by Dave Belisle
Derek couldn't help smirking. This wasn't golf. The time spent walking between shots, mentally preparing for the next swing, was gone. The green -- however undulating it was -- was tamed by the same putt at the end of each hole ... on a four-foot by 15-foot scrap of bright green artificial turf. The putt could be made with a pool cue.
The predicament facing Muldowney was a dogleg right hole -- well-stocked with sand traps. A squirrel darted along the side of the fairway. Derek wondered if the computer software took into account the beaning of the little critter. Muldowney reared back like a fisherman losing his balance while standing in a boat. The one wood smacked the ball off the large projection screen. The real ball fell to the ground, bouncing meekly, while it's video-enhanced twin soared into a cumulonimbus cyberspace. The ball bounded along the right side of the fairway before coming to a stop. Eliminated were the nasty, grassy lies, cart paths and puddles that Derek's drives always seemed to find. The squirrel was gone too. He'd long since concluded the golf balls were not gargantuan vanilla acorns.
"Hook! Hook! Fore!"
Muldowney looked around and winked. Derek and Erskine stood a few feet apart, two club lengths behind Muldowney.
"Heh, heh ... force of habit."
He put the head cover back on the club. Another force of habit, Derek thought. The clubs weren't going anywhere.
"I wanted both of you," said Muldowney, "... and now I can only have one? What's to stop me from calling up my third choice ... Manderville?"
"Well, now," said Victor. "Our hockey game will show you just how determined we are to work for Quick Pucks."
"Just 'cause I'm playin' like shit doesn't mean you have to keep feedin' it to me."
"Seriously, Bradley," said Victor. "A game would make a superb marketing tool. Great exposure for Quick Pucks. We'd look after all the details, of course."
Muldowney paused to look over his clubs. He selected a seven iron and bent over to tee up the ball. He wiggled into his stance. The green on the screen was 140 yards distant with the pin placement on the far left. Brilliant sunshine splashed the course. A light left-to-right breeze unfurled the red flag marking the hole. It waved at them, mocking them of their own crude subterranean surroundings.
"You can swing your side of the deal, Derek?" Muldowney asked.
Derek nodded.
"Y'know ... as a crown corporation, I can't be pissin' on my own patio ..."
Derek's next action surprised even himself. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a looney. He would stick his neck out on this one. The squirrel on the screen had survived. But there were no nearby trees for Derek to duck behind. He presented the coin in the palm of his not-too-shaky right hand.
"Flip for it?"
Muldowney grinned at Marcotte's offer.
"I like your style, kid."
He motioned for Derek to put the coin away.
"Okay," said Muldowney. "You two go ahead. Keep me posted. But if I hear of any problems -- anything -- I'm bringing in Manderville."
Muldowney turned back to his ball. He unleashed it into the screen with a "don't mess with me" wallop. The trees along the side of the fairway flashed past as the camera chased the ball in flight.
Moosomin or Moose Jaw?
... 1 ...
Marcotte's Uncle Bart lost his laundromat in a card game in 1954 when his ace-high club flush fell to another flush on the fifth-card-tie-breaker rule. Uncle Bart told the tale much the same way home-run hitters talk about long foul balls, or fisherman whose lines had been snapped by whoppers. Derek mulled this over as he eased his '67 Apache TP fastback past the row of scotch pines that lined his parents' driveway. Mr. & Mrs. Marcotte lived in a white bungalow in the blue-collar, residential neighborhood. A pair of garbage cans hugged the corner of the house.
Muffled shouts from the kitchen rattled off these aluminum-coated, eavesdropping receptacles before Derek was in the house five minutes.
"You wanna run that by me again?" asked his father. Ray Marcotte was a stocky, unshaven man in his fifties. He'd had his own auto repair shop on Dundas for fifteen years. He bought out the previous owner, Clive Macgregor, after working side by side for another twelve years prior to that. Putting in ten hour days, six days a week, the elder Marcotte had been tacking up and pulling down Toronto Maple Leaf calendars to the oily back wall since George Armstrong was captain.
