When the doorbell rang, I was in my room, staring at my geometry text, a series of triangles that kept shifting beneath my gaze. I went to the window, pulled the curtain aside and looked down on a police cruiser parked at the curb. I made it to the head of the stairs in time to see my mother pass through my field of vision, an open magazine trailing in her hand as she went to answer the door.
“Oh, is something wrong?” She sounded surprised. I could imagine her taking a step backward, her hand rising to her mouth when she saw the officer standing at the door.
“Yes, I’m afraid there is, ma’am. Is the rector here?” A deep voice so low I had to strain to hear it, a voice I recognized at once. I knew she wouldn’t like him calling her ‘ma’am.’ More than once I’d heard her say that the only people who used the term were the ones who think you’re too old and too decrepit to look after yourself.
“No, he isn’t. What is it?” Her voice sharper now, the beginning of alarm.
“It’s about your son — Blake.” Yes, it was definitely Mr. Hammond.
“Oh, my God.” I heard something hit the floor, decided she must’ve dropped her magazine. “Has he been hurt?”
“No, oh no, he’s not been hurt.” There was a pause during which I swear he shuffled his feet on the front landing. “It’s just that, well, I thought it best to let you know in person — he’s down at the station.”
“What’s going on?” There was a sob in her voice.
“It has to do with the death of that native girl. Anna Big Sky. You’ve probably read about it in the papers.”
“Blake wouldn’t be involved — ”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Russell, but it seems he is.” His voice was louder now, more sure of itself. “He came down himself.” It was as if he was laying out the evidence before my mother, but then he seemed to relent, his voice softening. “He claims he wasn’t involved personally, but there’s others say he was. That it was his idea.”
No. It would never be his idea. I started down the stairs.
“You understand,” he continued, “there’s no choice here — we have to keep him in custody.”
My mother was crying by the time I got to her. Mr. Hammond, wearing his uniform, but looking more unsettled than I’d ever seen him — skinny and balding, his cap in his hands — had backed against the door. It was as if he needed the door to hold him upright. When he spoke again, I thought, as I often had before, that deep voice must be someone else’s. It couldn’t be coming from his scrawny frame.
“We knew you’d be worried when Blake . . .” He paused, swallowed, cleared his throat. “He didn’t want to phone, asked if I’d come and break the news. Ashamed, I guess, but he thought you ought to know the circumstances right away.”
I put my arm around my mother. “No,” she said, but she was talking to him, not to me. Her shoulder quivered beneath her blouse.
Mr. Hammond stood in the doorway, looking embarrassed, his cap clasped over his crotch, as if that bit of apparel was all that kept him from being naked. His left hand suddenly abandoned the cap and began to work its way across the door, moving like something independent of the rest of him, until it finally reached the knob. “I’m sorry to have to bring you this kind of news about your son. I . . . I always liked Blake.” His hand was turning the knob. “You can see him any time you want. But what you really ought to do is get yourselves a good lawyer. That’s about the best advice I can give you.” He had the door open now, and was edging toward it. He ducked his head toward my mother. “Sorry about . . . the bad news,” he said. This was weird, but then I thought, sure, it’s because my father isn’t here — he was expecting to talk to my father. He glanced at me, nodded, and backed out of the house, pulling the door shut as he went. Mr. Hammond, I thought, what an awful job he’s got.
My mother’s shoulder was suddenly like iron beneath my hand.
“Get your father,” she said. “He’s over at the church.”
“You going to be okay?”
“Get him now.”
When I went to grab my bike, the cruiser was pulling away from the curb, its brake lights flashing once as it turned the corner.
Blake, I thought, he went down to the station just to tell them he wasn’t involved. What was the good of doing that?
I should have been asleep when they returned from the police station, but I was still fully dressed, lying on my bed, watching the way the shadows on my ceiling moved, slowly at first, then picking up speed, darting across the room whenever a car on the street outside passed in front of our house. Once, when the shadow stopped halfway across the room, I knew they were home. Without turning on the light, I rose from my bed, pulled off my clothes, and got into my pyjamas. Let them think they woke me up.
