Читать книгу I Am Nobody - Greg Gilhooly - Страница 9

TWO

THE PREDATOR

IN THE 1970S, everyone in the Winnipeg hockey community knew Graham James. He was an innovative minor hockey coach focusing on talent and speed, not size and brute force. He produced winning age-group (under sixteen) hockey teams while serving as a successful scout for major junior hockey teams in the Western Hockey League, one rung below the NHL. And he was based in St. James, the western part of Winnipeg, where I grew up.

Graham seemed to live and breathe hockey.

You might find it odd that I refer to the man who abused me as “Graham.” Yet that is how I see him, how I think of him to this day. He is, was, and always will be “Graham.” I have tried to pretend otherwise, and I have been encouraged to try to distance myself from him by referring to him as “Mr. James,” “the accused,” or “the defendant.” But to me, he is and always will be “Graham,” and so “Graham” he is.

I had only seen Graham from afar, but I, like the rest of the hockey community, saw him as somebody of importance. He was a winning coach, a scout, an innovator, a hockey intellectual working among less-educated and less worldly coaches. His demeanor at the rinks was somewhat aloof, and he always seemed to be deep in thought, analyzing and processing everything going on around him. He had an aura about him, and he was somebody you wanted to impress. And then suddenly you would see him laughing with a group of coaches or players, and in an instant he went from unapproachable Hockey God to regular guy. Everybody either knew or knew of Graham, and it seemed as if everybody wanted to impress him.

Impress is an interesting word to use, because Graham himself was anything but impressive. He was short and pudgy, with a boyish round face and unkempt curly hair. He had a sad face and was poorly groomed, and his presentation could best be described as “disheveled.” Yet because he was someone of importance in the hockey community, none of this seemed to register. He was somebody to impress.

It was Graham’s job to know about every hockey player who might be of potential interest to a junior hockey team. It was Graham’s job to get to know young boys. He was coaching the St. James Midget (sixteen-year-olds) AAA Canadians, a team from my area composed of boys two years older than those on the Bantam team I was playing for. We were both involved in hockey at the highest level in Winnipeg, and Graham most definitely knew who I was.

I finally got to meet Graham in January 1979, when my St. James Bantam Canadians traveled to Minneapolis for the North American Midwest Regional AAA Silver Stick Championships. Although Graham was coaching the St. James Midget Canadians, something that itself would have involved a massive time commitment, he somehow found time that weekend to help a friend of his, Mike Tishler, the coach of our arch rivals, the St. Boniface–St. Vital Saints.

In January 1979, people saw only good in Graham. They looked fondly upon him for giving even more of his time to the game of hockey by helping coach another team at that Silver Stick tournament in Minnesota, a team he was not directly involved with. The tournament was an opportunity for him to scout the best players in our age group. And there may even be people who to this day believe that Graham’s motive was solely to help coach that team and give his time freely to the game he loved.

As a scout, Graham was interested in identifying the best upcoming players, and the tournament featured the region’s best teams from both Canada and the United States. Our rivals, the team he was helping out, featured several outstanding players who were already attracting significant attention in the hockey world. Looking back, it is almost ridiculous to think about the talent that was playing hockey in Winnipeg in our age group. The St. Boniface–St. Vital Saints featured Darren Boyko, who would eventually play in the NHL and later set records in the Finnish Elite League; Dale Derkatch, who would set records in junior hockey while starring for the Regina Pats; and Mark MacKay, who would end up playing professional hockey in Germany and eventually captaining the German national team. The Winnipeg South Monarchs had among their players Brett Hull, Bobby’s son and himself now also in the Hockey Hall of Fame; and Richard Kromm, a highly sought-after prospect who eventually played for the New York Islanders.

There were other extremely talented players in our league in our age group. We played a very high level of hockey, and there were opportunities for an adult to latch on to a boy’s success. There was money to be made and coaching and management opportunities to be had by showing an eye for developing successful hockey players.

Graham was neither a parent nor a relative of any of the players. Still, it would never have occurred to anyone that he might have an ulterior motive. It would have been beyond contemplation in 1979 that Graham was using his position to develop relationships with young men, to access potential prey. Nobody considered for a moment that he might be putting himself amidst young, athletic, and even, some would say, good-looking boys for his own satisfaction.

Everybody on our team knew that Graham was there. As hockey players, we desperately wanted to impress him. But at the same time, we saw his helping a team from a different district, our rivals no less, as an act of treason against both the St. James team he coached and our team representing that same district. We used this seeming treason as motivation throughout the tournament. Hockey is about many things, with loyalty and respect for the jersey very high on the list. How dare he disrespect our jersey, his own team’s jersey, and help another team against us? Oh, the silly things that motivate young boys.

