(i)
28 December, 1947. Lucky boy, they said,
you missed the war. Half a season in Omaha, his first
as a pro. A patched-up eye, a cumbersome collar to hold his head
steady, felt like he was on the troop train home.
A month before, the team
on the bus travelling south, jogged awake, he sees a red sun
rising over bitten land. Snake rocks. Cactus. An hour from Houston,
the radiator blows. Sickly green all over the road. Local travellers
slow their trucks, squint across their sunburnt arms,
asking what in hale we disembowelled.
Texas. Jesus. Boulevards with palms. Trees
with bean pods two feet long. Foolish place to play
hockey in the first place. Plants and bugs
with teeth. Mexican tiles.
(ii)
An oval of faces floating overhead,
green masks and goggles. Four eyes. Frog eyes.
This is where they’d gone, the brainy guys. And here’s
a mindlessness he’s grown to love, morphine wings, hearing the talk
on the bus again, Geisebrecht and Simon hatching plans—Agar,
son of a bitch, the rip he’d given Geisebrecht a week before,
and worse, the grin when he walked around them both
to win the game. “Give him a look up the middle,”
says Geisebrecht. “Lure the son of a bitch with an open lane.”
Converging in front, they catch him high and low,
high stick, cross-check, arse-over-kettle into the crease.
A skate arcs lazily past, the stick accelerates in anger
or science, cracks Terry in the eye.
He hits the ice like a pallet of stone.
The ice feels cool against his face, relief
at last, this godforsaken place. Then the voices
wake him and he frowns. And what’s this weight
like an egg on his cheek and why can’t he
see? And what had he heard them say
before he woke? Saving one and let the other go?
But hell, you have to laugh, that monster eye behind
the lens. And knowing you must be just a thing
when someone looks that close. He knows
this all too well, the breath on his face, the loop
of thread and tug at his flesh. The masks lean close
for one last look, then, mercifully, the light goes out.
(iv)
Darkest night of his life, once the morphine
seeped away. He wept and prayed. A one-eyed
goalie, not much use to anyone. But fell asleep at last
and woke to a promising haze, and promptly
forgot all his bargains, hastily made.
His first game at home, he shuts down St. Paul
in a bitter, familiar wind. The hole in the hat, they said.
The bent badge. He wouldn’t be the first or last to dodge
one here in Texas. Lucky, he missed the wars,
and down he goes and who just happened
to be in Houston with his plane delayed?—
Sir This or That, some brilliant eye surgeon
from Britain, tops in his field. Still, he had a time
of it, they said, had to pop the eyeball out to stitch it up.
Couple of days, it was touch and go. But, healed and back
on the ice, who’s good as new? Who’s better?—
23 of 27 games he wins, Rookie of the Year,
and look who’s on the road again.
Just a little bump along the way.