With Church Change
The morning I left home to pursue a law degree at the University of British Columbia, my mother told me that growing up is what happens when you learn that excitement and purpose are not the same thing. I told her I knew that already and, after placing a bottle of whiskey into my hands, she cried with Dad when I left.
Growing up on the Canadian Prairies had turned me into a sentimental but deeply sedated kid. I loved my home, the flatness of our land. My friends had souls that hadn’t become dry and yellow like mine, and I envied them for it. Nathan Weir, my closest childhood friend, had a green soul. He believed, for instance, that spitting wads of phlegm over the hockey rink every night we hosed it down would give him supernatural protection against Clifton, and I put up with his gross superstition because it seemed to work. Clifton Childs was the killer in our town. All of us practiced some sort of ritual to protect ourselves against him.
As kids, we played hockey on an outdoor rink in the field behind my house. It was a large, decently-levelled rink that straddled the Canada—U.S.A. border with everything north of centre ice in Saskatchewan and everything south of it in Montana. Border officials never bothered us. They were more concerned with catching drunkards wandering across the fields and into the U.S. wearing nothing but boots, jeans, and trapper hats on. On the odd winter, the canine patrols would find one or two dead in the snow with a firearm nearby. “Blue Charlie Browns” we called them, because the bodies always belonged to depressed, middle-aged men. Only when they were caught and placed in hospital care, did Nathan and I chuckle over such things. Funny border-patrol stories of drunken buffoons getting caught by police gave us a flicker of amusement through the dark prairie winters, but deep down I worried. The year I was born, 1983, had been one of the worst years for suicides across Canada and though the suicide rate began declining as I got older, the winters here only seemed to grow darker. Quieter. November to April in this part of the country didn’t offer much excitement for boys like Nathan and I who weren’t secretly drinking at fourteen.
My happiest, most pivotal adolescent memory? The winter of 1997. I was sitting on the rink-side bench with Nathan to my left, the rubber hose in my hand, and the distant treeline whispering at us from across the border in Montana.
“The wind and snow will make the ice freeze unevenly,” Nathan told me. “It’ll be like skating on shale.” Nathan liked rocks. He wanted to study paleontology in Colorado instead of going to work with his dad at the Alberta oil sands after high school.
“Choppy ice is good,” I told him. “It’ll throw Clifton off.”
“Doubt it. Choppy ice never stopped death before.”
He spat over the rink. I poured some water over his floating wad before we left to shut off the taps at my house. I asked Nate if he wanted a ride to service tomorrow.
“Sure,” he said. “Nine o’clock?”
Yes, nine o’clock. Nine o’clock on Sunday January nineteenth, 1997. That was the date.
At the jumpstart of our teens, Nathan and I attended church for one reason: to collect money. Not by theft, but by scavenge. In the pews beneath our bottoms lay two decades’ worth of quarters and loonies waiting to be excavated—a hideaway for all the change dropped by church members who accidentally let a few coins slip from their fingers into the space between the pew’s cushioned bench and the wooden backrest. Fishing the money out after service was fun. This was the money Nathan and I would use to buy candy after our Sunday games, and if we were lucky, we’d collect enough money to buy some for the whole team. Today’s service was a good example. Once the benediction began, all the adults left the worship centre for coffee and carrot cake in the foyer, and Nathan and I got busy.
Like every Sunday, the boys were waiting on my driveway when we got back, and like every Sunday, they were disappointed in the amount of money we’d found. I knew better than to ask them to shovel the rink while Nate and I changed out of our Sunday clothes—I knew they would not. Instead, I let them snowball-fight each other until their spirits had risen, and a few minutes later, I arrived with the shovel.
By that time, Alfie was skating figure-eights over the snow-covered ice without a helmet on to show off his hair. Silas was snapping the brass buttons of his military-style jacket up to his chin, and Oliver was on the bench tying his skates. Then there was little Max, and Gage, Oliver’s younger brother. Gage was large for an eleven-year-old. His dimpled baby cheeks made him look inflated and infantile like the Michelin man, but once he went under his goalie mask, we fired pucks at him like firing shells at the Somme. And of course, there was Clifton. I’d just finished shoveling the rink when I heard his squeaky wagon wheels getting louder and louder, and the moment we saw his black jersey break the horizon, we scrambled to make teams. The same teams. New teams. Basically, we did nothing but threaten to Krazy-glue each other’s foreskins together until Clifton had finally crashed into our huddle.
