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Автор Стив Гамильтон
Winter of the Wolf Moon
Steve Hamilton
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Winter of the Wolf Moon
Steve Hamilton
CHAPTER ONE
Two minutes. That’s how long it took me to realize I had made a big mistake.
The blue team was good. They were big. They were fast. They knew how to play hockey. From the moment the puck was dropped to the ice, they controlled the game. They moved the puck back and forth between them like a pinball, across the blue line, into the corner, back to the point. Once they were in the zone they settled down, took their time with it, waited for the best opportunity. They were like five wolves circling their prey. When the shot came it was nothing more than a dark blur. The center slid across the front of the goal mouth, untouched, taking the puck and with one smooth motion turning it home with a sudden flick of the wrist. It hit the back of the net before the goalie even knew it was coming. Right between his legs. Or as they say on television, right through the five hole.
It was going to be a long night for the goalie on the red team. Which I wouldn’t have minded so much if that goalie hadn’t been a certain forty-eight-year-old idiot who let himself get talked into it.
“It’s a thirty-and-over league,” Vinnie had said. “Every Thursday night. No checking, no slapshots. They call it ‘slow puck. ’ You know, like ‘slow pitch’ softball? ‘Slow puck’ hockey, you get it?”
“I get it,” I said.
“It’s a lot of fun, Alex.
You’ll love it. ” Vinnie was my Indian friend. Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibwa, a member of the Bay Mills tribe, with a little bit of French Canadian in him, a little bit of Italian, and a little bit of God knows what else, like most of the Indians around here. You couldn’t see much Indian blood in him, just a hint of it in the face, around the eyes and cheekbones. He didn’t have that Indian air about him, that slow and careful way of speaking. And unlike some of the Indians I’ve met, especially the tribes in Canada, he looked you right in the eye when he spoke to you.Vinnie was an Ojibwa and proud of it. But he didn’t live on the reservation anymore. He never drank. Not one drop, ever. He could put on a suit and pass for a downstate businessman. Or he could track a deer through the woods like he knew the inside of that animal’s mind.
He had found me at the Glasgow Inn, sitting by the fireplace. I should have known something was up when he bought me a beer.
“I don’t think so, Vinnie. I haven’t been on skates in thirty years. ”
“How much you gotta skate?” he said. “You’ll be in goal. C’mon, Alex, we really need ya. ”
“What happened to your regular goalie?”
“Ah, he has to give it a rest for a couple weeks,” Vinnie said. “He sort of took one in the neck. ”
“I thought you said it was slow puck!”
