Tim Wendel

The game begins and as we listen something strange starts to happen. I look at a few more pictures in the old-time hockey book, but then I put it down and close my eyes. Soon afterward the sound on the radio grows louder. Well, not really louder, like it’s suddenly blaring or something like that. I crack open my eyes a bit, trying to see if grandpa has turned up the volume. But he also has his eyes closed.

He’s settled into the only chair in the room, leaving me sitting across from him on the edge of the bed. Grandpa almost seems to be asleep. That’s how quiet and still he is. So, I close my eyes again and somehow I feel the sound of the game begin to surround me. I can hear it behind me and in front me. It’s like I’ve been plopped right down in the middle of the action.

For the first time I can really see it in my head. The Blackhawks are really coming on. They are peppering the Montreal net with shot after shot and with each one the crowd oohs and ahhs until such sounds echo back and forth and you’re almost unsure of which one is coming first: the shot or sounds.

The Canadiens are desperate to get the puck out and several times they try to shoot it up the boards. But each time the Blackhawks’ defense holds it in. They don’t let the puck cross back over the blue line, out of the Montreal zone. From there, they begin to work it in. The pass goes into the corner, then around in back of the net. Then another pass goes into the far corner. All the while, the other Blackhawks buzz the front of the net and the Montreal players cannot match up. They don’t where the next shot is coming from.

Then the Blackhawks’ center, his name’s Mikita, too, darts between two Canadiens and is suddenly in front of the net all alone. His wingers have been waiting for him to break free and here comes the pass. Right along the ice, right on his stick. Without any wasted motion Mikita flicks the shot into the net. It’s a roof job. Right under the crossbar.

“All right,” I say, opening my eyes, expecting to find Grandpa Brozek sitting in the rocking chair in his room.

But when I open my eyes we aren’t upstairs, in his bedroom, back home in Ann Arbor. We’re there, in that old arena, with the Chicago crowd going crazy and me looking around wide-eyed, not believing where we are. How did we get here?

Grandpa is beside me – all smiles. Somehow we’ve joined the others. Everyone around us is standing, applauding Mikita’s goal.

“We’re here,” grandpa says. “Look, Alex, we’re here.”

Where we find ourselves is in a tunnel that leads back from the players’ benches at the old Chicago Stadium. I follow grandpa out into the noise. Everybody is standing, cheering for Mikita. Most of them are men, dressed in dark suits and wearing hats my dad once said were called fedoras. The noise ripples down from the rafters and sweeps over us so loud and long it reminds me of the time when my parents took me up north and we stood at the edge of Lake Superior with the white-cap breakers rolling in from far out. I’ve never heard anything so loud.

I peer upward, still trying to figure out how we got here. Smoke hangs in the shadows near the roof. Any minute I expect somebody to move us along. We’re so close to the Blackhawks’ bench we could reach out and touch them. There are the players my grandfather has been telling me about: Bobby Hull, Pierre Pilote and now returning to the bench is Stan Mikita.