Thunderbird Spirit Read online

  “Yes, Mom,” I said.

  He slapped my back and returned my grin.

  The guys gave me high fives as I stepped inside. A shorthanded goal is a big boost anytime. It’s even better late in a tie game against the Winter Hawks.

  I moved farther along the bench, puffing and sweating. When the guys finished slapping my back, Coach Nesbitt stepped close to me.

  “Keats,” he said, “that was a risky move. If it hadn’t worked, you’d be walking back to Seattle. As it is, I don’t know whether to shake your hand or bench you.”

  I pulled my hand loose from my hockey glove and held it out, grinning and hoping.

  He grinned back and shook my hand.

  We ended up winning 3–2, and we celebrated all the way back to Seattle—until the bus pulled into the parking lot.

  As we drove around the front of the ice arena, we were greeted by the flashing red and blue and yellow lights of police cars and fire trucks.

  All of the players crowded toward the bus windows, straining to see what was going on. When we pulled up to where we had parked our cars earlier in the day, we discovered what had happened.

  Dakota Smith’s ugly green truck was no longer green. It was black. Not from a new paint job. But from fire. His truck had become a smoke-filled, burned-out wreck.

  That wasn’t even the worst of it.

  The bus stopped well short of the fire trucks, and we tumbled out the front door.

  The police had already set up barricades. We got as close as we could, talking in low excited tones about something too difficult to believe.

  When we got to the barricade, we all shut our mouths. The night air was filled with the rumbling of diesel engines and the static of emergency radios. But not one of our voices added to the noise when we saw why the truck had been roped off by the police.

  In big, white, spray-painted letters on the pavement around the truck was a simple message: GO BACK TO YOUR TRIBE OR DIE IN THE CITY.

  chapter seven

  “How about a ride home?” I offered Dakota. The rest of the players had left long ago. Coach Nesbitt was talking to a cop. I’d been waiting in my Toyota listening to country music for the last half hour while other cops asked Dakota questions about his truck.

  “What’s that?” Dakota turned his head toward me. He stared at me as if I had just appeared out of the red and yellow lights swirling through the drizzle and darkness. To Dakota, I guess, it probably seemed like I had. I doubt he had heard me walk over from my car, and I had needed to tap his shoulder to get his attention away from the ruins of his 4x4.

  “Need a ride?” I repeated.

  “Coach Nesbitt said he’d take me home.”

  “Coach Nesbitt,” I said, “will ask all the same questions that you just lied about to the cops.”

  Dakota’s hair was tied back in a pony-tail. He tilted his head and studied me. The outline of his face reminded me of the way an eagle might stare. Then I saw a gleam of white from the dark shadows of his face. He was grinning at me.

  “Mike,” he said, “why would you think I’ve just lied to the police?”

  “Like you’re going to tell them someone shot at you twice? And that you somehow forgot to report it?”

  “Good point,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you told them you had no idea what any of this was about.”

  “Good guess. I told them that someone must really hate my red skin.” He shrugged and grinned again. “Although it’s really more like a nice dark suntan. Only I don’t have to pay to use a fancy tanning bed.”

  I knew enough about hiding pain to see that his joke wasn’t really a joke.

  “Good thing the truck is so burned they won’t notice the bullet holes,” I said, doing my best to change the subject.

  “Yeah, good thing,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of burning it myself?”

  I had to laugh.

  When I got quiet again, Dakota spoke. “So, Mike,” he said, “how do you know that Coach Nesbitt will ask all the same questions as the police?”

  “I’ve had people give me rides home, just so they can ask me questions. You can’t jump out of a moving car and walk away if you don’t like the questions.”

  “Oh.”

  I regretted what I’d said. Coach Nesbitt had put in a good word for me, had kept me from being suspended. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “Coach is a nice guy. He cares about his players. Of course he’s going to ask you questions.”

  “How about you?” Dakota said. “You saw the bullet holes. You know what happened yesterday in the parking lot. What are you going to ask me as you drive me home?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” I said, “I’ve got enough troubles of my own. The only thing I’ll ask you about is directions.”

  chapter eight

  I kept my word. I didn’t ask Dakota a single question about the guys who had shot at his truck. I didn’t ask if he thought they were the same guys who had burned his truck. I didn’t ask why someone would be doing this to him. I didn’t ask why he wanted to hide what he knew about them from the police. I didn’t ask how he knew it would all stop next Sunday. I didn’t ask if he was afraid. I didn’t ask if he wanted help.

  I only asked for directions.

  We got onto Interstate 5 and took it to Route 520, toward the floating bridge on Lake Washington. Before we reached the bridge, however, Dakota told me to go north. I followed signs directing us toward the University of Washington.

  I’d heard of this area—Madison Park— on the west shore of Lake Washington. It was a place for millionaires’ mansions. I didn’t say anything though. If Dakota wanted to take a shortcut, I wasn’t going to argue with him. As we drove in silence, the drizzling rain stopped. When my windshield wipers began to squeak on dry windows, I shut them off. Every few minutes, Dakota told me to make a turn to the right or to the left.

