Walker centers me, and Tate is on my wing. We click, the puck moving between the three of us, and I forecheck Bauer on his first shift and put my shoulder into his sternum hard enough that I feel his breath leave him through the bars of his cage. He says nothing. He’s feeling me out. Good boy. Feel away.
I go again on his second shift, and this time I dummy the hit — peel off at the last second, let him take the stride he thinks he’s earned, sweep his puck loose with the toe of my stick on the way past — and Walker is already there to scoop, and we are gone up the boards before Bauer has finished turning his head. From the bench, I hear Coach bark good read, Goldie, and I cannot help my stupid grin because she’s here. I forgot what it felt like when she’s in the stands. It’s been too fucking long.
I haven’t felt this good on a sheet of ice in two years.
I want to be clear about what I mean. I have played well in two years. I have played very well. I have put up numbers our analytics guy uses in his Tuesday meetings as proof that something is working. But playing well and feeling good are different things, and I have been living in the first one for a long time. I’m playing like a boy who loves hockey. It became such a chore that I forgot what this feels like. My chest is lighter.
It carries through the first period. Percy makes two saves. UMass hits a post, and I hear it ring all the way down to the bench like a bell in a church I don’t attend. On my next shift, I find Bauer at the half-wall and bump him just enough to remind him I’m still in the building. He gives me a look, and I give it back to him. We are having a wonderful time.
In second period, UMass scores six minutes in. Bauer skates his slow, cocky loop with one finger raised to nobody in particular, and on his way back to his bench, he glides past ours and catches my eye and says, low and pleased.
“Eat shit, eight.”
Two shifts later, he’s on the wall in his zone with the puck and his head down looking for an outlet. He sees me coming and turns his shoulder into me, and I oblige him. I hit him with my whole body. Hips first, shoulder square, stick on the ice — clean as a sermon — and he goes face-first into the plexiglass with the kind of thud that makes the four rows behind the glass collectively go oof. Walker has the puck, and we are gone again. Bauer pops up off the boards with that fast, embarrassed pop men do when they have been put on the floor in front of an audience. He cross-checks me in the back hard enough to bow my spine. The ref doesn’t blow it. I’m laughing inside my helmet. I love this. I missed this. I spent two years playing hockey with my jaw locked and my head down, and somehow, my jaw’s loose, and I’m having the best fucking time of my life.
Third period, and we are down two to one. Coach is barking. Stanley is barking back at his line. Benson does his quiet captain thing at the bench rail, all eyes and no mouth. I sit between shifts with my elbows on my knees and my fingers laced around the shaft of my stick, and I don’t look up into the stands.Don’t fucking do it. Don’t look up.I can feel her up there. Every shift, every battle, every dump-in into the corner where I am the first one back, even though I am not supposed to be the first one back, I’m hyper aware that she’s watching me.
Fifth shift of the period, the puck dumps into the corner. Bauer beats me to it by half a step. He elbows me in the side of the helmet on his way past. Hard. And my ears ring, my vision goes partly white. I plant my stick on the ice the way you plant a flag and do not go down, because I will not give Bauer thesatisfaction of going down. The ref blows it. Bauer gets two for elbowing.
Coach yells power play. We don’t score. Bauer comes out of the box on a hot reset.
He says, “You got a problem, eight?”
It’s the smallest thing he’s said all night. Eat shit was bigger. Cute was bigger. But there’s something in the you got a problem — something lazy, something amused, something I do not have the patience for tonight — that flicks the latch on the cage in the bottom of my chest, and the small, low animal that has been pacing in there walks out into the light, and my gloves are off before my brain has finished translating the sentence.
I drop them and grab a fistful of the front of his jersey before he has even gotten his off, and the crowd is up before our fists are. I get the first one in clean — right under the cheekbone, where the bone is closest to the skin, where it cuts — and the second one I land in the meat of his jaw, and I feel something give under my third knuckle.
I’m laughing inside my chest, I am laughing when his punches connect with my face. He gets a solid one on my chin. I feel it through the back of my teeth. The linesmen are on us in three seconds. They peel us apart, and Bauer is yelling. The ref is yelling, but I’m not yelling. I’m breathing hard through my nose with my mouth shut. I keep my eyes on Bauer because there is a part of me that’s hoping he tries to come back over the linesman’s shoulder for one more. He doesn’t, because Bauer is, despite everything, not stupid.
Five for fighting. Two for instigating. Seven minutes.
I skate to the box. I sit and lay my stick across my thighs. I rest the heels of my gloves on my knees and feel the slow, warm collection of blood inside the leather of the right one. There’s a humming behind my sternum that has been silent for two years, and tonight it’s on. My chin throbs. My ears ring. My thirdknuckle is split under the glove, and I am happy. Coach is going to crucify me, I think.
I look down, and her voice comes to mind.
“It’s funny to see you sitting in the penalty box.”
“You think that’s funny?”
She said, “I do. It’s a time-out for being naughty.”
She said it on Halloween in the dark of my bed with her lying right next to me.
It cracks me open, and I almost laugh in the box. I bite the inside of my cheek and dare to turn around. When I look up, blue eyes are already watching me. She’s shaking her head. The corner of her mouth is lifting, and the smile is mine. Just like that color on her sweater.
I look down again because I am a man with discipline. I told myself not to look, and I just did. Now I need to get through the next five minutes without doing it again.
The final horn goes, and we lose three to one. Bauer scores the empty-netter. I’m on the bench with my helmet in my lap, the trainer pressing a cold pack to the underside of my jaw, and she’s lecturing me. Coach is six feet away with his clipboard tucked into his armpit. His mouth is a flat line. Stanley skates past on his way to the tunnel and opens his mouth. I say don’t before he gets a syllable out and he raises both hands and keeps moving.
I skate to the tunnel with the cold pack still pressed to my jaw by the trainer half-jogging beside me, and the boards of our bench bang as the guys file off behind me. I’m aware I’m going to have a long lecture from Coach. I start praying he has something better to focus on than my seven minutes in the box.
The locker room is quiet.
Coach does the short post-game version because the team played okay, and we still lost. My prayers have been answered. Coach is too tired and too pissed to call me out on my wrongs. Defense was fine. Power play was an embarrassment. Bauer isgoing to be in our heads if we let him. UNH on Saturday. Eyes forward. Coach looks at me, finally, on the last sentence — no penalties next game — and I nod once. He moves on. He leaves. The door swings shut behind him, and the room exhales.
The team undresses. I’m at my stall, and the shoulder is in real trouble. I twist sideways to peel my jersey off, the bad arm hanging dead, the good arm doing the lifting. I get the chest pad off. I drop it between my feet. I sit there in my soaked Under Armour with my gloves on my lap and look at my taped knuckles.
Benson sits down next to me. “Blue.”
