Page 49

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. It’s a screen; I’ll get out of it next time.” He puts the mouthguard back in, skates to the dot. He says something to the linesman on the way; the linesman laughs.

I stand in my crease.

I would like somebody to skate over here and tell me what I am. I would like the referee to come over, put a hand on my shoulder, and say the word. The building is full of people. The bench is full of men. A coach is at the whiteboard. Not one of them is going to do it, because what I did looks exactly like a goaltender half a beat late on a point shot through traffic in March.

That’s what she’s buying. I understood it in an office on the waterfront with containers moving beyond the glass, and I understood it as a fact. I’m now standing inside it.

At the horn I go off last, the way I always do. The tunnel mouth is full of men in gear, the guy with the paddles, and two kids from the ice crew. The gray coat isn’t there anymore.

In the room at the first intermission, the assistant coach draws the goal on the whiteboard.

He draws it because he draws every goal, all season, every intermission. He does it in about ten seconds with a red marker: the point man, the two bodies, an arrow through the traffic and a circle on the far post. Then he says, “Get a stick on that,” to nobody in particular, and moves on to the neutral zone.

Ten seconds. That’s the entire investigation.

I drink a bottle of water, change my undershirt, and go back out.

I don’t let another one in.

I stop twenty-six, and I’m not going to pretend afterward that I didn’t know what I was doing, because from the faceoff at 5:54 of the first period, I play the best hockey of my life.

I stop seven more in the first, nine in the second. At 14:20 there’s a two-on-none: the trailer has the whole net. I get across in one push and take the far post away with the pad. The building erupts. I don’t hear what the backup coach says about my push afterward.

Their captain gets hooked on a breakaway at 6:14 of the third.

The penalty shot takes a minute to set up. They clear the ice. The crowd noise rises, then thins into that hum a building makes when eighteen thousand people are all waiting. I skate out to the top of the paint and back in. Left post, twice. Right post, twice.

He comes down the middle, goes to his backhand at the hash marks, puts it high glove—the same spot I used an hour ago.

I take it out of the air.

On my side in the crease, puck under my arm, mask half-turned. The rink screams my last name in two syllables. Our bench pours over the glass, banging doors. Beau skates in, drops on top of me, and gets a glove in my ear.

We score at 8:02, again at 11:40. Beau puts one in the empty net with nineteen seconds left.

Three to one.

They give me the first star. They say my name over the sound system, and the noise comes down out of the upper bowl in one piece. I go out and raise my stick to the four corners because that’s what you do. A kid in the front row behind the glass at the east end has a sign with my number on it in glitter and is hammering the glass with both hands.

I look at him for a second longer than I mean to.

Then I go straight back down the tunnel.

Nils talks to the room for ninety seconds. He doesn’t do a speech, ever, and he doesn’t do one now.

He stands in the middle with his arms folded and says the neutral zone was better. That we didn’t chase in the third. That Tuesday is a bus day.

Then he says:

“First goal was screened. That’s not on the goaltender.”

He looks at the room when he says it. Not at me. There’s a general noise of agreement. Somebody says something about our defenseman’s kitchen. Everybody laughs; the defenseman throws a roll of tape.

That’s it. It takes four seconds. Then Nils says, “Bus at ten,” and goes.

I sit in my stall with my chest protector half off and my head against the wood.