The Goalie on the Pond, a story prompted by Holden Caulfield
First line in a written statement to the school’s administration
HOLDEN CAULFIELD: The thing is, I wasn’t too crazy about doing it, but I was without my typewriter.
Days earlier on a laptop screen
AMERICANA INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS: The idea was to write the great American hockey novel in the style of J.D. Salinger. I told a real sonofabitch about it. I said I had been watching It’s a Wonderful Life and thought I could make it about two brothers: one living and one dead. The live one would hear a voice: Freeze it and they will skate, Ray. Or something corny like that.
Anyway, the living brother would build a hockey rink behind his house in Iowa–better make that Michigan– and his dead brother would eventually crawl out of a hole in the ice to skate once more and have a shootout with the living. And a reclusive Scottish gentleman with highly specific instructions on how to wear socks might yell, “You’re the man dog now, man!”
I didn’t grow up around hockey, but I saw Mighty Ducks and its sequel D5. I’m a fan even if Bordon Gombay is a phony. Iceland too for that matter.
My friend stopped me here. He didn’t know where this was going. That killed me.
I told him I had this idea that maybe the deceased brother shouldn’t be the first ghost on the ice. What if a disgraced hockey player appeared first? The rink would be for him, but he would serve as a spiritual guide too, like Jiminy Cricket with missing teeth. Or Paul Newman not on a bottle of salad dressing.
My friend stopped me again. Killing me twice. He said he had a book for me to read. He went to the bookshelf–he’s better read than me–and grabbed some paperback his dad left him. All my dad ever left me was some money and a killer slapshot. Anyway, I know his dad left it to him cause I read the personalized inscription on the inside cover. Love Dad is what it said.
This book was called Skateless Bo Jackson, and I started reading it and realized my hockey book wasn’t going to cut it. On the one hand, I was after the great American novel, and a hockey book would probably strike readers as Canadian. Are there even any Great Canadian novelists out there? I mean, besides in Canada? I know they have their fair share of comedians and even basketball players.
I realized then what I really wanted was to make a movie without a total Kevin in it.
So I started working on turning Bo Joe Horse Shoe into a screenplay, which means writing less words and just centering everything. It’s kind of depressing when you think about how everything is like that. Also, I couldn’t think of any disgraced hockey players. Swear to God. The crumby stuff is what makes the sport. It can be like that with professional prostitutes.
I don’t know if Duckless Bombay works as a title. Makes it seem like it’s about one phony and not even the guy who plays the baseball in his rye field. Who the heck is S.J. Dillinger? Does anyone really know? The hard thing about writing that no one tells you is all the research. You can’t just dream it up for christsake. And no one has a copy of Avalon Landing when you really need it. But I don’t like reading that much anyways.
Seems ol’ D.J. wrote about baseball just like his voice of a generation, T. K. W. P. Mann, whose only novel about a catcher was good and could be again, if you read it twice that is. The K might stand for Kinsella. There’s a lesson on how to sell a phony novel in that. We are all good and could be again. But K also denotes a strikeout in the game of baseball. Another lesson life is full of shit that helps the corn grow green. Maybe the letter stands for protein. Wonder what ol’ J.D. would make of Jose Kinsella anyway.
In conclusion, life is a rink of dreams.
The las few lines of the written statement to the school administration
HOLDEN CAULFIELD: If you want to know the truth, I should have just written about my brother’s baseball mitt. Then I’d only have had to change the names. It’s not even my homework. That’s the most depressing part about it. Just real lousy all the way round.
[Truth be told, Bryan Harvey wrote this, revised it, and sent it out for publication several times. Apparently, the world is full of Hawks. That’s a real quacker of a joke by the way. I’m looking at you, John Mulaney. Our authenticity is on thin ice.]
