The Last Season (17 page)

It was the least the bastard could have done for me, considering my teeth. I lost them in a four-pointer against North Bay Trappers. Whoever won would head into the second part of the season in first place, so it was a game we were all up for — but no one quite so much as Torchy, who was also chasing the Soo's Reinholdt for the first-half lead in league scoring.

Torchy was in magnificent form, moving in on the Trappers' net like a hummingbird at Batcha's honeysuckle and leaving the North Bay defence slamming the boards in frustration. Even with the crowd on him and the Bay's thug, Simon Billings, chopping away at his ankles, Torchy still managed to score twice and set up a third — a carom pass to me at the point and a low, hard one that Alvin Dorsett somehow tipped in as Billings flattened him with a cross-check — and we went into the first intermission up 3–0. All thanks to Torchy.

Up 6–2 halfway through the third I went down Bill Gadsby-style — knees flat out, hands to the side the way Al Jolson finished “Mammy” — and was just turning my face away from Billing's exaggerated slapper when I felt a painless, almost soft, certainly silent push against my mouth that sent me over in a perfect backwards somersault and left me spitting blood and my remaining front teeth onto the left face-off circle. There was no pain whatsoever.

I looked up and Torchy was bent down looking worried. “That fucking Billings,” he said in a low hiss. “He did it on purpose.”

I leaped up in a rage, still spitting blood and teeth, and spun like a cornered raccoon. Billings was standing off to the side, leaning on his stick and talking to a teammate, with a big, laughing smile on his puss. I wrestled Torchy's stick away and ran at Billings, holding the blade out at him like it was a stropped razor. His eyes nearly popped. The linesman caught me for a moment, and before I could shake free Billings had turned and was skating toward his bench. I reached out and tripped him and he dove headfirst, turning and wrapping his arms and gloves around his head as he crashed back first into the boards. I could see his eyes: afraid to look; afraid not to look. He squirmed like a netted trout.

The blood was warm and thick on my chin. It felt good. There was still no pain. I felt warm all over. Around me was total panic: referee's whistles, the crowd howling, the Trappers' bench screaming. I felt none of this. No panic, fear or even anger. I felt sensible, knowing the purpose of the coming act. Time had slowed respectfully, as if this was somehow more important than the game. Revenge was due and I was delivering it. Billing's arms flailed and I picked an opening carefully, without hurry. Torchy's stick came down once between an elbow and a face; the stick snapped at the blade; Billings opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out were bubbles, red.

As far as I was concerned it was over. Hockey, unfortunately, is without proper balance. If it worked sensibly, Billings and I would have gone off to get our stitches, the game would have resumed and, with luck, maybe I would have made it back for the last shift. But no one else was willing to admit it was over. Both linesmen were hanging off my shoulders when this short little bald-headed man in a Trappers' booster jacket hit the ice after climbing over the screen and grabs up Billings's stick and comes slipping across the ice at me, his face all twisted up and the stick cutting madly out in front of him like a scythe.

What could I do? With the linesmen on me I was a dead duck. But Torchy, God bless him, was free and charged the old geezer like he was coming one-on-one with me and I was the goaltender. Torchy blindsided him with a hip and the booster spun twice completely in his rubber boots before he buckled straight over backwards, his head striking the ice with a sound that made me think of the hollow wild cucumber we used to fire against trucks on Highway 60 so drivers would think they'd struck something big.

But this was no joke. He was hurt — I could tell by the way he stayed down, not even hoisting back on reflex alone, but staying on the ice like he'd gone halfway through and was stuck. The other linesman and the referee both jumped Torchy, and a good thing too.

The crowd went berserk. They threw rubber boots, programs, cups, even a set of car keys at us. Three North Bay cops had to come out onto the ice and escort the two of us, first to the dressing room and then out to the bus, where a crowd of punks screamed insults, knowing the presence of the cops meant their fists wouldn't have to follow through on their tongues. They had a heyday. By the time I got out to the bus with an ice pack my mouth had swollen shut. I couldn't even yell back at them.

It didn't stop Torchy, though. As soon as he was sure the door was locked tight, he mooned them.

