“That’s right, shoot.”
“Hard?”
Mr. Imoo smiled, realizing the play that went on between Sarah and Nish.
“Hard as you can.”
Travis often wondered if other athletes loved their particular games as much as hockey players loved theirs. Did baseball players enjoy practice? Did the Blue Jays or the Yankees ever play a little “scrub” baseball or “knocking out flies” while they were waiting around to play a real game? Did the Pittsburgh Steelers ever play a little “touch football” while gearing up for the Super Bowl?
He doubted it. But hockey players were different. Hockey players loved to play a dozen silly little games. Scrimmage, like this, was best of all–a time when you could try any play you wanted, a time when mistakes counted for nothing and no one even bothered to keep score. But there were also contests to see who could hit the crossbar, who could score the most one-on-one, who could hang on to the puck longest, who could pick a puck up off the ice using only the blade of the stick, who could bounce a puck longest on the stick blade, who could bat a puck out of the air best…
Scrimmage was when Travis’s line shone. Sarah at centre, Travis on left, the speedy Dmitri on right wing. Sarah the playmaker, Travis the checker, Dmitri the finisher.
Sarah made certain they lined up on Jenny’s side–with Nish, wobbling in thick pads, his head covered by a borrowed mask, heading for the far net. Mr. Imoo, laughing, skated beside him. The two seemed to have struck up a special friendship–or perhaps Mr. Imoo, like everyone else, was merely amused by Nish’s wild antics.
And Nish, of course, was making the most of it. Pretending he was Patrick Roy, he started talking to his goal posts, patting each one as if it were a guard dog that was there to help him out. He lay on his back and stretched like Dominik Hasek. He sprayed the water bottle directly into his face. He charged to the left corner and smashed his stick into the glass before returning to the crease, daring anyone to try to score on him.
Wayne Nishikawa, samurai goaltender.
Muck let them play. No instructions. No whistles. He simply let them do what they wanted, watching as they got a feel for the larger ice surface, and watching Mr. Imoo as he scrambled around on his skates and shouted at the players to “Shoot!” almost as soon as they got the puck.
Sarah picked up the puck behind Jenny and broke straight up through centre, Dmitri cutting away from her on the right. The moment Gordie Griffth made a move toward her, Sarah flipped the puck to Dmitri, who broke hard down the boards before firing a hard cross-ice pass to Travis.
Travis was ready to shoot, but couldn’t resist his little back pass to Sarah. Muck hated the move; Travis loved it. When it worked, it looked brilliant; when it didn’t work, it usually meant a breakaway for the other team. But this was scrimmage, so he tried it.
Sarah was expecting the trick pass and already had her stick raised to one-time a slapshot. The puck came perfectly at her, and she put all her strength into the shot, trying to drive it right through Nish if necessary.
The shot was high and hard.
It clipped off Nish’s skate blade, smashing against the glass behind the net!
Travis heard three sounds. The puck hitting the glass. Sarah’s scream of surprise. And Nish’s hysterical laugh.
Travis hadn’t even looked at the goal. He did now, and saw Nish lying flat on his back, head sticking up the ice, the heavy pads crossed casually and the skates resting high up one post near the crossbar.
“Save by Hasek!” Nish shouted.
He did it all practice long. He sat on the net, his legs dangling, and made saves. He lay on his side on the ice, head resting on his glove hand, and made saves kicking his legs high. He wandered out of the crease and dived back whenever one of the Owls fired a shot at his net, timing his slide just perfectly.
Whatever Nish was up to, it was working.
How it worked, Travis had no idea. Luck? The Japanese gods? Buddha? Or just Nish, trying, and accomplishing, the impossible. Mr. Imoo had tears in his eyes from laughing.
“No one on Earth plays hockey like you!” Mr. Imoo shouted at Nish.
“No one on Earth does anything like him,” Sarah corrected.
“He is true samurai!” Mr. Imoo pronounced.
Muck blew his whistle long and hard at centre. The Owls skated over to Muck, Nish last, as always, and falling to his pads as he arrived.
