Saved by Jack Falla Read Free Book Online

Cam asked me as I rerigged my rod.
    â€œTightened the drag too much,” I said.
    About a minute went by before Cam said: “Yeah, it’s like that with kids and players; Set the drag too loose and you can’t control ’em; set it too tight and you lose ’em. Got to set it just right.”
    Hang around with Cam long enough and you’re going to hear a few things worth writing down.
    As usual, we were on the porch shortly after sundown, and—also as usual—Cam had something to say.
    â€œI think we’re down to our last shot, JP,” he said, pouring a couple of ounces of Cognac into two of his parents’ Austrian-made crystal snifters.
    â€œYour dad has a lot more Cognac where this came from,” I said.
    â€œI don’t mean the Cognac. I mean we’re getting old. Our team’s getting old. If we don’t win a Cup this year I don’t think we’re going to win one. Getting close to last call, mon ami, ” he said.
    â€œCam, we’re thirty-one. You’ve got what? Two years left on your contract? I’ll probably get one more five-year deal. We’re still making it into the All-Star Game. We’ve got a few more kicks at the can.”
    â€œI know, but I’m getting tired, JP. Tired of coaches telling me I have to be in my hotel room by midnight, of fighting guys I don’t dislike—and don’t think Lindsey isn’t starting to notice that—and having no-talent guys like the Mad Hatter telling me what to do all the time. Where to be and what time to be there.”
    â€œAt least you have a soft spot to land,” I said, sounding a little jealous, which I was. Trying to soften that, I told him that no matter what happened he’d had a hell of a run.
    â€œThe run’s not over, Jean Pierre,” he said. I didn’t say anything, because when Cam uses my full name instead of calling me JP it means there’s more coming. Sort of like when your parents called you by your first, middle, and last name. Nothing good ever happened after my mother or grandmother started a sentence with “Jean Pierre Lucien Savard…”
    â€œThe only thing left that I really want to do,” he said, “is get my name on the Stanley Cup.”
    â€œYou and six hundred and fifty other guys on thirty teams,” I said.
    â€œYeah, every team wants the Cup, but there are only five or six teams that are legitimate contenders.”
    â€œCup or no Cup, we’ve had great careers.”
    â€œBut winning a Cup defines a career. Not winning one also defines a career. The best thing about winning the Cup is that they engrave your name on it. It’s forever, JP. Winning the Cup is immortality.”
    â€œAt least that’s an immortality I can believe in,” I said. We raised our glasses and moved to clink them together. But I misjudged the distance. I hit Cam’s glass too hard, shattering my snifter and sending shards of glass and a dribble of Cognac onto the floor.

Two
    It was raining as I drove to Cam’s house on Beacon Hill to pick him up for our preseason game against the New York Islanders at Boston Garden. The arena is the second Boston Garden. The original building closed in 1995 but everyone calls the new place the Garden, which in Boston they pronounce “GAH-den.” I live less than a mile from Cam in a condo on Marlborough Street, a place I bought after I sold the house Lisa and I owned.
    In nice weather Cam and I walk to the rink. We go up the west side of Beacon Hill, then down the north side to the Garden. The north slope was Boston’s red-light district in Colonial days. Now when we walk past the statehouse on top of the hill Cam says, “The whores moved uptown.”
    *   *   *
    Lindsey—Cam and Tamara’s eight-year-old—answered the door. “Hi, Mr. Savard,” she said. “Daddy said he’d be down in a minute. I like your