To Play Hockey, One-on-One by Joseph Michael Rein

     Barry knew he would pay for this in the morning. He missed a loop on his brown single-blade skates and had to pull the laces out completely to start over. When he got them in right he stood; his right wobbled a little, but his left felt altogether too tight. Was it too tight? Skates were supposed to be tight, so you didn’t twist an ankle, like he was damn sure he would if he didn’t give his right laces at least another tug. Either way his feet would swell up, become miniature clubs at the end of his legs. He took a pull off his bottle of whiskey. What exactly the hell was he thinking? He hadn’t played hockey in twenty-two years.

     It was New Year’s Eve. The lake had frozen over two weeks previous, prompting every ice fisher within a fifty-mile radius to chance their Fords out into the center, their shanties dragging in tow. The sun was waning, and though the day wasn’t particularly cold, by night it would drop below zero in a hurry. Many of the trucks were now gone, the men taking temporary shelter in one of four bars and then the Derricks Motel across the lake. A select few weathered the night in their shanties with battery-operated space heaters, heaps of hand-stitched blankets, and enough brandy for the entire county. A few of them stood outside now. They looked young, but Barry still wondered if he knew any of them. Time was he would’ve known every single one by name, where they lived. One knelt down, his hand diving into a snow bank and reappearing with a fistful of beer bottles.

     “Just be a second, Pops,” Jack, Barry’s son, said, referring to the quick shoveling job he performed, forming a half-sized rink that seemed even enough. Jack was thirty-four, an environmental lawyer, and quite recently divorced. He had inherited none of Barry’s physical traits—he had eyes like coffee saucers, all of his hair, hardly a chin at all—but also few of his father’s personality defects. If Jack was anything, he was smart. Never have to tell him twice, Barry used to brag to the guys at the lumberyard. Smarter than I am, and he’s only seven, then ten, then seventeen. Jack had shown up unannounced just hours before with one suitcase and some kind of fire lit under his ass, of all things looking to play hockey. Barry couldn’t for the life of him figure out why in the hell Terri would leave Jack. But then, Barry hardly knew Terri. For all he knew, she could be dumb as a post.

     “I ain’t gonna lie to you,” Barry said. “I can’t move around too good on these any more.”

     Jack looked up from the pile of snow he’d just vaulted over his makeshift boards. “Oh that’s it, huh? Old man chickening out before he gets started?”

     “Never said that,” Barry said, reaching and bending down for one of the five sticks he and Jack had dug up, along with the skates, from one of the old brown boxes in the furnace room. They had to dig through a dozen or so boxes of Lisa’s things she didn’t want to take with her, empty perfume bottles and old brassieres Barry’d tried on many occasions to throw away. “Wouldn’t get too cocky if I were you. May be over sixty, but your old man was quite the sharpshooter back in his day.”

     “A defenseman,” Jack said, finishing the last of his snow removal and moving to pick up a stick. “You hardly shot at all.”

     Jack brandished his stick and, flipping the puck onto their rink, he slid to Barry, putting on a lazy move as he passed. Barry watched his son stumble at first across the ice, rough around the edges, never quite divorcing himself from the concept of the step. He was half-walking, sure, but he was younger, and his body could move more efficiently. Barry glided with grace but he still wouldn’t have a lick of Jack’s speed.

     Jack had shoveled small goals on both sides, and he took his first shot, missing by a mile. Barry laughed. “I’m the one should be worried?”

     Jack fished the puck out of the snow and turned back to him. “Working out the cobwebs. Just make sure you can keep up.”

     A wind pulled down from the east, drifting some of the dusty snow onto their cleared rink. In an hour the sun would be gone, its face already reddening just over the wooded western edge of the lake. Noquebay was a pistol-shaped lake larger than most in northeastern Wisconsin. Barry and Lisa had bought the house as a resort in ‘72, an up-north getaway, but after Barry got laid off they sold their house in Burlington and moved up indefinitely. At first it was peaceful, teaching six-year-old Jack to fish off the neighbor’s dock, renting a pontoon for trips to Mickey’s Steakhouse on the other side of the lake. They bought a hammock, tied it between a tree and deck post. Barry and Lisa sat in it together on quiet evenings and watched the boaters—and increasingly jet-skiers—tire and call it a day. He should’ve seen the writing on the wall: one day she came out all hot around the collar and said, “Is this all you’re going to do? Sit in a damn hammock all afternoon?” Young Jack looked up from digging lakefront sand into his pail. When Barry went inside later, there had been no dinner on the table.

