Chapter 13
13
T he juniors are taking it easy; they’ve been told to play at seventy-five percent, no one wants any injuries before the game. Amat doesn’t have that luxury. He throws himself into every situation, presses his skates down as hard as if he were trying to cut through to the concrete. He gets nothing for it. The juniors hack and trip him, force him into the boards, bring their sticks down on his wrists, and seek out every little weakness in every piece of equipment in order to hurt him. He gets cross-checked from behind, falls on all fours, sees Lyt’s skates swerve, and doesn’t have time to shut his eyes before the shower of ice hits his cheeks. He doesn’t hear a word from David. After three-quarters of an hour Amat is so sweaty and exhausted and furious that it takes an epic exertion of will not to shriek, “Why am I here? Why did you bring me here if you’re not going to let me play?” He hears them laughing behind his back. He knows that saying anything would only make them laugh even louder.
“I said as much. He’s too weak,” Lars snorts as Amat picks himself up off the ice for the thousandth time.
David looks at the time.
“Let’s do some one-on-one. Amat against Bobo,” he declares.
“Are you kidding? Amat’s done two training sessions in a row, he’s on his last legs!”
“Line them up,” David replies bluntly.
Lars shrugs and blows his whistle. David stays by the boards. He knows his views on hockey aren’t entirely uncontroversial; he knows he has to keep on winning for the club to continue to let him play his way. But it’s also the only thing he cares about. And there are no winners without losers, no stars are born without others in the collective being sacrificed.
***
David’s one-on-one training is simple: a line of cones is laid out on the ice, from one end all the way to the other, forming a sort of corridor between them and the boards. One defenseman and one forward meet. If the puck leaves the corridor the defenseman wins, so the exercise forces the forward to find a way to get past in a very confined space.
Lars is setting the line up seven or eight yards from the boards, but David tells him to make it even narrower. Lars looks surprised but does as he says, but then David gestures to him to make it even narrower. A couple of the juniors squirm uncomfortably but say nothing. In the end it’s so narrow that it’s only a couple of yards wide, so narrow that Amat doesn’t stand a chance of using his speed against Bobo; there’s nowhere for him to escape, he has to meet him, body to body. Amat, some ninety pounds lighter than Bobo, can see this too. His thighs are screaming with lactic acid when he sets off with the puck. The exercise naturally presupposes a certain sporting distance between attacker and defender, but Bobo gives him none. He comes straight at him and hits him with all his weight. Amat lands on the ice like a sack of flour. Loud laughter from the bench. David gives a slight gesture to indicate that they should do it again.
“Stand up like a man!” Lars shouts.
Amat adjusts his helmet. Tries to breathe normally. Bobo approaches faster this time, Amat’s vision goes black for a moment, and when he opens his eyes again over by the boards he’s not quite sure how he ended up there. He can’t hear the laughter from the bench anymore, just a muffled echo in his ears. He gets to his feet and collects the puck. Bobo slams him in the chest with his stick. It’s like hitting a low-hanging branch at full speed.
“Get up!” Lars roars.
Amat crawls to his knees. There’s blood dripping from his mouth. He realizes he must have bitten his lip or tongue, or both. Bobo is leaning over him, but no longer cruelly. Almost concerned this time. A glimpse of sympathy in his eyes. Or at least humanity.
“What the hell, Amat...? Just lie there. Don’t you get it, this is what David wants? This is why you’re here?”
Amat glances toward the bench. David is standing there with his arms folded, calmly waiting. Even Lars looks concerned now. And only then does Amat realize what Bobo means. The only thing that matters to David is winning, and only teams with self-confidence win big games. So what do you do the day before the biggest game ever? You let them bulldoze something weaker. Amat isn’t here as a player—he’s here as a sacrifice.
“Just stay lying down,” Bobo tells him.
Amat disobeys him.
“Again,” he whispers, his thighs trembling.
When Bobo doesn’t reply, Amat hits the ice with his stick and roars:
“AGAIN!!!”
He shouldn’t have done that. The whole bench hears him. He hasn’t given Bobo a choice. The back’s eyes darken.
“Okay. Whatever you want. Stupid idiot.”
Amat sets off, Bobo waits toward the center, forcing him out toward the boards, and as Amat skates Bobo ignores the puck altogether and goes straight for his body. Amat’s head hits the boards, he collapses onto the ice, and it takes him ten seconds before he can even get to his knees.
“Again?” Bobo growls through gritted teeth.
Amat doesn’t answer. He leaves a small trail of blood behind him as he goes over to the far blue line, collects the puck, and straightens up. He sees Bobo’s body tense as he circles threateningly across the bear in the center circle and into the corridor of cones to put an end to this, once and for all. “Like a man,” Amat thinks to himself. Like a man.
He shouldn’t have the energy to take off the way he does. He ought to refuse to skate straight at Bobo after the beating he’s taken. But at a certain point in a person’s life you either sink or swim, and nothing really matters anymore. What else could they do to him now beyond this? Fuck them. Bobo heads toward him at full speed, but at the very last instant Amat doesn’t stand up like a man, he folds himself double. When he sees Bobo’s skates change angle he slips the puck between them and nimbly spins his body out of and away from the check.
In one stride he’s past Bobo, in two he’s caught up with the puck, in three he’s inside the offensive zone. He hears Bobo crash into the boards behind him, but now he only has eyes for the goalie. He pulls the puck off to the right, left, right, and waits for the goalie to move sideways, waits, waits, waits, and when he finally sees the goalie’s skates tilt a quarter of an inch he shoots midskate into the opposite corner. Against the flow.
***
A lion among bears.
***
Bobo sets off in blind fury, all the way from the other side of the rink. He’s one of the worst skaters on the team, but when he reaches Amat with his stick raised he still has enough speed and weight-advantage to put the boy in the hospital. Bobo doesn’t hear the sound of skates approaching rapidly from off to one side behind him, so the pain in his jaw when the shoulder hits it is jarring.
Amat slumps in exhaustion some distance away, untouched. Bobo lies on his back on the ice, blinking up at the lights as Benji’s face leans over him.
“That’s enough, Bobo,” he says.
Bobo nods stiffly. Benji helps him up and then ruefully rubs his own shoulder.
***
The sound of a puck hitting the net can be the most wonderful sound in the world when you’re fifteen. When you’re thirty-two as well.
“Write him up for tomorrow,” David says as he leaves the bench.
When the juniors head off to the locker room, Amat is still lying on the ice. Lars’s voice reaches him through a milky haze:
“Gather up the pucks and cones. I usually tell the guys that there’s a fuck-embargo the night before a game, but there’s no chance of you getting a fuck so just lay off the wanking, because you’re playing tomorrow.”
It takes the boy an hour to half crawl, half stagger to the locker room. It’s empty. The heating has been switched off. His shoes have been shredded and his clothes are lying soaking wet on the floor of the shower. It’s the best day of his life.