Heroes (6 page)

“I suppose some people do prefer to remember Mr. Reagan in his Presidential clothes— suit, tie, and all the rest of it. And he certainly did cut a striking figure, don't misunderstand me. But for me, even when he was serving the American people in the White House for all those years, he was still Ronnie of the West, always ready to do the right thing no matter how many of the bad guys had him surrounded. My nephew I mentioned earlier, Ron, my sister's boy, he's named after Mr. Reagan.” A sigh. “If only some of that can-do attitude were as easy to give.” She turned away from the picture.

“Anyway, here's your paper,” she said. “As of tomorrow morning you have to pay for your own. There's a box out front by the door. If you need change ask at the desk.”

Bayle took the paper, thanked her again, and went off in search of the Great Plains.

Laying on the bed, Bayle put the newspaper down on his knees, rubbed his eyes, and read the headline again (WARRIORS TO LEAVE TOWN?
Million Dollars in City-Ordered Renovations to Bunton Center Could Drive Team Out of Town Say Owners, Bunton Groceries).
So that's why Davidson is
persona non grata
around here, Bayle thought, reading on: it was his articles in the paper a few months back that put the city inspector onto the problems with the arena.
The story went on to say that over one hundred full- and parttime local jobs would be lost city-wide if Bunton Groceries were to relocate the team.

Bayle thought about the janitor he'd talked to that afternoon, Jefferson, and his six children, then the boy he'd seen in front of the arena earlier in the day, wondering what would happen to all of the Warriors apparel the kid had been wearing if the team decided to move. Row after row of unwanted Warrior t-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps hung in second-hand-shop abandon before Bayle's eyes, a sort of Platonic Form of uselessness weighing upon his mind. He shook the thought from his head and decided it was time to unpack.

Except for the busily humming air-conditioning unit and light fixtures and electrical outlets, the room was meant to resemble a turn-of-the-century pioneer's quarters. Bayle laid away his clothes in the mirrored oak dresser, put his dissertation, folders of hockey articles, and laptop computer on top of the heavy mahogany nightstand, and, the white porcelain chamber pot pushed underneath the bed, placed his air purifier on the level below and switched it to ON.

Bayle owned three air purifiers, none of which he ever bothered to insert a filter into. One of the machines he kept at his place, one he left at Jane's apartment for when he stayed the occasional night, and the third, what he called his “traveller,” a smaller unit, he left permanently in his suitcase for his rare trips away from home.

Filterless, each supplied more than simple white noise to drown out nighttime urban honks and howling, however, the machine's deafening quietude manufacturing a near-perfect auditory translation of the sort of peace of the intellect and emotions that Bayle from the beginning had sought out in studying philosophy. But even desire-denying Empiricus, he had to confess— as close as Bayle had ever gotten to finding in the written word eradication of emotional, moral, and metaphysical confusion — even Empiricus could not duplicate the depth of stillness of Being produced by the little
machine's uniform humming, the encompassing mist of droning certitude it provided never failing him for its soulsoothing effect.

Bayle laid back down on the bed and let the murmur of the machine spill over him. Flat on his back, a handembroidered feather pillow placed gently over his face, the steady whir that now filled the room received dirty him like a filled-to-the-brim hot bath. Although he easily could have nodded off — the long flight of this morning, the drinks on the plane, the non-stop chatter of today, the day's unexpected heat and humidity — he resisted his closing eyelids so as to experience wholly one of his most favourite of feelings, impervious awakedness, Bayle's own secular take on the Christian's ideal state:
in,
but not
of
this world.

From underneath the pillow Bayle peeked at his watch. Nearly four-thirty; three hours until face-off. Enough time to plug in his computer and input some of the notes he'd taken at the rink, maybe even have a look at a few of the files. Still deliberating, his eyes fell upon the discarded newspaper lying at his side on the bed, the story of the Warriors' potentially devastating move staring up at him, the Warrior-outfitted teenager from that afternoon once again coming to mind. Bayle closed his eyes.

