The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Act II

  Over the summer, Phil works in his father’s plant, accepts a hockey scholarship at BU, turns eighteen. While the discussion continues, it has passed him by. He has disappeared from the national and state media, overshadowed by the politicians. Instead, the dialogue has moved into the State House and Congress. New cloning regulations are proposed in several states. MassPIRG contacts him about helping their lobbying effort. Phil doesn’t return their calls. Phil has become yesterday’s news, and he is grateful. He and Roxanne even take in a couple of movies, though they are both very careful with one another.

  He reports to the BU Terriers two weeks before classes for hockey practice. No one mentions Gordie Howe. He feels their gaze watching and measuring him. He resolves to ignore it. Things appear to be working out. He’s starting out in the third line, which suits him just fine. He’d had his fill of visibility in the spring.

  Practice goes well. The feeling he’d had in his last game, that sense of leaning into his body, has not left him. By the time the first game comes along, against the Air Force Falcons, he has been pulled from the third line and put in the second.

  It’s a good game and the Terriers win with a single goal—Phil’s. He happens to be in the right place when it bounces from the glove of the Falcons’ goalie. While he played well, he has no illusions that the goal was anything but good luck.

  The next morning, leading the Globe sports feed, Frank Hammett’s story lies below a picture of Phil popping in the puck: “Gordie Howe wins against Air Force.”

  Phil reads the story over an early dorm breakfast. Phil wonders which is real—as far as he was concerned, the goal was a fluke. According to Hammett, it was the result of his excellence of play stemming from Gordie Howe’s genes. In effect, Gordie Howe played for BU by proxy.

  The warm camaraderie he’d felt during the practice weeks turns cold. Conversations dry up when he comes in the room. No one shuts him out of planning or discussion of games. But it is purely professional. Most of them, he realizes suddenly, are here on scholarship and not expecting to go into professional hockey. It’s a way to get through school. If Phil wins games for them, that’s good for them. But they don’t have to like him.

  Perversely, this seems to work for him. In high school, he’d enjoyed a certain amount of popularity. Phil was never lazy, but he was not averse to substituting a big grin and a glib tongue for work. His talents had carried him in spite of himself.

  Here, though, he speaks to few and finds himself trusting no one. He concentrates on his studies and on hockey. He returns his teammates’ professionalism with professionalism. They are close colleagues, not friends. His talents are an anvil and this coldness the hammer by which he forges his skill.

  On the ice, the personalities and conflicts are left behind. The game exists to the exclusion of all else. On the ice, Phil is free.

  It is no accident that he is brought up into the starting line by midseason.

  Hammett has developed a pattern in his stories: if the Terriers do well, it is because they have Gordie Howe playing for them. If they do badly, it is because of an inadequacy in Gordie Howe’s clone. The language keeps the debate fresh. More than once, late at night, Phil, too exhausted to sleep, tunes into the sports feed, only to find the cloning debate in full swing, with him in the starring role. In November, in a fit of sudden, killing rage, he rips the display from the wall and throws it through the window. Phil’s room is on the sixth floor. It is pure accident that no one is hurt. He cleans up the mess that night before any reporters get wind of it. He does not replace the unit. He thinks about taking a yoga class or something to relax. The idea of a Hammett headline saying “Gordie Howe Takes Yoga” stops him.

  Phil keeps reminding himself what had happened in his last high-school game; how a sudden burst of temper had cost him the rest of the play-offs. College hockey plays by the same rules: fighting gets you ejected from that game and the next. He keeps his temper under control. Still, he occasionally checks too hard or hooks too vigorously. His penalties mount.

  By February, Hammett has accused him of bringing “NHL-style hockey to Boston University.” Phil speaks little, works very hard, and only seems to come alive on the ice. His parents try to talk to him, but he answers in monosyllables.

  Then comes the first night of the Beanpot.

  Since 1952, the four hockey teams of Boston—Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Harvard—have played against one another for bragging rights and a bowl of beans: the Boston Beanpot. Boston College is paired up with Boston University in the first game—a rivalry within a rivalry. The game is fought like trench warfare. No inch is lost or gained; no goal is scored. Then, BC scores the first goal. Phil scores the second for BU on a breakaway. Both teams are playing better than they have in months. The game is full of hard and sweaty grace. Phil is at home with his teammates, with the game, with the ice.