There was conversation below, nothing I could detect as words, but a low murmur of sounds running together. I didn’t even pause at the head of the stairs. I needed to know. The stairs creaked and clattered beneath my bare feet, the hum of conversation ceasing. They were in the living room, the two of them standing there, the coffee table between them. I remember noticing the globe on the coffee table, slowly spinning as if the whole world was out of control. Someone must’ve swiped it with a hand.
“What happened?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“You should be in bed,” my mother said. She slumped down on the couch, staring not a me, but at the globe, watching it come slowly to a halt. Her eyes were red.
“Barb, he needs to know the situation.” My father sat down beside her, patted her once on the knee.
“He already knows.” She was staring at the globe, talking about me as if I wasn’t standing just across the room.
My father patted her knee again and raised his eyes to me. “Four boys are being held in the death of Anna Big Sky. For questioning.” He paused, his lips opening and closing before he continued. As if he was having trouble finding words. “Your brother’s one of them.” His eyes swung from me to my mother and back again. “The police think . . . Lord, help us, they think the boys murdered her.” He reached for my mother’s hand and took it in his own. “Blake swears he didn’t touch her — he wasn’t even there.”
“You believe him?”
“Of course, I believe him. Why would he lie to us?”
I thought the answer was obvious, but I kept my mouth shut, kept staring at him. My father must have noticed some subtle change in my expression. “Blake went down to the station after school,” he added. “Wanted to tell them what he knew. Those aren’t the actions of a guilty person.”
Unless he’s trying to make himself look good. But I didn’t say it.
My mother pulled her hand free, began to rub her upper arms as if she were cold. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They’re going to charge him — just like the others.”
“That’s a mistake. He went to see them of his own accord. Told them everything.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but only after Crime Stoppers heard and — ”
“Exactly,” she said, and now her tone was harsh. “They already knew.”
“Yes, I guess they did.” My father again.
“You know they did.” For the first time since I had come down the stairs my mother looked at me. “You just had to call the hot line, didn’t you? Before Blake could get there. You,” she paused, still staring at me, scowling now, “turned them in, named them all.”
“Not Blake. I never said his name.”
She rose from the couch, her eyes on me all the time, took a step toward me.
I wondered if she was going to strike me. Her eyes were wide, unfocused. She took another step. Hesitated.
“I can’t deal with this,” she said. “I’m going up to bed.” She turned abruptly and started for the stairs.
“You go ahead,” my father said. “I’m going to sit here awhile and think.” He watched her go, but she gave no indication that she’d heard him speak. When she disappeared into the hall, he glanced at me. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m gonna get a glass of milk.” I walked to the fridge, pulled out the milk, opened the dish washer and retrieved a clean glass. When I finished pouring the milk, I glanced back into the living room. My father was still seated on the couch, leaning slightly forward, his head bent, hands flopped awkwardly beside him. When I set the milk back in the fridge and closed the door, his body gave a little jerk, almost as if he were suddenly aware of someone watching him. He stood up then, reached for the newspaper which was folded on the coffee table, picked it up, and sat back down on the easy chair, shifting as if trying to find a comfortable spot. I took a long swallow of milk while he opened the paper. He held it in front of him, both pages open, but as long as I stood, drinking my milk in the kitchen, he never turned a page, never moved his head. I think his mind was focused somewhere far beyond the paper.
“No, I can’t leave it this way.”
That’s what I think she said. My mother’s words came from the direction of the stairs, were barely audible, but now I heard her footsteps approaching from the hall.
She hurried into the living room where my father was seated in the easy chair, reading the paper, or pretending to read it. He gave no sign that he heard her coming. The floor lamp above him made his bald spot shine over the front page headlines. He didn’t lower his paper until my mother stopped immediately in front of him. When he looked up and saw her there, he must have been troubled by what he saw, for he rose at once, took her firmly by the shoulders, “Barbara,” he said, but her hands flew up, and she was reaching over his arms, one hand after the other, slapping him in the face.
