Winter Hawk Star

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “You’ll spend four hours a week at the organization. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, you and Riley will represent the Winter Hawks and spend time with the kids, doing whatever the people there see fit.”

  “But, I—”

  “Do you want six weeks to prove yourself? It’s either go to Youth Works or get cut from the team. That’s the same choice I offered Riley. With Riley, though he doesn’t know it, I was bluffing. With you, I’m not.”

  He stared at me, waiting for my answer.

  “What time did you want us there, Coach?” I asked. “And what’s the address?”

  chapter three

  “I don’t have to do this,” Riley Judd told me.

  I was looking for street signs as I drove, so I ignored him. Besides, he’d been saying that since he got in my Jeep Cherokee a half hour earlier. He was saying it just to get me to argue with him. The truth was, as far as he knew, he did have to do this. Part of the contract that we sign as WHL players states that we will make ourselves available for public functions as Winter Hawks players.

  “Third Avenue,” I said. “We’re getting closer. Coach told us to look for the gate.”

  “Gate? That sounds dumb. All of this sounds dumb.”

  “The Chinatown gate. Cross the Willamette River on Burnside Bridge. Around Fourth Avenue look for,” I pointed, “the Chinatown gate. See?”

  Riley quit grumbling long enough to look.

  The huge gate had three different levels, all brightly painted in complicated patterns. On each side were huge bronze lions.

  “Cool,” Riley said, although by the tone of his voice he meant otherwise. “First, you’re a taxi driver. Now a tour guide?”

  I nearly told him I felt like a babysitter, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  It was four o’clock, so afternoon traffic was heavy. We sat through the stoplight twice before reaching Fifth Avenue, where I turned right. We drove another few minutes. It didn’t take long before the buildings we were passing began to look run down. There were vacant lots. Instead of clothing shops and cafés and people on the sidewalks enjoying the September sunshine, there were old houses, old apartments and two-story factory buildings.

  We passed a man in a big brown overcoat. He was pushing a shopping cart filled with empty bottles.

  “Nice neighborhood,” Riley said, again not meaning what he said.

  “The kids we’re visiting have to grow up in this area.”

  “They should have been smart enough to be born into different families.”

  What a jerk. I slammed on the brakes. It snapped Riley ahead into his seat belt.

  “Hey! Why’d you do that?”

  “We’re here,” I said. “Youth Works.”

  Just as Coach Estleman had promised, the building had been easy to find. All I had to do was keep my eyes open for the steeple and large cross. Youth Works had bought a large, brick, church building, built years and years earlier when wealthy people had lived in the area. The church building was set back from the street. I was willing to bet it was at least a hundred years old.

  In fading letters on a dirty white background, the sign stuck crookedly into the ground read: HOME TO YOUTH WORKS.

  The lawn between the sidewalk and the church was worn down, almost lumpy. I could guess why. A swing set and slide took up most of the middle of it. About twenty kids took the rest of it. They were running and screaming and doing all the things kids do when you let them loose outside.

  “We might as well get started,” I said.

  “We’re supposed to ask for someone named Sam.”

  “Probably some dry, dusty, old janitor type,” Riley said. “I think I’ll wait in the car.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I always do,” Riley said. “In fact I think I’ll just wait in the car for the entire two hours. Tell me what it was like when you get back.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I left him there and crossed the hard ground of the lawn. The kids ignored me. They had more important things on their minds. Like yelling and screaming and chasing each other.

  I managed to make it across without stepping on any of them. I knocked on a set of doors at the side of the church building. Within thirty seconds the door swung open.

  I found it hard to speak. I almost found it hard to breathe. A girl who looks like a fashion model will do that to a guy.

  She wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt. She had long dark hair that hung in loose curls. She had deep brown eyes. She had a slow wide smile. She had me in the palm of her hand.

  “Hello?” she said. It might have been her second or third hello. I was still trying to find air to speak.

