Chapter 7 - September 26, 1979
There was a guy leaving Bah's building as Sandy approached the next morning. She vaguely recognized him, and thought he must have recognized her too, because he frowned at her like he was trying to place her face. "You're with Bah, right?"
Sandy was caught off guard by the question. "I—uh. I guess so?"
The guy nodded. "Yeah. I remember you from when we had people over that one night before we left. Are you visiting him right now?"
Sandy nodded.
He raised his eyebrows and let out a little chuckle. "Hopefully you didn't have anything too exciting planned." Without offering any further explanation, he took his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door for her.
Sandy frowned. "Thanks." She felt like there was some obvious joke she wasn't a part of, but she couldn't imagine what it might be. When she knocked on Bah's apartment door, there was a clattering sound from inside and a moment later, Buzz Schneider appeared, holding an overflowing mug. Sandy watched the dark coffee inside slosh around and drip onto the floor, and Buzz seemed to realize this a second later.
"Ah, shit. Hi. Come on in. Watch your step." He moved aside for her to pass into the living room, and Sandy perched on the arm of the couch, watching as Buzz dropped a towel on the floor and guided it over the spilled coffee with his foot. Once he was done, he stood in the middle of the room, wiping off his mug. He looked over at her suddenly, frowning. "Hey, how did you even get in here? Did Bah give you a key?"
Sandy laughed. "No, no. There was a guy outside and he let me in. Sorry if I caught you in the middle of something," she told him. "Is Bah here?"
Buzz nodded, a half-smile spreading across his face. "He's asleep. We went out last night because we were all jetlagged and nobody could sleep." He paused and raised his mug to eye level, checking it.
"Oh. How'd that go?"
He looked at his watch. "Well, it's noon. Bah usually gets up pretty early—I stayed here after we got in and I don't think he even moved all night." Buzz shrugged. "I mean, he's definitely alive in there. What are you and Bah supposed to be doing?"
"He said we'd go tyo Valleyfair," Sandy told him, feeling a bit disheartened, and Buzz grinned.
"The amusement park?" he asked. Sandy nodded, and he breathed in sharply through his teeth. "Oh, I don't know about that today," he said. "You might wanna go check on what kind of condition he's in. He's in the second bedroom."
Sandy hadn't really been expecting to be the one to wake Bah up that morning, but she went down the hallway and tried to quietly open the door. She could see, faintly in the light filtering through the drawn shades, the outline of Bah hanging over the side of his bed, his hand inches away from a wastebasket. She walked closer to him, touched his arm gently, and he jerked awake. "Huh?"
"Can I turn on the light?" Sandy asked. Bah dragged himself back up on the bed and grunted by way of confirmation, but he still groaned loudly into his hands when Sandy flicked the light switch. "So, Buzz said you guys had a long night," she said, perching on the corner of the bed.
Bah sat up, rubbing both hands on his face. "Tell me about it. I feel like my head's gonna explode."
Sandy drew her legs up underneath her. "Are you feeling too sick to go out today?"
"Hmm? Oh. No, we'll go. We're probably running late. Just one sec." He rubbed his face again, harder this time.
If Bah hadn't told her a day ago that they were going to go out that morning, Sandy would have felt sure that she had the wrong day. "It's okay, you know," she said. "We don't have to go today. We can just—"
But Bah dragged his legs over the side of the bed and laboriously stood. "No, we're definitely still going. Just give me a minute. Five minutes." He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly. "Oh, Christ. Okay, ten minutes, how 'bout?"
When he emerged nearly twenty minutes later, Sandy and Buzz were watching highlights of a North Stars pre-season game on the television. "We play them in a couple of nights," Buzz was telling her.
"Do you think you'll win?"
He shrugged. "Herb says he thinks they'll come out swinging against us because they know a lot of the guys on our team will go pro, and they're trying to protect their spots. It's their job, you know. So it's oddly political."
"Listen to this guy making excuses," Bah said, leaning against the arm of the couch. They watched for another minute or two before he stood up straight again and turned to Sandy. "You ready to go?"
