Heroes (35 page)

Only when the Warriors' Dippy and the Wichita enforcer, Bladon, briefly renewed their season-long antagonism by rubbing their gloves in each other's face before each finally managed a single shot to the other's head after a quick whistle in front of the Tornado net did the crowd just as briefly come to life. The players raced in tight and surrounded the two heavyweights to lend support — each skater grabbing hold of a potential sparring partner from the other team by the jersey in case Dippy and Bladon's gloves got dropped — and everyone in the stands let out a loud roar and rose to their feet.

But the linesmen managed to get between the two enforcers and order was quickly restored. The game resumed at its previously sluggish pace for another few dull moments before the horn sounded to end the first period. Bayle filed into the arena lobby along with everybody else.

Waiting in line at the concession stand Bayle never saw Able, the Warriors' play-by-play voice, until he had Bayle by the hand and was shaking it with his customary vigour and telling him how darn nice it was to see him again and how much he'd enjoyed Bayle's pieces in the
Eagle
when Davidson had gotten sick and how surprised he was to see him back in town because he'd heard he'd left for good. When Bayle told him he'd returned to attend Davidson's funeral Able seemed stunned.

“Today? The funeral was today?” Able rubbed his bald head and stared down at the garbage-littered arena floor.

“I called Gloria as soon as I found out Harry'd passed on but she wouldn't talk to me,” he said. “I mean, the woman just wouldn't speak to me. All she'd say was that me and Duceeder and everybody else who had anything to do with the team were just as responsible for putting Harry in the ground as that hemorrhage was. I just wanted to know where to go to pay my respects, but there was nothing about a service in the newspaper and she just kept hanging up on me. I mean, sure, maybe Harry didn't see eye to eye with the rest of us over how things should get done around here, and maybe we teased him a little too much sometimes, but to say that we were responsible for ....” Able looked up at Bayle.

“My mother died around the same age as Harry did, you know? And I just wanted to come by and pay my respects. But Gloria wouldn't talk to me. She just wouldn't talk to me.”

By now Bayle was at the front of the line and the acnescarred teenager in the Warrior golf shirt and visor behind the counter snarled at Bayle demanding to know what he wanted because there were, like, other people besides him who wanted to get served today too. Then Able looked at his watch and said he guessed he'd better get back to the broadcast booth before Munson had a fit.

Bayle gave the kid his order, turned to Able, and told him that the very fact he wanted to go to the funeral so bad was indication enough of his intentions, and not to worry what Gloria or anybody else thought. Surprising himself,
Bayle even patted Able on the back a couple of solid times as he said it.

Able said thanks, shook Bayle's hand heartily, and turned around as he was leaving to say thanks again before disappearing into the cigarette-smoke fog of the arena lobby. Bayle got his Diet Pepsi and popcorn and walked back to his seat not sure if he should feel as good as he did about making Able feel better or as bad as he did for being disloyal to Gloria by talking to him. Eventually decided it was really all right to feel both.

Most of the second period was a repeat of the first, a zero to zero tie looking not all that unlikely. Bayle even saw more than one person leave their seat and not come back. Bored himself, he strained to see who was at press box row, spotting only Wilson, obviously covering the game for the
Eagle,
and Samson, puffing away on a fat cigar and smiling his usual big smile. The counter looked empty without Duceeder and Davidson sitting at their customary opposite ends.

But then with about seven minutes left in the period things began to pick up. An interference call against Robinson and a minor roughing penalty to Dippy for shoving Bladon from behind gave Wichita a two-minute, two-man advantage that the Warriors killed off like it was really no advantage at all, energized, it seemed, at the obstacle suddenly placed in their way. The crowd began to wake up as well, cheering louder and louder each time the Warriors would successfully ice the puck into the Tornado zone. When the power play was over and Robinson and Dippy skated out of the penalty box the fans stood up to give the Warrior penalty-killing unit a quick but noisy standing ovation.

