Teammates

By Colin McGregor

Depuis plus de 5 ans, Colin McGregor est chroniqueur en français pour le magazine d’information et de sensibilisation Reflet de Société.

Colin a ensuite été le traducteur de deux livres, Quebec Suicide Prevention Handbook et Love in 3 D, leur permettant de passer du français à l’anglais.

Maintenant Colin vient de publier son premier livre en solo, un roman, Teammates, en version originale anglophone.



Teammates
Three teenage friends on a college rugby team in the shrinking community of English Montreal – three friends each facing wildly different fates. This is the story of Bill Putnam, whose downward trajectory we first begin to trace in the late 1970s, and his friends Rudy and Max.
Teammates, their paths will cross in ways they never dreamt of in the happier days of their youth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Éditions TNT
• Release date: Sep 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9782923375908

Book preview

Cover of Teammates by Colin McGregor. A car is stuck in the snow, friends are pushing the car.

Teammates

By Colin McGregor

Cowansville, Quebec

Éditeur

Teammates

By Colin McGregor

Published by

Les Éditions TNT

625 Avenue de la Salle

Montreal, (Quebec) H1V 2J3

[phone] Fax: [phone]

[e-mail]

www.editionstnt.com

Cover illustration

Ian Fortin

graphic design

JuanCa

Copyright

Colin McGregor

The words printed herein make up a small slice of the story of our world. They have not been written selfishly, to be kept to ourselves. They are to be shared, offered in all humility, simply presented, and with love for you, the reader.

The partial reproduction of passages from this book is authorized for non-profit purposes, as long as the original source is mentioned and referenced.

Legal Deposit Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

Legal Deposit Library and Archives Canada

ISBN PAPIER: 978-2-923375-27-4

ISBN PDF: 978-2-923375-89-2

ISBN E-PUB: 978-2-923375-90-8

Printed in Canada

1

An overnight blizzard can completely transform a modern city.

8:30 a.m. on a weekday: trudging from point A to point B in the heart of a city of three million other beating hearts. The new snowfall had brought with it an almost eerie quiet, muffling Montreal’s hum. And the storm had kept a good number of citizens off the roads. I was on a lonely country trail.

I made my goat-footed way up a long wooden stairway that cut through a small stand of trees on the side of a hill. At the top sat the college: a fairy castle clothed in ice and frost, its ground floor half-buried by snowdrifts.

Cutting a path through a powdery playing field and past a skating rink, I slid up a steep driveway to the school’s front entrance.

Had it not been for that smallish billboard sporting the words Marianopolis College in cursive writing, you’d have no idea there was anything at all discreetly nestled at the foot of the thickly wooded embankment by this busy urban thoroughfare.

I joined the small crowd in front of the sign. Before me ran Cote des Neiges Road, a major urban artery six lanes wide. Snowy Hillside Road, to translate from the French, wound its lazy, serpentine path up and down the side of Mount Royal. Across the street: the hospital in which I was born.

I have not gone very far at all in my 17 years, I dreamt, half-awake. For the few unfortunates trying to negotiate their way up and down the avenue, it was a good thing that medical care was this close at hand. Cote des Neiges was one giant skating rink.

The show had begun.

The usual suspects had gathered to watch. Two of them were friends: Max and Rudy and I walked a few feet uphill, and took our position.

A dark gray station wagon, its tires squealing a vain protest, drifted laterally towards a fire hydrant a few yards up.

Max sneered.

You’re late.

I shrugged.

He gestured towards the road. They’ve been at it all morning.

Down from us a compact car spun helplessly, in slow motion.

Max shook his head. "That’s the third vehicle we’ve seen slide into that part of the sidewalk."

Rudy nodded. Idiots.

Four abandoned cars and an empty city bus were strewn at various angles within sight. Not one of them pointed straight down or uphill.

Minutes passed. A petite yellow Volkswagen Beetle corkscrewed slowly towards an imposing limestone façade a hundred yards downhill. As it did, another station wagon hit a fire hydrant with a dull thud. The defeated motorist got out, spat, kicked his vehicle’s tires and began swearing like a sailor. We couldn’t make out everything he screamed, but at one point in his tirade, he clearly called his poor Chrysler Le Baron Brain dead.

