Rebel in the Back Seat

Rebel in the Back Seat:

Short Story Collection

Paul Lima

Rebel in the Back Seat: Short Story Collection

Copyright © 2012 by Paul Lima

Published by Paul Lima Presents

www.paullima.com/books

Published in Canada

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First Edition 2012

Library & Archives Canada/Bibliothèque & Archives Canada Data Main entry under title:

Rebel in the Back Seat:

Short Story Collection

Lima, Paul

ISBN 978-0-9878711-4-5

This book is dedicated to the child within

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the help, support and feedback of the following members of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (www.pwac.ca):

Alison Cunliffe, Luigi Benetton, Denise Flint, Tanya Gulliver, Kate Merlin, Janet Money and Megan Venner.

Their perceptive suggestions, constructive comments and judicious edits helped me make this a better book. Note: any remaining typos are mine, all mine!

Contents

Introduction

Hockey Night on Ossington Avenue

The Conquest of Kong

The Winter of Whisky

My Father Did Not Fight

A Whiter Shade of Pale

L’Ascenseur

The Visit

The Last Bang

F R A G M E N T S

Beaujolais Nouveau

The Cattle Were Lowing

The Nuncles

Rebel in the Back Seat

About the Author

Introduction

As with most fiction, Rebel in the Back Seat is a labour of love. The stories were written (and rewritten) over a number of years.

When I first started to write fiction, I would walk into libraries and feel overwhelmed by all the novels and short story collections. My stomach would knot up and I’d develop shortness of breath. Some writers, I presume, feel as if they are standing on the shoulders of all those who have come before them. I, on the other hand, felt overwhelmed by the weight of all the writers who had come before me. Even so, I continued to intermittently plug away at my fiction. Some of my short stories were published in various literary magazines and two of them were Judges’ Choices in Toronto Star short fiction contests. But this is my first short story collection.

So why this book, and why now? Simply put, I woke up one day and realized I did not have to stand on the shoulders of other writers, nor did I have to feel buried beneath them. I just had to be the writer I am. With that, I decided to work on my fiction, collect my short stories in a book and put them out there.

Sometimes the decision to act is the hardest part of any act.

So, if you’re reading this, my decision worked.

Enjoy the read!

Paul Lima

www.paullima.com

Hockey Night on Ossington Avenue

Johnny Bower was my hero. He led the Leafs to victory.

In 1967, the year he turned forty-three, the craggy-faced goaltender backstopped the Toronto Maple Leafs to their third straight Stanley Cup triumph. Watching him on the CBC, I cheered as he hoisted the silver trophy above his head and I laughed when the cameras caught him in the dressing room after the game, wearing nothing but a toothless grin and champagne-soaked underwear.

Throughout the 1960s, I dreamt of being Bower, of stopping pucks for the Leafs, of being named first star on Hockey Night in Canada, of skating around Maple Leaf Gardens with Lord Stanley’s mug held high.

In 1967, the year I turned eight, I got to wear skates for the very first time ...

*     *     *

The Leafs are playing the Canadiens tonight. Les Pepsi de Montreal, Pa calls them. He hates the Frenchmen almost as much as I do. He’s asleep on the couch in the living room. His pre-game nap, he calls it. All the players nap before games, he’s explained to me. Even Bower.

Ma’s at the kitchen table patching holes in the corduroy trousers that my brother, Vito, no longer wears. Lucky me. I get to wear them next. Although I’m six years younger than Vito and a foot shorter, I weigh as much as he does. Ma’s become an expert at shortening the legs and letting out the waists of his old pants.

Vito’s out shooting pool at De Santo’s Billiards on College Street. If Pa asks where he is, I’m supposed to say he’s at the library studying, otherwise he’ll get heck when he comes home. Vito says if I scratch his back, he won’t kick my butt. But my brother’s okay. He pays me back when he can. Mostly by protecting me from my old man’s temper and the way he lashes out at whoever happens to be closest to him when something’s pissed him off. And he gets pissed off easily.

I’m in my bedroom, building a house of hockey cards on my orange-crate nightstand. The cards cost a nickel a pack. You get five player cards and a thin piece of sugar-coated gum that tastes like cardboard. I can’t afford to buy cards often because I hardly get any allowance. But I’ve got one hundred and fifty-seven cards. I won most of them playing closies, flipsies, topsies and other card games in the schoolyard. Dewson School is on Ossington Avenue, right across from our house. But there’s a lot of traffic on Ossington and I’m only in grade three, so my mom makes me walk a block south to College, cross at the lights and then walk a block north to get to school. What a drag.

My most valuable cards are my five Johnny Bowers. I don’t play games with them. I got three of them buying cards. I traded four duplicates—Keon, Howe, Hull and Beliveau—for one. And I found the other under a heap of yellowing newspapers in the laneway behind our garage while fishing for a tennis ball that Vito shot wide of my net.

I’m a pretty good laneway goalie, for a chubby kid. If you look at Bower, you’ve got to figure he was once chubby too. I flop a lot and throw my boots, arms, chest and stick in front of every shot. That’s why Vito calls me Kamikaze. Everybody calls Vito Stick because he’s almost as thin as the shaft of a hockey stick. He keeps his black hair slicked back in Brylcreem-coated waves. If I do anything dumb, like let in a soft goal, he shakes his waves and glares at me. It’s like a storm warning. I just hope he doesn’t start to thunder.

