Heroes

by Ray Robertson

  Bayle went upstairs to his old room and got down on his knees beside the bed. Eyes closed, he felt around on the carpeted floor until he had it. He pulled out the flag and opened his eyes, snapping it tight in front of him a few hard times to get rid of the dust and lint. He laid the flag down on the bed and carefully folded it. When he came back downstairs and his mother at the stove saw him and it coming through the kitchen, she started to say something but didn’t. Patty wasn’t something Bayle and his mother talked about. Not because they’d forgotten about her. Not because they didn’t care. Not because of anything except it just wasn’t something Bayle and his mother did.

  Bayle kissed his mother’s forehead. “Don’t set the table, Mum, I’ll do it, I’ll only be gone a minute,” he said and went out the back door.

  He flipped on the light switch in the garage and the long florescent tubes slowly crackled to life. It seemed like the garage never changed, time and more cardboard boxes only making it more like itself.

  A twenty year-old couch Bayle could still remember him and Patty as kids being so excited about trying out the day the big Sears delivery truck backed into their driveway. Four new snow tires his father had gotten a great deal on at Canadian Tire the spring before he got sick and didn’t have a chance to use. The family’s long-gone cat Freddy’s kitty litter box and claw-ravaged scratching post. And cardboard boxes. Boxes and boxes and still more boxes. Bayle knew the one he wanted.

  He set his mother’s old sewing machine on the cement floor and opened up the mildewy box underneath. Patty’s “British Thing” box. The six volume set of Kipling, bard of a long-gone empire upon whom the sun was every day closer and closer to setting. Her English bone china tea service with the missing saucer and the pot with the spout that never poured straight. A deflated soccer ball. Bayle gently placed the folded flag on top. He replaced the cardboard lid and put the sewing machine back and closed the garage door.

  His mother was sitting at her place at the table with her hands folded in her lap staring off into space, steaming plates and pots already out, the table set for two.

  “Mum, I told you I’d do that,” Bayle said. “It’s about time you stopped waiting on me hand and foot around here.”

  “I didn’t know how long you’d be out there,” she said. Bayle sat down across from her.

  “I wasn’t gone that long was I, Mum?” he said.

  “No, but....”

  “No but nothing. I had something to do and now it’s done and now I’m back.”

  His mother looked at him and almost smiled. When Bayle picked up his knife and fork and banged them down on the table and opened up his mouth as wide as it would go, pointing with the fork at the empty cavity, her almost smile turned into a did. She picked up one of the serving ladles and plopped an enormous scoop of mashed potatoes onto Bayle’s plate.

  “Good,” she said, “I’m glad you’re back. Now we can eat.”

  She ladled out more potatoes and then green peas and then began cutting off a huge slice of meatloaf.

  “And I want you to eat everything I put on your plate,” she said. “It’s about time you started putting some flesh on those bones of yours. You’re getting stronger all the time, but you’ve still got some room to go.”

  45

  IF I knew you were coming, we would’ve waited. But I never heard from you, Bayle. To tell you the truth, I never really expected you to make it.”

  Gloria and Bayle sat at Davidson’s kitchen table. Bayle had on his funeral clothes — the suit jacket and tie that Smith had leant him for his thesis defence and a pair of his father’s better blue work pants — but the service and burial had been over for more than an hour by the time Bayle managed to catch a bus in from the airport. Gloria and Wilson from the Eagle were the only late Saturday morning mourners, the Reverend Warren, Bayle learned, officiating in what was his last bit of official business in town before heading off to his new job heading up another church in Athens, Ohio, a small university town. It wasn’t the eastern seaboard like Warren had hoped, but it wasn’t here either, Bayle thought. World without end, Chuck. And try to take it easy on the hard stuff, buddy.

  Gloria made them each a tall glass of iced tea from an old jar of humidity-hardened instant tea crystals she found at the back of Davidson’s cupboard. She stirred and stirred each glass to try and get the chunks of crystals to completely dissolve, adding plenty of ice cubes when the clinking of spoon to glass had stopped.

