Author's Note: The Herbies episode is portrayed differently in this chapter than it is in the movie because for purposes of this fanfic I decided it would be better to base the plot on the more factual accounts of what happened. In real life, Mark Johnson did smash his stick on the boards, Mike was kicked out of the game for fighting and didn't participate in the bag skate, and Buzz was expelled from the game for trying to follow Herb's command to figure out what was going on. Every player has slightly different recollections of the bag skate in Norway, but for this story I chose to rely on Mike and Buzz's comments because the focus would mainly be on them. Feel free to submit any confusion or questions in a review or PM.
"When the cat is away, the mice dance on the table."—Norwegian Proverb
Cat and Mouse Game
As if he had a ticking clock instead of a hammering heart tucked inside his ribcage while he collected the puck the Norwegian penalty kill had fired deep into his own zone and skated at top speed toward neutral ice, Mike could feel the last seconds of their power play—earned when one of the Norwegian defenseman with a surname Mike would never be able to remember, spell, or pronounce had hooked Mark Johnson on a breakaway attempt—slipping away like water draining from a sink.
They needed to score to cement their one goal lead over their opponent. That was all Mike could think as he rifled off a tape-to-tape outlet pass to Steve Christoff, who volleyed off one of his renowned rapid wrist shots.
The puck soared over the Norwegian goaltender's shoulder and pinged off the crossbar in a frustrating noise that could have trumpeted the end of the minor penalty, since, at that second, the door to the Norwegian penalty box flew open, and the defenseman who had hooked Mark burst onto the ice. Obviously, the time they had squandered practicing their power play would have been better invested doing something more exciting and educational like counting each ice particle in the rink.
Chomping on his mouth guard, Mike ordered himself to focus on the game before he made some careless error that had the happy result of Herb benching him for the remainder of the period and advanced closer to the Norwegian net, trying to pressure the exhausted penalty killers, as the puck landed near Buzz, who had just come onto the ice for a shift change and who launched a shot.
The puck hit the goalie's knee pad and rebounded into the corner, where Neal, moving faster than any of the Norwegian defenseman on the ice, glided in to retrieve it. Facing the boards, Neal cleared the puck with a quick pass to Buzz. After he had already sent the puck sliding toward Buzz, Neal was charged from behind and rammed into the boards by the Norwegian defenseman who had just been released from the penalty box. Neal's helmet crashed against the glass, as his body slammed against the boards, and he crumbled to the ice.
His eyes narrowing to angry snake slits, Mike mentally reviewed the sequence to make sure that it passed muster as a cheapshot that justified him imparting a very physical education on the dirty player in question. Neal had already passed the puck, so it could not have been a legitimate, clean attempt to play the puck, and it was always a cheap hit to go after a player who wasn't touching the puck. Besides, Mike was practically prepared to swear on a witness stand that the Norwegian defenseman's skates had left the ice prior to making the hit, which meant that the defenseman had been targeting Neal's head.
That was forbidden and punishable not only with a penalty but with fists, because there was an unwritten code in hockey that was even more sacred than the rule book most referees didn't even enforce in a halfway competent manner. Big, physical players weren't supposed to target small, skill players for abuse. They were supposed to pick on players their own size, and Mike was going to teach the stupid Norwegian defenseman that very important lesson.
Oh, and he had no doubt that the Norwegian defenseman was stupid. Every time the Norwegian defenseman set skate blade on ice it was obvious with his vicious checks and boarding that only one thought—hitting—crossed his walnut brain, and whenever the puck came to him in his own zone he never made an outlet pass or charged the puck up ice. Instead, he would shoot the puck along the boards in the vague hope that it would bounce into neutral ice, and you could read in his dull, oil drop eyes the lumbering thought: I'm out of ideas here, so I'm just going to ram the puck along the boards, and see what happens.
Mike wasn't out of ideas, though, and he thought it would be very creative if he made the Norwegian defenseman ram into the boards like a puck. That image circled in an endless loop around his head as he raced—the universe spinning out of control into impossible time so that an instant seemed to contain an hour—toward the Norwegian who had offended him by treating Neal like a punching bag. Thinking that he was the sort of dog who would bite when his pack was attacked, Mike tore off his helmet and gloves in the international signal of an impending hockey fight.
A distinctly evil smirk dominated the Norwegian's expression as he hurled off his own helmet and gloves. Adrenaline throbbed through Mike's arteries as the pair of them squared off, each seeking a vulnerability that would incite them to strike first.