That meant there had been little time left for Derek. The only real quality time they'd spent together was Sundays at the races. They'd drive around the province in their battered Fjord Damn-Tough pickup to different horse tracks. Each road trip they'd pretend to be hauling a different race horse behind them. Ray never seemed to mind what name Derek came up with, so long as the horse wasn't a filly. Ray drew the line when it came to boys day out.
Less time together meant less squabbles to tend to, as far as Ray was concerned. He'd rather work his way around gaskets and piston rings. They didn't talk back. Anything in a car that wasn't in line ... a solid rap with a ball-peen hammer always worked wonders.
But Ray didn't totally shirk his responsibilities as a father. His wife of thirty-four years, Irene, was a barometer of sorts. He'd met her at a diner in York, on a trip to buy a rebuilt 289. She served him a slice of pecan pie and he stole a look into her cheerful, starry eyes. He knew there would be fair weather ahead for them.
Derek was born two years later. The boy bungee-jumped through childhood as do most only children. He was either being spoiled rotten or disciplined fiercely ... Irene with chocolate kisses and Ray with the belt. The clouding over of Irene's eyes usually meant it was time for Ray to lower the boom.
Wringing her hands in a dish cloth, Irene was posted faithfully in the background.
Derek sat at the table, spinning the salt shaker. He didn't have to look up to see his mother's distress signal. The first lecture from his father in six years was seconds away.
"You're gonna play a hockey game to decide a contract? Shit, this twentieth century marketing crap has been going downhill ever since the Edsel."
"And I've been strapped in that Edsel for eight years, Pop. Don't you see? This is my best shot. I can't work with Erskine. I'd rather take my chances ... and this is the way it's got to be."
"Son, we're not at Woodbine with a coupla bucks to put on some nag. Did everything I say when you were growing up rattle off that goalpost head of yours?"
"Easy, Ray," said Irene.
Ray turned to her. It was rare for her to utter a word during these family flare-ups. Ray looked upon these the same as he would changing a flat tire. The women were to stand silently in the background. Any advice was one word too many. He was on a roll and didn't want to be sidetracked.
"What? He's put his business on the table like some kinda poker chip and I shouldn't yell at him?"
Ray leaned over and clasped Derek's right hand with both of his meaty, grease-stained paws and shook it exaggeratedly. A crazy grin crossed Ray's face.
"Congratulations, m'boy. You're gonna do great ... just great." The grin turned to the smarmy charm of a used car salesman whose sold so many lemons his eyes are squinting from the juice. "So what if this guy's kicked your butt all over hell's half-acre since you went into business?"
"Ray ..." said Irene.
Her role as mediator had always been a minor one. But her one or two-word replies were usually able to turn the heat down a notch. Ray's blood pressure however, remained unaffected.
Derek looked to his father.
"I guess this means you can't loan me some money then?"
Ray pointed to the back door.
"Out! Get out!"
... 2 ...
"Right this way," the secretary said, ushering Derek and Artie into the executive board room at Herculean.
A long, power-polished, burgundy-coloured, mahogany table anchored the rectangular room. An overhead video projector flashed a computer-generated map of Canada onto a 6' x 8' screen behind the head of the table.
"Well, well ... do co
me in."
Erskine strode confidently across the room and stopped ten feet before them. A handshake was the farthest thing from either of their minds. Erskine gestured for them to take their places at the opposite side of the table from the only other person in the room, Walter Bittman.
Bittman was Erskine's resident computer hacker and he looked up meekly from the screen of the portable model in front of him. A lap dog with a laptop.
Artie unpacked his own laptop, hoping the vast difference in memory space and other missing bells and whistles wasn't too obvious. A couple of minutes later, Artie looked up from the semi-high resolution screen and nodded to Derek that they could begin.
"Let's do it," Derek said to Erskine.
