saw it all the way but the wobbles fooled me a little. I mishandled it with my catching glove and fumbled it back out in front of the net.
Slinky Jake Linke slid his stick between Soupy’s backpedaling legs and whacked the bouncing puck to my left, where Jason was waiting. Stevie Reneau had his stick hooked on the cuff of one of Jason’s gloves but Jason brushed it off and with one hand snapped a shot over my shoulder as I flopped to stop it. The puck whanged off the left post and trickled into my crease. “Shit,” Jason yelled. “Post.” I dove to my left to smother the puck but it squirted back out to Jason, who fired again, catching me so hard on the wide part of my stick that I dropped the thing.
Now I was lying on my back in the crease with no idea where the puck was. I felt my stick beneath my left leg pad and reached under to grab it but it was upside down so I had it by the fat blade instead of the knob, almost useless. Then Stevie fell backward across my legs, pinning me to the ice. I craned my neck to the left and saw the puck lying loose about six feet away, Soupy diving for it, and Jake Linke’s stick about to flip it over me and into the net. I couldn’t move my lower body, so I just shoved the thin upper shaft of my stick into the air and hoped for the best. The puck hit the two-inch-wide shaft just above the Sher-Wood label and dropped onto my chest. I covered it with both gloves as the referees blew the play dead.
“You lucky fuck.” It was Jason. Out of the corner of my left eye I saw him bearing down on me with his stick leveled across his chest. I twisted my body around and tucked my head. Jason came to a hard stop an inch from my head and jabbed the side of my mask with his stick. Soupy came crashing over me into Jason, spitting, “Get the fuck out of here,” while Wilf slammed into Jason from behind. I looked up to see Jason grab Wilf by the front of his jersey and toss him aside like a rag doll. Other players came flying and tumbling into the scrum, piling up on top of me, cursing, grunting, threatening to beat the living shit out of one another, forgetting for the moment that in fact most of them would be laughing and drinking together later at Enright’s.
The refs pulled us apart. I stood up and flipped the puck to one of them. Jason stood behind one of the refs, regarding me.
“You got shit in your ears?” he said.
“Did you like that save, Meat?”
“You didn’t fucking hear me yesterday, did you?” He looked down at my feet. “Ah,” he said. “Nice skates. Might want to test those out.”
“Do what you’ve got to do.”
He didn’t get his chance until the second period.
By then we were down 3–1. I’d let in another softie-a Clem Linke wrist shot that fooled me under my stick- hand glove-and the Minnows got another on a nifty tic-tac-toe passing play that I didn’t have a prayer of stopping. We were having trouble getting much offense going. If we stayed within two, though, we had a decent shot at coming back. I had to keep us in the game.
Now Jason caught a pass just inside our blue line, driving toward me. My defenseman on that side took the middle, giving Jason a long angle from the wing to my left. I pushed out a foot from my crease and crouched lower, forgetting my vulnerable feet, expecting a puck at my neck. Jason had room to shoot from outside the face-off circle but took another loping stride down the boards, hoping to turn me, the rusty goalie, sideways.
He wound up high. The puck exploded off his stick blade barely an inch off the ice. Before I could turn my pad the puck smacked the inside of my right skate just behind the toe. I felt something crack inside my foot as my knee buckled and I collapsed to the ice, screaming, “Goddammit” for the pain while searching for the puck. I felt it bounce once against my left hamstring and I squeezed my legs together, hoping to trap it there before it dribbled into the net. Jason’s knee caught me hard in the side of the head as he crashed the crease. I toppled over.
The refs whistled the play dead. My foot was on fire with pain. “Asshole,” I was yelling. “You fucking asshole.”
Jason was not through. He grabbed my shoulder and rolled me over and shoved the palm of his glove into my mask, snapping my head back. One of the refs tried to get between us but Jason shoved him aside with his other arm. He had about forty pounds on the ref and sixty on me.
“You got shit in your ears?” Jason said.
“What the fuck do you want?”
The ref was pulling Jason by the back of his jersey collar but Jason didn’t budge. “I’m giving you two for roughing, Meat,” the ref said. “Don’t push it.”
Jason grabbed the bottom of my mask and pulled my face in close to his. I smelled the tobacco dip on his breath. My gut churned with nausea. My foot felt like it might burst the seams of my skate.
“It’s over, pal,” Jason said. “Got it? She’s here for me. Don’t be fucking calling her anymore. You hear me? Don’t be fucking calling her.”
“It ain’t over with Vend, though, is it, Meat?”
A look of surprise spread over his face. He loosened his grip on my mask.
“You’re his bitch up here, aren’t you, Meat?”
“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.”
“Or are you Haskell’s bitch? Better get it straight who you’re working for, Meat, or you’ll wind up like Gracie.”
He shook his head. “You’re dead,” he said. The refs pulled him toward the penalty box as he stared at me over his shoulder. Before he stepped into the box, he pointed his scarred right hand at me. “You’re a little fucking pussy, Carpie,” he yelled. “And you’re fucked.”
Soupy and Zilch helped me to my feet. I couldn’t put much weight on my right skate. “You going to be all right?” Soupy said.
“He broke my goddamn foot,” I said.
“OK,” Soupy said. “Maybe I can get them to play the rest later.”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m going to play.”
“You can barely stand up.”
“Just give me a couple of minutes, I’ll be all right.”
I moved away from him, skated little circles back and forth, most of my weight on my left skate.
“Fuck it, Trap,” Soupy said.
“No.”
I put my stick-hand glove under my left arm and grabbed Soupy by his jersey. “Listen,” I said. I looked him in the eyes. Then I turned and looked behind my net. “Just get that bastard within reach.”
The ref dropped the puck on the face-off dot to my left. I leaned hard on my left skate, gritted my teeth against the pain. Soupy gobbled up the puck and skated it out of our zone. I watched him weave between the Minnows, moving away from me. My gaze moved to the bleachers. Darlene was gone.
Jason was as trapped by Vend and Haskell as Gracie had been. He probably thought he was clever, working both against the middle. Haskell must have thought he had a spy in Vend’s camp. Vend must have thought he had one in Haskell’s. I figured Jason was the one faxing Vend those copies of my stories, keeping him apprised of the town council’s doings. The two of them were, after all, bound by blood, and then money, and probably drugs and blackmail and who knew what else.
Maybe I should have felt for the guy. Right.
Jason came back on the ice with just under a minute to go in the period. Goalies are supposed to keep their eyes on the puck. But I watched Jason, waiting, knowing he didn’t think I had it in me.
One of the Minnows shoveled the puck into the corner to my left. Jason charged down the boards to get it. Soupy swooped in ahead of him, scooped up the puck, and veered behind my net. That’s where he left the puck.
Jason saw it sitting there and put his head down, churning at full speed.
The heel of my stick blade caught him full on the Adam’s apple. He flew up and back so hard that one of his skates almost knocked my stick out of my hand. I heard his helmet crack against the ice and watched as Jason threw off his gloves and clutched at his throat, choking. One of the refs rushed over and knelt over him. “Holy God,” he said, “somebody call nine one one.” I rested my arms on the crossbar and watched Jason kick his skates this way and that.
The ref turned to me. He was just a kid, maybe seventeen, played for the River Rats and made a few bucks
