The Last Season (23 page)

I boarded, ignoring the stares of curiosity, the accusing looks from those who felt I was using up their time, and I walked to the last seat, the very place I'd sat when Danny and I left for Vernon and when I left alone for Sudbury. Now I was going somewhere less definite, going, I suppose, to find out.

Poppa looked up into the windows and this time saw me as I ducked and stared out. Self-conscious with the others looking, he raised his hand in a quick Indian sign and dropped it. I waved back, staring at his face. There was nothing unusual in it: just Poppa watching other people's lives unfold. Not overly interested, but there in case they needed him. I felt like blowing him a kiss, but I was nineteen, six-one, a hundred and ninety-five pounds and on my way to the National Hockey League. It just wasn't possible. I waved a second time and sat, just as the bus moved out. Poppa turned and left me a final image, his back.

Down and around the bend and I could feel Pomerania leaving me like my own exhaust. The driver floored it, roaring over the limit, and I wanted him to go even faster. I was certain I would not be back again. I was also wrong.

We'll pray for you, Felix,
he had said. Poppa, please do. Batcha, please die.

B
ig
fucking joke, Pekka — go ahead, tell them all, go on. Big fucking deal. So I'm superstitious. So I did up the belts on all the empty seats — so what? We're still in the air, aren't we? I can see him up ahead—they're all up ahead, I take the last seat, always — and I can hear them snickering and see their flat red faces snap up and down for a look so quick you'd think I was a machine gun and them in foxholes. Sometimes I wish I was. Sometimes I wish I had the whole lot pinned down in front of me: Pekka when he gets this way, that weasel Erkki, the whole goddamn front office of the Flyers, the Jesus Kings too, every fat nearsighted son of a bitch of a sports reporter I ever met, Danny Shannon's gearbox pals, Batcha. Then we'd see who'd laugh at Batterinski. If Pekka thinks the seatbelts are such a joke, why doesn't he get up and unbuckle one? I'd like to see him dare. It'd almost be worth the plane going down just to see the look on his face.

Black as tar-paper out there. And what time is it? Four-fifteen in the afternoon. No sun. No rhyme. No reason. Here we are, off to some Arctic exhibition match in some jerk Swede town I can't even pronounce, all because they got a mill there that supplies the wood for all the damned blue and silver and orange and polka-dotted minnows that are paying for this team.

I almost said “losing team.” Not losing anymore, though. We're three for five with a tie since Christmas and a game like this could break our momentum. We don't know a damn thing about this team. Pekka says they're not Swedish
elitserian
, thank God, but who needs to be humiliated by some yumpin-yimminy yokels just when we're starting to click —

— Did I say that?
“Starting to click”?
My mind must be starting to go. I still remember the very day “Hockey Night in Canada” announced they'd hired Bobby Orr to do game commentary. Christ, Orr couldn't analyze his skate laces if they came undone. But true to form, they always go with the guys they can predict.

“Never wake up the big guy.”

“Starting to mesh now.”

“You can't leave the man in the slot.”

“That line's beginning to gel as a unit.”

“No question about it.”

“Only a matter of time.”

“They know there's no tomorrow.”

“110 percent.”

What's wrong with them? Who needs Fred Stanfield and his all-star teeth? Who wants to hear Jean Potvin use Dave Hodge's name every sentence, whether Hodge is there or not? “Well, Dave, I'm looking forward to a career in broadcasting when my hockey career is through, Dave.” It's a lucky thing for some players that their voices are better than their hockey ability. If they announced the way they played, they'd be damned fortunate to get work calling out the bus stops at the Muskoka Hotel.

They should have tried Torchy. I can just see Dave Hodge sitting there with his football helmet of hair, his clipboard and his smug little grin when Torchy comes in with his “Hockey Night in Canada” tie rolled and stuffed down the front of his pants to thrill all the female “shut-ins” and the guts of a grandfather clock dancing in the chest hair of an open shirt, mirror shades on for the camera lights. A cigar.

“Uh, so Torchy,” Dave would say, a slight catch in his throat. “What do you have to say about that first period?”

“No question about it, Dave,” Torchy would shout, “it
sucked
! But we got some isolated shots of something the kids should be learning out there. Can we run them? Good. There, stop right there if you can.... You see that big-titted red-head there, Dave? Eh? She's jumping up on the Gretzky goal — a tip-in, not worth the air time. But this, ain't she something else? Can you just roll that back a bit, fellows: there — now all you youngsters out there pay attention to this. You see there where I'm circling? That's a rock-hard nipple there, kids. You have to look closely but no mistake about it. And you know what that means, eh, Dave?”