  In the middle of the second period, Phil is carrying the puck into the Boston College zone. He sidesteps the defenseman and goes around him. The defenseman turns and tries to hook him, but loses his balance on the pivot. Instead, the stick whirls high in the air and slaps the side of Phil’s helmet, directly over the ear, knocking him down. There is no injury, but the pain pins him to the ice for a moment. He stands and skates slowly toward the face-off circle. The defenseman protests the penalty. Phil looks around the arena, sees Frank Hammett watching him from the other side of the glass, shaking his head. Phil can almost hear what he’s thinking: “Not much like Gordie Howe. Gordie wouldn’t take that. Not him.” Phil can almost read tomorrow’s article: “Gordie Howe’s Clone Not Up to the Original.” It pounds in his chest along with his heart. He can see what will happen next.

  The defenseman gives up arguing with the ref and starts to skate over to the penalty box. When he comes near, Phil pulls up with his stick and the defenseman goes down on his back. Without thinking, Phil lands on him with both knees. Then, Phil pulls off the defenseman’s mask and starts pounding him. This is no stylized violence like the NHL. Phil is out to kill him. This is not Gordie Howe, he is thinking. This is me.

  His teammates pull him off. The defenseman curls on his side. The refs throw him out of the game. His coach screams at him in the locker room. Gordie Howe would never have done that! Phil is out for two weeks, and maybe for good. Everything seems to happen from a distance.

  He puts on his clothes and goes outside into a deep clot of reporters. They’re just as far away as everything else. He just keeps walking, through the West End and downtown Boston. Past the Commons. Eventually, no reporters follow him and he is alone in the South End.

  He finds a hole-in-the-wall bar on Columbus Avenue and orders a beer without thinking. As if it’s the most natural thing in the world, they serve him, even though he’s underage. Something about his abstracted manner and his size suggest he’s older than he is.

  It’s the NHL for me, then, he thinks. Why not? Or the minors—there’s more fighting in the minors. At that moment, he thinks he could enjoy the minors.

  It happens as gently as snow on ice. A man jostles him on the way to the john. An insult is exchanged. Phil swings. The two men end up on the floor. Phil rolls over on top, and for a moment as he pounds on the stranger, as he wanted to pound on the defenseman, as he would have gladly pounded Frank Hammett or even Gordie Howe, he loves this stranger as he has no other.

  The bartender knocks him out with a sap, and he awakes, dizzy and puking, in the back of a police van. The nameless man he had been fighting is not there. It is only Phil and another, unconscious drunk. He leans back against the wall, wondering what happens next.

  Phil finds out at the arraignment that the man’s name is Kenneth Roget. He has been released from the hospital with a mild concussion and missing teeth. Phil gets six months’ probation and two hundred hours of community service. Roget threatens to sue, but the DA points out that Roget has a history of bar fights and is already on probation for assault
on his ex-wife. The DA gets Roget to settle for medical costs.

  Hammett’s article reads: “Gordie Howe’s Clone Jailed for Assault.”

  BU kicks him from the team and out of the university. He moves back home, contented for the moment to do his community service. His parents try to talk to him, but he is sullen and uncooperative. They suggest he call his friends from high school. He leaves the phone untouched.

  For his community service, he works as a janitor at the Framingham hospital. The simple and silent work suits him. He is invisible as he mops a floor or pushes a cart out to the trash compactor. Medical staff and visitors stream past him, oblivious. The patients, especially the chronic ones, strike up incidental conversations with him. One man, a paraplegic from a car accident, reminds him of the other Howe clone, Danny Helstrom.

  That night, on impulse, he finds a single Helstrom in Nashua, though there are two others in nearby towns. Phil isn’t sure how he should proceed. Call him? Could Danny Helstrom even speak? There but for chance and circumstance goes Phil Berger.