What felt like an eternity later but was probably only a second, the Norwegian threw the first punch at Mike, who dodged and unloaded one of his own at the Norwegian's nose, which was oddly crooked as though it had already been broken on several occasions as a result of similar scraps. His hit found its target, and there was a sickly satisfying slap of bone on vulnerable cartilage.
Taking what he was positive any psychologist would define as a perverse pleasure in the blood beginning to stream from his opponent's nostrils, Mike barely felt the blow that split his own lip although he tasted something metallic—probably iron from his own veins since Mom nagged him to eat all his minerals—on his tongue.
The iron from his blood fueling him further, he swung at the Norwegian's ear, as his opponent's fist creamed his right eye. Luckily, Mike spotted where the punch was directed a second before it made contact with his skin, so he closed his eye just before the fist made contact with his flesh. The noise of the hit echoed against his eardrums, but he didn't feel any pain even though he absently acknowledged that there would be a swelling shiner around his right eye by tomorrow morning.
He pulled back his fist, aiming an assault on the Norwegian's mouth, but found himself torn from the fray by an official. The referee shouted something at Mike and his opponent, but Mike couldn't process the words, because he was too busy glancing over his shoulder to check on Neal, who had gotten to his feet and was watching the ruckus with a quizzical tilt to his head as if he couldn't believe he had sparked so ardent a conflict.
Neal was all right then, but Mike didn't have much of a chance to experience relief over this notion, since some of the words spewing from the referee's mouth started to penetrate his skull and he realized that he, along with the Norwegian player, was being tossed from the game for fighting.
"Come on!" Mike was trying to conceal his scorn, but it required all of his control not to roll his eyes to show the contempt he felt for the referee's ruling. Waving his arm in his fury, he continued, voice rising with every aggravated syllable, "Are you blind or just biased? Did you miss that obvious boarding and charging call or what? You're supposed to be ensuring player safety, so don't blame me for doing your job when you won't."
Agitated by an argument that he was not a part of and a situation that he could not manipulate to his advantage, Herb, still standing behind the bench, jabbed a finger at Buzz and snapped, "Go figure out what the hell is going on."
Surprise written all over his face, Buzz skated toward the congregation around the referee, but the official, who had to sense that whatever reins he had once held over the game were falling out of his fingers, interpreted Buzz's approach as a challenge and barked, "You're out of the game, too!"
"What are you on?" Mike was shouting now, but he was just proud of himself for resisting the temptation to stamp his skates. "He didn't even say or do anything! What the fuck are you even punishing him for, huh?"
"Let it go, Rammer." Buzz grabbed onto Mike's elbow and tried to drag him toward the locker room, but Mike dug in his heels as much as he could on a frozen surface and gained enough traction to remain relatively stationary. "It's not that big a deal and certainly not worth getting all fired up about it, okay?"
"No, it's definitely worth getting all fired up about, because it's a damn game misconduct over a phantom offense, and that's about as big a deal as it gets in hockey." Mike yanked his elbow out of Buzz's grasp. "Don't try to calm me down. I have every right to be mad as hell right now."
"Relax." In contrast to Mike's increasing volume, Buzz's tone got softer. "Losing your temper with the zebra will just make things worse."
"You've got to be shitting me," scoffed Mike, but he allowed himself to be tugged away from the harebrained referee toward the locker room, where he would be guaranteed to receive during the next intermission a mighty tongue lashing from Herb for getting himself expelled from the game. Not that he regretted his decision, of course. Neal was his teammate, and people who didn't protect their teammates didn't deserve to have them, as far as he was concerned. "We've already been kicked out of the game. Nothing short of a nuclear fallout is going to make this situation blow any more than it already does."
"Yeah, but if you get the ref riled up, you can bet that he'll be calling everything against our team for the rest of the game." Buzz patted him on the shoulder. "You don't want that, do you?"
"No." Mike gave a scowl that swiftly transformed into a wince as his split lip protested the motion with a fresh wave of pain and blood trickling into his mouth. "I think he's already calling everything against us, though. I mean how else do you explain him throwing you out of the game when you didn't even do anything wrong?"
"A zebra made a bad call." Buzz shrugged as they arrived in the locker room that was heavy with the smell of sweaty pads. "There's nothing new under the sun."
"I wouldn't mind if a lion hunted down that zebra, that's for sure," muttered Mike, wrinkling his nose.
