The Skeleton Box (14 page)

I reread the story, focused again on the last sentence, and tried to get into my reporter’s garb, distance myself, be objective. Could it be mere coincidence? Could this Susan Breck be unrelated to the Breck who had insinuated himself into Tatch’s camp and convinced its dwellers that they could dig their way to liberation? Was Breck somehow connected to Nilus and, therefore, to Mrs. B? What was he really digging for?

“Are you getting hungry?” Vicky said.

“Huh?”

My phone rang. Thank God, I thought.

“For chicken and dumplings?”

“Hang on.”

I may have grabbed the phone a little too eagerly. Vicky folded her arms in that pose women adopt when they have an inkling that they’re about to be handed bullshit.

“Yeah?” I said into the phone.

“We’re down one-zip after two,” came the voice. It was Poppy. He was yelling. I flattened the phone hard against my ear.

“Excuse me?” I said. “This is Gus Carpenter.”

I could hear the din of the crowd across the ice from Poppy, who was probably standing by our bench, scanning statistics. “I said we’re down by one,” Poppy said, louder. “Dougie had a rough start, and they’ve got Tex all bottled up. But we’re still in it.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“You what?” Poppy said. “Gus?”

I waited as if listening to someone filling me in about something. I knew I was being a shithead, but I felt I had no choice.

“You there?” Poppy said.

“I understand,” I said into the phone. “Of course.”

“Let me guess—this involves a woman,” Poppy said. He hung up. I stayed on, knitting my brows. Vicky moved closer.

“All right, understood,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I clicked the phone off.

“You have to go?” Vicky said. She looked skeptical.

“Something’s going on with Mom.”

“Is she all right?”

“Well . . . I’m not sure.”

“Who was that?”

“Somebody at the sheriff’s office.”

“Oh. Your ex, I suppose?”

I decided that by saying nothing I would let her think that.

“I can’t believe she could just throw away a good man like you.”

I stood. “Sorry, Vick. I’ll have to take a rain check.”

“How about tomorrow? Sully’s gone till Saturday.”

I busied myself with folding up the copies and finding pockets for them. I couldn’t look Vicky in the eye anymore. “We’ll see.”

“No. We won’t, will we?”

“Come on, Vicky. It’s my mom.”

“Oh, of course. Did you get what you wanted?”

“Yes. Thank you so much.”

“I’m so glad. What are you waiting for?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry all right. Just leave.”

I should have felt worse than I did, but I was too busy thinking. As I walked to my truck through fluttering snowflakes, it struck me that if Breck was connected to Nilus and to Mrs. B, he might also be linked, in some way I couldn’t fathom at the moment, to my mother.

W
hen I slipped into the rink through a door near the Zamboni shed, the game clock said eight minutes, seventeen seconds to go with the River Rats trailing Mic-Mac, 1–0. I peered down the boards to the Rats’ bench. They had a chance. It was only one goal. The Mic-Mac goaltender might’ve been playing the game of his life, but he still had a weak glove and he kicked rebounds right back out in front of the net. One little bounce, a deflection, a mishandled rebound, and the Rats could be back in the game.

But the disconsolate way they were sitting told me they were bracing for a loss. I’d seen it before, the heads down, the barely discernible slump to the shoulders, the eyes straying to the clock. Poppy had called a time-out and was barking orders at the skaters gathered around him. He wouldn’t have called a time-out with so much time left if the Rats weren’t struggling. Tex had his right glove off and was examining the blister he’d gotten digging at Tatch’s camp. I looked into the stands. Tatch usually sat one row beneath the press box at center ice, where he could easily see his nephew at either end of the rink. But Tatch was not there.

I watched from a corner of the arena where there were no fans and I was breathing Zamboni oil and gas. The rink was as packed as I had seen it since I’d played net for the Rats on our failed title run. The bleachers were dressed in Rats blue and the throng swayed along with gold banners blaring “Welcome to Starvation—we’re hungrier than you!” I saw Soupy and Wilf and Zilchy and Stevie Reneau, wearing their old, frayed, too-tight Rats jerseys and passing around a water bottle. In the past it would’ve been filled with Beam and Coke, but Soupy couldn’t afford the good stuff anymore, so it was probably cut with Ten High or worse.

