“Watch out for Ahab yourself, you stupid fuck,” Finnie screamed, drawing forth a spurt of blood from his brother’s nose. “The king is dead! Long live King Finnie! Long live King Paul!”
Patrick and Gerry pulled Finnie back, but they merely restrained him. They did not retaliate in any way; they would, in the future, go so far as to prevent Kirby from exacting revenge. I don’t think they picked on Finnie as much after that and I never heard the oath again.
I saw that a person had to stand up for himself if he wanted to get anywhere, especially in hockey. From then on, I didn’t hesitate to knock people down if they came in on me, even if they were bigger than I was. So what if I was scared of them? If I let them walk all over me, I’d have to be even more scared of them. Thinking back on the incident, I realize that the important lesson, the one that I didn’t learn until it was much too late, was that if you’re going to swim around in strange waters acting like a big fish, you’d better watch out for Ahab.
From then on, Finnie and I were afforded a lot more respect, even though most of the players were five or six years older than us. We were invited to play more often, but this was short-lived, because by the middle of September the real hockey season was about to begin. Portsmouth’s Memorial Arena was home to a variety of junior teams and both Finnie and I were eligible to play. I had never played on ice before; I had never even been on skates. Finnie had skated numerous times and had his own pair, but he had never played goal on ice. We decided that we would have to make the transition.
I waited for weeks until I thought that my parents were in the right mood to ask for their permission and, more importantly, for enough money to buy equipment. The main difference between street hockey and ice hockey, besides the ice, is the amount of equipment involved. To play on the street you only need a stick, but to play in an ice hockey league you need shin, shoulder and elbow pads, pants, gloves, skates, a helmet, an athletic cup, a jersey and socks and a large bag in which to put it all. Since my father lost his arm our family had been on a tight budget; money was scarce, even with my mother’s job and my father’s pension. I knew that if I wanted to play, my timing would have to be perfect.
Finnie was relentless. Every day he’d ask for an update.
“Did you ask them yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Wrong time.”
“If you don’t ask soon, it will be too late.”
It was never the right time. It wasn’t so much that my parents were in bad moods; my mother was almost always the same stern but understanding woman I had known all my life, but my father was changing at such a pace that I really didn’t know what to expect from him anymore.
It had taken my father six days to save us from the garage. On the seventh he should have rested, but he didn’t. It would have been nice if it was a Sunday, but it wasn’t. It was a Tuesday. That day my father had gone downtown and gotten himself a library card. He had signed out the maximum number of books and had spent his days since on the back porch reading. For a while, he read a lot of Hemingway. He liked A Farewell to Arms best. He would read and reread the ending: the guy’s girlfriend dies giving birth to their baby, who also dies while the guy’s eating a sandwich in the hotel. When the guy finds out, he just turns around and walks away as if nothing ever happened, except you know that’s not how he feels. My father admired this; for him, it was impossible to be detached from even the most trivial of life’s details. My father cared how many birds were using our bird feeder. He cared how many spoons were in the cutlery drawer. He cared whether the towels in the linen closet were correctly folded and ordered.
He also read some Melville. Unlike Kirby Walsh, he actually finished Moby Dick. Whenever he was in a certain mood, he would point at whomever he wanted to chastise with the stump of his arm and growl, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.” None of us ever knew what it meant exactly and even after I read Moby Dick and found the part where Stubb says that, I still don’t know what the heck my father was on about. As far as Moby Dick and my father are concerned, I can’t really say which perplexes me more; I understand very little about either of them.
The real clincher, however, was when my father discovered that the library had every issue of National Geographic published since the society’s inception in 1888. He began to start all his sentences with, “Did you know…” Invariably the sentence would end with an obscure fact somewhere between very and not at all interesting. “Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell was the first president of the society?” “Did you know that a blue whale is over 100 feet long, but can’t swallow anything larger than a herring?” “Did you know that there actually is a Blarney stone?” Whether or not you knew, and whether or not you even answered, his response was always the same: “How about that! Who would have guessed?”
He started with the first issues and worked forward; he even made a long-term plan. He was, he figured, some 93 years behind or, if you prefer, 1,055 issues. Thankfully for him, the magazine didn’t become a monthly until 1898, or he would have been lost. He decided that he would read three a week, from front to back. At that pace it would take him five years to read them all, at which time he would be five years, or 60 issues, behind on the newly published magazines.
At first it took him a long time to read even one. He was not well-practised and often stumbled over words. He also found it difficult to turn the pages because of his arm, so he had to be extra careful with the older, more fragile issues. Eventually, as the issues got hardier and he became more proficient, he got to the point where he could read an entire issue in about four hours, which, given the amount of time he spent out on the back deck, was not very long at all.
I did not know what to make of all this; being unable to gauge my father’s moods was unnerving. As Finnie constantly reminded me, however, the deadline to register for hockey was fast approaching. Whomever administered the children’s leagues was not very forgiving about late registration. Once the deadline passed, you were out of luck.
