Page 30 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Shoot.
I head toward Sutton Arena.
After slipping through the side entrance, I sink into the seats and try my best to fade into the scattered crowd.
Beckett is center ice, on one knee, adjusting a kid’s stance, showing him just the right way to make the shot.
My heart hitches.
He’s doing Coach’s thing. The patient nudge. The quiet correction. My father’s gentleness, learned on this ice, passed forward to another gap-toothed kid on the same scarred surface. The inheritance of warmth from a man who could teach it to strangers but couldn’t figure out how to bring it home.
The kid fires a pass, Beckett pretends to miss it, and the kid’s face detonates with joy so pure it should be classified as a controlled substance. Beckett laughs, and the sound carries through the stands, hits me like a puck to the heart.
This is definitely a bad idea.
I watch longer than I should. Cataloging every moment, every laugh and smile, every time he kneels down to get on eye level with the tiny humans who want to be just like him.
Finally, I tear my eyes away and climb the bleachers to the left side, third row from the top.
Our spot. Dad’s and mine.
The bleacher is scarred and splintered, the wood gone soft with age. I run my hand along the seat, feeling for it—and there it is, under my fingertips, carved into the grain with a pocketknife by a man who was better with a whiteboard marker than a blade:
Hart was here
He carved it the winter I was ten. Tuesday morning, early, before anyone arrived.
What are you doing, Dad?
Leaving proof.
Proof of what?
That we were here. You and me. So if you ever forget, you can come back and check.
I trace the H with my finger, and my throat closes like a fist. I don’t cry, because crying at Sutton Arena is something I’ve only done twice before—once at eleven, once at thirteen—and I swore an oath.
The exhibition winds down. The crowd thins. The stands empty until it’s just me and the Zamboni making its final pass—erasing every mark, smoothing every scar, turning the ice back into a blank page. Saying goodbye.
I should leave.
Instead, I pull out my laptop.
I open Ice Cold Heart. Earbuds in.
My fingers find the keys.
And hallelujah, just like that, I’m back. The block breaks.
BECKETT
The mechanical hum of the Zamboni fills the tunnel, echoes off the wall for one final run. Why they even bother is beyond me—but then again, same could be said for our little send-off scrimmage. It wouldn’t be right to leave the ice like that.
Sweat still mists my neck, turning cold with the artificial chill in the air as I lean against the tunnel wall, watching the Zamboni paint over the ice. My duffel sits at my feet, the old one fraying at the seams—yeah, all right, I’m a little sentimental.
My other hand wraps around a puck, worn down from years of play. I know come Monday, this place is getting torn down to the studs. I set the puck on the sideboard, standing it on end, face out. An ode to the lost, like a glass turned down, everything poured out.
You had a good run, buddy.
