“The thing about Coach-about Blackburn not really being in that one place for four years?”
“Oh, right. Not yet. I called that woman at the newspaper again. It was weird, for a minute I thought she was going to cry. Anyway, she told me to call her at home tonight. Got to do my laundry first.”
Upstairs, I shoved a stack of old Hockey News magazines off my makeshift coffee table and lifted the plywood off the cardboard boxes beneath. I opened the box that wasn’t marked Trucks, the one marked Rats.
It was filled with old tournament programs, newspaper clippings, and photographs. I rummaged in the bottom and pulled out the dog-eared programs and yearbooks Coach had given me when I was a boy. I flipped through them once, then again more slowly, looking for a St. Albert Saints program for 1966-67, the season he supposedly wasn’t there. Then I lined up all the programs across the carpet in chronological order, from Kitchener in 1954 to Moose Jaw to Kamloops to Kelowna to Victoria to St. Albert.
There was nothing from St. Albert in ’66-’67.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. I looked again. There was no program from that season. Was my memory fooling me? I sat on the floor remembering Coach leaning over his empty plate, telling us St. Albert was just too damn cold. The kids were great and they’d nearly won the title, he said, but he wanted those warm summers. “I had four fantastic years there,” I could hear him saying. “But you know what? All good things come to an end.”
eleven
The dressing rooms at Blackburn Arena were cramped rectangles with benches and clothing hooks nailed into cinder-block walls, showers that occasionally spewed hot water, and black rubber mats covered with spilled coffee and spat tobacco dip. The only difference was the numbers one through four on the doors. When we were the River Rats, and now that we were the Chowder Heads, we had to be in dressing room 3. That’s where I found Soupy, Zilchy, Wilf, Stevie, and the rest of the boys before our 8:00 p.m. semifinal playoff game against the Mighty Minnows of Jordan Bait and Tackle. Soupy stood waiting for me to sit. I did and he plopped down on the bench to my left.
“Trapper,” he said. “Pumped?”
“Sure,” I grunted. I had way too much on my mind to be having pucks fired at my head. On my way in, I’d passed the Zamboni shed and spied Leo crouched beneath Ethel with a rag in one hand. It was briefly comforting to see him attending to his normal duties, as if nothing at all had happened the past two days.
“What’s the score out there?” Soupy said.
As we dressed, the Boynton Realty Land Sharks were playing the Capraro’s Pizza Pieholes in the other semifinal. The winner would play the winner of our game in the championship Monday night. The champs would get T-shirts and the runners-up would buy cocktails for everyone at Enright’s.
“It was five to one Sharks when I came in,” I said. “Saw Teddy just about behead Bobby Safranski with an elbow.”
Teddy had always been tough, but over the years he’d grown mean-sneaky mean. Even the toughest players watched their backs around him, especially after play was whistled dead and the refs were busy lining up a face-off. That’s when he might spear you with a stick blade or punch you in the back of the head.
The other guys jabbered as they tightened their skate laces and taped their shinguards. “He get a penalty?” Soupy said.
“Not Teddy. Refs never saw it.” I leaned closer to Soupy. “What was up with you and him today anyway?”
“Me and who?” Soupy said.
“Don’t. You and Boynton. At the Shoot-Out.”
Soupy rummaged in his bag. “What do you think? I lost a hundred bucks. Wasn’t a lot of fun. But everything’s taken care of, don’t worry.”
“Meaning what?”
I was thinking of the settlement offer I’d read in the marina that morning. Had he changed his mind and taken it? I wanted to ask directly but didn’t want him to know I’d sneaked in. Then again, maybe he already knew. Maybe he had left those squirming fish outside the marina door.
“By the way,” I said, “were you fishing this morning?”
“Fishing? Shit, I was in bed till noon. What the hell’s up with you tonight, Trap? It’s time to play hockey now.” He called to Stevie Reneau across the room. “Steve-O. Minnows got both Linkes tonight?”
Twin brothers Clem and Jake Linke were the Minnows’ best players.
“If Jake got out of jail,” Stevie said.
“Jail again? Now what?”
“He got kicked out of some Mancelona dive and got all pissed off and went up and down the street snapping windshield wipers off cars.”
“Nice,” Soupy said. “Could be both Linkes, Trap. Hope you brought your A game.”
“Go to hell,” I whispered back.
I opened my bag with an angry zip. Soupy elbowed me gently in the shoulder. I looked at him. His eyes said he didn’t want me to be mad, but he also wasn’t going to tell whatever he had to tell. Not yet, at least. “Come on, Trapper,” he said. “Stop worrying. Ain’t good mojo to talk business before games.” He meant luck, but it was bad luck to acknowledge that luck was involved.
One day when Soupy and I were eleven, we were riding our snowmobiles when we stopped atop a hill at the border between Pine and Polley counties. From there we could look back and see the lazy crescent of the lake and the chimney smoke curling up from Soupy’s house, where Mrs. Campbell was baking pies for a New Year’s dinner our families planned to share the next day. Soupy wanted to sled down the Polley side of the hill into forbidden territory; our parents’ rule then was that we were not to cross the Pine County line. But it was New Year’s Eve, Soupy argued, so it was OK. He pointed to a clapboard bell tower jutting up through the trees below. “See that?” he said. “We can ring the bell.” Before I could answer he was roaring down.
Ours were the only tracks scarring the snow around the one-room schoolhouse. It looked abandoned; boards covered all of the outer windows. Soupy creaked the front door open and we stepped inside. The vestibule smelled of moldy paper. Through the window of the locked inner door we could see the dusty desks pushed into a corner, textbooks stacked haphazardly on the wood floor. A rope hung down from a square hole in the ceiling.
“The gun,” Soupy said. He ran back outside, returning with his Daisy BB rifle.
“Soupy,” I said. “We’re gonna get caught.”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
“I’m not a pussy.”
“Look,” he said, holding up his gloved hands. “No fingerprints.” He trained the gun on the door window and fired. The hissing BB left a pinhole at the center of a web of spidery cracks. Six more shots opened a hole the size of a fist. Gingerly, Soupy reached through the jagged opening. The door gave way.
The floor groaned as we stepped inside. “Smells like ass in here,” Soupy said. I edged farther inside, holding my breath against the must. I reached up and clasped a mittened hand around the knot at the end of the rope. I yanked it once and jumped back. “Harder,” Soupy said. I yanked again, and the rope gave way so easily that I fell backward. I looked up and saw rope and bell and shreds of rotted wood plummeting toward me. “Holy shit,” Soupy yelled, and I rolled left just as the bell slammed into the floor. Soupy grabbed the back of my parka, yelling, “Let’s get out of here!”
The cops found us the next afternoon, just before dinner at the Campbells’. Soupy and I were horsing around in the basement when Mrs. Campbell called down. She marched us in front of two state troopers standing on her boot rug in matching navy parkas and earflap caps. One wore thick glasses and smiled sheepishly, as if he was embarrassed to be there. Mr. Campbell stood next to them, arms folded, face pinched with aggravation. We’d interrupted his afternoon of drinking beer and watching football.
“Sure smells good,” the trooper with the thick glasses said. “Got a turkey in the oven?”
“No,” Mrs. Campbell said, giving us a look. “A goose.”
Soupy and I stood shoulder to shoulder. “Boys,” the trooper without glasses said, “we have a report of a
