The Last of the Lumbermen Read online

  The other thing I knew was that I wasn’t cut out for the life Fred Menzies had planned for me. Not for piousness, not for Christian princesses, not for the other Bible college nonsense. But I gave it a try, hanging in for almost two years trying my damnedest to please Fred because he was paying the shot, and trying to please my mother, who spent a lot of energy explaining to me that I didn’t want to turn out like my real father.

  I stopped trying when the college principal claimed I’d gotten one of his princesses pregnant. I wasn’t guilty as charged, but someone had gotten her that way, and she decided I was the best catch in the school. So I cleared out about three seconds ahead of being kicked out, and went home to Chilliwack. Fred wasn’t very happy about it, being a believer in how young men ought to keep their weapons holstered until marriage — I swear he really believed that — but he didn’t say much.

  I got an apartment of my own with a couple of other guys, went to work in a supermarket bagging groceries, and settled down to figure out what to do with my life. The figuring didn’t go well, and before very long I slipped to about where Andy Bathgate had been headed — drinking too much beer, driving cars, and going to every party I could find. The part of me that remained Billy Menzies slipped into playing Senior hockey for the Chilliwack Christian Lions.

  I’VE PLAYED ON A couple of Senior teams in my time that could have made pureed banana out of a lot of Junior A teams, and who on a good night might have given an NHL team a run. The Chilliwack Christian Lions, despite the goofy name, were one of the best. It wasn’t religion that made us good, and it wasn’t the coaching. We were all under twenty-five, and most of us had good skills. We hung out together outside of hockey, and we liked one another, and, despite the pious stage we were on, we spent a lot of time getting drunk together.

  These days, most Senior leagues are filled with washouts from Juniors mixed in with a few older guys like me. The best players are what I call homers: local players who make their game — and the other parts of their lives — out of character and, more often than you’d think, brains. I’ve played with lots of guys in their thirties and early forties who are better players than they were at twenty. Sure, the legs may have died, and the grand ambitions are gone, but the love of the game is still there, trimmed down to a scale that fits. In a time when everyone and everything is trying to remake the world with levered debt, World Class pretense, and over-scale self-esteem, how many people do you know who can walk across the street in synch with their surroundings, and without wishing they were somewhere else? Well, Senior hockey has ‘em. Not many, but enough.

  Take Gord, for a perfect example. He’s six-one and close to two hundred and sixty pounds. If you spotted him and his nineteeninch neck on the street or in a bar, you’d swear he was a no-good down-and-dirty middle-aged trucker. The truth is that he needs that nineteen-inch neck to support his brain, which is big enough that he can’t get a hockey helmet to fit around his skull. So what if he can’t wheel because of an old back injury, can’t turn to the left because the outside ligaments on his left knee are flapping with loose cartilage? So what if he’s closer to fifty than to forty? You never hear him whining about what he could have been, because he doesn’t want to be anywhere but exactly where he is. He’s a medical doctor, not a truck driver, so he has real smarts. In fact, he’s the district coroner.

  Maybe, come to think of it, that’s why he’s always talking about time. He sees what’s at the business end of it more times a week than most people do in a lifetime. Hell, he’s probably seen a dozen people who’ve been run over by real freight trains.

  Jack Lankin, my right winger, is another example. Jack’s about my age, but he has even more damaged cartilage in his knees than Gord. Otherwise, he’s Gord’s opposite: five-seven, maybe one hundred and sixty pounds, and his neck wouldn’t look out of place in a chicken coop. Gord calls Jack the flabmeister because he’s never worked out a day in his life and lives on a diet of cheeseburgers and light beer. But he’s got softer hands than I have, he’s surprisingly quick, and he’s a magician when he gets close to the net.

  Jack’s my tax accountant, and he’s a magician at that too. He’s also as gloomy as Gord is calm and cheerful. With the local economy what it is, sorting out people’s finances, I guess, is more depressing than dealing with people’s cadavers.