Dave, clearing his throat: “Uh, cold?”

“
Cold!
No, dumbfuck — hornnnnyyyyyy! I knew her from when we played here with L.A., eh? Likes the guys to keep their equipment on — even keeps skateguards in her apartment to protect the carpet, no shit, Dave —”

They should have tried Torchy.

But they went with Orr. “They're starting to click, no question about it.”

“We'll be landing soon.”

I turn to the tap on the shoulder and it's Erkki, his breath smelling of pink Maalox tablets for that whirlpool bath that passes for his stomach. He's been chewing constantly since I discovered the key to Finnish victory.

“What's the name?” I ask for about the fourth time.

“
Örnsköldsvik
.”

I don't even try. In Erkki's mouth it sounds like he's bringing up a green slimy; in my mouth it would probably look like it too. I can't shake this cold. I think Kristiina actually prefers to do it in the snow — but I'd be a fool to complain, even if my knees are starting to crack and bleed.

“What's the team?”

“MoDo.”

That, I can say. “MoDo,” I repeat, nodding.

Erkki stares, wanting to go on. With his owl face, he always looks like he's pressed up against a plate of glass.

“There's no need for it here, okay Bats?”

“No need for what?” I say innocently, knowing perfectly well. Erkki wants to whisper, wants no one else to hear.

“You know, the bonus.”

I stare out the window at a turboprop engine sparkling like a hanging exhaust pipe, and answer without looking back. “As far as I'm concerned, this is a game.”

“Not one that counts.”

I have him now; I turn smiling. “Then why are we playing it?”

Erkki puffs slightly and the eyes narrow behind the wire rims. He is speechless, thank God. I will speak for him.

“We pay. Same as ever.”

Erkki squeaks through his two front teeth, turns, nodding, and is gone. I really could care less, but I know the “bonus” makes him uneasy. But hell, we're winning. All he has to face is the board of directors and hear how pleased they are that the team — fire away, Bobby Orr —
is beginning to gel as a unit
...
we're clicking
...
110 percent ... Bob's
your uncle.
Attendance is up. The papers are full of us. Pekka looks like a shoo-in for the all-star team. What more can they ask?

And so what if it gets a little dicey. What did old Sugar Bowles always say to me? “If you can't face the music, you can't lead the band.”

Three days after Christmas in Raumo, with Lukko only two points up on us, I closed the door tight, made Erkki sit down and eat his hands and delivered a speech Sugar would have given his good eye to hear. I talked about how all our salaries were linked directly to attendance and then about how the only way we'd draw more than two thousand a night was if we made people
have
to see us. And we could only do that by being different. Winners are different. But even better than winners are scrappy underdogs. That's what I saw Tapiola becoming — a scrappy underdog.

We'd change our image first. That was easy: all I had to do was remember Schultzy and Kelly and the boys back in Philadelphia.

No more shaving.

No more deodorant before games. Okay after, if necessary.

Same for aftershave.

An end to equipment washes, except in the case of blood, which makes a man look vulnerable.

A chart system to keep track of hits. Twenty-five Finnmarks for solid body contact, double for a hit where the opponent ends up on his butt. I wanted to offer one-hundred Finnmarks for a full fistfight, but Pekka pointed out fighting meant an automatic three-game suspension in Finland, so I made do with what was available, offering a special one-hundred-Finnmark bonus for any player dumping five opposing players on a given night. I even told them to keep it clean.

And God bless Timo, my lumbering, philosophical defence partner. I told him my scheme at the Viisi Pennia, our faithful bar, on a Thursday and by our Saturday game with Lukka Raumo he had been to the university library and uncovered just what I needed to make this a true, honest-to-God Sugar Bowles speech in the Vernon arena.

I let Pekka translate. “I know I'm not doing very well with your language,” I said, “apart from a few drinks and the word for condoms. But I have been trying to learn some of the fascinating history of your fine country. I've been reading about the seventeenth century and the Thirsty Years' War” — Pekka looked at me like I was putting him on, then shrugged and repeated in Finnish — “and I've become particularly interested in a battle that took place at the crossing of the River Lech. April, 1632, if my memory serves me correct.” I couldn't resist a glance at Timo here, what a prince; he was looking back at me back at me like I'd just discovered how to get nuclear energy out of a puck. “The great victors of the day were a Finnish cavalry unit called the... “— I prayed Timo's coaching was perfect here —” ...
hack a pelites
. Anybody know why they were called that?”