"You'd like to be that lion, I gather." Buzz chuckled. "Let's have Doc patch up those battle wounds of yours."
Since he could practically feel his lip and eye swelling, Mike decided not to protest that he didn't need medical attention and instead took a seat on the metal table. The cool metal pressed against him made him realize how flaming hot his skin was. Sitting down encouraged his lungs to notice how tired they were, because his breath started emanating from him in gasps, a punctuation of exhaustion, and his motionless position prompted his muscles to begin to remember the strain of the brawl. He was regulating his breathing patterns and massaging his biceps when Doc, already holding an ice pack and a jar of ointment, approached him.
"Another scrap for your record book." Peering into Mike's face as if to ascertain that only a black eye and a bloody lip were the toll exacted by the fight, Doc clucked his tongue in a manner that typically indicated the team's medical expert was wondering why he squandered his existence mending pugnacious hockey players who would show their gratitude for his care by inevitably charging back into perilous situations as soon as they were healed. "Sunrise will be coming early to your eye for the next couple of days."
"Don't nag, Doc." Warily, Mike watched Doc twist the cap off the jar of balm and hoped that it wasn't the sort of salve that stung as much as it soothed. "Color in the face is a sign of good health."
"A flush on the cheeks, not a bruise under the eye, is healthy color." Doc dipped a finger in the ointment and spread the oily substance gingerly over the swollen flesh below Mike's eye. "You could keep that in mind before you make me earn my paycheck by patching you up after one of your little fistfights."
"I don't get in that many fights." Mike battled the urge to squirm under Doc's ministrations. Even Doc's tender touch made the sensitive skin of Mike's latest shiner flame in agony, and the balm tickled where it had been applied. "Anyway, the other guy looks much worse than me. Really you should just be grateful that you aren't his team's doctor."
Finished rubbing salve on Mike's wound, Doc closed the lid on the ointment jar with a snap and then put the container down on the table before handing Mike a tissue, commenting in a tone as tart as a crabapple soaked in vinegar, "I'd be more grateful if I could understand what went through your mind when you showed so little concern for keeping your body in one piece. Speaking of being in one piece, press that tissue against the cut on your lip and the bleeding should stop soon."
Pushing the tissue against the slice on his lip as Doc had instructed, Mike thought that he had been hearing similar disapproving remarks from his mom for years as she tended to the scrapes and shiners he inevitably accumulated by standing up for himself and his classmates in a rough-and-tumble Minneapolis neighborhood.
He still remembered that September morning in third grade when he had engaged in schoolyard brawl with the neighborhood's biggest bully, Ricky Mather, because Ricky tugged on the Preston twins' pigtails and stole their lunch money one too many times. Katie and Maggie Preston might have cooties, giggle too shrilly, and slip gossipy notes to one another in class, but they were smaller than Mike and he had known them since Kindergarten—because P and R were a sneeze away from each other in the alphabet, so teachers forever were inserting Mike near the Preston girls on their stupid seating charts—which bought them his loyalty. That was why he had thrown a punch at Ricky's stomach when Ricky made the unwise decision of tormenting Katie and Maggie only a few feet away from Mike on the playground.
Both he and Ricky had been covered in cuts and bruises before the teachers supervising recess could separate them and drag them to the principal's office. Once he had been taken to the warden of his childhood prison, Mike received a stern scolding from the principal and then was sent home. Dad, who had been forced to leave his bread delivery job to pick up Mike since Mom was in bed recovering from a nasty bout of influenza, had been mad enough to spit venom. Resigned to the prospect of a stinging spanking from his father's slipper, Mike with the innocent fatalism of youth had determined that his situation could not be worsened by anything that emerged from his mouth, so he had told his father that Hitler had just been a Ricky Mather nobody had the nerve to punch in the gut until it was too late. That had made Dad snicker, and the slipper spanking had been averted.
That experience had taught Mike everything he needed to know about dealing with bullies. Most bullies, he discovered by virtue of this run-in with Ricky Mather, were big, ugly, and clumsy. They scared people by being able to injure them. They fought dirty. Therefore, if you weren't afraid of being hurt a little and were willing to stick up for yourself and others, a bully might be bested. Talk did no good with bullies. It just encouraged their brutal, domineering tendencies. Hurting was the only language that the Ricky Mathers of the world seemed to comprehend, and that was probably why the world always had such problems just getting along.