“Afternoon, gents!” With one hand, Clifton lifted the hockey net from his wagon and threw it to the other end of the rink. “Ollie! I used up the last bit of tape I borrowed from you, but I got change for another roll. Remind me after?”
“Sure. No biggie.”
I looked at Clifton’s hockey stick. It was taped up fresh from the blade to the Mark Messier autograph on the shaft. The thing was a Polish scythe.
“How was church?”
“It sucked,” Logan said. “All these bitches got was two-fifty.”
“It didn’t suck,” I replied. “And don’t call us bitches. We were in Jonah today.”
“Killer book,” Clifton said, “and that’s a quarter for each of us.”
A quarter indeed. Clifton was an alright guy, I had to admit. We’d be climbing over each other’s backs trying to settle candy scores every week if he wasn’t there to zoo keep.
“We picked teams and we’re in America,” Nathan informed him. “I’m in net for us, C.”
“Nice. And there’s Morgan and Hale.”
“And who?”
“That girl beside Mo. The one who comes to watch us play, sometimes.”
And to giggle every time we get shot, I wanted to add. Hailey McKenna, Morgan’s newest friend, was an arctic hyena. Instead of gloves, a pair of bear-claw oven mitts covered her hands. On her leopard-spotted parka were duct taped patches under the arms, and mounted on her nose was a pair of sunglasses.
“Whose side am I on, Cale salad?”
Morgan Fuller, on the other hand, was a stallion compared to Hailey the hyena. At fifteen, Morgan had a mane of black hair, evergreen eyes, and gingivitis-free gums. Like many families, Morgan’s only crossed the border on Sundays to visit relatives up here, but we still felt accomplished in piquing the interest of an American girl to play hockey with us. Plus, she was the only one of us who could skate backward, and watching her slender body twist and turn when she did was always nice. Sorry. “Theirs,” I said, and that was that.
Like always, our hockey game was decided by the first to ten goals, but today’s ice was so shale-like that it spoiled our shots and passes at every turn. At one point in the excitement, I lost track of where Clifton was, but when I joined the others in a scramble for the puck, I realized he was standing behind me, whispering for the puck to come visit. It did, of course. When the puck slid his way, Big C. widened his stance. Lifting his stick in the air charged the glossy shaft with a sunlit reflection, and the instant he whipped his blade down to the ice, our bodies stiffened to clay. First came the clap. A flock of birds in the distance took sudden flight, and after the puck ricocheted off what sounded like solid bone, we all heard a yelp.
Today it was little Max who got hit, and though play carried on after the puck cleft off his shin, a few of us went to go peel the boy off the ice.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled. “Meeting. I want a team meeting!”
“Morphine?” said Morgan. “Don’t have any, Maxie. Go draw a penalty and sit in the box.”
“Aye,” Logan added, “a two-week major would be good. Go warm the bench, bud.”
But Max did not warm the bench, bud. He only limped after the puck and threw himself into a fight that broke out between Silas and Alfie. All three of the boys ended up getting their jerseys wrapped over their heads (which threw Hailey into a giggling frenzy over on the bench), and once Clifton managed to break up the fight, we decided the next goal would win the game.
I can’t remember who won. I do remember Max was limping on our way to the store after the game, though. To Clifton’s credit, he did slow down to check on the kid, but as soon as he approached, little Max straightened up.
“Hey buddy. That was a bullet you took today.”
“That,” replied Max, “was a spitball, Big C. Next time, shoot the puck.”
Clifton’s laughter boomed over the fields. All the bruises we’d collected since November throbbed at the sound, and with that, we entered the store. The girls went off looking at mittens and toques. We spent our quarters on a single gummy worm each, and after high-fiving the girls and Clifton goodbye, we reentered to store to find Logan seated at a table with a cigarette lollipop in his mouth and little Max on his left with an ice pack taped to his shin. “Aright fellas,” he told us. “Everybody pull up.”
