Cold Day In Paradise, A

The blue team was good. They were big. They were fast. They knew how to play hockey. From the moment the puck was dropped to the ice, they controlled the game. They moved the puck back and forth between them like a pinball, across the blue line, into the corner, back to the point. Once they were in the zone they settled down, took their time with it, waited for the best opportunity. They were like five sharks circling their prey. When the shot came it was nothing more than a dark blur. The center moved across the center of the goal mouth, untouched, taking the puck and with one smooth motion turning it home with a sudden flick of the wrist. It hit the back of the net before the goalie even knew it was coming. Right between his legs. Or as they say on television, right through the five hole.

It was going to be a long night for the goalie on the red team. Which I wouldn’t have minded so much if that goalie hadn’t been a certain 48-year-old idiot who let himself get talked into it.

“It’s a thirty and over league,” Vinnie had said. “Every Thursday night. No checking, no slapshots. They call it ‘slow puck.’ You know, like ‘slow pitch’ softball? ‘Slow puck’ hockey, you get it?”

“I get it,” I said.

“It’s a lot of fun, Alex. You’ll love it.” Vinnie was my Indian friend. Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibway, a member of the Bay Mills tribe, with a little bit of French Canadian in him, a little bit of Italian, a little bit of God knows what else, like most of the Indians around here. You couldn’t see much Indian blood in him, just a little in the face, around the eyes and cheekbones. He didn’t have that Indian air about him, that slow and careful way of speaking. He looked you right in the eye when he spoke to you, unlike most of his tribe members who still think it’s rude to do that.

Vinnie was a walking contradiction. He was an Ojibway and proud of it. But he didn’t live on the reservation anymore. He didn’t insist that you call him a Native American. He never drank. Not one drop, ever. He could put on a suit and pass for a downstate businessman. Or he could track a deer through the woods like he knew the inside of that animal’s mind.

He had found me at the Glasgow Inn, sitting by the fireplace. I should have known something was up when he bought me a beer.

“I don’t think so, Vinnie. I haven’t been on skates in thirty years.”

“How much you gotta skate?” he said. “You’ll be in goal. C’mon, Alex, we really need ya.”

“What happened to your regular goalie?”

“Ah, he has to give it a rest for a couple weeks,” Vinnie said. “He sort of took one in the neck.”

“I thought you said it was slow puck!”

“It was a fluke thing, Alex. It caught him right under the mask.”

“Forget it, Vinnie. I’m not playing goalie.”

“You were a catcher, right?” he said. “In double-A?”

“I played one year in triple-A,” I said. “But so what?”

“It’s the same thing. You wear pads. You wear a mask. You just catch a puck instead of a baseball.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Alex, the Red Sky Raiders need you. You can’t let us down.”

I almost spit out my beer. “Red Sky Raiders? Are you kidding me?”

“It’s a great name,” he said.

“Sounds like a kamikaze squadron.”

Red Sky was Vinnie’s Ojibway nickname. During hunting season, he did a lot of guide work, taking downstaters into the woods. He liked to use his nickname then, playing up the Indian thing. After all, he once told me, who are you going to hire to be your guide, a guy named Red Sky or a guy named Vinnie?

“Alex, Alex.” He shook his head and looked into the fire.

Here it comes, I thought.

“It’s just a fun little hockey league. Something to look forward to on a Thursday night. You know, instead of sitting around looking at the snow and going fucking insane.”

“I thought you Indians were at peace with the seasons.”

He gave me a look. “I got eight guys on my team. They’re going to be very disappointed. We’ll have to forfeit the game. All because a former professional athlete is afraid to put on some pads and play goal for us. You gonna just sit here on your butt all winter? Don’t you ever get the urge to do anything, Alex? To actually use your body again?”

“You’re breaking my heart, Vinnie. You really are.”

“You can use Bradley’s stuff. It’s all new. Mask, blocker, glove, skates. What size do you wear?”

“Eleven,” I said.

“Perfect.”

I didn’t have much chance after that. Vinnie had been there when I needed him, taking care of the cabins while I was out making a fool of myself pretending to be a private investigator. So I certainly owed him one. And he was right, I was tired of sitting around all winter. How bad could it be, right? Put on the pads and the mask, play some goal. It might even be fun.

It was fun all right. The referee took the puck out of my goal and skated it back to center ice for another face off. I barely had time to take a drink of water from my bottle when they were back in my zone again, moving the puck back and forth, looking for another shot. The blue center was skating around in front of my goal like he owned it. I had to keep peeking around him to follow the puck.

