Rockets Versus Gravity (4 page)

Whenever a member of their church congregation cast judgmental eyes upon her from their pew bench perches, whispering words like “harlot” and “bastard” in Old Testament tones, Clementine's tears would gush yet again.

But now her cheeks are finally dry.

Clementine cradles the child against her chest. She has named him Aleksander, after his father. He's a good baby. He never cries.

On the billboard outside her bedroom window, Clementine watches the letters disappear, one by one:

JUDGMENT DAY is COMING

It came. It went. And she and her son were allowed to survive.

By the time the new advertisement has been pasted up, night is overtaking day. And behind the billboard, at the top of the radio tower in the distance, the red light is gently blinking. She cannot see it from here, but Clementine still tries to find it reassuring.

Light on, light off. Light on, light off.

O
ne day she will follow that blinking light away from this place.

I
t's the pre-game warm-up, and the whole team's got the jitters. Even me.

This is the most people I've seen inside the Faireville Memorial Arena in a long, long time. On the edges of the bench seats that surround the ice, they are perched like predatory birds, their sharp eyes tracking the skaters as they circle their zones and lob pucks at the net during the pre-game skate. Everyone is crushed right together, shoulder to shoulder, thigh against thigh. They're all singing along with the arena anthems blasting from the low-fidelity loudspeakers, punctuated by the occasional scream of “WHOOOOOOOOOO!”

Wheelie Koontz, the kid who sets up the PA system when the principal lectures us in the gym at school, is up there in the DJ booth. Wheelie can't play hockey himself, or any other sport, because he was born with spina bifida, and he's bound to a wheelchair. He sure knows how to get a pre-game crowd fired up, though. Right now, he's playing that song by Stompin' Tom Connors. You know, the one that goes,
“The good ol' hockey game is the best game you can name.”

The arena roars with the voices singing along; well, more like shouting along, really. There's not a lot of melody or harmony in the collective voices.

Before that, Wheelie played the one about the guy wanting his boy to play in the big league. And before that, it was the one by, um, what're they called again? Gawd, my memory sucks. Oh, yeah, it's The Tragically Hip. Yeah, that's it. You know, the one about Bill Barilko scoring the goal that won the Leafs the Stanley Cup.

I
t's tough to be a Leafs fan, isn't it? I mean, they haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967, which is way before I was even born. Wheelie says that Toronto Maple Leafs fans are masochists, which I think means that they secretly enjoy all the suffering that the Leafs cause them. The Leafs give them something to holler about, a reason to let out some of their anger over the bigger things that might be eating at them.

About a third of the hockey fans in Faireville root for the Leafs; all you have to do is count the number of
blue-and
-white jerseys in the crowd. Toronto is the closest Canadian city to Faireville, and this is the main reason why my dad cheers for them: loyalty to the “local team.” Another reason why Dad supports the Leafs is that his own dad rooted for the Montreal Canadiens, at least until the old man left home and never came back when my dad was nine years old. Dad has hated the Montreal Canadiens ever since, and Leafs/Habs games are weighted with more importance in our household than federal elections or rocket launches.

Me? Well, I just can't get behind a team that keeps trading away its promising younger players for old goats who, you know, got forty points one season five years ago before blowing out a knee. And I just can't get past the fact that the Leafs sell all their tickets to Bay Street lawyers and stockbrokers and bankers who write off the tickets as a “business expense,” and then they spend most of the game in the bar, or they're on their damned phones the whole time the game's being played, while the real fans can't afford to buy tickets at all and only get to holler at the Leafs through the TVs in their rec rooms. I haven't shared any of these opinions with my dad, though. When he's got the game on at home, I pretend to be happy when the Leafs score.

About another third of the townies root for the Red Wings, because they're actually the closest NHL team to Faireville. They play just across the Detroit River, which is only a
forty-five
-minute drive across the county from Faireville. Not everyone is so patriotic that they feel they have to get behind a Canadian team; hell, a few guys around here even cheer for the Flyers and the Bruins. My dad thinks that these fans are traitors to their country, and he doesn't mind telling them so when he's watching a game on the big screens at one of the local bars.

