Skater in a strange land

Three first pages

Once upon a time a published novelist told me he had revised the first page of his most current novel over one hundred times.

That seemed excessive to me at the time-- I was nineteen and very impatient-- and today it still does.

But first pages are devilish difficult to get right. So it is with the first page of this novel, which I have now finished and am revising.

Below you will find three versions of the first page of Skater in a Strange Land. If you're so inclined, would you be so kind as to leave a comment explaining which version you like best and why?

I've no idea whether I will use any of these three. It's possible that elusive perfect first page is still to be imagined. We shall see.

 

Version #1

 

This is going to be one of those long stories, but I promise not to tell it in a way that taxes your patience.

 

It is also one of those stories with many bits and pieces, some of which even to this day no one quite understands.

 

But it all started in the year 329 of our reckoning, and 2005 of the wide world's, the year that in North America there was no ice hockey season.

 

I know what you're going to say: a story about ice hockey? This can do nothing but tax my patience.

 

Well, for firsts, you have to understand that in my country, which is called Borschland, ice hockey is the great and only sport that we can call a religion, or, in our language Te Hijlikesport. And religion, if you look at it in the right way, is never patience-taxing.

 

But this story is not about ice hockey as much as it is about the heart. And this, I think, will be appealing to you no matter how much or how little you like ice hockey.

 

Ah, Te Hart, this is also what makes Borschic people sit up and take notice, for Te Hart is not only romance for one who lives in my country, though there is that, and there is a young lady in this story, who is of course very beautiful, and whose name is Rachael.

 

But all that is beside the point. Te Hart is best translated "the heart's desire," and this is in truth all of life; this is saints, angels, and all spirits together, singing in sheltering harmony, as we say in Borschland.

 

But I think I must already be taxing you, with all my talk about abouts and so little story so far.

 ...

#2

 

It is a little-known fact that, every year, we in Borschland send out invitations to foreign players to play ice hockey in the Borschland Hockey League.

It is also a little-known fact that no North American had ever played hockey in Borschland until Sherman Reinhardt.

Our Sherm.

Sherm’s story begins in the year 329 of our reckoning, and 2005 of the wide world’s, the year that in North America there was no National Hockey League season.

Now, to be very clear: I, Kadmus Greningen, am a journalist, and for the past 44 years I have been writing about the game of ice hockey in my little-known nation of Borschland. But this is not a story strictly about hockey. It is about Te Hart.

Te Hart can be translated roughly from Borschic as “The Heart,” and you may think this story is about a romance. And yes, there is one—certainly there is one.

But Te Hart means more to us Borschers than simply the flutterings of passion (temporary as they often are).

More properly, Te Hart is best translated "the deep longing of the heart," and this is in truth all of life; this is earth, sky, water, ice, people living in this world, the saints who straddle this world and the next, angels, and generally all spirits together, singing in sheltering harmony, as the holy deacons have always said in Borschland.

So if you like ice hockey, you might be partial to this story. And if you like romance, you might possibly appreciate this story. But if you are a person of spirit, then, if I may so humbly suggest it, you will listen to this story as one who listens to the songs of heaven.

Well. That did seem lofty. So on with it, on with it, Kadmus.

 ...

 

#3

 

There is a saying in Borschland that a hockey puck is akin to the human heart, for as a puck in hockey so the heart in love is fiercely knocked about while seldom reaching its goal.

 

You will have to forgive us Borschlanders. We are a very romantic and hopeful people, and nearly all of us consider love nobler than a frozen rubber disk. But it is true that Borschlanders are ice-hockey mad, and so are prone to sayings that combine love and our favorite sport.

 

So much is also true of the story I am about to tell, the story of Sherman Ignatius Reinhardt, the first North American ever to play ice hockey in the Borschland Hockey League.

 

But to be very clear: I, Kadmus Greningen, journalist, eyewitness of the Sherm Reinhardt story, must also inform you that what follows is not strictly about love, nor ice hockey.

 

It is about Te Hart.

 

Te Hart can be translated roughly from Borschic as “The Heart,” and from this you may conclude that I come to you with a romance. And yes, there is one—certainly there is one.

 

But Te Hart means more to us Borschers than simply the flutterings of passion (temporary as they often are).

 

Te Hart is best translated "the deep longing of the heart," and this is in truth all of life; this is earth, sky, water, ice, people living in this world, the saints who straddle this world and the next, angels, and generally all spirits together, singing in sheltering harmony.

 

But on with it, Kadmus, on with it.

 

Sherm’s story begins in the year 329 of our reckoning, and 2005 of the wide world’s, the year that in North America there was no National Hockey League season.

...

Chapter 12: Sherm gets telegrams

Wednesday morning, Day 15, I woke up and the sky was bright white.

 

Most of the time when you get a cloudy sky it is gray, but this was white, and it was white because it was snowing, the first snow of the season.

 Sherm Reinhardt (AKA Jamie Bell), hockey star.

It didn’t stick, just like my boots didn’t stick to the pavement when I walked out to the carriage waiting to take me to 14 Waatersdram, and from there to the train station where we’d board a special to take us to our next game against Wrischer, two hours away.

 

I was on a cloud, swirling around. I had never been a hero in anything before, not even in midget hockey. I was a good player, don’t get me wrong, but there was always someone else better on my team that everybody talked about. I never had a dad who coached and talked me up and brought me to special clinics. I just played, tried to get on good teams, and Dad watched, and he only missed when he was having chemo.

 

On the way to the train station on the first class tram set aside for us—second class trams followed, filled with fans—I replayed over and over that first goal against Tarlunz on Sunday night.

 

I knew I was going to lose that first draw, because it was my first game in this huge facility under the lights with the crowd and all the pomp and circumstance, and all through warmups I couldn’t feel my hands. I dropped my stick a couple of times before the game started and I felt like I should take off my gloves if I wanted to have any chance at holding on to the stick in the game.

 

I knew that guy, Baarda, was going to win the first faceoff. He was a gray-bearded guy with a tooth missing, and he smiled at me the way the guys in the locker room do when they’re about to play a prank. Guys like Baarda always win the draws. They either win fair and square or they cheat, but the puck always goes to their side.

 

So I made up my mind that, after I lost the draw, I would skate my ass off into the Tarlunz zone and see if I could just hustle my way into a good play. There wasn’t anything more on it than that. Forecheck, forecheck, I could still hear my American coaches telling me.

 

And I had adrenaline to burn. No one could’ve been more hopped up than me without artificial stimulation.

 

So Baarda sent it back to his d-man, the one on his left, and the dude had already decided to go d-to-d, a horizontal pass to the other defenseman. Borschland hockey players pass the puck, I’d figured it out in practice. So I rushed at the guy as if I was going to give him a big hit, and he may have thought, who is this crazy American, I’m going to pass and then duck. I broke off at the last second and extended my stick as far as it would go to cut off the passing lane.

 

It was a good move on my part, but it was lucky that the puck hit the end of my stick. It was even luckier that the puck flew up in the air. And after that I don’t know what happened. Instinct took over. The force was with me, or whatever. I know I hit it hard because I’d been itching to take a real heavy shot the entire practice time, and the coaches kept telling me not to. This time, adrenaline took over.

 

And the puck went in.

 

It was embarrassing, really, to hear the screams. I was back to not feeling my hands again when my teammates congratulated me. And I lost the second draw to Baarda because to tell the truth, I was shaking, and only 5 seconds had gone off the clock.

 

Busby sat with me on the tram and the train all the way to Wrischer. He helped. I got asked a thousand questions after the game, and he sat there patiently and translated every answer.

 

I kept saying it was just a flukey goal, and a great honor to be playing in Borschland and I hoped to make my teammates proud. And during the game, Mr. Chrujstenkaamps kept pointing at me and making a gesture with his two fists pushing forward—shoot, shoot—but I was just too shaky the rest of the game to think about it. I don’t know how I got three assists, don’t ask me, I kept saying. I was just playing the way the team expected.

 

“Did you ever play, Busby?” I asked him as the train tooted its horn and we picked up speed, making the apartment houses of Te Staff a blur. “I never asked you before. Did you play?”

 

Busby, who’s about 5 feet 7 and looks like a prematurely gray middle schooler, shook his head. “I played. Every kid in Canada plays.”

 

Then a reporter came up to us, and Busby didn’t say anything more about himself, because he was on the job.

 

The Wrischer press met us at the train. We had a press conference in the waiting room, which was a beautiful wood and glass barn, gargoyles etched into the glass and carved onto the ends of the benches.

 

“Sherm, what do you think of the Wrischer team?” The press kept saying, as if I was some kind of expert.

 

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out,” I said, and Busby translated in a lot more words than I had said, and everyone smiled and wrote on their notepads.

