Dedication: This piece is intended as a tribute to the late Bob Suter. May he happily play hockey in the hereafter. There isn't much plot to this story, but it's meant to be more of an illustration of the small, wonderful moments that ultimately construct a great lifetime.

Author's Notes: Everything from pop culture references to hockey politics is as historically accurate as possible. Gary Suter did end up giving Bob's shoulder pads to Chris Chelios, who used them throughout his NHL career. (Check out Chelios' autobiography, which is an enjoyable read if you're American and probably a mildly irksome one if you're Canadian since one of Chelios' favorite hobbies appears to be baiting Canadians, to learn more.) Mark Howe, who is referred to in this story just as Gordie Howe's son, did compete in the 1972 Olympics, where at sixteen he became the youngest American to medal in ice hockey, and he did play in the WHA (a league meant to rival the NHL before it merged into the NHL) before having an NHL career strong enough to get him inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Mark Johnson was cut from the 1976 Olympic hockey team because his father was the coach and didn't want to be accused of nepotism. Rob McClanahan did talk in one documentary about the Miracle on Ice how people were speculating that it would be either him or Neal Broten who went to Lake Placid (not both), so I just took that theory and ran with it for purposes of this story. The rivalry between Gophers and Badgers was well-documented in the 1970's and persists until today. If readers have any further questions, they can feel free to contact me in a review or a PM, and I'll try to answer as soon as possible.

All the Quiet Ones

Perched like a house cat on his dresser and staring out the window of his apartment bedroom at the skyline of the Twin Cities, Bob Suter wrinkled his nose in distaste so that it folded in on itself like a soaked paper bag. The steely skyscrapers looked like needles jutting out of pavement pincushion, and that made him miss Madison with its stately architecture so much that he could feel it knotting his stomach and punching the air out of his lungs like the bruising check along the boards Mike Ramsey had doled out to him in practice a little more than an hour ago—probably as retribution for one of the hundreds of hard hits Bob had delivered to the Gophers last season alone.

"This place is uglier than a witch's wart." Scowling, Bob struggled to resist the temptation to play the role of wimp by massaging the sore shoulder Rammer's check had created even if the only audience was Mark Johnson, his roommate who never judged him anyway, because that was one of the million unspoken rules of their friendship in which all the best parts were never voiced aloud but shared through some mental and emotional bandwidth that rarely required tuning. To take his mind off the swelling in his shoulder, which felt as if it had reached twice it's customary diameter if that was even physiologically possible, Bob switched on the radio resting on the desk beside him and began to fiddle with its dial.

As a reporter's voice cracked into the room with a bulletin about how the world had gotten worse today compared to the mess it had been in yesterday, Mark commented, "I think the Twin Cities look best at sunset. That's when the sun shines off all the buildings, and you can see the different colors in the stones and glass."

"Dusk, daylight, or night, it doesn't make a difference." Bob shrugged and regretted it instantaneously when it sent a lightning bolt of pain jolting from his shoulder to his brain at the speed of light. "The sun is always hidden behind the clouds here when it hasn't set, and it's setting earlier every day."

"No joke." Sitting with his legs crossed like an Indian around a fire, Mark flashed a grin that Bob had learned to interpret as warning that he was about to be made a target of his friend's amusement. Mark swiped a potato chip from a bag on the floor in front of him into a bowl of onion dip balanced on his thigh and went on between bites,"That's why they call it autumn, genius. I can explain to you how the seasons work, if you'd like."

"No, thanks. My Kindergarten teacher did a fine job with that." Bob stuck out his tongue at Mark as he twisted the dial to the left, hoping to find a station in this cultural wasteland that actually played decent music. When the crow's cry of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" swept into the room, Bob muttered derisively, "Hippie protest songs. Didn't those go out of style in the Sixties?"

"Yep." Mark's smile had deteriorated into a smirk as he chomped on his potato chips covered with onion dip. "Maybe they'll make a comeback in a couple of months when we hit the Eighties, so this station just wants to be ahead of the curve instead of behind the ball."

"Nah, the Eighties are going to be an era of untold peace and prosperity." Bob snorted while Dylan caterwauled on about how the answers to all of life's deepest questions were to be found blowing in the wind, presumably next to tattered McDonald's wrappings and soaked newspapers bearing last week's already ancient headlines. "We deserve that after the misery of the Seventies."

