Steve Hamilton - Winter of the Wolf Moon

Two minutes. That’s how long it took me to realize I had made a big mistake.

The blue team was good. They were big. They were fast. They knew how to play hockey. From the moment the puck was dropped to the ice, they controlled the game. They moved the puck back and forth between them like a pinball, across the blue line, into the corner, back to the point. Once they were in the zone they settled down, took their time with it, waited for the best opportunity. They were like five wolves circling their prey. When the shot came it was nothing more than a dark blur. The center slid across the front of the goal mouth, untouched, taking the puck and with one smooth motion turning it home with a sudden flick of the wrist. It hit the back of the net before the goalie even knew it was coming. Right between his legs. Or as they say on television, right through the five hole.

It was going to be a long night for the goalie on the red team. Which I wouldn’t have minded so much if that goalie hadn’t been a certain forty-eight-year-old idiot who let himself get talked into it.

“It’s a thirty-and-over league,” Vinnie had said. “Every Thursday night. No checking, no slapshots. They call it ‘slow puck.’ You know, like ‘slow pitch’ softball? ‘Slow puck’ hockey, you get it?”

“I get it,” I said.

“It’s a lot of fun, Alex. You’ll love it.” Vinnie was my Indian friend. Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibwa, a member of the Bay Mills tribe, with a little bit of French Canadian in him, a little bit of Italian, and a little bit of God knows what else, like most of the Indians around here. You couldn’t see much Indian blood in him, just a hint of it in the face, around the eyes and cheekbones. He didn’t have that Indian air about him, that slow and careful way of speaking. And unlike some of the Indians I’ve met, especially the tribes in Canada, he looked you right in the eye when he spoke to you.

Vinnie was an Ojibwa and proud of it. But he didn’t live on the reservation anymore. He never drank. Not one drop, ever. He could put on a suit and pass for a downstate businessman. Or he could track a deer through the woods like he knew the inside of that animal’s mind.

He had found me at the Glasgow Inn, sitting by the fireplace. I should have known something was up when he bought me a beer.

“I don’t think so, Vinnie. I haven’t been on skates in thirty years.”

“How much you gotta skate?” he said. “You’ll be in goal. C’mon, Alex, we really need ya.”

“What happened to your regular goalie?”

“Ah, he has to give it a rest for a couple weeks,” Vinnie said. “He sort of took one in the neck.”

“I thought you said it was slow puck!”

“It was a fluke thing, Alex. It caught him right under the mask.”

“Forget it, Vinnie. I’m not playing goalie.”

“You were a catcher, right?” he said. “In double-A?”

“I played two years in triple-A,” I said. “But so what?”

“It’s the same thing. You wear pads. You wear a mask. You just catch a puck instead of a baseball.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Alex, the Red Sky Raiders need you. You can’t let us down.”

I almost spit out my beer. “Red Sky Raiders? Are you kidding me?”

“It’s a great name,” he said.

“Sounds like a kamikaze squadron.”

Red Sky was Vinnie’s Ojibwa name. During hunting season, he did a lot of guide work, taking down-staters into the woods. He liked to use his nickname then, playing up the. Indian thing. After all, he once told me, who are you going to hire to be your guide, a guy named Red Sky or a guy named Vinnie?

“Alex, Alex.” He shook his head and looked into the fire.

Here it comes, I thought.

“It’s just a fun little hockey league. Something to look forward to on a Thursday night. You know, instead of sitting around looking at the snow and going fucking insane.”

“I thought you Indians were at peace with the seasons.”

He gave me a look. “I got eight guys on my team. They’re going to be very disappointed. We’ll have to forfeit the game. All because a former professional athlete is afraid to put on some pads and play goal for us. You gonna just sit here on your butt all winter? Don’t you ever get the urge to do anything, Alex? To actually use your body again?”

“You’re breaking my heart, Vinnie. You really are.”

“You can use Bradley’s stuff. It’s all new. Mask, blocker, glove, skates. What size do you wear?”

“Eleven,” I said.

“Perfect.”

I didn’t have much chance after that. Vinnie had been there when I needed him, taking care of the cabins while I was out making a fool of myself pretending to be a private investigator. So I certainly owed him one. And he was right, I was tired of sitting around all winter. How bad could it be, right? Put on the pads and the mask, play some goal. It might even be fun.

It was fun all right. I flicked the puck out of the goal to the referee and he skated it back to center ice for another face-off. I barely had time to take a drink of water from my bottle when they were back in my zone again, moving the puck back and forth, looking for another shot. The blue center was skating around in front of my goal like he owned it. I had to keep peeking around him to follow the puck.

“Get this guy out of here,” I said to anyone who could hear me. “Don’t let him just stand here.”

A long shot came from the blue line. I knocked the puck down, but before I could dive on it, the blue center knocked it into the net. Three minutes into the game, and I had given up two goals. The center did a little dance, waved his stick in the air, his teammates jumping all over him like they just won the Stanley Cup.

Vinnie skated by. “Hang in there, Alex,” he said. “We’ll try to give you a little more help.”

I grabbed the front of his red jersey. “Vinnie, for God’s sake, will you hit that guy or something? He’s camped out right in front of me.”

“There’s no checking, remember? Alex, we’re just playing for fun here.”

“I’m not having any fun,” I said. “You don’t have to take his head off, just… give him a little bump.”

The blue center was skating around in wide circles now, bobbing his head. He was chanting to himself, something like, “Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh baby, oh yeah.”

I knew the type. It doesn’t matter what sport you play, you always run into guys like this. In baseball, it was usually a first baseman or an outfielder. They came up to the plate with that swagger in their step. I’d ask them how they’re doing as they’re digging in, just because that’s what you do in baseball, but they’d ignore me. First pitch is a strike, they look back at the umpire with that look. How dare you call a strike on me? I’d throw the ball back to the pitcher and then give him the sign for a high hard one. Guys like that need the fear of God put in them every once in a while, something to remind them that they’re human just like the rest of us. If not a bolt of lightning then at least a good ninety-mile-per-hour fastball under their chin.

It was reassuring to see that hockey players had to deal with these guys, too. Vinnie smiled at me, took off a glove and adjusted his helmet strap. “Maybe just one little bump,” he said.

I knew they played three ten-minute periods in this league, a concession to age and to the fact that most teams only had nine or ten players. So I only had twenty-seven more minutes to go. I slapped my stick on the ice. Go Red Sky Raiders.

Vinnie’s men finally woke up and started playing some hockey. While the puck was in the opposite zone, I stood all alone in front of my goal, looking around at the Big Bear Arena. It was brand-new, built by the Sault tribe with money from the casino. There was a second rink on the other side, locker rooms in the middle, and a restaurant on the upper deck. The stands were mostly empty, just some women watching us. None of them looked like they were on our side. I pulled the mask away from my face, wiped away the sweat. The catcher’s gear I wore a million years ago-the chest protector and the shin pads-was nothing compared to these goalie pads. It felt like I had a mattress tied to each leg.