  A woman answers the phone. Her voice is tired. Phil is surprised. He expected a recording. Jake and Carol have been screening calls for nearly a year.

  “Uh, hi.” Phil can’t think of anything to say. “I’m Phil Berger.”

  “Yeah?”

  There is silence. “Is there a Danny Helstrom there?”

  “Oh,” comes from the other end. “That Phil Berger. Robinson said you might call. I figured it would have been last spring.”

  “Yes.” There is silence on the phone. “Are you Danny Helstrom’s mother?”

  “You bet. Grace Baker.”

  “Baker?”

  “Danny’s father couldn’t take it. He split when Danny was two. Funny, huh?” She laughs bitterly. “You want to meet your clone brother? I think it’s a bad idea, but Danny would like to see you.”

  Danny Helstrom looks like Phil. At least, if Phil had been stretched thin and shrunken, then broken and reset, he would look like Danny. Danny has never been able to sit erect. He half lies across the wheelchair fabric on his right side. His fingers are long and graceful, and move gently and independently of him like the tendrils of a sea anemone. His voice is high and nasal. He weighs barely ninety pounds. Looking at Danny makes Phil feel obscurely ashamed of standing on two legs, of feeling his muscle and strength, of being able to speak. When Danny looks at Phil, it is out of Phil’s own eyes.

  Danny smiles, quivering; half his face locks up and releases. He speaks. Danny only has partial control of the muscles of his tongue and lips; his words are a smear of long vowels, grunts, and hisses. Grace interprets for him: “He’s really glad you came up here. He thinks of you as his brother.”

  At first, Phil doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure why he’s here. “Good, I guess,” he says hesitantly. “Did Dr. Robinson test you, too?” It seems inconceivable that this broken creature could be a clone of Gordie Howe.

  “Yeah,” says Grace. “Gordie Howe. Just like you.”

  Danny says something to Grace. She frowns. “Are you sure? I should be here.”

  Danny gives her his half smile and replies. She shrugs, leaves the room, and returns with a black box fitted with a speaker. She attaches a microphone to Danny’s shirt, gives Phil a long glance, and leaves the room.

  Danny makes a sound like a cross between a moan and a stutter. The box says in a monotone: “She’s trying to protect me.”

  More at ease with Grace out of the room, Phil sits down on the bed. “How come?”

  “She thinks you’ll hurt me because I scare you.” Danny half grins again. “Are you scared?”

  Phil watches Danny. Something feels like it’s cracking inside him. “Yeah. You scare me.”

  Danny flops his head back and forth in a nod. “I could have been you. You could have been me.”

  Phil sighs. “Yeah.”

  “I know. Could be worse.” He grins again. “Could have not made it at all.”

  Phil clasps his hands together. This is my twin brother. “Is that what you really think?”

  Danny looks back at him. “Because of my body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. I do. I’d rather live.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “But you owe me.”

  Phil spreads his hands. “How do you figure?”

  Danny tries to point with his finger but it trembles in the air as if underwater. Instead, he nods in Phil’s direction. “You got the legs.”

  Phil looks at himself. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me about hockey. Tell me what it’s like to play like Gordie Howe.”

  Phil lets his breath out slowly. Danny’s right. It’s the luck of the draw that Phil got the body and Danny didn’t. He owes for that luck. He has obligations to Danny, as close to a twin brother as he will ever know, because of that luck.

  He thinks for a long time. It’s important to say it right, to express it. “If I could fly,” he says at last. “It would feel like skating.”

  The Bruins call him. He does not return the call. The Ice Cats in Worcester, the Chicago Freeze, the Florida Everglades. He does not return the calls. He has the phone screen out sports agents. He does not understand why he’s doing this. It is only a minor assault charge. Professional players have done worse, taken worse penalties, and still played. He may not be Gordie Howe, but he could still play with the Amarillo Rattlers, for God’s sake. He’s at least that good.

  Frank Hammett’s article reads: “Clone of Gordie Howe a Janitor in Framingham.”

  Something in him breaks.

  He finishes his community service by June. Jake gives him two thousand dollars. Phil takes his car and leaves town. He tells no one where he is going, since he doesn’t know himself.

