Chapter 4: Fulton and Banks
Author's Note: The Book and the Movie are a little out of order when it comes to when Fulton returns to the team. The movie has Fulton returning to the team a day or so after the loss to the cardinals. The Book / Novel has him returning to the team before the game. I feel that Charlie was the last one to see Hans, and he died soon after Charlie left. This was not easy to write for some reason.
Nia: I do occasional requests. I'll try to add an epilogue that might cover some of your wishes. It might be a while tho.
Fulton Reed jammed his hands into his pockets as he worked up the nerve to knock on the locker room door. He could hear the cheers from the crowd as the Eden Hall Varsity hockey team scored another goal.
There were times when Fulton wished he was as brave as Portman, Charlie, or even Connie. Sure, he was big and strong, but under that tough exterior, he felt small.
Fulton reached for the doorknob and wished he had someone by his side. He hated being alone.
Up until he met the duck, Fulton was alone. His parents passed away before he could remember them. He had no brothers and sisters. No cousins. No extended family either.
Fulton has lived with his foster parents since he could remember. They meant well, but they were always busy tending to all the younger kids. He was the only one who stuck around for any length of time. Everyone wanted to adopt babies. Nobody wanted Fulton. He was just this big kid that everyone feared. Then he joined the ducks. The ducks became his family.
Fulton had tried to make both Charlie and Portman see that, but Portman didn't want to leave Chicago, and Charlie was lashing out at everyone.
The door creaked as Fulton opened it. He had expected to find Coach Orion sitting alone in his office. Instead, Fulton found the team sitting on the benches in front of their lockers. Heads bowed in silence. No one even looked up when he opened the door.
The only sound other than the creaking door was subdued sobs from Connie as she buried her head into Guy's shoulder. Looking around the locker room, Fulton noticed that the rest of the team wasn't fairing much better. He could tell that a few of them were holding back tears.
"Who died?" Fulton asked, not realizing what had happened. They had lost before, but it never affected them like this. "It's just a game."
Russ shot him a look. "Where have you been?"
Fulton furrowed his brow. He wasn't about to say anything about skipping class with Charlie. Not with the possibility of Orion being around. Orion tended to show up out of nowhere.
"Nowhere," he muttered. "Where's Orion?"
"You coming back?" Goldberg asked with a hopeful voice.
Before Fulton could answer, Coach Orion returned from his office.
"I spoke to someone by the name of Jan on the phone. He said that the funeral would be Saturday at ten. I thought..." Coach Orion stopped when he saw Fulton standing there. "Fulton."
Fulton lowered his gaze as he felt Coach Orion watching him. Gathering all the willpower he could muster, he looked up and said, "Yes."
"Make sure to get caught up on your homework before practice on Monday," Coach Orion said. It was his way of telling Fulton that he could come back.
"I will," Fulton promised.
Coach Orion walked past Fulton and then turned to the team. "I'm sorry about your friend Hans," he said
It was so uncharacteristic of Orion to say anything remotely kind that it almost didn't sound like him.
"Thanks, Coach, " Fulton heard Connie say quietly before Coach Orion left.
Fulton plopped down beside Guy. Hans' passing was only the most recent loss the team had experienced.
Fulton could feel the despair throughout the locker room as the team began to change. Bombay had left the team for greener pastures. Portman was in Chicago, and Banks was on Varsity. Charlie was off the team, and Has was...gone.
The locker room stayed quiet even with Orion gone. Even Averman was somber.
"I'll call Portman tonight and let him know," Fulton finally said to the room.
"How is he?" Julie asked.
"I'm not sure. I was grounded the second my foster parents discovered I skipped school with Charlie. No Phone. No TV. No video games," Fulton explained. "The only reason I was allowed out of the house is that I told them I was coming here to apologize to Orion.
"That was weird," Mendoza pipped up at the mention of Orion. "One minute, he's yelling at us, and the next, he's all quiet."
It was Connie who said what everyone was thinking. "Where's Charlie?"
