Unstoppable

MOSES LAKE — It’s the surface you can hardly stand on. Here in Moses Lake it’s made solid by the 17-degree temperatures that sometimes take your breath away. The chill of the night sets the tone for streaming breath that turns to fog under the exertion of it all.

You have to glide on it, skate both forward and backwards. It's poetry in motion to those who can do it.

He likes the thrill of it all, like a bull rider, only the chosen few actually know both the thrills and the spills, and they’re willing to take the risk to find out which it is this time.

He likes the sounds, the reverberation when the puck sails wide and bangs on the boards.

He likes the sound of it moving closer to the target and the pop when it hits the goaltender’s glove.

Then there’s the best sound of all. Maybe there’s no sound at all when you put in a place where it’s untouchable, where it’s meant to be, that place where it’s nothing but net.

The purpose of it all is to get it past the last man standing, to set off the flashing red light and ignite the crowd.

Now that’s hockey at its finest.

“I love it,” he said. “When you get a slapshot and you can put everything you have behind it. You want to hit the ice just behind the puck because it gives the blade some bend. If you do it right, you can actually hear it going through the air. But wristers are my favorite. I like to flick it past the goalie.”

Nobody is going to take that away from Moses Lake junior Thomas Parham. Nothing is going to stand in the way of his taking the ice for the Moses Lake Coyotes midget team.

Not even a freak accident this summer where he tipped a dune buggy and the rollover resulted in the loss of two fingers on his left hand — the ring finger and the pinky to be exact.

There’s a shock that goes along with losing body parts. The pain of course and the violation of sorts. Then there’s the emotional side. How noticeable is it to the rest of the world? Do I keep my hand in my pocket or feel comfortable enough to go on with living as I always have? Then of course, there’s the why me?

Then you see a soldier return from the desert or the jungle with much worse, maybe the loss of an arm or missing legs from the waist down, and you realize you can live with your particular set of circumstances.

There’s a little bit of “Cowboy Up” in Thomas Parham. I mean, hockey players are missing teeth. Some have a cauliflower ear. Oth \ers are busted up in one form or another. He didn’t let a couple of missing fingers keep him from the game he loves … being a part of something special, the first group of Moses Lake Hockey Association players to cycle through all the age divisions.

“I wasn’t angry (at the accident),” he said as he strapped his gear on in the dressing room at the outside rink at Larson Recreation Center. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

He’s back to the get-on-living part of life. He has one goal this year to go along with six assists as the center. The Coyotes have just 13 players, so it’s not like they can roll four lines. He’s in perpetual motion, driving and dishing, attacking anyway he can.

But there was that first goal back.

The glove covers the hand, so it’s not like anybody knows. But he damn sure does. Covered or not, it’s a part of life and who he is as a man.

Thomas Parham chose to stand up and be counted and when he flicked that puck past the goaltender sprawled out across the pipes. The smile on his face when asked how it felt was enough. It was pure, unadulterated joy and words can’t describe something like that.

The game he loves, the sounds of silence until the red light goes off and the crowd rooting for his team jumping to its feet. The skate around with arms in the air, the thrill of teammates congratulating you.

All that makes up for it all, no matter what.

It’s not pond hockey here in Moses Lake, but it is an outside rink and the temperatures dip into the teens when the night practices take place.

The workouts at the Larson Recreation Center are where it all starts. The drills, the whistles, the stops and starts, the line drills, the skating drills, puck handling drills, all that stuff the fans never see on game day. Those are the days he remembers most, the sweat, the laughter, the goofy things done behind closed doors.

For the love of the game — Thomas Parham marches on, looking for ways to hear the sounds of silence and kick-start the flashing red light that follows.

Rodney Harwood can be reached at 509-765-4561 ext. 111 or businessag@columbiabasinherald.com.