Finnie Walsh (6 page)

I did not know what to make of all this; being unable to gauge my father’s moods was unnerving. As Finnie constantly reminded me, however, the deadline to register for hockey was fast approaching. Whomever administered the children’s leagues was not very forgiving about late registration. Once the deadline passed, you were out of luck.

Well aware of this, I decided to bite the bullet. I was, to say the least, surprised by how the idea was received.

“You hear that, Mary? The boy wants to play hockey!”

The next words I expected to hear were, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck,” but I was wrong.

“You’ll need all sorts of stuff,” my mother said.

“I’ll take you down to the store after school tomorrow, Paul.”

“Really?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Sure. Did you know that people used to think that if you ate gold you’d live longer?”

“Huh?”

“How about that! Who would have guessed?”

“I can really play?”

“Of course you can. It’s what your real father would have wanted,” my father laughed. I was born on the night Paul Henderson scored his winning goal. My father often joked that Henderson had more to do with my safe arrival then he did. I don’t think my mother really understood what was supposed to be so funny about that. I think my father would actually have been honoured if Henderson
had
fathered me. He had, after all, scored the game-winning goal that restored Canada’s national pride.

I don’t think I slept much that night and the next day when I told Finnie he actually squealed he was so happy. “Can I come with you to the store?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said. His family owned the store; of course he could come.

We waited anxiously outside the school for my father to arrive. He wasn’t allowed to drive because of his lost arm, but in Portsmouth you can walk pretty much everywhere. My father didn’t go out often; he was still a little self-conscious about his arm, so when he did go out he walked. Unlike other adults I knew, he didn’t walk so fast that it was hard to keep up with him. He wasn’t in any hurry and he knew it. On this day, though, I thought he could have made an exception and I was mad as hell, waiting out front and picturing him sauntering along as if he hadn’t a care in the world, while in fact he had a young son who was almost crippled by anticipation.

“There he is!” Finnie cried, frightening me, but it wasn’t him. “Never mind. It’s only Mr. Palagopolis.”

Mr. Palagopolis was the school janitor and Portsmouth’s only other one-armed man. He had lost his arm in the Korean War and he was truly one of the nicest men I knew. He was getting on in years, however, and had a tendency to remember things the way he
wished
they had happened and not the way they had actually occurred. The only time I had seen him get upset was when someone’s dad called him Greek. “I don’t know why you think I’m Greek,” he had said, his face turning red. “I was wearing a Canadian uniform when they blew my arm off.”

Actually, his arm had not been blown or even shot off. He had scratched it badly on some barbed wire he was laying out around his platoon’s camp and, because he had mistrusted army doctors, he had left the scratch untreated and developed gangrene. He had nearly died and was lucky to survive with just the loss of his arm.

He usually wore a prosthetic limb to aid him in his janitorial work, but that day he was without it. As he approached us, he appeared flustered, his face red and his fist clenched. “Hello, Mr. Palagopolis,” Finnie said.

“You boys seen my claw?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Someone stole my claw.” “Your arm?”

“Yes, yes, my claw. Do you know where it is?”

“No,” Finnie answered.

Mr. Palagopolis looked at me. I supposed, since my father was the only other person in town who would have a practical use for his claw, I was a likely suspect. “No, sir.”

“I hope not. You boys are good boys and I like you, but that claw’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Finnie’s eyes widened. Finnie found danger very exciting.

“Oh, sure, it’s dangerous all right. Got a mind all its own. And if it’s not attached to me, I can’t control it.”

“What does it do?”

“Who knows? I never know what the claw’s up to.” Mr. Palagopolis walked away, shaking his head.

I shuddered. “I wonder who stole his arm?” I said.

“Who knows? Maybe someone else needed it more.”

While we waited for my father to arrive, we both imagined what the claw could possibly be up to.

When I looked up and saw my father standing in front of us, I remembered where we were going and I put Mr. Palagopolis out of my mind. Finnie, however, was still captivated. “Someone stole Mr. Palagopolis’ claw,” he said to my father.

“He probably thinks I did it,” he replied.

“He said it has a mind of its own.”

“He ought to know, if it does.”

By the time we arrived at the sporting goods store, my father and Finnie had discussed at length the possibility that Mr. Palagopolis’ claw was on the loose roaming wild about town. As we walked through the doors, though, my father became all business. Finnie was equally enthusiastic, following my father from aisle to aisle, offering suggestions as he saw fit.

“What Paul is, really, is a defenceman,” Finnie said, “so he ought to have good shin pads for blocking shots. Really good shin pads.”

“Gloves,” my father said. “Gloves are what make the difference.”

“Gloves?” I said.

“If you can’t feel your stick, how are you going to be able to handle the puck?”

“Of course, good skates are
critical,”
Finnie added.

After much debate, we decided that shin pads, gloves and skates
were the most important pieces of equipment and that pants, shoulder pads and elbow pads were less so. My mother had insisted that my father buy me a top-of-the-line helmet and I’m glad she had.

Eventually we had everything in hand and headed to the cash desk. I was worried about how much all of it would cost, but my father didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest. He was actually in quite a good mood, laughing and joking around. When we reached the counter, however, he stopped laughing and became very sombre.

Behind the counter, talking to the sales clerk, was Roger Walsh. When we were older, Finnie told me that his father spent as much of his time as he could at the sporting goods store, which was only one of his many businesses. Even though it was without a doubt his least profitable venture, he apparently enjoyed being among the balls and sticks and gloves and shoes and skates. They reminded him of what it must have been like to be young. He felt he had missed his own childhood as he’d been groomed from an early age to assume control of the family business. Sometimes, when it was sunny outside and he was stuck in some office trying to keep his house of cards from tumbling down around him, he tried to invent a childhood filled with outdoor activities and friends and afternoons of unadulterated fun, so that he would have something to look back on and smile about. Whenever he felt like that, he would go down to the sporting goods store, which he had purposely not put the Walsh name on, and pretend that he was reliving memories of good times gone by.

