"Don't worry, Doc. If that happens, I can always come back as a forward."—Defenseman Harold Snepsts after receiving advice from a doctor to wear a helmet to avert brain damage.

Always Come Back

"I hereby open today's shooting contest," proclaimed Rizzo, shaping his fingers into a pistol and pretending to fire at the rafters of the Oulu arena where they were warming up for a game against the city's professional hockey club. "Competitors will shoot from the blue line, aiming top shelf where Mom keeps the cookies. Electric, why don't you go first?"

"Sounds great," Eric answered, emerging from the knot of Mark, Rob, Steve, Neal, Bah, Buzz, Phil, and Johnson to skate up to the blue line. A grin splitting his cheeks from ear to ear, Eric wound up for a slapshot that banged off the right goalpost.

"Bad luck getting eliminated on your first shot," commiserated Rizzo, clapping Eric on the shoulder.

"Easy come and easy go." Eric shrugged and gestured for Neal to take his place at the blue line. "It must have been the pressure of going first."

Neal launched a slapshot that found its target in the top part of the net. Beaming as he remained alive for the next portion of the competition, Neal stepped back to allow Steve to move up to the blue line.

Steve drew his stick back for a powerful slapshot, but his stick splintered as soon as it hit the ice before it could make contact with the puck. Spotting this, Mark couldn't stifle a smirk since participants were automatically eliminated from the shooting contest if their sticks shattered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he glimpsed Pav, who was deking invisible defenders, wink at him. Wondering if he was hallucinating things and figuring that he could always claim he had just been blinking a speck out of his eye, Mark returned the gesture even if he wasn't sure if Pav was watching.

"Good effort, Steve." Rizzo patted Steve's helmet, apparently not discouraged from overt displays of affection by the sour scowl on Steve's lips that suggested he had just swallowed the bitterest of pills. "You just put a little too much energy behind your hit this time."

"You don't say?" Steve etched sarcasm into every snide syllable. "Oh, so that must be why my stick broke. Who would have guessed? Surely not anyone who thought about it for even a second."

Huffing, Steve sped over to the bench to guzzle down some water that would probably not bank the blaze of his temper, while Phil skated up to the blue line to hit a slapshot that went top shelf into the net.

Following Phil, Bah and Buzz managed to fire slapshots that landed top shelf in the goal. After those two success stories, Rob experienced a failure when his stick, like Steve's, broke into smithereens the instant it made contact with the ice before it could strike the puck. As he listened to Rob curse the puck's parentage in a very creative manner, Mark again found himself snickering as he caught Pav's gaze, and, this time, he could have sworn in a court without fear of perjury that he saw Pav flash him a quick thumbs-up.

"If I were you, Wells—a hypothetical situation that makes me sick to contemplate—I'd wipe that stupid sneer off your face before someone smacks it off and spoils the scant decent looks you had," snapped Rob, obviously detecting Mark's snicker and whirling around to glare at Mark with enough heat to evaporate the icebergs in the Arctic.

"Something stinks around here." Mark waved a hand in front of his nose as if he had just scented a foul stench. "Oh, it's a sore loser, McClanahan."

"Better a sore loser than a filthy cheater, which is what you are, Wells," riposted Rob, folding his arms across his chest.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Mark demanded, planting his balled fists on his hips, as the blood pounding in his head reverberated against his eardrums with the compelling martial force of the war dances of his Chippewa ancestors. "How the fuck am I a cheater?"

"I should think that's as plain as the nose on your face, but I'll humor you." Rob's eyes narrowed as he thrust each word at Mark like a honed dagger. "You cut Steve's and my sticks so that they'd break as soon as they hit the ice, and if that's fair then I'm the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

"I—" Abruptly, it dawned on Mark how so far only Rob and Steve's sticks had splintered, which made him wonder if Pav had cut their sticks as a lesson for snubbing Mark during yesterday's training exercise-"I didn't do anything."

"You d-d-didn't?" Rob's face was tight with spite as he mocked Mark's slight stutter. "Why d-d-don't I believe you because it's too convenient?"

"Relax, Robbie." Johnson extended a hand to give Rob's shoulder a placatory squeeze. "Play nicely with others. It's just a game. We're supposed to be having fun, not risking apoplexy."

