“He’s a great talent. NHL? I don’t know.”
“But he’s so good.”
“He’s awesome. But, you know, with Nick I feel like he can’t see the whole ice at once. When things get too intense, he starts focusing on one area of the ice at a time. Tunnel vision. Playing against peewees and bantams you can’t tell, but when he plays against top talent, you can really see it. I watched him scrimmage with some guys from Sweden once, and he didn’t really have their vision and hockey sense. Great skills, though. Unreal reflexes.”
I think that over. “So when you don’t make it, do you feel bitter?” I ask. “Mr. Falco says bitterness is the great enemy of life.”
“Nah, I never felt bitter. I asked myself whether there was anything more that I could have done. I moved out of the house at sixteen to play junior hockey. What more could I have done? It was lonely out there, living in a strange family’s house like you do in juniors. Man, it was lonely! But when you’re out there playing at a high level, it’s worth it. The games make everything worth it.”
“So if you’re not bitter, how do you feel exactly?”
“I got my shot. That feels good.”
A feeling wells up in me, explodes in me actually: I want my shot. And yet, would I really want to move out at sixteen? That sounds scary, plus Dad says it’s lonely. And it’s only four years away. If I have a choice, and I’m good enough for juniors, I’ll wait until I’m eighteen to move out. But, realistically, that’s a hundred years away at the moment. Hockey-wise, the coming season is all I need to be focusing on.
“So, Conor, switching subjects here, I’ve been thinking about what you said. I talked to the sergeant at work. I’m going to be taking a couple of weeks off.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“No, it’s not a vacation exactly. I’ve just been thinking . . . you have to be alert in my job, extremely vigilant at every moment. And maybe I’m not able to do that right now. I’m distracted. I need to focus more, and there’s also the problem of I’m just not feeling it right now. Do you know what I mean?”
“Uh, sort of?”
“Sometimes when an officer has a lot going on in his life, the department likes them to take some time off. When I say I’m not feeling it, I’m kind of thinking of some of the things you gotta do out there, get yelled at, get insulted, maybe get shot at. Some days I don’t know why I’m out there.” He pauses. “I have something else to tell you.”
Uh-oh, that sounds big. “What?”
“I know you’ve already said no, but your mom’s parents really want to see you, and they say they’re going to see you.”
I stare at his profile. He can feel me staring and glances my way. “What do you mean, they’re going to?” I ask.
“They’re coming out for Thanksgiving. They said they’re flying out here, and they’re going to be in a hotel, just waiting, for you to call them.” I don’t say anything, so he adds, “Anyway, just keep thinking about it. It’s a long time away.”
I wait for a feeling to come, ’cause I literally don’t know what I feel. Then I think, That makes me feel really tired. I don’t actually like having complicated stuff in my life. Jae-won and I talk about that sometimes. We just wish everything could go smoothly. Then I feel sad. I look at the back of the front seat. I’m not really into forgiving people, even if they’re related to me. Like there was a guy who punched Jae-won during a game last year, and I punched the guy about five times before someone pulled me off. Got suspended for a game. But I wasn’t sorry at all, and if I see that same player again, I’m gonna hate him. That’s not right, but it’s the way I feel. Forgiveness sucks is the way I feel at this moment.
CHAPTER 27
* * *
THAT WEEKEND, JAE-WON stays over Saturday night. We discuss the playbook for about an hour with Dad. Dad has found old clips of youth hockey games from YouTube and Vimeo, and he goes over the clips with us, explaining how the players are executing drills that are the same as or similar to drills that Coach Dusan has drawn up. Watching film really helps a lot to see what the diagrams mean. It sounds corny, but it’s like the clouds just opened up and the sun shines through. I truly get it!
Afterward, we eat three peanut butter sandwiches apiece, then drive to the park with Sinbad to work out in the cool night air. Sinbad had a treatment Monday, but he got over it quickly, sort of. I’ve started to realize that in reality he seems off compared to a year ago. There’s something about him that just isn’t the same. I try to tell myself that it’s my imagination, but I know it’s not.
