(i)
Gerry Regan tells this little story
on himself: What with Toppazzini’s ear infection,
Laycoe’s father getting sick, and wives on the phone
to him wanting the husbands home, the ranks were getting thin.
He’d had to dress in Grand Falls himself just to have another
body on the bench. He’d taken a lap or two to try
and get the cobwebs out and floated one in toward Terry
when he saw the boys had turned away to try to hide their grins—
Mohns had heard the Grand Falls players by their bench,
“B’ys, I tell ya we can give these guys a game.
Look at number ten—’e can barely
stand up on ’is skates.”
(ii)
Toppazzini had been left behind in Corner Brook to heal. The word
was he was living like a king, women coming to visit him up in the
hospital during the day, bringing jam jams and pie and giving his neck
and shoulders a bit of a rub, then the men coming after their shift at
the mill, sitting around his bed telling stories. There was one—he
couldn’t remember it all, but wouldn’t forget the line it ended with,
“Who da Christ is heavin’ dem goddam rocks on me roof?”
Even Terry seemed to loosen up a little. “That night in Bay Roberts,”
says Regan, “I can see him under that umbrella in the rain. We talked
a lot together on that trip, both of us being separate in a sense. He
was intense—that’s what I remember most. And moody, sure, and
contradictory. You try to work him out like one of those crossword
puzzles he was always at. You get stumped and go on to another clue,
looking for the one word to unlock it all. In hindsight, I suppose
alcohol and women played their part. The spoils of war and all.” He
sits a moment, quiet, then says, “He talked about his wife and kids a
lot.” His hand open out philosophically. “We’re all a bit of a mystery,
don’t you think?”
He reaches for some cake his wife brought in with tea. “I remember
late one night on the train, he slips in beside me seeing I’m not asleep
and says he’s been thinking he should be getting a little more than
everyone else since it was mainly him who drew the crowds. Also he
was taking too many shots.” Regan looks around his Bedford living
room, and out the window at the sailboats in the sun. He points out
a novice race in the chaos of boats on the Basin. Too subtle to figure
out, a gentleman’s game, all the protocol of getting the boats around
the buoys without a collision and total confusion.
“How could I argue? I gave him an extra five dollars a game.” He
looks at me quickly. “That’s what he asked for. The rest were sound
asleep at the time, so nobody knew.” Then he adds after a moment,
“I guess when you think of it, nobody knows it still.” And seems
amused at keeping such a secret all these years.