  We climbed over the hill. Seattle was on the other side. Houses got bigger as we rose higher into the subdivisions. Occasionally, breaks between the houses gave us a great view of the university lights and the lake below.

  Finally I stopped where Dakota told me I should let him out of the car. I winced at the clanking of gears and at the chugging of my leaky muffler. Normally it didn’t bother me to drive such an old clunker. But from the size of the houses along these streets, it felt like I was breaking the law just by driving my car into the neighborhood.

  The streetlights gave me enough light to see exactly how nice these mansions were. They were all three- and four-story houses, looking as big as churches. Long tree-lined driveways led up to each house. Huge windows—dark at this hour—overlooked huge yards.

  “Fancy part of town,” I said. “How did you luck into staying with a family around here?”

  “I was born in the right hospital at the right time,” Dakota said. He said it so quietly, I didn’t know whether I had heard him right.

  “Huh?” I said. In the WHL, when you moved to a different town, the team arranged for you to stay with host families. These were known as billets. The team paid them for rent and some grocery money.But billets don’t host hockey players to make money, because we eat a lot of groceries. Instead billet families usually love hockey and want to help out. My new billets were exactly like that. A dad and mom and three boys still in elementary school. They were nice to me, but they certainly didn’t live in a mansion. And I couldn’t figure out what being born in the right hospital at the right time had to do with ending up with billets who lived in a million-dollar house.

  “The right hospital at the right time,” Dakota said again. He still spoke quietly. I had to listen hard to catch each word. “When I was born, I ended up going home with the people who live here.”

  “Huh? What happened to your parents?”

  By the way Dakota froze and stared straight ahead, I knew I had said something wrong. But I couldn’t figure out what. For a couple of seconds, there was only the chugging of my car’s muffler. I half expected every win
dow in the neighborhood to suddenly light up as people got out of bed to see the cause of such an uncivilized noise. I shut the engine off.

  More silence. This was not good. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

  “You probably wouldn’t get it.” I heard rare anger in his voice. “But then, no one has called you a redskin. Or worse.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look,” he said, “you saw those words spray-painted around my truck.” He laughed. It sounded bitter. “‘Go back to your tribe.’”

  “Yeah, I saw the writing. I thought it was ignorant. If I ever get hold of the guy who did it, I’ll punch his lights out.”

  “Punching his lights out wouldn’t solve anything,” Dakota said, still staring straight ahead at the wide paved street in front of us. “You can’t change people like that.”

  “So what wouldn’t I get?” I asked.

  “People like that, they’re trying to hurt me. When someone is ignorant on purpose, it’s easy to not let it hurt. Because it’s nothing personal. You should almost feel sorry for them because they’re such idiots.”

  This conversation was quickly going places I didn’t understand.

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Dakota said, cutting me off. He was definitely angry. “You sat here and asked what happened to my parents. Like you couldn’t believe my parents would actually own a house like this.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You couldn’t believe that,” his voice became a sneer, “a redskin would actually belong in a neighborhood like this. It’s like you think that because of the way I look, my parents and I should live on a reservation somewhere, beating tom-toms and living in tepees.”

  He took a breath. “See, that’s what hurts. Not when someone is ignorant on purpose. But when they’re ignorant without thinking. It really gets to me, and I want to explode. For you to assume—”

  “Shut your mouth,” I said. I could feel my anger begin to match his. “Shut your mouth before I knock it shut.”

  “Sure,” he said, “that’s the only way you know how to deal with stuff. Hit and punch. We all know why you get traded around so much.”

  “You’re the one who is ignorant,” I practically shouted. “Asking about your parents had nothing to do with what you look like.”

  “Really?” He said it in such a way that I knew he didn’t believe me. Nor did he care to believe me.

  “Really,” I said. “Most of the time mothers live when they give birth. And most of the time babies get to go home with their mothers. But not always. Not me. My mother died. So I didn’t get to go home with my mother. Not that I had a home to go to anyway. Because my dad likes whiskey too much.”

  Now it was my turn to pause for breath. “The only reason I couldn’t believe your parents lived in this house is because you made it sound like they weren’t your parents. And I couldn’t believe anybody I know might have it this good.”

  I turned the key in my ignition and floored the gas to get the car going. I didn’t care how much noise it made.

  “So why don’t you get on a horse, Tonto,” I said. My jaw hurt from how tight I was gritting my teeth. “Ride it on up to your nice home and your nice parents. This poor paleface will get out of here and quit embarrassing you and your neighborhood.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to even get all the way out of the car. I popped the clutch and took off as he was stepping onto the pavement. He had to jump to get away from my car, and I roared off with my passenger door still wide open.

  chapter nine

  Two blocks later, I felt stupid. As cool air rushed into my car from the open door, I cooled down too. How was Dakota supposed to know how bad things had been when I was a kid?

  If I had stopped to think, I would have probably understood why Dakota felt I had judged him because of his skin color.

  But I’d let my temper get in the way. Worse, I’d said some awful things, really awful things.

  My car door was banging back and forth, so I pulled over and stopped. I didn’t move to shut the door though. I felt too sick about how I’d lost my temper. I wanted to bang my head against the steering wheel.

