The Essential W. P. Kinsella Read online

  About that time a half-ton St. Edouard defenceman land with a knee on Ferd’s head, smash his mask, his face and his glasses about an inch deep into the ice.

  Guy Lafleur stand up on his seat and bark like a fire alarm.

  “Shut up, Guy Lafleur you son of a bitch,” says Frank. Then looking out at the rink where Ferd lay still as if he been dead for a week or so, he say, “That fat sucker probably broke his knee on Ferd’s head.”

  But the St. Edouard defenceman already skating around like he scored a goal, his stick raised up in the air, his skates making slashing sounds.

  It is Ferd Tailfeathers get carried from the ice.

  “Who’s buying the next round?” he ask the referee, as we haul him over the boards.

  “They take their hockey pretty seriously up here, eh?” says Frank to a long-faced man sit next to Guy Lafleur. That man wear a Montreal Canadiens toque and sweater, and he have only four teeth in front, two top, two bottom, all stained yellow, and none quite matching. I notice now that almost everybody in the arena, from old people, like the guy next to Guy Lafleur, to tiny babies in arms, wear Montreal Canadiens sweaters. Somewhere there must be a store sell nothing but Montreal uniforms.

  “You think this is serious,” the old man say, “you ought to see a wedding in St. Edouard. The aisle of the Catholic Church is covered in artificial ice, at least in the summer, in winter it freeze up of its own accord. The priest wear goal pads and the groom is the defenceman,” he go on in a heavy French accent.

  “I didn’t see no church,” says Frank, “only big building I seen was the elevator.”

  “You seen the church,” say the old man, “elevator got torn down years ago. You guys should stick around there supposed to be a wedding tomorrow. The bride and bridesmaids stickhandle down the aisle, careful not to be off-side at the blue line; they get three shots on goal to score on the priest. If they don’t the wedding get put off for a week.”

  Another old man in a felt hat and cigarette-yellowed mustache speak up, “We had one priest was such a good goal-tender there were no weddings in St. Edouard for over two years. Some of the waiting couples had two, three kids already—so the bishop come down from Edmonton and perform a group ceremony.”

  Knocking Ferd out of the game was a real unlucky thing for them to do. I’m sure they would of scored ten goals each period if they’d just been patient. In the dressing room we strip off Ferd’s pads, look for somebody to take his place.

  Frank tell first one and then another player to put on the equipment.

  “Put them on yourself,” they say to Frank, only not in such polite language.

  “You’re gonna have to go in goal,” Frank say to me.

  “Not me,” I say. “I got some regard for my life.”

  “Put your goddamned dog in the goal,” say the caretaker of the dressing room. We can hear the fans getting restless. They are chanting something sound like “Alley, alley, les Bashers,” and stomping their feet until the whole building shake.

  “You guys should go home now,” the old caretaker say. “They just looking for a bad team to beat up on. The way you guys skate it will be like tossing raw meat to hungry dogs.”

  “I think he’s right,” I say. “Let’s sneak out. We can fend off the fans with hockey sticks if we have to.”

  We are just about to do that when Frank get his idea.

  “It’s why I’m manager and you’re not,” Frank say modestly to me that night when we driving back toward Hobbema.

  We hold up the game for another fifteen minutes while we try to find skates big enough to fit Mad Etta.

  Etta been sitting in the corner of the dressing room having a beer. Her and Frank do some fast bargaining. End up Frank have to promise her $900 of the thousand-dollar prize money before she’ll agree to play. Frank he plunk a mask on Etta’s face right then and there.

  “Not bad,” say Etta, stare into a mirror. The mask is mean looking, with a red diamond drawed around each eye and red shark teeth where the mouth should be.

  When we ask the Bashers to loan us a pair of BIG skates, they tell us to get lost.

  “We’ve got to default the game then,” we tell them, “guess you’ll have to refund all those fans their money.”

  That make them nicer to know.

  “Yeah, we didn’t bring them all the way up here not to get in a few good licks.”

  “Besides the fans are in a mean mood. They want to see some blood. We’re going to get even for what happened to Custer,” say their biggest defenceman, who is about the size of a jeep and almost as smart. He give us his extra skates for Etta, then say, “We’ll score four or five goals, then we’ll trash you guys for a full hour. Get ready to bleed a lot.”