"Games are no fun when cheaters are involved." Rob's glower remained fixed on Mark. "Tell Wellsy to play nicely with others, Magic, since he doesn't seem to know not to cheat, although that's the first lesson anyone should learn on the elementary school playground."

"Do you have any evidence that Wellsy cheated, Mac?" Rizzo lifted an eyebrow. "If not, why don't you step aside and let everyone else keep playing, all right?"

"I don't need evidence when I know the truth, but by all means continue with your farce, and I hope Wellsy becomes the top jester." Tilting his nose in the air haughtily, Rob executed one of his perfect pivots and retreated to the bench, doubtlessly to expound upon his most recent suspicions against Mark to Steve, the player on the team who at the present had the highest odds of being sympathetic to such theories and complaints.

"Right, Wellsy." Rizzo exhaled gustily as the thunderhead that was Rob disappeared to bestow more joy on other fortunate individuals. "It's your turn."

Taking a deep breath through his mouth and letting it stream slowly out of his nostrils in an effort to focus on the contest rather than his endless battle with Rob, Mark approached the blue line and fired a slapshot that landed top shelf in the net and allowed him to advance to the next stage of the competition.

"Excellent shot," called Rizzo, clapping his palms together briskly as Mark, satisfied that he had at least done better than Rob and Steve, drifted away from the blue line to permit Johnson to take his place. "Now it's Magic's chance to shine."

Sliding over to where Pav was practicing alone, Mark muttered, his cheeks red as ripe tomatoes, "Thanks."

Giving a shadow of a smile, Pav nodded as if to both acknowledge the prank he had committed on Mark's behalf and establish that it had been nothing.

Feeling touched that anyone on the team who wasn't named Ken Morrow would be concerned with his welfare, nonetheless prepared to fight for it, Mark asked, stumbling over the words as if he had gravel in his mouth, "Why did you do it, Pav?"

"They—" Pav jerked his chin at Rob and Steve to indicate whom the plural pronoun referenced—"don't see you. They don't see me either."

His eyes locked on Mark's, Pav continued giving what to him amounted to a grand public declamation, "I don't care, but you do. Now they have to really look at you."

"I suppose they do." Mark chuckled. Finding himself overwhelmed with the urge to slap Pav on the back, he didn't deny it, and commented as his hand made contact with Pav's back, "You should talk more, Pav. I'd rather hear what you've got to say than the shit McClanahan spews like a broken sewage pipe."

Before Pav could reply if he was even going to engage in such a protracted conversation with another teammate, Rizzo shouted from the left faceoff circle, where the remaining contestants—Johnson, Neal, Phil, Bah, and Buzz- were ringed around him, "Hey, Wellsy! Are you surrendering or what?"

"Nah." Mark glided over to the faceoff circle to join the rest of the survivors of the first round of the shooting contest. "That's just what all my opponents wish on a star that I was doing."

"He should be accessed a delay of game penalty," remarked Rob primly from the bench. "Perhaps that would teach him to be more punctual."

"There's no clause in the rulebook about that," Rizzo responded with a gravity that implied there was a rulebook as important as the Constitution governing their shooting competition when, in reality, there was no rulebook whatsoever. "That means Wellsy can resume play right now without any sort of penalty. Now, Wellsy, you guys are going to try to score high on the glove side from this faceoff circle. Neal will go first."

Neal's aim was true, but Phil's shot sailed wide of the net to the left, while Bah's did the same on the right. Then it was Mark's turn, and he relished the glares from Steve and Rob that he could feel burning holes in his neck like cigarette butts as the puck he fired flew into the net high on the glove side. In fact, he was so enraptured in the triumph that came from knowing he was infuriating Rob and Steve by his mere continued presence in the competition that he almost missed Johnson's shot landing smoothly in the high glove side of the goal.

"Time to move onto the next faceoff circle," announced Rizzo, shepherding Mark, Buzz, Neal, and Johnson to the right faceoff dot. "Now you guys have to aim low on the blocker side."

By the end of this round, only Mark and Johnson remained alive in the contest. Neal had been eliminated when his shot had hit a water bottle on top of the net instead of entering the goal, and Buzz was finished when his shot had bounced off the crossbar.

