You Could Believe in Nothing Read online

  “Brian, is there an off switch on that heater?” he asked.

  The goaltender climbed on the bench to reach the space heater moaning from the ceiling, punching at buttons until the noise stopped. “Gerry’s not here,” he announced from the perch. “So two centremen and three sets of wingers and somebody drop back.”

  Derek did a head count up and down the room. Brian plus twelve skaters; a good turnout considering several of them couldn’t be feeling any better than he did. To Derek’s right, Nels Pittman made a space on the bench to pick apart a bud and roll a joint. “Want to smoke this now? Or wait till after?”

  “I’d like a draw before I go in net against these guys,” said Brian. “Couple of big shooters on this team. The same guys who played for East Coast Marine last year. Remember?”

  Brian tracked local hockey players with an archivist’s precision, sorting them by how hard they could shoot the puck. But most of the men in this room pursued the game in private. They booked ice time twice a week, paid ten bucks each, and skated for fifty minutes. They kept score, but never wrote it down. Their games had no recorded past and, because they picked new teams every week, no future beyond the final buzzer. Two or three times a year they interrupted the cycle for a weekend tournament like this one, testing themselves against their peers in the over-forty bracket.

  “When I grew up, you had your birthday party at your house,” said Heneghan, wrapping tape around his legs. “A fucking hot dog, a piece of cake, presents, goodbye. Big production now.”

  Leaning over his skates, Derek pulled hard at a lace. The jerking motion brought a great weight to his forehead. A stone in his back became a pebble in his throat, then an acidic paste flowering behind the tongue. Clenching his neck to force it back, cheeks puffing with the effort, he sat up. A dizzy moment then, and a glaze surfaced on his brow, comforting somehow. He kicked off the skates and quick-stepped to the bathroom.

  “And fucking loot bags,” said Heneghan. “Like they don’t already get everything they want.” He shook his head as Nels offered the joint. “Got to take the young feller to a birthday party.”

  Standing over the sink—he wasn’t putting his head near one of those toilets—Derek awaited the next fulmination, his gaze anchored on an unpainted patch of concrete where a mirror should have been. The cavity behind his nose burned. It occurred to him that Nicole might not be alone at all. She was nothing if not pragmatic. A woman not quite symmetrical, with that depression on one side of the collarbone.

  Heneghan clumped in to fill a water bottle.

  “Zamboni’s on.”

  “Are we still short?” asked Derek.

  “No sign of Gerry Whelan.”

  “Tell Brian I’ll go back.”

  “You alright?”

  Derek nodded.

  “Yes, b’y, you’ll be alright. Skate it off.”

  Derek spit, lifted a handful of water to his mouth.

  “Nikki,” he said to the concrete. “Nikki, you fucking skag.”

  What now?

  Skate it off.

  During warm-up Derek stood on the blue line and sent long, easy shots at Brian. Most drifted high and wide, leaving black skid marks on the glass behind the net. The glass was a state, spattered with melted snow and trails of spit or sweat. The boards below were scarred and chipped from a long winter. Derek had known this rink all his life. Feildian Gardens was old enough to have a history. But it retained nothing. The rinks of St. John’s didn’t absorb their past. They were built spare and functional, with every hour of ice time wiped clean as soon as the buzzer went.

  “There’s fucking music on somewhere,” said Derek, as both teams gathered for the opening faceoff.

  The referee cocked his head, birdlike in a red helmet. The music crackled overhead, a deep, repentant voice cutting through the refrigerated hum of the building.

  As we walked on the shore at the close of the day

  I thought of my wife who was home in Torbay

  I knew that she’d kill me if she only knew

  I was courting a lassie in Harbour Le Cou

  “Dick Nolan,” said the ref. “That’s an old Dick Nolan song.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Nels, stopping at Derek’s side.

  “Dick Nolan,” said Derek, gesturing to the roof.

  “What ever came of him?” asked the referee.

  “Dead, I believe,” said Nels and skated away.

  Derek and the referee stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads tipped back.

