breaking and entering out by-”
Soupy interrupted him. “It was me,” he said. “I went in that schoolhouse.” He jerked a thumb toward me. “He was there but he kept telling me not to.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “Excuse me, son,” the trooper with the glasses said. “What we heard-”
Angus Campbell took a step toward us. “What the hell were you doing in Polley?” he said. “You know you ain’t supposed to go that far, boy.” His right hand twitched beneath his left elbow.
“I know, sir,” Soupy said. “I’m awfully sorry.”
“Sorry, my ass,” Mr. Campbell said.
The trooper with glasses looked worriedly at Mr. Campbell. The other said, “You boys could’ve gotten hurt.”
“How’d you get in?” Soupy’s dad said.
“Broke a window, sir,” Soupy said.
“Broke a window how, goddamn it?”
“BB gun, sir.”
Mr. Campbell unfolded his arms and took another step toward his son. I felt Soupy flinch. “Sonofabitch,” his father said. His eyes searched the room. “Where’s the goddamn gun?” he said.
“Outside, sir,” Soupy said.
“Sir,” the bespectacled trooper said, but Soupy’s father ignored him and stepped out the door. “Son-of-a- fucking-bitch,” we heard him say as he slammed the door behind him. We heard him pick up the rifle and curse. Then we heard the gun barrel whang on the concrete porch, its stock cracking and splitting.
Mr. Campbell was sweating when he came back inside. He glared at Soupy as he brushed past us. Mrs. Campbell said, “Excuse me,” and followed him.
Soupy and I were both grounded for a week. I didn’t see him again until school the next Monday. His black eye hadn’t quite healed.
The first thing I said was, “Why’d you do that?”
“What?”
“Rat yourself out.”
He shrugged. “My old man would have whupped me anyway.”
Late in the playoff against the Minnows, we led 2–0, and I was bored. The Minnows hadn’t managed a shot on me since the middle of the game. My attention wandered to the bleachers, which were empty but for two women huddled beneath a green afghan up near the roof beams and three others chattering along the glass. They were all girlfriends of players. Wives were smart enough to stay home where it was warm and they couldn’t hear their boneheaded husbands threatening to beat up referees.
I noticed Brenda Mack making her way down the bleachers and asked myself why she would waste a perfectly good Saturday night shivering in a hockey rink. I’d had a crush on her in grade school and never had tired of seeing her. She had married Wilf, but that lasted only four years. Now she was dating a Minnow. She’d just reached the glass to my left when I saw Teddy Boynton emerge from dressing room 2 behind her. His hair was wet, and he was carrying his hockey bag in his left hand. An image-a memory-flitted through my mind too fast for me to recognize. Teddy called out to Brenda and she turned and smiled and he dropped his bag to kiss her on the cheek. As they chatted, Brenda pointed out something on the ice, probably her new boyfriend, and I thought, Teddy’ll have a two-hander-to-the-ankle for him next time they’re on the ice together. Boynton picked up his bag again, and then it came to me.
Without thinking, I rushed out of my net toward Teddy, waving my stick over my head and yelling, “Hey, wait! Boynton!” He turned, befuddled, and dropped his bag. “Go fishing this morning, Ted?” I shouted. The picture now fixed in my mind was of Boynton standing on Main Street, talking with Elvis Bontrager. Instead of a hockey bag, he’d held a tackle box. Which explained the fish outside the marina: It was Teddy, letting me know he was watching.
Now, instead of answering my question, he looked past me and pointed, grinning. “Heads up, Carp,” he said. I whipped around to see Clem Linke winding up for a shot from halfway down the rink. “Shit!” I screamed. I scrambled back toward my empty net but was still three strides away when Linke’s shot sailed across the goal line. The Minnows whooped and banged the heels of their sticks on the boards as I skated a hapless circle in front of my net. I wanted to disappear under the bleachers. To punish myself, I looked back toward Boynton. I could tell from how he was gesturing that he was explaining to Brenda Mack how I’d left my net untended and let a goal in from a mile away. She put a hand to her mouth, giggling, while Teddy clapped and yelled, “Way to go, Carpie! Just like old times!”
twelve
An hour later, I saw Boynton again, standing in the back of Enright’s, sipping a Heineken and talking with Darlene Esper. She leaned against the jukebox, smoking. I’d learned since returning to Starvation Lake that she only smoked on Saturday nights when she came to the bar without her useless husband to drink White Russians in her tight jeans and black turtlenecks. I didn’t go to Enright’s every Saturday, but she avoided me when I did. I understood, but it still bothered me. It bothered me more to see her with Teddy.
I kept an eye on them through the smoke and the crowd from the other end of the bar where I stood with Soupy and most of the other Chowder Heads. It was impossible to hear what Boynton was saying over the din of chatter and the blare of “Whipping Post.” He leaned to speak into Darlene’s ear. She folded her arms across her chest. He leaned back, waiting. She shrugged. He said something else. Darlene shook her head no, once, then a second time. She glanced my way and caught my eye briefly, then turned back to Boynton, who was holding up his hands as if to say, OK, I give up.
“Leave it alone,” Soupy said, elbowing me.
“What?”
“She’s married. Let it go.”
“So is Boynton.”
“Fuck Boynton. What the hell were you thinking out there tonight?”
Despite my late-game lapse, we had hung on to win, 2–1. It meant we would play Boynton’s Land Sharks for the league title Monday night.
“It was Brenda’s fault,” I said. “She’s way too hot for her age.”
“Roger that,” Soupy said. “The butt that belongs in the Louvre.” He shouted down the bar, “Hey there, barkeep! Four more Blue Ribbons, please.”
Francis Dufresne turned and glared. He was helping Loob tend bar. Along with his near-constant scowl, he wore an ancient pair of Wallabees with no laces and a bleached-out River Rats sweatshirt. His short, blubbery body shifted around like a sack of rocks as he moved. Old acne scars clefted his pale cheeks, and his nose was like a red rubber ball a dog had used as a chew toy.
His appearance belied his good fortune in life. The story went that Francis had taken five thousand dollars he inherited in the late 1960s and, by investing wisely time and again in real estate, turned it into millions. Maybe the story was no truer than the tales of the underwater tunnels, but the locals believed it because they could see the results in the office buildings and restaurants and subdivisions he’d developed. First with the help of Jack Blackburn, and later Teddy Boynton, Francis had built most of Starvation Lake that had been built in the past twenty years and bought much of the rest of it. He was the first to notice the swelling wave of tourists that Coach and the River Rats were bringing to town, first to recognize how to capitalize on Coach’s status by using him as a pitchman. Francis was smart and tenacious, but he hadn’t the looks or the charisma to charm the locals into letting him and his partners own most of their town. For that he had Coach, and when Coach was gone, he had Teddy.
Francis and Teddy had done well together. Teddy was the outside guy, making the deals, selling them to the public officials, flashing the fridge-magnet smile. Francis, many years older, was the inside man, raising money, huddling with lawyers, making sure the paperwork was right. Between them, they owned just about everything in town. But Teddy, as he had prospered, had begun to chafe at hearing about Francis’s role in his success. There were whispers that Teddy wanted Francis out of the new marina project.
