Goldenrod Read online

  Phuc’s leg bounced nervously as he sat beside me on the bench. Hockey affected him like an amphetamine. Once it was in his system he couldn’t stop moving. His performance on the ice was an expression of his personality, of not only an attitude toward life, but of a bloodline. Generations of Wildfongs were expressing themselves through Phuc’s movements. I consider hockey to be an art form, a mode of self-expression. We were a team of dancers and choreographers. Someone like Bruno, barrelling up and down the wing with blinders on, devoid of imagination, had the technical skill, but lacked the artistic flair. He didn’t have the delicate vitality of a creator. He was made for slavery.

  “Goal scored by number fifteen, Steve Lawson,” echoed the voice of the loud speaker, like a mechanical god. Lawson, captain of the St. Charles Darlings, had instigated and capitalized on a textbook passing play. The Darlings led one to nothing.

  Near the end of the first period, I was overcome by a familiar surge of magnificence. I felt my mind and body suddenly grow in stature, like Pinnochio’s nose, until my head was looming in the rafters and the ice surface had shrunk to a frozen puddle. Later in life I would exclaim to myself, “Ken, your emotions can jump from paranoia to delusions of grandeur in a matter of minutes.” I perceived myself as the center of the universe, everything revolving around me. I had the power to manipulate the forces of fate. All the world was a stage, and the players were puppets of my whim.

  I wanted the puck. It responded immediately, landing on my stick, and I carried it behind my net. My players set up along my boards and prepared for my rush down my ice. Phuc, sensing that something was about to happen, sparkled encouragement through his eyes. My face registered “goal.” There were red lights in my eyes.

  The puck went from me to Phuc and back to me. I proceeded up the ice slowly, fluidly, concentrating on my body, conscious of the power in my legs. I was aware of nothing but me; like a true artist, I was all ego. There was no snack bar, no spectators, no Winfield, just me and the opposition’s net. I did a prolonged version of the dance, lifting my knees and bouncing on my skates, before hurtling myself into a flurry of exertion. I exploded into overdrive, cutting to the left and to the right, digging in with my blades and leaving ruts in the ice like miniature railway tracks. I did a double crisscross with Phuc and broke between the defensemen. There was me and the goaltender. It was a waiting game, the first one who moves losing. The goalie went down and the puck went up. The red light went on.

  Reality flooded into my life as I became conscious of tying the score, of Phuc putting his arms around me, of the noise from my cheering section. The spectators were standing. As the external world grew to a monstrous amplitude, I experienced a corresponding deflation. I was falling from a creative high, shrinking in size, but still slightly bloated. The act of becoming that huge required a lot of psychological energy. I was exhausted and welcomed the opportunity to wilt back to normalcy.

  My father heralded in the second period with his famous whistling noises and bird calls. It was easy to identify Father in the crowd by the way his bald head, like a metallic dome, reflected the stadium lighting. Dad was notorious for making the same mistake twice, thrice, four times, multiples of ten. I harbored no ill will toward Father for running away from home. “Living with eight women was too much for him,” I reasoned compassionately. I couldn’t understand, however, why he chose a girlfriend with as many as four daughters. Four may be an improvement from seven, but not much of one, especially since he bought a hairdressing salon and was surrounded by women all day. The original mistake was compounded. He was now interacting with over fifty women.

  Instinct told me that it was bad luck for a bald man to be in the haircutting business. There was something hypocritical and mercenary about it. I didn’t have the heart to discourage Father or dampen his enthusiasm when he was off on one of his incomprehensible schemes. He was already disillusioned with the hair industry and stealthily indulging in his real passion. On Saturday afternoons, he loved to ride the elevators at his girlfriend’s apartment, pressing the buttons and gossiping with the passengers as they came and went. Father had a love-hate relationship with elevators. He couldn’t live with them and he couldn’t live without them. He tried everything from song writing to carpentry to doing paintings to plumbing, excelling in everything he touched, but always returning to the elevator trade. Elevators were a symbol of my father’s life.

