I GOT BACK TO OTTAWA in the early summer of one-nine one-seven. I was thought of as something of a hero, and treated accordingly, although there was also a joke making the rounds that I was lucky to have been shot in the head or else I might have been hurt. Clay was away, attending military college in Kingston, so I didn’t see anything of him. Clay Clinton, by the way, turned eighteen a month or two before the Great War ended. He was made a noncommissioned officer, and he spent a few weeks bossing people around at a training camp in the prairies, safest spot on the globe. How he parlayed that into an illustrious service career is a bafflement to me. Manfred Armstrong Ozikean, I should tell you, eventually got turfed out of the forces on some charge of drunk and disorderly (and that’s going some when the army thinks you drink too much) but he still had a shoebox full of decorations tucked under his arm when he returned. Manny never said much about the decorations, or about the war. Then again, he was quiet on most subjects.
Sometime in August, Pat Boyle came to visit me at home. He was the coach of the Ottawa Patriots of the newly formed National Hockey League. I was reading, at least looking at, a book, staring at a color glossy of St. George with his foot on the dragon’s head. The dragon’s tongue was sticking out and blood was everywhere. The lad George held his sword in the air and was shouting to the world that he’d offed the effing lizard. The storybook had belonged to my brother Lloyd—he owned a number of them—and we just the day before received word that Lloyd wasn’t coming home.
Pat was a handsome young man. Most people remember him when his nose had blossomed like a gray ghost squash and his teeth had turned black. Mind you, it was at age sixty-eight that Pat got arrested for child molestation, the sort of thing that tends to stick in people’s minds more than coaching even such a legendary squad as the Ottawa Paddies. I don’t know if Pat did what some claimed he did, but it hardly mattered, given how he looked, like Death waiting for a bus. He got shipped to Penetang and there he died. But I’m remembering him in his thirties, when he was a good-looking young mick.
So the old mother lets Boyle into the living room and he says, “What are you doing for the next seven months, Little Leary?”
I say, “Playing hockey for the Patriots, if they’ll have me.”
Patty says, “They’ll have you right enough, Little Leary. And they’ll pay you nine hundred and fifty dollars.”
I jumped up from my chair and started pumping Pat Boyle’s hand. I said, “I just wanted to put the lid on that offer before you changed your mind.”
If I had my life to live over again (no thankee very much) I suppose I’d do pretty much the same, except for I would cancel the three weeks I spent at my rookie training camp.
I walked into the dressing room, strutting and puffed up like a prize gamecock. Most of the Patriots were older men (the younger ones either still serving in the Great War or dead), and I imagined they’d never seen the likes of me. I had my miner’s cap tilted at a jaunty angle. My ring was tossing sunshine like a wet dog tosses water. The dragon-head walking stick was bouncing around as if there was a marching band in back of me. “The name is Leary,” says I, tossing my gear into a locker. “Little Leary.”
They didn’t say nothing.
They grabbed me, stripped me naked, and shaved off my pubics.
The other rookie showed up two days late, bleary-eyed and unshaven. He stumbled into the dressing room, clinging to one of the walls. With effort he managed to pull his mouth together in a smile. “Hello, Patriots!” he sang out, and that made him laugh. The laugh made him stumble backwards. “Hello, Patriots,” he repeated, almost a whisper. “Did you see what we did, Patriots? Can you believe what we did?” He struggled for purchase, getting a firmer grip on the wall. “My name is—” He hiccupped, a huge one that shook his throat. “My name is—” He looked up, bewildered almost, as if he’d forgotten.
“Manfred,” I supplied.
Manny saw me and grinned. “Hey, Percy,” he whispered, “you never told me you were a Patriot.”
The goaler, North Innes, whipped out the straight razor. He grinned like a maniac, mostly because that’s what the man was. The other Patriots stood up and advanced on Manfred Ozikean. I don’t know what they could have been thinking. Timmy Finn tried to grab Manny’s arm and he got thrown clear across the room. Three fellows came all at once. Manny started to bellow. I heard the crack of a bone-break, and Sully Fotheringham, a defenseman, started whimpering. The whole of the team set on Manfred Ozikean. By the time Pat Boyle broke up the fight, three men were injured for the season. Manfred was asleep, dead drunk.
