Play out the match

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Play Out the MatchBy Michael Knox, Michael HolmesECW PRESSCopyright © 2006 Michael KnoxAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-55022-723-9ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, PLAY OUT The MATCH, STRIKE TOWN, FLEE, NORTHERN EARTH, LISTEN, OUTPORT, HEED, SWIMMING IN THE BODENSEE, WORK, BENEATH, PAST TRENTON BY BUS, RHYTHMS, NOTES TO A FATHER, THE CHIPS, GANONOQUE, AND I WILL PASS, 1920, THOSE DAYS, NATASHA, BITTER PILLS, NIGHT ON ROBERT STREET, THE DEEP, VISIT, SUBURB NOCTURNE, APART, ST. JOHN'S, SIGNAL HILL, THAW, WAIT, WANT, GLIMPSE OF THE MYRIAD, DREAMS, DESCENT, THE RACCOON, WHEN, LUCK, KINGSTON TO HALIFAX, THE LONG WALK, MIST, LEAVE YOUR LIFE, CURSING YOUR NAME, THE FALL, THE DAY, NIGHT NOISES, FROSH, COFFEE WITH MARINA, JENNY, MS. BECKETT, THE DIMMING, STRUGGLE, THE COLLECTORS, BILL, OUR THINGS, CHAPTER 1    PLAY OUT THE MATCH     You are ever huge and complacent     miraculously balancing your width     on a comically narrow bar stool in my mind.     Drizzle spattering panes in that little Ayrshire pub     a thousand generations of our families' affiliation     stretching back behind us.     Old oak of a man. Body     like a bunch of hard fists     an easy clench on a pint of the black stuff     wide knuckles reaching up halfway on the glass     and that great watchful back     probably better than your puckered eyes     always trained fast on that blurry set     for nothing but rugby or football matches.     Glasgow brawls left stubborn nicks, ironic tears     in the brow of the animated boulder of your face     red like mine but heavier like your body     denser more elemental.     As if you'd sprung from the very highland earth.     I admit I was always jealous of it     your notched face merrily mocking     that I was better off getting by on my looks     and clapping the scarred weight of a massive unreal hand     like a grown uncle on my stringy shoulder     because we both knew strength is all you really loved.     When the doctors said your liver'd had it     and to lay off the drink and the smoke     you regaled us. Told it like a joke.     "Aye lads, dead in the face" — sip — "fuck'yu."     You weren't the kind of man to hear things twice     and they knew it. So you kept on     boasting that you'd finish the match     the way you'd always played it     and — sly wink — hoped they were tapping a keg for you in     heaven.     We lost our nerve to look scared.     A coward, I put a loyal hand on your rocky shoulder     and gave a stiff-chinned nod and a wink     and got us a round of the pure.     But somehow, I know you were scared.     Faced suddenly with something     you couldn't square off with in the rainy streets.     And on the way home at night     splashing the trapped stars free of their puddles     and laying in that tiny complaining bed of yours alone     even through the drink you were afraid.     We all feel about for the horizons of our limitations     and yours were closer than you'd ever let on     holding court at your bar stool.     Mortality levels this playing field of ours.     You knew you were too terrified not to drink all day in the pub.     We both knew you were not indomitable     in the world beyond that smoke-hazed little nook     our world of cigars and malts and the occasional crunching punch-up.     And stepping home needled with lowland rain     I think that you must have resolved each night to stand     tomorrow to take a new life in this world.     But sitting up in bed in the morning     with that blend whisky bottle on your nightstand     you looking at sky the colour of smoke and thought     on all the dispassion and resignation in things     and with a belt or two to mash out the hangover     you rose and in what you may have pretended was courage     and integrity but was only soft submission     said to the late morning, "Another day I've been given"     and resolved in soliloquy that you would play it     the best way you knew