Heroes

by Ray Robertson

  With Patty beside him in the backseat of the family Buick, and already suited up in his hockey equipment at home in preparation for that weekend’s Pee Wee game — but runningshoe footed, Bauer skates stored in the trunk — Bayle would every Saturday afternoon listen to his father at the wheel of the car go through pre-game strategy:

  “These guys on Dolson Mowing, these guys have got speed and know how to use it, Peter, these guys like to skate. So don’t get caught standing around out there, okay? Don’t let your man get away from you. You’re just as big as they are, so use your size, make your man pay for his space out there, keep him honest. Remember how we saw Sittler take care of Clarke last Saturday night? Do it just like that, Peter, just like number 27, just like the captain. Get all over him, son. Make him pay.”

  Once actually inside the rink Bayle’s father would drift off to smoke and talk with the other puffing fathers in the cloudy arena lobby while his mother would buy Bayle and his sister hot chocolate and their choice of one treat each from the canteen before joining the other coffee-drinking hockey mums at the shiny shellacked picnic tables. Bayle and Patty would leave the grownups behind and sip their hot chocolate and eat their candy bars and watch the hockey game being played before Bayle’s own from the freezing wooden rink-side bleachers.

  Even when the boys from his own team would begin to arrive at the arena Bayle would sit with his sister in the stands. Not because his parents said he had to, but just because he liked to. Bayle’s teammates were Bayle’s teammates, but mostly they bored him. Even if six years his junior, Patty never bored Bayle.

  “I don’t know why they call us Pee Wees, Patty. It’s just what they call us, I guess. I never really thought about it.”

  “Peter, if you hold your cocoa like this the steam warms up your nose and then it heats up the rest of you. I wonder why it’s like that. Why do you think it’s like that, Peter?”

  “Patty, save some of your Snickers for later. Look at me: I’ve only taken two bites out of mine and you’re already almost done.”

  Patty stopped attending Bayle’s hockey games when she discovered that cricket was the national game of Great Britain. Bayle tried his reasonable best to convince her that as much as she might want to be — and even though Canada was a part of the Commonwealth — she’d always be Patty Bayle from and of Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada. But Patty had decided to become a British subject.

  Bayle quit playing hockey not long after. He was going into Grade 9, just starting high school, and there were other, more interesting things he wanted to do with his spare time. Like going out for football. And dances, and girls.

  After Patty had quit coming to his games, and just before he hung up his skates for good, Bayle had been struck by the fact that no matter how hot you got when you were down on the ice playing — even when you were sitting on the bench between shifts — how incredibly cold it was to just sit in the stands by yourself and watch a game, no matter how interesting the match-up. He’d never realized just how cold it was to sit up there and simply watch.

  Bayle knew he should ask Samson and Duceeder about the story in the Eagle, should probably try to work the team’s threatened move into his own projected article somehow, but before he could formulate a properly journalistic question Davidson was making his way toward the press box.

  Mindfully slow, like a man walking a tightrope without looking down, Davidson advanced up the aisle, a can of Coke in one hand, a portable computer and small printer hanging from the other. As in the truck earlier that day, he looked only in the direction he was going.

  “Mr. Davidson, good evening,” Samson said. Bayle nodded. Duceeder didn’t lift his gaze from the zamboni circling the ice.

  “Samson,” Davidson said. He removed his old suit jacket and carefully folded it and placed it on the counter. He pulled a stool from underneath, sat down, loosened his tie, plugged the computer into a jack underneath the counter, lowered his head, and immediately began punching hard at the keys of the laptop. Even from one seat over Bayle could smell the liquor.

  “Mr. Davidson,” Samson said, “this is the young man I was telling you about downstairs.”

  Without looking up from his small computer screen, “I’ve had the pleasure,” Davidson said.

  “Oh, wonderful. As I’m sure I remarked to you earlier, Mr. Bayle here is a fellow journalist. Only this is not one of your typical ink-stained wretches. From what I understand, before too long we’ll have to call him Doctor.”

