The flies buzzed around them. Travis swatted a mosquito. The old man was rooting about in what seemed to be a shed tacked on to the back of the main house. An open doorway to one side led to what looked like it might be the living room. There were papers all over the place.
Mr. Fontaine grunted with satisfaction and stepped back, pulling a lacrosse stick out from a pile of shovels and rakes that were leaning against the wall. He turned, punching the pocket, wiping a hand up and down the handle to clear away the dust.
Dust or not, Travis could tell it was a Logan. Barely used. Still as good as the day it was bought, thirty or forty years before.
“You think you can take good care of this?” the old man asked as he handed it over to Travis.
“Yes, sir,” Travis said. “It’s beautiful.”
“It belonged to my boy,” Zeke Fontaine said. “He was Muck’s best friend. And as good a lacrosse player as I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The old man sounded so sad as he said this. Travis had no idea what to say to him.
“He sounds like a neat kid,” Nish said, filling in the gap.
The old man nodded. He looked up, his old eyes glistening in the dim light. “There’s a picture of him there on that table,” he said, pointing a slightly shaking finger.
It was an old school picture, now badly faded, but it showed a handsome young man with light blond hair and a wide, confident smile.
“Looks about our age,” Nish said.
The old man nodded.
Travis could say nothing. He was dumbstruck. He stood, his mouth wide open, staring at the photograph of Liam Fontaine.
He felt he had seen the boy before … somewhere.
At the graveyard?
15
For the entire ride back to town Travis wondered how to tell Nish that he thought he had seen Liam Fontaine before. He had no idea how he could say anything without making a complete fool of himself. What could he say? That he had seen the boy at the cemetery the night they had gone to The Blood Children: Part VIII. Nish wouldn’t believe him. And who would blame him? Travis couldn’t believe it himself.
It made no sense.
Nish, however, was thinking only about his movie. He babbled all the way about the “great setting” Old Man Fontaine’s place would make for a horror flick. Nish loved the dark, spooky house. Loved the dog’s grave. Loved Zeke Fontaine’s face – so much in fact that he was even toying with asking the old man if he’d like a part in his film.
Get real! Travis wanted to say. But he said nothing. He let Nish dream on. And he tried to force his own thoughts back to something more down-to-earth.
The Screech Owls were due to play the following evening in Brantford, home of the second-best team in the league, the Warriors. It was going to be a tough test for the Owls. If they could compete against the Warriors, they were a real lacrosse team.
Travis wondered if he had enough courage to try the stick Mr. Fontaine had given him.
The Warriors were everything Muck had warned them they would be. Big and tough and extremely skilled, if a bit slow on their feet. Mr. Dillinger seemed particularly worried and fidgeted terribly, almost as if he wished he had something useful to do – like sharpen skates. But Mr. Dillinger only had water bottles to fill and laces to worry about, and the lack of work just seemed to make him more nervous.
Travis, too, was nervous. He took the new – or was it old? – Logan out for warm-up and one of the referees came running over to check it out. Not because it might be illegal, as Travis first feared, but because he had recognized the make and wanted a closer look.
“You’re a lucky young man,” he said to Travis as he handed it back.
Travis wasn’t so sure.
The game began. Sarah won the draw easily, but was instantly flattened by a hard check from behind. The ball squirted to Travis’s side and he tried to scoop it up but lost it when it ticked off the catgut. A Warrior scooped it free, tossed it cross-floor, and sent in his winger on a break. He rolled right off Fahd’s check and scored easily on a bounce shot that Nish misjudged.
One shot, one goal.
The Warriors built the score to 5–0 by the time of the first intermission. Travis and the other Owls sagged against the boards, spraying water directly onto their faces and munching on orange sections that Mr. Dillinger had cut up when he ran out of other things to do.
Travis was disheartened. The Owls looked weak and disorganized and unskilled.
“Your speed,” Muck said. “Use your speed.”
Sarah got them rolling with a great rush up-floor in which she turned her back on the defence as they came together, crashed into them, and dropped off to Dmitri, who stepped around the falling defenders and beat the Brantford goalie on a sidearm.
Andy scored on a long shot that took an odd bounce.
Simon scored on a shot that tipped in off a Warrior’s stick.
The Warriors scored two more, and the Owls answered with two, one by Sam and the other by Travis on a low underhand that skimmed the floor and slipped right in between the Brantford goalie’s feet.
They were into the third frame, the Owls still down by two goals, when Wilson scored on a wonderful solo effort that took him up-floor and around the opposition net, sending in a high overhand lob that just cleared the goaltender’s shoulder before the clock ran out.
There was only a minute left in the game.
Sarah had the ball in her own corner. Two Warriors were on her. She huddled down and popped the ball free to Nish, who’d left his crease to help out.
Travis cut towards centre. “NISH!” he screamed.
Nish saw him and hit him perfectly. Travis took the ball, turned, and headed in.
One defender back.
Travis reached up and wedged the ball down hard into the pocket. He had tried the bounce play twice already. Once it had worked. Once it hadn’t. They might be expecting it again.
