The Skeleton Box

TEN

Pucks boomed off of the rink boards as I pushed through the double-door entrance to the Starvation Lake Arena. It felt reassuring. There would be no talk of burglaries or murder there.

Through the lobby windows I saw Tex on the ice, bearing down on the goalie, Dougie Baker. Tex faked to his right, then dragged the puck the other way with the toe of his stick. Dougie slid with him. The puck hit a rut in the ice and rolled up on an edge. Tex tried to snap it between Dougie’s legs but got only half of the tumbling puck. It flip-flopped up and Dougie snatched it with his catching glove.

“Fucking bullshit,” Tex yelled. He turned hard, spun behind the net, wound up with his stick, and, as he came around the other side of the net, swung the shaft across the goalpost with an echoing crack. The broken-off blade went flying. Tex skated to the bench.

We really did have to talk with him.

Refrigerant stung my nostrils as I hustled across the black rubber-mat floors past the benches beneath the big gold-and-blue Home and Visitors signs. I had relished that whiff of chill since I was a boy and the town rink, about the same age as me, hadn’t yet been closed in on the ends.

My dad took me to my first River Rats game when I was five. By the second period, I had taken my hot chocolate and climbed down from the bleachers to stand along the glass behind the Rats’ goalie, a short kid with quick hands named Ronayne. I was fascinated by all the straps and buckles and laces that attached his leather and plastic armor to his arms and chest and legs and how it made him seem so much bigger than when I had seen him walking along Main Street.

I liked how he tossed his head around between face-offs, twisting his neck this way and that, his face inscrutable behind his molded white mask, the sweaty ends of his stringy hair flopping on the back of his jersey. It wasn’t long before I was strapping on the goalie pads and squatting, alone, between the goalposts.

Now I laced my goalie skates on in dressing room 3. I heard Coach Poppy blow two blasts on his whistle. The skate was nearly over. I shoved on hockey gloves, grabbed a stick, and clomped out to the ice.

The seventeen young River Rats were kneeling around Poppy at center ice in their blue-and-gold helmets, gloves, and sweats. High above their heads hung a faded banner declaring the Rats the runners-up in the 1981 Michigan state championship. My team. A team I wished had been forgotten, but was not.

“On your feet, buckets off,” Poppy said. I skated up and stood facing him from the other side of the players’ circle. The Rats doffed their helmets, hair stuck by sweat to their necks and foreheads. “Let’s have a moment of silence for Coach Carpenter. He lost a good friend who was a good friend to the River Rats.”

Tex and the other boys lowered their eyes. I saw stickers on the sides of their helmets bearing the initials PMB. I wondered if any had known Mrs. B. I wondered what they would have thought if they knew that, the morning after our loss in that state final so long ago, she’d come to our house with a plate of peanut butter cookies she must have gotten out of bed at dawn to make. I petulantly refused to eat. Later I felt sad that she had been so kind and I had turned her away. I walked next door and, while Darlene watched, I apologized to Mrs. B. She laughed and told me she was glad I hadn’t eaten those cookies because it wasn’t her best batch and she’d given one to the dog and thrown the rest away.

The team assembled around me now was poised to wipe out the memories of the team that had come so close but fallen short. These Rats were as quick and hungry as their namesakes and, to the delight of the fans, as nasty, too, certainly tougher and scrappier than any of the teams that had preceded them. For years, the mighty squads from Detroit-Little Caesars and Slasor Heating, Byrd Electric and Paddock Pools-had intimidated the Rats with their jutting elbows and chopping sticks. But these Rats weren’t afraid to meet a slash with a slash, a cross-check with a cross-check.

Best of all, it was Tex, their leading scorer, their most skilled player, who inspired their toughness, though not only with his heavy slap shot or his fast feet or his knack for finding the back of the opponents’ net with the puck. Unlike many a star player, Tex refused to let his teammates fight his battles.

Early that season, he’d scored two goals and an assist and the Rats were finishing a 5–2 win over Detroit’s Byrd Electric when a double-wide defenseman named Cranch, nicknamed “Crunch,” gave Tex a whack to the back of a knee. Tex collapsed and slid into the side of his own net. The crowd howled for a penalty, but no ref had seen. Cranch skated away with a smirk between his chapped-red cheeks. Tex struggled to a knee, then to both feet, and started wobbling down the ice after Cranch. “No, Tex,” Poppy screamed from the bench, and I joined him, yelling, “Come to the bench-now!”

