Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  “At your age, you’ve got to be cautious with an injury like that,” said my aunt, probing my ankle. “You’re still growing. Imagine if you had to sit out a whole year…”

  “That could mess up your career,” my father went on, playing the role of the wise old man.

  But none of it stuck. With both of them on my case, I felt like I never wanted to play hockey again. But that’s a crock. Skating’s in my blood. That same morning I had secretly taken the quad, hiding my skates in the luggage compartment. When school was over, I was planning to go to the arena and work out by myself.

  The new arena’s ice is fast, wicked fast. It seemed like I could go end to end twice as fast when I was in full flight. They had torn down the old arena to build this one. In the old building that dated back to the ’60s — my father was three years old — the ice was too soft on account of the obsolete cooling system. The pucks slid sluggishly and passes were always a bit off. And the carooms off the boards were so unpredictable and sometimes so ridiculous that it had turned into a standing joke in the league ; visiting teams treated us like a bunch of losers. It had become a real embarrassment for the municipality and one of the main issues in the last elections. The townspeople might argue bitterly when it came to the governments they’re supposed to elect, the ideas they’re supposed to come up with and the money they’re supposed to spend, but when it came to the arena, everyone was on board.

  I skated for fifteen minutes circling first one way then the other, getting pumped up by the effort. As I repeated the exercise, the rhythm of my skates became so natural that I was able to do a couple of laps around the rink with my eyes closed, knowing exactly where I had to turn and how much strength I should put into each stroke.

  I was shooting pucks at the net from the red line when I saw a light go on in the hallway leading to the locker room. I wasn’t supposed to be there and I felt a bit uneasy. Of course, the person headed towards me was the last person in the world I wanted to see : Larry, my coach. But there he was, dressed in his customary light blue jogging suit, baseball hat on his head. I couldn’t see his face, just the blue tinted glasses that reflected the arena’s overhead lights.

  “You’ve started skating, McKenzie ?” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered, gliding up to him on my good ankle.

  “Is your ankle still sore ?”

  “No. I’m being careful.”

  “When did you start skating ?”

  I shrugged my shoulders…

  “When did you start ?” he repeated. He still had his hat on, and didn’t look too classy with his two hands tucked into the front pockets of his coat. He had just come in from outside and was cold. His glasses were fogged. I don’t even know how he could see me.

  “On Monday,” I answered. “But I’m going to take it easy and watch out that I don’t reinjure myself.”

  “And it’s already Thursday and it never crossed your mind that we should talk ? Don’t you think your coach should be informed when his star player gets back on the ice ?”

  “Yes…”

  “Just like you were too busy to show up for team practice last week. You think you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, without thinking about anyone else, is that it ?”

  “No…”

  “I’m gonna tell you something, McKenzie, I’ve seen guys coming up in my day, guys like you ; underachievers that grew up faster than the others and could do what they wanted on the ice. Some of them, a few, have made it to the Major Junior League. But not one has made it to the NHL. Do you know why ?”

  “No…”

  “Heart, McKenzie. They don’t have heart. So far, they had it easy. But when it comes time to give it everything they’ve got, leave it all on the ice, show that they’re a notch above the others, they can’t cut it. They get creamed. They lose face ; they lose the war, their personal war. And then what happens, do you know what ?”

  Then, I swear, I almost said that those are the guys that become coaches in minor hockey… but I kept it to myself. I was afraid of getting him even more ticked off. The whole time he was jawing at me his face was grimacing and his upper lip was quivering.

  “You know what happens to them ?” he repeated.

  “No,” I said.

  “They work in a factory or sell insurance door-to-door. And not a day goes by when they don’t regret not having done what they had to when they had to do it. Do you get what I’m saying ?”

  “Uh…. I guess.”

  He looked me up and down through his no-longer fogged up glasses. Hat still atop his head, Larry calmed down slowly, no doubt proud to have said his piece, and put me in my place. He turned away and walked nonchalantly down the corridor to his office. Maybe he was hoping I was going to thank him the next time I scored a goal.