And of course, things being what they are, our two Winnipeg teams had traveled all the way to Minneapolis only to end up facing each other in the Mid-Western Regional AAA Final, a game that could have been scheduled just a short drive from everybody’s house back home.

I don’t remember much about that game except that I did not play particularly well and we lost to the team Graham was helping. For some reason, I’d been very calm on the bus taking us from the hotel to the rink for the game and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more energized for the final. So I mentally “worked myself up,” that being the mantra for successful athletes back then. But I had completely misunderstood what was going on. My perfectly calm state had actually been something I’d never experienced before—perfect preparation for a big moment. As the game wound down I realized that in working myself up, all I’d done was get in the way of my ability to play naturally to the best of my ability. I was so disappointed, so mad at myself.

Me being me, I blamed myself for the loss and was both angry and somewhat despondent as our team left the ice with our second-place trophies or medals or whatever they gave us—it was just a loss to me, and second-place awards meant nothing to me that night. And just then, as we were walking down the pathway from the ice surface to our dressing room, there, almost incredibly, was Graham standing just off to the side, alone, watching us but looking as if he didn’t want us to see him. I looked over and saw him and couldn’t help myself: “Hey! Graham! Nice job helping them. Traitor! You have to leave St. James to be a winner?”

Back then, I would have been the last, and I mean last, person to say anything rude to an adult. I immediately felt sick about what I had done and resolved to do whatever I could to try to take it back.

Except you can’t ever really take words back.

After getting out of my equipment and eventually leaving the dressing room, I searched for Graham to apologize to him. I was nervous and ashamed. I expected the worst. Instead, I was met by a very calm, very reassuring, almost nurturing man who said that he understood that things are said in the heat of the battle and that I shouldn’t worry at all about what I’d said. He said that if he’d been in the same position, he likely would have done the same thing. I was relieved.

“Hey, Greg, this is just one game,” he said. “Focus on what you’ve accomplished. Focus on your skills, on what you can do. That’s the real you. You know you’re better than today. Today, tonight, was an exception.”

“It’s Gil. The guys call me Gil.”

But it got even better. Graham went on to compliment me on my play. He told me to put this one game aside and learn from it. He let me know that he was aware of my ability and successes and that he thought that I had a future in the game if I kept progressing in the right direction. He said that he was prepared to help me, that he had some thoughts on things that could help me, but he definitely did not want to interfere with my current coaches (who, he thought, weren’t that good but must be respected) so we would have to keep this between us to avoid causing offense. Same with my dad—don’t tell him, as my coaches would eventually find out. Keep this to myself, at least for the next little while, and we’ll see what we can do. He said he would get in touch when we were back in Winnipeg. And with that, we agreed to speak when back in Winnipeg.

I remember getting on our team bus to head back to Winnipeg not caring one bit about the fact that we had lost the regional finals. Instead, all I could think about was that one of the leading figures in our hockey world thought I had a future in the game and was prepared to work with me.

That was the random event that caused our paths to cross. Those were the random words uttered by me in frustration that changed my life. Some might assume that I would wish I had never apologized to him. But I see it differently: it was my fault and I wish I had never been rude to him. In the end, nothing mattered. I was nobody to him, just an opportunity, a potential victim.

Not too long after we were back in Winnipeg, Graham started following my team around and showing up at games. Seeing him there, knowing he was watching me, I felt flattered. In those days before email, texting, cell phones, even voice mail or home recording machines, he could have just called my house and asked for me. But he never made direct contact with me anywhere other than at a hockey rink. He was always surrounded by other coaches or kids in hockey jackets, near the canteens at the rinks that everybody passes on the way in and out of arenas. It provided him with a perfect opportunity to grab a quick minute of conversation with me while my dad was waiting for me in the car. If he ever needed to get in touch with me, he could always easily find me.

Eventually, Graham suggested that we get together at a local restaurant. I was so excited that somebody of his stature in our hockey community wanted to meet with me, and I could hardly wait until the day came.

THE DAY FINALLY came. I had just turned fifteen and didn’t yet drive, so I had to walk there, about a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk. I was so excited. I wanted to make a good impression, and I most definitely didn’t want to be late, so I arrived very early. Because I had very little money with me, I sat drinking several glasses of water while I waited for him. The waitress asked if I was going to order something or just sit there. I was quiet and nervous. Eventually Graham showed up.

“Greg, sorry, Gil, sorry I’m late.”

