The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1 Read online

  Travis placed his head against the humming window and asked himself the question he’d been asking since the first year he’d signed up for hockey: when was he ever going to start growing? He had always been small, but he hadn’t started worrying about it until he turned peewee. He was twelve going on thirteen. Another school year and he would be headed into high school and–already notably small in the schoolyard of Lord Stanley Public School–he was petrified he wouldn’t grow before he got there.

  Growing was only one of two serious matters that deeply bothered Travis. The second was his fear of the dark–how many twelve-year-olds still needed a night light?–but most of the time his fear of the dark was something he could keep to himself and his family. But how could you hide your size?

  “Hang in there,” his father kept telling him. “You’ll grow. I was a late grower. My brothers were late growers. You’ll go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning having ripped right out of your clothes.”

  Travis knew what an exaggeration that was. He knew that his father meant he’d have a late growth spurt that might come over one summer, not a single night, and he knew better than to think he would ever fall asleep a peewee and wake up a bantam in a pair of torn pyjamas. But he couldn’t help wishing anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when they got to Lake Placid, Travis stepped out of the van and his pant cuffs were up around his knees…

  “PIT STOP!”

  Travis jumped. He had been dozing again. His head felt thick, his eyes out of focus. He rubbed them as Mr. Dillinger called again from the driver’s seat of the big van.

  “Pit Stop! Last one before Lake Placid! Ten minutes! You go now or you go later in your pants–this means you, Nish!”

  Travis could hear them giggling. His vision cleared and he saw that everyone in the van was looking back at him. Because he had fallen asleep, obviously. Well, so what? But they wouldn’t stop laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Travis asked Nish, who had turned around, his face looking like it was about to split.

  “Mr. Dillinger. Didn’t you hear him?”

  It didn’t make sense, but Travis let it go. He headed into the restaurant, pushed the door open, saw that everyone in there was laughing at the team coming in–what was the matter with them, never see hockey players in a van?–and decided that he’d better go to the washroom first.

  Funny, there was no line-up. Nish and some of the other kids were hanging around outside the door but they didn’t seem to want to go in. More like they were waiting. Travis pushed past them through the door, turned to the mirror–and saw immediately what his teammates, and all the people in the restaurant, had been giggling at:

  HIS HEAD WAS COVERED IN CREAM!

  It had been put on like a cone. Swirled like he was about to be dipped into chocolate at Dairy Queen. He looked like a fool. But it was so light he hadn’t felt it. That’s why they’d been laughing at him. It was hilariously obvious to everyone but Travis himself, who couldn’t even feel it up there.

  Travis grabbed a handful of the cream and threw it off his head into the sink. He reached for some paper towels and began rubbing it off. On the other side of the door, he could hear the entire team howling with laughter as they imagined his reaction.

  Travis smelled his hands. Shaving cream. There was only one person in the Screech Owls van old enough to shave.

  Mr. Dillinger.

  Travis was still blotting shaving cream from his hair as the pines gave way and the van began climbing up through a twisting string of motels and motor inns, past a Burger King and McDonald’s, up and over a hill and down onto the main street of Lake Placid. They were finally here. The six-hour drive was forgotten. The shaving cream was forgotten. Travis was as wide awake and alert as he would be if the team was just waiting for the Zamboni to finish flooding the ice so the game could begin.

  Lake Placid was alive with cars and campers and people. It was still early spring yet it felt like an Ontario tourist town at the height of the season. Traffic barely moved. Shoppers wove through the cars as if the street were a parking lot and the stoplights meaningless. It felt like summer to Travis, after a winter of heavy boots and thick jackets and shovelling snow.

  There was a banner stretched high across the street. “WELCOME TO LAKE PLACID’S SIXTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL PEEWEE HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIP.” “International”–the word made it seem impossible, more like one of his dreams than reality.

  Travis had been playing hockey for six seasons–tyke, novice, atom, and now peewee–and he had got much better each year, if not much bigger. In tyke, with his dad the coach, Travis had started the season holding on to the back of a stacking chair so he wouldn’t fall, and he had finished the season the best skater on the team after Sarah Cuthbertson, who had, they all joked, an unfair advantage in her mother.