"The Norwegian guy went after Neal." Mike shrugged, not particularly caring whether Doc understood his thought process. "Whenever I see someone big pick on somebody smaller just because they think they can get away with it, there's going to be a fight."
"Well, nobody could accuse you of being a bad teammate, even if you are an uncooperative patient." Doc's face softened into a slight smile as he wrapped the ice pack in a towel and handed it to Mike. "The ointment should be dry by now. Hold this against the bruise for ten minutes, and then take it off for ten minutes. Repeat that process for at least a half hour. That should reduce swelling. Understand?"
"Yep, Doc." Nodding, Mike pressed the ice pack bundled in the towel against his bruise and winced as its frigidity met the flaming skin of his shiner. To distract himself from the unpleasant temperature contrast between his bruised flesh and the ice pack, he shoved himself off the table and walked back toward his locker, tossing over his shoulder, "Thanks for the ice and ointment. You're the best."
Mike had just settled himself on a bench when the door to the locker room slammed open and the rest of the team pooled in, looking sweaty and as if they were already done with their emotional investment in this game, since their soft hotel beds had to be singing a siren song in their imaginations.
"How is the game going?" Mike asked Bill, anxious to know what had happened since he had been kicked out of the competition.
"All right." Bill squirted water into his mouth. "We're still up by one goal, but, based on Herb's mood, you'd guess that we're down by one. He's not happy at all."
"Not happy is a euphemism for potentially homicidal." Phil swiped the sweat off his forehead with a towel and then hurled it at Mike's shoulder. "Keep your head up if you like it attached to your neck, which I actually don't see why you would since your face is so hideous."
"I hope you're his first victim, so that the rest of us have time to flee the scene." Catching the towel with some difficulty owing to the ice pack obstructing his vision, Mike launched it back at Phil, aiming it at the older boy's face. "That would serve you right for being an asshole."
At that moment, the locker room door banged open and shut again, and Herb, displaying his customary knack of arriving at the second that cast Mike in the worst possible light, entered just in time to see Mike throw the towel at Phil.
"Spoiling for another fight with someone else bigger than you, Rammer?" Wearing his most intimidating glower, Herb marched toward Mike. Leaning close enough to Mike that he could measure the gap between his coach's front teeth, Herb snapped, "I guess getting chucked out of the game wasn't dumb enough for you. You have to try to outdo yourself in the stupidity competition by getting in a fight with a teammate before you've even taken the ice pack off your eye, don't you?"
Instinctive fear flooded Mike's veins like adrenaline, and he tried to dampen it, because he knew that Herb was a feral dog who could sense fear. The way that Herb's eyes were burning into him as if they were tongues of fire licking into a piece of paper, Mike concluded that this, unfortunately, wasn't a rhetorical question, so Herb expected a response. That was bad, since Mike's mind felt as if it had been wiped blank by a gigantic eraser. Damn it. He had heard so many times from so many assorted sources that humans only used about ten percent of their brains on a regular basis, and right now, he definitely needed the other ninety percent to pick up the slack.
Swallowing to moisten a throat that had gone as dry as a barrel of sawdust, Mike answered in a voice he prayed was appropriately chastened, "No, coach. Of course I don't."
"That's funny, because your actions scream the opposite." Herb shot a final scathing glare at Mike before ripping into his next target. "Baker, you looked lost as an amnesiac on that Norwegian goal. If you're going to interfere with your goalie's field of view like that, make damn sure you block the shot, because your goaltender can't get a good read on the puck if you're screening him. Just use your common sense since I know you've got no hockey sense to work with."
Accepting the correction without argument, Bill nodded, as Steve Christoff chose the wrong time to squirt water into his mouth and became the next recipient of a Herb harangue. "Excellent job there, Christoff. You showed better aim with that bottle just now than you did the whole game with your hockey stick. No observer of your shooting technique can tell whether you're aiming at the net or the pipes. You should be embarrassed by your poor performance tonight."
Herb jerked his arm around the locker room to encompass the whole team in his rant. "All of you should be ashamed of yourselves. I haven't seen any of you put in a strong shift, and there's not been a second where I felt like I was seeing actual effort from anyone on this pathetic excuse for a team. Put the pedal to the metal next period, because if you won't work during the game, we'll work twice as hard afterward. I certainly won't believe you're tired after if you put in zero effort during the game. You'd better give yourselves a swift kick in the ass before I do it for you, since you won't like how I do it."
