Heroes (19 page)

Hell, yes, Davidson said. Of course he'd be ready and able by the time of the team's next home game. No problem. Just some damn bug he couldn't seem to shake off. No problem at all. Bayle wondered at Davidson's sudden amnesia about the team's boycott but never brought it up. Whenever Davidson mentioned covering the team again Bayle would just nod right along. Talking about working again always seemed to lift the old man's spirits.

Not that they did much talking. Dinner done, the dishes by Bayle's hands washed and left soaking in the sink, Davidson's take-with-meals medication taken (to combat the less-intense but still-existing fever, dizziness, and nausea), a
cup of lemon tea set steaming on the arm of his easy chair, the two men quietly passed the evening until Davidson went to bed around eleven listening to the Warriors' game on the radio or, on the nights the team wasn't playing, watching T.V.

Game nights they spoke more than others, but not so much to each other as to the radio, Yes!-ing when the Warriors scored a goal, Goddamn!-ing when they let one in, here and there throughout the contest each offering Coach Daley strong counsel about player match-ups and general points of hockey strategy. And when, as was inevitably the case one or two times a game, Dippy and the opposition's tough guy dropped their gloves to mix it up, Davidson would huff off down the hallway and announce over his shoulder that he had to go to the crapper and to “give me a holler when the circus leaves town.” Waiting until he heard the reluctant wooden scrape of the bathroom door being pulled shut, Bayle would elbows-on-knees lean into Gloria's boombox on the coffee table and silently urge Dippy on, guided along by Abie's sure, AM radio voice and a former livingroom rugrat's memory of a thousand bloody hockey fights, his father's eager blow-by-blow account of each battle hovering above his little-boy head, each excited deliverance drowning out Bob Cole's tame CBC report.

“C'mon, Tiger,” his father would yell, Dave “Tiger” Williams, the best pure fighter the Maple Leafs had ever had taking to task some gutless sonofabitch dumb enough to mess around with Salming or Thompson or any of the Leafs' other bread and butter players. “Make that bastard pay, Tiger, make him pay! Get in there, boy, get in there tight! Use your right! Your right! Let him have your right!” And more often than not Tiger
would
find a way to unload that wicked right hook of his and give the K.O.'d player one more good reason to think twice the next time he contemplated taking advantage of one of Tiger's smaller teammates.

When the fight was finally over, the linesman picking up the discarded gloves and sticks and sometimes even sweaters, Bayle's father would smile and lean back in his easy chair and
nod his head with the satisfaction of knowing that at least for tonight — at least at Maple Leaf Gardens tonight — fairness and justice ruled the world once and for all, that the bad guys weren't going to get away with anything they shouldn't, and that the good and honourable were guaranteed the standing ovation they so rightly deserved.

And in spite of Able occasionally falling behind the play Bayle decided that he called a pretty good hockey game. Munson was nearly as surly and uncommunicative on the air as he was off, but Abie's lively delivery more than compensated. The Warriors managed only two wins on their road trip, but by Bayle's count Dippy ended up undefeated in nine fights, including two hard-earned ties, again with the Wichita tough guy, Bladon, Dippy's only real competition for the league's penalty minutes lead.

Pugilistic inebriation aside, Bayle only drank an occasional can of beer during his time at Davidson's, and even then, only when preparing dinner. Coming home halfdehydrated after spending a good portion of the blistering day covering some businessmen's over-50 softball tournament or a Boys and Girls for Christ Back in the Classroom charity soccer game (the weatherman bewildered as ever by the lingering heat wave now into its second week, of late given over to delivering nightly updates on the rapidly dropping aquifer level), Bayle, for a change, actually tasted what he drank.

Days he worked, evenings he spent with Davidson. And after the old man had gone to bed and Bayle had ironed and set out his work clothes for the next day and made and packed away his lunch, Bayle would sit in Davidson's worn easy chair and hate Duceeder and what he'd done to Harry.