  He knew why: he was the one kid who skated every day–or at least every chance he got–in the open-air rink behind the school. And when he wasn’t on the rink, he was in his basement, stickhandling tennis balls across the concrete and firing pucks against a big plywood board his father had bought and attached to the wall.

  Travis Lindsay was hockey-crazy. His favourite team was the Detroit Red Wings. He had all the cards from the recent years–Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov–but the Detroit team of his dreams played back in the 1950s, thirty years before he was even born, when “Terrible Ted” Lindsay and “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe, were the superstars.

  Travis’s grandfather had once told him that Ted Lindsay was a distant cousin, which made him an even more distant cousin of Travis’s–but a cousin all the same. The same name, the same skills…the same size. Ted Lindsay had not been big, either, but he had ended up being known as “Terrible Ted” and was in the Hockey Hall of Fame. “Terrible Travis” didn’t sound quite as good, but it was the way Travis secretly liked to think of himself.

  He had been through house league. He had played on the atom competitive team for a jerk named Mr. Spratt who called them by their last names and insisted on being called “Coach.” He wore a suit while he worked the bench in tournaments–even chewed ice like an NHL coach. He used to scream at the kids until they cried. With his parents’ blessing, Travis had quit and gone back to house league.

  And then he had tried competitive again. With Muck.

  Muck Munro was so unlike “Coach” Spratt that it hardly seemed they played the same game. Muck didn’t yell. He laughed at the first player who called him “Coach.” He didn’t wear suits during games, didn’t wear matching track outfits for practices.

  According to Guy Boucher’s dad, Muck had been a pretty fine junior player at one time, but he had so severely broken his leg in a game that he had had to quit hockey altogether. He still walked with a slight limp.

  But Travis could see the ability whenever Muck came out onto the ice with them. He had to favour his bad leg a bit, but Travis had never heard a sweeter sound in his life than when Muck went out onto the still-wet ice and took a few long strides down the rink and into the turn, his skates sizzling like bacon in a frying pan as they dug in and flicked out into the next stride.

  Travis had tried to listen to his own skating, but all he could hear was the chop when his blades hit. Nothing smooth, nothing sizzling. He figured he had neither the stride nor the weight. He was too small to sound like Muck.

  Muck put the team together. He was the one who got Barry Yonson and Ty Barrett to come on as assistants. Barry had played junior “B” the year before, quitting to concentrate on his school work, but Muck figured, correctly, that Barry missed his ice time and invited him out to help with the team. Barry was great: a big, curly-haired guy with a constant gap-toothed smile and the ability to slap a puck–in the air!–all the way from his own blueline over the net and against the glass at the far end.

  Ty Barrett was a bit older but had also once played for Muck. He worked as an assistant manager at the Tim Horton donut shop and every time they had an early practice he would bring in a box of still-warm
Timbits he had picked up on the way to the rink. Though heavy-set and a weak skater, Ty was great at organizing drills. He made them fun, always with the two sides competing against each other for first grabs at the Timbits.

  It had been Muck who got Mr. Dillinger to be the team manager and trainer, and that had worked out wonderfully, as well. Mr. Dillinger kept the dressing room loose. He drove the van to the tournaments. He organized the pizza, the pop, the wedgie stops. Travis had never had so much fun playing on a team in his life.

  This is it!” Mr. Dillinger shouted as the van groaned up one more hill and swept into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. It was a Holiday Inn unlike any they had seen before. Sun Spree Resort, it called itself, with a putting green out front, nature trails, a big indoor pool, a Jacuzzi hot tub, an arcade, and, straight back down the hill, the Olympic Center hockey rink. The teams could practically roll out of bed into their dressing rooms.

  “Awwwww-righhhhtttt!” all twelve Screech Owls shouted. Nish pumped a fat fist out the side window.

