The Last of the Lumbermen Page 15

  “Must be a little warm during the summer,” I say.

  “We don’t use it then,” she laughs. “There’s an outdoor stove out there.” She’s pointing through the window. “And we’re not here very much during the summer.”

  We make small talk while the kettle heats, mainly about the stove. I get the sense that she’s reluctant to talk about herself or young James, and there’s no mention at all of the father. She asks for the form, reads it carefully, then signs it without comment and hands it back to me.

  By the time the tea is made and properly steeped, I’ve decided that I like this woman as much as I like her looks. I want to know more about her, her kid, and her husband — if there is one. But she’s not giving me any conversational openings on anything but hockey, which she says fascinates the boy.

  “I’ve noticed. How does he get to the games?” I ask. “You’re rather a long way out here.”

  She laughs, and an eyebrow flickers. “Oh, he has his ways of getting around. And don’t you worry. If he says he’ll be somewhere, he gets there. And he’ll be on time.”

  There’s an odd kind of edge to her voice as she says this, as if she’s not quite able to take the pleasure from her son’s inde- pendence she thinks she ought to. We talk more about the boy, and the impression that he’s a mixed pleasure for her strengthens. We run out of small talk, and I get up to go.

  “I’m sure this will be a good experience for him,” she says plaintively. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you? He thinks the world of you.”

  “Well,” I say, “we do share the Bathgate name, so we have that in common. I’ll keep an eye on him.” I don’t mention any of my previous plans to strangle her son or run him over with my car, and I don’t mention that I threatened to make his brains squirt out of his ears just yesterday afternoon.

  As I’m passing through the hallway on the way out, my eyes stray to the wall of framed photos. Curious, I stop to look them over. Most are landscapes — a northern lake, two men dwarfed by a wolf fir, a wedding photo I don’t examine very carefully, things like that. But toward the top there’s a photo of a child in a hockey uniform, an old photo, that arrests my attention. The child, as I stop to examine it, is nine or ten years old, wearing a Montreal Canadiens sweater.

  I feel Claire Bathgate’s hand on my shoulder. “I should have taken that photograph down,” she says simply. “I think you’d better come into the living room and sit down.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  OVER THE NEXT HOUR, Claire Bathgate tells me a tale that makes my head spin. She’s my stepmother, my father’s second wife, and the boy I’m about to make the stickboy for the Mantua Mohawks is my half brother.

  Without meaning to, she confirms some of what my mother told me about my father — and contradicts everything I imagined about what happened after they split up. Yes, my father had a moderately successful truck-logging company, sold it, gave my mother the proceeds, and hit the bottle. But around the time my mother lost track of him, when I was seventeen or so, he began to slowly dig his way out. Claire met him in Camelot, where she was a nurse in the hospital.

  She dried him out, fell in love with him — she didn’t say which came first — and they homesteaded in one of the valleys to the southeast of the city. My father went back to logging, except this time as a private operator clearing farmland and logging off private woodlots. They stayed in the backwoods for a decade and a half, living a simple life and making a decent living. He’d become something of an expert at small-scale log- ging, occasionally using horses, and was currently much in demand— outside the country, of course — for some harvest and reforestation innovations he developed along the way.

  They’d moved back to Mantua about the time I returned, mainly so James could get a proper education, and, I guess, because my father was getting on in years.

  “He must be close to seventy now,” I find myself saying to Claire.

  “Seventy-one,” she says. “Not that you’d know it to look at him.”

  “He knows I’m here?” I ask. “I mean, that I’m me.” I sound stupid, garbled.

  “Of course.”

  “But he never thought to contact me?”

  “He’s thought about it constantly. But he knew about the trouble you’d had, and he thought you might not want to be reminded about it. And,” she says, “he wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from him.”

  “I was convinced he was dead,” I said. “I haven’t heard hide nor hair of him since I was, let’s see — sixteen, I guess.”

  “I’m sure this is a lot to take in all at once,” she says, carefully. “You’re going to have to do some thinking about it. You realize that James is your half brother.”

  “I’m getting my head around it. Shouldn’t he be getting home anytime now?”

  “We’ve got some time,” she says, then answers my unspoken question without my having to ask it. “He doesn’t know. And I don’t think he should be told until a few other things are settled. Like whether you want to speak to your father.”

  This one brings me up short. The thought that I have a living father is one shock. That he’s in the same part of the planet I’m in is another. I can’t imagine what I’d say to him if he were to walk in the door right now. I’d crawl under the coffee table, probably. The panic it throws me into must be apparent.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “He’s in Denver. He travels quite a lot, these days. He won’t be back until Saturday.”

  She’s being incredibly gracious. It must not be any easier for her having me sitting in her living room than it is for me to be here, and I’m at sea trying to figure out how to reciprocate. I stand up.

  “Well,” I say, “I guess we’re just going to have to play this one straight up. I won’t mention anything to James, of course. But you can tell my father that I’ll be in touch early next week. And it’s been extremely nice meeting you.”

  She hands me my coat as I slip on my boots. “I don’t think you have any idea what a relief this is to me,” she says, extending her hand. Her eyes are misty.

