The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4

by Roy MacGregor

  Wilson laughed. “There’s no rinks in Jamaica.”

  “So?” Nish asked with a shrug. “I’ll build one.”

  “Shouldn’t you think about the movie first?” Sam asked. “You’re spending the profits and you don’t even know what the movie’s going to be about.”

  “I have people to do that,” Nish said, with a wave of the hand towards the rest of the Owls.

  And so the debate began. They gathered around a picnic table in the park, and for more than an hour talked about possible plots.

  Simon and Fahd wanted to make a movie about aliens who land in Tamarack but make the mistake of dropping their flying saucer through the arena roof in the midst of a Screech Owls hockey game and are sliced to tiny, bloody bits by the skates of the hockey players.

  “Stupid,” said Nish.

  Andy wanted to make a vampire film, with plenty of bloodsucking and graveyard scenes and open caskets and people walking around town with garlic bulbs hanging around their necks.

  “Can’t stand garlic,” Nish decided.

  “Frankenstein!” Jenny shouted. “Someone builds a monster in science class and it wakes up at night and terrorizes the town.”

  “Been done too many times,” said Nish.

  “The flesh-eating Windigo!” Jesse offered. “It comes out on snowy nights and scares people half to death.”

  “Where would we get snow?” Nish asked.

  “Good point,” Jesse said, disheartened.

  They talked about invasions of deadly bacteria, about how they’d stage exploding bodies, about how they’d film spaceships. Every suggestion seemed to have a huge strike against it. Too expensive. Too difficult. Too corny. Too un-scary.

  Nish slammed his meaty hand down on the picnic table. “We need something original. A story no one has ever done before.”

  Travis found himself speaking even before he knew what he was saying. He couldn’t believe it. Here he was, the one who knew best how impossible Nish’s schemes could be, the one who had seen a thousand Nish brainstorms wash out in their execution.

  “There is one,” he said, quietly.

  A silence fell around the picnic table. Travis could almost hear the heads turning towards him, the eyes all waiting.

  “And that is …?” Sarah prodded.

  “Tamarack has its own horror story,” Travis said, “only I’m not that sure about it.”

  “What do you mean, not sure about it?” Sam asked.

  “I just remember my grandfather and one of his friends once discussing something terrible that happened out on the River Road – something really awful that my grandfather said was the worst thing that ever happened here.”

  “Well,” Nish said impatiently, “what was it?”

  “I don’t know. They stopped talking about it when I came in the room.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “find out.”

  6

  It was the day of the Screech Owls’ first lacrosse game ever. They were scheduled to play the Toronto Mini-Rock, a peewee version of the Toronto Rock professional lacrosse team, with identical sweaters, their own team bus – and an attitude.

  Some of the Owls had gone over to the rink that morning to catch the arrival of the Toronto team. They seemed, to the Owls, much bigger, much older, and much more arrogant than their own little team. They got off the bus with a cocky, know-it-all swagger, all decked out in team sweats with the Rock logo, and all with equipment bags that looked so professional Travis was glad none of the Owls had bothered to cart along their own equipment.

  Several of the Mini-Rock players took out their sticks – each one a brand-new, top-of-the-line Brine with the loose strings carefully braided – and they whipped the ball around so quickly Travis could hardly follow it.

  They never missed a pass. The ball never struck the sides of their sticks. The Mini-Rock players whipped back passes and underarm passes and sidearm passes. They even played a game in which the player making the catch had to hold his stick up perfectly steady, without moving it no matter what the throw, and each time the ball flew directly in without so much as a tick against the side.

  “I think I just came down with an injury,” Nish said.

  “Me, too,” said Andy.

  Muck held a brief warm-up practice shortly after noon. To give them a feel for the upcoming game, Muck had the Owls simply run in two different circles, the players in each circle lobbing the ball between each other. They took a few shots at Nish – none of which he stopped – and then Muck sent them out on laps while he headed off in the direction of the coach’s dressing room.

  “What’s with Muck?” Nish shouted at Travis as he puffed up from behind him.