“I saw some things I liked,” Muck said. “And I saw some things I didn’t like.”
He turned his gaze on Nish, who had his goalie mask off and was smiling up at Muck, blinking innocently.
“Tournament rules require us to have two goaltenders,” Muck says. “You just won yourself a job, Mr. Nishikawa.”
Nish’s eyes stopped blinking. They opened wider in shock.
His mouth opened as well.
And for once, no sound came out.
In the evening, the Screech Owls went down into the heart of downtown Nagano. It had been Mr. Dillinger’s idea, and it turned out to be a good one. It stopped the Owls from thinking about the murder.
Data brought along his video camera, and Mr. Dillinger and Travis and Sarah took turns pushing Data’s wheelchair along so that Data could use his good hand to record the scene for when they all got back home.
Travis had never seen anything like this unfamiliar city. What struck him was not so much the people moving everywhere, the cars and the buses and the policemen’s whistles at the intersections, it was the powdery snow falling to earth through the brilliant lights, the still-busy stores, and the million different things for sale in packaging so strange that Travis often didn’t know whether they were to be worn or eaten. It was like some wild combination of the Santa Claus parade, Disney World, the Eaton Centre in Toronto, Niagara Falls–and a world Travis had never even imagined.
Nish, of course, was acting as their tour guide–even though he himself had not yet been downtown. But obviously he had been quizzing his new pal, Mr. Imoo. He knew there was a McDonald’s at Central Square. He knew how to work the vending machines so the team could get cans of Sweat, the new team drink. He knew that the area was renowned for its huge, delicious apples, still looking fresh at the end of the winter. He knew that the main street was called Chuo, that the main department store was halfway up it, and that the Buddhist temple, where Mr. Imoo was a priest and where they would be touring on Saturday, was at the far end. When they crossed at one of the busy intersections, they could see up to the temple in the distance, like some fantastic fairytale setting in the light falling snow and the magical glow of the downtown lights.
Nish, however, didn’t know everything.
“What’re they wearing?” Fahd had asked, pointing at some shoppers.
Travis had seen others like them before. Every once in a while they would come across someone on a bus or in the street wearing a curious white gauze mask across the mouth and hooked by elastic over the ears. They looked like doctors and nurses about to head into the operating room.
Mr. Dillinger knew. “Health masks,” he said. “People with breathing problems wear them when the smog gets bad. A city like this traps smog between the mountains. The masks cut out the pollution.”
“We should get them for Nish,” Sarah said.
Nish, who had only partially been paying attention, turned around. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think about it, Stinky.”
Nish let the comment pass. His mind was apparently on more important things. From the moment Muck had named him backup goaltender for the game against Sapporo, he had taken his new role to heart.
“Great goaltenders,” he had announced to the boys sharing their little apartment, “are nuttier than fruitcakes. You have to be eccentric to play goal.”
He had gone down the list of great goalies as if counting off points for an exam. Jacques Plante, who used to knit his own underwear. Glenn Hall, who used to throw up before every game and between periods. Patrick Roy, who talks to goal posts
and insists on stepping over the lines in the ice rather than skating over them. Goalies who have secret messages painted on their masks. Goalies who talk to themselves throughout the game, as if they’re not only playing but also doing the play-by-play.
“Mr. Imoo’s going to help me,” Nish announced as they walked along. “He’s going to work with me until I’m the first goalie in history to have a force shield.”
“A what?” Travis had asked.
“He’s an expert in martial arts, too–not just a Buddhist priest. He’s the greatest guy I ever met. He’s got a black belt in judo and he knows tae kwon do, and he’s going to teach me how to do the Indonesian ‘force shield.’ It’s a little-known Asian secret that’ll give me superhuman powers.”
“You already have superhuman power,” said Sarah. “Unfortunately, it’s in your butt.”
“Back off,” Nish said. “Look at what I got here.”
Nish flattened out a piece of carefully folded paper.
“This is the address of a restaurant where a friend of Mr. Imoo’s can bend spoons.”
