The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5

by Roy MacGregor

  Travis had originally worried about his red-haired friend with the fiery temper and astounding passion. Carrying only a backpack with a Canadian flag sewn on one side and the Screech Owls logo on the other, Sam had set out with little money and a one-way flight to Europe.

  From time to time, Travis would hear from her. A postcard from Paris. A short letter from Italy. E-mails from an Internet café in Mumbai, India. A box containing a small Christmas gift from Bali. She had been to Sydney, Australia, and dropped in on the friends the Owls had made there, been to Nagano, Japan, to call on the original Mr. Imoo and see where the Owls had played before she joined the team.

  There would at times be long gaps between messages, and Travis, always inclined to worry, would presume the worst. He imagined her drowned by a Tsunami off the coast of Japan, killed by lions in Africa, frozen to death on the Himalayas, murdered by pirates, tribes, thieves, and serial killers – only to find out the next morning that the postman had dropped a new card from her into his mailbox, or a new message was waiting for him in his e-mail.

  And then, one day, she returned. No warning, no hint, nothing – and most assuredly not a word about the little, twisting baby she carried in her arms as the bus dropped her and her beat-up pack outside the Tamarack Hotel.

  “I call him Muck,” Sam said when Travis caught up to her.

  Nothing more. Just Muck. No real name. No last name. No explanation of where the child had come from on Sam’s incredible journey around the world.

  Travis decided to leave it like that. Perhaps she had found Muck under a cabbage leaf, just as his grandfather used to joke when Travis asked where babies came from. Perhaps Travis was better off not knowing.

  One thing for certain: he knew better than to press Sam. She was Sam, after all. Different. Magnificently different.

  “Muck!”

  “You get in here right now, mister!”

  Imoo started wagging his tail. Sam and little Muck were his favourite humans after Travis. He barked and broke away from Travis, bursting through the cedars on a shortcut to the water, splashing in to the delighted shrieks of Muck, who immediately forgot that his mother was calling.

  Sam turned as Imoo broke through the underbrush, trailing his leash behind him. She was flushed with annoyance at Muck, but also deeply tanned from so much time in the sun. Her hair, usually carrot red, had turned nearly the colour of blood, and it highlighted her golden skin so strikingly that, Travis had to admit, his old friend had become an extraordinarily magnetic young woman. It was impossible to pass by Samantha Bennett without turning your head to stare. If some people appeared to glow, it could be said she actually flamed – her spirit so intense it seemed a spotlight was following her.

  “How ya doing?” called Travis.

  “You want a kid?” Sam laughed.

  “Not if it means changing diapers.”

  “It doesn’t,” she kidded. “Just look at him – he’s out of diapers already.”

  Muck and Imoo were racing through the water, the dog splashing circles around the naked kid, the earlier silence now shattered by Imoo’s barking and Muck’s shrieking.

  The lost diaper was floating far out into the lake.

  “I’ll wade out and get that for you,” Travis said.

  “Just a second,” Sam said. “C’mere – I want to show you something.”

  After making sure Muck and Imoo had returned safely to shore, Sam led Travis around to the edge of the gravel parking lot.

  She turned and held a finger to her lips, indicating that Travis should be silent.

  Up ahead, Travis could see the mysterious Anton Sealey crouched down, silent as a statue as he stared through the lower branches of a cedar tree.

  Anton was Sam’s special “friend,” but not in the way that many people presumed when they saw them together. Anton had moved into Tamarack while Sam was wandering the world and Travis was off at university. No one knew anything about him. He had opened up a used bookstore, and Travis’s grandmother, who haunted it in search of new mysteries to read, wondered aloud how he made his living selling second-hand books for so little.

  Still, it seemed to Travis Lindsay that Anton Sealey didn’t need much. He wore the same clothes – checkered shirt, leather vest, jeans – all the time, sandals six months of the year, hunting boots the other six. He wore a rainbow-coloured woolen toque summer and winter, his long hair sometimes tucked up into it, sometimes braided at the back.