With that final ominous admonishment hovering in the air like a thunderhead on the horizon, Herb pivoted on his heel and stalked out of the locker room, slamming the door in his wake. For a moment, the only sound was the echo of the door banging shut, and then Eric Strobel remarked, "Well, he certainly likes to increase his chances of cardiac arrest. What's his real gripe with us, anyway? We're winning. What more can anyone ask of us?"
"You're preaching to the choir." Rob scowled at the skate laces he was tightening in his usual intermission ritual to prepare himself for the following period. "He wants to crucify us for not playing with a mania that would suggest we were down by a goal instead of up by one. He's so fucking insane that no shrink or rubber room would be able to cure him of his legions of mental problems."
"He's a bastard," snarled Steve, tossing his water bottle at the floor tiles with more force than the task required so that the resultant inertia caused the plastic to burst, spraying his surrounding teammates with water. As those around him gasped and cursed in protest of this impromptu baptism, he raised his voice to a shout to be heard over the water bottle ruckus. "I wasn't trying to hit the posts with my shots, and if he couldn't see that, he can go screw himself with his own damned lectures."
"I'm not sure that's physiologically possible." Blue eyes agleam like a lake on a spring day, Jack smirked. "I think nouns need to have a physical dimension to perform the verb of screwing."
"Don't provoke your teammates now, OC." Rizzo spoke up before Steve, who had opened his mouth to retort, could volley some doubtlessly unkind words in Jack's direction. "It's been a long day for everyone, but we've just got to get through this game. Then we can get some much needed rest at the hotel. Okay, guys?"
Steve gave a terse, angry nod, and Jack offered an indolent shrug by way of acknowledgement. It was only later—when all the damage it could possibly do had been done—that they learned just how wrong Rizzo had been in his assessment of the situation.
Since he and Buzz had been ejected from the game, they clambered into empty seats a few rows behind their team's bench to watch the action from the stands. However, the fact that his teammates looked as if they were skating through quicksand made the game more painful than exciting to observe, so he soon find himself taking more interest in the halos the arena's lighting created in the glistening braids of the girl in the chair ahead of him. The braids reminded him of Jill, because she would plait her hair like that before some of her dance recitals, and the thought of Jill brought him back to their last afternoon together before Mike left for Europe…
It was the anniversary of their first kiss, and Jill was leading the way up the winding park path, her graceful footwork and straight spine displaying the perfect posture and poise of a lifelong dancer. Trailing along behind her like the proverbial lovesick puppy, Mike couldn't help but remember the first time he had seen that confident stride when she walked into Miss Jackson's second-grade classroom wearing a flowery dress, Mary Jane flats, and a friendship bracelet around her slender wrist. It was hard to imagine that moment leading to this one when they were headed back to the sacred spot where they had touched each other's lips for the first time.
They pushed through tangles of branches and knots of humidity thick enough to squeeze the breath from their lungs. The gummy smell of pine clawed the air as they trudged onward, mosquitoes buzzing around their noses and eyes. At a big, semi-phallic rock, Jill made a right, and then they were standing before their tree: the tree that literally had their initials carved on it and encircled by a heart. Under the heart, a line marked every year they had come here to commemorate their first kiss.
Mike was about to make some wisecrack about how nauseating they were, but when he saw the tilt of Jill's chin in the dappled sunlight streaming through the tree boughs, the swan length and beauty of her neck, and the moist moss green of her eyes, he found himself instead murmuring, "I love you, Jill."
"You're already getting kissed." Grinning, Jill fiddled with her French braid. "You don't have to try to charm me."
"Oh." Flushing, Mike discovered that he couldn't think of anything wittier to say. At least he hadn't been reduced to talking about the weather or the benefits of cranberry juice in keeping the digestive system regular. When it came down to it, life was nothing more than a series of such small victories or controlled disasters. "All right then."
"I love you, too." Jill's grin blossomed into a giggle.
"Okay, okay." Lifting his palms, Mike feigned being put-out. "You'll get kissed, too."
Mike enfolded her in his arms. When she was twelve and he had finally mustered the courage to kiss her, her hair had smelled wonderfully of tropical shampoo and her lips had tasted of strawberry Pixie Stix. Today her hair carried the scent of lilacs and her mouth was spiced with the cinnamon she had sprinkled into the cappuccino she had ordered at the café where they had eaten lunch.
