Hockey Dreams (20 page)

Who took advantage of this? Well I didn’t because I was too stupid. I became his only friend. (Because once I did, he stopped teasing me about Montreal. I became a hysterical Detroit fan as long as the playoffs were on.) Even his brothers turned against him. They were all going for Detroit when the series started and all cheering Chicago by the end.

But it was not his twin brother Darren, his older brother Paul, his younger brothers Greg or Simon. It was not Michael, or Tobias, or myself who got him rattled. It was not even poor Ginette who still waited for us outside on the street because she was scared to come to the door. It was Garth who rattled him to his bones. Garth, the boy who carried his books like a girl and believed in Santa Claus until he was fifteen.

Garth did not know hockey but he knew business. He had an instinct for an accident waiting to happen. In his later life he would earn hundreds of thousands of dollars because of this, selling fish and chips, and take big trips to Florida. The accident waiting to happen was Stafford. Stafford did not know he was an accident waiting to happen. He was too sure of himself. He bet his money, he bet his shoulder pads, he bet his Detroit sweater — he finally bet his skates.

Garth had no passion for hockey at all. He knew nothing about hockey — that was what made it so entirely infuriating. He could pretend he did. Hockey fans seem to invite these neophytes into their camp. The neophytes are incorrigible at going along for the ride — being one with popular opinion. They never take a chance, but it is the very pedestrianness of their natures that makes them out to be winners. They have only the passion of the moment and the passion of the group. They will always be in the inner circle, because they are loath to stand on their own. They will never be great fans but they will be
accurate
fans. They will love Bobby Orr without knowing a thing about Boston. They will make money off of the Russians. They will bet on Sweden and Forsburg, against Canada and Cory Hirsh, without batting an eye, and think that all your torment and love of country is deliciously funny, because they are
proper
when it comes to the game.

This is exactly what was played out that faraway April of 1961, between Stafford and Garth. Neither of them knew that they represented the two branches of hockey, that they would evolve
through Stafford into one kind of fan and through Garth into another quite different kind. That Stafford’s branch would not be able to bend with the times. That Garth’s branch would be sickeningly accommodating to the moment. Stafford’s branch would invite disdain by both the intellectual and business, and it would die off when the country was no more. Garth’s branch would invent slogans like: “It’s good for the game.”

Garth was very jolly this whole time. He took an actual cynical delight in torturing Stafford. After the first game he had Stafford’s pet snake. Worse for Stafford, Sawchuk was hurt. This was a diversionary problem for the entire series that played favourably into Garth’s hands, unknown to Garth himself, who never watched a game. He was always in bed at eight o’clock.

Stafford’s big thing was to win the Stanley Cup, and like an obsessed gambler or, for a more proper correlation, like Hitler’s operation Barbarosa against Russia in 1941, he poured everything he could into it.

Hockey took a great upturn on the road too, after a few weeks of sabbatical, and on the river, which still had its ice. There were games now after school every evening. Now we were Sawchuk, or Hank Bassen, or Glen Hall or Stan Mikita, Delvecchio or Howe.

Though the nights were brightening up, the air was still cold and sharp; the wind from the river could still cut through you. And Michael, who had never gotten to play for the Bantam All-Star team, was planning a big game on his rink against those in our neighbourhood who had made it to those
All-Stars — and who had gone on that trip to Boston — a city Michael would never see.

It looked as if he had bitten off more than he could chew as well. For with Paul, Darren and my brother on one team, along with Ginette in the net, and Stafford, myself and Michael, with Tobias in the net, on the other, it didn’t look like much of a contest was going to happen.

But this was
the
game that was going to be played — and like all games that are played with makeup teams, it happened by accident. It happened over an argument between Paul and Michael about who between them had the hardest slapshot. I thought they were both about equal.

But Michael envied Paul. Paul was growing larger and stronger by the day — Paul’s life had so much potential. He was a Foley whose father owned a tire garage. Perhaps this was what underlined the quest for the rink and the game. Perhaps Michael realized that his life was doomed, and in this doom — he wanted to make a stand. Make a stand with nothing against everything.

