Page 21 of The Best Parts of Him
“Can we drink champagne out of it?”
Dabbs squinted at the kid who’d asked. “You can drink 7Up out of it.”
That earned him a loud cheer from the crowd of twelve-year-old boys loitering around the Stanley Cup in the middle of North Bay, Ontario’s Pete Palangio Arena. The kids had been mid-hockey camp when Dabbs had arrived for a surprise visit for his day with the cup, and they were all dressed in full uniform, skating circles around the championship trophy as if it were the Holy Grail.
Which Dabbs supposed it was. The Holy Grail of hockey, anyway.
Ken Crupus, the Keeper of the Cup who’d traveled to North Bay with Dabbs to ensure the cup’s safety and care, stood nearby, happily answering the kids’ questions.
“What’s the worst-est state you’ve ever seen it?”
“How did you get such an awesome job?”
“What’s the most fun you’ve had while spending time with the winners of the cup?”
“Has any player ever used the cup as a salad bowl?”
On Dabbs’ left, Coach Pete—no relation to the North Bay-born NHL player for whom the arena was named—said, “It was kind of you to do this for them.”
“I did it for you,” Dabbs admitted. Arms crossed over his chest, he watched as the kids played Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who was going to fetch the 7Up. “I wouldn’t have a Stanley Cup at all if it wasn’t for you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” Dabbs turned to his childhood coach and smiled. “You look good, Pete.”
The look Pete shot him was a cross between Don’t bullshit me, kid and Flattery will get you nowhere. “I look like an old man.”
“A healthy old man.”
Pete laughed, the sound as gravelly as Dabbs remembered.
Pete had coached North Bay’s budding hockey players since before Dabbs was born. As tall as Dabbs at six-foot-two, he was in his early seventies with a receding salt-and-pepper hairline, but he’d kept himself in shape. Every summer, Dabbs spent a week or two mentoring kids at Pete’s hockey camp, and every summer Pete told him this was going to be his last year. He was going to retire, put up his feet, smoke cigars, and drive his wife crazy until she sent him out to find a hobby that would keep him out of the house.
But the man was both too stubborn and too in love with the sport to ever retire.
“Sorry I interrupted your camp.”
Pete snorted. “If you’re going to bring me the cup, you can interrupt whenever you want. Bring it back next year, will you?”
“I’ll do my best.”
A journalist from the North Bay Nugget acting as both reporter and photographer snapped photos as the kids posed with the cup. She’d told Dabbs that she’d get the required permissions to publish the pictures from parents and guardians when they showed up to pick up the kids later, but in the meantime, she’d capture as much as she could. Her article would appear in both the print and digital versions of the newspaper within the week.
His organization’s PR people had encouraged him to beef up the media presence, but Dabbs hadn’t wanted a spectacle. He’d wanted to surprise Pete and his campers, and he wouldn’t have been able to do that if national media were camped out in North Bay.
More than that, though—he’d wanted to give the kids some inspiration on their own hockey journeys. A little If you work hard, you could win the cup too.
Besides, this was where Dabbs had played hockey as a kid. It had been important for him to give back not only to his community, but to Pete too.
Pete’s blue eyes had filled with tears when Dabbs had arrived with the cup, which proved that Dabbs had made the right decision in bringing it home. And without a jumble of journalists and camera people here, Pete got to actually spend time with the cup instead of answering questions about how special and important this was.
Dabbs let the North Bay Nugget reporter move him into various spots around the cup, posing him behind it, next to it, in front of it, with Pete, with the campers, with Pete and the campers, with the other coaches and counselors, and taking a gulp of 7Up out of it, which the kids got a hell of a kick out of.
Then it was their turn to take a sip of the soft drink out of it, and Dabbs cringed, imagining the bacteria floating around in there.
“God,” he muttered. “It’s going to be a Petrie dish of germs.”
“Yup,” Pete agreed, grinning before taking his own sip. “It’s as sweet as I imagined.”
