"The Zamboni Mechanic's Blood" by Kathleen Winter

My husband came home from his new job as a pallbearer and made miso soup while I checked the mirror to see if those were really moustache hairs I’d noticed on my own face, glowing in the sun. Had he noticed the hairs?

“No.”

“Please tell me honestly.”

“I’ve known a lot of women with moustaches.” He chopped leeks. He had thrown his fedora with the red feather in it on our water cooler. He wasn’t sure if he liked the new job. He looked good in that fedora but he was putting a dead man in the ground every day.

“Have you?”  

I wondered about the moustachioed women my husband had known. I saw them in my mind. Moustaches and long hair. Moustaches and hot pink patent leather handbags. He had never mentioned these women before. “We were talking in the church, me and one of the other porteurs. He used to be a Zamboni mechanic for all the big NHL games at the old forum. It was great. He only had to work three hours and they gave him a nice ticket up close.”

“Does this fall into the category of other part time jobs more desirable than the one you just found at the funeral service?”

“Eh?”

“The Zamboni mechanic.”

“It was great for him—he saw all the games…”

“Wait. We were just talking about moustaches.”

“I mean he had a moustache. A nice little grey moustache, nice and full and wide, from the nose to the lip. And it stopped at the edge of the mouth, on a 45. He’d sit with the wives of the hockey players.”

“He told you this today?”

“Yes, it was a Ukrainian funeral. The priest had red robes all embroidered; a beautiful young man. We had to place four chandeliers around the body.”

“With burning candles?”

“Yes and the songs were lovely. Different from any other kind of song. And I saw another thing: a young man crying, and an old man wiping away his tears.”

“And the Zamboni mechanic was telling you about his job.”

“Yes, in the lobby, before the graveyard. One time he got called all the way up to Quebec City to fix a Zamboni that had stopped in mid game. Big fines for that. No one would admit it ran out of gas. Pranksters are always doing that to the forklift guys in warehouses as well. Zambonis and forklifts run on propane. All you have to do is open the valve. And one time Patrick Roy got knocked out.”

“Patrick Roy?”

“He’s the most decorated goalie in the NHL. He got knocked out and his wife was sitting beside the Zamboni mechanic and she grabbed him and ripped his shirt and dug her long fingernails in his arm and drew blood. He had to throw away that shirt.”

Leek and carrot shavings floated in the miso. We’d eat, then walk to the market for café au lait at the place we call the garage door. That was one thing about his new job. After a three-hour funeral he could do what he wanted, but I knew he didn’t like it. All the porteurs were a bit older than he was. They were semi-retired. The Zamboni mechanic had told him he regretted deciding to become old too fast. Sometimes a widow flung herself on a coffin and the porteurs had to be careful not to drop it. You were the porteur of other people’s passion, and if you weren’t careful you missed the moment when a red-feathered bird stole off with your own.  

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