He wasn’t late. Graham can be very charming. He was just less early than I was and wanted to put me at ease for being a dork who showed up way too early for our meeting. He immediately made me feel like the most important, successful young person he had ever come across. He gushed with praise about my hockey talents as well as my success at school.

“So, I hear you’re a bit of a genius. What’s your favorite subject?”

“Yeah, right. I don’t know. Math, English, stuff like that.”

I was clearly a brilliant conversationalist.

It was apparent that he had done his research, as he seemed to know more than I thought he would about who I was and what I had already done. He said that he had seen me play a game at a tournament the year before and was amazed at my talent. He complimented me on how others spoke of me, both as a player and as a person off the ice, saying I was well known as an intelligent, well-mannered, respectful, and very hard-working young man.

Besides flattering me, Graham started digging for more about me.

“You know, I think that a strong family upbringing can be helpful in developing character. Most of the guys on my team have great parents. But it’s also possible that coming from a tough family background can make you into an even stronger person. What’s your family like?”

I gave him a bit of information, but not the whole story. “We’re OK, I guess.”

He told me about his team, shared some hockey secrets, asked about my school, and touched on current affairs. Our discussion was very exciting for me, and I felt as if I were being brought into the inner workings of the local hockey community. Knowing about my success at school and my interest in academics, he played up his position as a teacher and let on that he was highly educated. And he immediately homed in on the potential issues that might be at play.

“I know what it’s like to be very smart and good at school while also playing sports. The other guys can sometimes make it hard on you. It can be a lonely place. I understand.”

By engaging me, adult to youth, as somebody who mattered, by listening intently to my every word without dismissing me or yelling at me, Graham instantly became somebody I thought I could talk to, somebody I wanted to talk to, somebody I respected and admired for the simple reason that he made me feel that I finally had a meaningful voice outside of the classroom. It was the first time my intellectual side had been respected and encouraged outside of school, in the real world. I didn’t have that at home. And all it took was this one conversation to make me feel good about myself.

I don’t remember things like what he was wearing or what we ate, the kind of things you think would be etched in my memory. I do remember looking down as he went on and on about me, breaking eye contact with him out of embarrassment, and seeing a stain on my hockey team jacket next to the team crest and worrying that he would see that stain and think I was a slob for having spilled milk on it earlier and not cleaning it properly.

Mostly, I remember getting up from the table and feeling almost dizzy, slightly removed from the situation while thinking that this couldn’t be happening. How lucky was I? How cool was this? It was amazing.

And of course, I had a long time to think about it because I walked home. It wouldn’t be right, he said, for us to be seen together. And he told me to keep our contact secret—something he would reiterate at each of our meetings.

I thought it had been one of the best days of my life.

WE CONTINUED TO meet at the same restaurant every few weeks or so for a few months.

Over time I became increasingly at ease discussing things with him. From answering with a simple “OK” when he asked about my relationship with my parents at our first meeting, I increasingly opened up when he later circled back to the issue. I slowly, gradually let him in on the isolation I was experiencing at home and divulged how difficult it was no longer having my best friend around all the time.

He would tell me that I was better than the rest of my teammates and that I deserved better coaching, coaching that respected both my physical skills and my brain. He would go on and on about hockey strategy, stressing that a goalie should know more than anybody else on the team about how the patterns of the game work because goalies have to participate actively in a team’s own defense while at the same time responding to the other team’s offense.

“You know, traditionally, goaltenders in minor hockey have been ignored when it comes to teaching hockey theory. Do your coaches teach systems of offense and defense?”

“Well, they run drills for us with the guys having to be in different places in different situations.”

“But do they give it an overall structure, something cohesive where everybody has certain fundamental responsibilities?”

“Not really.”

“You need to know what the other team is trying to do in your zone. And you need to know what your team is trying to do to defend that. There’s a reason for all of that positioning.”

“I think our guys are just trying to remember where the coaches want them to be.”

“Look, I appreciate the role of the goalie in a way others can’t. Because you’re smart, once you understand the patterns, the systems, you can use your head in connection with your talent to move far beyond others playing your position. I’m sure your coaches already recognize that. Maybe your guys just aren’t ready for systems, or surely they’d be teaching you how to play, wouldn’t they?”

He asked about my parents and my relationship with them. What were they like? Where did they come from? What were their interests? What had they done in their pasts? What were they doing now? Surely, given their backgrounds, they would understand that I needed to be challenged, and they were already encouraging my intellectual pursuits and supporting me in my athletic and academic efforts, weren’t they?

The seeds of doubt were sown. Who was there to teach me? Who understood me? Who was there to champion me? My parents? My coaches?

