ON ICE

Mike Bossy is long gone, and Denis Potvin, and Billy Smith, Butch Goring, Clark Gillies, Brent Sutter, and the greatest New York Islander of all -- Bryan Trottier.

Bill Franklin, who never wore skates, is the Islanders’ biggest fan. Growing up in Merrick, Bill watched every game on WOR-TV with Tim Ryan and Eddie Giacomin handling the play-by-play and color commentary.

After Bill’s first year with the New York City Police, he started splitting Islanders’ season tickets -- two seats to 21 games, and he never sold a single ticket. He attended every game with Carolyn, and, later, with John. To Bill Franklin, the 21 best days every year were in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum watching his team, with his boy. And that includes the 2008-‘09 season when the Islanders finished dead last with 62 points.

John and the Islanders were the most important things in Bill’s life. Carolyn is aware she finished third in the popularity contest; third place is decent for a thoroughbred in a big race, but not for a great wife and mother.

Watching the games with John, Bill always pointed out the importance of forechecking in creating scoring opportunities and a quick release on wrist shots -- don’t drag the puck to build up power, use your wrists and forearms to snap the puck.

“The quicker to the goal, the more goals.”

Bill recited that advice a thousand times. In fact, Bill repeated his hockey insights over and over hoping John would learn to properly play the game through osmosis, and the game would be second nature when he stepped on the ice.

Bill was right about the second nature thing.

The first time John skated at the Deer Park Rink, he was better than the other four and five-year-olds and wanted to stay on the ice after the others went home crying. When he was six, Bill hired a figure skater to teach John to skate with greater balance and power. Bill always smiled watching John follow chain-smoking Cindy Mulroney around the ice.

On his first Pee Wee team, John averaged a hat trick per game.

Bill knew his boy was special.

John was “his boy” or “my boy”, and Carolyn stopped trying to get Bill to switch to “our” because John was “his” boy. Bill spent every free moment with John, usually involving hockey, and as John progressed through the youth leagues, Bill devoted even more time to him. The fourth grade summer, the clubs enquired if John Franklin wanted to play on their squads; tryouts weren’t necessary. The club teams had better coaches, tougher competition, and more convenient ice times.

John was always the first-line right wing, and top scorer.

Watching him play in the Long Island rinks, Bill sometimes wanted to cry. Was it pride? Love? Exhaustion? Or maybe, Bill thought, it can never be better than this.

How could it?

* * *

When John turns 14, the prep schools start dangling a premier education, and the chance to compete against elite talent.

Saint Paul’s asks John to visit, and he goes to Brooks Brothers in the Tangers Outlets to be outfitted with: a navy blazer, khakis, dress shirt, loafers, and a club tie with slanting blue and lime-green stripes.

The tie costs $85; the scholarship is worth $58,000 a year.

On his campus visit, John is amazed the school has two rinks, and five varsity players from Canada.

The admissions officer informs John he must repeat his freshman year to “catch up with the other students”. The real reason -- the school wants John to be a year larger and stronger before beginning his four years of eligibility. Again, Saint Paul’s is offering a scholarship to “the finest preparatory school in the nation”, and regardless what happens on the ice, “Saint Paul’s will get you into any college”.

Bill learned Concord, New Hampshire was 287 miles from West Islip, New York, with an average driving time of five hours and 58 minutes. There is no “average driving time” for policemen, a flash of the badge instantly increases the speed limit, thank you.

In the summer before Saint Paul’s, John plays for an all-star team from Long Island, Westchester County, and Manhattan. The games are a frozen version of playground basketball -- a focus on scoring with little concern for defense. John plays the best teams from New Jersey and New England with many of the prep school stars he’ll be competing against. Bill is no longer concerned if John can keep up. John can play on the first line. As a freshman.

After a practice, John stays on the ice to work on his skating, sprinting on the chewed-up ice until his thighs burn.

John is about to head home when his blade catches a rut. John goes left, his leg goes right, and he collapses with a high-pitched squeal.

“Ddaaammmmnnn!”

John tore his ACL.