Well, sir, that should have been the end of Manny’s hockey-playing career, except for the fact that he demolished the lineup so thoroughly that Coach Boyle had no choice but to have a look at him.
The next day Manny showed up sober and quiet. He stepped onto the ice, skated the length of it, and fired a practice shot past North Innes. That’s about all it took for Manfred to make the team.
For me, it was a different tale. They kept knocking me down. I kept getting up. My bony little arse was three different kinds of black. But I’d remember all that the monks had taught me—the Bulldog, the Whirlygig, the Inner-Eye Fling, and damned if I didn’t do all right. They couldn’t keep ahold of me, they couldn’t stop my shots. And what I couldn’t accomplish through the brothers’ teachings I accomplished through pure Irish blockheadedness. Yes, ma’am, I done all right.
One time a reporter came from the Ottawa Gazetteer to ask about the new prospects. Pat Boyle says of Manfred, “The lad is a wizard.” Of course, that play The Wizard of Oz was big news back then, and that’s what started people calling Manfred just Oz, and that’s how come today he’s known mostly as Manny Oz, the Wizard.
Of Percival Leary, Boyle said, “A leprechaun.”
Fully three-quarters of the boys were Irishmen. Not counting me and Pat Boyle, there was maybe eight all totaled, Finn, Denneny, O’Casey, and O’Sullivan, and some others whose names I could remember if there was any great reason to. We were as green as grass is what I’m saying, so much so that we were nicknamed the Paddies and our jerseys bore a big shamrock for the team emblem.
Many of that Ottawa Patriots team were pretty famous men. North Innes, for example, who was as good a goaler as there ever was, except for when I played with him he was fat, pushing thirty-five years of age. North liked to have a laugh, but he never laughed at anything that I thought was humorous. Shaving off people’s pubics was one of his favorite activities. He also liked to cut your clothes into ribbons while you were showering, or dump itching powder into your uniform just before a game. North Innes died a young man, eaten up by cancer.
I made it through the training camp all in one piece, and then the regular season started. I rode the pines for seventeen games. It made me sick. I mean it. Sometimes I’d sit there wanting to throw up all over my skates. Lucky thing for me I never did eat too much, or that’s likely what would have happened. Now, why Pat Boyle was sitting me out is still a mystery, because it’s not like the Ottawa Patriots were tearing up the league. After seventeen games, our record was 4-11-2, which is piss poor, as you can see. And we’re talking a forty-game season here! Manfred was the only bright spot, averaging a goal a game. But as quick as Manny could score them, our defense would open up and North Innes could only do so much.
Now, game eighteen was in Montreal, against the Maroons. I don’t have to tell you who was on that team. Sprague Cleghorn, that’s who. Sometimes I still have nightmares about Cleghorn. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the man, but if there ever was a black-hearted shark-minded bastard, Sprague was it. I mean, his brother Odie would as soon cut off your balls as say hello, and we used to call him “the nice one.”
In Montreal that night, Sprague is mowing down the lineup. He’s just standing there chopping at us like we’re so much firewood. Well, sometime in the second period, Sprague takes out Dan O’Sullivan with a two-hander to the kneecaps. Say good night, sister! Boyle starts eyeballing the bench. Then he says, “Leary.”
This is peachy. I’m a center or a rover, but Boyle’s putting me on the defense. Still, I’m not about to bellyache about it. I hop over the boards.
About a minute after play starts, Sprague gets the puck and starts down the ice. Now, the man could skate, but none too sprightly, and it didn’t take me but a second or two before I’m right behind him. “Sprague!” says I, and naturally enough, he takes me for one of his teammates and drops the puck. I scoop it, tell him, “Thank you kindly, Spray-goo!” and I’m gone. Now was the time for everything I’d learnt from the Brothers of St. Alban the Martyr. I bulldogged, I hardstepped, I inner-eyed all the way. I blew that puck by the goaler! That was the best feeling I ever had in my life. Some of the Patriots skated over to congratulate me on my first NHLer. Then I heard a voice from behind me. “Hey, Percy!” I turn around, expecting a handshake, and the last thing I saw was Cleghorn’s fist sailing into my face.