The Monkeyface Chronicles (28 page)

Three goals in three minutes of ice time. The scoreboard clock reads 16:32; three-and-a-half minutes left in the game. If Packer gives him just one more minute on the ice, Michael will win that trophy. I can feel it coming. Everyone in the arena can feel it.

Michael turns toward the glass, looks up where my mother and grandfather are sitting, and raises his hands in the air. Grant Brush skates toward him at full speed, with his stick clenched between both gloves like motorcycle handlebars. Michael doesn't hear Grant coming for the noise of the crowd. His head snaps back and his helmet flies off as Grant viciously cross-checks him into the boards from behind.

As Michael twists and falls, he is plastered against the boards a second time by Graham Brush, who has skated in at full speed right behind his brother, his blades kicking up snow behind him. Graham's elbow drives Michael's face into the glass, and his raised knee drills into Michael's spine. Michael crumples to the ice like a broken doll, his arms and legs splayed out at odd angles.

As the Brush twins skate away, I see Graham hold out his glove for Grant to knuckle-punch. Blood is gushing from Michael's nose and mouth, trickling from a gash on his forehead, running over his cheeks and ears, forming a slowly-expanding halo of red on the ice around his sweat-matted hair.

The crowd is screaming. No. It's me. It's me screaming.

My blades
hiss hiss hiss
beneath me. My gloves thump against the ice.

I grab Grant with both hands, spin him around, pull his helmet off, a handful of his jersey in my left hand, my right fist slamming
slam slam slam slam slam slam slam
. Feel the skin over my knuckles tearing, shredding, bone exposed. Feel it only in theory. No pain. Only rage. Blood spattering his jersey. And mine. Nose cartilage cracking. Teeth snapping. My knuckles red and pulpy.

His body limp. On his heels. Release left hand. Falls to the ice.

I spin. You're next. Graham wide-eyed. Drops his stick. Tries to skate away.

No no no. No way, you. You. Next. Switch hands. Grab jersey with right hand. Throw punches with left.

Over Graham's shoulder, I see Sam Simpson coming. Hasn't been on the ice all game. Gonna stop me. Gonna save his friend. He's tackled by Brian Passmore.

When I'm finished with Graham, I drop him on the ice.

I back-skate to the edge of the boards, lean back, try to breathe, hold myself up. I feel like a warm, invisible sheet of armor is melting from my body, exposing me to the cold arena air. I watch the blood drip from my knuckles, bursting crimson stars on the clean whiteness of the ice.

Then legs are swinging over the side of the box. Every member of the Faireville Blue Flames Triple-A Junior Hockey Club is fighting another member of the team. Brian Passmore wrestles at centre ice with Sam Simpson. Trevor Blunt grapples in front of the bench with Toby Frenier. Jake Burns and Turner Thrift circle each other, throwing punches. Our number one goalie and backup goalie have met at centre ice, and are pounding on each other's thick padding. Guys pile onto one another, swinging, swearing, spitting.

The only person left on the Blue Flames bench is Mr. Packer, who feebly yells, “Discipline, boys! Discipline!”

There are sticks and gloves scattered all over the ice. It's like I'm not really here. It's like I'm watching this on the screen of a drive-in theatre through the rain-streaked window of a passing car.

The referee and linesman skate past me, toward the fracas in front of our bench, and the ref says, “How the hell am I gonna call
this
?”

This is how the ref eventually called it: except for Michael, every single member of the Faireville Blue Flames got a five-minute major for fighting, a ten-minute game misconduct, and a ten-minute gross misconduct. Grant, Graham and I were also handed instigator penalties. It was the most penalty minutes doled out in a single game to a Junior hockey team in the history of the Plympwright Hockey Association. Every player was also slapped with a ten-game suspension, which meant that we had to forfeit our playoff games. Our opponents, the seventh-place Clementville Lightning, would move up into the sixth and final playoff berth.

After the verdict was delivered, Coach Packer sat down on the bench and burst into tears. Neither Mayor Brush nor my grandfather got to announce their candidacy for the upcoming mayoral race.

The doctors at Faireville General Hospital have managed to stop the bleeding, but Michael is still unconscious. A tired-faced doctor delivers the news to me, my mother and my grandfather in the Emergency Room waiting area.

“We've taken preliminary X-rays, and it appears that Michael's neck is broken, and at least two vertebrae in his lower back are shattered,” the doctor says. “Unfortunately, we don't have the equipment here to analyze or repair the damage he has sustained, so he will be transported by air to a Neurological Unit in Toronto, provided that he . . . as soon as his vital signs stabilize. I wish I could tell you more.”

My grandfather holds my mother's hand. They both stare into separate regions of nowhere, their faces as cool and stony as tombstone statues.

“Philip,” my mother says, “you had better go to the house and get your father.”

My grandfather groggily says, “Oh. Yes, Philip. Go get your father. My son. Your father.”

I walk out of the Emergency Room waiting area, still feeling strangely disconnected from everything around me, like a helicopter hovering over a disaster area.

The automatic doors slide open before me, and as I step through them, a young nurse in an eggshell-blue uniform calls out, “Hey! Do you want me to disinfect and wrap those hands before you go?”

“It's okay,” I hear myself saying. “They're not mine.”

