Page 105 of The Grumpy Defenseman

The kid looked down at Ranger. “Is that your dog?”

“This is Ranger.”

Ranger accepted the introduction by sitting on my boot.

The kid grinned. “He looks like he knows stuff.”

“He thinks he does.”

His mother laughed softly then, the tension leaving her.

The kid dug in his backpack and came out with a folded program, bent at the corners and soft from being handled too much. My face was on the cover of some community-night giveaway two seasons ago.

“Could you sign it?”

I took the pen from his mother and signed my name across the white space by my shoulder.

“What’s your name?”

“Mateo.”

I added it above the signature.

For Mateo. Keep your head up.

He read it like I had handed him something breakable.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You play?”

“Defense.”

“Good,” I said. “The world needs more responsible people.”

His mother gave me another smile, warmer this time, and steered him toward their car. Mateo looked back once and waved.

Ranger watched them go, then looked up at me like the stop had served its purpose.

Maybe it had.

I stood there for another second with the leash in my hand and the highway moving behind me. A kid at a rest stop. A bent program. Ranger’s weight against my leg. None of it was worth $89,000,000.

Still, somehow, not nothing.

I got Ranger back into the truck, set my phone facedown, and pulled onto the highway.

A few miles later, he sighed and went to sleep.

The Clearfield Municipal Rink had been painted twice since I had last seen it.

Same tan brick underneath. Same parking lot with the long crack running diagonal to the entrance, repaired once and split again because the freeze-thaw never agreed with the concrete; maintenance crews kept patching it anyway.

I pulled into a space near the door and sat for a second with the engine off.

It was nine-forty. The marquee by the road still read PUBLIC SKATE SAT 1-3 in magnetic letters that had not been changed on Tuesdays since 1994. Somebody had taken the K out of HOCKEY on the side of the building and never put it back.

I told Ranger to stay. Got out. Walked across the lot with my hands in my jacket pockets and something tight in the back of my throat.