by Fran Hurcomb
Going Places
FRAN HURCOMB
Text copyright © 2008 Fran Hurcomb
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hurcomb, Fran, 1949-
Going places / written by Fran Hurcomb.
(Orca young readers)
ISBN 978-1-55469-019-0
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8565.U72G63 2008 jC813’.54 C2008-903059-1
First published in the United States, 2008
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008928574
Summary: Girls’ hockey has finally come to Fort Desperation,
Northwest Territories, along with vandalism,
a mystery and the possibility of a road trip.
The author would like to acknowledge the support
of the Northwest Territories Arts Council.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover artwork by Gary Alphonso
Author photo by Kathleen Smith
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
PO BOX 5626, STN. B PO BOX 468
VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA
V8R 6S4 98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1
To all of the Hockey Girls
across the North.
Acknowledgments
Thanks as always to Dave and Kathleen for being supportive and helpful with technical details. Thanks also to Ann Westlake for early editing and encouragement and Sarah Harvey of Orca Book Publishers for her skillful editing, which managed to be both educational and enjoyable.
Chapter One
With four seconds left in the final game, Hayley Wickenheiser scored for Canada on an empty net, and that was it. Game over. Canada had beaten the United States 2–0 to win the Four Nations Cup.
“Wow,” said my mom, “what a game.”
“Yeah,” I replied, relaxing back into the couch in the corner of our café. “They are so good. How can they play like that?”
Mom reached up and turned off the tv; then she settled down on her stool behind the counter. She’s the proud owner and proprietor of Casey’s Café, the only restaurant in all of beautiful Fort Desperation, Northwest Territories. Casey was my dad, whose dream the whole thing was, way back in the eighties.He died three years ago, and Mom decided to keep the place going. I am the number-one assistant, which means waitress, dishwasher and cleaning lady, when required.
“Years of practice, Jess. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll play for Team Canada.”
I laughed. “Yeah, right. You know what I like best? I like the way they pass the puck around. Way more than in men’s hockey.”
“I like that there’s no bodychecking,” added Mom. “I hate seeing men being pounded into the boards. This is much more civilized.”
I leaned further back into the couch. “I wonder what it would be like to play girls’ hockey?” I said.
“Do you think you’d like it?” asked Mom.
“I don’t know, but sometimes I get tired of the boys. Some of them are getting awfully big and mean.”
“Well,” she said, “I was talking with Milly Smithers…you know, the wife of that new rcmp corporal. They have three girls who all played girls’ hockey back in Newfoundland.” I’d seen the girls at school. One of them, the middle girl, Daisy, was in my class. Our school is small—a total of about two hundred students from grade one to twelve— so new faces really stand out. Daisy and her sisters were the topic of many conversations. They seemed friendly, but they kept to themselves. Having an rcmp dad probably meant they had more rules to follow than most of the kids in Fort Desperation.
“Just because it happens in Newfoundland doesn’t automatically mean that it will happen here, Mom,” I pointed out. “This is the Northwest Territories. We’re, like, thirty-five years behind the rest of the country in everything, including girls’ hockey.”
“Now you know that’s not true. We do have the Internet now.” She did have a point. The Internet had arrived in Fort Desperation two years ago. It was slow, but it was here.
“Anyway,” she continued, “if you’d like, I could do a little research online. I think Yellowknife has girls’ hockey now.”
“Mom, Yellowknife is big. They even have a Wal-Mart. We have George’s Trading Post and Video Rentals. It’s just not the same. You can’t compare us to Yellowknife.”
“Honey, couldn’t you try to keep an open mind for a few days? Ask around. You never know. There might be some other girls who’d be interested. Playing with girls might actually be fun, and besides, you’re less likely to get hurt.”
Ahaaaa…there it was…the real reason for this sudden interest in girls’ hockey. Last year I’d broken my collarbone in a boy’s game against Hay River. That Melvin Laroque plays so dirty. I never even saw him coming. He flattened me into the boards and skated away with a big grin on his face. They took me off on a stretcher. It was so embarrassing. It made me feel a little better to hear that my teammate Michael Greyeyes beat him up after the game. But still…I was out for the rest of the season, and that sucked.
Boys’ hockey was rough, but I was used to it. The boys in town try not to kill me and the other girls, but in the last year or so some of them have grown so much that it even hurts when they lean on me in the corners. I sometimes feel like I’m surrounded by giant aliens. Boys from other communities aren’t always so nice. In fact, it sometimes feels like they’re out to get the girls, just to let us know that they think we shouldn’t be playing hockey.
“Mom, girls’ hockey might be totally wimpy. They don’t even allow bodychecking. It would be…” I tried to think of the right word. “Dainty!” I said finally.
She laughed. “I can’t imagine you or Sam or Geraldine ever being dainty, dear. Sorry. Anyway, think about it a bit and talk to the others. You never know, it might work.”
