Were it not for the farm, they would have never chosen to move to the Valley, to a town smaller than the Newfoundland hamlet where Bruce had taken his first breath. While cycling through the countryside one amber-hued Sunday afternoon they’d seen the “For Sale” sign and stopped to take in the view from the roadside. The plot of land, surrounded by sugar maples, sloped towards a pond where two chairs sat facing one another, as though their occupants might return at any moment to continue their conversation. Leaving their bicycles by the cedar rail fence, they’d wandered down the lane. Bruce knocked on the door but there was no answer. A radio diffusing the O.J. Simpson verdict had been left on in the kitchen but there weren’t any vehicles under the leaning carport. He remembered looking towards the water thinking the pond was so clear. In the winter he’d play shinny on the ice. He hadn’t played much hockey since leaving Bell Harbour, but if they moved here, he’d lace up his skates again. At least, that was what he hoped for. But even as they discussed the logistics of packing up their home in the city, he knew a beautiful view would not be enough. They could settle in the heights, but the pulse of the town beat in the coffee shops and diners, hair salons and ice cream parlours, the arena and the library. Life happened down the hill, in the valley. And more than the view, Bruce wanted that, too.
~
It was sometime after Christmas, one of those winter days when spring inventory arrives long before the snow has melted. Lorne was unpacking a crate of bungee cords in the “Camping Etcetera” corner of Valley Hardware when a stranger walked in. Lorne nodded hello and began sorting out the different sizes. The man had a ruddy complexion underneath tiny speckles of white paint that dotted his face and hands. A tradesman obviously, but Lorne couldn’t recall having seen him before.
“Can I help you find anything?”
The man grinned. “It’s some cold, wha?”
“No such thing as bad weather, just bad gear,” Lorne said and the man nodded his head. Lorne tried to place the accent. “You a Newfoundlander?”
“Best kind.”
Ah. Lorne figured he probably wouldn’t feel the cold for another twenty degrees. In his mind’s eye, he had a vision of icebergs floating past a rocky northern outpost.
“I’m working on a reno, and I reckon I ‘ave bit off more than I can chew.”
Lorne straightened up. The story of every person who has ever flirted with a sledgehammer. After that initial thrill of tearing down walls has dissipated…
“We’ve bought an old farm and she’s right dilapidated. She’s got newspaper in the walls for insulation.” The man exhaled loudly. “I wasn’t planning on touching the attic but there’s bats, see, and the smell is right fousty.”
Lorne hated bats. His daughter Ella tells him how important they are, how they control insects but he’d rather have snakes, rodents, spiders… anything but bats.
“… Right. I won’t bore you.” The man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “This here is what I’ll be needing.”
Lorne scanned the list. “Drywall and insulation come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you let me know how much you need I’ll give you a call when the order’s ready. Your wife’s probably eager to get rid of the bats, eh?”
The man opened his mouth to say something but stopped.
“Pick-up or delivery?” Lorne rung up the tab on the old register.
The man’s ruddy face darkened a shade. He pulled his shoulders back. “Delivery, yeh. We’re at the old McGuire farm, top o’ the hill.”
Lorne suddenly remembered the chatter in the coffee shop when Hilda sold her place to two handsome men from the city. It caused a stir with the women because one of them supposedly worked for “Hearth & Home” magazine. Some of the men at the coffee shop gave the farm a new nickname, which for Bruce’s sake, Lorne hoped he’d never overhear.
“No wife,” Bruce said quietly.
“Right… uh… so, are you a magazine editor?”
At this the man chuckled and the awkward moment passed.
“Nah. That’d be Karl. I’m buddy who has to take apart a plaster lathe ceiling while bat dung falls on my head.”
“Ah. Then you’ll be needing some of these.” Lorne slipped down the paint supply aisle and collected a few masks. While Lorne rang up the last of the purchases, Bruce reached for a flyer beside the cash.
WE WANT YOU! PICK-UP HOCKEY WITH THE “OLD TIMERS”
WEDNESDAY NIGHTS 9 P.M.
COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIPS ON THE LINE!!!!!!
“Can I take this?” Bruce asked.
“You play?”
“Back home it’s hockey and snowmobiling near half the year.”
It would be kinder to tell him the roster was full, the pamphlets were old. Lorne handed Bruce his change and a bag of masks. In his head, he heard the OT captain, Val, a chicken farmer from the seventh concession, hollering from the bench at the opposing team last Wednesday: Who taught you fairies to skate?
It would never work. Bruce just wouldn’t fit in with the guys at the rink.
“She a competitive league?” Bruce asked.