Cranch was curling out of a corner with the puck, his head down, when Tex hit him. Tex’s hard plastic right shoulder pad drove into Cranch’s chin and snapped his head back so hard that his helmet flew off and cracked against the boards. Then Tex grabbed him by the collar of his jersey and flung him to the ice and pummeled his face with punch after punch, opening cuts that would require twenty-four stitches. Cranch was unconscious by the time the two refs and Poppy tore Tex off. Poppy appealed the three-game suspension ordered by the league, to no avail.

After that, the Rats were never the same, never again the talented but tame youngsters from up north who went into games against the downstate teams hoping merely to stay close and get a bounce or a ref’s call that would help them win late. The Rats began to play in the spirit of the logo they wore on their jerseys: a snarling, snaggle-toothed rodent wielding a hockey stick like a pitchfork.

The fans loved it, our players reveled in it, Poppy and I worried about it. Both of us knew there’s a thin line in hockey between playing tough and playing stupid. If the Rats got a reputation, deserved or not, as dirty players, opposing coaches would whisper to the refs, who would then look for the first chance to whistle us for a hook or an elbow. We didn’t have the depth on our bench or the kind of stand-on-his-head goalie to survive too many penalties.

Because Tex was our best player, we were in even deeper trouble when he went to the penalty box. Yet three times that season, he had taken major penalties of five minutes each because he’d let his temper get the best of him. With Tex sitting uselessly in the box and the Rats forced to play short-handed for long stretches, we had lost all three games.

Mic-Mac, the team we’d face in the state quarterfinal that night, was well aware of Tex’s weakness. They would keep a shadow on him, try to deny him the puck, shove a butt end in his ribs, or give him a face wash with a glove whenever the refs were looking elsewhere, hoping to get him riled, get him to take a penalty, at least get him thinking about something other than taking the puck to the Mic-Mac net.

“OK, gentlemen,” Poppy said. He wore a Rats sweat suit. His head, a tousle of thinning gray, was bare. “What’s the most important thing?”

“The puck,” the Rats answered in unison.

“That’s right-the puck. Because the best defense…”

“Is to have the puck on your stick.”

“If we have the puck, we cannot lose, am I right?”

“Yes sir, Coach.”

“And we move the puck to the open man because…”

“The puck has no lungs.”

“That’s right, the puck never gets tired.” He grabbed his whistle, blew another short blast. “Tex, hang around,” he said. “Everybody else, be back here no later than six-fifteen.”

The Rats scattered. Tex slipped a glove off and held his right hand in front of his face, frowning.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

He showed me the skin between his thumb and forefinger. “Blister,” he said. “On my shooting hand.”

“From breaking your stick in half?”

“Freaking digging.”

“At the camp?”

“Yeah. Bunch of bullshit. That Breck dude is a dick.”

“Whoa there, partner,” Poppy said. “Tape it up and forget it. You’re going to have a big game tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“The Mic-Macs are going to be all over you, trying to get you to do something stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“Yeah, well, listen up.”

Poppy had told me about his plan earlier. It stemmed from his own youth skating for the old Detroit Junior Red Wings. Poppy had been a brawler then, assigned to beat up opposing players who hassled the Junior Wings’ stars, like Gordie Howe’s son Mark. Poppy had some wicked scars on his knuckles to prove it.

If you pushed him, Poppy would talk about those days, but it was clear that he had regrets, that he wished he hadn’t established himself as merely a fighter, a reputation that followed him into the low minor leagues but never propelled him even close to the NHL. Back then, their fighters came from every corner of Canada but never from the United States.

“I want you to keep your cool,” Poppy said. “When you get honked off at some guy for putting his stick up your butt, count to three, call him an asshole, walk away.”

“I can do that.”

“But just in case.” Poppy moved in close to Tex. “Just in case you feel like you can’t hold it in, here’s what I want you to do.”

Tex waited.

“Do not drop your gloves. Do you hear me? Under no circumstances will you drop your gloves. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Instead, if some guy gets you to the point that you’re just dying to blast him, I want you to do this. I want you to hit the guy once, as hard as you can.” Poppy threw a slow fake punch just short of Tex’s face. Tex did not flinch. “Just once. As hard as you can. Then head directly to the penalty box. Do not pass go.”

Tex smiled. “You sure about this, Coach?”

“It ain’t funny, son. I don’t want you to lose it at all out there. I don’t want you in the penalty box. But I’d rather you took a two-minute penalty than something that sits you down longer or gets you tossed.”

“Do you understand, Tex?” I said.

“Yeah. One punch, go to the box.”

“Especially with that Holcomb guy.”