 

We skated their rink, which was on a big pond in the middle of the city, with houses on the far side of the pond and a grandstand that was a horseshoe with the open side to the pond. It wasn’t nearly as big as Te Staff. The stands went up about 25 rows at the most, and though the game was a sellout, it felt a little like a neighborhood skatearound.

 

The other team was small, much smaller than we were, and though they skated pretty fast, we were bigger and faster, and we muscled them off the puck pretty good and played keep away, and after a while the goals started coming.

 

We kept it in their zone most of the time, and at one point I was behind the goal, receiving and passing, and the third time it came behind the goal, I just took the puck, faked a pass, and wrapped it around the goalie, stuffing it into the bottom right of the goalmouth.

 

Everybody was silent as if that had never happened before. To tell the truth, that had never happened to me before. I had seen wraparounds, but I never had the open ice to try one before. And it worked.

 

We were up 2-0 in the second when I got my second. I actually won a face off at the right point and passed to my wing—Oovie, everyone called him, what a great player—and drove to the goal. Oovie passed back to me and I hit the puck into the top right window.

 

I scored another late and we won 4-0. It was kind of ridiculous, how easy that game was. We could’ve scored twenty.

 

Afterwards the Wrischer press acted like I was the second coming. It was weird, because when I say we could’ve scored twenty, we could’ve. The guys didn’t shoot all that much, they held the puck and tried to make the perfect pass. When I got it I passed a lot, too, but I couldn’t not shoot sometimes because I was taught you need to pepper that goalie. And when I shot it tended to go in.

 

Busby said afterwards, “They don’t call it a hat trick when you get three. They call it a trinity.”

 

“Like, religion?” I said.

 

“Yeah, and that makes you a saint.”

 

I tried to read my book on the Borschic language on the way back from the game, but people kept interrupting me, and I got about 3 dozen telegrams of congratulations from everyone except the primeminister of Borschland. Most of them were just congratulations from random people, random important people whose names meant nothing to me. But a few made an impact.

 

One was from someone named R. MARTUJNS, and it said, I LISTENED ON THE WIRELESS. CONGRATULATIONS ON THE TRINITY. BLESSINGS.

 

Busby said, “She has a serious thing for you.”

 

“Hope so,” I said.

 

Another was from the United Borschland Movement. It said, LEAVE BORSCHLAND TODAY. NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM YOUR PRESENCE HERE.

 

Busby shook his head. “No death threats yet. But wait till we play Matexipar.”

 

Then there was a third. It was in English, from an LB. YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER. A FRIEND IS AT HAND. WAIT FOR A MESSAGE.

 

“Who’s LB, I wonder?” Busby said. “English telegram’s very rare. Prank.”

 

I didn’t say that LB was probably Linus Black, Jr. “Could be a friend of mine. Last I saw, he was running from the Bearland spy service.”

 

“You have a friend who’s a bear? You never told me.”

 

I gestured around at all the uproar in the lounge. “Who had time?”

 

“Good point,” said Busby.

 

Then somebody put a glass of brandy in my hand, and we had a toast and a song, so Busby never had a chance to follow up on Linus Black, Jr. As to the message, it didn’t scare me. It probably should’ve scared me, but everything seemed so unreal at the time.

 

Besides, I had the Premujr Ball to look forward to.

Chapter 11: First game

Early in the Borschic season, at the beginning of Eveember, it is not as cold as it’s going to be. Sometimes it has not snowed yet. So the good ice keepers of Te Staff use refrigeration to keep the rink cold.

Photo from here. 

We in Borschland have been slow to adopt the latest technologies, it is true. Some say we could not have done so except that we live here in the Continent, insulated from the wide world and the devastating wars of which that world is so fond. So be it. But we have found out about making ice cold when the weather is not so cold, because we love ice hockey as much as the wide world loves war. Maybe that is why we have been able to keep war as small as it always has been here. It seems as if the bears and foxes are always at war or fond of it; perhaps that’s why bears have accepted so much from the wide world, to stay above their rivals and defend their land.

 

But I fear I have strayed from my purpose.

 

That first Sunday in Eveember is always magical. The first games of the season quicken the whole of Borschland like nothing else. In other countries autumn is a season of melancholy, regret and nostalgia. For us it is a new birth. When it is cold enough to skate on ice, then our blood races. When it is dark enough again to light the candles of the deacons and pray with our saints, then we know hope.

 

In the year of 699, Te Staff began its campaign with its traditional rival, Tarlunz, which is an industrial city a few miles northwest of the government center. It is a place of factories and forges, but of old it is also a place of forests and ponds, a reclaimed marsh, and there are still hundreds of ponds where the young boys skate in the winter, and from these ponds are plucked most of the talent of Tarlunz.

 

These factory boys have the hearts of oxen and never stop skating, never stop fighting. They are not as well-coached as our Staff boys, however, and they have never developed the confidence to beat us regularly. Always there is some shift of the puck that eludes them.

 

On this night there was much pomp and pageantry at Te Rujnk, our skating place. The river shined with the lights on the far bank, from the longshoreman’s cities of Natatck and Rirlver, those hardworking twins of freight and cargo. The spit of land, Te Saandmaas, that extends between the river and Te Rujnk was full of workingmen, standing, standing, throughout the game, and not seeing very well, for that spit does not rise much above the river level, and they were standing ten and fifteen deep, but cheering none the less as our skaters waved to them under the spot lights and the bands played.

 

The grandstand proper of Te Rujnk is built into the bluff that borders the river and guides it on, moves it along, saying, you shall not swamp this city. There is room for six thousand here, some of it in seating, some of it in benches, and at the very top in the grand boxes sit the dignitaries of the city, its richest and sometimes its happiest citizens. One level below sit the press, and there is where I am, humble reader, with the river lit up and the spotlights following the players as they skate around, waving, smiling.

 

I know not exactly what was transpiring in the mind of Sherman Reinhardt at this time. Surely he had been in bigger rinks, for he had played in North America. And surely he had been cheered louder, for I think in America they have grandstands that seat twenty and thirty thousand fans at a time.

 

But Sherman Reinhardt never would have been cheered so sincerely. Of that I am humbly confident.

 

Of the game many thousand words could be written, yet it seemed to pale in significance to the historical nature of the event. To be sure, Te Staff won, by a score of 7 goals to 2, which was an impressive total, though there is no reason for us to have given up any goals at all.

 

It was our Sherm who shone, however, our Sherm, our guest, our adopted son.

 

Sherm lost his first faceoff. It must have been because he was dazzled by the lights off the river. The venerable center of Tarlunz, Habel Baarda, who has scored a century of goals in his career, slipped the puck back to his defenseman and seemed almost to take a bow, as if to say, you were not expecting this North American to beat us Borschland boys, were you?

 

Sherm went after that lost puck, furiously skating for it, and extended his stick as one defender attempted to pass horizontally to the other. The puck, headed for its intended target, clipped Sherm’s stick and spindled high in the air. Sherm plucked it like a ripe Borschic apple, laid it at his feet, and let fly a shot on goal that went so fast it was in the net before any of us had time to pick up our field glasses.

 

You have never heard such cheering.

 

Lubert Veeststaff, the Tarlunz goalminder of whose age we have now lost track, said after the game he had never seen a puck struck so hard.

 

Afterwards, Sherm said through his interpreter Alastair Busby, “I apologize to the nation of Borschland for my selfishness. I was caught up in the moment and my blood was up.”

 

It was a proper thing to say. We Borschers tend not to play the game by ourselves. But how can one apologize for a lightning bolt? It is a force of nature, an act of God.

 

I believe that by that shot the will of the Tarlunz team was broken, like dry kindling over one’s knee. Through the rest of the game it seemed as if Te Staff danced the Premujr Ball about the slow-footed Tarlunzers. Sherm took his part, but every time he got the puck he seemed to want to pass it, though the crowd begged him to shoot again. Chrujstoff, our young hothead, ended up with 2 goals to take the honor of the flowering crown that night, and Sherm was credited with 3 assists as he skillfully furnished the puck to the blades of his teammates.

 

He officially took 3 shots on goal, including that first one.

 

Afterwards there was much talk. Up to that point there had been much talk, but it was of an anticipatory kind. Now there was something we could remember rather than imagine. Most of the men in the press box were impressed, and they wrote in their stories that Te Staff had been blessed to discover a kind of saint from another world.

 

But one man, a good man is how I think of him, named Henrujk Willbaanz, who writes for Te Tarlunzer newspaper, wrote something different that got the entire nation thinking.

