Heroes (28 page)

Bayle looked up from the Rorschach bourbon-blot on his pant leg. Saw Gloria's fingers on his other knee, her leaning face, coming-close eyes, lips ....

Six seconds later and both of them with water in their eyes, Gloria softly crying at the kitchen sink with her back turned to Bayle, the sting of her hard, loud slap reddening the entire left-hand side of his face and tearing his eyes.

Gloria finally turned around from the counter. “Why did you want to go and do something like that?” she said. She wasn't crying anymore, but some of the tears she had were running down her cheeks. “Why?”

“I don't know. I guess I thought you wanted me to,” Bayle said.

“You guess you thought I wanted you to?” The drying tears were still there, but the vulnerability he'd never seen before and that just a moment previous had gone with them was suddenly now gone. Long gone.

“And how the fuck do you figure that?” she said, crossing her arms. “You're saying that I led you on, Bayle? Is that what you're saying?

“I guess not, no.”

“No guessing about it.”

“No.”

“No is right. I'm with Harry, Bayle.”

Bayle hung his head. “Yes.”

“You think just because Harry's sick and in the hospital and not here to see what's going on that I'm gonna betray him? Betray him and me and everything we've got between us?”

“No.”

“No is right.”

Head still down, Bayle picked up his glass of bourbon off the kitchen table. Set it back down. “But what has your having gotten clean have to do with Duceeder?”

Incredulous, “Christ, Bayle, what — ? I think you better go home now. Right now.”

“But I want to know.”

“I think you should go home now, Bayle. Your story-time privledges have been revoked.”

Bayle looked up. “I've go to know, Gloria,” he said, almost begging. “I've got to know how it all fits together.”

“How all what fits together?”

“I don't know.
Everything.”

Gloria stared, hesitated; hesitated, but could see and hear Bayle's desperation. She sat back down at the table and looked at him long. Took a drink from her glass and looked at him again and shook her head as if she didn't quite believe what she was going to do. Took a deep breath and shook her head one last time. Finally spoke.

“So I got clean, all right? And Harry, somehow he finds out that the one thing my mother did for me before I split for good was sign me up for figure-skating lessons when I was 13 because one day when she was good and high and vegging out in front of the T.V. she convinced herself that Dorothy Hamil was the most beautiful white woman she ever did see and that I might have a shot at being a real lady if only I learned to skate like little Miss Dorothy. So Harry talks to Duceeder and convinces him that what the team needs is a mascot to get the fans more into the game. And before too long I become the Warrior. Gloria the Warrior.”

Bayle smiled. Gloria almost too.

“Yeah, I know, there's the costume and all the rest of it, but believe me, it still beats working the late shift at Taco Bell five nights a week for five bucks an hour or dealing dope and every minute wondering whether you'll live to see tomorrow night. And I always did like skating, you know? Sometimes, when it seems like it's just me and the ice out
there, speeding so fast and going round and round in big perfect circles, the air so fresh, so clean, not hearing a thing but the sounds of the ice giving way underneath my skates, it feels ... good. It just feels good. Even if that crackhead bitch was the one who got me started.

“So anyway everything's just hunky dory. Until one day a couple years back Harry comes home from covering the team three sheets to the wind at two in the afternoon and with a bee in his bonnet something awful. After enough jawing I get it out of him that the girl Dan Fenton had the baby with all those years ago, she's living out in B.C. now and she's gotten ahold of Duceeder that very morning after hearing about the money Dan set aside for her — don't ask me how, probably Dan's parents — and she's wanting it and wanting it right now because her and Dan's boy is twenty-something now and she's wanting to help send him to — get ready for this, now — chef school, the boy's big dream. But Harry doesn't have the money anymore.”

“Couldn't he take out a loan or something?” Bayle said.

Gloria sat down her drink. “Take out a two-thousand-dollar loan so he could hand it over to some complete stranger so she can pay the way for her boy so he can play at being a baker?”

“I though you said he wanted to be a chef.”