Max craned his neck to focus on the Volkswagen as it wafted like a snowflake towards its inevitable doom. The little bug’s wheels spun uselessly. It softly came to rest in a snowbank in front of the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

I felt my shoulder sting through my ski jacket. It was Rudy, from behind, punching.

Howya? he said hoarsely. More fodder for that diary of yours, eh?

I nodded. My lips were frozen shut; my mouth wasn’t working. I brought my mittens up to my face to thaw out a few talking muscles.

Max didn’t turn his head. Bill Putnam, ya gotta stop the diary stuff. Only 14 year old girls keep a diary every night.

Rudy brushed several locks of his mousy brown bangs away from his eyes and shot me a conspiratorial wink. Jerking his mullet towards Max, whose eyes were still riveted on the Beetle, Rudy mumbled: The man’s obsessed.

Max huffed.

He’s hoping there’s a stranded princess he can rescue in one of these cars. A damsel in distress. Anything to get…

Hey! Max stared daggers. "Offside! That’s not what this is about."

Really? Rudy said.

"Really: cars crashing into solid objects. It doesn’t get any better than this. What’s wrong with you people?" Satisfied he’d made his point, he turned his back to us and focused once again on the stricken VW.

Rudy smiled a crocodile smile. Now, be honest Max, he said. Let’s say some shapely 22-year-old brunette in a compact car broadsides, say, that wall. He pointed at the brick wall fronting the hospital grounds. "You wouldn’t slide over across the ice and help her out? Want us to buy that?"

Max thoughtfully furrowed his brow for a second then replied: "Well, in that case, yes I would come to her assistance. I am a gentleman."

Rudy and I exploded with laughter. Max didn’t crack a smile.

You Dutchmen, Max said, pointing an accusing finger at Rudy, will stick your fingers in any dike. I, however, am here to help the oppressed.

Minutes more passed. Eventually, a police car parked at the top of the hill. Two officers got out and placed a row of orange traffic cones across the asphalt.

The show was over. 9:30 a.m. My feet were frozen solid, and I had a class.

Okay guys, I said, "it’s been a slice, but I’m in a gotsa go situation. Lab in 15 minutes, and…"

Rudy grabbed my arm. Wait, he pleaded, this’ll be priceless. Two more minutes.

Max had left us, sliding cautiously along the ice towards the other side of the road.

A shiny little red Subaru sat immobile along the sidewalk across from us, its taillights pointed in our direction. All we could see from our perch was a long mane of raven hair on the driver’s side of the front seat. Help was on its way – in the form of Knight Errant Max, risking all to rescue the damsel.

Max teetered up to the driver’s side window. Splaying his feet wide apart to establish his balance, the White Knight knocked politely on the window. Speaking loud enough to be heard through automotive glass, he smilingly offered any help he might be able to provide.

We could not hear exactly what Max might have yelled. But it could not have been very well received. The car door shot open, almost knocking Max to the pavement. A tiny, thoroughly enraged man with a mullet – business in the front, party in the back – screamed in French. Judging by his handlebar moustache, this was no princess.

Max slowly backed away, buckling from time to time like an elephant on a frozen river.

Rudy’s chest welled up with unsuppressed joy.

The dike has sprung a leak, he said.

I turned and left for class, leaving Rudy laughing so hard he had trouble drawing breath.

2

The bell rang. We spilled out of the lab and into the corridor: twenty-one teenaged, lab-coated chemistry students disgorged back into the halls of a nun-run Catholic college. We were creatures of science and logic nestled in the bosom of an institution built on faith. Signs of this paradox were not hard to find. A large, ornately carved wood crucifix greeted me on my way out. It hung on the wall immediately opposite our lab.

I felt a jolt in my ribs. C’mon, said a squeaky, feminine voice attached to the elbow. You make a better wall than a door. Get along!

I didn’t dare turn around. I knew that this ‘Minnie Mouse on helium’ voice emanated from the cherry lips of my fellow science student, the heart-stoppingly beautiful Christina. And whenever I looked Christina in the eye my sentences began with dumb, clauseless utterances followed by slobbering bursts of kindergarten babble. It was best to look away.

Sorry, I said. You must be in a rush. I was only…

Christina did not respect my space in the slightest. Grinning from ear to flawless ear, she grabbed my eyeglasses and playfully removed them.

