The Last of the Lumbermen (21 page)

There's no parking spot in front of
the store, so I have to double park, put
on the blinkers, and hope for the best. “Ah!” Wally
says as I breeze through the front
doors. “The Great Weaver Bathgate himself, replete with illegally parked civic limousine. What mission of tender mercy brings you to grace our
lowly premises this afternoon? No 5030s at Canadian
Tire? Can I perhaps sell you a modern hockey stick instead?”

“Give it a break, Wally,” I laugh. “Jack
claims you've got a goalie mask somewhere around
here for Junior. Is that true or
was he shitting me?”

“Indeed it is true,” Wally replies, sounding
not entirely surprised. “Wait here and I'll get it for you.”

He disappears into
the storeroom, and I hear him shuffling boxes a
round. “What are you planning to do?” he hollers.
“Tease Junior with it?”

“Nothing so crass,” I answer. “I'm going
to tell him he can't play for six weeks unless he wears it.”

“Very cunning. Think it'll work?”

“Probably not.
It's Jack's idea, not mine. I take it you hear
d about yesterday's game.”

“I heard,” he says as he comes
out of the storage room and plants the mask on
the counter. “I saw. Quite a moment in
the history of local sport.”

I pick up the mask and lift it
to eye level. It is, as Jack promised, painted in
fleshtones. What he didn't say was that the fleshtone would
be corpse-quality. Actually, it's worse than that. Some
of the flesh appears to have decomposed, while the r
est looks like it came from someone who just
rammed his car into the side of a gasoline
tanker. The total effect is roughly that of
Jason
without
his hockey mask. Hard to say
whose goofy idea this design is. Somebody has a sense of
humour, that's for sure. Probably Wally.

“Beautiful,
isn't it?” Wally comments. “And speaking of beauties, your better half was just in her
e.”

“My better half is right where it's been all
day,” I answer, checking my fly with mock care so he gets the gag.

“Very funny.”

“What was Esther doing in here?” I ask.

“Nothing much,” he says, then adds, sounding about as mys
terious as is possible for someone who resembles the Pillsbury
Doughboy, “and none of your business.”

I GLANCE ALONG THE
street as I come
out of the store and see that the meterman
is half a block past my car. He turns
around just as I open the car door, grins, and waves at me. There's no ticket on the windshield.

TWENTY-TWO

H
OW DOES THIS KID
get to the hockey games? That's
the pleasantly practical puzzle I sort through as I
drive through the cheesy subdivisions north of Mantua. It
doesn't sound like the boy's father is a hockey fan,
and I hadn't exactly gotten the sense from his
mother that she was on top of his comings and goings enough to be getting him to and f
rom the games.

Out here, he's a long way from
town. Maybe there's a neighbour nearby who has
regular tickets. Maybe, but the kid never seems to be
with anyone at the games. One thing's for sure.
If anyone is with him, he or she isn't giving him
any guidance about how to behave.

I drop the neighbour transport theory
when I find the road named on the scrap of
paper beside me on the seat. There aren't
any close neighbours because the Bathgates live a half kilometr
e beyond the last of the subdivisions, at the dead end
of a road that, as I bump the Lincoln along
it, isn't much better than a skid road. But it's been ploughed.

The
house is half hidden behind a dense grove of
young spruce and birch trees that appear
to have been planted deliberately to shield it f
rom sight. There's power and telephone lines, and a clearing that doesn't stretch much beyond the twenty-five-by-fifty-foot rectangle of freshly flooded ice
that ends close to the side of the house, and
which probably doubles as a vegetable garden during the
summer. Aside from that, pretty well everything
else is as mother nature would like to have
us live: no wrecked cars in the yard, hand-split
cedar shingles covering the roof and outer walls, and, at
the edge of the cleared area, a half
buried sod-covered bunker with birch saplings sticking fr
om it like porcupine quills. Beyond the bunker is a
thicket of half-grown thirty-to-forty-foot lodgepole pines, probably reg
rowth after a logging cut or forest
fire. A murder of crows is calling
back and forth to one another, most of them hidden
by the boughs, and whiskey jacks are flitting around a birdfeeder atop the bunker.

A
place like this is unusual for Mantua, whose citizens —
when they're not using their property as a
personal dump site — prefer to live in treeless
suburbs with lawns that look like they've poured concr
ete and painted it green. Any way I look
at the Bathgate house, it just ain't natural for Mantua: no
vinyl siding, no satellite dish, no plastic. The same or
derly attention to detail I could see in the landscaping
is evident in the house — it's no slappedtogether
homesteader's shack. I can't see how large it
is, but it's sizable. Hmm.

