The Last of the Lumbermen Read Online Free Page A

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    If we hadn’t had the argument that we needed to defend the Cup we’d won — and the commercial honour of Chilliwack’s car dealers — the pious ministers might have had their way and the world — my world — would be quite different. As it was, each one of us had to make solemn promises not to drink or fight or chase around before they’d send us off to win a second championship for the Lord. We made the promises, but once again we didn’t give Jesus anywhere near as much attention as we did hockey and Molson Canadian. And because of that, my name is Andy Bathgate and I live in Mantua.
    Back then I was called Billy Menzies. A couple of years after my parents divorced and my mother and I left Mantua, my mother married a man named Fred Menzies, a good Chilliwack Biblethumping car dealer and one of the Chilliwack Christian Lions’ sponsors. Fred Menzies insisted on adopting me, and, under pressure from my mother to help her rebuild the family, I went along with it. According to her, my real father was spending his time and energy staring down the neck of an open whiskey bottle, and since he hadn’t shown up to raise any objection to my being adopted, why should I? A little while after the adoption went through, Menzies insisted I use my second name, William. That got shortened to Billy, because you can’t play hockey — even in Chilliwack — with a name like William.
    I didn’t much like old Fred, but at least he was there. And once I got over myself, I took to being Billy Menzies like a duck to water. Billy Menzies — at the beginning, anyway — was kind of admirable: quiet, self-confident, and even studious.
    As a beginner in hockey, Andrew Bathgate had been a defenceman who didn’t score much, took too many penalties, and made most of his stops by crunching other kids into the boards. But as Billy Menzies, comforted by the rock-solid arenas that never saw more than a dusting of snow, and after being sent o ff by Fred to Vancouver for power-skating lessons, my game improved. I was quick and smart, and the coaches said I was born with soft hands. I even grew a little pious.
    As Billy Menzies I was good enough to be a star in Junior B when I was seventeen. Probably I didn’t have the wheels to play higher than that — but I didn’t have the ambition either. When I wasn’t drafted, I let old Fred send me to Bible college in Oregon, which I didn’t have much ambition for either. I skipped as many of the Bible classes and church services as I could get away with, got high marks in the business courses, played some baseball, and chased after the Bible college girls.
    The girls wer e okay, I suppose, but they ran to type. They had names like Lynette and Tracy, and they all looked the same to me: thin, fine blond hair , pale complexions, and angular faces and flabby bodies that instinct told me would go to seed on them by the time they were halfway through their twenties. They were trailer-park princesses, no-brainers, Christian baby factories. If I didn’t know much else, I knew better than to settle for that.
    The other thing I knew was that I wasn’t cut out for the life Fred Menzies had planned for me. Not for piousness, not for Christian princesses, not for the other Bible college nonsense. But I gave it a try , hanging in for almost two years trying my damnedest to please Fred because he was paying the shot, and trying to please my mother, who spent a lot of energy explaining to me that I didn’t want to turn out like my real fathe r.
    I stopped trying when the college principal claimed I’d gotten one of his princesses pregnant. I wasn’t guilty as charged, but someone had gotten her that way, and she decided I was the best catch in the school. So I cleared out about three seconds ahead of being kicked out, and went home to Chilliwack. Fr ed wasn’t very happy about it, being a believer in how young men