Ice Magic

by Matt Christopher

  “Coach Hayes just called,” she said from the bottom of the stairs. “He said that the game’s called off.”

  He stared, shivers rippling up his spine. “Did he say why, Mom?”

  “The electric power’s off,” she explained. “The game is postponed till some future date.”

  11

  After breakfast Pie went over to the Byrds’ house and told the twins the sad news. Their eyes popped. Their mouths sagged open.

  “Isn’t that something?” Jody whispered tensely.

  “That toy hockey game has more magical powers than I realized!” Joliette exclaimed in the same breathless whisper. “It’s fan-tastic!”

  “Fantastic is right,” replied Pie, keeping his voice down too so as not to let Mrs. Byrd hear. No telling what she might say if she heard them discussing magical powers. “I’ve talked with Terry Mason about it. I practically accused him of stealing the game.”

  “What did he say?” Joliette asked.

  “He said he didn’t steal it. And was he mad!”

  “Do you think he did?” Jody inquired.

  “I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have gotten so sore if he had. I was sorry afterwards that I accused him. It was a dumb thing to do, since I was only guessing, anyway.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Jody. “Well, it’s going to be a dull day now that the hockey game was called off. Wonder what will happen if we never find our hockey game?”

  “Good question,” said Pie.

  Joliette shivered. “We’ve got to find it,” she said. “I won’t ever sleep again if we don’t.”

  It wasn’t a dull day for Pie. His father started to build a partition in the basement to make a carpentry shop for himself, and Pie helped him. Working got his mind off the missing toy hockey game. But when they finished for the day his thoughts reverted back to it.

  What effect would there be on the real hockey rink if the toy hockey game could never be found again?

  It was something to worry about.

  At five minutes of eight that night Jody called. His voice was bubbling with excitement.

  “We’ve found the hockey game, Pie!” he cried.

  Pie’s heart skipped a beat. “Where was it?”

  “Dad had put it on a shelf in the basement and then covered it with an old rug! Unintentionally!”

  A wave of relief swept over Pie. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in years, Jody,” he said. “Well, there’s something I must do now, for sure.”

  “What?” Jody asked.

  “Apologize to Terry,” Pie replied. “And I can think of a million things I’d rather do than that!”

  “I know what you mean,” Jody said. “But I suppose it’s best. It’ll rest on your conscience if you don’t.”

  “Right,” said Pie. “Well, thanks for the good news, Jody. See you.”

  “How about coming over next Friday night and playing a game?”

  “Okay! See you then.”

  It was after church on Sunday morning when Pie met Terry and considered apologizing to him. But their parents were around, and Pie couldn’t gather up enough nerve.

  Later that day, when he was returning from the gorge after a look at the ice-caked falls, he met Terry again. Terry had his cat with him, trailing at his heels.

  “Terry, I — I want to see you a minute,” Pie said. His heart was thumping. He’d rather jump into ice-cold water than apologize to Terry Mason. But, as Jody Byrd had said, the guilt would rest on his conscience if he didn’t.

  “That’s a switch,” Terry said.

  “I owe you an apology,” Pie said. “I accused you of stealing that hockey game from the Byrd twins, and I’m sorry.”

  “Why? Did they find it?”

  “Yes. Mr. Byrd had stuck it up on a shelf, then covered it with an old rug.” The thumping began to disappear. “Well, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  Terry looked at him a long minute. “Okay,” he said at last.

  They passed by each other and continued on their way. Suddenly Terry yelled, “Pie?”

  Pie looked around. “Yes?”

  Terry was holding his cat. “Thanks!”

  “Sure,” said Pie.

  There was an item in the Deep Gorge News Monday evening about the repair of the electric power system at Davis Rink; it said that the game between the Penguins and the Hawks would be played as scheduled. The Penguins-Bears game, which had been called off last Saturday morning due to the power outage, would be played sometime in January.

  On Friday night Pie went over to the twins’ house again. After visiting for a while with Mr. and Mrs. Byrd, he and the twins descended to the basement, sat at the table in front of the toy hockey game, chose their teams, and started to play. Since tomorrow’s game was with the Hawks, Jody called his team the Hawks and Pie called his the Penguins. Joliette kept time and the score.

