The New Yorker - 11.11.2019

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 39

thing to do. The game ended in a tie.
During a bantam game (bantams are
thirteen and fourteen), at a rink on the
top floor of a mall in West Nyack, one
of our players got rifled into the boards.
His head bounced off the plexiglass. He
stayed down. The referees blew the play
dead and stood nearby, dawdling like a
pair of plainclothes detectives at a crime
scene. The players retreated and took a
knee. In street shoes, I made my way
across the ice. This boy’s father had
played in the N.H.L. and was in the
Hall of Fame. Hundreds of goals, thou-
sands of penalty minutes, dozens of
fights. A legend. But he wasn’t there
that day. His son was lying face down,
as though on a massage table. I asked
the boy how he was doing.
“I’m done,” he said.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Some shitty mall.”
Lucid. Droll. Good to go? We held
him out, without subjecting him to the
numbers.
Years before, I’d been in the stands at
Madison Square Garden when his fa-
ther, playing for the Rangers, collided
with an opponent head on head, neither
seeing the other. Paramedics spent more
than five minutes trying to revive him,
as the arena went quiet. “Is he dead,
Daddy?” my older son, then six, asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I could hardly
speak, being somehow on the verge of
tears. After a while, the crowd started
chanting the man’s nickname. That’s
what brought him back to conscious-
ness, he later said. He was wheeled off
on a stretcher. He missed fifteen games,
then returned in time for the playoffs,
and played for another two years. He
stayed in the city and signed his son up
for our program. He helped coach. You
could see the opposing coaches and par-
ents sneaking glances. On tournament
trips, as kids raised hell in the corridors
of the hotel, the hockey dads and moms
gathered around him at the bar and
pumped him for insights and anecdotes,
a prince among the plebes. He liked to
stay up late, too. An old habit, perhaps,
from his playing days.

T

he symptoms lingered and mutated
and became almost commonplace,
and I began to contemplate retirement.
That word, however facetiously it was
deployed—because to consider the beer

leagues a career, even in jest, was gran-

diose—had a finality that got marbled

up with whatever depression the con-

cussions had brought on. I missed skat-

ing, making plays, throwing my body

around. I missed the boys. I missed the

post-game high, endorphins giving way

to beer and refrigerator raids.

A few months after my third con-

cussion, a teammate, Mango, got one,

too. We had chemistry on the ice, and

liked talking and thinking the game,

on our way to and from the rink. We

were nerds for puck support and a

methodical approach in the offensive

zone. He was attacked in a melee at the

final buzzer. Such things were much

rarer than I have made them out to be,

but here it was, violence that was not

cartoonish. This time, there were no

rodeo clowns. Maybe the Intangibles

had lost sight of the intangibles. A lot

of guys had moved away or stopped

showing up. Injuries, work, babies, the

burbs. Colorado, Chicago, Minneapo-

lis. Ribs, disks, ankles, brains. Jesus had

a heart attack. Scoobs’s house burned

down. The spirit of the thing: catch it

if you can.

Mango’s symptoms lasted for more

than a year. Before long, he had to quit.

So did Junta and Mahonze. The team

disbanded. Now we were the invisibles,

a chunk of our city life eliminated by

blows to the head. My sticks stand blade

down in a corner of the apartment; now

and then, I catch a whiff of the old

hockey-glove stink that still saturates

the knob of cloth tape at the butt end

of each one. I feel well enough to en-

tertain the idea that there’s got to be a

game for me somewhere out there in

the city, one peppy enough to make it

worthwhile yet so moderate as to be

safe. Will I never again collide with an-

other human being? The thought is

hard to bear. When I can’t sleep, I have

a habit of imagining myself, over and

over, crossing the red line and, with a

flick of the curved blade, flipping the

puck high in the air, over the opposing

defensemen and into the corner, but

then, instead of chasing it, swerving to-

ward the bench to get a line change. 

Pierre Soulages, Eau Forte V, color aquatint and etching, 1957. Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.

Preview: November 16, 12-5; November 18 to 20, 10-6; November 21, 10-12

104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710 • SWANNGALLERIES.COM

Contemporary Art

November 21

Todd Weyman • [email protected]