The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2

by Roy MacGregor

“Who’re you anyway?” the reporter asked.

  “I’m the coach of this team, and I’m very upset with what you have done to this young man.”

  Lundrigan was almost like a puppy confronted by a large dog.

  “I just explained a minute ago to the kids,” he said. “It had nothing to do with me. They rejigged the piece and put that headline on it. I don’t write the headlines.”

  “But you could write an apology,” Muck said.

  “I will,” Lundrigan said. He was sweating, breathing hard. “I swear. But I can’t guarantee they’ll run it, okay?”

  “You work for this paper but you wash your hands of what they do to your work?” Muck asked.

  Again the sheepish grin: “Well, not usually–but sometimes they mess things up.”

  “You ever play hockey?” Muck asked.

  Lundrigan blinked, unsure what this had to do with what they were discussing here.

  “A bit,” he answered finally, “but what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Travis makes a mistake,” Muck said, “Sarah, here, doesn’t blame him. Same if she makes a mistake. We take responsibility for each other on our team, mister.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s all well and fine, but there’s a big difference between a game and reporting–”

  “Is there, now?” Muck asked. And with that he turned both Travis and Sarah around and marched them back to the dressing room.

  Travis had never believed there would come a time when he wished he wore another number. He had worn number 7 since his very first practice, when his father sent him out with a Detroit Red Wings sweater with the 7 sewn on the back and above it the name Lindsay. They were the same number and the same team sweater that his father’s older cousin, “Terrible Ted” Lindsay, had worn back in the 1950s.

  Now he’d take any other number–even one too large to fit into the loop at the end of the L in his autograph. Besides, no one was asking for his signature any more. They were still chasing “Paul Kariya’s cousin,” Nish, and there was huge interest in Sarah, who had played so brilliantly in the opening game, but the team captain of the Screech Owls, despite the magnificent hologram at the bottom of his card, was a bust. No one but the reporters wanted anything to do with him.

  Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. Most of the crowd seemed to know who was wearing number 7. There were a few boos during the warm-up, and shouts of “Shame!” from different sections in the stands.

  “Pay no attention,” Muck told him. “Remember, you’re here to play hockey. It’s what happens on the ice that counts.”

  The Owls were up against the other pre-tournament favourite in their division, the Beauport Nordiques. Beauport was just outside Quebec City, so the stands were packed with Beauport fans. The team also wore the fleur-de-lys pattern of the old NHL Quebec Nordiques, which apparently made for good television, because during the warm-up every camera that had been chasing Travis over the past few hours was down by the glass to get close-ups of Travis gliding past the opposition sweaters.

  Nicole and J-P had explained it to Travis. The old Nordiques, with their sweaters so similar to the provincial flag, had come to symbolize the fight for an independent Quebec. Whenever the Nordiques played the Montreal Canadiens, the event was hailed and promoted as a rematch of the “Battle of Quebec,” the same battle the French and English had fought on the Plains of Abraham back in 1759. And when the Nordiques won, it was a victory that reversed the outcome of the original battle. A victory for Quebec’s independence, a victory for the French language and culture.

  Travis couldn’t follow all of this. But he got enough of an idea to see what was being played out here between the Beauport Nordiques and the Screech Owls. No wonder the cameras were here.

  The Beauport team was big and fast and slick. Travis could tell from the warm-up that they were a superb hockey team. He knew Muck was concerned, too; why else would the Owls’ coach have bribed them with a trip to see Montcalm’s skull if they won? And Travis knew he would find it hard to play his best. He couldn’t shut out the noise. The boos hurt him. And he had missed the crossbar every shot he had taken during warm-up.

  Muck tried to change things around by starting Andy’s line. He said it was to open up a bit of ice for Sarah and Dmitri and Travis by keeping them away from the Nordiques’ top combination, but Travis knew it was to take him out of the picture. Muck didn’t need the entire Colisée coming down on Travis’s head just before the puck dropped.