Just about everyone else in the arena roots for Montreal, because back a couple hundred years ago, the Brits kicked a bunch of the French out of what's now Quebec, and they settled just up the road from Faireville in Rivière Lévesque, a village that isn't big enough to have its own hockey team. I guess the Leveckers (that's what we call them here in Faireville) still feel some connection to their former countrymen who stayed in Montreal; most of the Leveckers still speak French at home. Of all of the barroom fistfights that my dad has had over the years, most of them were with Hab-fan Leveckers.

Me? Well, I secretly root for the Ottawa Senators, who are pretty much despised by Red Wings, Canadiens, and Leafs fans alike. Why the Senators? Because once, when I was just a little kid, my dad drove me to Ottawa in his truck to go see a Senators game, and it's still one of the best memories I've got.

When the Senators started back up as an NHL team, they played at the tiny Ottawa Civic Centre, because I guess they hadn't earned enough money to build an NHL-size arena yet. Dad was running up to Ottawa to bring some supplies back to the factory anyway, and last-minute game tickets at the Civic Centre were pretty cheap, so he figured, “Why not take the kid to see a game?”

Even though the Senators were beaten four-two by the Bruins that night, my dad and I had fun together. It was the last time I can remember him smiling at me, actually. It was the last time that he punched me just for sport; you know, on the shoulder, just for fun.

Sometime during the third period, one of the Senators players challenged one of the Bruins to a fight for chopping one of his teammates on the ankle with his stick. The Senator lost the fight and skated off with a bloody nose, but my father stood up and cheered for the guy as he left the ice with a towel over his face.

“That's the stuff, Aaron,” Dad said to me. “That's the Code. You gotta stand up for your teammates when someone does them wrong. You gotta stand up for yourself, too. Even if you lose the battle, you win the war. Understand?”

I told him that I did.

Then Dad got all teary-eyed, like he sometimes does when he's drunk, and he reached into the inside pocket of his parka and plucked out a simple silver ring.

“This is for you, kiddo. I won it fair and square in a poker game, so it's a winner's ring. It's a lucky ring. I want you to have it.”

The ring was engraved on the inside with the words
Forever More
. Even on my thickest finger the ring was loose, but I wore it anyway.

We turned right around after the game and drove the eight hours back to Faireville, because Dad couldn't afford for us to stay the night in a hotel room. We ran out of gas on the way home, though; in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, in the middle of nowhere. That part was less fun. It did not put Dad in a very good mood.

The Ottawa Senators set three NHL records during that inaugural season, by the way: the longest home losing streak (eleven games), the longest road losing streak (thirty-eight!), and the fewest road wins in a season (one). Still, I started rooting for them back then. My dad says that I'm a sucker for the underdog, and I guess that's true. And the Senators did eventually get better.

T
he team that I play for, the Faireville Blue Flames, has a similar record to the first-year Senators, by the way. We are in dead-last place in the league, and we are about to play the Gasberg Pipefitters, who are so far ahead of every other team in the league that, even if they lost the rest of their games this season, they would
still
be the champions.

Now Wheelie Koontz is playing the song about the guy wanting to drive the Zamboni. I actually drove the Zamboni once, when Earl, the arena manager, got too drunk to park it himself after an old-timer's game went into triple overtime. Driving the Zamboni is really not a big deal; it's like steering an oversized, top-heavy lawn tractor around. A Zamboni is not exactly a “
Powerful-yet
-Nimble Driving Machine” (a phrase I borrowed from the rinkside advertisement for Gasberg Exotic Sports Cars). Still, the capacity crowd is singing (well, screaming) that they want to drive the Zamboni, too, when the lyrics are overwhelmed by a collective scream of “WHOOOOOOOOOO!” as Keegan Thrush steps onto the ice.

A bunch of girls from our high school, their faces painted purple and gold, wave a spray-painted bedsheet banner that reads K
EEGAN
T
HRUSH
IS #
1!!!!! They drool over his architecturally perfect face, and they write poems in English class detailing his sky-blue eyes, wavy dark hair, strong cheekbones, and square jaw. The high-tech body armour beneath his jersey makes him look even more like a mythical warrior. When he points the end of his expensive composite stick toward their section of the stands, the girls all scream orgasmically, the heat of their bodies almost melting the
purple-and
-gold makeup from their faces. Their hero has acknowledged them! Oh my
gawd
!

Purple and gold are Gasberg's team colours, by the way. Our team colours are blue and silver.

