The Ice Chips and the Magical Rink Page 4

  And then it was gone.

  “What’s under this?” someone called from the frozen pond.

  Swift—Swift and Edge!

  Lucas, Edna, and Gordon turned to see the two Ice Chips moving slowly toward them along the pond with their sticks in their hands and their heads bowed. Lucas knew that they couldn’t believe what they were skating on!

  “The ice . . . is still a little . . . bumpy,” Gordon said apologetically, thinking he was answering Swift’s question.

  Lucas noticed that Gordon had turned as red and bright as his sister’s toque. And he wasn’t looking at Swift as he spoke.

  Swift was in her hockey equipment, Ice Chips jersey and all, but Edge didn’t even have a jacket on—just a thick long-sleeved shirt, his helmet, and some wool mittens. He looked frozen.

  “This is amazing,” said Edge, still looking down. Slowly, he opened and closed his skates, tracing a caterpillar pattern below. Then he rubbed his mittens together and stuffed his hands into his armpits. “I could get used to this . . . well, except for the cold.”

  “Hi!” Swift said as she brought her skates together and stopped between Lucas and Edna. “I’m Swift. This is Edge.”

  “Hi, I’m Edna. Your names are cute as a bug’s ear,” she said with a giggle.

  “I’m . . . Gordon.” Her tall brother smiled shyly.

  “You wanted a puck? I got one,” said Edge as he pulled a thick black disk out of his back pocket and turned it over in his frozen mitten. His skin was now red from the cold. Lucas felt bad for him. “It was in my hand when I . . . I guess . . . um, here.” Confused, Edge flipped the puck onto the ice, where it landed with a slap.

  Lucas realized that Edge’s brain had to be as scrambled as his.

  “Yes!” shouted Gordon. “If we can borrow your puck . . . you can borrow my jacket—I’ve got a sweater underneath . . . like Swift’s. I won’t be cold.”

  Gordon slipped off his jacket to reveal a well-worn wool sweater—maroon with thick white stripes knitted into the sleeves. It wasn’t at all like Swift’s. There was some kind of logo on the front, but it was so battered, Lucas couldn’t make it out. On the back, the bottom of the number 9 had ripped off and some of the stitches at the top were coming loose. But Gordon didn’t seem to care. He was proud of it.

  “Thanks,” said Edge, slipping into Gordon’s jacket. The arms were too long, but that didn’t matter. At least it was warm. “The puck’s all yours.”

  With a big grin, Gordon immediately swatted the puck with his stick. Then, running lopsided with both feet, he lifted his boot, slid on his one skate, and chased after it.

  “Why only one skate?” Edge asked Edna.

  Edna laughed. “A neighbour sold our mom a bunch of hand-me-down clothing and these old skates—she needed money for milk. We fought over them, and he got one and I got the other. I told Gordon I’d sell mine to him for a quarter—but he doesn’t have that kind of money.”

  A quarter? thought Lucas. Who doesn’t have a quarter?

  “We tried calling you,” Swift said quietly to Lucas. She glanced at Edna and then at the two unfriendly looking players clearing off their patch of ice farther down the pond. Carefully, she pulled up her sleeve. “But our comm-bands reset themselves. They weren’t working, although I think they’re okay now.”

  “What’re they?” asked Edna. “Watches?”

  “Hello, comm,” Lucas said.

  His comm-band lit up and then fizzled. Then slowly, it came back to life.

  “Maybe it’s the weather?” Lucas said, bewildered. “Now I’ve got a signal.” But he didn’t really mean the weather. He meant the big snow globe that had landed them here—or whatever it was that had shaken them up and then dropped them in the snow. Should I try calling Crunch? Is it even possible to call home?

  “‘Signal’?” asked Edna. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Their chatter was interrupted by a puck smacking into Swift’s goalie pad. The four kids turned and looked to see where it had come from. Far down the ice was Gordon, grinning.

  “He didn’t hoist that all that way!” said an incredulous Lucas.

  “Who else?” asked Edge. “He’s the only one shooting at us.”

