20. Nolan
Chapter twenty
Nolan
Before the game, my teammates surrounded me with private rituals, each performed to perfection.
Misha set his carved bears on the top ledge of his stall. Then he kissed the head of the second bear from the left.
Wes went man to man, one sentence each, working the room alphabetically. Anderson came first.
Brick was eating a sandwich: sardines and mustard. He swore it was non-negotiable on days that mattered most, and with his mouth full, he offered me a bite. I declined; the smell of fish blended with the ever-present locker room funk.
Jamie was in the next stall, re-taping a stick. I sat on the bench beside him.
"How do you feel, kid?"
"Good." He stared at the blade. "I feel ready. This is what we dream about, right?" He smiled. "I'm excited to get out there."
Elias stood at the doorway, lanyard on, watching. He caught my eye and tipped his head toward the ice—go win a hockey game. I tipped mine back—go be a bodyguard. Neither of us said it out loud. We didn't have to.
The noise was there as soon as we stepped onto the ice, and it never let up. There was a hush during the anthem, but as soon as it ended, the sustained roar began again.
Boston came out heavy, and their big winger dialed in by the ten-minute mark. He started finishing a half-second late and low, driving against my hip on purpose, testing whether I'd fold.
I was re-tying my skate laces and didn't see the first goal go in. Boston was a good team, and good teams score. Their goal quieted our crowd for the first time in the game.
In the room between periods one and two, the strips over my temple began to itch. That instantly brought it all back—wet grass, gravel, and the fall. Then the buzzer sounded, and I put it all away and skated onto the ice.
We tied the game eight minutes into the second.
Their goalie did what I told Elias he'd do. He dropped early with Jamie closing fast. Jamie held back and slid the puck across the crease to Wes, who buried it into three feet of open net.
The riverboat whistle blew, and the entire building moved. It was a shudder in the bones of the place. Jamie yelled something into Wes's shoulder, and Brick banged the boards with both gloves. The ref stood at center ice holding the puck, waiting the noise out.
It was a tie game, and I skated to the bench at the next whistle. When I got there, I did my usual scan, looking for Elias at the pillar just past the camera well.
He wasn't there.
Doyle's men were where they always were. The camera well was full.
He walks around, I told myself. That's part of the job: checking exits and sightlines.
I checked the pillar again at the next shift change. He still wasn't there.
Petey crouched into the space behind my shoulder and spoke low, directly into my ear.
"Doyle can't raise your guy. He's missed two check-ins. The radio's live but he's not answering it. Last anybody saw him he was headed down the northeast service level. It was fifteen minutes ago. They're looking. Doyle figured you'd want to know."
The game kept going. Somebody iced the puck. The whistle blew, and the linesman skated it back the length of the ice. I sat there with my water bottle in my hand and every cell in my body screaming the same thing.
Go!
I knew the northeast service level. I'd killed many game-day afternoons exploring the guts of the building because walking around was easier on the hip than sitting still.
I knew where the caterers propped their door.
I also knew where the ice plant swallowed sound so completely that you could stand ten feet from someone and not hear them.
I was six seconds from the tunnel. I could be down there before Doyle's men finished checking the loading dock.
Ty stood in a hallway once while I held a bucket of ice, and I told myself somebody else would handle it. Ray Halloran dialed my number nine times while I signed jerseys. I knew what could happen when I did nothing.
The whistle blew for the face-off. Coach called my line.
I leaned back. "Petey, tell Doyle: the ice plant. It's the one place in the building where machinery eats the sound. It's where you would take somebody in the building. Go."
I went over the boards, and Petey left the box.
Twenty seconds into the shift, Boston drew a penalty on Brick, and when the whistle came, Coach kept me out for the penalty kill.
I blocked a shot with my good leg, but I couldn't get the ice plant out of my mind.
The ribs screamed, but we successfully killed the penalty.
The horn ended the power play, and I got back to the bench with nothing left in either lung.
Petey was back, waiting behind my shoulder.
"They're in," he said. "He's alive."
That was all he said. Not he's okay. I only knew he wasn't dead.
It was enough to get me through the rest of the period.
The second intermission is eighteen minutes long. I'd never endured a longer eighteen minutes in my life.
