“Not very bright, Nishikawa!” Kelly Block called out from the other side of the water.
Data finally came up with the solution. There was a sharp bend in the creek farther up towards the hills. Data suggested that the team with the cable pay enough of it out to span the creek, strap the remaining coils to a board, and carry it up above the bend so that the flow of the water would carry it across the creek as it rounded the corner.
“Now that’s using your head!” Kelly Block called over.
“I’d like use this hammer on his head!” Nish hissed as he stood by Travis, watching the coils of cable head for the other bank.
Once the cable was across, they were able to mount it like a clothesline, running from one platform to the other. And finally, the Owls on Travis’s side figured out how to fit little Simon Milliken into a safety harness and hang him from a sort of “roller skate” device they had fitted onto the cable. His teammates hoisted him up and launched him over the creek, little Simon sliding easily over the tumbling waters as Screech Owls on both sides cheered him on.
“Now that,” a proud Kelly Block announced, “is teamwork.”
It was, too. Travis felt great about what they had accomplished. They had been given a complicated problem and together they had solved it. Liz and Jesse had seen how to put the platforms together. Data had figured out how to get the cable across. Travis and Nish had worked on how to mount the cable onto the platforms. Jesse and Wilson had connected it all. Sarah had known how to work the safety harness. And Simon had flown over the river into the arms of the Owls on the other side–who had then used the same equipment to send Lars back.
“There was another way,” Nish grumbled when all the team was once again gathered together.
“And what was that?” asked Kelly Block, suddenly interested.
Nish pointed up the slope, where a concrete bridge spanned the same swollen creek. “We could have driven.”
Several of the Owls giggled, but Kelly Block just grimaced. Obviously, he and Nish weren’t on the same wavelength when it came to humour–or, for that matter, hockey or anything else. If Block was looking for an example of “bad chemistry,” Travis thought, he needed look no further than to Block himself and poor Nish.
Travis knew what was going on. He’d seen it too many times before. Nish was caught in a disaster of his own making. He was digging himself in deeper and deeper, desperately hoping his humour would spring him free when, in fact, it was only making matters worse.
Travis thought that perhaps Nish’s luck had turned when Kelly Block announced that he was going to begin one-on-one sessions with the players. They were going to work on self-esteem and concentration and focus, and he was going to teach them some special “envisioning” techniques.
Those Owls who closely followed the NHL knew about “envisioning” and were excited by the prospect of learning how to do it themselves. Paul Kariya, who was idolized by many of the Owls–especially Nish, who still claimed Kariya was a distant “cousin”–was famous for his ability to concentrate fully on the game at hand. Even before a game began, he could “see” the way it would be played, and to the Screech Owls this ability was almost as impressive as his ability to skate so fast and shoot so quickly.
“We’re going to do this step by step,” Kelly Block announced. “We’ll work on those things that distract you and keep you from being the player you can be, and then we’re going to work on clearing your mind of everything but the game. We all start envisioning the same game; we all start playing the same game. And that’s where proper team chemistry begins–up here.” Block tapped his forefinger against his right temple and spun slowly around on his heels so the point was made to every person in the room.
“I’ve drawn up a list of players in the order I’d like to meet with you,” Block said. “You’ll find it tacked up at the end of the hall.”
The Owls rushed away to see, as if they were racing to slap a teammate who had just scored. Everyone wanted to know when they were going to start learning how to “envision.” And everybody wanted to know who was going first.
The most surprised player of all, when they saw the list, was the one whose name was at the very top.
Wayne Nishikawa.
Travis was in his room, changing, when Nish burst in from his session with Kelly Block.
“This guy is a certifiable class-A nut!” Nish shouted, flopping backwards onto his unmade bed.
“Whadya mean?”
Nish sat up, his face red and flustered. “Okay,” he said, “we go over my ‘psychological profile,’ right?”
“Right.”
“He says I’m an insecure kid who has no sense of himself and doesn’t even like himself. That’s crap! I LOVE myself!”
Travis couldn’t argue with Nish. But he couldn’t really argue with Kelly Block, either. The truth, he figured, was somewhere in between.
“He wants me to refocus. He says I play the wrong position for my personality. He says I’m a natural forward and that Muck has messed me up by having me always back on defence.”
Travis shook his head in sympathy. “You’ve always played defence. Muck didn’t put you there. He just kept you there.”
“I know that. But this lunatic says that I have these needs that would make me a great forward. I need recognition. I need to be the star. I need to hear my name coming over the public-address system.”
All true, Travis thought to himself. But he said nothing. And Nish didn’t seem to see any truth in it. He continued, unaware that Travis was stifling a smile.
“So he says he’s going to teach me how to ‘envision’ playing forward. He has me lie down on a couch while he plays this stupid sleepy music like my mother plays, and he tells me to close my eyes while he talks.”
“Did you?”
“You have to–wait’ll you get in there with him. It’s creepy. He’s a wacko!”
“Maybe.”
“He sits there talking like he’s me. You wouldn’t believe it! He’s sitting there saying, ‘I want people to like me. I know my role on the team is to be the funny guy and make people laugh, but I don’t really want to do that–’”
“But you do, too!”