“Get this guy out of here,” I said to anyone who would hear me. “Don’t let him just stand here.”

A long shot came from the blue line. I knocked the puck down, but before I could dive on it, the blue center knocked it into the net. Three minutes into the game, and I had given up two goals. The center did a little dance, waved his stick in the air, his teammates jumping all over him like they just won the Stanley Cup.

Vinnie skated by. “Hang in there, Alex,” he said. “We’ll try to give you a little more help.”

I grabbed the front of his red jersey. “Vinnie, for God’s sake, will you hit that guy or something? He’s camped out right in front of me.”

“There’s no checking, remember? Alex, we’re just playing for fun here.”

“I’m not having any fun,” I said. “You don’t have to take his head off, just … . give him a little bump.”

The blue center was skating around in wide circles now, bobbing his head. He was chanting to himself, something like “Oh yeah baby oh yeah oh yeah oh baby oh yeah.”

I knew the type. It doesn’t matter what sport you play, you always run into guys like this. In baseball, it was usually a first baseman or an outfielder. They came up to the plate with that swagger in their step. I’d ask them how they’re doing as they’re digging in, just because that’s what you do in baseball, but they’d ignore me. First pitch is a strike, they look back at the umpire with that look. How dare you call a strike on me. I’d throw the ball back to the pitcher and then give him the sign for a high hard one. Guys like that need the fear of God put in them every once in a while, something to remind them that they’re human just like the rest of us. If not a bolt of lightning then at least a good 90-mile-per-hour fastball under their chin.

It was reassuring to see that hockey players had to deal with these guys, too. Vinnie smiled at me, took off a glove and adjusted his helmet strap. “Maybe just one little bump,” he said.

I knew they played three ten-minute periods in this league, a concession to age and to the fact that most teams only had nine or ten players. So I only had 27 more minutes to go. I slapped my stick on the ice. Go Red Sky Raiders.

Vinnie’s men finally woke up and started playing some hockey. While the puck was in the opposite zone, I stood all alone in front of my goal, looking around at the Big Bear Arena. It was brand new, built by the Sault tribe with money from the casino. There was a second rink on the other side, locker rooms in the middle, a restaurant on the upper deck. The stands were mostly empty, just some women watching us. None of them looked like they were on our side. I pulled the mask away from my face, wiped away the sweat. The catcher’s gear I wore a million years ago, the chest protector and the shin pads, that was nothing compared to these goalie pads. It felt like I had a mattress tied to each leg.

The game started to get a little “chippy,” as the hockey announcers like to say. The elbows were coming up in the corners, the sticks were hitting other sticks, maybe even a leg or two. There was only one referee, a little old guy skating around with a whistle in his hand, never daring to blow it. He was probably retired from a civil service job, never got in anybody’s way his whole life and wasn’t going to start now.

I finally stopped a couple shots. It wasn’t like catching a baseball at all, I realized. A pitch in the dirt, you become a human wall. The glove goes down between your legs. You don’t even try to catch it. You let it bounce off you, you throw the mask off, and then you pick it up. A hockey goalie can be more aggressive, move out of the net, cut off the angle.

“Att’sa way, Alex,” Vinnie said. He was breathing hard. He bounced his stick off my pads. “Now you’re getting it.”

Towards the end of the first period, there was a loose puck in front of the net. I dove on it. The blue center came at me hard, stopping right in front of me. He cut his skates into the ice, sending a full spray right into my face. The old shower trick. I had seen it on television a thousand times, now I got to experience it in person.

As I got up I stuck my stick into the hollow behind his knee. He turned around and cross-checked me. Two hands on his stick and wham, right across my shoulders.

I looked into his eyes. A cold blue. Pupils dilated, as wide as pennies. My God, I thought, this guy is either stone crazy or high. Or both.

The referee skated between us. “Easy does it, boys,” he said. “None of that.”

“Hey ref,” I said. “That metal thing in your hand, when you blow in it, it makes the little pea vibrate and a loud sound comes out. You should try it. And then you can send this clown to the penalty box for two minutes.”

“Let’s just play some hockey, boys,” he said, skating off with the puck.

The center kept looking at me. Those crazy eyes. I took my mask off. “You got a problem?”

He smiled when he saw my face. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were an old man. I’ll try to take it easy on you.”

When the first period was over, we all got to sit on the bench and wipe our faces off for a few minutes. Nobody said anything. We could hear the other team on their bench, laughing, yelling at each other. Just a little too loud, I thought. A little too happy. Then they started making these noises. It sounded like … That stupid chant you hear them do down in Atlanta at the Braves’ games. The Indian war chant.