On his back, on his side, on his stomach, on his other side, on his back again, Bayle could not get settled, the spell of the air purifier unable to plough him under. Later, sitting up on the edge of the bed, none the refreshed for his attempted hour of rest, That's odd, he thought. That's not like me.

W
ELL, GOOD
evening, Mr. Bayle. Sit yourself down over here beside me. You can help fill out the buffer-zone between James here and Mr. Davidson when he arrives.”

Fifteen tiers of seats above the ice surface, the Bunton Center press box wasn't much more than a twenty-foot-long open-air linoleum counter at the south end of the rink. Several three-legged stools tucked neatly underneath, the counter itself was bare but for some ancient coffee-ring stains and Samson's folded hands. Bayle would have preferred to be by himself buried somewhere high in the nosebleeds, but this was where Jane would have wanted him to be. He took the offered seat between Samson and Duceeder. Since that afternoon Duceeder had reasserted the part in his thinning hair and changed his coffee-stained tie.

Hand-holding couples; overflowing families; even a few timid-looking solo supporters: all checked over their ticket stubs again and again, all walked up and down the cement steps of the arena trying to find their way. Although it had been years since Bayle had last been inside a hockey rink — with his father, to a Maple Leafs' playoff game five months before the elder Bayle's death, the hard-to-get post-season tickets a celebration of sorts of Bayle's father's seemingly successful post-op recovery from the cancer — the arena was just as he remembered an arena being a half hour before a game: lights low, the ice in shadow but still brilliant white, the air late-fall, early-morning fresh.

With Patty beside him in the backseat of the family Buick, and already suited up in his hockey equipment at home in preparation for that weekend's Pee Wee game — but runningshoe footed, Bauer skates stored in the trunk — Bayle would every Saturday afternoon listen to his father at the wheel of the car go through pre-game strategy:

“These guys on Dolson Mowing, these guys have got speed and know how to use it, Peter, these guys like to skate. So don't get caught standing around out there, okay? Don't let your man get away from you. You're just as big as they are, so use your size, make your man pay for his space out there, keep him honest. Remember how we saw Sittler take care of Clarke last Saturday night? Do it just like that, Peter, just like number 27, just like the captain. Get all over him, son.
Make him pay.”

Once actually inside the rink Bayle's father would drift off to smoke and talk with the other puffing fathers in the cloudy arena lobby while his mother would buy Bayle and his sister hot chocolate and their choice of one treat each from the canteen before joining the other coffee-drinking hockey mums at the shiny shellacked picnic tables. Bayle and Patty would leave the grownups behind and sip their hot chocolate and eat their candy bars and watch the hockey game being played before Bayle's own from the freezing wooden rink-side bleachers.

Even when the boys from his own team would begin to arrive at the arena Bayle would sit with his sister in the stands. Not because his parents said he had to, but just because he liked to. Bayle's teammates were Bayle's teammates, but mostly they bored him. Even if six years his junior, Patty never bored Bayle.

“I don't know why they call us Pee Wees, Patty. It's just what they call us, I guess. I never really thought about it.”

“Peter, if you hold your cocoa like this the steam warms up your nose and then it heats up the rest of you. I wonder why it's like that. Why do you think it's like that, Peter?”

“Patty, save some of your Snickers for later. Look at me: I've only taken two bites out of mine and you're already almost done.”

Patty stopped attending Bayle's hockey games when she discovered that cricket was the national game of Great Britain. Bayle tried his reasonable best to convince her that as much as she might want to be — and even though Canada
was
a part of the Commonwealth — she'd always be Patty Bayle from and of Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada. But Patty had decided to become a British subject.

Bayle quit playing hockey not long after. He was going into Grade 9, just starting high school, and there were other, more interesting things he wanted to do with his spare time. Like going out for football. And dances, and girls.

After Patty had quit coming to his games, and just before he hung up his skates for good, Bayle had been struck by the fact that no matter how hot you got when you were down on the ice playing — even when you were sitting on the bench between shifts — how incredibly cold it was to just sit in the stands by yourself and watch a game, no matter how interesting the match-up. He'd never realized just how cold it was to sit up there and simply watch.

