“He hasn't mentioned it to me, not yet, anyway,” I said.
Gerry never looked my way, he settled his gaze on centre ice and said, “I've been playing, coaching, and involved in one way or another for twenty years now. Your boy has it. He knows it and they know it. Don't worry, he'll be talking to you soon. So will one or both of those scouts. Travis has come into his own, and Junior B makes sense. Shit, Junior A makes sense the way he's playing lately.”
They won their game that night. Travis had three assists and doled out two thundering bodychecks. On the way home I was busting to ask him about the scouts. We talked non-stop about the game and his near miss on a backhander in the middle of a goal mouth scramble. When we were over halfway home I couldn't hold back anymore. I told him that Gerry Ferguson had pointed out the guys from the Junior B teams. Travis smiled and took a drink from his water bottle.
“I was going to tell you. It's just that with everything that's happened and with Rusty, you know.”
I pulled onto the shoulder and flicked on my hazard lights.
“Travis, listen to me, B is the place to improve your skills, get better at the things that'll never grow if you stay in Triple A. You know as well as I do that these B clubs have agreements with A clubs. You're playing like an A player. If you want to make a go of it, I'm behind you. You let me worry about Rusty.”
He shuffled his feet around and avoided looking at me. Eventually, he let out a weak, “Yeah, I know, but . . .”
I told him there were no buts. That's when he told me that Rusty had been running around town with the Street brothers. Talk about feeling deflated.
I remember one time I was at the Copper Kettle with Gus and a couple of the other guys, wolfing back some BLTs and drinking coffee. Gus had been talking about the provincial police and how they'd added a second patrol area to Battleford Township. The official line was that the police had gone through some geographical reassessment and decided that the township now required a second constable on patrol. But Baxter, who had a way of finding things out, said that they'd added the extra cop for one reason and one reason only: the Street brothers. Marty and Johnny Street lived with their mother, who had been married to a biker until he vanished. They had a little sister named Cassie, a skinny little thing who walked naked around their yard, which was full of old tires and car scraps, until she was twelve or thirteen. The Street boys had both finished with school at sixteen. They made their living dabbling in various petty crimes. They sold weed and illegal smokes they'd gotten from the U.S. They always had hot property, stuff “off the back of a truck”to sell at the local flea markets. And they always had cash to pour into their cars, an assortment of junkers with chrome rims, cheap hand-painted racing stripes, and Thrush mufflers. They weren't big-time hoods by any stretch, but they were getting older and showed no signs of walking the straight and narrow. Rumour had it that they'd hit a bank down in Buffalo. When that news started making it around town the Street boys made some visits to some of the more loose-lipped residents of Battleford and the rumours soon hushed. The Streets were losers; the last thing I needed was for Rusty to get tangled up with trouble like them.
It was difficult to celebrate Travis's news about the Junior B scouts knowing that my eldest boy could be out roaming around with thugs, inches away from serious trouble. A breath away from fucking himself up, bringing more grief on the family.
We got home around ten that night. Travis went upstairs to tackle some homework. I wandered outside to have a cigarette. I walked my property nervously, making circuits around the house trying to figure out how to handle Russ. Here's the thing: I knew I had to lay down the law, but if I came off too heavy-handed, Russ would react badly and that would give Travis a world of worry. I had to promise myself to take a soft approach. I stood and finished a third cigarette and looked at the west side of our home. The driveway that led to our garage ran along that side of the house. The brown brick was scuffed and streaked with black paint from Rusty's pickup truck. God knows how many times in the last year he'd driven in late, and drunk, and scraped his truck along the side of the house. I wondered where the hell I'd been, why I hadn't noticed it. I had a hunch that I was acting on all of this too late, and it was an ugly feeling. It felt like I was being watched, and I wondered if it were Wanda's eyes upon me, assessing me, shaking her head from wherever she was. I was trembling by the time I went back inside and took my position on the couch in the front room to wait for Rusty. Travis wandered halfway downstairs and said goodnight. When he'd shut off the lights upstairs I took down a bottle of rye and a shot glass. I wasn't about to start again, not regularly, but I needed a sharp one to calm my nerves.
Rusty got home at shortly after midnight. He looked sober as he hung his coat and kicked off his boots. He switched on the light and jumped when he saw me sitting there. He studied the table for a moment, acknowledged the bottle, and set his cocky stare on me.
“Thought you'd given that up,” he said.
“One or two won't hurt every now and again.”
He didn't respond. He walked past me slowly, on guard, as if I might jump up and take a poke at him. I wanted to tell him that a whisky once in a blue moon was small potatoes compared to running around with local thugs and getting so drunk you couldn't steer a truck down a sixty-foot driveway. But I stayed low-key because he seemed to have his act together at that particular point. I asked him to join me for a shot. He flashed a phony grin.
“You want me to sit and drink with you.”
“Just one, I want to talk about something.”
He fetched a glass from the cabinet and poured himself a short one.
“So, shoot.”
“Where've you been? You have a good night?”
He downed the whisky in one gulp and closed his eyes.
“Okay, old man, you're sitting here waiting for me with a bottle in front of you, you're still up at ten after twelve, and you're all cordial and pleasant, like the fucking Avon lady. You wanna tell me what's up?”
“Well, your brother is going to be talking to some Junior B scouts. What do you think of that?”
He tipped the glass right up, his tongue searching for the remaining drops.
“It doesn't surprise me. I think he could play B no problem.”
“I'd like you to help him, Russ.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Help him? Hey, I quit years ago. Haven't been on skates for five years. How can I help him?”
“I don't mean the hockey part. I was thinking more like just being there for him. He looks up to you, Russ.”
“Well, in case you forgot, I was in the car with you earlier, on the road to that game. You decided to stir the shit.”
I don't remember all of what I said next. But I lost it and said a mouthful. The boy knew how to push my buttons. He knew how to dare you to try and have a regular conversation with him. I stood and whipped the shot glass against the wall. I told Rusty that maybe he could help his little brother by setting an example. For starters, he could stop hanging out with criminals and quit making me feel like a guest in my own home, like I needed a fucking passport to walk in the front door. I told him that I lost my wife, that I knew and loved that woman for years before he was even around, so lose the attitude, the air he put on that made me feel like his was the greatest loss, the sharpest grief. Russ stood when I'd finished. He gritted his teeth and said, “You lost her because you ignored her. You put more value on that pathetic, rundown, backwoods gas station of yours than you ever did on her. She wanted out of this dump long ago. But she walked on eggshells around you all the time. That's what killed her.” He went to the front door and snatched his coat from the closet.
“Don't you drop a cheap shot like that and then walk out of here!”
He