“Sure, Blair made the call,” she said, “but it was your fault. Advice for a friend, you said, but you knew. The whole time, didn’t you? You told him what to do. He had to do what was right.” That was what she said, her words angry at first, then sarcastic, and almost indistinguishable from the sobs that separated them.
My father kept his hands on her shoulders, his head swinging slightly from side to side as each blow ricocheted off his cheekbones, but he never tried to stop her. Though she was weeping now, and gasping for breath, she kept slapping his face. I wondered if I should grab her and pull her away from him, but when I took a step toward her my father shook his head. As he did, my mother struck again and, with his head twisted to one side, she caught him in the nose.
“And now — your son — your own son — he’s innocent — and he’s in jail — ” her weeping as loud as her words “ — for some girl we don’t even know — an Indian.” She stopped hitting him, her eyes suddenly wide with alarm. “Lord,” she said, “oh, Lord!” Then she fell against him, collapsed into his arms, her wails partially smothered against his chest, but continuing, rising and falling, cries like those of an animal trying to tear its leg from a trap. My father rested his head on top of hers and held her a long time with his eyes shut. Held her until her cries were silent shudders, until her body quit shaking. I don’t know how long that took. It might have been five minutes, might have been even more. At first there was a slight trickle of blood from his left nostril, but it stopped running and eventually it looked as if somehow he had spilled chocolate sauce on his upper lip. When my mother was finally quiet, he half-carried, half-walked her to the couch, where he laid her down, pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and tucked it around her. He noticed me then, still standing at the kitchen door.
“Go to bed,” he said. “We need some sleep — all of us.”
When I got upstairs, I stood at the window, staring down at the dark yard, the lilac bushes lost in shadow, one weak patch of light falling from our front window. I wondered what the hell my mother thought. That I was out to get my brother? Was that it? Did she really think I’d put them through all this suffering just to nail him? To frame my own brother? She didn’t know a thing — neither one of them did. They figured he was innocent.
Later, quite some time after I had slid into bed, I heard my door open. Footsteps cautiously approached the bed.
“Blair, you awake?” My father whispering in case by some chance I was asleep already.
I rolled toward the sound. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry you had to be downstairs for that.” His voice was still only a whisper. “You have to understand, your mother was very wrought up. She’s not herself tonight. If she were, you know as well as I do, she would never have said what she said — there at the end.”
“I know that.”
He did something then he hadn’t done in years, leaned over the bed and kissed me lightly on the forehead, his lips like dry parchment on my skin. “Good night, son,” he said, and left the room.
Neither then, nor afterwards did it strike me as odd that what had worried him so much it brought him to my room, what he didn’t want me to misinterpret in any way was her dismissal of Anna as an Indian, and not the blows she’d rained upon his cheeks.
When we circled the coaches after warming up for Saturday’s big game against Diefenbaker High, we all shoved toward the centre of the circle, slapped our right hands together, shouted in unison, “We can win, yes we can, we’re together, every man,” but I don’t think any of us believed it. We all knew that four of our first stringers were sitting downtown in jail. Three of them were irreplaceable. Yeah, and this game was for the league championship; with the southern final next week and the provincial final the week after that, they wouldn’t even consider postponing this one.
I hadn’t felt much like dressing for the game — football didn’t seem important anymore — but then I thought that, since my brother had screwed up, and let his teammates down too, there should be at least one Russell on the team. But it wasn’t letting his teammates down that got to me. I was furious because of what he’d done to Anna — helped to do. Still, I knew he’d never have been involved if it weren’t for that damned Jordan Phelps. That, at least, was what I needed to believe.
Besides, I was going to play. Morris Ackerman had been moved from defence to offence, given the impossible task of replacing Phelps at wide receiver, and I was going to take Morris’s spot in the defensive backfield. For the whole game. That shouldn’t have mattered, of course — playing football was nothing compared to a dead girl — but to tell the truth I was kind of excited to be starting on defence instead of standing on the sidelines like some jerk-off who couldn’t play.
Diefenbaker won the toss and chose to receive. For the first time ever, I was on the field for the kickoff, my legs shaking so hard I was surprised they held me up. Then the ball was in the air and I was running downfield, keeping in my lane, a blocker hitting me, his shoulder hard in my chest, and it was okay — I wasn’t nervous anymore. Except he hit me again, and again. When someone finally brought the runner down at mid-field, I was still trying to shake off the blocker and nowhere near the play.