  For a week now I’d been skating every day, getting ready to rejoin the team. I hadn’t missed one day practicing shooting in our yard. I could have told him that. Told him that’s what I love doing and that that was enough reason. That his G.I. Joe lectures were one big waste of time. But I kept quiet. It was none of his business, it was nobody’s business. Except mine. And besides, what could I have said ? That since I got injured, the team had lost all five games and had been shut out twice ?

  I took my skates off and left.

  I don’t know why I keep doing it. Actually, I do know, and it’s completely nuts, but I do it anyway. On a regular basis, during my three-week convalescence, I went by the Pinchaults’ on 3rd Side Road, I mean like, plenty of times. Up and down the dirt road I went, pretending I was just doing what I always did, watching out of the corner of my eye to see if Jessie was somewhere on the porch, in the fields, or what I was really hoping for, walking along the road.

  She would have decided to go for a walk after dinner, by herself. Just when I would have been passing by. I would have stopped to say hello, and she would have smiled like she used to do. We would have talked a bit, then she would have asked me what I was doing there, and I would have explained that I was coming back from getting the cabin ready for winter. She would have said that she’d like to see it and I would have invited her to climb on behind me. Up at the cabin, she would have gone down to the lake to watch the sunset over the mountain. I would have watched her for a minute, walking towards the shimmering water, the bottom of her jeans caked with mud, her colourful scarf wrapped around her neck and her long curly hair rippling down her back, before going inside to throw a couple of logs in the stove. Then she would have been standing at the bottom of the stairs, asking me if that was the same quad that had broken down before. I would have said yes, a little embarrassed, not really understanding what she was getting at. She would have said that she hoped that it wasn’t going to happen again, with a conspiratorial glance. I would have come close to her…

  OK, that’s pretty over the top.

  I never saw Jessie walking along the road. Didn’t see a soul any of the six times I went by her place. Unless you count Stéphane Pinchault, who I saw twice down in the field next to the house in the middle of all the trash that was lying around.

  If there was one thing that did get through to me from Larry’s useless little speech, it was that time was my own worst enemy and that the longer I waited, the more I risked missing my chance. I had to go to the net. I had to talk with her. So, fed — or more like stuffed — by the obsession that made me want to see her so badly, I jumped on the quad and cruised down 3rd Side Road.

  I accelerated past the railroad tracks, gulping in the fresh air that smelled like the forest. The day was drawing to a close and the sun shone with a dull gleam that said winter was on its way. The birches and spruce bent down to pay their respects. In the distance, the Pinchaults’ unkempt homestead began to emerge through the trees. As I got closer, I was able to make out the car that was parked behind Robert Pinchault’s. It was big Sauvé’s chopped and lowered Honda.

  Sitting on the quad’s seat, one hand on the handlebar half-heartedly feeding it some gas, I c
ould see Jonathan Sauvé getting into his car. He looked up and saw me. I raised myself off the seat, tucked my chin into my hunting jacket and blew by the house, looking off in the other direction.

  I headed home with the definite impression I was the all-time king of the losers. As I rolled along I could see the streetlights coming on as night fell, forming the royal passage for the king of the jerks ; unable to grasp why everything was slipping away from me like sand through my fingers, only the harder I tried to tighten them the faster the sand flowed.

  I was really dragging my ass when I came in the house. I hung my jacket on a hook and smelled something that gave me a warm feeling inside. Sylvie was cooking dinner. I plunked down on the green couch and watched some guy yakking away on television. I couldn’t understand a thing he said. He was even more idiotic than me, and that made me feel a bit better.

  I was about to turn in when I heard the oven door open with its distinctive creak. I got up to go to the kitchen, sliding my feet into my slippers. There was Sylvie, her scarf on her head, holding a huge casserole of shepherd’s pie. She winked at me, licking her lips, and asked me to put some ketchup on the table.