He dropped his shoulder.
The defender didn’t go for it, keeping his legs together to block any bounce.
Travis tossed his stick, high and spinning through the air, and stepped around the surprised defenceman. The stick seemed to move in slow motion. It hung suspended in the air. Travis could hear gasps from the crowd. He could hear his own feet slapping on the floor.
Moving in under the stick, he reached up with one hand and caught it. He jammed the stick down so the bottom of the handle rapped off the arena floor, jiggling the ball free.
A fake, a fake backhander, and he slipped an underhand shot in the short side.
The arena erupted.
The players on the floor mobbed Travis. The players on the bench bolted as the clock ran out and the buzzer sounded.
Travis had scored a thousand goals in hockey, including practices, exhibition games, and road games, but it was never like this.
Even Nish was on top of him, weighing about fifty extra pounds in his sweat-filled, stinking equipment. He had never smelled so sweet!
Now there were other hands pulling him free. Strong, big hands. It was Muck. He was smiling and shaking his head. “I guess I know where you got that.”
Travis smiled back. He looked for Mr. Fontaine, but the old man was already at the gate leading off the floor and away.
There was no use chasing him. The players were all holding each other and half dancing in the corner of the rink. They had only tied the game, but they had tied the Warriors.
They were a team.
A competitive team.
With only the championship now to go.
16
“It’s no good.”
Travis didn’t like what he was hearing, but wasn’t surprised. Data and Fahd and Sarah and Sam were delivering the verdict on the video he and Nish had brought back from the dump.
“You can see too much of the dump,” said Fahd.
“No one’s going to be scared out of their wits by a bear ripping apart a garbage bag,” said Data.
“We’re going to have to
try again,” said Sarah.
Travis let out a long breath. “Okay,” he said. “What can we do?”
Sam had some ideas. They would set up in the deep woods just behind the dump and try to film one of the bears in the wild. They could then combine this with the better shots of the bears taking swipes and runs at each other in the dump, but only the ones that didn’t show the garbage.
Fahd jumped in: “And we can do a third series of shots showing dummies being ripped apart or blowing up or whatever. If we edit them in, people will think the bears are ripping people up. We just need to find a few dummies.”
“No problem there,” Sam said, looking right at him.
Fahd had heard the joke before, but still didn’t get it.
“Fine!” Nish interrupted. “There’s only one problem. How do we find a bear in the woods?”
“He comes to us,” Sam said. “You have to attract them – that’s what hunters do.”
“We’re not going to shoot them!” said Data.
“Yes we are,” said Sam, “with a camera.”
“Hunters bait them,” said Simon. “They put out rotting meat.”
“Gross!” said several of the Owls together.
“The bears are attracted by the smell,” Simon continued. “It has to be a strong smell, that’s why they use meat that’s gone bad.”
“Where are we going to find a smell that powerful?” wailed Fahd.
“Think about it,” said Sam.
There was a pause. No one understood.
Sam slowly raised her hand and very deliberately pointed, as if she were taking aim, at the source of a smell powerful enough to attract the attention of wild bears.
Nish!
Travis thought to himself, It’s a good thing that we’re capturing this on film, otherwise no one would ever believe it!
They were deep in the bush behind the garbage dump. They knew they were in the right area when Jesse found a large beech tree with sharp, regularly spaced scrapings across the bark. “A bear has scratched here to sharpen his claws,” he announced.
Travis looked up, way up. For a bear to reach that high, it would have to be twice the height of Travis. At least. He shuddered.
“What’s this?” Nish called from farther up the trail.
The others hurried along. Nish was standing over a huge black mound of what looked, on first glance, like mud.
“Bear dropping,” said Jesse.
Nish giggled. “How come we don’t call it ‘dropping’?”
“Because most of us have the decency to use a toilet,” said Sam.
“At least this proves a bear has been here recently,” said Simon.
“Time to get ready, Stinker Boy,” said Sarah.
All eyes were now on Nish. He was, already sweating. His face was twisted like an old sock.
“We’re not going to do this,” he wailed.
“We are so,” said Sam. “Now get your stuff on!”
17
And that was how Wayne Nishikawa came to be walking down a bush trail in full lacrosse goalie equipment. He looked a bit like a bear himself, the heavy equipment nearly doubling his bulk and making him waddle as he walked.
Sam’s idea had been ingenious, Travis thought. They needed a terrific, horrific smell that no bear on earth could help but notice. What better than Nish’s lacrosse equipment?
Nish had been outraged. He was furious when Sam suggested it and fought the idea tooth and nail. But the Owls had thought about it and decided. In the end, he had no choice. The horror movie, after all, was his idea. If it was going to work, they all had to pitch in – and this time it was his turn.
“I’m the director!” he’d whined. “Not bear bait!”
Jesse and Simon, who knew more about the bush than the others, had taken over the rest of the planning. Jesse knew, from experience, that nothing gets rid of a black bear better than a sudden sound, so they were carrying whistles, and Jesse even had an old pot and a wooden spoon to smack together if they needed to drive one off.