The drive between the boys' apartments and the amusement park took about a half an hour, during which Sandy had to check repeatedly to see if Bah needed her to pull over for him to throw up. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to go on any rides with you today," he told her. "I'll just hold your purse and watch if you want."
Sandy regarded him with concern. "Honestly, Bah, we don't have to go. We can go the next time you guys have days off. You don't have to feel, you know, obligated or anything."
"I do—" Bah paused, holding the back of his hand to his mouth and puffing his cheeks out. "I do feel obligated," he continued a moment later. "We made these plans before I went to Europe."
"Are you gonna have fun holding my purse and watching me go on rides?"
He grinned at her. "I guess we'll have to see."
It turned out that Bah did not find watching Sandy go on rides much fun. After about a half an hour at the park, he wanted her to go on the High Roller, an intimidating wooden roller coaster that Sandy had ridden upon first arriving there, again, but this time he wanted to come too.
"Should we maybe try something less aggressive to be safe and see how you feel? Maybe the ferris wheel?" Sandy asked, noting that although Bah did look better now that he was out in the fresh air, he definitely didn't look good.
Bah shook his head. "I'm fine. See?" He hopped up and down on the spot, as if that proved anything. "Come on, it'll be okay."
Immediately it became apparent to both of them that it would not be okay. Sandy stared over at Bah, who was sucking in deep breaths as their cart climbed to the top as if he thought there wouldn't be air up there. As the cart started to decline, both of Bah's hands flew to his mouth and he screwed his eyes shut. He didn't move again until the cart had come to a complete stop, and then he wrenched at the restraints holding him in his seat until they flew off.
"Are you okay—?" Sandy started to ask, but Bah shook his head at her, scrambled out of his seat, and disappeared at a run.
She searched for a few minutes and discovered him hunched over a garbage can, his elbows propped on the rim of it. Three young children watched nearby, giggling and eating cotton candy. Sandy put her hand on Bah's back, and he started and turned to look at her.
"Oh. I'm really sorry about that." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "That was so shitty. I can't believe that happened."
Sandy, who could believe that happened, shook her head. "It's okay." She dug around in her purse and pulled out a stick of gum. "Do you at least feel better now?"
Bah let out a shaky breath and nodded, accepting the gum. "I feel like I should have taken a lesson from myself in college before we left Burnsville. You always feel a lot better after you throw up, right?" He seemed to defer this ruling to Sandy, who shrugged. "That's my experience, anyway. Maybe we should wait a bit before we go on that one again."
Sandy returned his smile warily, feeling somewhat guilty before she reminded herself that Bah had been the one who insisted on coming. The children who had been watching Bah wandered away, satisfied that the show was over. Sandy sank down on a bench next to Bah's garbage can. "Do you think we should just go home?"
"No," Bah said, a little sharper than he seemed to have intended. He paused, catching Sandy's reaction. "Sorry." He sat down on the bench beside her. "I just wanted us to have some fun today after I was gone for so long, you know?"
Sandy smiled at him. "I know. It's okay. I'm having fun." She worried suddenly that there would a moment when Bah would kiss her—he seemed to be a fan of doing so unexpectedly, and she didn't believe enough in the healing properties of the old stick of gum she'd found at the bottom of her purse to feel excited at the idea. Luckily, he didn't particularly seem to be in the mood for it. He noticed her looking at him and scooted closer along the bench, putting his arm around her shoulders.
The two sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the groups of people walk past. Although they had arrived fairly early on in the day, a decent crowd had accumulated in the park. Sandy studied a young couple seated at a picnic table on a patch of grass in the distance. The man was trying to feed the woman some of his ice cream cone. Chuckling at something that she was saying, his hand shook and he smeared a streak of strawberry ice cream across her cheek. Both of them burst out laughing, looking like a commercial for happy people. Sandy glanced up at Bah, who had leaned his head back and closed his eyes in the sun. She nudged him and he peeled one eye open. "Hmm?"
"How was Europe?"