A slim, tall woman opens the door
to me just as my fist is descending against it, and
I come within a slapstick hair of punch- ing her in the stomach as my intr
oduction.

“That was close,” I say, stepping back to r
eassure her I'm not an axe murderer. “I'm Andy Bathgate.”

“Yes,” she says, “I recognize you. I'm Claire
Bathgate. James's mother. Please come in.”

She moves aside and I step past
her into a hallway that looks into a spacious living
room. The room is sparsely furnished but comfortable looking, with
a large olive-drab couch covered in what looks
like old velvet, a couple of stuffed chairs of
a darker shade, and a big wooden coffee table between
the three. There's a large deep red Persian rug covering most of the plank floor, and along the far wall are floor-to-ceiling bookcases
that, at a glance, aren't filled with
Reader's
Digest
condensations. Aside from several lamps and an airtight
stove with a deep wood box to one side of
it, that's all. No television, no stereo, and no
cereal box bric-a-brac.

I slip off my boots and
pull off my coat, which she takes from me and hangs on a hook on the wall behind he
r.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Please.”

“Well, why don't you follow me
to the kitchen and we can sign your documents while the water boils.”

She turns her
back on me without waiting for a reply, and
I follow her along a hallway lined with black-and-white photo
graphs. Claire Bathgate is probably in her fifties,
and as I watch her move I decide she's gaunt rather
than slim. Her step doesn't give away her age. It's
sure and athletic, and I'm not quite sure why
I think she's over fifty. Her face perhaps,
or maybe the care- less salt and pepper of
her hair. I kind of like the way she
looks, actually. She fits with the house.

The kitchen is as casually unusual as the
living room. Natural cedar walls and cupboards, a ci
rcular oak table, and three chairs. The stove is
the biggest thing in the kitchen. It appears to be
a wood stove, but much larger than any I've ever seen.

I watch her fill a kettle and slide
it atop one of the six stove plates. “It's called an
Aga,” she says, without looking at me. “Swedish. We do
all our cooking on it, and it heats the hot
water and keeps most of the house warm.”

“Must be a little warm during the summer,” I say.

“We don't use it then,”
she laughs. “There's an outdoor stove out there.” She's
pointing through the window. “And we're not
here very much during the summer.”

We make small talk while the kettle
heats, mainly about the stove. I get the sense that she's
reluctant to talk about herself or young James, and
there's no mention at all of the father. She asks for the form, reads it ca
refully, then signs it without comment and hands it back to me.

By the time
the tea is made and properly steeped, I've decided
that I like this woman as much as I like
her looks. I want to know more about her,
her kid, and her husband — if there is
one. But she's not giving me any conversational openings on
anything but hockey, which she says fascinates the boy.

“I've noticed. How does he get
to the games?” I ask. “You're rather a long way out here.”

She
laughs, and an eyebrow flickers. “Oh, he has his
ways of getting around. And don't you worry.
If he says he'll be somewhere, he gets there. And he'll be on time.”

There's an odd kind of edge to her voice
as she says this, as if she's not quite able
to take the pleasure from her son's inde
- pendence she thinks she ought to. We talk mo
re about the boy, and the impression
that he's a mixed pleasure for her strengthens. W
e run out of small talk, and I get up to go.

“I'm sure this will be a good experience
for him,” she says plaintively. “You'll take car
e of him, won't you? He thinks the world of you.”

“Well,”
I say, “we do share the Bathgate name,
so we have that in common. I'll keep an eye
on him.” I don't mention any of my previous
plans to strangle her son or run him over with
my car, and I don't mention that I
threatened to make his brains squirt out of his ears just yesterday afternoon.

As I'm passing
through the hallway on the way out, my eyes stray
to the wall of framed photos. Curious, I stop to
look them over. Most are landscapes — a
northern lake, two men dwarfed by a wolf fir,
a wedding photo I don't examine very carefully,
things like that. But toward the top there's
a photo of a child in a hockey uniform, an
old photo, that arrests my attention. The child, as
I stop to examine it, is nine or ten years
old, wearing a Montreal Canadiens sweater.

I feel Claire Bathgate's hand on my shoulder. “I should have taken that photograph down,” she says simply. “I think you'd better come into the living room and sit down.”

TWENTY-THREE

O
VER THE NEXT HOUR
, Claire Bathgate tells me a
tale that makes my head spin. She's my stepmothe
r, my father's second wife, and the boy
I'm about to make the stickboy for the Mantua Mohawks is my half brothe
r.