     “Alright big guy,” Barry said, skating towards Jack. He moved only ten feet or so and already he felt the pull in his upper thighs, near his groin. How demanding this sport was, on those muscles particularly, yet in his youth he could skate for days and hardly feel a thing. “You remember the rules?”

     Of course Jack remembered the rules. Up to seven, everything’s in play until a team scores. Always face off to begin the point. These were the rules Barry himself had set ages ago, when Jack was just a boy, hardly able to lug around the adult-sized stick he insisted on playing with, his cousins and uncles flying around him and passing him the puck out of pity. He’d hoped that after a certain time, after Jack and his cousins had grown and had children of their own, they would reconstruct the old tradition, maybe even on a larger scale.

     But here they were, Barry’s wife gone, Jack’s own leaving him without children. Terri’s family would side with her, same as Lisa’s did. For some damn reason it was always the man’s fault. And Barry and Jack were left to play hockey one-on-one, a ridiculous notion in itself. But here they were, anyway, and Barry saw no reason to break from the rules.

     “Seven. We’ll alternate dropping the puck,” Jack suggested, and Barry nodded. They skated to would-be center ice, Jack holding the puck.

     “On three,” Jack said. “One, two.”

     Jack dropped the puck and tried snatching it away, but Barry easily swiped it sideways, gaining quick possession. He backed away and practiced a little puck handling, but it slipped away from him unprovoked; he’d always been better at keeping people from scoring than scoring himself. Jack pounced on the puck, too quickly for Barry to recover. Jack slid in easily for the first score, almost followed the puck right into the goal.

     “Ha! One-nuts,” he gloated, fists in the air. Barry went to retrieve the puck.   “Your drop old man.”

     “Watch who you’re calling old,” Barry said. “And don’t count chickens.”

     They took a quick whiskey timeout and then hit center ice, facing off again. Barry let Jack control this one, and slid back into defensive mode. But before he could get himself set Jack charged, wheeled back and sent a soft slapshot past him into the left corner of the goal.

     “The crowd goes wild!” Jack mimicked crowd noise, skating along the faux-sidelines and high-fiving fake teammates. Barry again retrieved the puck, watching his son enjoy imagined glory. After a while Jack skated back around, coming up on Barry’s side and placing an arm around his shoulder.

     “This is living, huh?” Jack asked. “I miss this Pop. We should’ve come up here more often.”

     “Would’ve had you any time.”

     “Truth is, Terri was quite territorial. Like driving three hours up here was this huge inconvenience or something.”

     Barry nodded, oddly at kinship with his son on this point. Toward the end with Lisa, it had been like with every decision Barry was taking away from her somehow. Like she was heading towards the goal and anything Barry did was a jab, a check, some sort of defense against her shot at happiness. Something wouldn’t work out, and it was Barry’s fault even before he knew what the damn thing was.

     Barry looked out onto the lake. A crowd that had gathered outside the nearest shanty was coming their way, a bottle in each hand and a shuffle-stagger in each step. “Would you look at this,” Barry said. “A real-life crowd.” As the fishermen approached, most in red and green flannel shirts and overstuffed pants, Barry looked for guys he knew, but most of them were Jack’s age or even younger, hardly men at all. One kid had three piercings on his face that Barry could see, another wore a crooked baseball cap over his winter stocking hat. Back when Barry knew his lake neighbors most of these kids were probably just a twinkle. Barry probably knew their grandparents.

     But there was something about this sudden and unexpected crowd that fueled Barry’s competitive spirit. He felt in some small way like he was back in community college, in front of his groups of family and friends. And so, this time after Jack dropped the puck Barry didn’t let him near it. Barry kept it close, used his body as leverage to slide alongside the snow. He was gaining a step; his leg and hip muscles were loosening, remembering the movements he’d trained into them so long ago. The whiskey ran hot in his blood and it helped release his body. Pushing Jack left, he doubled back and went right, opening up a clear shot. Jack watched the puck and looked surprised to see it go, surprised that his old man had such a move in him. Barry himself was a little surprised.

