Dead Voices Read online

  “What glory between the sheets?” Wally said, raising his eyebrows at Mike.

  “I may be chaplain now, but I wasn’t chaplain in my younger years.”

  “Shit,” Jamie said. “You couldn’t stop the puck then and you can’t stop it now.”

  Mike curled an imaginary cigar, doing his Groucho. “Hey, I may not stop the puck now, but I had a hell of a time with vulcanized rubber.”

  Jamie shook his head. “You’re so full of holes, Mike, you don’t know which end to put the rubber on.”

  “Does that make any sense?”

  “Who the fuck cares?”

  Wally gave Jamie a big smile. “Doesn’t it get boring after a while, though?”

  “It’s the other way around, Commish. The same woman over and over. C’mon, what’s that like? After eating the same three burgers, I’m ready to hurl, dude.”

  “If that’s how you look at them,” Marty said. “You obviously haven’t eaten a gourmet meal with all the courses and the wine and the violins.”

  Jamie gave him a big grin. “Oh, I’ve tasted a few.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Marty said. “With the right feelings?”

  “You fucking kidding me?” Jamie said, turning to Marty. He paced the small office. A couple of his big steps and he had to turn around. “Is he going into touchy-feely territory? Not in Hot Stove, please.”

  “Why not?” Mark said. “Why do we have to restrict ourselves? Are we hockey players and mere boys — or are we more? Are we not men as well?”

  “Some of us excel in all categories,” Jamie said. “And some peter out.”

  Mark put on his serious face. “A man, after all, is more than just a hockey player, is he not? He’s a son and a father and a husband. He works for his family and lays down his life for his family. He’s a warrior, sure, but does he not have feelings as well? If you prick a man, does he not bleed? If you tickle a man, does he not laugh? If you hurt a man, does he not cry?”

  “Yeah, if he gets it up the ass,” Jamie said, giving them his fist-pump.

  “We’re talking feelings, Superman. We’re talking about taking the Enterprise where no man has gone before.”

  “Yeah, into the Big Bang.”

  “No, Superman. Into the deep recesses of the heart.”

  “Let me remind you, Professor, that Superman can have feelings to show his sensitive side, sure, and he may have been married in the past, but he can’t stay married. If he ever stayed married, he’d lose all his power as a superhero. He’d never be ready to save the world at any second. He’d be washing the dishes with Lois Lane instead.”

  “That’s the thing, see,” Mike said. “Superman’s supposed to be the ultimate good guy, isn’t he? Superman and Lois . . . they have the bond that shall remain nameless in Hot Stove League.”

  “Absolutely right. But that’s just the show for the kiddies, Mike. In reality Superman has to satisfy the needs of all women, bar none, or else he’s not truly Superman.”

  “I think you’re mixing apples and oranges, Superman,” Mark said. “The übermensch is not the comic-book and movie Superman. They’re two totally different fruits.”

  “Are you trying to insult me?” Jamie said. “I can mix anything I want with my superpowers.”

  “Right,” Marty said. “But can you turn time around and bring us back to the Pleistocene period when the earth was one big skating rink?”

  Jamie grinned. “I can clean your ass, off and on the ice, that’s a solid.”

  Marty raised his narrow eyes to Jamie. “Oh, can you?”

  “Boys, boys,” Mark said. “We’re in the chaplain’s office.”

  “All right, all right,” Mike Corelli said. “As chaplain, I have to steer this ship into uncharted territory, even though I may be jeopardizing my dubious status as a hockey player.”

  Jamie and Wally frowned. Mark was shaking his head.

  Mike twirled his cigar. “Navigator, take us to the far reaches of space, where no hockey player has ever been. Take us to amore, amour, amor, eros, cupid, agapé.”

  “Fuck, give me some oxygen,” Jamie said.

  “Borrring,” Wally said.

  “I’ve been to the planets amore and amour and cupid,” Jamie said. “But I’ve never been to eros and agapé. Are you going to home-school us, Mr. Chaplain?”

  “Are we in a fucking retreat?” Wally said. “Borrring.”

  “No, let him speak.”

