He was on the ice under the hockey-rink dome, dribbling the puck back and forth from one goal to the other, measuring his wind and keeping himself on the edge of the rink, moving so fast the advertisements on the back walls and boards flew by him as multicolored banners. The dome was filled with his sounds; his breathing, the soft clack when his stick touched the ice as he moved the puck up and down, back and forth, the steady skeeth skeeth skeeth as his blades bit into the ice and the sudden skeritch as he cut a fast turn and threw up a shower of ice.
It was an hour before the rest of the team showed up and Dad had talked the owner into letting Brian have the dead time. Dad shook the owner’s hand and the owner, smiling, quickly shoved his hand into his pocket before putting on the lights.
When the man tripped the breakers the lights started to hum and dad called out, “Three minutes, Brian.” He slapped the owner on the back as if he were a BMW dealer and the owner buying a new car.
“You know the drill, Brian. Be on the ice before the lights are white or you pay for your time.” Brian made his way to the players’ box, holding his stick high, banging his gear bag against the seats and rinkguards. His father walked away, outside, probably to enjoy a good Cubañero.
The lights came on slow, like dusk turning back into day, tinting the entire arena blurry-eyed red at first then orange then quietly screaming away their heat as they continued through yellow and finally into blinding, silent white.
Brian kicked off his sneakers and stripped to his jockeys in cold, cool darkness. He velcroed his pads with wide eyes in the dim red light. He pulled on his uniform and silently smiled as it stretched over his pads like a second skin. It pressed his pads into him like a tortoise wriggling on an old, familiar shell as the dome went from red to orange. He snapped and laced his skates under yellow skies. As the lights made their way to silent white the sounds of the rink went from their heat bleeding scream to his skates steady, toothy susurations as he moved onto the ice.
Brian smiled as backwall colors and wisps of frosty air moved by him. He’d made it. He let the puck drop from his glove and the entire world collapsed into the hard, black rubber dancing at the end of his stick.
He circled around it a few times, kept it trapped just inside the friction tape that covered his blade, just enough so the goalie would lose it when Brian fired his best shot.
Keerack! up against the rinkguards. The puck smacked off the plexiglass just where the goalie’s facemask would be. Brian caught the puck before it had bounced twice and skeritch turned and fired keerack and caught the puck again then looked up at the rinkguard. His breath fogged in front of him and the puck bounced away from his stick. He slapped it towards the edge then checked it as he skated up to the plexiglass.
There, where he’d fired his last shot, was a little tiny crack, a tiny little fissure in the plastic smoothness, a quiet little rainbow to show his might against the vast silent whiteness of the rest of the rink. He smiled then moved the puck out onto the ice, starting his sprints from one goal to the other.
His solitude was interrupted by a broken skeeth skeeth ske-eeth rhythm, a susuration interrupted as if by a cough or a limp on the ice. Danny’s nasally voice sliced through Brian’s solitude as if his peace had never existed at all. “Brian! Wait up!”
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