To Ownie, the new rink felt like an airtight shipping container on the waterfront. When a puck hit the boards, it made a hollow pop, echoed by row after row of empty bleachers. There was a sense of timelessness in the windowless fabricated enclosure; it could have been noon or three in the morning, Ecum Secum or Istanbul.
Ownie glanced at the sheet he’d been given by the team.
Weight |
213 |
210 |
% fat |
13.8 |
11 |
VO2 Max |
53.7 |
+55 |
Training HR (low) |
138-143 |
140-145 |
(high) |
156-161 |
160-165 |
Sprint Test (Peak) |
12.4 |
+13 |
Mean |
57.3 |
+60 |
Bench Press |
200 |
245 |
Chin-Ups |
4 |
25 |
Dips |
10 |
+25 |
Sit-Ups |
N/A |
+60 |
It didn’t matter, he decided, stuffing the printed sheet into his pocket. They only cared about one thing. “Okay, Jonathon,” Ownie shouted, knowing exactly what that was. “Come here.”
Jonathon glided over the blue line, drawn by an invisible magnet under the ice, a towering automaton who stood six-four on his Bauer Supreme stainless steel blades, a Van Halen disciple with a partial plate. The rink was empty; he and Ownie had the ice to themselves.
“Let’s get down to business,” Ownie ordered.
Jonathon nodded inside a plastic shield. Through the shield, Ownie could see it: a scar that masqueraded as a harelip until you got up close and saw the irreversible damage: twenty-four stitches, a fractured skull, and a million-dollar contract hanging by a suture.
“When we finish here, you’re gonna feel like George Foreman,” Ownie announced. Jonathon smiled a mechanical smile that opened from the middle like an elevator door, showed a flash of teeth, then shut, a smile devoid of warmth or humour. “Only not so old.”
When Ownie first saw Jonathon a couple of years ago, the boy walked with a swagger. You almost expected him to hoist up his pants and spit. He had Elvis sideburns, a scowl, and a mean grimace on his boyish face. Ownie knew what that was for: it was a cover, a way to pretend that everything wasn’t perfect, that he wasn’t really blessed, so that ordinary mortals wouldn’t realize what an awesome life he had and try to take it from him. Now the swagger and scowl were gone. Jonathon’s mouth was frozen in shock, like a skier looking into the face of an avalanche.
Ownie was holding up a pad, which Jonathon was punching with his right hand, the left hand extended as though he was holding onto an opponent’s sweater in a fight. “You wanna get in three or four quick, straight punches, and then an upper cut, all while keeping your balance,” Ownie explained. “You can’t get knocked off your feet. If you go down, you lose.”
Still boyish, Jonathon’s shoulders were like coat hangers, metal edges that time would pad. From the corner of his eye, Ownie saw a jogger wired to a Walkman chugging around the top of the rink. The jogger veered around something that was low and out of sight, probably, Ownie concluded, a kid salvaging errant pucks.
“That’s beautiful. Now work on your balance, stay centred,” Ownie yelled. “Keep your legs spread, your ass down. You’ll have it made.”
Ownie didn’t know if Jonathon would make it. He’d give him his best shot: teach him how to fight, build up his confidence, and arm him for the next round of goons. That’s all he could do. On his next lap, the jogger veered again, Ownie noticed.
“Ray Robinson had phenomenal balance; he was smooth and graceful with everything he did,” Ownie explained. “He was a dancer in Paris for a while.”
Jonathon had never been to Paris; he was a first-round draft pick: a power forward in the Ontario Hockey League who scored twenty-one goals and forty-three points in his rookie NHL season before he was taken out by a goon, a no-talent thug who fought his way up from East Coast league hockey, a scalp-collector who earned his bounty by knocking off kids.
“It’s all balance and rhythm.”
Ownie checked the Pepsi clock with the puck-shaped puncture. When he did, he saw something flash behind row M, near the jogger’s detour.