I looked up as they looked down, Timo as well, the prince. He knew the answer better than I.

“Well, I'll tell you why. Their name they got from their battle cry. ‘
Hakkaa p
ää
lle!
' In my language that translates as ‘Cut 'em up!' I think Tapiola Hauki needs a battle cry like that — what do you think, Pekka?”

Pekka looked back, startled. He wanted to laugh but it came out like an air cough, and this he turned into a face-saving nod. “Sure,” he said. “Good idea.”

“I think so too. And I want to try it before we go out there tonight — are you ready?”

“Ready!” Timo the prince called back.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!”
I shouted.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle,”
about four answered sedately.

“Hakkaa päälle!”
I shouted, slamming my stick against the wall for effect.

That woke them up.
“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!”

“Hak-kaa p
ääää
lllle!”
Some, like Timo and Pekka, were getting into it, beet-red when they yelled.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!”
I screamed, slamming my stick so hard it splintered, sending the blade sailing like a boomerang across the room.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!”

“Cut 'em up!!!!”

“Cut 'em up!!!!”

“Okay,” I said in a calm, steadying voice, the voice Sugar always reserved for the last phrase. “Let's go.”

That night we beat Raumo Lukko 4–3 to tie them for last place, and it cost Erkki 400 Finnmarks. The next match, against Lahti, we won 5–2 and it cost 575 Finnmarks; third game 6–4 and 925 Finnmarks with a full 100-Finnmark bonus going to big Timo, who had suddenly taken to screaming “
Hakkaa
p
ää
lle
!
” whenever he slipped over the boards to start a new shift.

Erkki paid out the money from some weird fund he had and by the time we left for the exhibition game in Sweden he was a nervous wreck that someone was going to squeal to the press. I told him he was nuts, that would be like cutting a hole in your own pocket, but he wouldn't stop worrying. Every time I saw him he was scanning a newspaper, and usually he could find something on us, though never quite what he dreaded. Arto Pakola, the most important sportswriter, had already started referring to us as “The Nordenskiöld Street Bullies” in his columns, and I had to explain to poor, trembling Erkki that it was simply a play on “the Broadstreet Bullies,” which was the nickname the Flyers were known by when they still had Schultzy and me — when they still won, incidentally. There was even an open debate between columnists in the
Sanomat
and Tampere's
Aamulehti
whether such a
kovanaama
as Batterinski was good for Finnish hockey. Kristiina said it meant I was a “bully” and complained in a letter to the editor, which they ran.

Myself, had I been able to write Finnish I might have sent a thank-you note. Harold Ballard would die for what we had going here — a team of Finnish rejects and a washed-up National Hockey league cement-head winning for a lousy $300 a night. Harold would have danced with King Clancy at centre ice. But Erkki, not on your life. Erkki was gobbling Maalox by the bottle and ripping his nails so badly they were bleeding on his shirtsleeves when he'd fidget. He began walking around wearing little bandages over them. Last game he ate the bandages.

Myself, I'm not so sure it's the money. We got our first point the night after I walked through the park to the Ishallen and thwacked Nurmi's bronzed butt. It might have been that — who can know for sure? Me, I'm not willing to take the chance, so I'm sticking to that route, bum slap included.

Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. Centre ice in the ugliest arena of my life, lights like a closet, ice like black cellophane, the public address bouncing off the walls sounding like Danny and I cursing at the rock cliff on the far side of Black Donald, a snotty crowd of whistling Swedes. I'm worried about the new kid, Matti. The weasel Erkki never even asked me, just phoned me and said we'd picked up this great prospect from Helsinki Jokerit for next to nothing. What's that? I asked. Erkki wouldn't say. But once I saw this Matti I didn't have to ask anymore. Next to nothing, indeed. Jokerit dumped him and I could see why immediately: just look at his eyes. A good hockey player keeps his eyes centred, the focus wide as if looking at something buried thirty feet deep in the ice. That way only slight turns of the head are necessary. A player like Matti keeps a fine focus, too sharp, his head always flicking back and forth at something specific. A player like Matti doesn't understand that the game is not the puck, the game is the flow, and that concept you cannot teach. Matti plays out of fear, always looking for the unexpected. I play with near distraction, praying for the unexpected.