  Bruno broke his stick over the back of someone’s neck; the crowd was outraged that a penalty was called for such a minor indiscretion.

  “Shake your head, Ref, your eyeballs are stuck,” shouted Father, “but watch you don’t get sawdust on the ice.” My father repeated the same mistakes and the same jokes. I had heard that line every game for three years.

  Although it was uncomfortable for a while, my parents learned to tolerate each other. When Dad first brought Sara, his girlfriend, to one of my hockey games, Mom “accidentally” spilled a whole cup of coffee on his crotch. It happened between periods, and I could hear Dad screaming all the way from the dressing room. Mother was emphatic about claiming that it was an accident. I could understand a little spillage being an accident, but not a whole cup of coffee on the crotch. Fortunately, the accidents had stopped occurring.

  Phuc and I had an effective system for killing penalties. Phuc forechecked and I waited until he passed me the puck. I’m the proverbial puck hog, refusing to pass unless hopelessly surrounded by the opposition. I’ve been known to rag the puck for the full two minutes of a penalty. Phuc didn’t feel resentful or exploited by this game plan. It suited his personality to be the second man, getting the assists and letting me score the goals. We were both doing what we did best.

  Phuc didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder as he chased the puck into the Darlings’ corner. There’s nothing more intimidating in the game of hockey than feeling a hulking pursuer breathe hotly down your neck as you race into the corner. The secret is to commit yourself, to go full speed. It’s when you hesitate, even slightly, that you end up being splattered headfirst against the boards. Phuc was a kamikaze pilot. “Orientals have no fear of dying,” I said to myself admiringly, as I glided into the slot. Phuc dodged the onslaught of blue and drove a hard pass exactly to my stick. I felt the gap between the goalie’s leg drawing me in, sucking me up with a gravitational force of its own.

  The Dixie Queens didn’t enjoy the short-handed goal for long. Steve Lawson, the captain of the Darlings and my handsome rival, tied the score shortly after the penalty was over and shortly before the second intermission. In the dressing room, Bruno did one of his assistant captain performances, loudly denouncing the team for costly lapses in concentration. He raised his voice to a shout and broke his stick against the wall in frustration, his second stick of the game. He apologized for letting emotion get the better of him and explained, with endearing modesty, that he was no superstar himself, just a hard-working guy with good intentions and a profound affection for the team.

  “Shut up, Bruno,” I said wearily, exercising my power as a superstar. “I’m trying to meditate and you’re making it so I can’t concentrate on my mantra.”

  Bruno sat down petulantly, giving me one of his unintelligible looks. My mother had a term for men like Bruno. “Glass cocks,” she called them. “One knock and the cock shatters.” A glass cock is a man who displays an exaggerated form of masculine pride to mask a quagmire of self-doubt. Bruno was mortally wounded. I closed my eyes and attempted to transcend the Brunos of the world through meditation.

  “You’re the captain,” mumbled Bruno, interrupting me again, “you say something.”

  “My performance on the ice speaks for itself,” I said somewhat pompously. I was struck with one of my ideas. “But since you ask for it Bruno, and I am captain, I’ll share the secret of winning the game. It involves manipulation of the mind, ridding yourself of insecurity and negative thought. You must Think Golden. Did everyone hear that? Think Golden. You must think of that championship cup of
gold, fourteen-karat gold, like the number on my sweater, fourteen! I’m your leader, the captain, the queen of Queens. I’m your Golden Boy. Follow the Golden Boy. We must become one consciousness, one golden consciousness. Everyone close their eyes and think golden. Repeat the word in your mind over and over again. Golden. Golden. Golden.”

  The room filled with the silence of twenty reeking adolescent men lost in meditation, communing in the realm of infinity. There was no movement reflected in The Great Mirror, just a legion of armored Buddhas and the invisible buzz of spiritual energy. Outside, the old Zamboni ice groomer finished its job, coughed, and farted to a stop, increasing the resounding volume of quiet. Time passed unnoticed. Winfield was unnoticed too, as he entered the dressing room and glared confoundedly at his sleeping warriors.

