Page 26 of Before the Fire
The English is accessible. Short sentences, clear dialogue, words I mostly know and context clues for the ones I don't. The main character is a hockey player, a forward, and within the first chapter he's described his pre-game routine and his relationship with his teammates and I am comfortable in this world because it's my world, just in a different language.
But the hockey is wrong. Not terribly wrong, but wrong in ways I notice. A power play formation that doesn't exist. A description of a slapshot that suggests the author has never seen one. A penalty called for a play that isn't a penalty. I think about Mueller and how he would react to these inaccuracies and almost text him, but I keep reading instead.
In chapter two there is a love interest. And chapter three there has tension. By the end of chapter four, I have forgotten about the bad hockey because I need to know if these two people will figure out what is obvious to everyone around them, and I'm turning pages faster than my English should allow.
I text the rookie chat.
Marchetti gave me a book to help my English. It is about hockey players. There is also romance.
Davis
What kind of romance?
The kind where two people are clearly in love and refuse to admit it. Very frustrating.
Novák
Welcome to fiction.
Mueller
Is the hockey at least good?
No. It is terrible. All wrong.
Mueller
Then why are you reading it?
Because I need to know what happens, Mueller.
I put the phone down and pick the book back up. Outside, Atlanta is doing whatever Atlanta does at eleven at night, which based on my limited experience involves heat and distant trafficand the hum of air conditioning that never stops. Tomorrow, I will tell Marchetti I am on chapter five and watch his face do that pleased thing again.
Chapter 16: Davis
Ikonen tells Mueller "good stick" after a two-on-one drill, and Mueller almost skates into the boards.
It's two words. Ikonen doesn't stop moving, doesn't look back, just says it on his way past like it's nothing. But Mueller pulls up short and stands there with his stick across his knees and this expression on his face like someone just told him he won a contest he didn't know he'd entered. He doesn't move for a full three-count. Then he skates to the back of the line and does the drill again, harder, like he's trying to earn it retroactively.
I've been watching this happen to guys all camp. Ikonen's approval is rare enough that it functions like a highly trafficked illegal substance. One word from him and a player's whole day reorganizes around it. Thompson has been chasing it like a competition he can win through effort. Kowalski got a nod after a penalty kill last week and was visibly pleased for an hour. Meanwhile, it did the opposite to Thompson. The veterans are more subtle about it, but they feel it too. That praise from this man who almost never gives it is significant. You can't earn itby wanting it. You just have to be doing the right thing at the moment he happens to look.
Mueller doesn't know any of this. Mueller doesn't track interpersonal dynamics the way the rest of us do. Which means he has no clue how significant it was, only that the captain gave him a compliment and his chest puffed out a bit and he wants to do the drill again. I find this both endearing and slightly painful to watch.
Practice runs another forty minutes and I am sharp. The positioning, the reads, the way my feet are getting to spots before my brain fully commits to going there. Two weeks of camp have fine-tuned my mechanics. I'm playing faster than I've ever played, and I can see the ice the way I always hoped I would at this level.
The question is whether the coaches see it too.
I watch for signals. Who gets reps on which line. Who the coaches talk to after drills and what their faces look like when they do it. Whether Bodie watches me or watches through me. These are the calculations that every bubble player makes in the last week of camp, and I am absolutely a bubble player, no matter how good my feet feel. Twenty-two years old, undrafted, no pedigree.
This morning there were two more empty stalls. A winger from Manitoba who'd been here since day one and a defenseman who'd been getting third-pair reps all week. Gone. No announcement, no goodbye. Just clean stalls and the rest of us pretending not to count.
Fifty-odd players came to this camp. The roster holds twenty-three. I can do that math in my sleep, and I do, most nights, lying in bed running the numbers like they'll come out different if I calculate them one more time.
After practice I do extra work. Skating drills, edges, transitions. The rink is mostly empty by the time I'm done. Justme and a couple of other guys who are doing the same. We don't talk about it. We just skate and refine.
I shower, change, and head for the cafeteria to grab some dinner before it closes. The hallways are quiet this late. Most of the guys are gone for the day. The building has that emptied-out feeling it gets after five, when the hockey is over and it's just a building again.
I hear him before I see him.