  Beware of the damsel with the bonnet of blue

  And the pretty young maidens of Harbour Le Cou

  “It must be from general skating,” said the ref. “Or a skating party. They always have music.” He looked at his watch and blew his whistle. “We better get going. I’ll see if they won’t turn it off.”

  Derek waited for the puck to drop, and chased it behind his own net. His legs were hard and cold and his mouth was dry and Dick Nolan followed him, ringing in his head. So he wasn’t ready for the tiny guy who pulled up behind him in a spray of snow. All he had to do was step against the boards and block the puck. But he hesitated. The tiny guy slipped through and stuffed the puck around the far post, forcing Brian to fall and smother it.

  “Fuck,” said Derek. “Sorry.”

  “No worries. Hard off the glass next time.”

  He returned to the bench and drank water. Fuck.

  “Buddy’s quick, eh?” said Nels Pittman, his jaw hanging open at the end of a thin, craggy face.

  “Yeah,” said Derek.

  “I played with him when we both went to Gonzaga,” said Pittman. “Did you know Annie Keefe? When she got knocked up? That was him.”

  Somebody’s wife and two kids were sitting across from the bench, halfway up the bleachers. The children played what looked like a card game. Their mother watched the ice and hugged herself, shivering. Derek imagined babies emerging from Nicole, gooey and raw, a little girl growing up with Nikki’s teeth and long, sliding jawline, the touchstones of his erotic life. What would it be like to watch that?

  Pittman stood and leaned across him. “Get back! Someone! Jesus fuck!” There was a struggle at the net, everyone groping. Brian dropped to his knees like a toddler, but the puck was already behind him.

  On the next shift Nels drilled a frightful shot at the first opportunity. The goalie ducked.

  “No slap shots,” said the ref, pointing Nels to the penalty box.

  Those two kids in the bleachers came from inside their mother, from between those sausage legs. Lately Derek felt something strange when he looked at women, especially mothers. Something sticky and swampy.

  The tiny guy scored off the next faceoff. Nels Pittman emerged from detention, furies drained. Nothing left but a shameful skate back to the bench. Seconds later the score was 3-0, and out of reach. They all knew it. A game gone wrong, and Derek had yet to break a good sweat.

  They returned to the room in single file, dropping sticks inside the door and reaching over each other for beer. The tub in the middle of the floor was packed with Zamboni snow, leaving only bottle caps visible. Derek stripped to the waist and climbed over several sets of legs to grab a pair of bottles so cold they sent a tremor through him.

  “He’s telling me I’m disengaged,” said Heneghan. “That’s what they call it. Like, if you’re sitting there at your desk and it’s like, ‘I couldn’t give two fucks,’ then you’re disengaged from your job, from the whole…all of it, right?”

  Heneghan took a long pull on his beer, which bubbled to the neck and foamed his mustache. His shoulders were steaming, and he struggled with the Velcro of an elbow pad.

  “So I’m in buddy’s office, and I says to him, ‘You’re only here to get me back on the job. It’s got nothing to do with what’s good for me or whatever. A man is sent to you and your job is to get him t
o stop fucking around, back to work. So don’t pretend it’s all about me and my job satisfaction.’ ”

  “Oh, yes. Got to have my job satisfaction,” said Leo Murphy, privately amused. Murphy always seemed half asleep until he got started. Then he would talk.

  “What are we doing this afternoon, Brian?” he asked.

  “We’ll see who’s here. Same lines?”

  “Same lines that just got our asses kicked.”

  “Well, I don’t know about Gerry. He fucked us, basically. At centre, on D.”

  “He was headed downtown when I left Lenny’s. Going for four o’clock in the morning by then.”

  “Got locked in at Bar None, I imagine.”

  “Well, you’re here.” Brian stepped across his goalie pads. “Lenny’s here. If you can walk you can make the game. That’s the rule. That’s always been the rule.”

  Kevin Byrne arrived from the head of the room to deliver a smouldering, stinking joint.

  “Who’s paying your therapist, Steve?” he asked Heneghan.

  “Joint union-management. Benefits package, right?”

