CHAPTER 25
Elvis Presley Sideburns
Now I’m driving a truck by the railroad yards, by hot-box detectors and hoppers, by Canadian Pacific grain trains that never move; these are the neo-Indians, once of travois and herds, ghost dancers, bareback; now of shopping cart and bottle depot, Granvin Sherry and jailhouse tattoos. Highrises up like golden cigarette lighters, men in neon wheelchairs, hair to their waists. I read in Esquire that long Presley sideburns are back. Many in the tiny town by my lake will breathe relief as they swing back into the heated vortex of international fashion. You look good—who’s your embalmer?
Down the road Neon heats the needle in a cooker, puts the needle into his hand. Heroin is the hot new trend. Everyone’s doing it. So it must be okay, right? His syringe seems homemade, partly sawed-off, more like an eyedropper, redolent of bleach. Neon’s playing harp, his flat hands on the harmonica. At the Crazy Arms Motor Hotel another band breaks up.
Is Waitress X trying to teach me a lesson? Times I think she’s right to break it off; we shouldn’t see each other. I decide she is brainy and honourable, thinking of her boyfriend, thinking of my Intended. She’s smart to cut me loose.
But she calls back. Says she didn’t break it off. I stop eating, can’t taste a thing. Men wander between stars, my brain is two spheres floating in the bed of its skull. I find it difficult to concentrate.
CHAPTER 26
The Drowned Coast
I call but Shirt Is Blue is off in air flying his favourite triplewing Fokker. Where is he? I need to talk. I need his pirate voice and big laugh. Arr-Matey. Junk bonds float the bull market. My agent invested in some for me. Gee thanks so much. He used a bunch of players’ money without permission and lost it all. I order a pizza by computer and it tastes like paper: Might as well fax them. There is rain in my eyes and I can’t see her face on me soft as teeth, cold as a bathtub. What we take now as islands are old coastal hills, now half drowned, where horses, goats placed their ancient alien hooves. We’re necking in the rain. Light rises on blackberries dark and hanging in thorns. I can’t remember the waitress’ face. I want to. Beauty will sooner transform honesty. I need to talk to Shirt Is Blue.
Evolution: I crawled from a warm sea into an Electra convertible, into a woman’s lap. I understand my life has been dominated by women, by matriarchs, female teachers, older girlfriends, wives and ex-wives. I am uncomfortable with males, with coaches, managers, owners. My father had two jobs, worked late and was behind a newspaper. Women make me feel gifted; men make me feel a clod.
But then in weak moments I picture Waitress X without me in some sexual Eldorado, dressing and dancing, dancing and undressing fleetly, this scent and that head and this torso going different directions, doing acts I cannot imagine but sense are out there on the edge, unknown orifices, percodan, grapes and cocaine and shackles and Mazola.
I did as the car radio instructed; I went left, I went right, I stayed on the Chute Lake Road and went to Blackie’s, the last tavern for eighty-nine miles. I hit the Pain Field Tap, I visited Historic Downtown Concrete, I went to Colfax Concrete River Days and I got the Friendliest Deals On Lo Cost Wheels. At every coffee stop birds feasted on the insects smashed against my grille. A woodpecker took up with the metal of my vehicle: Clang bang clang. It persevered. I spotted a wild canary, a pleasing yellow lévitation, then a larger bird hit it in mid-air. Every barn had huge blades and circular saws on the walls, inside and out, teeth everywhere. Every barn said: The Beginning Of Wisdom Is Fear Of The Lord. I began to fear my lord.
There were nights I didn’t mix it up, when I didn’t feel like it. Another defenceman takes out anything that moves; clutching, spearing, fighting. An old enemy looks at me, says, Well it isn’t me, and I laugh, knowing what he means. Leave it to someone else for once, both of us thinking, leave it to someone else tonight. I won’t pretend. I enjoyed being an animal. But I only wanted to be an animal some of the time. To do well you had to want it all the time. I was traded for losing a fight in front of our bench. No one cared how I came out, only that it was bad psychologically for the team. I was gone in hours. Another suitcase open, my cheekbone killing me, double-vision.
I come to realize I could never be an efficient drug addict; it takes me a pitcher of lemonade to wash down two painkillers. My ankle and my sinuses are killing me. There was a time I didn’t know what sinuses were.