  “Fuck!” stammered Winfield. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  “The name is Phuc, not Fuck,” said Phuc angrily, finally standing up and asserting himself. “Pronounce my name properly or not at all.”

  “Here! Here!” I said, supporting the rights of my line-mate.

  “The other team has been waiting for five minutes,” responded Winfield distractedly. “If you don’t get out there now, the game will be defaulted.” I rose, grabbed my helmet, and marched out of the room. The team strutted behind me in an orderly procession. Winfield followed up the rear.

  The Dixie Queens monopolized the third period. Red was dominant. Red was in the corners, along the boards, dashing around the opposition’s net. We hit the post three times and the crossbar twice. The Darlings’ goalie had never played better or luckier in his life. Even I missed opportunities. We couldn’t score. Winfield had a negative presence which permeated the team, taking root in Bruno and spreading all the way to me. Winfield was the sour ingredient, the harbinger of bad luck. Man is a victim of subtle, unconscious forces that play in the atmosphere. Winfield corrupted the atmosphere.

  I was on the bench, panting and observing my girlfriend Elizabeth Baldwin. Her unprecedented beauty was a tribute to nature, to nature’s mysterious power of creating an aesthetically perfect construction. Brown hair hung in curls to her waist, accentuating a dark, immaculate complexion and classically feminine features. She was equally enchanting from behind. I almost fainted the first time I saw her buttocks. She had curves that I had never seen before and in the most interesting places. She walked down the hall in high school causing pubescent males to literally tear into the men’s washroom and commit unutterable acts of sordid self-abuse. Her eyes were dark and emotional.

  Elizabeth was an atrocious snob. Her little nose was forever vertical, like she was sniffing the air and enjoying a faint aroma that only a sensitive aristocrat could appreciate. She chattered almost exuberantly to Phil, which I found shocking, because she hardly opened her mouth around me. When you’re young and falling in love, you do everything but talk. We had our own unique communication system. Phil was the middleman. Elizabeth confided her thoughts to Phil, who transmitted the message to me. I confided my response back to Phil, who transmitted the message to Elizabeth. It was like passing the baton in a relay race. The system worked. Phil felt included, and Elizabeth and I were saved the embarrassment of direct confrontation.

  How did we get along when Phil wasn’t there? Terrifically! Every moment we had alone was spent fumbling in the dark, exploring each other’s bodies, discovering the mystical beauties of sex. I didn’t get stimulating conversation from Elizabeth. “Let’s face it, Ken,” I whispered to myself, still on the bench and waiting for my shift, “few people can compete with you intellectually.” Elizabeth and I had a gigantic, enormous, overpowering sexual attraction. Her parents went away one weekend, and we made love non-stop for forty-eight hours. We almost starved to death. If they had gone away the whole week, we could have died of starvation or permanently damaged our genitals!

  Winfield crumbled under pressure. It was nearing the end of the third period and the game was tied. I was not surprised when Winfield was seized by epilepsy. It was one of his more violent fits. He cracked his already swollen head heavily on the cement floor a few times before the trainers were on the scene to hold him down. His eyes rolled white and his mouth made a gurgling noise. Winfield was a frightening mass of writhing anguish. The demon in his soul had taken possession of his whole being, wreaking vengeance on the other self, bent on destruction. There was something ominous about that suicidal beast, something that scared me. I was afraid it would get up and start chasing me.

  Winfield’s eyes unraveled and he began to regain consciousness. He may have damaged his head. The trainers hustled him off to the hospital before he had a chance to insist on staying; and he told me to act as coach. Winfield was embarrassed because everyone in the rink had had a perfect view of his uncouth discharge of poisonous energy. It was over before it started. I was coach, ascending to the throne. I legislated a line change.

  My line was on next. The face-off was in the Darlings’ corner. I felt the atmosphere change, as if a curse had been lifted. There was no more Winfield, no more negativism, but a feeling of liberation and excitement. I decided to play defense and told Bruno to take my position at center. Bruno had grown compliant. If I had told him to get a shovelful of snow out of the Zamboni and stuff it in his jock, he would have done it. His glass cock was shattered; I didn’t want to give him shriveled balls too.

