The Last Season Read Free

when I excused myself and went to the washroom to work on my hair and zits. The hair only took a second; there was only so much you could do with a brushcut.
    Some of the guys had been saying I looked like Tim Horton and that was just fine with me. I thought I played like him, too. Horton looked then like the Maple Leafs cut his hair on the skate sharpener, grinding it down, but I made do with Herb Broadbent’s scissors and not a damned thing else. The style was a natural for me and Herb was even talking about hanging my picture, complete with hockey uniform, in his shop window to advertise.
    But I knew he wouldn’t. A picture of Batterinski wouldn’t look like an advertisement for hair, but like one against zits. I was convinced I had zits because I was Polish. No one in my family had good skin; no one in Pomerania, as far as I had seen, ever had either, except for a few Irish like Danny Shannon. Maybe it was all the sugar in the mazureks , because Poppa, Jaja, and Ig all had swollen noses, moles, blackheads and broken vessels. Maybe it came from not pronouncing “th” properly, I don’t know.
    At least I had hair. Hair like Poppa’s, too, not poor Ig with his damned Scotch tape and floor sweepings from Hatkoski’s barber shop. How could they have been brothers, Ig with a quarter of Poppa’s brain and not a speck of his hair? And goddamn that Danny, too — him going on after practice yesterday to Powers and Bucky, telling them all about my Uncle Ig taping on somebody’s white hair over some of Danny’s own cuttings. Danny Shannon should have known better. Sometimes I wondered, who’s the more retarded, Danny or Ig? The real difference was Ig couldn’t help himself and smartass Danny could, but didn’t bother. The prick.
    If he wasn’t my best friend, I’d have killed him. And he knew that, which is why he was even friendlier than usual when I called on him.
    â€œYour old man’s here ?” he asked when I said I was heading down to the hotel to see him. “Jaisus — I’d give anything for my gang to show up for a game.”
    I very nearly said I’d gladly trade him, but let it go, knowing full well Danny’s enthusiasms weren’t necessarily tied to what he really felt. Danny Shannon put popularity before all other considerations and Vernon seemed ready-made for him. He’d only been in town a day when he had his first telephone call. A girl, naturally, and since then hardly a day went by without a call, a single female screech “You’re cute!” and then a banged receiver. Cute, yes, I couldn’t deny that, Danny with his curly hair black as a puck and those big sleepy brown eyes and what Poppa always calls “the damn sneaky Irish charm.” But I never begrudged him that. It was all he had, really. He wasn’t a first-stringer on the team, not like me, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to make any go of school. His personality was as crucial to him as my hips were to me. What people knew you by.
    Vernon had a great Main Street, snaking up from the river past the hotel and the theatre and on up into the hill where the water reservoir sat. The river ran between two lakes, the one back of the arena called “Fairy,” and Danny found it impossible to walk by the sign over top of Riley’s Hardware without splitting a gut. All it said was ODDFELLOWS CLUB, FAIRY BRANCH , which was good for one laugh but hardly what Danny had turned it into. I knew I’d have to make sure we kept to the other side of the street if we took Poppa anywhere, God forbidding.
    The only similarity between Pomerania and Vernon was the amount of walking you had to do. Vernon had a covered arena with artificial ice; Pomerania had an outdoor rink, ice pebbles and spring muck. Vernon had four thousand people; Pomerania had maybe two hundred — and most of them hidden in the pines. Once we had eleven hundred spectators