“Ici!”
“Travis–une pour moi!”
“Moi, s’il vous plaît!”
“Moi!”
It was cold enough to see their breath, yet Travis Lindsay was sweating as he stumbled and stuttered and tried to answer the shouts of the crowd gathered around him. How he wished he’d paid more attention in French class. If only they’d speak slower. If only he were standing closer to Sarah Cuthbertson, who was in French immersion, and who was yakking away happily as she signed her name, again and again and again.
Travis was helpless. He could do nothing but nod and smile and sign his name to the hockey cards they kept shoving into his hand.
He wished he understood better. He did not, however, wish that any of this would stop. As far as he was concerned–as far as any of the Screech Owls was concerned–this moment could go on forever.
“Travis! Ici!”
“Moi!”
This was what he had dreamed about all those long winter evenings when he’d sat at the kitchen table practising his signature. This was why he’d worked on that fancy, swirling loop on the L of “Lindsay,” very carefully putting “#7” inside the loop to indicate his sweater number, just like the real NHLers did. He knew that his mother and father had been smiling to each other as they watched him work on signing his name, and he wished they could see him now. Travis Lindsay–Number 7, with a loop–signing autograph after autograph outside the renowned Quebec Colisée.
There was no end to the surprises on this trip to Quebec City. The Owls had come for the special fortieth anniversary of the Quebec International Peewee Tournament, the biggest and most special peewee hockey tournament on Earth. The Screech Owls were just one of nearly 150 teams entered, and Travis just one of 2,500 players, but every single player felt as if the Quebec Peewee could be his or her tournament, the moment where he or she would make their mark and be noted by all who saw them play.
Like everyone else here, Travis knew the history of the Quebec Peewee. He knew that it was here that Guy Lafleur and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux had all come to national attention.
More than fourteen thousand fans showed up in the Colisée to cheer the great Lafleur the night he scored seven goals in a single game. The following day, they sewed seven velvet pucks onto his sweater and his photograph was splashed across the country’s sports pages–a national superstar at the age of twelve!
Wayne Gretzky’s team had come here from Brantford two years after Gretzky scored an amazing 378 goals in a single season. Mario Lemieux had first demonstrated his amazing puck-handling here. Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Denis Savard, Pat LaFontaine, they had all starred here. And so had a young peewee goaltender named Patrick Roy, who was stopping pucks with a strange new style they were calling “the butterfly.”
In the forty-year history of the Quebec City tournament, nearly five hundred of the young players who had come here had gone on to NHL careers–a record unmatched by any other minor-hockey gathering in the entire world.
The time might even come when people would talk about this tournament as the one where young Travis Lindsay served notice that he was NHL-bound. They might say this was where Sarah Cuthbertson, captain of the Olympic gold-medal-winning Canadian women’s hockey team, first came to national attention. Or that this was where the scouts first began talking about Wayne Nishikawa, the best defenceman in the entire National Hockey League. Travis or Sarah or Nish–or Jeremy, Jesse, Derek, Dmitri, Jenny, Lars, Simon, Andy, Fahd, Wilson, Liz–the Screech Owls were all here, each one with his or her own special dream for Quebec City.
They already had their own hockey cards. And their own fans. Just like in the NHL.
Sure, the autograph collectors were kids, almost all of them younger than the Owls themselves, but the cards were real. Upper Deck, the best card manufacturer there was, had contacted every team headed for the Quebec Peewee, and team managers, like Mr. Dillinger, had handed out forms for the players to fill out, telling how tall they were and how much they weighed, what position they played, and how many goals and assists they had last season. There was even a question about which NHL player they modelled their play after, and another about what they enjoyed off the ice. Upper Deck had also asked for action shots of each player, and Data’s father had taken photos of all of them in turn: Travis stopping in a spray of snow, Sarah stickhandling the puck, Jeremy making a stretch glove save, Nish taking a slapper from the point.
As each team arrived in Quebec City, someone from Upper Deck had met them with a large box of hockey cards for their team manager to hand out. The players were overwhelmed. The cards were of the best stock, complete with a glossy photograph of each player on the front, and a head shot, showing just his or her face, on the back. Each player’s statistics and personal information were printed in fine gold lettering, and the team captains–like Travis–skated over a small hologram of the tournament logo.
Upper Deck also distributed the cards–by the thousands, it seemed–among the young fans of Quebec City. The free cards almost caused a riot outside the Colisée, where some of the teams, including the Owls, were lucky enough to book their first practice. The young fans seemed to know what the cards might one day mean. If they somehow had a card signed by Guy Lafleur the night he scored his seven goals, or by Wayne Gretzky when he played here, what would it be worth today?
