Picks and Sticks Read online

  “I … I was hoping maybe … I …”

  “Why are you fooling around like this? Just when your figure skating career is taking off?” He was speaking quietly, his rage suppressed. Jane knew this was his most dangerous mood. She looked down the ice surface at Ivan walking toward Al, and Susan skating beside him. “Answer me!” Leonard snapped. Jane started.

  “… I don’t know. It makes me happy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why? What do you know about it?”

  “You’ll have to give it up. Starting now.”

  “No. I do it on my own time. It has nothing to do with you.”

  Leonard’s rage spilled over. “It has everything to do with me! It’s totally affecting your skating, your poise, your jumps, your spins, and your energy level! I’m your coach!! You think I haven’t noticed a difference? I could probably pinpoint the day you started this nonsense. Give it up, Jane. I’m warning you. You’re mother’s going to be furious.”

  Jane’s stomach dropped. “Please. Don’t tell her.”

  “How can I not? Do you have any idea how much your skating has cost her? And I don’t just mean money.” Jane stared at him for a beat, furious.

  “Yeah,” she seethed, “I have an idea about that.”

  “Don’t you wreck this for her.”

  “Exactly. Better not wreck it for Mom.”

  “Promise me you’ll give it up,” Leonard pressed.

  Jane looked to Ivan, now in a heated argument with Al. Susan and Irina were standing by him like bodyguards. Jane wavered.

  “I … I don’t want to … I … I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll have to tell her, then.”

  Jane could think of nothing worse. A strong desire to protect her mother arose in her.

  “Wait … I … don’t my feelings matter here?”

  “Go change your skates.”

  “Wait. What are you going to do?”

  Leonard skated away from her. Jane stood on the ice, shaking. She looked down at her legs. She could not move. Jane could hear him tell Wendy, who had just arrived, to go get her skates on for patch because she could have Jane’s figures lesson. She heard him thank Al for his information. She watched him snub Ivan as he went to the dressing rooms. She saw Barb and Wendy join Irina and Susan at the boards. They were looking at her with curiosity and concern.

  Al jolted the remaining suspects into action. “I’ll kick youse all out in a second! Remember, I’m watchin’ ya. All of yas!”

  He left a trail of doughnut dust in his wake. Ivan waved his finger at the girls, a sign for them to scatter. Jane stepped forward and fell, forgetting she had no picks. She got up and skated, shaking, toward her figure skating friends and hockey mates.

  “Whoa. Tense!” Wendy said.

  “What’s going on?” asked Barb. Jane, mute, looked in the direction where Leonard, Ivan, and Al had exited. When she finally spoke, she was hoarse.

  “I’ve been playing hockey.”

  “Okay. Wow.”

  She was staring at the exit, her mind churning. Finally, a thought came clear, and with it, her voice.

  “Come join us.”

  “What?” Barb and Wendy asked in chorus.

  “Come to hockey practice in the morning.”

  “Jane, this is not …” Irina tried to warn.

  “Huh? Eh?” Barb and Wendy said together.

  Susan started to smile.

  “We’ll start a team,” Jane said. “We’ll practise on the sly.”

  “What are you, nuts? Canadians are less than two weeks away,” said Wendy incredulously.

  “I’ll do both.”

  “Sure you will.”

  “Just watch me.”

  “What about Leonard? And your mom?” Barb asked.

  “It’s my spare time. They can’t tell me what to do.”

  Wendy and Barb looked at each other. Wendy grinned.

  “I hate patch. I suck at figure skating. I’m too tall.”

  “I’m too short and fat. I can’t lift off. But I skate fast,” Barb offered. A tacit agreement passed between the two friends, and they turned to Jane. “Okay,” they said, simultaneously, “we’re in.”

  “Good,” beamed Susan. “That makes us five.”

  Once out of her figure skating gear, Jane spirited Ivan and Irina away from the arena and took them to Steve’s. She hadn’t skipped since Mr. Marsh’s decree, but she felt too upset to go to school. She definitely couldn’t go home. Not yet. Leonard was probably there, telling on her. She would wait to face her mother at the arena after school. She hoped Deb would take the news better in public.

