The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  Before the practice, they lined up for commemorative photographs, and then, when all the pictures had been taken, Muck spoke to them. Apart from the coaches and Mr. Dillinger, whistling softly as he laid out the sweaters and socks, the players were alone in the huge dressing room, the team entirely by itself. This year Muck had put an end to parents coming in. They were “players” now, Muck had said, not “helpless infants,” and the change had been profound.

  Travis could still remember when the tiny dressing rooms were so crammed with parents–sometimes both parents–that the players could barely move. He could remember how, even after it had reached a point where their sole job was tightening the skates, the parents would stay for the coach’s speech, and how some of the dads–Mr. Brown had been the worst of them–had insisted on adding their own speeches, the kids all sitting there secretly giggling and paying not the slightest attention to whatever came after the first “Listen up!”

  “I want to speak to you for a minute,” Muck began, his voice so soft he could have been speaking one-on-one to any of them. “This is a good tournament. We’re going to have to be at the top of our game if we’re going to go anywhere in it. You already know some of the teams here. We’ve played the Toronto Towers before. We know them and they know us. Rest assured the others are every bit as good, if not better.”

  Travis hated the Towers. Chippy and arrogant–the Screech Owls had played them twice before and lost once and won once. The game they won the Towers had protested, claiming Muck had stacked his team. He hadn’t, of course, and the organizers had thrown the protest out. But that was the kind of team they were.

  “There are teams here from New York State, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. We haven’t seen any of them. And the first team we play–the Portland Panthers–are the top-rated team in New England.”

  “We’ll wipe ’em,” Nish said.

  Muck looked up from his piece of paper and fixed his gaze on Nish, who reddened.

  “You’re going to be hearing there are scouts in the stands,” Muck said.

  Scouts! NHL scouts watching the Screech Owls? Why?

  “Some of your parents have already informed me that this is so, but I want you to understand exactly what it means. They’ve been there before, only you never knew about it. And I certainly never would have mentioned it to your parents.

  “They are not NHL scouts, no matter what some of your moms and dads may be thinking. They’re mostly coaches, and a few general managers of bantam teams. Maybe the odd midget team. But that’s all they are. This is a convenient place for some of them to see what’s coming up in their own district–and remember that, you’re all committed to the Central District until at least midget age–and maybe to get a sense of how the players are coming along in other hockey areas.

  “That’s it. It’s that simple. Nobody’s going to walk up to you and say, ‘Sign here and you’re Jeremy Roenick’s left-winger for next season’…”

  Nish let the air he’d been holding snort through his nose. Travis was surprised to find that he too had been sitting there with breath held, almost afraid to breathe. Yet Muck had been talking as calmly as if he were sitting around the dinner table, nothing more.

  “…I’m dead serious, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to say something to you that sounds like the exact opposite of what I’ve been yelling at some of you now for more than four years. ‘Keep your heads down.’”

  Muck paused, letting the line sink in.

  “Anyone know what I mean by that? You, Travis?”

  Travis tried to speak but nothing came out. He had to clear his throat and start over. “It means we should concentrate on what’s going on on the ice.”

  “You got it. Forget the stands. Forget thinking about what might happen five or six or seven years from now. For all you know, you might be in the same jail cell as Nish here by then.”

  Nish sat back as everyone laughed, shaking his head in disgust, used to Muck’s cracks, enjoying the moment as much as anyone but determined never to show it.

  “The Screech Owls are here to play hockey–nothing else. You’ve heard me say it a million times. ‘Hockey is a game of mistakes.’ Let’s not make our first one before we even leave the dressing room. Now let’s go out and make a team of ourselves. Nish, you bring the pucks.”

  “I’m gonna hurl!”

  Nish had turned his third colour since morning. Red-faced and angry when the other boys had jumped on him to get him up, then white and drained by the end of the practice, he was now almost grey. Travis sat beside him in the twisting, groaning van and wondered if he should try to comfort his friend, or wisely move to the seat behind so he wouldn’t get splashed if Nish indeed threw up, as he was threatening.

