I was lots of things when I was young but I was never a fighter. My dad raised me shooting pucks in the driveway, not saying much, just listening to the noise it made when each one hit the bullseye in the back of the net. Whoosh, with the cold Northern wind—a sound as natural as my breath. Mom would get worried as it turned dark and crack the door open, lean halfway out in her sweater and yell: Come on in now! But of course he didn’t listen and since he didn’t, neither did I. The shots kept coming and they always ended up in the same spot, because if you’re not a fighter then you’ve gotta be a scorer, and if you can’t do that then you’re all out of luck. That wasn’t an option for me. I’d miss a shot here and there, watching as the puck flew past the crossbars and into the bushes. Dad would fire up his whole spiel again, tell me how “close” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades when I’d say: Well that one was right off the bar. You could hear it from two blocks down. Eventually I learned to just stop trying to justify my failures and see them for what they were. (It was true, though, I’d think afterwards—the shot really was close. For whatever that was worth.)

Well, we were playing against some shitty public school in the middle of April when I dropped my gloves for the first time. I expected it to be more ceremonious but it was something more like a bar fight. The guy was about twice my size and he’d just laid me out against the boards, slammed me there with a loud thump that the nosebleeds heard too, and I decided that if this was what the crowd wanted (cheers and gasps streamed down from the rafters like confetti) then I’d give them what they came for. On most days I can’t even remember his name but I do remember the way his knuckles felt when they burrowed deep into my cheekbones, twisting my skin around in every which way. He had those stout blue collar hands that made me sure he’d be a great worker for someone someday. And he never made it to the big leagues or the national teams but still, in that moment, both our dreams were just as bright as the other’s. It was nice to think for a second that we both had a chance.

I’m not sure exactly what it was about that instance that made me snap but I could feel all the familiar eyes striking me down and I just couldn’t see myself thrown to the wayside with all the other players who never had it in them to put up a fight. Maybe I only accepted his challenge out of pride, because I couldn’t bear the thought of all these people watching me lose to such an inferior player, I don’t know; but regardless I hurled those gloves onto the ice and came at him like I was shooting to kill.

On most days it felt as if my heart rested up inside my head, pounding on and on, trying to rip its way out. I think that I finally just allowed it to. We were tangled in a mess of muscles, clobbering away at each other in praise of the knockout round, the hand held high, the shower of applause that followed in rapid succession. And something left my body that day. Some shattered, glimmering little piece of me that I can’t ever get back. And believe me I’ve tried. We spilled our guts onto the ice and left them out there on display. That shining exhibit. After the fight I felt like I knew him better than most people I’d ever known and we had never even spoken a word to each other. Here, look how I still lose my edges and trip like I just learned how to skate yesterday. Look how I still flinch against the boards when I know someone’s coming to knock me dead.

For whatever reason I felt less afraid with everyone watching me from the stands than I did alone. I thought to myself, maybe they can see it too. The beast hanging onto my shoulders. That’d be better than just letting it chew on me in solitude without any proof of my suffering. And maybe they can even hear him when he starts begging: More, more, more. The hunger was indiscernible from mine at some point and it simply festered in my stomach with abandon. Please, tell me that you can see him. And tell me too that none of this was my doing, that this is how it was always going to end. Convince me, please (I’m listening, I really am this time), that this is what I was made into and not who I am.

I always knew that I would die scared.

And it was even clearer in the back of my coach’s car on the way to the ER, and then there beneath the fluorescents in my hospital robe. (I remember him muttering under his breath how I’d done the right thing, set the example, led us to victory in the end.) I drifted in and out of lucidity, all wired and hooked to various machines that beeped onwards in the long night. Dad’s voice ran rampant up in my head, echoing louder than any of my own thoughts. I hung onto everything he’d ever told me. Elevate the puck a little higher. Not too high, but high enough to get it over his glove. Just like we practiced. We’ve been over this so many times. Since you were a boy. (Yes, you may look like one still but you’re not one now.) Pass it for once. Your teammates are wide open, man. Don’t look down. There’s nothing there. Look up. Look around. Smile. Show your teeth. It’s not all about you, y‘know? Except for when it is, meaning: if you win, it was a team effort. If you lose, it was all your fault. Every player has that mindset. They have to. That’s why they’re up with the gold trophies and not playing in high school gyms with handfuls of pyrite. Get used to the pressure; it’s only gonna get harder to breathe. It’ll feel like this for the rest of your life. Even when you’re done playing, you’ll just be thinking about playing. Even when the third period is almost over and you can barely hop over the boards to change, you’ll still beg for overtime. For one more shift out there with the only people you’ve ever truly known and been known by. You’ll remember them in your shattered ribs and purple thighs—in all the broken things you wish you had the chance to break some more. Now you can’t even move. This is gonna leave a mark, but you’re aware of that. The game does a great job of making sure. Don’t get too ahead of yourself. Odds are, you won’t even make it far enough to ever have something worth missing.

Every piece of me had been tampered with, taped over, stitched up. I felt like an experiment. Like a sketch for something beyond myself that I was on the edge of meeting for the first time. They shoved the needles deep into my skin, probing and searching for something that could fix the wrongness I carried. The pills kept piling down my throat and I had no idea what they were but I took them like a champ anyway. (I was always taught that a scared player was a dead player, and so I tended to swallow my tongue and go along with the play that was drawn up for me.) Everything that I felt, I felt tenfold—the room pulsed with the rapid dashes of my own heart and I came to the obvious but paralyzing realization that all of this could go away at any second. I wasn’t sure in which direction I was running or what ledge I was holding onto but I was close to falling into something deep and endless. (Sometimes it felt like I learned how to skate before I learned how to walk.)

I drowned in hydrocodone and antiseptic and the smell of citrus; bleach and peroxide and rubbing alcohol. I thought that I’d never get better and that this was all there would be for the rest of my life until I could convince someone to let me die with dignity, but against all odds, the doctors never gave such news.

I’d be fine; there wasn’t much wrong. Just some bruises, broken parts, slight bleeding. It was practically harmless. The things hockey players collected like trading cards. You won’t even need surgery! they told me in jubilant exclamations. But I knew right away that my body would feel this moment forever, more and more every day. I recalled seeing my dad slowing and stifling as he grew older, the way his bones could barely hold his skin up when he walked. How his brain fogged up like the windshields back home as the years passed. And sometimes he had that look in his eyes like he didn’t really know where or who he was, like maybe sitting there on the couch he thought he was still sending another guy to the ground with a body check. I thought about how that must be a nice feeling. It’s funny looking back now; I asked the doctors when I’d be able to play again before finding out if I’d even be okay.

And so I closed my eyes, let them roll into my skull, and I was back there in an instant. I had him right where I wanted, down on the ice, reeling from my doing. I kept beating his teeth in until I couldn’t even feel my hand anymore, until it was just another piece of equipment. Something else that I was trying on. I finally stopped and looked down at what I’d done: the shattered nose, gorged eyes, white protrusion of bone. I wondered if his mother would recognize him the next time they met. In the moment I had thought my life was over, that everyone would hate me for the rest of my days, that when I limped back to the bench red and ruined my teammates would cower away in fear—but the crowd had never cheered louder, my teammates had never held me tighter.

***

Austin Anthony is a college student from Texas who loves to write about sports. His work has previously been featured in Fifth Wheel Press, The Sheepshead Review, The Stirling Review, and Blue Marble Review, among others.