Our plan to save ourselves from Big C. became simple. At sixteen, Clifton was first to smash through all five stages of puberty and was gaining more mass each week, but we couldn’t banish him from our games because we needed his net to play. Losing him also meant playing with an uneven five on four, and though no one wanted to say so, we were far too proud to tell Big C. that his shots were too hard.
I listened to the boys argue. We all had bruises, but bruising wasn’t our problem. Not really. In five years, all our welts would be healed—but in their place would be something worse. Something more personal; more formidable. Even now I could sense it watching over our table like one of the wooden crossbeams supporting the ceiling, and it frightened me. I didn’t want to confront it. I wanted to be green, short-sighted, and oblivious to its presence like the boys. Simple things like hockey and candy were enough to excite them, and hearing them discuss Clifton’s slapshots like they’d be the greatest challenge we’d ever face in our lives made me wish that they were.
“A date,” I said. “A date to get Clifton out of the way so we can fix his stick while he’s gone.”
“A date?” This was Nathan. “You mean with a girl?”
“No, with a racoon.”
“Which one?” Alfie asked. “You?”
“You know who. Hailey will do it if we pay her, I bet.”
“Not with my money she won’t,” Logan said. “I ain’t payin’ for jack.”
The whole table agreed. But I knew the boys. They didn’t have any money to speak of—ours was a gang of country boys with chores not jobs. When I proposed we do it with church change, their explosive reaction only confirmed the sorry state of our lives to be true. “It’s my money,” I told them, “but this’ll be our plan. We pay Hailey to take Clifton out one Sunday. While he’s gone, we un-tape his stick, cut it halfway through at the heel, and tape it back up. Morgan will drop Clifton’s wagon off at his house on her way across the border, and at our next game, Clifton’s stick will shatter on his first shot.”
At this, their defiant looks melted into serious thought. The boys knew they couldn’t decide how I spent my church change; and besides that, this plan could work. Clifton would be out of commission for the winter. It would take him a while to save up for a new stick, and in the meantime, he would play goalie or play with a broom. If he discovered our plan, I’d accept all the blame and get our money back from the girls, and then we could spend the money on something big like a cheese pizza or a water gun for the summer.
I had them cornered. Gage and Ollie were first to agree with the plan, followed by the others until Max blew his nose. And of course, Morgan signed on. She didn’t respond to my email until Friday, but by then I was just grateful she’d responded at all.
You’re a funny guy, Caleb. And yes, I understand. Hailey says she wants $20 to spend an afternoon with Clifton. American. But I want a cut for helping, too. $10 American. Throw in another 5 and she’ll comb her hair for him on the big day. That makes $35.
Take it or leave it.
And again, that was that.
Like I expected, the boys didn’t share in my enthusiasm when I told them on Sunday how much money the girls wanted to execute our plan. In fact, every slapshot they suffered from Clifton in the weeks that followed only earned me their death stares as if I was now the cause of their pain. The girls kept our secret well enough. Hailey continued laughing like she did. Morgan continued poking fun at our bruises but would make up for it by giving us her secret smile when Clifton’s back was turned. It wasn’t long, though, before Big C. started asking us why we didn’t feel like going to the corner store all of a sudden. We anticipated this. Gage and Oliver were needed to help paint every room in their house. Max was seeing a tutor every Sunday to help curb his grades. Alfie and Silas had taken cleaning jobs at the grocery store (in the back out of sight), and Logan had booked Sundays off to shovel driveways for the old. I didn’t enjoy lying to Clifton. But he was getting a date at the end of all this, so I didn’t feel too bad.