  They moved into one of the booths, and watched the morning coffee traffic.

  “Why we here, Jane?” Ivan asked.

  “I’ve got five now,” she burst out.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Five girls.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Five girls who want to form a team. Irina, me, Susan, and two of my figure skating buddies. Wendy and Barb.”

  Ivan looked to Irina for confirmation, then said, “Oh, no. No more figure skaters. You are in trouble already; I am in trouble with Mr. Leblanc and Leonard. I not need team, we just, we find place to practise, just you, me, and Irina. We go to pond.”

  “But you already invited Susan to join us.”

  Ivan hesitated. “Is true.”

  “Please, Ivan. Even just the thought of getting to play with a bunch of girls … work together … we could, I don’t know, make a team, really do it. And you said you coached a girls’ team before, you know something about it …”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, why not?”

  “There are no other girls’ teams to play. We would be only one.”

  “But … that’s no excuse … we could just practise, play among ourselves … we could ask some guys to play against us … something …”

  Ivan shrugged, noncommittal. Jane looked at Irina. She was watching her father carefully, a neutral expression on her face.

  “Jeez, Ivan,” Jane pressed, “I thought you would be into this.” He shook his head. Jane looked past Ivan at the warm sunlight filtering through the ruffled curtains.

  “My dad would have done it,” escaped her.

  Ivan looked at her sharply. “Yes. Yes, is true. But what about your coach? And mother? They will not approve.”

  “You are in trouble from morning,” Irina added.

  “I’ll bring them ’round.”

  Ivan shook his head again. “I think no.”

  Jane took a breath to retort, but stopped herself. She eyed Ivan. He had made references to her father before, references that only an acquaintance could make.

  “Ivan, did you know my dad or something?” she ventured.

  Ivan took a moment. “A little bit I knew him. Bud Matagov was a player I knew.”

  Jane was skeptical. “How? How could you know him?”

  Ivan answered carefully. “A long time ago there were games between countries. In Russia. Not quite same as Summit Series, but still, quite good.”

  “And you played for — ?”

  “Yugoslavia,” he said, squeezing Irina’s hand. “We were good, but Canadians sent amazing team. The Kelowna Packers. Your father was captain — a very, very good player.”

  “I know all about this! I have a picture of that team, and we have the jersey.”

  “I play against him in Soviet Union. He was a player to watch. He beat us almost by himself.”

  “That’s amazing! I … I can’t believe you knew him.” Jane felt a shiver slide up her spine. She tried to take a sip of tea, but the mug shook as she brought it to her lips. She tried to distract herself. She looked around the room and saw a ragged, middle-­aged man at the c
ounter. He dug deep into his pockets, and slowly counted out enough coins for his second cup of coffee. He was always here when she was. She looked again at Ivan, a thousand questions playing in her mind.

  “What happen to your father?” Ivan asked gently before she could ask anything of him. Jane’s mug slipped between her fingers and clattered to the tabletop, slopping tea onto the surface. She felt tears spring to her eyes. The morning had been too much. She reached for some napkins, pulling a wad out of its metal container. She dabbed at the spill, soaking the flimsy tissues. She answered chokingly, “He … he died when I was ten. He was driving to a men’s exhibition game, out of town, and he … he hit a rock cut … He loved to go fast …” She began to cry in earnest. She rarely did, but once she started, she could never stop.

  The man at the counter and the cashier were listening now. Ivan and Irina tried to shush her, but a huge crack had opened in her heart. They gave up and let her sob. When she looked up, the poorly dressed man had shuffled over to her and was offering her his coffee.

  “No, thank you,” she whispered, shaking her head, but he put it down in front of her anyway and ambled out of the bakery. She wrapped her hands around the cup’s warmth. The place became silent.