Diefenbaker had a running game, but they threw the ball often enough that you knew you couldn’t count on a run. My problem was that I had to cover the slotback until I was sure they weren’t going to pass to him, then come up fast and try to stop the runner who was going full speed by then with at least one blocker out in front. I was dodging blockers, slapping at them, shoving them, grabbing their arms, fighting to get through them and lay my hands on the runner. Once I faked to the left, lunged right, and made a blocker miss me, but I was off balance, almost staggering as I went for the runner, and he put his head down and drove me backwards, carrying me half a dozen yards before I got him stopped. I remember Ivan Buchko slapped me on the butt and said, “Way to go, Blair. You’re getting it.”
We finally stopped them on our fourteen yard line, one of our linemen recovering a fumble. Now it was our turn.
Our first play was a run, off-tackle, for a mere three yards. Then Mac Kelsey, our second string quarterback threw a pass, but he hurried it, throwing before the receiver turned around, bouncing if off his shoulder, and we had to kick.
It seemed as if I was back on the field before I caught my breath. Yeah, Blake, I thought, if you weren’t so stupid, you’d be here yourself, and we’d have a quarterback who knew how to complete a pass. And then for some reason I felt crummy, as if I was crazy to be out here playing football in the snow, but no matter how I felt I wasn’t going to quit.
For a while, it almost seemed as if the Diefenbaker team had made a deal with the ref that allowed them extra players on the field. Every time I tried to stop a run, another blocker hammered me. I swear, there were blockers everywhere. In fact, I made two tackles on the far side of the field, but only one on my own side, because when the play went to the far side the blockers were hitting someone else. Of course, by the time I tackled the runner over there he’d gained at least a dozen yards. Football was too much like the rest of life, things not working out the way you want them to.
It was a long afternoon.
And a lopsided score. In the end, a team that in normal circumstances we might have beaten, outscored us 20 to 7. When the final whistle blew, I was battered and breathless — and the happiest I’d been in days. There was something satisfying about being out there all the time, being a part of it all, those seconds of tension before the ball was snapped, then the sudden release, breaking into action, running, shifting direction, muscles straining, hurling my body at someone else. Once, in the fourth quarter, they threw a short pass to the slotback I was covering. He ran right at me, faked to the outside, then cut inside, running parallel to the line of scrimmage, looking for the ball that he knew would be coming at him. But I was right behind him, already seeing it happen. When the ball touched his fingertips, I nailed him from behind, low, my shoulder beneath his butt, my legs driving hard, and he was going over backwards, his shoulders slamming into the ground, bouncing, the ball coming loose, dribbling away. Incomplete.
Oh Blake, I thought, never have you hit a guy like that. And then I felt crummy again.
The locker room was more quiet than usual after the game, players slumped on the benches like sacks of dirty jerseys, nobody saying a thing. Yeah, and it wasn’t just the loss that we were thinking of, with Anna dead and four of our teammates in jail. When Coach Ramsey came in, he stomped through the room, kicked a locker and slammed himself onto the bench without a word. I felt the bench shudder beneath me. Coach Conley was right behind him. He walked a little circle in front of us, his eyes resting an instant on each of us before he spoke.
“Well, guys,” he said, “it was a tough way to end the season. But it was a good season, and I don’t want you to forget that. You won every game but this one, and this afternoon you had a lot going against you.” He paused and looked around the room again, maybe wondering if he should get specific or simply leave it unsaid. “To tell you the truth, I think I’m more proud of you right now than I’ve been all year. You all knew you were up against it today, but you never quit trying. Maybe the score was a little one-sided, but I’ll tell you something: right now, that other team is every bit as tired and bruised as you are. They had a tough game, and they know it. Sure, they had more talent today, but you guys kept going at them all afternoon. You hit them, and you hit them, and then you got up and hit them again. I just want you to know I feel like it’s an honour to be your coach.”
