The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4

by Roy MacGregor

  “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.

  “I don’t remember,” he said.

  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?”

  9

  Autumn Leaves Retirement Home lay just beyond the arena on the bank of the river where a small rapids ran along one side of the waterway and a large, deep pool lay along the other. Across the water, the sidewalks and lights of River Street came to an end and River Road, a gravel road now heavily oiled to keep down the dust, began. Beyond that lay the marina, the town dump, a few farms, the lake, and the seemingly never-ending bush.

  It wasn’t Travis’s first time at the home. He’d come with his parents to visit a great-aunt who had died a year earlier. Nish, however, had never been, and didn’t have a clue how to behave once he got there.

  “Where do you think you’re going, young man?” a turtle-faced woman demanded as he sauntered past the reception desk without so much as a nod in her direction.

  “To see Mr. Donahue,” Nish answered, barely breaking stride.

  “You’ll have to sign in,” she snapped.

  Nish stopped, heading to the visitors’ book and grabbing for the pen that dangled off the end of a string attached to the desk.

  “Are you family?” she demanded.

  “That’s right,” Nish answered.

  She stared at him over the tops of her glasses. Travis could hardly blame her; Nish looked as likely a relative of old Mr. Donahue as the retirement home looked like the hockey rink.

  Nish never missed a beat. Catching her suspicion before it had time to go anywhere, he turned and pointed at Travis. “He is.”

  “I see,” said the turtle. “What family, exactly?”

  Travis had to think fast. “Nephew,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie; there had been a time when he was told to
call Mr. Donahue “Uncle Ralph” because Travis’s grandfather and the old man were best friends together on the police force.

  The turtle looked dubious, but let them pass after they’d signed in.

  “He’s in 228,” she shouted after them.

  They found the room at the far end of the second floor, but getting there was a bit unnerving. An old man in a wheelchair had been singing songs without words as they passed. An old woman, her stockings fallen down around her ankles, had sworn at them and swung at Nish with her cane.

  “Remind me not to get old,” Nish whispered behind his hand as they headed down the corridor.

  Travis said nothing. He felt sorry for these people and was glad that his own grandparents were still healthy and living in their own house. He tried to imagine Nish as an old man living here, but couldn’t. Would he be mooning everyone who passed? Would he be wearing X-ray glasses to see through the nurses’ uniforms? Would he lie in bed screaming “I’M GONNA HURL!” every time a doctor came close?

  They knocked at the partially open door.

  “Get in out of the rain!” an old voice cried out from the other side.

  Nish turned to Travis and made a face. Was that a joke? Or did the person inside really think it was raining in the hallway?

  Travis recognized Mr. Donahue at once. He was sitting in a chair beside his bed and was just pushing away his food tray after the noon meal. He was completely bald, his head as polished as the top of the cane Travis’s grandmother sometimes used. Mr. Donahue was fully dressed, wearing a tie and navy blazer with a police crest on the breast pocket, but his shirt seemed to belong to someone twice his size. The collar looked like two or three of Mr. Donahue’s bird-like neck could have fit inside it.

  It was almost as if he had shrunk since Travis had last seen his grandfather’s old police friend. Travis couldn’t remember how long ago that had been, but at this rate, he thought, in another couple of years Mr. Donahue’s neck could fit through one of his blazer buttonholes.

  “Mr. Lindsay!” the old man shouted. “How kind of you to come.”

  Travis was amazed the old man remembered him. It took a couple of minutes before he realized Mr. Donahue had not recognized Travis at all. He had mistaken him for his father.

  It was soon clear that Mr. Donahue was about thirty years behind the real world. He was still a policeman in his mind. He was talking with his partner’s young boy.

  Nish understood this faster than Travis. And instead of trying to correct the old man, he let the conversation proceed as if they really were more than thirty years in the past.

  Mr. Donahue complained about draft dodgers. He bragged about the Montreal Canadiens – who did he think was playing for them, Travis wondered, Jean Béliveau? And he complained about the boring lunches his wife was packing for him. Travis had never even known there was a Mrs. Donahue.

  “What’s the biggest crime you ever solved?” Nish suddenly asked.

  Mr. Donahue looked up, surprised. His pale blue eyes were astonishingly clear, the whites as pure as snow.

  “Biggest crime I was ever involved in,” he almost shouted, “was never solved – and you two boys know that as well as I know myself.”

  Travis took a gamble. “River Road,” he said mildly.

  “Exactly!” Mr. Donahue said, shaking a long finger in Travis’s direction. “Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Nish took a much larger gamble. “What happened?”

  Mr. Donahue looked down again. At first the boys wondered if he’d heard. Then they wondered if he’d drifted off to sleep on them. When he finally looked up, the eyes had reddened, and the pale blue glistened under the ceiling lights.

  “I don’t know, boys. Only one person can answer that question, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Who’s that?” Nish asked.

  Old Mr. Donahue hammered his fist in fury on the arm of his chair. It glanced off and struck the food tray, sending it clattering to the floor.

  “Fontaine!” he shouted. “Zeke Fontaine!”

  Travis swallowed hard. He had heard this name only the night before, when his father mentioned it on the way home from the lacrosse game. “Zeke” had sounded funny. Now it struck terror in him.