  The teams were well matched. The Nordiques were as good as Travis had guessed. They carried the puck well, but the Owls checked better, particularly Andy and Sarah, who were brilliant at centre. Jeremy was in goal again, Muck taking advantage of Jeremy’s “hot hand,” and Nish was his usual force on defence.

  The moment Travis stepped on the ice for his first shift, there were more boos. He heard them as he chased a shot down the ice, and heard them, louder, when he first touched the puck. The first time he had the puck long enough to try a play–a simple give-and-go with Sarah–he stumbled and fell going for the return pass. The Colisée exploded with cheers.

  Travis skated off almost in tears. He had blown the play. He had let the crowd get to him. He wished he never had to take another shift.

  “You can answer them,” Muck told him as he leaned over from behind, his big hand working the tense muscles in Travis’s neck.

  “H–how?” Travis asked. He knew his voice was breaking. He didn’t even try to say more.

  “You play your game. The people here know their hockey better than any crowd in Canada. You show them what you can do, they’ll respect your abilities. And you don’t have to say a word.”

  Travis tried to gather himself. He felt ashamed that he had ever thought he wouldn’t want to wear the number of “Terrible Ted” Lindsay. By playing badly, he was not only letting his team down, he was letting his family down.

  Next shift, Travis went in to forecheck, the boos seeming to chase him up and down the ice. He came in on the defence, faked going to one side and stuck his far leg out just as the defence passed cross-ice. The puck slammed into Travis’s shin pad and bounced into the corner. He was on it instantly, the boos rising in waves around the rink. He stickhandled as the defender who had given up the puck came in on him, slipped the puck between the player’s legs and danced out the far side of the corner with it, free for a play.

  Nish was thundering in over the blueline. Travis hit Nish perfectly, tape to tape, and Nish wound up to shoot but, instead, faked the shot and passed off to Sarah, who one-timed the puck perfectly.

  Owls 1, Nordiques 0.

  “Think of the boos as cheers in another language,” Muck said as he slapped Travis’s shoulder and draped a towel around his neck.

  The Nordiques tied the score in the second period on a splendid end-to-end rush by the same defenceman Travis had checked, and then went ahead 2–1 on a lucky shot from the corner that was supposed to be a pass but clipped in off the back of Nish’s skate and in behind Jeremy.

  Muck sent Sarah’s line out with only two minutes left. The Owls were trailing by a goal, in a game they had to win, or at least tie, if they were to have any hope of reaching the finals–and, just as important, in Data’s case, anyway, if they were going to get a look at a real skull.

  They lined up for what might be the final face-off in the Owls’ end, Travis up hard against the Nordiques’ right winger, who was determined to rush the net as soon as the puck dropped.

  Their shoulders touched. They pushed. The Nordiques’ winger slashed Travis quickly across the ankle. The referee either didn’t see or didn’t want to see. Travis looked up into the player’s mask as their shoulders met again.

  “Maudit Anglais!” the player said, spitting out the words.

  Travis was confused. He couldn’t ask for a translation. He knew he didn’t need to. He couldn’t pull out his diary and show the player where his words had been twisted by the newspaper reporter.

  “You’ve got it all wron
g,” Travis said quickly. He looked again at the eyes. It was obvious the player did not understand what he had said. Travis cursed himself again for being so bad at French. Why can’t I tell him? he thought. Why can’t I even try?

  He had to try.

  “Je…,” he began, tapping his Owls crest with his glove. “J’aime vous…”

  The player blinked in what looked to Travis like shock, then laughed.

  What did I say? Travis wondered, panicking. I just wanted to tell him that he had it all wrong, that I liked him. But it’s not “J’aime vous,” for heaven’s sake. It’s “Je t’aime…” But wait a second, that’s not it either. Oh no, oh no, oh no–I think I just told him, “I love you!”

  Travis could feel the colour rising in his face. Mercifully, the puck dropped. Sarah took out her man and Data moved in quickly, plucking the puck free and taking it back behind his own net, where he quickly played it off the boards to Dmitri, on the far side.

