We had two seats in a section with a side view of the goal, the lower row 9, the two seats frisking the left edge of the section. I’d taken the outermost seat so that I wouldn’t feel so much like a dog tied by a line. I didn’t mind that when anybody passed to go to the bottom I could hear the sizzles of their beer as it sloshed in the clear plastic cups that cracked instead of bending. I was less keen of when I felt them coming before I heard or saw them, and I would stiffen without realizing it, my shoulders drawn back as if by a cord, something abrasive and easeless, and I would have to bear the humiliation of glancing at whoever passed by, just to spare my nerves. The inner seat on my right side was unoccupied, but I wouldn’t want to sit there.

​

The padded back of one of our defensemen wiggled a little as he pushed from foot to foot to move himself backwards, shoulders bunching to his ears so that his stick would press down, enamored with the puck several feet ahead. In all his gear it would not be right to say that he looked like some sort of big cat, sly and slender—though his body moved in that regard it had to factor in the heaviness of the padding. He moved like one of the waves at those artificial surf parks—engineered, calculated, and executed with a natural unpredictability. He’d learned how to move in hockey pads and skates since he could point a stick and drag it, and so he had developed a litheness despite the bulk. He’d probably been one of the best backwards skaters—though skating backwards usually was easier than skating forwards, and safer, since if you fell, you’d be falling forward—and his coach or mentor or overzealous father had recommended he play as a defenseman. Here he was.

​

The opposing team’s center was drawing in close as the puck shuttled over to our side. One of their forwards got ahold of it and shot it to him. When the center had intercepted it one of them shouted something which could only be heard as “-OOT!” as the S and H came out softer and couldn’t echo. The center drew his stick back and crushed it onto the ice. I lost sight of the puck then: even though it was a little black drop of rubber on white, I couldn’t have kept track of it when it was being shot through the legs of our defensemen and the opposing players. I watched the goalie instead. With hair-splitting precision and patience he dropped to his knees and bucked his shins out to the side. The puck rocketed towards him and bounced to the left off of his leg pads. The cluster unraveled themselves from each other and dove for it—frogs to a fly. The center clamored over for his second chance before our defenseman slapped it over to the opposing side, and they then rushed off after it. I relaxed back into my chair and then checked my watch.

​

Dad had been gone for twenty minutes. I imagined that he had just now found his way to the pretzel or popcorn booth. If it was the former he was stranded at the tail of an exhaustingly immobile line, maybe watching the pretzels’ lazy rotation in the warming cabinet, their salt-speckled brown like freckles on a fawn. If it was the latter it was a popcorn cart with a glass box filled halfway to the brim. Maybe he was watching the kernels as they flopped out of the kettle like baby birds dropping from the nest for their maiden flight. I wondered if he could smell the salt and butter from the pretzel or popcorn from where he was in line. I wondered if he was happy, or if he was annoyed because he was waiting for so long. It would be a while before I would see him again.

​

The opposing team came back over in a line to our side, sliding over as a wave of soldiers would have marched forward, pushing our team alongside them and scattering about. Their defenseman gained possession of the puck and slid it to the forward with the clear shot. He snapped the stick onto the puck so that it went flying—as fast as he’d done so our goalie reached up and almost seemed to pluck it out of the air, bringing it down in a clean arc to cage the puck in his glove. A roar rowed its way through the crowd, and the forward looked back towards the goal—crowds seemed to react faster than the players sometimes—when he saw the glove clamped against the ice he sighed with his head back and fell to his knees, then stood back up again with a sportsmanly weary smile.

​

The roar was more of a chorus now, belting one note, dedicated to our beloved goalie, in all his colossus. We sang for his precision, we sang for the name on his back, for the face gridded underneath his helmet cage. There was a man underneath the padded armor, who served to us the same valiance that knights did for feudal kingdoms.

​

A lineman skated over to the goalie and accepted the puck when it was offered to him. He skated over to one of the spots in the end zone. Following him was our center, and an opponent from the other team whose position I did not know—though he was not the forward who had taken the shot. The forward had lagged behind and taken a position close to where the face-off would begin. The lineman waited for a breath that was held to be released, then dropped the puck into the center of the solid red circle. Our center and the opposing player clamored for it, and somehow—though I couldn’t see how it could have happened—the puck ricocheted between them and shot off towards the opponent’s defensive side by the sheer friction of the scuffle. Everyone set off towards it then, and the breath the lineman had waited for had been reclaimed.