  Spring — just a rumour just five hours before in thawing but still chilly Toronto — was, here, already full-blown, the warm, sap-scented air making the bees and everything else alive tinglingly restless, the good new goo of springtime teeming pushing through the winter-weary veins of leaf, bee, and human body alike. Bayle’s suit jacket and tie hung over the back of his chair, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to the elbow.

  “It took a couple days for your letter to be forwarded to me from the university,” he said. “I guess I should have called you when I got my flight, but it was late and I was sure you had enough on your mind already and I thought that if I left early enough this morning and was here by noon ....”

  Gloria sipped her iced tea and crossed her black-stockinged legs, the sound of sheer to sheer the sound of pure sex to recent late-night black-and-white movie buff Bayle — every 1940’s B-movie seduction scene, it seemed, ending up with one of those long black stockings hanging over the lampshade. Bayle had never seen Gloria in anything but her Warrior outfit or jeans or the same grey sweatsuit, so the stockings, modest heels, and black dress were, even if entirely bereavement acceptable, a little overwhelming. Bayle crossed his own legs, hoping to hide his approval at Gloria’s choice of mourning clothes.

  “That you took time out from everything else and came all the way down here is as much as Harry could ask for,” Gloria said. “You dropping everything like you did shows your respect for him just fine. Being there when they put that box in the ground wouldn’t have done any more.”

  “Thanks,” Bayle said. “Because I wanted to be here for you. For Harry, I mean. You know what I mean.”

  “I’m glad you came, Bayle,” Gloria said, giving his hand a quick squeeze as she got up from the table to get more ice cubes for their drinks.

  Bayle looked around the kitchen as a way of not looking at the outline of Gloria’s firm ass through her dress as she walked away from him. “What’s going to happen to all of this?” he said, gesturing around the room. “To all of Harry’s things.”

  Gloria plopped two more ice cubes in her and Bayle’s drink. Pulled an envelope out of her purse sitting on the other chair and placed it on the table.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “Harry’s will.”

  Bayle hesitated then touched the edge of the envelope. “I never really thought of Harry as the will-leaving sort.”

  “That makes two of us,” Gloria said. “Imagine how I felt when it turns out he left everything to me.” Bayle looked up from the envelope. “Oh, it doesn’t come to much money-wise,” she said. “After paying for the funeral and some of the hospital costs his insurance at the Eagle didn’t cover there’s maybe a few hundred dollars left. But that’s not what I care about. What this really means,” she said, tapping the envelope with her finger, “is that instead of some cousin or whoever coming in here and selling everything off at some yard sale or something, I get to take with me anything I want that will help me remember Harry by.”

  Bayle thought of Gloria in her new home in Georgia making herself a cup of lemon tea in Harry’s old white teapot; smiled.

  “It’s funny, you know?” she said. “The last time I saw my mom was when I was 13, but still, she was my mom for those years, right? But I’ll be damned if I can remember what she looks like. I mean, I do, it’s there, but it’s not, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t exactly ask for any family photos when I got smart enough to bust out of there, and it’s not like I’m every day needing to remember her and all the hel
l she put me through, but still, you’d think I could remember if I wanted to. But that isn’t going to happen with Harry. When I make my move from here I’m gonna take enough of him with me so as I can remember him as long as I got all my marbles.”

  They both sat there looking at the white envelope on the table until Gloria finally stuck it back in her purse. “But what about you, Bayle? You teaching at that college of yours yet, or is that in the fall? I forget what you said before.”

  “No,” he said. “That job ... no, that job didn’t work out.”

  “What have you been up to then? Teaching at some other place?”

  So Bayle told her about getting sick and being in the hospital and recovering at his mother’s house and how actually only when his mother retrieved and opened up the letter from the government that he’d tossed in the trash the night before did it turn out that his income tax refund from the year before would supply him with the money he needed to make the flight and be here, and then only barely.

