Burn Bright
When Mark walked into the locker room the next day, his attention was immediately captured by another message on the blackboard. This time, the white chalkboard blared in all capitals: BREIBO NAD AKRM- HO MRICSASHT ERTE OHW VENREGERE ERA RYOU AESCHBR.
Hoping this gibberish translated into another clue about where the Christmas tree was hidden, Mark fumbled around in his windbreaker pocket, found a pen that he hoped still had ink in it, and scribbled down the jumble of letters on the only scrap of paper he could locate easily: a tattered bubblegum wrapper from inside his jeans pocket.
"What language is that in?" Bill asked, jerking his head at the note on the chalkboard.
"Pig Latin?" suggested Mike Ramsey, shrugging.
"Not even a pig could mess up Latin that badly," OC answered, shaking his head. "Try again, boys."
"It's all Greek to me." Phil Verchota raised and lowered his broad shoulders in a shrug.
"That's definitely not Greek. You can't envision that being written on the Acropolis, can you?" Bill's gaze narrowed as he scrutinized the letters on the board. "I'm not even convinced that is a language. There seems to be no semantic pattern to the way any of the letters in the various words are grouped. Every word appears to follow its own linguistic rules. That indicates either the message was not written in any language known to mankind, or else that it is written in several different languages with distinct semantic patterns."
"The word 'era' appears," put in Eric Strobel helpfully. "Maybe you're on the right track about the message being written in several different languages. How original. I only wish I were well-educated enough to understand them all to better appreciate the artistic genius behind the message."
"You're all over-thinking this." Neal Broten chuckled as every eye in the locker room focused on him. "That message is written in exactly the same language my papers are when I put them off too long, try to pull an all-nighter, and fall asleep at my typewriter, collapsing on the keyboard with my forehead pressing random buttons until my roommate manages to shake me awake in the morning."
"Be honest," teased Dave Christian, nudging his best friend on the team in the ribs. "You talk and write in that language all the time."
"This is ridiculous," Rob snapped, stalking up to the blackboard and erasing the note with zeal. "We're putting more thought and effort into interpreting this stupid message than the idiot who produced it put into writing it."
"How would you know how much thought and effort the person who wrote the message put into it?" challenged Silky, arching a keen eyebrow. "Are you confessing to be being—to use your eloquent phrasing—the idiot who produced it?"
His eyes hard and burning as coals, Rob opened his mouth to retort but was mercifully cut off by Buzz, who observed lightly, "Whoever wrote the note probably isn't stupid. Whoever it was most likely just wanted a little bit of attention and a few laughs. I'll bet it's just a joke."
"Yeah, whoever wrote the message is probably just a dirty attention hog," agreed Rob, all tartness as he treated Rizzo and Silky to a glare that could have cracked mortar. "Naturally, such a brat wouldn't care whether the attention was positive or negative—"
"So, of course, the best solution would be to just ignore it, and the person will stop leaving annoying messages once the little notes aren't getting any more attention," Mark finished firmly, shooting his left-winger a repressive glance that meant behave. "Mom always said that if you want someone to stop bothering you, most of the time just ignoring them will do the trick, and my mother is always right. She told me so herself, and she is never wrong—"
"Because she is always right," completed Rizzo, who obviously felt he had gone too long this morning without speaking. "Gotta love the circular logic of mothers everywhere."
"Actually, as I was going to explain before I was so rudely interrupted, the ideal solution wouldn't be ignoring the message writer." Rob's terse tone announced to the whole team that he wasn't planning on behaving for anyone. "The best solution would be giving the person in question a powerful whack upside the head, but that, tragically, will have to wait until the guilty party is uncovered."
"Everyone has a different idea for solving problems. That's one of our team's great strengths, I think." Buzz grinned to relax some of the tension slicing through the room like a knife. "Anyway, Bah, have you seen any good movies lately?"
The topic of movies they had seen recently and films they wanted to watch carried them through the remainder of their preparation for practice, providing Mark with a chance to ruminate over the chalkboard clue now that he did not have to worry about preventing Rob from ripping off the heads of assorted teammates. The letters in the message were an incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, but they were organized into distinct units of sounds like words. That suggested they had to mean something. Maybe he and Rob had to rearrange the letters into English words, unscrambling the letters of the puzzle into words that made sense, but that would take a lot more time than Mark had right now…
He was trying to shift the letters he remembered into words that might be relevant to the Christmas tree hunt as he slipped onto the bench to watch the beginning of the scrimmage Herb had set up for today's practice, but he was denied the opportunity to make much progress in this endeavor by Rob, who had slid in beside him, griping, "I want to throttle Rizzo. And disembowel Silky. And draw and quarter Buzz—"
"Thanks for being so open about your feelings." Pinching the bridge of his nose, Mark thought that he and Rob had better find their Christmas tree soon before Rob turned into a homicidal maniac on a murderous rampage to destroy any teammate who aggravated him in the slightest. "It might be faster, though, if you just listed the teammates you aren't daydreaming of executing in very creative ways."
