Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“Fair point,” I concede. “Conquest first, civilization second.”
“Conquest first, civilization as the justification.” He reaches for his barbell. “They were very good at making expansion look like a favor to the people they invaded.”
“Every empire tells itself that story,” I say. “That’s not unique to Rome. That’s just what power does with its own narrative.”
He looks at me directly then, the way he looked at me once in my office before he stood up and walked out—like he’s recalibrating. “You sound like someone who’s read more than just somewhat.”
“Well, let’s just say I watch a lot of documentaries and I know a little bit about a lot of stuff.”
Locke stares at me briefly before settling back down onto the bench to do another set of presses. It feels as if the conversation is over, but I’m not ready to let it go. I’m actually setting a foundational block and it’s far too flimsy to abandon just yet.
“Do you think Eisenhower would have understood the Romans?”
“What do you mean?” he asks as he pumps iron, a slight grunt to his words.
“Well, he had the same problem… holding a territory taken by force without becoming the thing you fought against?”
“Most commanders don’t think past the victory,” Locke says. “That’s the failure point. You plan for the battle and not for the morning after.”
He racks the bar and sits up. We look at each other and I sense no professional friction between us.
I pull the thread very carefully, understanding how fragile it is. “Do you think Eisenhower ever made peace with it? The gap between knowing what was right and living with what that rightness cost him? When the cost turns out to be—”
Locke stands up so abruptly, the words freeze in my mouth. His expression has gone blank, walled off into nothingness.
“Good conversation,” he says flatly, but his manner indicates he found nothing good about it.
In fact, I think what I said there at the end might have been distasteful to him.
Locke reaches into his pocket and pulls out earbuds. He puts them in and moves to a different section of the gym, closing off the conversation as final as a dead bolt sliding home.
I sit on my bench and look at the space where he’d been standing.
He was right there.
For ten minutes he was engaged with me as we talked about history. He was unguarded until he was triggered and the shutters came down.
The frustrating part isn’t that he disengaged but rather trying to figure out what caused the change. My mind rewinds the conversation, and it seems the change came when I asked him about the cost of being right.
It’s a clue, for sure, but without context, I have no idea how it matters to him. I reach for my water and take a sip.
Whether the rightness of a thing is ever enough when the cost turns out to be something—what?
That question was going somewhere Locke didn’t like and that’s why he stood up.
I pick up my weight and finish my biceps curls and think about the man who walked away from a question like it had knives that would cut him open.
Chapter 7
Locke
The arena is thunderous, the Calgary Wild fans losing their shit because their team just went up by two goals and there are nine minutes left. Calgary has been playing a suffocating defensive game that makes a comeback feel less like an opportunity and more like a mathematical problem with no clear solution.
I sit with one elbow on my knee, the other clutching my stick at mid-shaft as I watch the ice and wait for my line change.
I ignore Adam on his own bench, just as I’ve been trying to ignore him for most of the game. Of course, that’s virtually impossible given we are opponents whose lines are facing each other.
Warm-ups were the first test. We were out there at the same time, the two teams sharing the ice in a loose pregame ritual. I had prepared for it the way I prepare for most things—by lifting my walls and locking them tight into place. I skated my patterns and I took my shots. I kept my eyes where they belonged, and I envisioned my performance on the ice.
I truly don’t find it difficult to cut someone out of my sphere of interest so completely. I’ve had experience with this, having played against Adam a handful of times per season over the last nine years. It’s like we don’t even exist to each other, unless a puck gets in between us.
It doesn’t mean I don’t feel him though. He was too integral to my formative life that I can’t switch off the anger just because I refuse to look at him.
My very first shift out on the ice during the game, I’d hopped out and barely made it down to the blue line before I knew he was out there with me.