Bill will always remember the scream and think, it would’ve been better if John had stayed down on the ice.

Stayed down forever.

His boy, his beautiful boy.

* * *

Someone at Saint Paul’s knows the New York Ranger’s surgeon, and John is operated on at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Bill tells the surgeon, forgive us for being lifelong Islanders fans. The surgeon says, he loves the Islanders -- they always let the Rangers win.

The operation takes 55 minutes, and afterwards the surgeon informs Bill and Carolyn everything will heal nicely.

Overall, it’s a setback athletes face. Bill is betting on an eight month recovery; screw that, knowing John, he’ll be on the ice before the sixth month ends.

On the ride home, they stop at Walgreens to fill a prescription. Sixty Oxycontin pills with automatic refills.

* * *

The drive home from the Saint Paul’s is the longest, most miserable ride.

On Monday John is suspended from team activities for “undisclosed violations”, and Thursday he is expelled for passing out in History. Before pumping out his stomach, they drew his blood.

“The blood tests just came back,” the headmaster says in the exit interview, “and in your system they found, and I quote, ‘a suicidal amount of opioids’. Let’s allow that to set in for a moment…John, we brought you here to be a scholar, a gentleman, and not an addict. I always tell the students in these meetings, this could be the best lesson you’ll ever have. If you learn from it.”

By hour-four on the ride to West Islip, Bill feels better.

John needs to be home; it was obvious the day they dropped him off. The faraway move to a privileged prep school was too drastic. And when John couldn’t play hockey, all the troubles began. Things will be better back home.

When he recovers, John has a tryout with the Long Island Mavericks. The Mavericks have sent players to the national team, and Division-1 powerhouses.

* * *

The years after his lone college season are loaded with anger, and desperation. And rehab followed by weeks of sobriety, followed by another relapse, the worst relapse yet, then more rehab, and more interventions, John being sectioned, and the weeks and days of sobriety that Bill and Carolyn know will not last. In fact, when thinking about the future, they stop thinking about forever or the long-term. Just get through the next 24 hours, that’s all you can do. Worry about tomorrow sometime tomorrow. God willing, always God willing. Just hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. And when it comes to opioids, the worst only means one thing.

* * *

John Franklin shows up at Bill’s condo weighing 140 pounds. He wants his hockey equipment.

“I’m going to play in a league in Brooklyn.”

It isn’t the first time, and Bill isn’t about to let a drugged, half-dead creature take his son’s equipment. So he can sell the $400 skates for $20?

Furthermore, Bill likes seeing the hockey equipment in the closet, as if John from six years earlier might suddenly reappear, and badger him: Come on, I have a game, and it’s an hour away. Come on, old man, let’s go.

Bill hands over $40, and it sickens him how eagerly the money is snatched.

Looking out the window, Bill watches John wave the bills at a smoke-belching 1984 Impala with a cardboard license plate.

* * *

Bill parks his cruiser in front of the condemned brownstone. Someone will buy the ruin and convert it into three or four condos with stainless steel appliances and a shared roof deck. The rebuilt neighborhoods are only three or four blocks from there.

Bill is reading a New York Post waiting for John to appear. After a couple hours, Bill walks to the Jamaican grocery for another cup of burnt coffee. Back in the car, Bill decides to give it until four; if John doesn’t appear by four, he will return to Long Island.

Reading the movie reviews for films he will never see, Bill sees someone walking toward him. Stooped over with ragged pants that keep tripping him -- it is John.

Mumbling, John’s nose is scabby, and his left forearm is encased in a filthy cast. Bill notices no one wrote on the cast. Maybe cast writing is only for schoolchildren, maybe you need friends for that to happen.

Wearing his uniform, Bill stands on the sidewalk where John will pass by. Even when John walks in front of him, Bill cannot understand a word he is mumbling.

“Hey,” Bill says, and then louder, “hey!”

John glances back with no recognition, stumbling toward the abandoned building.

Bill takes four steps and stops.

Why, Bill thinks, why? What can you do now that you and Carolyn haven’t tried a hundred times before? A thousand times before.