"I'm suddenly having vivid fantasies of burning you at the stake." Rob scowled, plainly not amused by being interrupted mid-rant.
"At least I'm in good company on your death list." Sighing, Mark thought it was going to be a long practice if Rob was determined to be as prickly as a cactus today as he had been yesterday.
"You have no taste if you think that Rizzo, Silky, and Buzz make good company." Rob snorted contemptuously. "I wouldn't be friends with any of them if they were the last people on Earth after a nuclear fallout."
"Come on." With an exertion of will, Mark confined himself to a mental eye roll at his left-winger's bullheadedness. "I understand that you've persuaded yourself that Rizzo and Silky are filthy sneak thieves, but what has Buzz done to deserve your eternal loathing? He is the self-appointed grandpa of our team. The one who gets up early to bake us a stack of pancakes when we don't have morning practices and who tells us funny stories about all the World Championship teams he has been on. There's really nothing to dislike about Buzz."
In fact, of him and Rob, Mark thought that he would have a better reason to bear a grudge against Buzz. Buzz had been a member of that 1976 Olympic hockey team that Mark as a senior in high school had nearly made but had been kicked off of because his dad, the coach, feared the charges of nepotism wouldn't be fair to either of them. Buzz had been one of the two Gophers on that Olympic team who made piqued remarks to the press about how Mark was just another high school kid whenever the team lost a training game, never mind that Mark had accumulated eleven points in eleven games…
But professional hockey players did not harbor grudges. They knew nothing related to the sport was personal unless they imagined it to be so. They understood that yesterday's rival could become today's teammate, and today's teammate could be transformed into tomorrow's rival. They were prepared to work with anyone whenever it was necessary for team success, and Buzz was too warm a personality to be at all disagreeable to work with. Besides, Mark figured that in the war waged between the Gophers and the Badgers, no one was entirely innocent.
After all, he had been guilty himself of reporting Steve Christoff to a referee for not wearing a mouthguard near the conclusion of a Badger-Gopher showdown. He had been a lot less concerned with the opposing player's safety and more with the ten minute penalty Steve would receive for not wearing a mouthguard. Steve later told Mark that Herb made him skate for a half hour around the arena after the following day's practice, getting lectured by Herb all the while on the importance of mouthguards.
Sometimes, Mark wondered if he had to go back in time and repeat that action knowing what he did now if he would have the guts to do so. It was one thing that to a helmeted player you perceived only as an opponent, but once you had talked and laughed with a person, it was harder to crush their dreams with abandon. Back then, Mark hadn't even known about the muscle-melting torture that being skated as a punishment could be. At Wisconsin, whatever Herb might have believed on the contrary, they trained intensely, because on game day you didn't just smile, show up unprepared, and hope for the best, but Dad never skated his players as a punishment. Dad would never have wanted any of his teams to associate something they should love—skating hard and fast—with a punishment to be avoided at all costs, while Herb's enlightened view seemed to be that his players were welcome to hate anything they liked as long as they became faster skaters with stronger endurance. Maybe, Mark reflected, that was part of the reason he had smashed his stick against the glass in Oslo. Perhaps he had simply been unable to tolerate another second of being forced to hate something he loved—of having one of his passions in life stolen from him Herbie by agonizing Herbie. Maybe the stick smashing had been nothing more than his way of saying, "I break, too, and I won't play hockey for you if you make me hate it."
So, the question was, aware of how much of a torment a punishment skate could be, would he have intentionally put Steve through that just to get a ten minute power play? The competitive half of Mark—the part that loved nothing more than to win—screamed yes, while his compassionate side yelled at him for even considering such cruelty. He supposed he would just have to file the whole matter under questions he would rather not have answered about himself…
"Are you back from the moon yet, or should I find somebody else to talk to who won't space out on me mid-conversation?" Rob's palm wave in front of Mark's eyes yanked him out of his musings.
"Sorry." Mark shook his head to clear it and regain his focus on his currently mercurial line mate. "I was lost in thought there for a moment."
"Obviously." Rob rolled his eyes. "Anyway, what you missed while your brain was wandering among the stars was me explaining that I hate Buzz because he redirected the conversation when my fierce questioning might have forced Rizzo or Silky to make some sort of revealing confession."