What I did feel bad over was stealing money, once, directly from our church’s offering chest. It was a twenty-dollar bill I saw floating inside, bound for the homeless shelter and soup kitchens in Regina along with everything else. I snatched it. Collection had been slow and we were suffering Clifton’s bombardment like open targets at a range, but with that bill, we were able to hit our thirty-five-dollar quota with ease. It was a shame. Church had been interesting that morning. My mother even smiled at me for my attentive behavior throughout, but the boys were overjoyed I had stolen the money. After six weeks of enduring Clifton’s onslaught, we could look forward to executing the final phase of our plan, and the following Sunday actually came pretty fast. That weekend, we finished our church series in Jonah. Nathan and I were able to hunt for our church change as usual, and the gang was all smiles when we returned home. Instead of lacing up, we decided to lie flat over the centre ice to cloud gaze for the time being; and also to leave the bench empty so Hailey and Clifton could secure their date privately. Plus, the weather was glorious. With only a few clouds above, the sky was so big and blue that we could’ve fallen into it and not realized for hours—I barely even noticed Clifton’s squeaky wagon wheels when he came to the rink.
“Hey gents. We getting up any time soon?”
“In a few,” Ollie said. “Few minutes, Big C.”
A few minutes is all it takes. Before Clifton can put on his skates, Morgan and Hailey arrive to the rink. Hailey’s hair is all curled, the tears in her parka are sewn. Over her hands is a pair of maple-leaf-patterned mittens, and this time, the sunglasses are nowhere to be seen.
Big C. is silent as she sits beside him on the bench. It’s not until she removes a box of Smarties from her pocket and slides it over to Clifton’s leg, that he begins to clue in.
“Nice touch,” Nathan says to me. “Our girl has taste.”
“Yeah. And a voice.”
They hear us. Hailey turns pink, Morgan flips us the finger, but little Max stands up.
“Go, Cliffy!” he shouts. “Get lost with Hailey and never come back.”
And suddenly, we’re all up. Clifton’s face is last to turn pink, but after getting a nod from Morgan, he and Hailey are off with the Smarties in hand.
The boys and I collapse on each other in a pile of joy. I hand Morgan the envelope full of cash which she counts for herself, and once we get settled, we arrive at the stick. Morgan passes it to me as though handing over a relic, but when the boys take it, they press it down on the bench with its head dangling over the edge.
“Right here,” Silas says pointing to the heel, “is where we have to cut. A handsaw should do it easy, eh Cale?”
Yes, a handsaw sounds best. After I return with one from the shed, Oliver unpeels the tape and I rest the blade over the stick. It’s surprising how much the wooden grain resists. The stick rattles defiantly until I get a groove going, but in just a few seconds, the whole thing is over. I lift the blade from the groove, I blow the sawdust away, and we bandage the stick up to the Mark Messier autograph like it had been before.
“Like surgery,” says Morgan. “The stick looks the same.”
It does look the same. Morgan slips the stick into Clifton’s wagon and vanishes with it over the hill of my house. The boys, meanwhile, have never been happier. With our candy fast over, they decide to forgo today’s hockey game and make for the store early. When Nathan asks, I let him take my share of the church change to spend on himself, and I watch him jump like a snow hare to catch up with the others. I stay behind, then stare at the sky. I chose that winter to pretend like Clifton’s slapshots would be the greatest challenge we’d ever face in our lives, and I loved it. My whole life had been flat. You wouldn’t think it possible for a person to plateau so early—that one’s land could impress itself so powerfully on one’s soul—but it can. It does.
On Saturday I was alone in hosing the rink down. Nathan didn’t join me as I figured he wouldn’t, and this left me time to enjoy some solitude on my own. I did enjoy it. I thought about all the bruises we’d suffered from Clifton over the years; then about how joyful we were to see him off with Hailey, and what we did the moment they left. Eventually my thoughts drifted and coalesced into pictures of who my friends would grow to become. I saw Silas in military-green. I saw Nathan collecting rock samples in the Grand Canyon and Alfie selling guitars in his shop, but for some of the boys, I didn’t see happy futures. I didn’t know what my own future looked like, but as my dad often said, we lived in a place that didn’t rush anyone into the woods. The Prairies are that blank space between east and west: a land of quiet guardians who choose to be stoic and peaceful.