It took eighteen stitches for me and four sessions for plate fitting at Gus Demers's dentist. Billings, I heard, needed thirty stitches, so there's no doubt who won that exchange. Torchy also lost when Demers refused to let him dress next time we went back to North Bay, a decision which Torchy has always claimed cost him the league scoring title. Stupid bastard, Gus probably save his life.

I found out later the little bald man was Billings's father.

I found out much later that Torchy Bender had tipped the shot, so Billings had been completely innocent.

“But you told me he'd done it on purpose,” I said.

“He was pissing me off. I wanted him off my back, okay?”

Maybe I should have hated him, but I loved Torchy forever — at least I thought it would be forever — after that. I guess I was one of Jaja's true Poles even then, always walking alone. No one had ever fought my fights for me; no one had ever been expected to; damn sure no one had ever been asked to. But Torchy had done it on his own, and given a shit less for the consequences. He did it for
me
, and as long as I could remember no one had ever done anything for me before.

He made it rough, but I stuck by him. I awoke to a pillow in my face, usually, and more than once to a bare butt impersonating an elephant charge about six inches from my nose. I had to lie for him and Lucille. I had to let him crib from my history notes — funny, it just struck me that history was my best subject, so I must have more Jaja in me than I realize — and then, when he failed and I passed, I somehow let him talk me into quitting Grade 11 with him.

But what can I say? The one time I needed him, he was there. And if Torchy Bender was willing to walk with the guy he loved to call “the big, dumb Polack,” I was willing to let him walk and get away with it. But only Torchy.

In hockey it is called a “rep,” short, of course, for “reputation.” Mine grew out of North Bay: one game, one moment, the clock stopped, the game in suspension — and yet it was this, nothing to do with what took place while clocks ran in sixty-eight other games, that put me on the all-star team with more votes than Torchy. Half as many, however, as Bobby Orr. But still, it was Orr and Batterinski, the two defencemen, whom they talked most about in Ontario junior.

Bobby Orr would get the cover of
Maclean's
. I almost got the cover of
Police Gazette
after the Billings incident. My rep was made. The
North Bay Nugget
's nickname for me, Frankenstein, spread throughout the league. I had my own posters in Kitchener; there were threats in Kingston and spray-paint messages on our bus in Sault Ste. Marie; late, frantic calls at the Demers house from squeaky young things wanting to speak to the “monster.”

They didn't know me. I didn't know myself. But I loved being talked about in the same conversations as the white brushcut from Parry Sound. Orr they spoke of as if he was the Second Coming—they sounded like Poppa praising the Madonna on the church in Warsaw; for me it was the same feeling for both Orr and the Madonna — I couldn't personally see it.

Orr had grown since I'd seen him first in Vernon, but he was still only sixteen in 1964 and seemed much too short to be compared to Harvey and Howe, as everyone was doing. He'd gone straight from bantam to junior, but Gus Demers still said he was just another in a long list of junior hockey's flashes-in-the-pan. Another Nesterenko, another Cullen.

We met Oshawa Generals in that year's playoffs, and the papers in Oshawa and Sudbury played up the Batterinski-Orr side of it. “Beauty and the Beast,” the
Oshawa Times
had it. The
Star
countered with “Batterinski's Blockade,” pointing out that the Hardrocks' strategy was to have Batterinski make sure Orr never got near the net, though no one ever spoke to me about it. I presume it was understood.

On March 28 we met on their home ice, the advantage going to them by virtue of a better record throughout the season. I said not a single word on the bus ride down, refusing to join Torchy in his dumb-ass Beatle songs, refusing even to get up and wade back to the can, though I'd had to go since Orillia. My purpose was to exhibit strength and I could not afford the slightest opening. I had to appear superhuman to the rest of the team: not needing words, nor food, nor bodily functions.

If I could have ridden down in the equipment box I would have, letting the trainer unfold me and tighten my skates just before the warm-up, sitting silent as a puck, resilient as my shin pads, dangerous as the blades. The ultimate equipment: me.

