Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway Read Free Book Online Page B

on Finnie’s pads; they hadn’t been in great shape to begin with and Finnie was having to patch up holes in the leather more and more frequently as time went on. I put my gear in my closet, only taking it out to look at it and try it on, which I did nearly every day.
    I began to attend the public skate down at the arena with Finnie. I found skating forward awkward, but I could skate backward without nearly as much effort. The only way I could stop was to either fall down or slam into the boards.
    Finnie was a terrific skater, but a lousy skating teacher. “Move your feet,” he’d yell. “No, no, not like that!”
    I would usually answer him by falling on either my face, my ass, or both.
    “You’re not trying,” he’d say, standing over me. “You can do it, I know you can. Here, watch me.”
    So I’d watch him skate around and then I’d get up and the cycle would repeat itself.
    One day, I fell down and, instead of seeing Finnie standing over me shaking his head, I saw Joyce, laughing. I felt my face flush. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a malicious laugh, but rather a sympathetic laugh, if such a thing is possible. I got up slowly and tried to talk to her without falling down. I failed.
    “Jesus, Paul, you’re a crappy skater,” she said, looking down at me.
    “I know.”
    “He’s just learning,” Finnie said defensively.
    “I can see that. He doesn’t seem to be learning very much.”
    “Skating’s hard,” I said.
    “Not really. Show me what you can do.”
    I got to my feet and pushed off with a couple of hesitant strides.
    “Straighten your ankles,” Joyce said.
    I straightened my ankles and took a couple more strides.
    “Bend your knees.”
    I bent my knees.
    “Push with one foot and glide with the other.”
    I did as instructed.
    “Transfer your weight as you push off.”
    With straight ankles and bent knees, I pushed, glided and transferred my weight. I wasn’t trying to skate so much as I was trying not to look like an idiot in front of Joyce. She skated backward ahead of me, shouting tips and encouragement. Finnie did laps around the rink, switching from forward to backward effortlessly.
    Then I realized that I was skating. “Hey, look at this,” I shouted to anyone who would listen.
    “See? I told you it wasn’t so hard,” Joyce said.
    “Holy shit,” Finnie said.
    I picked up my pace, gaining speed with every stride. Then I remembered that I didn’t know how to stop. I went hard into the boards and fell to the ice. Finnie and Joyce stood over me, looking concerned.
    “You okay?” Finnie asked.
    “I think so.”
    “We’re going to have to teach you how to stop,” Joyce said.
    “That’s probably a good idea,” I said, pleased on several levels with the idea of further skating lessons with Joyce.
    “Come back after school tomorrow. We’ll see what we can do.”
    Over the next few weeks, I spent all my free time at the arena. As I walked home after that first lesson, though, I was overwhelmed by how much I had achieved. I was exhausted, but itwas a good kind of tired. It would have been nice if I could have held onto that feeling, but it didn’t last.
    That night I had the dream for the first time. I would have the dream fairly regularly over the next 15 years. I didn’t figure out what it meant until it was too late. That night, I dreamt only part of it; the rest would come later.

    I was in an arena, not the Portsmouth arena, but a much larger one. I was wearing full hockey equipment and I was skating fast into the opposition zone. I felt something heavy attach itself to the back of my jersey, but I couldn’t see what it was. In my head I heard someone yell and then the puck went into the net and the crowd went insane with frenzied cheering. Everyone rushed over to me like I was a hero and then I heard my father say, clearly above the roar of the crowd, “Bad, bad work, Mr. Starbuck.” I felt an overwhelming sense of dread and then I woke up.

    By the time my