  Travis knew his play was to head for the middle. He broke hard, looking at Dmitri for the pass, only to find he was flying into the boards instead, crushed by the right winger’s shoulder.

  The arena was cheering wildly. They were singing, “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goo-ood bye…”

  The big Nordiques winger was leaning down, smiling at him. “Je t’aime,” he said in a sarcastic, sing-songy voice.

  Coming out of nowhere, Nish’s glove hit the player’s shoulder, spinning him around. But before the two could do anything, Sarah had taken a stranglehold on Nish and was wrestling him away.

  It was the smart move. The referee’s hand was up; the winger who had charged Travis was getting a penalty. And the Owls desperately needed the advantage. With a power play and less than two minutes left in the game, they still had a chance for the tie.

  “You okay?” Muck called as Travis skated slowly to the bench, the boos following him all the way.

  “I’m fine,” Travis said. In fact, he could hardly catch his breath. His chest hurt. He had slammed hard into the boards.

  “Good,” said Muck. “You’re right back out there.”

  Travis turned back towards the face-off, the boos growing louder still, as if someone had grabbed the volume control and cranked it as high as it would go. Travis had never heard such noise. And it was all because of him. If only it had been cheers instead.

  Sarah won the face-off and sent the puck to Data, who fired it around the boards to Dmitri. Travis, grimacing with the pain, broke for the blueline and Dmitri hit him perfectly. Travis used the boards to chip the puck past the first defenceman, broke around him, and picked it up again just outside the Nordiques’ zone.

  There was one player back. Travis came in, ready to shoot, but then looked for Sarah, who was flying up over centre and had beaten her own check with her wonderful speed. Travis knew he had to try it. It had worked in practice. It had worked in the street. It had worked in the Duponts’ backyard rink.

  The back pass!

  He knew what Muck thought of it. “This isn’t lacrosse, mister,” he’d say in practice. But if ever the situation was perfect…

  He could hear the boos, still just as loud. If he could pull this off, Travis thought, he might silence them.

  Travis reached forward and put the blade of his stick in front of the puck. He had to be careful now; with the puck on his backhand he was working against the curve of the blade. He pulled the puck back until it was behind his skates and hidden from the defender.

  Instead of bringing the puck ahead of him again on his forehand, he continued the backward sweep until his stick was directly behind him, the puck still on the wrong side of the curve, and he slipped a pass, backwards, to where Sarah was skating.

  Sarah picked up the pass in full flight. The defender couldn’t turn right, having already committed to Travis, and she blew past him, coming in on net and turning the goaltender inside out and down with two quick stickhandles and a shoulder fake.

  She slipped the puck easily in on the backhand.

  Tie game, 2–2. With the clock running out.

  “No more back passes,” Muck said as the Owls left the ice to a chorus of boos.

  “It worked,” Travis said, grinning.

  “No more back passes,” Muck repeated.

  Travis said nothing. He was privately delighted with the back pass. But his heart sank as he turned the corner: the way to the Owls’ dressing room was blocked by cameras and reporters.

  “Will you be issuing an apology?” a woman shouted.

  Travis said nothing.

  “We’re told you will be making a statement–is that correct?” a man called out.

  Through the crush, Travis caught a glimpse of familiar curly hair. It was Bart Lundrigan, and he was being interviewed by another man. They were both seated and surrounded by lights and cameras. Lundrigan was talking, and the man interviewing him was nodding. Bart Lundrigan seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Travis realized that the reporter had chosen the location and time of his interview very carefully. The Owls–Travis, Nish, Mr. Dillinger, Muck–were all a dramatic background for his television appearance.

  “Inside,” Muck said.

  “Mr. Lindsay!” someone called.

  “Coach–can you give us a few minutes?”

  “Travis!”

  And then they were through the door and had slammed it behind them, the warmth of the Owls’ dressing room, the smiles of familiar faces, the cheers of his teammates, rising over Travis like a warm blanket at the end of a terrible nightmare.