  We set Etta on a bench with her back to the wall. Me and Frank get one on each side of her and we push like we was trying to put a skate on a ten-pound sack of sugar.

  “I’m too old for this,” puffs Etta. “What is it I’m supposed to do again anyway?”

  “Just think how you’ll spend the $900,” says Frank, tie her laces in a big knot, “and everything else will take care of itself.”

  Three of us have to walk beside, behind, and in front, in order to steer Etta from the bench to the goal. The fans are all going “Oooh,” and “Ahhhh.”

  I get to walk behind.

  “If she falls back I’m a goner,” I say.

  “So keep her on her feet,” huffs Frank. “I figure you value your life more than most, that’s why I put you back there.”

  “That’s one big mother of a goaltender,” say one of the Bashers.

  “More than you know,” says Etta, but in Cree.

  “Alley, alley, les Bashers,” go the audience.

  Once we get Etta to the net she grab onto the iron rail and stomp the ice, send chips flying in all directions, kick and kick until she get right down to the floorboards. Once she got footing she stand with an arm on each goal post, glare fierce from behind that mean mask what painted like a punk rock album cover.

  Soon as the game start again the Bashers get the puck, pass it about three ways from Sunday, while our players busy falling down, skate right in on Mad Etta and shoot . . . and shoot . . . and shoot. Don’t matter where they poke the puck, or how often, there is always some part of Mad Etta blocking the goal.

  After maybe ten shots, a little player zoom in like a mosquito, fire point blank; the puck hit Etta’s shoulder and go up in the crowd.

  “That hurt,” shout Etta, slap with her goal stick, knock that little player head over heels as he buzz by the net. She get a penalty for that. Goalies can’t serve penalties, but someone else have to. The Bashers take about twenty more shots in the next two minutes.

  “You’re doin’ great,” Frank yell from the bench.

  “How come our team never shoot the biscuit at their goal?” Etta call back.

  “We’re workin’ on it,” says Frank, “trust your manager.”

  Things don’t improve though, so Etta just turn her back on the game, lean on the net and let the Bashers shoot at her backside. There is more Etta than there is goal; even some shots that miss the goal hit Etta. I think it is a law of physics that you can’t add to something that is already full.

  There is no score at the end of the first period. Trouble is Etta assume the game is only one period long.

  “I got to stay out there how long?” she yell at Frank. “I already earn more than $900. That little black biscuit hurt like hell,” she go on. “And how come none of you guys know how to play this game but me?”

  The players is all glassy-eyed, gasp for air, nurse their bruises, cuts, and hangovers.

  As we guide Etta out for the second period, Guy Lafleur go to barking like a fire siren again. He always hated Mad Etta ever since one day he nipped at her heels while she huffing up the hill from Hobbema General Store, and Etta punted him about forty yards deep into the mud and bulrushes of the slough at the foot of the hill.

  When she hear the dog Etta spin
around knock a couple of us to the ice, make Frank afraid for his life, and go “Bow-wow-wow,” at Guy Lafleur, sound so much like a real dog that he jump off his seat and don’t show his nose again until after the riot.

  The way we dressed Etta for the game was to put the shoulder pads on, then her five-flour-sack dress, then tape one sweater to her chest and another to her back.

  Soon as she get to the goal she have to guard for the second period, she don’t even stomp the ice, just fumble in the pocket of her dress, take out a baggie with some greenish-looking sandy stuff in it, sprinkle that green stuff all across the goal line. Frank rush off the bench, fall twice on the way ’cause he wearing slippery-soled cowboy boots.

  “What are you doin’?” he yell at Etta, who is waddling real slow, force each skate about an inch into the ice every step, and is heading for the face-off circle to the left of her goal.

  “If I stay in front of that little closet I’m gonna be so bruised I’ll look polka-dotted. I’ve had enough of this foolishness.”

  “But the goal,” cries Frank.

  “Hey, you manage the team. I’ll do what I do best,” and Etta give Frank a shove propel him on his belly all the way to the players’ gate by our bench.

  As the referee call the players to center ice, Etta sit down cross-legged in that face-off circle, light up a cigarette, blow smoke at the fans who stomping their feet.