People don’t equate this kind of meekness with strength. People equate mountains with strength, oceans with wisdom, and forests with life. These places aren’t patient; they make people grow. And yet, so do the Prairies. The wind, as it sifted through the Montana treeline in the distance, was telling me so. Soon, I could hear it whisper. One day soon, I’d wake up. I’d look out my bedroom window and see the roots from the treeline bursting up through my ice rink to destroy it forever. I’d run out of the house crying and cursing and would try cutting their roots apart with every sharp tool I had, but in the end, the roots would be too loving and formidable to deny. Eventually I’d understand why the trees had done what they had, and then I would thank them for being those silent guardians watching over us all along; those distant monoliths I once feared, but that I needed to learn to embrace.
I slept. On Sunday, when Nathan asked me where I was going after church service ended, the words coffee and carrot cake fell from my mouth. He was hurt, but I had spoken the truth. Even if there were golden coins lodged in the pews, they wouldn’t be ours to dig up. For his sake and mine, the church change had run out.
Our reward, instead, was what happened that afternoon. The sun was shining when we arrived at the rink. Alfie was skating figure-eights over its surface; his hair having grown from a timid John Lennon to a seasoned Bon Jovi. Silas’ military-style jacket was noticeably smaller on him now, and Logan was skating around bare-chested to show everyone the trail of hair he was growing from his bellybutton to his groin.
I joined the boys in pulling our jerseys over our heads and having blind races down the rink. When Clifton arrived, he dropped his wagon handle to jump in, and when the girls came, even Hailey joined in the fun. I’ll tell you right now: the break never happened. At least not with us. When Clifton showed us his stick, it was already broken in two.
“On my driveway,” he said. “She came up Friday evening for a second date, and bam.”
“Hailey?” asked Logan. “You crossed the border and broke Clifton’s stick?”
“U-huh.”
“And that’s not all,” Morgan said. “Go get it, Hailey.”
When Hailey returned from the wagon, it was with a clean, tempered beauty. This one bore no autograph but Big C. didn’t mind: his new stick was even taller than the first and had a curve just as wicked. Just twenty-something dollars, Clifton told us, and before we could congratulate him, he and Hailey were off to test it over the ice.
It was a good beating I received from the boys afterward. I’d failed them. I’d failed myself. On Sunday March sixteenth, 1997, we were destined to play our game against Clifton Childs, the hardest slap-shooting hockey player in all Saskatchewan. The boys and I were destined to suffer his shots, and at the first opportunity Clifton had to let loose, we were destined to stiffen to clay.
I was already tender from the beating I’d received.
Part of me didn’t want Clifton to score, but more than anything, I was glad the girls had replaced Clifton’s stick. I couldn’t have blocked Clifton’s shot if they hadn’t, and by all accounts, it was a perfect shot block. I slid in front of Clifton’s wind up, turned my body over to take the shot in my lower back, and was still able to rise, somewhat, and carry the puck with me back up the ice.
The pain was incredible. Still, I pressed on. Before the Montana treeline destroyed my hockey rink forever, I’d show the boys the email I sent to Morgan those eight weeks ago. We’d laugh over reading my plan to snap Clifton’s stick for the flicker of excitement it offered, but beneath that, the boys would see me: a kid who was afraid of the future, of its uncertainties and dark valleys, and who was forbidden by his parents to consume alcohol or have a girlfriend until he’d graduated from university or until he’d decided what he wanted to do with his life.
Clifton Childs wasn’t death. Clifton couldn’t catch me now. Ahead of me was only Nathan Weir, my closest childhood friend with whom I used to steal money from church, waiting for me to take my shot. It’s funny: in my mind, I pictured myself gracefully maneuvering up the ice with the puck dancing between my blade, but if the Montana treeline were asked, it would say I looked like nothing more than a child, limping in awkward strides up the frozen pond that he made in the middle of some field for his friends to enjoy.
In the end, the puck bounced over a ripple in the ice and my shot missed the net. But, because I was skating so hard, I slid into the goalie and took him into the net. I’d stay down. Everything would hurt. But, after rolling on my back, I’d see the faces of my friends standing over me, laughing, and a girl with black hair reaching down to lift me up.
Photo graciously provided by Chris Liverani from Unsplash.
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