The Last of the Lumbermen (32 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

T
HE OTHER GAMES IN
the first draw go roughly
as expected, too. The Raiders thump Creston twelve to
three. In the late games the Fort St.
John team mows down the Terrace Flyers six-one, and,
in the dead of the night, Hinton gets by Grande
Prairie five to four and the Roosters put the
boots to the poor Burns Lake team thirteen to four.

Despite the first-night partying, everybody makes it to our game against
Hinton none too worse for wear except Stan Lagace,
who Gord had to roust along with the Burns
Lake Cow- boys when he drove over to
their motel at seven
AM
to make sure they'd
show for their game. He found Stan passed out in
the front seat of his car outside the Cowboy
units. One of his cousins, it seems, is the Cowboys' goalie,
and the two of them made a night of it.

Wendel
and Freddy must have had a particularly good time
at the bar, because all through the warm-up
they've got a bad case of the giggles.

The Hinton Locomotives aren't
the Idaho Saints, and we come off the ice
after the first period tied at one, and sucking air
because their defencemen are lining up along the blueline and
thumping us when we try to carry the puck in. They aren't much on offence — the goal they get is a
looping fifty-footer that Junior boots — but they play decent hockey. I take a regular shift.

In the
dressing room Jack tells us to dump-and-chase for the
second to loosen up the blueline barricade. It works, and
the score is five-one after another twenty minutes. I
pick up two of the goals, without anyone laying a
finger on me. Both times Wendel dumps the puck in,
turns on the jets, and has it behind their net befo
re they know what's hit them. He puts the puck
on my stick as I'm arriving in the high slot,
and I hit the upper right corner, stickside, both times. Speed isn't everything.

We've al
ready heard that the Lions have taken the Raiders,
but during the second-period intermission we get a surprising sco
re from the other arena. It isn't that
Creston has beaten the Cowboys in the eight
AM
game. It's that, early in the second period of the Okenoke/Saints
game, the Saints are ahead threeone. It
doesn't make any sense to me, but for some reason
Wendel and Freddy think it's hilarious. And somehow,
they don't seem to surprised.

“What the hell is going on up there?” I ask Wendel.

The question sends
both of them into hysterics. “Don't ask,” Wendel answers once
he gets control of himself. “Really. You don't
want to know.”

When Jack tells me he wants me to
cool my heels so I'll have something for the next
game, I spend most of the period wondering what it
is and why Wendel thinks it's so funny. Either
the Bears found Jesus or they all decided to play
the game with one arm tied behind their backs.

We cruise through the thi
rd, not taking chances and letting Junior get some business.
Gus is the only one who won't let up, buzzing a
round the ice like a Tasmanian devil, getting successive penalties for boa
rding, slashing, and roughing.

Halfway through the period the Hinton captain,
a big, amiable centre I played against years ago after he'd washed out of Junior A, skates by our bench and stops to chat.

“Hey, Weaver,” he says, not very seriously.
“Put a leash on your pit bull before I
have to whack him over the head with something.”

“We
don't control him,” I answer. “He's on r
emote from a ship in outer space.”

“Well, bench the sucker, then.”

“We don't
want him on the bench when he gets like this,”
Bobby Bell says. “He chews on things.”

The Hinton captain skates away, laughing. Nice guy,
but just after the next face-off he decks Gus
with a hip check in the neutral zone, and Gus hobbles off the ice cursing.

“Someone get
that sonofabitch,” he demands, slumping down on the bench beside me
and rubbing his knee. “That was a deliberate attempt to injur
e.”

Jack steps in behind him and pats him on the
shoulder. “It was an attempt to educate,” he says.
“If he'd been trying to hurt you, you'd be lying face down on the ice right now.”

Gus turns
to complain more, sees that it isn't going to
work, and relaxes. “Is this great hockey or what?”
he asks no one in particular. “I
love
this game.”

I give
him a nudge. “Are you sure you're
really a psychiatrist?”

He gives me a look that half-convinces
me he's been giving himself electroshock treatments. He answers
in his best Bronx accent. “I'm from
New Yawk City. We're all escapees fr
om the loony bin.”

“Just like around here, then.”

He shrugs. I'm not sure whether or not he's kidding.

WE WIN GUS'S
GREAT
hockey game six to three, which is
no surprise. The surprise, ten minutes after the game
ends, is when Wendel gets off the phone and
tells us that the Idaho Saints have defeated Okenoke by the same score.