  No one knew anything about his past, nor where he had come from, not even why he had come to Tamarack. What they did know was that he loved Tamarack as if he’d been born and raised there, and had set himself up as the town’s leading environmentalist, appearing before town council every so often to argue against whatever he figured was doing more damage to the environment than good to the town.

  Sam Bennett looked out for Anton. According to Travis’s grandmother, if it weren’t for Sam and her sandwiches, Anton would be even skinnier than he was. But neither Travis’s grandmother nor Travis himself believed, as others did, that there was anything romantic going on between the two.

  It was more like Sam had two children to care for: little Muck and big, tall, skinny Anton.

  Anton turned, nodding quickly in acknowledgment of Travis’s presence. Then he turned immediately back, staring intensely at whatever it was that Sam wanted Travis to see.

  At first Travis thought they were all looking at green stones, but then he realized it was a row of five turtles. The turtles seemed almost to have been laid out by design. The five of them – two with shells as big as dinner plates, three slightly smaller – had worked their rear ends into the hot sand and now sat expressionless, as if they were lined up in a turtle beauty salon waiting for the machines to finish drying their hair.

  “Snapping turtles,” Sam whispered.

  “What’re they doing here?” Travis whispered.

  “They’re laying their eggs. Isn’t it magnificent?”

  Travis had to admit that it was. It was magnificent and it was unusual and it was funny and it was powerful.

  “Remember Nish’s famous skinny dip with the snapper?” Travis whispered.

  Sam giggled. “I heard about it – I wasn’t on the team then, though.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.”

  Anton turned and glared at them.

  “It’s rare to see so many laying at once,” Sam whispered very quietly to Travis. “They make no sign of even acknowledging each other, you know. Isn’t that weird?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not to them. Who knows what a snapping turtle thinks?”

  “They’re the oldest residents of this continent,” Sam said. “Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Anton says they were here when there were dinosaurs. Long before our ancestors even thought about walking on two feet.”

  “They’re survivors, I guess,” Travis said with admiration.

  “The only thing they can’t survive is us,” Anton hissed over his shoulder.

  “That’s the truth,” Sam whispered back.

  “Have you heard the news?” Travis asked Sam.

  “What news?”

  “Town council voted last night to name the new arena complex after Sarah.”

  “They did?”

  Travis nodded, smiling. “Amazing what a gold medal can do, isn’t it?”

  Sam turned away. “Does that mean she’s coming home?

  “I guess,” Travis said.

  Sam nodded, saying nothing.

  What was it? Travis wondered. Why do I get the sense that Sam, Sarah’s best friend on earth, didn’t want to hear that?

  3

  Sarah Cuthbertson was the greatest hero the town of Tamarack had ever known. She had gone from the Screech Owls, the legendary peewee team coached by Muck Munro and managed by Mr. Dillinger, to play for the Toronto Aeros women’s team, and from there straight to Calgary, where she had joined the national women’s hockey team and started her studies in physical ed
ucation at the University of Calgary.

  She played in her first World Championships at age nineteen, and then competed in two Olympics. In the Winter Games earlier that year she had captained the Canadian team to the gold medal, Sarah herself scoring the winning goal in overtime against a powerful Team U.S.A. Sarah had picked up the puck in her own end and skated the length of the ice before dropping it into her skates to attempt a play Muck had always ridiculed as “the dickey-dickey-doo” and forbidden his players ever to use.

  But this time it had worked. The puck clicked off one skate blade onto the other and then through the stabbing poke check of the last American defender. The puck slipped right back onto Sarah’s own stick blade. She faked once with her shoulder, then went to her backhand and roofed a shot so hard it sent the goaltender’s water bottle sailing back against the glass – just as Dmitri had always done with the Screech Owls and was now doing on a regular basis for the Colorado Avalanche.

  Travis figured the entire town of Tamarack was standing at attention as the anthem played and the Canadian flag was raised. Most, he was certain, were shedding tears along with Sarah as the camera settled on her, gold medal about her neck, blond-brown hair plastered to her forehead, as she struggled to get through “O Canada,” trying, and failing completely, to hold her composure.

