Heroes

by Ray Robertson

  “Stupid for you to sit out here while I’m just going to be sleeping in the other room,” Davidson said, “but have yourself a belt if you want. You know where I keep the bottle.”

  “Thanks,” Bayle said, “but I’ve got a lot of work to do later tonight after I leave here. I’m way behind as it is and I want to stay on the ball.”

  “So go home and do it then, nobody asked you to stay. I already told you it’s just a damn flu bug that I’ve got. Probably picked it up from one of the players.” Davidson shuffled across the hardwood floor hallway to his room and shut the bedroom door behind him, leaving Bayle by himself.

  Bayle by himself, first he tried the T.V.

  But the plot of “I Love Lucy” could not drag him in, the horrible anxiety Lucy seemed to experience over the expensive new hat she had bought and the prospect of inflaming Ricky’s unpredictable Cuban temper simply unable to generate even the minimal amount of empathy needed for even half an hour of imbecilic escapism. He brought a dish towel back from the kitchen and hung it over the T.V. screen, changed the channel to complete snow, and turned up the volume. He closed his eyes and leaned back in Davidson’s armchair hoping for stormy soothing. He received only a static-smudged television station with the volume turned up. Wide opened eyes scoped the small room.

  Bayle by himself, he picked up today’s Eagle off the coffee table.

  A fresh round of explosive destruction, this time inflicted upon the local art museum, had once again been claimed responsibility for by C.A.C.A.W., the justification this time being that “the American people have been slowly bled to death long enough so that the cultural elite of this country can indulge their appetite for outright moral depravity.” Bayle wondered who would get it next and how badly. More than the actual bombing, it disturbed him just how easily he assumed that there would be more attacks. He put the newspaper back down on the coffee table. Although no new retching sounds filtered down the hallway from Davidson’s bedroom, at only a little after ten-thirty it was still too early to assume that he was out of the woods and head home.

  Bayle by himself, he pushed eleven long distance numbers, leaned back on the couch, and waited for the other end to pick up.

  If Bayle couldn’t with all sincerity say that he’d missed Jane over the last week — that sort of Romantic idealization simply not the sort of thing their relationship was based upon, she never hesitated to point out — he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d dialed up Jane’s number with full intentions of actually speaking to her. For a change, he hoped he wouldn’t get her answering machine.

  He put his feet up on the coffee table, shoes covering up the C.A.C.A.W. story on the Eagles front page, and listened to the throbbing ring tone. His own feet in front of him unexpectedly leading to Gloria’s feet in his mind — the long brown toes, the healthy cords of blue veins — Bayle surprisingly felt himself throb a little and then just a little bit more, the first time in who knew how long that that particular piece of equipment had itself managed to pick up.

  Good: not the familiar clicking beginning of Jane’s answering machine.

  “Hello?”

  Not so good: not Jane’s voice, not even female, in fact. Male, young, almost yelling, trying its best to be heard over heavy beated dance music slowly pounding away in the background.

  Obviously Bayle had misdialed. Apologizing, hanging up, he dialed again.

  “Hello?”

  Options. Bayle could: slam down the receiver, immediately followed up by broken-hearted wailing about the room; roar into the receiver (succeeded by identical broken heart and wailing); or, politely ask the young man who answered for Jane, patiently waiting while she got called to the phone.

  “Yeah, just a second. Jane! Phone!”

  An eared explosion of plastic colliding with wood said that the receiver had been dropped onto the night table beside Jane’s bed where he knew that the phone was kept. Bayle’s ear still smarting, the phone was picked up and more carefully set back down. A garbled conversation between a man and woman punctuated by the woman’s throaty laugh and promise to “get back to this subject later, much later” floated above the music.

  “Jane Warriner,” Jane said.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello?” she said again, louder.

  “I said, ’Hi’.”

  “Hello? Peter?”

  “Christ, Jane, of course it’s me, who did you think it was?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that it’s a little loud here right now and The man’s voice muttered something Bayle couldn’t make out but of which he imagined the carnal worst.