“Chef, baker, motherfucking hot dog vendor, have I been talking to myself all night here, Bayle? Harry used that money to save my life. Not to send me off to college or fix my car or get me a nose job. To
save my life.
Don't you think that's a little more important than some farmboy strapping on an apron?”

“Of course it's more important, it's just that ....”

“Just that what?” Gloria said.

“Well, just that it really wasn't Harry's money to give away. I mean, technically speaking.”

Gloria looked at Bayle and slowly shook her head. Picked up her drink. Looked at him one more time. Drank.

“So what happened?” Bayle said.

Gloria looked up from her glass, the effect of the rare
evening of drinking showing in her face. She picked up the glass and drained it. Spoke as if performing the last tiresome task of the day.

“What happened next is real simple. Duceeder kept asking Harry for the money and Harry kept saying he didn't know what the hell Duceeder was talking about, that he doesn't even remember where he put that money. Until one day Duceeder somehow tracks down the bank and finds out that Harry withdrew all the money, with interest, the year before. Harry and Duceeder weren't exactly on the best of terms by this point anyway — Duceeder had started getting in tight with Able and Munson and all the rest of that crew by then. And the only reason Harry even goes by Duceeder's place anymore is to see his nephew Billy. But the thing with Dan's widow just makes things worse. Then those articles came out that Harry wrote on the Bunton Center and then the rumours about the team moving started and, well, that only made it final. Duceeder forgets all about all the good Harry did for him over the years and all of a sudden Harry's a no-good, trouble-making communist or something. And that's just about all there is to tell.”

Bayle picked up his glass but there wasn't anything in it. Went for the bottle but it was empty too.

“Of course, none of that bothers Harry none — the less he has to talk to Duceeder the better — but Duceeder all of a sudden doesn't let him see Billy no more, and that does bother Harry some because Harry, he doesn't have much family left, you see, and even though that boy's not really his nephew, he treats him like he is. And from what Harry says, that boy, Billy, he's all right. In spite of who his father is.”

“I know,” Bayle said. “He's a good kid.”

“Harry tell you about him?”

Bayle shook his head. “Tonight, after they arrested Duceeder, I tried to make sure he got home okay.”

Gloria's tired face brightened. “They took Duceeder away during the game? Right in front of his own son?”

“It wasn't pretty,” Bayle said. “But all things considered, the
kid actually handled the whole situation pretty well, I think.”

“All right!” Gloria said, clapping her hands. “Let that boy see first hand what kind of man he's got for a father.”

“He didn't do anything wrong, Gloria. I was the one who planted the drugs there, remember?”

“He may not be guilty of what he got arrested for, but he's sure enough guilty for what he did to Harry, how he deprived that poor man of his livelihood, the way he practically drove him into the hospital.”

Bayle held his tongue so Gloria could keep on believing.

Gloria picked up the empty glasses and carried them to the sink. Turned on the faucet and squirted a yellow shot of dish soap in each. “Anyway, the way I figure it, thankfully it won't make much difference one way or the other to Harry now, anyway.”

“Harry's all right, isn't he?” Bayle said.

“Harry's just the same as he was yesterday: no better, no worse. But I've got a feeling, I've got a real good feeling, that when I visit him tomorrow and tell him all about the team, him not covering them won't be such a blow anymore, won't eat him up inside like it's been doing, you know? I've got a good feeling that when that happens he'll be back on his feet again in no time.”

Playing along, “Tell him what all about the team?” Bayle said.

Gloria turned around at the sink. “Didn't you hear?”

Bayle shook his head.

“The Warriors, they're moving. They announced it right after the game on WUUS. To Texas, they said. All of us, we're all done now, Bayle. It's over. For everybody.”

T
HE NEXT
day's
Eagle
flew with Bayle back home. The aborted hockey article was dumped in an airport trash can just before boarding.