  Let Frank Hammett write about that.

  The principle around which Austin, Texas, revolves is heat.

  It is late. Phil lies on the bed staring at the ceiling, waiting to go to work. His head is next to the window, the coolest spot in the room, but that’s not saying much. He shares a house with three strangers. He’d found the house advertised in the paper when he’d hit town in June. It was cheap, and he liked the idea of living with strangers. Later, he realized why the house was cheap. It’s made of brick, and the Texas summer sun turns it into a rock oven in the day, and the bricks re-radiate the heat at night. In the Texas winter, it is merely uncomfortable.

  Every town has a hockey team these days and Austin is no exception. The Austin Ice Bats are resting comfortably near the bottom of the WPHL. Last week, against his better judgment, he’d gone to see them play the Amarillo Rattlers. He knew as soon as the game started that the Ice Bats would knock down his door if they knew he was here.

  Phil tends bar in the Mexican side of town. The only Spanish he knows is “otra cerveza,” “un tequila,” and a list of other liquor-related words. He takes the money, sometimes dollars, sometimes pesos, and serves the drinks in silence.

  Mainly, it’s hot. Even in February. One of the other bartenders has lived in Austin all of his life and says it didn’t used to be so hot in the winter. But now the February sun burns down and it’s in the eighties every day. Up North, he thinks, there are the January snowstorms followed by February, when everything freezes so hard you can’t even bury somebody until the spring thaw. Then, there’s March, when the ground gently softens under the wet snows, April, when it’s mud season, and a quick spring in May.

  As he cleans the bar, he thinks of winter in Massachusetts, when the temperature starts to hover around zero, and the ice gets thick and draws all the water from the air and the ground starts to feel rough and bumpy as it freezes down. Everything comes down to essentials in a New England winter: bare trees, snow, frozen earth, ice.

  Down here, it feels too easy to be winter. The Anglos sail on the man-made lake. They water their grass. They grow their flowers. February is just another month.

  He corresponds with Danny regularly. Instead of the net, they send written le
tters, on paper, by mail. Except for packages and certified letters, physical letters are largely a thing of the past, having been replaced by photon packets moving at the speed of light. Danny started it and Phil responded the same way. Neither has ever talked about the comfort of holding a paper letter.

  Phil’s letters go like this:

  Danny,

  I’m still working at the bar. We’ve got a little heat wave now so every night the place is packed. Lots of sweaty music. I’m tending bar on weekends so I get some more money. By the way, guess who I ran into down here? Roxanne, my old girl friend from high school. Seems she went to University of Texas. She’s been down here all this time and we never ran into each other. She came into the bar and recognized me. It was good to see her. She’s engaged to a nice enough guy.

  My boss Guillermo took me camping out of the city a couple of weeks ago. I’ll say one thing about Texas. The sky is just as big as people say. We lay in our sleeping bags drinking Jack Daniel’s and just watching the moon go by.

  Write and tell me about things up North.

  Phil

  Phil knows the process Danny goes through to write a letter. If he uses the voice writer, it’s a struggle to get the words out, a struggle to correct them when the writer makes a mistake. Phil has seen Danny sweating and shaking after leaving a note for his mother.

  Instead, Danny usually prefers to use a specially fitted keyboard. The process is still slow and laborious, each key combination carefully thought out and forced through his trembling hands. But it’s easier than speaking. Such a letter might take Danny a week or more of concentrated effort. Each letter Phil receives feels heavier than his own, as if the effort has given it mass and heft. Phil keeps a box in his room and each letter from Danny is carefully flattened and stored there.

  Phil wonders why he saves the letters so carefully. He thinks it might be the way Danny always talks about little things going on around him. Danny is home most of the time and the local world is most of what he sees. Other times, he thinks it’s because it was only an accident that Danny was the crippled one and Phil was born unmarked. Both could have been crushed by their birth or neither, or Phil could just as easily have been locked into the wheelchair by his own body and Danny been whole. As Danny had said the first day, Phil owed Danny something. Recognition, maybe. Acknowledgment. Respect.