Chapter 11 Hájek
The cafeteria has fourteen types of protein. I counted.
In Czech league, we had chicken and sometimes fish.
Here there is chicken in four preparations, two kinds of fish, beef, turkey, something called a "power bowl" that contains grains I cannot identify, and a smoothie station with a menu longer than some restaurant menus back home.
The nutrition staff has printed cards explaining macronutrients in three languages. Czech is not one of them.
I take the chicken and rice because chicken and rice is the same in any country, and I find our table.
The rookie table. My table, which is a strange thing to feel attached to after less than a week, but here I am, attached to a table in a cafeteria in a city I had to look up on a map four months ago.
Everything in this country is enormous. The rink is enormous.
The cafeteria is enormous. The trucks in the parking lot are enormous.
The volume in the locker room would register on seismic equipment.
In Brno, our locker room was small enough that you could hear someone's phone buzz from across the room.
Here I cannot hear the person next to me unless he is yelling, and he usually is.
Novák finds me after lunch, which is a thing he does now. He came to North America two years before me, for college, and knows things I don't yet. Which coaches want you early and which don't care. Where the good coffee is. That you don't sit in a veteran's stall, ever, even if it looks empty.
"The defensemen's meeting is in room C, not room B," he says, falling into step beside me. "Room B is goaltenders today. You don't want to walk in on Soucy's pre-meeting routine."
"What is his routine?"
"I don't know and neither do you. That's the point."
This is how Novák helps. He doesn't explain everything. He gives me enough to not embarrass myself and lets me figure out the rest. He is someone who walks ahead of you on an unfamiliar path and kicks the rocks out of the way without making a big deal about it. There should be a word for that.
The afternoon practice is a full scrimmage, the first real one of camp. Coaches split us into two squads and let us play. I am on the blue line with Campbell, who is quiet and reliable and communicates in short phrases I can follow. "I got him." "Switch." "Go." This is a language I speak fluently.
The game itself is faster than anything in Czech league.
The forwards are bigger, the cycles are harder, and the ice feels smaller because everyone closes space so fast. For the first three shifts I'm a half step behind, reading instead of reacting, my brain translating what I see into what I should do with a delay that costs me positioning.
Then it settles. Somewhere in the middle of the second period the thinking stops and the playing starts, and my body remembers that I've been doing this since I was eight on the outdoor rink behind my grandfather's house. The ice doesn't care what language I speak.
I get a shift on the power play, top of the umbrella.
The puck comes to me at the point and I have a decision.
I can shoot, which is safe and expected.
Or I can sell the shot and thread a seam pass to Marchetti, who is cheating toward the net with his stick on the ice.
The lane is there for maybe a second, a window between the penalty killer's stick and the goalie's sight line.
I take the pass. The puck goes tape to tape. Marchetti buries it so fast the goalie doesn't move.
Marchetti points at me on his way back to the bench. I nod because I don't trust myself to say the right English words in this moment and also because my heart is going so fast I might not be able to speak at all. A power play goal in an NHL scrimmage. My first one.
After the shift, I'm on the bench catching my breath when Kowalski leans over from the forward group.
"Nice dish, Hájek." He glances down the bench toward where Ikonen is sitting, watching the play, and then looks back at me with his eyebrows up. "Did you see that? Cap gave you the nod."
I look, but Ikonen's attention is back on the ice. I missed it.
"Trust me," Kowalski says. "He doesn't do that for just anyone. That's like getting a standing ovation from a statue." He claps my shoulder and turns back to watch the scrimmage.
I sit on the bench and let the moment exist. A goal. A nod from the captain that I didn't see but someone else did, which somehow makes it mean more.
After practice, Asher finds me in the hallway. I don't know how he does this. He has a way of appearing next to people at the exact moment they need someone to appear, like a warm, tall compass that points toward whoever is standing alone.
"Hájek." He says my name the way he says everyone's name, like he practiced it to make sure he gets it right, not realizing that he could mispronounce it a thousand ways and I would still answer. "That seam pass on the power play. You see ice like that all the time or was that a special occasion?"
"I see it," I say. "In Czech league also. The pass, this I can do."
"Yeah, you can." He grins. "Hey, you settling in okay? City treating you all right?"
"The city is very hot. And very big."
"It is both of those things." His grin gets bigger, if that is even possible.
"And there are many types of chicken."
He laughs, bright and open, as if I've told a real joke. Maybe I have. "Welcome to America, man. If you need anything, restaurant recommendations, help getting around, whatever. I'm here."
He claps my shoulder, the same way he does with everyone, and moves on. I stand in the hallway and feel slightly less far from home than I did ten minutes ago.
That evening I want to call my mother, but it's three in the morning in Brno. The time difference is a thing I understand in theory and hate in practice. Six hours means I finish dinner when she's asleep and I wake up when she's at work. The overlapping window is small, and I keep missing it.
My apartment is quiet in a way that Brno never was.
No trams outside the window, no neighbors arguing about parking through thin walls, no sounds I recognize.
I eat leftover chicken, the same chicken from the cafeteria, and think about the outdoor rink behind my grandfather's house where the ice was rough and the boards were just snowbanks and the floodlights were two lamps my uncle wired to a generator.
The game was the same. Smaller, colder, mine. I miss it.
My phone buzzes. Davis in our text thread, the loose one we created the first day of camp. Davis named it "Fresh Meat".
Anybody free tomorrow? Off day. Was thinking we could explore the city. Or at least find food that isn't from the cafeteria.
Mueller responds in seconds.
I'm in. Where?
Novák
Somewhere with air conditioning.
Yes. I would like this.
Mueller asks if he should bring anything. Novák says "your passport, in case we get lost and end up in Alabama." I send a thumbs up and then, after a pause, a chicken emoji, because I don’t know what else to say.
I set the phone down and think about how I am in this apartment in this enormous city in this enormous country where I am far from home and missing my mother and still full of a feeling that I think might be hope.
Four guys who didn't know each other a week ago are making plans to spend their day off together.
None of us has anywhere else to be, and that's the whole reason, and it's enough.
Tomorrow we explore. Tonight I lie in the quiet and let the homesickness sit where it sits and try not to fight it, because Novák told me once that the missing doesn't go away, you just learn to carry it while you're doing other things, and he would know.