Then it was Wichita's turn. All the pressure they hadn't managed to exert during their power play they somehow mustered now, for several long minutes keeping the pressure almost entirely in the Warrior zone, driving shot after shot at the Warrior net. Some were rocket slapshots from the point
that missed high and wide but blasted along the glass right back to a waiting Tornado defenceman for another go. Some were drives from the top of the face-off circle that Warrior defencemen were able to throw themselves in front of and keep from getting through to the net. And some were point-blank shots from right out front, the final piece of a bing-bang-boom passing play from Tornado to Tornado to Tornado. But none of these nor any others got behind the goal line and chants of LET'S-GO-WARRIORS-LET'S-GO! echoed off the Bunton Center walls.

Just when the Warriors started to return the favour, though, peppering the Tornado goalie with several difficult blasts of their own, the horn sounded and the second period was over. The crowd, most of it on its feet and all of it, Bayle included, loudly applauding the attacking Warriors, seemed caught slightly off guard by the noise of the horn and the sudden stop in action, like someone discovering while gleefully belting out their favourite song they're not at home alone after all. The large doors at the north end of the rink slid open and the zamboni rolled onto the ice. The crowd quietly sat back down in their seats.

But not for long.

Before Bayle or anyone else had time to decide whether to stay where they were or visit the washroom or get something to eat or drink from the lobby, Gloria shot out onto the ice like a streak of silver light, aluminum sheathed as usual and with the plastic cannon strung over her shoulder, whipping around the rink like a mad speed-skater racing desperate and alone against some kind of terrible clock.

A few wildly reckless circles of the rink while feverishly pointing and jabbing her cannon at every section of the crowd were followed up by a whole series of sinew-stretching jumps, twists, and backward skating flips that didn't appear to follow any method other than what her never-ceasing-to-move legs instructed, but which thrilled the audience all the same. Somewhere between a figure-skater and a runaway train on blades, Gloria had the crowd in an applauding frenzy.
Winding up her final laps as the Warrior, she pulled the last of the tennis balls out of her ammunition belt and hurled them into the furthest reaches of the rink as she raced around the ice surface faster than she'd ever gone before.

All the tennis balls pitched into the stands, the zamboni having long since done its job and left the ice, the players for both teams standing at their respective benches waiting to come on for the start of the third period, Gloria, although it seemed impossible, somehow managed to crank it up yet another notch, convincing her exhausted legs to carry her around the rink even faster still. At a speed that transformed her into a blur of silver, Gloria began peeling off her uniform and tossing it into the stands.

Still tearing around the rink, first went the plastic cannon, lobbed into the second row behind the Warriors' bench. Then came her ammunition belt. And then, last lap almost over and tearing toward the opening of boards at the north end of the arena waiting to collect her, off came the glaring robot headpiece, tossed high over the glass into the waiting, outstretched hands of a young man in the seventh row behind one of the nets, the silver head hanging suspended in the air for a split second for all to admire like a beheaded trophy flung fresh from some intergalactic chopping block.

Too late now to throw on the brakes to stop, Gloria left her feet where the playing surface met concrete and flew off the ice and through the air like a crouching ski-jumper, right through the opened boards and down the black-rubber-carpeted hallway out of the fans' sight. The doors slammed tight behind her and the crowd erupted. Spilling out of their benches, the players for both teams banged their sticks on the ice in tribute to the performance.

From the opening drop of the puck the Warriors and Tornados did not play but combated like it was the seventh and deciding game of the championship round and not the last, meaningless contest of an unsuccessful regular season. Every charge up ice by the Warriors brought the home town fans to the literal edge of their seats, a steadily building
murmur of excitement as the puck was head-manned down the ice culminating more often than not in an excellent opportunity to score and a disappointed but still thrilled
Ohhhhhh
as the puck either just missed the net or was stopped by the Tornado netminder — just as when the now thoroughly detestable visitors rushed toward the Warrior net, the crowd's loud
Ohhhhhh
an
Ohhhhhh
of relief this time at a thankfully wayward shot or save. And the body-checking on both sides now turned ferocious, every time a defenceman retrieved the puck from his own end or a forward made a pass in open ice he paid for it with a crushing hit that sent him hurtling into the end boards or the almost-as-punishing empty air.