  “I’m really gonna hurl!”

  Nish wasn’t alone in feeling woozy. Practice had gone so well, Muck had told them when it was over and they were dressing, that he was going to take them all up Whiteface Mountain. The Screech Owls had gone in convoy, the big van followed by a half-dozen cars, and the group had snaked in such an impossible series of rises and hairpin turns that, a couple of times, those leading in the big van could look down, way down through the trees, and see one of the following cars seemingly going in the opposite direction.

  Mr. Dillinger was driving, and he seemed to be enjoying it. Every hairpin turn he would shout out “I’m losing it!” and some of the players, on cue, would scream–but they all knew he was kidding, not about to crash.

  They had to drive about six kilometres to rise just one, through deep woods and then pine and shrub. Every turn produced a new view, but Willie Granger, who had shut his eyes after the first rise, never saw one of them. “What’s the Guinness record for being afraid of heights?” Wilson Kelly teased. Willie didn’t let on that he’d heard.

  Finally they reached the parking area near the top. They pulled up as close to the castle-shaped restaurant as they could get, parked and locked the cars, and then headed into the tunnel for the long walk to the elevator. It was dark and damp and they could hear and see water running below the walkway.

  “Geez, is it ever cold!” Nish shivered.

  “toDSah!” shouted Data, the strange word echoing. No one knew what it meant, except that it was a Klingon swear word, of which Data had dozens: petaQ, taHqeq, yIntagh, Qovtatlh, va…

  “It’s like a dungeon!” Sarah shuddered.

  “I’m outta here!” Willie cried before they had gone ten steps. He ran back out of the tunnel.

  “Wait for me!” shouted Nish.

  “va!” barked Data, following.

  “Me, too!” yelled Mario, chasing after the rest.

  “Where’re they going?” Travis asked, turning to watch his teammates as they flew back down the tunnel.

  Mr. Dillinger was right behind him. “They’ll take the stairs up,” he said. “We’ll take them on the way down. I can’t blame them for wanting out of this.”

  The old cage elevator creaked and shuddered as it travelled up the inside of the mountain, the guide quietly reading a paperback as she pushed the button for the top and waited, one hand on the button, the other on her book. What a gloomy place to spend the day, thought Travis. He hoped the book had lots of action, and was set outside somewhere sunny and warm.

  A few minutes later they emerged onto the observation deck, the sun like a long-lost friend when it fell on Travis’s face. After a minute of feeling blinded, he got his vision back, the bright sky giving way to an unbelievable scene spreading out as far as Travis could see: blue lakes, green forest, a haze in the distance making the far hills seem almost ghostly.

  There was another guide on the deck, and he pointed out the Montreal skyline far to the north, and Lake Placid and Mirror Lake and the town of Lake Placid down below, the lakes so small at this height they seemed puddles, the town all but invisible through the light haze in the air.

  The players and parents broke off into little groups, most of them heading back toward the elevator, the
easiest route back to the parking lot. Some wandered off on their own, taking photographs of each other and pointing out sights, before heading toward the trails and stone steps which led back down the mountain.

  Travis wandered off on his own back up to the observation area. For a while he watched “Captain Video”–Norbert Philpott–and his father arguing about the correct way to film the landscape on their Camcorder. It was a ridiculous scene, the two Philpotts fighting for control of the camera. Maybe they were going to wait until they got it back home and on their television before they’d enjoy the scenery.

  At the far ledge, he caught up to another group, Sarah, Dmitri, and Derek, who were pumping quarters into the big viewing machines and trying to see Montreal more clearly, some one hundred kilometres away.

  “Where is the Forum?” Dmitri wanted to know.

  “You can’t see it,” Sarah told him. “But you can see the mountain.”

  “I thought we were on the mountain,” Dmitri said, confused.

  “The Montreal mountain, Mount Royal,” Sarah explained impatiently. “It’s just called ‘the mountain.’ It’s really a hill.”

  “Well, why don’t they call it a ‘hill’ then?” Dmitri wanted to know.