  Muck was true to his word. The Screech Owls had managed a tie, a single point, against the powerful Beauport Nordiques, and so they were off to see Montcalm’s skull.

  They parked at the Château Frontenac, and before continuing, Muck led the Owls inside and met with an older man who seemed to know him from a long time ago. They talked a while about old hockey games and then moved off to a corner. The man had a notebook and took down some of the things that Muck said. Most of the Owls investigated the hotel souvenir shop while they waited, but Travis couldn’t fight his curiosity. He guessed that whatever it was that Muck and the man were discussing, it involved him. He thought at one point that he saw Muck hand the man a small book with a red vinyl cover. The diary?

  Muck said nothing to Travis about the meeting. When Muck had finished, he and Mr. Dillinger paraded the Owls away from the hotel and turned into a series of older, smaller streets until they came to one called Donnacona, which was so narrow it looked more like a side alley than a real street. They came to small sign, “MUSÉE,” and Muck turned in, with the rest of them following.

  It was a small chapel. Apart from a few nuns, most of them old and all clad in the same grey habit, the Owls were the only visitors. Attached to the chapel was a small museum filled with period clothes and religious items, most of which meant nothing to the Owls. In a small room on the ground floor, however, there was a glass case on a desk against the far wall, and inside the case was what they had come to see.

  Montcalm’s skull.

  “Awesome,” said Data.

  Travis would have used another word. Repulsive, perhaps, or frightening. There was nothing here that brought to mind the passions of the Battle of Quebec. There was no magnificent blue waistcoat or brilliantly white shirt, nothing heroic in the eyes as the Marquis lay mortally wounded, his men about to carry him off to the chapel where they hoped he might recover in time to save the city. There were not even eyes–only empty sockets.

  There was nothing here to suggest anything but death, and the mystery of what becomes of you when the spark of life is gone. The skull seemed so small to Travis–too small, surely, to have ever been a man. He could not see the face of the Marquis in it, only bone yellowed with age, the grinning jaws containing just a few remaining stained and broken teeth.

  “Can we take it out of the case?” Data asked.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Muck said. “Show a little respect for the dead, if you don’t
mind.”

  Travis noted that Muck was practically whispering in reply to Data’s near shout. Data saw everything from the point of view of someone who watches too much television. To him, the skull was a prop, just a toy. To Muck, the skull was the past, a real man who had suffered a real and painful death after a real battle.

  Travis tried, desperately, to see Montcalm the man in the hollowed-out, yellow eye sockets. What was the last thing he had seen? he wondered. Did he know that Wolfe had won? Did he know that his men were beaten and that he was going to die?

  Travis pictured the French general lying there, blood staining his white tunic and beautiful blue waistcoat. If he had felt such pain just hitting the boards, how much pain had Montcalm felt? Was he frightened?

  He felt a current of air on his neck. Was it the heat coming out of a ceiling vent? The breath of someone behind him? Or Montcalm’s presence?

  He shook it off and turned his attention from the curious skull to the typewritten notes beneath it. There were two: one in French and one in English. He read the English.

  It was a strange note. Instead of explaining the Marquis’s life, it attacked the king of France for abandoning Montcalm in death. When the French and English settled their differences and put an end to their war in 1763, the king of France was given the chance to keep any piece of land he chose from the New World. Though the king knew his faithful general had given his life defending this land where Travis now stood, he passed on Quebec and selected, instead, three tiny Caribbean islands.

  Whichever of the elderly nuns had typed this curious note, she had ended it with an even more curious line: “He let the Canadians down.”

  Travis shivered. He did feel the Marquis’s presence!

  Perhaps it wasn’t Travis’s fault, but that was just the way he felt, too–that he had somehow let Canadians down. All Canadians.

  If only he’d never agreed to do that damned diary. If only he spoke better French. If only they hadn’t booed…

  “That’s more like it,” said Muck.