Chapter Two
As I walked down the main road after school the next day, trying hard not to break my ankles in the frozen ruts, I did think about girls’ hockey. In some ways, it seemed like a good idea…to have other girls to change with would certainly be more fun. Right now, we had to change in the bathroom off the lobby, one at a time, while the boys got to monopolize the two changing rooms. And I had to admit that even though I had been playing with these boys since I was seven and knew them inside out, I really didn’t feel like I belonged with them anymore. Some of them would be quite happy if girls never played.
This year I was supposed to play Bantam. I have one of those end-of-the-year birthdays that always leaves me younger than everyone else on the team. My parents let me stay home an extra year when I was kindergarten age, so I started school later. It works out okay. I’m actually one of the oldest in my grade seven class, which might be why I get good marks.
Bantam was going to be tough. Some of those boys are really big, and they love bodychecking. It seems like that’s their favorite part of hockey.
But nothing would ever make me quit hockey. It was the biggest thing in my life. I missed it when the season was finished, and I started dreaming about playing in July or so. In October, a gray time of year in Fort Desperati
on, the thought of it was all that kept me going. Since we had natural ice in the arena, we wouldn’t be playing indoors till almost Christmas, but the pond behind the school would be frozen any day now, so at least there’d be a chance to play outside until the arena was ready.
When I got home, Spider, my skinny, long-legged, totally loveable dog was bouncing up and down on his chain beside the woodpile. His ice-blue eyes were fastened on me, pleading for a walk. “Just a sec, boy. Let me grab your leash, and we’ll go,” I said.
Spider is great. He’s a reject from the sled-dog racing scene. He runs like the wind, but not when he’s in harness. Show him a harness, and he goes on strike. One of the dog mushers from down south gave him to me last year after our local race. I was his last chance, and he knew it.
I unclipped him and let him run loose. There wasn’t much traffic this time of day. There was never much traffic, come to think of it. We headed to the riverbank, where, with any luck, he might scare up a rabbit for a chase. I liked walking along the riverbank. It was sort of restful, but also interesting. The river was always changing.
The Mackenzie River is the whole reason for Fort Desperation being here at all. Fort Desperation isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. I think that the fur traders who founded it almost two hundred years ago were starving to death or something when they named it. But things must have improved, because it’s still here today. About eight hundred people live here now, people of every kind. Lots are Dene or Metis, like me. Some are descendents of the original fur traders.
But there are also people from all over Canada. There are families from China, India and Europe and even a few old draft dodgers from the United States. Mostly everyone gets along okay.
The river looked ominous in the fall gloom. A dusting of snow along the shore only made the swift waters look blacker than ever. Hard to believe that in a month or so it would be frozen almost solid. The days were already getting really short. Soon it would be pitch black when I walked to school in the morning and black again an hour after I got home. We were due for our first blizzard too, and all of the boys were totally hyped for snow. For them, it meant only one thing: snowmobiles. They’d be racing everywhere, day and night.
“Hey.” From behind me a familiar voice broke the silence. It was Michael Greyeyes, from my hockey team.
“Hey, yourself,” I said.
“How’s it going?”
“Not bad.” There was a long pause while Michael fell in step beside me. I hadn’t seen him much since hockey ended last spring. He had been away for most of the summer, and he’s a grade ahead of me at school.Likethe rest of the boys, he had grown lots. He towered over me now. “Going to play this year?” he asked.
“Sure. I mean, what else would I do?”
“Yeah. I heard they were going to try and get the ice in earlier this year, so we can actually start before Christmas.”
“That would be cool.”
“Yeah.” There was another long pause. “The pond is starting to freeze. There might be a game on the weekend if the ice is good. Want to play?” he asked.
“Sure. Guess I should dig out my skates and get them sharpened.” There was an old sharpening machine at the gas station where we could sharpen our skates for a dollar apiece. “I hope the machine is still working.”
“Yeah. It would be a real drag if it broke. Well… See ya.” And with that, he was gone, jogging slowly across the road and heading toward home. I whistled for Spider, who had been happily searching the riverbank for disgusting things to roll in. Luckily, he hadn’t found anything. Trying to give Spider a bath was not much fun.
Chapter Three
At school the next day, I had a chance to talk to my two best friends, Sam and Geraldine. We had all started playing hockey together when we were little. We were actually the first girls in Fort Desperation to play hockey, so we got to be a bit famous. My dad was our first coach, and he made it lots of fun, but I think if it hadn’t been for Sam and Ger I probably would have given up when the boys started laughing at the way I skated. We stuck it out though, and it was worth it. Last year we played together on a line on the Peewee team and scored a lot of goals.
“What would you think of starting a girls’ hockey team?” I asked casually at lunchtime. There was a stunned silence.
“A what?” said Ger.
“A girls’ hockey team. You know. No guys, just girls.”
“Why would we do that?” asked Sam.
“Well, maybe if all the girls who already play got together, and we could find a few others who’d like to try it out, then we’d have a team. I guess we could practice and then maybe go somewhere for a tournament or something. My mom said she’d look into it if we’re interested.”