I had to play goal with a broom until Vito swiped a hockey stick for me from Danny’s Variety next to De Santo’s. I wish I could’ve seen him shove the shaft down his pants and slip the blade under his arm. Even though I have a stick, I still get stuck hacking in the laneway with the little kids whenever Vito and his buddies play pick-up on Grenadier Pond in High Park. That’s because I don’t have skates.

I’ve got the walls of my card house stacked three-high when the phone rings and wakes Pa. I hold a glass against the bedroom wall, like Vito taught me to do, so I can eavesdrop on my father.

"Bene, Antonio. E tu?"

Pa’s talking to his younger brother, Tony, who owns Capelli’s Garments on Spadina. Pa’s worked there since he got laid off from his construction job a couple of years ago. I think he cuts material for socks and underwear. Socks and underwear are the only clothes I don’t get as hand-me-downs.

"Stasera? Pa asks as I press my ear firmly against the glass. Con Pietro."

This evening? With Peter. Peter’s my pain-in-the-ass cousin who’s only twelve but thinks he’s a grown-up and acts just as dumb. Vito only lets our stuck-up cousin hang around us because he always has money for smokes and Cokes. He has skates too and he plays hockey on Grenadier Pond. Vito says Peter’s pretty good, but he hardly ever scores on me when we play in the laneway.

"Va bene, Antonio. Un minuto," Pa says, then calls my mother.

Turns out a supplier is taking Tony and Peter to the hockey game; Tony has two extra tickets—for the freaking ballet. He wants me and Ma to go to the ballet with his wife, Emilia. To the ballet. Not to the hockey game!

Nicky! Ma bursts into my room like a tornado. Shirts, pants, socks and underwear fly everywhere as she scrounges through my closet. "We’re going to The Nutcracker. What a treat. Put on your Sunday best. Clean underwear too."

I turn my back on her and knock over my house of cards. It’s Saturday night. Hockey Night in Canada is on tonight. Leafs versus Montreal. And I’m going to be at the ballet. Not if I can help it.

While Ma’s in the bathroom getting all powdered up, I plead with Pa to let me stay home. I even speak Italian to him.

"Per favore, Papà."

He shakes his head and cracks open a beer.

But Pa ...

He chops air with his free hand and says Nicky! in the deep voice he usually reserves for when Vito gets home late. I’m not brave like Vito, who would just stand there without blinking. I’m not stupid either. I scramble out of the living room.

In the taxi, I ask Ma why we have to go to the ballet.

It’s a Christmas tradition here, she says. "In Italy, when I was your age, I went to ballet and opera whenever I could. How I miss Figaro."

I don’t ask who Figaro is.

The taxi pulls into a driveway where my aunt is waiting, wearing her long fur coat. Ma straightens my polka-dot bow tie as Emilia squeezes in beside me and almost knocks me out with her perfume.

The Nutcracker is held at the O’Keefe Centre, a huge auditorium named after the beer Pa drinks. The ballet is as dull as I figured it would be, although the Mouse King is neat, especially when he fights the Nutcracker.

Things really get boring when a ton of frilly snowflakes start to prance around, so I close my eyes and pretend that I’m at Maple Leaf Gardens watching Bower take on the Canadiens.

Beliveau shoots. Bower’s gloved hand flicks out, catches the puck quick as a cat captures a mouse. Richard’s in on a breakaway. Poke check—Bower’s master move—leaves the Pocket Rocket shaking his head and cussing the maskless wonder. Toe save. Chest save. Splits. Bower’s ballet gives the Canadiens fits ...

I hear applause and open my eyes. The dancers take their final bows and we head for the exit.

What did you think, Nicky? Ma asks.

I wonder who won the game?

Hockey. She sighs.

That night, as she tucks me into bed, she says, At church tomorrow, remember to thank Uncle Tony for the ballet tickets.

I thank Tony but keep my fingers crossed behind my back because I’m not feeling thankful. After all, the Leafs beat the Canadiens two to one, even though they were outshot by the Canadiens forty-two to twenty-one. First star? Bower, of course. And guess who brings an official Maple Leafs hockey program to church? Peter. On the cover, making a perfect poke check, is Johnny Bower. And scribbled across the cover is Bower’s real-life autograph.

On Christmas morning, Uncle Tony almost makes up for stiffing me with the ballet ticket. He gives me a pair of black skates with steel toes, ankle supports and smooth laces with plastic-tipped ends for easy threading. My folks give me hockey socks they bought at Honest Ed’s on Bloor. And Vito gives me—I don’t believe it—a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey sweater. It’s so new it smells like a warehouse full of fresh underwear. On the back of the sweater, there’s a big number one. Bower’s number.

As I slip my new sweater over my head Vito says, You got skates just in time, Kamikaze. We need a goalie tomorrow.

You want me to play? At High Park?

I’m on any team you’re not on, Peter says, so I can whip your butt.

I shove a fist in his face.

Hey, Vito says, making like a referee and separating us. Save it for the game.

I sleep in my Maple Leafs hockey sweater and dream of poke checking the Canadiens at Maple Leaf Gardens while Bower sits in the stands, a huge grin on his face, watching