I can’t say that anyone around the room was smiling or looking proud, but at least nobody resembled a sack of laundry anymore.
“Well, it’s been a long afternoon,” said the coach. “Right now, you all look as if you could use a nice hot shower. Go ahead, guys, and don’t worry about your lockers. You can clean them out Monday after school.” He grinned at us, or tried to grin perhaps, then stepped into his office, and I thought how calm he seemed. We’d just lost the biggest game of the year, and already he had it in perspective.
Most of the players looked as if they’d come back to life. They started hauling their jerseys off, getting out of their equipment, bits of conversation starting up here and there throughout the room, some of the guys drifting off to the shower room. Coach Ramsey was still sitting on the bench. When the guy between us headed for the showers, Ramsey slid toward me. “You little shit,” he said, his voice surprisingly quiet. “Don’t think I didn’t see you going at your brother the other day at practice. The day he took off. When I ask him what’s going on, you know what he says? He says, ‘My stupid brother told.’ I didn’t know what he meant. Not then.”
Ramsey wasn’t even looking at me, and I didn’t respond. He rose suddenly and stepped in front of me.
“Right away he’s in jail — him and the other three. And who turned them in? Not too hard to figure out, is it? Wasn’t for you, they’d of been out there where they should of been. Playing.”
Damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was getting to me. I kept gazing straight ahead, my eyes focused on his midriff, where his Lightning jacket was pushed out by the roll of flab that hung over his belt.
“You listening to me? If there was even half a brain in that ugly head of yours, we’d of had all our best players going today. That Diefenbaker bunch wouldn’t of touched us.”
I knew he wanted to shake me, but I never raised my eyes. A gold button wavered in front of me, some of the paint peeled away, a dull brass beneath it. The cloth was pulled tight around the button.
“Half a brain and you would of waited till the game was over before you did something stupid.”
I wondered if he could see me shiver. Any minute now, and he was going to slug me. Yeah, if I didn’t hit him first.
“They all could of played—every one of them. You get what I’m saying, shithead? All you had to do was wait.”
I was leaning back as far as I could without falling off the bench, but he was pressing toward me, his bulky stomach so close the button almost touched my nose.
“I’m talking to you, you little bugger!”
The button shifted, jumped suddenly.
“Whoa! Enough of this.”
Coach Conley had Ramsey by the shoulder, hauled him around, jerked him almost off his feet. Coach Conley was yelling at him, and suddenly I thought, that’s funny, he never yells at us. “Leave it alone. Just leave it alone.”
“Yeah, but — ”
“Shut the hell up. Right now.”
The two of them jaw to jaw in the middle of the room, my teammates backing away from them as if someone had lit a fuse there in the locker room, and they didn’t want to be caught in the blast. All you could hear was breathing, harsh and quick, from the two men, I guess, and maybe from the players watching them. Then Coach Conley stepped away from Ramsey and nodded toward his office. “Maybe, we should go in there and have a chat,” he said to Ramsey, his voice as composed as it was in health class.
When Ramsey wheeled around, he gave me a dirty look and said, “The least you could of done was sit tight. One bloody week — that was all we needed.”
Coach Conley didn’t wait for him to leave the room before he came to me. “Don’t concern yourself about this,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. “Nothing here was your fault. Coach Ramsey likes to win — puts a lot of work into winning, you understand. Sometimes he loses track of other things.” He was looking down at me, his grey eyes mild as a summer shower. He glanced at the other players, paused. I guess he wanted to say something reassuring for all of us.
“Eight years ago,” he said, “we had a terrific running game. Tank Tinsley was our fullback, big and fast too, best runner I ever coached. Kid could run through a locked door. We went to the provincial final that year, up in North Battleford. Would have won it too, but the night before the game Tank decided the curfew didn’t apply to him. Oh no, he had to try the hotel bar and see if maybe in a strange town he could pull some beer. Head coach back then was Coach Grenier. He’d told everybody on the team exactly what I told the bunch of you — that anybody breaking curfew was going to get himself benched. He benched Tinsley and we lost. If Mr. Ramsey had been coaching with us then, I don’t suppose he would’ve approved, but I have to say I admired Coach Grenier. The man had guts.” He looked around the room again. “You do what you have to do — that’s the way it is. The way it has to be.”
