12 Feb 2010, Written by Deb R. Lewis in fiction,story
Sergei the Creeple
Sergei’s teammates scrambled and wove like red ribbons. The blue-jerseys stole the puck. He drew into the shell of the net — a hermit crab — padded armor jerking at the puck’s every motion. With surprising elasticity, Sergei split his legs at the knee and fell. A whistle blew. Sergei sprang up, shoved the arrested black disk toward the ref then fiercely slashed his skate blades into the ice to re-sanctify the defensive zone from the taint of that thick, black dot. He swept the ice chips patiently out to the edges of the net with his stick and readied to block.
Reeling drunk, Sergei was a sober man — the only time his life-spark shone was when he bladed onto the ice, stick in hand. Blue-eyed, handsome, he spent most time off the ice, arrogant and alone. Doting girl-hearts rained like flowers on opening night, drying around the edges upon discovering he was mostly about hockey rivalries and “National call me up soon.”
With the sound of a can opener click, the dropped puck shot goal-bound across the ice. Sergei spread his legs to block; an opponent’s skate blade cut full force into the tendons behind Sergei’s knee; his calf muscle dropped like an old sock and one of the thigh muscles shrieked up like a flophouse shade. That was that. Fans cheered as they hefted Sergei past the slumbering Zamboni, out to the waiting ambulance where the cold night air brought home his anguish.
#
The boys showed up drunk beyond their stars. They snuck in a fifth of vodka “for anesthetic augmentation.” As if being injured weren’t enough, they had won without him, then Kasparnak — the number-two goalie — had the nerve to come make his delicate inquiries.
Sergei’s terse reply: “Waiting for surgeon. Then I be fine and you get numb butt, sitting on bench.”
Jack blocked Kasparnak from view, holes in his smile. “You’ve betrayed our motto.” He was a wing man, a decent guy.
“What you mean?”
At Jack’s signal, they slurred a bastardized fight song:
We never stumble, we never fall!
We sober up on wood alcohol!
When we fight, we fight all night!
We are THE bad-ass team!
The steel-haired charge nurse bust through the door. “If you can’t be quiet, beat it.”
“If I let you watch me beat it, can we make all the noise we want?”
Hand on her hip, she eyed Jack’s crotch. “I doubt there’s much to watch.”
Sergei lightened as the guys who understood English jeered.
“You know, with all that make-up you ain’t wearing, I think you’re a lesbian.”
“Only because little boys like you don’t have what a gal needs.” She raised a pinky for display as the boys let Jack have it. On exit, she pinned the lot with her eyes. “Seriously guys, keep it down.”
“You know,” Jack sighed, “I think she’s my match.”
Someone snorted but, with rowdiness verboten, the room turned into a funeral parlor; they left in a steady trickle of excuses. Sergei would lose at least a year — probably two. It didn’t look promising. A few pats on the back, a few mumbled sympathies, and all bets off.
#
After Surgery Number One, he lay, slurring green on painkillers, as the perfect choreography of Hindu music videos on Namaste TV wore him down.
“Your coach called,” Cleo — his ex-girlfriend — said, hefting an over-laden basket of concern onto his tray table with a bang. She pulled things out one by one as if his hands were incapable. A jar of shredded beets, a well-meant book of New Yorker cartoons, a solitaire game, two Mylar balloons tied to a “Get Well” mug arrangement. And the basket. She had a thing for baskets.
He politely kissed her cheek then flipped soberly through the cartoons. He did not like gifts; gifts created entanglements — obligations.
“This is book for babies and I still don’t understand.”
“Oh, who understands half the shit The New Yorker publishes? But the cartoons — they’re the only reason anyone actually subscribes.”
“Oh,” he said and laid the book to rest by his good thigh.
He held up the morphine drip, oozing with sweat. “Bullshit thing don’t work — belly sick. It still feel like railroad spike in my knee.”
She laid her head on his, petting him. “Poor, poor thing.” Then as if goosed, she said, “Your coach sent me.”
Sergei looked at her in wonder. It had taken the most rigorous neglect to get rid of her, even telling coach that he would like double practices to escape her incessant chattering.
“Not working out?” Coach had asked.
Sergei shrugged. “American women talk too much. I like time only to fuck, then get away from them.”
Coach had shaken his head like it was a sad, sad joke. Now, Sergei was convinced that Coach was sending one of two messages. It was either to give up his whole hockey career and surrender to Cleo’s terrible kitten-dressed-in-doll’s-clothes kind of love, or Coach had sent Cleo to drive him crazy so he would work harder to get back on the ice. He yearned for the latter, but Sergei was not an optimist. “Give up? This is not my prize after so hard of work. I show them; I am not giving up.”
He kept these thoughts to himself, watching Cleo’s lips move, only half listening as she said, “I have to go out of town. I’ll be back Thursday.” He was relieved when she gave his forehead a motherly kiss and left. Without hockey, he didn’t have any idea what to say to her.