  “Are you having a party or something?” Bayle asked. He attempted to appear as casually informational as possible.

  “What’s that again?”

  “Are you having a party?” Bayle shouted. He sounded like an angry parent.

  “I’m having a friend over, Peter, if that’s what you mean, yes. Is that all right with you?”

  “No, no, I was just wondering if —”

  “I take it it’s all right for you to wake me up at two o’clock in the morning anytime you’re drunk and feel like it, but if I decide to have someone over from the magazine for a few drinks to talk about next month’s issue, I suppose that I need your permission.”

  Bayle didn’t answer, wanted the long distance hum between them to mend the misunderstood moment, to dissipate the thousand miles, to suck up the accumulated strain and mixed connections of the last year and a half. There was no hum, however; the loud music in the background would not allow it.

  “Look, I really just called to let you know that my plane’s supposed to be getting in tomorrow night around ten.”

  “You’re kidding. Has it really been nine days already?”

  “It’ll be nine days tomorrow, yeah. You sound like —”

  “August, no! I am not having another Jagermeister! Oh, all right, put it down over there. I know I’m going to regret all this tomorrow. I’m sorry, Peter, what was that again?”

  Bayle couldn’t remember what he was saying, could only dizzyingly conjecture what a man named “August” might look like and what Jane’s use of all implied. Instinctively he pulled out all the big guns he’d been saving up for when he was triumphant-news home-returned and once again Janeentwined. He let her have it all, unloaded the whole smiling story of his rosy professorial prospects and future, even briefly considering bringing up the long-awaited return of his below-the-belt reawakening (on second thought, though, deciding that the idea of announcing, “Hey Jane, guess what? There’s this really hot woman down here who’s given me my first boner in over a year!” probably not such a great idea after all).

  Bayle’s appropriately edited tale told, “That’s wonderful, Peter,” Jane said, “it really is. I’m happy for you. I really am.”

  Bayle thanked her, told her that he understood when she said she had a late editorial meeting the next night and couldn’t pick him up at the airport, and agreed to bring in his draft of the hockey story to the office sometime Saturday afternoon. Before hanging up, over top of the thumping music, Jane once again told him how happy she was that the trip south had worked out so well for him, that it sounded like he really was finally back on track. Bayle once again thanked her for saying so.

  Resting the receiver back in place, the sound of plastic clicking to plastic the room’s only sound, Happy for me? Bayle thought. Happy for us.

  Davidson coughed twice from the other room.

  Except that Jane couldn’t stand loud music.

  Davidson cleared his throat.

  Except maybe a little reggae music when she felt like getting laid.

  Davidson coughed one more time.

  But-

  The ring of the telephone drove Bayle’s heart. He whipped the receiver back to his ear before it had a chance to shrill a second time.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  “Bayle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bayle, it’s Gloria. I’ve o
nly got a minute. How’s Harry doing?”

  “Gloria. Where are you?” The sound of Gloria’s voice kept Bayle’s heart pounding.

  “San Antonio, we just got to the hotel. Is Harry sleeping? Is that why you’re answering the phone?”

  “Harry. Right. Yeah, Harry’s in bed. He turned in about an hour ago.”

  “How’s he doing? He drinking his tea?”

  Bayle looked down the hallway at Davidson’s closed bedroom door, his pair of worn, old man slippers set outside the room, side by side. The sound of static coming from the television set filled up the small room.

  “Bayle? You still there? Bayle?”

  “I’m here,” Bayle said.

  “How is Harry, Bayle? You’re not giving me any answers. What’s wrong? Is something wrong there? I want to know if there is. I want to know, Bayle.”

  “Nothing’s wrong’” he said. “And don’t you worry about Harry. Harry’s going to be just fine.”

  “You sound pretty sure.”

  “Well, I guess I am.”

  “You guess you are?”

  “I mean I am. I am sure.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll see.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I am,” Bayle said, “you’ll see. Nothing bad is going to happen to Harry. I’m going to make sure of it.”