  “A very great shame,” Ivan said quietly. “I am sorry.” He paused as Jane composed herself. She ran her fingers through her hair and blew her nose into a napkin, laughing apologetically. She surveyed the mess she had made, shrugged, and smiled.

  Ivan smiled back, his teeth slightly crooked, his blue eyes twinkling. “Well, then …,” he said, glancing at Irina, “tonight … after school … shall we start our own Packers team?”

  Jane threw herself across the table and hugged him.

  6

  The Team

  IT WAS THE DARK of the moon, almost impossible to see. The early morning January practice was bordering on disastrous.

  “Ugh. My toes are freezing,” Wendy whined as she circled the pond in the coming daylight, trying to stamp them alive. Ivan was making them do skating drills, passing drills, endless drills, even though the pucks were barely discernible. The girls’ energy was starting to flag.

  “For the last time, you’ll have to change your figure skates to hockey skates,” Jane snapped at Wendy, her breath coming out in white sheets.

  “I’ll hurt myself.”

  “You won’t. You’ll get used to it. I did.” Jane passed a puck to her figure skating friend, who somehow nabbed it, and together they skated toward the empty net.

  “Reach back and slap it!” Jane encouraged her. The puck travelled ten feet and dribbled to a stop before the goal crease.

  “I’m done,” Wendy moaned and went to sit down. Ivan was there to stop her and point her to the back of the line.

  “We just got here!” Jane said.

  “It’s god-­awful cold! Can’t you feel it?”

  “Naw. Stop complaining.” As Barb and Susan rushed toward the net, Jane surveyed the growing team. The day before, when she had told Susan about her meeting with Ivan and the possibility of a team, Susan had somehow found four girls from the technical wing of the high school and invited them to join. She was sneaky — and talented — that way. And so, four new girls were at the pond for the first time in their lives; they had somehow found it in the morning darkness. As Jane watched them weave through the drill, she thought they looked really strong; they were defensive players who learned to play in backyard rinks their fathers flooded for their brothers — scrappers and scrapers all — just like Susan, herself.

  I’d never meet these girls otherwise, Jane thought. Never in a million years. And neither would Wendy and Barb.

  Ivan blew his whistle, and the girls encircled him at the centre of the pond. Wendy seemed about to whine again, but Jane elbowed her.

  “Let us try some shinny,” Ivan said to cheer them. “I’ll join in.”

  “What’s shinny?” asked Barb.

  “You, Jane, me, and … names again?”

  “Katherine,” said a feisty, wiry girl. “And this is Karen.”

  “And you two?”

  “Jenny.”

  “Patti.”

  “You, Jane, me, Katherine, and Karen against Wendy, Susan, Irina, Patti, and Jenny. Understand, Barb?”

  “Yes,” Barb said, stamping her feet.

  “Like little game without goalie. It will warm you up.”

  “And what, we’re gonna fight over one puck? I keep tripping over all the ones already out here,” Wendy said.

  “Here. Watch.” Ivan picked up a puck, took some tinfoil out of his pocket, and wrapped it. He threw it back down onto the ice where it glittered.

  “This is better, no?” he said.

  “No,” Wendy grumbled. “I am really gonna have to stop in a minute.”

  “Stop acting like a prima donna,” Susan jabbed.

  “My toes are going to fall off!”

  “Mine, too,” squeaked Barb.

  Jane looked at them impatiently. “You can quit if you’re just going to bellyache the whole time,” she challenged. She gazed up at the stars and filled her lungs with cold air. If they would just shut up, she could love this morning.

  “Naw,” said Barb. “I’m not a quitter.”

  “Me, neither,” said Wendy. “I’m sorry. You know I’m a suck, Jane. I’ll toughen up.”

  “Good. I bring you hockey skates tomorrow,” Ivan pronounced. “For now, you skate hard. Action may warm you.”

  As the girls sorted themselves out, Jane, clearing the extra pucks, grew excited. There were so many different types of people coming together; maybe they could all actually get along, actually be a team. Ivan really seemed like the kind of man who could pull them together.