You’re supposed to leave your safety goggles in the lab, she said. Electrolysis is over. No stealing college property.

Squinting, I gently took my glasses from her hand, turned them around and held them up so she could peer through the lenses. Not goggles, I said. Mine. Sight. Necessary.

She peered through the lenses and recoiled. You aren’t lying! she squealed. You’re blind as a bat! But you don’t wear these when you play rugby. How do you manage to see the ball?

Really, on the field I’m better off without them, I said, looking directly at her through the mists of my vision. That way I can’t see the carnage around me, either. If I could see how hard the sport really is, there’s probably no way I’d be stupid enough to get on the field and risk life and limb for a dumb oval lump of leather.

I felt my face crack a smile. My sentences finally had verbs. The ghostly blob of haze before me evoked far less anxiety than the sharply-defined Christina I saw through my eyeglasses.

Wow, she said, smiling. He speaks! You should speak more often. Anyway, I’m off to physics. I await your next sentence with great anticipation.

And with that, she turned and walked away. I almost poked an eye out as I rushed to put my glasses back on, to watch her bounce away in her frilly peasant skirt. She turned a corner and vanished behind sober wood paneling.

I headed off in the opposite direction and found an alcove in one of the enormous bay windows that lined the school’s corridors. I sat down and opened up my chemistry notebook. Taking Bic in hand, I scribbled out the following words, underlining them for emphasis:

Note to self: Don’t wear glasses during dates.

I closed the book, but stopped myself getting up and opened it again. Beneath my first note, I wrote:

Second note to self: Find dates.

How come I never see you with anyone? I mean, a female?

I looked up from my chemistry text. The jut-jawed face of Max filled my full field of vision. From these close quarters it looked as if his high, angular cheekbones were intent on bursting through his nearly translucent freckled skin. I had been minding my own business at a small study table in a secluded corner of the college library. But Max had slipped across from me without my even noticing and seated himself opposite me, imposing upon my solitude.

Faced with his semi-accusation I expressed mild surprise. Huh? Why are you asking…

It just struck me, he cut back. And it bugged me. I wanted to ask you before it slipped my mind. I knew I’d find you here. You practically live here.

The best defence is offence, I said to myself. I took an aggressive line: Okay Max, how do you know I don’t have a girlfriend stashed away at, say, Vanier College, or even one of the high schools?

Max’s eyes narrowed. Bill, I live three streets away from you. We go to rugby practice together three nights a week. We play matches all over the place. We’ve been to New York together on Easter Weekend, with the team. When we’re in Montreal, you tag along with Melanie and I and go drinking on the weekend. I’d have noticed a girlfriend. Right?

I had to concede the point with a nod.

Max drew himself over the table, drawing his face even closer to mine.

Look, Bill. You’ll never in your life have a better opportunity than here. We male students are outnumbered by females by almost two to one. And everyone here is smart, otherwise they wouldn’t get in. Are you nervous, scared of rejection, what then?

No, scared? Not me, I said emphatically, subtly puffing my chest out a centimeter or two. I play rugby.

A diary. Concern for others. Sensitivity. Are you… I mean… you’re not… Max let his right wrist go limp.

Nervous, I shot back in a whisper. "You got it. Nervous. Scared. That’s it. Nothing more."

He put a brotherly hand on my shoulder. Don’t sweat it, he whispered back reassuringly. You’re good looking. In a way. Smart, obviously. A bit odd, but there are women who like that. You should have no problem. We’ll get you chicks.

I shrugged and tried to go back to my elements and compounds. A scrap of paper floated to rest on my lap. I picked it up and read it. It contained an address.

He pulled down my textbook and looked me in the eye. In two weeks. Next Friday night, after rugby practice, he intoned solemnly. It’s a party. A team party. You are a Highlander. I will introduce you to women. You will talk to them. Captain’s orders.

That’s right, I thought to myself. He’s our team captain. The second team, but my team nonetheless. I stuffed the scrap of paper in my pencil case and grunted, which proved sufficient to send Max on his way.

