42

When I came out, I brought the intensity of the bush camp out with me. I was seventeen. I was still a boy. But this mistreatment made me hard. When I took to the ice with the Moose, the anger funnelled out of me, and my game became a whirling, slashing attack. It didn’t matter who we played. I played as hard against the white town teams as I did against reserve teams. There was no lively banter on the bench. Instead, I glared at the ice until they opened the gate to release me. I still had grace, the flowing speed, but my eyes were feral beneath my helmet. I blazed up the ice with locomotive force, and when anybody hit me, I hit back. When they slashed me I slashed back harder, breaking my stick against shin pads and shoulder pads. When they dropped the gloves with me I punched and pummelled until I had to be torn off by my teammates. There was no joy in the game now, no vision. There was only me in hot pursuit of the next slam, bash and crunch. I poured out a blackness that constantly refuelled itself. The game was me alone with a roaring in my gut and in my ears. I heard nothing else. When the other members of the Moose stopped talking to me, I knew that I was beyond them, the tournament teams and the game, forever.