Searching for Terry Punchout

by Tyler Hellard

  Back in my room, I’m dreaming of the myriad ways the night could have gone better, or at least, better in that one very specific way. But I also go through all the reasons she should or shouldn’t be with me.

  Pros: Not unattractive. Reasonably clean.

  Cons: Unemployed. Technically homeless. Limited ambition and dubious prospects for future success. Documented history of premature ejaculation.

  A knock at the door saves me from moving past the superficial into listing my real character flaws—the stuff buried in my DNA. I answer wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts and am unsurprised to find Paulie standing outside.

  “Jesus, man, I’m tired. I don’t want to go drinking tonight.”

  “Hey, Adam. How are you?” Paulie is pale and shifty-eyed, like he’s been caught in a lie and is looking for another lie to get him out of trouble.

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, I don’t want nothing, it’s just my dad told me to come get you. Something happened.”

  “Am I supposed to guess?”

  “No. They were out, Dad and his buddies up at J.J.’s. and Punch—your dad—showed up.”

  Paulie stops talking as though he’s finished explaining something.

  “And?”

  “Well, J.J. was there.”

  “Paul, can you get to the part I’m supposed to care about?”

  “They got in a fight.”

  “Who did? Dad?”

  “With J.J.”

  “Really?” The thought of my father throwing his gimped fist at a fat, sweaty man is funny to me. “Wow. That must have been a sight.”

  Paulie chews his cheek. “No, but you need to come.”

  “Come where? Shit, did he actually hurt the fat bastard? Did they throw him in jail?”

  “No. Your dad, he collapsed. They had to call an ambulance.”

  “Oh.” I’m still not sure what Paulie is trying to tell me. Collapsed can mean a lot of things, but I don’t want to ask any more questions. I’m not sure I’m ready for the answers.

  “Dad says they wrestled around,” Paulie continues, “and Punch just sort of stopped and fell over, like he was drunk.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he alive?”

  Paulie’s face calms as though he’s only just now ready to have this conversation with me. “I don’t know.”

  •

  We drive to the hospital and I ask at the desk about my father.

  “He’s with the doctor,” a grey-haired nurse tells me, not even asking me who I am. This isn’t a busy emergency room—they know why I’m here.

  “So he’s alive.”

  “He’s with the doctor. I’ll go see if someone can come give you some more information.”

  We sit and wait for about half an hour, until a doctor comes out to tell me that my father is, in fact, still alive, and that’s more of a relief than I might have expected it to be a few days ago.

  “He’s had a myocardial infarction—a heart attack.”

  “Is it bad? Obviously, it’s bad, but I mean, relatively?”

  “He’s stable right now and resting. We need to run some tests to see what the extent of the damage is, and we’ll have to keep a very close eye on him.”

  “But he’ll be okay?”

  “For now. We’ll know more after the tests.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not right now,” and then he goes.

  Paulie stays with me, sitting in the uncomfortable chairs. The vinyl covering makes fart noises every time one of us shifts our weight. These are the only sounds for about two hours. Eventually, a nurse comes out and tells me I can see my father.

  The room is tiny and cold. Machines rhythmically beep, click, and whirr. My father has tubes and wires all over him. His skin is chalky. The deep lines on his face are grey. He looks like a charcoal sketch of himself. Looking at him, I’m not so sure he’s really alive. I imagine all the possible scenarios. He recovers, and what? I have to stay and take care of him? He dies and there’s nothing left connecting me to Pennington. I’d be an orphan, and even though that wouldn’t really be any different from how I’ve lived the last ten years, it wouldn’t be the same, either. Would I speak at his funeral? What would I even say?

  “Dad,” I say quietly, and his eyes slowly open. I have no follow-up, so I ask him how he feels, which is a stupid question. Clearly, he feels terrible. He looks terrible. His lips move, but I can’t hear any sound.

  “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” I say, moving in close and putting my ear up to his face. “What did you say?”