Lorne considered the six exclamation marks on the flyer. While it was true they weren’t supposed to fight, if a real estate deal went sour or the insurance agent dragged his feet on a payout, minor infractions sometimes led to blows. Occasionally both parties showed up at the same chiropractor for an adjustment the following day.
“Why don’t you come out this Wednesday and see for yourself?” Lorne found himself suggesting, for reasons he couldn’t explain.
Bruce stuffed the flyer into his vest and nodded goodbye.
On Wednesday, Lorne arrived at the arena before his teammates, as if by arriving first he could somehow control whatever happened later, if Bruce showed up. Lorne hadn’t grown up playing hockey, though he knew how to skate. His parents weren’t the type to give up their Saturday mornings freezing their butts off on arena bleachers and so it wasn’t until Ella was a toddler and he’d been living in the Valley for a few years that he decided to try out. The teams he should have played on, the 18-25 years olds, had a full roster. It was the old timer captain, Val Hewitt, who made an exception to let “a young fella” fill in for a man who’d broken his leg in a haying accident. He’d been filling in for a decade now, and since his skating skills posed no threat to the opposing team, he’d kept his spot.
The door swung open and three OT’s walked in, chucking their bags on the floor. “Lorne!”
He swallowed a sigh. His teammates had become like older brothers and uncles to him. On the ice, they showed him how to stick handle the puck and skate backwards towards the goal; off the ice, they fried fish at weekly charity suppers and hauled boxes at the annual All Saints’ Bazaar. But most of all, what cemented Lorne’s affection to this middle-aged, pot-bellied, cheap beer drinking crew, was their steadfast loyalty to Valley Hardware. When the big box store was built out on the bypass, he couldn’t sleep at night, imagining financial ruin for his humble main street institution. Val was the one who implored the coffee shop crowd to support the independent stores, “don’t forget who sponsored your kids teams for decades!” A person didn’t forget gestures like that. Valley Hardware survived the fancy competition, and Lorne had Val to thank for his vocal support.
The men came in, slapping each other on the shoulders, bellowing hellos, before grunting into their skates one by one. Bruce was the last to arrive. He pushed the door open and surveyed the room. The men on the bench quieted.
“Uh, everyone, this is Bruce. Bruce, meet the Old Timers.” Lorne tossed him an extra-large jersey. They would face off against the Stars, another local team, that night.
“Whaddya at?” Bruce lowered himself onto the bench and eased off his boots, apparently unconcerned his greeting hung in the muffled silence of the OT’s locker room.
Val stood up and gave everyone their positions. “You there,” he said to Bruce. “What team do you play for?”
A couple of the guys rolled their eyes at the old chicken farmer.
Lorne stood up. “Put him on my line.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Fine by me.”
On the ice, a whistle blew and they shuffled out to warm up. Bruce skated with ease, and unlike the other old timers, he didn’t favour one knee over another or have to worry about weak ankles. As he took aim at the net, Lorne saw his talents would be wasted playing defense. By the time the second period was up, Bruce had barely touched the puck, and Val refused to pass. When Bruce slipped off the ice and retreated into the locker room, Lorne pretended not to notice they were one man down.
“You’re back early,” Monica said to Lorne when he got home that night. “How did it go?”
“We won,” he said, flopping onto the couch beside her.
“Then why aren’t you having a drink at the Palace?”
Lorne shrugged. The game had been a disaster. When they had possession and could have passed it to Bruce’s corner, they looked past him, driving the puck wildly up through centre or letting it ricochet off the boards.
As his wife listened, stroking her dogs, Knox and Wesley, her brow furrowed. When she first heard about the new couple in town, back when a bunch of church ladies had gone up to Hilda’s to help her pack up the farmhouse, there had been quite an animated conversation. Caitlin, the free-spirited ceramist/ yogi, looked forward to making friends with men who wouldn’t hit on her. Lucy, a dear soul who’d recently been widowed, recalled her husband’s brother, a “confirmed bachelor”, who could not fathom living with his best friend.
Monica did not care to learn about hockey manoeuvres, but she did care about the souls of the people in the Valley, Lorne’s especially.
“How do you feel?” she asked him.
“The guys followed Val’s lead…”
Monica snorted. “Sorry. What else is new?”
“…they were jerks tonight,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“And?”
“And… those jerks are my friends.”
“So? What are you going to do?”
Lorne shook his head. He wished that the disapproving lines on his wife’s face would point him quickly in the right direction, but for now, he sighed and said, “I’m going to bed.”
Monica stayed in the living room with the television on, not really paying attention to the show. Though it really was too late to call, she picked up the phone and dialed her old friend, Byron.