  The game started with the usual face-off at center. Jody’s man grabbed the puck, zipped down the rink, and swish! A shot that missed the goal by a hair.

  The puck bounced off the corner and into the rink, and Pie raced after it with a defensive player. The player brought the puck up the ice, shot it across the blue line, and a Penguin wingman stopped it.

  “That’s you, Pie!” Joliette cried excitedly

  So it was, Pie realized. He moved the man up the ice, and snap! The man spun and the puck shot off the edge of his stick. Missed!

  The puck whipped around the corner. Jody’s man intercepted it, shot, and again Pie caught it.

  Slap! A close one! But again a miss.

  One of Jody’s men grabbed the puck, carried it up the ice, and shot. Goal!

  “Sorry about that,” Jody said, grinning.

  In the second period Pie tried his best to tie up the score, but his shots kept missing by slim margins. Then he tried a new tack. He passed to another player, not realizing who it was until the player scored and Joliette shouted, “That man’s Terry, Pie!”

  The fast action continued, and Pie found himself sweating. He blamed it on the excitement and the action, but he knew that the real reason for it was knowing that the game was a preview of tomorrow’s real game.

  Almost halfway through the second period the man who represented him passed to the man representing Terry, and again the man scored.

  “You’re ahead, Pie!” Joliette shouted.

  Pie smiled. Perhaps that was the smart thing to do — keep passing to Terry, regardless of how they felt toward each other. Playing the best together was the way to play the game.

  Then, about a minute later, Pie’s right wing failed to budge when Pie twisted the control lever. He twisted it this way and that, but the figure remained almost stationary.

  That’s me again, he realized, staring. Would that mean disaster in the real game? A chill ran down his spine.

  12

  Time!” Pie called, and Joliette wrote down the time on a notepad.

  Pie tried to lift the hockey figure off the metal rod that projected straight up out of the slot about an inch, and it slid off easily.

  “It’s gotten loose,” Jody observed.

  “Twisting it so many times must’ve loosened it,” Pie reasoned. “Those little staples in the wood came out just enough to lose their hold on the rod.”

  There were two such staples driven into the hockey figure, square ones to fit over the square rods. He put the hockey figure back in place, fitted the staples over the rod, then tried to force the staples further into the wood with his thumb. He couldn’t.

  “Get me something to tap them with,” he said.

  Jody produced a hammer from a wall laden with tools and handed it to him. A light tap on each staple made the hockey figure secure again. Pie twisted the controls back and forth, and the figure whipped this way and that like new.

  “Well, I’m in shape again,” he said happily. “But it’s funny why that happened to me. The man representing me, I mean.”

  “I thought of that,” said Jody. “Think it rea
lly means something, Pie?”

  “I don’t know. I won’t know till we play tomorrow.”

  “In my opinion it definitely means something,” Joliette said with conviction. “I don’t know what and I don’t think it’s serious, because you’re back in the game. But I bet it means something.”

  “But those staples coming loose could be just an accident,” Pie said.

  “No accident,” Jody said, as he jiggled the other figures on their rods. “Look. Every one of them is tight. Why should the staples only on yours come loose?”

  Pie inhaled deeply and emptied his lungs with a long, drawn-out sigh. “That’s right,” he said. “Why?”

  “Let’s finish the game,” Jody suggested. “Let’s see what else is going to happen tomorrow.”

  “You two finish it,” Pie said, feeling a tension mounting inside him. “I don’t think I’d care to know what else is going to happen to me tomorrow.”

  He left the table.

  “Maybe that’s what it meant!” Joliette cried. “You’ll be leaving the game!”

  “For good?” Her brother wrinkled his nose. “Nuts, Jolie. That’s only the second period. What might happen is that Pie will go out for a while for some reason other than a normal one, and then go back in again.”

  “You could’ve let me finish,” Joliette said, glaring at him.

  “Sorry. Sure you don’t want to finish the game, Pie?”