  He wheezes into my ear, and then I hear a faint command: “Clean the ice.”

  •

  I’m sitting at Mac’s kitchen table. It’s somewhere between too late at night and too early in the morning. Mac puts a rum and Coke in front of me, and I’m grateful. Paulie brought me here from the hospital, and, thankfully, Mac and Shitty were up playing cards. Dad’s keys are stabbing into my thigh, so I pull the mess of them—about twenty or so keys of varying sizes on a large round ring—from my pocket and set them on the table.

  If my father had ended up in the hospital a year ago or a month ago or a week ago, people would have been hard-pressed to track me down. There would have been little expectation I’d show up. I mean, sure, I’d have cared, I guess, but I would have felt more distance. But it’s not a year or a month or a week ago. Today my father is in the hospital and it seems he expects I’ll take over his job until he gets well.

  What has changed in the last week? We’ve spent time together, but it hasn’t exactly been quality time. I’m sad my dad is sick. I’m worried he might die. Is that all it takes? Spend a few hours with someone and suddenly they matter? I feel like I’ve been tricked into giving a shit about a man I’ve spent years actively not giving a shit about.

  “That old man is crazy,” I say to no one in particular. “Like I know how to drive a goddamn Zamboni. Who the fuck do I even call about this?” I whack the giant ring of keys across the table with the back of my hand and it hurts a little.

  The keys slide to a stop in front of Shitty, who tilts his head and squints at them. “Wait. Are those seriously the keys to the rink?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He told me to take care of the ice. Any ideas about how I’m supposed to do that?”

  He smiles. “Well, I do have an idea.” He picks up the keys and shakes them. “A little shinny?”

  “We can’t do that,” says Paulie. He looks at me. “Can we?”

  “I think we can,” says Shitty. “I mean, we have keys. That’s not technically breaking into the place, so I think legally and ethically we’re in the clear.”

  While using my sickly father’s keys to break into the rink to play hockey is objectively wrong, it actually sounds like something I’d very much like to do. Mac calls Dave, and Shitty takes off to go get his skates and an extra pair for me. We all meet in front of the rec centre about a half-hour later with gear, two bottles of rum, a case of store-brand cola, and a bag of weed. “Anything worth doing is worth doing fucked,” was how Shitty put it.

  None of the keys are labelled, so it takes some work to get into the lobby and then the rink. A few lights are still on, like someone who didn’t know where all the switches were locked up after my father was rushed to the hospital, but mostly it’s dark and cavernous. It’s quiet and, in some ways, I can see the appeal of living here.

  We head to the Royals bench to put on our skates. The pair Shitty brought for me are a little tight but will have to do. Dave is on the ice first and quickly blasts a puck into the boards, the thump echoing throughout the empty arena like a gunshot. He always did have a heavy shot.

  I’m the last to get laced up by a wide margin—it’s been a long time since I tied skates. Doing it properly requires calluses I haven’t had since I was a kid. Standing at
the gate, looking down at the one-foot drop to the ice, I’m nervous to step out. Should I have a helmet on? I haven’t been on skates since I gave up playing hockey over a decade ago. That feels like another life, a life where I knew how to skate. In this life, there’s a better-than-average chance I’m going to bust my head open.

  And then I almost bust my head open.

  My first step onto the ice is a disaster. I glide about a foot and a half on my left skate, but as soon as my right blade touches the ice, it throws my balance off and I execute a 450-degree spin, arms and stick flailing in a manoeuvre that could best be described as a whirligig. None of the guys seem to notice; they’re busy passing a puck around at the far end of the ice and firing shots at the open net. Once I get myself stopped, I stand very, very still, leaning a bit to keep my balance while trying to figure out roughly where my centre of gravity is. Slowly, I straighten up, grasp my stick with both hands, and take a deep breath. I push off and it’s perfect.