Bayle knew he should ask Samson and Duceeder about the story in the
Eagle,
should probably try to work the team's threatened move into his own projected article somehow, but before he could formulate a properly journalistic question Davidson was making his way toward the press box.

Mindfully slow, like a man walking a tightrope without looking down, Davidson advanced up the aisle, a can of Coke in one hand, a portable computer and small printer hanging from the other. As in the truck earlier that day, he looked only in the direction he was going.

“Mr. Davidson, good evening,” Samson said. Bayle nodded. Duceeder didn't lift his gaze from the zamboni circling the ice.

“Samson,” Davidson said. He removed his old suit jacket and carefully folded it and placed it on the counter. He pulled a stool from underneath, sat down, loosened his tie, plugged the computer into a jack underneath the counter, lowered his head, and immediately began punching hard at the keys of the laptop. Even from one seat over Bayle could smell the liquor.

“Mr. Davidson,” Samson said, “this is the young man I was telling you about downstairs.”

Without looking up from his small computer screen, “I've had the pleasure,” Davidson said.

“Oh, wonderful. As I'm sure I remarked to you earlier, Mr. Bayle here is a fellow journalist. Only this is not one of your typical ink-stained wretches. From what I understand, before too long we'll have to call him Doctor.”

“That a fact?” Davidson replied.

Actually, more of a running theory, Bayle on the inside
answered. On the outside, however, he smiled like a perfect idiot. Yes yes yes, a veritable doctor, yes. Capable of healing the metaphysically ill in three sagacious visits. Your tuition cheerfully refunded if no relief afforded to your aching
weltanchung
within the first two months of treatment. If all else fails, take two Platonic dialogues and call me in the morning. Bayle wondered if zamboni drivers suffered from vertigo. Probably a union job anyway, he decided, probably have to know somebody. Bayle didn't know anybody.

Davidson kept working away at his laptop. Duceeder watched the zamboni make its final laps around the rink. Samson, hands still folded in front of him, smilingly beheld the filling-up seats all around him.

WE WILL WE WILL ROCKYOU
WE WILL WE WILL ROCKYOU

A blast of tinny rock and roll that Bayle knew indicated that the players' appearance on the ice was imminent jumped out of the arena loud speakers.

“Christ, Samson,” Davidson said, “the warm-up hasn't even started yet. Are you selling ear-plugs at the concession stands now?” Davidson didn't look well; in fact, fingers peeled tight around the edge of the counter, face only a shade or so darker than the white handkerchief sticking out of his front pant pocket, he looked like a prime candidate for either a heart attack or a sustained bout of vomiting. Or both. Bayle wondered if it was the shock of the loud music or simply his day-long tippling catching up with him. Or both.

“Not a decibel louder than it was last year, Mr. Davidson. You're just getting a little bit long in the tooth, I fear. Besides, it doesn't seem to bother our young friend here very much. Mr. Bayle? Does the public address system seem to be operating at an acceptable volume to you?”

“I guess,” Bayle said.

“There you are,” Samson, smiling, said in Davidson's direction.

“Well, if Mr. Bayle
guesses
it's just right, than I
guess
it must be,” Davidson said. He shot Bayle a look of thorough disgust only compounded by his physically pained expression. “Are the stats ready yet?”

“Cynthia will have them for you in five minutes,” Samson answered.

Hands flat on top of the counter for support, Davidson pushed himself up and put his jacket back on. “I'm going to the can. Tell her to put the new statistics beside my notebook. And ask her to bring me another guidebook. I forgot mine at home.” Davidson walked away from the press box as carefully as he had arrived.

Waiting until Davidson had moved out of earshot down the stairs and into the arena lobby, “I honestly don't know how you can talk to that bastard, Samson,” Duceeder said. “Should've done like I said last winter and banned his ass from all media-access spots for being intoxicated on arena property. We do have the right, you know. It is in the arena by-laws. Make him fill out his damn game reports from the first-floor john. See how serious he is about writing articles on the condition of the Bunton Center then.”