The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3 Page 10

  Nish looked, his eyes squinting with suspicion. “N–no.”

  “It’s coprolites. Anyone have any idea what that means?”

  The guide looked around. Data was raising his hand.

  “Yes?” the guide asked.

  “It’s dung, isn’t it?”

  The guide’s eyes lighted up. “Good for you. Yes, dung. Prehistoric poop. This one’s probably twenty million years old.”

  “Does it still smell?” Nish asked.

  “A smell wouldn’t last twenty million years, young man,” the guide said, shaking his head.

  “You obviously haven’t spent much time around Nish,” Wilson said, breaking up the group.

  “Very funny,” Nish snapped, and stormed off.

  It wasn’t a good day for Nish at the Royal Tyrrell Museum–but that was nothing compared to the evening he had back at Camp Victory. After a good meal, the Owls had been sitting around, talking about their wonderful day at the dinosaur museum, when Kelly Block walked in and announced that their day wasn’t done yet.

  “We are going to build a team,” Block announced.

  “We already are a team,” Nish protested, but he wilted under the stern gaze of Kelly Block.

  “You are, are you?” Block asked, his eyebrows rising.

  “We’re the Screech Owls,” Nish said weakly.

  “Your name?”

  “Wayne,” Nish said.

  “Nish,” Fahd corrected.

  Block smiled. “So, Mr. Nish, do you know what makes a team?”

  Nish had turned crimson. “I guess…. Kids who play together. A coach.”

  Block laughed. It was an ugly laugh. It seemed fake to Travis, and it had an insulting tone to it. “Not even close, mister.”

  Block, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor as he talked to them, suddenly sprang to his feet. He stood himself in front of Nish.

  “Stand up,” he instructed.

  Nish reluctantly got to his feet. Travis could see that he was sweating.

  Block pulled a chair out from a table and set it in the middle of the floor.

  “Stand up here,” Block commanded.

  Slowly, Nish climbed up onto the chair and stood.

  Kelly Block pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. “Lean towards me,” he commanded. Nish leaned forward and Block tied the handkerchief over his eyes. He then straightened Nish up, keeping one hand on Nish’s arm to keep him from falling.

  “You,” he said, pointing towards Sarah. “Back there.” He pointed behind Nish.

  Travis realized at that moment that Kelly Block was no fool. He had already understood that there was a rivalry between Nish and Sarah.

  Sarah rose, smiling, and stood where she was told behind Nish.

  Block stared up at Nish.

  “I’m going to push you over backwards,” he said. “One of your teammates will catch you. Do you understand?”

  “N–no,” Nish said. His voice shook.

  “I assure you that one of your teammates is behind you and will stop your fall,” Block said. “Do you believe me?”

  “I–I guess so.”

  “You don’t sound very certain.”

  “I can’t see anyone.”

  “But it’s your teammate. Wouldn’t they automatically be there to save you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” Block said with sarcasm. “You don’t know. What kind of ‘team’ is that, where you don’t know your own teammates?”

  “I don’t know.” Nish repeated. He sounded near tears.

  “I’m going to push you back,” Block warned. “Are you ready?”

  Nish was breathing hard. “N–no.”

  “Your teammate is there, waiting to catch you.” He turned to Sarah. “Are you ready to catch him?”

  “Yes.”

  Travis could see Nish jump with the realization that it was Sarah waiting behind him. Sarah, who never let Nish get away with anything. Sarah, who knew exactly how to wind Nish up or shut Nish down, whatever the situation required.

  “Here goes,” Kelly Block said.

  He placed a large hand over Nish’s chest, and pushed back. Sarah prepared to catch him.

  Nish buckled! He folded and toppled forward rather than back, falling into Kelly Block’s big hands instead of back onto Sarah.

  Block caught Nish easily and ripped off the handkerchief.

  Travis noted Block’s smile. He had expected this.

  Travis could see the terror in Nish’s eyes. And humiliation. And anger. He had been singled out, he had been tested, and he had failed. Nish wouldn’t look at Sarah, who also looked hurt. She had wanted to catch Nish. Travis knew she would never have let Nish fall and hurt himself.

