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“Have a nice game, Miller!” I say, trying to show some good sportsmanship.
He just stares at me with a mixture of anger and fear, leaving me confused but I don’t have time to think about it.
The referee tosses the coin, and we end up with the left side of the rink. He then places the puck in between us, and we lock sticks, one on each side of it.
The referee whistles, drops the puck, and all hell breaks loose.
Miller seems less interested in getting the puck than he is in hitting me in the shins and tripping me over, so I steal the puck for the team and advance through their line of attack.
I’m immediately body-checked by Miller with so much intensity that I hear something cracking.
God, I can’t have a broken rib right now, I have towinthis game.
I control the play, passing the puck to the forward, who then scores a goal from the face-off spot. As the center, I hold my position, defending against the opposing team's advances before unexpectedly being body-checked again by Miller.
“Foul play!” I scream to the referee, pointing aggressively at Miller, but the referee doesn’t do a thing.
We keep on going, winning quite easily, several members of their team seem more busy using me as their personal punching bag than actually scoring.
I complain to the referee, once, twice, and nothing. Something is odd and my concerns are falling on deaf ears. When the period ends, I’m aching everywhere, and I can only picture Parker describing me to the audience as a ‘mess of a man.’
“Can you keep on playing, Baker?” Coach Dawson comes to me immediately as I enter the players’ bench.
“Not if they keep going at it!” I say, feeling my ribs.
“Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on either…” He shakes his head. “Tell you what: you’re on for the next period, if they keep on bashing you, I’ll replace you with Simmons.”
“I don’t wanna play!” Simmons says humorously. “If they’re coming for the center like that I don’t wanna be anywhere near that rink!”
“You’re going to play if I say you are going to play, Simmons!” Coach says, not understanding that Simmons is just joking.
I turn around to see Elsa, sitting there with the other women at a distance. She has a bright smile but concerned eyes, a hand lifted as if to say she’s worried about me.
I wave back and she shouts to me, “Give ‘em hell!” I can only read her lips, and when I shout back “Hell yeah!” she gives me a thumbs up and smiles.
The second period starts, and it’s the longest twenty minutes of my life. They pick up the pace of the match, and turn the score, but also do not forget about me or leave me alone for a single second.
I take stick blows to the front and the back of the knees, my lumbar, and my face, spitting a tooth when the strongest one hits me.
And I’m body-checked, up and down, left to right, from all possible angles and all possible positions. I can barely breathe, but now I’m seeing the end of this, or my name is not Harvey Wentworth Baker.
At the end of the second period, I pull from Elsa’s acting book and put on a pretend act that I’m perfectly okay and ready for another twenty minutes.
“Baker, you’re out, Simmons—”
“No!” I bellow. “Coach, you gotta let me finish the game!”
I’m angryas fuck.I’mseething,I’m on fire, and if that doesn’t win games, I don’t know what does.
“You’re too hot-tempered right now, Baker, and injured!” Coach says. “I don’t want to risk your safety!”
“Coach,please!” My throat is hoarse and raspy from screaming.
It’s now or never. I won’t even be able to talk past this point. The coach is making some substitutions.
When he finally looks at me, I just stare him down and say,” I’m going back out.”
He just slaps his sides and adds, “Just five minutes more, Baker!”