  PART TWO

  26

  THE ROUTINE was, at times, tiring. Returning home to Davidson’s place in the settling dim of early evening after finishing up at the Eagle whatever assignment he’d been given that morning by Wilson, the paper’s sports bureau chief, and before getting around to making Davidson and himself a simple supper (scrambled eggs and toast, fish sticks and fries, grilled cheese and tomato soup), Bayle often found it necessary to take a short nap. He dozed for usually no more than half an hour in the same place where he slept at night, on Davidson’s livingroom couch, too exhausted to dream, but one whole country and a million miles away from having no dreams at all. The difference was incalculable.

  Taking over the old man’s job until he was well enough to return had been Bayle’s idea. “Well,” Davidson said, “at least if you’re filling in for me I know I’ll get my job back.”

  Wilson and Davidson had started off as entry-level field reporters at the Eagle twenty years before and had been, up until seven years ago when Wilson married a local Baptist girl with two small children from another marriage and uncompromising teetotalling ways, fairly regular drinking companions. Energy heretofore given over to boozing it up with Davidson was rapidly transformed into dedicated Eagle ascending, the end result being Wilson becoming head of the paper’s sports department by age forty and Davidson becoming one of his employees.

  Wilson was also probably Davidson’s only friend at the newspaper and had said nothing about the curiously quoteless Tulsa game report Davidson had turned in just before taking ill. He gave his former drinking buddy until the Warriors came back to town from their eight-day road trip to find out what was wrong with him and decide whether or not he thought he could continue on as the team’s beat reporter, not to mention handle his other duties as one of the sports department’s two full-time writers. Wire reports could suffice until the team returned home, but if he wasn’t back on his feet by then, Wilson wasn’t going to have much choice but to start looking around for a permanent replacement.

  Hell, yes, Davidson said. Of course he’d be ready and able by the time of the team’s next home game. No problem. Just some damn bug he couldn’t seem to shake off. No problem at all. Bayle wondered at Davidson’s sudden amnesia about the team’s boycott but never brought it up. Whenever Davidson mentioned covering the team again Bayle would just nod right along. Talking about working again always seemed to lift the old man’s spirits.

  Not that they did much talking. Dinner done, the dishes by Bayle’s hands washed and left soaking in the sink, Davidson’s take-with-meals medication taken (to combat the less-intense but still-existing fever, dizziness, and nausea), a cup of lemon tea set steaming on the arm of his easy chair, the two men quietly passed the evening until Davidson went to bed around eleven listening to the Warriors’ game on the radio or, on the nights the team wasn’t playing, watching T.V.

  Game nights they spoke more than others, but not so much to each other as to the radio, Yes!-ing when the Warriors scored a goal, Goddamn!-ing when they let one in, here and there throughout the contest each offering Coach Daley strong counsel about player match-ups and general points of hockey strategy. And when, as was inevitably the case one or two times a game, Dippy and the opposition’s tough guy dropped their gloves to mix it up, Davidson would huff off down the hallway and announce over his shoulder that he had to go to the crapper and to “give me a holler when the circus leaves town.” Waiting until he heard the reluctant wooden scrape of the bathroom door being pulled shut, Bayle would elbows-on-knees lean into Gloria’s boombox on the coffee table and silently urge Dippy on, guided along by Abie’s sure, AM radio voice and a former livingroom rugrat’s memory of a thousand bloody hockey fights, his father’s eager blow-by-blow account of each battle hovering above his little-boy head, each excited deliverance drowning out Bob Cole’s tame CBC report.

  “C’mon, Tiger,” his father would yell, Dave “Tiger” Williams, the best pure fighter the Maple Leafs had ever had taking to task some gutless sonofabitch dumb enough to mess around with Salming or Thompson or any of the Leafs’ other bread and butter players. “Make that bastard pay, Tiger, make him pay! Get in there, boy, get in there tight! Use your right! Your right! Let him have your right!” And more often than not Tiger would find a way to unload that wicked right hook of his and give the K.O.’d player one more good reason to think twice the next time he contemplated taking advantage of one of Tiger’s smaller teammates.