  But Kelly Block was ignoring both of them. He was standing in the centre of the room, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his hands out in front of him as if he were holding a phantom football. He nodded his head knowingly.

  “There is no team here,” he announced. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  There was no time, however, for Kelly Block to do anything about the Screech Owls’ team spirit before they played their first game. The Drumheller Invitational Peewee Tournament was getting under way first thing the next morning, with the Owls scheduled to play their first match against the Hanna Hurricanes.

  “That’s Lanny McDonald’s home town!” Data had shouted as Mr. Dillinger read out the schedule to the Owls gathered in the dressing room.

  “Maybe they’ve all got big red moustaches!” Nish shouted.

  Travis giggled, thinking of a bunch of twelve-year-old boys and girls skating out looking like they were Yosemite Sam from the Saturday-afternoon cartoon shows. He was a great fan of Lanny McDonald, even if he’d never seen the Hall of Famer play in the NHL. He knew that Lanny had scored a big goal for the Calgary Flames the year they won the Stanley Cup, and he knew, of course, that Lanny McDonald not only played with heart, he approached life the same way. He’d come all the way to Tamarack, after all, for the big fundraiser after Data was hurt by the car.

  It was time for the Screech Owls to hit the ice.

  “LET’S GO!” Sarah called, slamming her stick hard onto the concrete floor of the dressing room. Travis, the captain, hadn’t even put his helmet on yet! He scrambled to catch up, joining in the shouting.

  “C’MON SARAH — A COUPLE OF GOALS!”

  “MAKE YOUR FIRST SHOT COUNT, DMITRI!”

  “BE TOUGH, LARS! BE STRONG!”

  “MOVE YOUR BIG BUTT, NISH!”

  Travis moved quickly through the door leading to the ice surface, Data slapping the rear of his pants as he passed. Travis had come to count on Data’s slap as much as he needed to hit the crossbar in warmup. Data being there meant a lot to the Owls–he had, in some ways, become as important a coach as Muck himself. Not for how he planned out the games and changed the lines, but for how his own intensity and desire seemed to rub off on the others.

  Travis stepped out onto the ice of the little arena knowing there was nothing he’d rather be doing. It might have been like summer outside, but in here the air was cool and the ice as hard as glass. He could hear his skates dig in on the corners. He could hear the buzz of the crowd. It seemed as if the entire town of Hanna had driven down for the game. Travis hit the crossbar on his first shot, a high snapper over Jenny’s left shoulder. He slammed his stick triumphantly into the boards as he swooped past the net and turned back towards the blueline.

  The crossbar was a good omen. Sarah took the opening faceoff and turned her back on her checker, giving her time to send the puck back to Nish, who was already in motion. Nish crossed his own blueline and–just as his skates touched the tail of the green dinosaur on the Owls’ side of centre–sent a high, looping pass up the right side for Dmitri, who timed it perfectly, snaring the puck just as it crossed the Hurricanes’ blueline. There were cries in the crowd that Dmitri was offside, but Travis knew better. Dmitri’s astonishing speed often made him look
offside, and besides, the linesman had been right there as he crossed.

  The Hurricanes’ defence was quick, however, and Dmitri’s route to the net was cut off. But for Dmitri it was no problem: he did his reverse curl, heading directly towards the boards, and then cutting back up towards the blueline. The move worked beautifully. As he headed in one direction, everyone else went the other way. He caught Sarah perfectly as she slipped over the blueline. Sarah dished a backhand pass to Travis, cutting in from his wing, and then took out her defender. Travis found he was all alone, one-on-one with the Hanna goaltender. A quick deke to the backhand and Travis lifted the puck high as he could as he flew past the net, the goaltender sprawling. He couldn’t see what happened, but the ping off the crossbar followed by the whistle told him he had scored–and it was a beauty!

  Screech Owls 1, Hurricanes 0.

  One shift and they were already ahead. A grateful Mr. Dillinger was all over Travis’s line, tossing towels over the necks of Travis, Sarah, and Dmitri as they skated off and took the bench. Towels–and they hadn’t even broken a sweat! Data wheeled along the cramped space behind the bench and slapped each of them on the back.