Vinnie stood up and looked at them over the glass partition. Then he looked at us. Eight faces, all Bay Mills Ojibway. And one old white man. Nobody said a word. They didn’t have to.

Here it comes, I thought. I’ve seen this look before. I’ve never met an Ojibway who wasn’t a gentle person at heart, who didn’t have a fuse about three miles long. But when you finally gave that fuse enough time to burn, watch out. You see it in the casinos every couple months. Some drunken white man makes a scene, starts yelling at the pit boss about how the no-good Indian dealer is cheating him. Doesn’t even realize that the pit boss is a member of the tribe himself. If he pushes it far enough he goes right through a window.

I felt a little looser in the second half, watching my Red Sky Raiders take it to the blue team. Vinnie was right about one thing—it felt good to use my body again. For something other than cutting wood or shoveling snow, anyway. If this was a mistake, it certainly wasn’t a big one. It wouldn’t rank up there with the other major mistakes of my life. Like getting married when I was twenty-three years old, just out of baseball, not sure what I was going to do with my life. Not a good reason to get married.

Or letting myself get talked into becoming a private eye. And everything that happened after that.

Or Sylvia. Letting myself fall in love with her. Yes, I’ll say it. The puck is in the other end. I’m skating back and forth in front of my net, wondering why I’m thinking of these things. But yes, I’ll say it. I loved her. “I’ve been hiding up here,” she told me. “I’ve been hiding from the world. I think you are, too, whether you admit it or not.” And then she left. Just like that. “I hope I’ve touched your life.” The last thing she said to me. What a melodramatic college-girl thing to say. I hope I’ve touched your life.

Yeah, Sylvia. You touched my life. You touched my life the same way a tornado touches a trailer park.

The puck coming this way. The blue center behind it. The sound of his skates in the empty arena. Snick snick snick snick.

Funny how things come into your mind at a time like this. It used to happen in baseball. I’d be settling under a pop fly and I’d think of something else in my life with a sudden clarity like it was the first time I’d ever thought of it.

Like my biggest mistake of all. Rose’s apartment in Detroit. Aluminum foil on the walls. My partner and I frozen with fear, watching the gun in his hand.

Snick snick snick snick.

Sylvia. I am in her bed and she is looking down at me. We have just finished making love in the bed she shares every night with her husband. He is my friend, but I don’t care. She owns me.

The skater is fast. He is the best player I will ever play against. He looks up at me. A peek over his shoulder. The other players are far behind. Time slows down. It’s something every athlete knows, an unspoken understanding between us. It’s just him and me.

I didn’t pull my gun in time. I waited too long. I am shot and my partner is shot and we are both on the ground. There is so much blood. It all comes back to me. Not as urgently as it once did. I don’t dream about it much anymore. I don’t need the pills to make it through the nights. But it still comes back. I am lying on the floor and my partner is next to me.

I come out of the net to cut off the angle. He shoots. No! It’s a fake. He pulls the puck back. I can feel myself falling backwards. He’s going to skate right around me and slip the puck into the open net. Unless I can knock the puck away. My only chance. I jab at it with my stick as I fall.

I hit the puck and my stick goes between his legs. He trips and slides face first into the boards. Then he is up, his gloves thrown to the ice. I take my gloves off, my mask. He throws a punch at me and misses. I grab him by the jersey and we dance the hockey fight dance. You can’t find any leverage to throw a good punch when you’re on skates. You just hold on and try to pull the other guy’s shirt over his head. It’s a funny thing to watch when you’re not one of the guys dancing.

The man’s eyes were wide with bloodlust and whatever the hell chemicals he was flying on. “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“The fuck you’re sorry,” he said. Spit and sweat hitting me in the face. All around us the other players in the same dance, every man picking his own partner according to how much they really felt like fighting. The old referee was skating around us, blowing his whistle. I guess he finally remembered how it works.

“I didn’t mean to trip you,” I said. “Just calm down.”

“Fucking Indians,” he said.

“I’m not an Indian,” I said.

“Yeah, fuck that,” he said. “I know, you’re a Native fucking American.”

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?” he said “Did I say something funny?”

“You always get high when you play hockey?” I said.

“The fuck you talking about.”

“You’re higher than the space shuttle,” I said. “If I were still a cop I’d have to arrest you. Skating while impaired.”

He gave me a good push and skated away. The dance was over. “Fucking Indians,” he said.

We finished the game. Vinnie scored once in that period. Another of his teammates scored in the third period to tie the game at 2-2. I made a couple nice saves to keep us tied.