Bah opened his other eye. "We ended up 7-2-1. We did pretty well over there."
"Seven wins, two losses, and a tie, or the other way around?"
"No, you're right," Bah laughed. "We tied one of our games against the Norwegian team. There's a fun story." He straightened up, pulling his arm away from Sandy's shoulders and turning slightly on the bench to face her. "Have I ever told you about our coach?"
Sandy shrugged. She remembered various things from the party, when she had listened to the boys talk about this man. He seemed terrifying. "I've heard some things. Why, what happened?"
"Well," Bah said, "we had just tied this game. And this team was... I mean, they were a fine enough team, but we should have been able to beat them. We were just flat, you know? Just not playing at all as good as we could—as we had been for the entire time we were there. And so the whole time we were playing, I kept looking over at Herb out of the corner of my eye. You know how sometimes you can tell when somebody is just about to completely lose it?" He paused, and Sandy nodded. "It was like that. And I just hoped I wasn't standing there when he eventually did snap, but the game went on and on, and then once it was over, he makes us stay out there on the ice."
"Uh oh," Sandy said.
"Yeah. We tried to skate off the ice so we could go back to the hotel, and our assistant coach, Craig, goes, 'no, guys, just stay out there.' And I just…" Bah shook his head. "I knew it wouldn't be a good thing."
"So what'd he do? Yell at you guys out there?"
Bah grinned at her. "Oh no, we skated. We did Herbies. I don't think I've ever told you about that before. It's this skating drill Herb makes us do where we start at one end of the ice, skate to the blue line, skate back to the start, centre ice, back, the far blue line, back, and then all the way down and back."
"Oh, God." No wonder he was in such good shape, Sandy thought.
He nodded. "You betcha. And so we did a few of them at a time and then he'd let us skate once around the ice to catch our breath, and then he'd make us do some more. We don't usually do that many of them—he's not a maniac or anything. He's usually not, I guess. Anyway, we did them for so long that the caretaker of the rink shut the lights off on us, and even then he didn't let us quit. We just skated in the dark with him hollering at us."
The word "masochist" occurred to Sandy and she smiled to herself. "So at what point did he let you stop?"
At this, Bah threw his head back and laughed out loud. "I think he probably would have been content to still have us out there skating, but at one point during one of the laps we got to cool off, Magic—have you met Magic? Mark Johnson," he clarified, and Sandy shook her head. "Oh, I'll have to introduce you. Anyway, he smashed his stick on the glass and pretty soon after that we were allowed to leave. I would have done that right away if I'd known that was the key to getting him to let us stop." Bah smiled again. "We played that same team the next night. Guess how it went?"
Sandy grinned. "Probably not too flat?"
"We won 9-0," Bah said, and they both laughed. "So, I mean, I guess it worked, right? It got the desired result." He shook his head and turned to face front again, putting his arm back around Sandy's shoulders. "Anyway, it'll be good to be home for a little while."
Sandy leaned against him. "Any big plans?"
He shrugged. "I thought maybe my parents would come out but they're working, I think. So I'll probably just rest before our game on Friday, because we leave the next morning for about a week."
"You're going away again so soon?"
Bah smiled and nodded. "Yep. We're gone from the 30th until October 8th. I told you," he said as Sandy continued to look surprised. "I am a very busy man. We don't play a lot of games at home. You're going to have to start coming to practices and games if you want to see me."
"Are people allowed to watch your practices?" Sandy had been imagining secretive sessions in private locations, so as to keep the training secrets of the team away from prying eyes.
Bah nodded. "Of course. We practice at Roy Wilkins. Roy Wilkins Auditorium, in St. Paul," he said, noticing her not recognizing the name of the rink. "And so anyone can come in and watch. You honestly should sometime if you're not working—it might be fun."
"It might be?" Sandy grinned. "I don't want to come and watch you skate until you throw up."
Bah rolled his eyes at her. "You already saw that, though," he said, gesturing at the two of them. "I threw up in public, in front of you today. You owe me this."