  Oh yeah. Jack’s also the general manager and playing coach of the Mantua Mohawks, and pretty much the man who keeps the North Central B.C. Senior Hockey League going. When Esther and I enter the dressing room, he and Gord are just sitting down to solve the league’s latest crisis.

  FOUR

  ESTHER COMES INTO THE dressing room with me this morning just like she did last night to rescue me. She was wandering in and out of Mantua’s hockey dressing rooms long before I became her main squeeze, so nobody thinks twice about it. She did it with Wendel before he went off to Regina to play Junior A, and I suspect she did it while her husband was playing. I’m pretty sure that if Wendel had decided to sign with the Rangers she’d be wandering in and out of NHL dressing rooms without anyone stopping her, too.

  Having her around makes a certain subtle dress code necessary after games, along with a degree of verbal decorum, and I’ve got to admit I welcome both. I never did like the dressing room horseshit as much as most of the guys I’ve played with, not the rah-rah stuff and not the nastier stuff.

  “So,” I ask as I shed my coat and edge myself onto the leatherette training table. “What’s today’s doom and gloom?”

  Jack and Gord are crammed into Jack’s cubby hole of an office. Jack’s behind the desk, Gord straddling one of the two rickety chairs. It isn’t quite a confidential conversation we’re busting in on, but then it really isn’t an office they’re in, either. There’s no door, just the big oak general manager’s desk Jack got in a furniture auction, a telephone, and the equipment lockup behind the desk. Jack has his elbows on the surface of the desk, hands over his ears. He doesn’t look happy.

  “It’s the Roosters,” Gord answers for him. “They don’t want to play Sunday afternoon.”

  “What is it this time?” Esther asks.

  With the Roosters, it’s always something. They’re from Came- lot, the town one hundred klicks south of Mantua, and they’re perpetually short of players. The reason is that the team is owned and run by Fritz Ratsloff, and he has seven of his own sons on the team, along with three or four of their cousins. You’d think having it all in the family would make it easier, but the Ratsloffs have their own unique style of hockey, and they expect anyone they bring in to play from outside the family to play their way. A Ratsloff is hard to emulate, and months go by when they only have the eleven Ratsloffs and their little goalie, Lenny Nakamoto. Lenny runs the old man’s hotel bar for him and doesn’t mind the way they play because he’s wackier than any of them. He’s a black belt karate expert, and the only goalie I’ve ever seen who can deliver a rabbit punch with a hockey blocker that can lay a man out cold. Not a lot of forwards care to crowd his crease.

  Try to imagine a hockey team made up of eleven Hanson brothers and Bruce Lee, and you’ve got the Roosters. The Ratsloffs are all stark raving crazy, each, all, and in their own unique ways — except for the twins, who are crazy in the same way. When things get going, all of them are as likely to crunch a member of their own team they suspect of malingering as players on the opposing team. I can’t remember when we last beat them, and it isn’t because they’ve got better hockey skills. Excepting Gord, who they can’t do much damage to, and Wendel, who’s so fast they can’t catch him, I think most of us let them win because we’re afraid of what they’ll do to us if we beat them.

  They leave me alone too, sort of. Can’t say exactly why, but I’ve been excused from the serious bone-crunching ever since I started playing in the league. I have a theory about why. Some- one, probably Jack, told them I’m the real Andy Bathgate, the one who played in the nhl back in the ’50s and
’60s. Only the Ratsloffs would be thick-headed enough not to realize I can’t be the real Andy Bathgate. Or even if I were, I don’t see why it would matter to them. But there it is. They give me a patch of ice free of blood and broken bones, and I take it.

  “The twins got D & D’d last night after they beat the Bears up in Okenoke,” Jack explains. “I guess they went to the bar, bit the heads off a dozen or so weasels, and then tried to bite the heads off a couple of the Bears who were goofy enough to think they could drink in the same bar. The cops’ve got ‘em in the lockup, and won’t let them out.”