  When I lose my temper, I lash out. Sometimes with my fists. Sometimes with my words. And later, when I think about it, I feel foolish. But I almost never apologize. I can hardly allow myself to think about some of the stupid things I do when I’m mad. How could I actually admit them out loud?

  I banged the steering wheel. Not with my head. But with my fist. It didn’t help.

  The steering wheel was still there. My hand now hurt. And I still felt bad about what I’d said to Dakota.

  That’s when my car died. It sputtered and stopped, and my headlights dimmed. Before I left Saskatoon, a mechanic had told me I needed new electrical wiring. Naturally I had just laughed at the guy.

  I wasn’t laughing now. It was at least ten miles back to my billet’s house. I didn’t have enough money on me to call a taxi. It would cost me a fortune to have my car towed. And I sure couldn’t afford to fix this heap.

  I banged the steering wheel again. Then I shut off the headlights, got out of my car and walked around to slam the passenger door shut.

  I sat down on the curb behind my car. Maybe if I pretended none of this had happened, it would all go away. The night sky had lightened slightly at the approach of dawn. I could almost see the outlines of branches above me. I felt totally alone.

  I sat like that for five or ten minutes. Feeling alone was nothing new for me. I’d felt like that most of my life. This was worse though. A new day was ready to start, and it hit me that I didn’t have much hope for anything. One more mistake and I was out of hockey.

  I had no job, no money, no family. Dakota Smith, the one person who might have become a new friend for me in Seattle, was probably wishing I’d get run over by a train. I couldn’t even walk back down the street and ask to use his phone. How could life get worse?

  A vehicle approached from somewhere down the street. Its headlights swept the pavement under my car and bounced off my feet. With my luck, it would be a patrol car. The officers would take one look at my car and give me a ticket for littering.

  I hunched down behind my car, hoping the headlights would keep moving and that whoever passed by would not notice me sitting on the curb.

  The headlights did keep moving. The vehicle swept by, so quickly the driver could not have seen me. It wasn’t a cop. I was ready to believe that at least one thing had gone right in the last half hour. Then I noticed the passing vehicle was a red 4x4 truck.

  The brake lights glowed red as it slowed to turn onto the street where Dakota Smith lived.

  A red 4x4 truck.

  I flashed back in my memory to the truck that had almost hit Dakota’s in the arena parking lot. A red 4x4 truck. Same make. Same model.

  What were the chances of another truck, the same make and same model, cruising up to Dakota’s house in the early hours of the morning?

  Not very likely, I decided.

  I forgot to remind myself that the last time I had seen a red 4x4 truck, the guys in it had a rifle. Without thinking, I was up on my feet and running down the sidewalk toward Dakota’s house.

  chapter ten

  There were two. A pair of shadows. Each carried a baseball bat. They moved past where I was hiding behind the trunk of a large tree on the edge of Dakota’s property.

  I was glad to be out of their sight. I had to concentrate on breathing quietly as I tried to suck air into my lungs. I had sprinted here and was able to reach the house first because they had driven past me and parked well down the street. I considered jumping out and attacking them. But when I spotted their baseball bats, I told myself I was interested in reaching my next birthday. I stayed hidden.

  “You’re sure the dog’s on a chain?” I heard the bigger of the two ask in a low voice. In the half-light before dawn, I could see he had a beard and wore a lumberjack shirt.

  “Yeah. The dog’s
on a chain. I was here yesterday.”

  They moved past. The second guy, also in a lumberjack shirt, was shorter and skinnier and was wearing a knitted cap. Along with his baseball bat, he carried a small, clear plastic bag. I couldn’t tell what the bag held.

  I went through my choices.

  I could wait a few minutes until they were behind the house and then ring Dakota’s front doorbell. That might give the guys a chance to get away though, as I tried to explain what was happening. Especially if the lights went on in the house as Dakota or his mother or father answered the door.

  I could follow them and try to figure out what they were planning to do. But following them was useless, since I probably couldn’t stop them unless I was prepared to let them know I was there. If I didn’t give myself away, I wouldn’t be able to follow them anyhow, because once they left the property, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with their truck.

  Thinking of their truck gave me the idea.

  I waited until I was sure they had rounded the corner of the darkened house, and I sprinted away from the tree and back toward the street.

  It took me less than a minute to reach their 4x4. They had parked it down the street and around a corner, in the shadows between two streetlights.

  Perfect.

  When I got close to the truck, I noticed a sticker on the window that warned the truck was protected with a security system.

  I grinned. Even more perfect.

  Now I knew exactly what I was going to do.

  I searched for some tiny pebbles in the gutter beside the truck. I found four and put them in my mouth where I wouldn’t lose them.

  Squatting beside the front left tire, I unscrewed the small rubber cap from the tire’s valve stem. I took one of the pebbles from my mouth and stuck it on top of the air valve. I screwed the cap on again. As the cap tightened, it pushed down on the pebble. The pebble pushed down the air valve. Air began to hiss from the tire.

  Moving around the truck, I put pebbles into the three other valve caps. With all four tires hissing air, it seemed like the truck was sighing sadly as it began to settle on its rims.