His hand was on my shoulder all the time he spoke. When he finished, he gave my shoulder a squeeze and started to follow Ramsey into his office, but he stopped and turned back to us.
“Pulling beer is one thing,” he said, “but it doesn’t get anybody killed. I don’t know what’s going on with those four boys, but the police figure they know something, and you can bet it’s serious. You guys best hit the showers and get on home.” No one moved until he’d disappeared into his office and the door was closed. Then everyone began to talk.
I thought they might want to kill me, but they just wanted to know, was I the one who turned them in.
“Not my brother, no,” I told them, “but the other guys — they’re guilty as hell.”
When Morris Ackerman said Coach Ramsey was right, I should’ve had brains enough to wait, Ivan Buchko told him to shut his face, there were more important things than winning.
That night at supper we had TV dinners, thin slices of turkey, mushy potatoes, mixed vegetables, a gob of cherry pudding, all in separate compartments on what looked like cardboard plates — my mother said she wasn’t much interested in cooking. Nor in the game either when my father brought it up. What she was interested in, what she wanted to talk about was the lawyer. How could they be sure Wanda McKinnel was the right one to hire? Had they perhaps made a mistake not getting a man? No, my father said, she’s got a good reputation. Yes, but in these circumstances —
“Jim Hammond swears by her,” my father said. “Besides, I liked her when I talked to her. She made sense.” He turned to me. “Which reminds me, we need to have a little talk.”
“Now?”
“When supper’s done.”
It was suddenly like eating leather, but I got it all down, and when I was finished, he led me up to the den, waved me toward the chair beside his desk, and closed the door. He sat down and leaned across the desk toward me.
“Listen now: there’s something I need to get absolutely straight. That night you came wanting advice for your friend, you weren’t asking for a friend, were you?”
“I guess not.”
“Your mom and I weren’t jumping to conclusions?”
I shook my head.
He studied me a minute, his eyes not blinking once. “It was Blake you were worried about.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why in the world would you think Blake would be involved in . . . in the death of Anna Big Sky?” He had hesitated, but he finished in a rush. When I didn’t answer, he continued, “Why did you think Blake was guilty?”
I couldn’t tell him what they’d done to Amber — what he’d done. “It wasn’t just him,” I said. “It was Jordan Phelps and — ”
“But you think Blake is guilty.”
“I guess so — yeah.”
He shook his head. “You have any reason for thinking this way?” I could tell he was trying to keep his voice down.
“Sure.”
“Come on. Out with it.”
I had to tell him something, and when I started it came gushing out. “He’s just like the rest of them — doing whatever Jordan Phelps wants. And Jordan hated Anna — because she showed him up for the loser he is. I saw it happen — in the hall at school — and, man, he wanted to get her back. And Blake was mad at her because he took her out once and she didn’t want to go out again, but he said he knew he could get her to go with him, and he must’ve talked it over with Jordan and the other guys, and they got her out there in the country, and that’s where they did it.”
My father shook his head again. “That’s your evidence?”
I nodded.
“You’re wrong, you know? You need to talk to him. Wanda McKinnel says she’s almost positive Blake had nothing to do with that girl’s death. She thinks he was concerned about the other boys, trying to get them to do what was right, turn themselves in.”
“She doesn’t know him like I do.”
“Know him? I don’t think you know a bloody thing.” He was half out of his chair, his voice loud and angry, but he got his hands on the desk and pushed himself back into his chair. I felt sorry for him then. He wanted to make everything right for Blake, and he couldn’t do a thing. “What is it with you? You want your brother in jail?”
“No. Of course not.” But I was the one who’d phoned Crime Stoppers.
“Get out of here, will you? I need to think.”