  Travis took a look, the haze so dense at such a distance he could not even tell where the mountain–or hill–was. His vision suddenly went black as time ran out and the viewfinder closed. He started fishing in his pocket for another quarter.

  “Here, you kids need some change?”

  They turned and Mr. Brown, grinning from ear to ear, was marching toward them with a mittful of quarters held out.

  Sometimes Mr. Brown was a bit much, Travis thought. Always offering to help out with the driving or the practices or the phoning, but pushy about it. He was always the loudest in the stands. He was always the one ripping into the officials. He’d been the only parent to argue with Muck when Muck made the decision that the team no longer needed parents cluttering up the dressing room. Mr. Brown had claimed that he, and only he, could do Matt’s skates the way Matt needed them done. Muck had told him Matt could do his own skates from now on, and would learn to like them. Matt not only had done his own skates fine, he seemed much happier and more talkative since his father had ceased speaking for him.

  “No, we’ve seen enough, thanks,” said Sarah.

  “Okay, okay. Just trying to help.”

  The kids all thanked him. Mr. Brown wasn’t through.

  “Look, I’m glad to catch you four here alone. You’re our setup men–sorry, Sarah, set-up players–and if you guys are going, the whole team’s going. And if Matt finally gets off his duff and scores a power-play goal, it’s going to come from one of you. So I got a little proposition, just between us, okay?”

  No one said anything. No one knew what to say.

  Mr. Brown reached into his pocket and pulled out a massive roll of bills held together with a silver clip. Travis had never seen so much money at one time. On the outside was a twenty-dollar bill. If all the bills were that big, there must be a thousand dollars!

  But they weren’t. Mr. Brown eased the clip and spread the bills like a fan, the twenty covering another twenty, a fifty, and then a couple of tens, a few fives. Still more money than any of the kids could count at a glance.

  “You guys play the way I know you can all play and I’m good for two dollars a point, okay?”

  He looked at them all, one by one. They looked back, uncertain, not feeling right.

  “We’ll tabulate at the end of every match, okay? I’ll keep the stats, you guys keep the cash.” Mr. Brown chuckled at his little joke. No one else laughed.

  “Are we on?”

  Travis didn’t know what to say. Dmitri would not say anything: he would wait for one of the others to take the lead. Derek was staring hard at the money. That left Sarah.

  “I don’t think so,” said Sarah, and turned abruptly away.

  Her comment so caught the group off guard that no one knew what to do next. Mr. Brown seemed flustered, angry. He held the bills out once more and shook them, trying to tempt them.

  “We’d better not,” said Travis. “It wouldn’t be fair to the other kids on the team.”

  “They wouldn’t want to see goals? C’mon–”

  “We’d better not,” Travis repeated. “Thanks all the same.”

  Red-faced, Mr. Brown slapped the bills together again and rode the clip over them, then stuffed the cash in his pocket. He was shaking his head.

  “It’s not like I’m offering you something for not scoring,” he said, indignant.

  “We know,” said Travis. “It’s just that we’d better not.”

  The group broke up quickly, Mr. Brown heading back into the souvenir shop, the kids off and away to the next lookout area.

  But Sarah was gone. When Travis next saw her, she was in the snack shop, sitting with a Coke while Muck sat, with nothing, tapping his fingers on the surface of the table.

  Muck was listening. He had a look on his face like bunched-up tape. Travis didn’t need to hear to know what Sarah was telling the coach.

  Travis’s wristwatch said 1:57. The van was to leave at 2:00 p.m. sharp, and he knew he’d be in big trouble if he was late. He’d gone out along the rock cut and lost track of the time when he came across a friendly chipmunk so used to people that he’d scrambled up onto Travis’s cupped hand, up his sleeve, over his shoulder, and down into his vest pocket. From the sound of the scolding, the chipmunk had expected the pocket to be filled with nuts. Travis had then gone off searching for pine cones for the little chipmunk, and in looking had forgotten the hour. And now he had to run.