"I told you that you shouldn't go on the ride!" Sandy laughed. "Somebody wanted to be tough and go on the roller coaster."
"Well, I hope I at least convinced you that I'm tough." He leaned over, catching her off guard and dropping a mint-scented kiss on her cheek. "It would mean a lot if you came sometime," he said, more seriously. "I'd like you to actually see what I do, other than watching my back as I beat you at running."
Sandy laughed again and nodded. "Okay. I'll come, but just let that coach of yours know that I won't be able to handle watching him be hard on you."
"Yeah, I'll tell him," Bah replied. "I'll make sure he knows. That will definitely make a difference."
They left Valleyfair shortly after, and Bah insisted that they go out to eat. They went to a diner along the highway and Bah told a harassed-looking waitress that he only wanted an order of dry toast. "It's the only thing I can eat," he explained to Sandy after she ordered a BLT sandwich and fries. "I'm sick."
She scoffed. "You're not sick, you're hungover."
He tsked at her and shook his head. "Not very sympathetic of you." They both laughed. "So, how was your month? I never even asked."
"It was good. Pretty quiet," Sandy said. "I mostly just worked. I saw Gayle one night."
Bah raised his eyebrows at her as he took a drink of water. "Did you? What did you do?"
"She brought beer over to my house. She wanted to go to a bar, but, you know, I'm not old enough. So—"
"You're not?" Bah cut her off. "How old are you?"
It occurred to Sandy suddenly that she didn't know how old Bah was, either. She didn't even know his last name or where he was from, other than that it was called, mysteriously, "the Range." She didn't know Bah at all.
Sandy could feel herself frowning deeply, and Bah was watching her, an amused expression on his face. "What happened to you just now?"
"I just realized that I hardly know anything about you," she said.
He grinned. "You just realized that now? I must not be at all interesting to you, if you haven't wondered enough to ask. What are you suddenly dying to know?"
For the next half hour, Sandy and Bah traded information across the scrubbed table of their booth. She found out that his last name was Harrington and that his middle name was Michael, and that his birthday was May 24th. He was twenty-two, and he had five siblings (three brothers, two sisters). "That's a lot of people in one house," Sandy said.
"Well, there's some years between all of us, but I'm definitely quicker than most in the bathroom in the morning. That's a question you would never think of asking, but I bet you're glad I answered it."
Bah had grown up in Virginia, Minnesota, which was about a three hour drive from Minneapolis. His dad drove a locomotive engine for an iron mine and his mom was a teacher. Bah had just finished college, having majored in physical education. He wanted to teach, maybe, if hockey didn't work out. He'd been playing hockey since he was a little kid. He loved it.
"Do you think you'll go to the NHL?" she asked.
Bah shrugged. "It'll be unexpected if I do, but it's what everybody wants, right?" Sandy mimicked his shrug, and he grinned. "Well, just trust me."
Sandy dragged a couple of fries through some ketchup as she thought about this. "Why do you think it'll be unexpected?"
"Oh, because I'm not quite good enough. On paper, at least," Bah replied. "What? It's the truth," he added, as she looked up at him, surprised. "I work my ass off and coaches like that, but I'm not out there scoring beautiful goals or anything."
Prior to this, Sandy hadn't even considered that there were better hockey players than Bah. She had barely considered that there were other hockey players than Bah. She shook her head. "I guess I really do need to come watch you play sometime."
Bah let out a short laugh. "Why? Do you want to see how much worse I am than everyone else?" They grinned at each other, and he reached across the table and grabbed one of her fries. "I think I like living in a world where you've never seen me or anybody else play."
Sandy was glad, as they left the restaurant a while later, to see that Bah's order of toast had brought him back from the dead a little bit. When they pulled up to the apartment building, there was someone leaving, hauling a suitcase. Bah leaned forward in the passenger seat, peering at the guy. "Uh oh."
