The Mighty Oak

When his sister called from Boston to say their mother was dead, Oak was in an ice bath halfway through a twelve-pack of beer in the middle of the Texas afternoon trying to concentrate on how he was going to knock Pat McDonald’s head in. Outside his apartment, the El Paso sun blazed. Inside, he had the apartment lights off, as he kept them, against the wavering sickness in his head. He hadn’t slept again. He hasn’t slept much since the headaches that crept in over the summer, his hip and lumbar throbbing in their marrow. His ma wasn’t supposed to be dead. When Oak talked to her in July, three months ago, four, she said she was better, that her cancer was on the run.

Out the team bus window, a cattle truck rattles his head. The El Paso Storm bus rolls north through the Chihuahuan desert on the way to the Albuquerque, New Mexico rink, at the far northern edge of the West Texas Hockey League. Oak sits alone in a seat at the back of the bus with the other veteran players. The boys are playing cards, they’re on their phones. The bus smells of sweat, Icy Hot, booze breath, and beer farts. Oak takes a drink from the roadie he’s got between his knees. He’s got a seat reserved on a four am Greyhound back from Albuquerque to El Paso