Because life no more for Bayle a baffling kaleidoscope of confounding colour necessitating the careful construction of a sceptic's brick-solid breakwall to keep the entire tidal-waving mess at comfortable arm's length away. Uh uh. Black and white everywhere Bayle looked now — everything he heard, touched, tasted, smelt, too. Cops and robbers, you see. Good guys and bad guys. Us versus Them.

Although what he was actually going to do about getting even with Duceeder and getting Harry his job back Bayle wasn't sure. Nor what more could be done for Davidson's failing health. Nor, now that he thought about it, how he was going to explain to Jane his non-existent hockey article and the nearly maxed-out
Toronto Living
credit card he'd been entrusted with and which should've been returned by now, Bayle along with it (the card easily converted to a handy cache of instant-teller cash).

But most problematically of all, Bayle wasn't sure what he was going to do about not being able to fall asleep at night until Gloria's long, skater's body had been squeezed out of his restless flesh by the necessary sweet pulling free of himself by his own guilty right hand, the first time in Bayle couldn't remember how long that even the slightest urge to spank his monkey had seemed like anything more than just a good idea he should probably get around to one of these days. Sharing Davidson's morning
Eagle
with him over coffee and toast before heading out to do the job the old man could no longer do, Bayle really wasn't sure. But his job kept him busy. And in the evenings there was usually hockey to listen to.

Nights — the livingroom air conditioner working overtime to take out the room's warm stale air and replace it with what was cool and fresh and new — Bayle lay on his back on the fold-out couch and hated. Hated Duceeder with an intensity that rivalled the deep-gutted spite he still felt for Donald Comiskey, Etobicoke Collegiate's starting quarterback and Patty's student council president and one of his sister's last ever dates.

After Patty with smeared mascara and a torn sweater at three a.m. through intermittent tears and over an entire carton of Loblaw's neapolitan ice cream finally managed to tell Bayle the whole story of what had happened — at the Scarborough Bluffs and in Donald's parents' red Trans-Am after he for the thousandth time said he really, really wanted to and Patty just as many times insisted that she didn't — Bayle helped his sister finish the ice cream, saw her off her to
bed, and waited up all night at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee for company for what everyone knew was Donald's customary nine a.m. tee-off at nearby Indian Creek Road Golf and Country Club.

When Bayle came stomping out of the trees near the second hole a little after nine, choirs of birds chirping away their Saturday morning salute, Donald did his best to try and look simply annoyed that a non-member was on the course until Bayle grabbed a driver out of Donald's bag without stopping and kept on coming. When Bayle had to tell himself to stop hitting Donald or he might just kill him, he dropped the golf club to the ground and jogged back into the trees and then all the way home.

Later, sitting at the kitchen table again, waiting for the police to show up at the front door and take him away, Bayle wondered whether, if he went to jail, he would remember today as the worst or the best day of his life. The police never came and Bayle never had to decide. Common sense to the contrary, pros and cons on both sides, it seemed.

“J
UST GIVE
me the damn thing back and I'11 go myself.”

“I'll go,” Bayle said. “I just don't know why I can't mail it on my way to work tomorrow.”

“Because you aren't going to work tomorrow morning — I am,” Davidson said.

“So you've said.”

“Yeah, and what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, forget it. So mail it yourself tomorrow. It'll get there the next day. What's the hurry?”

“Just give it back and I'll go myself,” Davidson repeated.

It was silly, selfish even, not to straightaway agree to do Davidson the simple favour when the old man had casually asked him to after dinner, but the thought of leaving the house and travelling the three or four blocks to hand-deliver the small, crudely gift-paper wrapped package left Bayle clammy on the outside and churning within. In the week that Bayle had stayed at Davidson's — the road trip over now and the Warriors' team bus due home any time — he'd never once ventured out after coming home from work.

Where this sudden anxiousness came from he didn't know, only that in the last week he hadn't felt anything of this stomach-tightening sort. Being asked to drop off the package — “Just something for somebody you don't know and that doesn't have a damn thing to do with you other than you delivering it,” Davidson had told him — Bayle felt the same way he did every time he flew and the stewardess's voice over the intercom calmly announced that it was now okay to take off your seatbelt. Hurling through the sky at five hundred miles an hour in two hundred tons of steel thirty thousand feet above the earth and now it's suddenly okay to freely move about the cabin. Thanks for the invitation, Ms., but the seatbelt stays on.