Without meaning to, she confirms some of what
my mother told me about my father — and contradicts everything
I imagined about what happened after they split up.
Yes, my father had a moderately successful truck-logging
company, sold it, gave my mother the proceeds,
and hit the bottle. But around the time my mother
lost track of him, when I was seventeen or so,
he began to slowly dig his way out. Clair
e met him in Camelot, where she was a nurse in the hospital.

She dried him
out, fell in love with him — she didn't say which
came first — and they homesteaded in one of the
valleys to the southeast of the city. My
father went back to logging, except this time as
a private operator clearing farmland and logging off private
woodlots. They stayed in the backwoods for a decade and
a half, living a simple life and making a decent living.
He'd become something of an expert at small-scale log- ging,
occasionally using horses, and was currently much in
demand— outside the country, of course — for some harvest and
reforestation innovations he developed along the way.

They'd moved back to Mantua about the
time I returned, mainly so James could get a pr
oper education, and, I guess, because my father was getting on in years.

“He must be
close to seventy now,” I find myself saying to Clai
re.

“Seventy-one,” she says. “Not that you'd know it to
look at him.”

“He knows I'm here?” I
ask. “I mean, that I'm me.” I sound stupid, garbled.

“Of course.”

“But he never thought to contact me?”

“He's
thought about it constantly. But he knew about the
trouble you'd had, and he thought you might not
want to be reminded about it. And,” she says, “he
wasn't sure you wanted to hear from him.”

“I was convinced
he was dead,” I said. “I haven't heard hide nor hair of him since I was, let's see — sixteen, I guess.”

“I'm sure this is a lot to take in
all at once,” she says, carefully. “You're
going to have to do some thinking about it. Y
ou realize that James is your half brother.”

“I'm getting my head around
it. Shouldn't he be getting home anytime now?”

“We've got some
time,” she says, then answers my unspoken question without my
having to ask it. “He doesn't know. And I don't
think he should be told until a few other things
are settled. Like whether you want to speak to your father.”

This one brings me up short.
The thought that I have a living father is one
shock. That he's in the same part of the planet
I'm in is another. I can't imagine what I'd say
to him if he were to walk in
the door right now. I'd crawl under the cof
fee table, probably. The panic it throws me into must be apparent.

“Don't worry,”
she says. “He's in Denver. He travels quite a
lot, these days. He won't be back until Saturday.”

She's being incredibly gracious. It must not be any easier for her having me sitting in her living
room than it is for me to be here,
and I'm at sea trying to figure out how
to reciprocate. I stand up.

“Well,” I say,
“I guess we're just going to have to play
this one straight up. I won't mention anything to James,
of course. But you can tell my father that I'll be
in touch early next week. And it's been extremely nice meeting you.”

She hands
me my coat as I slip on my boots. “I
don't think you have any idea what a relief this
is to me,” she says, extending her hand. Her eyes are misty.

I
take her hand, and, to hell with it, lean forwa
rd and kiss her cheek. “Tell James to be at the Coliseum about five tomorrow.”

My watch r
eads four-forty-five as I walk back to the Lincoln. The
darkening sky is a deep, transparent purple, and the
crows and jays are already silent. In
an hour, the sky will be filled with stars. I
crank up the engine and let it idle while the
heater blows the ice crystals from the windshield.

There's still the possibility that
when I get home tonight the locks will have been changed.
I don't think that's in the cards, but then
again I don't seem to be dealing the cards
or deciding what the game is going to be right no
w. The only other thing left on my list
is to visit Junior, and see if I can
fit him with a goalie mask. If it sticks to his
face and turns him into a horror movie ma
rquee, I won't bat an eye. I pat my
inside pocket to make sure I've got the signed
insurance release, and flip the Lincoln into gear.
The motor guns as the wheels dislodge themselves from the
snow, and off I go.

Halfway along the quarter-mile driveway
a Ski-Doo bursts out of the trees onto the
roadway fifty metres in front of me. The
machine swerves as its driver regains control, and heads
in my direction spewing a cloud of powdery snow
in its wake. It doesn't have lights, and all I can
see of the driver is that he — or she — is small. It's fifty metres past me before I realize that it's James.

AS I PULL INTO
the parking lot outside the hospital
I scan for Esther's truck, hoping she'll be
here visiting Jack so she can help me br
owbeat Junior into agreeing to wear the mask. Then I
remember Jack is long gone on the plane. So,
no Esther, damn it. I scoop the mask from
the seat beside me and walk toward the hospital
entrance. At the last moment I remember that after
noon visiting hours are over, and enter thr
ough the emergency entrance. I'm practically on a first-name basis
with everyone there, and they'll think I'm looking for Gord.

