Joe Hall and David spent a lot of time together on the train. Most of the other players didn’t pay much attention to him, but Joe seemed to like having him around. David figured it was probably because he missed his own kids.
Joe told David that most of the Canadiens were hoping to play Vancouver in the Stanley Cup series. “It’s got nothing to do with you,” he said. However, like their concerns about David, it did have to do with money.
“It’s because the rink in Vancouver is so much bigger,” Joe explained. “It’s got nearly eleven thousand seats. Seattle’s barely holds four thousand. That means the bonuses will be bigger if we play Vancouver because the money all comes from ticket sales.”
In fact, the players’ money only came from the ticket sales for the first three games. The Stanley Cup series was a best-of-five series, but officials from the two leagues didn’t want the players dogging it. Paying them for only the first three games meant no one would try to lose on purpose so the series would go the limit and they’d make more money.
“But it doesn’t really matter who any of us wants to play, does it?” Joe said. “Whatever happens is going to happen no matter what anyone wants. When the PCHA playoff wraps up on Friday, then we’ll know.”
The game on Friday started at 8:15 in Vancouver. It ended a little after ten o’clock. The Canadiens were on the train in Calgary, which meant it was shortly after eleven when word of the game reached them. A telegram was waiting for Mr. Kennedy at the station. A porter brought it to him in the car, and all the players gathered around as he took it. David had already climbed into his berth, but he certainly wasn’t sleeping.
“It’s Seattle, boys,” Mr. Kennedy told them. “They won it 7–5.”
David could hear some of the players groan at the news, but in his berth he fell asleep with a smile on his face.
“So you’re going to Seattle,” Joe said at breakfast the next morning. “You must be excited.”
David was excited, but he knew better then to look too pleased with the other players around. He nodded and smiled shyly.
Joe hadn’t asked David much about his uncle before. He didn’t want to get him talking about it in case he wasn’t going to get the chance to go to Seattle. Now that he was, Joe was curious. “So what do you know about this uncle of yours?”
“Not too much,” David admitted. “My mother used to tell me stories about him, but she hadn’t seen him since he was younger than I am now. I’ll show you …” David had the picture of his Uncle Danny with his sewing kit in his suitcase, and he went back to get it.
Like everyone who saw it, Joe was amazed by the resemblance. “He looks just like you!”
“I know.”
“So what happened to him? How come you don’t know how to find him?”
David explained how his mother and her brother had both been sent to Canada and how a new family had adopted him but not her. “When they were all living in Montreal, my mother got to see him a lot. She said his new family was always nice to her, but they didn’t want to adopt a teenage girl. Even after they moved all the way to Vancouver, my mother and my uncle still wrote to each other. But then Mr. Embury — Danny’s father — got sick and he had to go to a special hospital in Seattle. My mother said that Danny and his mother moved there to be close to him, but then he died. She said after that the letters stopped coming.”
David also told Joe about Mrs. Freedman and the letters she’d written and the addresses she’d been sent and how maybe Embury was really Embery or Embree. “There’s only eight addresses altogether. I’m going try to find those people and talk to them. Maybe one of them will know where my uncle is.”
But David had never told anyone the whole story before now. All that J-P and Mrs. Freedman had known was that David had an uncle named Danny Embury and that he lived in Seattle. When Joe heard the whole story, he realized that if Danny’s mother had gotten remarried after her husband died, then she wouldn’t be Mrs. Embury anymore. Danny’s family name might have changed, too. While there was still a chance that one of those families might know something, Joe was worried that David might have come all this way and wouldn’t really be looking for the right person.