  “Look. I put some paprika on to redden up the top. Not bad, eh ?”

  I nodded and sat down, a bottle of ketchup in my hand. My problems seemed to fade to nothing in front of a big thwack of shepherd’s pie.

  We had each started in on a big serving when we heard my father return from work. He came in, thumping his feet, and slowly stripped off his outdoor clothing while we ate silently. He muttered a few incomprehensible words at the television and then came to join us in the kitchen. He was limping more than usual. You could tell his foot was hurting him. He had spent the whole day in the bush where it was wet and cold. In autumn, his injury always acted up.

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge, got a plate from the cupboard, and sat down across from us without a word. Sylvie and I watched as he took a huge swig of beer and then plopped a scoop of pie onto his plate. He drenched it with an unbelievable quantity of ketchup, so that you couldn’t see anything else, unless it was a couple of pieces of corn floating in a big red puddle.

  “You really can’t stand shepherd’s pie, can you ?” asked Sylvie, teasingly.

  He shrugged his shoulders. And right at that moment, he reminded me of myself when I don’t feel like answering. I was just about to mention it to him, but he looked so beat that I decided not to and went on eating in silence.

  “How’s it going ?” asked his sister.

  “Hard day,” he answered, his mouth full.

  “Your foot’s hurting you ?”

  “Yeah. And I’m heading out next week to do some marking, up above the reservoir.”

  “That’s not exactly close by.”

  “A twelve-hour drive.”

  “That’s a long way to go to cut some trees.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Is that what’s got your back up ?”

  “Not really. This afternoon, the guys were talking about the mill closing again.”

  It wasn’t the first time that the mill closing down had been discussed, both in town and around our table. Two years back, my father had been laid off for almost five months. And then, no sooner had the mill reopened, and no sooner had new machinery been purchased with government money, than they were back to talking about closing the mill. I’ll never figure it out ; Aunt Sylvie has. But she keeps her mouth shut around my father, who would just accuse her of being a tree-hugger.

  Whenever they start talking about closing the mill, there’s this unbelievable malaise that hangs over every house in town. People get anxious. When the mill was shut down two years ago, some mighty unpleasant things went down. Crime went up, and certain things happened that were so bad you can’t even speak about them. Guys who people looked up to turned into full-time alcoholics. Popular girls left for Quebec City or Montreal.

  My father works as a subcontractor for the Company. He marks trees for cutting. All his tools belong to him. He owns his big new truck. And if there aren’t any more contracts or money even to pay for a beer…

  “It’s going to work out,” said Sylvie, the eternal optimist.

  “Maybe I should start picking mushrooms with you,” said my father.

  “Why not ? I made two hundred dollars the other day picking chanterelles.” She went to put the kettle on for tea while my father grumbled that you can’t pick chanterelles all year round. She was in the midst of explaining that a well-organized person, gathering wild berries and mushrooms from April to October, could live comfortably and just take the whole winter off, when she suddenly stopped and grabbed a big brown package that was on top of the fridge. She brought it to the table.

  “I almost forgot. The book you ordered on eBay came in.”

  I pushed away my empty plate and started opening it.

  “I’m warning you,” Sylvie said to me, “you wanted your present ahead of time, but there’s not going to be anything else at Christmas, understand ?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “What is it ?” asked my father, intrigued, leaning over toward me and trying to see. I showed it to him. It was a gigantic encyclopedia that I had found on the Internet. Three hundred thirty pages. More than five hundred colour photos, with rare species found even here in Quebec. It was the reference on the subject. There wasn’t anything better.

  “Since when are you into insects ?” he asked.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday came at last and there I was, perched in the stands, waiting. The arena clock showed one ; the game would be starting in a half-hour. I pretty much had the place to myself. I’d come a bit early so I could hang out with the team in the locker room. The guys were glad to see me without crutches, “ready for battle” as Larry put it.