News of the move was all over the newspaper, from its front page announcement, to the Local Scene
(“Local Business Braces Itself for Economic Affect of Warriors' Departure'),
to, of course, the sports section, where a hastily constructed capsulized account of the team's history filled up the entire top of the first page. The history lesson sat directly on top of Bayle's report of last night's game. The placement seemed fitting.

But right beside a short article reporting no new leads in the search for members of C.A.C.A.W. there was still room left over for one more page-one, Warrior-related story. The headline read
Warrior
G.M.
Arrested on Charge of Drug Trafficking,
the story going on to explain how Duceeder and his wife were each looking at twelve years of federal penitentiary time if convicted. The picture directly underneath of Duceeder entering the police station by himself, cuffed hands raised to his face unsuccessfully shielding his identity, said it all. Bayle crushed the paper into a messy ball and jammed it under his seat.

At Pearson International in Toronto nobody was there to greet him. Passengers were instructed to keep their seat belts on until the light at the end of the cabin said not to and the taxiing plane came to a complete stop, but everyone stood up anyway, scrambling around like panicked squirrels and clawing after their luggage in the overhead compartments and sizing up the competition next to them for the race toward the nearest exit. Bayle stayed strapped into his seat until the plane was empty. A flight attendant came by to ask him if he'd forgotten anything. Bayle said he hadn't like he wished he had and moved down the aisle toward the big hole in the side of the airplane where the captain and the other flight attendants stood around looking at their watches and tapping their feet while waiting to wish the guy in 46B who looked like he hadn't slept or shaved in three days a nice day and thank him for flying with them today.

The airport shuttle delivered him as far as the westernmost subway stop; from there, rapid transit, right downtown.
Coming up the stairs of the St. George station: the cold, grey, metallic-tasting everything of an enormous November downtown Toronto sky and an explosion of scurrying people sprung everywhere from somewhere making Bayle's head swim. Swim with people crossing the road, shaking hands and parting, shaking hands and back-slapping and walking off together, standing and talking calmly under elm and oak, bicycling along (patiently ringing their bells), jogging by (cheerfully mouthing words to songs only their headphoned ears could hear). Even — because St. George street borders the university — the odd odd academic type with pointed silver beard (stroked with every third step) and dangling red scarf sucking on a pipe (cherry-tobacco: sweet) with a thick hardcover stuck right there underneath his nose strolling his way through the throng of accommodating sidewalk strollers.

Bayle kept walking, swimming head making for eyes-everywhere gawking — the intoxication of a tourist in his own town — walking around and between as best he could dog-walkers, hand-holders, hockey-bag-and-stick-toters, chalk-on-pavement hopscotchers, after-dinner-tokers, hairy panhandlers (always polite — answering, when told you have no spare change to give, “Thanks and have a good night anyway!”), and, finally, ending up at 177 Spadina Road, the three-storey brick house divided into six bachelor apartments that Bayle called home. Or, rather, had.

His key to the front door worked just fine, but the one to number three, on the second floor, Bayle's flat, proved a little more difficult. Actually, didn't fit anymore. Mr. Hart in number one on the first floor, occupant and superintendent, seemed more sad than angry at Bayle's prolonged indifference to his repeated but polite pleas for nearly three months worth of overdue rent, at the unfortunate but necessary decision to evict.

“And my stuff?” Bayle asked.

Another sad frown. “Until yesterday, I'd kept it all for you nice and neat right downstairs in the basement.”

“And now?”

“Let me get the legal papers. A lawyer by the name of Johnson, if I recall, him and a moving man came by yesterday afternoon and took everything away, lock, stock, and barrel. I don't know what sort of trouble you're in, Peter, but I can't believe what they done to your things is right and square. Let me go inside and get the legal papers.”

“Don't bother,” Bayle said. “I've got my own set.”

Handshake, best wishes, no hard feelings.

Laptop and bag in hand, Bayle waded back out into the night, delicate yellow covering of a slightly chilling setting sun transformed in the short time it took him to join the ranks of Toronto's increasing homeless population into a bitterly fucking cold Canadian night.