  They piled out of the van and into the hotel. Muck was already there, waiting, with his usual Diet Coke in his right hand. Spread out before him on a small table were a dozen or so white envelopes with names and numbers on them.

  “Good drive?” Muck asked.

  “One close shave,” Mr. Dillinger answered. “Right, Travis?”

  Mr. Dillinger laughed so hard two women checking in turned to stare, but he didn’t care. Travis turned red.

  “Check the envelopes,” Muck said to the new arrivals. “You’ll find your roomies and two keys per room. Soon as you find your rooms you can go on up.”

  Travis was in with Nish, Wilson, and Data. He couldn’t have picked better roommates if the choosing had been left to him.

  “One more thing,” Muck announced as the players scrambled for their keys. “Don’t even try to watch the adult movies on your TVs. We’ve had the front desk disengage the pay channels for the whole tournament. Understand, Nish?”

  Nish kept them up until midnight trying, unsuccessfully, to re-wire the television so he could watch the forbidden movies. It had taken Travis a long time to fall asleep. He was just too excited about the tournament. It wasn’t his fear of the dark–he’d solved that by going last to the bathroom and then “for-getting” to turn off the light, leaving the door open barely a crack. None of the other boys had complained.

  By 6:30 a.m. he was wide awake again. Wide awake and anxious. He checked to see if anyone else was awake. Nish was rolled in his sheets like a tortilla, the only fragment of flesh exposed a single big toe sticking free at the bottom. Wilson, on the other hand, had nothing over him, since Nish had yanked all the blankets to his side during the night, and was rolled up in a ball like a baby. Data was snoring slightly, breathing like an old Klingon.

  Travis went into the washroom and wet three washcloths with water as cold as it would run. He squeezed them out and then brought them back into the bedroom where he dropped one on each face and, in the case of Nish, over his big toe.

  “Whaaaaa?” called Wilson, who bolted straight up.

  “Jach!” shouted Data. He even dreamed in Klingon!

  Nish didn’t stir.

  “C’mon, guys,” Travis said to the others. “We got an eight o’clock practice.”

  “I don’t have to practise any more,” Wilson argued. “I can’t get any better.”

  “Come on, Wils–you want to play in the Olympics, you better find out how slow you are on an Olympic ice surface.”

  Growling, Wilson threw his pillow at Travis and rolled out of bed. Data was already up and moving. Wilson and Travis jumped simultaneously onto Nish, squashing the Tortilla.

  “Hey!” Nish shouted, trapped by his blankets. “Bug off!”

  Nish began to twist violently, going nowhere. Wils sat on his head, lifted his arm and, with his open hand cupped under his armpit, made a loud farting noise that caused Nish to twist and scream until he bounced right off the bed onto the floor.

  With Nish furiously staring up, Wils once again let one rip from his armpit, with everyone laughing at poor Nish, who’d taken the sound for something else.

  “Jerk,” said Nish.

  “Let’s go,” Travis said.

  Travis Lindsay loved dressing rooms. The smells, the sounds, the anticipation before a game and the satisfaction after: ever since he began playing Travis had loved that first feeling that came over him as he walked into a hockey dressing room.

  He loved the familiarity. He loved to know he had his place and his teammates would expect him to be in it. He loved the insults, the practical jokes, the wicked, Coke-forced belches, the stupid, meaningless, harmless bragging.

  Sometimes the feeling was better before a game, when everyone would be coming in at different times–Nish usually first, delivered by his parents, who knew his habits best, and then dawdling until he was the last one dressed. Matt Brown always late, his bigmouthed father in a panic and sharp with Matt as he pushed him to hurry. Fahd sometimes playing Tetris on his Game Boy until Mr. Dillinger announced the Zamboni was out on the ice, then dressing with all the precision and efficiency of a human computer. Sarah Cuthbertson arriving fully dressed but for her shoulder pads, sweater, gloves, helmet, and skates. Willie Granger with some obscure fact he’d memorized from the Guinness Book of Records, like the world’s longest sneezing fit being 978 days or something. Travis particularly liked it when everyone would finish dressing in near-silence, everyone knowing that there was nothing now but a few words from the coach and a game to come.

