MANA: this one thing

Shown: Brett North and "Twitch"...an upcoming two year old not featured in the following story.

The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found on my profile page. Thanks!

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Any athlete who makes his living off of the combined sweat and blood of himself and his teammates learns to see the strengths and weaknesses of those he is called to struggle beside. He will observe until he can anticipate them. He will learn their names. Listen to them sing along to a song on the radio in the bus. Remember what beer they drink. Remember what things to never ever bring up in conversation because the last time they did someone required stitches. He may not see eye to eye with them, may not approve of the things they say and do, but he will defend them from the humiliation of defeat in front of their mutual foes. He is more committed than he may appear when he is twenty-one and a shapely ass passes him by. More apt to stay with the woman who finally suits him after the dozens he slept with that did not. Having played his own childhood away he takes the time to play with his children now. He is more honest with himself and with others, having had the honesty beaten into him and out of him during his professional years. His judgment is finer. His ethics are stronger, like the tightly woven ropes the tendons have become in his arms and legs, pulling him in the right direction. He has seen too much and lost too much to do anything but grind away some more. And he’ll do it for the same reason he did it the year before. He’ll do it for the people who are grinding away with him, lacing up and taping up, and slapping him on the back of the leg with their sticks. And along the way, he becomes a man.

Tomas North watched his kid brother ruffle the black mane hanging over Martin StLouis’ eyes. At times, Brett was a smaller, angular version of himself...still hanging his arms around some animal or another. He could see Brett now, riding the family’s belgian malinois around the kitchen; the dog that killed the neighborhood cats patiently padding around the family’s old linoleum lined table with Brett hanging around his neck, a plastic kazoo buzzing the tune of puff the magic dragon from his lips. There was Brett sharing his icecream cone on a hot july fourth with the giraffe in the dismal paddock at the zoo. And there was Brett, curls looser and freer than his own, fifteen years younger standing in the street reaching out a hand to stroke the nose of a horse carrying a mounted policeman, their mother begging him not to bother the working animal and apologizing over and over again to an officer who simply smiled into her pretty dark Italian eyes.

Brett was scratching at Marty’s muzzle now and laughing to himself as the victorious horse lipped his fingers gently.

“You like her,” Tomas said.

Brett ignored him and reached down a long hand wrapping it around the horse’s foreleg, picking up the leg, checking it. He worked quickly and expertly as though the work was as relaxing for him as the cigarette was for the actual groom smoking some yards away. Tomas watched him.

“How you figure that?” Brett finally replied, dropping the hoof and picking up the next.

Tomas nodded to the small sleek animal nibbling on Brett’s sleeve. “You let her take him.”

Brett shrugged and avoided the look Tomas was giving him. He was gliding his fingertips and palms over the coat of the delicate black horse, following the current the hairs that ran the length of him, as though his hands were brushes dipped in ink stroking a blank canvas and washing him in black all over again. The horse himself, Marty, casually regarded Tomas’ little brother as though he were a shoulder-friend or a common chummy goat grazing at his feet.

“I’m your brother. Give the word.”

“It’s alright, Tom, let her have the horse. She won. No reason to take her off. Hell, think about it, she won still injured as she is...she reminds me of Daymond Langkow. You remember him? Calgary Flames.” Brett looked up and grinned.

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“He was a resilient sonofabitch. He’s got two broken hands and he’s holding his stick,” Brett planted his feet in the straw and mimed the warrior’s stance and grip. Tomas nodded absently in reply. “All through the playoffs. And he wasn’t the only one.”

“Everyone is hurt come playoffs.”

“She’s like us, Tom. You know that? You knew that. You gave her the horse. Here have a beer, have a horse. She belongs on Marty.”

Tomas listened to Brett’s scattered speech. Smiled to himself. “Duly noted. No roster changes.”

His kid brother sighed and wiped the sweat off of his face with the back of his hand.

“And Subversive?”

Brett didn’t reply.

“She was there wasn’t she?” Tom pressed. “You gave up the goddamned horse because she was standing there. The Belmont is tomorrow,” Tom pointed his finger into Brett’s chest, “That horse could win the Triple Crown tomorrow, Brett. And you let some perky little blonde minor--”

“She’s eighteen.”

“--Not minor, ride the favourite.”

“Not the favourite.”

“And the blonde wasn’t even the one you wanted.” Tomas paused. Cocked his head to the side. “She’s not a minor?”

Brett looked over from the other side of the stall and gave him a crooked smile, “Tomas, You’re married.”

Tomas scratched at his thick strawberry beard. “You’re not. Does she have boobs? Do jockeys have boobs?”

“Not my type,” Brett winced before dropping down into the straw to stare up at the horse with the crooked stripe running down his nose.