 

“We have only one game to judge,” wrote Henrujk, “but we must all ask ourselves this question: if Sherman Reinhardt is typical of all North American hockey players—indeed, if there are many players above him, celebrated and decorated in the National Hockey League, as we know Crosby and Malkin are—then how is it that we can take pride in our game, knowing that the average player from elsewhere can be venerated as the Hero of Borschland for his superior skills?”

 

That sentence stirred something in us. The papers the day after were all sprawling with rebuttals and responses, some of them appearing on the opinion sheets, not just in the sporting pages. Henrujk told me over lunch the next week that he had mainly been interested in selling a few more Tarlunzers that day, that he had not realized what kind of chord it would strike to cast doubt on the skills of our players.

 

But doubt it cast, and the ink flowed like blood in a battle. Some writers took Henrujk’s side, and wrung their hands over the possibility he presented. Others scoffed, saying it was one game, wait and see. Still others said that anything Sherm had done was due to the help of his teammates; even the miraculous first shot was chalked up to the training regimen of the first ten days, or to surprise on the part of the Tarlunz team, or to simple luck. And there was one, a columnist in the feminine pages of Ter Abendteelegraf, Noora Oobeest, who wrote what came closest to my hopeful heart:

 

We are darkening our hearts over nothing. Maybe we have attracted to our shores a player who, for whatever reason, was not revered in his own country, but who has always had inside him a burning passion for the game, and in his body the talent and skill to excel, but who, for whatever reason, was never properly appreciated in the wide world with its myriads of hockey players smiled on more often and more widely by Lady Fortune.

 

Maybe, Borschland, we have midwifed from our Sherman the greatness that was always inside him.

 

But Noora’s voice was a small one in those days; most of us were for waiting to see how well Sherm would do in the next games. But there was a small group of influential naysayers who came from, of all places, the steel city of Matexipar, whose hockey team is an archrival of Te Staff’s. These naysayers, these spoilsports, called themselves the United Borschland Movement, a political party dedicated to keeping the world out of Borschland and keeping Borschland for Borschers.  Most of the time they occupied themselves with trying to uncover spies in the diplomatic corps of the Upright Bears of Bearland, and hoping to pass laws prohibiting bears from selling honey on street corners. They also wanted to keep the Loflinlanders in Loflinland, and the servants who came from Vinasola in their servanthood, and not a child to learn a foreign language. They polled less than ten percent in national parliamentary elections, but they were taken seriously, and feared more than their power warranted.

 

The UBM newspaper, Te Schtimm, or The Voice, published a front-page editorial calling for Sherman Reinhardt to be expelled from Borschland, and for there never to be any other foreign players. This was impossible, of course, because there were already a number of players from other countries in our land, including several from Vinasola, Gimroth, the Twin Kingdoms of Daan and Kaatsch, as well as Europe, especially Finland. There had even been a few bears in the league, mostly goaltenders, it is true.

 

But the spell of North America and its legendary hockey league had taken hold in Borschland, and we all knew that this year the league had not been playing because of a labor union dispute. What if, the editorial said, a flood of players from North America came to Borschland and forever changed our national game? Once one player was here, he could report back to his fellows that this was an attractive place and well-paid, and there would be no regard for the Borschic traditions or style of play. Following the ice hockey players would be colonists, the editorial read, and after them guns and other governments, and finally Borschland would cease to be Borschland.

 

It was a preposterous notion, but it was not dismissed as it should have been. The parliament took up debate on Wednesday morning, several hours before Te Staff’s next game, on establishing a limit for foreign players on Borschland Hockey League teams.

 

Sherm took all of this with monumental good grace. When asked, he downplayed his skills and said that first shot had been a stroke of luck. He said that he was grateful for his teammates’ help, and grateful still more for the chance to play in such a storied tradition, in a place where hockey was of the greatest importance.

 

It was what was expected, what was hoped for, but there have been many players who have not said the things we expected them to say. So I give full marks to Sherm. And I waited for that game next Sunday night, for, truth to tell, I like a good story as well as anyone else, and I was interested to read the next chapter.

Chapter 10: Bon Voyage to America?

On Day 10, Wednesday, we all got a rest, and I got to spend the entire time in my B&B with that Borschic book. Busby said the coaches would make roster decisions, and we would have our first game on Sunday.

 

The papers had gotten a hold of the news that I was on Rachajl Martujns’ dance card for the Premujr Ball, Saturday night after the first week of the season.

 

I was also on a number of other young ladies’ dance cards. The PR department had said yes to a bunch of invitations that came in shiny envelopes. I was given these at my locker every day after practice.

 

One paper called me Borschland’s most eligible bachelor—after the PR department sent a runner down to the practice rink to ask if I was single. I wonder if Caroline what’s-her-name would’ve objected to me saying yes.

 

Those last days of practice, we played a lot of situational hockey and scrimmaged, and laid off the skating drills so much. Most of it was passing—from behind the net, from the flanks, in front, drop passes, head man passes, give-and-goes. There was so much room on that rink, and still only five skaters, so  there wasn’t nearly as much hitting and checking as on a North American rink. It felt like you were always playing four-on-four hockey, there was so much room.

 

And early on, I found out the hard way you can’t check in Borschland.

 

I was skating into a guy on a forecheck and he just disappeared and I went flying into the boards and almost broke my neck.

 

Assistant Coach #2 turned into a blazing red skin balloon and screamed murder at me. Busby translated, “Coach says, don’t do that again.”

 

I have never been a huge hitter in my life, although my coaches at College o’ the Lakes kept screaming “forecheck, forecheck” as if it was the miracle cure. In Borschland, you are not allowed to wind up on anyone, anywhere. You can’t smash someone into the boards. You can’t blindside them. Mostly the only thing you can do is shoulder them off a puck if they don’t duck first. There is a lot of room on the rink and almost all the time someone can see you coming, and they are small and wiry enough that they just make themselves scarce, like a hummingbird.

 

If you do connect, even if it is a legal hit by North American standards, you can get thrown out of the game. Penalties are for things like looking at someone funny.

 

Forwards, I found out, are supposed to concentrate on skating around people and putting the puck on net. On defense, you are pretty much waiting for the puck to come out to you. It’s not gentlemanly to get in the way of the other side’s three forwards if you are wanting to be able to have some offense on their side of the blue line.

 

I was told that I was mostly to stand at mid-ice during my shift, looking like a lovely lifelike hockey statue. One of the defensemen would stand with me, and we could’ve shot the breeze while their three forwards went against our two d-men and goalie. It made for a lot of one-on-one races to the net when I finally got the puck, but the goalie always seemed to have the answer when I shot it. I may have scored 1 out of 10 on average on these rushes, which Busby called the Dragonslayer or Don Quixote, depending on how snarky he wanted to be.

 

The point of the game, I learned, was not to score goals, but to score them beautifully. Coach was adamant on making the extra pass. It was beautiful to be able to send it all the way around the net on four passes and have someone tap it in on at the weak side on the fifth. You weren’t commended for vicious slapshots from 50 feet out that were intended to kill and maim before slicing into the net top shelf right.

 

In fact, it was much more gentlemanly for your stick never to go over your waist level, any time. That meant a half-slap or a wrist shot was the most powerful it ever got, and a lot of scoring was just pushing the puck to somewhere the goalie wasn’t. Chrujstoff Anselm was great at that. He would take a pass around the point, skate in between the defenders, stickhandle, then flip the puck through some unseen hole in the goalie’s armor.

 

Gorgeous.

 

The left and right wingers were expected to stand around the blue line and dip in for loose pucks if necessary, but they didn’t do a lot of skating in the defensive zone either. You might think this was a lot of standing around for players, but it takes a lot of energy to battle end to end in Borschland with that huge rink.

 

A lot of guys in the NHL couldn’t have played in the Borschland Hockey League. Not to be disrespectful, but if you’re a guy who’s used to skating around a small rink slamming into people for a living, you’d spend a lot of time in Borschland getting treated for a broken neck incurred by missing people and peeling yourself off the boards. They skate that well.

 

After the last day of practice, we went up to the coaches’ office, where there was a piece of paper tacked on the door. The guys pushed me upstairs like they were going to play another joke, and they were laughing all the time. We all stood on the landing below the door, and we all walked up 8 steps from the landing and 8 steps down again after we’d read the list. Norbert, the old captain, the goalie, regulated who went first and when.

 

Every guy came forward and took a look at the list, and then grunted something like “Ja, Gut” or “Klejnzjujt” which meant something like son-of-a-bitch, and when I was going to get in there and look, Norbert stopped me and let someone else go.

 

“Altererste,” he kept saying, until finally someone said. “Noy man last.”

 

So I stood there, the “noy” or "new" man, until Norbert finally told me I could go, and as I walked up the stiars I looked down at them grinning at me like pirates, and I got to the door and looked for my name, and it wasn’t there.

