Chapter 17 — Bouchard

The hard freeze of January had moderated into slushy mid-February, a depressing time for all at Kennebec Academy and especially for Sam Reed. Not only was the weather gloomy, but everything in his life seemed to be spinning down the drain. He was utterly at sea in algebra -- the quadratic formula, the slope of a line, the parabolic curve of a quadratic equation were words without meaning. He couldn’t write a decent paper in English because he had nothing whatever decent to say about Silas Marner and little golden-haired Eppie in the coal hole. He hung on desperately to his American History course. At least he could understand it and learn it, although Andrew Jackson’s financial machinations were downtown Dullsville. And he was spending his afternoons in the Bowdoin rink behind a goalie mask that covered his face from brow to chin. He did this only as a favor to the coach, who needed another goalie on the squad for practice. Tim “sticky fingers” Lofting, starting goalie, was all-star material. He was quick, sure, and full of fun to back up the team. In fact, he was largely responsible for Kennebec’s undefeated record. He had two shutouts, and Kennebec had won several games by single goals. Sam never played in a game unless Kennebec was so far ahead that it didn’t make any difference whether he could stop a puck or not. In practice, he stood in the cage so the boys could shoot at him, he played in scrimmages across the rink from Tim, and he had cold feet daily, literally and figuratively. He couldn’t believe that playing second-string goalie would help his college chances. On the way to the hockey rink in the school’s yellow bus, Sam sat listlessly in a back seat alone, his forehead bumping against the cold glass of the window. It was so cold that it hurt a little, but he almost liked that. Around him eddied the talk of the coming afternoon game. Androscoggin was good – very good. They too were thus far undefeated, and they had a formidable line led by their left wing, Attayun Bouchard, a French Canadian. “Probably a ringer. Bet he can’t spik-a-de-Anglish,” joked one. “Maybe not,” put in Tim with mock seriousness, “but he has a shot like a deer rifle. I’m scared of him. You guys got to protect me. If he once lines up a slap shot, I’m a dead man. If I wanted to get shot at like that, I would’ve joined the Army.” “Don’t worry, dear. We’ll take care of you,” said Joey, left defense. “Have no fear. The defense is

here.”

Sam didn’t pay much attention. He knew Tim wasn’t afraid of anything on skates and could probably catch a .45 bullet in his left-hand glove if he had to. The bus creaked to a stop in the rink parking place behind another labeled “Androscoggin School.” It was empty. Lugging bulky hockey bags, the team piled out, followed by managers carrying spare sticks and last of all by the two goalies loaded down with their heavy pads. As the dank smell of the rink enveloped him, Tim saw white-shirted figures nonchalantly circling the ice. The Kennebec team warmed up in one end of the rink. Sam put on the mask and took a turn in the goal, even though he knew he wouldn’t play, more or less mechanically turning aside a puck with his stick or catching it in his glove. Then Tim took over the cage, full of fun and fight and what he called “the old pepper,” kicking out a puck to one side, catching another and dropping it over his shoulder for a defenseman circling the goal. “Get that thing out of here, Sonny. I don’t want to see it again,” he laughed. When he missed one – and everybody does, “How to score, Sandy! If you can get by this stick, you 77