Instead of joining Poppy at the bench, I decided to stay where I was.
Poppy didn’t need me now, and I preferred not to be seen by someone who might tell Vicky I was there. And if Darlene called, I wanted to be able to exit without being noticed.

It quickly became obvious to me what the Rats’ problem was. They couldn’t get the puck to Tex. And if Tex didn’t get the puck, the Rats had trouble scoring. It was a team of grinders and muckers who were good at keeping the other squad off the scoreboard and, usually, finding ways to put the puck on the stick of our best player.

Mic-Mac had that figured out. Every time Tex touched the ice, Pinky Holcomb, number 9, was on him, always within a stick’s length, chirping in his ear between whistles. Before a face-off in my corner, Pinky sidled up next to Tex on the edge of the circle as the ref prepared to drop the puck. They were just a few feet away from me on the other side of the glass. Pinky turned his head sideways and talked into Tex’s ear. Tex fixed his gaze on the players taking the face-off.

“Hey, shit-teeth,” Pinky said. “Maybe I can fuck your mommy when she gets out of jail, huh? She’ll probably need it after licking all that prison pussy, eh?”

Tex turned his head to Pinky. I pushed my face into the gap between two sheets of glass. “Tex, don’t do it,” I said.

Tex glanced back at me, then turned back to the face-off. The ref dropped the puck. “Pussy,” Pinky told Tex.

Little Davey Straub, standing just to Tex’s left, had heard everything. As Pinky chased the puck into the corner, Davey chugged up from behind and pasted him across the boards. “Fuck you,” Davey said as Holcomb went down. Number 22 for Mic-Mac smacked the puck behind the net and around to the opposite corner. Holcomb got to one knee and watched Davey skate away as the refs cleared the zone. Then he jumped up and zeroed in. Coming up from behind Davey, Holcomb swung a vicious hack across the back of his left leg. Davey crumpled. Holcomb flew past, cackling. The slash was risky with a one-goal lead, but the refs didn’t see.

Tex did, though.

The next thing I knew, Tex was standing face-to-face with Holcomb
at the near blue line. It was too far away for me to say anything, but I heard Poppy screaming, “No, not now, Tex, no.” Tex wasn’t saying a word. Holcomb was smirking and yammering and did not expect the punch. Tex’s gloved fist hit him square on the chin. He dropped. Tex turned and obediently headed for the penalty box. I looked over at Poppy. He had his eyes closed, shaking his head. Tex had done exactly what he’d been told, but his timing was not good. It looked like the Rats would have to play short-handed for the rest of the game.

But Pinky Holcomb, thank God, had an even nastier temper than Tex.

Pinky bounced up, juked around a ref, and tackled Tex from behind. Tex tried to right himself, but Pinky grabbed the back of his jersey collar and slammed Tex’s helmeted head into the ice, once, twice, again. Tex took it. It took two refs to peel Pinky off. “Straight to the box, Tex,” Poppy was yelling. When Tex got there, I saw him wipe his mouth. He held his hand up for a ref to see the blood.

The officials took a few minutes to sort out the penalties. Tex got two minutes for roughing. Holcomb was assessed a five-minute major because he had drawn blood, a ten-minute misconduct, and a game misconduct. He skated off, still screaming curses at Tex and Poppy and the refs as he disappeared into dressing room 1. Later we would learn that he had turned to one ref and said, “Did the other coach suck your cock before the game?”

Thank you, Pinky. The Rats now would have a power play, five skaters against four, for the last three minutes of the game.

Everything changed then. Now the Rats were carrying the play and Mic-Mac was chasing. With one minute, forty-two seconds to go and the Rats swarming the Mic-Mac net, Davey Straub tipped a Tex Do-brick slap shot up and over the falling goaltender’s left shoulder to tie the game. The arena shook, our old runner-up banner trembling in the rafters. I glanced at the Mic-Mac bench. Now they had the slumped shoulders.

With just over thirty seconds to go, Tex scooped up a rolling puck at our blue line. Butterfly bandages had closed two cuts under his left eye.
He leaned his long body into a churning circle, cradling the puck on his stick with one hand, then exploded out of the turn at center ice, blowing past a Mic-Mac winger as if his skates were set in concrete. Tex zigged left, cut right, head-faked a center, flipped the puck high off the glass, zoomed around a defenseman, and caught up to the puck with the other defenseman in futile pursuit.