  Sometimes he liked it best after a game–after a victory, anyway–when he could take as much time as he wanted, sitting there grinning and sweaty, his hands in his lap, his helmet, sweater, shoulder pads, elbow pads, and gloves all off, everything else including his skates still on and tied up tight. Travis loved the feeling of a game well played, the way they would all go over the best plays and the goals and about how well Guy or Sareen had played in goal.

  Players would explain missed opportunities (“I couldn’t get the puck to lie down,” “That ice was terrible, the puck skipped right over my stick”) and they would talk about players on the other side (“Did you see his face when he got that penalty?”) and hope, always, that maybe someone would say something good about the way they had played. And usually someone did. The Screech Owls were, after all, a team.

  Travis had a thing about arenas. He loved the warmth and the light when the door opened for a 6:00 a.m. practice in the winter. He loved the cool and the dark when the door opened for a 6:00 p.m. practice in the early fall. He loved the smell of Dustbane when the workers were cleaning up. He loved the sound a wide broom made when it was pushed across a smooth cement floor. He loved the dry, sparking smell of the sharpening stone when it hit against a skate blade, especially if Mr. Dillinger was doing the sharpening, and he loved to watch how silently, smoothly Mr. Dillinger could work the skate holder across the shiny steel surface of the sharpener.

  But more than anything else, Travis loved new ice. He liked to stand with his face against the glass while the Zamboni made its final circle. He liked to watch while the water glistened under the lights and then froze. He loved to be first onto the ice and feel the joy of new ice as he went into his first corner, coming out of it with a fine turn so he could then skate backwards to centre, watching the first marks form on the fresh surface–his marks.

  He liked the first feel of a puck on his stick. He did not like, but could do nothing about, pucks sticking in water that had yet to freeze. Sometimes a player would be about to take a slapshot when the puck would suddenly grip on him, and player and stick would go gliding on alone, the stick swinging down on air. When other players saw that happening, they always roared with laughter. It was embarrassing, but it happened to everyone.

  Travis already had superstitions. He was still a long way from Montreal Canadiens’ goaltender Patrick Roy talking to his posts, but Travis had a few things he always had to do. This year he had
to ring a shot off the crossbar. If he could do that in practice or in the warm-up, then he’d have a good game.

  Travis had never seen a rink like this one before. Massive, white, more like an art gallery than a hockey arena. They’d walked by the hall of fame. They’d stood by the Olympic display watching the video repeat the 4–3 win over the Soviet Union that had given the Americans the 1980 Olympic gold medal. None of the Screech Owls had ever seen such a celebration–not when they won, not even when they watched the Stanley Cup playoffs and saw the Rangers or the Penguins or the Canadiens win.

  The win had been called “The Miracle on Ice.” And it looked like a miracle. The place had filled with thousands of blue and white balloons. The crowd had poured onto the ice. The players were in tears. Men and women–who were they? fathers? mothers? officials?–crying and hugging each other and touching players as they passed by, as if the players had some magical power that might rub off–and seeing that film it seemed as if they did. There wasn’t a Screech Owl watching who didn’t imagine him or herself there and part of something so special nothing else in life would ever compare.

  The rink itself was huge, big as an NHL rink, with red seats and ads on the boards–Coca-Cola, Kodak, Miller Draft, milk–and the ice surface so big and square that the Screech Owls, none of whom had ever skated on an Olympic-size ice surface before, could only stare as if they were seeing a mountain or the ocean for the first time. A player could get lost out there!

  The dressing rooms had shelves for the equipment, hangers and lockers for the players, and, as Nish shrieked when he saw them, “Pro Showers!” The Screech Owls’ home rink didn’t even have one shower. The Olympic Center had a massive shower room with stainless steel tubes running from floor to ceiling that had shower nozzles sticking out at different heights and in every direction. More like a car wash than any shower Travis had ever seen, but he could hardly wait to try them.