  “So, I mean, the union’s there for your interests,” said Kev. “The guy is working independently, he’s paid by both sides, so there’s no, like, he can’t—”

  “Oh yes, the fucking union. The fucking union brothers.” Heneghan puffed fiercely on the joint. A wet forelock collapsed over one eye. “When we were on the street they were coming around saying, ‘Hold out, b’ys, we gotta hold out.’ Then they took three percent and sent us back to work after being out for three weeks for fucking three percent. Goddamn solidarity bullshit.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  Kev had outfitted the team for the weekend, providing black jerseys with green trim and “Concrete Solutions” spelt out in yellow letters across the chest. “Specializing in Excavation and Restoration” read the smaller script below, under a logo of a fist raising a trowel.

  “Fucking Whelan asshole. He let the team down,” shouted Murph from the middle of the floor, prompting a chorus of half-serious replies.

  “Cocksucker Whelan. That’s bullshit.”

  “I mean, if you don’t want to play hockey…”

  “We don’t forget that shit.”

  “He won’t fuck us again.”

  “Couldn’t get it going,” said Shawn Gover. He was next to Derek, fastening clasps on the overalls he wore to work as a cable television tech.

  “We were shit,” said Derek. He hadn’t noticed Shawn all game.

  “It was a shit game,” said Gover.

  “Too many hangovers, I guess.”

  Shawn shook his head. “Some days you’re just shit.”

  An hour and two morning beers later, Derek drove east to meet his father. He was much better off for the exercise and the drink. The pounding in his head had receded to an ordinary, reliable ache.

  The sun slipped in and out of a purple cloud, strangely warm for March. It was the first true sign of spring, and Derek responded emotionally, with a flush of joy spilling over to little jabs of panic. He turned on the radio, filling the car with a song he dimly recognized, a husky woman’s voice singing about no troubles, no foolish dreams in her life. She got music. I got it in me, she sang. His cell rang. It was Brian, asking if Derek might remain on defense for the next game. Derek said he was easy either way. Brian said much depended on the truant Gerry Whelan. Derek agreed that Gerry should at least call. He agreed that no one understood the hassles involved in keeping this fucking crowd in line. He agreed that Brian was too old for this shit.

  Your loved ones deserve only the best, said Lou Langdon, voice plunging to reassuring depths. Spruce Grove Estates. Assisted community living for the young at heart.

  Feeling a tug of camaraderie, Derek apologized for his shoddy play.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Brian. “We were all bad. Some days you’re just shit.”

  “That’s what Gover said.”

  “Did he? Well, at least we’ve got our story straight.” A child’s wail crackled over the phone. “Fuck, I gotta go. See you this afternoon.”

  Time now for our regular Saturday feature here on Classix 490. “Wacky Tracks and Wisecracks,” celebrating the novelty hits of the classic rock era, brought to you by Spruce Grove Estates. This week we’re going deep into the vault for a nugget that might ring a bell with you hockey fans out there. If you remember the good old days of the NHL, back when they played for the love of the game, you’ll remember Bobby Hull, one of the all-time greats. From 1966, here’s a musical tribute to the man they called the Golden Jet.

  The song began with the roar of an airliner taking flight, chased by a blaring trumpet and galloping rhythm worthy of a western movie.

  A jet-propelled star

  A scoring sensation

  A powerhouse winger

  The craze of the nation

  The words tumbled out faster than Derek could follow, the singer racing headlong to keep up with the jet-propelled pace. A ridiculous song, but Derek flinched to hear it. This was Bobby Hull, after all. A name that stirred deep memories from his childhood.

  It was still rich in his imagination, the story his father had shared in the car during the winter he was banished from the family. How Louis Butt and Elizabeth Fonteyne had travelled to Detroit in the spring of 1965. How they had married there, and then gone to a hockey game, to see Bobby Hull and the Blackhawks beat the Detroit Red Wings.

  As he grew up and pieced together the details, Derek understood that it wasn’t Bobby Hull who drew the newlyweds to Detroit. They had gone to retrieve Curtis, to reunite the boy with the mother who had given him up at birth. It was their first night together, the three of them sitting in the Detroit Olympia, watching Bobby Hull. That was Hull in his prime, tearing the game open, opponents helpless in his wake. A sight no man could ever forget, said Lou.