Victor withdrew a ball point pen and slowly extended it into a two-foot long pointer. He aimed it at the provinces projected onto the screen. He'd spared no expense and was enjoying every minute of it.
"In establishing the geographic context of the draft, I'm sure you'll agree that choosing cities and towns would have been too exhausting a process, while picking provinces would have eliminated the sport of it. Therefore, for the sake of argument, we'll use the political map of the country. 295 zones to divide amongst us. Er ... don't feel you have to visit every one. That's highly unlikely with the game only a month away and your being limited to ... bus travel, I presume. Alright then. Once you pick a zone, you have exclusive rights to the players found within. As we go along, Bittman here, will put his color graphics in motion. You have three minutes to make your selections. We'll draft 150 zones today and finish up tomorrow. Your zones will be white, mine red."
Erskine turned to Artie.
"Bittman will provide you with copies of each of our drafting zones when we're finished."
Bittman smiled smugly at the mention of his name.
Derek shook his head at Erskine.
"Thanks, but we'll keep our own record. Gerry had nothing on you when it comes to gerrymandering."
Erskine shrugged. "It's there if you want it. The game will be April 30. That gives us two months to organize our teams. Go ahead. Seize the day."
"Scarborough Centre," Derek said.
"Ah. Your home turf. Well, guess who's coming to dinner. Scarborough East."
Derek grimaced. There goes the neighborhood.
... 3 ...
You can tell a lot about a man by the way he drafts players in a hockey pool.
There's the "Cram". He's the guy who stays up all night studying the stats.
There's always a "Long Shot Lover" in the house. He's so sure he has the supreme dark horse, i.e., the rookie who's going to turn the league on its ear. More often than not, his flash in the pan is back-burnered to the minors before Christmas.
"Mr. Marquee" draws his players from the nightly highlight reels on the sports shows. The player may only score five goals a year, but if most of the goals wind up on the 11 p.m. replays, he could be a legitimate third rounder for Mr. Marquee.
"Stand Pat" is the poolie who keeps picking the same players over and over, hoping this is the year they catch fire.
"Gramps'" draft list is chock-full of players over thirty. His "fine wine" theory is abruptly shattered when another debilitating injury proves that aging players mature like peanut brittle.
It's easy to pick out the person at a hockey draft who hasn't done his homework. He's the poker face staring out of a manhole cover into the fast-approaching high beams of a snow plow. A face like that is rare. Most Canadians understand the finer points of scoring statistics. I.e., in the spring of 1993, being the leading scorer for Ottawa is like being the best reggae band in Yellowknife.
Reading the hockey scoring summaries each morning carries the joy and agony of the births and obituaries columns respectively. Players who notch three points or more are exalted, while those who don't even show up in the penalty minute section are presumed dead.
But Marcotte isn't drafting players for an 80-game regular season. He needs them for one game. He was heading up an all-star team of players who, for the most part, he'd never seen. It was similar to the old method of choosing up sides for a hockey game. The players dump their hockey sticks in a pile at center ice. Half of the sticks are then tossed toward one blue line, half towards the other. When the players retrieve their sticks, they know what side of the rink they're defending. This method of selection may date back to the purges of Stalin.
The plum contract with Quick Pucks would go to the winner, while Derek's advertising business was the other "beer" this game was being waged over. He wouldn't want it any other way.
The clock on the wall said 11:10. They'd been at it for two hours and had an impressive game of Brite-Lite going. The map of the country was slowly filling itself in with an illuminated checkered red and white pattern. There was a strange patriotic flare to it. The lights looked to be blazing red and white remnants ... from a maple leaf flag that had been blasted by a Spanish trawler. An immigration official might argue it was a melting pot that had been sitting on the fire too long.