  Travis had never felt so proud in all his life. Sarah was his friend, one of the closest friends he had ever had. He had played with her, he had played on the same line as someone they were now saying might be the best woman hockey player in the entire world.

  And Travis felt even prouder when the CBC crew went straight out onto the ice and interviewed a still bawling Sarah after the ceremony was over.

  “That was an amazing play,” the announcer shouted over the din of the crowd.

  Sarah blushed. “Muck would kill me,” she said.

  “Muck?” the announcer asked, his eyebrows forming a double question mark.

  “Muck Munro – my peewee hockey coach. He hated us trying things like that.”

  “Your … pee … wee … coach?” the bewildered announcer said.

  “The best coach I ever had.”

  Sarah turned directly to the camera, blew a kiss, winked, and raised her medal from around her neck.

  “Thanks, Muck – a big part of this is yours!”

  Travis wondered sometimes if Muck had been watching.

  The old coach had stayed with the Screech Owls for a few seasons after Travis and his friends – Nish, Sarah, Sam, Fahd, and all the others – had moved on to other levels, but it was never the same for him.

  He kept coaching lacrosse, as well, for a few more years, but then after Zeke Fontaine – Muck’s eccentric assistant in lacrosse – had died, Muck took over Zeke’s place out on River Road, fixed it up, planted a small garden out back that he called “Zeke’s and Liam’s Place” in memory of the old coach and the son Zeke lost to the rogue black bear.

  Gradually Muck had become more and more of a recluse. Travis hadn’t seen him for more than a year. Sometimes Travis would drop in for a visit, but Muck never seemed to be around. There were even times when Travis had wondered if Muck was standing back in the bush, watching through the trees until whatever caller had come would give up and leave.

  The Screech Owls had had a new coach for the past few seasons, a young high school teacher in town who had once played for them: Travis Lindsay. And though Travis had given Muck an open invitation to come out to practice, an open invitation, really, to join him behind the bench at any game, Muck had never come along.

  The new Screech Owls were a wonderful little team, an assortment of boys and girls every bit as wacky and wonderful as the original Owls, Travis thought. But obviously Muck didn’t feel the same.

  A couple of times, while Travis had been coaching the team, he had seen Muck’s now-white crewcut appear in the crowd where the men often stood back of the penalty box on the far side, but he was never there when Travis looked up again, and never there at the end of the game, when Travis would most certainly have invited him in to the dressing room to meet the new Owls.

  Travis wondered, sometimes, if Muck even knew what had become of the old lineup, who had gone where and done what. He himself could run down the lineup without a single reference to one of the many Screech Owls team pictures he kept in his little apartment near the bridge leading up to Lookout Hill.

  Sarah Cuthbertson: Centre, No. 9, Assistant Captain. Gold medallist, Olympic Winter Games; Team Canada captain; said to be the world’s top women’s player of the day. University of Calgary student, physical education.

  Travis Lindsay: Left Wing, No. 7, Captain. Played some junior hockey; played at college; still playing in gentlemen’s league. High school teacher, history and phys-ed.

  Dmitri Yakushev: Right wing, No. 91. With Sarah, one of the true superstars of the original Screech Owls; moved on to sensational bantam and midget career; drafted by the Ottawa 67s, where he won the Ontario Hockey League scoring title and was named Canadian Junior Hockey Player of the Year (“A first,” he joked, “for a Russian!”); drafted by the Colorado Avalanche, where he is currently one of the hottest young stars in the NHL.

  Samantha Bennett: Defence, No. 4. Played women’s hockey; former prime prospect for Canada’s national team, but decided to travel the world instead. Currently back in Tamarack with a son, who she calls Muck. As passionate about the environment and wildlife as she ever was about hockey. An enigma.

  Fahd Noorizadeh: Defence/right wing, No. 12. Won full scholarship to Waterloo University, where he studied computer engineering and played for the varsity hockey team that won the Canadian university championship. Retired as player and currently in business with Larry “Data” Ulmar in Toronto, where they are fast gaining an international reputation for their detective work in tracking down computer fraud.