  Okay, not perfect. I have all the grace of a drowning cat, but I’m skating. My strides are short, but consistent. As I close in on the sideboards, I cross over, right leg over left. I can hear the metal cutting into the ice. It’s a fantastic sound, completely unlike anything else in the world. There’s no way to hear that sound and not feel like a champion skater, even if what you’re actually doing is skating only by the loosest definition.

  Turning again, I am now headed toward Paulie and Shitty and Mac and Dave. Paulie spots me coming and shouts, “Macallister, heads up,” sailing the puck toward me. It comes hard, flat, and smooth across the ice. There’s a sharp crack as it hits my stick. You’re supposed to cradle the puck when you receive a pass, but instead I just run into it, pushing the puck ahead of me. It’s not good technique, but it serves my immediate purpose of scoring a goal on the empty net in front of me, which I do with a lazy wrist shot from the hash marks before falling to the ice and sliding into the net myself. Glory be mine.

  •

  It doesn’t take long for my feet to cramp up and need a break. I take a seat on the bench to flex my toes, uncomfortable but happy. It’s not like I’ve forgotten about my problems, but right now I’m willing to accept there are things beyond my control and it’s okay to have some fun.

  Dave skates over and jumps into the bench, sitting about five feet to my left. He’s here for the rum, which he mixes inside an old water bottle and squirts into his mouth. After a few more squirts, he holds the bottle out and I take it. Dave mixes a stiff drink.

  “Why do you take J.J.’s money?” I ask after my second gulp. The question has been gnawing at me.

  “The fuck business is it of yours?”

  “It’s not. I just want to know. Why would you let him have that over you?”

  “He doesn’t have anything over me.”

  “Sure, he could ask you to hide a body or something.”

  Dave gives me an are-you-serious look and fishes his cigarettes out of his pocket while shaking his head.

  “I don’t really think he’s going to get you burying people,” I say. “But if he did ask you, you’d have to think about it, wouldn’t you?”

  “That’s a hell of an opinion you have of me.”

  “I’m just trying to understand it.”

  “He has the money and I don’t. Don’t overthink it.” He reaches and takes the water bottle back from me, as though he has decided I no longer deserve it. “You’re a stick, you know,” he says.

  “I’m a stick?” I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but I get the sense I should be indignant.

  “Yeah. A stick. You don’t know that joke?”

  “Refresh me,” I say.

  “What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?”

  I do know this joke. Everyone does. So I answer: “You call it a stick.” I still don’t get his point.

  “Exactly,” he says. “You’re a stick.”

  “Dave, what the fuck are you on about?”

  “You think we’re all stuck here. That we don’t leave, but we do. Most of us do. Fuck, even Paulie got to Pictou and worked the ferry for a bit. But we come back. We’re boomerangs. You didn’t. You’re a stick. You look down on us, but the thing is, a boomerang is a marvel of engineering or physics or whatever. It does exactly what it’s built to do. A stick is just a fucking stick.”

  “And I’m a stick. This is why you’ve always been such a dick to me? It’s a stupid analogy.”

  “Was I a dick to you?” Dave asks, and I want to high-stick him in his teeth.

  “You know you were.”

  “I honestly don’t think about it. You might lie awake every night remembering high school, but I don’t. I moved on.”

  Wait, what? He’s moved on? I’ve moved on. I got out. He hasn’t moved on anywhere. I’m the guy who did something with my life. Aren’t I?

  I sit and stew while Dave alternates between squirts from the bottle and drags from his smoke.

  “You know, I went to university for like two months,” he finally says. “I took a philosophy class, which was mostly dumb, but the guy—the prof—told us about this thing called solipsism. You know about that?”

  “It’s the idea that you can only be certain that you exist.”

  “Right, something like that. You can only be sure of yourself. I like that.”

  “Why’d you come back?” I ask, and I genuinely want to know. “You could have done a lot of things.”

  “What things? Where would I go?” He doesn’t mean he had nowhere else to go. He’s asking why he would want to go anywhere else.