  “That a fact?” Davidson replied.

  Actually, more of a running theory, Bayle on the inside answered. On the outside, however, he smiled like a perfect idiot. Yes yes yes, a veritable doctor, yes. Capable of healing the metaphysically ill in three sagacious visits. Your tuition cheerfully refunded if no relief afforded to your aching weltanchung within the first two months of treatment. If all else fails, take two Platonic dialogues and call me in the morning. Bayle wondered if zamboni drivers suffered from vertigo. Probably a union job anyway, he decided, probably have to know somebody. Bayle didn’t know anybody.

  Davidson kept working away at his laptop. Duceeder watched the zamboni make its final laps around the rink. Samson, hands still folded in front of him, smilingly beheld the filling-up seats all around him.

  WE WILL WE WILL ROCKYOU

  WE WILL WE WILL ROCKYOU

  A blast of tinny rock and roll that Bayle knew indicated that the players’ appearance on the ice was imminent jumped out of the arena loud speakers.

  “Christ, Samson,” Davidson said, “the warm-up hasn’t even started yet. Are you selling ear-plugs at the concession stands now?” Davidson didn’t look well; in fact, fingers peeled tight around the edge of the counter, face only a shade or so darker than the white handkerchief sticking out of his front pant pocket, he looked like a prime candidate for either a heart attack or a sustained bout of vomiting. Or both. Bayle wondered if it was the shock of the loud music or simply his day-long tippling catching up with him. Or both.

  “Not a decibel louder than it was last year, Mr. Davidson. You’re just getting a little bit long in the tooth, I fear. Besides, it doesn’t seem to bother our young friend here very much. Mr. Bayle? Does the public address system seem to be operating at an acceptable volume to you?”

  “I guess,” Bayle said.

  “There you are,” Samson, smiling, said in Davidson’s direction.

  “Well, if Mr. Bayle guesses it’s just right, than I guess it must be,” Davidson said. He shot Bayle a look of thorough disgust only compounded by his physically pained expression. “Are the stats ready yet?”

  “Cynthia will have them for you in five minutes,” Samson answered.

  Hands flat on top of the counter for support, Davidson pushed himself up and put his jacket back on. “I’m going to the can. Tell her to put the new statistics beside my notebook. And ask her to bring me another guidebook. I forgot mine at home.” Davidson walked away from the press box as carefully as he had arrived.

  Waiting until Davidson had moved out of earshot down the stairs and into the arena lobby, “I honestly don’t know how you can talk to that bastard, Samson,” Duceeder said. “Should’ve done like I said last winter and banned his ass from all media-access spots for being intoxicated on arena property. We do have the right, you know. It is in the arena by-laws. Make him fill out his damn game reports from the first-floor john. See how serious he is about writing articles on the condition of the Bunton Center then.”

  Surprising himself, not knowing he was going to say it until he did, “But it’s not his fault,” Bayle said.

  Samson and Duceeder turned around in their seats.

  “I mean, if the Bunton Center’s unsafe, he was just doing his job writing about it, right?”

  Duceeder scowled, Samson actually smiled, if a little sadly; both men looked back down at the ice.

  Well, it’s true, Bayle thought. Right?

  10

  “YOU MUST be the hockey guy my aunt was talking about
. Welcome to Shitsville, U.S.A.”

  Envisioning an early night preceded by a diligent attempt to make sense of some of what he’d managed to jot down during the game, an admittedly sluggish but hard-hitting four to one Warriors’ victory — including two bloody fights, both draws, between the Warriors’ Dipper and the league’s other premier enforcer, Wichita’s Bladon — Bayle asked the teenager staffing the front desk of The Range if there were any coffee or pop machines in the building. His first live hockey game in years had put Bayle in the mood for a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Pop? You mean, like, soda? Yeah, down the hall to your left, right past the lounge.” Before Bayle could move away, however: “Hey, wait a minute, almost forgot, this came for you. No charge.” Bayle looked at the sheet of shiny paper and exhaled hard through his nostrils. It was a fax from Smith, his thesis advisor. A thousand miles away, he thought, and he still manages to be in your face. Bayle folded the page in two and stuck it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Later.