  Larry Ulmar: No. 6, formerly defence, then assistant coach following his accident. Data also won a full scholarship to Waterloo. Won the Governor General’s medal as top graduating student. Turned down a job offer from Microsoft to go into business with Fahd. Regained considerable use of his left arm and shoulder and vows one day to use his computer knowledge to map out the spinal nervous system and find a cure.

  Lars Johanssen: Defence, No. 13. “Magic” Johanssen went on to star in junior hockey and was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings. Chose instead to return to his home town of Malmo in Sweden, where he currently stars in the Swedish elite league and refuses to sign with the Red Wings, who still own his rights. Studying cartography at University of Malmo in off-season.

  Andy Higgins: Centre/right wing, No. 16. Big Andy kept right on growing. He quit junior hockey, however, after several coaches tried to convince him he had to become a brawler if he ever expected to turn pro. Andy went on to the University of British Columbia and is now a marine biologist working with the Vancouver Aquarium.

  Jesse Highboy: Right wing, No. io. Played right up until juvenile and then went on to Trent University in Peterborough, where he did Native Studies and is currently studying to become a lawyer. His cousin, Rachel Highboy, also graduated from Trent and last winter became the youngest elected aboriginal official in Canada when she was elected Chief of Waskaganish.

  Simon Milliken: Left wing, No. 33. Like Travis, little Simon eventually caught up to everyone else in size and continued playing until he left to join the Canadian armed forces, where he is currently a peacekeeper on tour overseas.

  Derek Dillinger: Centre/left wing, No. 19. Played Junior “B” hockey and then moved on to Clarkson University in New York State on a half scholarship. He is now an investment counselor in Florida and, apparently, quickly growing wealthy.

  Jenny Staples: Goaltender, No. 29. Played goal at the University of Toronto but became so involved in the Hart House Theatre program that she soon gave up hockey in favour of her new passion, acting. Last year she won a major award as a supporting actress in a made-for-television movie.

  Willie Granger: Defence, No. 8. The t
eam trivia expert landed the perfect job when he was named an assistant editor of The Guinness Book of World Records. A job, Travis liked to think, Willie could do in his sleep.

  Wilson Kelly: Defence, No. 27. Joined the RCMP immediately after graduating, served several years in the Canadian North, and is currently a policeman in Kingston, Jamaica. He always said he’d return “home” one day.

  Liz Moscovitz: Left wing, No. 21. Played two seasons with the Toronto Aeros, the same team Sarah left to join, but decided to give up hockey in favour of school. She is still in school, studying to become a doctor, and has recently become engaged to another doctor.

  Gordie Griffith: Centre, No. 11. Decided that he was more a lacrosse player than a hockey player and recently led the Victoria Shamrocks to the Mann Cup, the Stanley Cup of lacrosse.

  Jeremy Weathers: Goaltender, No. 1. Had a stellar career in junior hockey and was drafted in the second round by the Dallas Stars. He has struggled since, however, with injury and bad luck, and is currently playing in the minor leagues, still hoping for the big break that could take him to the NHL.

  Mr. Dillinger: Good Old Mr. Dillinger was still managing the Screech Owls. He had quit briefly when Muck Munro decided to bow out, but soon found he had far too much time on his hands and returned to the team. It was Mr. Dillinger who had called Travis when the team needed a new coach. The old team bus is still running, thanks to Mr. Dillinger’s mechanical abilities, and he is still insisting no one can drive it but him. He still sharpens skates better than anyone. He still arranges “Stupid Stops.” His current passion is card tricks, which he uses to entertain the Owls when they’re off at tournaments.

  Often, as he ran the Lookout trail with Imoo, Travis would go up and down the list in his head. It was just another part of his obsession with order, with everything being in its proper place. He could go up and down the list of players and check them off and know everything about them it was necessary to know.

  But he always left one name out.