Still, he jogs along with us, then lies and watches as we do the stairs. Afterward, Jae-won’s wiped out, plus he likes to hang with my dad, so I walk Sinbad alone. Since it’s night, I stay in sight of Dad, ’cause if I were a perv, I’d hang out in dark parks.
Sinbad pulls hard on the leash. Sometimes I let him pull, since it seems to make him happy. I used to use a prong collar—those are supposed to be better for dogs’ necks than choke chains. But when I found out he had cancer, I got him a halter to hurt him less. But he likes to pull more in the halter. “Heel!” I say, yanking on the halter. He heels well in the prong collar but ignores me now. “Sinbad, heel!” I say louder, and we get into a pulling match. Here I used to think I had a little control over him, but now I see it was just the collar!
When we return to Dad and Jae-won, they’re talking about Dad going to nationals as a bantam AAA and losing in the final.
“Was it fun anyway?” Jae-won asks.
“Yeah, it was amazing. We all cried after we lost, though. Then we started talking about how we were going to make it back next year, and we cheered up. We didn’t make it back. Three of our best players aged out of bantam, and the team wasn’t as good the next year. But the final was amazing, one of the most fun games I ever played in. We lost in overtime—it was incredibly intense.”
“Cool,” Jae-won says.
They don’t have a national championship for peewees, so that’s all in the future. Nationals can probably be a shock, ’cause you’re one of the best teams from your area, and you probably think you’re pretty hot, but then you meet up with a bunch of kids who are the best team in their areas. Some of those teams from Minnesota are supposed to be scary good. I actually know a kid whose parents moved the family to Minnesota specifically to advance his hockey career. He was super talented for sure, so his parents just decided to completely go for it.
It’s weird. Sometimes it seems like there are a lot of godly players out there, and then sometimes it seems like there are hardly any. But the bottom line is, there are enough so that it’s practically impossible to make the NHL.
“Do the coaches yell at each level?” Jae-won asks Dad.
“Yeah, you gotta get used to that. Actually, not all of them yell, but most of them believe in maintaining appropriate fear, which usually means yelling.”
“I wrote a paper in school about the F-bombs the coach dropped on us last year, and my teacher said she was going to report him to the authorities, whoever they are,” Jae-won says.
Dad laughs. “The F-bomb authorities?”
It’s nice, it’s really cool, to be sitting around in the middle of summer with my dog and two guys—Dad and Jae-won—who totally understand where I’m coming from, and I totally understand where they’re coming from. We all get not having money, we get sports and working out, we get respecting each other. And we’re superclean. There are some kids at the junior high who smoke pot, who’ve gotten drunk, who’ve stolen prescription drugs from their parents. That’s a whole other world from mine. I watch it like I would watch a documentary on my computer or something. It’s interesting, but it’s completely separate. It might as well be a whole different planet.
CHAPTER 28
* * *
DAD SPENDS HIS two weeks off working in the yard, planting stuff, which is a first. At one point I ask him if he’s enjoying his time off, and he says, “I gotta tell you, gardening is not my thing. The sergeant at work suggested i
t.” He laughs. “So that’s a waste of two weeks off.” Still, he seems pretty relaxed, and I haven’t heard him crying in a while.
“So did you, I don’t know, think about anything while you were gardening?”
“Actually, I did,” he says, but doesn’t say more.
I can tell his favorite thing to do is take me to lessons or work out with me and Jae-won. He gardens and then watches TV, holds a couple of poker games. But he does seem a little bored, I’m not sure with what exactly—the gardening, yes, but something else as well. I try to think back, and it seems to me he wasn’t always bored. On the other hand, all that boredom looks like it was good for him, ’cause he’s laughing more than he used to. I can hear him laughing and talking loudly during his poker games. So I think the two weeks off were good for him, and maybe everything’s okay now.
And then finally—suddenly—it’s here, mid-August, triple-freaking-A. The season begins!! All the way in the car as Dad drives to the rink, I sit up straight and stare ahead, taking big breaths. It’s unbelievable that it’s here. It’s gonna be just me, Jae-won, and Lucas from AA. Are we gonna be the worst players on the team? I wonder if the other guys will be nice to us, or if they’ll think they’re better than us.
