Page 31 of Gravity
Why me?I'm not worthy of him. I'm not, Jesus, I'm not.
I lob his earlier question back. “Why do you play?”
Bryce turns us off the highway onto a rural road that goes from snowpack to powder in about ten seconds. He’s in four-wheel drive, frowning through the windshield as the truck roars through a whiteout landscape. The truck is bouncing, jostling us left and right, and I grasp the handlebar beside my head as I brace my palm against the dash.
He doesn’t speak until we turn onto an even smaller path, this one sheltered by trees. It's a game trail, nothing more than a path for deer. Branches scrape against the side of Bryce's truck.
“Hockey was something I could change. I could spend hours on the river. I could change my release or tighten my grip. I could hone my accuracy and improve my speed. I could become someone else on the ice. For a dirt-poor boy who never owned his own pair of skates, that was as powerful as a drug.”
We're both quiet. The truck engine roars. His jaw is clenching, holding, clenching again.
“Tu sais… this game. It is not just choreographed plays, or dueling over the puck. It’s not about trying to score the most goals.Non, it's none of that.”
I frown. Those are the textbook definitions of what hockey is.
“Hockey is… It is human nature distilled. We take men and we compress them by putting them on ice, putting walls around them, slapping blades on their feet, and giving them sticks. Tell them, ‘Go as fast as you can,’ and chase this little puck. We force them to react under total pressure in fractions of a second.Alors, put a man's career, his reputation, and his future on the line?Calisse, you will see him revert to his bare self when he skates.”
We emerge from the trees at the bank of a frozen river. He pulls us onto what should be the beach, but is now packed snow with a powdery layer billowing across the top. The river is glass, at least half a mile wide, stretching toward the horizon to my left and right. It’s the biggest sheet of continuous ice I’ve ever seen in my life.
Bryce shifts the truck into park. The engine idles. Tiny snowflakes fall onto the windshield. “When you see the game from that perspective, you realize what you're really doing out there is finding weaknesses. That is what the whole game is about: uncovering someone else's weakness. Digging it out, over and over and over again. Like when we beat Seattle. We beat them in their minds before we beat them on the ice.”
Bryce hesitates. He takes a breath and holds it deep in his chest. “You are my weakness, Hunter.”
ChapterTwelve
Hunter
Hockey and Canada are inextricable. I may have been a US player on a US team, only venturing north of the border for road games a few times a year, but even I know: there is no separating the game from its home or its history.
Like the United States, Canada is an improbable nation. I am from Texas, where the vastness of that state seems more likely to separate rather than unite Texans, but the opposite is true. A Texas identity links the swampy wetlands of the eastern bayou to the windswept plains of the panhandle, and further, to the expansive horizons where ancient ocean beds have shifted into the sky-high limestone mesas crawling across West Texas. I am Texan anywhere I go in my home state.
The same is true across Canada. The country is overwhelming, stretching from ocean to ocean and to the top of the Arctic Circle. Explorers, fur-traders, and farmers each tiptoed deeper into a place where their little lives were hopelessly outmatched by the land. Over time, rivers became arteries of life, connecting far-flung camps and settlements.
Hockey began on those same rivers. Villages—then towns, then cities, then provinces—competed against each other and came together, building ties that still unite the nation, no matter the geographical distance, politics, or language. The game became Canada’s heartbeat, and the soul of hockey endures on frozen rivers and lakes and ponds.
This is how Bryce grew up playing. I’ve only known indoor rinks and organized games, but he found hockey through his father, his brothers, his family's connection to the land, and then, through himself. Just a river of ice, a boy, and his mind. What is this game like when you play yourself against the world and your unending imagination?
We don’t speak as we unload our gear from the truck. Bryce dumps a duffel bag full of old pucks on the snowy bank, and then sits on a rock to tie on his skates. I carry our sticks. These are classics—old wooden sticks—and they clatter when I toss them on the ice. Then I have to figure out how to sit on a boulder and tie on my skates and negotiate pushing myself to my feet on the smooth-as-glass river. There is no bench here, no boards to hold on to and swing myself over.
Bryce holds out his gloved hand and helps me up. My breath fractures. He won't look me in the eyes.
The river is a midnight mirror, the ice deep and dark beneath our skates. He glides across the surface like he was born here, because, well, he was. I’m more tentative. The only Zamboni is the wind and the snow, but they've done a great job turning this into an impossibly slick surface.
He's the better skater, especially now, and it takes me a while to catch up. He is constantly outmaneuvering me, but as my confidence grows, so does my speed, until I'm all-out chasing him.
We fly from bank to bank, never slowing, never stopping for boards or corners or whistles. He keeps looking back, checking where I am, and each time he does, his smile grows. I haven’t seen him smile like this since Vegas. I hear his laugh rolling down the river, and a part of my chest unclenches.
I close the distance on a straightaway pursuit like we’re speed skating an Olympic run. When I finally reach him, I wrap my arms around his waist from behind and twist. He grabs onto my jacket, I lock my hands on his hips, and we spin, our skates turned out, momentum and inertia working in tandem.
A piece of the bank juts out nearby, piled with thick snowdrifts that go to our shoulders. We twirl closer, closer, and then we puff right into the heap. Powder explodes around us as our skates slide out, and when we collapse, we must look like two pairs of skates and shins extending from a snowy hummock. I end up on my back with him above me. We're pressed chest to chest, our arms still wrapped around each other.
We’re both wearing tuques and hoodies, gloves and jackets, and he put on flannel-lined jeans over his compression leggings before we left the arena. I’m still bundled up from this morning. Only our faces are exposed. His breath fogs in between us.
The world is silence and snow… and him. I brush the tips of my gloved fingers down his flushed cheeks. His pupils widen. His lips part.
S’il te plaît, leave my heart broken,he told me in the truck.I pull back.
Bryce wiggles until he gets his hands on a solid chunk of ice buried in the snow. He hefts, and then he’s on his knees—knees on either side of my thighs, straddling me, like Vegas, like Vegas—and then back on his feet. He pushes away, skating out to the center of the river.