  Travis turned to high-five Data–and then saw that the Screech Owls had another coach. Kelly Block! He was standing beside Ty, seeming to dwarf the young assistant coach.

  “What’s ‘Mental Block’ doin’ here?” Nish hissed in Travis’s ear.

  Travis shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he just appointed himself coach.”

  “If Muck was here he’d toss him out of the rink.”

  Travis shrugged again. He didn’t know. If Muck were here, he doubted Block, for all his nerve, would have the guts to step in beside the Owls’ coach. But Muck wasn’t here, and Block was trampling over poor Mr. Dillinger right in front of their eyes–or, more accurately, right behind their backs.

  Travis felt Kelly Block’s hands on his neck, rubbing hard through the towel. He didn’t like the feeling at all.

  “Atta boy, Trav! Way to go out there! You just keep open for Sarah to hit you–you got it?”

  Got it? Travis wondered. What’s this guy talking about? Of course he’d try to get open for Sarah. They’d been playing together so long now, neither of them, or Dmitri, for that matter, even had to think about what the play might be. It was as if three players–Travis, Sarah, and Dmitri–shared one mind. But here was this smarmy “sports psychologist” acting as if he’d come up with the play himself.

  Soon, Andy had scored a lovely goal on a hard slapshot through traffic. Fahd scored–a bit of a surprise–on a play in which he seemed to walk in, in slow motion, from the blueline and slip the puck under the arm of the falling Hurricanes goaltender. Jesse Highboy scored on a tip-in, and Wilson scored on a weak backhander that went in off a defenceman’s skate.

  Screech Owls 5, Hurricanes 0.

  It was clear by the end of the first period that the team from Hanna was badly outclassed by the Owls. Instinctively, the Owls began to hold back a bit, knowing that Muck never, ever wanted them to run up the score on a team. “Never humiliate an opponent,” he used to say. “You try to embarrass the team you’re playing against, you really just embarrass yourself.”

  Kelly Block, however, began to take over at the break. While Mr. Dillinger hung his head low and stayed in the background, working on Sarah’s skates, Block tried to make a speech that only caused Nish to get the giggles. He talked about how these tournaments are often decided on goals as well as points, and how the Owls had better make every shot count. Kelly Block’s eyes, Travis noticed, had taken on a new look. It was as if they were on fire. Travis found he couldn’t look him straight in the eye.

  By the middle of the second period, Block had taken over completely. He was calling the line changes. He was standing directly behind the players, rocking on the balls of his feet and chewing on ice the way some of the big-league coaches did. He was ignoring Mr. Dillinger and Ty and even Data.

  Travis felt the hand on his neck again.

  “Trav,” Kelly Block’s voice growled into his ear, “I’m going to shake up the lines a bit, okay?”

  Travis didn’t know what to say. Shake up what lines? And why? But he knew what he was expected to say, and he said it: “Okay.”

  “Sarah!” Kelly Block shouted. “Out with Jesse Highboy–and you, Liz!”

  Up and down the bench heads bobbed up, helmets turning back and forth as friends and teammates tried to catch each other’s eye. What was going on here?

  Travis noticed that Kelly Block had a list in his pocket that he kept referring to and making changes on with a pen. It was crazy. Sarah had never played with Jesse or Liz in her life. And who did Block want him to play with?

  “Nishikawa!” Block shouted after an offside whistle. “You’re centring Travis and Andy!”

  Instinctively, Travis turned to see if Nish would look in his direction, and sure enough, his best friend shot him a glance. Nish looked as if they’d just stepped into an insane asylum and some nut had taken charge of the Owls. Nish at centre? Not likely.

  Sarah’s expression said pretty much the same thing: Who is this guy? What is going on here? Where’s Muck?

  Nish didn’t even know how to line up for the faceoff. Twice, the linesman had to correct his stance. Then he threw Nish out of the circle. Red-faced and angry, Nish had to let Travis take over the draw.

  Travis won the faceoff and sent it back to the defence–but the defence turned out to be Derek Dillinger! Derek, who’d never played defence before, lost the puck in his skates and let it slip away into open ice, where a quick little Hurricanes forward picked it up and flew down on Jeremy, scoring high to the stick side.

