Portraits of Ice Men

The night was quiet and the air was thick with salt from the ocean.
The town of Cornwall was fast asleep, the way the sherif liked it.
He had pulled into the police station's parking lot ready to hang up his hat and collect his personal vehicle's keys when he saw McQuaid's boy.
With his windows down, the sherif could hear the scrape of loose gravel on the road as he gently cut the wheel and eased the old cop car to a stop, parking alongside the very familiar looking beat up old Ford 150.
Adam was asleep in the driver's seat, his lean arms folded across his chest, his head tilted back against the headrest, his new fitted in a Stanley Cup Champions baseball hat tipped forward, covering his eyes, his mouth slightly ajar.
The sherif heaved a sigh and looked up at the boy he had come to watch grow into a man over the years with an empathetic smile; the boy he had written a letter to about achieving your dreams when he set off to play in the OHL, no matter how scared you are; the boy he had kissed hard on the cheek yesterday when he went with him to pick up the Cup at the port; the boy he would kiss in his hair in just a week when his grandmother was to be declared dead.
The sherif tilted his chin up to get a better look into the vehicle. At the other end of the truck's front bench, nestled in the passenger's seat, was the Stanley Cup itself.
'You're lucky Cornwall only has about a thousand people and every single goddamn one of them loves you, boy,' the sherif thought to himself, chuckling. 'Or that puppy'd be stolen out here like this in the dead of the night.'
The sherif gave a cough and Adam startled awake.
"Oh, Chief," the young defenseman croaked, unfolding his arms, clasping his hands together and pushing them towards the windshield in a stretch. Adam had two Chiefs in his life; Johnny Bucyk, the Bruins' director of road services, and his father's old friend, Richie.
"Adam," the sherif nodded, smiling. He still had one hand on the wheel, the other was resting alongside his open window.
"I'm drunk; I need arrested," Adam said, smirking as he bowed his head between his outstretched elbows, laughing to himself.
"If only you knew how willingly I'd like to oblige to that request," the Sherif said after a bark of laughter.
"I'm driving under the influence," Adam told his feet by the pedals. "Stop me in the name of the law!"
The two shared a soft chuckle.
"What are you doin' out here, anyway?" the sherif asked. At first he had found the gesture of his best friend's son passing out at the police station to be a bit of a sweet one, as if he were waiting to see him after his shift to spend a little time with his mentor during the last few hours of his day with the Cup. Whenever Adam was home, he usually did stop by the station after a night of drinking, knowing he could always get a safe ride home having to endure just a little chirping from the older man. Unfortunately, in a small town, half the drivers on the road on a weekend night were illegal, whether it be from alcohol consumption or age. Cornwall was a small, quiet town, and if you mostly kept between the lines on the road, you were mostly left unheckled. If he ever found himself in a state of intoxication, Adam would drive the few yards from the Diving Bell watering hole he loved to the police station and wait for Chief to get off work and take him home.
Adam had known Chief ever since he could remember. His own father had never played hockey, so while he was the one getting up at four in the morning and tying Adam's skate throughout his youth career, Chief had always been the one to actually lace up with Adam and critique his play after games. Chief and McQuaid had been best friends since they were kids and since the sherif never married, it only seemed fit that he was deemed an unofficial uncle of McQuaid's bunch.
There was a certain sense of symbiotic need between the two men sitting quietly in their respective vehicles while Adam was growing up. Adam needed an ice mentor and Chief needed a purpose greater than the police force.
But, now, as the sherif watched the great expanse of Adam's plaid covered back expand and shrink in a great sigh, he wondered what else was plaguing the young man.
He could tell he hadn't come merely for a designated driver.
Today had been Adam's Day with the Cup. It had been delivered by ferry yesterday, and today they had a parade that Chief helped orchestrate through the town centre to celebrate his achievements. He had become quite the little celebrity for the small town.
After the parade he knew the McQuaid's were having a BBQ and a bonfire for the remainder of the evening, with all of their extended family and Adam's friends. He wondered why Adam had left the festivities and ended up drunk in front of his police station.
"How'd the day go after I saw you at the parade?" The sherif asked.
After a few moments of silence, Adam shook his head.
After a few beats more, the sherif asked, "no?"
Adam sighed again and pulled himself back up into the seat. He let his head tilt, the tendons in his long neck twisting as he moodily shifted his eyes outside of the truck, avoiding his godfather's stare.
"I just punched Billy's teeth out," he sighed, dropping his head to examine his bloodied fingers in his lap.
"Branahan? Billy Branahan?" The sherif asked, surprised.