"What?" Sandy didn't recognize the guy, but Bah clearly knew him. He wrestled out of his seat belt and out of the car, jogging to meet the guy as he came down the front walk. Sandy watched from the car as they talked. The other guy seemed to be explaining something, shrugging and talking with his hands, and Bah was shaking his head. Eventually, they both looked over at the car, and Bah gestured for her to come out. Sandy shook her head emphatically. This didn't seem like it was her business. But Bah waved her over again, a little more impatiently, and so Sandy got out of the car.
"... Didn't realize anything was going on today, otherwise I wouldn't have made plans. I'm sorry," Bah was saying as Sandy came walking up.
"I don't think anyone knew," the other guy replied. "Don't feel bad." He turned to Sandy and gave her a weak smile. "I just wanted to meet you before I go," he said, holding out a hand. "I'm Mark Wells."
Sandy shook his hand, remembering Bah mentioning his dog-named roommates and assuming that this was Wellsy. "Sandy. It's nice to meet you," she said.
"He thought it was weird that you were just sitting in the car and watching us," Bah told her.
"Oh," Sandy said.
Mark shook his head. "That isn't true. Bah said he wanted me to meet you today when you guys got back, but—" he raised the hand that was carrying his suitcase. "I'm just on my way out of town."
"Oh," Sandy said again. For the second time that day, there seemed to be something going on that she didn't understand, but this seemed a little more serious. "Where are you going?"
Mark and Bah exchanged a look. "Michigan," Mark said. "Flint. Hopefully just for a while."
"He's—uh—he got sent down," Bah explained. "Herb called him this morning and told him."
"Sent down? Do you mean…" Sandy paused, not sure if "cut" was the polite term for it.
"Yeah," Mark and Bah said in unison, both having read her mind.
"Oh no, I'm sorry," Sandy said, and she felt it. Again, she was very aware of how much this wasn't her business. "Will you get to come back?"
There was a pause. Bah looked over at Mark, whose face took on a somewhat steely quality. "Yup. Don't worry, you'll see me again."
"Good man," Bah said, reaching out and clapping Mark on the shoulder.
"On the bright side, nobody has to share a bedroom on the apartment anymore," Mark replied with a laugh. "That'll be a nice change of pace for you guys. Anyways, I should probably head out," he continued. "Herbie said they were expecting me at some point today, so I'd better at least make a good impression. It was nice to meet you, Sandy."
"You too," Sandy said, feeling incredibly sad and trying to remind herself that she had just met this person about five minutes ago. "Good luck in Michigan."
"Yeah, keep your chin up," Bah said, holding out a hand for Mark to shake. Mark pulled Bah in and hugged him, and Sandy craned her neck to peer in the direction of her car, trying to hide the fact that she was crying a little.
"Take care, you guys," Mark said, starting to walk down the sidewalk.
"Drive safe," Bah said and Sandy waved, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.
Sandy and Bah sat on the front step of the apartment building and watched as Mark drove off. Bah leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist. "Well, that definitely put a damper on the day, didn't it?"
"Is that really how it works?" Sandy asked. "You just get a call one morning and—poof—you're going to Michigan and there's nothing you can do about it?"
"Pretty much."
Sandy leaned forward too. "That just seems so unfair."
Bah started to answer, but the door behind them opened and two guys came out, each holding two beer bottles. One of them was Bah's other, smaller roommate, Pav. "Thought you guys might still be out here," he said, handing a bottle to Bah. The other guy thrust his spare bottle at Sandy, who reluctantly took it.
"What time did he get back?" Bah asked.
Pav shook his head. "He was gone in the morning, and me and Buzzy went to eat after you guys left and when I got home, he was in the bedroom with the door closed so I just left him. He didn't tell me what happened until he came out with all his stuff."
Bah rested his chin on his palm again and shook his head. "Shit. We just got back yesterday. How—"
"You'll drive yourself nuts, Bah," the other guy said, leaning against one of the columns on the porch. "Don't bother trying to figure it out." He poked Sandy in the leg with the toe of his shoe, and she jumped. "Nothing ruins a nice date like having to deal with hockey team drama, isn't that right, baby?"
"She was just saying how unfair it was," Bah said.