  She glanced over to Irina who hadn’t joined the circle. She wasn’t joining her shinny team. Instead, she was doing her trick: bouncing a puck high into the air off her narrow stick. Even in the dark, she was very adept at keeping it aloft, all her concentration centred on this repetitive activity. Jane drifted toward her, attracted by her mystery and skill. Irina was so lithe and lethal, a finesse player, not a bruiser like some of the new girls — a female version of Mike. She was about to encourage Irina to join them, but Ivan was suddenly upon his daughter, speaking harsh words to her in their language. Irina caught the puck in her glove. Ivan saw Jane listening and switched to English.

  “You must be leader in this group, Irina,” he demanded. “You cannot just sneak to side. Lead by example. Please. Join your team. We play shinny. Go skate.”

  “Sorry, Papa,” Irina said, and stared out at the motley crew of players waiting to start. She did not move. “It’s just that — ” Ivan’s next words bit into Jane, and they weren’t even directed at her. “You may be better than these new girls, but you are not better skater than Jane. Challenge her if you are bored.”

  “Dah, Papa.” Irina looked up and her focus fell on Jane. She glided closer.

  “Where’s your soul?” he asked her.

  What the heck? Jane thought. Who talks about souls?

  Irina turned one hundred and eighty degrees and skated back to her father.

  “Where’s my soul, Papa?” Her eyes snapped fire, even in the darkness.

  “You must be friends to girls on this team. You must be emotional with them. Not stay apart,” Ivan insisted. “They are trying.”

  “Where’s my soul?” Irina repeated. She crowded into his space. “Where you think my soul is, Papa?” Suddenly, she pulled a piece of paper out of her glove. Irina deliberately unfolded the crumbled, smudged page and smoothed it against her chest. She waved it in her father’s face, then stuffed it back in her glove and stroked over to Jane. She pulled Jane’s arm, nabbed the tinfoil puck and, lightning quick, they were one lap around the pond. Susan came even with them. With Susan at left wing and Jane at center, they passed flawlessly to one a
nother, weaving a formation that sped them toward the empty net. Irina passed to Susan at the last moment, and Susan flicked the puck in. The tinfoil flew off.

  “I think I have found my first line,” Ivan said as they circled back to him. He was smiling, but Jane could still sense tension between father and daughter. Irina was glaring at him, still angry. Under her breath, but near enough so Jane could hear, she said, “He know where my soul belong. And it is not here.”

  Mine does, thought Jane, achingly aware she was expected at the arena, and was going to get in so much trouble with her mother and Leonard that she’d probably be grounded forever. Mine belongs here.

  As they fumbled through the shinny game in the coming light, scoring and celebrating now and then, a distant drone of machines filled the air. The noise got louder and the game slowed to a halt. On the other side of a hill, just out of sight of the pond, lay the frozen Georgian Bay. This time of year, thick ice hugged the shores along the town’s waterfront, connecting it by frozen pathways to the Ojibway reservation, Parry Island.

  “What’s that?” asked a jittery Wendy. “Helicopters?”

  “Don’t think so,” Susan muttered.

  As the bluish dawn light began to cast faint shadows on the snowbanks, the dark outlines of three snowmobiles came into view at the top of the hill. Their noise sputtered out. Human blobs disconnected themselves from their mounts. Transfixed, the players on the pond made out five shadowy figures walking down the hill between the trees.

  “What’s going on?” Wendy asked.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Jane said.

  The figures drew nearer. Jane recognized Tina Tabobandung, the quiet Ojibway girl who had been in her class since elementary school. She was carrying an enormous equipment bag and stick, and was wearing some improvised hockey gear already — thick, wet Eaton’s catalogues were strapped to her shins, snowshoes strapped to her feet.

  “Tina!” Jane hailed her.

  “Coming!” Tina hollered, moving as fast as she could. When the group arrived at the edge of the pond and stared at their white counterparts, Jane skated over.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked Tina.