The first nurse I r
un into tells me that Gord has left, but
that Junior is on the fourth floor.

“Not in the psychiatric ward?” I say.

“No,” she says, ignoring my attempt
at humour. “He's going to be fine. The disorientation
was gone by this morning, although he doesn't have much recall of what happened.”

I wave
the mask at her. “Maybe this'll keep him out
of here next time.”

She glances at the mask and
grimaces. “I hope so. But
that's
perfectly horrible-looking.”

“He looked
pretty horrible last night after that puck bounced off his noggin.”

“Wait till you see him now,” she says
as she pulls open a curtained stall and disappears inside.

SHE ISN'T KIDDING.
JUNIOR
, when I find him, is sitting up in bed
sporting two giant shiners and a bandage across his
forehead that looks big enough to have a baseball stu
ffed inside it. They've put him in a private room,
no doubt as a courtesy to the patients who requi
red peace and quiet last night.

He's a picture of quiet if not peace
when I enter, with reading glasses propped on
his nose, perusing the latest issue of
Playboy
— open, naturall
y, to the centrefold.

“Shouldn't you be reading something that'll improve your mind?” I say, holding the mask behind my back.

“Nice to see you, Weaver
,” he grins. “I hear you spent last night in here, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They let me out this morning.
Nothing wrong with me a few weeks off the ice won't cure. How's tricks?”

Junior lifts the glasses car
efully off his nose and sets them down on the side-table. “I'll live. Nice headache, though.”

“Gor
d been around?” I ask.

“He stopped in a couple of times. Took
Jack to the airport a couple of hours ago, I think.
What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

I sit
down on a chair just off the foot of
Junior's bed, and manage to keep the mask
out of sight. “Good news and bad,” I say.

“Give me the good news.”

“It isn't much,” I say. “You remember
that little bugger who comes to all the games and razzes everyone?”

“He razzes you, Weaver,” Junior points out.

“Whatever. Anyway
, I just made him our new stickboy. Str
oke of genius, no?”

“Some stroke,” he says. “I know that kid.
Dad and I coached him one year in minor hockey. He was a bit of a satellite.”

“Say what?”

“You know, one
of those kids who's in orbit all the time. His
old man is a bit of one, too, I hear
. Ran some sort of weirdo handheld logging
operation outside Camelot until a few years ago. When InterCon moved
into that area they got his timber licences revoked,
or bought him out, or something. InterCon saw him as
some sort of threat.”

“Anyway,” I say, “the kid'll be a
round the dressing room from now on. Try not to step on him.”

Junior
rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he answers, “okay. So
let's get to the bad news.”

“I had a long conversation with Milgenberger this morning, and an even longer one with Jack before he took off.”

“Don't beat around the bush,” Junior says. “You
were talking about me, right?”

“Yeah,” I admit. “We've got a small problem.”

“Well, you can relax. I'll be fine for the Friday game.”

“Afraid
not.” I slip the mask under the chair and get
up to gaze out the window. If I'm going to
get Junior to co-operate, I'm going to have to get
him thinking that the mask is the only thing that'll save his ca
reer.

He bites. “Jesus, Weave. What is it? What
did Milgenberger say?”

“He said that whack
you got is life threatening. If you get hit
on the same spot again, you could be a vegetable.”

“Bullshit,” Junior explodes. “I'm fine.”

“They obviously haven't shown you the X-rays,” I sa
y, deliberately keeping a dead tone in my voice.
“Apparently your skull nexus disintegrated when that puck hit it.”

There's no such thing as
a skull nexus, but I'm pretty sure Junior won't know that.

“My
skull nexus disintegrated? What the fuck is a skull nexus?”

“It's a small set of bones just above your temple,”
I say, touching a spot on my head
just above the hairline where I can feel a slight
ridge, “that keeps the different bones that make
up your skull from coming apart. There's one
on each side, and they work as lynchpins, sort of.” I'm
neck deep in the brown stuff here,
but it has his rapt attention. “The bones are
completely gone on your right side, and they're weakened on other side.”

“I thought skulls were
made out of solid bone,” Junior says, whistling. “Wow.”

“That's
what I thought, too,” I say. “Shows you how
little we know. Anyway, Milgenberger says you're through with hockey.”

Junior
turns white as a sheet. “You gotta be kidding,”
he says. “I'm too young to quit.”