I don’t see either Jae-won or Lucas as I walk across the parking lot with my heavy bag and stick. That sucks. But in the locker room, they’re sitting together in the far corner, so I join them and start getting changed.
“Hey,” Jae-won says.
“Hey.”
“How’s your dog?” Lucas asks.
“He’s good. He had that one real bad stretch, but he’s doing better. Thanks for praying for him. It actually helped—he got better. I’m praying now sometimes too. So seriously, thanks, man.”
“Cool that it helped. It was no problem, I pray every night anyway.”
“Cool.”
“You pray every night?” a kid named Avery asks loudly.
The locker room goes silent. I wince a bit, like maybe Avery’s going to make fun of Lucas.
“Yeah,” Lucas says kind of cautiously.
But Avery just nods. “Cool.”
The AAAs from last year are sitting next to each other, joking about how some of them have gained a few pounds over the summer. Three of them have a push-up contest while the others count and laugh. They’re super relaxed, while I feel tense and worried, like maybe I’m not going to skate well next to the AAAs.
“Do you go to church on Sundays?” I ask Lucas. “I mean, I guess not. You were always at the games.”
“My parents don’t actually belong to a church. We’re independent Christians. We read the Bible together every night.”
“Cool,” I say, then pause to think about how many times one of us has said “cool” just since I got here. Lucas bows his head and closes his eyes for a moment, like he always does before practice. He does it for just a brief moment, so you could almost miss it. Lucas hardly talked to anyone last season. But now I feel bonded to him since he prayed for Sinbad and it worked.
One of Jae-won’s laces breaks, and he panics a bit, ’cause he doesn’t want to be late. He’s still changing his laces as we all leave. “Don’t worry, you still have a few minutes,” I tell him.
He nods, but I can see he’s stressed. We march through the hallway and into the rink. The Zamboni’s already finished, and Coach Dusan stands with his clipboard, talking to a couple of parents. One of the assistant coaches throws a bucket of pucks onto the ice, and I chase one down. Jesus skates around the ice, and I stop what I’m doing to watch. I saw how skinny he was in the locker room with his shirt and pants off. It’s unbelievable how that skinny body can skate so fast. All of last year’s AAAs race around with Jesus. Wow, some of them are awesome skaters!
Coach Dusan slides onto the ice, puts his fingers into his mouth, and lets out a piercing whistle. We rush to him. He looks at Andrew, who arrived last. “Ten push-ups, Andrew,” he says, and Andrew falls to the ice. He only manages seven.
“Seriously?” Coach says. He shakes his head.
Jae-won is running across the floor and slinks onto the ice while the coach is looking at his clipboard, drawing on it. He doesn’t look up but says, “You’re late.”
“I’m sorry, my lace broke, Coach Dusan!” Jae-won cries out, like we’re in the marines.
Coach Dusan rubs his forehead and closes his eyes. He seems to think a moment before saying, “I wanted to talk to you all about something important. I know some of your parents put a lot of pressure on you about your hockey. Not all of your parents, but some of them. I don’t want anyone on this team who doesn’t love the great game of hockey. I want you to work your butts off, yes, but I want you to do it because you love the game. I understand that you’re not always going to love practice, you’re not always going to love working out, you’re not going to like it when I get on you to work beyond what you think you’re capable of, but you have to love the game of hockey. I love this game. But if I had to go through all the work I went through and I didn’t even love the game, my life would basically be ruined. If you don’t love the game, talk to someone. If your parents won’t listen, talk to me. I’m all about the human potential as it relates to hockey, but reaching that potential is the opposite of what will happen if you put in the hours to do something you don’t even love. I had a player like that once, and some bad things happened just because his parents couldn’t hear that he didn’t want to play. So talk to me. Pull me aside and talk to me. Any questions?”