The room was quiet. Guys changed gloves, retaped, and drank. The coaches came in and drew one adjustment on the whiteboard.
I sat in Vern's stall wearing a fresh undershirt with a heat pack pressed against the hip. I watched the clock over the door count down and hung onto the word alive.
Brick lowered himself onto the bench next to me. He had a skate on his knee and worked at a lace that didn't need attention.
"You've checked the tunnel nine times since we came in," he said. "It's about the tall guy?"
"Something happened under the stands." I kept my voice low. "Doyle's people got to him. He's alive. That's all I know."
Brick was quiet for a second. "You're still here," he said.
"I'm still here."
"Okay then." He put the skate on. "Twenty minutes. We win this thing, and then you go find out what's going on. Focus out there. You're no good to him or the rest of us at half-speed." He knocked his shoulder into mine once. "Forty years. I can taste it."
Down the bench, Jamie was talking to Misha with his hands, demonstrating a play, and Misha watched patiently. The kid's hands were steady. He was dialed in.
The buzzer went. Misha stood, touched one bear on the head with a gloved finger, and led us down the tunnel.
The third period of a tied Game Seven is the longest hour in hockey, and I played it split down the middle.
As the period unfolded, nobody came with more news about Elias. I knew Petey would return if everything went south.
We won it at 9:14 of the third.
It started as nothing, a puck rolling up the wall on our power play that Wes flattened at the line.
I skated to the front of the net and stood there.
Their defenseman checked into my strapped ribs like he'd seen an x-ray and knew precisely where to hit.
I planted my skates and took it. Wes walked two feet left, and I tied up their defenseman's stick so he couldn't clear the lane.
I never saw the puck. I heard it. The riverboat whistle blew and twenty thousand people yelled at once. Wes climbed on my back, yelling something I never made out.
Two-one. We had ten and a half minutes to work off the clock, but that was the easier job.
Boston came in waves. Misha stood his ground and refused to let anything pass. With 1:54 left, their goalie sprinted for the bench, and Coach called me in for the last shift assignment of my career.
I won the face-off in our zone. They cycled, and I blocked a point shot with my good leg.
The puck squirted loose with thirty seconds left, and Jamie chipped it the length of the ice. Twenty thousand people counted it down—ten, nine—and the horn cut them off at zero.
Then the riverboat whistle.
Not three blasts. It came on long and low and didn't stop, the deep-water sound the building had been taught to wait for, and it ran past the point where a win would have let it go.
The last time it had run like this, the men whose banners hung in the rafters were young.
Some of them were in the building for a new Cup victory.
The team piled on Misha, gloves and sticks raining down. Jamie went airborne. Brick skated circles with his arms out, and under all of it the whistle held, and held.
I turned away from the pile. Confetti rained down on the ice. My heart pounded, and the whistle was still going.
Elias came up the north tunnel.
He was walking under his own power. Doyle had a man on either side, neither of them touching him. He had a forearm wrapped in gauze, with blood dried at the knuckles. He scanned the arena, and when he found me, he jogged in my direction.
Every lens in North America was pointed at that ice, and I knew they wouldn't stay on the expected pile of hockey players.
They would focus on the alternate captain of the Stanley Cup champions skating past his team and past the Cup itself, coming out on a cart.
They would show me dropping my gloves and my stick before I wrapped a battered man in my arms, holding him to my chest.
They could have it. I'd spent fourteen years trying to make sure my story got told my way. This story told itself.
"You're late," Elias said. "I handled it."
"You did not."
"No." He placed his good hand on the back of my neck. "Somebody sent them to the ice plant. He'd said that's where they'd hold me." The hand tightened. "Nolan, you told them."
"I was on the bench."
"You answered when they asked."
He didn't say anything else, and neither did I.
The team carried the Cup over to me a minute later.
Wes handed it over, and I carried it in one slow lap around the ice.
I found Eileen Danaher standing behind the glass.
She had both hands pressed flat against it.
I raised the Cup to her, and the old veterans from 1986 stood up around her one at a time.
***
Three nights later, Misha hosted the poker game. He'd promised it during the rest gap. He wrote his promises in concrete.
The loft looked the same as it had a month ago. Wes was already there when I arrived with Elias at my side. Brick brought Maddie's contribution in a bakery box.