  In that brilliant, frigid winter when he was eleven years old, Derek would wait by the front window on Saturday afternoons. At the sight of the royal blue Buick with Lou’s head atop his leather coat, Derek’s breathing would turn shallow and quick, and he would feel lightheaded as he stepped out the door. Derek feared his father would never come back. That’s what Curtis said would happen, taunting him with it, grinning with worldly cynicism. So when Derek climbed aboard the car, he would ask to hear the Bobby Hull story again, and listen as they gathered speed on the highway, a grey strip of pavement flanked by matching ridges of snow.

  The shadowy figure in the episode was Curtis’s father. John Ogilvie was an American soldier once stationed in St. John’s. That’s where he had seduced Elizabeth, a girl barely out of high school, bringing Curtis needlessly into the world. By some arrangement with Elizabeth’s family the baby had been whisked off to America, leaving his mother behind. Perhaps it seemed the sensible thing to do, abandon backwards, barren Newfoundland and raise the child in the land of opportunity. But Elizabeth Fonteyne grew older, shook off the disgrace of the unwed mother, and found a husband. Then she went to Detroit to get her boy back.

  That’s how Derek understood the story of his family and how it began.

  A blond bomber, a golden jet!

  A superstar, improving yet!

  He had often pictured his parents, young and urbane, smartly dressed as they took their seats in the smoky arena with a seven-year-old boy. To Curtis they were strangers, but anxieties and mistrust would have been swept away by the Golden Jet and his dazzling show.

  Hearing the song now, it occurred to Derek that the levers of betrayal must have been in place even then, a mechanism inside his father, waiting to be set in motion.

  TWO

  Rebounding from a sickly childhood, Lou Butt hit the airwaves straight out of high school. “A new voice on the teen beat” according to the newspaper clipping, a column of miscellanea under the headline “Around and About.
” Derek had found it folded into the family copy of The Book of Newfoundland.

  CKOX promises an accent on youth, and what better way than to have this personable Brother Rice grad spinning the latest discs. His nightly turn at the microphone is ‘For Teenagers Only!’

  He became Lou Langdon the following year, changing his name for a move to television. Every Friday afternoon the studio at Buckmaster’s Circle would fill with squirming kids for a dance-to-the-hits show called Crazy, Man, Crazy. A photo from those days showed Lou in a dark suit with pointy-toed black boots, equal parts hipster and chaperone. His flat cheeks and sunken chest, evidence of a bed-ridden youth, suited the modish look. Beaming teenagers flanked him on either side, squeezed into the frame so you could sense the static among them, the skirmish of libidos. Several boys bent slightly at the knees, the better to catch an incidental feel of ass or thigh. The girls turned pointy chests to the camera. Little vinyl records dangled over their heads.

  Lou wasn’t much older than the kids, and as star and gatekeeper of the show, he surely would have had his pick of the lot. It was easy to imagine girls, breathless from their dance floor exertions, invited back to Lou’s office, reclining like swimsuit models and feigning helpless surprise as he released their zippers and clasps. To give it all up for marriage at the age of twenty-one struck Derek as almost willfully torturous. Elizabeth Fonteyne was tainted goods, three years older than Lou and an unwed mother. Derek’s imagination skirted this moment. The Elizabeth he knew, level and hardheaded, was not one to expose herself to ruin. She was not a teenager dropping her skirt for an American soldier. She would never let anyone take her baby away.

  In early photos of his parents, Derek searched his mother’s eyes for a cynical glint, a sign that she already knew love’s troubles. But they looked like any other young couple: radiant, innocently sexual, immensely happy to be together. In a favourite wedding photo, they stood on the sidewalk outside a Detroit hotel, heads tilted together and champagne glasses held aloft. Elizabeth, smart and slim in her light skirt and jacket, squinted in the daylight and hunched her shoulders against a spring afternoon that must have turned chilly. Lou’s tie was raffishly askew, his mouth opened in a laugh, and his eyes looked over the camera to the distance beyond.