"Down to the final two." Rizzo rubbed his hands together, his face a beacon of excitement. "Time to up the ante. I want you both to try to score a wraparound goal. Wellsy, you're up first."

Glancing over at the bench to ascertain that Rob and Steve were still watching the show, Mark spotted Herb standing there, appraising Mark with eyes as cold and cunning as a serpent's. After reminding himself to concentrate, Mark told himself that this was an opportunity to impress Herb that he could not afford to squander. Obviously, he could never be better than Johnson on a consistent basis because there was a reason the Madison native had the appellation Magic, but he could beat Johnson by sheer tenacity in one competition and be the best forward on the team for at least one moment in time, and he was resolved to achieve such a feat with Herb as an onlooker.

Gritting his teeth, Mark wheeled around the net, feeling as though he were a shark chasing prey, and then shoved the puck into the goal as he completed curving around it.

"Done." Mark nodded at Johnson, while his mind and body readied themselves for the next phase of the shooting contest. "It's your turn."

Johnson glided around the net with the puck on his stick, and Mark fully anticipated the puck sliding smoothly into the goal, but instead it skidded away toward the boards.

As he raised his arms in the air in the universal expression of victory, Mark's gaze shifted over to the bench to check if Herb was suitably impressed by his triumph—however fleeting—over Johnson, but his heart sank into his stomach when he realized that Herb, busy scrawling notes on a scrap of paper, seemed not to have noticed Mark's moment of glory.

"Congratulations!" exclaimed Johnson, enveloping Mark in a hug, and Mark supposed that it was easy for Johnson to be gracious in defeat when he so rarely lost anything and could be confident of winning whatever the next competition was. When it boiled down to it, Johnson was friendly and unfailingly polite but he didn't understand what it was like to go through life having to forever cast off the label of failure that was so cruelly and unjustly affixed to your forehead as Mark did. "Great job, Wellsy!"

"You too." Mark smiled, as he recognized that his entire frame was quaking with the adrenaline onrush brought on by victory. "I guess the puck just hit a rough patch of ice for you."

"I've got no excuse." Johnson nudged Mark in the ribs. "You were just better than me and won fair and square, so don't rub my nose in it."

Hoping that Rob, who respected Johnson's opinion as much as he was capable of esteeming anyone's, had overheard the bit about his winning being fair and square, Mark returned to the bench. As he settled into a space beside Ken, he tried to convince himself that Herb had seen his performance in the shooting contest no matter what appearances had indicated on the contrary and would give Mark a chance to prove his worth in a spot higher in the lineup…

Perhaps it was the fact that he had almost persuaded himself that this was definitely going to transpire that made his whole body and soul freeze when, ten minutes into the game, Herb tapped him on the shoulder, barking, "Wellsy, next shift you'll play right wing on Broten's line."

Bristling because he was a center and he didn't appreciate Herb implying that he wasn't good enough to be one, especially on this team, Mark said in a tone as stiff as a fake smile, "I'm a center, not a winger."

"On this team, you'll play whatever position I tell you, or you won't play at all," countered Herb in a voice frigid enough to bring the temperature of the arena into the negative range.

Massaging his temples as Herb stride back down the bench, snarling at Christoff that he was to remain at right wing on Broten's line, Mark saw Rob glaring lightning bolts Zeus would have been glad to hurl at him. No doubt Rob thought he was a center who was too much of a position snob to even entertain the possibility of playing what many regarded as the inferior role of winger, but it wasn't as simple as that. He was well aware that this team was so loaded with centers that many adept centers—Rob, Steve, and Eric sprang to mind instantaneously—were already converted to wingers, but he questioned his ability to shift to wing as seamlessly as they did.

He was a rigid player who preferred to have his role defined for him so he could know what was expected of him, and a new position meant a different role with varying expectations that he would be relied upon to fulfill without instruction in the midst of a game. Sure, he understood what his wingers did, but that was in the same way that he knew what his defensemen and his goalie did. It was a periphery knowledge that wouldn't have allowed him to play winger with any more skill than a deaf man could the clarinet. He didn't want to humiliate himself or hurt his team. Why were Herb and Rob so determined to perceive malice and disdain where there was none?