Adam nodded.
"I guess he and Addison have a thing," he grumbled, lifting his eyes to look through the windshield at the darkened town. He couldn't guess the time but knew it was somewhere around midnight since all of the lights in the centre were off.
The sherif knew that Branahan and Madison had a thing. Everybody knew. Billy Branahan had had Addison Janney wrapped around his finger since Grade 9.
Adam was the only one who never seemed to know it.
"Adam.. you knew that now, come on, kid."
"Why though? Why? Why's she gotta like him, y'know? He's a brute," the young man said, getting fired up, his brows tightly knitted and his mouth unhappy. He held his hands up in an innocent gesture as his eyebrows lifted, his shoulders forming shrug that never finished, and his lips a question that no one could ever answer.
The sherif sighed and let his gaze fall to his own hand, gripping the wheel. If his suspicions were correct--and for someone in the police force for over forty years, they typically were--and if he knew Adam like he thought he did--which, really, he did--he had a feeling Adam had left his family's celebration to show Addie the Cup in private.
Adam groaned, hitting his head back against the headrest in frustration, shaking Chief out of his thoughts.
Then, Adam's face fell.
"Oh," the sherif said, softly, making to roll up his windows and climb out of his car.
"No," Adam sniffed, raising his bruised knuckles up alongside his cheek and turning his face away from Chief. In a huff he folded his arms over his chest again, looking out the passenger's window.
"I'm gonna go get my keys and lock up. Wait here," the sherif said after a few awkward beats of silence, his old, soft fingers curling momentarily around McQuaid's old truck's window.
Adam looked back toward Chief but didn't dare turn his head.
He nodded.

"Scoot," the sherif instructed, lifting himself into the old truck. Adam slid down the bench and moved the Stanley Cup so it sat in the middle.
They took the long way home, which really was any way they wanted to go once they left the town centre. They drove along the coast for a while, listening to the wind and the crash of the waves. Chief thought of the stones that were innocently thrown to shore and pulled back into the tide with the longshore current, gravity ceaselessly taking advantage of them over, and over, and over.
He looked at Adam quickly.
"He's got her pregnant. That's the worst part," he said, after some time. He lifted his hands, which used to sit in his lap, up to his face. With one he adjusted his baseball cap, and with the other, he picked at his bottom lip.
"You can't tell anyone, though, Chief," he said, giving him a little pathetic look.
The sherif nodded in understanding. In a town like Cornwall, bad news spread like wildfire.
After whatever happened with Addison, Adam still wanted to defend her honour.
He was too kind, sometimes.
They chugged along the coast in silence for a while, Chief never taking his eyes off the road as Adam's roamed with his mind.
When he looked up at the stars out of the open passenger's window, the sherif finally spoke.
"How'd you learn that?"
"I went to see her," he admitted. "She texted me, said she wanted to see the Cup."
"So you took it to her?"
"Of course," he shrugged, looking at him as if waiting for his approval, or rather, knowing there'd be a lack thereof.
The sherif gave him no such clue. The boy wasn't Chief's to reprimand.
He knew Adam had taken the Cup to Addison because, although the McQuaid's would disapprove of her presence at their party for Adam greatly, they would never disallow her coming. They weren't those kind of people, regardless of how many times Addie had hurt their son growing up. In bringing the Cup to her, Adam could avoid the awkward confrontation for everyone. Adam was that kind of kid.
"She has her own house now," Adam told him.
He nodded but he already knew that, too. He was the sherif, after all.
"It's on Ebony, on that hill," the young man recalled, pointing far off to the left.
"I had heard," Chief nodded.
"It's not that big but, at least she doesn't have to live at home," Adam reasoned.
'Adam, too sweet and naive for your own good,' the sherif thought to himself with a heavy heart. Everyone knew Addison bought her own place because her father prohibited her from dating Branaham under his roof. So, like the independent woman she was, Addie got her own roof so she could do whatever the hell she wanted under it.
The house was a wreck, but when you're young, you don't notice those things as much, Chief recalled. It was blue and a single story, two bedroom one bath, tucked behind some forgotten trees on the end of a forgotten road. Addie had grown up well, just like McQuaid's kids, not with too much but with just enough. Her family was well-liked by the town and she was quite the little gem of the city when she was younger. Through high school, though, she started going out with that Branaham kid and got caught up in alcohol and trouble. Adam never came to know that side of her, though, because he was off making a name for himself in Ontario in the Juniors and then in Boston. He still doesn't know the real Addie, or pretends not to, at least.