  Sweat had broken out on Nish’s forehead. He was leaning towards Mr. Donahue, working so hard to get him to talk that he didn’t even see the shadow looming in the doorway and the face of the turtle appear, looking like it was about to bite the handle off a rake.

  “What is going on in here?” she demanded.

  Travis was already picking up the spilled tray. “Nothing – he just dropped his tray, that’s all.”

  “What was all the shouting for?” she snapped. “There’s to be no shouting at Autumn Leaves.”

  “I’ll shout when I damn well feel like shouting!” Mr. Donahue bellowed. Travis realized there was no love lost between the turtle and Mr. Donahue.

  “Who are these young men, Mr. Donahue?” she asked.

  “I have no idea!” Mr. Donahue snapped back.

  “He’s one of my grandfather’s closest friends,” Travis tried to explain as the turtle pushed the two boys towards the front door. He was surprised she didn’t twist their ears to hustle them out. “I’ve known him all my life!”

  “Well,” the turtle said when they got to the door, “he doesn’t know you any more. He doesn’t even know who he is any more.”

  With that, she shoved them through the revolving doors and out onto the front steps of Autumn Leaves.

  “Who the hell is Zeke Fontaine?” Nish asked as they headed down the driveway towards the river.

  “I think I know,” said Travis.

  “Well,” Nish demanded, “who?”

  “Our lacrosse coach.”

  10

  “Zeke Fontaine …,” Mr. Lindsay said. “I thought he had died years ago.”

  Travis had gone to the source of the coach’s strange first name, and Mr. Lindsay had at last seemed willing to talk about the mysterious old man, even if, as he said, neither he nor anyone else knew the whole story.

  “Zeke Fontaine was once a great lacrosse star,” Mr. Lindsay said. “Played out west on a couple of Mann Cup teams, I think. He came here in the 1960s and set up the town’s minor lacrosse system. At one point lacrosse was as big as hockey around here, you know, but it eventually faded and then vanished altogether – at least until this year, when Muck came along and revived it.”

  Mr. Lindsay sipped at his coffee and stared out the window. “I should have seen the connection right away,” he said, almost to himself.

  “What connection?” asked Travis.

  “Muck Munro. He was a heck of a hockey player,” his father said. “You know that. Probably would have played in the NHL if he hadn’t got hurt. But he was an even more talented lacrosse player.

  “Zeke Fontaine had two young stars,” he continued, “Muck and his own son, Liam. Liam was probably better than Muck. In less than three years Zeke built his team into a national contender. Hadn’t lost a single game all year when the bad stuff happened …”

  “What bad stuff?”

  “Liam got killed. At least people think Liam got killed – they never found the body. The lacrosse team was headed for the provincial championships, but they never played another game. And Zeke Fontaine never coached another game.”

  Travis’s father was speaking almost dreamily now, as if Travis wasn’t even there. He would take his time – Travis knew his father well – but he would tell whatever he knew. Travis would just have to sit. Patiently.

  “Zeke Fontaine claimed his son was attacked by a rogue bear. They lived out River Road – I guess he still lives out there – and the old man said his son was walking home from the rink when he got attacked.

  “It made some sense. Farmers had been complaining about this huge black bear with a streak of white along one flank that had been attacking their stock – Silvertip, they called it. Some sheep had been killed and eaten, a
nd even some cattle were slaughtered and, I think, a horse. It was pretty ugly.

  “There was a huge hunt for the bear. They brought in rangers and even a couple of army snipers and killed every black bear they could track down. Soon as they killed them, they cut open their stomachs and analyzed the contents, but they couldn’t find any evidence whatsoever that any of them had attacked the boy.”

  Mr. Lindsay fell silent.

  “What about the bear, Silvertip?” Travis asked. “Did they shoot it?”

  Mr. Lindsay took a long sip, remembering. “They did. Two local policeman, Darby Fenwick and Constable Rodgers – I forget his first name – cornered it back of Lookout Hill and one of them emptied his service revolver into it. But that wasn’t enough to stop Silvertip. He charged them both. Tore them to ribbons. Rodgers was killed straight away, but Fenwick took three days to die. Only time I ever saw your grandfather fall down on his knees and bawl. It was the worst thing that ever happened in this town.”

  “Did they find the bear?”

  “No. Never.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “Never found him, either. And that’s when the story turned really ugly.

  “One of the other kids on the team claimed that Zeke and Liam had had a big fight at the rink, which was why the boy happened to be walking home that day. It’s a long haul out to where they lived, you know.

  “Anyway, that got the police looking more closely at Zeke. They found a rifle at the house that had been fired recently. They found old clothes burned in a backyard barrel. They found a shovel with fresh dirt on it. Zeke had an answer for everything: he’d been shooting groundhogs; he’d been burning old oil rags; he’d been working in the garden.

  “I know your grandfather, for one, never believed him. The police were convinced he’d done his own son in and sent the police on a wild goose chase – I guess you could say wild bear chase – that had cost the force two good men. They blamed Fontaine for their deaths.”

  “Did they charge him?”

  Mr. Lindsay shook his head. “Couldn’t. Never found the boy’s body. Never had any evidence apart from their own suspicions.”