The kiss moved like a warm wave from Mike's heart, and Jill curled closer into his embrace, her breasts pressing against his chest. He could feel her racing heart and ragged breathing. His hand wandered down the curve of her spine, and, when their tongues met, he felt a jolt as if the tectonic plate he was standing on had just collided with another…
He returned to reality with a bump when a cascade of applause and cheers washed over his eardrums. Glancing at the scoreboard, he read the glowing numbers that announced the game had ended with a tied score of three.
"Um, did we tie the Norwegians or did they tie us?" Mike asked Buzz, feeling somewhat guilty for not paying appropriate attention to his teammates' performance, no matter how lackluster it might have been.
"They tied us," replied Buzz, mercifully not commenting on Mike's absentmindedness. "The last two goals were theirs."
"Crap." Mike shook his head, as he watched a doubtlessly irate Herb corral the team toward the red line, and he didn't have to be a detective to predict from this clue that a Herbies marathon was imminent. "Herb's going to blow a gasket. He'd much prefer a comeback to fading in the homestretch."
Buzz was silent as they stared down at their teammates beginning their punishment skate. When the crowd around them showed no sign of departing, and, in fact, began a standing ovation.
"What the fuck is wrong with these people?" hissed Mike, rather vindictively hoping that the Norwegians in the seats around them could translate every word with absolute accuracy. "Have we stumbled across in an arena of total sociopaths or what? Why the hell do they want to watch a lunatic coach torture his players?"
"I'm sure they think it's just some cool demonstration the team is putting on for their enjoyment, and they're trying to be polite by showing their appreciation." Buzz clapped Mike on the shoulder. "Relax. We don't need to get bent out of shape over what complete strangers do anyway."
"Oh, Herb will make it a demonstration all right." Mike's mouth twitched in wry disgust. "I just wonder how long it will take to dawn on the Norwegians that it's not a show they want to see."
Certainly Mike didn't wish to be in the audience for this matinee. He didn't want to watch his teammates suffer through a bag skate, but he couldn't stomach the notion of being the coward who turned his face away from their pain. Although he wouldn't be able to save them from Herb's misconception of justice, he could at least bear witness to the nightmare they were enduring. He would show his solidarity by not averting his eyes no matter how horrible things got in the rink tonight.
What felt like an hour later but might have only been fifteen minutes, several of the skaters collapsed to the ice, and the sound of retching reverberated throughout the arena. The sight of players barfing on the ice alerted the crowd to the fact that this was punishment for the American team, not entertainment for them. All at once, the applause died, and the masses, chattering to one another in a babble of Norwegian, started to drift out of the exits.
"I can't watch this anymore." Buzz lurched to his feet, and Mike, figuring that any action would be better than watching helplessly as his teammates vomited, rose as well. "I'm going down there now."
They made their way against the congested current of spectators flowing out of the arena until they arrived in front of the boards encircling the rink. Herb was too wrapped up in berating the players on the red line before sending them off on another skate that he didn't seem to notice Buzz and Mike's presence by the glass, but Coach Patrick did if the eyebrow he arched in their direction was any indication.
"Should we put on our gear?" Buzz asked, and Mike thought how weird it was that they would both prefer to participate in a bag skate than stay safe in the stands.
"Cool it, Buzz," Coach Patrick rapped out crisply, and, even though he knew that Coach Patrick was trying to shield them from the harsh consequences of Herb's ire, Mike resented the order to not suit up for the punishment skate. He didn't want to be protected; he wanted to be with his teammates no matter what suffering accompanied that solidarity, but he and Buzz couldn't flagrantly disobey a command from their assistant coach.
"We shouldn't have asked permission." Mike could feel the words jabbing into his throat like splinters of guilt. "We should have just changed and came out onto the ice. Then Coach Patrick wouldn't have been able to stop us from skating."
"Sure." Buzz sounded as weary and defeated as Mike felt. "I'll make a mental note of that and do it if this situation ever crops up again, which hopefully it doesn't."
\
After that, there was nothing more to say. They could only watch with miserable impotency as their teammates skated, wheezed, and vomited in a cycle that already seemed as inevitable and eternal as the progression of the seasons. Mike cold feel tears tickling the back of his eyes like feathers, and it took all of his willpower not to let them stream down his cheeks, because he had sworn to himself at the beginning of his time at the U that he would never allow Herb the satisfaction of making him cry. He might have been the youngest member of the team, but that didn't mean he was going to cry like a baby.