 

“Waass, nijk te hujmer?” Chrujstoff said, which is like, “What’s the matter?” and they all tried to keep straight faces, although some of them were about to fall off that landing, they were shaking so hard.

 

“This is so lame,” I said, and Chrujstoff came up and read the list again, and he threw up his hands and said, “Nijk Reinhardt, Nijk Reinhardt!” and then let out a few Borschic curses. He put his arm around me, said he was sorry or whatever, and all the guys said they were sorry and “Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage to America.” Everyone said that, Bon Voyage to America.

 

So I knew they were punking me, but I also knew that there was a chance I hadn’t made it, because I wasn’t the best guy out there, I had spent the entire ten days just trying to get my wind. The coaches never said anything plus or minus. I was in an English-free zone, I couldn’t overhear a coach talking to a coach. It was all Borschic, all the time.

 

So they took me down to the locker room, and they all stood around and sang me a traditional song and gave me a Te Staff banner and an honorary Te Staff game sweater (both as if they'd been saving them for just this type of occasion) and they shook my hand, and all the time some of them would be falling down laughing while the others were making speeches or handing me stuff.

 

Then finally they opened this little brown bottle with a cork and indicated to me I needed to take a swig. One of the guys said, “Trink, olt Borschic goodbye.”

 

And just as I was about to say forget you, you drink first, Busby came in holding a piece of paper. “Don’t do it,” he said, and took the bottle from the guy holding it out to me.

 

“Where have you been?” I said, as Busby glared at everyone.

 

That was it. They couldn’t take anymore. They all bent over double and laughed their tails off.

 

Busby took the cork out, smelled it. “It’s a laxative. You would’ve been on the toilet all night.” He then gave me the paper. “Everyone got one of these in their mailbox today.”

 

This one had the Te Staff logo with the names of the coaches and managers in print. At the bottom there was a wax seal. “This is the official list,” he said.

 

I was first line center.

 

“They sent me off on a snipe hunt this afternoon,” said Busby over the noise. “I knew they were up to something.”

 

When they stopped laughing they started singing, and each one of them hugged me and said No hard feelings and I love you like a brother and Welcome to the team, in Borschic.

 

First line center.

 

Then the coaches came down and we went to a swanky restaurant with about a thousand people in it and a hundred five foot tall ladies in evening dresses with big bosoms kissed our cheeks and gave us white roses.

 

You’ve never seen anyone drink like those guys.

 

I don’t remember much that happened, except for one exchange that Busby translated for me.

 

“I thought I’d die,” some of the guys were saying.

 

“I can’t believe how much training we did,” another said.

 

And one guy would so to another, “You looked so bad, you looked like death,” and he’d punch him on the shoulder.

 

“But I was worse,” said a third.

 

“What, what?” I kept asking.

 

Busby said, “The coaches wanted to make sure you understood that the team was serious, just as good as anywhere in North America. So they made everyone train their butts off.”

 

“So it wasn’t just me?”

 

“No, not at all, they were all dying. But they had to make it seem like it was just routine.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“You didn’t ask.”

 

First line center.

 

“So after this, you’re saying, the season is going to be a piece of cake, I guess.”

 

Busby nodded, “Piece of cake.”

 

Then somebody who was listening asked what “piece of cake” meant in Borschic, and Busby told them, and everyone started chanting “piece of kek, piece of kek” and others shouted the Borschic translation “krustuloff, krustuloff,” and that was the refrain for the evening and it even made it into the papers that I had felt the first ten days with my new teammates was as sweet as eating pastry, because in Borschic, Busby told me later, you don’t say something is easy by saying “piece of cake,” you say it’s easy, like “en apfelnosch,” biting an apple.

 

It was a sweet night. But it wasn’t a piece of cake season.

Chapter 9: Sherm meets Rachajl

That first week was hell.

 

In fact, I was thinking of quitting all through it.

 

That’s just how out of shape I was.

 

I kept up pretty well in my last season at College of the Lakes. We conditioned, it was serious, I never drank that much beer in between. But that pace was recreational compared to Te Staff's.

 

After that first day that was only skating, we started using pucks, passing, skating in between cones, stickhandling. I felt rusty, slow, and stupid. Coach never talked, which was a bonus, but the other two guys, the fat ones, Assistant Coaches numbers 1 and 2, were constantly chattering, and I had no idea what they were saying. Busby didn’t skate next to me, whispering in my ear. He would take long breaks, I wouldn't know where he was, then he'd show up for a media moment.

 

I thought, if I make this team, I will learn Borschic. It was the first time I’d ever seen any use for learning another language.

 

But I had to get over the soreness and the little voice that was saying, “quit.”

 

Plus the other little voice that was saying, “You’re gonna get cut.”

 

I knew I had a contract, and I knew it had numbers on it, but it didn’t say, “guaranteed” anywhere—at least not in English. So all through that first week I was in fear. Fear of not making the team, fear of failing, but most of all, fear of having to take that hellacious trip all the way back to the U.S.

 

No one should have to come this far and have to go back so soon.

 

I got a lot of attention that week. I mean, attention from the press. On the first day they printed a poem in the paper by someone named R.M. The guys brought it up to me and laughed and nudged me, and I turned to Busby, and he said, “We’re going to have to find a way to translate that one more elegantly. It's a very classy piece of work.” Somehow I thought Busby was being fake modest about that, because he is one brain when he turns it on. But he refused to translate it, and I just kept a clip of it in between the pages of a magazine I'd taken from the Bear Air flight.

 

Newspaper dudes interviewed me. There are a lot of newspapers in Staff Borsch. I once told Busby that the newspapers in Staff Borsch were like the Internet because they updated just as often as there were about as many of them as there are websites about one town. They must have killed a thousand trees a day for all that newsprint. Staff Borsch is actually a small city, but it has a bunch of cities right next door, and there’s a million people overall in the area.

 

I trusted Busby to get my answers right, because to tell the truth, I was hurting. I’d never had to do, in a row, fifty end-to-end cone runs with the puck on my stick. Especially on a rink that was about 25% bigger than a normal rink. It was like a soccer field on ice. My ankles hurt like they were broken. After my go I knocked over so many cones they were always putting the cones back in place.

 

On Day 4, I got interviewed by Kadmus Greningen. Busby said he was one of the most respected hockey columnists in the nation. We went to this fancy restaurant with mirrors hanging everywhere. I had to look at myself from three angles.

 

Somehow we got on to the subject of the training regimen, and Busby told him I was adjusting to all the skating. But I couldn’t lie all that well. I didn’t need to put on eyeblack, the circles under my eyes were dark enough.

 

 

Chrujstof and the guys were always goofing on me. Once they pinned a piece of paper that said “REINHARDT” on it to the back of one of the guys, and the others all lined up, and when he skated between them they all tipped over and fell down one by one. They did great imitations of cones. And they never stopped laughing after that one. Comic geniuses.

 

I had a hard time sleeping. People would parade past my B&B, and serenade me at 3 AM. The trainers handed out a lot of aspirin but they didn’t have any anti-inflammatories. I got a mineral bath and a steam bath and a massage every day after practice, but that only helped so much.

 

Then the worst thing happened.

 

At the end of the first workout on Day 5, we were going to break for lunch, and Busby told me Coach wanted to see me in his office.

 

“I’m getting cut,” I said to Busby as we took the walk up the stairs from the practice rink to Coach’s glassed-in office.

 

“Somehow I don’t think so,” said Busby. He was Canadian and nothing phased him.

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

Busby wouldn’t answer. We knocked on the door, Assistant Number One said “Kam Ujn,” which sounds a lot like a vampire saying “Come in” and we stood there while the Coach looked us over.

 

Assistant Number One said, “Reinhardt, you’ve been skating hard. You deserve a break. Take the afternoon off. Get your training and take the afternoon.”

 

“Yes,” said Assistant Number Two. “A break’s what you need. Get out and see the city if you like.” And he handed Busby an envelope.

 

Coach scowled, but nodded.

 

Busby looked in the envelope. More black and red bills.

 

I said, “What about the other guys? Do they get the afternoon off?”

 

“No, they need the work. You need the rest,” said Assistant Number One.

 

I looked at Busby. He looked at me. We both knew I was dying. “Okay,” I said.

 

I told Busby I would spend the afternoon off my feet. I would’ve watched TV or played video games, but they didn’t have those. So I said I’d read a book. He could get me one of those Learn Borschlandic books and I’d study it. I figured, a good afternoon of rest and I’d be back at it the next day. The funny thing was, as bad as I’d been, none of the other guys, with the exception of Anselm, out-athleted me. I could skate fast and I could stickhandle with them. But they were three hundred percent better in their wind than me, and they were at home. They made me look like a beginner.