  “Looks like he’s quitting!” shouted Fahd from the other side.

  “Muck doesn’t quit,” said Travis.

  They ran until they could feel the sweat rolling out of their helmets and all the way down to the small of their backs. They ran until the balls of their feet stung. They ran, and ran, until the rink filled with a sound far more familiar from winter: Muck’s whistle.

  Muck was in the home players’ box, and he was no longer alone. Standing at his side was a very old man with white, white hair and the thickest glasses Travis had ever seen. It looked as if he was staring out at the Owls through those little shot glasses Mr. Lindsay kept in the locked liquor cabinet.

  The Screech Owls looped over towards the players’ bench and the cool relief of the water bottles. Most didn’t even bother to drink, just tilted their masks back on their heads, grabbed the plastic bottles, raised them high, and sprayed.

  Lacrosse sweat, Travis decided, was different from hockey sweat. Twice as much and twice as warm. It always amazed him how, in a hockey game, a good sweat could almost cool him at the end of a hard shift. Not so in this game. This sweat was like scalding water on the skin. Salted scalding water.

  Muck opened the door and stepped aside for the old man to step out onto the floor.

  Travis could hardly believe what he was seeing through his stinging, blinking, sweat-filled eyes.

  The old man had sneakers on. And white shorts with green stripes identical to Muck’s. And he was carrying a lacrosse stick unlike any other on the floor.

  The old man’s stick was made from a single piece of wood, and wood so polished from use, the shaft seemed to shine in his hands. It curved at the end like a shepherd’s crook, and the loop was completed by something that looked like hard leather. The pocket itself was leather while the pockets of the kids’ sticks were nylon string. And the loose leather strands at the end of his stick were perfectly braided and each one tied off with a different colour of bright cloth.

  Travis had never seen such a stick before. It was … well … beautiful, but he couldn’t see how it would be good for anything, unless you hung it on a rec-room wall and called it an antique.

  Muck cleared his throat, a signal for them all to pay careful attention. “This is Mr. Fontaine,” he said.

  “Hello, boys,” Mr. Fontaine said.

  How bad are his eyes? Travis wondered. Can’t he see there are girls on this team?

  “And girls,” Sam corrected.

  Mr. Fontaine blinked, looked around several times. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Sorry about that. Muck told me there were girls on this team – something we sure didn’t have in our day.”

  “Mr. Fontaine was my coach when I played lacrosse,” said Muck. “He knows more about this game than anyone standing here knows about hockey – so listen to everything he says. He’ll be working with us this summer.”

  Travis couldn’t help looking over at Nish, who was rolling his eyes. Nish usually didn’t have time for anyone even a few years older than he was, let alone several decades. And he was a firm believer in modern equipment – the best new skates, the best pants, top-of-the-line sneakers, the right logo on his T-shirt and baseball cap, the tiniest cellphone, the number-one video game, CD, or movie.

  There was only one kind of antique Nish liked, he once told Trav
is. Leftovers in the refrigerator!

  Muck picked up his whistle and blew it lightly. “Let’s work on some drills.”

  Travis had been working at the far end of the floor with Sarah and Dmitri – Muck was keeping them to their hockey lines for the time being – and he was trying to get around Sam and Fahd for a clean shot on Nish.

  His size was hurting him. In hockey he had his speed to take him around defence, but in lacrosse you either went right through the defence or else you tucked the ball in tight to your body and tried to roll through. Cross-checking was perfectly legal in lacrosse, and Sam, with her great strength, was almost flicking Travis away like a pesky mosquito every time he tried to break through for a shot.

  “You’re having trouble, eh, son?” Mr. Fontaine said, noting the obvious.

  “I guess,” Travis said.

  “You know,” Mr. Fontaine continued, “it’s not necessary for you and the ball to travel together – so long as you both reach your destination at the same time.”

  Travis had no idea what the old man meant.

  Mr. Fontaine took the ball from Travis and dropped it into his own old stick. It made absolutely no sound as it fell, cradled deep inside the leather.