  “You’re telling me you spent everything you’ve got just to get down here for Harry?” she said.

  “It really wasn’t that big a sacrifice. Really. It was found money. And like I said, I wanted to come.”

  Gloria smiled and crossed her legs again. Causing Bayle to avert his eyes and once again cross his.

  “I don’t know what your plans are,” Gloria said. “But like I already wrote you, I’m leaving for my sister’s place as soon as I can manage. But Harry’s apartment, it’s got five more months of rent paid on it that I can’t get back, I already checked. You’re welcome to stay here if you want. Rent free. Maybe you could ask Wilson for your old job back at the Eagle. He seemed pretty mad at you for just leaving like you did, but maybe not that mad.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to get back. My ticket’s nonrefundable, return date tomorrow. I thought I’d stay for the game tonight, but I’m going home tomorrow.”

  “Of course you want to get right back, what am I thinking?” Gloria said. “Like you want to be working for some newspaper like the Eagle. You probably want to get back as soon as you can so you can start looking for another teaching job now that you’re feeling better again, right?”

  “I’m going back tomorrow because I told my mother I would. I’m all she’s got now.” Bayle lifted his glass and finished his iced tea. “Besides,” he said, “as good as she’s been to me, I’ve really got to get some kind of work — any kind of work — and find a place of my own back in the city before we end up driving each other crazy. Grown men weren’t meant to live with their mothers and I wasn’t born to live in the suburbs. And they tell me the Monday morning newspapers have got the best help-wanted ads.”

  “Do they advertise the kind of job you’re looking for in a regular newspaper?”

  “I guess I’ll know that,” Bayle said, “when I start looking.”

  Gloria nodded and rose and rinsed their glasses in the sink. Shut off the tap and turned around, stepped out of her shoes, yawned.

  “It’s been a long morning,” she said. “And I’ve got to have my pre-game nap.”

  “I thought only players slept before games,” Bayle said.

  “Anybody that works as hard as I do out there at what they do deserves to have a pre-game nap. Player or not.”

  “Gotcha,” Bayle said. He picked up his jacket and tie off the chair and started for the livingroom.

  “Aren’t you tired too?” Gloria said. “I mean, what time did you say you flew out of Toronto this morning? Quarter to seven?”

  “Maybe that’s a good idea,” Bayle said. “Maybe I’ll just crash out here on the couch for awhile. Just make sure you get me up when you do, okay? I wouldn’t want to miss the last game in Warrior history.”

  “Then maybe you should come and lay down with me,” she said. “I always set the alarm for six. We can ride to the rink together and you can be there early enough to get the best seat in the arena.”

  Bayle looked down at the floor. “But before, when I tried to ... I mean, you said before you’d never betray Harry.”

  Gloria slowly padded over to where Bayle was. Kissed him, first, soft on the cheek. Then long and hard on the mouth. Took his hand.

  “Harry’s gone now, Bayle. That’s why your not being here when they threw that dirt down on that box this morning doesn’t mean nothing next to to you showing up and not forgetting about him. You remember Harry and I remember Harry. And that’s good. That’s the important thing. But Harry’s gone now. And you’ll be gone from here forever tomorrow and me not long after. But right now, we’re still here. And there isn’t anything anybody can do about that.”

  46

  AN EARLY arrival at the arena and a great seat to watch the game, just like Gloria promised, right at centre ice, seven rows up. Bayle scratched his nose and smelt his fingers and thought of a tuna fish sandwich and just how nice it felt to once again feel gloriously loose as a goose in body and soul from the back of your tired calves to the top of your nicely cloudy brain after spraying sweat and sucking face all lovely afternoon long. If only he hadn’t bought today’s Eagle before Gloria left him at the concession stand downstairs to get ready for her act. Bayle munched from his box of popcorn and read the newspaper the same way you run your tongue over a sore tooth you know you obviously shouldn’t but can’t stop from doing anyway.