“Okay,”
I ask Wendel. “You want to tell me what you know about all this?”

“Know?” he answers, trying to appear puzzled, but losing it mid sentence. “What is it exactly that I'm supposed to know?”

“Well, what you two are finding so funny
about the Bears losing to those goofy missionaries.”

“Geez,” he says. “You got
us all wrong, here. Did somebody pass a regulation about not looking happy when we win?”

“No,
but you didn't start the heavy chortling until you hear
d the other score. Don't give me the gears.”

He motions me over to a corner wher
e one of the visiting teams has stashed their equipment
and plunks himself down on top of an equipment bag.
“The Saints,” he says, “uh, didn't make it to their game.”

This
makes sense. “Someone did. Who?”

“The Murder Squad,” he answers.

I
don't really want to know how this was engineer
ed because I'm pretty sure Wendel was riding
in the locomotive. I need to know just one thing.

“You want to
tell me what became of our missionary brethren?”

“They'
re up at Ward's Lake, I think. In
the community hall.” Ward's Lake is a small fishing
resort about sixty kilometres north of town.

“You
think
that's whe
re they are? Where's their bus?”

“Oh,” he says, “Their bus is at
the other arena. Where it's supposed to be.
The missionaries were, er, transported out to Wa
rd's Lake and left in the hall. To hold
prayer meetings. They were supplied with refreshments, and stuff.”

Oh, oh. “Refr
eshments” is local code for grain alcohol, which, if you're
not expecting it, can be successfully mixed with any
thing: Coke, ginger ale, lemonade, probably even hot chocolate. It's
used around these parts for wedding stags or other
occasions where you need someone drunk enough
that you can paint them up and chain them to
parking meters, truck bumpers, the front doors of City Hall, and any other location that'll make them look silly when they wake up.

“What else?”

“That's about it. Freddy told them a religious
group up there wanted to meet with them for
a midnight prayer jamboree. We dropped them o
ff with the refreshments and told them we
were off to pick up the group they were to meet with.”

“You planning to retrieve them or anything?”

“Didn't think
about that,” he admits, his grin suddenly sheep- ish. “
We just wanted to get the Murder Squad a
game, that's all. I mean, they
did
drive all this way.”

It's the first
time in a long while I've seen Wendel without a
contingency plan, and the first time he's
ever
acted like
a goofy kid.

“I'll try to straighten things out with them.
We'll probably have to refund their entry
fee, and it's hard to say what the Bears will
do when they find out they've been mugged by a
bunch of pansy rock n' roll musicians.”

“They know,” Wendel says.
“That was Blacky I was talking to on the blower.
The Murder Squad wore their own jerseys for
the third period. The Bears don't mind. It was
a better game than they were expecting, and it isn't as if they're strangers to losing.”

The Saints could
make a major stink about this, but something tells
me they won't. They'll get another game if they want it,
and they can go home and tell their pastor they
won a hockey game, which is something I'm pretty
sure they haven't been able to do before unless
they snuck into a Bantam tournament. That's confirmed half an
hour later when the coach of the Saints shows up
looking sheepish rather than righteous. I think he's decided that
Mantua is too full of agents of the devil for
his boys, and he just wants to get them out of
town and back home. He doesn't even want a refund of the entry fee.

I get Go
rd on his cell phone, explain what's happened, and tell
him to get Wendel to talk to the Murder
Squad about continuing to play in place of the Saints. I don't think they'll have a problem with that.

THIRTY-FIVE

I
'M BACK AT THE
Coliseum to find that
the Drillers have sent the hopeless Cowboys to the bar
for good, and that the Roosters, in surprisingly good
shape after whacking the Cowboys at three
AM
, have won their game.

Jack and Gord are standing at the
entrance when I pull the Lincoln into my regular spot
by the door. They're talking animatedly with
someone wearing a black and grey jacket that looks like
it belongs to the Hinton Locomotives. I've already let
them know about the deal I've made with the Saints,
and when I join them they're trying to sell
it to the Locomotives' coach. He isn't too happy to
hear his team will have to face a gang of
crazy rock n' roll musicians who can play hockey instead
of the skinny Bible-slappers they'd been expecting.

