Finnie Walsh (18 page)

“I hear you rebuilt that old rink this year,” my father said.

“Yep. It’s nice to play somewhere where there isn’t any pressure.”

“What rink?” Sarah asked.

“Up by the reservoir,” Finnie said.

“Oh. I’m not allowed to go up there.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Louise says it’s too far.”

“Well, Louise probably knows what she’s talking about.”

Sarah moved closer to Finnie and tried to look as cute as possible. She did this whenever she wanted something and it
tended to be fairly effective. “Maybe you and Paul could take me?” she said, smiling.

“If it’s okay with Louise.”

Finnie knew that I had bought Sarah a pair of skates for Christmas and so did Louise. Finnie told Sarah that we’d take her on Boxing Day. That was supposed to be our last day in Portsmouth.

“You still wearing the number 13?” my father asked.

“Yes.”

“How’s it working for you?”

“Well,” Finnie answered carefully, “I think it’s working fine. I mean, it’s not an
unlucky
number for me anyway.”

“I think it’s a good number.”

“So do I.”

In truth, the number had been a bit of a problem for Finnie since he had reversed it following Pelle Lindbergh’s death. Whether this was just symbolic or some attempt to rewrite his own history, I’m not sure. Finnie was a collector of sorts, except that he was also a modifier. When he kept something that reminded him of a particular situation, he always seemed to change it slightly, as if to alter the actual event. When he’d changed his number from Lindbergh’s 31 to Finnie’s 13, he’d irreparably tied his own fate to Lindbergh’s. He’d doomed himself to being Lindbergh’s antithesis. I think he had already realized this on some level.

Later, after everyone else had gone to bed, or in the case of Sarah been
sent
to bed, Finnie and I went out to the garage. It was pretty much the same as it had been since my father had saved us from it years ago. My mother and Louise avoided it like the plague and Sarah thought the fish were laughing at her, mocking her with their bulging eyes. My father had been forced to set up a small portable heater next to the fish tube to keep it from freezing during winter nights and the excess heat kept the garage at a
bearably warm temperature. Finnie stood, staring at the cages, playing the old game.

“Find the jumper cables,” I had said, trying to give him a challenge.

Finnie stood in front of the fish tube and assessed the situation. After a while, his gaze shifted from the cages to the garage door, where it remained transfixed. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Your dad is the reason I became a goalie.”

“I know.”

“I mean, we kept him awake all afternoon, making all that noise, and he didn’t say anything because of my father…”

“Yeah.”

“And then he gave me that rock.”

I paused. My father still gave Sarah rocks sometimes. “What’s the deal with the rocks anyway?”

Finnie looked at me. “You mean you don’t know?”

“No.”

“There is no deal. It’s a smokescreen.”

I still didn’t understand.

Finnie looked back toward the cages. “Whenever your dad gave you a rock, what did you do?”

“I sat there and tried to figure out what the hell the rock was supposed to mean and how it had any relevance to my problem and how my father could possibly think that a rock was going to make any difference.”

“Exactly. That’s what you were thinking about. What you weren’t thinking about was the problem.”

“You mean it was all a distraction?”

“Sure. Most problems have a way of working themselves out. When the time comes, we just know what to do.” Finnie continued to stare at the cages.

I just sat there absorbing what he had said.

“Joyce’s in town,” Finnie said.

I froze, suddenly feeling guilty. “Yeah?”

“Yep. I saw her yesterday.”

“How is she?”

“Same as always.”

I considered my options and for some reason I decided to be bold. “You still have feelings for her, don’t you?”

Finnie looked at me and then down at the floor. “It will never work out.”

“Why not?”

“It just won’t. We both know it.”

“You’ve talked about it?”

“Yes. There’s nothing either of us can really do. Maybe if things were different, well, then things would be different.”

“That’s a lot of bullshit,” I said.

Finnie shrugged. “Maybe it is. But that’s the way things are.”

His attention had reverted back to the cages. He was staring at one in the upper right-hand corner, mentally weighing its potential contents. Slowly he moved toward it. He reached up and opened it. His hand disappeared inside it. When it emerged, it held the jumper cables.

“Jesus, Finnie. How do you do that?”

“I don’t know. It all just somehow makes sense.”

On Boxing Day of 1990, Finnie, Sarah, Louise and I set out to the reservoir. It would be Sarah’s first time on the rink and she was more than a little eager to try out the skates I had given to her the day before. It was cold, but there hadn’t been any new snow for a couple of days, so we wouldn’t have to clear the ice. My mother bundled Sarah tightly against the cold, swaddling her in two sweaters, a thick winter jacket, mittens, a toque and scarf
and bulky snow pants. Sarah had a heck of a time getting her life jacket on over all this, but she managed. With this added protection she seemed secure against the bumps and bruises that go along with learning to skate. We drove up to the Walsh sawmill, shut down for the week on account of the holidays, and proceeded to the reservoir on foot. Wrapped up as she was, Sarah couldn’t really walk properly; she sort of waddled, like a Christmas goose. She was having trouble keeping up with us, so I slowed down and let Finnie and Louise go on ahead. It took Finnie longer to change into his gear because there was so much more of it. Besides, I had missed Sarah while I was away and hadn’t spent any time alone with her since returning.

“How’s school going?” I asked her.

“It’s okay. Mrs. Sweeney’s pretty nice.”

I had forgotten that she was in Mrs. Sweeney’s class. Sarah was the same age Finnie and I had been when we met. That seemed like such a long time ago.

“I was always scared of Mrs. Sweeney,” I said.

“She’s not scary,” Sarah said. “She’s just gruff.”

“Gruff?”

“Yes. She’s only pretending. It keeps the bad kids from trying anything.”

I laughed. Sarah’s evaluation made a lot of sense.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked me.

