how, just how many.”
We were to play the Pipefitters in the state final. They had dispatched their first two opponents with ease, 5–0 and 7–1. They were big and fast and intimidating in their goatees and sideburns and long hair hanging down over the numbers on their jerseys. Mostly they were good. To beat them we knew we would have to execute the Rat Trap to perfection and take advantage of whatever scoring opportunities we could muster. Even if we did all that, we would not win if we did not stop number 17, Billy Hooper.
College scouts had started watching Hooper when he was just thirteen. That year he scored 127 goals in eighty games for Paddock Pools. The Pipefitters lured him away by making his father an assistant coach. By the time he was sixteen, colleges were begging Hooper to enroll, and he was projected as a number-one draft pick in the Canadian junior leagues. But in an accident that summer, Hooper lost the sight in his left eye. As Pipefitter fans told it, Hooper pulled over on the Ford Freeway near Detroit to help a woman whose car had broken down. When he tried to jump-start her car, the battery exploded. His face was somehow spared severe burns, but the hot acid splashed his eye. Outside Pipefitter circles, another story circulated. It involved Southern Comfort, jumbo firecrackers, and a neighbor’s mailbox. Doctors told Billy Hooper his hockey career was over. But when the Pipefitters held tryouts that fall, he showed up wearing a black eye patch. He struggled at first. His impaired depth perception made it hard for him to feel how hard to shoot and pass. His coaches worried that his severely limited peripheral vision made him a target for crippling checks. Hooper played on. He removed his eye patch for games; his teammates took to calling him “Deadeye.” In a few months he was turning defensemen and goalies inside out again and, by season’s end, Billy Hooper was again one of the most talked-about players in Michigan. Still, nobody was talking anymore about college and the NHL. The scouts didn’t believe a one-eyed skater could make it at those levels. They stopped coming.
In the Pipefitters’ first two state tournament wins, Hooper was unstoppable, scoring five goals and assisting on four others. I saw him score on a wrist shot, a low slapshot, a deke, a high backhander. At one point, seemingly trapped behind the net, he caromed a goal in off a goaltender’s calf. On breakaways, I noticed, he especially liked to try to stare the goalie down and then head-fake him into flopping, whereupon Hooper would come to a near stop and calmly flip the puck over the fallen tender.
Coach noticed, too. After our semifinal win, he squeezed between Soupy and me on the bench in dressing room 3. “Tomorrow night, Gus, number seventeen,” he said. “Remember-you’re a stand-up goalie. I’ve seen you watching him. He’s got a lot of dipsy-doodles, eh? Every one’s designed to make you fall on your face so he can go high on you. Don’t take the bait, Gus. You’re not a flopper. Hold your ground.”
“I will.”
“Good.” He put his arm on my shoulder. “You coming tonight?”
Coach had invited us all to stay in his billets. He said it was important for the entire team to be together before its biggest game ever. Everyone was going-except me. My mother insisted that I stay with her, at home.
“I don’t think so, Coach,” I said. “My mother-you know.”
“Yes, I know. You ought to be there tonight. I’ll speak with your mom again.”
That was the night I called my mother a bitch.
Soupy was quiet the next morning at our pregame skate-around. I sat down next to him in the dressing room as he struggled with his left skate.
“Have fun last night?” I said.
“Same old thing,” he said. He kicked his skate heel against the floor to force his foot all the way in.
“I hope you guys got some sleep.”
“I’ll get a nap before the game.”
“You OK?”
“Just nervous.”
We weren’t going to be playing for hours, but already my stomach was squirming like a bass on a fishing spear. Soupy never seemed to get nervous, though. He was always fooling around, throwing tape wads, telling jokes. He didn’t really look nervous now, either; he just wasn’t himself. Something wasn’t right.
Coach walked in. “Good morning,” he said. “Are we ready to win?”
“Yes, sir,” we all said, except for Soupy, who was preoccupied with his skates.
“Swanny?” Coach said.
Soupy didn’t look up. He plopped his helmet on his head, grabbed his stick, stood up, and brushed past Coach on his way out of the room. Coach silently watched him go. Teddy Boynton came in with his bag slung over a shoulder. Coach slapped him on the back. “Ready, Tiger?”
“Oh, yeah,” Teddy said.
I leaned over to Wilf, who was taping his stick blade. “What’s with Soup?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe he’s pissed about Teddy shadowing the one-eyed guy.”
“We’re shadowing Hooper?”
A “shadow” would stay with Billy Hooper wherever he went on the ice, in the hope of keeping him from getting the puck in the open. It was a difficult but potentially glorious job. A shadow had to be fast and disciplined and utterly selfless. For a player as quick and shifty as Hooper, I couldn’t imagine anyone but Soupy being the shadow.
“Don’t know for sure,” Wilf said. “But Coach had Teddy and Soup up at his house for a couple of hours last night, and when they got back, I thought I heard Teddy say something about it, but I was half asleep.”
“Man,” I said, “we never had a shadow before. Coach must think this Hooper is still hot shit.”
“Fuck Hooper,” Wilf said.
Eight hours later, we were back in dressing room 3, dressed and waiting to go out on the ice for the state championship game.
I sat next to Soupy, staring at the shiny black tape I’d wound onto my waffle glove, Eggo. I was so afraid to play that I couldn’t wait to get out on the ice. That’s how goaltenders think. My belly would keep jumping around even after I got in the net and started roughing up the ice with my skates and whacking the goalposts with my stick. The butterflies would disappear only after the first shot on goal drove into me and I swatted it down or kicked it away or grabbed it in my catcher. If it hurt, even better.
The only sound in the dressing room was of stick blades being tapped nervously on the rubber-mat floor. Through the closed door we could hear the crowd’s rumble, and when the door swung open to let Coach in, we saw the throng in blue and gold squeezed in the space between the room and the rink, clapping and yelling. Leo slid in behind Coach. Coach threw the bolt on the door and stood before us in a jacket and tie, a gold River Rats stickpin in his lapel. His eyes scanned the room, falling briefly on each one of us. He clapped his hands together in front of him and held them there.
“Men,” he said. “Three things.”
He held up an index finger. “First, as always, the Rat Trap.”
He held up two fingers. “Second, the Fitter goalie’s got a good glove and two left feet. Make him use those feet. Shoot low and crash the net for rebounds.”
He held up three fingers. “Last, we’re going to shadow number seventeen. Teddy the Tiger’s our man.”
I looked at Soupy, who was sitting, as always, to my left. His eyes were on the floor. “Seventeen’s got some speed and a few moves,” Coach said, “but he doesn’t much like the rough stuff, does he, Tiger?”
“No, sir,” Teddy said.
“Truth is, he’s a little fag, isn’t he, Tiger?”
“He’s a one-eyed fag with a lot of fancy-ass fag moves,” Teddy said. He looked across the room at Soupy, the hint of a smirk on his lips. The others egged Teddy on, saying “Yeah, Teddy boy!” and “Do it!” and “Kill the little fag!” Soupy kept his eyes down. I elbowed him. We couldn’t win without Soupy.
“Soup,” I whispered. “You don’t want to be tied up covering Hooper. The guy’s got one fucking eye. Hell, the Fitters’ll probably have a shadow on you. ”
He ignored me.
“What do you say, men?” Coach said. That was our signal. It was when Soupy usually clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Tonight, you’re a sponge…” Now he didn’t move. Everyone was up, crowding around Coach. I stood. “Soup?” I said. Still he did not move.
Coach stuck out his right hand and we all reached in to touch it, glove on glove on glove. Coach got up on his