I've done enough negotiating with morons
for one day, so I hang back and listen
until it's clear that Gord and Jack are
going to make their argument. Then I pull Go
rd aside while Jack finishes.

“Good news,” he tells me.
“We don't play until noon tomorrow.”

I'd
already figured this out, more or less,
from listening in on their conversation. “Good thing. I'm a little wiped out. Anything else going on?”

Gord shrugs. “I talked to Blacky Silver.
He was pretty decent about the game with the Mu
rder Squad. I think he's already gone home, and so have most of the rest of the Bears.”

“I don't think their hearts we
re really in this one.”

“Yeah,” Gord agrees. “Kind of
a sorry situation, really. Good chance we'll never see
a lot of those guys on the ice again. Oh. Befo
re you disappear into Esther's lap for the evening,
I want you to do a little pub crawl with me.”

“Clear the chilluns out of the bar?”

“Something like that. Your kid is
on his way to the Columbia. Those yo-yo musicians have really got him wound up.”

It's my turn
to shrug. “Wendel's pretty sensible about drinking.
Did Esther get James home okay?”

“They hung around to watch part of the Roosters
game, and then your dad picked him up, I think.”

“I'd better call her and let her know
I'll be late, and get her to call Claire
about tomorrow's game. She's expecting me about now.” I
look over to Jack and see he's concluding negotiations. He's
smiling, so things have come out as he wanted them
to. I duck out and go to one of the payphones
to call Esther. Maybe I'll collect Wendel f
rom the bar and bring him home for a decent
meal.

I'm thinking like a parent all around.

THE THREE OF US
head to the
Columbia. On the way over Jack seems preoccupied, even a little worried.

“Something bothering you, chum?” I ask.

“Something Mayfield said
while I was browbeating him into accepting the game
with the Murder Squad,” he says after a moment's thought.

“What'd he say?”

“It
was something one of his players overheard in the Columbia. About Wendel.”

“Somebody probably shagged them with a story that he's r
ocket-boosted or something.”

“No,” Jack says. “This wasn't about the tournament. It was
about your community scaling yard. Apparently there
was some sort of union-industry pow-wow a couple of nights
ago to try and stop it.”

“What did you expect? If it flies, the
yard's a major bucket of piss in their lap. But how did Wendel come into it?”

Gord inter
rupts. “I think you'd better pay attention to this. Some
of those U.I. fallers who hang out down at the
Columbia have decided Wendel's right up there with Karl
Marx as the head of the Communist Menace.”

“That's idiotic. There isn't a Communist Menace anymore.”

“Well, half of
them haven't ever read a newspaper, and the
other half won't ever believe the commies are gone
so long as there's even a Liberal party.
They feel a threat to their pickup payments and
start seeing commies in the woodpile. It's bred
into them.”

“Anyway,” Jack continues, “A bunch of them wer
e supposed go drinking in the Columbia tonight, and who knows
what they'll do if Wendel shows up.”

The parking lot behind the Columbia is
full when we pull in, about half rusty pickups
and the other half Harleys. The bar is packed
to the rafters as we enter, and I notice
a couple of bikers removing the stripper poles fr
om the stage. No Wendel, so far.

I stop one
of the waiters. “You seen Wendel Simons ar
ound here?”

“Not bloody likely,” he answers, jerking his
thumb in the direc- tion of three or
four crowded tables of beefy guys near the entrance. “And I hope he doesn't show up.”

“What's happening on the stage?” Gor
d wants to know.

“Some guys from Vancouver are coming
in to do an acoustic set. Real famous, I heard. Okay by me.” He points to the back of the bar. “You'll probably want to take
those boys with you when you go.”

It's Bobby Bell and Dickie
Pollard with somebody else who's face down on
the table. It's no great deduction figuring out it's
Stan.

I point them out to Gord, and he
rumbles off to perform the roust. Meanwhile I've got
to think fast. I'm betting big money Wendel is going
to show up with the Murder Squad, and that's
guaranteed trouble.

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Jack wants to know.

“That Wendel is going to appear any second?”

He nods. “Let's just hope
Freddy's with him. This could be ugly. We don't have a lot of friends in this bar
.”

I glance around the room. He's right, but
I'm not frantic with regret about that, and neither
is my liver. There's no time for any
other regrets, because a roar goes up as
five burly musicians enter through the front, each
packing a guitar, trailed by an entourage led by Wendel. F
reddy isn't with them, damn it.