     “Now we have a game,” Barry said.

     The next few points were back and forth, Barry gaining a little while Jack’s initial doggedness wore down. Barry felt a click in his left knee, the one operated on a bunch when he was in college, but at the moment didn’t feel any pain. Jack was getting into it, maybe too into it, throwing his body around like a kid, his head down at all times, but for some reason this only upped Barry’s fuel. After each score Barry took a soft whiskey break and offered the bottle to Jack, who took it only when Barry scored.

     “Damnitall,” Jack said after Barry scored again, the first words besides grunts between them for some time. Part of the crowd whooped, their cheers echoing off the shoreline, while the others grunted like boars. Wallets surfaced and money exchanged hands. The score was tied at four.

     Jack slapped the puck back to center ice. He looked up at Barry, but his eyes darted away quickly. He crouched into position and geared himself for another go.

     “Hold on a sec,” Barry said, slow to get back. He’d been going at it pretty good and was starting to feel the painful benefits. His ankles were throbbing, fat in his skates, probably purpled and blued for all the wear he was putting on them. His quads and hamstrings bubbled all around. His back, never the most reliable, was holding out okay but he knew it was only a matter of time for that too.

     “Come on. Four all,” Jack said.

     “Just a minute now, your Pop’s not–” Barry stopped himself, and in doing so got a cough stuck in his throat.

     “Typical. Old man backing out.”

     Barry leaned on his stick and cocked his brow. He enjoyed a little competitive banter, sure, but from the look in his son’s eyes Barry knew he was pushing it.

     “You know what’s typical?” Barry said. “Not hearing from you for years. That’s typical.”

     Jack stunted, as though Barry was the one who had first crossed the line. “What would you like?” Jack lowered his voice so only Barry could hear. “Ah, hello Pop, it’s Jack. My marriage failed, I hate my job. The Prozac’s doing jack shit.”

     “Because you only grew up here, for Chrissakes,” Barry said, his voice not dropping at all. “If I’da known it was that bad–”

     “What, Dad, you could’ve helped? You’re not exactly the person for marriage advice.”

     “Watch your mouth.”

     “Drove Mom away when I was just a kid. No surprise I have commitment issues.”

     Barry slapped his stick against the ice. “And you were some kind of goddamn treat to raise?”

     A silence hung between them for a moment. Then a different voice, this one from the crowd. “Just fight or drop the puck already!”

     Barry looked over and saw the kid who’d spoken, nineteen at best, holding a bottle and drunker than the rest.

     Barry raised his stick. “Keep your little mouth shut, hey,” he said. The kid looked ready to plunge forward towards Barry, but a friend caught him.

     “Maybe Terri was right,” Jack said. “Maybe coming here is always one big mistake.”

     “Maybe shouldn’t have then.” Barry got a good look at his son. Christ, did he still look like a teenager, angry about the wrong things, confused by everything else. That pissed-up kid in the crowd was drunk but he was also right. There wasn’t anything else to do. “You’re up. Drop the damn puck.”

     Jack lost the face-off to his father easily, and Barry could see he hadn’t shaken the conversation. Barry slipped along the left boards with ease and backhanded one into the right corner of the goal. Jack watched the puck nestle into the pile of snow and immediately lifted his stick high into the air. Before the crowd could even murmur Jack, with a half-curse, half-shout, crashed the stick down onto the ice, shattering the blade into pieces, splitting the shaft like a wishbone. A slice of the blade shot towards Barry and struck him broadside on the leg.

     “Hey!” Barry yelled. “You keep your goddamned head!” Jack still held a strong grip on the handle of his broken stick, his head now pointed to the air, his eyes closed. “Okay, that’s it. We’re done.”

     “No,” Jack said immediately. “Grab me another stick. I’ll pick this up.”

     “Your mom ain’t here to make this go away Jackie Boy. She ain’t been here. Since you were eight, for Chrissakes.”

     His son looked at him. “Just get the stick.”