In the last minute of the game, my new friend the blue center had an open shot at me. He wound up and launched a rocket. No slapshots, my ass. I got a glove on it, knocked it just high enough to hit the crossbar with a loud ringing sound that reverberated through the entire arena.

The game ended. There would be no overtime. The next game was ready to start, as soon as they got us out of there and gave the Zamboni a chance to take a quick run over the ice.

He stared at me, breathing hard.

I look back on that moment now, the two of us looking at each other on the ice. I wonder what I would have done if I had known what would happen in the next few days. I probably would have hit him in the face with my hockey stick. Or broken off the end and jabbed him in the neck. But of course, I had no way of knowing. At that moment, he was just another hotshot asshole hockey player, and I was the old man who just took away his third goal.

“No hat trick today,” I said to him. “Looks like the Cowboys and Indians have to settle for a tie.”

The Antlers was not far away, just over on the east side of Sault Ste. Marie, overlooking the St. Mary’s River. As soon as you walk in the place, you see deer heads and bear heads and stuffed coyotes, birds, just about any animal you can think of. I usually don’t spend much time there, but Vinnie was buying that night so what the hell. It was the least I could do, even if it was American beer.

“Here’s to our new goalie,” he said, raising a glass of Pepsi. We had pushed a couple tables together in the back of the place. His eight teammates were all there, all quietly working on their second beers.

“Stop right there,” I said. “You said this was a one-night gig, remember?”

“Yeah, but you were great, Alex. You gotta keep playing. Do you realize that those guys had a perfect record before tonight? We just tied them!”

If his teammates shared his enthusiasm, they didn’t show it. I looked at each of them, one by one. A couple you’d know were Indians the moment you saw them. The rest were like Vinnie—a lot of mixed blood. Maybe you’d see it in the cheekbones. Or the dark, careful eyes.

They were all drinking. Most if not all would get drunk that night. More than one would get to a state well past drunk. I knew it bothered Vinnie. “I feel guilty sometimes,” he once told me, “living off the reservation. A lot of my tribe, they think I abandoned them. When I was growing up, I could go down the street and walk in any house I wanted to. Just walk right in. Open the refrigerator, make a sandwich. Go turn the TV on. Everybody was my family. I really miss that, Alex. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much, you know? Too much family. And somebody always in trouble. Somebody in jail. Somebody passed out drunk. I just had to get out of there.”

He lives in Paradise, right down the road from me. He’s my closest neighbor, maybe my closest friend next to Jackie. He deals blackjack at the Bay Mills Casino when he isn’t doing his Red Sky hunting guide thing. “You know the difference between a Indian blackjack dealer and a white blackjack dealer?” he once asked me. “This is going to sound like a stereotype, but it’s true. The white blackjack dealer never gambles. Those guys in Vegas? They see a thousand people playing blackjack all night long, maybe fifty of them walk away big winners, right? You think those dealers are gonna cash their paychecks and play blackjack with it? I’ve got a couple cousins who lose every dime, every week, guaranteed. They cash their check, maybe they buy some food and beer, then they go right to the casino and lose the rest of it. Every fucking week, Alex. You know what they tell me? You want to hear what they say? They tell me that there’s no word in Ojibway for “savings.” You know, as in life-savings. A nest egg. The only word that comes close is this negative word, you know, like hoarding. Keeping something to yourself. Which they wouldn’t have even known if they hadn’t taken a course in Ojibway at the Community College. But now that’s supposed to convince me it’s okay to always be broke. It’s like they’re saying that they’re real Ojibway and I’m not. I’m just tired of it.”

Vinnie sat at the table, staring at a moose head on the wall. Nobody said anything. Just a quiet frozen winter night at the Antlers.

Until the blue team showed up.

They busted into the place with a lot of noise and a gust of arctic air that rattled the glasses on our table. “Goddamn,” one of them said, “will ya look at this place?”

They pushed a few tables together at the other end of the room. There were nine men and nine women. Most of them had leather bomber jackets on. Even with the fur collars, they couldn’t be warm enough.

My new buddy the center went up to the bar, told the man to start the pitchers coming. He had one of those hockey haircuts, cut close on the sides and long in the back.

“So who the hell is that guy?” I finally said.

“Who, the center?”

“Yeah, Mister Personality.”

“That’s Lonnie Bruckman. Some piece of work, eh?”

“He always play high?”

Vinnie laughed. “You noticed, huh?”

“Hard not to.”

“Guy can skate, though, can’t he? I think he played for one of the farm teams somewhere. Most of those guys on his team are ringers. Old teammates from Canada. He brings in a new guy every week.”