  “I’m sure,” said Pie. “See you tomorrow — after the game.”

  The rest of the evening — from the time he left the twins till he went to bed — dragged like a snail crossing the Mojave Desert. So did the morning — from the time he got up till the time he went to the game. What did that accident in the toy hockey game mean, anyway?

  The buzzer sounded for the start of the game and the Line 1 players of both the Hawks and the Penguins skated to their positions. The whistle shrilled.

  Face-off!

  Phil Adams, the Hawks’ center, knocked the puck to his left wingman. The man scooted down the length of the ice close to the boards, then cut in sharply toward the Penguins’ net. Just as Frog Alexander swooped toward him, his stick outstretched to pokecheck the puck, the Hawk shot. Like a missile the black pellet flew through the air toward the net — and missed by inches!

  The puck bounced off the wall behind the net, Pie after it. The defensive Hawk beside him reached the puck first, and Pie bumped into him. He tried to hold his balance as he scrambled to pokecheck the puck, but his oversize skates prevented him from shifting around as quickly as he wanted to. In a second he found himself sprawled on the ice while the Hawk defenseman dribbled the puck toward Penguin territory.

  “Come on, Pie!” yelled a familiar voice. “On your feet!”

  He scrambled up, ignoring Terry Mason’s commanding yell. Apparently apologizing to Terry for accusing him of stealing the Byrd twins’ toy hockey game hadn’t changed his attitude a bit.

  Pie saw the Hawk defenseman glancing at a wing, and sprinted up the ice. Just as Frog and Terry met the oncoming Hawk, the man snapped a pass to the wing.

  Anticipating the play, Pie bolted forward, stretched out his stick, and intercepted the pass. He sprinted for the net. Ten feet from it, he shot. The puck sailed through the air. Up went the Hawk goalie’s hand. A save!

  A minute later Pie accepted a pass from Frog, shot, and again the Hawk goalie’s gloved hand picked it out of the air like a frog’s quick tongue catching a fly.

  Oh, man! Pie thought disappointedly. I can’t get one through him!

  The face-off. Then a Hawk was dribbling the puck up the ice, stickhandling it as if the pellet was magnetized to his stick. My man! Pie realized, and sprinted after him.

  The Hawk swept by Frog, weaved around Chuck, and reached the side of the Penguins’ net. Snap! There were only inches between Ed Courtney’s padded legs and the side of the net, but the puck sailed through for a Hawks’ score.

  “That was your man, Pie!” Terry snapped as the first line skated off the ice and the second line skated on.

  “I can see,” Pie replied indignantly. “But these skates are —”

  He caught himself and met Terry’s flashing eyes.

  “Skates are what?” Terry asked, smiling. “Too small? Too big? I was wondering when you were going to blame something.”

  “Fact is, they are big,” Pie said as they climbed over the wall and sat down. “They belonged to my brother. And his feet are bigger than mine. Lots bigger.”

  Terry’s lips parted as if he were going to say something, then closed again. The reaction surprised Pie. It wasn’t like Terry to shut up like a clam. Something that I said, Pie thought, made him change his mind.

  What?

  Pie remembered that Bob, Terry’s older brother and a former hockey player here at Deep Gorge, was also attending State College. “What do you hear from Bob?” he asked, hoping that a little dialogue might help Terry forget his differences with him.

  “Nothing,” Terry said.

  “He’s playing, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

  He didn’t seem to want to talk any more about Bob, and Pie didn’t push him. But it sure was funny how he had clammed up so fast.

  The score remained 1 to 0 going into the second period. Line 1 was back on the ice. This is the period, Pie thought — a shiver racing up his spine — when something is supposed to happen to me.

  But after a few moments on the ice he forgot the incident, forgot last night, forgot everything except what was happening now.

  Twice he took shots at the goal and missed. Each time he expected a yell from Terry, but the center was keeping silent. Pie couldn’t believe it. Had mentioning Pat’s skates to him really made that much difference?