Drowning in a river of resentment, Mark concluded that Herb and Rob's suspicions about him were merely reflections of terrible darkness they carried around in their own hearts. All his conflicts with them were more rooted in their own issues and insecurities than they were in his, but that notion was sparse solace to him throughout the rest of the game as Herb delivered on his threat and staunchly refused to play Mark until the final horn sounded.

Still sulking over being benched like a Pee Wee who had arrived late to a playoff game, Mark griped to Ken as they sat next to each other on the bus driving them back to the campsite, "I can't believe Herb was enough of a bastard to want me to play winger when I had just beaten Johnson in a shooting contest. I mean, what the fuck more can he expect from a forward than that? Him asking me to play winger after that was the worst insult I've ever received from a coach, and, yep, that includes all the gibes about how with my height I should audition for a role as a Munchkin in a production of The Wizard of Oz instead of wasting my time trying out for a hockey team."

"Calm down before that vein throbbing in your throat finally explodes under the pressure, Mark." Tugging meditatively on his earlobe, Ken continued in a level voice that suggested they were discussing nothing more stressful than what brand of milk at the supermarket was the best bargain, "Maybe you're looking at this the wrong way. Isn't it possible that Herb ordering you to play right wing on Neal's line was more of a compliment than an insult?"

"Yeah, right." Mark snarled, fogging the window with the exhaust of his breath. "It's possible it was compliment in the same way it's possible that Santa Claus lives with the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny at his North Pole toy factory."

"Don't be a jerk." Ken elbowed Mark in the ribcage. "Anyway, aren't wingers supposed to be the best scorers on the team, so couldn't Herb have asked you to play right wing on the second line because he was impressed by your shot?"

Biting his lip, Mark wondered whether Herb had reacted so hostilely to his declaration that he was a center, not a winger, because, from Herb's perspective, he had been throwing away the gift of an opportunity to play on the second line and find a place on the team as a winger since the team was so bloated with centers Mark was unlikely to make the roster in that position.

"It was stupid of him to expect that I could transition from center to winger at the drop of a pin," scoffed Mark, squelching the jealous voice inside him that observed Rob, Steve, and Eric could probably accomplish such a task without batting an eyelash. "That's the definition of being an asshole."

Mark remained in this black mood as the bus pulled into the campsite and the team streamed out of the vehicle and into their cabins with their equipment bags slung over their shoulders.

"Holy crap, I feel as if I've just been beaten by a thousand clubs," grumbled Silky, collapsing on his bunk and rubbing his presumably aching muscles. "I could sleep for a fucking week and still feel like shit."

"You're lucky to be tired." Far from being disposed to greet complaints about physical exhaustion with sympathy, Mark found each reminder that his teammates had taken ice time that should have gone to him more stinging than a slap across the cheek, so he glowered balefully at Silky. "That means you got to play, so stop bitching. It's basketball players, not hockey players, who are supposed to be whiny bastards."

"You're quite mopey for someone accusing somebody else of being a wimp," retorted Silky, sticking his tongue out at Mark.

"Yeah, it's your own damn fault that you didn't get a smidgen of ice time," Steve added, studying Mark with a hatred that suggested he was a demon spawn. "You could have gotten my ice time, but I guess it wasn't good enough for you, so I don't know what the hell you're moaning about."

"Oh, isn't it abundantly clear that no winger's ice time would be good enough for him, Steve?" put in Rob, who was sprawled on his top bunk, bouncing a soccer ball off his feet and head with an almost nauseating amount of fervor given that he had just finished playing first line minutes in a hockey game. "As a center, he's much too exalted to play wing. He'd rather not play at all than lower himself to the level of us peasants."

Wishing that the soccer ball would hit Rob's thick head with enough force to give him a concussion, Mark hissed, "If you got your brain out of your butt long enough to have a real idea about anything for once, McClanahan, it might occur to you that I don't know how to play wing that well."