"Well, if you didn't want to have someone interrupt your interrogation, you shouldn't have resorted to threats of violence," Mark informed his friend dryly. "We're a couple of centuries beyond the Spanish Inquisition, you see."
"Threats of violence are very effective at getting recalcitrant people to talk," muttered Rob, chin lifting in revolt.
"Not necessarily with honesty, though." Mark's eyes widened earnestly. "That's why confessions under duress are useless. I mean, you could get me to admit to being a Martian if you tortured me long enough."
"I always knew you were a Martian." Rob elbowed Mark in the ribs. "You were just dispatched here by your evil alien overlords to make us Earthlings look terrible at hockey, and I'm such a grand interrogator that only I could get the truth out of you. Admit it."
"Yeah, right." Mark nudged Rob back. "You're such a marvelous interrogator that you forgot to ask me a single question."
"I'm such a skilled interrogator I don't need to lower myself to asking questions." Haughtily, Rob tilted his nose in the air. "I just make statement that my subjects immediately feel the urge to confirm or deny. Their confirmations or denials always prove my suspicions correct."
"Ah." Mark snickered. "That would probably be solid evidence that you hear only what you want to hear, Mac."
Before Rob, who was opening his mouth to respond to this assertion, could reply, Herb blew his whistle and barked, "Broten's line, replace the Coneheads. Johnson's line, you're in for Verchota's. Christian and O'Callahan, you're on defense near Janny's net. Baker and Ramsey, you're playing defense for Craig's side. Move with a purpose, gentleman! Hockey games are won or lost by substitution speed!"
Seconds later, everybody who was supposed to be on ice was in position, and all those who were intended to be off it were settled on the bench. Facing off against a smiling Neal at center ice, Mark felt totally at ease and focused as he waited for Herb to drop the puck. This was how he relaxed. This was how he had fun. Being on ice was, simply put, the best feeling in the world.
The puck slipped from Herb's fingers, and time seemed to slow, providing Mark an eternity in which to follow the puck's trajectory to ice—to anticipate where his stick needed to be to seize the puck before Neal did. The puck hit the ice, and Mark's stick slid around it a second before Neal's did.
Mark twisted around Neal, protecting the puck with his body and discovered, when he emerged from his twirl that, somehow, Neal was still in front of him. Mark continued down the ice, shifting the puck from side to side as often as necessary to shield it from Neal's repeated attempts to steal it, and trying to skate around Neal several times, always to find Neal still stubbornly keeping pace with him.
Midway through his third spin, Mark spotted OC surging forward to confront him, dangerous as a hornet with a menaced hive. Deciding that it was definitely time to pass, Mark feigned a shot to Eric, whom Dave Christian instantly glided into cover like a German Shepherd on guard duty, and then sent the puck sailing toward Rob.
Rob, on a burst of speed, dashed toward the net, his jaw clenched with his trademark determination and intensity. Seeing where he was headed, OC quickly fell back to close in on the net like an oyster protecting its pearl. Dave, too, drifted nearer to the goal, leaving Eric open.
Rapidly, Rob fired a shot, which bounced off Janny's pad. The puck streaked toward the right boards, where Eric was there a fraction before Dave. In one fluid motion, he hit the puck and sent it flying smoothly through Janny's legs into the net.
After blowing his whistle sharply to ensure that he had everyone's attention, Herb rapped out his corrections, "McClanahan, I don't know how many times I'll have to tell you to aim higher on a shot like that before you take a hint and do it. Janny, you shouldn't have given up that rebound. Catch the puck with your glove or pass it to one of your defensemen, but don't send the puck flying toward the boards. O'Callahan, you're allowed to move to the right side of the net to help block a shot from that direction. Skates have blades for a purpose: so you can change your positioning. As for you, Christian, do you see anything you could have done differently?"
Hoping that Herb would restrain himself from tearing into Dave too harshly, Mark bit his lip. As far as Mark was concerned, it was very brave of Dave, who hadn't played defense in years, to agree without any sort of grumbling to fill in Bob's place as a defenseman until his injury healed. Moreover, it was not as if Dave played defense pathetically. Normally, his quick wits and swift skates allowed him to fulfill his duties with alacrity, and, even when he was out of position, those traits usually permitted him to compensate for his mistakes. Dave was doing well in a position that he was unused to playing, but naturally, Herb would never compliment him on that, just as he would not praise Eric for a beautiful goal. As always, it would be left to the team to pat each other on the back.