"Right." Mark chuckled as Dylan pondered such merry questions as how long mountains could exist before eroding into the ocean and how long people could be enslaved while the rest of the world just watched. "I'll just be grateful if we don't have to wait for hours to fill our cars with overpriced gasoline."

"You're so easy to please." Bob's mind was focused on his conversation with Mark, but his hand was busy pushing up his sleeve so he could push at the plum bruise the size of a baseball on his shoulder. When he applied pressure to the battered area, the flesh turned white as a swan's feather and the throbbing ceased. "Really, you should set higher standards."

"Nope." Mark shook his head while the bag of potato chips rustled like footsteps through fallen leaves as he grabbed more of his snack. "Then I'd run the risk of being disappointed, and if there's one thing I never do, it's that. It's much easier to be happy when you have low expectations of the world in general."

"That's not a very optimistic attitude." Bob waggled a finger on the hand that wasn't attending to his injured shoulder in mock reproof. "Tut tut."

"Dad's the optimist." Mark crunched on a potato chip to emphasize this point. "I'm a realist resigned to be as cheerful as possible about my fate."

"Hard to be an optimist around here." Bob's jaw tightened as the radio blared Johnny Cash's "Tennessee Flattop Box," which made Bob contemplate whether Minnesota stations played music that had been written in the past decade. "Jeez, now we're back in the Fifties. Does it take an extra decade or two for music to hit Minnesota or what?"

"Come on, Bobby. This song is a classic." Laughing, Mark started snapping his fingers with an air so jaunty that Bob had to squelch the urge to deck him in the nose. "It's great for snapping your fingers to."

"How risqué." Bob snickered. "My girl and I must dance to this song sometime then."

"Dancing is the Devil's own brainchild." Mark shuddered. "It's designed so you trip over your own feet and look like an idiot."

"Minnesota is the Devil's own brainchild," corrected Bob, thinking that the U was probably a special factory that Satan used for churning out his most evil minions.

"Be reasonable about the target of your rage." Mark's expression was more humorous than chiding. "You can't hate a place, but you can hate its people."

"I do hate its people." Bob's lips thinned. "Rammer nearly dislocated my shoulder today, and yesterday he practically broke my rib. Why the hell does he have to finish his checks so hard in practice anyway?"

"Because we're Badgers, and he's a Gopher." Mark waved a onion dip laden potato chip in harmony with his statement. "That's all the reason he needs."

"He clobbers you too?" Bob's eyes narrowed into serpent's slits, since he had thought—or maybe just hoped—that he was the target of Rammer's vengeance because of his history of throwing hard hits when their universities did battle on sheets of ice.

"Of course. I scored way too many goals against the U for him to forgive me just because we're training together now." There was more than a trace of pride in Mark's voice as he shoved the bag of chips and the bowl of onion dip in Bob's direction. "Have some nibbles. Food will cheer you up, and I can't stand to see you so pouty."

"You're a horrible person." Bob slid a potato chip through the onion dip and popped it into his mouth, his tongue noting instantly that the chips were the smooth kind without the ridges. That was the surefire way of knowing that they had been purchased by Mark, not him. Mark preferred potato chips that were flat like a fresh coat of ice, while Bob favored ones that contained their own mountain ranges. "Serving me junk food in my bedroom when you must know what my mom would say about that."

"Definitely." Mark's eyes gleamed like sunlight on a fountain. "She'd tell you that eating where you sleep will invite mice since you never clean up after yourself. Once mice come, you'll have to set up mouse traps, and, because you never look where you'll going, you'll step on one. Then, since you have an insanely high pain tolerance, you won't even notice that you stepped on one until hours later, so they'll probably have to remove the toe at the hospital along with the trap."

"Shut up," growled Bob, who thought that Mark was tormenting him a little too much when the pain in his shoulder was roaring like a lion again. People said he had a high pain threshold, but that just came from biting his lip forcefully enough to flood his mouth with the metallic taste of blood as his mind chanted the old hockey aphorism that there was no pain where strength lies over and over until it acted as a numbing agent along with the frigid rink surrounding him. Pain was less important than winning, and even if pain was the body's pathetic whimper for help, there was only so much an ice pack, bandages, or Advil could do anyway. Most of there limited comfort had to be a placebo effect anyway. "It's not like your dad would approve of you getting fat off potato chips and onion dip either."