I maintained silence through the “Queen” and allowed myself but one chop at Frog Larocque's goal pads, then set up. Orr and I were like reflections, he standing solid and staring up at the clock from one corner, me doing the same at the other, both looking at time, both thinking of each other. We were the only ones in the arena, the crowd's noise simply the casing in which we would move, the other players simply the setting to force the crowd's focus to us. Gus Demers had advised me to level Orr early, to establish myself. Coach Therrian wanted me to wait for Orr, keep him guessing. I ignored them all. They weren't involved. Just Orr and me.

His style had changed little since bantam. Where all the other players seemed bent over, concentrating on something taking place below them, Orr still seemed to be sitting at a table as he played, eyes as alert as a poker player, not interested in his own hands or feet or where the object of the game was. I was fascinated by him and studied him intently during the five minutes I sat in the penalty box for spearing some four-eyed whiner in the first period. What made Orr effective was that he had somehow shifted the main matter of the game from the puck to him. By anticipating, he had our centres looking for him, not their wingers, and passes were directed
away
from him, not
to
someone on our team. By doing this, and by knowing this himself, he had assumed control of the Hardrocks as well as the Generals.

I stood at the penalty box door yanking while the timekeeper held for the final seconds. I had seen how to deal with Orr. If the object of the game had become him, not the puck, I would simply put Orr through his own net.

We got a penalty advantage toward the end of the period and coach sent me out to set up the power play. I was to play centre point, ready to drop quickly in toward the net rather than remaining in the usual point position along the boards and waiting for a long shot and tip-in. Therrian had devised this play, I knew, from watching Orr, though he maintained it was his own invention. I never argued. I never even spoke. I was equipment, not player, and in that way I was dependable, predictable, certain.

Torchy's play, at centre, was to shoulder the Oshawa centre out of the face-off circle while Chancey, playing drop-back left wing, fed the puck back to me, breaking in. A basketball play, really, with me fast-breaking and Torchy pic-ing. The crowd was screaming but I couldn't hear. I was listening for Orr, hoping he might say something that would show me his flaw, hoping he might show involvement rather than disdain. But he said nothing. He stared up at the clock for escape, the numbers meaningless, the score irrelevant. He stood, stick over pads, parallel to the ice, back also parallel, eyes now staring through the scars of the ice for what might have been his own reflection. Just like me, once removed from the crowd's game, lost in his own contest.

The puck dropped and Torchy drove his shoulder so hard into the Generals' centre I heard the grunt from the blueline. Chancey was tripped as he went for the puck, but swept it as he fell. I took it on my left skate blade, kicking it forward to my stick, slowing it, timing it, raising back for a low, hard slapper from just between the circles. I could sense Orr. Not see him. I was concentrating on the puck. But I could sense him the way you know when someone is staring at you from behind. I raised the stick higher, determined to put the shot right through the bastard if necessary. I heard him go down, saw the blond brushcut spinning just outside the puck as he slid toward me, turning his pads to catch the shot. His eyes were wide open as his head passed the puck; he stared straight at it, though it could, if I shot now, rip his face right off the skull. He did not flinch; he did not even blink. He stared the way a poker player might while saying he'll hold. Orr knew precisely what my timing was before I myself knew. I saw him spin past, knew what he was doing, but could not stop; my shot crunched into his pads and away, harmlessly.

The centre Torchy had hit dove toward the puck and it bounced back at me, off my toe and up along the ankle, rolling like a ball in a magician's trick. I kicked but could not stop it. The puck trickled and suddenly was gone. I turned, practically falling.
It was Orr!
Somehow he'd regained his footing even faster than I and was racing off in that odd sitting motion toward our net.

I gave chase, now suddenly aware of the crowd. Their noise seemed to break through an outer, protective eardrum. There were no words, but I was suddenly filled with insult as the screams tore through me, ridiculing. It seemed instant, this change from silently raising the stick for the certain goal, the sense that I was gliding on air, suspended, controlling even the breath of this ignorant crowd. Now there was no sense of gliding or silence or control. I was flailing, chopping at a short sixteen-year-old who seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Batterinski was coming for him.