  Gordon hobbled and slid on his one skate back to the gang. “Sorry about that,” he said, deeply flushed. “I been . . . working on my strength—maybe too much. I been . . . pulling myself up like this on the barn . . . door frame.” Gordon held his hockey stick above his head and pretended to do a chin-up.

  Swift let out a laugh.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Gordon, looking down at the ice again. “I’m . . . really, really sorry.”

  “He doesn’t know his own strength,” said Edna. “He’s always doing things like that. I should give him this other skate so he can really play.”

  “You said I had to . . . buy it,” said Gordon. “I don’t . . . have a quarter.”

  Lucas took a deep breath. He had a quarter. It was his lucky coin, but here was something that Lucas knew he should do. All the poor kid wanted was a second skate so he could actually learn to use them.

  Lucas dug back into his pocket and pulled out his cherished Olympic keepsake. “Here,” he said, handing it to Edna. “Give your brother the other skate.”

  Edna took the coin and looked at it, both sides, then handed it back to Lucas.

  “He can have the skate,” she said. “But I don’t want your quarter—who knows how you got that much money. You’re just a kid.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” protested Lucas, taking the quarter back. This time he noticed it felt different. It felt heavier.

  “Well, you never know,” said Edna as she hopped and slid over to her brother.

  Lucas ran his thumb along his quarter as he always did. But that felt different, too.

  He looked down at the coin and then immediately held it out for Swift and Edge to see.

  Instead of a hockey player skating in front of a red maple leaf, Lucas had been running his thumb over the raised picture of a man’s face. He had a giant moustache and a crown, and was looking off into the distance. The words around his head weren’t even in English!

  Lucas flipped the coin over, and all three of the Ice Chips gasped.

  The quarter, which had been made to honour the gold medal win at the 2002 Olympics, had been completely transformed.

  On the tails side, it now had a wreath of maple leaves following the curve of the coin.

  And the date.

  1936.

  Chapter 10

  Canadian Prairies

  1936?!

  Lucas rubbed his eyes again—this time, in absolute puzzled wonder. He looked at Swift, who also seemed in shock. They both looked at Edge, who seemed to be pinching himself.

  “Look!” said Swift, pointing.

  Across the field, beyond the steaming horses still searching for grass under the snow, was an ancient black truck moving along the road. It was the sort of vehicle the Chips had seen at the car show in Riverton, where old-fashioned cars and trucks from all over the country were put on display each summer.

  Another black truck was going the other way. And a third one was now passing a horse pulling some kind of wooden box with four big wheels—it had to be a horse and buggy! This was no car show. This was . . . the past.

  And it was happening right now!

  “Look at the skates,” Edge whispered to his two teammates.

  Edna was pulling her skate off her foot while Gordon was pulling the green rubber boot off his. Gordon tossed his boot into a snowbank, near the burlap bag Edna had been carrying.

  “Toss me my other boot,” Edna said, pointing over at her bag. “We’ll use yours as goalposts.”

  Gordon was ecstatic. “I’ll owe you a dime, at least,” he said, grinning as the boot he’d thrown toward Edna landed right beside her socked foot.

  Edna now had two rubber boots and Gordon two skates.

  Lucas had never seen skates like that. The bla
de was completely different than anything he knew. It looked like a tube or something, and the boot of the skate looked soft, like a leather shoe. It didn’t even have the hard ankle support of Speedy’s old Bauers.

  Gordon was lacing up his new skate as fast as his fingers could move. He stood, uneasily, and edged out onto the ice—and promptly fell flat on his bum!

  Edna was laughing, but Gordon was determined. He got up, wobbled a bit, and then fell again.

  Lucas’s skates, the old ones from Speedy, looked lame in comparison to Edge’s and Swift’s but fabulous compared to the old skates Gordon was trying to master.

  Gordon’s skates seemed hopeless.

  “Does he not know how to skate?” Swift asked.

  Edna shook her head.

  “Well, we’ve got ours on,” Edge said. “Let’s show him how.”