  I take her hand, and, to hell with it, lean forward and kiss her cheek. “Tell James to be at the Coliseum about five tomorrow.”

  My watch reads four-forty-five as I walk back to the Lincoln. The darkening sky is a deep, transparent purple, and the crows and jays are already silent. In an hour, the sky will be filled with stars. I crank up the engine and let it idle while the heater blows the ice crystals from the windshield.

  There’s still the possibility that when I get home tonight the locks will have been changed. I don’t think that’s in the cards, but then again I don’t seem to be dealing the cards or deciding what the game is going to be right now. The only other thing left on my list is to visit Junior, and see if I can fit him with a goalie mask. If it sticks to his face and turns him into a horror movie marquee, I won’t bat an eye. I pat my inside pocket to make sure I’ve got the signed insurance release, and flip the Lincoln into gear. The motor guns as the wheels dislodge themselves from the snow, and off I go.

  Halfway along the quarter-mile driveway a Ski-Doo bursts out of the trees onto the roadway fifty metres in front of me. The machine swerves as its driver regains control, and heads in my direction spewing a cloud of powdery snow in its wake. It doesn’t have lights, and all I can see of the driver is that he — or she — is small. It’s fifty metres past me before I realize that it’s James.

  AS I PULL INTO the parking lot outside the hospital I scan for Esther’s truck, hoping she’ll be here visiting Jack so she can help me browbeat Junior into agreeing to wear the mask. Then I remember Jack is long gone on the plane. So, no Esther, damn it. I scoop the mask from the seat beside me and walk toward the hospital entrance. At the last moment I remember that afternoon visiting hours are over, and enter through the emergency entrance. I’m practically on a first-name basis with everyone there, and they�
��ll think I’m looking for Gord.

  The first nurse I run into tells me that Gord has left, but that Junior is on the fourth floor.

  “Not in the psychiatric ward?” I say.

  “No,” she says, ignoring my attempt at humour. “He’s going to be fine. The disorientation was gone by this morning, although he doesn’t have much recall of what happened.”

  I wave the mask at her. “Maybe this’ll keep him out of here next time.”

  She glances at the mask and grimaces. “I hope so. But that’s perfectly horrible-looking.”

  “He looked pretty horrible last night after that puck bounced off his noggin.”

  “Wait till you see him now,” she says as she pulls open a curtained stall and disappears inside.

  SHE ISN’T KIDDING. JUNIOR, when I find him, is sitting up in bed sporting two giant shiners and a bandage across his forehead that looks big enough to have a baseball stuffed inside it. They’ve put him in a private room, no doubt as a courtesy to the patients who required peace and quiet last night.

  He’s a picture of quiet if not peace when I enter, with reading glasses propped on his nose, perusing the latest issue of Playboy — open, naturally, to the centrefold.

  “Shouldn’t you be reading something that’ll improve your mind?” I say, holding the mask behind my back.

  “Nice to see you, Weaver,” he grins. “I hear you spent last night in here, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They let me out this morning. Nothing wrong with me a few weeks off the ice won’t cure. How’s tricks?”

  Junior lifts the glasses carefully off his nose and sets them down on the side-table. “I’ll live. Nice headache, though.”

  “Gord been around?” I ask.

  “He stopped in a couple of times. Took Jack to the airport a couple of hours ago, I think. What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  I sit down on a chair just off the foot of Junior’s bed, and manage to keep the mask out of sight. “Good news and bad,” I say.

  “Give me the good news.”

  “It isn’t much,” I say. “You remember that little bugger who comes to all the games and razzes everyone?”

  “He razzes you, Weaver,” Junior points out.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I just made him our new stickboy. Stroke of genius, no?”

  “Some stroke,” he says. “I know that kid. Dad and I coached him one year in minor hockey. He was a bit of a satellite.”

  “Say what?”

  “You know, one of those kids who’s in orbit all the time. His old man is a bit of one, too, I hear. Ran some sort of weirdo handheld logging operation outside Camelot until a few years ago. When InterCon moved into that area they got his timber licences revoked, or bought him out, or something. InterCon saw him as some sort of threat.”

  “Anyway,” I say, “the kid’ll be around the dressing room from now on. Try not to step on him.”

  Junior rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he answers, “okay. So let’s get to the bad news.”

  “I had a long conversation with Milgenberger this morning, and an even longer one with Jack before he took off.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush,” Junior says. “You were talking about me, right?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “We’ve got a small problem.”

  “Well, you can relax. I’ll be fine for the Friday game.”

  “Afraid not.” I slip the mask under the chair and get up to gaze out the window. If I’m going to get Junior to co-operate, I’m going to have to get him thinking that the mask is the only thing that’ll save his career.

  He bites. “Jesus, Weave. What is it? What did Milgenberger say?”

  “He said that whack you got is life threatening. If you get hit on the same spot again, you could be a vegetable.”

  “Bullshit,” Junior explodes. “I’m fine.”

  “They obviously haven’t shown you the X-rays,” I say, deliberately keeping a dead tone in my voice. “Apparently your skull nexus disintegrated when that puck hit it.”

  There’s no such thing as a skull nexus, but I’m pretty sure Junior won’t know that.