Everyone wanted the captains’ signatures. Travis knew it was because the captains’ cards had the beautiful hologram, and he was trapped by eager autograph-seekers as he tried to plough his way through to the team bus after practice.
“Travis!”
“Moi!”
“Une carte seule, s’il vous plaît!”
He felt like a fool, unable to speak to them properly. He signed, and muttered stupidly: “Merci…Oui…Merci…Bonjour…Oui…Merci…” He knew they could tell he understood about as much French as a kindergarten student. Why couldn’t he be like Sarah, who was talking as much as she was signing? Why couldn’t he be like…like Nish, standing over there in a huge circle of young fans, signing his name as if he was greeting his adoring public outside Maple Leaf Gardens on a Saturday night.
Travis looked over, puzzled, as he signed another card. Why was his best friend drawing such a big crowd?
By the time he finally made it to the old school bus, and Mr. Dillinger had closed the door on the remaining fans who were still holding up cards and calling out their names, Travis was certain that they were calling out “Nishikawa!” far more than “Lindsay!” He decided to investigate.
Travis finally found Nish, last seat on the bus, flat on his back and holding his right wrist up as if he’d just been slashed.
“I’ve got writer’s cramp, man,” Nish moaned when he saw Travis. “Real bad–I don’t know whether I can play or not.”
“Very funny,” Travis said. “Where’s your card?”
Nish suddenly blinked, surprised. “You want my autograph?”
“I just want to see it.”
Nish made a big thing out of checking his jacket pockets. There was nothing wrong with his wrist now. He patted and probed and seemed happy to come up empty.
“Sorry, pal–all out. Can’t keep up with the public demand, it seems.”
Lars turned to help. “I traded him for one,” Lars said to Travis, reaching back with a card. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Travis said. He caught Lars’s eye. There was a message in the look Lars was giving him. He wanted Travis to see something.
Travis returned to his seat and compared Nish’s card with his own. Data’s father had taken a wonderful shot of Nish firing the puck from the point, and the head shot on the back was fine, but those were the only similarities. Travis had listed his statistics from last year–37 goals, 39 assists, 14 minutes in penalties–and had said he tries to play like NHL superstar Paul Kariya. He had added that he played baseball and soccer and lacrosse in the off-season and liked any movie with Jim Carrey in it. Nish’s card had his statistics right–14 goals, 53 assists, 42 minutes in penalties–but there truth came to an abrupt end.
Nish had said he’d already been scouted by the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
He had said Brian Leetch, Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defenceman, played a lot like him–not that he tried to play like Brian Leetch.
He had said Paul Kariya was his cousin.
Nish had his eyes closed when Travis made his way back to the last seat. Travis slapped Nish’s knee, causing the choirboy eyes to flutter open. Nish obviously knew what was coming.
“You can’t do this!” Travis said, holding out Nish’s card.
“Can’t do what?” Nish asked, blinking innocently.
“This!” Travis almost shouted. “How can you say you’ve already been scouted?”
“Because I have. And you have, too, or don’t you remember Lake Placid?”
Travis shook his head. “That was nothing. They weren’t NHL scouts.”
“They were scouts, weren’t they? And everything ends up in the NHL eventually, doesn’t it?”
“But they had nothing to do with the Leafs or the Ducks.”
“Well, I like to think they did. Those are the teams I’d want to have scouting me, okay?”
“And what do you mean you’re Paul Kariya’s cousin?”
Nish shrugged. “Don’t get your shorts in a knot. He’s part Japanese, isn’t he?”
“So?”
“So, what do you think ‘Nishikawa’ is? French?”
“And that makes you cousins?”
“Sort of.”
“‘Sort of ’? You can’t say that.”
“I just filled it out as a joke,” Nish said. “How was I supposed to know what they were going to use those forms for? No one said anything about hockey cards that I remember.”
“You can’t lie like that,” Travis insisted.
Nish took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. “I just exaggerated, that’s all. No one gets hurt by an exaggeration. Paul Kariya? He doesn’t even know, and he won’t know.”
Travis stared out the window all the way back to the drop-off point where the Screech Owls were to meet the families they would be staying with for the tournament. Soon the bus began its slow, twisting climb up into the narrow streets of the Old City. They passed horse-drawn carriages, statues, old churches, and drew up to a hotel that looked more like a palace standing over the frozen river. Sarah and Jenny were at the windows taking pictures of it all, but Travis hardly even noticed.
What if Nish was right? What if there was no harm in a little exaggeration? Maybe Nish did just mean it as a joke and Travis was letting his job as captain spoil his sense of humour.
Or perhaps he was jealous that Nish’s card was attracting so much attention.