Tuesday night: Max, Rudy and I, together, stuffed like circus clowns into the back seat of a two-door taxicab. The team’s training sessions, twice a week, began at 6:00 p.m. and lasted a little less than two hours. We were splitting cab fare to get home – or to be more precise, somewhere near home. The Montreal Highlanders’ practices were held at the green playing fields of a boy’s private school a 10-minute car ride away.

Afterward, we would pool our pennies, grab a cab together and ask to be deposited together at a predetermined point. Through trial and error we’d pinpointed the most economical place to be let off. The route took us along residential streets and through very few traffic lights. This got us reasonably close to our respective homes on less than $2.00 per head. Our drop-off point: way up the hill from where any of us lived. After a gruelling training session, it left us with an easy downhill route to our respective front doors.

We spilled out of the cab onto a postage stamp-sized park at the top of the street where I lived. The park sat in the shadow of a sprawling Gothic limestone mansion. Millionaire’s row. The sports equipment bags we carried with us always made us look suspicious. One cabbie, mistaking us for aspiring cat burglars, had even called the cops on us. One sniff of what was inside those bags was enough to convince the officers to let us go.

On this winter Tuesday, 8 p.m., there we were, battered and bruised, at the top of Argyle Avenue. The neighborhood was eerily beautiful in the ethereal glow of yellowish streetlights. Snow and ice clung to tree branches, transforming usually upright maples and oaks into crystalline weeping willows. Establishing uneasy footing, we cautiously began our long slide downhill.

Nice night, I said.

Yeah, Max replied. If you like darkness and 30-below with the wind chill.

Maybe on the surface of Mars, Rudy mumbled hoarsely.

Practice had been an exacting affair. We’d covered tackling techniques. On a wooden gym floor. We were the walking wounded.

Rudy was wearing a pink knit hat with a pom-pom on top. Max made a snide comment about pom-pom girls. I observed that no low-flying planes would ever hit him given his toque’s visibility. The teasing was on. This sort of asinine conversation was how we almost always communicated with each other – when we talked at all.

We had all spent our lives clinging to the same side of that same hill, growing up on its south-facing slope in the same neighborhood. Despite this, we didn’t actually know each other all that well.

Max had been a year ahead of me at our high school; Rudy, who had lived all his life a hundred yards away from my home, had been at another school before college. We had all known of each other of course, circling each other’s paths as we made our rounds like ants working the same hill, but from different tunnels. We were now friends because rugby had brought us together. Max the politician had recruited the rest of us.

We were not yet best friends. Pregnant silences linger when the obvious doesn’t need to be stated. In the quiet, deep bonds are formed.

On the descent, the tax bracket changed. Rambling stone manors gave way to semi-detached homes, then Victorian row housing.

Without warning, shooting pains stabbed through both my kneecaps.

Screaming out, I collapsed on the icy sidewalk face first. Brown sand, sprinkled there by city workers to prevent pedestrians from tripping, filled my nostrils.

Max kicked me gently in the ribs. Get up, you goldbricker.

Rudy looked a bit more concerned.

What is it? You were walking fine just a few seconds ago. Bill, we’ve all got bumps and bruises.

Embarrassed, I rolled onto my side and bit my lower lip to stop from crying out.

It’s like someone whacked me across the kneecaps, I winced. But from the inside of the knee. I don’t get it.

Earlier, I’d been zigzagging along a gym floor to avoid tacklers. Max, strong as an ox, grabbed me around the torso and lifted me to my feet. Arms flung over their shoulders, we began making our way to the bottom of the hill.

I was moaning softly to myself. Max started giggling.

Not funny! I whined. Stop it.

Figures, Max replied. We stick you out on the wing, far away from all the action. Throw you the ball a few times a game to make you feel like you belong. All season, nothing, not a scratch. Guys are breaking arms and legs around you, but old Bill never needs a band-aid. Poetic justice.

I was shaking. Part pain and part fear. My teammates could feel it. The ribbing ceased.

The third-to-last door to the right at the end of the Avenue sported an ornate gold knocker in the shape of a lion. From inside, the sounds of yelling accompanied by the barking of our family’s Labrador Retrievers. The smell of alcohol wafted into the wintry night air.

Leave me here. I’ll be fine. Honest, guys. Fine.

Max punched me on the shoulder, managing a meek grin. Teetering, I took hold of the doorknob and turned it.