"Yeah, he'd tell me that a lion doesn't eat this garbage," Mark agreed, and Bob figured they were both remembering all the times that Badger Bob would burst into the locker room to find a player guzzling a soda or devouring a bag of junk food only to be forced to chuck the snack into the trash because Badger Bob believed that lions didn't eat unhealthy food. "I don't want to be a lion, though. Lions laze around all day, and I'd rather leap about."

"Maybe you could leap on Rammer and cut his throat with your claws," suggested Bob, eyes widening to the size of quarters in his earnestness.

"Nah, you'll have to do your own killings I'm afraid." Mark shook his head. "I'm not willing to go to jail for you."

"Then I'll have to go back to daydreaming about stoning Rammer to death with pebbles." Bob's lips quirked as he indulged in imagining the culmination of this vindictive notion.

"If you were a clever murderer, you'd take advantage of Minnesota's natural beauty to achieve your dirty crime." Mark tugged idly at an earlobe. "At one of the thousand lakes, you've got to drown and bury someone."

"You're such a creep." In mingled revulsion and admiration, Bob whistled. "I guess it's true what they say about all psycho serial killers being the quiet ones."

"Sure." Mark switched to yanking on the other earlobe, so at least Bob didn't have to worry about them ending up comically lopsided. "Not all the quiet ones are psycho serial killers, though, and all the psycho serial killers also drank their mother's milk when they were little. Correlation doesn't equal causation as my statistics professor said, so you can't draw any conclusions from statistics, which is why I'm not quite certain what the use of gathering statistics is except to keep academics busy."

"You could always ask Mac during one of your long chats on the bench." Although he wasn't exactly jealous since that was an emotion reserved for clingy teenage girlfriends, Bob couldn't prevent himself from shooting Mark a sidelong glance, since, as far as he was concerned, Mark plopped down next to McClanahan on the bench at practice far too frequently for it to be entirely coincidental unless Mark and McClanahan were magnets with opposite poles inevitably drawn to one another, which seemed extremely improbable.

"Right." Mark rolled his eyes, and Bob felt an odd surge of relief that he was still Mark's favorite confidant, since McClanahan was a boring nerd who would expostulate at length about anything scholarly if given even the faintest opening. "Then I'd be treated to an hour long lecture on the subject, which sounds totally fascinating, but, out of time considerations, I think I'll pass, thank you."

"Minnesotans are so weird." Bob grabbed another potato chip, coated it with onion dip, and deposited it between his teeth. "I wish this team had more people from Wisconsin on it, but I suppose we can't expect a more balanced representation when the coach from the U—" he pronounced this word with the scorn that he might have injected a term like mumps or measles—"is running the squad and will look after his own boys first."

"Given that he and Dad have their own little Cold Water going on, I bet I'll be sent packing soon." Mark's fingers drummed a tattoo against the floor. "Politics kept me off the last Olympic team, and they'll bar me from this one, too. Just wait and see, because the wait probably won't be very long."

Feeling each word as a stab to his hurt shoulder, Bob remembered how much they had whispered and passed notes about Mark being cut from the '76 Olympic team because his father was the coach and feared accusations of nepotism during physics class during their senior year of high school.

"It was bullshit that you couldn't go to the Olympics in '76 just because of who your dad is." Even after four years, Bob gritted his teeth at the stark unfairness that still rankled probably since it had been his first real encounter with institutional injustice. Before that, discrimination was something that happened to black people in hotbeds of racism like Alabama, but not to anybody he knew or cared about personally. Then, as he had pointed out so many times during senior year of high school, "Gordie Howe's son got to play when he was only sixteen in '72. Obviously the kid was good because he's putting up tons of points in the WHA as a defenseman right now, but how awesome could he have been as a sixteen-year-old forward? That decision has politics written all over it in capital, neon letters."

"Of course it does." Mark's lips quirked. "If you worked at USA Hockey would you want Gordie's famous elbows smashing into your skull because you said his son couldn't go to the Olympics? I don't think so."

