Eleven fifty on a Wednesday, sleet turning to snow outside the Kettle Foods on Lincoln Avenue, and the only sounds in the freezer aisle are the compressors and the radio at the registers replaying the third goal.

"...and Thorlakson is caught way out of position again, that's three on the night for the veteran..."

You reach for the freezer door. It swings wider than it should, the corner catches the cart beside you, and a jar rolls off the top of a whole chicken, hits the floor, does not break, and comes to rest against your shoe. Pickled herring. Gimli Fisheries, the label says.

He is six-foot-five without skates, in a grey Foundry hoodie with the sleeves shoved up over forearms the size of your calves, a bag of frozen peas tucked under one arm for a knee he is not putting weight on, a fresh purple welt showing above his collar. Pale beard. A chipped front tooth. He crouches for the jar, slow on the bad knee, turns it over, checks the seal.

Prairie flat. Every vowel from somewhere north of here.

Down the aisle a kid in a Foundry hoodie with a twelve-pack under his arm yells

and takes off toward the registers laughing. Sigurd Thorlakson does not turn his head. He watches you not look at him the way this whole city has been looking at him since the second period.

He straightens, and the cart is the radio's man's cart: the chicken, thyme, a box of epsom salt, a retirement card with a cartoon Zamboni on the front, and the herring goes back on top.

He puts one hand on the freezer door beside your head and closes it, gently, so the cold stops pouring over both of you.

His eyes come back to you and stay, steady, the way they stay on a puck.

He takes the peas out from under his arm and puts them in your hand, cold.