  “So who won?”

  “What?” Bayle said, looking up.

  “The game. Who won?”

  “We did. I mean the Warriors. Four-one.”

  “Go team.”

  “You follow hockey?” Bayle asked.

  “Nah. I’m more of a — what would you call it? — individualist in my sporting tastes.” A crooked grin to go along with his black leather jacket and Metallica t-shirt coloured the remark slightly enigmatic. Bayle, however, refused to ruminate; Bayle wanted a cup of hot chocolate.

  “You hitting the sack? It’s not even eleven. Not going to take in all the sights and sounds the big city has to offer?”

  “I think I saw just about all I needed to see today,” Bayle said.

  “Yeah, you got that right.”

  “So what’s with all the heavy safety precautions then, all the security signs on everybody’s lawn?”

  “Drugs, so they say,” Ron answered.

  “Drugs?”

  “So they say.”

  “You mean like drug trading, gang violence, that sort of thing?”

  “The only logical career choice for any energetic young American entrepreneur from the wrong side of the tracks with no silver spoon stuck in his mouth and who doesn’t want to work at Burger King for minimum wage his entire life. So they say.”

  Bayle waited for further clarification. None apparently forthcoming, he said goodnight and headed down the hallway looking for the coffee machine. The boy called out after him:

  “Right on. You too. Have a good one. And if you need anything, just, like, you know, let me know. Anything. You know?”

  The coffee machine offered regular and cappuccino, two special blends, Swiss mocha, a non-alcoholic Irish coffee, something called “Premium Blend,” Earl Grey, Orange Pekoe, and English Breakfast teas, but no hot chocolate. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, Bayle thought.

  Hot-chocolateless, he opened the door to his room. He put his coffee on the nightstand and lengthwise on the bed flipped through his notepad. Quickly learning here nothing he hadn’t already seen and known three hours before first hand, he picked up one of the informational files Jane had instructed the Toronto Living research department to put together for him. Three quarters of an hour later Bayle put the folder back on the nightstand.

  Although admittedly slightly depressing to learn that the number of Canadian professional hockey franchises was steadily diminishing each year and that every day new teams seemed to be popping up in unlikely American cities like Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta — all due to a woefully weak Canadian dollar and the huge tax breaks many booming American cities were willing to hand out to sports franchises — Bayle knew that none of what he read should be allowed to affect him all that much. Empiricus dictum number one: Freedom from disturbance means suspension of judgement. If, like clean water, raw timber, and maple syrup, Canada’s game was becoming just one more Canadian export steadily seeping south, well, then, Empiricus dictum number one. When all else fails, Empiricus dictum number one.

  Bayle went into the washroom and plucked out and put in their disinfected white plastic place his contact lenses. On his way back to bed he pulled to one side the window curtain and paused to let affect the full effect of a rear parking lot-lit pastiche of beam swirls and pulsing light spots, an overflowing tub of electric honey being glub glub generously dumped all over the nighttime black world, the entire wonderfully incomprehensible sighted sensation a woefully near-sighted man’s sole compensation for never being able to lie down for even a quick nap without having to first remove from his eyes two pieces of water-permeable thin plastic. (Guilt-free, fullblown irrationality: a crystal-clear sceptic’s sweet-treat of refreshing confusion for the brain.) Of course, Patty had always been the exact opposite.

  When eleventh-grader Bayle got his first pair of glasses and told his sister not with awe but just because it was true how weird it was to now see things he hadn’t even known were there before and how much clearer everything else looked, Patty had immediately insisted that she wanted glasses just like Peter, that she wanted to see all the things that she hadn’t been seeing up to then too. Bayle’s parents tried their best to explain to their eleven-year-old daughter just how lucky she was that she didn’t need to wear glasses, that her eyes were beautiful just like they were, and wasn’t she glad that she didn’t have to wear anything that might keep everyone from seeing just how beautiful they really were?