"I don't think you'll be cut from this team." Bob hugged his knees against his chest, because he didn't feel confident saying the same thing about himself, since his future with the squad seemed to be on much shakier ground than Mark's. "Brooks has you on a line with McClanahan and Strobel, two of his precious U boys. He also has you running power play and penalty kill units in practice. Clearly he regards you as a useful player."

"Plenty of time for the power play and penalty kill units to change before the Olympics." Mark didn't appear convinced by Bob's logic. "As for my line mates, that doesn't mean squat. Mac told me that he heard he and Neal were in competition for the same spot on the team, since Herb would only be taking one of them to Lake Placid."

"Huh?" Wondering if he had misheard, Bob dug his fingers into his ears in search of wax that might be clogging them but came away with nothing clinging to his fingers. "Why would Herb cut one of his own boys when he could get rid of a Wisconsin boy or a BU one instead? That doesn't make sense with the politics we discussed earlier."

"No, it does," demurred Mark. "Think about it. Herb wouldn't want to decimate the hockey program at the U, so either Neal or Mac gets to go to Lake Placid while the other has to remain here in the Twin Cities keeping the U competitive in college hockey. Politics will keep me off the team, and one of Neal or Mac. Mac claims that Neal has always been something of a pet with Herb, so he says that—everything else being equal or close enough to equal—Neal would get the Olympic nod over him. In a nutshell, I'm on a line with at least one boy who is probably going to be shown the door."

"How the hell would Mac know this?" His forehead furrowing, Bob's mind did overtime to discredit whatever McClanahan had said to Mark during one of their stupid bench chats.

"He can hear the other Minnesota boys talking when they think he and Neal are out of earshot." Mark bit his lip. "Eavesdropping on the gossip others are spreading about you, he claims, is one of the first survival tricks you learn in the cannibalistic society that is American suburbia."

"We don't know that what the other Minnesota boys are saying is anymore accurate than reports of UFO activity," argued Bob. "That's why it's called gossip. It's not meant to be true. It's just designed to make you feel rotten as spoiled milk."

"It makes sense." Mark's chin lifted. "I don't want to believe it, but it makes sense."

"Mac is just making crap up to scare the shit out of you." Bob decided that McClanahan was lucky not to be around to be punched into the next century. "I mean, if what he was spouting off about was true, he'd be awful generous warning you about it when you barely know one another and you being apprised of the situation can't profit him, wouldn't he?"

"That's the sticking point: I can help him possibly hang around, and he can potentially return the favor for me." Mark's hands combed through his hair in mild agitation. "Look, what Mac was getting at when he explained all this to me is that if either of us are going to make the Olympic team, we're going to have to put up sufficient points to impress Herb, and we'll have to do that together if we're on the same line most of the time. It's a you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-rub-yours sort of deal."

"Great to hear Mac has you falling for all his paranoid conspiracy theories," scoffed Bob. "When are you guys forging a partnership to discredit the Moon landing, huh?"

"Listen, Bobby, I hate politics, but I can't just stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and ignore them." Mark kicked a dustball with enough fervor to send it spiraling under the dresser for shelter. "That would be a good way to get my neck slit, and I'm not suicidal."

"You'll be fine," insisted Bob, although he was well-aware that this sentiment would bring very little solace to Mark at the moment.

"Yeah." Mark's spine curled downward like a comma as if resignation were transforming him into a hunchback. "Once Herb cuts me, I'll go back to Wisconsin to play for Dad. It's not like I won't be able to play hockey again just because I'm cut from another Olympic team. If I couldn't play hockey anymore, that would be the end of the world."

"If I get cut from the Olympic team," Bob declared, making a promise as he invented this wild idea, "I'll quit playing and give my shoulder pads to my younger brother Gary to pass along to some other kid who needs them and doesn't mind that they're a bit banged up. I'll be done playing the game, but my essence will linger on in my equipment forever."

"Or until the kid washes the shoulder pads." Mark stuck out his tongue. "That will be approximately five minutes after Gary hands them to him, because your pads reek."

"Nah." Bob gave a grandiose wave of his arm. "Essence is eternal, Mark. I'm going to live forever in my equipment."

"Haunting the world with a stench like sliced onion, that's your idea of eternity." Mark wrinkled his nose. "Don't make me barf."