His resolve was tested when the lights in the arena were switched off, plunging the rink into darkness, and Herb kept the team skating, although most of them could barely stand up, in what had to be the dictionary definition of both the meanings of madness.
This isn't real, Mike tried to tell himself even though he knew that the thought was an utter lie. It can't be real. It's way too crazy to be true. Maybe I'll wake up in a minute to an alarm clock in Stockholm to discover that the day hasn't even begun yet, and it's definitely proof of how much of a nightmare this situation is that I'm hoping that I'll have to get on a plane soon, but that's a price I'd gladly pay to stop this horror.
Yeah, right, his more cynical side thought, that will happen when pigs fly when pigs fly though this arena. Hey, why not take advantage of the opportunity to go completely crazy in every way and imagine something even more improbable like riding the same flying pigs to Norway instead of an airplane?
As if Mike's ideas of improbable occurrences and going completely crazy in every way summoned both, Mark—whom Mike couldn't recall so much as raising his voice to retort something cross at anyone—chose that moment to smash his stick against the boards during a relative lull in the punishment marathon. At first, Mike was convinced that his eyes had deceived him in the darkness or that his mind had cracked under the strain of witnessing this cruel and unusual punishment of his teammates, but the sound of shattering wood as the stick split in half and the clatter that followed as both parts fell to the ice couldn't have been manufactured by his imagination. Nor could the way the constellation of players near Mark folded closer around him as if to protect him from Herb spotting that he now had no stick.
The cluster around Mark couldn't shield him forever, especially because Herb's flinty gaze was already sweeping over the exhausted assembly on the ice, the stoniness of his expression establishing more effectively than words that he was determined to uncover the culprit and then roast them on a spit.
This observation rocketed Mike into motion. Dashing toward their bench, he snatched a stick from the hogshead of spare ones they kept in case sticks broke during the game. He didn't have time to check the names written with varying degrees legibility at the top in tape, so he grabbed the stick closest to him and hurried along the boards until he reached Mark, noting inwardly that perhaps it shouldn't have been such a shock that Mark had lost his temper in such a dramatic fashion. After all, news bulletins about serial killers always had the shell-shocked neighbors gibbering about how the cold-hearted, psychotic murderer had been such a quiet, upstanding guy, so the team should probably just be counting itself lucky that only a stick was broken when Mark snapped…
"Psst…Magic," he whispered with all the volume and fervor he dared to employ when Herb was searching for victims to skewer into hockey player kabobs. To his relief, Mark spun around to face him immediately, and he catapulted the stick over the boards to Mark, who caught it and flashed him the ghost of a grateful grin and thumbs-up.
As he rushed to rejoin Buzz, Mike heard Herb bellowing with all the rage of a baited bull unable to locate the offending matador, "If I ever see a boy smash his stick against the glass again, I'll skate you until you die! Again!"
Trying to ignore the sound of blades slicing through ice, Mike, who had arrived beside Buzz, muttered, "Do you think he did see who smashed the stick against the glass?"
"I don't know." Buzz was studying Herb speculatively. "Given that Mark's father is his biggest rival, things could get very complicated on this team if he did see Mark break the stick."
"You mean he would cut Mark for snapping the stick?" His eyes widening, Mike gave a shiver that had nothing to do with the glacial temperature in the rink. "He can't do that. Mark's got this eerie habit of making the impossible maneuver just look easy and smooth. We don't have a snowball's chance in the dog days of August of medaling without him. Herb has to understand that."
"Yeah, and maybe he does," answered Buzz slowly, as if he were developing this theory as he spoke. "You know, Rammer, even Herb's worst critics wouldn't accuse him of being dumb, so I think he's smart enough to realize that he could discover who broke the stick by checking whose name was written on it. I bet he didn't even look because he didn't want to see."
"Oh." Not exactly pleased to be essentially reduced to a meaningless role in the proceedings once again, Mike scowled. "I guess that means what I did was totally useless after all. Great to know."
"Every good deed has a point." With a slight, serene smile, Buzz clapped Mike's shoulder. "You made it easier for Herb not to see, and I bet he noticed that."
"I'll have you know I was much more subtle than that." Mike stuck out his tongue. "I'm certain he didn't notice anything."
"Yep, you're the king of subtlety. You were about as subtle as a charging ram in the spring, which is pretty darn impressive." Buzz chuckled. Then, shifting more toward the serious, he added, "Don't worry, Rammer. If you take a long enough view, everything turns out all right in the end. That's the best thing about life."