“What’s so hard about that?” Jenny asked.
“He doesn’t touch them, that’s what’s so hard about that.”
According to Nish, the restaurant was located in what seemed to Travis to be a back alley. It was a narrow passage leading off the main street, not even wide enough for a car to get down. They walked along, Travis growing nervous, until finally Nish stopped and pointed at what looked like little more than a run-down house.
“This is it.”
“Your Mr. Imoo’s pulling your leg,” said Sarah.
“Ha!” snorted Nish. “Let’s go.”
Nish pulled the front door open and stepped inside. Fahd followed, then Andy, then the rest of them. Travis had to turn Data’s chair around and back him up over a small step, but he managed it easily.
Sure enough, it was a tiny restaurant, with barely enough room to hold them all.
A woman came out from behind the cash register clapping her hands together and smiling. Obviously, she was expecting them. She began speaking–very fast and in Japanese–to Nish, who kept bowing and saying, “Moshi moshi!” to her, which only made her smile all the more.
She called back into the kitchen and a man wearing a white apron came out, also smiling and bowing. Nish held out his piece of paper. The man took it, nodding as he wiped his hands on the front of his apron, and laughed when he realized why the kids were really there. He had business cards for them all–but in Japanese, of course, so Travis had no idea what they said.
Travis was shocked at the reception. Back home, he thought, kids like him and Nish and Sarah were often regarded with suspicion the moment they walked into a store or a restaurant on their own. Often, they couldn’t get anyone to wait on them. They got ignored in lines. It was as if somehow, at the age of twelve or thirteen, they’d just broken out of prison, where they were serving life sentences for shoplifting and armed holdups.
But not here. Not in Japan. There was such trust, such open acceptance, even if they were just kids. The woman had an Olympic pin for each of them. Sarah, luckily, had a small Screech Owls crest to give her in return. A man who had been sipping a large bowl of soup picked up and moved off happily to give the Owls and the restaurant owner more space at the one large table in the place.
Just then, the door of the restaurant opened again. It was Mr. Imoo, his ragged hockey bag over his shoulder, a stick in one hand, and a huge Band-Aid over his nose that oozed with fresh blood.
Nish seemed ecstatic to see his new hero, racing to help Mr. Imoo unload his hockey gear.
“What happened to you?” Nish asked.
“Good hockey game tonight,” Mr. Imoo grinned.
“Who won?” Fahd asked.
Mr. Imoo grinned again. “Game or fight?”
Mr. Imoo seemed particularly pleased with his little joke. He explained it, in Japanese, to the restaurant, tapping his injured nose a couple of times while everyone else laughed and giggled. Whatever Mr. Imoo was, thought Travis, he wasn’t at all like the minister of the church his family attended back home.
The woman brought over a handful of spoons.
“How come he doesn’t use chopsticks?” Fahd asked.
Nish turned to him with a look of astonishment combined with disgust.
“Chopsticks,” he informed Fahd, “are made of wood.”
“My goodness,” said Sarah, “such an expert.”
Giggling, the man placed one of the spoons in the centre of the table, and then fell very quiet. He seemed to withdraw into his body, his arms folding tightly over his chest. His eyes were closed and he began to rock slightly, as if gathering his energies.
Mr. Imoo, the snow still melting in his hair, also went quiet, not even bothering to wipe away the long drop of melted snow that rolled down one cheek.
The Screech Owls fell silent too, but most of them slyly looked around to catch the eye of a friend, their expressions all asking the same question: What on earth is going on here?
But not Nish. Nish was even rocking slightly himself, his eyes almost closed but open just enough that he could keep them on the restaurant owner.
The man grunted once and opened his eyes. He had somehow changed, as if almost hypnotized, and it seemed he was now totally unaware of their presence.
He reached out his index finger. Slowly, carefully, he ran it lightly along the length of the spoon, almost as if he were reaching out to tickle a cat’s stomach.
