Scratch List

I have a list.

It lives in the back of a notebook that is not for quotes. Names I will not waste tape on. Men who walk past a recorder and call that a personality. Miles Varga has been on it since October, which is a month and a woman I do not joke about anymore because June Harlan made June a medical word in this town.

Tonight he takes Ben Trask's nose off in a scrum that looks like a letter.

Trask is twenty. Silver Bay. I wrote him last March when he was still junior and his mother made chili in a kitchen that had a view of a lift bridge. I still have the audio. He said I just want a look. He got a look. He got Miles Varga's glove in his face and a sound I will hear when I try to sleep.

I am in the press box. Ink on my thumb. The Barn roof is too low for a building that wants to be important. The glass has a film the league would call character and I call a smear I can still see through. Greer Lang is already doing time on the scrum. I do not have to ask her. She does time the way I do sentences. Her camera is a small mean animal on a beanbag. She does not flinch when the towel comes out. I write the period, the score, the shift change that was not a change so much as a decision. The Pike are up one. They will not stay up one. That is not the story. The story is a chin and a wait I can feel from up here without a stopwatch.

Maren Soto is in my ear before the horn.

"Don't write dirty before I have a sentence."

"I write what I see. You iron what you need."

"Rhea."

"Maren."

I go down the press stair. The tunnel smells like rubber and lemon and blood that is not Ward's. Ward is dressed. June is on the bench with a face that is a clipboard. Miles comes off with someone else's blood on his lip, which is his hobby, except this time the blood is also on his knuckle and the knuckle is swelling in a way June will want.

He sees me.

He walks past.

I write declined without looking at the page. I have written it so many times my hand can do it in the lot. The lot is dirty ice and a light that has given up and a row of trucks that all think they are the same truck. His is not. I know the dent. I know the plate. I know the way he opens the driver door like a man who has decided the building is finished with him. He does not look back. Looking back would be a quote.

"Varga," I say.

He does not stop. He never stops. That is why he is on the list. That is why I am going to write dirty and sleep like a person who has a job.

Ben Trask is on his knees on the ice with a towel that is already a joke. The trainer from Ashland — not June, they brought their own — is saying something about a cart. Trask looks up at the Barn roof like it personally betrayed him. I do not take a picture of his face. I am not that kind of tape. I take a picture of the scoreboard and the time of the scrum and Greer's still will do the rest.

Ruthie Falco is in the tunnel with coffee that has gone cold. She looks at me like I am a leak she has not plugged.

"You write protocol last month and I lived with it," she says. "You write dirty on my winger and I will not live with it as a courtesy."

"Then live with it as a fact. He waited. Greer will have the wait. Trask is a kid I already put in the paper as a person. I don't do persons as furniture."

"Three sessions," Ruthie says. "Official availability. He sits with you. Maren books it. If you go around me to the mother in Silver Bay before the first session I will pull your credential and I will sleep fine."

"You're going to make him talk."

"I'm going to make him sit. Talking is your religion. Sitting is mine."

She leaves. Miles is gone. The room is a roar that does not include him. I stand in the lot with the notebook and I write the lede in my head before I start the car. The cold finds the ink on my thumb and makes it a fact I can feel. A parent is yelling at a closed door about cowards. I do not write the parent. I write the time. I write knuckle swelling. I write declined, lot, always. I start the car because the heater is a deadline I can keep. I sit until the glass clears enough to see the dent leave. I do not follow it. Following a truck is a column. I do not do columns. I do a diner.

Fenwick Pike winger Miles Varga broke Ashland call-up Ben Trask's nose in a third-period scrum that looked less like hockey and more like a message. Varga declined comment. He always does.

I file from the diner because the diner has a counter and a coffee that is not a personality. I sit on the stool I always sit on. The cook does not ask. He sets the cup and he sets the plate I did not order because I order it with my face. The pie case hums. A man two down is talking about a lift and a barge like those are the only numbers that matter. I type with my gloves off and the ink smearing the space bar. I do not make dirty the first word. I put it in the third sentence where a reader who is not a blog will still trip on it. I hit send at 11:40. Dirty is in the third sentence. I do not make it the headline. I am not a blog. I am the Fenwick Ledger and my father still thinks print is dead and I am wasting a law degree on a barn.

My phone lights. Ed Collett. I let it go. He will leave a voicemail about billable hours. I will listen tomorrow when I need to be angrier. Behind him, if he is in the shop, there will be a saw. There is always a saw when he wants work to sound like a real place and a barn to sound like a hobby. I put the phone face down next to the recorder. The recorder is off. The night is not a session. The night is a file.

Miles's truck is in the lot behind the diner. I know the truck. Everyone in Fenwick knows the truck. He sits in it and does not come in. He does not look at my laptop. I do not look at his window. That is a kind of treaty I did not sign. I look anyway, once, because I am a person who counts, and the dome light is off, and the knuckle is a shape I cannot see and can still write.

I close the notebook. The scratch list is on the last page. I do not add a star. He is already the whole list.

I drive to the apartment above the hardware store. The stair smells like solvent and a winter that has decided to live in the wood. Law books on a shelf I do not open. Clippings on the table I do open. Ben Trask's mother in a kitchen. Chili. Lift bridge. I play six seconds of the audio and I stop it because I am not going to cry over a nose in a town that collects noses. His voice in March is younger than twenty. That is not a medical fact. That is a tape I made when he was still allowed to want a look without paying a sound for it.

I write a second graph I will put in the morning if the club irons the first one into upper-body and hockey play. I write the cart. I write the towel. I write Ruthie's three sessions like a threat I am going to spend. I do not write the truck behind the diner. The truck is not a quote.

I sleep with ink on my thumb.

I do not dream about Miles Varga's mouth. I dream about a recorder he will not look at, and I wake up already writing the question I am going to ask him when Ruthie makes him sit, and the question is not why. The question is how long did you wait.

How long is a sentence.

He can give me one word. I will still have Greer's time. I will still have dirty. I will still have a list.

The list is the job.

The job is not to make him a saint. The job is not to make Ben Trask a martyr. The job is to spend the tape on a man who has been walking past me since October and finally did something I can spell.