The counselors always tell Bill, let him hit rock bottom. But hasn’t John been hitting and digging into rock for years?

On his drive back to West Islip, Bill wonders again, what could I have done differently? Maybe I should have just hugged John; no begging, no angry threats, just hugged him. Maybe I should have pulled him into the car and driven him home. Or maybe Bill needed to visit the nearest church and plead for a miracle; sooner or later God responds, doesn’t he?

* * *

Bill fell asleep during another Islanders’ loss. The sixth consecutive defeat; with 20 games remaining, the Islanders are already out of the playoffs.,

A ringing phone awakens Bill. He finds the cell phone in the couch cushions and hears John’s voice. The voice sounds like it’s processed through a filter that removes 100 points from the IQ, while adding 40 years to the age.

Stupid, senile, and so high.

After a couple unintelligible words, Bill says: “Why the hell are you calling? Why?!”

The response is in slow motion: “…I…I…just…wanted to…”

John calls infrequently, and Bill later realizes there had to be something John really wanted to say, but Bill did not have the patience.

“I don’t have money to give you. I’m not driving into the city to buy you food or get you drugs. And I don’t want any more lies. I can’t do it anymore, John, I can’t. It is late and I am done. So done.”

John never calls again.

Bill often wonders, is it because he told John not to call? It would be cruel if the only time John obeyed him recently, was the one exhausted time Bill didn’t mean what he said.

Bill is angry, confused, and exhausted.

Until the end, every time his phone rings, Bill looks at his screen hoping it is John.

* * *

It is no New York-Presbyterian. John ends up in a welfare hospital, Brooklyn’s Brookdale Hospital. Receiving a well-deserved F rating, Brookdale is where you go when you have no hope and no money.

John has pneumonia, hepatitis, anemia, dysentery, and his body is wracked with infections when the Pakistani doctor contacts Bill and Carolyn.

Bill has difficulty understanding the accent but he clearly hears the concern, and the doctor’s message: take your son home now. You don’t want him dying here.

After Bill leaves to drive into the city, Carolyn goes online, and the first Brookdale Hospital review says: “I wouldn’t send a dying animal to this ZOO.”

The obese nurse behind the check-out desk asks, was John born February, 1994? The date can’t be right, he must be older.

The date is right, Bill says.

Driving down Route 27, Bill looks at his boy asleep in the passenger seat, under a blue and orange stocking cap. Like old times after a practice or game, John sleeping while Bill drives. Except now John looks like Bill’s brother, Martin, before he passed away from leukemia. Martin was 52, which is twice as long as John will live.

Bill needs to stop and buy a bottle.

Vodka or whiskey? Better buy both.

* * *

Bill hires around-the-clock hospice care with shifts of Haitian nurses, who talk softly to John, even though he never answers. John is past talking; deeply sedated on the Barcalounger from the old West Islip house, John’s lungs are full of liquid so they must keep his chest elevated.

At night, on the couch with a whiskey & ginger, Bill turns on the Islanders, and cranks up the volume.

Bill does it for two reasons.

He hopes John can hear the announcers discussing slap shots, penalty kills, and how the Czech rookie, just called up from Bridgeport, looks like “a keeper”. And secondly, and as important, Bill wants to punish himself. He wants to watch a meaningless Islanders’ game with his boy, so he can contrast the right now with the old nights John and he watched hockey. Bill needs to punish himself -- he is to blame. For everything. John is his boy, and Bill did not take care of him. Not the way he should have. The Monday night parents’ meetings always remind Bill, this “plague” is beyond our control; all you can do is offer tough love and help when asked. But Bill believes there are many things he could have done differently and better.

Differently and better.

With the hot tears cooling on his cheeks, Bill thinks, John is dying on a vinyl Barcalounger. In a small, sad condo. And the Islanders just wasted another season. It cannot get worse.

In the last nine years, Bill learned it can always get worse.

* * *

John dies on the Barcalounger.

Sleeping on the couch, Bill looks up and notices John isn’t breathing, and the skin has collapsed on his face like a death mask.