can get by anyone’s.” He kicked the puck out. “Did that go in?” And the next puck spun off his stick. It seemed weird to hear Tim’s cheerful familiar voice coming muffled from behind the featureless plastic goalie’s mask. The players shot in turn, each gliding to the end of the line, skating in to shoot or drawing back for a slap shot. Skates scraped on the ice, the pucks slammed on sticks and boards, and Tim kept up the banter. Sam saw it and heard it all as through a dream. The whistle blew and the coach called the team to the bench. They clustered together, Sam on the edge of the knot. “OK, men. These guys are good and don’t forget it. You will have to go full bore all the time. We will use three lines in rotation and change often. Most of all, avoid penalties. It will be hard even for our shock troops to hold off their power play short handed. They are fast and rough, but don’t let it get you mad. Score early and often. And watch number 9, Bouchard. He is said to be a winged wonder, but he can be stopped. Let’s go!” Hands clasped together in the center. “Know what I heard about Bouchard?” put in Tim. “He puts his skates on one foot at a time, just like the rest of us.” Sam couldn’t reach the clasped hands but joined in the laugh and the cheer as the starting team skated out for the face-off. From the instant the referee dropped the puck, the game was just as the coach had said it would be – fast and rough. Skates whirred and clacked on the ice, bodies slammed together and crashed against the boards. Sticks whacked each other, and the puck skidded from end to end, thumping pads and cracking against the boards. Each team respected the other, and hard as they played, each was careful to avoid penalties in spite of the shouts of a few ill-mannered spectators. “Don’t take that crap from him. Belt him one!” “Oh, ref! Are you blind or just stupid?” At the end of the first period, no score. Tim had been even better than usual in the goal, with an easy grace turning the puck with stick or skate, picking it out of the air with his glove, moving out to block a pass across his goal or standing fast against charging forwards. Bouchard was good, probably the best player on the rink. He was big, fast, an expert stick-handler, and had a hard, accurate shot. No Kennebec defenseman could stop him alone, so forwards had to check back fast when Bouchard came in with the puck. His helmet hid his face, but his size, his style, and the big blue number 9 on his white shirt made him unmistakable. In the second period he scored on Tim. Kennebec’s morale sank and Androscoggin’s soared. Again Androscoggin scored, this time with a low slap shot. Desperately Kennebec fought back, but the Androscoggin defense was tight and confident and the Androscoggin goalie was a wizard. Toward the end of the second period, Ed Hale, desperately chasing a breaking Androscoggin forward, tripped him from behind and drew a 2-minute penalty. Androscoggin put on their first line, brought up a defenseman, and pressed in hard. Kennebec closed ranks, banged the puck up the ice whenever they could get a stick on it, checked hard, and did all they could to protect Tim. They knew another goal would put them out of the game. But Androscoggin knew that another goal would cinch the game and probably the league title, and with only 20 seconds of the penalty left, they pressed in hard. There was a scuffle in front of the Kennebec goal, a desperate rattle and smash of sticks, a clash of skates, and a simultaneous screech of two referees’ whistles. Tim was flat on his face in front of the goal, his hand on the puck. No goal. The clock stopped. But when Tim stood up, he couldn’t move his fingers and he nursed his right forearm, pain on his face. The coach shuffled out. As he carefully drew off Tim’s glove, Tim winced. The coach helped him off the rink to the spontaneous applause of both teams and the spectators. “Get your pads on, Sam – it’s your game now,” said the coach, preoccupied with Tim’s injury. Sam said nothing but thought, “Put me in? I can’t face these gorillas. I almost never played in a game before.

I’m not ready, coach!” His fingers felt very cold and stiff as he buckled the pads, slid on the gloves and mask, and stepped on to the ice. The coach passed him his stick. “Do the best you can, Sam. It’s a tough break.” That did nothing much to build Sam’s confidence as he skated awkwardly toward the cage in his pads. The shock troops, then on the ice to kill the penalty, gathered round him with encouraging words and slaps on the helmet, but he felt that they didn’t really trust him. Why should they? He just came out for practices to give them a target to shoot at. “Take care of me, boys. I’m out here for the first time,” he quipped, imitating Tim; but there was no response. He felt like David in Saul’s armor. He looked up the ice at the white team lining up for the face-off. There on the left wing was big number 9, Bouchard, tense, confident, strong, dangerous. Sam braced himself against the Canadian, the foreign hairy ringer, the enemy. The whistle blew, the puck dropped, and here they came! Three white shirts charged across the blue line after the rocking puck. Red-shirted defensemen skated backwards ahead of them, crowding Bouchard with the puck toward the boards, forcing a pass. The center laid back a little while the other wing closed in fast on the post to Sam’s left. Bouchard passed back to the center. Like lightning he shot. Automatically Sam took the puck on his stick and thought, “Rebound!” He covered to his left as the Kennebec defenseman slashed the puck up the boards. “Lucky that time,” thought Sam. “The great Bouchard didn’t even get to shoot.” The penalty clock was showing single numbers. Ed was standing in the gate of the penalty box ready to explode on to the ice the instant his penalty ended. And down they came again, four of them this time. In a flurry of skidding skates and clashing sticks, Kennebec cleared the puck across the blue line in time for Ed, bursting from the penalty box, to pick it up, fake out the lone defenseman and score. Kennebec was back in the game 2-1 as the buzzer ended the second period. Before the last period, the team gathered in the locker room. The coach was not there, having taken Tim to the Bowdoin infirmary. No one seemed to know what to say and almost everyone was tired. Sam thought he ought to act like a goalie, even though he didn’t feel much like one. “All right, you guys. A good offense is the best defense. Keep the puck in their end and you’ll get a couple by and by. We’ll pull this out. And cover that Bouchard. I don’t like what I see of him.” Little Phillips, assistant manager, carrier of sticks and Captain of the Water Bucket, had the right word. “Sam isn’t Tim, but he has been holding off our first line in practice for a month, and our first line is as good as anything we have seen today. Leave the goal to him and go in and score.” “You’re OK, Peanut,” said the captain. You tell ’em.” The first lines faced each other at the beginning of the last period. Kennebec pressed, but Bouchard picked up a loose puck behind his own goal. Here he comes, thought Sam. Less and less I like this Bouchard. Across the blue line, he faked the puck between the feet of the Kennebec defenseman and rushed savagely in on the goal – big, menacing, featureless behind his face guard, his skates flashing, the blue “9” on his shirt glaring. Sam, through the eye holes in his mask, watched the puck zigzagging ahead of his stick, instinctively slid his stick to the right, pads together, glove ready. The puck glanced off the post, his pad, and away and Bouchard with it. Lucky again, thought Sam. Here come two more. But a Kennebec defenseman circling behind the goal picked up the puck and Kennebec attacked, the sounds of battle retreating to the far end of the rink. Again and again a white-shirted line, usually it seemed led by the fierce Bouchard, bore down on Sam. His red-shirted team met them, checked them, blocked passes, broke up plays; but often Bouchard or someone else got through and drove hard at Sam. Behind his blank white plastic goalie mask his hate and fear of Bouchard grew. Through his little eyeholes he watched the big “9,” imagined the scowling brow,