I love sportswriters: We lose and the hacks say we must make changes; can the coach, that floater at centre, that goon with the glass jaw, the slug on D, Helen Keller in net, get rid of the bums, make me an offer, everything’s going cheap. We lose some more and the tall foreheads say we made too many changes, we panicked; what we really need is an even hand at the rudder, stability, a system. Hey, stick with the young players awhile, give them a decent chance; build with your draft picks, don’t deal them for has-beens. But just maybe you could pick up some proven winners, a leader in the locker room, someone who’s been there . . . you know, Swoop Carleton, Lou Nistico, Butch, Unger, Pepper, Steamer. Hell, get Bucyk out of retirement.
Neon told me in 1973 he wanted a Cadillac with dorsal fins, V-8, cattle horns, ragtop, all the toys. No, I thought, not a Caddy, too big a boat, too American. Then a few years later I could see it, honking the horn, laughing and cruising dusty hill roads to the beach; a perfect statement of excess, medium camp. Who cares about M.P.G. Today I can’t see it anymore. Does this mean I’m reactionary? Against big business? I can’t interpret now. I enjoy mowing the lawn, discussing interest rates over a flaming pile of maple leaves. Where is Sid Vicious when we need him?
Is the ice good?
The ice is good.
Before here it wasn’t so good. The circus. The figure skaters. The elephants.
No. The ice is good. And you watch the Zamboni guy fly like a good tractor driver whipping around a field, surprisingly fast corners. And the doomed coach has a straight blue brow, like a baboon. And our centre had 34 stitches, most of them bites. And the old dying owner grabs my arm hard. “Kid. All those cuties. They’re a sideshow. You know what I mean. You’re still waiting on the main event. Maybe you don’t know it. But you’re still waiting.” Three days later he’s dead of an embolism with an Oriental cheerleader on a futon.
Well, why doesn’t she call?
The old owner, in his ice cream suits, was onto something. The sportswriter said when the old owner croaked there was no dancing in the streets. But traffic was heavy. I hate sweating in a helmet; I like scrimmages where no one wears them. I wonder, do helmets accelerate hair loss? My father has more hair than me. He said to never wear a hat. We had a Tuesday night game: early that afternoon I ate three farm eggs, scrambled in butter, with red peppers, green onions and Pace Picante hot sauce. I got two fast goals and almost had a natural hat-trick. So of course Thursday I must make myself the exact same meal, see if it does the trick. It doesn’t do the trick. The team joker deftly saws into all of my sticks so that my stick breaks each time I try to shoot.
Tuesday felt great; I was flying through the other team, lanes opening miraculously; I moved the right way and no one checked me, no one wrecked my knee. Both times I got through, arms on me, and went hard at the goalie; the first time I shoveled it along the ice and it skimmed between his legs, the second time I flipped it high to the right of his glove. The puck has eyes. With two seconds on the clock I got the third goal. The team bashed the boards with their sticks, stamping and cheering, louder than the crowd, because they knew this was unusual for me, to take the puck coast to coast twice and to end up with a hat trick. The third goal was pretty ugly. Two seconds to go and I went to the net, a puck came loose and I knocked it through a gathering of ankles. A garbage goal. I was killing myself laughing. They joked, calling me Bourque, calling me Coffey. This must be how the really good players feel all the time.
“Where’d you get that move? Why didn’t you do that before?” they ask.
Maybe I have moves in me. Maybe I could do it every night
. I could get a bushel, make millions. No problem. I bought everyone drinks and they bought me drinks. Then it was over.
My hat trick was never written up, was never on Sports Page at Eleven. I was not made famous. But I remember, I’ve got the tapes in my brain, unless the airport X-rays are erasing them.
CHAPTER 27
Stones on My Tongue
Rain stains the black trees, good earth leaping and splashing into rivers rising in our South Pacific theme basements. My hybrid motorcycle floated from the wet All Weather Road, trying to avoid John Ghostkeeper’s moonblind cutting horse (goddamn that horse), entering the sorry ditch where police tell me I struck a barbed wire fence and two fence posts.