"I guess I could have positioned myself better, Coach," Dave replied after a moment's pause. "I should have positioned myself so that I could block the net and cover Eric at the same time."
"You guess right." Brusquely, Herb nodded. "Next time, shift it up a gear, and do it right."
He glared around at all the players assembled on ice as if to strip the all of any lingering delusions that their performances had been remotely adequate and then shouted, "I want the next lines out on the ice in under three seconds. Give me some proof that I've got a team of college students, not geriatrics."
"Yes, sir," chirped Neal in an undertone, offering an ironic salute that Herb, skating with his back to them as they glided toward the bench, apparently missed. Neal wasn't timid about being cheeky since he seemed to be too upbeat and gifted for even Herb to harangue. "Right away, sir. Hope we all don't fail inspection, sir."
"I certainly failed inspection," Dave remarked gloomily, as they clambered over the boards and flopped onto the bench. "Herb all but told me I'm completely defective as a defenseman."
"You aren't defective at all!" protested Neal with a squeak, spraying water he had just gulped from his bottle over everybody within a yard's vicinity. "You've done a great job stepping to the plate now that Bobby's out with his broken ankle. I would be peeing in my pads every time I went onto the ice if I had to play an unfamiliar position, but you're so smart and calm about it. Every time I see you play defense, I'm just amazed by how poised you are, you know."
"Neal is not barking up the wrong tree for once." Eric smiled. "You're learning how to play a different position than you're used to. Herb will be as patient as he can be with you, because even he can't expect you to pick up on everything without making a few mistakes now and then."
"Electric's right." Rob reached around Mark to give Dave an affectionate tap on the helmet. Obviously, now that Eric had scored, Rob felt free to ease up on himself and his teammates. For the rest of practice, he would probably be all hugs and encouragement. As long as his line scored, Rob defined his progress as successful or at least acceptable, even if he had not gotten the goal, but he became very tightly wound when he believed their line had failed to deliver on their potential. "Herb would never have switched you to defense if he didn't have faith in your creativity, flexibility, and quickness. I've seen at the U Herb dump players into the deep end of a different position to see if they'll sink or swim. If they sink, he tells them they looked like a chicken skating around with its head cut off, and he won't bother trying to teach them the new position, because he knows they'll never get it. If they swim, though, he'll let them work out the nuts and bolts of that position without being too overbearing and critical. Just keep learning from your mistakes, Dave, and remind yourself whenever you to that, since Herb has already played you as a defenseman more than once, you've already swam in his eyes."
Both his wingers, Mark realized with a jolt, were speaking from experience. Even though, as a Badger, he had faced off against both Rob and Eric as centers, it was easy for him to forget that both of them had played center throughout their hockey careers. He got so caught up in thinking of them as his wingers, he didn't remember that Rob and Eric probably perceived themselves as centers playing the role of wingers. He supposed that it was a tribute to the skills of his line mates in their assumed roles as wingers that he never really thought of them as centers. Maybe he should remember that they were star centers in high school and college a bit more, he decided with a twinge of guilt. He didn't want to step on their toes by saying or doing something stupid—to make them feel as if they were stuck playing second fiddle to him when they had been the ones who played dutifully for Herb for four long years.
"You're doing wonderful, too, Electric," added Rob, wrapping Eric in an awkward, one-armed embrace. "Yesterday, when I said that your moments of greatness didn't begin to cancel out you slacking off the rest of the time, I forgot how brilliant you are when you're on. Thanks for being on today when we needed you to score."
"Thanks for being on every day, Mac." Eric returned Rob's hug. "I admire that about you, and I wish I could do it myself, but…"
"It doesn't matter," interjected Rob vehemently. "You're a brilliant player, and I couldn't stand the competition if you were on fire all the time. You shining occasionally is really all I can take without being cast into the shadows."
"What a pack of lies!" Eric exclaimed, laughing. "You're so intense that I know you'd shine all the brighter with more competition."
"Our line is going to shine very bright today." Mark smiled, thinking that line mates were like siblings. Sometimes they argued; other times, they comforted one another. Sometimes they taunted and goaded each other; other times they defended and helped one another. Sometimes they felt like they had nothing in common; other times they were closer than bread and butter. Sometimes they failed to communicate with results that ranged from the comical to the disastrous; other times they read one another's minds. Sometimes they hogged the puck; other times they shared with remarkable generosity and selflessness. Sometimes they competed other times they cooperated. There were good days and bad ones, but they were always one unit, and now they were one unit glad to be facing what was shaping up to be a good day for them. Drawing reflexively on one of Dad's favorite compliments, he went on, "We scored the prettiest goal today, boys. I'm so proud of us."