  The St. Edouard team steal the puck on the face-off, sweep right over the defence and fire at the empty goal. But the puck just zap off to the corner as if there was a real good goalie there. After about ten shots like that the Bashers get pretty mad and the fans even more so. It is like Etta bricked up the front of the goal with invisible bricks.

  The St. Edouard Bashers gather around the referee and scream at him in both of Canada’s official languages, and all of Canada’s swear words.

  The referee skate to the net, test with his hand, but there is nothing to block it. He stick one skate into the net. He throw the puck into the net. Then he borrow a stick from one of the Bashers and shoot the puck in, several times.

  “Stop your bitchin’ and play hockey,” he say to the St. Edouard players.

  “I bet I could sell that stuff to Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers for a million dollars an ounce,” Frank hiss into my ear. “You’re her assistant, Silas. What do you think the chances are of getting hold of a bag of that stuff?”

  “It would only work when Etta stare at it the right way,” I say.

  “Hey, Edmonton Oilers could afford to buy Etta too. She’s more valuable than Wayne Gretzky. And we’d be her agents . . .”

  “Forget it,” I say. “You can’t buy medicine.”

  Les Bashers keep shooting at our goal all through the second period and into the third, with no better luck.

  It a fact of hockey that no matter how bad a team you got you going to score a goal sooner or later. At about fifteen minutes into the third period, Rufus Firstrider, who skate mainly on his ankles, carry the puck over the St. Edouard blue line, try to pass to Gorman Carry-the-kettle, who been wheezing down the right wing.

  The goalie see the pass coming up and move across the goal mouth to cover it, and there’s a Mack truck of a defenceman ready to cream Gorman if the puck even gets close to him. But Rufus miss the pass entirely, fall down and accidentally hit the puck toward the net and score. That is all the goals there is: Hobbema Wagonburners 1, St. Edouard Bashers 0.

  It was them and their fans what started the riot. We all headed for the dressing room, except for Frank, who jump into the stands looking for Guy Lafleur, and suffer a certain amount of damage as a result.

  After the RCMP cooled everyone off and escorted us to our bus, Frank show up with a black eye and blood on his shirt, while Guy Lafleur have a notch out of one ear but a big mouthful of Basher hockey sweater to make up for it.

  They got carpenters screwing the seats back in place and men busy resurfacing the ice. The Bashers decide to start the tournament over the next day, playing against teams they can beat. They agree to pay us $2500 to go home and never enter their tournament again.

  And that’s the truth.

  How I Got My Nickname

  In the summer of 1951, the summer before I was to start Grade 12, my polled Hereford calf, Simon Bolivar, won Reserve Grand Champion at the Des Moines, All-Iowa Cattle Show and Summer Exposition. My family lived on a hobby-farm near Iowa City. My father who taught classics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, and in spite of that was still the world’s number one baseball fan, said I deserved a reward—I also had a straight A average in Grade 11 and had published my first short story that spring. My father phoned his friend Robert Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, an eminent translator, sometimes phoned my father late at night and they talked about various ways of interpreting the tougher parts of the Iliad) and two weeks later I found myself in Fitzgerald’s spacious country home outside of New York City, sharing the lovely old house with the Fitzgeralds, their endless supply of children, and a young writer from Georgia named Flannery O’Connor. Miss O’Connor was charming, and humorous in an understated way, and I wish I had talked with her more. About the third day I was there I admitted to being a published writer and Miss O’Connor said, “You must show me some of your stories.” I never did. I was seventeen, overweight, diabetic, and bad-complexioned. I alternated between being terminally shy and obnoxiously brazen. I was nearly always shy around the Fitzgeralds and Miss O’Connor. I was also terribly homesick, which made me appear more silent and outlandish than I knew I was. I suspect I am the model for Enoch Emery, the odd, lonely country boy in Miss O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood. But that is another story.

  On a muggy August morning, the first day of a Giants home stand at the Polo Grounds, I prepared to travel in to New York. I politely invited Miss O’Connor to accompany me, but she, even at that early date, had to avoid sunlight and often wore her wide-brimmed straw hat, even indoors. I set off much too early and, though terrified of the grimy city and shadows that seemed to lurk in every doorway, arrived at the Polo Grounds over two hours before game time. It was raining gently and I was one of about two dozen fans in the ballpark. A few players were lethargically playing catch, a coach was hitting fungoes to three players in right field. I kept edging my way down the rows of seats until I was right behind the Giants dugout.

