry,” I said, as if to say it wasn't loaded. Unlike me.

I couldn't stop the finger and it was out, lying pointing at him along the rubber-tipped change mat. Kim saw it and relaxed. He smiled at me, winked, quickly checked for observers and then peeled the bill in one motion from my finger. He leaned down and picked up a cigar box from well under the till, set it down, opened it, patted in the dollar and closed it. I was absolutely convinced the dollar had come from the collection plate. Perhaps Mrs. Riley's, destined, she thought, for the “poor orphans” she was always fretting about when her daughters turned their noses up at turnip. How could a well-intentioned dollar become so misguided? Nothing to it when Danny Shannon's the middle man.

From another cigar box, this one beneath the cigarette display case, Kim took a small package that I first thought were penny matches. But it was an Indian picture, in full headdress, and when he handed it over I realized this was the key to Maureen the Queen. I rammed the safe into my pocket and fled.