Twenty Miles (21 page)

I had her. I had her pinned.

Hal glanced down at Terry’s head, the mouth gaping in drugged sleep, then looked up at us, a defensive jut to her jaw.

‘Hi, kiddo. We thought we’d just drop by quickly, say hi. But we don’t want to wake her up, so ... ’ Sig gave a half-wink, abandoning it in the middle.

‘Well, she’s been sleeping for a while, so maybe I could – ’

‘No, no, Chris, we’ll just stay for a quick chat, and then – just let her sleep.’ Sig, whispering now. ‘You been getting any sleep, kiddo?’

Hal shrugged. ‘Not tons. Enough, I guess. Not as much as her.’

She looked at me, and I combed her stare, watching for any signs of challenge. Nothing, just tiredness.

‘Moon bag-skated us yesterday,’ I offered.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, she was mad at Toad, I think.’

‘Of course. Anyone set Toad in her place?’

‘No. Pelly tried.’

‘Pell. She’ll never get it.’

A white machine hummed an insect tune next to Hal. Terry’s chest moved under a nightgown patterned with snowmen. The smell twisted between my teeth.

Hal didn’t move until Sig said we should go. Then she gathered the tubes carefully in her hands, slowly, as though picking up icicles, and lowered herself out of the bed, propping a pillow next to Terry where her body was. Terry’s shoulders jangled loosely. Hal followed us out into the hall.

‘Well, you try to get some rest, girl,’ Sig said.

‘Okay. I’ll tell her you stopped by.’ Hal’s face twitched, and Sig and I stepped down the hall.

‘You’re the only one who’s come here,’ Hal said. ‘From the team.’

I half-turned. ‘Yeah, I didn’t know if – ’ I looked to Sig.

‘Hope you don’t mind us stopping by,’ Sig offered.

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ Hal said. ‘Just – the rest of them. They’re chickenshit, I guess.’ Her jaw muscle pulsed.

I thought of the anonymous casseroles stacked in her stall.

‘They probably are chickenshit,’ Sig said. ‘You bet they are.’ She reached over and squeezed Hal’s forearm, her knuckles blue against Hal’s skin.

‘S
he’s a tough one,’ Sig said as the truck reeled down Pembina Highway, the fast-food fluorescents, the flower hut in the Sally Ann parking lot, the couple necking on the bus bench, all tumbling past in a reckless blur.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Mo says she’s been sick for so long, and I didn’t even guess, didn’t have a bloody clue.’

‘Oh, you mean Terry’s tough.’

‘Well – and Chris too, mind you. Of course. Jesus, of course.’

‘No one knows what to do.’

‘Well.’

We stopped at a red light and a pack of teenaged girls in a hatchback next to us were laughing – the dulled sound of it came in through our closed windows with subdued explosions of bass. I looked over and they were all decked out for some party or the bar, all in a uniform of straight, long hair and darkened eyes. Their red, laughing mouths seemed ignorant and cruel, and then the light turned green and they sped off.

‘Brave,’ Sig said, her eyes twitchy, jumping from the rear-view mirror to the road to the mirror. Her thumb beating ragged percussion on the wheel. Sig had turned the radio off in the hospital’s parking lot as we were leaving, a frustrated sigh as the polished, perky tones of an announcer came barrelling out when she turned the key in the ignition. Silence tightened around our seats in the close-walled truck.

‘Pardon?’ I said.

‘Your friend. She’s damn brave. All alone like that,’ Sig said gruffly, checking the rear-view again.

I looked at her. I thought about that word,
brave.
No. She didn’t know Hal. To mistake her weakness for bravery. What I saw when I walked into that hospital room: Hal giving in. The room, the smell, the indifferent hum of the machines, Terry’s hard, bald head, all seemed to exist because Hal had let them. Climbing into the bed with Terry was an act of permission, a flat-out abandonment of battle. She placed herself in that bed, climbed right into the centre of it, and so the room spun around her heavy axis, a slow orbit, and with it came the gradual shedding of light. Furious disappointment flooded my chest. Hal had given up.

I
started to take the long way back to Rez from the rink. Out the front doors of Sam Hall instead of the rink door by Ed’s office. I didn’t visit him Tuesday after practice. On Thursday, he caught me walking out of the dressing room, down the hall toward the front doors.

‘Heya, Iz?’ He called at my back from the opposite end of the hall. I pretended I didn’t hear him.