  “Um,” I said.

  She laughed. “That’s a good start. Are you from the Portland Winter Hawks?”

  “Um,” I said.

  “I can guess by your jacket.”

  I looked down. Of course. My team jacket. The one with Portland Winter Hawks all over it.

  “Um,” I said.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” she said. Her smile became a slight frown. “But I thought there would be two of you.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “Oh, there he is.” She looked past me to my car. I looked as well. Riley was jogging across the grass toward us with a big grin on his face. He neatly sidestepped a couple of kids as if he were a football player on his way to a touchdown.

  “Um,” I said.

  Riley slapped me on the back as he joined us.

  “Hey, bud,” he said. “Next time wait for me to get my shoes tied, will you?”

  He turned his grin toward the girl in the doorway. Riley is nearly my height. He has dark hair and blue eyes and a dimple in the center of his chin. He fills his Portland Winter Hawks jacket like he’s lifted weights since he was ten years old, which, of course, he has. He has an Elvis strut that shows he’s afraid of no one. With my short red hair and too many freckles on a face with no dimples and no wonderful smile, I was just a mutt wagging his tail beside a show dog.

  “The name’s Riley Judd,” he said to the girl. He stuck his hand out for her to shake, which she did. With a nice big smile for him.

  “I’ve been looking forward to helping out with the kids. In a neighborhood like this, they need as many breaks as they can get.” Riley shook his head sadly. “The big guy here hasn’t been so keen, but we’ll work on him, right?”

  She laughed. Riley was still holding her hand. “Right,” she said. “We’ll work on him.”

  The screams of laughter on the lawn rose and fell as Riley and the girl continued to hold hands and look at each other.

  Riley finally let go of her hand. “Well,” he said, “the first thing we need to do is talk to someone named Sam. Any chance you can help us?”

  “I’m Sam,” she said. “I’m in charge of the phys-ed programs here.”

  “You’re Sam?” Riley asked. “You don’t look like a Sam.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “Actually, I’m Samantha. Samantha Blair.”

  “Sam for short,” Riley said. “I like that. It’s kind of classy.”

  She rewarded him with another smile.

  “You don’t look much older than us,” Riley said.

  “I’m eighteen. I skipped a grade in elementary school. Graduated high school early. I’m taking a year off to work with the kids before I go to college.”

  “Um,” I said. Why could Riley find things to say, and why did my tongue feel like a block of wood?

  “It’s great that you guys could help,” she said. “Mostly, we just want you to spend time with the kids. A lot of them come from troubled homes. Youth Works is a place where they don’t have to worry about getting beat up by parents or gang members. When school finishes for the day, they come here instead of going home. We try to make sure they get exercise, good food and a friendly ear to listen to their problems. We—”

  She stopped herself and shot a startled glance over our shoulders.

&nb
sp; “That’s my brother, Ben! What are they doing with him?”

  We followed her gaze. Two men were standing in the middle of a bunch of kids. They had grabbed a seven- or eight-year-old kid by his arms and were dragging him toward the open side door of a blue van parked in front of my Jeep.

  From the ski masks over their faces, it was easy to guess they weren’t Ben’s friends.

  They threw Ben into the van. One of the men jumped in behind him and slid the door shut. The other man ran around the front of the van and jumped behind the steering wheel.

  “You drove, right?” Samantha asked.

  I nodded. The keys to my Jeep were still dangling in my hand.

  She grabbed my wrist and started dragging me toward the street. I stumbled after her. The kids on the lawn were all frozen in shock, quietly staring in the direction of the disappearing van.

  “What about me?” Riley shouted.

  “Call the police!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Tell them what happened!”

  I had to run to keep up with her. The kids made room for us as we passed through the group.

  I sprinted past her, cutting around the front of the Jeep and sliding in behind the steering wheel as she managed to get in the passenger side.

  The Jeep started with a roar. I gunned it, and we jumped ahead.

