Thunderbird Spirit

  Thunderbird Spirit

  Sigmund Brouwer

  orca sports

  Copyright © 2008 Sigmund Brouwer

  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

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-

  Thunderbird spirit / written by Sigmund Brouwer.

  (Orca sports)

  ISBN 978-1-55469-045-9

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8553.R68467T486 2008 jC813’.54 C2008-903424-4

  Summary: Spin-off racial hatred takes hockey players

  Keats and Dakota into a web of violence and deceit that makes

  winning this year’s league title the least of their concerns.

  First published in the United States, 2008

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930033

  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 design by Bruce Collins

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  Author photo by Bill Bilsley

  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

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  010 09 08 • 4 3 2 1

  chapter one

  “Keats, you boneheaded jerk!” The voice came from above me, at the top of the Plexiglas surrounding the penalty box. The guy sounded like he was using a megaphone. I could hear him clearly above the thousands of yelling fans, who were glad to see me get a penalty here in Saskatoon.

  The score was 3–3 with only five minutes left in the hockey game. The center on my line, Dakota Smith, was already in the penalty box. With me beside him, it left five of their Saskatoon Blades against three of our Seattle Thunderbirds. Worse, the Blades were only one game behind us in the overall league standings. We needed this win to stay in first place going into the playoffs.

  “You hear me, Keats?” the voice screamed again.

  I ignored him. I spend a lot of time in the penalty box, and I get yelled at a lot by angry hockey fans. I expected Saskatoon fans to hate me.

  “You’re a boneheaded jerk!” he hollered. “Play hockey instead of running people into the boards!”

  I could have told him I’m one of the smallest guys on the ice. Can I help it if bigger players trip over my knee and smash into the boards? But the referee hadn’t believed my story. This guy probably wouldn’t either. Besides, he wasn’t getting to me. I’ve been called worse things than a boneheaded jerk.

  “How about you, redskin?” the guy yelled at my teammate beside me. “Where’s your bow and arrow?”

  Now I was mad. I’d only been on the Seattle Thunderbirds two weeks, and Dakota Smith kept to himself, so it wasn’t like we had become friends. I didn’t know much about him, but I did know he was definitely Native North American. He was tall and big-shouldered. He had long black hair, high cheekbones and skin like unpolished copper.

  I turned and half stood. “That’s enough, bozo!” I yelled. Bow and arrow was going well past what fans should be allowed to say.

  Dakota pulled me back down to a sitting position.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Dakota told me calmly, still staring straight ahead. “This happens all the time.”

  I twisted my head and glared at the fan. He was leaning halfway over the Plexiglas, just above me. He had long greasy hair and wore a dirty denim jacket with a black T-shirt underneath. He was so close I could see the hairs growing out of his nostrils.

  “Bozo, Keats? Bozo?” he shouted, working himself into a frenzy. “You’re both losers! A crazy man and an Indian chief! Clear the rink before we clear you!”

  Dakota stayed calm, and it helped me keep my temper. Instead of yelling something, I managed to force myself to smile sweetly into the screaming guy’s face.

  That just made him angrier. He started shouting so loud that drool slid out the sides of his mouth. When I realized my smile drove him nuts, I just kept smiling.

  “Aargh!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Aargh!” He was so mad he couldn’t even find words anymore.

  I kept smiling.

  “Aargh!” he shouted again. Then he leaned down even farther. And he spit right into my face.

  The guys on the team tell me that when I go crazy, my eyeballs roll back into my head. If that’s true, my eyeballs were spinning in circles as I wiped the spit off my cheek. And I lost it. Totally.

  Without thinking, without caring, I reached up and grabbed the guy by the shoulders of his denim jacket. I yanked him face down into the penalty box.

  I made one mistake. I pulled too hard.

  When I lose my temper, I sometimes forget my own strength. I pulled so hard that the guy slid right across the lap of my slippery nylon hockey pants. His face ended up in Dakota’s lap.

  I couldn’t hear the crowd, of course, because when I lose my temper, nothing gets through. Later the guys told me the crowd went totally crazy too: Screaming. Yelling. Cheering. I also later learned that the referee had noticed and had blown the whistle to stop play and to call for security guards.

  All I knew was I wanted to get this guy for calling Dakota names and for spitting in my face.

  But I couldn’t. Not with his face and shoulders across Dakota’s lap. Not with Dakota calmly pinning the guy’s arms so he couldn’t fight.

  When I looked down, all I could see was the backs of his legs, the back of the top of his pants and the back of the bottom of his jacket. Mad as I was, I wasn’t going to start spanking the guy.

  I had to do something to punish this guy. Just when I thought my body would pop like a balloon from anger, I saw it. Where his jacket and black T-shirt had lifted to show some skin, I saw the top of the guy’s underwear.

  I grabbed it with one hand. Then with the other. And I pulled as hard as I could. I didn’t stop yanking upward until his underwear almost reached his shoulder blades.

