ONE SIP OF THE DEMON RUM—this is what the old mother used to say—is your first step toward the grave. My mother had a number of picture books that told tales of men and women whose love of liquor brought them first shame and infamy and finally death. My, how Death does love to get its hands on boozers. The last page of one of my mother’s booklets showed a man dressed in rags, sitting in the fires of perdition, the Devil standing over him, chortling. I shudder to think of that picture.
The old mother wasn’t alone in her thinking. During the Great War, prohibition seemed to work pretty good. I hardly even noticed, but there were people who could tell you that the crime rate dropped and worker productivity went up, so on and so forth, and it looked for a while like Ontario might stay dry for eternity. Then something happened, namely, they passed the Volstead Act in the U.S. of A. and America was all of a sudden dry as a bone. Certain people—the young Clay Bors Clinton among them—started a campaign to get the Ontario prohibition laws repealed, which they soon were. This enabled Clay to be about the business of his life, namely, getting filthy rich.
There was nothing illegal in what Clay did—at least, if there was, he never told me about it—and certainly the charge that Clay was a bootlegger is a false one. Jubal St. Amour, now, owner of the Amerks, that man was a bootlegger. Jubal started his career with an empty bathtub, some potatoes, and a lot of copper tubing. All Clay did was to take that money he won gambling on the one-nine one-nine cup series and open up a few taverns close to the American border in Ontario and Quebec. The Yankees would putter up and spend the day boozing. It could be that Clay sold a few bottles under the table, and I suppose it further could be that Clay sold the occasional truckload to some entrepreneurial types, but for the record, all Clay Clinton did was open seven or eight shanty groghouses, and that’s when he started raking in the dough.
In the meantime, Manny and I were playing hockey for the Ottawa Patriots. In the season after we won the cup, we sank to fifth place.
Manfred was all the time on and off the water wagon. One time he even went to a clinic to dry out, but they had some strange notion about “maintenance drinking,” and Manny was on a bender most of the three weeks he spent in there. Manfred went to the Oxford Group. They were church people, and their basic idea was this—you are a piece of dung, but God is willing to help. So they spent a long time convincing Manfred that he was a piece of dung, and it seemed like God Himself came around to this line of thinking, because He did precious little to help Manfred. It was after the Oxford Group that Manny really began to go on ragers. He got himself arrested two or three times—drunk and disorderly, creating a public spectacle—and once he disappeared for four whole days, missing two games. The assistant general manager of the Patriots fined him one thousand dollars for that scam! And if that seems like an overly stiff and severe fine, that assistant general manager was C. B. Clinton.
How that was exactly, that Clay became the assistant general manager, has never been too clear. The G.M., Frank O’Connor, was a good friend of the Clinton clan, but that hardly seems reason enough to install a young brash mook like Clay as your assistant. But things worked out. In that first year Clay Clinton arranged a trade. Clay traded North Innes, the Patriot star goaler, for four young players, none of whom showed particular promise. It looked like a rum deal until North Innes died in ’twenty-five. In 1926 Clay Clinton was made the general manager of the Ottawa Patriots Hockey Club.
His first move was to trade me.
Now, before all that happened, I should point out, I got married. I married Chloe Elizabeth Millson in the summer of nineteen twenty-three. How this event transpired is still something of a mystery to me.
I liked Chloe well enough, I mean, she was pretty in a pinched sort of way and quite the athlete, an excellent skater and skier. In the summer, there was nothing she liked better than to go to the small lakes in the Gatineau and swim all day. Come to think, it was at one of these lakes that the true nature of our “understanding” reared its ugly head. The deal was, Chloe would have no compunction against stripping off and swimming in my sight all in the buff-bare—not an unpleasant sight, I’ll admit, Chloe being slight but muscled—and I in turn would join her in holy wedlock. Back in those days, that was the kind of deal you made.
We were wed in late August. I could likely remember the exact date if I put my mind to it. Some geese, worrywarts, were already heading for Florida.
The groom’s side of the affair didn’t amount to much. My mother, sister (with her boyfriend, a friendly young buck with withered fingers), and my brother Francis were there, naturally, and my friends Clay Bors Clinton and Manfred Armstrong Ozikean. Patty Boyle came to represent the Patriots. There were reporters from the two Bytown newspapers, because I was a celebrity. I wasn’t the King of the Ice back then, but I was making my move, brother, you can believe me on that account.
The bride’s side, I was alarmed to find out, was enormous. Not only that, it was largely women. Not only that, all the women were variations on Jane. Some were older, some were younger, some were bigger, some were slighter, but basically Janey was your basic Millson. These women buzzed around the front yard of the big Millson homestead while the men stood in the shade of an oak tree and drank lemonade. Mr. Millson, a fat man whose joy in life was the cultivation of a heroic handlebar mustache, would occasionally walk over to me, wrap his arm around my neck, squeeze it hard, and make a peculiar growling noise. This was meant as affection, or so I took it. Mrs. Millson—Jane with gray hair, a powdery face, and thirty extra pounds—would come over and press on me various foodstuffs. Aunts would walk over and inform me, giggling, that I was a professional hockey player, but mostly these aunts confronted Manfred with the same information. Manny stood there looking nervous, intrigued by something held high in the branches of the oak tree. Clay Clinton held court for the matrons, and was as charming a bastard as the sun ever shone upon.