He had told Chief he tries to keep in contact with her and they exchanges texts once and a while but it had been two seasons since he spoke with her directly on the phone at all. He said he refrained from calling her anymore unless it was her birthday. He always left her a kind little voicemail and never expected a call in return. When he came back for the summers she avoided him as best she could but would humor him for a couple of beers if he were especially persistent or got stuck in the cereal aisle with him at Bob's Market.
'She must've really wanted a picture with the Cup, with the star of the town tonight. Maybe now she realized she had chosen the wrong mate,' the sherif mused to himself.
Needless to say, she wasn't the sherif's favorite citizen, and hadn't been for a while.
"I, uh," Adam began, pinching his nose with his hand, his elbow propped up on the inside of the truck's door. "I brought the Cup over maybe around ten," he said. "When stuff at my house was starting to quiet down. Didn't tell my parents where I was going, just said downtown. I went to her house and she was alone and really excited about the Cup and all and I dunno, I just thought maybe now, maybe this time, y'know?" He asked the truck, searching for an answer he knew he didn't want to hear out in the wild wind that was smoothing across the windshield, rattling one of the whippers.
"And then for a second I was right!" He laughed, his long fingers finding the brim of his hat and curving around it. He still didn't face Chief or look directly at him, but the sherif didn't mind.
"She kissed me!" His voice was light and airy, as if he still didn't believe it himself. His eyebrows' height suggested he still didn't quite. "Oh, she kissed me long and good, too Chief," he said, grinning like a school boy as he flashed him a look to confirm what he believed to be his incredible luck.
The sherif chuckled. "About time! How many years you been waitin'?"
"Too many, Chief. Too many," Adam sighed, his smile fading over a few moments as he moved to look back out the window, his fingers playing with the black stand on which the Cup sat, solid. He could tell his godson was replaying the moment of his embrace with Addison in his mind; he let him have some time to. The only thing Adam had wanted more in his short life currently sat between them, gleaming silver in the fast moon light.

He remembered opening his mouth against hers so wide that his jaw cracked. It startled her and she pulled away, cooing and stroking his rough five o'clock shadow.
"It's fine," he had told her, hungry for her lips again. He couldn't imagine what it would be like if she had been at home to take care of him after every playoff game he had just endured less than a month ago. Injuries from the final series still plagued him; an unhealed ankle, a swollen shoulder. If only he could've swept her off her feet and taken her to Boston with him, she never would've had to live in this dump of a blue house, alone, unloved.
She had pulled him onto the couch in her living room and he had tingled until he was numb except for his marathoning heart which hammered against his ribs and made funny noises squeeze their way out of the back of his throat in the form of rugged breaths when her lips left his.
He had pawed the front of her shirt up, revealing her bra, and with heavy fingers slid one of her breasts free. She let him tongue and suck it as she arched her back and moaned his name, her fingers looped around his belt loops and holding his hips to hers.
The Cup sat perched on the cluttered coffee table as witness.
She held his face to her chest and wrapped her ankles around his calves, locking him above her. Adam much preferred to kiss her skin; her mouth had tasted of stale smoke and he didn't want to think of Addie like that. To him, she was still pale and taught, smooth and smiling, just like he remembered her in her bathing suit at the town pool or the pond from his summers off.
He had lifted his lips back up to her neck when she finagled her hand between their bodies, using the tops of her nails to create space between his abs and his boxers to reach his throbbing manhood.
He had wanted to stop her, wanted to tell her they didn't have to do this--as much as he wanted to for as long as he had waited for this for. He wanted to tell her to move out of this stupid house and come to Halifax with him in a week to begin training again. He wanted to promise he'd only be gone for three hours a day and then treat her like an absolute princess; like he had always wanted to. She didn't have to touch him for him to love her. He wouldn't force her to do anything she didn't want to; he didn't want her to think he wanted only these things from her. He wanted so much more...
He had gasped when she found him underneath his boxers and khaki shorts. Dizzy and discombobulated, he had fallen off the couch with the sound of crunch gravel from the driveway, an unmannered "oh fuck!" slipping from Addie's mouth.

"She kissed me and stuff, and then he pulled up in his stupid Honda Avalanche," Adam continued, looking out the window of the old truck with a sneer, his arms folded again.
The sherif had no desire to know what "and stuff" included, so he chirped the boy, instead. "Hey, great gas mileage."
He saw Adam's face tug into a half smile for a fraction of a second in the silver moonlight. Then it went back to a sulk.
"He came all stormin' out of it, yelling at her and stuff; he knew my dad's truck, I guess," he said, his voice going tighter. "And he hit her," he said, barely audible, sniffing and palming his cheeks of any tears before Chief could notice.