Although he actively encouraged his own children to enjoy
their
childhoods, it was at the expense of the future of the family business. None of his older children was equipped to take control of the Walsh empire. Occassionally, he thought Finnie might turn out to be capable, but most of the time he didn’t seem so sure. These considerations weighed heavily on Roger Walsh.

I like to think that on the afternoon we were there Roger Walsh was fondly remembering a soccer game in which he had never played. When he saw his youngest son approach the counter, he might even have momentarily considered passing him the ball, as Finnie was in a good scoring position. Then he realized where he was and snapped to attention, which left him a bit disoriented.

“Hi, Dad,” Finnie said.

“Hello, Finnie,” Roger Walsh answered.

“How are you, Mr. Walsh?” I asked.

“Oh, hello Paul. I’m fine. Hello, Bob. How are things with you?”

“They’re all right, I suppose.”

“That’s great. Glad to hear it. Your arm is healing well?”

“It hasn’t grown back, but other than that, yes.”

Roger Walsh smiled hesitantly. Finnie laughed and I assumed that this meant my father had been joking, so I laughed too. Mr. Walsh emitted a small chuckle and my father smiled. Then there was an uncomfortable silence.

“We’d like to purchase this hockey gear for Paul, Mr. Walsh.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll get Kevin to ring it in. Nice talking to you.” He motioned to Kevin, a dopey-looking man in his late twenties, who was one of the store’s three full-time employees. As Mr. Walsh was leaving the store, he turned back and called over to jittery Kevin, “Give them the staff discount.” A bewildered Kevin nodded; it was not common for Roger Walsh to give anyone a discount. The door jingled shut and Roger Walsh was gone.

“How much is the staff discount?” my father inquired.

“Fifty percent, sir,” Kevin answered.

“Fifty percent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Holy…,” my father looked over at Finnie, “cow.”

We paid for the equipment and I was set. I can recall few times in my life when I have been happier than I was on that day.

Unlike Finnie, I did not use my equipment for street hockey. Concrete and pavement had taken their toll on Finnie’s pads; they hadn’t been in great shape to begin with and Finnie was having to patch up holes in the leather more and more frequently as time went on. I put my gear in my closet, only taking it out to look at it and try it on, which I did nearly every day.

I began to attend the public skate down at the arena with Finnie. I found skating forward awkward, but I could skate backward without nearly as much effort. The only way I could stop was to either fall down or slam into the boards.

Finnie was a terrific skater, but a lousy skating teacher. “Move your feet,” he’d yell. “No, no, not like that!”

I would usually answer him by falling on either my face, my ass, or both.

“You’re not trying,” he’d say, standing over me. “You can do it, I know you can. Here, watch me.”

So I’d watch him skate around and then I’d get up and the cycle would repeat itself.

One day, I fell down and, instead of seeing Finnie standing over me shaking his head, I saw Joyce, laughing. I felt my face flush. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a malicious laugh, but rather a sympathetic laugh, if such a thing is possible. I got up slowly and tried to talk to her without falling down. I failed.

“Jesus, Paul, you’re a crappy skater,” she said, looking down at me.

“I know.”

“He’s just learning,” Finnie said defensively.

“I can see that. He doesn’t seem to be learning very much.”

“Skating’s hard,” I said.

“Not really. Show me what you can do.”

I got to my feet and pushed off with a couple of hesitant strides.

“Straighten your ankles,” Joyce said.

I straightened my ankles and took a couple more strides.

“Bend your knees.”

I bent my knees.

“Push with one foot and glide with the other.”

I did as instructed.

“Transfer your weight as you push off.”

With straight ankles and bent knees, I pushed, glided and transferred my weight. I wasn’t trying to skate so much as I was trying not to look like an idiot in front of Joyce. She skated backward ahead of me, shouting tips and encouragement. Finnie did laps around the rink, switching from forward to backward effortlessly.

Then I realized that I was skating. “Hey, look at this,” I shouted to anyone who would listen.

“See? I told you it wasn’t so hard,” Joyce said.

“Holy shit,” Finnie said.

I picked up my pace, gaining speed with every stride. Then I remembered that I didn’t know how to stop. I went hard into the boards and fell to the ice. Finnie and Joyce stood over me, looking concerned.

“You okay?” Finnie asked.

“I think so.”

“We’re going to have to teach you how to stop,” Joyce said.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said, pleased on several levels with the idea of further skating lessons with Joyce.

“Come back after school tomorrow. We’ll see what we can do.”

Over the next few weeks, I spent all my free time at the arena. As I walked home after that first lesson, though, I was overwhelmed by how much I had achieved. I was exhausted, but it
was a good kind of tired. It would have been nice if I could have held onto that feeling, but it didn’t last.

That night I had the dream for the first time. I would have the dream fairly regularly over the next 15 years. I didn’t figure out what it meant until it was too late. That night, I dreamt only part of it; the rest would come later.

I was in an arena, not the Portsmouth arena, but a much larger one. I was wearing full hockey equipment and I was skating fast into the opposition zone. I felt something heavy attach itself to the back of my jersey, but I couldn’t see what it was. In my head I heard someone yell and then the puck went into the net and the crowd went insane with frenzied cheering. Everyone rushed over to me like I was a hero and then I heard my father say, clearly above the roar of the crowd, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.” I felt an overwhelming sense of dread and then I woke up.