  But Patty wasn’t buying. Sulked and sulked for weeks. Sat on the floor a foot and a half away from the television screen watching cartoons hoping for failing eyesight. Bayle would silently pass by the livingroom on the way from his bedroom to the bathroom and push his new glasses up the bridge of his nose and hope that somehow his little sister got what she wanted. But it wasn’t to be. Patty had been cursed with perfect vision.

  11

  MID-SUMMER ’95, the summer after Bayle’s first year of aspiring doctorhood, and a rare Sunday dinner at the Bayle home with Peter back from the city, just before Patty refused to leave her room altogether and before Bayle’s mother decided her daughter’s recent case of the blahs was something more than just another one of her temperamental daughter’s many moods and got her a nine a.m. appointment with Dr. McKay, their family doctor, Patty never managed to keep.

  Bayle hung his suit jacket up behind the kitchen door and kissed his mother on the cheek and asked where Patty was.

  Overseeing several bubbling pots on the stovetop and without turning around, “Where else?” his mother said.

  “It’s just Patty, mum,” Bayle said. “She’ll snap out of it. She always does.”

  Since his father’s death three years before, it had fallen upon Bayle to absorb the majority of his mother’s exasperation over the emotional Ferris wheel of Patty’s highs and lows. The beeping red light on his answering machine usually meant a Patty update from Etobicoke from his mother. Lately, his machine had been awful busy.

  “Maybe you can get her out of her funk, Peter,” his mother said, poking her fork into a pot of rolling, boiling potatoes. “I don’t know what’s left for me to say to that girl. Eighteen years old and with three different universities offering her full scholarships and your sister has to be coaxed into eating her meals and to wash her hair once in awhile. I tell you, I’m glad your father’s not around to witness this. A man like like him who had to work for everything he ever got in his life would have just killed for the opportunities you and your sister have had handed to you. And don’t fool yourself. There are plenty of other kids out there just as smart as Patty who would take her spot at those schools in a minute. Those universities aren’t going to wait on her answer forever, you know.”

  Bayle nodded.

  Granted, Patty could be a handful, but their mother was no picnic either. According to her, all that Patty really needed to do to keep herself on track was to settle down with a hardworking union man like her and Bayle’s dear old dad, get a house of her own in Etobicoke to call her own
and fix up and look after, and start pumping out three or four future Ontario Hydro workers. That would keep her busy. That would keep her head out of the clouds.

  “I guess I’ll go see how Patty’s doing,” Bayle said. He waited for a response. His mother kept lifting and replacing steaming pot tops.

  “That macaroni and cheese sure smells good,” Bayle offered.

  Turning around from the stove, oven-mitted hand on her hip, “It’s brocolli quiche,” his mother said.

  “Well, it sure smells good anyway.”

  “Tell your sister that,” his mother said.

  Bayle said he’d relay the message.

  By themselves briefly before dinner and right through every second of it, Patty chin-in-hand indifferent to her brother, her mother, the food on her plate, and every scrap of conversation encouragingly volleyed her way — all to a degree Bayle had never witnessed before. Since the recent collapse of her nearly two-year-long Catholic kick (a new record for continued fixation), Patty had been aloof the few times Bayle had spoken to her and not too good at returning his occasional calls, but that was, he’d thought, just a part of her usual post-engrossed state.

  But three months after she’d donated her rainbow-of-a-closet full of variously coloured rosaries and the complete works of Thomas Merton to the Salvation Army and resolutely gone to bed at four in the afternoon on the day of her Grade 13 graduation from Lorreto’s, no new things of earth-shaking importance spilled from Patty’s lips that Bayle and everyone else within earshot just had to know about, none of the usual nervous signs of giddily revving up for the inevitable next Big Thing evidently revving.