“Sure.”

“You have to promise not to tell Dad.”

“I promise.” My interest was piqued. I had never known anyone to successfully keep a secret from my father.

“Pal has a new claw.”

“What?”

“He got it before Halloween. He only wears it at school. Well, maybe he wears it at home. But he didn’t tell Dad about it and he
doesn’t wear it when he comes to the house. He made me promise not to tell Dad.”

“Why doesn’t he want Dad to know about it?”

“Pal says that he has a big obsession.”

I couldn’t argue with that. When he had been hunting the one-arm bandit, my father had been driven to a singular purpose. Since he had given up the hunt, however, he had been calmer, as if some outstanding issue had finally been settled.

“Know what else? It’s been two months and Pal still has the claw. He doesn’t even lock it up.”

“You’re kidding.”

Sarah looked at me very seriously. “I wouldn’t joke about the one-arm bandit, Paul.”

We turned the corner to witness the last thing in the entire world we would have expected. But there it was, plain as day.

“Holy shit,” Sarah said.

Beside the old pump house stood Finnie and Louise. They were holding each other close and they were kissing. Like they were possessed. Either they didn’t know we were watching, or they didn’t care, because they sure didn’t stop. I just stood there, bewildered, my jaw agape, until Sarah intervened. She inhaled as mighty a breath as her lungs could hold and blew into the whistle. The quiet was obliterated by its shriek. It scared the pants off Finnie and Louise, though thankfully not literally. Louise banged her lip on Finnie’s chin, causing Finnie to bite his tongue.

“Jesus Christ, Sarah,” Louise yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell are
you
doing?” Sarah scuttled behind me, using me as a shield.

“What does it look like?”

“Looks like you and Finnie were kissing,” I said.

“Well, then, does anyone have a problem with that?” she asked.

“No,” I said. For some reason I was a little frightened of Louise at that moment.

“I guess not,” Sarah said. “But it’s gross.”

“Then that’s settled. Finnie and I were kissing and no one has a problem with that, so for the love of Christ, Sarah, lay off that whistle before it kills someone.”

“Sorry,” Sarah said.

Finnie had remained quiet until then, perhaps because of his bitten tongue. “Anyone want to skate today?”

This sounded like a good idea to me — anything to relieve the tension. We all put on our skates and after 15 minutes the whole thing was old news. It all made perfect sense, really. Louise had been after Finnie for years, or at least since the night he’d knocked out Frank Hawthorne’s eye. Even when they were kids, they always had a strange mutual understanding. It wasn’t like Finnie and Joyce; there were no sparks, no magic, but Finnie and Louise just seemed like a natural fit. Getting used to the idea did not require much time. I mean, Louise was my sister and Finnie was my best friend, but even though one might think that would be awkward, it wasn’t. Of course, I was young and more than a bit naïve, so I didn’t understand that things that are obvious and simple are rarely easy or timeless.

As for Sarah, I don’t think she much cared either way, so long as she didn’t have to watch. Besides, Sarah was able to adjust to almost anything. That was one of her greatest qualities.

The first time Finnie tried to stop a shot, he fell down, sliding right out of the net and into the corner. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

“You fell on your ass,” I said. “What’s not to believe?”

“I forgot to sharpen my skate. I’ve totally lost the edge on this one.”

“Nice going.”

“Yeah. The other one’s fine, though. I could shave with it, if I wanted.”

“That’s not going to do you a lot of good.”

“No, it’s not.”

After that we gave up taking shots, because every time he moved too fast or shifted his weight to the dull skate, he fell. Louise and Sarah were both poor skaters, so we concentrated on teaching them. Finnie was more patient, so he taught Sarah, while I gave Louise some pointers. Unlike Sarah, Louise had been skating before, but she was out of practice. After a while her legs came back, though, and it wasn’t long before she was gliding around with a fair degree of proficiency.

“Good job,” I said, skating ahead of her.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m not the natural skater you are.”

I remembered I hadn’t been much of a skater until Joyce Sweeney had given me lessons. I felt a fresh rush of gratitude.

Louise lost her balance and fell, which elicited a look of concern from Finnie, but she was fine. She got up off the ice and resumed her tentative strides around the rink.

It had started to snow, light, fluffy flakes. Before long it was really coming down. It was about two in the afternoon and even though the sun was hidden it was still fairly bright. The trees were blanketed; several inches of snow covered the ground. There were footprints and indentations around the rink, evidence of the people who’d been there since Finnie had rebuilt it, but they were being erased and only a few metres beyond us the snow was untouched.

Finnie and Sarah were off in the far corner of the rink. A layer of snow covered the ice and hampered our ability to skate. It made it harder to control your motions; if you fell down, you slid a lot farther. They were playing tag, Finnie skating past Sarah while
she tried to tag him. She seemed to be having a great time, as did Finnie, but Louise and I were tired, so we went and sat down at the far edge of the rink. Our mother had given us a thermos of hot chocolate, but it wasn’t hot anymore, so we just sat there and watched them.

As Finnie skated past Sarah, she reached out and tagged him, but she lost her balance and fell. Finnie coasted past her, stopping in the centre of the rink. Sarah lay just outside the goal crease, laughing. Then her laughter stopped suddenly and she looked down at her life jacket. A mitten went up to her mouth. She looked around the rink, eyes wide. She started to scream. Louise and I stood up, thinking that she had hurt herself and had only just realized it.

Finnie skated over to her as fast as he could. It took him only seconds to reach her. As he dug his skates into the ice to stop, he slipped. Maybe it was because of his dull skate blade, maybe it was because of the snow on the ice, or maybe he just fell. He tried not to land on her, sprawling out toward the empty ice, but in an instant he was on top of Sarah, who’d stopped screaming and had closed her eyes.