‘Norse!’ Louder now, the clatter of his footsteps on the rubber floor. I kept going. ‘I found this other picture last night, thought you’d – ’ A desperate edge to his voice. He called Kristjan his brother, but he’d only known him for a season. His best season. I couldn’t help him find it again.

I pushed through the doors, out into the cold.

‘C
ome on, sweetheart, you can do better than that,’ Toad yapped at Pelly, the two of them in the faceoff circle. Moon faked another puck drop and Pelly squirmed against Toad’s shoulder in that unsure moment when the puck could be there, it could be in their feet, but they just didn’t see it drop.

‘The disc ain’t even there, honey,’ Toad said. ‘Whatchoo gettin’ all up over me for?’

‘Corinne, could you be serious, please?’ Moon said, hovering the puck above their sticks. On the board side of the circle, I shifted my elbow over Woo’s, impatient, my limbs all twitchy with the false starts. Woo layered hers back on top, poked me in the ribs with the butt of her stick, and giggled. Our skates stuttered gasps as we dug in, limbs poised with waiting, ready to guess.

‘Toad, come on,’ Hal said, crouched on the opposite side of the circle.

‘When am I not serious?’ Toad said, and Moon sighed. She shook the puck slightly, as though weighing it in her hand, and then dropped it. Toad’s elbow darted into Pelly’s stomach. She pivoted, bringing the puck back into her skates as she pushed Pelly off, and I watched, blocking Woo’s path to the puck with my side, Woo ramming me with her elbow, a jolt in the ribs that I vaguely registered, watching the black line of the puck to Heezer along the boards, and then Heezer going with it, around behind the net. I abandoned Woo, pushing off from her side with a half-turn, and headed toward the boards, Heezer approaching, head up, looking for someone open. Calling – ‘Heezer, here! Heez! Heez!’ – lifting my stick off the ice, up to my waist, a flag, open, Heezer sailing the puck along the boards, and I flicked down the tip of my stick, licking up the puck as Woo heaved against me, spine-first into the boards, and I twisted, but Woo was still there, grinding me in, chest crushing, and I put a glove out on the glass to steady, kicking the puck with my feet, and – ‘Iz, Izzer, atta girl, Iz, feet, feet, Woo, Woo, here, point, feet!’ – whistle.

‘Christ, you guys, what’s up with the whistles?’ Hal said as we jostled around the circle again, the opposite one this time.

‘See, this is our problem, ladies.’ Moon held the puck up near her face like a bribe. ‘This is what we keep running into. You gotta
quicken up those hands. Nat, that puck should have been out of your hands as quickly as you got it. None of this lollygagging around the net, okay?’

Heezer nodded vigorously. ‘I just didn’t see anyone open, so – ’

‘Iz was open – see, there’s a window of opportunity that we keep missing with slow hands, ladies. Okay? I want you concentrating on that. We don’t need any heroes – you play around with the puck and you lose it. I see it happening over and over.’

‘Did yoooou ever know that you’re my heee-rro ... ’ Toad sang in the middle of the circle.

‘Toad, zip it,’ Pelly said, bent over, stick across her thighs.

Toad sent her an exaggerated air kiss.

‘Corinne! Maybe we should get some fresh legs out here ... ’ Moon looked toward the bench. Helmets shifted along the line as players’ legs coiled, ready to jump the boards.

‘No way,’ Woo objected under her breath, and I looked at her in agreement, our helmets almost touching, arms locked tight again.

‘We just got on. Toad, shut up,’ Hal said.

‘I’m on mute, Mooner, I’m on mute,’ Toad said. Moon shook her head and raised the puck.

‘Okay, let’s go.’ And, as though trying to shatter it, she spiked the puck to the ice.

Toad, on it quickest again, didn’t get as much of an elbow up on Pelly, and the puck dribbled weakly toward the goal, Hal lunging toward it, on it, skating behind the net, and I sprinted down and up through the centre, Woo’s stick on mine, glove on my back, and then I broke away from Woo, open, and – ‘Hal! Hal! Here!’ – the puck on Bitty’s stick along the boards, and me lurching, breaking past the blue line, watching Bitty, Bitty dropping the puck down the boards, behind her, and Hal picking it up, looping back again, back along the boards, behind the net, buying time, more time, and I skated back over the blue line, cutting toward Hal’s boards, and Hal looking up, wheeling around Tillsy, looking toward me, but not at me. Behind me, past the glass, outside the ice, looking, and then a quick glance at the scoreboard – the rehearsed tic, reckoning with seconds, as though it might give her a clue to improvise – and she
fell down, on her knees, on her stomach. And I picked up the puck still gliding the arc of the boards, bolted forward, but wait, wait. No one was skating with me.