​

I turned to watch with a somnambulistic headlessness, an almost ignorant disbelief—a lot would happen all at once in hockey but you would miss it because you were focused on what was not happening—as the players weaved through each other to the other side of the rink, shrank in size, stretched in perspective. I looked to the jumbotron but could not get a good look up there either, as the camera’s view was broadened to show as much action as it could—the players looked smaller up there than they did down here. My eyes then instinctively darted to my left, as before my mind could acknowledge the thought I sensed doom approaching, wickedly deft yet carousing, and though I knew enough to tell myself that it was just another man with another beer, I would have been willing to swear that my heart had picked up speed and my eyes had grown a little wider, shoulder blades pulled back again by that uncomfortable cord. I felt like one of those dogs you couldn’t sneak up on. The man passed me and while I was becoming more convinced that switching to the inner seat may be fine, I would not. To offer a distraction, I checked my watch. Dad had been gone for twenty-three minutes.

​

Logically I knew that he had probably moved forward somewhat in the line to the popcorn or pretzel, but the stubbornness of my mind conjured up the same image I had imagined before. A low feeling sank in my throat and cast a shadow into my stomach. I could only see him standing stock still, not even being able to find the miniscule movements of his eyes or fingers—like he was stuck in a candid photograph. I watched the players and told myself that his heart beated as their hearts beated, his chest rose as their chests rose, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot as they shifted their weight. I had seen old footage of my father when he had played hockey as a much younger man, and that was what I imagined him as, though the barbarous energy was concealed and dispersed more finely, and he was standing in line, moving slightly, waiting for popcorn or a pretzel. I shouldn’t have worried. I continued to do so. I couldn’t quite select out whatever it was that was continuing to trouble me, feeling only a continued and ambiguous feeling of doom which would open itself up like a rotten fruit. Everything around me seemed to buzz with an energy all centered on an eagerness to attack. I watched a stationary light in the rafters push its way towards me when I blinked, like one of those angel statues in Doctor Who. It thought I wouldn’t notice, but I did, and there were all sorts of little parts moving to make big moving parts, and they were all moving towards me, and I could feel the Earth as it rotated, slow as it was, it thought I wouldn’t notice, and so I pressed my hands into fragile little fists and prayed to God if there had ever been such a thing. I wanted it all to stop, if even for just a moment to get my bearings, and then all the atoms could continue racing forwards, all the electrons could circle the nucleus as the players were now circling the rink again, coming back towards our defensive side. I noticed that my hand was shaking with all my strength as I pulled my wrist towards myself and checked my watch. God had not answered my prayers, maybe because I’d done something wrong or there was no God to pray to, and all the atoms continued their racing uninterrupted. Dad had been gone for a month.

​

In the pretzel or popcorn line I couldn't imagine my father anymore. Where he would have stood was instead a shape cut out of existence, an obliterative nothingness I knew I simply could not speak on. I’d preferred to sit next to his absent seat, as there was still some notion of existence within that absence—at the very least there was still a father who had the ability to be absent, as opposed to the truth. At his funeral I could think of nothing to say, as there was a prominent grief but no articulation, and so I’d refused to approach the pedestal. I’d been afraid of not having the words to describe it.

​

He’d always said that some day he’d wanted to take me to an official NHL game, one with big crowds and expensive tickets and the players, he said, who moved faster than you’d imagine. “Some day” now existed, or rather lack thereof, in wherever my father went.

​

I watched the players move around without concentrating on what was happening, convincing myself that I could feel the blood rushing from my head. Maybe in heaven—I wasn’t so much a spiritual person but found it easier to accept that he had gone somewhere as opposed to what I feared might be the truth—he was patiently awaiting a butter-braised and salt-scattered pretzel or carton of popcorn, loaded with all the fat and carbs it could muster. He would enjoy the first one in years. He’d been so good here on earth. He restricted his alcohol, caffeine, and processed food intake. Fat and sugar he’d avoided when he could. It should have been good enough. He exercised almost daily, filled the lower shelf of our fridge with ready-made salads, ate garlic—even with yogurt—kept track of his doses on the chalkboard in our kitchen and bought himself a blood pressure monitor. If anything had ever been fair, it would have been good enough.

​

I think I was afraid that there was nothing after it—even as I retained a disbelief in the spiritual, the religiously conventional, I had gotten stuck in hypocrisy. After all he had done, I could not accept that he had gone anywhere but paradise. And with all this suffering I was holding on my tongue like a supernaturally intact jawbreaker that pooled bile in the back of my throat, I couldn’t understand that it was all for someone who was no longer anything. I think, most of all, I was afraid of that void.

