Bryan Gruley - Starvation lake

He stood. “As for the various other ways we’ve approached the game, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to apologize.” His smile melted slowly away. “I’m going to be a little bit blunt with you now, folks. Please don’t take it personally. I really love this town and the lake and how you’ve all welcomed me here. And I love your boys, every one of them, even the one- especially the one I had to cut from the roster.” He was moving slowly around the room now, looking at each parent, one by one. “I don’t come from here. Don’t have kids of my own. So I don’t have all that-that emotion you have tied up in watching your kids. I think I can be a little impartial, if you know what I mean. I’ve won a few championships in my time, and I think I know what it takes.”

“Come on, Jack, we all want to win,” Champagne piped up. “But why do we need players from Timbuktu to do it?”

Coach steepled his hands beneath his chin. “Good question. Here’s the answer.” He paused. “Because the players we have aren’t good enough.” He waited in the silence that followed, which was more awkward for the parents than for him. Then he repeated it: “Because the players we have aren’t good enough. I’m sorry, folks. We have a few guys who are fast enough, or skilled enough. We have one boy who can skate with anyone in Michigan.” I elbowed Soupy in the ribs. “We have another who’s going to be the best stand-up goalie this town has ever seen.” Soupy shoved me back, and Stevie Reneau smacked me on the back of the head. “And we have a few other good players in Starvation Lake. But we don’t have enough. Not if we want to reach the ultimate goal.”

He let the phrase linger on the air, as he had with us. He’d never used it on the parents before. As if on cue, Champagne finally said, “And what would the ultimate goal be?”

“Well,” Coach said, “why don’t I have your sons tell you?” He looked in our direction. “Boys?”

After practice earlier that afternoon, Coach had placed a cardboard box in the middle of our dressing room floor. We’d watched as he sliced it open with a pocketknife, reached in, and pulled out something wrapped in clear plastic that he held up for us to see. “What do you think, boys?” Inside the plastic was a shiny blue jacket with gold stripes on the collar and cuffs, and gold piping along the sleeves. A River Rats logo was stitched over the right breast and a player’s name-“Stevie” this one read-over the left. We all jumped up, oohing and ahhing. “The ultimate ultimate,” Soupy said. We’d never had team jackets before. Coach had told us to stow them in our hockey bags until the parents’ meeting.

Now the seventeen of us filed into the snack bar in our new jackets, as Coach had told us beforehand. It was the parents’ turn to ooh and ahh. We formed a tight semicircle around Coach, Soupy and I on either side of him, again as he had instructed. He laid his hands gently on our shoulders. Surveying the room, I saw my mother smiling from her table. She’d probably known about the jackets ahead of time.

“Gus,” he said. “Can you tell the folks here, what is the ultimate goal?”

All the parents’ eyes were on me. I stuffed my hands in my jacket pockets and blurted, “To win one game, Coach.”

“Just one, Gus?”

“Yes, Coach.”

Champagne snorted. “One game?”

“Why don’t you let him finish, Don?” It was the voice of Francis Dufresne, who was leaning on a vending machine in the back of the room. Dufresne didn’t have children, but he never missed one of our games. The bar he owned, Enright’s, ran a shuttle bus to the rink on game nights.

“Gus,” Coach said. “What is that one game?”

I gave the answer. A few parents seemed to sit up straighter. Coach turned to Soupy. “Alden. Is the ultimate goal to win all the games?”

“No, Coach.”

“Why not all the games, Alden?”

“Because losing is good for winning, Coach.”

“Say again?”

“Losing is good for winning, Coach.”

“This is ridiculous,” Champagne shouted.

“Boys,” Coach said, looking around at us, “how many games are we aiming to win?”

“One, Coach,” we answered in unison.

“And that game is?”

“The state championship, Coach.”

“Hear, hear,” Dufresne said. He’d moved away from the vending machine to hover over the sitting parents, a short man in a black leather jacket who seemed to take up more space than he actually did. “The best damn town in the state of Michigan ought to be able to prove it’s the best at the best damn sport there is.” He raised a fist to the level of his shoulder. “We’ve been doing this for, what, twenty years? We’ve got someone here who’s telling us what it takes. It’s time to stop whining and do it.”

Lenny Ziolkowski, the father of Paul “Zilchy” Ziolkowski, stood. Mr. Ziolkowski played poker on Friday nights with Coach, Leo Redpath, Soupy’s dad, and a few other dads at Blackburn’s cabin. “Jack’s got a tough job,” he said. “We ought to give him the room to do it, unless someone here thinks they can do a better job.” He glared momentarily at Champagne. “We’re not out there on the ice with him, but our boys are, and the boys sure seem to like him.”

I looked up at Coach then. I saw a spark in his eye I’d never seen before, a spark like the one I saw in the eyes of shooters bearing down on my net. It wasn’t there long, and it scared me at first, but the fear didn’t last, because I knew Coach was on my side.

“Folks,” he said. “Tell you what. I cut a boy from the team yesterday. Maybe I got a little ahead of myself. I’d like to restore him to the roster, effective immediately. I can’t guarantee he’ll play a whole lot, but he’ll have every chance to earn it.” He looked directly at Don Champagne now. “If you’ll get me the right size, I’ll order Jeff a jacket first thing tomorrow.”

Champagne just nodded. Then I saw my mother waving her hand. “Yes, Mrs. Carpenter?” Coach said.

My mother talked fast, and I worried she’d say something nobody would understand. But it was clear enough. “I would just like to say, I don’t know about anybody else, but I think the boys look just adorable in their jackets.”

“Adorable?” Dufresne cried out. “Bea, we don’t want adorable hockey players.”

“Oh, all right, Francis, wonderful then or-oh, I don’t know!” She started to clap, and then Dufresne started clapping, and pretty soon the whole room, even Champagne, was applauding. By the time the meeting ended, Coach had persuaded the parents to chip in for a new skate-sharpening machine, and Dufresne had offered to organize a committee that would investigate installing new benches in the dressing rooms.

That Sunday, Coach came to dinner at our house. Mom made fried pork chops and baked potatoes with gravy. We didn’t talk about the Rats at first, but Mom finally asked how he thought the meeting had gone. Coach shrugged as he reached for a bowl of peas and carrots. “You know, Bea?” he said. “It’s like I always say. They don’t care how. All they care is how many.”

It was late in our fourth full season that we finally proved ourselves. By then we were whipping all the teams up north and had beaten some good squads from as far downstate as Ann Arbor. But the Detroiters still had our number.

Griffin Hawks, a team from the suburbs west of Detroit, came up for a pair of weekend games. Friday night we blew a 2–0 lead to lose 4–2. There were tears in the dressing room afterward. We’d never come so close to beating a Detroit team. Coach normally would’ve told us hockey wasn’t for crybabies and ordered us to listen up, eh, here’s how we gave up those last two goals. But on this night he just stood by the door, hands folded behind his back. When we’d all gotten our clothes on and our bags packed, he raised his arms for silence.