“I know that. But he’s being me, and he’s not doing a very good job, okay. He’s saying, ‘I want to be Wayne Nishikawa, team leader. I want to be Wayne Nishikawa, good friend. I want to be Wayne Nishikawa, good person’–That’s him speaking, not me. I just want to be Nish, and I’m not too crazy about being a good person!”
“What then?”
“What then? I don’t know. I fell asleep.”
Travis couldn’t help himself. He started to laugh. “You fell asleep?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“How could you?”
“It was hot in there. And he had that awful music on. And he was getting pretty boring–”
“You fell asleep!” Travis repeated, delighted.
“Big deal. I’m awake now.”
“Where was he when you woke up?”
“I don’t know. Gone.”
“He was gone?”
“Yeah. So?”
Travis couldn’t believe it. Here was Kelly Block, trying to do what he was being paid to do, trying to do what he was supposed to be an expert in, and the kid he’s working on falls fast asleep when he’s talking to him.
“He must hate your guts,” Travis said.
“Then we’re even,” Nish said. “Because I hate his.”
Travis and Lars were coming back from breakfast when they looked up the highway and saw a distant figure, furiously pedalling a mountain bike towards the camp.
“That’s not who I think it is, is it?” said Travis.
“It is,” said Lars. “Don’t tell me Nish is finally trying to get in shape.”
Nish was now in full view. His red face sweat-covered and blotched. He skidded in the gravel as he turned hard off the highway, straightened out and bolted through the gates to Camp Victory. He sagged on the
handlebars as the bike rolled to a stop near the garage, his chest heaving as he gasped desperately for air.
“He’s hyperventilating!” shouted Lars as the two Owls ran towards their friend.
“No he’s not,” corrected Travis. “Something’s scared him!”
Travis knew his best friend well enough to know when Nish was badly frightened. Usually Nish was cocky and full of himself, but every once in a while he got scared into dropping the act and the little boy inside him came out.
“What’s wrong?” Travis called as he and Lars raced up. He held the handlebars of the bike as Nish, unsteadily, dismounted and gulped air into his lungs. Travis noticed that Nish’s T-shirt and track pants were soaked through with sweat.
“You okay?” asked Lars.
Nish gasped and choked and spat and moaned. He fell to his knees and placed both hands on the ground in front of him, hanging his head as he fought for air and calm.
“Nish!” Travis finally demanded. “Tell us what’s wrong!”
Nish looked up, his face swollen and soaked. Tears? Sweat? Travis couldn’t tell.
“You, you…won’t…b–b–believe m–me!” Nish gasped.
“Believe what?” Lars asked. He was gently patting Nish’s back, trying to offer him some comfort.
Nish stared hard at them, his eyes pleading for them to take him seriously. Travis had never seen such desperation in his friend’s eyes. The look alone scared him–and he didn’t even know what it was that had frightened Nish!
“I s–saw…some…thing,” Nish gulped. He seemed about to break into tears.
“What?” Travis asked. “What did you see?” There couldn’t be grizzlies around here, could there? And there weren’t any buffalo around any more, were there? Except in special parks. Nish couldn’t have started a stampede, could he?
But Nish wasn’t saying. He seemed to have caught his breath now, but he was strangely silent. This wasn’t Nish, Travis thought to himself. Nish was the one who always had to tell everything, first and loudest if possible.
Nish spoke in a very quiet voice. “You won’t…believe me.”
“Try us,” suggested Lars. He had a look of utter sincerity on his face. Travis was glad it was Lars who was there with him. Nish could trust Lars the same as he could trust his closest friend, Travis.
“What?” Travis asked.
They helped Nish over to the steps of the nearest cabin. He sat quietly until he had his breath back, then tried to remain calm as he told them what had happened.
The night before, Nish hadn’t been able to fall asleep. He had tossed and turned all through the night. He had tried every trick he knew–counting sheep, counting goals, dreaming up gross tricks to play on his teammates–but nothing worked. All he could think about was the look in Kelly Block’s eyes as the so-called sports expert told him that he, Wayne Nishikawa, all-star defence at the Quebec City International Peewee Tournament, all-star defence at the Lake Placid International Peewee Hockey Championship, was now supposed to be a forward!
He got up and went to the open window. Everything here was upside down. Defence to forward. Winter to summer.
Nish stared out towards the hills. There was a faint ribbon of red on the high ledge; dawn creeping into the valley. There was no point in sleeping now. No point in even trying.
He had thought of waking Travis up, but Travis was so deep in sleep, Nish was torn between waking him up and doing something funny to him. He thought a dirty trick might perk him up, and headed back to his duffel bag for his special can of shaving cream that had come on every trip Nish had made with the Screech Owls.
He tiptoed back to Travis’s bedside and very carefully squeezed out a long unicorn horn of cream on Travis’s forehead, teasing and twisting the pile so high that it held just a moment before drooping down over Travis’s nose and mouth. Travis, still fast asleep, swatted at the irritation and rolled over, spreading shaving cream all over his pillow.
But Nish couldn’t even force a smile. He just wasn’t his old self.
