This is not a good hockey story. If you want a really good hockey story, read SA Penn Lady or MugsyB ("The true North, strong and free"). This story was written because it hurts if I don't write it, and also so I don't have to write any more of Ch 2 of "A New Birth of Freedom". Any excuse will do. This story has homophobic and anti-Semitic language, which mirrors the world, not me.
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Zec Pribl didn't hear the siren, and barely saw the red lights flashing. He hung his head, exhausted, long past seeing or caring. Five brutal playing minutes, with only two TV timeouts and the stoppage caused by his goal (second of a worthless season, whoop-de-fucking-do), against possibly the greatest Montreal Canadiens team ever, had worn him out.
His helmet fell to the ice, bouncing off the tip of his skates; his feet had no more feeling, although maybe he'd broken a toe again (if he had, it was time number thirteen that he could remember). He dropped his gloves, a reflex, but kept hold of his stick.
Never drop your stick unless it's broken, let them pry it out of your cold dead hands
, he thought.
They were done skating off the ice, the pride of Atlantic Canada, the hands that held high the torch from McRae's poem in the old Forum. "To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high." When he was young, when life could still be beautiful for a kid from Sydney Mines going to play in the National Hockey League, when he could still dream without sneering, those words were his heartbeat. He would hold high the torch.
Well, here he was, fifteen years later. And there was no fucking Torch.
The holders of The Torch had beaten his Islanders 5 to 1, and it was only because their stars were short-shifting to avoid injury that it wasn't 25 to 1. Piotr Shevstoff was as near to goalie perfection as an imperfect world would allow. If the Isles had five shots on goal it was more than their average lately, and Shevstoff turned each aside without even a sneer, as sneering would merely demean him.
Zec's goal in the third period was the stuff of slapstick comedy; a desperation clearing pass from Joe Antonelli ricocheted off the skate of George Bigginhill, the Canadiens' second-best right winger, a transplant from the Coventry Blaze of the UK Elite League, and onto Zec's stick. Zec, dropping his hold on Hypolite De Comminges' stick, hoping the linesmen, ref, and the ubiquitous TV cameramen hadn't spotted him, started up ice from deep in the zone. Zec managed to get around Suicide Syd (Norris Trophy shoo-in Sydney Mines Blake, another refugee from Sydney Mines--the poor bastard was named for the fucking place), how Zec would never know, as Zec was dragging his lead-loaded ass up ice. Maybe Syd was too busy laughing, or calculating what his next salary demand would be after Norris Trophy Number Three. Then Zec was alone, scuffling his skates like a beginner, closing in on Piotr the Great.
He couldn't juke or stick-handle. His left foot slipped, Piotr thought Zec might actually have learned a fake and dove right, and Zec blasted the puck high on the glove side. The red light went on. The siren went off. The scoreboard above the rink lit up, and the few hundred masochists who paid to watch this farce (or got given tickets by others less masochistically inclined) and remained in the Coliseum, gave some thin cheers.
Zec was glad to breathe. The goal didn't matter. The Islanders would lose their eleventh straight home game, and thirteenth over-all.
And goals weren't Zec's job. Zec was an enforcer. His job was to instigate fights, incur penalties, take away scoring chances, be the bullyboy, the tough guy. He had gone back fighting with his face masked with blood again and again. His blood had reddened the ice of every garden, coliseum, stadium in the league. And he had reddened that ice with other blood, damn fucking right he had, every fucking chance he got.
And when no decent team would keep him, he wound up in the falling-apart Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Christ Jesus help the poor fucking veterans if that was the best they could do for them!
But his real job was to protect the has-beens, never-wases and never-would-bes that now wore the Blue and Orange, a pathetic lot, now turning into clown clothes the uniforms that had once adorned the greats.
That motherfucker turned cocksucker, Assistant Coach Mick McRafferty, kept him on the ice for five whole minutes, after he'd played twenty of the previous forty. Head Coach Dengton Molleson, nominally in charge of line changes, was, as usual, in a semi-stupor. Dented Dengton never met a bottle he didn't like, and the squeeze bottle behind the bench, reserved for Coach, was full of vodka--at the start of the third period, anyway. By now it was fucking empty and sucked drier than a tit.
Zec would have cursed out Mick, but realized it would do no good. The team would either be sold or go bankrupt. He and the rest of them would be sold for scrap if anyone was dumb enough to want any of them.