He was rubbing his chest, absently, unconsciously, as though nursing some old wound and Tomas watched him. Watched him like he watched every man on the ice and he saw all he needed to see. It was still about her and what she’d done to him years ago and he was gunning in the opposite direction now. Well, what do you know?

Tomas grinned at him. “I knew this. You realize, ya little shit, that I knew all along?”

“I’m sure you did. You’re clairvoyant.”

“Oh shut up, I don’t need some crystal from the mall to see your stick is pointing in her direction every time she comes near. The whole time I’ve been here...like a little compass,” Tomas teased, pointing his pinky finger out like a dial. Brett reached up and slapped it away, leaving Tomas staggering backwards laughing into the wall. He slid down and sat opposite his brother. “You kiss her without permission. You pick a fight with a Frenchie that if she’s not fucking yet, she will.”

“He’s very Quebecois, Tom, he’ll trip up.”

“You tell yourself that and I’ll just sit here and think about how very North you’re being.”

Brett rolled his eyes and looked away.

“Masochistic....” Tomas sang under his breath.

“Fuck off.”

“Sadomasochistic,” Tomas sang a little louder, “You remember that guy, what was his name?”

“Rodger Hammon.”

“That’s it Rodger Hammon, shit he would agitate and agitate, you know...he’d poke and jab in the faceoffs, pissed Charlie Stewart off, I remember....he’d do that just so Chuck would hit him. Didn’t some guy eventually kill him?”

“They busted him up pretty bad, enough that the coach let him waive.”

“Huh, how he flew under the radar all the way into the ECHL I’ll never know,” Tomas muttered, folding his arms behind his head. Brett still wasn’t looking him in the eye. “So is this it? You want her to hit you?”

“I’m not pulling a Hammon, Tommy.”

Tomas snorted, pushing him a little closer to the boundary of his comfort zone. “Oh yeah?”

Brett looked up at him, the glare in his eye flickering brightly. Tomas knew that look. Back the fuck off now. Tomas felt his lips curl up a little. Only Marty stood between them. Only Marty prevented his kid brother from making the distance between them and throwing a fist.

Tomas waited for him. He had always been a winger, never a center, never one to hold up under a standoff and, sure enough, Brett flinched first. Tomas’ grin widened.

“I didn’t kiss her to provoke her.”

“You still planned it.”

“Of course I did. Fuck, Tommy, I tried to behead Marty May with a Reebok Sickick Three. I wanted to kill him. In front of the whole goddamn world. I’m no Saint and no one in the league ever expected me to be. That was the whole point. That was the gimmick. The irony. The Choirboy was anything but. So...yes...I grabbed her and planted one like a fucking rapist. It was not the best impression I could have made, but, believe it or not, it was the exact impression I wanted to make.”

Tomas raised an eyebrow.

Brett sighed. Ran his hands through his hair. “I wanted her to see the worst side of me first. Get it out of the way.” He pointed to his chest. “This is what I am, you know? I’ll always be the Choirboy of Broad Street. I plan things. Bad things. I’m Brett Harley North. You too, Tom. You talk about how North I’m being. You know, right? Now let me show you everything else, right? I don’t,” he paused...let a long breath slip between his lips, “I don’t want a girl again...a girl who’s going to...I don’t want some jacked up breasted blonde who sees a jersey stuffed with cash. I don’t want that again, Tom. I don’t. I’ve had enough to know I don’t want it anymore.”

Tom was quiet.

Brett glared, defeated.

Finally, incredulously, Tomas replied, “You’re looking to settle?!”

“I thought you could read people.”

“I can, I do, but shit, Brett, I thought you just wanted to pick up the crumbs when Leclerc was through with her, I didn’t realize you wanted the whole goddamn cookie!”

Brett looked his brother in the eye. “I’m twenty six and in the middle of my second life.” Brett reached up and stroked Marty’s nose as the horse sniffed him, “I look at Eddie Ne and I think, god, he really fucked up. The world was his and he never ever got into the sheets with a woman he really loved. You wrote on the hockey stick, ‘you are an ass’ and the whole time I’m driving to the hospital I keep looking at that stick, and the whole time I’m thinking you’re talking to me too. ‘You are an ass.’”

Tomas stared.

“I have to prove this one thing, Tom, this one thing," Brett paused, searching for words, "I’ll always play the game.”

“But the reason for winning has changed," Tomas finished for him.

“Exactly.”

Tomas stood up and brushed the straw from his pant legs. He reached out and stroked the horse. A smile emerged from his beard. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. His little brother had made the leap from boy to man all on his own. A little puff of brotherly pride filled his chest...and he’d gotten to see it.


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