He would throw himself at
them
headlong, and he would pick
us
as his partners. Partners who did not know how tragic his stand was, but who also knew instinctively the losing odds.

That was the secret Michael
saw
in us. And this was the game he had planned. His battle involved forgetting who he was. Involved being a water boy for men who worked the boats, involved keeping a picture of his mother in a box, involved taking care of Tobias and knowing he could not take
care of him anymore. Involved buying boots for Tobias and wearing shoes most of the winter.

It was his battle.

Stafford said later that it was Hank Bassen, the backup goalie for Detroit that cost him everything. Cost him his hockey sweater and his pet snake. Because he worried about Hank Bassen. It was as if his great hockey mind seemed to make a series of blunders in 1961 that would never happen to him again. As if he was like Napoleon with a cold, Hannibal who, after Cannae, could not take Rome.

But the worst thing for Stafford was that in his jubilation, in his tirades against Chicago, and his side attacks against Montreal, he was both his only general and his enemy’s only mole. That is, Stafford would talk and Garth would listen. Before this series started Garth, I am convinced, had never heard of Pierre Pilote or Stan Mikita. Nor had he heard of Glen Hall, Hank Bassen, Ken Wharram or perhaps not even Howe or Hull. But you see that did not matter. For the spy in Stafford’s character spoon-fed Garth all of this.

“I hope the defence can help old Hank Bassen and stop Hull and Mikita and Pilote or we’re in trouble.”

“I bet they can’t,” Garth would say.

“Pilote won’t score — he won’t score.”

“Bet your lousy shoulder pads he will,” Garth would say.

Then the general in Stafford would take over. He would try to stop the leaks in his knowledge that had been given away by his spy.

“Well I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“I see.”

“What do you mean — you see?”

“I just see you’re frightened of Mikita and Hull and Pierre Pilote and are blaming poor Hank Bassen — a goalie of great stature probably. So really the faith in your team is bogus.”

“Great stature — what does that mean?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Garth would say, as disheartened at dishonesty and duplicity as, oh I don’t know — maybe Jacques Parizeau himself.

This would go on, or at least a conversation much like this. Perhaps not in its language but in its intention as sophisticated as some political strategist.

And poor Stafford would be left wobbling in uncertainty.

“Damn it all — Garth is a hockey genius,” he told us. “I can’t get by him, he keeps coming up with the answers — I don’t know how he has it figured out. I think he even predicted that Sawchuk would hurt his shoulder. The trick is — he’s quiet — he never says anything — he’s a sneaky, girlie, kind of guy — but
what he knows
is incredible.”

A number of things worked against Stafford. One was his absolute openness with all his friends — a feeling that they would, because of friendship, share as much information with him as he did with them. Another was his ability to lie for these friends to himself, and always place them in the best possible light (similar to what he did with Jimmy J. and years later with Melanie). Third was his overall superstition. He
was sure even years later that it was his bad luck, something in his nature, that caused the Red Wings to lose.

He wore the same socks throughout the entire playoffs. Twice his mother sneaked them from his bedroom at night and washed them, but he had them back on his feet the next morning, as wet as rags.

But the worst thing of all was how he was teased and tormented about the greatness of Chicago to and from school. He was all alone as they teased him. And so he bet his shoulder pads, his sweater, his skates, his bitten-up hockey puck, his snake.

He, too, like Michael, was taking on all comers, because he knew, he knew, he knew — he would lose.

Between games five and six — with the Hawks up 3–2 in games, Stafford was restless. I asked him to a movie with me the night before the sixth game and he babbled like an idiot about the referees, Chicago cheats, Garth. He hated Garth; Garth had become his nemesis. He had Garth figured out. Garth was not the hockey genius one might first think. “I asked him what he thought of Chicago and he told me he thought they were adorable.
Adorable
,” Stafford said. “How can a person even say that about a hockey team?”