The funeral home quickly arrives to remove the body, and Bill drags the Barcalounger to the curb, leaving it in the rainstorm for the Thursday garbage truck.

Bill reviews the arrangements with the funeral home director.

No open casket. No town cars. No large funeral, just a small service for the immediate family. No long eulogy about John leaving this world too soon. On second thought, skip the eulogy. And let’s keep the service short and sweet. The quicker, the better.

Bill mixes a morning cocktail and continues: no laminated prayer cards. No organ player. No singers. And if Bill must place an obituary in the papers, no photo.

Bill listens to descriptions of the four casket options.

Suddenly Bill says, they want the body cremated. He and his ex-wife, Caroline, agree on that. It’s one thing they do agree on. And, oh yeah, Bill wants funeral bouquets.

“They’re called sympathy arrangements.”

“Whatever they’re called, I want 20, 25 of them. Who cares if it’s only the immediate family, cover the entire altar; make it look like John just won the fucking Kentucky Derby.” Tears are flowing. “I don’t want him thinking for one minute that he wasn’t loved. Not for one minute!”

“Okay.”

John is dead less than three hours, and already Bill knows a junkie son is better than a dead…Bill doesn’t complete the thought -- Carolyn is banging on the door.

Bang, bang, bang, she will hurt her hand.

Bill hears Carolyn’s anguished shouts and knows she will give him holy hell. Why didn’t he wait until she got there so she could see John? Why didn’t he just wait? She wanted to give John one last kiss, that too much to ask? Why didn’t you wait, Bill? Just this once? Why?! You know, he was my boy too? My boy too.

Carolyn is right, but still -- John was more his boy. And always will be.

* * *

Bill has known Willie Macomb for nearly 20 years. Willie and his second wife, Shelley, run the Dix Hills Ice Rink on the Vanderbilt Parkway; John played over 200 games inside the corrugated metal structure.

Seeing Bill enter the rink, Willie hurries over to tell him how sad he is about John. What a shame, what a crying shame. Willie observes, so many local families are going through the same nightmare.

“Bill,” Willie says, “if you like, I could put together a little memorial tournament. We have six leagues playing here. Everyone loved John, his name will draw a crowd.”

Bill thanks Willie for offering that, but Bill has something different in mind, and please tell him if he is off base. Bill doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

Willie smiles hearing the request. It’s a fantastic idea, and Willie is more than happy to do it. More than happy; no problem whatsoever, Bill.

The Zamboni is parked just past the locker room and snack bar. Willie pats the machine he has “driven over 10,000 miles”, and Bill hands him the package.

“No, you need to do it.”

Willie unhooks the latch, and John dumps ashes into the Zamboni’s wash-water tank. Careful, he tells himself, be careful; that is your son floating in the powdery gray mist.

Willie told Shelley to select a song to play over the rink’s speakers, something appropriate. Willie just replaced the old sound system with a wireless version, and everything sounds wonderful now. Not staticky like before; wait until you hear it, he says.

As Willie steers the Zamboni laying down a new layer of ice with John’s ashes, an old time Irish tenor belts out: “Danny Boy”:

“The summer’s gone and all the roses dying

‘Tis you must go and I must bye

Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny Boy, I love you so.”

Watching the Zamboni circling the slick ice, with the hammy soundtrack accompanying the action, Bill thinks, he must be insane but isn’t this the most beautiful tribute he’s ever witnessed? As a policeman, Bill has seen hundreds of tributes; tributes of all kinds, huge and tiny.

On bad days, Bill will drive the 20 minutes to the Dix Hills Rink and sit in the stands far away from everyone and watch a game.

Any game. Won’t matter who is playing. Bantams or semi-pro. Hell, Bill will watch open-ice sessions with all levels of skaters falling and laughing.

To be in the chilly, moldy rink with John will be comforting.

It will be.

Jerry Cronin: Won EMMYS, awards from the Academy of American Poets, cowrote a song that entered the top-5 on the Alt Country charts and other stuff.