One keystroke later, Bittman turned the Wetaskiwin zone in Alberta red. The wee rectangle continued to blink, proud and beaming at being the latest area selected. These flashing red lights took their turns as distress signals to Derek. Little lighthouses that knew not the rocks from the Rockies. Each time they lit up, he had three minutes to make his selection. They blinked monotonously, a stop light stuck on red -- yet signalling go. Hurry! ... before it's too late.
It all seemed too surreal. It was the flip side of Salvadore Dali's The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, with a dreadfully lackadaisical time piece hung out to dry on a desert tree. Time falling apart ... too weak to stand still. Seconds, minutes and hours ... with all day to spare. Derek wished it would do just that for him now.
No. The red and white pockmarked map of Canada blinked away. It was his turn. Again. He remembered a day at the races.
The bell at the race track signaled two minutes til post time. His dad quickly folded the racing form down the seam and just as quickly made a second fold down the middle of the page. The numbers of the horses were circled and the wagers were penciled in at the top. Derek knew his father would change one or two of his selections while they stood in line. As they neared the ticket window, his father gestured outside, beyond the grandstand and said, "you have to watch the tote board to see where the smart money is going." Derek stared at the long rectangular sign on its side.
Every eye in the grandstand was glued to it, yet the board was devoid of advertising -- or even advice on how to pick a winner. It was the tote board that wasn't going anywhere. Weighed down by a wall of light bulbs in crazy-eight patterns, every minute the bulbs churned out another dizzying, digital wave of information.
Derek came to appreciate numbers. Years later he reckoned those days at the track had kept him in a few math teachers' good graces. He could still feel the firm nudge on his shoulder from his father. It meant to step lively and stay close until the bets were in. These nudges and other nuances of father-son bonding had come fifteen minutes apart, ten times every Sunday afternoon during racing season when he was growing up.
Before the afternoon at Herculean was over, Marcotte felt like he'd emptied out a huge bank account of nudges stored from those Sunday afternoons from years past. Only the nudges came every three minutes now ... and they weren't gentle reminders to come along. These were hard shoves, triggered by the flashing red lights, urging him to stay back, far back, lest he be trampled.
The pushing would only stop when the two-color neon country before him was paid in full. Or would it? But there was something different about these nudges. The urgency was there as it had been before. Missing however was the quick fix of anticipation a two-dollar wager brings.
These were negative nudges, fresh from yesterday's argument with his father. Each one urging him not only to rethink his selection, but what the hell was he doing there in the first place. Nudges from a hard-core mechanic meant ... grease stains. D
erek caught himself looking down the front of his spotless three-piece suit, sure he'd find enough oil to send environmentalists scurrying.
Derek knew when his father's touch meant business. He'd shaken his father's hands fewer times than he could count on both of them. Grasping his father's hand had been like laying your soul bare. On each of these few occasions, he'd attacked his father's grip with strength, wanting to assure him he was as good a man. When their palms did part, it was all too sudden.
Derek looked at Artie. Artie had gone along with the deal. Derek knew he would, though he was still somewhat surprised. It wasn't like Artie to take a flyer on something like this. But there comes a time when the matador has to put away the red cape and uncap the barbecue sauce. May-Ja-Look had yet to bust out.
Artie recognized this was their bull to ride. Together, they'd scoured the pages of the Hockey Bible and made some phone calls. They weren't in the typical hockey pool draft chatted up around the water cooler. Here they were general managers to living, breathing players. He and Artie would have to perform like Sam Pollock, Bill Torrey ... nay, God himself ... just to put together a team that could lace up the skates of the Herculean club.
There had been no visions the previous night as Derek slept. No divine interventions from Dick Irvin, Sr., one of Montreal's many mentors ... or a visit from the ghost of penalties past, Bill "Big Whistle" Chadwick, the foghorn-voiced ex-referee. Otherworldy advice was needed if he were to have any chance of exorcising the demons that had haunted him since the accident. Yet a small voice inside told him to prepare for this hockey game like no other. It would be the most sporting, nationally accepted and humane method for exacting revenge on one sonofabitch named Victor Erskine.
