Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

And through it al, we remember Ben. How his life was wasted on a pointless obsession. And then his death, so preventable and yet unsurprising, even fated. But we quickly shift away from the outcome of Ben McAuliffe's narrative to a greatest hits of scenes from his youth, his dorky visions, his sleepy goaltending. Soon Randy and I are laughing and coughing and laughing again, which we're thankful for, seeing as it makes our anguished tears look to the rest of the room like beer-fueled hilarity.

Some time later I make my way to the men's room and see how busy the place has gotten. The work crews kicking the mud off their boots, the girls-night-outers squeezed into their finest denim. Even a clutch of suits tossing back a couple of after-work quickies before heading home to the newer streets north of the river.

And then two faces I recognize. Stepping out of the crowd and offering hands to shake. A big felow in a Canada Post parka first, folowed by his stout, patchily bearded friend.

"Trev? Holy shit! I was right. It's you!" the first one says, and claps me in a bear hug.

"Todd?"

"Glad to know the grey hair didn't throw you off too much."

" Todd Flanagan ?"

"Last name too. Nice work."

"How's Tina? You two stil together?"

"Long gone," Todd reports. "Tina was not a stick-around sort of girl." Todd loops his arm around the bearded guy's neck. "Here's another test. Can you recal the name of this walking sieve right here?"

"Vince Sproule," I announce, catching in the toothy grin a glimpse of the eighteen-year-old he once was. "Grimshaw's greatest goalie ever."

"He was quick, wasn't he?"

"Not so much these days," Vince says, pretending to snatch an oncoming puck out of the air. "Three kids and too many Egg McMuffins can slow you down after a while."

Todd and Vince were Guardians too, teammates on the high- school team. And though they were only two years ahead of us at the time, they look a decade older than we do now, bloated and shambling. But content too, I'd say. The added pounds that come with snacks in front of the game-of-the-week and unrenewed gym memberships.

"A terrible thing," Todd says, his hand on my shoulder. "About Ben."

"It is."

"Guess you're here for the funeral."

"Randy too."

"No shit?"

"He's sitting over there. In the corner."

Todd and Vince squint over the heads of other patrons to find Randy waving back at us, like a long-lost cousin at airport arrivals.

"It's a goddamn team reunion," Vince says.

"Wish it could have been for better reasons," Todd adds, and I'm moved by how plainly he means it.

"We're going to miss him," I say.

"Us too," Todd says. "It's a funny thing. I probably saw him more than anyone the past while."

"You visited?"

"I'm a mailman," Todd says, pointing to the Canada Post patch on the chest of his jacket as though to offer proof. "Been delivering to Ben's neighbourhood pretty much since I took the job. I'd wave up at him in that window, Monday to Friday, before going up the steps to drop off the bils."

"Did he ever come down? To talk?"

"Not a once."

"Always was an oddbal," Vince Sproule says, shaking his head. "But then there's a point when oddbals turn just sad. You know what I mean?"

"I do."

"Never much of a goalie, either," Todd says.

"It's a good thing we had you, Vince."

"You ever wonder how far we could have gone that year, Trev?" Todd asks.

"I don't realy think about it."

"It was tragic. What happened. But maybe not just for, you know, those involved. You were a pretty good sniper yourself."

"It doesn't—"

"Who knows who would have noticed you. You could have—"

"I told you, I don't think about it. I do my best not to think about a lot of things."

"Sure. I can understand that," Todd says, nodding as though at an insight into his own condition he'd long been blind to.

Then something happens that delivers a sharp stab of jealousy: our waitress, the pretty referee, walks up and gives Todd a kiss on the cheek.

"Don't you just love this guy?" she says before slipping back into the crowd, and though it's just more waitress banter, it's obvious that she does love him. Lucky Todd Flanagan. Tina Uxbridge might have fooled around on him a few hundred times before dumping him. But if this referee is Todd's new girlfriend, he's bounced back quite nicely.

Todd is grinning like a monkey. "You remember Tracey."

"Tracey?"

"She was a lot smaler then."

Then I get it. The bundle of squawking joy Tina used to bring to the Guardians games.

"That's your daughter?"

"You fancy-suit, big-city guys. They al as sharp as you?"

"She was just a baby."

"Stil is."

"Wel, I have to thank you, Todd. You've just made me feel incredibly old."

"C'mon. You didn't need me for that, did you?"

I carry on to the men's room, and when I return Todd and Vince have joined Randy at our table, a fresh pitcher already between them. I suppose it's al the beer that helps in creating the sense that the four of us stil have so much in common, when realy al we talk about is how lousy the hockey got on TV after they started giving

"these Russian pretty boys five milion to fake a concussion every time the wind blows" (as Vince puts it), our women troubles, the body's first betrayals that attend the lapsing of its forty- year warranty.

Or maybe I'm wrong in that. Maybe we are stil friends, and I've just forgotten what they are.

Eventualy, Todd and Vince announce they have to go home and get some sleep. Todd has his mail rounds in the morning and Vince has to replace the brakes on a minivan at the garage he co-owns before they have to put on Sunday clothes for Ben's funeral in the afternoon. Yet even then we stay on for one more pitcher to add to the previous half-dozen or so, al served by Tracey Flanagan, Todd's baby girl.

When we finaly head out into the night, the air has cooled several degrees. I stand with Randy on the sidewalk, deciding which way to go. Around us, the town has been sharpened by the cold, the old storefronts grey and looming.

The two of us shake off a chil. It's the shared notion that for al the time we were inside Jake's Pool 'n' Sports, in the deceptive warmth of light and company, Grimshaw was waiting for us.

I think we were hoping to find it gone. Torn down to make way for a triplex, or finaly razed for safety reasons, leaving only an empty lot behind. We don't entertain these possibilities aloud, in any case. Once we'd paid our tab at Jake's, it was stil only nine, and Randy wanted a cigarette, so I joined him on a tipsy wander through the streets, taking the long way back to the Queen's.

Neither of us acknowledged it when we turned the corner onto Caledonia Street. We started up the long slope toward the hospital, noting how remarkably little had changed about the houses, the modest gardens, even the mailboxes lashed to the streetlight poles to thwart kids from tipping them over. When the McAuliffe house comes into view we automaticaly cross the street to be on the same side it's on. We pause in front for a moment, gazing up at Ben's window.

And then, unstoppably, we turn to folow what was his line of sight for most of his waking adult life.

It's stil unoccupied, judging from the black, uncurtained windows, the wood trim bristled with mildew, the knee-high seedlings dotting the yard. Nevertheless, given the little care paid to it over the last thirty or more years, the Thurman house looks reasonably solid, testimony to the stone foundation and brick work of its builders over a century ago. Even the headless rooster stil tops the attic gable.

"Why don't they just tear it down?" I ask.

"Can't. It's privately owned."