  “I’ll tell you who they are,” Wally said. “Jack Eros played for the Leafs way back. He’d drop the gloves every chance and give someone a knuckle sandwich. And Jacques Agapé was a Montreal Canadien, if I’m not mistaken, who’d go into the corners with a pocket-full of eggs and not break one.”

  Marty smiled at Wally. “I know where you got that.”

  Mike went ahead, indifferent to their comments. He tried to explain the difference between the two words in his best doctoral voice. He became so stiff and serious, however, that he made everyone uncomfortable, which threatened the loosey-goosey spell in the room. Sensing it himself, he stopped and suddenly twirled his imaginary cigar.

  “Well, I gave it a shot. Those are my principles, but if you don’t like them, I have others.”

  “All right, all right,” Jamie said, taking over. “Let’s put a few things into perspective, shall we? Let’s get solid here, boys. In Hot Stove we may act like boys, but we’re all men. At least the last time I looked. And a man likes sex, pure and simple. A man is supposed to love all women, or as many women as possible. A man wasn’t made to stay with one mate for long. Look at the animal kingdom where many of the males mate’m and leave’m. Where they fight to have their own pride of females. It’s just nature weeding out the weak and keeping the strong.”

  “Yeah, in the animal kingdom, sure,” Wally said. “But animals don’t play hockey, dude. And we play hockey. That means we have responsibilities to the team. As a husband and a father we have to take care of our team. The team comes first — and there’s no ‘I’ in team.”

  “The same old clichés,” Mark said.

  “Why do you think it is a cliché, you chooch?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us.”

  “That I will,” Wally said, nodding, getting off his horse and ready to do the two-step. “I’m going to edify you guys, all right, because it’s quite apparent you need some edifuckation.” He raised his finger as if to address the troops. “In the first place, the husband has to have strong feelings for his wife, OK. Call it love if you want. It starts with passion and hot sex, sure, but eventually it settles down and changes and becomes other things as well. They fight and bicker and settle into their roles on the team. They come to depend on each other for different things. They build a home as a team, work as a team, raise their children as a team. They may individually go through slumps, bad years, catastrophes, but if they’ve created a strong bond the union will save them. That’s what love’s all about, boys. Not the romantic stuff of the movies, but living it out day in and day out as a team.”

  “You mean,” Mike said, “the husband stays a Leafs fan his whole life?”

  Wally grinned. “Yeah, you stay solid, dude.”

  They all stared at Jamie.

  “Well, I’m not a true fan, I guess. I play the game, boys. There are those who play and those who watch. You guys can be the spectators. I’m the player, man, the superplayer.”

  “Maybe you’re just afraid of taking the plunge,” Marty said. “Don’t you ever want to have kids? Then you’d have someone your own age to play with.”

  “He probably has a few out there he’s not even aware of,” Mike said.

  “No way, dude,” Jamie said. “Unless I used a holy condom.”

  “The same old story, a tale of love and glory,” Mark said, shaking his head. “As time turtles onward into the dull horizon.”

  Mike’s face beamed. “Remember this line, Professor? Peter Lorre says to Bogey in Rick’s Cafe: You despise me, don’t you, Rick? And Rick says: If I ever gave you any thought, I probably would, yeah.”

  Mark couldn’t recall Rick actually saying he loved Ilsa in Casablanca. She definitely said it. But he was old-school. He didn’t have to say it. It was written all over his face. And in the end he had gotten the letters of transit for her and her husband.

  He tried to explain to the boys that old-school guys would find it embarrassing to express their feelings in words, that if you had the feeling you didn’t say it, and if you said it, nine times out of ten, you didn’t authentically have it, but he made a total mess of getting it across.

  Then Marty spoke up as the arch-destroyer of all bullshit, he said, to give them the facts and just the facts, ma’am. What most people thought of as love was merely a blind biological urge to ensure the protection of the new genes and their vulnerable carriers, he said in his slow ponderous voice. It had a short phase of sexual infatuation and a longer phase of dull habit. We were merely the pawns in the game of genomes, with our selfish genes wanting all the glory. Love made us pass the puck around in reciprocal altruism, he said, the selfish drive to find a mating partner by which to replicate ourselves.