Stafford touched every pole on the way to the movie, and every pole on the way back. If he missed a pole he would go back and touch it. Then as we turned along King George Highway he began to worry about his socks. He sat down on the sidewalk, in the slush, took his boots and shoes off
and switched his socks about. Two women passed by, and he looked up at them, as indifferently as if he was in his bedroom with Tobias.

He had to have them on the same feet for Detroit to have a sliver of a chance. And he had mixed them up, because his mother was dumb enough (his words) to wash them. This mixup in his socks is what cost Detroit the cup in 1961

Game six was Chicago’s. Bassen was in the net for Detroit because Sawchuk had played poorly in the fifth. However Chicago won by the same score the Trail Smoke Eaters won the World Championship in March: 5–1 Detroit’s dream was over. As yet it still is.

Stafford kept his head under a couch cushion for almost the entire game. Now and then, when you looked over at him, you would see a giant cushion, and two half-blind eyes blinking from under it, as he stared morbidly at the TV.

Stafford was cantankerous after Detroit lost. He looked sad and feeble. Worse, Garth actually kept all the things he took. Stafford’s twin brother Darren managed to get the bitten hockey puck back, because it had come from a Moncton Hawks’ game, the only important game Stafford had ever been to. Darren brought it home and set it back on Stafford’s desk.

Every night he got into bed, and lay upon a plastic sheet, and stared through the window across the hallway at the stars. He had forgotten much about his Lloyd Percival pamphlets, and when I tried to cheer him up by talking about Lloyd, he looked at me and shrugged.

M
Y FATHER WAS PRESIDENT
of the Recreation Council in 1961 and Gordie Howe was invited to give the talk at the closing banquet. My father picked him up at the train station, and mentioned to him, that though I had played hockey that year, I felt that I hadn’t played quite well enough to deserve a dinner. So I was going to stay home.

Gordie said kind-heartedly that that was not right, and telephoned me and asked me to go, saying he wanted to see me there.

Of course I forgot all about Stafford. He came to the door and I was getting my white shirt and tie on, tucking myself together.

“Where are you going?” Stafford said.

“Oh — I guess I’ll go along to the banquet.”

“You said you weren’t going — you talked me into not going —”

“Well — I wasn’t planning to — but Gordie phoned me, wants to see me there — you know.”

“Gordie — Gordie who?”

“Gordie Howe —”

Stafford looked at me. He looked at my mother. He looked at my brother. He looked at my mother again.

“Gordie Howe — the real Gordie Howe.”

“Of course.”

Stafford came close to me and whispered, “The one in my poem —”

“Same Gordie.”

“What did he say?!”

“Just the usual small talk — you know what Gordie’s like.” I answered for some reason as if I was aggravated.

My mother was bent over fixing the cuffs of my pants and telling me to stay still, and I was wobbling back and forth in the hallway, with the most exasperatingly worldly look on my face that Stafford had ever seen.

I never noticed him leave.

Things were happening at the Foley’s Tire Garage all over Easter — incidental things — small things. Jimmy J. went there every night to eat peanuts. It’s a rather strange thing for men to leave the comfort of their home, and sit in an old garage and eat peanuts with the cold drafts forever through the great doors.

But at any rate he was back to being Jimmy J. He talked about having killed a polar bear. He talked about fishing. He talked about space ships. He had a cigarette behind his left
ear and a cigarette behind his right. He hated communists. He believed he knew some.

When Paul or Mr. Foley came into the garage he would leave, two young boys following him out. But when the garage was left in charge of anyone else Jimmy J. would pop his head back in the door, walk nonchalantly over to the peanut machine, and put in a nickel.

Now the story was that he owed everyone money and his wife’s hairdressing business was being put on the auction block because of Jimmy J.

Jimmy J. would always chew one peanut at a time. He had come back to the garage to tease Stafford about Detroit, but whenever Stafford saw him he would turn and walk in the other direction.

“All the NHL hockey games are fixed,” Jimmy J. stated.

He liked to state this, because it gave him the moral higher ground, and an instant credential he never had to prove, about his value as a social critic of the game, as he popped one peanut into his mouth and chewed it rapidly, while jostling the other seventeen peanuts in his hand.