I had fled to my room, but it was too quiet up there, the walls closing in around me, like it was me in a cell instead of Blake, and I’d come back down stairs. I thought about phoning Evan to come over, but he’d probably want to know what was going on with Blake, and I didn’t want to talk about it. I had the living room all to myself and turned on the television. My mother was in the bedroom, staying out of sight, I guess, that was about all that she was up to, that and crying; my father was still in the den, by now probably working on the next day’s sermon. It had to be done. Must have been hard for him to write a sermon when he was worried about Blake in jail and mad at me to boot. Still, if you didn’t know any better, you might think it wasn’t much different from any other Saturday night. At our house, Saturday nights were never a lively time. Usually, I’d be out somewhere with Evan, but if I was home I’d often hear my father going over his sermon, practising it out loud, working on his emphases and pauses, adding examples that he hoped would get through even to the people in the back pew. He liked to say that the ideas came from the Lord, but it was his job to keep the congregation from drifting off to sleep.
I lay down on the couch, hoping I could concentrate on the hockey game. The Leafs were leading Boston three to two, players slamming one another into the boards, ice chips flying, the glass shaking, and I thought, maybe I can do this, think about the game and nothing else, the puck dumped ahead, everybody chasing it, but my eyes were heavy and I kept sliding off, missing portions of the action. Time and time again a new line would be breaking in on goal, and I hadn’t seen them leave the bench. Then the score was tied, and I had missed the goal. Once the Leaf winger swooped behind the net, blond hair flying below his helmet, the puck on his stick as he cut around a player, one foot striking the back of the goal, catching, and he was off balance, already falling when the Bruin defenceman smashed him against the boards. His head struck the boards, snapped back, and he fell to the ice. Lay there without any sign of motion. Even the announcer was silent for a few seconds. Someone from the bench was bent over him, the trainer, I guess, examining his head. He seemed to be unconscious. When the trainer pulled his helmet off, his hair wasn’t blond anymore, but dark and curly, a gash across his cheekbone, his eyelids beginning to flutter, and when those eyes finally opened, my brother was looking up at me.
I sat up so fast my feet slammed onto the floor.
The trainer was bent over him once more, shielding him from view. Seemed to be whispering in his ear. Then he was moving one hand, the other hand, both his legs, and I was breathing again. Two players got his arms over their shoulders, lifted him. His legs splayed and dragging, they skated him toward the bench, the crowd applauding, and it was the Leaf winger they were clapping for, blond hair falling on his shoulders, not my brother after all.
I grabbed the remote and turned off the game. Sat hunched forward on the couch, staring at the empty screen, trying not to think, but my brother was in jail, and I had helped put him there.
No, that wasn’t right. He was the one who knew Anna would go out with him, who’d driven to the old McAuley place, taken her there — I knew it as sure as if I’d been there myself to see him — and then everything had gone wrong and she was dead. They’d killed her, God, she was gone forever. He must have been crazy, yeah, drunk and crazy, but that was no excuse. He made his own choices.
Sure, I chickened out at the last second, couldn’t say his name, but he was just as guilty as the other guys. The buggers.
Was there any chance that I was wrong? No, the police were holding him — just like the rest of them — the police wouldn’t have it wrong.
I was so damned tired — too tired to think straight. I needed to get some sleep, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to make it up the stairs to bed. I dug my fists into my eyes, tried to rub the sleep away, but my knuckles were wet when I looked down at them.
Some time later, I realized I was lying on the couch again. The light on the end table by the easy chair was still on, the one we always used while watching T.V., but the room seemed darker. Someone had turned the hall light off, yes, and pulled the afghan over me. I checked my watch. Twelve-thirty. I swung my legs onto the floor, the muscles stiff and aching, but I knew I could make it up to bed.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw that the light was off in the den, but passing the door, I felt my heart surge, my breath halt an instant, then come back in a rush. On the other side of the dark room, just visible in the pale light from the window, my father sat at his desk, his head bent, his shoulders slouched forward. He had to be lost in thought, his mind far away and troubled, or he would have heard me on the stairs, maybe even heard me gasp. When I noticed his hands clasped together before him, I knew that he was praying. For what seemed like many minutes, I remained at the door, standing awkwardly, half-turned toward the den, watching him, but he never shifted his position, and at last, when I felt one calf begin to cramp, I tiptoed off to bed.