  When the fight was finally over, the linesman picking up the discarded gloves and sticks and sometimes even sweaters, Bayle’s father would smile and lean back in his easy chair and nod his head with the satisfaction of knowing that at least for tonight — at least at Maple Leaf Gardens tonight — fairness and justice ruled the world once and for all, that the bad guys weren’t going to get away with anything they shouldn’t, and that the good and honourable were guaranteed the standing ovation they so rightly deserved.

  And in spite of Able occasionally falling behind the play Bayle decided that he called a pretty good hockey game. Munson was nearly as surly and uncommunicative on the air as he was off, but Abie’s lively delivery more than compensated. The Warriors managed only two wins on their road trip, but by Bayle’s count Dippy ended up undefeated in nine fights, including two hard-earned ties, again with the Wichita tough guy, Bladon, Dippy’s only real competition for the league’s penalty minutes lead.

  Pugilistic inebriation aside, Bayle only drank an occasional can of beer during his time at Davidson’s, and even then, only when preparing dinner. Coming home halfdehydrated after spending a good portion of the blistering day covering some businessmen’s over-50 softball tournament or a Boys and Girls for Christ Back in the Classroom charity soccer game (the weatherman bewildered as ever by the lingering heat wave now into its second week, of late given over to delivering nightly updates on the rapidly dropping aquifer level), Bayle, for a change, actually tasted what he drank.

  Days he worked, evenings he spent with Davidson. And after the old man had gone to bed and Bayle had ironed and set out his work clothes for the next day and made and packed away his lunch, Bayle would sit in Davidson’s worn easy chair and hate Duceeder and what he’d done to Harry.

  Because life no more for Bayle a baffling kaleidoscope of confounding colour necessitating the careful construction of a sceptic’s brick-solid breakwall to keep the entire tidal-waving mess at comfortable arm’s length away. Uh uh. Black and white everywhere Bayle looked now — everything he heard, touched, tasted, smelt, too. Cops and robbers, you see. Good guys and bad guys. Us versus Them.

  Although what he was actua
lly going to do about getting even with Duceeder and getting Harry his job back Bayle wasn’t sure. Nor what more could be done for Davidson’s failing health. Nor, now that he thought about it, how he was going to explain to Jane his non-existent hockey article and the nearly maxed-out Toronto Living credit card he’d been entrusted with and which should’ve been returned by now, Bayle along with it (the card easily converted to a handy cache of instant-teller cash).

  But most problematically of all, Bayle wasn’t sure what he was going to do about not being able to fall asleep at night until Gloria’s long, skater’s body had been squeezed out of his restless flesh by the necessary sweet pulling free of himself by his own guilty right hand, the first time in Bayle couldn’t remember how long that even the slightest urge to spank his monkey had seemed like anything more than just a good idea he should probably get around to one of these days. Sharing Davidson’s morning Eagle with him over coffee and toast before heading out to do the job the old man could no longer do, Bayle really wasn’t sure. But his job kept him busy. And in the evenings there was usually hockey to listen to.

  Nights — the livingroom air conditioner working overtime to take out the room’s warm stale air and replace it with what was cool and fresh and new — Bayle lay on his back on the fold-out couch and hated. Hated Duceeder with an intensity that rivalled the deep-gutted spite he still felt for Donald Comiskey, Etobicoke Collegiate’s starting quarterback and Patty’s student council president and one of his sister’s last ever dates.

  After Patty with smeared mascara and a torn sweater at three a.m. through intermittent tears and over an entire carton of Loblaw’s neapolitan ice cream finally managed to tell Bayle the whole story of what had happened — at the Scarborough Bluffs and in Donald’s parents’ red Trans-Am after he for the thousandth time said he really, really wanted to and Patty just as many times insisted that she didn’t — Bayle helped his sister finish the ice cream, saw her off her to bed, and waited up all night at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee for company for what everyone knew was Donald’s customary nine a.m. tee-off at nearby Indian Creek Road Golf and Country Club.