Starvation Lake

eleven

The dressing rooms at Blackburn Arena were cramped rectangles with benches and clothing hooks nailed into cinder-block walls, showers that occasionally spewed hot water, and black rubber mats covered with spilled coffee and spat tobacco dip. The only difference was the numbers one through four on the doors. When we were the River Rats, and now that we were the Chowder Heads, we had to be in dressing room 3. That’s where I found Soupy, Zilchy, Wilf, Stevie, and the rest of the boys before our 8:00 p.m. semifinal playoff game against the Mighty Minnows of Jordan Bait and Tackle. Soupy stood waiting for me to sit. I did and he plopped down on the bench to my left.

“Trapper,” he said. “Pumped?”

“Sure,” I grunted. I had way too much on my mind to be having pucks fired at my head. On my way in, I’d passed the Zamboni shed and spied Leo crouched beneath Ethel with a rag in one hand. It was briefly comforting to see him attending to his normal duties, as if nothing at all had happened the past two days.

“What’s the score out there?” Soupy said.

As we dressed, the Boynton Realty Land Sharks were playing the Capraro’s Pizza Pieholes in the other semifinal. The winner would play the winner of our game in the championship Monday night. The champs would get T-shirts and the runners-up would buy cocktails for everyone at Enright’s.

“It was five to one Sharks when I came in,” I said. “Saw Teddy just about behead Bobby Safranski with an elbow.”

Teddy had always been tough, but over the years he’d grown mean-sneaky mean. Even the toughest players watched their backs around him, especially after play was whistled dead and the refs were busy lining up a face-off. That’s when he might spear you with a stick blade or punch you in the back of the head.

The other guys jabbered as they tightened their skate laces and taped their shinguards. “He get a penalty?” Soupy said.

“Not Teddy. Refs never saw it.” I leaned closer to Soupy. “What was up with you and him today anyway?”

“Me and who?” Soupy said.

“Don’t. You and Boynton. At the Shoot-Out.”

Soupy rummaged in his bag. “What do you think? I lost a hundred bucks. Wasn’t a lot of fun. But everything’s taken care of, don’t worry.”

“Meaning what?”

I was thinking of the settlement offer I’d read in the marina that morning. Had he changed his mind and taken it? I wanted to ask directly but didn’t want him to know I’d sneaked in. Then again, maybe he already knew. Maybe he had left those squirming fish outside the marina door.

“By the way,” I said, “were you fishing this morning?”

“Fishing? Shit, I was in bed till noon. What the hell’s up with you tonight, Trap? It’s time to play hockey now.” He called to Stevie Reneau across the room. “Steve-O. Minnows got both Linkes tonight?”

Twin brothers Clem and Jake Linke were the Minnows’ best players.

“If Jake got out of jail,” Stevie said.

“Jail again? Now what?”

“He got kicked out of some Mancelona dive and got all pissed off and went up and down the street snapping windshield wipers off cars.”

“Nice,” Soupy said. “Could be both Linkes, Trap. Hope you brought your A game.”

“Go to hell,” I whispered back.

I opened my bag with an angry zip. Soupy elbowed me gently in the shoulder. I looked at him. His eyes said he didn’t want me to be mad, but he also wasn’t going to tell whatever he had to tell. Not yet, at least. “Come on, Trapper,” he said. “Stop worrying. Ain’t good mojo to talk business before games.” He meant luck, but it was bad luck to acknowledge that luck was involved.

One day when Soupy and I were eleven, we were riding our snowmobiles when we stopped atop a hill at the border between Pine and Polley counties. From there we could look back and see the lazy crescent of the lake and the chimney smoke curling up from Soupy’s house, where Mrs. Campbell was baking pies for a New Year’s dinner our families planned to share the next day. Soupy wanted to sled down the Polley side of the hill into forbidden territory; our parents’ rule then was that we were not to cross the Pine County line. But it was New Year’s Eve, Soupy argued, so it was OK. He pointed to a clapboard bell tower jutting up through the trees below. “See that?” he said. “We can ring the bell.” Before I could answer he was roaring down.

Ours were the only tracks scarring the snow around the one-room schoolhouse. It looked abandoned; boards covered all of the outer windows. Soupy creaked the front door open and we stepped inside. The vestibule smelled of moldy paper. Through the window of the locked inner door we could see the dusty desks pushed into a corner, textbooks stacked haphazardly on the wood floor. A rope hung down from a square hole in the ceiling.

“The gun,” Soupy said. He ran back outside, returning with his Daisy BB rifle.

“Soupy,” I said. “We’re gonna get caught.”

“Don’t be a pussy.”

“I’m not a pussy.”

“Look,” he said, holding up his gloved hands. “No fingerprints.” He trained the gun on the door window and fired. The hissing BB left a pinhole at the center of a web of spidery cracks. Six more shots opened a hole the size of a fist. Gingerly, Soupy reached through the jagged opening. The door gave way.