  “Yeah!” Swift agreed enthusiastically, just as Gordon bailed again, almost bumping his chin on the ice. Lucas felt relieved that the two players clearing their own ice farther down the pond hadn’t seen it. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt protective of Gordon. He liked him.

  “Good luck,” said Edna with a hopeful smile.

  * * *

  “Gordon just asked me how we can see the puck with these things on our heads,” Lucas whispered warily to Edge as their new friend made another wobbly circle around the ice. “He means our helmets—no one had helmets back then . . . uh, I mean back now.”

  “They didn’t have many Sikhs around here either in 1936, I bet,” said Edge, smiling and touching his mitten to his helmet. “But it’s cold out and we don’t have toques anyway. As long as they don’t think we’re plastic-headed spacemen, let’s keep them on.”

  Swift was now skating slowly beside Gordon, trying to give him some coaching and encouragement. Lucas and Edge circled around to give them a little room.

  Edge pushed out from the shore and glided away from Lucas, flexing his ankles from side to side almost as if he were skiing. The movement had the effect of sending him down the ice without either blade ever leaving the surface. It was an easy trick, and Edge liked to start each practice or game with a bit of it.

  Lucas, feeling the wind on his face, turned and headed the other way. He flew down the ice with the wind at his back, sweeping past Gordon, still knock-kneed and wobbling, before coming to a hard stop that sent a high spray of snowy ice into the air.

  The ice felt different. It was . . . harder. That struck Lucas as ridiculous. Ice was ice. Wasn’t it? All ice should be the same—unless it was melting. But this wasn’t at all like the ice in the indoor rink back home. This was ice so hard he could feel his blades dig in the moment he switched to real skating. And there was a sound as he skated.

  A sound almost like bacon frying in a pan.

  A sizzle.

  This was amazing!

  With Lucas on one arm and Swift on the other, Gordon was able to take his first few strides on the ice. Lucas was amazed at how thick the kid’s arm was. He felt strong. Strong as a man.

  Lucas encouraged Gordon to copy Edge’s stride—he was, after all, one of the best skaters on the Chips—and Gordon caught on quickly, heading down the ice all on his own and then trying a turn with a sharp stop like Lucas had done.

  Gordon’s legs flew out from under him and he crashed down hard on his side. But he was laughing. He was loving it.

  The two other players down the ice—the ones in the thick dark sweaters who seemed to be scowling—looked over. They were laughing in a different way, but then went back to what they were doing. They’d finished sweeping the snow off the small section of ice where they were going to play, and they were lacing up their skates.

  “Look at Gordon’s blades,” Edge said. “He needs a sharpen.”

  Lucas looked and saw rust all along the bottom of the blades. No wonder he couldn’t turn and stop. They’d have to get them sharpened . . . but where?

  Edna had a suggestion. She knew a man who sharpened saws and knives by hand. He came around to all the houses and farms each summer in a wagon—chiming a bell that told people the “sharpener” was there—but in winter you had to go to his place.

  “I’d love to see that,” said Lucas, “but I guess I’d need boots.” He was already worried that he’d scratched his own blades on that rock in the field. His skates probably needed a sharpen, too.

  “Well, you’re in luck,” said Edna.

  She tossed Gordon his boots from the snowbank—they hadn’t made their goalposts yet—and then walked over to her burlap bag and undid the leather strap.

  “These came from our neighbour, too,” said Edna, yanking out a third pair of green rubber boots. “Our brother Victor was supposed to be here today at the slough.”

  Victor had probably gone off with the other boys to watch the trains come into the station, she explained, since the Ceepee Bridge over the North Saskatchewan River had recently been finished.

  “He’s just got shoes . . . with a hole in one sole,” said Gordon as he slipped off one skate, then the other, and reached for his boots. “We were going . . . to surprise him.”

  “Wait—what’s a slough?” Lucas asked, confused. Haven’t we been skating on a pond?

  “This,” said Edna, pointing at the icy surface. “The Hudson Bay Slough.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s good for animals. So they can get a drink. Don’t you have animals?”

  “I have a cat and a dog and a brother,” said Lucas.