  Felix, who’s my centre on the first line — I line up on the right, but I shoot from the left — seemed genuinely happy to see me and it felt good to shake his hand. He started giving me the business, asking me if I needed help getting across the blue line. Felix is on the small side and he skates like a bullet. Not weighing much, he goes down easily. For which Larry reads him the riot act : if he doesn’t beef up his adductors bad things are going to happen during games ; he might as well kiss the National Hockey League goodbye.

  Our second-line center is Tommy, my best friend. We love playing together because we complement each other’s strengths. We pass the puck back and forth and we have a blast on the power play. Both of us are big and we don’t hesitate to use the occasional elbow to clear the front of the net. That’s the kind of thing that really bugs Larry. No having fun without permission from him. The first thing he did at the beginning of training camp was to split us up. Tommy tried to argue, but Larry shut him up, saying he knew us well enough, he’d seen us play together before and it wasn’t going to happen this year.

  “Nobody said it was going to be easy, guys,” Larry said. It was the same old pep talk : dig deep down, stay within yourself, you’ve got to have heart and all the rest.

  No worry about losing my seat ; nobody was there yet, so off I went in search of three hotdogs with mustard and relish to gobble before the opening face-off. Larry is after me to eat more veggies. I’m getting fat he says, and fat won’t cut it in the NHL. You know, honestly, that guy, I’m really starting to hate him.

  I gulped the hotdogs down in a couple of mouthfuls and chased them with a big swig of Pepsi. The crowd was streaming into the new arena. A lot of people who knew me came up to say hello. How was I doing ? they asked ; when would I be back in action ?

  “Next game, Tuesday night.”

  “You must be going nuts,” they said.

  “Yeah, I can’t wait.”

  “Same for us.”

  It was a long Saturday afternoon.

  We got our butts thoroughly kicked, 5-1. At the beginning of the second period, Felix brought the crowd to its feet, getting in all alone and going five-hole for a wicked goal. But that was it. O
therwise, the team was in full retreat. The offence was anemic, the defence back on its heels. Especially Simard, who was catching hell from a couple of rowdies who if you ask me were being really stupid. He’s a regular guy, Simard. He gives it everything he’s got each and every shift. But he’s slow, and it’s not a good thing how easily he gets beat to the outside. I saw his family in the stands. His poor mom had to sit there and take it while a couple of drunks called her son every name in the book. Finally, it got so bad that two girls stood up and told the rednecks to zip it. But the horse was already out of the barn as they say. Which is probably the reason why it took awhile before somebody stood up for him. If Eric Simard doesn’t pick up his game a notch, his skates are going to get heavier and heavier, and at our level, you can’t get away with that for long.

  It was glumsville in the locker room after the game. Some of the guys discreetly acknowledged my presence with a nod. A couple of others were jawing at each other in the showers. Which is one thing you don’t want to do around Larry because all hell is likely to break loose. And then everyone involved is likely to find themselves skating laps until 6 o’clock. “The team — the soldiers — make up one unit, which has to stick together,” as our drill sergeant/coach was apt to say. To give you an idea of how bad things were, Larry didn’t even come around after the game to see the players.

  I went up to Felix, who was sitting by himself in front of his locker, not speaking to anybody. He already had his coat on and was lacing his boots.

  “Your line played alright,” I said. “You just caught some bad luck. It could’ve gone the other way.”

  “Bad luck ?” he said, getting up and slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder. “If that’s what you call missing three wide-open nets. Stank up the place, more like it.”

  We left the dressing room together. I asked him if he wanted to come up to the cabin, but he said no.

  Outside, you could almost smell the snow in the air. Overhead, the clouds rushing by looked like giant rollers piled one on top of the other. The wind whipped the leaves across the arena parking lot. I asked Tommy if he still wanted to go up to the cabin with me. We could light a fire. I’d stocked the cooler and figured we’d cook ourselves some burgers. But he just shrugged and looked away.