Whoa, that’s the last thing I expected to hear. We all stand there quietly. Coach is pretty intimidating, so I can’t imagine that anyone will have any questions. Then Jae-won raises his hand, and Coach Dusan nods at him.
“I love hockey,” Jae-won says. “Especially the actual games. I lie in bed and think about hockey until I fall asleep. But I feel a lot of pressure, too. Is that okay?”
“Good question!” Coach Dusan exclaims. “Pressure, unfortunately, is part of elite sports. So you’re going to feel pressure. Some of that pressure will be coming from me. But only you know if the pressure is too much for you. If you think you’re reaching a point where it’s too much, I encourage you to come and talk to me. But I want to be honest with you, you will feel pressure, and that’s normal. If you love playing the games, then I think you’re all right. I had that kid who didn’t love the games. . . . Does that help, JW?”
“Yes,” he says, nodding.
Then Coach suddenly looks right at me and says, “Conor, did you read the playbook?”
I freeze. What?? Why me? “Yes,” I say, scared for no reason, since I understand most of the book now. Then I say “Yes!” louder.
“What do I want you to do in practice today, and every day?”
Relief floods over me. “Practice with intention!” I answer.
“Good! Practice with intention, everybody. Twice around the ice, full speed.”
A boy named Nikita suddenly yells out, “Grizzlies on three, one-two-three!”
“GRIZZLIES!” we all shout.
“One-two-three!”
“GRIZZLIES!”
We take off around the rink, our skates digging in. The ice feels slow today, maybe ’cause it was a hundred degrees outside this afternoon. I feel like I’m dragging, but I try to concentrate on speed until I stop with a spray of snow.
“Twenty push-ups!” Coach Dusan calls out, and we all fall to the ice.
Practice is a lot harder than I expected. I haven’t played defense in two months and feel like I’ve lost all my instincts. Then when we work on our saucer passes, it turns out that mine aren’t smooth enough, so it’s harder for the other player to get them. I always thought I made great saucer passes. To tell the truth, I thought I was a master. And everybody’s always told me I have a hard slap shot. I do, but it turns out I miss the net too much, Coach Dusan says. But the hardest part is that we’re supposed to have memorized about fifteen plays that were written up in the playbook. I’ve read all the plays,
and watched film with Dad, but wouldn’t you know it, Coach has us practice a drill that Dad couldn’t find film for. I feel like I’m in way over my head, but then I see that a lot of guys don’t understand either. It’s also hard ’cause Coach’ll draw twenty lines all over his board, and the lines start to get mixed up in my head.
The playbook says to ask questions, so at one point I skate up to Coach Dusan and ask, “So during the forecheck drill when F1 skates to the strong side, where should I be?”
“Just for the purposes of this drill, stand on the weak side but slightly toward the strong side,” he says. “During a game, you need to be creative and make your decisions on the fly based on the situation.” I start to walk off, and he says, “Conor.”
“Yes?”
“If you have an opening, don’t be shy about taking a slap shot. Your slap shot is one of the reasons I picked you for this team.”
“Okay.”
So during the next drill I take a shot from a couple feet inside the blue line, and I’m surprised when it explodes toward the net and just misses, hitting the goalpost. “There ya go, Conor!” yells Coach Dusan, and suddenly it seems like a perfect day.
In the locker room later, I feel good, relaxed. Everybody’s showing each other their biceps—Brian’s are biggest. He’s one of the kids from another club. I’ve never talked to him, but I think everybody has talked about him, ’cause he’s already hit puberty, so he’s five feet seven and practically sounds like a grown man.
“How tall are you, Conor?” Brian asks.
“Five-four,” I say.
“You’re fourth tallest on the team. Andrew is shortest.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the best hands,” Andrew says.
“Jae-won has the best hands!” I answer.
“No, he doesn’t—he’s AA!”
“Jae-won does have good hands,” Brian says. “I saw him play last year.”
Then Andrew wants to arm wrestle Jae-won, which has nothing to do with how good your hands are, but they do it anyway, and Jae-won wins. So everybody’s laughing and starts insulting Andrew, but he’s good with it and laughs as well.