  He screamed and yelled and squirmed. Dakota held him to keep him from turning over and swinging at either of us. And I kept pulling, even when my arms felt so tired I almost had to let go. Right about then, the security guards got to the penalty box.

  I was glad to let go, so they could haul the guy out of there. While I don’t lose my temper terribly often, when I do, I really flare. It came and went so fast that I was already feeling embarrassed by what I had done.

  The security guards led the fan up the stairs away from the penalty box, one on each side so he wouldn’t try to get away. But I don’t think he felt like running. Because when I looked over my shoulder to watch him walk up the stairs of the ice rink, the top of his underwear was still halfway up his back.

  “Well, Mike,” Dakota said to me above the insane roaring of the crowd, “I can see how you got your nickname.”

  chapter two

  Getting called into the coach’s office is like getting called into the principal’s office. And I never have good enough grades to hope it’s because the principal has nice news.

  “Yes, Coach?” I didn’t step all the way inside.
Maybe he wanted to speak to someone else. Maybe our trainer had called the wrong person from the dressing room down the hallway. Or maybe I was going to be traded. Again.

  “Michael,” Coach Nesbitt said, “come in.”

  He didn’t call me Mike. Or Keats. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “Sure, Coach.”

  He pointed me to a chair in the corner. I sat down.

  On a shelf behind his desk were trophies and hockey photos. One photo showed Coach Nesbitt with Wayne Gretzky at a golf tournament. Wayne was taller and skinnier. The photo was a few years old. Coach Nesbitt had less hair now, and what was left of his hair was salt-and-pepper gray.

  “I want you to think about Saskatoon,” he said.

  I nearly laughed a sad laugh. When didn’t I think about Saskatoon?

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

  Already, after only two weeks in Seattle, I wished I had a goal for every time someone asked me to repeat those two words after my explaining I used to play there.

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

  People in Seattle smile when I say it, like they think I still talk baby talk. I’ve even had a few say, “Bless you,” as if I had just sneezed.

  Then I have to explain that Saskatoon is a city with a Western Hockey League team, and that Saskatchewan is not a sneeze but the Canadian province right above North Dakota.

  Actually, Saskatoon people are crazy about hockey, and it is a great city for hockey players. But only if you wear a Saskatoon Blades uniform. For a player on any other team in the WHL, the Saskatoon ice arena is not a great place to be.

  Saskatoon is bad enough for other out-of-town players. For me, it was horrible. I had left the Saskatoon Blades under bad terms. In leaving, I’d also left behind the closest thing to family I’d ever had.

  Coach Nesbitt snapped me from my thoughts. “We need to discuss what happened in Saskatoon,” he said.

  It hung there while I kept my face stiff and stared back at him. Some labels are bad enough: Troublemaker. Bad-tempered. Rebel. I could live with those. I deserved them. Other labels—like thief—hurt worse and follow you longer. I had not defended myself in Saskatoon. I sure wasn’t going to start now.

  He realized what he’d just said. “I don’t mean why they traded you. I mean the penalty-box incident.”

  I nodded. I’d been wondering when he would get around to this. It had been four days since I’d lost my temper in the Saskatoon penalty box. We had played other teams on three of those days. We’d tied the Regina Pats the day after Saskatoon and lost to the Red Deer Rebels the next day. Then we killed the Lethbridge Hurricanes, leaving us a full day to get home to Seattle by bus. I’d been dreading this moment all that time.

  “Saskatoon was great, wasn’t it?” I said. “Remember how we killed off that two-man penalty and then pulled off a win in overtime against the Blades?” I snapped my fingers. “Wow! Now that I think of it, I did score that overtime goal, didn’t I?”

  It had been a beauty. Their defenseman had slapped a cross-ice pass right onto my stick, and I had burned up the ice on a breakaway, pulling the goalie left, flipping the puck to my backhand and firing the puck high into the right corner of the net. Yes, it had been dumb taking a penalty. It had been even worse to lose my temper when the guy spit in my face. At least, though, I’d scored the winning goal.

  Coach Nesbitt buried his face in his hands. I heard him let out a deep sigh.

  “Yes, we did win,” he said when he pulled his hands away. “And, yes, you did score.”

  I grinned. I doubted my happy grin was fooling either of us, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

  “I also remember a few other things,” Coach said. “I remember you throwing someone into the boards and taking a penalty when Dakota was already in the box. That was a bad time to put us deeper in the hole.”

  “The guy hacked my ribs with his hockey stick,” I protested. “I couldn’t let him get away with—”

  “How many times have coaches had to talk to you about this?” Coach Nesbitt interrupted.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I score lots of goals, but not too many in overtime.”

  He slammed his fist on his desk. It shook the coffee mug that held his pens and pencils.

  “Quit clowning, Keats. You know exactly what I mean.” He glared at me. “And I want you to tell me exactly what I mean. Right now.”