  In the bigger picture, it was natural selection for winning the game. He used examples from the animal kingdom to hammer home his point. A mother would fight for her young and even sacrifice her life, if need be, because of her genetic makeup. She’d take the fall for the team and the team would benefit as a result. As cynical as it sounded, he added, it was all chemistry. We were the mere pawns of our DNA and RNA. When sperm and egg combined, the chromosomes of both literally lined up side by side like a face-off and swapped pieces of themselves. It was Nature moving us around the ice by means of our own vanity. And because males had so many more spermatozoa they could sow their
wild oats and be callused guys like Superman, while the females had be more selective and nurturing because they had larger and fewer eggs.

  “Hey, I resent that, Mr. Science,” Jamie said. “I’m no pawn in my genes.”

  “This is getting too borrring,” Wally said. “Is this Hot Stove or Love Boat?”

  At that point they saw Brianne Lorimer walking by the office. Jamie dashed out and brought her in.

  Brianne was one of Mark’s favourite teachers on staff. She was short and blond, in her late thirties, with attractive freckled features, and an outgoing boisterous disposition. She taught Phys Ed, coached the curling team and girl’s soccer, and did some guidance. She had been married over ten years and had two boys who played in the minor hockey program. Mark had never seen her in a foul mood, though she could rake any guy over the coals over his stupidity. She always had a smile and was full of lively banter, keeping everyone in good cheer. Today she was in a maroon track suit, with the curling team logo on it, looking very swishy.

  “Hi-ya, fellas,” she said with a big grin. “Is this a meeting of Hot Stove?”

  “According to Mr. Biology here,” Jamie said, “it’s a meeting of the school sperm bank.”

  “It’s SSB dot org,” Mike said.

  She shook her head. “Yeah, SSB dot defective org.”

  “Listen, we’re serious, Bree,” Jamie said. “We want to be more than just hockey players and sperm donors. We want to be real men, as the Professor says.”

  “It takes a woman to make a man out of a boy.”

  Mike curled his imaginary cigar. “I’d say it’s vice versa, Brianne. That it takes a man to make a woman out of a girl, with more vice than versa.”

  “Stop it, Mike,” Jamie said. “The Professor and Marty want us to be serious, and we need the female point of view here. And Bree’s the designated female.”

  Jamie turned to Brianne, his face deadly serious. “We’re discussing the nature of love, Bree. And we have to put you on the spot. We need to know what the female view is on love. Do you, for example, need to hear your husband say he loves you every so often?”

  “It would be nice, sure.”

  “Does he, in fact, do so?”

  “Not really. He’s not a lovey-dovey guy. I think I’d feel very uncomfortable with a lovey-dovey guy.”

  “You say, not really. So he does say it . . . every so often?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “I’d rather not say, boys. It’s in the family vault.”

  “Ah,” Wally said. “She means he says it when he’s doing the dirty.”

  “When his dick is over her head, you mean?”

  Brianne laughed. “You guys kill me. You turn everything upside down, that’s your problem. Especially with women. The vice of your gonads plays with the versa of your minds. How can you ever call something that’s beautiful dirty?”

  “Are you talking about sexual congress?” Jamie said.

  Brianne frowned. “No, you idiot. It’s called making love.”

  “Ah, how-do,” Mike said. “That’s what I was trying to explain before about the different kinds of love. And here I gotta take off my goalie mask and give it another try, boys. Do I have your permission to take Hot Stove to uncharted territory?”

  “You got three minutes,” Jamie said. “I’m timing you.”

  Mike got up, took a deep breath, and faced them with all the seriousness of a chaplain. For a few seconds Mark thought he’d break the spell. But Mike was simply being chaplain-esque, a guy who was playing the part of a chaplain, and thus a guy who was more than just a chaplain. Mark could remember Mike himself using the example of Sartre’s waiter being waiter-esque on a few occasions to make a point about the authentic self. He just hoped Mike wouldn’t speak too long, as was his wont, especially since they were in a real chaplain’s office.