He put the shaving cream carefully away–stopping first to fill one of Lars’s boots–and sat on the edge of his rumpled bed, trying to decide what to do.
He started to dress, pulling on his Screech Owls sweatpants, a T-shirt, and his Owls windbreaker. If the warm gust from the window was any hint of the day to come, he wouldn’t need anything else.
He had no idea what he would do. He didn’t want to hang around the camp–Camp Defeat, he was starting to call it–in case Mental Block was also up early and the two of them bumped into each other. Nish wouldn’t mind bumping into Block–but only if he, Nish, was driving a train.
He had it in his mind that he had to get away. And the only way to do that was to take one of the mountain bikes and head off for a while into the Badlands. He liked the name–it seemed like a place where he would belong.
Nish slipped out quietly, easing the door shut so that no one would awake. He stepped carefully, avoiding the creaky board on the steps and jumping down from the cabin onto the soft sand that had appeared as the snow ran off towards the river.
There was no lock on the garage that held the mountain bikes. Nish wondered, briefly, how many places there were left in the world like Drumheller and at home in Tamarack, where you didn’t need to lock up everything you owned if you ever expected to see it again. He liked this town. He just didn’t like Kelly Block and Camp Defeat.
Nish eased out the best bike within reach–a Gary Fisher, with front and rear suspension and a built-in computer that would tell him not only how far he had gone but how long he’d been gone. He was sort of running away, but his stomach was already rumbling with demands for breakfast. He’d just go for a little while, and be back in time to put the bike away and meet the rest of the guys back at the cabin before breakfast.
No, on second thought he’d better just meet them at breakfast–Travis and Lars would want to get him back for the shaving cream!
It was beautiful out on the highway. The sky to the east was blue and gold and pink, and the thin light of dawn gave the few houses along the way a blue-black tint, as if they were silhouettes rather than houses. Already there were some people up, and the lights in upstairs rooms gave strange cat’s eyes to some of the buildings.
He rode hard until he got to Rosedale and the suspension footbridge. He knew there were good paths on the other side. He tried riding his bike across the bridge, but the swinging motion made his balance uncertain, so he got off and walked, staring down through the steel-grate floor of the bridge at the churning grey-brown water. Any higher, he thought, and he wouldn’t have the stomach to make this crossing.
There were no houses on the other side. There had once been an old coal mine, but it was long since abandoned, and though there were signs saying “PRIVATE PROPERTY” bike trails headed off everywhere, disappearing behind the shoulders of the sandhills. There were supposed to be more hoodoos back here–perhaps he’d find some.
Back on his bike, Nish headed into the Badlands. He was breathing hard, pumping determinedly as the bike darted along the trails, the shocks cushioning every small bump and washout. He was alone in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, and he felt completely at ease. It surprised him and pleased him that he felt this way.
He looked around at the barren hills and the strange rock formations. It was no longer the age of TV and video games and McDonald’s. It felt as if he had gone back a hundred million years in time. And he was the only human on the face of Earth!
Nish giggled to himself. He was no twelve-year-old kid on the run from Camp Defeat, he was the ferocious Deinonychus they had talked about at the museum. He had the greatest eyesight of all the dinosaurs. He was quickest on his feet, fastest with his hands. No, not hands–long claws, sharp as scalpels. He chomped his teeth together, imagining they were twice the size of a shark’s, and ten times as sharp.
The path Nish had taken through the hills rose and fell. He had to keep changing gears and, at times, his rear
wheel spun with the extra energy he seemed to have found, small pebbles flying out behind him. He looked back, admiring his own dust. A dust cloud in March, in Canada. Incredible.
Nish was beginning to feel much better. Why feel sorry for myself, he wondered, when the real fool here is Mental Block? Why worry about anything when he could ride a bike so nice in country like this? The air was warm in his face and fresh with the start of the day. If this was indeed what the world was like at the dawn of history, then he wouldn’t mind being there at all.
Nish stood on his pedals to accelerate up a steep incline. The front wheel of the bike rose and twisted in the air. The rear wheel spun hard, jumping the bike hard.
What was that sound?
Nish let the bike settle and put one foot on the ground, turning back to see what had made that strange throaty sound behind him.
Was it the rear wheel catching? Was it a bird? An animal?
Nish shivered. But it wasn’t cold. It was warm, probably heading for hot. He was sweating–but now the sweat felt like little chips of ice running down his back and under his arms.
One hundred million years collapsed in a second. Nish was no longer all alone in the prehistoric world of the dinosaurs; he was all alone in the modern world of the Badlands.
And he was scared.
The noise came again. It sounded like it came from a cave. It sounded like it came from some great pit that had no bottom.
The mine? Weren’t there still old mine shafts around here? But what was making the sound? There were all sorts of animals in the West that Nish didn’t know anything about. He’d never seen a coyote. He’d never even seen a prairie dog until Andy pointed them out as the bus made its way along the highway from Calgary.
But wouldn’t a coyote howl? This was no howl–it was a growl!
Nish got off his bike and stood by it, thinking that in case of an attack he might keep the bike between him and whatever animal it was out there with him.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3 Page 11