I stopped, the puck dripping from my stick, and turned, looked past the glass, into the stands. Mo and Eileen stood at ice level, Mo’s arm around Eileen, the two wet-cheeked. Eileen covered her nose with a Kleenex, buried her head in Mo’s shoulder. I stood for a moment, watched Hal, unmoving, watched the semicircle form slowly, confused, Boz crouched next to Hal’s head, Toad skating to the gate, leaping off the ice toward Mo and Eileen, and then coming back on, slowly. I heard her say that one word to Moon,
Terry,
and then, ‘Fuck, fuck,’ as she skated past me. And I glided toward them, players from the bench draining onto the ice – ‘What happened? What’s wrong?’ – and then the words from Toad, passed from helmet to helmet, down the crooked line along the boards, passed to the players still on the bench, waiting for Hal to get up, she never stayed down long, even that time she tore the shit out of the tendons in her ankle, she never stayed down.

And then we all fell. That second Hal hung her eyes on the scoreboard must have balanced us there, all of us strung together like a giant, moving mobile, before it crashed down, that second the clock couldn’t shuck away, and didn’t we all fall when she did, as teams do, as families do. And there should have been a crash, we should have heard it, the hollow gunshots of our shin pads hitting the ice all at once, the thunderous crack of helmets colliding, of equipment cracking open and scattering across our ice. But, instead, a sound none of us had heard with each other before, a hovering emptiness that was more than quiet: as Hal fell, she inhaled all of our voices, all the swearing and insults and calls for the puck, all the laughter – sucked in with her breath as she fell, as we all fell. And we didn’t know when she’d breathe it out again. When she’d let us play on.

I watched, from the circle, Hal’s head not moving, her legs not moving, everything still. Watched Boz take off her glove, put her hand on Hal’s back. Toad kneeling down beside, sneer twisted underneath her cage, throwing her glove, violent, against the boards, and placing a careful hand on Hal’s arm. I watched five, six,
seven bare hands fall down onto Hal. Then I put a hand on too. The hard shell of shoulder pad underneath my chilled fingertips.

The horn went and Ed hovered confused beside the Zamboni, watching us through the glass. He needed to flood.

Quiet, and Hal pinned to the ice under our hands.

M
y funeral would be casual – none of the God stuff, some of my favourite music, and maybe a picture of me at the front next to the casket, an appropriate one. A hockey picture, an action shot, maybe – my face wouldn’t even be visible, it would be one of those blurred photos, my body streaking out behind me like spilled paint, and it wouldn’t matter what my face looked like, because I would be flying. And there would be another picture next to it, an action shot of Kristjan – I knew exactly which one, I had it in a scrapbook at home. A picture almost identical to the one they’d have of me, and people a few rows back wouldn’t be able to tell which one was Kristjan and which one was me.

I’d be wearing a white jersey in the picture, and with my arms streaking out at the sides, I would look as though I had wings – this would be for the people who needed some nod at God for the whole thing to be right.
She’s with her dad,
they’d say.
They’re playing hockey together, right now, finally.
This last statement would unleash the tears.

And Sig would be happy with my picture too, because it would be tough, it would be ferocious. And my teammates would be in the front pew, maybe surrounding Sig on both sides, Sig in the middle, and the players forming a kind of protective wall, stand-ins for me in my absence, the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and all that.

Most of this, of course, would be bullshit. My teammates, and probably Sig too, would find it hilarious, the bullshit. It would be important they find it hilarious. The only way I could even begin to make it up to Sig. My leaving.

Some people I couldn’t picture at a funeral. The team would be there at mine, of course, but I couldn’t see it. What games could they possibly play? I pictured them passing a note down the line,
written on a Kleenex maybe, an appropriate disguise for the quip written in Toad’s slanted capital letters, something perverted, and Pelly would have to run from the room to laugh. I pictured them playing dodgeball at the end of the service with a balled-up program. All the mourners shuffling down the aisle, and my teammates ducking among the pews, crouching away from Heezer’s wicked overhand throw, disguising their laughter with their jackets pulled capelike over their faces.

That they would all be there, quiet and still, seemed an impossible fiction.

We filled the left side of pews five and six at Terry’s funeral. Hal’s tall head jutting in the front. The line of faces slanted diagonal down from me, eyes cast down into their laps.