  If we were making love with the partner we love, Mike said, playing the part of a chaplain, then it was beautiful and transformative. It would go from eros to agapé. It would bring about what Lonergan, his mentor, in his fuller theory, called self-transcendence. Here Mike made a great show of using the word that would never go over too well in Hot Stove since it could only be derided as ostentatious, show-offy, and absolutely not-hockey. But Mike brought it off because he was Mike-the-goalie and not Mike-the-chaplain while Hot Stove was in session. So Mike explained that self-transcendence was the capacity to go beyond our limits as individuals and fulfill ourselves in our fuller capacity as authentic human beings. Being in love, Mike-the-goalie said, was a concrete feeling that transformed an ‘I’ and ‘thou’ into a ‘we’ so powerful that two became one and then three in the offspring. And the guys were amused, very amused, Mark saw, as if Mike was doing his acrobatic best to stop the puck whizzing by him.

  “Excuse me!” Jamie said. “Both one and three? Are you doing the new math?”

  Mike grinned. He wasn’t finished. He should’ve finished. He was going on too long, Mark feared. He could feel the dressing room shaking as if it was hurtling through a foreign gravitational field.

  With that concrete feeling and joy, Mike said, came the vulnerability of being connected so closely to someone else that we could feel the other’s pain as well. That connection, however, was open, alive, unrestricted, at the peak of the soul’s capacity go beyond itself and realize its full potential to merge in rapture with the sublime — with the Big Guy, he said. The heart has its reasons that reason knows not, Mike-the-goalie said with a flourish, quoting Pascal. The heart pushed our horizons ever and ever outwards to include our union with our Creator.

  “Ah, the theologian’s guide to love,” Mark said, feeling Mike had put on his chaplain’s garb in mid-stride, seriously jeopardizing the spell.

  Mike frowned. “How so, Professor?”

  “I’m all right as long as I play a professor. As soon as I become a professor, I’m in trouble.”

  “Let me set you straight, Professor,” Jamie said. “You’re also only playing at being a hockey player.”

  “Look, I’m no authority on love,” Mark said. “But a theologian — and a celibate priest to boot — would be the last person I’d consult for a take on eros.”

  “There are a few priests I’d like to hang by the balls, I’ll tell you that,” Marty said.

  “You mean the pedo-priests,” Jamie said.

  “Yeah, the guys who use the power of their office to sexually abuse children — and then are swept under the rug by the Church.”

  “We’d give them a piece of Hot Stove justice, right?” Wally said.

  “Don’t let the rotten apples spoil the barrel, boys,” Mike said. “Let’s get back to the issue in hand. What do you disagree with, Professor?”

  “You said some good things, yeah, but you slipped in the party line as well. In the end your theory is like Marty’s theory of the DNA in religious garb.”

  “You have to explain, Professor,” Jamie said.

  “Borrring.”

  “I’ll make it short. In both the science theory and the religious theory, love is merely the means towards an end. It’s not an end in itself.”

  “Aw, fuck, I’m sorry I asked him.” Jamie shook his head.

  “Let’s get back to hockey, shall we,” Wally said. “Or else I’m blowing this joint.”

  Mark gave them his mock smile. “In hockey terms, do we play to win the game or do we play for the sheer love of the game?”

  “I play for beer, that’s what I play for,” Wally said.

  “Did you guys hear the one about the hockey player and the case of beer?” Mike said, switching roles again. “A guy’s walking on the sidewalk with a case of beer and passes by his friend’s house. His friend Dougie, who plays on the same team, shouts out. Hey, Bobby, whatcha get the case of beer for? I got it for my wife, Bobby says. Good trade, Dougie says.”

  “Ah, what’s the use?” Mark said.

  “Go ahead, tell us, Shakespeare,” Marty said. “Give us the rap on love, dude.”

  Mark went into his sing-song, bobbing his head, rapping his fingers on the arm rest to get a beat, doing his take on a couple of Irish poets. “Love’s the force that drives the flower, through the earth and to the power. Love’s the longing that makes us whole, until the centre cannot hold. Love’s the skin and the desire that puts the rose on the pyre.”