“Hullo?” Reverend Byron answered on the fourth ring.
“It’s Monica.”
“This better be an emergency, you know I can’t tackle the lectionary with less than eight hours sleep.”
“I want to talk about hockey.”
Byron laughed. “It’s a miracle! Okay… tell me what’s going on.”
The next day, at the coffee shop, Val came and sat beside Lorne at the counter, drumming his fingers on the zinc countertop.
“Val,” Lorne said, nodding.
“Lorne,” Val said.
They sat in silence, sipping their coffees. As usual, Val spoke first.
“Your, uh, friend… hell of a hockey player, but nobody can understand what he’s saying half the time.”
Lorne decided Val probably wouldn’t care to learn that Bruce had taught sailing lessons in the city for fourteen years and in all that time no one had drowned, which would seem to prove that having an accent wasn’t dangerous.
“We’ve managed with the guys we’ve got. I mean, why bench the lads if they’re out to get exercise, right?”
Shaking his head, Lorne considered his response. His affection for Val, and their history, kept the words muddled in his head.
The chicken farmer delivered the coup de grace. “You’re young, Lorne. You couldn’t have known that these things just don’t work out. You can’t mix oil and water and expect everything to flow.”
Lorne finished his coffee and got up to return to the store. In that moment, Lorne wanted to quit the team. Instead, he spent the morning shoveling the sidewalks until his shoulders ached, a kind of pre-emptive penance. Up and down the street, he threw heaps of wet heavy snow into grey piles the plow would flatten later, after he’d gone to talk to Bruce.
The road leading up to the old McGuire farm ran diagonally, an anomaly in the grid of concessions that divided up the county into thousand acre plots. Lorne steered his pick-up over the narrow crest of the hill and turned into the lane. Down below, on a cleared pond, Bruce smashed pucks into a homemade net, each shot echoing violently against a chipboard wall.
He wandered down the packed snow path and stood on the edge of the pond with his hands in his pockets, gathering his thoughts.
Bruce looked up. “How’s she getting’ on?”
Lorne sighed. The ice was perfect.
“That bad, eh?” Bruce sighed. He pulled a flask from his vest and took a swig, offering it to Lorne, who accepted. Rum?
“I knows why you’re here.”
“The issue is – ”
Bruce held up his hand. “I’m not an issue, Lorne – ”
“– Our captain.”
Silence. The view of the valley below was one in a million.
Lorne continued. “He’s got issues. But… we’re not all like that.”
Bruce grabbed the flask, poured the liquid down his throat and then abruptly threw it into the snowbank. “Got skates with ya?”
“Yeah…”
Bruce circled the pond, pushing the puck over the grey marble surface, waiting.
A few minutes later, Lorne laced up and slapped his stick down. They played until it was too dark to see the puck any longer.
“So…”
“See you Wednesday night,” Bruce said.
Lorne coughed. “Wednesday?”
“Do you know Reverend Byron, the United Church minister? He was shooting pucks here yesterday. Said I’d be welcome to finish the season with the Stars.”
No matter who won the county championship next month, or how loyal his teammates were, if someone had bodychecked Lorne into the boards right then, he couldn’t have felt more bereft.
“Byron didn’t like screech as much as you though,” Bruce said with a chuckle.
A month passed and then one day Bruce called Lorne while he was reading the local newspaper in the back office of Valley Hardware. The Stars had won the county hockey championship, but Bruce wasn’t interested in talking sports.
“I could use a hand,” he said. The heating had gone at the farm.
It was a slow day. Lorne could afford to take an hour off. “I’ll come have a look.”
When he arrived at the farm, opera blared from the kitchen radio. A smooth tenor was singing along. Lorne waited a moment before knocking.
“Hello?” he called out.
The door opened abruptly. “Are you the furnace guy?”
“No, I’m Lorne… from Valley Hardware?”
The man nodded. “Oh. Come on in, I’ll get Bruce.”
Lorne cleared his throat. “Have you ever thought of singing in a choir?”
Karl stared at Lorne over his reading glasses. “If your choir is anything like your hockey team, I’m not interested.”
Lorne thought of all the ways the choir at All Saint’s was most definitely not like the OT’s – lots of women, plush velvet padded chairs, better smelling uniforms… but he didn’t share any of that. Instead he said, “Every voice is needed. Come on out, Thursday, 7pm.”
Karl and Bruce watched Lorne leave an hour later, the taillights of his truck disappearing over the hill. They bundled up and headed towards the pond, each of them thinking about going down the mountain, about all the living that happened in town. They reached the frozen chairs that faced one another, chairs that had been waiting for their occupants to resume a conversation.
Which was exactly what they did.