     Barry kicked the piece of stick that hit him towards Jack. “Get your own damn stick.” If he was going to act like a twelve-year-old then he deserved to be talked to like one. Coming to his house practically demanding that they revive an old tradition, and then what thanks does he show? He breaks a stick. That stick was probably older than him, might’ve been one that Barry’s father had  hah used to teach him so long ago.

     Jack skated around a bit after picking up a new stick, avoiding Barry’s eyes. He slid with stiff, intense movements, like the whole world depended on his ability to stay on his skates.

     “You gonna keep your head?” Barry asked.

     “Five-four,” Jack replied. He skated to center ice.

     Jack easily took the face-off from Barry. As Barry skated back to defend, he felt stiffness in his legs and back from the short break. Jack surged at him with speed—he was finally gliding, letting the skates do their work—and Barry knew he couldn’t match it. There were no two ways about it; either he let Jack pass and score, or he pulled a muscle, maybe worse. Jack slipped by and easily tied the game.

     “There it is,” Jack said. “Slowing down old timer. Fives.”

     Barry handled the next face-off, and had no intention of ever giving Jack a shot at the puck. He turned his hip toward Jack and kept the puck at a distance, leveraging his body for position towards the goal. Jack bumped up against him and suddenly became overly aggressive, butt-ending Barry in the ribs, trying to get the puck away. Cheap shot. Barry’s adrenaline kicked in and ignited his muscles, youth spreading down his limbs, the competitive fire once again burning. He waited until Jack stuck his hands out again and deked opposite, leaving Jack lunging at the air, until he slipped and fell flat on his stomach. With ease Barry scored the go-ahead goal.

     “There that is,” Barry said, hockey-stopping next to his son so that some ice shavings kicked up onto his pants. “One more to go.”

     Jack stayed down for longer than Barry had expected. The flannelled crowd of fisherman no longer cheered for each goal, watching instead in silence, as one watches the evening news, with a tentative curiosity. When Jack did get up, he kept his gaze outward, beyond the men and towards the middle of the lake.

     “Let’s go,” Barry said. “What’s the matter?”

     “Nothing,” Jack said, his anger and whatever else getting the best of him. Barry knew what it was like to play angry; hell, he’d spent a good deal of his high school years pissed off without much of a reason for it. So at the next drop, when Jack stabbed at the puck hastily, his skates clumsy again, Barry knew his son would make a mistake. Jack charged but in his haste let the puck get out in front of him. It was as easy a pick as a natural born defender could ask for. Barry poked the puck out, sliding it between Jack’s legs. Before Jack could slow himself down Barry was off in the other direction, braced for a breakaway.

     Barry had a step. Jack knew it. It would be an all-out sprint to the goal, but on such short ice even Jack couldn’t make up for that mistake. Barry hustled down the line, ready at any moment to flick in the game-winner uncontested. Just before he wound up he looked over his shoulder and quickly glimpsed his son’s face, the loose jowls, the sa s g under the eyes, the look of a man who kwho nows he’s about to get beat, about to lose with nothing to do to stop it. His son had lost.

     Barry slowed up and flicked his wrist, sending the puck across the ice. It slid over bumps and snow dust and landed directly in the center of the goal.

     Barry turned around. His son glided slowly with his hands on his knees and his head down. “Good game Jackie Boy,” he said. He skated to his son and nudged him on the shoulder.

     “Piss off.” In one motion Jack threw down his stick and gloves. He moved towards the shore, no longer skating but stomping like someone new to the ice.

     “Christ Almighty, you still a sore loser?” Barry asked. Jack stopped but didn’t turn around.

     “You know what?” Jack said to the shore. “I actually thought it’d be nice to see you again. Even thought you might, just might, have a little sympathy.”

     “Sympathy? Sympathy I got. Letting you win isn’t part of that deal.”

     “I’m not talking about the fucking game, Dad.”

     “You ain’t a boy anymore, Jack. Can’t expect people to hand you anything. Can’t expect to win when someone outplays you.”

     “Win. Lose. Is this the only way you know how to talk?”

     “What? To hell, I’ve had it,” Barry said. “You know something? You’re just as much of a piss ant as ever.”