  The twins are the youngest Ratsloffs, the babies of the family. Some babies. They’re both six-foot-four, and nasty as wolverine snot. They’re also dumb as wolverine snot. Jack’s theory about the twins is that the angel in charge of brains didn’t realize there were two of them in the tank and only tossed one in, which they damaged by squabbling over which one got to use it.

  “I don’t see why they can’t play,” Esther says. “That’s only two players out.”

  “You’re forgetting that you’re dealing with the Ratsloffs,” I say. “Not human beings. The rest of them won’t leave Okenoke without the twins.”

  “I heard they spent all night driving their 4x4s up and down the street trying to run the locals down.” Jack adds. “The RCMP detachment’s thinking of declaring a state of emergency — or siege or whatever — but they’re not sure how to do it.”

  “If they don’t figure it out pretty quick,” Gord says, “the bar’s going to open and the Ratsloffs will really lose their minds.”

  “Well, what those animals do isn’t your problem,” Esther sniffs. “Let them default the game if they don’t show up.”

  “Maybe we should send Andy up there to see if he can calm them down,” Gord says. “They never behave like animals around him.”

  That gets a laugh from everyone but Esther, who pulls me down on the table and nudges me to turn over on my stomach. “You’re not going anywhere,” she announces. “Pull off your shirt and I’ll see if I can get your back moving. Maybe I won’t have to take you to the physiotherapist this afternoon.”

  I roll over onto my gut and instantly feel her strong fingers pushing at the snarly discs at the base of my spine.

  MORE FACTS FOR YOU: the North Central British Columbia Senior Hockey League, known for short as the NSHL, has four teams: the Mantua Mohawks, the Roosters, the Okenoke Bears from the town just north of Mantua, and the Wilson Lake Stingers, the southernmost team. Over the years a few teams from farther away have joined the league, but sooner or later they pack it in. When I joined the league there were six teams, actually, but that only lasted the first year. It’s been down to the basic quartet for the last four now.

  It’s really common sense that dictates the size of this league. Most players drive their own cars to the away games, and it better not take too long, because it’s a league tradition for the players to load up on the way. With a three- or four-hour drive, sooner or later you’re going to land up with an impaired driving charge, or in some ditch as a quad, or dead. Even when those distant teams made it to a game intact, it wasn’t much fun watching the home team pound on a bunch of tired-out drunks.

  Like I said, I’m in my seventh season with the Mohawks, all with the same linemates and most of the same players as when I started. Around the league they call us the Molasses Line, for reasons I don’t need to go into. Still, we do our share of scoring, and we play smart. I don’t think our defencemen are too fond of us, but, well, you know the answer to that one.

  My nickname is Weaver. I can’t remember who hung it on me, or exactly why. I picked it up in my twenties, and it stuck. People around here probably think it has something to do with the way I wander around an offensive zone, looking for open space — and trying to avoid contact with opposing defencemen. So I’m okay with it. I put things together. I suppose you could say that’s what I do outside the rink, too, but slipping and sliding is a more common talent for people in real estate.

  I’m a rangy six-two, one-eighty, and with a thick head of white hair I wear down to my shoulders. I guess I look pretty strange coming in on a defenceman. Outside of Wendel, I’m about the league’s biggest draw. Who knows, maybe it’s the Andy Bathgate thing. If the Ratsloffs will buy into that one, who’s to say others haven’t? The real Andy Bathgate is older than I am, even if the kid in the stands last night won’t believe that’s possible.

  RIGHT NOW, WITH ESTHER’S knuckle jammed into my left gluteus muscle, I’m having no luck at all trying to pretend my back doesn’t hurt. It’s excruciating, until her thumb connects with the spasming nerve and the needle goes off the register and I let out a howl in spite of myself.

  Esther doesn’t let up. She’s done this enough times to know what’ll happen next. The nerve connection overloads and severs, and I feel the muscles all across my back and down my left leg let go. Sensing it, she relaxes her thumb, and slaps my thigh.

  “Congratulations,” she says. “You’ve just given birth to one five-hundredth of the real thing.”