  “I know you got cut from the team in Quebec, but what happened to you in Halifax? You’re easily good enough to play university hockey.”

  “They didn’t want me,” he says.

  “You got kicked out. I heard that. You beat up a guy or something. But why?”

  “Why did I beat him up?”

  “No,” I say, “why did you beat him up badly enough to get thrown out of school?”

  Dave looks out at the ice. Shitty and Paulie have dropped their gloves and are wrestling each other around, throwing soft punches. Shitty has Paulie’s sweater and T-shirt pulled over his head, revealing Paulie’s sizable, hair-covered belly. Paulie, blinded by his own clothing, flails wildly. Mac is sitting on top of the net smoking a joint, jeering at the mock fight.

  Dave keeps his eyes on them while he talks. “I don’t know. I mean, he was a fuckhead. I don’t know how they decide who your roommates are, but that school got it wrong. He was from Calgary. His name was Kenneth and he’d get sour when I called him Kenny. Preppy fucker. Skinny and fucking arrogant. Four of us shared a common room with a kitchen. That kid was always on me about being dirty and having the guys from the team over for beers. I came home drunk, and he tried to give me shit about not doing the dishes or some bullshit. I lost it on him. I don’t even remember it, except for him lying there bleeding and crying all over himself. Pissed himself, too.” Dave takes another squeeze of rum and tosses the bottle back my way. “I knew they’d throw me out. I sat in my room for two days waiting for the police to show up and arrest me, but they never did. No one showed up at all to talk about it. I left anyway and came home.”

  Dave came home because that’s what boomerangs do.

  “I think I’m getting divorced,” he says after a few seconds.

  “From what I hear, that’s probably for the best.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “What do you want me to say here, Dave? Do you love her? Go win her back. Be romantic or beat up that guy I saw her with or whatever. I don’t fucking know.”

  “What guy?”

  “Does it matter?” I ask.

  “No. I guess it doesn’t. But if I find out, I’ll kick the shit out of him.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  •

  We’re all drunk and tired, but we’ve scr
atched up the ice good and the only thing my dad asked was that we clean it for him. I don’t know if he was serious or in a near-death fever dream, but it’s hard to ignore what could very well be his last request.

  It takes a while to figure out how to turn the Zamboni on and work out what a few of the more prominent gears and buttons are for. I ease it out, jerking forward and stopping and jerking forward again as my foot taps the gas. Once I’m on the ice, I fiddle with switches, waiting for the contraption on the back of the machine to drop down so it can shave and flood the surface.

  Shitty, standing behind me, yells, “Okay, it’s going, start moving,” and I push my foot down on the gas and roll forward down the ice. Behind me Shitty shouts, “It’s working. I think. Looks right, anyway.”

  I keep it pointed straight. When I reach the far blue line, I realize that I will have to circle, but I don’t know what the turning radius on this thing is. I wait until I’m almost at the goal line and crank the wheel to the right, but I’m way too deep and have to jam on the brakes, sliding a few inches and bumping the end boards. Plexiglas shakes around the entire visitor end of the ice.

  “Ferfucksakes, you can’t drive for shit,” Paulie says, climbing up onto the machine. “Give it here.”

  Figuring he can’t do any worse than running into a wall like I did, I jump off and step away. Paulie looks over everything for a second before yanking on a handle and slowly backing the machine up. He slams the same gear down and lurches forward, twisting the wheel the whole way. He comes out of the turn about a foot away from the boards, which isn’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than hitting them. By the time he’s into the third corner, he’s hugging the edge like a pro. The rest of us stand in the middle of the ice and watch, stunned by his proficiency. As he drives back to the middle of the ice, he yells orders to move the nets out of his path, then back once he’s passed. After about ten minutes he’s done and executes a perfect three-point turn before backing the Zamboni off the ice and into its room.

  “How the fuck do you know how to drive that thing?” Mac asks Paulie as we bolt the double doors at the end of the ice.