Cole Brennan: Mandatory Reconciliation

For the record, I didn't want the bed.

Put that in the binder. Put it wherever the league puts things.

Sheila from Player Wellness left at two this afternoon with the last of the daylight and the only truck, because the storm that was supposed to miss Vermont didn't, and what she left us was a case of chili, a three-ring binder and a certificate that needs both our signatures or neither one of us plays hockey again. Around five a maple came through the bunkhouse roof. Around seven the power quit. So that's the whole estate now: one cabin, one woodstove, one bed, and the guy who broke my nose.

Hi.

You're standing at the foot of it with your arms crossed. We've been standing here a while. It's a queen. I've sat in penalty boxes with more room.

"I'll take the floor," I say, because I'm a captain and a goddamn adult.

Neither of us looks at the floor. It's forty-four degrees in here, according to a thermometer shaped like a trout, and the trout's hanging right over the stove.

Here's what you need to know about you. For four years you've been the worst part of my winter. Your stick in my ribs, your stupid face in the other circle, forty-one penalty minutes against me personally, and yes, I counted, it's a hobby. And three weeks ago, Game 7 of the Harvest Cup, a fake trophy the commissioner invented to sell beer in November, you beat us. In overtime, on your ice. You won. Then you came down the handshake line and you got to me and I said four words, which I'm not writing in any binder, and you pulled your glove off and broke my nose with the hand I'd just shaken.

Who does that? You WON.

It healed a little to the left. There's a strip of tape on it. I look great. That's not the point.

I grab the binder because somebody has to, and I tip it toward the stove light. Sheila laminated the tabs.

"Exercise Six," I read. "'Repair. Partners take turns tending an injury the other has sustained. Speak only in I-statements.' She put a little clip-art bandage on it."

Nothing from you. Your jaw does the thing it does before a faceoff.

We're five for eight. We got through Trust Fall on a technicality. Three more of these and two sets of initials and we both walk out of here reinstated, never have to speak again outside of a scrum, and I can go back to thinking about you the normal amount.

I hold out the ice pack. It's been out on the step in the snow. It's the only thing in this cabin that still works.

"I feel," I say, "like you owe me a nose."

My hand's steady. I want that noted. The wind's trying to take the roof off and I've got your shoulders three feet away with the fire on them, and I am not thinking about Tampa, because nothing happened in Tampa.

"Your turn, Portland."