Well aware of this, I decided to bite the bullet. I was, to say the least, surprised by how the idea was received.
“You hear that, Mary? The boy wants to play hockey!”
The next words I expected to hear were, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck,” but I was wrong.
“You’ll need all sorts of stuff,” my mother said.
“I’ll take you down to the store after school tomorrow, Paul.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Sure. Did you know that people used to think that if you ate gold you’d live longer?”
“Huh?”
“How about that! Who would have guessed?”
“I can really play?”
“Of course you can. It’s what your real father would have wanted,” my father laughed. I was born on the night Paul Henderson scored his winning goal. My father often joked that Henderson had more to do with my safe arrival then he did. I don’t think my mother really understood what was supposed to be so funny about that. I think my father would actually have been honoured if Henderson had fathered me. He had, after all, scored the game-winning goal that restored Canada’s national pride.
I don’t think I slept much that night and the next day when I told Finnie he actually squealed he was so happy. “Can I come with you to the store?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I said. His family owned the store; of course he could come.
We waited anxiously outside the school for my father to arrive. He wasn’t allowed to drive because of his lost arm, but in Portsmouth you can walk pretty much everywhere. My father didn’t go out often; he was still a little self-conscious about his arm, so when he did go out he walked. Unlike other adults I knew, he didn’t walk so fast that it was hard to keep up with him. He wasn’t in any hurry and he knew it. On this day, though, I thought he could have made an exception and I was mad as hell, waiting out front and picturing him sauntering along as if he hadn’t a care in the world, while in fact he ha
d a young son who was almost crippled by anticipation.
“There he is!” Finnie cried, frightening me, but it wasn’t him. “Never mind. It’s only Mr. Palagopolis.”
Mr. Palagopolis was the school janitor and Portsmouth’s only other one-armed man. He had lost his arm in the Korean War and he was truly one of the nicest men I knew. He was getting on in years, however, and had a tendency to remember things the way he wished they had happened and not the way they had actually occurred. The only time I had seen him get upset was when someone’s dad called him Greek. “I don’t know why you think I’m Greek,” he had said, his face turning red. “I was wearing a Canadian uniform when they blew my arm off.”
Actually, his arm had not been blown or even shot off. He had scratched it badly on some barbed wire he was laying out around his platoon’s camp and, because he had mistrusted army doctors, he had left the scratch untreated and developed gangrene. He had nearly died and was lucky to survive with just the loss of his arm.
He usually wore a prosthetic limb to aid him in his janitorial work, but that day he was without it. As he approached us, he appeared flustered, his face red and his fist clenched. “Hello, Mr. Palagopolis,” Finnie said.
“You boys seen my claw?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Someone stole my claw.” “Your arm?”
“Yes, yes, my claw. Do you know where it is?”
“No,” Finnie answered.
Mr. Palagopolis looked at me. I supposed, since my father was the only other person in town who would have a practical use for his claw, I was a likely suspect. “No, sir.”
“I hope not. You boys are good boys and I like you, but that claw’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Finnie’s eyes widened. Finnie found danger very exciting.
“Oh, sure, it’s dangerous all right. Got a mind all its own. And if it’s not attached to me, I can’t control it.”
“What does it do?”
“Who knows? I never know what the claw’s up to.” Mr. Palagopolis walked away, shaking his head.
I shuddered. “I wonder who stole his arm?” I said.
“Who knows? Maybe someone else needed it more.”
While we waited for my father to arrive, we both imagined what the claw could possibly be up to.
When I looked up and saw my father standing in front of us, I remembered where we were going and I put Mr. Palagopolis out of my mind. Finnie, however, was still captivated. “Someone stole Mr. Palagopolis’ claw,” he said to my father.
“He probably thinks I did it,” he replied.
“He said it has a mind of its own.”
“He ought to know, if it does.”
By the time we arrived at the sporting goods store, my father and Finnie had discussed at length the possibility that Mr. Palagopolis’ claw was on the loose roaming wild about town. As we walked through the doors, though, my father became all business. Finnie was equally enthusiastic, following my father from aisle to aisle, offering suggestions as he saw fit.
“What Paul is, really, is a defenceman,” Finnie said, “so he ought to have good shin pads for blocking shots. Really good shin pads.”
“Gloves,” my father said. “Gloves are what make the difference.”
“Gloves?” I said.
“If you can’t feel your stick, how are you going to be able to handle the puck?”
“Of course, good skates are critical,” Finnie added.
After much debate, we decided that shin pads, gloves and skates were the most important pieces of equipment and that pants, shoulder pads and elbow pads were less so. My mother had insisted that my father buy me a top-of-the-line helmet and I’m glad she had.
Eventually we had everything in hand and headed to the cash desk. I was worried about how much all of it would cost, but my father didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest. He was actually in quite a good mood, laughing and joking around. When we reached the counter, however, he stopped laughing and became very sombre.