     “Take after my father,” Jack said. He stomped up onto the shoreline, then through the grass and over to his Jetta. Without taking off his skates he sat in his car and shut the door.  Barry waited for him to turn it on and drive away but Jack just sat there, his hands in his lap, his eyes out towards the lake, where the sun had dropped behind the treetops on the other side. The ice fishermen quietly started shuffling away and Barry turned to them. One of the younger ones stopped halfway back to his shanty, unzipped his fly and pissed in their direction right on the open snow and ice. Barry went inside.

 

     After an hour of news Barry stood and looked out the window. He tipped back his glass of brandy and saw his son’s car, still there, Jack sitting inside motionless, probably freezing his ass off. This was no different than when he was a kid, hiding under the basement stairs in the spot too small for Barry to get to. The first time he’d sat so quiet Barry couldn’t find him; Lisa panicked that he’d run away. After that they always knew where to find him when he got into a fit, and that his mother was the only one who could coax him out.

     Barry turned and went into the kitchen to make pasta. His body was tired. The muscles in his shoulders and back pinched and whined. It’d been a good few years since he’d exerted himself like that, nothing more than a walk in the woods or at most a bike ride. Each drink of brandy coursed down his stomach and washed warmth over his body, but within minutes it was gone and he needed another. He watched the water to to a boil, then the dried noodles soften and bend, until they were so overdone they mashed together. He made two large plates out of it, smothered them in sauce and dug into his. His goddamned stubborn son. He finished his own plate in less than five minutes, looked at the other still softly steaming, and pulled it in front of him. “Sit out there all night,” he said, and shoved his fork into that plate as well. He didn’t stop until all the pasta was gone.

     With drops of sauce on his fingers and shirt, around his lips and on his chin, Barry got up and went back to the window, only to see Jack right where he left him. “If you’re gonna go then do it already!” he yelled at the window. Though there was no way Jack could hear him, at that moment he turned his head from the lake and looked up as though he had. But it was only for a moment. As quickly as he had left it he resumed his stare. “Fine,” Barry said. “Just damn fine.”

     Barry turned the TV up louder than it needed to be, sat in his recliner and crossed his arms as though someone was watching him. The screen was blurry and so he squinted to see it, the whiskey and brandy and pasta all lumping in his stomach, moving up to his head and making him drowsy. He started drifting off, thinking he should have made a coffee or at least drank a Coke. In a matter of minutes he was out.

 

     It was dark when Barry woke with his son standing over him. The TV was off and Jack hadn’t turned on any lights. The couch below Barry felt like a bed of sharp icicles. His arms, his legs, everything about him was stiff as a tree trunk. Jack started to pick him up by the torso. Barry wanted to shove his son away but his arms wouldn’t cooperate, nothing would cooperate. The wind kicked up against the house and Jack whispered, “I’ve got you Dad.” Barry finally sat up but his damn legs wouldn’t scoot so much as an inch.

     Jack was underneath one of Barry’s shoulders, holding him with both hands, carrying his entire weight through the living room. Barry wanted to stand on his own but his knees didn’t even try to bend, his legs as good as flagpoles to walk on. “Almost there,” Jack said, taking him through the bedroom door. When they reached the bed Barry expected his son to flop him down on it, but Jack set him down careful as a parent with a newborn. Jack adjusted Barry’s pillow underneath his head and threw another afghan over the top of the covers.

     “Dad,” Jack said.

     “Yeah Jackie Boy?”

     Jack noticed the sauce on Barry’s chin, so he licked his thumb and rubbed at it. “Think it might be time for the old man to get a cane,” he said.

     “Cane wouldn’t be so bad.”                                          

     Jack left the room and closed the door behind him. Half-asleep, Barry watched the door for minutes, expecting his five-year-old son to throw it open and come jumping on their bed, the Saturday morning sun following behind him. Lisa would get up with him and make pancakes as Barry stayed in bed for another hour, the smell of burnt batter and coffee drifting into his light sleep. He hadn’t thought then what a wonderful thing it was to have the sound of someone moving around in your house when you woke. For the next hour Barry lay awake, listening to the wind slap his glass window and for the sound of the front door opening and then closing on him.