“What if one of them starts to eat me?” Nish had whined.
“What’s ‘I’m gonna hurl!’ in bear language?” laughed Sarah.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Jesse. “Bears are a lot more scared of people than people should be of them.”
Nish had dressed, reluctantly, at the side of the road and then walked in with the rest to take up their positions. He would waddle along the trails in his stinking equipment; Jesse and Simon would be right behind him in case some sudden noise was needed; and the Owls would set up with their cameras in two strategic places, hoping to get some good footage of a black bear rambling through the woods. With luck, they’d even have one of them rise on its haunches to sniff the air for some stinking Nishikawa.
Travis and Sarah and Sam were to take the far end of the path. Fahd and Andy were among the Owls at the near end.
Travis found a perfect stand of cedar to wriggle into. The branches were soft and smelled wonderful, and the skirt of the cedar was so low and dense that, once he was inside, he could not be seen from the trail.
Sarah and Sam hunkered down on the other side of the trail. Sam had the video camera. If either Travis or Sarah saw signs of a bear coming, their job was to alert Sam to be ready.
It was a hot, lazy day. There were still mosquitoes in the woods, and Travis wished he’d remembered to bring along a bottle of bug repellent. He felt he was being eaten alive.
The wind was still. The only sounds were the occasional songbird flitting through the trees, the grating call of a crow high in the maples, and as the air grew hotter, the deep, long buzz of cicadas that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Travis thought he heard a whistle!
It could mean one of only two things: a bear had been spotted, or a bear had to be frightened off.
He listened hard, wondering if he put his ear to the ground whether he could hear the sound better, the way a railway track is supposed to let you know a train is coming long before it can be seen.
He could hear breathing now! Heavy breathing, puffing!
Travis pushed out a little from under the apron of cedar branches. He looked down the trail, the sunlight dancing as it played through the high branches and spotted the path with occasional bright patches.
The sound was closer now! And he could hear branches being pushed aside and then swishing back into place.
He could hear grunting! The telltale sound of Nish working hard.
Travis looked across at Sarah and Sam. Sam was readying the camera. Sarah was leaning down, staring towards the sound of the oncoming Nish.
The branch of a spruce was thrust aside, and Nish pushed through, breathing very heavily now. He wasn’t running, but he seemed anxious, frightened.
Travis suddenly felt sorry for his friend.
Nish kept going, past Sam, past Sarah, past Travis, completely unaware that they were hidden there in the bush.
The spruce bough swung again, this time more slowly.
Travis felt his breath catch.
The head of a bear pushed through, swinging its nose from side to side, sniffing for Nish!
Travis could see Sam already filming. She was well out of sight and downwind from the bear. It hadn’t noticed her.
The bear pushed the rest of the way through. It was huge!
It paused, sniffed the air again, then rose on its haunches.
Travis caught the briefest flash of white.
Silvertip!
18
Where were Jesse and Simon?
Travis frantically searched the dark shadows beyond the bear. There was neither sight nor sound of them.
Perhaps the whistle had been a warning to scare off the big bear, but hadn’t worked! Perhaps the two boys had become separated from Nish or taken a wrong turn.
Maybe Nish was running! Maybe that was as fast as he could go with all that equipment on!
Travis instantly regretted this whole wild scheme
. They should never have agreed to send Nish out in his equipment. It might have seemed funny at the time – but no longer.
The bear settled on all fours again, sniffed and grunted loudly.
“HHHELLLLLP!”
The call came from ahead on the path. Travis swung around and saw that Nish had turned and seen the bear up on his hind legs. Nish was still wearing his goaltender’s mask, but the cage over his face couldn’t hide the pure, absolute terror in his eyes.
“HHHELLLLLP MMMMEEEE!”
Travis acted at once. His friend had called and he had to respond. He leaped free of his cover and jumped up and down, waving his arms.
“SHOOOO!” he shouted. “GET AWAY, BEAR!”
The bear stopped, rose again on his haunches.
Travis knew at once he’d made a mistake. He’d have had better luck against mosquitoes with that silly shout than against the biggest bear in the woods.
“SCRAMMMM!” he shouted with more force. He picked up a branch and threw it, spinning and crashing through the air. He wished he’d had a rock in his pocket. He looked around but could see none on the soft, needle-covered earth.
Silvertip stared at Travis, then raised his nose, sniffing. Sniffing for me? Travis wondered. Or sniffing for Nish?
Silvertip settled, then turned, his huge shoulders snapping dead twigs as he changed direction and headed off the path.
Straight for Travis.
“TRAVISSS!” Sarah shouted. “GET OUT OF HERE, QUICK!”
Travis was running before he could even think. He was pushing through spruce and cedar, the branches whipping into his face, and he was stumbling and sliding and slipping up and down hills.
He knew it was wrong. He knew that one thing you were never supposed to do around a black bear was turn tail and run. Back away slowly, the park rangers always said. Make noise, show no fear, and back away slowly. Don’t panic, don’t show them you’re petrified – and never run away screaming.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4 Page 15