The floor groaned as we stepped inside. “Smells like ass in here,” Soupy said. I edged farther inside, holding my breath against the must. I reached up and clasped a mittened hand around the knot at the end of the rope. I yanked it once and jumped back. “Harder,” Soupy said. I yanked again, and the rope gave way so easily that I fell backward. I looked up and saw rope and bell and shreds of rotted wood plummeting toward me. “Holy shit,” Soupy yelled, and I rolled left just as the bell slammed into the floor. Soupy grabbed the back of my parka, yelling, “Let’s get out of here!”

The cops found us the next afternoon, just before dinner at the Campbells’. Soupy and I were horsing around in the basement when Mrs. Campbell called down. She marched us in front of two state troopers standing on her boot rug in matching navy parkas and earflap caps. One wore thick glasses and smiled sheepishly, as if he was embarrassed to be there. Mr. Campbell stood next to them, arms folded, face pinched with aggravation. We’d interrupted his afternoon of drinking beer and watching football.

“Sure smells good,” the trooper with the thick glasses said. “Got a turkey in the oven?”

“No,” Mrs. Campbell said, giving us a look. “A goose.”

Soupy and I stood shoulder to shoulder. “Boys,” the trooper without glasses said, “we have a report of a breaking and entering out by-”

Soupy interrupted him. “It was me,” he said. “I went in that schoolhouse.” He jerked a thumb toward me. “He was there but he kept telling me not to.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “Excuse me, son,” the trooper with the glasses said. “What we heard-”

Angus Campbell took a step toward us. “What the hell were you doing in Polley?” he said. “You know you ain’t supposed to go that far, boy.” His right hand twitched beneath his left elbow.

“I know, sir,” Soupy said. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“Sorry, my ass,” Mr. Campbell said.

The trooper with glasses looked worriedly at Mr. Campbell. The other said, “You boys could’ve gotten hurt.”

“How’d you get in?” Soupy’s dad said.

“Broke a window, sir,” Soupy said.

“Broke a window how, goddamn it?”

“BB gun, sir.”

Mr. Campbell unfolded his arms and took another step toward his son. I felt Soupy flinch. “Sonofabitch,” his father said. His eyes searched the room. “Where’s the goddamn gun?” he said.

“Outside, sir,” Soupy said.

“Sir,” the bespectacled trooper said, but Soupy’s father ignored him and stepped out the door. “Son-of-a-fucking-bitch,” we heard him say as he slammed the door behind him. We heard him pick up the rifle and curse. Then we heard the gun barrel whang on the concrete porch, its stock cracking and splitting.

Mr. Campbell was sweating when he came back inside. He glared at Soupy as he brushed past us. Mrs. Campbell said, “Excuse me,” and followed him.

Soupy and I were both grounded for a week. I didn’t see him again until school the next Monday. His black eye hadn’t quite healed.

The first thing I said was, “Why’d you do that?”

“What?”

“Rat yourself out.”

He shrugged. “My old man would have whupped me anyway.”

Late in the playoff against the Minnows, we led 2–0, and I was bored. The Minnows hadn’t managed a shot on me since the middle of the game. My attention wandered to the bleachers, which were empty but for two women huddled beneath a green afghan up near the roof beams and three others chattering along the glass. They were all girlfriends of players. Wives were smart enough to stay home where it was warm and they couldn’t hear their boneheaded husbands threatening to beat up referees.

I noticed Brenda Mack making her way down the bleachers and asked myself why she would waste a perfectly good Saturday night shivering in a hockey rink. I’d had a crush on her in grade school and never had tired of seeing her. She had married Wilf, but that lasted only four years. Now she was dating a Minnow. She’d just reached the glass to my left when I saw Teddy Boynton emerge from dressing room 2 behind her. His hair was wet, and he was carrying his hockey bag in his left hand. An image-a memory-flitted through my mind too fast for me to recognize. Teddy called out to Brenda and she turned and smiled and he dropped his bag to kiss her on the cheek. As they chatted, Brenda pointed out something on the ice, probably her new boyfriend, and I thought, Teddy’ll have a two-hander-to-the-ankle for him next time they’re on the ice together. Boynton picked up his bag again, and then it came to me.

Without thinking, I rushed out of my net toward Teddy, waving my stick over my head and yelling, “Hey, wait! Boynton!” He turned, befuddled, and dropped his bag. “Go fishing this morning, Ted?” I shouted. The picture now fixed in my mind was of Boynton standing on Main Street, talking with Elvis Bontrager. Instead of a hockey bag, he’d held a tackle box. Which explained the fish outside the marina: It was Teddy, letting me know he was watching.

Now, instead of answering my question, he looked past me and pointed, grinning. “Heads up, Carp,” he said. I whipped around to see Clem Linke winding up for a shot from halfway down the rink. “Shit!” I screamed. I scrambled back toward my empty net but was still three strides away when Linke’s shot sailed across the goal line. The Minnows whooped and banged the heels of their sticks on the boards as I skated a hapless circle in front of my net. I wanted to disappear under the bleachers. To punish myself, I looked back toward Boynton. I could tell from how he was gesturing that he was explaining to Brenda Mack how I’d left my net untended and let a goal in from a mile away. She put a hand to her mouth, giggling, while Teddy clapped and yelled, “Way to go, Carpie! Just like old times!”