Bruckman took a couple pitchers back to the tables. When he came back for more, he spotted us. Our lucky night.

“Hey, it’s the Indians!” he said. As he came and stood over us, I got a good look at him without the hockey gear on. Whatever he was on, he had just taken another dip, probably in the car on the way over here. Coke or speed, maybe both. “Nice game, boys,” he said. “Can I bring a couple pitchers over?”

Nobody said anything.

He looked at Vinnie’s glass. “What ya got there, LeBlanc? Rum and coke? Lemme buy you one.”

“It’s just Pepsi,” Vinnie said.

“You’re kidding me,” Bruckman said. “An Indian that doesn’t drink?”

He laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in two weeks.

“We’re all set here,” Vinnie said. “Thanks just the same.”

“Hey old man,” he said to me, “that was a nice save you made on me. You took away my hat trick, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“I’ll get you next time.”

“Won’t be a next time,” I said. “I was just filling in tonight.”

“You gotta play again,” he said. “You’re good. Believe me, I know. I played in the Juniors, on the Soo Canada team for a couple years, same team Gretzky played on before he went up. I would’a gone up myself if I wasn’t an American.”

Here it comes, I thought. There’s always an excuse. All the guys I played ball with, and most of them never went to the major leagues, of course. Maybe one in a hundred guys who starts out in the rookie leagues ever makes it. The other ninety-nine, they all have a story. Coach never gave me a chance. Hurt my knee. Didn’t get enough at-bats. It’s never just, “I just wasn’t quite good enough.”

This American thing, though, that was a new one, because of course you’re only going to hear that one from a hockey player. I should have let it go. Just nodded at the guy, smiled, let him stand there making a jackass of himself, laughed at him later. But I couldn’t help it.

“That’s a shame,” I said. “They should really let Americans play in the NHL. It’s just not fair. Ain’t that right, Vinnie?”

“It’s gotta be a conspiracy,” Vinnie said.

“How many Americans are there?” I said. “I bet we could count them on one hand. Let’s see … John Le-Clair, Brian Leetch, Chris Chelios …”

“Doug Weight,” Vinnie said. “Mike Modano, Tony Amonte.”

“Keith Tkachuk,” I said. “Pat LaFontaine, Adam Deadmarsh.”

“Jeremy Roenick, Gary Suter.”

“Shawn McEachern, Joel Otto.”

“Bryan Berard, is he American?”

“I believe so.”

“Derian Hatcher, Kevin Hatcher. Are they brothers?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But they’re both American.”

“Mike Richter in goal,” Vinnie said.

“And John Vanbiesbrouck.”

“All right already,” Bruckman said. “You guys are real comedians. I didn’t know Indians could be so funny.

“We forgot Brett Hull!” Vinnie said.

Bruckman grabbed Vinnie’s shoulder. “I said all right already.” His smile was gone.

“Get your hand off me,” Vinnie said.

“You’re making fun of me and I don’t fucking appreciate it,” he said.

“Last guy who made fun of me lost most of his teeth.”

The whole place got quiet. His teammates were all looking at us, as well as the men at the bar. There were maybe a dozen of them. They had all been watching the Red Wings game on the television. The bartender had a sick look on his face. He probably had a nice streak going. Seven nights in a row without a drunken brawl.

“Bruckman,” I said. I looked him in the eyes. “Walk away.”

He held my eyes for a long moment. He was sizing me up, calculating his chances. I could only hope the chemicals racing around in his brain didn’t make him decide something stupid, because I sure as hell didn’t want to have to fight him without skates and pads on.

“You were lucky,” he finally said. “I should have had the hat trick. You never even saw that puck.”

“Whatever you say, Bruckman. Just walk away.”

“Look at you guys,” he said. “You Indians are so pathetic. I don’t know why they ever let you have those casinos.”

The bartender showed up with a baseball bat. “You guys gonna knock this shit off or am I going to call the police?”

“Don’t bother,” Bruckman said. “We’re leaving. Too many drunken Indians in this place.”

He gave me one last look before he went back to his table. I didn’t feel like telling him I was really a white man just like him.

When they had all put their leather jackets back on, knocked over a few chairs, muttered a few more obscenities, and then left without paying for their beer, the place got quiet again. Vinnie just sat there looking at the door. His friends all sat there looking at the table or at the floor. I tried to think of something to say to break the spell, but nothing came to me.

“You know what bothers me the most?” Vinnie finally said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Those women that were with them? One of them, I think I recognize her. I think she’s somebody I grew up with. On the reservation.”