  “Seat belt!” I shouted. I scrambled to get mine on before we squealed around the first corner.

  The van was a block away.

  I pressed the gas pedal to the floor. We closed the gap to half a block.

  “License plates,” I told her. Time seemed to be like a slow current. I felt strangely calm and clearheaded. “Get the number. There’s a pen and paper in the glove box.”

  She scrambled to find the paper. I concentrated on the road.

  Now the van was a quarter block away. Close enough to see the plates. Close enough to see we wouldn’t get the number.

  Samantha slammed the dash with her fist in frustration. The back end of the blue van was covered with mud, and the van’s license plate was impossible to see.

  At that moment, the van driver must have realized we were chasing him. A huge cloud of black smoke mushroomed from the van’s exhaust pipe as it started to slip away.

  I glanced at my speedometer. Fifty miles an hour. I thought of the rush-hour traffic on the main roads. He’d be forced to slow down as soon as we got off these side streets.

  Brake lights suddenly showed on the van. It skidded sideways to make a right turn at the next intersection.

  I slammed on my own brakes and wrestled with the steering wheel to keep from sliding out of control. I turned hard to make the corner.

  The van had turned maybe five seconds before we reached the intersection. And five seconds earlier, both lanes had been clear. The van had been able to skid through the far lane and then veer back onto the right side of the road.

  Not us. In those five seconds, a small truck had almost reached the stop sign of the cross street. And we were also skidding into the far lane, a half second away from slamming into it head-on.

  I made a decision without even thinking. Instead of fighting the skid and trying to pull back into our lane, I spun the wheel to the left, aiming for the sidewalk on the other side of the truck.

  For one sickening heartbeat, I thought we were dead. I braced, ready for the crash. And in the next second, we hit the edge of the sidewalk, hard enough for our seat belts to jerk us back onto the seats.

  I kept my grip on the steering wheel, holding tight, trying to keep us on a straight line down the sidewalk.

  Fire hydrant.

  I spun the wheel again, cranking us back onto the street, missing the fire hydrant by less than the thickness of a coat of paint. We bounced off the sidewalk, shot through a gap of parked cars and hit open pavement.

  The van had opened its lead to a full block again.

  I mashed the gas pedal and tried to catch up.

  The van’s brake lights showed red again. It made another turn to the right.

  This time, I was ready for the corner. I eased off the gas, hitting the brakes hard. We rounded this corner under control.

  I stomped the gas yet again, throwing us back against the bucket seats of the Jeep. In the next split second, I almost stood on the brakes.

  We had rounded the corner to see a huge delivery truck angled across the street, backing into an alley. The delivery truck seemed to fill the entire windshield.

  chapter four

  I managed to stop a dozen feet from the side of the delivery truck. The blue van had not. It was resting sideways against the truck. The driver must have skidded sideways, trying to stop and turn away from it. The van now blocked the delivery truck driver’s door. The driver stared down at the top of the van from behind his own steering wheel.

  “My brother!” Samantha shouted.

  She yanked at the door handle and popped the door open. In her panic, she forgot the seat belt. It caught in her hair.

  “Don’t get out,” I said.

  “But my brother! He’s in the van.”

  “The guys who kidnapped him are also in the—”

  I snapped my mouth shut. The sliding door on the van was opening, and the kidnappers were getting out of the van. Two of them, not wearing ski masks now. The taller one had a walrus mustache. The shorter one had blond hair that reached his shoulders.

  The one with the walrus mustache reached back with his free hand and dragged Ben from the van.

  Without taking my eyes off them, I reached into the backseat. I knew exactly what I was going to grab. One of my hockey sticks on top of my gym bag.

  I closed my hand on the shaft of wood and pulled the stick with me as I stepped out of the Jeep.

  “Leave the kid,” I said.

  “Drop dead,” the short, blond-haired guy said.

  “Leave him.” I wasn’t going to let them take the kid.

