Page 104 of Full Contact

“He kept a list,” Hog said. “In his phone. Who he owed. He showed me once. I was on it for a sandwich.”

“Did he pay you back?” Mark asked.

“He bought me two.”

I’d known Heath since his call-up. I’d watched him hold the crease against men twice his size, and I’d heard him explain a goal off his ass to three separate audiences. I hadn’t known about the list. It was nice to hear about him from people who’d known him before any of the Ironhawks did.

“On Heath’s first road trip,” Pickle said, “we went to Sault Ste. Marie on a school bus.”

“You didn’t,” Varga said.

“We did. It was a retired one. The league rented it from a man named Gord.”

“That’s not a team bus. That’s a field trip,” Varga said.

“It had a sign on the back that said STOP. It folded out. Evan made it fold out at every rest area.”

“Was it yellow?” I asked.

“Mostly.”

“Then it’s a school bus,” Varga said. “You can’t play professional hockey out of a school bus.”

“We did, though. For two years.” Pickle leaned toward him. “Heath sat in the back by himself the whole first trip. He didn’t know where he was allowed to sit. So Hog went back and sat with him—“

While they argued, Peaches came back down the hallway.

She walked along the edge of the rug, behind Varga’s chair and past Adrian’s bag. She stopped beside Hog. His hand hung beside the dining chair, knuckles down, while he listened to Pickle.

Peaches sniffed his knuckles. Then she rubbed her cheek along them, slowly, from the first knuckle to the last.

Hog stopped breathing. He turned his hand over, very carefully, and scratched behind her ear with one finger.

She leaned into it.

“Hog,” Varga said. “Twelve hours from Thunder Bay in a truck. Who drove?”

Hog stopped scratching to answer. “Rhett, mostly. I did the part through Wisconsin, because he says I—“

Peaches pushed her head back under his hand.

Hog looked down at her and started scratching again. He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Because you what?” Varga asked.

Hog didn’t answer. Varga turned to Pickle, who was still going on about the school bus.

”—so Hog’s sitting in the back with him, and Gord can’t find the defroster, and—“ Pickle glanced over, saw the dining chair, and stopped. The rest came out at half volume. “—and the heater didn’t work, so we all wore our helmets the whole way.”

At the wall, Priya had her camera up again. She hadn’t moved to get the shot. She’d been standing in the right place all along. She gave Mark a thumbs-up below the camera.

“Does she like the cheek?” Hog asked me, low. “Or behind the ear?”

“The cheek. Along the jaw, toward you,” I said. “She’ll push if you’re doing it wrong.”

He moved his finger to her jaw. She pushed anyway, then settled. He didn’t look up again for a while.

“Is Rook really retiring?” Pickle asked Varga. “Heath says he won’t change his mind.”