"He did?" The sherif asked, quietly. It wasn't long ago that he had shown up at the blue house on a domestic violence call. Unfortunately, all he could do was banish Branahan from the property while he was there. Because they weren't married and because Addison didn't want a restraining order, he had to leave it at that.
"And so I beat this shit out of him, and she was yelling at me and hitting me and telling me to stop," he said, his voice strained as he furiously rubbed his tears away. "I dunno Chief, something in me snapped," he confessed, leaning his head back against the headrest, heaving a sigh. "I just couldn't believe him, I couldn't look at him, I couldn't see him, I was just hammering away at him while she screamed at me. And then!" He said, gesturing with his hand. "And then it's like she doesn't even want to be helped, she doesn't want someone stick up for her. She didn't want me to hurt him! 'You're hurting him! You're hurting him!' She yelled at me. Like, why? I asked her why. Know what she said?" Adam asked his old friend, his head turned sideways, facing him, pressed up against the head rest.
"What," Chief asked, not moving his eyes from the dark road ahead of them.
"She said 'cause they're having a baby together," Adam said, deadpan. "And she loves him."
The sherif nodded, knowingly, but surprised.
The coast line gave way to trees and they rolled their windows up to spare them of the roaring noise or wind on wood but were only met with deafening silence in the new quiet of the cab.
Adam heaved a sigh.
"I guess I'm pretty dumb, eh Chief?" He asked after a few heavy minutes.
The sherif considered the question.
"Not dumb, Adam. Kind," he finally answered after some thought.
The young man, tired of being put through all of the thrills and drills life had to offer him in a single day, breathed a laugh. "Yeah? You don't say," he scoffed, folding his arms again and letting the bill of his hat rest against the truck's window.
He watched the world whirl by as he sat still.
It was a sensation he felt far too often.
"You're too kind," the sherif explained. "You don't see people for who they really are, sometimes." The two observed a lull, and then, "Addison will never leave Branahan, she never has--"
"But she kissed me, and stuff--" the young defenseman interrupted, not wanting his one shot with Addie to go unnoticed, unremembered. He would certainly remember it forever.
"That reveals more about her personality than it does about yours, Adam. Would you have kissed her if you knew she was with Branahan?"
"Well, I dunno; if I had known explicitly I wouldn't of..."
"Right, because you're a good guy," Chief said, allowing Adam to connect the dots. Addison had kissed him even though she was apparently in love with someone else.
"And don't let her fool you; you're too kind to think they're in love because they're having a baby together," the sherif said, giving Adam a look over the top rims of his glasses. "Not everyone that has kids together loves one another like Mark and Cindy," he said, referencing Adam's parents. "But you're kind to think they do."
"I still think I'm dumb," he said, crossing his arms and looking out of his window.

It wasn't much longer until the young defenseman fell asleep, letting his defenses down along with his bottom jaw. He sat slumped up against the truck's door, his hat tipped up on his head and his hands piled in his lap, his arms tired of gesticulating his frustration and lifting his achievements all day.
The sherif finally rounded the corner onto the McQuaid property.
The gravel crunched underneath the old truck's tires as he pulled up to the boy's childhood home, a white cottage just perched above the ever moving ocean, and he noticed a familiar silhouette sitting by the fire. The tables and chairs were still lined up, like skeletons of a good time frozen in the night.
He turned the ignition off as the shadow raised his hand in a wave. The sherif nodded back, carefully inching the driver's door open and shutting it behind him with an eased shove and a soft click.
Before he disturbed the universe by pushing rocks against one another with his boots, he took a minute to observe the songs of the crickets, lost in the dark and desperately looking for their mates.
With one last look into the truck, the sherif decided Adam needed to sleep this off. He wouldn't wake him.
Chief made his way across the grass and toward the dying bonfire kept company by his old friend. Before they exchanged any words, McQuaid offered him a beer, already uncapped.
"Thanks," the Chief laughed. "Might be needing a bit of nursing, myself," he admitted.
"How is he?" the father asked.
"Well," the sherif replied, sinking into a lawn chair with a great sigh. "He went to see her."
"Of course he did," the father scoffed, his eyes never leaving the burning embers. Disgust plagued his face. "I knew that bitch would ruin his Day."
The sherif gave him an empathetic smile. After all the years the two of them had been friends, he knew Mark McQuaid was a man of few words, especially bad ones. And of all the things in the world he himself could think to call Addison in defense of their boy, "bitch" was certainly the nicest of them.
He, too, was kind like his son.