  Edna rolled her eyes and laughed.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have more . . . boots,” Gordon said to Swift and Edge, who were now passing the puck back and forth over the bumpy ice surface. Lucas could tell they were happy to stay behind.

  Edna turned to Lucas and pulled her knitted toque down over her ears with a smile. “We’d better get walking.”

  Chapter 11

  Skates off, the gang of three began walking along the road into the town. Lucas noticed that only a few of the homes had vehicles in the driveways or on the street. Were people all at work? Or were they poor? At one corner, they came across the strangest thing: a car being pulled by a team of horses. Not a buggy this time, an actual car—with its motor turned off!

  “A Bennett buggy,” Edna told him when he asked what it was. “Don’t you have them where you’re from? They’re named after our useless old prime minister, our dad says. He’s gone now, but the people without jobs still can’t afford gas. Some had to go back to using horses.”

  “Times are tough around here,” Gordon added quietly.

  They came to a corner house that had a wagon but no horses. The wagon had a sign on the side: “Ward’s Sharpening.” It was filled with snow.

  An older man with more hair in his ears and nose than on his head came to the door, listened to their story, and invited them in.

  “Grampa! It’s a party! We’re having a party!” a little kid squealed as he ran into the front hall. He wanted to greet their guests, too. The boy was four or five years old and was running around with a pair of underwear on his head—despite the fact that he was fully dressed.

  Lucas and his friends had to stifle their giggles.

  “That’s my grandson, Robert,” the old man said with a chuckle. “He fancies himself an inventor.”

  “Today I’m a soldier. And this is my helmet,” Robert said loudly, watching them through one of the leg holes. “But I’ve been fighting all day and I’m hungry!”

  The old man grabbed some dried apple slices from a jar in the kitchen and gave them to Robert. Then he took the skates, put heavy coats on himself and his grandson, and stepped out into the garage. The kids all followed.

  Lucas wondered where the man’s sharpening wheel was. He loved how the stone wheel would start spinning with just a flick of a switch. The skate would be locked into its holder, and then there would follow the most beautiful sight and sound Lucas had ever known—the sparks flying off a blade as the sharpener smoothly worked the skate along the spinning wheel.


  But there was no such machine. And no switch, either. It was dark in the shed—there weren’t any windows. The old man removed what looked like a bottomless glass vase from the top of a heavy, metal-topped glass jar filled with yellow liquid. Then he lit a match and touched it to a piece of cloth sticking out of the metal lid. The cloth, which was soaking in the yellow liquid below, burst into a large flame that the man made smaller by turning a tiny metal wheel. He then put the glass vase back over top, and to Lucas’s surprise, the whole room took on the small flame’s glow.

  Mr. Ward took a file and began working along the blades by hand. He used several files to remove the rust and then took a flat, rounded stone into his hand. He spit twice on the stone and began rubbing it along the grooves of each blade.

  Edna and Gordon had moved to the other side of the skate sharpener, closer to the garage door where they could watch, but Lucas was happy beside Little Robert—that’s what Edna and Gordon had called the grandson. The boy reminded him of Connor, only skinnier.

  Besides, Lucas had decided he shouldn’t get his own skates sharpened after all—he couldn’t risk an adult figuring out they were from the future.

  “You play hockey?” asked Little Robert, swinging his legs on the old trunk where he was seated. He had pushed his underwear toward the back of his head and was now wearing it like a toque.

  Lucas nodded. For him, hockey was the only game that existed. To prove it, he quietly opened his coat and took his thin school journal from his inside pocket. He’d stuffed it in there when Lars had unexpectedly walked into the Ice Chips’ change room—so Lars couldn’t grab it and make fun of him.

  Lucas turned to the page where he’d drawn himself—the Lucas he wished he could be this year—dressed in all-new equipment.

  “What is he?” asked Robert, gently taking the journal from Lucas’s hands.

  “It’s a hockey player. The kind they’ll have when you’re a grandpa . . . maybe . . . I mean—” He didn’t know if it was safe to tell anyone their secret—even a little kid.

  “Wow, that’s aces!” said Robert, grinning from ear to ear. “Wanna see what I drawed?”