The other guy laughed and sipped his beer. "That sounds about right. I'm Dave Silk, by the way," he said. "Nice to meet ya."
"You too," Sandy said. "I just can't believe how sudden that seems. How would you even prepare for it?"
"You wouldn't," Bah said with a shrug. "I try not to think about it because if I did, it'd be all I ever thought about."
Dave Silk sat down on the step next to Sandy. "It's not like we all haven't been cut before," he said. "We all—what are you, scared I put something in there? Have a drink." He cut himself off, bumping his bottle into Sandy's. She took an obliging sip. "Anyway, we all know what it feels like."
"Seems... Not that fun," Sandy said, and the boys laughed.
Pav and Dave stayed outside on the step for a while longer, quietly talking hockey and drinking their beer. Eventually, Pav straightened up and Sandy saw him gesture at Dave to get his attention. "C'mon, let's go in," he said, and the two of them went back into the building.
Sandy and Bah were left sitting alone on the step, Bah absently blowing into his empty bottle. A moment later, Sandy stood up as well, handing her bottle to Bah.
"You heading out?" he asked, setting it down and using one of the columns to pull himself into a standing position.
She nodded. "I had fun today," she said, starting to back up across the lawn towards her car.
Bah followed her. "Me too. I hope all this," he said, gesturing toward where they had been sitting on the step, "didn't depress you too much."
"It didn't." She shook her head. She stopped walking a few feet from her car, and he caught up to her. "Kind of makes me worry for you a little, though."
He frowned. "Why?"
"I would just be really worried about getting comfortable anywhere if I knew there was the possibility of that happening to me."
Bah folded his arms. "Well, I can see why it would bother you, but it's just something I've gotten used to. You just learn to not let it mess with your head—or you do, but you use it to make you play better so it doesn't happen." He shrugged.
She squinted at him in the sunlight. "I feel like that's some kind of disorder."
Bah rolled his eyes theatrically at her. "What are you, a doctor now?"
"Runs in my family. Will's gonna be a doctor, remember? My brother," she supplied, when he looked confused.
"Ah, yes. You come from a medical family."
"You can meet him if you want. Him and Jenny, if you want."
"Tonight?"
"If you want to."
He hesitated. "I'd better not. I think I need to be around the boys tonight. Are they free tomorrow?"
Sandy nodded. "Probably. You should come for dinner—I bet they'll like you." This was half a lie. She had no doubt that Jenny would like Bah, but she wasn't so sure about Will. They were all adults, though. Will would be able to keep it together and meet someone his sister was spending time with, she thought.
"Sure," Bah said. "And yes, I'm very charming, so I think they'd like me, too."
"Just make sure you don't accidentally go out drinking the night before," Sandy said, and let out a little yelp as Bah suddenly reached out, grabbed her by the hand, pulled her close, and kissed her.
When they separated, Bah grinned. "Sorry. Felt like a good moment." He dropped his arms to his sides and took a step back. "Can we go for a run tomorrow before dinner?"
"Okay." Sandy pressed her palms against her warm cheeks and wondered if Bah would ever stop having this effect on her.
He continued to smile at her as he started backing up towards the building. "Great. I'll call you."
Sandy pulled herself together enough to get into the car. She thought of something suddenly as she started to leave, and quickly rolled down her window and called to Bah, who was walking back across the lawn. He turned. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," he said.
Now that he was standing there, looking at her expectantly, she felt ridiculous and selfish for asking, but she did, quickly before she lost her nerve. "Would you call me if it ever happened to you?"
He looked confused. "What? You mean, if I got sent down?"
"Yeah."
Bah took a step in the direction of the car and then stopped, seeming to determine that this wasn't meant to be a long conversation. "Sandy," he said, "of course. Of course I would call you."
Sandy smiled. She could see on his face, even from at a distance, that he looked completely incredulous that she would even have to ask. "Okay," she said. "Sorry. I just don't want to wake up some morning and find that you got shipped off to Flint, too."
"Oh, no," Bah said, laughing a little. "I don't think you're getting rid of me that easily."
"I hope not."