“Pinky?” Tex said. “What a wuss. I’ll take him and-”

“No,” Poppy said. “The point is not to go head-hunting. The point is to stay calm, focus on the puck, but if you feel the dam bursting, you know what to do.”

“OK, Coach.”

“Control yourself. Be a man.”

For some reason I thought of my reporter’s propensity for smashing computers. Whistler, who was forty years older than Tex.

“I’ve got to fix this hand,” Tex said.

As he skated away, Poppy said, “You think he’ll get into it with Pinky?”

“Of course,” I said. “Just a question of how much.”

“God help us. I worry about him up there with all those crazy people. He’s a good kid. Not sure he’s cut out for that.”

“Me either. Listen, Pop, I might be a little late tonight. Got some stuff to take care of.”

He looked taken aback for a second, then said, “Got it. Hey-we’re going to have a moment of silence for Phyllis again, right after the anthem.”

“Great. Ring me between periods, will you?”

“Will do.”

“Don’t forget.”

My phone rang as I was pulling out of the rink parking lot.

“Whistler here,” the caller said. “Got lucky again.”

“With T.J.?”

“Good one. No. With this Nilus guy. My source at the archdiocese is retired, but he remembered him from way back. Said to check a couple of counties for lawsuits. I left a note on your desk. Maybe you want to run them down. Or I can.”

“Lawsuits against Nilus?”

“Concerning Nilus, supposedly, though I doubt he’s the only defendant, because as a priest he wouldn’t have two nickels. The church or the diocese would be the deep pockets.”

“What did he supposedly do?”

“Not sure. The guy was a little squirrelly. Might be nothing-you know, a property dispute or something. Maybe somebody got pissed that he made him say too many Hail Marys.” Whistler laughed at his little joke and, as he laughed, I heard a snatch of music, the opening riff of a Procol Harum song. I imagined him standing outside Enright’s.

“I’ll check it out,” I said. “I found out some interesting stuff myself.”

“Cool. What do you got?”

A snowplow rumbled past, a pair of fluttering River Rats flags attached to the cab windows.

“Not much yet,” I said, “but the clips-well, the headlines-filed downstairs, you know, the morgue, said Nilus was around when some nun disappeared years ago. Then they got the guy who killed her and he got killed in jail.”

“Whoa. Awesome shit, man. You get it in tomorrow’s paper?”

“No.” I looked at my watch. “Two minutes to deadline, and I don’t really have it nailed.”

“Always first,” Whistler said.

“And frequently right.”

“Let’s hope Channel Eight doesn’t have it.”

“I’ve got to go. Thanks for the good work.”

“You got it,” he said. “Tough story, but a good story.”

“Yeah.”

“And, Gus, next time you go down to that basement, let someone know so we can send down a search team if you don’t come out.”

Besides two moldering tomatoes and half a head of slimy lettuce, all I could find in my fridge were two cans of Blue Ribbon, a month-old package of Swiss cheese, a jar of dill pickles, and some Miracle Whip. It would be enough. I was starving.

I had planned to shop for groceries that weekend but got busy. Before going to Mom’s Sunday morning, I’d had to dump a quart of 2 percent milk that had soured before I’d even opened it. My one loaf of bread was nearly stale, but I figured it would be fine toasted, at least until it started growing mold, so I’d stuck it in the freezer.

Now I took it out and put two hard, frosted slices in the toaster on the counter next to the fridge. The kitchen, with its drab green walls and fake petunias hanging in a plastic basket over the sink, wasn’t all that big, but bigger than the one I’d had when I’d last lived alone, in an apartment over the Pilot, before spending a year back at Mom’s.

I had moved out of Mom’s six months before and rented one of the old Victorians on Main a few blocks from the Pilot. The rent was cheap because the landlord lived downstate and he liked having someone there to make sure the pipes didn’t freeze and the roof was shoveled. I could walk to work, which helped clear my mind for rewriting press releases and arm wrestling with corporate and cops and town council members.

Some mornings I would be sitting in that kitchen eating a bowl of Cheerios, hearing the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room, imagining it was growing louder by the tick, and I would feel oddly certain that somebody else should have been there, that I shouldn’t be sitting alone in a house that big, in a town that small, and I would get up and turn on a radio or, if it was warm enough outside, open a window so I could hear cars and trucks passing on Main.

Now, while the bread toasted, I spun the lid off the Miracle Whip and shoved my nose inside. It didn’t smell life threatening yet. I cut two dill pickles into thin slices and set them on a paper plate festooned with little Santa heads.

I gazed out the window over the sink. Across the way I could see the Andersons sitting down to dinner. Two towheaded boys and a teenage girl waited at the table while their mother set a casserole in the middle. Beef stew? I wondered. Scalloped potatoes? Darlene made terrific scalloped potatoes with ham.