  A Hawk was dribbling the puck past Pie. Pie sped after him, bodychecked him near the defensive blue line, grabbed the puck, and bolted up the ice with it. Ten feet from the Hawks’ net he met the oncoming Hawk defensemen and considered taking a shot. Suddenly he saw one of his own men skating in from the left side of the net. It was Terry. Instinctively, Pie shot the puck to him. Terry caught it, and snap! Into the net for a goal!

  Terry glided by Pie, and was instantly smothered by the other Penguins. “Nice going, Terry!” “Great shot, man!” they shouted.

  Pie skated around the net, a spark of pride kindled in his heart. Terry was getting the praise, but it was Pie who had passed him the puck. And an assist, like a score, counted as a point, too.

  The clock was ticking off the seconds toward the ten-minute mark when Pie intercepted a Hawk rebound off the boards and sprinted down center ice with it. As Pie breezed over the blue line into Hawk territory, a Hawk rammed into him with a neat bodycheck and knocked him down. The Hawk wingman quickly stretched out his stick, hooked its blade around the puck, and yanked it toward him.

  Scrambling to his feet, Pie maneuvered himself between the Hawk and the puck, then shifted quickly and sped around the Hawk toward the opponents’ net. The rink was open in front of him, and he was about to swat the puck for a shot at the goal, when both the goalie and a Hawk defenseman got in the line of fire.

  Just then Pie saw a Penguin sweeping in from the left. It was Terry. Pie snapped the puck to him. The pass was perfect. Terry stopped it, and with a quick snap, scored.

  Again Terry received the plaudits from his teammates. This time he skated up to Pie, puffing hard. “Thanks, Pie,” he said. “And also for the first one.”

  Pie, dead tired, only smiled.

  “Nice passwork, Pie,” Coach Hayes said to him as Line 1 came off the ice and Line 2 went on. “By the way, I heard you asking Terry about his brother, Bob.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that Bob didn’t make the team?”

  Pie stared. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Of course Pat did and is doing real well,” said the coach. “Come to think of it, Pie, maybe that’s why Terry’s been bugging you. He’s hurt that Bob isn’t playing and Pat is, an
d has been taking it out on you.”

  Like a bombshell Pie realized the logic of that reasoning. Terry was a kid who would do exactly that.

  “That must be it, Coach,” he said. “It can’t be anything else.”

  Line 2 couldn’t score, but they held the Hawks from scoring, too. Line 3 did well until 6:23, when a Hawk drove in a shot to tie up the score, 2 to 2.

  Meanwhile, Pie rested and tried to remember what had happened in the game he had played with Jody Byrd last night. But he was so tired he gave up.

  Coach Hayes’s yell, “Okay, Line 1, on the ice!” came too quickly

  The Hawks grabbed the puck from face-off and worked it toward the Penguins’ goal with expert stickhandling before Frog managed to steal it and drive it back up the ice. Just before it reached the blue line, and to prevent an icing charge, Pie snared it. He started to dribble it through the neutral zone into Hawk territory when a man bumped into him with a hard bodycheck and sent him sprawling.

  Pie clambered to his feet and a sudden discovery reeled him. Something was wrong with his right skate!

  He looked and his heart sank.

  The front part of the skate had broken loose from the shoe!

  13

  Pie left the ice, bone-tired and sick at heart. He’d have to watch the rest of the game from the bench, but what about afterward? Was he finished with skating? Would his father buy him a new pair?

  The coach sent Jim Stanton in to replace him. Jim was a wing on Line 2.

  “Too bad, Pie,” Coach Hayes said. “But those skates looked too big for you in the first place. Were they?”

  Pie nodded.

  “Thought so. Skates should fit tighter than your regular shoes,” Coach Hayes advised. “When you get your new pair, make sure they’re a tight fit.” He grinned and squeezed Pie’s knee. “You’ll find that you’ll skate a lot better.”

  Seconds later someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked around. It was Jody.

  “That’s what that trouble meant!” Jody whispered.

  Pie frowned. “What trouble?”

  Suddenly he knew what Jody was referring to. The hockey figure representing him on the toy hockey game coming loose on the rod last night! It had forecast today’s incident as closely as anything possibly could!