Even though Keegan lives in Faireville, he is eligible to play for the Gasberg team because he goes to school there. His parents send him to Eagle Crest Preparatory College, the
twenty-five
-
thousand
-
dollar
-
a-year
private high school in the city. Unlike most people in Faireville, they can afford to send Keegan to Eagle Crest, because Keegan's dad owns Gasberg Exotic Sports Cars; he also has controlling interests in a number of other “exotic” businesses, like the “exotic” dancers at the Ooh La La All-Nude Gentlemen's Club, as well as the “exotic” substances dealt in its back room.

It would normally raise a lot of eyebrows that Ramsay Thrush drives a Maserati in a town where everyone else drives
ten-year
-old pickup trucks and Honda Civics, but since Ramsay makes a big show of donating money to every local charity and cause, most people turn a blind eye to his more questionable enterprises. With their good eyes, they choose to see him as an upstanding civic leader and admirable philanthropist, as long as he keeps that messy stuff in the city, where it belongs.

Normally, Keegan would be considered a traitor to his hometown for playing for Gasberg, but somehow the adults of Faireville all love Keegan, too. Keegan lives with his parents in one of the lace-trimmed estates in Victoria Park, in the very home where Prime Minister Abbott slept one night, so Keegan's got the
please-and
-
thank
-you manners of Faireville's
tea-and
-cookie elite. This makes the Faireville moms believe that he's Ideal Husband Material for their daughters.

Meanwhile, the Faireville dads believe that Keegan will be going to the Big Show one of these days, and they're all itching for the day he scores his first NHL goal on TV, so they can say to whoever is sitting beside them in their basement rec room, “I watched him play his final game at the Faireville Memorial Arena. I knew it then. I knew it then.”

T
he ref blows the whistle for the game to begin, but none of the players can hear it for the noise of the screaming crowd. So the ref waves his arms in the air and blows the whistle again, so loudly this time that his cheeks puff out and turn purple.

Keegan Thrush skates to centre ice for the opening faceoff, wearing a confident grin like one of those cowboy heroes in the 1950s serials that they play late at night on the public television channel (which is one of three stations we get on the tinfoil antennas on our ancient TV). There is a good reason for Keegan's confident grin: the Gasberg Pipefitters' previous game against the Brownton Buttermilkers.

The Buttermilkers have got intimidating-looking
black-and
-gold jerseys, like the Boston Bruins. They've also got the most terrible name in the history of hockey.
The Brownton Buttermilkers
sounds like the title of one of those pastel-covered paperback novels that my mother likes to read:
The Southern Saffron Soufflé Sisterhood
or
The Peterborough Puddin' Pie Protectorate.
Despite their
less-than
-threatening name, though, the Buttermilkers are a hell of a better hockey team than we are, the second-best in the league. And just last week, Keegan Thrush scored
ten unassisted goals
on them.

Think about that for a minute.
Ten
goals.
Unassisted.
Ten goals, all by himself. Against an entire team of decent players.

To put this feat in perspective, the highest number of
points
ever scored in a NHL game was ten, by the Toronto Maple Leafs' Darryl Sittler, versus the Boston Bruins. Sittler scored six goals and contributed four assists. It has never happened again since, and probably never will.

Darryl Sittler got six goals and four helpers. Keegan Thrush scored
ten goals.

Now, I understand that the Wheatfield Major Junior Hockey League is not exactly the NHL, and that the Brownton Buttermilkers are not the Boston Bruins. But still, against our pathetic team it's possible that Keegan will score
eleven
goals tonight.

This is what everyone is hoping to see. Everyone wants to see Keegan Thrush set yet
another
league record.

Nobody is here to cheer for their pitiful home team. Everyone in town has crammed into the Faireville Memorial Arena to watch Keegan Thrush single-handedly destroy the Faireville Blue Flames.

Everyone but my dad, that is. He may be the only person in Faireville who isn't in love with Keegan Thrush.

“You should drop the gloves with that gawd-damned pretty-boy traitor,” Dad said through gritted teeth as we walked to the arena. “Are you wearing your lucky ring?”

“Yep. I'm wearing it.” The ring is too tight for me now, but I still wear it when I'm playing hockey. Dad takes it personally when I don't, and, well, he's not a lot of fun to be around when he takes things personally.