Graham asked me what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to pursue hockey, or did I want to do something with my education? If it was hockey, he said, there would be no stopping me—provided I received the right coaching and training, and he could help me with that. If it was something else, he, a teacher, could also provide guidance as I worked toward university. But if it was a combination of the two, he, as both a leading figure in the hockey world and a teacher, was ideally situated to be my mentor.

I wanted to do both. I had always wanted to do both. I told Graham that my dad had only gone to Grade Eight and that I would be the first in our family to go to university. He would have heard the way I said it, the determination in my voice. He would have understood that I wanted to be different from my dad, better than my dad.

“My dad focused on hockey and look where that got him.”

And with that statement, without realizing it, I had crossed a line. I was now speaking disrespectfully about my own father to somebody outside the family, somebody who until very recently had been a complete stranger. The one thing Graham would most easily have learned about me and my relationships with my own family was that I wasn’t going to be like my dad. Graham instantly saw that as a way to connect to me, to bond with me.

Those seeds of doubt. Who was there to teach me? Who understood me? Who was there to champion me? After our meetings I would think long and hard about what he had said. He didn’t tell me that my parents were bad or that my coaches were bad. He left me to come to my own conclusions. He prompted me to ask myself what I wanted and how I might best achieve that. But before prompting me to ask myself those questions, he had already positioned himself as the answer to my dreams.

We increasingly discussed how I could best develop as both a player and a person. He now knew that I wanted to play varsity hockey at university, and there was no way I was ever going to change my mind about that, notwithstanding his position as a junior hockey scout. There were rumors of a new rule that would make those playing major junior hockey, the level of the teams for which Graham scouted, ineligible for NCAA university hockey in the United States (this rule was, in fact, adopted the next year), so he never pushed me to the Saskatoon Blades or the New Westminster Bruins or whoever else he may have been helping. Graham took great pride in steering players into what is now the Canadian Hockey League, but that was never on my radar.

“I understand you. You want to do what I wanted to do, exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to get a scholarship and play hockey in the States too, but my asthma got in the way. It’s smart. You get the best of both worlds. You’ll have your hockey and an education to fall back on. That education will always be there.”

“Graham, I’m not ever going to play in the NHL.”

“You have no idea just how good you are and how much potential you have, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, I understand you. Only somebody like me can understand you. People like us, we need to stick together and help each other.”

He would never let too much time go by between our meetings, but he was also never so in my face that it became off-putting. He walked a delicate line between keeping me on a string and appearing to allow me to move on with other aspects of my life with other people. He was able to maintain an emotional hold on me, and I would increasingly ask for less and less time to pass until we could get together again to talk. Yes, in a way, getting together became my idea. His time was now something he was doling out in limited amounts while I craved more. Not only did have me on a string, he had me swimming toward him.

Graham started revealing himself to me. He told me that he believed that he was misunderstood, that he was a good guy but that many people seemed to be insecure around him, almost in awe of his education and coaching talent. What he hated most, he said, was having to dumb himself down in certain circles to be accepted. He was frustrated that he was in many ways a loner dedicated to making the game of hockey better. He never understood how sportswriters, especially Jack Matheson of the Winnipeg Tribune, could keep their jobs after supporting goon hockey. He thought it was unfair that sportswriters, who, he said, generally knew nothing about hockey, had the right to comment about anything to do with the game. He believed they were hurting the game, and once told me that the definition of a sportswriter was somebody who had failed English but could remember the winner of the last twenty Stanley Cups.

That was Graham. He would say anything to make a point that served his immediate interests and made him look better than everybody else. He was trying to get me to see that he was smarter and funnier than everyone else while appealing to my intellect and my sense of humor.

It worked. More and more I wanted to be like him.

Graham sympathized with me, saying that people like my father, who had dropped out of school before high school, could never understand people like us, people who lived a different life inside our heads. One night at dinner, my dad was talking about somebody’s son who was in engineering at university. He couldn’t understand why somebody would go to university to learn how to work on a train. I just nodded and looked away. But I laughed with Graham about it, thinking that he understood me and cared about me. I laughed with my eventual abuser about a perceived shortcoming in my dad. I can’t ever take that back.

Graham told me he could help me develop to the point where he could get me a scholarship to an Ivy League school. He could develop me. He could get me something. It was now all about what he could do for me and how I needed him to get what I wanted. Except, there’s no such thing as an athletic scholarship to an Ivy League school, not that I knew anything about that at the time (there is need-based financial aid, which often amounts to virtually total funding when a student-athlete comes from a family with a low income like mine). A simple sentence, but one with so much embedded in it, designed to position him between me and my dreams. Yet, all I could see at the time was that he was encouraging me to chase my goals.