The Rats on the bench jumped to their feet. I actually felt a fleeting pang of sympathy for the Mic-Mac goalie. He must have been praying that Tex’s shot would hit him in the head, the neck, the chest, somewhere, anywhere, because there was no chance that he was going to see it.

Tex dipped a shoulder. His wrists snapped. The goalie flailed. The black blur of puck grazed the inside of the near post and tore into the mesh at the back of the net.

The game ended twenty-seven seconds later, Rats 2, Mic-Mac 1.

Gloves and helmets and sticks littered the ice around the blue-and-gold mound of players swarming Tex. Some of the younger fans vaulted the glass and shuffled across the ice in their shoes and threw themselves onto the pile, while the rest of the fans stamped their feet, chanting, “Let’s go, Rats! Beat Pipefitters! Let’s go, Rats! Beat Pipefitters!” In Thursday night’s state semifinal, the Rats would face the Pipefitters, their old nemesis from downstate, the team the Rats had never beaten, the team that stole the title from us in 1981.

I slipped out through the Zamboni shed.

I called Mom as I walked to my truck.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “The police keep driving by.”

“They’re just doing their job,” I said.

“They’re irritating.”

I wondered how she would even know they were driving by. She would have had to stand in the kitchen to see the road. She was usually in bed by nine.

“I’m coming over.”

“No. I’m fine. I have things to do.”

“I thought you were going to bed.”

The phone fell silent. Then Mom said, “Just be sure to lock the door. And make your bed in the morning.”

A single light burned over the kitchen sink at Mom’s. The house was quiet. I locked the kitchen door, slipped off my boots, turned my phone off, and tossed it on the snack bar. I opened the fridge. It was packed with platters and casseroles wrapped in cellophane and foil that neighbors had dropped off. I chose a chicken dish with broccoli and noodles and slid it into the microwave over the stove.

Walking through the bathroom with its doors at each end, I saw a balled-up clump of police tape in the wastepaper basket next to the toilet. The tile floor was bare, the Me Sweet Ho rug having been confiscated as evidence. The door to Mom’s bedroom was closed, but I inched it open and peeked in. She was asleep, faced away from me toward the lake side of the house. A paperback by Jacquelyn Mitchard rested on her nightstand.

It gave me a little start. Mom had given me my first book,
From the Rocket to the Jet: Hockey’s Greatest Heroes,
when I was six. I almost didn’t read it because the title didn’t include the greatest player of them all, Gordie Howe of the Red Wings. Mom told me not to judge a book by its cover. I read it. Gordie was in it after all.

Mom bought me another book,
The House on the Cliff,
and then another and another until I was reading them so fast that my parents couldn’t afford to keep buying them and I got my first library card. I thought of the sixty-year-old photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office showing a young woman, a nun, who had done the same for my mother. If Mom had ever said a word about her, I had missed it, or forgotten.

I shut Mom’s door.

Back in the kitchen, I scooped a heap of the chicken casserole onto a plate and poured myself a glass of milk. A set of headlights eased past
the house. I went to the window and squinted into the dark to see if it was a Pine County sheriff’s cruiser but it was gone before I could be sure. I took my plate and glass into the living room and sat in the recliner and grabbed the TV remote. I clicked the volume low and pushed Channel Eight for the news. The set blinked on to a hockey game, the Wings playing the Blues in St. Louis, late in the third period, Wings up, 4–2, and Stevie Yzerman squatting for a face-off.

I tried to clear my mind for a few minutes of everything I had seen and heard and read in the long day behind me. The casserole was delicious. The Wings were about to win. I set the plate on the end table next to me and picked up the remote. Maybe I wouldn’t bother with the news after all. Maybe I could find a Seinfeld rerun instead. The Blues pulled their goalie for an extra skater. I shoved myself back in the recliner, thought I wouldn’t mind if I fell asleep right there.

Less than twenty seconds remained in the game when a ribbon of words began to scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” they began. Not another snowstorm, I thought. The string went blank, then these words rolled across: “BINGO NIGHT KILLING LINKED TO LATE PRIEST.” I bolted up in the recliner. “What the fuck?” I whispered. I waited. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” it repeated while my stomach twisted into a knot. The next line rolled past: “POLICE INVESTIGATING CONNECTION TO FR. NILUS MOREAU. DETAILS AFTER THE GAME.”