 

Busby was for the plan at first, until, while I was unlacing my skates in the locker room, the front office sent him a note saying I was needed for a PR appearance at a local brandy tasting.

 

“You haven’t been seen drinking brandy yet,” Busby explained. “It’s the national drink of Borschland. They’re very proud of it. It’s what all the fans drink to stay warm at the games.”

 

“Stay warm?”

 

“You play all your games outside. It’s a tradition.”

 

So instead of spending the afternoon off my feet, we went to a tailor to get fitted for a Borsch suit of clothes, and we picked a pair of trousers and a shirt and a suitcoat off the rack for the PR appearance. The black and red bills I’d received from the coach were plenty to pay for it all. Around 4 we went over the Brandujwejngarteen Ter Apfeldaam, and the place was packed. Again, mostly men, but there were some young women and some older women and they all congregated around me and gave me kisses on the cheek as the photographers blazed away with their old-style flash bulbs that sizzled and smelled like burnt oven crumbs.

 

The brandy was total fire water, stuff you don’t drink unless you cut it with something goofy stupid like Gatorade or whatever. We sat at a table and they brought me glass after glass, little shot glasses of the stuff, and I couldn’t tell the difference between any of it, but Busby kept saying things like “This is northern apple. It’s more subtle. Not as sweet.”

 

I got ripping blitzed just sipping that stuff, and round about 7 when they brought in hors d’oeuvres I was done. But it turned out the party was just beginning.

 

After the hors d’oeuvres there was a fish course, and then a potato course, and then an apple course, and the photographers flashed away again with me behind this big pile of apples, and there was this older lady, she must have been fifty, who posed holding two apples on either side of her chest, and they took a picture of me and her. Everyone got a bit happier than is good for anyone.

 

After that they pulled back the tables and a band with a fiddle and a little horn and a standup bass started playing country tunes, and everyone got out and stomped around. The women dragged me out there, and I don’t remember much of it. I saw the pictures in the paper the next day—the guys put them up in the locker room—and I had to deal with the most massive hangover of my entire life.

 

But there was one good thing that happened that night.

 

Pretty much after all the screaming and shouting was over, and Busby was chatting up this young lady in his best Borschic, and I was sitting on a velvet loveseat listening to a song sung by a 55-year old lady in an evening dress with her hair piled on top of her head and a diamond necklace twinkling like stars. She was accompanied by a guy on a piano, another on a violin, and a third with a little squeeze-box accordion.

 

I couldn’t understand a word, but it didn’t matter by that time.

 

Suddenly Busby was by my side, I was sitting up straight, and this face was staring into mine.

 

She had brown eyes, dark brown eyes, dark and shiny like black coffee in a white mug. And she was staring at me, so those eyes made quite an impression.

 

The rest of her was smaller. I mean, the nose wasn’t tiny, it was a good strong nose, but not a honker by any means. Her mouth was soft and simple. Her high, sharp cheekbones made her look like a model. And she was wearing a gray hat with a big brim under which she’d pinned her hair away from her face, and on top of the brim was a big, fluffy, black and white feather.

 

She was the classiest woman I’d ever seen.

 

“Wilkaam int Borschland” is all I remember her saying. The rest is a complete blur. Busby interpreted some, and she spoke some in English, and I remember thinking her Borschic and her English were both pretty good. But I wished to God that either I’d had less to drink, so I could understand her English, or I’d had more lessons in Borschic.

 

The next day after practice, when I’d sweated out all the brandy and had taken a junk load of aspirin, I sat with Busby in the locker room and asked him about her.

 

“Rachajl Martujns,” he said to my first question. “She writes poems. And she told me she hopes you’re going to write a poem on the ice for her.”

 

“She’s a fan?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

“Well, I hope she comes to one of our games.”

 

“I’m sure she will. But you’ll see her anyway.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Because you asked for the pleasure of a dance at the Premijr Ball.”

 

“What?”

 

“The Premijr Ball is the party they have in the city for the beginning of the hockey season. It’s a big affair. Very formal. People dance, the newspapers write about it. Who went, who danced with whom.”

 

“Do I have to go? I mean, do all the players go?”

 

Busby laughed. “No, most of the players don’t go to the Ball. They don’t have the class.”

 

“But I don’t have the class either.”

 

“You’d better get some, eh? Because the poetess Rachajl Martujns has you down on her dance card.”

 

“No way I asked her to dance. I can’t even pretend to dance, drunk or not.”

 

“Hey,” Busby said. “It wasn’t exactly your fault. She roped you into it. The way Borschic women do.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah.” Busby looked up and said goodbye to some of the other guys, tah-loo, tah-loo. “There’s no feminism in Borschland. Men run the show, no questions asked. But you’d be surprised how much Borschic woman get done around here. So you’ve got to be on your toes. Or else you’ll be married and wearing a stiff high collar every Saturday night at the charity do.”

 

And I thought, I probably could handle that if I was married to Rachajl Martujns. But maybe that was the fire water talking.

Chapter 8: Kadmus interviews Sherm

Note: Apologies for the delay in posting. I am on Chapter 14, but I forget to post regularly here. 

That first day, we the members of the Fourth Estate, otherwise known as the press, did not have the privilege of speaking face to face with the newest darling of the city, Mr. Sherman Thomas Reinhardt. It was all business, indeed, a closed skate, as Mujster Menheer Chrujstenkaamps calls it.

 

I do not think the city was ready yet for any words from Sherm himself. It was all too big an affair for us. We had been asking for someone to come from America for many years, nigh on twenty, and it was a terrible and terrifying thing for us to have done and to have continued to do for those many years when no one replied to our invitation to skate and play our beautiful game.

 

Borschland is not open to the wide world, as you must know by now. We have lived by ourselves for most of our history. We have not known whether our mariners would come back to our shores when we sent them out, for the great Creator of the world saw fit to make the Continent a place apart, half in the world where we come from, and half out.

 

So we began to send fewer and fewer seafarers out—back to Europe or parts elsewhere, and spent more and more time circling our own continent and becoming familiar with all the other peoples who have been here all the time or have wandered here from somewhere else. And we had become content with our isolation.

 

But now there is a great movement inside our land that says, maybe the Creator, the god of our Saints, is asking us to bring our light outside, to the wide world, for we see how much that world is burdened with hurt and destruction. Maybe we were incubating our light for the sake of the world.

 

That is what the deacons and deaconesses told us, in any case. There were—and are—skeptics of this particular philosophy. Those opposed (many of them call themselves the Baandesbewejging Borschland—United Borschland Movement) believe that if we let in others, then others will change us, and for the worse. They do not want anyone to come and change anything about this little egg yolk that is Borschland. They do not want us to hatch into a bird that may join the wide world and someday end up in some greater land’s pot.

 

So here was a great test for us, the Borschers, to see if we could welcome someone from that great country to the north, the United States, that beacon, the place to which all peoples of the world look in hope. If we could welcome that person and he could play our game and team with our players and make something beautiful, why, then, we all might see this as the first beginnings of something greater, then he might go back to his home and tell everyone about us and our challenge to bring the light could begin.

 

I am a journalist. I tell of what happens, and if people dream, then I tell of that, too.

 

So Sherm and I did not speak together until a few days into training. I believe the honor of the first interview went to my colleague at Te Taglik Staff, Mort Voorbeelz, not because Mort is more august than I in the world of sports scribbling, but because, apparently, Sherm had read the poem in that day’s edition of Mort’s paper, and was intrigued to know who the author might be. In typical fashion, the authors of poems use only their initials, and we had an inkling it must be the young Rachajl Martujns by the R.M., but this was the first time we had seen a poem in the sporting pages of the newspaper in quite a long time, so it could have been anyone.

 

It was a beautiful poem and expressive of that longing and hope of which I have just written. Rachajl is such a lovely spirit. She might be the incarnation of Sankt Rachajl herself, friend of the Loflins.

 

I read the piece that Mort wrote about Sherm, and I must say it did not, in my humble opinion, capture that which we were all wanting to know: who is Sherman Reinhardt, really?

 

So my interview was set for 28 Nachtober, four days after the arrival of the forward in a strange land.

 

We met in the dining room of Te Grujs, an establishment known for its large plate glass windows and ornate mirrors. It is a place to see and be seen. They also do a beautiful broiled fish known as a tervelly that is stuffed with our local freshwater Borschic lobster, the Kraackenscheeln.

 

Sherm arrived in a carriage wearing American sports clothing—a brimmed cap, long nylon pants with a stripe down the side, leather exercising shoes, and a padded jacket zipped to the neck. It was a bit blustery out, and he may have forgotten to unzip the jacket once he came into the well-warmed restaurant. But he did remember to shake my hand and take off his cap as we met. 