#
Three days later, Cleo watched his thumbs dance drunkenly over the yellow buttons on the small, blue solitaire game. Sergei’s mouth formed a perverse rainbow. His head tilted in time with the flare of his nostrils. “I not like these game,” he said without looking up. “I play and play stupid game, but I not like.”
“Why?” Cleo set her bag on the floor. The edge in his voice was distressing.
“I lose again!” He slammed it on the edge of the bed. “I lose, and every time, it call me names. ‘Creeple, creeple, creeple!’”
“Sergei, you’re not a cripple. You’ll get better, you’ll adjust.”
He leveled a glare at her — a regular raging-bull glare. “My leg! Messed up! Saint Jude! I don’t adjust — I play hockey! And you bring me game like this! ‘Creeple,’ it call me. Creeple!” He saw her bewilderment and thrust the game at her. “Push any button — you see? Creeple!”
Cleo stared at the tiny screen, lost because of the despair in his voice, and saw only the various cards in their untenable positions.
“Push button,” Sergei demanded.
She pressed a button to get a new card off the deck, but the move was not allowed and the word “INVALID” flashed at her.
“Does it call you creeple too?”
Cleo sighed. “Sergei, it’s saying ‘In-VAL-id.’ Not that you are an IN-va-lid. Some say, ‘Game over’ or ‘Try again,’ but this one says ‘Invalid.’ The move isn’t valid.”
He cleaned his nails with the corner of his sheet. He glowered and shrugged. “I not like that game.” His fever spiked from analgesic desertion. “It hurt my feelings,” he said as if to put an end to it.
She quietly laid the game on his table, regretting deeply that the game did not simply say “Try again,” and racked her mind for something she could give that would not unexpectedly poison him against her. How the bizarre tumblers of fate lined up on one!
They stared at the mute television for a long time, not speaking.
He reached for the game again, murmuring, “I hate this damn thing. Creeple, creeple! ‘Sergei the creeple!’” as he began playing.
#
Sergei left the hospital after the better part of a week. After long convalescence and furious physical therapy, he skated solo drills with a brace to harden himself during team practice. When the team doctor ordered rest, with his leg sprawled across the bench, he played the nasty battery solitaire, sighing when he lost, “Creeple, creeple, creeple…”
He worked in as second goalie. Though he didn’t see much game time, he gladly sacrificed himself for the sake of the team. Anything in hopes of saying “Nationals call soon” again. His predatory torso bent forward, he eased down on bent knees, asking them to stretch as they once used to do, relieved if they went even halfway before it hurt, then he would bang his stick on the ice — just like when an opponent was about to escape the penalty box — to let every son-of-a-bitch in the arena know he was ready for that filthy little puck. Just let the enemy send it his way — he would drop into the splits, screaming, to stop the puck and let Jack quietly raise him after the whistle.
“How you doing, old man?” Kasparnak would say between periods, eyes gleaming as Sergei’s pasty white face glowed red-hot.
“Fuck you, ass-snot.”
“No problem, gimpy.” Parting shot delivered, Kasparnak skated for the lockers.
At game’s end, he did not join the team for drinks, but sat in the locker room with ice-packs duct-taped to his knee, playing that rotten little solitaire game. “Creeple, creeple, creeple…” His echoing voice sounded like some codger in a cathedral whispering over a string of little black beads.
#
Toward the middle of the new season, Cleo quit calling, and that was fine by Sergei. Kasparnak had been traded and would be going national soon. Sergei regained his starting position and guarded it desperately against a new recruit. The rookie’s name was Sergei also, but they called him “Invictus” because he had the word tattooed in an arch over his heart. In the showers it looked like a badge of Old English letters on an invisible T-shirt.
When Sergei had blood drained from his good hip, though this did not interfere as long or as terribly as the ripped knee, the locker room stirred with whispers: “Sergei has lost his edge.”
“Sergei Invictus?”
“No, Sergei the Creeple…”
And while he wrestled the smarting to keep his spot at all costs, he also drank alone, glaring into the devilish game screen every waking off-ice hour, squinting at that word with its slippery pronunciation: INVALID.
Sergei iced up in the locker room, exasperated. “I hate this game.”
“Why not throw it away?” Jack asked, tired of hearing it.
Sergei’s eyes blazed. “I should throw it down the garbage chute! I should burn it!” But he returned to playing; nothing came of it.
It was like the goalie was terminally cursed. No one was really surprised when “the Creeple” lost his left eye to a skate blade, and while he might have a slim chance to play again in the minor leagues, it was doubtful that Nationals would ever call.
Sergei, never the gregarious sort, steadfastly refused all conversation, playing his idiot game when his attention was not absolutely commanded. He’d pick up the game and sigh, “Creeple, creeple, creeple.”
It seemed all he could think at this point, all he could say — or even be.
Photo by NaJina McEnany via WikiMedia Commons
