by W. C. Mack
“High-sticking!” I shouted to the ref, pointing at Tank.
He hit Bosko with the stick again, this time on the leg.
“And slashing!” I practically screamed.
Coach was shouting for a penalty, the rest of the bench were on their feet, and the fans were loudest of all.
“Blatant foul!” Coach O’Neal yelled. “Call it, ref!”
He was right about the blatant part. I’d never seen a kid be so obvious about trying to hurt another player. Sure, we all knew hockey was a rough sport, but playing the boards was one thing and slashing was something totally different.
The kid should have been thrown out of the game.
“Way out of line!” Tim yelled.
By the time the ref skated over to check on Bosko, our giant was already back on his feet.
Before anyone could stop him, he raced across the ice and shoved Tank.
The big guy went down. Hard.
“No,” I groaned. The last thing we needed was a penalty.
The rest of the team backed away from Bosko and Tank, just like Coach taught us to do if it looked like there might be a fight. We weren’t supposed to jump in. Ever.
Bosko made another move toward him.
“Come on, Eddie,” Patrick murmured. “Keep your cool.”
“Don’t do it,” I whispered.
The ref blew his whistle and called Bosko for charging.
“Their man was high-sticking and slashing,” Coach shouted at him.
The ref shook his head. He hadn’t seen it.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Coach shouted. “It was blatant.”
The ref shrugged and directed Bosko off the ice.
Our gorilla would be out of the game for two full minutes.
Down one goal, with a minute and forty-three seconds left, and we handed the Thunder a power play?
Seriously. Handed it to them!
“Man, what’d he have to do that for?” Kenny sighed as we watched Bosko skate toward the box.
The second he stepped inside, Bosko said, “The kid slashed me and nobody called it.”
Coach shot him a look. “It’s not your job to settle scores, Bosko.”
“But Coach, the ref is —”
“Calling the game.”
He frowned. “But —”
“That’s not how my team plays, Bosko.”
“But —” Bosko tried again.
“Sit down and watch the game, son. We’ll talk about this later.”
I’d only seen Coach O’Neal look that mad and disappointed a couple of times in the three years he’d been my coach, and both times were when guys got too rough. He’d always taught us to play hard but fair and he had no patience for fighting.
At all.
I didn’t look at Bosko. I couldn’t believe he’d blown it for us.
Me and the rest of the bench tried to make up for our missing player with a whole lot of shouting and cheering.
But it didn’t work.
The Thunder scored another goal with seventeen seconds left and we lost the game.
“Thanks a lot, Bosko,” Kenny muttered as we all piled onto the ice to shake hands with Victoria and tell them “good game.” Even though we didn’t mean it.
Coach O’Neal saw Tank sneering at Bosko in line, so he shook his head and stepped out on the ice, heading straight for the Thunder’s coach. If his scowl was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Never mind the fact that he was wearing street shoes.
He only made it a few steps before his feet slipped out from under him. He flew up in the air, almost like a cartoon, but then landed hard on his butt.
“Oof!” Kenny said, wincing.
“Oof is right,” I agreed, then skated over to him.
“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning in close as he rubbed his lower back.
It was pretty obvious from his scrunched-up face and groaning that he wasn’t.
It didn’t take long before there were parents out on the ice. Coach was answering questions with grunts, and when he finally did squeeze a word out, it was “Wow.”
I had the feeling he wanted to say something a lot worse than that and when I saw the relieved looks on the parents’ faces, I figured they must have been thinking the same thing.
“He’s gonna need an ambulance,” Mulligan said. He played Old Timers on Wednesday nights, and came to almost every Cougars game to cheer us on. “Anybody got a cell phone?”
My parents didn’t, since they liked living in the Dark Ages, and my sister’s was charging at home.
I was amazed she could even breathe without it.
“Ungh,” Coach groaned, wincing from the pain.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.
I’d never actually heard anyone say that before.
“Right here!” A man I didn’t recognize stood up, then seemed to change his mind. “Well, I’m a veterinarian.”
Coach groaned again and the man sat down, looking kind of sad that he wasn’t a real doctor.
When Coach was carried off the ice on a stretcher, the rest of us just stood there.
“Nice work, Bosko,” Colin said, rolling his eyes.
“If you have something to say to me, say it,” Bosko growled.
“I just did,” Colin muttered. “Nice work.”
Bosko looked at the rest of us, and I’m sure he saw the same frustration in every guy’s face that I did.
I wanted to say something in his defense, since he’d kind of become a friend while he was tutoring me in Math. But at the same time, I knew I’d be the only one defending him, for something I didn’t think he should have done in the first place. Charging? Come on.
I kept my mouth shut.
“You win some, you lose some,” Dad said, quietly.
Like that helped.
“What a burn,” Kenny sighed. “And now Coach is all messed up.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Patrick asked, as the Thunder headed for the Visitors locker room, high-fiving all the way.
“Go home,” I shrugged.
“No, I mean the team,” Patrick said. “We’ve got two practices this week and we’re up against Nanaimo on Saturday.”
Nuts.
“Maybe we should cancel, until we know what’s happening with Coach,” Chris’s mum said.
“Nah, we just need a fill-in,” her husband told her.
“Who? You?” she asked, laughing.
“No … but somebody.”
All I could hear for the next ten seconds was a bunch of fathers saying how busy they were.
Then I heard my dad’s voice above the crowd.
“I’ll do it.”
And I grinned.
About the Author
W.C. Mack was born in Vancouver., B.C. and now lives in Portland, Oregon. Always a Canucks fan, W.C. Mack has also been known to cheer for the Portland Winterhawks.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my editor, Diane Kerner, who pointed me toward the rink, and to my agent, Sally Harding, who encouraged me to go for it (even though it wasn’t rugby).