Behind the counter, talking to the sales clerk, was Roger Walsh. When we were older, Finnie told me that his father spent as much of his time as he could at the sporting goods store, which was only one of his many businesses. Even though it was without a doubt his least profitable venture, he apparently enjoyed being among the balls and sticks and gloves and shoes and skates. They reminded him of what it must have been like to be young. He felt he had missed his own childhood as he’d been groomed from an early age to assume control of the family business. Sometimes, when it was sunny outside and he was stuck in some office trying to keep his house of cards from tumbling down around him, he tried to invent a childhood filled with outdoor activities and friends and afternoons of unadulterated fun, so that he would have something to look back on and smile about. Whenever he felt like that, he would go down to the sporting goods store, which he had purposely not put the Walsh name on, and pretend that he was reliving memories of good times gone by.
Although he actively encouraged his own children to enjoy their childhoods, it was at the expense of the future of the family business. None of his older children was equipped to take control of the Walsh empire. Occassionally, he thought Finnie might turn out to be capable, but most of the time he didn’t seem so sure. These considerations weighed heavily on Roger Walsh.
I like to think that on the afternoon we were there Roger Walsh was fondly remembering a soccer game in which he had never played. When he saw his youngest son approach the counter, he might even have momentarily considered passing him the ball, as Finnie was in a good scoring position. Then he realized where he was and snapped to attention, which left him a bit disoriented.
“Hi, Dad,” Finnie said.
“Hello, Finnie,” Roger Walsh answered.
“How are you, Mr. Walsh?” I asked.
“Oh, hello Paul. I’m fine. Hello, Bob. How are things with you?”
“They’re all right, I suppose.”
“That’s great. Glad to hear it. Your arm is healing well?”
“It hasn’t grown back, but other than that, yes.”
Roger Walsh smiled hesitantly. Finnie laughed and I assumed that this meant my father had been joking, so I laughed too. Mr. Walsh emitted a small chuckle and my father smiled. Then there was an uncomfortable silence.
“We’d like to purchase this hockey gear for Paul, Mr. Walsh.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll get Kevin to ring it in. Nice talking to you.” He motioned to Kevin, a dopey-looking man in his late twenties, who was one of the store’s three full-time employees. As Mr. Walsh was leaving the store, he turned back and called over to jittery Kevin, “Give them the staff discount.” A bewildered Kevin nodded; it was not common for Roger Walsh to give anyone a discount. The door jingled shut and Roger Walsh was gone.
“How much is the staff discount?” my father inquired.
“Fifty percent, sir,” Kevin answered.
“Fifty percent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Holy…,” my father looked over at Finnie, “cow.”
We paid for the equipment and I was set. I can recall few times in my life when I have been happier than I was on that day.
Unlike Finnie, I did not use my equipment for street hockey. Concrete and pavement had taken their toll on Finnie’s pads; they hadn’t been in great shape to begin with and Finnie was having to patch up holes in the leather more and more frequently as time went on. I put my gear in my closet, only taking it out to look at it and try it on, which I did nearly every day.
I began to attend the public skate down at the arena with Finnie. I found skating forward awkward, but I could skate backward without nearly as much effort. The only way I could stop was to either fall down or slam into the boards.
Finnie was a terrific skater, but a lousy skating teacher. “Move your feet,” he’d yell. “No, no, not like that!”
I would usually answer him by falling on either my face, my ass, or both.
“You’re not trying,?
?? he’d say, standing over me. “You can do it, I know you can. Here, watch me.”
So I’d watch him skate around and then I’d get up and the cycle would repeat itself.
One day, I fell down and, instead of seeing Finnie standing over me shaking his head, I saw Joyce, laughing. I felt my face flush. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a malicious laugh, but rather a sympathetic laugh, if such a thing is possible. I got up slowly and tried to talk to her without falling down. I failed.
“Jesus, Paul, you’re a crappy skater,” she said, looking down at me.
“I know.”
“He’s just learning,” Finnie said defensively.
“I can see that. He doesn’t seem to be learning very much.”
“Skating’s hard,” I said.
“Not really. Show me what you can do.”
I got to my feet and pushed off with a couple of hesitant strides.
“Straighten your ankles,” Joyce said.
I straightened my ankles and took a couple more strides.
“Bend your knees.”
I bent my knees.
“Push with one foot and glide with the other.”
I did as instructed.
“Transfer your weight as you push off.”
With straight ankles and bent knees, I pushed, glided and transferred my weight. I wasn’t trying to skate so much as I was trying not to look like an idiot in front of Joyce. She skated backward ahead of me, shouting tips and encouragement. Finnie did laps around the rink, switching from forward to backward effortlessly.
Then I realized that I was skating. “Hey, look at this,” I shouted to anyone who would listen.
“See? I told you it wasn’t so hard,” Joyce said.
“Holy shit,” Finnie said.
I picked up my pace, gaining speed with every stride. Then I remembered that I didn’t know how to stop. I went hard into the boards and fell to the ice. Finnie and Joyce stood over me, looking concerned.