He was still looking at the ice, long after his own team had left, long after the PA announcer bade the fans a safe trip home, and had been greeted with obscenities. Once you could have brought your children to the Coliseum, and they wouldn't have heard a word they wouldn't have heard in Church. Now, it was an aural pigsty.
One drunken fan came lurching down to the glass beside him. "Pribl, you're a cocksucker. C'mere and suck my cock!" The man gestured to his fly. Zec took the stick, pried the glass loose, and spat the mucus that gripped his throat straight into the man's face. "Go fuck your mother, asshole, if you can find the whorehouse she's in," he replied.
Fortunately the refs and linesmen were gone, and the TV cameramen too. The fine would have been more than he could afford. The drunk looked at him stupidly, and started to cry. Zec felt like he wanted to cry, too.
He went to the locker room, which was its usual filthy self. The hot water was mostly gone. Jupey, the equipment manager's subassistant, remained, reading a porn mag. Zec gave him his equipment and, stepping carefully around the debris that hadn't been cleaned in two days, went to the shower. He didn't care about the cold water, or that the whirlpool was still broken.
He got minimally clean, dressed, and used the office phone (strictly off-limits to players, but he didn't care) to call a taxi to take him home to Mineola. "Home" for Zec was a co-op apartment that he kept out of foreclosure by paying some interest and keeping the rent current, after the guy from whom he'd rented it decamped with Zec's security deposit.
The New York Islanders Hockey Club, L.P., had been sold six years ago to a bunch of Jews from Palm Beach, who needed something to boast about at the club besides how much money they made with their special friend Bernie Madoff. When their special friend got through with them, their special enemy Irving Picard started in. Most of them were bankrupt in all but name, but their obligation for salaries and rent would strip them bare, so they hung on. And only a sale of the franchise might ever get them even.
They'd sold every player worth anything, sold every high-round draft pick, kept Molleson on as Coach because he was cheap, and McRafferty because he could coach a little when Molleson was in the bag, which was pretty fucking near always. They didn't run giveaways or promotions, and the fan base, if you could call it that, was beneath contempt.
The taxi showed up. The driver wanted to talk hockey, so Zec practiced saying "Un huh" and "yeah", and gave him the minimal tip. The driver started to whine, so Zec threatened to bust his fucking ass. The driver recognized Zec and left in a hurry.
To sleep, perchance to dream, or to eat, perchance to belch? Let's try food, but first, a wee dram. He walked from the co-op down to Partners' on Willis off Third Street. It was late, maybe 10:45, but they might still have something.
As he reached the door, he saw them. The guy was beating up on someone, pushed against the wall, and his two friends were egging him one. "C'mon, Billy, whack that dyke!" "Yeah, man, beat her queer ass!"
The girl was bleeding, he could see that much. One or two people left the bar, but they were clearly wearing their "I ain't gettin' involved" shirts.
Zec was angry. He was always angry, but now he was really angry. He didn't like queers, although he roomed on the road with Duncan Lytle, the goalie, a bear of a man (in more ways than one), who, it was said, "swallowed more hot cum than you swallowed cold Molson". But Dunc kept his lifestyle to himself, along with his .882 GA.
Zec socked the first egger-on with a beautiful left sucker punch on the upper lip and nose, buckling the guy's knees and sending the blood cascading down his jacket. The second guy turned and reached for what looked like a gun. Zec knocked his hand upwards and jabbed two fingers at his eyes. As the guy screamed and covered his face, Zec pushed him against the beater, who had turned toward him, cursing. Zec pushed the two of them into the wall, grabbed the blinded guy by the hair and slammed his head into the wall twice, then lifted his foot and crashed the heel of his boot across the other man's instep, breaking it. Another scream. The first guy, the beater, raised his hands: "I give! No more!"
Zec took the girl away from the wall. Her nose was bloody, she had bruises on her face and neck, and she was growing two lovely black eyes. She was heavy, a candidate for membership in the Great American Obesity Epidemic, big shapeless tits, black short hair and a thin mouth, out of character with the rest of her face. One eye had closed up, the other was dark brown under the bruising.
Zec turned back to the men. "If I see you again, shit, I'll fucking kill you. And if you go for that gun, I will kill you now." The beater was helping his friends. They said nothing.
Zec started the girl walking away. "There's a hospital at the train station. I'll take you there."
"No, no hospital, just get me home."