  Jack looks up from his desk. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I answer. “She’s just reminding me that only women know what pain is about.”

  He ignores me. “Oh. So you’re saying Weaver will be able to play tomorrow afternoon.”

  Esther grimaces. “If he wants to.”

  “You’re off the hook for practice today, anyway.” Gord says.

  “How come?” I ask.

  “Nobody wanted one,” Jack explains. “So we let the Juniors have the slot.”

  Now you know why we’re in last place.

  FIVE

  THE COLISEUM IS USED pretty well around the clock on weekends, so Esther and I wander out to the stands to watch the minor hockey game that’s on the ice. It’s just past noon and the Peewees are playing, eleven- and twelve-year-olds. At this age, they can be fun to watch. They’re fast and the no-hitting rules let their budding skills shine. They’re not overdosed with hormones like they will be in a couple of years, so they don’t miss the hitting, and they don’t give a damn about fighting.

  That’s where the good stuff ends. Up in the stands, these kids have parents, and modern hockey parents are a separate species from the rest of us, one that gives up all traces of civilization the moment it opens an arena dressing room and pushes its offspring inside. I grew up before the kind of minor hockey played today was invented, so I can tell you what a great game hockey used to be. All you needed was a stick, a puck, weather cold enough to freeze a patch of ice, and some other kids. You could play for hours without seeing hide nor hair of your parents — or any other screaming adults — and you came home with a runny nose, not a bloody one. But somewhere along the line, somebody decided that it wasn’t safe for children to play hockey without adults there to bullyrag them, and things went straight to Looneyville.

  Esther has the right word for the people who did it. She calls them “Close Adults” — as in Close Adult Supervision. I don’t think they’re adults at all. They were invented by those job-sucking social workers who think the world would be better if everyone is strapped into safety devices or covered up to the ears with regulations. Close Adults believe there’s a child molester hiding behind every clump of bushes, and a safety hazard everywhere else. You can tell the difference between them and the social workers who invented them because they’re willing to ruin children’s fun without being paid to do it. That’s what they’ve done to minor hockey.

  So let me correct myself. It isn’t the game that’s the problem. Minor hockey could be fun if they’d just kick the adults off the benches and out of the offices, and put the parents in straitjackets and stuff gags in their mouths while their kids are on the ice — and maybe for an hour or two afterward.

  The parents in the stands this morning are jumping up and down and hollering at the referee, the coaches, and the op
position players as if they believe the fate of the world rests on how this mid-season game goes. They think that the big investment they’ve made on their kid’s equipment entitles them to lose their minds over the slightest error, injustice, wavering will, or lapse in concentration on the part of anyone on or near the ice — the players, coaches, officials, — it doesn’t seem to matter which. You might mistake these crazies for normally overprotective parents if you didn’t see them screaming at their kids to play harder, smarten up, and kill every other parents’ kid who keeps them from looking like the next Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky.

  As Esther and I settle down into the seats, a two-hundredpound mother in a pink parka and blue ski pants is clambering across the seats to yell from rinkside at her son, who has just been trapped up-ice on a breakaway.

  “Skate, you little shithead!” she shrieks at his backside as he lopes up the ice after the play, hopelessly behind. The boy hears her, hesitates momentarily, and drifts sideways along his own blueline as the breakaway fails and the puck skitters back toward centre.

  “Get on the puck!” the mother bellows, louder if possible, waving her arms like a windmill. “Move it, you lazy asshole! Move!”

  Other parents farther up in the stands get caught up in her hysteria and add to the din, terrified that their sons will humiliate them the way this woman’s son has. The boy glances toward the commotion, and, hesitating again, skates into a player from his own team who is rushing after the action. They both go down in a heap. A player from the other team retrieves the puck and pushes it ahead to his winger, who skates in on the net and scores easily.

  I see the coach yanking at his necktie and muttering to himself as the teams line up for the face-off at centre. But as the puck is dropped, he turns toward the mother and makes a resigned “calm down” signal to her.