  “Drop dead,” he repeated. “We’ll give you the help you need to do it.”

  His partner pulled out a switchblade knife. He clicked it open.

  Again, I felt a strange calmness. I gripped the stick like a baseball bat. I measured the distance between us. Instead of backing up, I took a step closer.

  “Come on, boys,” I said. “Try me out.”

  The second guy pulled out a switch-blade.

  I grinned. A part of me wondered where my fearlessness was coming from. Another part of me got ready to swing hard and swing smart.

  They split up. One moved to my left. One moved to my right. I couldn’t defend myself against them both.

  But the boy was free.

  “Run hard, kid!” I shouted. “Now.”

  The boy sprinted toward me. Then past me.

  “You’re dead meat,” the guy with the mustache snarled, waving his knife. “Sliced, bloody meat.”

  “And you’re a home run,” I said, gripping my stick harder. Like a baseball bat.

  The sound of sirens reached us.

  The men looked at each other and hesitated.

  In that moment, I stepped forward and swung hard at the one on the right. He managed to get his arm up. I broke my stick across his forearm.

  He shrieked.

  Sirens rose louder.

  The other one moved in close, stabbing at air.

  I was left with half a hockey stick in my hands. I swung it at him, and he danced away.

  His partner kept shrieking in agony.

  I heard the Jeep’s door slam shut.

  “I’m with you!” Sam shouted.

  “And me,” a strange voice said. It belonged to the driver of the delivery truck, rounding the back of his vehicle. He carried a tire iron in his hand.

  Both kidnappers reacted instantly. They ran across the street and into the alley.

  I stared after them, suddenly aware that I was breathing hard and fast.

  Time returned to normal speed. I began to realize what I had just done—I’d held my own against two men armed with switchblades.
<
br />   “Leave them be,” Sam said. “We got my brother back. We don’t need to chase them.”

  I managed to nod. Like I was stupid enough to run after them.

  “Sorry, kid,” the truck driver growled. “It took me awhile to get out the passenger side of my truck. I had some boxes in the front seat.”

  He was a big man. Dirty blue jeans. Dirty black shirt. Big beer belly. I was glad he’d been on my side.

  I managed to nod to him too. Had all of this really happened?

  Sam’s brother joined us. A kid with brown hair, his head hardly reached as high as her shoulders. He stood beside his sister, his arms wrapped around her waist.

  “You don’t speak much, do you?” Sam said to me.

  “Um,” I said. Something about her grin and the way her hair blew across her face tangled my heart and my tongue.

  “What’s your name anyway?” she asked.

  “Um,” I said again.

  Where was my sense of calm when I really needed it?

  chapter five

  “Hey, hero,” Riley Judd told me, “prepare to look stupid.”

  We stood almost visor-to-visor at the centerline during practice.

  “Hero?” I asked. He stood on one side of the centerline. I stood on the other.

  “You didn’t see me chasing down a van, did you? You didn’t see me getting thank-you hugs from Sam.”

  I still couldn’t believe I’d actually faced down two guys with switchblades. I didn’t expect anyone on the team to believe it either. They’d probably laugh at me. I preferred to be invisible. A person could stay out of trouble that way.

  “How many times do I have to tell you it wasn’t a big deal,” I said. “Sam was probably just happy to get her brother back and—”

  The piercing blast of Coach Estleman’s whistle interrupted me.

  “You clowns going to gab all afternoon?” Coach asked as he skated toward us. “Or are you ready to play?”

  “Ready to play,” I said. “Sorry, Coach.”

  “Play?” Riley Judd said. He pushed his helmet back and looked me directly in the face. “Play? I’m ready to put on a show.”

  I sure hoped he wouldn’t. For the first half hour, we had skated hard during this practice. We had then spent twenty minutes in shooting drills and another twenty minutes in passing drills. Now we would finish with half an hour of scrimmage. Reds against blues—half the team against the other half in a game situation.