  The Giants were thirteen games behind the Dodgers and the pennant race appeared all but over. A weasel-faced bat boy, probably some executive’s nephew, I thought, noticed me staring wide-eyed at the players and the playing field. He curled his lip at me, then stuck out his tongue. He mouthed the words “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” adding something at the end that I could only assume to be uncomplimentary.

  Fired by the insult I suddenly mustered all my bravado and called out, “Hey, Mr. Durocher?” Leo Durocher, the Giants manager, had been standing in the third base coach’s box not looking at anything in particular. I was really impressed. That’s the grand thing about baseball, I thought. Even a manager in a pennant race can take time to daydream. He didn’t hear me. But the bat boy did, and stuck out his tongue again.

  I was overpowered by my surroundings. Though I’d seen a lot of major league baseball I’d never been in the Polo Grounds before. The history of the place . . . “Hey, Mr. Durocher,” I shouted.

  Leo looked up at me with a baleful eye. He needed a shave, and the lines around the corners of his mouth looked like ruts.

  “What is it, Kid?”

  “Could I hit a few?” I asked hopefully, as if I was begging to stay up an extra half hour. “You know, take a little batting practice?”

  “Sure, Kid. Why not?” and Leo smiled with one corner of his mouth. “We want all our fans to feel like part of the team.”

  From the box seat where I’d been standing, I climbed up on the roof of the dugout and Leo helped me down onto the field.

  Leo looked down into the dugout. The rain was stopping. On the other side of the park a few of the Phillie
s were wandering onto the field. “Hey, George,” said Leo, staring into the dugout, “throw the kid here a few pitches. Where are you from, son?”

  It took me a few minutes to answer because I experienced this strange, lightheaded feeling, as if I had too much sun. “Near to Iowa City, Iowa,” I managed to say in a small voice. Then “You’re going to win the pennant, Mr. Durocher. I just know you are.”

  “Well, thanks, Kid,” said Leo modestly, “we’ll give it our best shot.”

  George was George Bamberger, a stocky rookie who had seen limited action. “Bring the kid a bat, Andy,” Leo said to the bat boy. The bat boy curled his lip at me but slumped into the dugout, as Bamberger and Sal Yvars tossed the ball back and forth.

  The bat boy brought me a black bat. I was totally unprepared for how heavy it was. I lugged it to the plate and stepped into the right-hand batter’s box. Bamberger delivered an easy, looping, batting-practice pitch. I drilled it back up the middle.

  “Pretty good, Kid,” I heard Durocher say.

  Bamberger threw another easy one and I fouled it off. The third pitch was a little harder. I hammered it to left.

  “Curve him,” said Durocher.

  He curved me. Even through my thick glasses the ball looked as big as a grapefruit, illuminated like a small moon. I whacked it and it hit the right field wall on one bounce.

  “You weren’t supposed to hit that one,” said Sal Yvars.

  “You’re pretty good, Kid,” shouted Durocher from the third base box. “Give him your best stuff, George.”

  Over the next fifteen minutes I batted about .400 against George Bamberger, and Roger Bowman, including a home run into the left centrefield stands. The players on the Giants bench were watching me with mild interest often looking up from the books most of them were reading.

  “I’m gonna put the infield out now,” said Durocher. “I want you to run out some of your hits.”

  Boy, here I was batting against the real New York Giants. I wished I’d worn a new shirt instead of the horizontally striped red and white one I had on, which made me look heftier than I really was. Bowman threw a sidearm curve and I almost broke my back swinging at it. But he made the mistake of coming right back with the same pitch. I looped it behind third where it landed soft as a sponge, and trickled off toward the stands—I’d seen the play hundreds of times—a stand-up double. But when I was still twenty feet from second base Eddie Stanky was waiting with the ball. “Slide!” somebody yelled, but I just skidded to a stop, stepping out of the baseline to avoid the tag. Stanky whapped me anyway, a glove to the ribs that would have made Rocky Marciano or Ezzard Charles proud.