Still, he knew Davidson couldn't go. The medication was helping and he wasn't that bad off if he didn't move around too much and got plenty of rest, but even just from the front door of the house to the truck and then to wherever he wanted Bayle to go through the evening's still-considerable humidity and heat was simply out of the question. If the
thing had to be dropped off tonight Bayle was going to have to be the one to do it. He took the house key off its hook by the back door.

“If I've gotta go out in this muck the least you can do is tell me what it is I'm delivering'” Bayle said, holding up the package.

For a few seconds Davidson seemed to consider whether or not he should answer Bayle's question. Then, without expression, “My autograph book,” he said. “Nearly every hockey player worth his jockstrap over the last forty years is in there.” He took the cup of tea Bayle had made for him and slowly moved from the kitchen to the livingroom without another word.

“And I guess I'm supposed to believe that this person you want me to give this to is actually expecting your, ah, autograph book?”

Davidson eased into his chair in the other room with a soft, settling groan that sounded part-pain, part-relief. “Of course not,” he said, his left arm slowly rising, the remote control pointed as if in wrathful accusation at the unawakened television set. “It's for his fourteenth birthday. And don't give it to anybody but Billy, you understand? Nobody. And for Christsake, don't be a damn fool and let the cat out of the bag about what it is, either.”

The captain turned off the seatbelt sign and Bayle was free to roam around the plane. He stuck the key to Davidson's place in his pocket and said he'd be right back.

B
UT FOR
the pair playing road hockey in the driveway, 66 Maple was like all the other houses along the street, each ranch-style residence outfitted with an attached garage, small yard, and tiny cement porch. Bayle parked and locked up Davidson's truck and walked to the foot of 66's driveway.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Is there a Billy that lives here? I'm sorry, I haven't got a last name.”

The teenaged shooter, hockey stick raised hip-high and ready to slap the tennis ball at his feet in the direction of the net at the other of the driveway, looked back over his shoulder without lowering his stick. The goalie untensed, rose from his ready crouch.

“I'm Bill,” the boy said. He turned around to face Bayle. “I'm Bill Duceeder.”

The boy wore the requisite three-sizes-too-big blue jeans and two-hundred-dollar running shoes, but topped the whole thing off with a beaming white t-shirt with PROPERTY OF THE WARRIORS stencilled across the front and an equally new-looking Warriors baseball cap with the bill pointed backwards, the very cool way it wasn't intended to be worn. Bayle wondered how the paunchy-looking older guy outfitted in the goalie regalia managed to remain standing. Had to be ninety degrees out, he thought, and then with all that protective leather gear on top of everything else .... Ah, probably just like a million other fathers who would rather be anywhere else than sweating through their eyeballs and risking taking a tennis ball to the nuts, Bayle guessed; probably because his kid asked him to. Bayle smiled remembering his own old man going through the exact same torture for him in their driveway.

“What do you want, Bayle?”

Bayle immediately recognized the voice from behind the goalie mask. “Duceeder?” he said.

The boy looked in confusion from Bayle to his father, then back at Bayle again. “I'm Bill Duceeder,” he repeated.

Duceeder peeled off the white goalie mask and shovelled back onto his head the wet mat of hair temporarily sweatstuck to his forehead. He placed the catching glove, blocker, and goalie stick on top of the net. Fat goalie pads still attached to his legs, he waddled down the driveway's blacktop toward Bayle like some kind of obscene penguin. “Go on inside, Bill, and pour us a couple iced teas before the game comes on,
okay? I'll be in in a minute. And see if you can talk your mother into cutting us some more of that birthday cake.”

“But he said he's looking for me, Dad.”

“Go on inside, Bill.”

“But Dad, he said —”

“Now,
Bill.”

The boy gave Bayle a disappointed last look before turning around in the driveway and slowly walking toward the house, hockey stick disappointedly dragging along behind him. He hesitated at the front door, taking his time in taking off his hockey gloves and throwing his stick on the lawn, but eventually went inside.