the snarling lip, the jutting hairy chin, the little hateful squinting eyes. Sam began to strike back. He didn’t just stand in the goal to be shot at. Sometimes he charged the attacker before he could shoot or stepped out to block a pass. Even when he stayed in, he was counterattacking. With his glove he picked the puck out of the air; with his stick he slipped it behind him to a Kennebec man who golfed it up the ice to a forward. No goalie ever scored a goal, but Sam was setting them up whenever he could. And at last Kennebec did it. With only a minute left, the game was tied 2-2. The face-off, and here came Bouchard again. Behind his mask Sam growled, “Damn you, number 9! Get him, defense. Tip him on his butt. Waste him.” Defense crowded Bouchard hard against the boards, but he got a pass off to his right wing. Sam blocked the shot and there was that black Canuck at his right elbow ready to slam in the rebound. Sam dove for the puck, got his hand on it as Bouchard’s stick hit hard against his elbow. The whistle blew. “Sorry,” said Bouchard. “Sorry, I guess,” said Sam inside his mask. “Trying to give me what you gave Tim, you big gorilla!” The referee dropped the puck, the shot went wide, and the buzzer ended the period and the regular game. A tie game! They agreed to play a 3-minute sudden death overtime. The first score would end the game and win the league championship. Kennebec took the face-off, fired the puck into Androscoggin’s zone and kept it there. But finally Bouchard picked it up, crossed over, dodged back, and crossed the blue line alone. Joey, the only man between Bouchard and the goal, and an Androscoggin victory, leaned forward and swept the ice with his stick, hoping to knock the puck away. Bouchard checked himself, cleared the end of Joey’s stick, bored in fiercely behind him and wound up for a slap shot. “Don’t you shoot at me, you black devil.” Sam snatched it out of the air, dropped it behind him to Joey, saying, “Get it out of here. I don’t want to see it again today” and he wasn’t joking. Defense cleared it. But that devil Bouchard had it again. “O God, here comes that apeman again,” said Sam aloud, full of hate for his vision of that dark face and those wolfish eyes. Bouchard charged furiously, slipped the puck aside at the last minute to number 14. Sam took the shot on his ankle as Bouchard circled the goal and slashed at the rebound. Number 14 charged in and all three went into the goal together as the puck slid back to the boards and the buzzer ended the game. No goal. The players untangled themselves. Sam, enraged by the violation of his goal and the rough treatment, shoved the white shirts violently out of his way. “I’ll get that dirty black herring-choker, so help me, I will. I’ll bash his dirty mug.” Although the game was over, Sam still stood in the goal, trembling with rage behind his mask. Now the teams were lining up to shake hands, each team in single file passing the other, right hands to right hands, glove and helmet in the left. It was the conventional display of good sportsmanship. Sam was the last in the Kennebec file. As the Androscoggin captain came through first, Sam took off his mask and glove and mechanically shook hands first with the captain and then with one white sleeve after another, scarcely looking up. “When I get to that damned Canuck, I’ll never shake his hairy hand. I’ll belt him right in the face. By God, I will. I’ll deck him.” He looked down the line for number 9, but each man hid those behind. Suddenly there he was, the “9” seeming to fill the rink, tall and wide. Sam clenched his fist and looked up. He saw not the fierce wolfish countenance he had imagined but a smile and a pair of cheerful blue eyes under reddish hair. “Nice game, goalie. You sure are a hard one to get by. Hope you didn’t get shook up that last play.” Sam’s clenched fist, only half relaxed, fumbled for the outstretched hand, touched it and at the touch, melted. Before he could find words to answer, Bouchard was gone and Sam felt Tim embracing him enthusiastically with his left arm, leading him toward the bench, while the mask rocked unheeded on the ice behind him.