I saw nothing but nothing, blew sideways into blind meadows undersea with stones on my tongue, stones in my passway, wires at my eyes, king of exits, king of salvage, down writhing with the snakes and coyotes. My shoes came right off in the mud. That hurt? someone in a uniform asks.
Shirt Is Blue looks uncomfortable visiting me in the hospital, a big man, skin pale, ready to faint. He whispers, Know what they call motorcyclists here? Organ donors.
A kid lies in the next bed: Any trouble breathing? they ask him. We’re going to put in a halo. A silver thing and holes in his skull. I wrecked dad’s car, the kid in the next bed says. Don’t worry, they say. On the road to church, the kid in the next bed says. Don’t worry, they tell him.
Can you move? Your foot?
I can’t move, he says.
Don’t worry yet. Lie still. More X-rays.
Get this tube out of my nose, he says.
I’m sorry, I can’t understand you with that nasal tube.
What time is it?
I said do you have any allergies? Penicillin? Phenobarbitol? Sulfa?
I’m cold. My parents . . .
Where’s the technician? Can you move your fingers?
Can I worry yet? the kid asks.
Finally the pictures of my wrecked leg arrive. Big negatives hung on a white field: scrimshaw, postmodern art.
They stare at these X-rays with that auto-pilot frown. They point at my knee and I’m out for the season. Coach will be pissed off. GM more so. He went out on a limb for me, let go a draft pick, albeit a low one. And right when I started scoring with my lucky stick.
Need another X-ray? No, we’ve seen plenty, thank-yew!
How far does this tube go? Making me sick.
The kid’s halo is screwed on and I’m cringing as they actually turn silver bolts right into his head. The sun expands coming in the eastern glass.
The kid finally stops yelling, a dog’s breakfast of tape, tubes, electrodes, collar, metal struts to keep his head on, six bolts living in his skull. Good head, he jokes, ha ha ha. Can I worry yet, he asks.
Drinkwater Out For The Season. I read about myself in a Catholic hospital in this city of thieves, recession bringing the worst out in these dog-headed folks of the northern plains, the big meat eaters and wolf-faced crazies in a ward, waiting to blow the unemployment cheque at the track by the slough. Police on the avenue below always have someone spread on a blue hood, flashers bouncing on the road like zinc; it’s pretty, and off to the west antlered animals move in the tiny gap between trembling limestone mountains.
I read about myself in the Catholic hospital and think of the animals, their seasonal migrations, like mine. I pivot on these seasons. Like farm kids going to two wars, I went off to the leagues, to the Lethbridge Broncos, the WHL, backroads to Elysian fields, waitresses everywhere, giving me things. Hello Walls is on my radio. My Intended moves her sleek digital palmcorder. She is worried about me; she has taken time off from work just for me. The air is so bad in hospitals and I’m itchy as hell.
Ah quit your bitching, the nurse says to me.
That could be you, the nurse says, pointing at the kid in the next bed. That could be you. The kid in the halo attempts to look noncommittal, not sure how he’s supposed to feel about her statement.
No, nothing happens to me, I say.
Everything happens to you, says Shirt Is Blue, eating another onion, tears springing into his maze of wrinkles.
Why does everything happen to me? I ask.
Why does everything happen to you? Shirt Is Blue asks. I don’t know, he says, why do they buy the Queen gifts? She’s loaded, she doesn’t need them. She must have a fucking warehouse: Oh great, here’s another Eskimo carving, here’s another Calgary Stampede cowboy hat.
I’m sorry, says Alex Trebek on TV, you must phrase it in the form of a question.
I feel sick, I say. Yeah, my fingers feel like hot dogs.
Hot dogs? That’s O.K., that’s normal, the nurse says, that’s to be expected, she says.
Normal? When do I get real food? This stuff’s been through an atom-smasher. When do I get out?
Don’t you have a TV yet? she says. There’s some good things on the TV.
I have a TV! When do I get out of here?!
There are wired birds in the air; our conversation seems to flow through their gnarly feet. What are they putting in my IV?
He has ever but slenderly known himself, says Shirt Is Blue, flirting with the Irish nurse, quoting King Lear, building up to ask her out on a date in his topless Jeep with the pictures of Roy Orbison and Christ. Me, I’m beginning to view the bodies two storeys below at the funeral home as rookies and veterans: IN they go through the doors, fresh meat, untouched, money makers to be worked on; OUT they come, processed, drained, their face done over, on their way back home, forgotten, cut from the team, from memory, from history, from the only game in town.
