![]() ![]() Oak takes a drink from the roadie he’s got between his knees. The bus smells of sweat, IcyHot, booze breath, and beer farts. The boys are playing cards, they’re on their phones. Oak sits alone in a seat at the back of the bus with the other veteran players. The El Paso Storm bus rolls north through the Chihuahuan desert on the way to the Albuquerque, New Mexico rink, at the far northern edge of the West Texas Hockey League. Out the team bus window, a cattle truck rattles his head. When Oak talked to her in July, three months ago, she said she was better, that her cancer was on the run. He hasn’t slept much since the headaches that crept in over the summer, his hip and lumbar throbbing in their marrow. Inside, he had the apartment lights off, as he kept them, against the wavering sickness in his head. Outside his apartment, the El Paso sun blazed. When his sister Arlene called from Boston to say their mother was dead, Oak was in an ice bath halfway through a twelve-pack of beer in the middle of the Texas afternoon, trying to concentrate on how he was going to knock Pat McDonald’s head in. The fact of Oak’s physical existence is powerfully rendered, and the bone-deep transformation of his character is one you will not soon forget. The Mighty Oak is a visceral and emotional experience. Bens builds a remarkable character from the skates up. When a brutal encounter with the police places him in the path of Joan Linney, a haunted public defender, and Kip, a boy with a brave face, Oak and his chance companions roam cold streets from Castle Island to Quincy Point, struggling to believe in a different future. Still, he can’t conceive of a future without hockey, even as he chews oxycodone and Adderall to numb his injuries and steady his brain. There he confronts a life he failed to live, a daughter he doesn’t know, and a body that is quickly breaking down. He’s called back to Boston by his mother’s death. And he has been away from home for too long. He is a broken machine of gristle and rage. He’s been an enforcer for longer than his hip or shoulder or back have been able to hold together. He plays for the El Paso Storm in the West Texas Hockey League. ![]()
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