Fulton remembered the words that Charlie had spoken to him earlier. Before learning of Hans' death, Fulton was still upset at what Charlie had said. Now he was just sad for Charlie.
"I don't know," Fulton confessed.
With Bombay and Portman out of the picture, Charlie and Fulton gravitated towards each other. Portman was like the brother Fulton never had. And although it was unspoken, the team knew that as close as Bombay was to all of them as their coach and mentor, Charlie's and Bombay's relationship went further than player and coach. Much further.
Fulton didn't know how Bombay felt about the team anymore. He used to think that while they were the ducks, they were more than that. They were Bombay's team. That was before Bombay decided to break off from the flock. No one, not even Charlie, had heard from him since he left.
As the team started to undress out of their hockey gear, the ordinarily quiet Ken Wu approached Fulton.
"I'm glad your back Bash Brother," Ken smiled.
Fulton smiled back at Wu but then turned serious. "Tell me the truth," Fulton said in a low voice so no one else would hear him. "Did you really lose 5-1 to the Cardinals?"
The Oakcrest Cardinals were a shadow of their former selves. After the disappointment of not winning the pee wee state championship, Coach Reilly banned his former team from trying out for the Hawks for the 1993 season. He had the district lines were redrawn to include the addresses of the cardinals' best players.
Only a few of the players remained from the original Cardinals team. Even without Conway, Fulton, Banks and Portman, the Eden Hall JV team were still heavy favourites.
"I don't know what happened," Ken explained. "We just...stopped playing. Shutdown, you know?."
Things were not fun anymore. The team was a shell of its former self, but at least his friends were there. But now, with Hans gone, there was no one left to pick up the pieces.
Fulton was not religious, but he couldn't help but bow his head and say a prayer after hearing of Hans' passing. He could see the others doing the same as Connie sobbed more openly now that Orion had left.
It was why no one noticed when Adam Banks entered the locker room.
Adam Banks stood at the front of the locker room, much like he did when he had first joined the ducks. The only difference was that Charlie wasn't there to welcome him and Bombay wasn't there to intervene.
"What do you want?" Russ finally said."Here to gloat?"
Banks ignored Russ's comment. He had taken the past few days to reflect on what had happened in the past couple of weeks. The prank war. The bullying of the smaller members of the ducks. Their play on the ice. It was hard to watch.
It reminded him of when he was on the Hawks. Although Banks never initiated any of the bullyings when he played on the Hawks, he was complicit. After his injury during the state finals, Banks promised himself he would never be complicit again.
While Banks did not know about the dinner until it was too late, he decided not to go back and help. And when it came to the unofficial game between the Varsity and JV teams, he chose to play with the Varsity even when he saw them playing dirty. He wanted to show that he belonged on Varsity, even at the expense of his friends.
It wasn't until Coach Orion had dropped by the Varsity locker room to let him know that Hans had passed that Banks finally decided that he'd had enough. Instead of his new teammates consoling him on losing a dear friend, they made jokes about where the JV team would get their hockey equipment because the one place they could afford to get equipment was now gone.
Banks wasn't having any of it. While he had some choice words for some of his teammates, he decided against saying anything until he had convinced both Coach Orion and Coach Wilson to let him return to JV team.
"I'm here because, well, I don't have anywhere else to be," Banks admitted.
The comeback on Russ's lips vanished. "Sit down already," Russ said before adding the obligatory 'Cake Eater'.
Adam never realized how much he missed his old nickname. On Varsity, it was always 'Freshman' or, even worse, 'Banksie'. All of his teammates, with maybe the exception of Scooter, came from money. He was just another rich kid.
Adam Banks' eyes darted around the locker room, looking for Charlie.
"He's not here," Dwayne said.
Bank raised an eyebrow. "In detention for skipping school?" Adam asked, not knowing that Conway had quit the team.
"He's quit," Guy said.
Banks couldn't believe it. Charlie? Quit? He loved the game more than all of them.
"Oh," Adam said. It was all he could say. "I guess ducks don't fly together after all."