He was shadowed by the team interpreter, the exiled Canadian Evan Busby, who gave me all of Sherm’s answers.

 

At my question about lunch, Busby said Sherm was in training and would not be taking anything with a complex sauce. In fact, he said, a simple bujfsteek and mineral water would do.

 

Sherm looked a bit worse for the wear, I will confess. Though he was a full six feet in height, he hunched over in his seat and appeared much smaller. He was pale, had dark circles under his eyes, and a growth of beard which made him look a bit like a criminal on the run. His thick, wavy hair was molded by the cap and unkempt. But his blue eyes flashed with life, despite his evident fatigue, and he tucked into his Bjaward Sudmaas bijfsteek, the finest our land has to offer, with obvious relish.

 

“The training regime,” Busby said for Sherm, “has been demanding for me. There is a bit more endurance training here than in the States.”

 

“Clearly,” I said. “Our ice rinks are very large. We need to be able to skate back and forth.”

 

Sherm nodded, hunched over, and put a bite of steak in his mouth.

 

“And how do you find Borschland so far?” I asked.

 

“I confess I have not seen much of it yet beyond the practice rink, the trainer’s steam room, and my bed,” said Sherm. “Though I did enjoy seeing the multi-colored shutters on the houses in the valley of the Borschland River.”

 

“We are very proud of those,” I said, and paused, a fear coming up in my heart.

 

“We will be seeing more of Borschland soon,” Sherm volunteered. “When training camp is over, I hope to make the social rounds.”

 

“Good!” I said, in more vehement tones than I’d wanted. “We want you to feel welcome. Skating is not the only thing for which we brought you here. There is a ball at the beginning of the season, the Premujr Ball, and that will be a wonderful chance for you to meet some of your admirers. I hope you dance.”

 

“I will learn,” Busby reported Sherm said, though he said a good deal more than just that, and his mien was that of a skeptic, humble at his own abilities. But a hockey player should not think of dancing as an arcane skill. It is very similar to skating, though, it is true, the opponent, if such we are to term her, is formidable.

 

“Are you planning to learn Borschic?” I ventured.

 

“I hope to have the time,” Busby was in the process of reporting, and Sherm interrupted with “Gudtak,” which means “good morning,” and I felt warmed in Te Hart. He had already learned some Borschic. He was of good stock. He was a fine young man.

 

Sherm hobbled back out of Te Gruis and into a carriage again once he had finished his steek and mineralwaater, back to the stern discipline of our legendary manager, C. Chrujstenkaamp.

 

I was left with the impression that he should drink a measure of brandy—the kind that comes from Lisandran apples. There is no discipline that cannot be managed with a measure of that homely vintage down one’s gullet.

 

My piece came out in the evening edition, a short one but heartfelt, in which I said that it was upon Mejster Chrujstenkaamp to ease up on the sprint-skating to let our American find his legs. It is no small thing to travel 6,000 miles, and into a new world. We might find a bit of mercy is in order.

Chapter 7 - Sherm meets the team

We—Busby and I—walked down the narrow corridor that led from the front of 14 Waatersdram, past about a thousand reporters standing in a small foyer. Busby put up his hand and said something in Borschic, “Not now fellas,” I figured, and he took me through another door and down some stairs and we came out into a locker room that was filled with guys getting suited up to play hockey.

Photo from here.

They cheered, and Busby introduced me around, and I remembered none of their names, but I saw that most of them were smaller than I was, and lean, and un-buff, similar to the College of the Lakes team I played for. And we went into the manager’s office, where I sat down with two fat, bald, guys, and one really tall, skinny guy with black hair and silver sideburns.

 

They gave me coffee, and Busby interpreted for me.

 

“How do you feel, Reinhardt?” one of the fat guys asked me.

 

“Like I could sleep for three days,” I said, and Busby said something that I was sure didn’t include the word “three.”

 

“Excellent, you must skate with us today,” said the second fat guy. “Just a short workout.”

 

“We are counting on you to score goals,” said the first fat guy.

 

“As long as there’s no goalie, I’m your man,” I said.

 

They laughed when Busby translated. The second fat guy said, “Excellent. We hear you have many hat tricks to your credit.” And he tipped an imaginary hat from his bald head.

 

The only credit I knew about was the $100 I had left on my card back in the States, but I didn’t say anything about that. They must have read my mind, because the next thing they did was hand me an envelope.

 

“It’s your meal and lodging money for the first week of training camp,” said Busby.

 

I opened the envelope. There were a lot of red and black bills inside.

 

“Don’t go crazy. It’s not as much as you think. But you can buy me a beer after practice. You get more than I do, let me tell you.”

 

We left the office, and I asked Busby who was the tall guy with the silver sideburns.

 

“That’s the head coach,” said Busby. “Crujstenkaamps.”

 

“Why didn’t he say anything?”

 

“He never does. Just points. It’s good for a guy who doesn’t know any Borschic. He makes himself perfectly understood.”

 

I found out quickly. Busby showed me to my locker, where I put on a rig and a uniform with a scary lack of padding, and no helmet.

 

“Don’t worry,” said Busby. “It’s about skating in this league, not hitting.”

 

Yes, it was. I followed the guys out to the practice rink, which was in this big brick windowless cavern lit by globes hanging from the ceiling. We didn’t touch a puck the entire day, just skated in drills clutching our sticks. I don’t know, I threw up over the boards about twenty minutes in to the first end-to-end sprints—threw up that steak and the vegetables the lady at the B&B gave me, threw up the fries and the relish, threw up the coffee I’d drank in the manager’s office, everything. But after that, my head was clear and it didn’t seem so bad. By the time I got back to my locker and Busby met me to go home, the only pain I was feeling was in my entire body, minus the stomach.

 

“My God,” I said. “How long was that workout?”

 

“Only two and a half hours,” said Busby.

 

“Only?”

 

“Yeah. Tomorrow you’ll be in it for five or six. And a lunch break.”

 

A guy came over to see me, short, squirrely, maybe five foot seven, but a faster skater I’ve never seen in my life. With a little triangle goatee and eyebrows that seemed to point up at the ends. He patted my knee and smiled, and gave me something wrapped in paper and tied with string.

 

“That’s Chrujstoff Anselm,” said Busby. “He’s going to be the second line center. After you.”

 

“After me? That kid’s a beast. Did you see how fast he was?”

 

“Open the package.”

 

I did. Chrujstoff leaned on his stick and smiled, and the other guys came around. As I opened it, I smelled none-too-fresh meat.

 

“What is this?”

 

I unfolded the last fold, and there in the center of the paper was a greasy, veined pouch, sickly pinkish grey.

 

Everyone laughed until they were about to fall down.

 

“It’s a pig’s stomach. The guys thought you might need a new one after today’s practice,” Busby said.

 

Chrujstoff pointed to the stomach. “Apfen, apfen,” he kept saying.

 

“There’s something inside,” said Busby. He pulled out a pocket knife and gave it to me.

 

I shook my head, but cut into the rubbery skin, and I felt something moving. “Oh, great,” I said. “What is this, like a bunch of cockroaches or something?”

 

Chrujstoff and the guys just laughed. I kept cutting, and finally I heard a tweet, and there was a flutter and feathers in my face, and I threw the stomach in the air. A bird flew up and started circling around the locker room.

 

More laughter, and the guys came around and started punching me on the shoulder and rubbing my head.

 

“They said, it’s an American eagle,” said Busby. “Smaller than they thought it would be.”

 

That kind of did it. I’m not that patriotic, and I’m not a fighter, but I snap sometimes, and this was one of those times. I stood up, snatched Anselm by the collar, and shook. He was about 135 pounds, I figured, not the biggest dude on the team, but he was the one who did the joke, so he was going to get punched.

 

I reached back to give him one straight in the nose, but before I could do it, a couple of bigger guys stepped in. One took my hand from Anselm’s collar and the other got me in a headlock. I hunched down, twirled, and the guy with the headlock went flying into the guy that had me by the arm. Both of them crashed to the floor and I landed on top of them.

 

I tried to pop up, couldn’t—after that skate, I had no legs left, not even a foot, not a toe—and just lay there on top of the big guys, out of breath again, just like I had been for the last two and a half hours.

 

Anselm leaned over, put his hands on his knees, and howled with laughter.

 

Then the whole locker room went quiet, and a face loomed over me. It was Coach, the silver-haired stork, Christen cramps or whatever.

 

He didn’t say anything, just glared. The other guys got up fast, and I rolled on to the floor. Busby pulled me up and said, “He’s fining you for fighting.”