  I examined the tops of my knees. I hadn’t had a chance to change into my hockey gear yet, so I was still in blue jeans. There was a hole just above my left knee. A small hole. I knew it would get bigger though. I’d probably have to buy a new pair soon and—

  “Keats, lift your head! At least have the guts to look me in the eye.”

  I lifted my head and glared back at Coach Nesbitt. “You want to talk to me about how I lose control when I lose my temper,” I told him. “I need to learn to curb it, so I can reach my potential as a hockey player.”

  Coach Nesbitt settled back in his chair and sighed again. “I wish you knew how sad it makes me to watch someone as good as you throw it all away.”

  I went back to staring at the tiny hole just above the left knee of my jeans.

  “Come on, Keats,” he said. “I want to help.”

  “That guy made some crack to Dakota about a bow and arrow, Coach. He spit in my face. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Not try to rip his underwear off, that’s for sure.” Coach Nesbitt chuckled at the memory and then remembered I was in front of him. He forced a frown back on his face. “Dakota told me what happened, Keats. He told me you shouldn’t be blamed. I have a lot of respect for Dakota, and I’m going to go on his word. I’ve written a report and sent it to the league’s head office, requesting that you not be fined or suspended.”

  “Is that why you called me here?” I grinned again. This was the first time in a while that getting called to the coach’s office had meant good news.

  “It’s only part of the reason.” His frown deepened. “Keats, the Seattle Thunderbirds may be your last stop. In three years, you’ve played for four teams. We both know why you had to leave Saskatoon. If we don’t keep you, I doubt anyone will pick you up. And you know what it means if you can’t play in the WHL.”

  It meant I’d never have a chance at getting drafted into the National Hockey League. The WHL was the last step before making a pro team. I’d been dreaming about that since I was a kid.

  I picked at the hole in my jeans.

  “Look,” Coach Nesbitt said, “I’m on your side. I know you had it tough growing up. I really want to help you.”

  I stood, walked up to his desk and put my hands on it. I leaned forward and looked him straight in the eyes. My voice was tight with anger. “Two things, Coach Nesbitt. One, you have no idea what growing up was like for me. Nobody can. And two, it’s none of your business. Ever.”

  He pushed his chair back and stood. We were the same height. I was a short hockey player. He was a short coach.

  “Two things, Michael Keats.” His voice sounded as angry as mine. “One, you’re right. It is none of my business. And two, speak to me like that again and you’re suspended for ten games.”

  He stared at me, daring me to say anything else.

  I wanted to. Then I thought of how much I still wanted to play hockey. I thought of Dakota Smith and how cool he had been when the guy in Saskatoon mouthed off about a bow and arrow.

  “I’ll try to watch my temper,” I said.

  “Good. Now get back to the dressing room and get ready for practice.” He allowed me a small smile. “You guys had a great road trip, and I’m going to skate the team easy today.”

  I walked out of there with my jaw shut tight.

  I was still mad when I got to the dressing room. Most of the guys were already in their equipment and on the ice, which was good. I didn’t feel like talking. I hated it when anything or anyone reminded me why I had been forced to leave Saskatoon.

  chapter three

  Coach Nesbitt liv
ed up to his promise. It was a light practice. He ended it after only an hour. By then, of course, I was in a better mood.

  I showered and dressed in a hurry because I wanted to catch Dakota Smith. He was usually the first guy out of the dressing room, and he never hung around the rink with the rest of the team.

  When I got out to the parking lot, I had to pull my collar up against the drizzle. Gray fog draped across the dark green of the high hills around us. People in Seattle told me it was always like this in February. I didn’t mind the drizzle, though, or the fog. It sure beat the cold weather up in Saskatoon.

  The big parking lot around the arena held very few cars. I jumped over puddles as I ran to catch up to Dakota. I still had to shout his name to keep him from getting into his truck before I reached him.

  During my two weeks with the Seattle Thunderbirds, I hadn’t heard Dakota Smith speak more than a dozen words. He always sat by himself on the bus on road trips, reading thick books. It wasn’t that he was a nerd. Or that he couldn’t have friends. It was more like we were so unsure of him that we kept our distance. He had a reputation as someone you didn’t want to mess with. While Dakota Smith was probably only seventeen, just like me, he carried himself as if he were a legendary warrior of a fierce noble tribe.

  Dakota could play. He was fast, sweeping through the opposing teams like wind through pine trees. He was smooth, like a mountain river flowing over round boulders. And he had a shot as deadly as a striking snake.

  “Dakota!” I shouted again as I hurried.

  He leaned against his truck and waited for me. I knew what I wanted to say but not how to say it.

  “Nice truck,” I said when I got there.

  He grunted.

  We both knew it wasn’t a nice truck. It was an old Dodge 4x4. Green. Banged up. Splattered with caked-on mud that was probably older than most cars.

  I shrugged. “Actually, it’s an ugly truck.”

  For the first time ever, I saw him grin. “Yup. But it will get me anywhere.”

  “Look,” I said, “I just want to thank you for helping me with Coach Nesbitt. He used your story on a report. I probably won’t get suspended.”