  “My skull nexus disintegrated? What the fuck is a skull nexus?”

  “It’s a small set of bones just above your temple,” I say, touching a spot on my head just above the hairline where I can feel a slight ridge, “that keeps the different bones that make up your skull from coming apart. There’s one on each side, and they work as lynchpins, sort of.” I’m neck deep in the brown stuff here, but it has his rapt attention. “The bones are completely gone on your right side, and they’re weakened on other side.”

  “I thought skulls were made out of solid bone,” Junior says, whistling. “Wow.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “Shows you how little we know. Anyway, Milgenberger says you’re through with hockey.”

  Junior turns white as a sheet. “You gotta be kidding,” he says. “I’m too young to quit.”

  It’s time to spring the mask. “There’s one thing that can save it.” I let the sentence trail off into silence, as if what’s on my mind is just too unthinkable to say out loud.

  “What is it?” Junior pulls back the covers and starts to climb out of bed. “I don’t want to have to quit.”

  I push him back onto the bed. “Well,” I say. “You remember when you got bopped a couple of winters ago up in Okenoke?”

  “Yeah,” Junior says, suddenly much less casual about his head injuries than ever before in his life — now that his skull nexus has disintegrated. “That was a doozy.”

  “Well, apparently the beginning of the damage was apparent that time. Milgenberger mentioned it to Jack,” I say, “and Jack wrote away to this special clinic in Tulsa Gord knew about” — I reach beneath my chair and pull out the death’s-head mask — “and had this built for you.”

  For a second, it looks as if Junior is about to dive beneath the bed. Then a wily look crosses his face. “You lousy bastard,” he says. “You’ve been stringing me along, haven’t you?”

  “Not a word, I swear,” I tell him. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Junior snarls. “And I ain’t wearing no goalie mask.”

  “You can’t play goal again for the Mohawks without one,” I tell him. “The Coliseum’s insurance company called this afternoon and threatened to cancel the team’s insurance.”

  I’m blowing more smoke, of course, and this time Junior knows it right away. Given the releases we sign, if he wanted to play with a loaded .45 automatic stuck in his ear, the insurance company wouldn’t give a damn unless the Coliseum manager had personally filed off the safety and cocked it for him.

  “Screw you,” he says. “I can’t play goal with a mask, and that’s final. I may have to sit out this weekend, but I’ll be back the week after. And I won’t be wearing any stupid mask.”

  A voice from the door interrupts him before he can launch the tirade against girly men, poufters, and safety freaks that’s coming next. “I think you should stop being a fool, son, and use the mask.”

  Damned if Don Young, Sr. isn’t standing in the doorway. Junior’s jaw drops wide open as the old man steps into the room, nods to me, and moves close enough to Junior that he can examine the bandage on his son’s forehead. I don’t know how long he’s been listening to our conversation, but evidently it was long enough.

  “I must have had a dozen of these injuries,” he says, dryly. “But nobody thought enough of me to get me a mask, and I was too stupid to ask. It’s a bloody wonder my brain isn’t more scrambled than it is.”

  Junior is still silent. So, for that matter, am I. The old man makes a fist of his big hand and uses it to tap Junior on the shoulder. “Listen,” he says. “You take that mask and you wear it. I don’t want to hear any more of this manly man horseshit fr
om you. God gave you few enough brains without you letting the ones you have get turned into Jell-O pudding.”

  Mission accomplished. I toss the mask into Junior’s lap and leave his father to lecture him on the merits of safety and hockey masks.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A SMALL JOLT OF relief rattles up my spine when I see Jack’s pickup parked in the driveway: Esther hasn’t run away to join the circus or been abducted by aliens. So far, so good. When I slip my key into the front door lock and it turns without a hitch, I’m two for two.

  It’s better than that, actually. She’s cooking my favourite dish, shepherd’s pie. It’s the first time she’s ever made it, and I can see she’s used my recipe: hamburger, carrots, onions, salt, pepper, and a dollop of ketchup for the sauce, with riced potatoes on top. I’ve been cooking the dish since I can remember, and there are two tricks to it: never alter the proportions, and don’t add any Smarties. No peas, no corn, no ground lamb, no silly spices.

  With the news I’ve got, though, we don’t waste time discuss- ing recipes. I start with the visit to James Bathgate’s mother. Esther doesn’t say much, but I can see she’s pleased rather than disturbed. That makes a certain sense: in her way, Esther has been almost as isolated as I’ve been. She lost her mother to cancer just after Wendel was born, and her father died in a trucking accident a couple of years after that. Since Leo was killed Wendel has been her family, along with Gord and Jack. When I came along I entered a very small circle, and until two days ago I wouldn’t have even seen myself as an essential part of it.

  Wendel has already told her about the Coalition meeting, and she’s a little skeptical about my offer. “Are you really prepared to give up that property for something that may or may not work?” she wants to know.

  I tell her I am.

  “This is about Wendel, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Sure,” I answer. “He is my son, and I’ve got to start some- where with him. You know damned well he’s not going to buy into any lovey-dovey stuff, so I figure it’s got to be something practical. And anyway, it isn’t going to cost me my shirt.”