 

And Coach put out his hand, and Busby gave him my meal envelope. Coach opened the envelope and took out about half the bills. Then he left.

 

Then something happened I’ll never forget. I went over to my locker, sat down, caught my breath, and guys started parading over. Each guy on the team gave me a little handshake and a red or a black bill. The money kept coming, kept getting stuffed in my envelope, up until the very last guy, the reserve goalie, a beefy mug who was shorter than Chrujstoff and yet wider, it seemed, than a car door.

 

I ended up with a fatter envelope than I started out with.

 

“Welcome to the team,” said Busby.

 

 

Chapter 6

I was not in the crowd that day.

 

I was not even close to 14 Waatersdram, although I was in the city on the day, and I did hear about the uproar. There is always some kind of uproar in Staff Borsch.

 

I am not strictly a fan of ice hockey, you see. I am a poetess. My name is Rachajl Martujns.

 

That agglomeration of vowels and consonants must look frightful to a non-Borschic eye. My name is pronounced something like the French name Raquel, and my last name is Martins, really not that unusual, I don’t think.

 

You also may be thinking, what is a poetess, and what kind of career is that for a young Borschic lady who happens to be the daughter of a deacon, and one of the most prominent deacons in Staff Borsch, indeed.

 

The fact is that there have been many poetesses in the land of Borschland, almost ever since Borschland began, and the first people landed on the shores and met the Loflins, who are very poetic, by the way.

 

I don’t think we Borschers are very poetic by nature, but the Loflinlanders are so. They have their epics that go back a long, long way, and their love poems, I do so adore those, and they have their religious poems, and wisdom poems, and almost everything they say is a kind of poem. So it was impossible for the Borschic people not to have some kind of poetry pass into them, despite that we have not always been on the best of terms with the Loflinlanders, to say the least.

 

Being a poetess is not a lucrative career, I will admit, and I will admit as well that poetesses tend to rely on their fathers for their livelihoods, and then on their husbands once and if they get them, unless they become deaconesses, at which time they sort of cease to be poetesses, although I can’t imagine why the two can’t mix.

 

At the time that our beloved Sherm Reinhardt came to Borschland, I had not yet thought on marriage, being just shy of 20 years old, and newly graduated out of the Borschland Women’s University, or as it is called in Borschic, the Daamensveltinstitut. I was much encouraged by my professors to be a poetess—that is, to write sentiments that unite all of Borschland with their beauty and universality and sometimes their subtlety, and to perform this poetry everywhere, for in Borschland it is customary to start things like state dinners and openings of steel mills with a bit of verse.

 

My professors, in fact, encouraged me to become a kind of celebrity, for a good poetess does engender notoriety amongst the common people, and is invited all over the country, and does sometimes sell enough books to be well off on her own, though, I dare say, that is getting more and more seldom for some reason. Perhaps that great new love of the people, the murder mystery, is cutting in to our market.

 

But as I say, I was nowhere near the offices of the great ice hockey club when this uproar over Sherm Reinhardt took place, and yet I feel as if I was.

 

I, being a poetess, must always follow my intuition and inspiration, and that afternoon as my mother set the evening tea before us, and my father the deacon took his leisure to bless it, and there was a newspaper open on the piano bench as I came to the saloon to take our meal, that I spied a picture, a lovely engraving, as our newspaper artists are wont to make, of the face of this young American man.

 

It was not like Sherm’s face, not as I came to know him, but it did capture something of him. It was of his profile, with roses about his neck, and looking off to the side, to the advertisement about the ladies’ foundations on that page, and there was something noble about the angle of his jaw, the command of his eyes, the roughness of his unshaved cheek, the perfect circle of his ear, that touched me. He seemed entirely himself, even though he was not really himself, just a picture. It was as if the artist had received some kind of essence from Sherm and had transferred it to the picture, with that essence intact.

 

And I thought, what an extraordinary young man.

 

“Mother, did you see the papers?” I asked as we sat down, and Father was finally finishing his prayers and blessings.

 

“Yes, I did,” she said. “It’s going to be nothing but ice hockey for the rest of the year up until Epiphany and long beyond.”

 

My father grunted, and poured Mother a glass of Anvorian wine.

 

“Did you see the picture of that man, the American, who’s arrived from the wide world?”

 

“I did,” she said. “Imagine. The first American ever to play the game in Borschland. What a feat.”

 

My father sipped at his own glass of wine, grunted in approval, and rubbed his hands over his fish cakes. He loved his fish cakes, especially with the dill sauce that my mother directed our cook to make for them.

 

“I think I may have a poem for that man,” I said.

 

“Saints,” said Mother. “Already in love, my dear Rachajl? What about that young man Kejls? He has such good manners.”

 

“I am not in love, Mother,” I said. “This is a national poem I am thinking about.”

 

“Then you are smitten and soaked already,” said Father.

 

“A national poem about an American?” said Mother. “Come now.”

 

“It is going to be about how we are a welcoming nation,” I said, although I didn’t really know what the poem was going to be. “And I am going to write it both in Borschic and in English.”

 

“But you don’t know English.”

 

“I know English literature. I took a course of it with Professor vaan Flijcht. It should not be that difficult to do.”

 

“My dear,” said father, buttering bread.

 

“Well, keep it short,” said Mother. “And ask Kejls about it before you submit it anywhere. He has good judgment.”

 

Kejls Muttik was the last person I was going to ask about this poem. Kejls was not a poetic person or even an academic person, though he did have some pretensions of that. He was a university graduate, of the Military University of Borschland, and he was getting a commission in the Borschland Navy, so I expected that I would not be seeing much of him in the very near future.

 

Mother was hoping that Kejls and I could get married someday. His family knew my family, and his family was a very pious one, donating much money for the restoration of Father’s chapel and the care of the deacons and deaconesses who keep our religious traditions strong and our people blessed and prayed for. I was grateful to Kejls’ father, who owned a lot of factories in the city of Tarlunz, next to Staff Borsch. But Kejls himself, well. I was hoping for quite a bit more, frankly. Is it too much for a woman to want to stand behind a great man, and I mean, one who truly realizes his greatness?

 

A young woman in Borschland is not like a young woman in the wide world. I have done some study of the so-called twentieth century, and I understand how it is that women are emerging from under the broad, many-feathered wings of their men and standing in the bright light of the sun. But that is a long way from coming true in Borschland, I’m afraid, and I don’t exactly know if that is what is best for us Borschic women in the long run. I hope I do not disappoint any female readers.

 

In any case, I thought the very first thing I must do in order to begin work on this poem was to meet the estimable Sherman Reinhart. What an intrepid young man he must be, I thought, to have come from so far away, to have understood the depth of what it means to play ice hockey in Borschland, to know that he would have such a great weight on his shoulders of being the first man ever from America to play the game for us, and for our legendary team, Te Staff.

 

First I took out pen and paper and composed something I thought would please the editor of Te Taglik Staff newspaper, Mejster Chrujstoff Dookens, with whom I had lately developed something of an understanding. I would write small, topical poems for the women’s society pages, for which he paid me a shilling or three. The poems were beginning to find a readership, if any of my friends’ talk was worth anything.

 

This time, I wrote Mejster Dookens, I would write something of the same character, but I would like to see it published in the sporting pages, where poetry is not so familiar, though not unheard of.

 

“Mejster Dookens,” I wrote, “I feel as if something great and grand is about to happen in our nation. With the arrival of the American in our land, can we finally be close to a moment where the whole world might be flooding to our doorstep, to follow the people of Borschland into a life that is decent, gentle, restrained, and yet joyful?”

 

I thought that last perhaps an overreach of the truth, and I started anew, but when I came to that spot again, I realized it might not be, and I left it that way.

 

“This will be the first of my poems about the estimable Sherman Reinhardt, a series of poems that will culminate in a grand work both in Borschic and English. I give you, sir, rights of first refusal to publish the entire series.”

 

And I finished the letter, put it in an envelope, stamped it, and left it in the box for the evening mail delivery.

 

Then I went to work on the poem itself, and that took me some time, for I did not finish it till well after soup, and after my mother scolded me for leaving on the electric lights so long, and not switching to candle, which is so much more pious, if less lighted. But it was worthy, I thought, worthy enough for the moment.

 

This is what it said, translated, of course, from the Borschic:

 

Ode to a Face

 

Hope’s an odd thing, you ring

a bell and all a city’s looking

to heaven to sing.

 

Saints among us, someone paints a picture

of a face that newsprint cannot taint.

 

What is that tracing? Of a long-awaited lacing

of boots and a crunching race as steel

cuts into ice.

 

Reinhardt, lion of a man

Scion of the New World, ion broken

free from the orbit of an atom

 

That one, not massive enough

to contain your courage.