  Mr. Fontaine moved the stick to his shoulder, then whipped it hard in a shot aimed straight at Nish’s head. Nish hit the concrete – but the ball was still in Mr. Fontaine’s stick!

  “You okay, son?” the old man called to Nish. “Slip on something?”

  Nish mumbled something in response and scrambled back to his feet.

  The rest of the Owls had gathered to watch. Those who had seen the fake were in shock. They had never seen a stick move so quickly, almost like a frog’s tongue flicking a passing fly out of mid-air.

  “Now,” Mr. Fontaine said to Sam, “you try to stop me – okay?”

  Sam seemed unsure. “O-kay,” she said. The old man looked at her hard. “I mean stop me, understand?”

  Sam still seemed uncertain. “I guess,” she said.

  The old man flicked a few fakes. It seemed, to Travis, as if he were playing with a huge Yo-Yo instead of a lacrosse stick. Once, he even turned the stick upside-down and swung it in a perfect 360-degree circle, handing it off behind his back, and still the ball held its position snug in the pocket.

  The old man began running at Sam. Travis had never seen such skinny, blue-veined legs. They were white as the lacrosse ball. And they also seemed unsteady, as if he shouldn’t even be walking, let alone running on an arena floor.

  Sam was red with embarrassment for the old man. She made a half-hearted effort. Mr. Fontaine snapped out a fake that sent her screaming to the floor, convinced he had just sliced her ear off.

  The old man flicked his stick so that it lobbed the ball slowly back and over his head, then without looking he stabbed the stick behind his back, catching the ball again perfectly. He seemed to know, instinctively, where the ball would be.

  Mr. Fontaine helped Sam up.

  “I mean stop me, my dear, don’t pity me.”

  “Y-y-yes, sir,” Sam said.

  He circled back, bouncing the ball and picking it up again without so much as a glance as he turned on those spindly, weak legs and charged again.

  This time Sam came out hard, her stick held up to block the old man.

  He faked ever so gently with one shoulder. Sam spread her feet, prepared for any turn he might take.

  Quick as a snap, Mr. Fontaine bounced the ball between her legs as she turned to go the other way with him. He slipped around the other side, caught the ball on its way up, faked once to put Nish into a sliding block, and then whipped the stick around his back to drop an unbelievable backhander into the net.

  “My God!” Andy said beside Travis.

  “Unbelievable!” added Jesse.

  Mr. Fontaine reached into the net, spun his stick effortlessly against the ball as it rolled about the concrete floor, and pulled his stick away with the ball once again nestled perfectly in the pocket.

  I would die happy, Travis thought, if only once I could pick up the ball like that.

  The old man came trotting back to Travis. He held out his stick, turned it over, and deposited the ball in Travis’s hand.

  “Now you try it,” he said.

  7

  Four hours later, the Screech Owls were losing 17–5 to the Toronto Mini-Rock. The score was hardly unexpected; they were only just beginning and the Toronto team had been around for years. What was important, Muck told them, was not who won, but how the Screech Owls developed as a team. The game would give them a sense of how far they had yet to go before they could call themselves a lacrosse team.

  Nish had played well. He had blocked dozens of shots, some of them while lying on his stomach in his crease and kicking up his legs. Balls had hit him on the head, on the chest, on his toes, and once even on his butt when he got so confused he forgot which way he was facing.

  Sarah, too, had played well, though she was up against a huge centre who at first kept bowling her over whenever they fought for a loose ball. Her opponent was the Mini-Rock’s top player, but she didn’t let him overwhelm her. Her playmaking skills in hockey were all evident in lacrosse, and she had good enough speed to keep up with and even beat the Mini-Rock forwards. She had scored three of the Owls’ goals, and twice sent Dmitri in on breakaways. Dmitri was easily the fastest player on the floor, but he kept dropping the ball before he could get a shot away.

  Travis had his own troubles. He kept getting knocked away from the play. He couldn’t win the corners, and he couldn’t break through the defence to give Sarah another target apart from Dmitri.