  When they got back to the bench Kelly Block was furious. He benched Derek for losing the puck and Nish for getting thrown out of the faceoff circle.

  “You had nothing to do with it,” Travis told his friend, hoping to comfort him.

  “He hates my guts,” Nish said. “That’s all that’s going on here. He hates me.”

  “Maybe he knows what he’s doing,” Travis said. “He’s a sports psychologist after all.”

  “Yeah, right–and I’m a rocket scientist.”

  By the third period, Kelly Block was setting lines as if he were drawing names from a hat. The confusion was so enormous, he obviously felt he had to explain himself.

  “This is a great opportunity for us to try out some new combinations,” he said during a quiet break in the play. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on team chemistry.”

  Travis could only shake his head. “Team chemistry” never used to be a problem. Muck hadn’t put the Owls together as if he’d dropped a pack of cards and simply picked it up in whatever order he found it. The Owls had been years in the making. Most of them went all the way back to mite together. Travis and Sarah had first played together in novice. And as long as they’d been peewee players, they had played with Dmitri on the first line. The top line.

  Now there was no top line. No lines at all, it seemed. Defencemen were playing up, forwards back. Travis wondered if Block would yank Jeremy out of goal in the final few minutes and put him at centre.

  The Hurricanes used the confusion to edge their way bit by bit back into the game. They brought the score to 5–3 with two minutes to go, when Sarah, now back on defence, began an end-to-end rush that left a soft rebound lying at the edge of the crease, and Dmitri backhanded it home so high and hard the goaltender’s water bottle flew through the air and shot its contents all over the glass in front of the goal judge.

  “Atta girl, Sarah!” Kelly Block shouted as they returned to the bench. “You’re a natural defenceman–sorry, defence-person!”

  Sarah said nothing. Travis had never seen his friend so unhappy about setting up a goal.

  But Sarah’s discomfort was nothing compared to Nish’s. Nish was sitting at the far end of the bench, pounding his skates into the board to keep the circulation flowing in his feet. Travis could tell, even at that distance, that he
was crying. But he wasn’t sure why.

  Frozen feet?

  Or frozen out?

  In the morning, Kelly Block immediately began to work on building “team chemistry.” He had the Screech Owls take turns standing on the chair and falling backwards; they knew that when they fell, someone–a teammate–would be there to catch them. Even Nish managed to shut his eyes and fall back, first into Andy’s arms and then Simon’s, once he’d seen Sarah and Travis and Lars and Dmitri and Derek and Liz do the same without so much as a nervous tremor.

  Travis was beginning to understand what Block was up to. When the sports psychologist talked about a team being like a chain, and “only as strong as its weakest link,” Travis could see how that made sense on a hockey team. It was fine to have puck-carriers and goal-scorers, but unless there was a solid defence to back them up, the game would become more like basketball–last shot wins. And it was fine to have forwards who were good in front of the net, but unless there were forwards who were also good in the corners, the puck was never going to get to the front of the net. And as for the goalie, well, that was the most important position of all, wasn’t it? Travis didn’t think there was a position in all of sports–not baseball pitcher, not even football quarterback–that had as much pressure as goaltender. Pitchers didn’t have to play every game, or even every second game. And there was no coach on the sidelines to send in plays to a goaltender the way they did in football.

  To reinforce his “link” theory, and to get the Owls depending on each other off the ice as well as on, Block had a few more exercises for them to try. The best involved a nearby creek that emptied into the Red Deer River, a creek that was now swollen with the runoff from the recently snow-covered hills. Block had them build a “bridge” to get across it. He put half the team on one side of the creek, and half the team on the other. They had to assemble a platform on each side using logs and boards, fitting and clamping them together without the aid of plans. Then they had to figure out how to get a cable across from one platform to the other so that one of the Owls could cross the creek. They tried throwing the cable across, but the creek was too wide and the line fell short. On Nish’s suggestion, they tried tying one end of the cable to a hammer and then throwing it again. But the hammer was too heavy. It plunged into the water and very nearly snagged the cable permanently on the bottom.