  To commemorate the Warriors’ last game the paper was full of plenty of pie charts and graphs to show how the loss of the team was going to be the biggest hit the town had taken since the G.M. and International Harvester plants moved to Mexico in the early ’80s. Another article on the same page reported how a series of long-promised federal grants intended for rust-belt towns to re-train the significant number of unemployed former employees of the long-gone auto and steel industries had been scrapped in the Republican senate. The article went on to note how Washington insiders were all abuzz over the highly successful anti-grant lobbying efforts of newly nationally syndicated radio talk show host I.M. Wright. Since just before Christmas Wright’s show had been picked up by thirty-seven new affiliates and the list was growing every day.

  Although relegated to page four, C.A.C.A.W., Bayle discovered, was still going strong. Silent since his own departure from town in November, the militia group had just recently sent a new dispatch to the Eagle offices saying that a new “political action” intended to observe both the “local misgovernment’s persecution of the Bunton family that has forced them to move the Warriors to Texas” as well as the anniversary of the “constitutionally unjust murders by the federal misgovernment of the Branch Davidians at Waco” was “imminent.”

  Bayle crunched his empty popcorn box under his foot and kicked it and the folded Eagle under the seat ahead of him. The stands had begun to fill up while he’d been reading, and as much as the words in the newspaper, the faces of the crowd told the town’s story.

  The men, as usual, slurped at their giant paper cups of beer and stared down at their game programs. The women wore their Warriors sweatshirts and blew on their styrofoam cups of steaming coffee. And the children had their Warriors pennants to wave and hot dogs and ice cream bars to munch on. But replacing the expectant buzz that always filled the Bunton Center just before the players took to the ice was a heavy silence. A couple of banners made out of white bed sheets and red paint sagged from the upper sections declaring We’ll Miss You Warriors and Warriors Forever! but when the home team came out for their last ever pre-game skate the noise from the crowd was only at its usual pitch for one or two loud minutes. The warm-up for both teams in full swing, Bayle could actually hear the players down on the ice calling out for a pass, the hard, wooden slap of the puck coming off the stick.

  Once the game got under way it quickly became apparent that both the Warriors and their opponents from Wichita, the Tornados — the only other South Central Hockey League team not to make the playoffs and, as a result, really with nothing to play for — shared the crowd’s lack of interest. Neither team seemed ove
rly concerned with actually winning the game, each squad content to play most of the period in the neutral zone and to simply dump the puck into the opposition’s end without much desire to skate in after it. The loud rock music that blared between every stoppage in play seemed just annoying, no one singing along or stamping their feet or clapping their hands during the parts they were supposed to.

  Only when the Warriors’ Dippy and the Wichita enforcer, Bladon, briefly renewed their season-long antagonism by rubbing their gloves in each other’s face before each finally managed a single shot to the other’s head after a quick whistle in front of the Tornado net did the crowd just as briefly come to life. The players raced in tight and surrounded the two heavyweights to lend support — each skater grabbing hold of a potential sparring partner from the other team by the jersey in case Dippy and Bladon’s gloves got dropped — and everyone in the stands let out a loud roar and rose to their feet.

  But the linesmen managed to get between the two enforcers and order was quickly restored. The game resumed at its previously sluggish pace for another few dull moments before the horn sounded to end the first period. Bayle filed into the arena lobby along with everybody else.

  Waiting in line at the concession stand Bayle never saw Able, the Warriors’ play-by-play voice, until he had Bayle by the hand and was shaking it with his customary vigour and telling him how darn nice it was to see him again and how much he’d enjoyed Bayle’s pieces in the Eagle when Davidson had gotten sick and how surprised he was to see him back in town because he’d heard he’d left for good. When Bayle told him he’d returned to attend Davidson’s funeral Able seemed stunned.