Finnie Walsh (22 page)

It was a sell-out crowd that night, as all Stanley Cup games are. Eighteen thousand wildly cheering fans packed the stands. When the puck was dropped, I was on the bench. I looked into the seats to see if I could spot my parents and Finnie, but there were too many people and too many lights. I mentally reprimanded myself for doing this. I was there to play a game, not to wave at my family. I had to concentrate.

Our team scored early in the first period and then again in the middle of the period. The coach decided that the best thing we could do was to sit back and protect our lead. That was where I came in. For the rest of the first period and well into the middle of the second, I saw more ice time than I had ever seen in a game before. To my credit I was playing what was possibly the best game of my life. I broke up several plays that had the potential to score goals and when one of our guys got sent to the box I was put out on the penalty-killing unit.

Midway through the second period, however, we got caught on a bad line change and gave up a three-on-one that resulted in a goal. Now that the score was 2-1 for us, the coach thought that we should assume a more aggressive posture and I spent more time on the bench in favour of an offensively minded defenceman.

Both teams went without scoring until late in the third period, when we let in a weak shot from the point. The horn sounded and the period ended with the game tied.

As I sat on the bench waiting for overtime to begin, I looked again into the stands and this time I successfully located Finnie and my parents. They were seated behind the opposition’s goal, about
15 rows up. My mother was reading through her program, no doubt checking the write-up about me to make sure that there were no mistakes. My father was wearing his Portsmouth Jaguars foam finger, which I thought would bother Finnie, but when I examined him closely he seemed to be quite calm, almost peaceful. He was so obese he could barely fit into his seat and even though he was at the seventh game of a Stanley Cup final, with the game going into overtime, his face was serene and collected.

Whatever thoughts I had entertained before the game about hockey or Finnie or the dream had vanished from my mind. All I cared about was the game and not losing it. I didn’t care about winning, I cared about not losing; somehow there was a difference.

The puck was dropped and for the first several minutes of overtime both teams held back, being careful not to make any mistakes in their own zone. Then, about five minutes in, the play started to open up as the players’ focus shifted to scoring the goal that would win the cup. The entire year, over 100 games, the whole championship, it all came down to one goal. It was a goal of incomprehensible proportion.

It was my third or fourth shift of overtime, about seven minutes in. I got the puck behind our net and passed it to the other defence-man. I skated out of our zone and as I reached centre ice I got a return pass. I evaded what would have been a punishing check and decided to take the puck into the offensive zone.

As I crossed the blue line, I felt a presence behind me and without looking I knew that someone was there. Ahab was there. I looked for someone to pass to, but there was no one; our other defenceman hadn’t entered the zone, so a pass to him would have put us offside, and the forwards were covered. I decided to put a shot on net and hoped that someone from our team could get to the rebound. As I brought my stick back to make the shot, I was grabbed from behind. A hand, with fingers that felt like steel, like
a claw, pulled me back and then pushed me forward. As I fell to the ice, I managed to connect with the puck. The shot left my stick and sailed through the air. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I heard a whistling sound and I was reminded of Sarah. The puck flew past the goalie, who was looking in the direction of the referee. The mesh at the back of the net rippled and the red light went on. The goalie frantically skated over to the referee, complaining that the whistle had gone, that play had been halted. The referee hadn’t stopped the play, however, and neither had the linesmen. None of them had heard a whistle, so the goal stood. We had won the Stanley Cup.

My teammates pulled me up from the ice and engulfed me into their mass, celebrating my goal. Gradually the reality of what had happened sank in. I had scored the winning goal. I had won the game. I had done what Finnie had asked of me. I had erased his goal.

We were presented with the cup and my teammates paraded it around the rink, which was suddenly full of reporters and officials and people who had managed to get past security and onto the ice. When the cup was passed to me, I skated over to where my parents and Finnie were sitting, but there were so many people that I couldn’t find them.

It was then that I heard my father’s voice. Above the roar of the crowd and my teammates howling, it rang out loud and clear, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.”

Throughout the game Finnie had remained silent, calm, just like the Chicoutimi Cucumber, Georges Vezina. My father said that he never took his eyes off me. He held his left hand, his glove hand, in a fist, clutching something small and fragile. Whenever I got the puck, he would raise the fist to his mouth.

Then, finally, seven minutes into overtime, he saw his chance. As I shot the puck, he raised his fist to his mouth and blew as hard as he could. My parents were both so startled that they didn’t even see the puck go into the net. They’d heard a noise that they hadn’t heard in three and a half years, a noise that they’d never expected to hear again.

When they looked at Finnie, however, they saw that something was wrong. He was choking, his massive frame shuddering and his meaty fingers grasping his throat. My father tried to give him the Heimlich manoeuvre, but he only had one arm. My mother tried too, but Finnie was just too fat; she couldn’t get her arms around him. The crowd around them had erupted and there was no way they could go for help. It takes a surprisingly long time for a person to choke to death. Finnie just slumped into his seat and closed his eyes. My father said he wasn’t even trying to fight it, like he was just waiting for the end. When Finnie finally lost consciousness, my father was able to lower him to the ground and peer down his throat. He couldn’t see anything at first, but my mother did a chest compression, just below the sternum, and, even though Finnie was already dead, his corpse reacted reflexively and spit out the object that had been blocking his windpipe. My father wordlessly reached out and put the plastic whistle from Sarah’s life jacket into his coat pocket.