The boys and the girl were wearing matching River Rats sweatshirts. The father, Oke, came in talking into a cell phone. His wife gave him a look and he smiled and dropped the phone into a pocket and sat down. I’d gone to high school with the guy. He used to come to Rats games back then. He and his buddies would sit in the very top row at one end of the stands, avoiding teachers because they’d had a little pregame party in the woods near Jitters Creek.

Oke ladled the casserole onto the kids’ plates. I imagined him and his wife and the boys sitting in the bleachers across from the Rats bench while the girl-I thought her name was Jo, and like a lot of the girls she was sweet on Tex Dobrick-squeezed along the glass with all the other high school girls in the corner near the concession stand.

My toast popped up.

I laid the pieces of bread down side by side and used a spoon to slather Miracle Whip on both. I laid a slice of cheese on each piece, the pickles on one, and mashed the whole thing together.

Miracle Whip splatted out one end of the sandwich into my palm as I took the first bite standing at the sink. I finished it in six bites and leaned my head under the faucet for a long drink of water. Dinner was done.

My phone rang. After I’d spoken with Whistler, I had tried and failed to get both Mom and Darlene. I hoped this was one of them.

“What do you got for me?” Dingus said.

I wished I hadn’t answered. “Not much,” I said. “Tatch said he had family matters the other night.”

“What family matters?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You call yourself a reporter?”

“It’s Tatch, Dingus. You were right about his camp.”

I wondered if Darlene had told Dingus about Nilus by now, if they’d figured out he might be a priest who once lived in Starvation.

“How about Bea?” he said.

“She might have told me more if you didn’t have Catledge hovering.”

“It’s for her own safety.”

My phone beeped. Another call was coming in, but I couldn’t hang up on Dingus.

“I appreciate it,” I said. “Mom did say she heard Frankie was out campaigning.”

“Yeah, waving your stories around,” Dingus said. “Thanks for the help.”

“We have a story tomorrow saying he’s going to make it official.”

“Stop the presses. That guy’s been up my butt for months.”

“Solve the case. He’ll go away.”

“I do hope your mom talks, Gus. Because I’d hate to have to bring you in.”

“Bring me in for what?”

“For questioning.”

“You might want to reread the First Amendment, Dingus.”

“Uh-huh. The shield of shields. Who the heck’s going to wield that for you, son? Your lawyers? The last time you were in my office, you had to borrow a pen.”

Which was true.

He ended the call with a satisfied grunt.

I dialed voice mail. There was a message from Darlene.

“Gus,” she said. “I hope you’re making more progress than we are, and… I hope you’re doing OK and Mom C’s all right.” Seconds of silence followed. “I might try to stop by the rink, but… we’ll see. We’ve got extra patrols out in the neighborhoods, in case this guy tries another house while everyone’s at the game. Talk later.”

I hit Replay, listened again. It hurt to hear Darlene in pain, but hearing her voice also felt good. She hadn’t spoken to me that softly since she’d ended things the year before. I hoped it wasn’t only because of her mother.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, brushed my teeth, ran a hand through what remained of my hair. Mom always said I looked better with my hair short anyway. “My own little Paul Newman,” she would say.

I heard cars honking outside on Main Street.

I grabbed my River Rats jacket, a blue-and-gold satin number with “Coach Carpenter” stitched in cursive over the left breast. Beneath that, another line of script said, “State Runner-Up 1981.” Poppy had had it put on. I told him I wished it wasn’t there, and he told me, Grow up, Gus, that was the greatest Rats team ever.

I went downstairs and stood at the bay window watching the cars and pickups and SUVs inching down Main toward the rink, an actual traffic jam in Starvation Lake. Horns blared. Kids hung out of windows waving Rats pennants. People stood curbside, thigh deep in snowbanks, clapping their mittens together and chanting, “Gooooo River Rats! Beeeat Mic-Mac!”

A sheriff’s cruiser whooshed by the line in the left lane, lights flashing.

The people of Starvation Lake had set their new home alarm systems and fastened the new padlocks on their doors and set out for a night of forgetting. Of forgetting about the vacant storefronts down the street, the For Sale signs on the lake, the high school having too little money to continue shop classes, the plastics plant closing and taking its fifty-eight jobs to Alabama. Maybe they couldn’t forget the break-in that had left one of their own dead, but they could channel their fear and confusion into cheering for the long-haired, pimply-faced boys taking their first step toward the town’s first state title.

I really wanted to join them, but I had something else to do.