Near the end of one of our meals at the restaurant he was very clear: “Look me in the eyes. Look hard. I believe in you. You can do this. It doesn’t just have to be a dream. But it will require commitment. You’re going to need a lot of help. Nobody makes it without a lot of help. But I believe in you. You have every right to succeed, no matter who doesn’t believe you can do this, no matter who believes this is beyond what somebody like you can achieve. I believe in you. We can do this.”

No matter who doesn’t believe in me?

No matter who believes this is beyond me?

Somebody like me?

I felt panic. My body tightened and my ears started to ring. What didn’t I know about myself that he knew? Who was he speaking with who had told him I wasn’t good enough? Maybe my dad had been right all along.

But at the same time, I could see in his eyes that he believed in me, that my goals were attainable, that he accepted me, that he understood me. I was starting to believe that maybe I had found my place, that here was someplace I belonged, that I had finally found my true home.

I didn’t see the dead eyes of a shark hunting its prey. Instead, I saw the compassionate eyes of somebody who knew what was going on inside my head because, in his telling of his story, he too had been a brilliant student and a top athlete, and nobody but people like us could understand just how difficult it is to be a jock in a geek’s world and a geek in a jock’s world.

“People like us”—those words haunt me still.

Maybe the problem was that I wasn’t enough of a jock to truly be a jock? Maybe I wasn’t enough of a geek to truly be a geek? Maybe I was nowhere, lost, and without his help and guidance I would always be lost, alone, one of a kind? Maybe I was just nothing special? He understood me, he knew what it was like to be caught between two worlds, he would help me with both worlds. I was one of a kind, but he was too, so the two of us would be one of a kind. “People like us have to stick together to help each other,” he said.

“People like us…”

After a short while, everything he said made perfect sense to me. He was increasingly becoming the major voice and guiding light in my life, and I was slowly becoming isolated from the people closest to me. My coaches couldn’t know, my family couldn’t know, the others on my team couldn’t know about our relationship, and that was pretty much it for me at that time. If any of them ever found out, it would be all over.

And Graham was dangling a pretty big carrot in front of me for immediate gratification. The older team in our area that Graham coached, the Midget (sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds) St. James Canadians, was in contention to represent Manitoba in the Air Canada Cup (now Telus Cup), the national Midget hockey championship. Graham told me that if his team qualified, it would have an expanded roster for the tournament. He thought I should be added, given the potential need for a third goalie for the tournament and his belief in my abilities. I was shocked, as that would mean he’d be lifting me two levels, bypassing the two AAA goalies in the age group ahead of where I was playing, two goalies who were also highly regarded.

Graham’s team did qualify for the Air Canada Cup. It was held in, of all places, Winnipeg that spring of 1979. I’ll never know whether he was telling me the truth, but he told me he tried to get permission to add me to the roster and was denied because he wasn’t allowed to bypass the boys who were older than me. Graham told me he protested. The three players (none of whom were goalies) he called up from the team a year older than mine were James Patrick, a defenseman who went on to star in the NHL; Dave Farnfield, who ended up playing at Yale; and Rob Scheuer, who ended up captaining the Princeton hockey team.

While the first of those names is what hockey people will focus on, it is the second and third names that were relevant to me, as they were recruited by and eventually accepted at Ivy League schools. To me that indicated that Graham was able to deliver on his promises. The reality, of course, is that Graham had nothing to do with their being recruited by Ivy League schools. But I didn’t know that back then.

GRAHAM HAD GOTTEN to know me very well. He understood what I wanted to achieve and had positioned himself as ideally suited to help me achieve my dreams. He saw that I was particularly vulnerable because I was a bit of a loner caught between two worlds. I looked to Graham and not to my dad—a man who, I am sure, loved me but just couldn’t show it—for guidance. I opened up to Graham. I let him in.

A goaltender has an interesting perspective on the game of hockey. In many ways the game unfolds in front of the goalie, its patterns revealing themselves sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but usually in recognizable ways. An adept goalie adapts and reacts to the moving parts, most often without even consciously thinking about what is happening. The goalie is said to be “in the zone,” and the pucks are stopped, controlled, and redirected with ease.

I thought I was on my game. I was in the zone, a dominant player on my team, in my league, and I was now being tutored and mentored by a leading figure in the game. I thought I could see everything in front of me, that everything was finally coming my way. It all looked so promising, so attainable, so very real.

But in reality, I couldn’t see anything.