(i) was
“Part of the show, hey? We all get a penalty shot
to try to close the gap? But you know how nervous you’d be,
going one-on-one against the greatest ever.”
“Oh, Gerald. Well, he’d be the man to put one in.”
“My son, I won’t forget it. Falling down he whacks a bullet
right at Sawchuk’s head. He had to be quick.”
“What went on in Gerald’s head? Well, who might help you
there I couldn’t say. What went through mine was everyone I knew
in the world was there, including a girl from Curling
I was moony over then.”
“Just a shot, you know, nothing special. I’d say
Sawchuk let it in on purpose.”
“That was my own bad luck I get the middle shift
at the mill that week so never saw either game, but Gerald
had a good job with the railroad and one of the Bruins didn’t make
the train, I wouldn’t like to say his name, but Gerald arranged
a place that night on a pulp and paper train,
something not just anyone could do.”
“Oh yes, he had his well-known temper.
Once in Detroit he whipped a skate at some reporter’s head,
another time he goes right up over the screen to get at some fan.
Imagine seeing that in all his glory coming at you.”
“A fluke is what I’d have to say. Why Terry took such exception,
I wouldn’t know who you could find to tell you now.”
“Went after him? I don’t remember that.
But Gerald, he wasn’t nothing then but string and bones.”
“So you’re the man who scored on Terry Sawchuk.”
I find him in Lewisporte, living in the cottages.
I take a table in the small cafe where I can see the water.
“Oh he’ll talk to you about hockey,” the waitress brings
me bad coffee, “just give him half an opening.”
Waiting, I glance at some notes I’d made that morning
on the pier, things I wanted to know. I thought of how warm
it was out on the water where I’d talked with a man and his son
on their boat about the way the fish were.
Larger than I’d expected, he arrives in a pickup,
red or maybe it was blue, looking a little at bay. He settles
his eyes on me, the only customer. I hadn’t planned to say what
I said as he stood in the door. I see his eyes well up.
“Greatest moment of my life,” he says.
None of this is on the tape, which begins with a clatter
of spoons and the waitress on the phone. “Half the town
was there, my son. Don’t be getting on about it
being my imagination.” She lays the telephone down
to fill our cups, eyeing Gerald as he checks the sugar top
for local jokers. She looks at me as if we were hopeless,
cut from the same cloth as whoever was waiting
to finish defending himself. She sighs and goes back
to her cigarette and the phone.
He pulls his coffee closer and begins. Yes the train.
And yes the game. Staring down into the cup he holds
in both hands. “Maybe he did come after me,
but he was only kidding. Yes, he did say
something. Just like it was yesterday.”
Long silence, looking out over the water,
then he turns to me. “He said, ‘How come a guy with the shot
you got isn’t up with us in the NHL?’”