Chloe disappeared early on. She touched the back of my hand lightly and said, “Pookie, I’m going to lie down.” Pookie, that’s me. Don’t even ask.
“Uh-yeah,” I grunted. It was about five-thirty in the afternoon. I’ve ever had a reputation as a man early to bed and early to rise, but this was pushing it. “I’ll be along.”
Chloe did look nice in her bridal gown. Don’t think it never occurred to me that the girl deserved better than to marry yours truly.
When I did go to bed, some hours later, Chloe’s face was creased by slumber, and a little line of spittle fell from her mouth. Her nightgown had ridden up, and her buttocks were naked to the world. The skin was very, very pale and seemed almost to shine in the gloom. I peeled off and got into the bed beside her. Her breath was heavy and regular. I mumbled a good night and closed my eyes. Chloe set upon me like a dog on a bone. Neither of us knew what we were doing, although Chloe seemed to have an intuitive grasp on things. Anyway, we worked it out pretty good. Afterwards, Chloe cried, but she insisted she was happy. We slept in each other’s arms.
At the reception I had a talk with Jane. She came up to me, walking a little unsteadily. Janey was into the lemonade. The Millson menfolk were spiking the stuff, adding whatever liquor they’d brought with them. The lemonade kept changing color and consistency, and Janey had a glass of stuff that was bright orange and as thick as blood. “Brother-in-law!” she hailed me.
I hadn’t thought of us in terms of this new relationship. “Sister-in-law,” I said, more to hear the sound of it, and I toasted her with my glass of well water.
“I’m right corked,” Janey confided, pressing her lips into my ear. “I’m pissed, Little Brother. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Watch your tongue.”
“Answer me this, Lucky Number Seven. How’s come when I get a snootful I start feeling all warm and happy, and when Manny ties one on he is as nasty a piece of business as you’d ever care to see. That’s a poser, isn’t it, Little Brother?”
I shrugged. Janey’s bosom kept brushing against my arm. She took a tug on the lemonade. “Why don’t you drink, Little Brother?”
“As the old mother would have it, I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”
“Brains,” Janey scowled. “Who gives a spit about brains?”
“What do you mean?”
Janey decided to sit down. Actually it was more like the gods decided that Jane should sit down, because she plopped onto her backside like a sack of oats. Janey patted the earth beside her. “Sit down, Little Brother, Lucky Number Seven. Sit down and hear my problems.”
I crouched beside the girl. “What problems, Janey?”
She hefted a finger and waved it at the general activity. “There they are yonder.”
“What are we looking at, Little Sister?”
“Now, the one of them,” said Janey—she crossed her arms on her knees and cradled her small head—“is standing there thinking about whether or not to have a drink of lemonade. That’s all he’s been thinking about, all day. My guess is he won’t. Tonight, though, he’ll go over to Hull and get so drunk he can speak French! Right now, though, everyone in the family thinks he’s a proper eejit because all he does is nod and grunt.” Jane did an imitation of Manfred’s attempts at politeness, which sounded like a Barbary ape long deprived of creature comforts. “Some of the men here—like my Uncle Donald—want to start a fight with him. Isn’t that queer? How’s come so many men want to fight him, just because he’s so big?”
I shrugged again. “Cleghorn sure has it in for him.”
“You be careful of that Cleghorn, Little Brother. He means you harm.”
“I can handle Spray-goo, Sister.”
Jane held my hand briefly. I wondered at this for a while. “Now,” she went on, “my other problem is standing there making my Aunt Sarah turn purple with laughter. The smooth son of a bitch.”
I guess I looked a bit surprised. Janey thought I was gaffed at her language (which, frankly, could be quite unladylike). She burst out with a short laugh. “You know what he is, Little Brother.”
“I didn’t know Clay was complicating things.”
“Clay Clinton complicates everything. That’s what he’s best at is complicating things.”
Clay glanced up from Aunt Sarah and saw us watching. He raised his glass and turned on that smile of his.
Jane Millson sighed. “It’s hard, Little Brother. Jeezly hard. I think I’ll get so drunk that I sleep for four days.” Jane struggled to stand erect. I could see almost the whole length of her legs. Janey picked up her lemonade glass and drained it. Then she looked at me. Her eyes were a hard, dark blue. “Little Leary,” she asked. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? How’s come you didn’t fall in love with me?”
“Couldn’t say,” I told her.
“Well, now you’ve got Chloe.”
“Yep.”
“But I’ve got bigger bubbles than her.” Janey used to say things like that just to watch my face. I’m not sure what my face did, but it surely started the girl laughing.