"Bullshit." Rob kicked the soccer ball from his right foot to his left. "Winger is a less complicated position than center, so if you can play center, you can play winger, too. You see, when your center takes a faceoff, you get prepared to receive a pass. When the puck goes along the boards, you retrieve it and pass it to your center. If the action is in the offensive zone, you forecheck, but if it's in the defensive zone, you backcheck. It's so simple a kid could do it, and, in fact, many of them do. The only reason you can't play winger is because you won't. I just wanted you to know that I could detect your lie with almost zero mental exertion, so why don't you have the balls to admit that you see wingers as an inferior breed to centers?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Robbie," chimed in Johnson from the bunk below Rob's, and Mark thought that Johnson should have fun striking his left winger's fragile ego back to its normal excessive size so that their line could function optimally without any friction. "Nobody thinks that since it sounds like the sort of idea someone would concoct after smoking some serious dope—you know, the kind that makes people take an intense interest in individual carpet fibers."

"Zip it, Magic. I wasn't talking to you." Rob's dark eyes speared into Mark. "I want to hear Wellsy's answer, and I can guarantee it won't be as tactful as yours."

"What do you want me to say, McClanahan?" Mark forced his mouth into a jeer when all he really wanted to do was sleep so he could forget another dreadful day in which he had managed to further estrange himself from Herb and his teammates who weren't called Ken Morrow. "Everyone who has so much as watched a hockey game realizes that centers are about three times more valuable than wingers. Don't hate the player; hate the game."

"Indeed." Rob's lips thinned as he arched an icily inquisitive eyebrow in Mark's direction. "I gather you see yourself as just a center, don't you?"

"I'm a center." His jaw taut, Mark nodded, because he was unwilling to cede any of his identity, since that was the mistake his Chippewa ancestors had made during the Westward Expansion, and he was still paying for their weakness in the scorn he felt for himself and from others. "Not a winger. Not a defenseman. Not a goalie."

"What a marvelous coincidence. I'm a center, too." Rob hit the soccer ball with his inflated head. "The only difference between you and me is that I'm a center who plays wing, while you're a center who doesn't play at all. Isn't that fascinating?"

"Not as fascinating as watching your eyes get pecked out by a crow would be," Mark volleyed back.

Before Rob, whose mouth was already opening to provide some witty comeback, could offer a rejoinder, Johnson tugged on the arm Rob had dangling by his bunk, saying, "Let's go get some wood to build a fire, Robbie. We need to eat some dinner."

"That's a brilliant suggestion, Magic." Rob whistled in a distinctly ironic fashion. "We could build the fire in the stove in here, so the soot blows in all our eyeballs, or we could build it in one of the fire pits outside so that when the rain that has been threatening to come all day finally arrives, the wood will get soaked and the flames extinguished. It's overwhelming how many wonderful choices and merry outcomes there are."

"You're such a lazy bump on a log." Johnson twisted Rob's arm. "Come on. The sooner we go, the faster the nightmares that you described can become reality."

"Ouch," yelped Rob. "Damn it, Magic, this may come as a shock to you, but my arm is attached to the rest of my body, and, consequently, is not designed to be bent that way, since it could be removed from its socket."

"Your lips are moving, and all I hear is whining." Johnson laughed as he gave another yank on Rob's arm. "Grow up and accept that stretching is good for you, Mac."

"Stretching is good for me, but dislocating my arm isn't." Heaving a melodramatic sight, Rob extricated his arm from Johnson's clasp and leapt over his bunk's railing down to the floor. "Look out below. Bombs away. Hurry up, Magic. I don't feel like waiting all night for you so we can complete our mission."

"I never keep my friends waiting." Johnson rolled out of his bunk. "Honestly, it's a mystery to me how you could even hint that I would do such a horrible thing."

"Which friends are you talking about?" inquired Rob as he and Johnson walked out of the cabin to search for wood. "Would you be referring to your legions of imaginary ones?"

As the door slammed shut in Rob and Johnson's wake, blocking out their banter, Mark closed his eyes and cradled his head in his pillow, embracing the nap that was trying to wrap around the tendrils of his mind. At this point of a long and wearying day, a nap before dinner was welcome, because he knew that it would bring no nightmares. In his dreams, nothing would go wrong, since, in his dreams, he always did everything right. That was why his nightmare would be whatever he found when he awakened in this cabin and remembered that he did nothing right, which was why he had few friends but many foes.