  Phuc could read my moods. He started doing my dance. The fever spread and all the Queens started dancing, including Bruno. I felt a wave of emotion as I joined the dance. The St. Charles Darlings never had a chance. Phuc was a blur of red. When he got the puck, his head was up and he was looking at me. I was given the puck as I maneuvered into open ice. My shot bounced off someone’s stick and dropped into the net. “How revolting!” I exclaimed, when I realized that it was Bruno who deflected the puck. Bruno had scored the winning goal.

  I wasn’t shy in front of a camera. I loved having my picture taken. A reporter from a local newspaper snapped a flash at me as I came out of the dressing room, my hair still wet from showering. Bruno was too elated to shower. He left the dressing room early and followed the reporter around, elaborating on how he positioned himself in front of the net and calculated the velocity of my shot in order to make the deflection. The reporter couldn’t stand still. He was searching for unpolluted air. Bruno was a foul-smelling person at the best of times. After having played three periods of hockey, his stench was unbearable.

  “Congratulations,” coughed the reporter, trying to turn away from Bruno and face me. “You had a good night tonight.”

  “The whole team had a good night tonight, not just me,” I said modestly. Hockey fans can’t get enough modesty. They consume modesty with gluttonous relish. If a player announced that he had won the game single-handedly, and that his teammates were a bunch of useless dolts, he would probably get hit by a car in the parking lot, even if what he said was true.

  “To what do you attribute the team’s success?” asked the reporter.

  “The coach!” I answered convincingly, playing the part that was expected of a captain. “I adore Winfield! People with high foreheads are supposed to be intelligent. William Shakespeare had a high forehead. After a year with Mr. Winfield, I think that superstition has something to it. But it’s more than intelligence. There’s an air of tranquility about him. He has the calm of a man at peace with himself. I don’t know how to express it exactly. He’s.… he’s gentle. He’s firm, mind you, and masculine, but he’s gentle at the same time. He’s a gifted speaker, too. The pre-game lectures are a work of art. They turn the whole team on. That’s why we won the game. We won it for Winfield.”

  “How do you feel about the final game, Mr. Harrison?” asked the reporter.

  “We were lucky tonight. We won by the skin of our teeth. We’re playing a powerful team, perhaps the best junior B team in America. We had one good period tonight, the third. We’re going to need three good periods next time. There’ll be no relying on luck.”
/>   After dropping that ominous bit of foreshadowing, I left the reporter to the designs of the vulturous Bruno. My cheering section swarmed around me as I entered the snack bar area. Elizabeth, suspecting that I would be dehydrated from such a grueling game, had bought me a large Coke. My father had bought me a large Coke too. My sister Wendy had also bought me a large Coke. My mother had bought me a large Coke and a hot dog. I collected my bounty and thanked everyone gravely. I led my people out of the Dixie Arena. I felt like Moses parting a carbonated sea of Coca-Cola with my followers trusting in the divinity of my confidence.

  2. Virility

  I knew Phil had arrived by the way my bowl of Raisin Bran vibrated on the kitchen table. Phil’s car stereo was clearly audible from half a mile away and capable of shattering a bay window at three-quarters volume. The stereo was a useful piece of equipment. It gave us a feeling of power and territorial dominance. Phil, blessed with the family car, drove Paul, Ross and myself to school every morning. I barely distinguished the sound of the horn through the orchestrated roar of rock music. With Phil’s stereo playing, the horn was redundant.

  I ran out the door, down the stairs, and stopped on the driveway in front of the car. I dropped my books, started to dance, and worked myself into a rock ’n’ roll frenzy, limbs flailing, playing an imaginary guitar, jumping on and off the car fender, screaming along with the song in a grotesquely out-of-tune voice. My hair became a disheveled mess and my body contorted violently, coiling and uncoiling and striking like a cobra. Phil, Paul, and Ross were familiar with the morning ritual. They remained passive, witnessing my Dionysian revelry with patient forbearance.