Page 21 of Poetry On Ice

Pass the fucking puck!

At the last second, I concede and tap it to my right. It hits the board with a dull clatter.

“How ’bout you pass it where I am, not where you think I should be?” sneers Decker.

We do the same thing again. And again. We find the goal each time, obviously. There isn’t a defenseman near us, so it would be almost impossible not to, but fuck, it isn’t pretty.

We do it over and over.

The Zamboni comes and goes again.

The ice is fast. A hard, smooth surface that seems built to repel us. When I look up, I see that Warren and Luddy have left. The stands are deserted except for Coach. Blood pumps hard. My lungs scream and my throat burns. I’m exhausted, and my mood is rapidly plummeting.

Coach is sitting back on the bench, legs crossed, feet propped up on the boards, with his eye on his phone. He scrolls steadily and, now and again, lets out a quiet chuckle.

We take our positions at center ice and Decker passes to me. I scramble to get there, twisting my hips into a sharp stop and stretching my stick backward to make contact.

It’s the last straw.

“Fuck!” I roar. Ordinarily, it takes a lot to make me lose my temper. It really does. Ordinarily, it takes years to provoke me to this level of rage. Decker getting in my face is the notable only exception to the rule. I’m stressedand drained today, I’ve hardly slept a wink since Decker put his hands on me at the hotel, and our losing streak has gotten to the point where no amount of positive thinking can ignore it. On top of that, I’m hungover, I’m thirsty, and I have a low level of arousal swirling through my veins that’s making me feel like I exist outside of myself.

I skate aggressively three yards forward and slam my stick onto the ice. “Passhere!” I glide back several yards and beat the ice again, “Not here!”

Decker glares at me, plumes of steam puffing out from his mouth as he catches his breath. “Not even you could make that, dumbass,” he says evenly.

I raise my chin and stare him down. “Try me.”

We head back to the line. Decker has the puck. He keeps it on the blade of his stick until he’s moving at close to his top speed, then he swings and unleashes a torpedo in my direction. His aim is surgical—five yards ahead of where I told him I’d be.

Asshole.

I get there, just. It isn’t easy, but it’s a damn sight easier than having to come to a stop and scrabble behind me. The puck makes contact with my stick. I control it, and then I let loose a torpedo of my own.

Behind me, to my right, I hear a low rumble. A soft “humph” said two or three times over and Decker mutters something that sounds like, “Show pony.”

He taps his stick on the ice twice, and without looking back, I feel where he is. His presence is vast. Endless. A dense, murky swamp with a hurricane at the center. A cold blast from behind me makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I put the puck where he is. Carbon fiber meets vulcanized rubber. I don’t need to look back to know he didn’t have to move a muscle to stop it. The puck found his stick with the sure force of a magnet.

When he begins to skate again, something’s different. His presence and mine find each other and merge. Hot and cold mix. Peace and chaos collide and cancel each other out. I’m dimly aware of my legs and my skates. My stick in my hands. I am aware of the puck though, a black linear streak that screams toward me and ricochets back and forth from his stick to mine. I’m more than aware of it. It’s like it’s developed a pulse. A heartbeat I feel in my chest as surely as if it’s my own.

Without a word spoken between us, Decker and I rip up the ice. We score again and don’t take a second to regroup. We don’t bother tracking back to center. One of us gets the puck, and we tear all the way to the otherend of the rink and score in that goal as well. We dart back and forth from one goal to the other, the netsswish,and as soon as the puck lands, it’s back in play. Neither of us stops. We can’t.

A long, hard-to-conceptualize time later, several banks of overhead lights go off, changing the rink from harsh white to misty blue-gray.

I turn in a startled stop and so does Decker. We look around and see Coach on his feet, so we skate over.

By the time we get to him, my body is reacting to the sudden halt in overexertion. Nausea rises, thin and bitter as it hits my tongue. I swallow it down and plaster a big smile on my face because beside me, Decker’s chest is heaving and he’s struggling more than I am to contain it.

“You know,” Coach says, “I don’t claim to know much. But I know hockey.” He points at me in that no-nonsense way of his. “I asked for you, McGuire, I fought for you, and I wasn’t wrong to do it. Off the ice, the pair of you are dumber than a box of rocks, but on it? You have the potential to be something special. Poetic, almost.” He looks at Decker and then back at me. “Next time the puck drops, I expect to see nothing less than what I saw here today.”

10

Ant Decker

We’re on the icein Detroit. It’s the third period, and we’re tied at two goals each. The Blackbirds are a shit-hot team, one of the best in the league this season and last. Even if McGuire and I could find our rhythm like we did on the ice yesterday, which we haven’t been able to do yet, there’s a good chance we don’t have what it takes to beat them. It’s been a stop-start game with the Blackbirds in our half far more than we’ve been in theirs. Our goalie, Bennet, has been on fire. A solid wall, a pane of bulletproof glass. He’s moving like he’s the main character in a Matrix reboot. He’s stopping pucks most players wouldn’t have seen.

If it weren’t for him, we’d be in deep shit.

The attack is relentless, a hard, angry clash of their bodies and ours. Each second feels like a minute—and a minute is a fucking long time in a hockey game to begin with. I’m on the bench, throwing back water. McGuire’s here too. His eyes haven’t left the ice for a second.