A week later: managing nicely, walking in ways calculated to minimize my constant discomfort. On this day, I was limping down the college’s main corridor towards my compulsory English class. My path was blocked by the giant, tweed-coated bulk of a familiar frizzy-haired old man nicknamed Frankenstein – square head on equally large neck.

Bill, said the baritone, I am led to believe that your budding rugby career has come to a sad end.

Dr. O’Grady, philosophy professor: when he spoke, new students would involuntarily swivel to see where the FM radio was stashed.

Yes, sir. I looked away.

What exactly is the problem?

The orthopedist at the General says the cartilage between the kneecaps and the knees has worn away. In both knees. Simultaneously. One more bad turn and I could end up in a wheelchair.

I looked up – way up – and made eye contact. He just stared back, expressionless. I felt a need to fill the awkward silence.

"Sports is a large slice of my world. This is actually a big deal for me. I’m sort of at a loss here..."

He waited a moment, cleared his throat sonorously, and then spoke unhurriedly: Wear and tear… Part of life. You know, Bill, this building used to be a monastery.

Dr. O’Grady’s odd digressions always led somewhere.

Yes, Bill, he continued. A Sulpician monastery. This land was owned by monks ever since the 1600s.

He gestured towards the large bay window next to us.

You see, he said, sweeping a single hand towards the view outside, When this city was but a village, this land around us, as well as where the hospital stands today, was an apple orchard. The Sulpicians were great orchard keepers. The Grey Nuns took it over when the monks’ numbers dwindled.

I nodded, knowing full well not to interrupt the éminence grise when his rhetorical sails were billowing.

These classrooms were hewn from the monks’ living quarters, which were called cells. Their cells were tiny. The nuns knocked down a good number of walls to make larger classrooms…

He fell silent, still staring out the window at the snow-covered field, the ice rink, the cityscape beyond – who knew what? A few seconds passed. I felt I had to say something, if only to acknowledge I was still listening.

Okay.

He snapped back to the here and now. These men led lives of sacrifice and discipline, he said. Up early in the morning; to bed late at night, alone for hours in a tiny cell with a view of their apple trees.

His gaze remained firmly affixed on the wintry scene outside.

In our tradition, he continued, We celebrate saints, heroes of the faith. Hundreds, even thousands of years after they’ve left us, we revel in their achievements and honor their suffering. Every day in our calendar has one or more saints associated with it.

I know that. You gave me that calendar, remember?

Quite. If you are an observant Catholic, the dead are all around us. They sit at our dinner table. They worship with us in our pews. The monks are still here. This college is redolent with their sacrifice. If you attune yourself, you can sense their spirit. Sacrifice is in the woodwork and the masonry.

I tried to follow the thread of his logic. And now that my athletics career is over…

He looked down with benevolence. You, Bill, are in the right place to launch on a new chapter. You can handle this. There is more to existence than games. Muscular Christianity may be over for you. But there are other ways to live. Benefit from your surroundings. Learn its lessons. You still have your brain. And your heart.

The corridor was now empty. I’m late for my organic chemistry lab. Professor Moore will have my head. Thank you for the wisdom. I will chew on it.

From over my shoulder I heard the venerable old academic call out softly: My niece still wants to meet you, Bill. Whenever you’re free…

3

Nestled in the rear double seat of a bus, westward, Friday night: Crawling along the side of my hill, to my left the city was aglow. Most every floor of each skyscraper was fully lit up – no energy crisis evident here. Colors and shades ranging from muted off-white to garish lemon yellow advertised Montreal’s high-rise commercial real estate possibilities. Accompanied by piercing red car taillights and soft streetlamps, the effect produced was that of a symphony of light that generated not a single atom of heat.

On the other side of the bus, above the hill – two lit skyscrapers, really. And they weren’t buildings. One – a fork-shaped transmission tower, minimally lit, not really on my radar day or night. The other – a symbol of Montreal. A giant, white crucifix. A steel cross, lit up with giant bulbs in two rows. Standing sentinel atop the mountain, it had been there since my earliest memories, making my anthill world look far more Catholic, and far more protected by a beneficent higher power, than it had been. At least, in my experience. My world was Protestant. And a free-for-all.

I was now, I whispered to the cross, officially, no longer a Montreal Highlander. A passenger across the