Or Wilf Cude. When the name comes up
what you think of is a kind of joke: what happened the moment
he knew he’d had it with no sleep and those lunatics
waving their sticks in his face.
Pencilled in to start that night, he shakes
the ketchup bottle over his pre-game steak, pounds it
hard with the heel of his hand, miles away his mind,
what with who he had to watch that night, the war
and general state of things, the crowds falling off and teams
collapsing and all the crackpot plans to save the game.
And who’s the one who gets it in the end?
The goalies. Like Charles Adams and all his firepower
in Boston insisting the League bring in an ‘icing’ rule.
And Art Ross wanting a puck with edges bevelled
to make it swerve and dip on its way to the net.
“Which is guaranteed to pack them in.
Defence is boring, Americans love scoring.
Look at basketball,” he says.
“Be careful,” says Beulah Cude, a hair
too late, and out it comes, half the bottle all over his plate.
That’s when he cracks. Seems to be how it happens, something
that dumb, pushing them over the edge.
Half into his animal crouch, he gapes
at the steak where it sticks to the wall, then slowly,
dramatically, slides to the floor. Like some poor bugger
drilled by a firing squad. Any last words and … oh sorry too late.
My God. There had to be a better way to make a life, maybe
he would have that talk with his father-in-law his wife
had once and tentatively proposed.
Succinct and of his age, his epitaph to the press: “Boys,
I had to get out before they came for me
with the butterfly net.”