 

Ah, the Borschic muse was stingy enough to contain my poem in only those few lines. I could’ve written more. But I am aware of the journalistic imperative! So much news, so few column inches.

 

I hoped he would like it, Mr. Sherman Reinhardt, for, I thought, he would certainly be reading the sporting pages in the newspaper, and certainly not about women’s society.

In any case, I hoped the young lion of America would understand that it was not because I was smitten with him that I wrote it, but because, as all good young women are in Borschland, I was a patriot.

Chapter 5

  It took another seven hours to get to Chead Mille Failte, seven hours of raggedy half-sleep and French fry snacks, and when the Irish conductor came into the compartment at 5 AM saying tickets please, with his vest and thin tie and black conductor’s hat, he put his hand to his nose, punched our tickets, and said under his breath, “Freet. A thee-ah thee list.”

 

“What’s he say?” I croaked to Junior.

 

“You think I know Irish?” said Junior.

 

We rolled through one more passport check, platform side, and the Irish train left, and the Borschland train arrived, and I was impressed. The locomotive was black and all shined up, with with a black coal car and black passenger cars, and on the side in silver it said B O R S C H L A N D   G E J I K N E T E   T S U G W E K in this incredibly classy block letters, and Express vaan Grujslaand underneath that.

 

“Ah yes, the BGT,” said Junior.

 

“You expecting any friends?”  I asked.

 

“In Borschland, certainly,” he said. “This is a backwater.”

 

There were no bears about on the platform, and we saw no bears on our car, and we sat in a compartment with a Borschic clergyperson who spent the entire time looking out the window or consulting a little red book with gold leaf, and whispering to himself.

 

Around 7 AM I got up, went to the lavatory, washed my face and shaved. I looked like crap and I said to the mirror, “Ready to face the day.” I had one small zit over the right hand edge of my upper lip, and my eyes were bloodshot and my hair was probably too long for Borschland, all smushed up like a mohawk on top of my head. I wet it and slicked it back with a comb just so I could call attention to my big, crooked nose. Never got hit with a puck there, it was just naturally that way. Then I checked my teeth and breath, and made a mental note to buy some mints somewhere. I figured I was going to meet the coach and whatever type of suits they had running the team, so I should at least have minty-fresh breath.

I forgot, of course.

 

Phweeeeee, went the train whistle as we finally made the mountain pass between the Celtlands and Borschland, and the sun came through the right side of the train, red, then gold, and the cliffs reflected the light where the railway builders had cut into the mountain.

 

Down below we could see a river in a deep gorge, crowded with rapids, and as we descended down from the summit the river seemed to come up and widen out, and pretty soon we were in a mountain valley with houses on either side of us, and telephone poles, and the houses were made of stone below and stucco above, with wood shingle roofs and shutters on the windows purple, green, red and yellow.

 

I saw a lot of carts with horses, but no cars, and Junior said we wouldn’t see any until we got into the city, because Borschland does without cars. And the train really started humming, and everything flashed by in the bright sunshine.

Once we got down on level ground, there were fewer pines, and the trees were all losing their leaves, and many were already bare. It was warm inside the compartment, but the people outside were bundled in jackets.

 

“Hockey weather,” said Junior.

 

The clergyperson looked up from his book and nodded at Junior, said a few words. “He wants to bless you,” said Junior.

 

In those days, I never gave religion much thought, though my sister always did, especially after our parents passed. But I said yes, because there is never any harm in being prayed for or blessed.

 

And the clergyperson opened up a little case next to him, and took out a little bottle of water, and a little bottle of oil, and he dabbed a little of both on to his fingertips. And the guy made a sign over me—not the sign of the cross, I’m pretty sure, because we are German Catholic, and I know about that type of stuff—and he touched my forehead with the water and the oil.

 

“Amen,” he said, and I said Amen as well.

 

So that was that. Around 9 AM it clouded up, and around 10 we pulled into Staff Borsch Central Station, and I got incredible butterflies in the stomach.

 

“So what’s the drill here?” I said, gripping my stuff.

 

“Don’t worry,” said Junior. “You are home free.”

 

I didn’t really notice that he said only I was home free, not both of us, until Junior ran.

 

He was fast. He was fast for a bear.

 

He got off the train first, and at the bottom of the stairs there were two bears in black ankle length coats with fur collars. One of them had a mustache and the other had mutton chops, and they were big, about 7 feet tall.

 

Junior put up his hand, as if in greeting, and then he hit the platform running, pushing past one of the bears, bouncing off him like a pin ball. The clergyperson was behind me and said something like Highly Outrageous, but it was in Borschic, so I didn’t understand.

 

The bears took off running after him, through the crowd that was getting off the train. I had no guide anymore.

 

The clergyperson shook his head at me, as if to say, Bears. What are you going to do? And he motioned for me to follow him, and we went with the crowd to the front doors of the international platform, and before I knew it I was on the street in Borschland, surrounded by people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me.

 

It was cloudy, and cold, but with a kind of brightness to the sky, as if the sun was trying to get through, and there was a taxi stand with horse-drawn carts all lined up. Across the street there was a big sign that said SUB with an arrow pointing down. Subway, I thought. Wow, a subway, and horse taxis. I had no idea where 14 Waatersdram was, so I went to the taxi stand and showed them the address, and the taxi captain called for a guy.

 

“Haakee?” said the taxi man. “Amerikanish?”

 

I nodded. He nodded. He looked my gear up and down, a duffel about as long as a hockey stick. Then he said something to the driver that didn’t include anything like 14 Waatersdram, and I got into the horse-drawn cart for a short ride to a place that was not on Waatersdram, but this unpronounceable street called Sanktvujtenswij, and he stopped, as I found out later, at the bed and breakfast of the taxi captain’s brother and sister-in-law.

 

The driver carried my gear into the place, which was a tall, narrow building with steep steeps, flower boxes in the windows, and a peaked roof right next to a bunch of other buildings just like it. He motioned for me to follow him, and we went through the door with a bell over it, and came into a kind of living room/dining room where we were greeted by this huge woman with the biggest, well, I have to say the biggest bosom I have ever seen on a woman who is about five feet even.

 

She came up to me and hugged me full on so that whatever kind of bra or corset she was wearing dug completely into my ribs, and she kept saying Amerikanish Amerikanish, and she told me to sit down along with the taxi driver, who didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

 

Then she put this big steak in front of us with some fried vegetables that turned out to be shredded leeks (really good, you should try some), and the taxi driver and I ate and sort of gestured to one another as if we were playing hockey, and the first word in Borschic I ever learned was the word Gool, which means “goal,” and sounds like the way we say goal, except they say the “o” sound a little longer than we do. I think probably he thought he taught me about everything there is to know about playing hockey in Borschland, because he set up the salt and pepper shaker as a goal mouth and he used forks and knives to make the boards behind the goal, and he took a little peppermint candy in a bowl on the table to make the puck. He was an expert, I have to say.

 

Then the lady ushered me up to a room upstairs, and patted the bed, and put her hands to her head in the universal sign of nap time. I figured, why not, I’ve got about a half hour before I have to be there, and I was out like a light by the time my head hit the pillow.

 

The next second—I swear, it was the next second—I’m woken up by about ten thousand people singing at the top of their lungs. I don’t think there’s any way to describe how loud it was. I’ve been at hockey games. I used to go the crappy NHL team they’ve got in Minneapolis and I know what a large crowd of people sounds like. But this was over the top. I have never heard such loud singing.

 

So I’m up on my feet for two seconds, and they come get me, and pull me downstairs, and the crowd just sort of surfs me over for two blocks to 14 Waatersdram. The whole street was full of people, mostly men, but at the front door there were some women who tried to drape roses over my shoulders. I think some of them were pretty good-looking, but to tell the truth, I don’t remember.

 

Then I’m on top of the crowd, and in the middle of the street is this overhead electric tramline with the cars like train cars, and there are more wagons with horses, and everybody is singing, everyone’s got mustaches and mutton chops, and they’re throwing their hats up in the air, and the only thing I can think is,

 

Is this for me?

 

They put me down right in front of the door for 14 Waatersdram, and the door opens and someone kind of pulls me inside.

 

And it’s a guy who puts his hand on my soulder, looks at me straight in the face—he’s a redhead, with freckles, and blue eyes—and he says, “Welcome to Borschland. I’m Busby.”

 

Intermission post: on success and "sticking" with it

This is a nice commentary on a hockey player who succeeded through very hard work for a lot of years. Maybe Sherm Reinhardt will at some time go to the NHL and have the same said about him. But in any case, the commentary is great inspiration for all of us who work hard for our respective dreams and success but haven't hit it big-- yet.