Suddenly his hand moved with astonishing speed, the fingers fanning, and in the blur Travis thought he must have lost sight of the spoon, for when the hand pulled back, the spoon was still there, in the centre of the table–but twisted almost in a perfect circle.
“Outstanding!” Nish said, nodding his head rapidly.
“How’d he do that?” Fahd asked.
“It’s a trick,” Sarah said.
“No trick,” Mr. Imoo said.
“Can I film it?” Data asked.
Mr. Imoo spoke quickly, in Japanese, to the man, and the man nodded back in agreement.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Imoo said to Data. “This is special one for Sarah.”
With Data’s camera rolling, the man placed another spoon in the centre of the table, then reached out and gently took Sarah’s hand in his. Sarah seemed nervous, and Travis could see that she was blushing, but she let the man guide her hand to the spoon and place her fingers over it to feel that it was made of stainless steel.
He took her hand in his again, and while her hand rested on his, for a second time he ran a finger lightly along the spoon, flicked his fingers once, and another curled spoon lay on the table.
Sarah yanked her hand back as if it had just touched fire.
“Is it hot?” Fahd asked.
“N-no,” Sarah stammered. She reached out and carefully picked up the bent spoon.
“For you,” the man said, gesturing that Sarah should take it.
“Th-thank you,” Sarah said, blushing deeply now. She took the spoon, rolled it once in her hand, and then placed it proudly in her lapel buttonhole.
“Arigato,” she said to the man. “Thank you.”
The restaurant owner got up and bowed deeply. He seemed very pleased that Sarah had thought his spoon worthy of a fashion statement.
“Mr. Imoo’s going to teach me how to use the force shield,” Nish announced to no one in particular.
“You already bend your stick blades too much,” said Lars. Everyone laughed.
“You laugh now,” said Nish. “You won’t be laughing when ol’ Nish starts sending players flying with a flick of his glove.”
Mr. Imoo giggled and put a hand gingerly to his battered nose.
“Force shield not protect me tonight, that’s for sure.”
It was the morning they were to travel to Mount Yakebitai, site of the first-ever Olympic competition in snowboarding. On the way they passed through some of the most spectacular scenery Travis had ever seen, b
ut not all the Owls were interested in looking out into the bright, sunlit day.
“Put on a movie!” Nish had screamed from the back.
“Open a window!” Sarah, sitting directly behind him, screamed a moment later.
Mr. Dillinger went to the front of the bus and tried to arrange with the driver to put a movie on the bus’s video system, but the driver, unfortunately, had no movies.
“Shoot,” moaned Nish. “I wanted to see Godzilla in the original Japanese!”
“Hey, Data!” Sarah called ahead to where two seats had been removed to accommodate Data’s chair. “Put on your tape. I want to see how that guy bent those spoons.”
“Yeah!” shouted Fahd. “Me too.”
Everyone was in agreement, and Mr. Dillinger set about rigging the machine so it would play what Data had recorded so far of the Screech Owls’ great trip to Nagano.
“Where is it?” Mr. Dillinger called back to Data as he began pushing the “rewind” button on the machine.
“Not too far,” said Data. “About now!”
Mr. Dillinger pushed the “stop” button, then “start.” A picture began dancing, badly out of focus, on the screens throughout the bus.
Mr. Dillinger fiddled with the tracking buttons and the picture came into sharp focus. It was the opening-night banquet.
“Too far!” called several voices up and down the bus.
“Hey!” Nish shouted. “Hold it right there for a second!”
Mr. Dillinger looked back, startled.
“Pause it!” Nish shouted. “Pause it!”
Mr. Dillinger hit the “pause” button. Travis looked closely at the screen. There seemed to be nothing of importance on it. Just a waiter carrying a tray of sushi toward the head table.
“It’s a mistake,” Data said. “I didn’t know how to work the camera then.”
“No!” Nish shouted. “Back it up a touch!”
Mr. Dillinger pushed “reverse” and then “play.”
“That’s the creep who dumped me!” Nish shouted, anger in his voice.
Travis turned in his seat, startled. What was Nish going on about?
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3 Page 3