Airborne

M
y bloodstained hands chop through the air,
left right
left right
, and my feet on the pavement
clip clip clip
clip
. I am vaguely aware of my lungs
huff huff huff
ing, my heart pumping
thud thud thud
. My eyes receive the images, my eardrums vibrate with the sounds, and my nerve endings feel the stimuli, but I am not really here. My mind is hovering above me, distant and detached, like a space capsule receiving intermittent signals from Ground Control.

As I run up the steep laneway toward our house, the message replays itself in my breath:
“Dad . . . Michael . . . ac
cident . . . hospital . . . Dad . . . Michael . . . accident . . . hosp
ital.”
Then something pauses the sound loop: there are dozens of fireflies buzzing and dancing around our home. As I reach the hilltop, my airborne mind finally computes what I'm really seeing. Torches. People holding torches. People in old-fashioned pilgrim outfits.

Several of the men are lined up, swinging a heavy log between them. Its butt end slams against the front door of our house, wood splinters flying, the door flexing in the middle. A shrill voice cuts through a dissonant chorus of
hallelujahs
and
amens
: Candace Brown has raised a witch-hunting posse, against our family.

“Oh LORD,” she cries, “Make this house of lies BURN! DESTROY the lies of science, DESTROY the lies of greed, DESTROY the lies of lust! RESTORE the bond of mother and child! The Day of Reckoning is HERE! The Day of Reckoning is HERE!”

I veer off the laneway and into the cover of the woods to the back of our house and peek through the window of the garage door. My father's motorcycle is not there. At least he won't be burned alive in his laboratory if they set their torches to our house.

I fumble with the back door key. There is pulsing in my eardrums and tingling in my adrenalized arteries, but my airborne mind stays distant, detached. Finally the key slides in, and I slip into the kitchen. The front door crackles with another blow from the makeshift battering ram. I grab the kitchen telephone.

“911 Emergency Response,”
says the nasal voice of the dispatcher.
“Please state the nature of the emergency.”

“There's a home invasion taking place at One Castle Hill Road,” I hear my voice say. “They've got torches. They're beating down the door. Hurry.”

“God, when it rains it pours,”
the dispatcher says.
“Okay sir,
get yourself to safe location. Help is on the way.”

I run out through the back door and hide in the woods behind the garage. They cheer as their makeshift battering ram smashes down our front door. Their voices become muffled as they surge into our house.

Then there are sirens and flashing lights. The police cruiser's tires spit gravel as it speeds up the hill, followed by the roaring engines of a fire truck and ambulance. I peek around the edge of the garage. Bright orange light flickers through the arched windows of our house. Tabernacle interlopers rush out through the back door. Their colourless clothing helps them to vanish quickly into the darkness of the woods.

Two police officers throw open the doors of their cruiser and hit the ground running. One sprints around to the back of the house, where most of the invaders have already fled, while the other cop positions himself before the shattered front door. His voice squawks from a megaphone,
“The building is
surrounded! Come out slowly with your hands on top of your
heads!”

Two firefighters run from their truck, tugging a length of flattened hose. They stop in front of the shattered door, brace themselves as another fireman at the truck counts,
“Three!
Two! One
!” The hose swells, and a stream of water bursts from the nozzle and strikes hissing at the flames.

At the back of the house, a coughing Candace Brown runs out through the kitchen door. She grips an extinguished torch, its tip trailing a tendril of white smoke. The police officer at the back of the house grabs her from behind in a sort of bear hug. She kicks and thrashes, screams out for The Lord, but there is no Divine Intervention on Candace's behalf.

The cop carries her around the house, and I emerge from behind the garage into the carnival of red and orange flickering light. I run ahead of the officer and open the back door of the cruiser for him. He tosses Candace inside and slams the door closed. She kicks at the window with her buckled pilgrim shoes, and screams,
“Satan's Minion! Demon! Demon!”

“Whatever, lady,” the young policeman says. “They'll give you some nice pills to make the demons go away.” He turns to me and says, “Thanks for the help, buddy.”

“It's my house. I made the call.”

“Jesus,” the cop says. “Are you okay? Anybody else in there?”

“Everyone else is at the hospital with my brother. Except for my father. I don't know where he is.”

The firemen are inside the house now. I hear a few words crackle over the walkie-talkies:
“spot fires . . . not much chance
to spread . . . under control . . . ”

The other police officer is standing at the edge of our driveway, looking down the hill to the Tabernacle of God's Will. “Pete!” he calls out to the officer who's standing with me. “They're regrouping down there at the Weirdo Church.”

Officer Pete slaps me on the back, and says “Gotta go. Get the boys in the ambulance to have a look at you, okay?”

He jumps into the cruiser with his partner, and they gun it down the hill. The car slides to a halt at the bottom, and the two cops take off after the fleeing Tabernaclers.

I am still receiving images with my eyes: firemen rush in and out of the house, wisps of steam and smoke rise from the shattered front doorway. I am still hearing sounds with my ears: water continues hissing inside, men's voices shout out, walkie-talkies crackle. I smell the scorched air, a blend of campfire smoke and burnt oatmeal cookies, and I feel cool mist on my skin from the leaky hose connection as I slip past the fire truck. But I am not really here. My mind hovers higher and higher above me, farther and farther out of range, like a satellite scanning this pinpoint on earth from space.