Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

Cranch was curling out of a corner with the puck, his head down, when Tex hit him. Tex’s hard plastic right shoulder pad drove into Cranch’s chin and snapped his head back so hard that his helmet flew off and cracked against the boards. Then Tex grabbed him by the collar of his jersey and flung him to the ice and pummeled his face with punch after punch, opening cuts that would require twenty-four stitches. Cranch was unconscious by the time the two refs and Poppy tore Tex off. Poppy appealed the three-game suspension ordered by the league, to no avail.

After that, the Rats were never the same, never again the talented but tame youngsters from up north who went into games against the downstate teams hoping merely to stay close and get a bounce or a ref’s call that would help them win late. The Rats began to play in the spirit of the logo they wore on their jerseys: a snarling, snaggle-toothed rodent wielding a hockey stick like a pitchfork.

The fans loved it, our players reveled in it, Poppy and I worried about it. Both of us knew there’s a thin line in hockey between playing tough and playing stupid. If the Rats got a reputation, deserved or not, as dirty players, opposing coaches would whisper to the refs, who would then look for the first chance to whistle us for a hook or an elbow. We didn’t have the depth on our bench or the kind of stand-on-his-head goalie to survive too many penalties.

Because Tex was our best player, we were in even deeper trouble when he went to the penalty box. Yet three times that season, he had taken major penalties of five minutes each because he’d let his temper get the best of him. With Tex sitting uselessly in the box and the Rats forced to play short-handed for long stretches, we had lost all three games.

Mic-Mac, the team we’d face in the state quarterfinal that night, was well aware of Tex’s weakness. They would keep a shadow on him, try to deny him the puck, shove a butt end in his ribs, or give him a face wash with a glove whenever the refs were looking elsewhere, hoping to get him riled, get him to take a penalty, at least get him thinking about something other than taking the puck to the Mic-Mac net.

“OK, gentlemen,” Poppy said. He wore a Rats sweat suit. His head, a tousle of thinning gray, was bare. “What’s the most important thing?”

“The puck,” the Rats answered in unison.

“That’s right-the puck. Because the best defense…”

“Is to have the puck on your stick.”

“If we have the puck, we cannot lose, am I right?”

“Yes sir, Coach.”

“And we move the puck to the open man because…”

“The puck has no lungs.”

“That’s right, the puck never gets tired.” He grabbed his whistle, blew another short blast. “Tex, hang around,” he said. “Everybody else, be back here no later than six-fifteen.”

The Rats scattered. Tex slipped a glove off and held his right hand in front of his face, frowning.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

He showed me the skin between his thumb and forefinger. “Blister,” he said. “On my shooting hand.”

“From breaking your stick in half?”

“Freaking digging.”

“At the camp?”

“Yeah. Bunch of bullshit. That Breck dude is a dick.”

“Whoa there, partner,” Poppy said. “Tape it up and forget it. You’re going to have a big game tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“The Mic-Macs are going to be all over you, trying to get you to do something stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“Yeah, well, listen up.”

Poppy had told me about his plan earlier. It stemmed from his own youth skating for the old Detroit Junior Red Wings. Poppy had been a brawler then, assigned to beat up opposing players who hassled the Junior Wings’ stars, like Gordie Howe’s son Mark. Poppy had some wicked scars on his knuckles to prove it.

If you pushed him, Poppy would talk about those days, but it was clear that he had regrets, that he wished he hadn’t established himself as merely a fighter, a reputation that followed him into the low minor leagues but never propelled him even close to the NHL. Back then, their fighters came from every corner of Canada but never from the United States.

“I want you to keep your cool,” Poppy said. “When you get honked off at some guy for putting his stick up your butt, count to three, call him an asshole, walk away.”

“I can do that.”

“But just in case.” Poppy moved in close to Tex. “Just in case you feel like you can’t hold it in, here’s what I want you to do.”

Tex waited.

“Do not drop your gloves. Do you hear me? Under no circumstances will you drop your gloves. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Instead, if some guy gets you to the point that you’re just dying to blast him, I want you to do this. I want you to hit the guy once, as hard as you can.” Poppy threw a slow fake punch just short of Tex’s face. Tex did not flinch. “Just once. As hard as you can. Then head directly to the penalty box. Do not pass go.”

Tex smiled. “You sure about this, Coach?”

“It ain’t funny, son. I don’t want you to lose it at all out there. I don’t want you in the penalty box. But I’d rather you took a two-minute penalty than something that sits you down longer or gets you tossed.”

“Do you understand, Tex?” I said.

“Yeah. One punch, go to the box.”

“Especially with that Holcomb guy.”

“Pinky?” Tex said. “What a wuss. I’ll take him and-”

“No,” Poppy said. “The point is not to go head-hunting. The point is to stay calm, focus on the puck, but if you feel the dam bursting, you know what to do.”

“OK, Coach.”

“Control yourself. Be a man.”

For some reason I thought of my reporter’s propensity for smashing computers. Whistler, who was forty years older than Tex.

“I’ve got to fix this hand,” Tex said.

As he skated away, Poppy said, “You think he’ll get into it with Pinky?”

“Of course,” I said. “Just a question of how much.”

“God help us. I worry about him up there with all those crazy people. He’s a good kid. Not sure he’s cut out for that.”

“Me either. Listen, Pop, I might be a little late tonight. Got some stuff to take care of.”

He looked taken aback for a second, then said, “Got it. Hey-we’re going to have a moment of silence for Phyllis again, right after the anthem.”

“Great. Ring me between periods, will you?”

“Will do.”

“Don’t forget.”

My phone rang as I was pulling out of the rink parking lot.

“Whistler here,” the caller said. “Got lucky again.”

“With T.J.?”

“Good one. No. With this Nilus guy. My source at the archdiocese is retired, but he remembered him from way back. Said to check a couple of counties for lawsuits. I left a note on your desk. Maybe you want to run them down. Or I can.”

“Lawsuits against Nilus?”

“Concerning Nilus, supposedly, though I doubt he’s the only defendant, because as a priest he wouldn’t have two nickels. The church or the diocese would be the deep pockets.”

“What did he supposedly do?”

“Not sure. The guy was a little squirrelly. Might be nothing-you know, a property dispute or something. Maybe somebody got pissed that he made him say too many Hail Marys.” Whistler laughed at his little joke and, as he laughed, I heard a snatch of music, the opening riff of a Procol Harum song. I imagined him standing outside Enright’s.

“I’ll check it out,” I said. “I found out some interesting stuff myself.”

“Cool. What do you got?”

A snowplow rumbled past, a pair of fluttering River Rats flags attached to the cab windows.

“Not much yet,” I said, “but the clips-well, the headlines-filed downstairs, you know, the morgue, said Nilus was around when some nun disappeared years ago. Then they got the guy who killed her and he got killed in jail.”