  Late in the third Sarah cleanly won a draw and broke up-floor quickly. She threw the ball to Dmitri, who caught it and began racing down the far boards.

  A large Mini-Rock defenceman came out and drilled him with a hard cross-check, spilling the ball along the boards, bouncing crazily from sidespin.

  Sarah moved past her check and scooped the ball on the run. She set along the far boards, faked a pass to Sam on defence, then threw completely cross-floor to Travis.

  Travis felt the ball rattle against his pocket, but it stayed. It felt heavy. He was panicking, and he couldn’t stop it. The other defender was charging right at him, stick held out like he was coming to take Travis’s head off.

  His first instinct was to duck, but he knew that would only make the situation worse.

  He stepped towards the defenceman, faked, and the defender stopped, setting. Travis dropped his shoulder, forcing the defender to spread his feet. He bounced the ball through and darted quickly by the surprised defenceman just in time to lunge ahead and catch the ball, barely, before it spun off into the corner.

  There was only the goaltender between Travis and the net. The goaltender puffed out his chest pad and came at him. Travis faked again and raced towards the corner, breaking the goalie’s angle.

  He fired blind. All he saw was the red light flash. All he heard was Sarah’s scream.

  “YYYYYYYYEEESSSSSSS!”

  He had scored the first lacrosse goal of his life – and on Mr. Fontaine’s magic play!

  Travis loved the feel of his linemates piling on. It had been a meaningless goal – no way could they win – but it had been a beautiful one.

  At the bench even Muck was smiling. Travis came off, and Data tossed a towel around his neck as he took his seat on the bench.

  Travis felt a pair of hands on his shoulders. They were the oldest-looking hands he had ever seen. Pure white where they weren’t freckled or liver-spotted. Gnarled, bony fingers. Huge, swollen knuckles. They looked as if they might shatter if someone squeezed them. But then they squeezed – quickly, and with surprising strength.

  And then they were gone.

  8

  The final score was 19–8 for the Toronto Mini-Rock. It had been a clean game, and the two teams shook hands. Mr. Dillinger had ice-cold Cokes waiting for them in the dressing room, and Muck took the unusual step of making a very s
hort post-game speech.

  “By the end of the season we’ll be even with them,” Muck said. “Just wait and see.”

  Travis doubted it, but he still felt very good. Lacrosse was fun, almost as much fun as hockey, and he had to wonder if he’d ever scored a sweeter goal in winter than the one he’d scored just now.

  “Where’s Mr. Fontaine?” Travis asked as the dressing room emptied.

  “He never came in,” said Derek.

  “Went straight from the bench to the front door,” said Sam.

  Travis shrugged. Perhaps he had to be somewhere. Too bad, though, because Travis had wanted to thank him for the lesson.

  He drove home with his parents. Mr. Lindsay, who had played a little lacrosse when he was growing up, was delighted with the game and said he hoped this signalled the return of a sport that had simply faded away for lack of interest.

  “Who was the old man on the bench with Muck?” Mr. Lindsay asked after a while.

  “Mr. Fontaine,” Travis said.

  “Zeke Fontaine?” Mr. Lindsay asked.

  Zeke? Travis wondered. What kind of name is that?

  “Just Mr. Fontaine,” he said from the back seat. “That’s what Muck called him. He’s going to help Muck coach.”

  They drove in silence after that. Mr. Lindsay seemed to be thinking about something else.

  Finally, Mrs. Lindsay asked her husband, “Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know if it’s who I think it is,” said Mr. Lindsay.

  “And who do you think it is?” Mrs. Lindsay asked.

  “I’d rather not say until I know for sure.”

  Nish was at Travis’s door early the next morning. He’d already forgotten about the loss to the Toronto Mini-Rock and had turned his attention completely to the horror movie that was going to make them millions and show Mr. Dinsmore down at the Bluebird Theatre that he had made a terrible mistake kicking out next year’s Oscar winners.