Wendel isn't three steps inside before I
hear a rumble from the yahoos by the
door, and the scraping of chairs being pushed out of the way
.

For a split second I experience the same sinking
sensation I felt when I saw that bear coming over
the hill toward me — another obligation to respond
to, lousy tools to work with, and no time to think.

I calculate
the trajectory of the loggers and block the path of
their leader about midway across the floor. I'm
staring into a set of bloodshot blue eyes without anything
to say to them but “Stop.” So I raise
my arms in front of him and say it
three times, loud as I can.

The leader recognizes me. “Get out of
the fucking way, Bathgate,” he says. “We don't have any beef with you.”

“Wrong,” I say. “I know what you're up to her
e.”

“You don't know jack shit about nothing,” someone behind the leader shouts.

“Wait a minute here,” I answer, loud
enough for all of them to hear. “I know I'm
supplying the land for that scaling yard that's got
you all wired up. And the kid you're
planning to pound on happens to be my son.”

“Okay, fine,” a voice calls
out. “We'll bust your ass too, fucker.”

“Is
that so?” I hear Gord say from behind
me. “I'm this man's personal physician, so I guess you'll
have to dance with me and my nurses here.” I
glance behind me and take in four of them counting
Stan, who cancels himself out when he staggers backwar
d and lands in the lap of a biker who's
turned in his chair to watch the festivities. Wendel is
on the stage helping the musicians set up, oblivious.

I turn back to
the leader, and we make eye contact. If a
brawl is in the offing, my best bet is to
make him think I'm unafraid and wait for him to
make the first move — and hope to hell he
telegraphs it with his eyes. I keep my hands up
in front of me, close to my body, partly
because if I touch him he's going to drive me,
and partly because it puts me in the best position
to hit him first — and partly because I'm scared
shitless and don't want to move.

I've been here befo
re, but not for about ten years. Still, you
never forget what a real fight is like. Not
like the action movies, which make it look like the
fighters are dancing acrobats, not animals out to wound
one another. Hockey isn't much help here because
when you're fighting on the ice your skates keep
you from getting much leverage on a punch. A
real fight is an ugly, graceless thing: a human
fist slamming into flesh and bone makes the kind
of sound you hear in butcher shops, not the canned whip-cracks
they lay onto movie soundtracks. I don't want to hit
another human being ever again, but …

“Leave Simons alone,” a menacing voice I don't recognize intones f
rom behind me.

When I turn around to look there are fifteen or twenty bikers standing behind Gord, and some are big enough
that he doesn't block the view.

“This isn't about you,” the leader
of the loggers says, sounding less sure of himself.

“Sure it is,”
one of the bikers answers. “The kid's okay. You
want at him, you gotta take us first.”

“He's a fucking commie,” screams someone just behind the
leader. “He wants to screw us out of our jobs.”

The big biker is contemptuous. “Gimme a b
reak. If you ass- holes were working you wouldn't
be in here. You think Inter- Con's
going to give you a job for whacking this guy
, you're even stupider than you look. They're not
giving anybody jobs anymore.”

“Anyway, fuck you,” another biker
chimes in. “We wanna see Simons play in the tournament.”

One of the loggers
steps forward, but his aggression is gone.
“If Simons and those other commies get what they want,
we'll all end up tied to a team of horses, trying
to cut down trees with a pair of scissors
with one hand and holding a shovel in the other
to scoop up the horse shit.”

It's such a great line I laugh out
loud. “Well, better that than parking your sorry asses in
a permanent welfare lineup,” one of the bikers snaps
back. “Simons and his friends make more sense than those
InterCon flacks who've been fucking with your heads — or the Forest Service. Or the IW
-fucking-A.”

If a brawl was going to happen, the crack about
the union would have been the flash point. But the
loggers are cowed. One of them yells out that the
bikers wouldn't know what value- added industry looked like
if it walked up and bit them on the ass, and
what ensues is, I swear to God, a
technical
a
rgument. When we collar Wendel they're still at it,
flinging around ideas like Sustained Yield and Equivalent Community
Value like they were born with them in their
mouths. It's not quite the rebirth of civilization, but
it's better than sitting in front of a television set listening to why we're going
to get screwed no matter which way we turn, and
a damned sight better than me and Wendel getting killed for our so-called communist ideas.