When the Tornados finally broke the scoreless draw a little over fifteen minutes into the period on a seeing-eye low slapshot from the point, the crowd quieted down, but only for a few numb seconds. Before the Tornado goal could even be announced they were right back into the game, each fresh Warrior attack on the Wichita net heralded and capped by a storm of cheering that seemed more the rooting roar of one enormous booster than of an arena of thousands clapping and yelling on their own.

The Warriors heard their fans and fed off the noise, skating faster and hitting harder, pounding the Tornado net with slapshots from way out, wrist shots and backhanders from close range, dekes and one-timers from close in tight. But the Tornado goalie was good, and when he wasn't good, he was lucky. And when the Warriors lifted their goalie for an extra attacker to try and help get the equalizer, Wichita shot the puck into the empty net with thirty-three seconds left in the game and that was that. The crowd sat back in their seats and were quiet for the first time since Gloria blazed onto the ice at the beginning of the second intermission.

What happened next, Bayle saw from the first.

Scanning the Warrior bench after the clinching empty net goal, Bayle spotted a red-faced Coach Daley screaming into Dippy's ear and Dippy, staring straight out at the ice,
emphatically nodding his head again and again. And then, just before the face-off at centre ice, Daley smacked him hard on the shoulder pads with both hands and Dippy hopped over the boards to replace Trembley in the face-off circle. The puck was dropped but Dippy likely never saw it, racing right for Bladon manning the right defenceman's spot before the puck even hit the ice.

Sometimes a hockey fight is like a baseball fight where two people who really don't want to fight push each other around a little bit and wait for someone to get between them and break it up. Sometimes it's like a football fight where, even if the two do have a score to settle, all they really manage to end up doing is hurting their hands smashing them on each other's helmet. But sometimes a hockey fight is everything a boxing match rarely is, two men standing toe to toe for what each believes to be the very best of reasons, pounding away at each other until their faces hurt so much they don't feel anything, not even pain, and their arms grow so tired and heavy from hitting that at the end it takes all their effort just to lift them from their sides for one last punch.

Dippy and Bladon stood no more than a foot and a half apart, barely moving on their skates, repeatedly hitting each other in the face, head, and neck. If their fists were flesh jackhammers, their heads were like those Easter Island stone statues — unmovable, expressionless, stoic. The other players paired off in customary form, clutching at each other by the jersey, but no one could be bothered to do much of anything but watch the team's two enforcers fight their final bloody battle of season-ending honour. Bayle winced at every shot Dippy took to the head and howled with delight with every punch he landed; felt sad but happy wishing his father could be there to see what he could see. Thought: The old man would have
loved
this.

And because the entire crowd was standing on their feet screaming for Dippy and against Bladon, the first, smaller explosion went virtually unnoticed. But when the second pipe bomb went off behind the net at the south end of the rink,
blowing plexiglass and whole hunks of wood from the boards all over the ice, the riot began in earnest.

Bayle became one with the panicked, shoving mass trying to squeeze its way through the exits and into the lobby and out of the arena. Like all the others Bayle ran up and down the stairs trying to find an opening not jammed full of people. So much more out of what had suddenly become the ordinary then to see Samson sitting by himself at the press box with his elbows resting on the counter enjoying his cigar while watching the anarchy of the crowd, as if the whole thing were somehow some sort of private spectacle being put on for his own amused benefit.

“Samson?” Bayle said. Maybe he's in shock, he thought.

“Ah, Mr. Bayle. I'd heard you were back our way. I never did receive a copy of that article you were working on so diligently down here. Did all our hospitality go for naught?”

“Samson ....” Bayle gestured around him with both hands, mouth hanging open.

“Yes, it's terrible, isn't it? Although it doesn't appear C.A.C.A.W. will be claiming any fatalities this time, thankfully.”