The final score was 19–8 for the Toronto Mini-Rock. It had been a clean game, and the two teams shook hands. Mr. Dillinger had ice-cold Cokes waiting for them in the dressing room, and Muck took the unusual step of making a very short post-game speech.
“By the end of the season we’ll be even with them,” Muck said. “Just wait and see.”
Travis doubted it, but he still felt very good. Lacrosse was fun, almost as much fun as hockey, and he had to wonder if he’d ever scored a sweeter goal in winter than the one he’d scored just now.
“Where’s Mr. Fontaine?” Travis asked as the dressing room emptied.
“He never came in,” said Derek.
“Went straight from the bench to the front door,” said Sam.
Travis shrugged. Perhaps he had to be somewhere. Too bad, though, because Travis had wanted to thank him for the lesson.
He drove home with his parents. Mr. Lindsay, who had played a little lacrosse when he was growing up, was delighted with the game and said he hoped this signalled the return of a sport that had simply faded away for lack of interest.
“Who was the old man on the bench with Muck?” Mr. Lindsay asked after a while.
“Mr. Fontaine,” Travis said.
“Zeke Fontaine?” Mr. Lindsay asked.
Zeke? Travis wondered. What kind of name is that?
“Just Mr. Fontaine,” he said from the back seat. “That’s what Muck called him. He’s going to help Muck coach.”
They drove in silence after that. Mr. Lindsay seemed to be thinking about something else.
Finally, Mrs. Lindsay asked her husband, “Do you know him?”
“I don’t know if it’s who I think it is,” said Mr. Lindsay.
“And who do you think it is?” Mrs. Lindsay asked.
“I’d rather not say until I know for sure.”
Nish was at Travis’s door early the next morning. He’d already forgotten about the loss to the Toronto Mini-Rock and had turned his attention completely to the horror movie that was going to make them millions and show Mr. Dinsmore down at the Bluebird Theatre that he had made a terrible mistake kicking out next year’s Oscar winners.
“If we can’t find anything local to do it on,” Nish was saying, as he helped himself to a huge bowl of Froot Loops and poured on maple syrup instead of milk, “don’t worry about it. Fahd and I have been kicking around a few new ideas.”
“Like what?” Travis said, busy buttering his toast.
Nish stopped chewing long enough to explain. “Fahd’s got this great idea of a humungous ball of gas coming out of space and crashing into Earth and killing everybody. He wants to call it Fart Wars.”
“Sounds stupid to me,” said Travis as he reached for the raspberry jam.
“Me too,” Nish said, Froot Loops exploding from his mouth as he talked. “I mean, you can’t even see a fart. You can’t scare anybody unless you can show something that stinks so bad people fall over dead from it.”
Travis couldn’t resist. “Make the movie about your hockey bag – or better yet, your lacrosse bag. Just unzip it on Main Street and watch people drop like flies!”
“Very funny.”
“I thought it was.”
They set off early to see Travis’s grandfather. He and Travis’s grandmother lived in the lower part of town where the river widened slightly and Lookout Hill cut off the morning sun.
Old Mr. Lindsay, a retired policeman, had lived his entire life in Tamarack. His father had been a logger in the days when the magnificent white pine in the hills around town had been shipped all over the world. His grandfather had been a trapper and had built the first cabin ever on the banks of the river. Travis sometimes thought the town should have been named after his family, not after an old tree that grew only in swamps and couldn’t hang onto its needles.
They found old Mr. Lindsay in his garage workshop, puttering. His workbench was covered in the old alarm clocks and radios and toasters – pickings from the garbage, favours for neighbours – that he loved to spend his spare time figuring out and fixing. There was a cup of coffee steaming beside the vise and, hanging off the edge of the workbench, a large smouldering Corona cigar sending smoke twisting towards the fluorescent light. Old Mr. Lindsay was not allowed to smoke in the house, which made Travis wonder if he really enjoyed fixing the neighbours’ broken appliances or whether he simply needed an excuse to get out of the house and light up.
“Good mornin’, boys,” the old man said as he set down his glasses and reached for his coffee. “Radio says you came up short last night. Sorry I couldn’t make the game.”
“You didn’t miss much,” said Nish.
“Said on the radio you scored one, Trav. Good on you. What about you, Mr. Nishikawa? Pretty unusual for you to be kept off the scoresheet.”
“I’m playing goal,” Nish muttered. “Biggest mistake I ever made in my life.”
Old Mr. Lindsay stared at Nish a moment, his eyes twinkling and a little smile growing. “I doubt that – I doubt that very much.”
A small radio lay in pieces before the old man. He was checking the circuits with a tiny screwdriver that had a light bulb at the end which flashed whenever he touched a live wire. He put his glasses back on and returned to the task at hand, well used to having the two boys drop in and watch.
Nish nudged Travis with his elbow.
“Grandpa …?” Travis began.
“Yes, sir?” the old man answered without looking up.
“What’s the worst thing that ever happened in Tamarack?”
“That new traffic light on Church and Main. Why?”
“No, I mean a long, long time ago – back when you were young.”
The old man looked up and grinned. He tilted his glasses onto the top of his head. Travis now had his full attention.
“Well, that would have to be the meteor that killed off all the dinosaurs, wouldn’t it?”
Travis shook his head. He liked his grandfather’s strange sense of humour, even if he rarely got the joke.
“No, when you were a cop – a policeman, I mean.”
“You mean a cop. That’s what we called ourselves, and nothing wrong with it, either.”
The old man paused, sipped his coffee, and picked up the smouldering cigar and shoved it into his mouth. “I handled a murder investigation all by myself once,” he finally said, puffing on the cigar, his eyes almost closed. “But that was two crazy drunken brothers arguing about whose turn it was to go out to the woodpile. It wasn’t a nice thing, but hardly the worst.”
“What about that thing out on River Road you and Mr. Donahue were talking about one day when I was over?”
The cigar came out and old Mr. Lindsay set it down, hard. He was no longer smiling. He pushed his glasses back into place on his nose, and turned back to his work.
Travis was taken aback. His grandfather suddenly seemed so cold and uninterested. Perhaps he really didn’t remember. Travis’s grandmother was always going on about how his grandfather could lose his glasses on the top of his head, and how he had to write down everything he intended to do each day – and then usually lost the note.
“River Road,” Travis repeated. “Something about –”
But Travis’s grandfather cut him off with a curt “No.” End of topic. No further discussion.
They stayed around and watched the old man work, but there was hardly any more talk. Travis’s grandfather seemed almost in another world, and they were not going to be invited in. After a while they said they had to go and together they walked down towards the river wondering what they could do now.
“Far as I’m concerned,” said Nish, “I’m more curious than ever to know what the story is.”
“So am I,” said Travis.
“You got any ideas?”
Travis didn’t. They could search through the library files to see what the local newspaper might have written, but they didn’t even know what the topic was. Besides, a little newspaper whose front page featured ribbon-cutting ceremonies wasn’t likely to contain a story that even the police wouldn’t discuss.
“What about this Mr. Donahue you mentioned?” asked Nish.
“He’s in the retirement home,” Travis said. “My grandparents go and visit him sometimes, but Grandma says it’s hardly worthwhile. He lives in the past.”
Nish turned and stared at Travis, his eyes growing wide. “Well?” he said. “Could we ask for anything better than that?”