The motorcycle crash makes me realize my dependence on my Intended. For some reason I want to see her and not Waitress X after the accident. I want to see my Intended. I surprise myself at times. My Intended brings my opiates: licorice, the latest issue of The Hockey News, a smuggled quart of dark homemade beer.
I’m not as bad as you think, Waitress X said. I didn’t believe her then. But I know now she was right.
An ex-friend was tearing up the bigs that one year and took me to the nightclub by the municipal airport, a club that was once a restaurant where I was fired as a busboy, now a hangout for uppity jocks and their suckholes. My ex-friend was gravy train, point a game and I was an ex-iron man, out of hard cash, suing an agent who ripped me off and I’m left with what might have been, that. There was a big lineup but he strolls right to the front and leaps across a counter, me following self-consciously with people in line glaring at the back of my head.
Pearls clicking, a woman leads us to a backroom available for the in-crowd. It looks like a gambler’s movie; green felt on the round table and they’re grinning at me and the WHA goalie wouldn’t stop, his nose bleeding into the white pile, and I thought, That’s it for him, because we knew the young coach wanted him gone. I thought, he’s gone and he doesn’t know it, but later he turned up with the New York Rangers of all clubs, and he did okay. I thought New York would kill him but he did all right for himself there with the manicured, the wired, the bottom feeders, the crackpots, the MSG screwballs.
Then October, the wire, the same goalie not protected, gone from yet another team.
Messier was there at the club hitting on every blonde and Gretzky hid in a staff hall, too famous even way back then, peering sneakily from behind a curtain like old Polonius. Eddie Mio bummed another smoke from me. We could hear loud voices from the women’s can:
Women’s Can Voice #1 says, Once my nose is numb, I’m gone! I don’t drive, I don’t talk! Ever notice how a guy’s head and nose looks like his dick? Flat nose, flat dick.
Women’s Can Voice #2: You ever notice that?
Women’s Can Voice #3: No.
I felt my nose. Wayne Gretzky looked at me, felt his nose. Mark Messier felt his nose.
During the oil boom Alberta was all nose, coke everywhere, a giant nostril hovering, trembling gently. Neon would write one cheque, thinking he had bought enough. Then he’d write out one more, he’d run out. Th
en another cheque. Another cheque, another, all in one evening. Finally he ripped up all the little cheques and wrote the guy at the party one big cheque. Powder lifts as a swarm and the sparks fly upward, Alberta Crude paying the bill. One player had to get his nose cauterized; the guy from Sports Illustrated was not making it up. Players were doing coke right out of Lord Stanley’s Cup. None of us would have made it in the old sixteam league, that’s what we heard day in day out and I’m still sick of it. Hey, they might not have made it in our league. You’ve got to ride the roller coaster to know.
In my dreams I still see it loom in the rain: that giant horse with the white eyes. I try to steer the motorcycle but the road’s mush and I slide past the margins, the end of the straight and narrow. I float at a neighbour’s fence a curious man: What will this feel like?
Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two step . . .
At my worst low (in terms of manic depression, not manic morality) I dreamed the beautiful Waitress X came back to me. In the dream we were necking, closer and closer into each other, not sex but some other much more sensual manner of moving closer, barriers melting, some kind of slow give, one body, communion, whatever. A Vulcan mind-meld. I was so fucking happy. Waitress X was back and saying to me with a little laugh, catching her breath: “I couldn’t leave that you know.” This made sense to me.
Then I woke cold in a room trying to fathom what it is in our bodies, our minds, that torments ourselves when it’s absolutely the last thing we need. These dreams alter the entire music of the day. I got used to her mouth, her way of kissing. Why can’t she just be here? Is that such an impossible desire? Too grieved to negotiate my feet from the bed, I had to lecture myself: Quit feeling so jesus sorry for yourself blah blah blah count your blessings blah blah blah get it through your thick skull, you had your shady fun but you belong to someone, and so does the waitress. I lift weights in an attempt to work off depression, to sweat out my ailments.
Salvage King, Ya! Page 13