He’d been working with Jonathon for a week, a recurring sideline that started when the AHL came to town. The team called him a trainer and kept his real role secret, which was fine with him but gave Butch something to bitch about. “What are you, a leper?” demanded Butch, who tried to take the good out of everything. Ownie got his satisfaction not from recognition, but from resurrecting guys like Bryan McSweeney, another casualty who’d come to him shell-shocked. For an entire month after he’d arrived, McSweeney picked the skin off every finger on his hands, trying to get to the root of his fears. They worked on strength and fighting until, convinced he was invincible, McSweeney skated circles around the dressing room, shredding the rubber mat, and yelling, “He’s mine, man, he’s mine.”
The jogger veered again.
Last week, Ownie had seen McSweeney on TV scoring two goals. He’d rather think about that, he decided, than Butch’s bullshit.
Uuup. Ownie saw a flash of something above the seats. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Dooown. It was Turmoil. What the hell was he doing here?
Ownie packed his gear and headed outside the rink, confused. He banged the side window of a Delta 88, a beater with a sunshade stuck in the windshield, despite the fact that it was snowing. “Take that thing down, will you!” Ownie pointed to the sunshade, which was decorated with toothy squirrels lounging on lawn chairs and sipping margaritas. “Are you nuts? People will think you’re a dope dealer or somethin’.”
From the driver’s seat, Turmoil grabbed the squirrels and stuffed them into the backseat, rattling the rigid cardboard, jamming it past the headrest as though he was acting under protest. Ownie climbed inside, where the two men sat in sullen silence. Heavy flakes were falling, the kind that filled the Emergency Room with frantic wives and chest pains.
“Why you foolin round with them ole hockey players?” Turmoil demanded.
“Pardon me?”
“Them ole hockey players. You shudden have nothin to do with them.”
Ownie stared at the snow, insulted. First of all, he didn’t like anybody telling him what to do. Secondly, he happened to like hockey, which would have been his sport if he had been any good, if he’d had speed, and a pair of hockey boots and skates that fit, shin pads instead of Eaton’s catalogues.
“You should be lookin after me!” Turmoil banged the pile steering wheel for emphasis.
“Yooou?” Ownie stretched the word into disbelief.
“Ahm the one who got a fight comin up in two months.” Turmoil hit the wheel again. “Ahm the one you s’pose to be training.”
“I spend plenty of time with you.” Ownie was impatient. “You get three hours at the gym every single day. What more do you want?” Christ, Ownie muttered to himself, he never had to deal with any of this shit with Tommy. He was family, and nothing ever changed; he was the same person every day of the week.
Turmoil mulled it over, staring ahead and then sideways; he fiddled with the dials on his radio, trying to escape the static and Ownie’s stare. “Ahll drive you home.”
Even Turmoil had legroom in the outsized car he had recently purchased, noted Ownie, who was used to Louie’s Jeep. Through the window, Ownie saw a Cougar in summer tires fishtailing up a hill, stopping, starting, then sliding back with a growl. “Gear down, will ya,” Ownie urged. “It’s slick.”
“Do they make good money?” asked Turmoil as Ownie shifted in his seat, which was covered with acrylamb. “Them ole hockey players?”
“Yeah, not bad, depending on what kind of contract they have, who owns them, that stuff. You take a star like Lindros, a showstopper, he signed for three-point-six million.”
“Three million dollahs!” Turmoil spun his head sideways. “How come you nebber tole me bout this?”
“Why would I tell you?” Ownie asked as the Cougar slid into a lamp pole.
“Ah play hockey.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, mon.”
Ownie pursed his lips for a full twenty seconds. “Hockey?”
“Ye-aaa-sss!” As Turmoil extended the word to three excruciating syllables, Ownie shifted, suddenly feeling trapped. The side windows had been tinted by the snow, and the interior of the car felt as dark as a hearse.
“Well, with your size, they’d make a policeman out of you. You’ve got the horses to do it. You’d make big money.”
“Oh, mon, me a poleesemon.” Turmoil started to laugh, thin, frozen notes cracking in the air. “In the eye-lands, the poleesemon, they shoot you. You dohn do wha they wahn. Bang! In your howse, at the horse races, in the mahket. Oh, mon.”
“Well, you wouldn’t get no gun.”
“You show me how we get one of them contracks.”