  The elevator was headed down and would take far too long to come back up, so he began to run down the stone steps, skipping and jumping to the irregular shapes. Travis had to watch himself to make sure he didn’t trip, but he also had to make time, and he was practically airborne when, coming from the pines, he caught the distinct voice of Muck. An angry Muck.

  Travis slowed instinctively. Slightly off the trail and through the pines he could make out Muck and another man’s back. From the bald spot he knew immediately it was Mr. Brown.

  “And don’t you ever, ever let me catch you doing something like that again or you’ll never come anywhere near any team I run, no matter whether your boy is on the team or not. Understand me?”

  Mr. Brown was rattled, upset, uncomprehending. “C’mon, Muck. It’s hardly like they’re getting paid to throw games. Where’s the harm in a tiny little reward for good play? The NHL pays bonuses, for heaven’s sake.”

  Muck began speaking very distinctly, his words short and clipped, a sure sign, as all Screech Owls knew, that his temper was boiling over.

  “The ‘harm,’ Mr. Brown, is that you’re teaching selfishness. You pay them to score, what am I supposed to do? Pay the others to back-check? Give Boucher a five-dollar bill if he makes a save? This is a team sport, mister.”

  Now Mr. Brown was angry: “You don’t have to speak to me like that.”

  “Fine, then!” Muck snapped, biting off his words. “I won’t speak to you at all.”

  Muck turned, leaving Mr. Brown sputtering and fuming. Mr. Brown’s hands were by his sides, furiously clenching and unclenching. “Jerk!” Mr. Brown cursed, but so quietly Muck was already out of earshot.

  Travis ducked back in behind the pines and took one of the other paths leading down to the restaurant and parking lot. They hadn’t seen him. And the van was still there, Mr. Dillinger at the wheel waiting for the signal from Muck to go. Travis had made it in time, thanks to the heated discussion between Muck and Mr. Brown, but Travis couldn’t find it in himself to be grateful to the two men. He hadn’t liked the tone of the conversation. He hadn’t liked at all the way Mr. Brown had stood there making fists and cursing as the coach walked away.

  Travis woke with the sun on his face. He lay blinking for a while, then shifted out of the direct light of the window and lay for a while longer staring at the beam of light
that seemed somehow solid and filled with hundreds of tiny, floating dust particles.

  He had no idea what, if anything, could have stirred the particles up. The boys had settled down shortly after Nish gave up trying to figure out how he could re-wire the television so he could finally see an adult film–“I gotta get some tools,” he kept saying, “gotta get some tools”–and all had fallen asleep quickly. Travis had even managed to be last into the bathroom, which allowed him to “forget” to turn off the light again.

  There was sound in the hall. People were talking, laughing, excited. But Travis couldn’t make it out. Nish rolled over, grunting, and pulled a sheet up over his head, uncovering his body. His feet wiggled for blanket warmth but could find none. He sat up.

  “Wazzat?” Nish asked.

  Travis’s mom had often told him at breakfast his eyes were still full of sleep. But Nish’s whole face was still full of sleep, as twisted as the sheets, one eye stretching open and the other stuck shut, as if he had Scotch-taped himself to sleep rather than dozed off quietly the way Travis and Wilson and Data had. Nish’s stuck eye popped open so suddenly Travis expected to hear a snapping sound.

  “Who’s making all the noise in the hall?” Nish wanted to know.

  “They woke me up!” Data called, as he, too, sat up blinking. “jIyajbe’!” (“I don’t understand.”)

  “Let’s get dressed and go see,” Travis suggested.

  It was worth getting up for; even Wilson made it in time. The recreation area downstairs was filling with guests, some of the younger ones still in pyjamas, all talking and pointing, some laughing and some very much upset. There were workers with pails and towels standing around the far corner of the pool where the Jacuzzi was completely hidden behind a huge, still growing cloud of soap bubbles. The bubbles were spreading onto the pool and beginning to drift across the water. The workers were trying to find the control button amid the suds so they could turn off the hot tub and stop the swirling that was only making more and more bubbles. They were not having much luck.