​

The players stampeded close into our side again, overtly ravenous, as if their blood were spiced and sizzling, and I knew then that there were no more moments to be spared, there were no more plays, no more strategy—it had all turned into a free-for-all. The audience in the front row battered the glass which wiggled in response—the flexibility of plexiglass could withstand body slams and fan’s hand hits and puck shots better than stiff—and though the players ignored it as long-adapted background noise I could not, I heard every single thing at once. I caught sight of the puck and followed its neat, almost sinisterly clean trail from one of the opposing forwards to their winger who had a clear shot at the goal. The winger—an Eastern European surname—took an impressively smooth slapshot and the puck, as if encouraged by its own sentience, dove towards the goalie—the audience around him half-rose in their seats the moment they saw the Eastern European raise his stick—our goalie leaned back slightly and knocked the puck a little ways off its course to the right. The audience cheered once again. Everyone seemed to sharpen into all angles as they raced off for it—our defenseman closest to my section pulled back on the shoulder of the opposition’s other winger. The winger’s arm’s waved like that of a much more domestic and less experienced skater, and on the back of one blade he slid and fell backwards onto the ice—the other blade was stuck upwards and he appeared to kick our goalie in the face, as he fell backwards and managed to kick the goal off of one of its posts with an open leg. Our goalie rolled around until he was facing the ice. I gripped the fleshy inner knuckles of my hands, right middle fingertip running over an indelible callus. Against all hope, and against all reason too, I told myself something had just happened. The goalie raised himself to his elbows and removed his mask, sending it curling onto the ice—the force of the removal meant that an ungloved hand he’d held to his neck came loose. Blood airbrushed the ice, accompanying then what I noticed to be an already substantial amount. Our goalie’s knees wiggled like he was swimming on land, and with a groan of shock and horror from us it came to be known that our goalie was attempting to get to his knees, attempting to save his own life, and alongside the groan that rippled through the crowd the referee stopped the play, probably first noticing the untethered goal—our goalie’s brow was large and creased, much larger than any brow I’d ever seen before from so far away. Blood came over his hand in a sheet, and every insubstantial movement released more blood from above his hand, between his fingers, down the bottom of his jersey, so fast it must have gone in miles per hour. The audience members in the first few rows squirmed and cried, their faces in tragedy masks—one man had already fainted, another was clutching at the left side of his chest. I looked away quickly, back to the ice. Acid rose in the back of my throat. Maybe it was bile, maybe it was fear, unassessable. Even from where I was in the ninth row I could see everything that was in our goalie’s eyes, a deeper pain than fear, a deeper fear than pain, an indescribability, a nothingness that came when the thing that never happened, happened. Players who noticed the commotion looked towards him and quickly looked away—he’d applied such intense pressure to his neck that the blood was coming down in dribbles the size of marbles, splashed into the deepening pool—it had never ceased, not once—our center had guided one of the athletic trainers onto the ice, then stoically skated away. The trainer ran through the puddle of blood and pressed a logoed towel to his neck, lifting him below the arm and trying to keep him upright, more trainers and blue-gloved medical staff following behind him, supporting our goalie’s other arm, his torso, pushing him towards the nearest exit, leaving a trail of neat beads and, behind the trainer, shoe prints. All I could see was the back of our goalie’s legs as he faintly skated off the ice.

​

Our center headed back towards the bench, light as if he were dizzy, then came to his knees and vomited on the ice. He took a moment to collect his breath, got back up again, and skated the rest of the way. I looked at the defenseman who I’d been watching earlier. He skated around in circles listlessly, mouth open and shoulders curled around the back of his head—he moved without the decades-long security he’d been so confident with just minutes earlier.

​

With the exit of our goalie, the audience’s groans and cries soon gave way to total silence. I’d never been in such a large place, empty with so many people—filled with total silence. I felt my very stomach pale. I didn’t think I would be sick, though I was dizzy and lightheaded—I felt empty. If I were to gag I did not think there would be anything to reveal. My hands were tights and my fingers ached in their fists, but I did not undo them—I was afraid that if I moved, then, somehow, this would mean that our goalie would not survive. A “hmm”ing sob twisted in my throat, but I did not open my mouth—it pushed through my nose.

​

Many people had started to cry, maybe from the moment our goalie had removed his mask while blood flowed on his chest, the moment he had confirmed himself a man under it all—though we had known it all along we had not wanted to fear a weakness so man-suffered as death. We had wanted the armor to work.

​

I did not move my eyes, my spine coiled at my back like some tensile cobra drawn and waiting for the second to strike—I watched all the players who crossed my line of vision, another from the opposing team dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead to the ice—the largeness of his padding amplified his shoulders, which shook greatly. His teammates circled around him and patted him on the back, some of our players standing around him too and lowered their sticks within his line of vision, all of them gray-faced. I wondered if he had been the one who had done it. A woman three rows down from me was praying, her cheeks wide from where her mouth was pressing into them. I wanted to say a prayer too, hypocrisy and all, and I wondered if you could do it without clasping your hands. I said one within eye blinks. My stomach was growing staticky and even if the audience had kicked up again I couldn’t hear it. I was glad Dad wasn’t here to see this.