“What a weird idea,” replied Ger.
“My mom was talking to the new rcmp corporal’s wife. I guess those Smithers girls played girls’ hockey in Newfoundland.”
“They don’t look like hockey players. They look like Barbie dolls,” exclaimed Sam.
“They’re not that bad. In fact, they’re really mean soccer players. I saw them playing at the field when they first got here. They know what they’re doing.”
“Okay, so say they can actually play. That makes six of us. That’s not enough,” piped up Geraldine.
“Yeah, I know. I suppose if we could find a few more girls who could skate, we could at least try it out. It would be cool to do a road trip without the boys.”Road trips with the boys were not always fun. They had farting contests and peeing competitions and only wanted to watch gory combat movies on the bus. And they sure didn’t want to go to the mall to shop. A road trip with girls would be awesome.
“Maybe we could go to Yellowknife. They have girls’ teams there…and a Wal-Mart, and McDonald’s and a swimming pool. Yeah, that would be cool,” said Geraldine after thinking for a few seconds.
“Yeah. Well, I guess we could ask around a bit. But I’m not going to quit boys’ hockey,” I said.
“Oh, for sure. I’m not quitting real hockey. This is just for a road trip,” agreed Sam.
The one place that everyone in Fort Desperation always goes is George’s Trading Post and Video Rentals, known simply as George’s. Even if you don’t need groceries, you’ll probably want to rent a movie sometime. In the lobby is a beat-up bulletin board, which is the main communication center in town. It is plastered with notices for babysitters, firewood, sled dogs for sale, Ski-Doo parts and church bazaars. It was the perfect place to put up the small sign that read: Are you interested in playing on a girls’ hockey team? Contact Mary Middleton at Casey’s. Since Mom wanted to help, I figured this would be a good way to start.
At breakfast a few days later, Mom looked at me with questions in her eyes. “I got a phone call last night from Jewel Graham. She says the twins are interested in playing hockey. Do you know anything about this?”
“Oh no…not the twins.” My worst nightmare had come true. Opal and Ruby Graham were twin figure skaters. They had learned a bit about figure skating in Hay River when they were little and could often be seen twirling and leaping in the arena, wasting perfectly good ice time. They wore tiny dresses and gleaming white figure skates. They were definitely not hockey players. “They can’t join, Mom. No way.”
“What I’d like to know is why they phoned me about it? What does this have to do with me?”
“Well, Mom, you wanted to help. I thought we could use your expertise in organization to get started,”I replied, trying the old “You slide further on grease than sandpaper” approach.
She glared. “You don’t think I’m busy enough running this place fourteen hours a day?”
“Don’t worry. Nothing will really happen. There’s no way we’ll ever get enough players for a team. And the twins are banned!”
Chapter Four
How could I have known that there were so many girls who wanted to play hockey? By Friday, Mom had received four more phone calls, and I had several other inquiries at school. There app
eared to be about fifteen girls in town who wanted to play hockey. Yikes!
“Well, now what do we do?” Mom asked Sam, Geraldine and me when we stopped in at the café after school. “Are you girls really into this, or was it just a joke?”
We looked at each other. What did we want to do?
“Well,” I said, after a short silence, “what we really want is to go on a road trip, with girls, not boys. But I don’t know what to do next.” Geraldine and Sam nodded in agreement.
“Next. Yes, next is always a problem,” said Mom. There was a long pause while she thought. “I think we need a meeting. That’s always safe. We can hope that nobody shows up.”
“Yeah, cool. A meeting. I’ll make another sign,” volunteered Sam.
“We could have it here, Mom, some evening. There’s lots of room.”
“Okay,” agreed Mom, “but I’m not doing any phoning. I draw the line at phoning.”
So, Sam made the sign. This one was bigger and fancier, with hockey graphics and colored printing. It let Fort Desperation know that A meeting for everyone interested in girls’ hockey (parents welcome) is being held at Casey’s Café on Monday evening at 7 pm. That would give us the weekend to decide what we really wanted.
Saturday morning dawned clear and cold. Winter was finally here. I scraped a hole in the new frost on the kitchen window. Time to put up the plastic. I peered through the tiny hole and read the thermometer: minus twenty-two degrees Celsius. All right! It was cold enough to make ice! Lots of ice!
Before I did anything else, I hauled in a few armloads of dry wood and kindling. The woodstove in the café had been sitting patiently, waiting for winter, and this was officially it. I opened the door, stuffed in some paper and kindling and struck a match. I watched while the paper and then the kindling burst into flame. Once it was going well, I added a few small logs and adjusted the damper. For the next six or seven months, the fire would rarely go out. We had an oil furnace, but wood was a lot cheaper. Once it got cold, the woodstove became our main source of heat, and another job for me. At least I didn’t have to cut the wood. Once a month, Edward Mercredi delivered a cord to our back door. Six cords got us through most winters.