There were three things of interest on his person besides the whistle. In his pants pocket was the one and only rock that my father had given to him so many years ago; a partially burnt hockey card, the card of his one-time idol, number 31, Pelle Lindbergh; and a worn, crumpled picture of Georges Vezina.

A
fter Finnie’s death, the mystery of the one-arm bandit was revealed. It all made perfect sense in hindsight. Maybe all things make perfect sense in hindsight. All the thefts took place at school. They started after my father lost his arm and ended when Finnie and I went away to the junior team. The one-arm bandit had to have inside information about my father’s plans; he was always in the right place at the right time. Besides, Finnie was the only other person who knew the combination of my old bike lock.

On the morning of Finnie’s funeral, there was a knock on our door. When my father answered it, he was greeted by a delivery truck driver bearing three large boxes addressed to Mr. Palagopolis, care of my father. My father signed for them and Sarah and I helped him to move them into the kitchen. He opened the first one and his jaw dropped. He didn’t need to open the second or third box. When I looked, my jaw dropped too. I ripped open the other two boxes, unable to contain my amazement. Within the boxes were 25 prosthetic arms, the exact number of arms that the one-arm bandit had stolen from Mr. Palagopolis. Each claw had a sticker on it and on each sticker in red marker was written the date the claw had been stolen.

There was a note in one of the boxes, addressed to “Bob and Pal.” It read, simply, “Here are the arms back. You don’t need them anymore. Love, Finnie.”

I was furious. To think that it was Finnie the whole time, that he was the thief who’d caused my father and Pal so much misery. “That fucking bastard,” I said under my breath.

“Shut up, Paul,” Sarah said.

My father laughed, making me angrier. “How can you laugh?”

“Because he’s right. We don’t need them anymore. He’s given us that.”

It took me a long time to understand what my father was talking about. It was only when I remembered something Finnie had once said to me that it began to make sense.

“Everyone’s missing something, Paul,” he’d said. “If you try to put something else in its place, you’re only going to cause more damage.”

Sarah smiled; she’d known all along what Finnie was up to.

Finnie took away my father’s arm and then he took away Mr. Palagopolis’s arms, but as the one-arm bandit he gave them something else in return. My father had long ago stopped absent-mindedly gesturing with his missing arm and Pal had stopped believing that his claw was out to get him. I suppose, in a sense, Finnie, the one-arm bandit, had healed them.

Hockey is unique in that it is the only professional sport in which the players get to take the trophy home with them. In all other sports, the championship trophy sits in a display case somewhere, but the Stanley Cup is on the road all summer, spending two days at the home of each member of the team who won the right to possess it.

The first day the Stanley Cup sat in my parents’ living room,
scores of neighbours came by to see it up close and to congratulate me on the win. They all said how sorry they were about Finnie. Of course, they didn’t know what had actually happened; they’d been told that Finnie had died of a heart attack.

On the second day, Louise and I took the cup up to the reservoir and placed it in the spot where the crease would have been. We sat, wordlessly, for most of the afternoon. Eventually, though, I had to ask Louise the one question that, to this day, I don’t know the definitive answer to. “Do you think he meant to die?”

Louise thought for a long time before she answered. “I don’t know if he
meant
to or not. But I think he knew he would.”

“I had a dream, Louise. I’ve been having it for years.”

She was not surprised. “There was nothing any of us could have done.”

When they took Finnie away, strapped to a stretcher even though he was dead, there was a smile on his face.

I never played professional hockey again. I was only 22 when I retired and people thought I was crazy to walk away from what would have been a multimillion-dollar career, but there was plenty that they didn’t know. I had done what I’d had to do and it was time to get out, before the game became a business and I erased the mark that Finnie had made.

I finally understood what Finnie had been saying all along, the point he’d tried to make with the Howie Morenz card. To stay in hockey, I would have had to love the game the way Finnie had loved it. I refused to be one of the people who was ruining the sport. If you don’t love it, if you can exist without it, then you shouldn’t be there. I had no choice but to leave. I had worn Bill Barilko’s number and I would not disgrace it by staying.

I don’t regret quitting hockey. Roger Walsh gave me a job, a good job, and together we have kept his business going. None of his other sons ever amounted to anything; Kirby’s still in jail, this
time for the rest of his life, and Patrick and Gerry are content to live on the money their father gives them each month. When Roger Walsh dies, he will leave me the bulk of his business, with the understanding that I continue to send his surviving sons money. I have grown fond of old Roger; together we have learned many things about Finnie that neither of us would have known on our own. It seems that everyone who ever came into contact with Finnie got a tiny piece of his puzzle.

Louise has never married. She maintains that she will never meet anyone who can make her feel the way that Finnie did. I wish I could argue with her, but I can’t. Besides, Louise always did just fine on her own.