Fever Season (14 page)

“Like in a rooming house?”

“Yeah.”

“But what if you can't get a job and you don't have a family?”

“Well, they don't kick you outta da orphanage right away, but I suppose a kid like that might end up on a farm in the Eastern Townships.”

David nodded. “My father was on a farm there when he came to Canada. He once told me they worked him like a slave.”

“That's what I heard, too. You get a place to live and enough food, but they don't pay much and they work you really hard. I know a lot of people who joined da army to get away from da farms. So what about you? Do you have udder family in Montreal?”

David shook his head. “My mother has a brother, but he lives in Seattle. I showed Mrs. Freedman a picture.

She sent some letters to try to find him.”

“You don't know where he is?”

“Uh-uh. My mother hadn't seen him since he was a boy.”

J-P frowned. “You probably don't want to hear this, but every orphan dreams about things like that. They all think they've got a long-lost cousin or a rich uncle somewhere who's going to show up one day and save them.”

“But I do have an uncle!” David insisted. “And I'm going to find him!”

J-P heard the angry tone in David's voice and regretted what he'd said. He knew it was true, but it was stupid of him to say it. David had lost so much so recently. There was no reason to take his hope away, too. And it wasn't impossible that if he did have an uncle that someone would find him. It was a real long shot, though.

“I'm sure Mrs. Freedman will do all she can,” J-P said reassuringly. “She's a real nice lady. Besides, you still got two more years.”

Two more years!

David hoped it wouldn't take that long. He knew his mother had done it when she was only sixteen, but David couldn't imagine himself living alone in a rooming house. He had to find his uncle.

C
HAPTER
13

The trip on the streetcar along Saint Catherine from downtown to Jubilee Rink was pretty much the same as the one David used to take along Dorchester with his parents to get home from the hat factory. It was dark, and there wasn't really much to see, but David could pretty much tell when the streetcar was getting close to Papineau Avenue. That was where they used to transfer to head for their flat on Chabot.

A few minutes after they crossed the intersection at Papineau, J-P and David got off the streetcar at Frontenac Street. J-P's sister lived a few blocks away on La Fontaine. It only took about five minutes to walk there.

J-P's sister and her husband had a small house in a working-class neighbourhood. The streets in this area didn't look too different from streets around Chabot, but practically everyone here in the east end of Montreal was French. Marie didn't even speak English. When they went inside, she said something to J-P that made him laugh.

“She say you don't look Jewish,” he translated.

David was quiet as everyone sat together in the kitchen and J-P spoke with his sister and brother-in-law. He noticed that they both called him Jean-Patrice, but otherwise they spoke so fast that David couldn't make out the words. Judging from the smiles and laughter, he could at least tell they were happy. Marie brought out some treats for all of them, and some mugs of hot coffee for J-P and her husband, Maurice. Maurice opened a small brown bottle and poured something alcoholic into their coffee.

“Ah, merci,”
J-P said.

That was finally a word David recognized.
“Mair-see,”
he said to J-P's sister as he picked up a piece of pastry.

“De rien,”
she replied with a smile.

After a few minutes, J-P told David it was time to go. They bundled up again into their warm winter wear and headed out once more into the cold night.

“Do they know what we're doing?” David asked J-P as they walked.

“Well, I told them we were going to da game …”

“But do they know what we're
doing
?” David asked again.

J-P laughed. “Well, me and Jacques never used to say anything to Marie about sneaking into da Arena, but I'm sure Maurice knows da game started at 8:15 and it's already 8:30!”

The stretch along Saint Catherine beyond Frontenac was mostly open railway land. The wind whipped in off the Saint Lawrence River and blew freezing cold across the open spaces. Fortunately, it only took a few more minutes to reach Jubilee Rink.

David knew from all the newspaper stories at the time of the fire that Jubilee Rink was much smaller than Westmount Arena. Still, he was surprised when they reached the building. The Arena had been two storeys of red brick with fancy concrete finishings along the line of the roof. And while it was true the Arena looked like a factory from the outside, Jubilee Rink was nothing more than a wooden barn. And the walls were pretty thin, too, so it would stay cold inside and keep the ice frozen. Only the sounds coming from inside really made it clear what the building was. It was easy to hear the fans cheering while David and J-P stood in the street.

“Hope that means dey're finishing up da first period and not already starting da second,” J-P said. “It's way too cold to wait here much longer.” Fortunately, the noise died down a few minutes later. “It must be intermission now. Let's go.”

He led David around to the back of the building. As they walked, David could see that most of the windows were too high for anyone to reach without a ladder, but a few were low enough.

“This is it,” J-P said, pointing at a narrow window beyond a wooden door. The window, which swung on a hinge from the side, was a little too high to see through, but David noticed it was open a crack. “First thing we gotta do is make sure da room's empty. If I get down on my hands and knees, you can stand on my back and see in.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just don't stand dere too long!”

David stepped onto J-P's back and peered in the window. He spied a workbench with a bunch of drawers against one wall and a lot of big tools scattered around. There was also a potbellied stove to keep the room warm, but no people. “There's no one inside,” he said, jumping down.

“Okay,” J-P said. “Here's what you gotta do now. Climb on my back again and reach your hand inside. The window should pull open pretty easy. Then I'll boost you up. Once you're inside, open da door for me.”

The hinge on the window was a little bit stiffer than J-P had described, but it pulled open without too much trouble. When it was open, J-P got up and linked his hands like a stirrup for a horse to boost David up. Once he got his knee onto the windowsill, it was pretty easy to get inside. His heart was pounding from the excitement and the exercise, and David had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself. But then there was a problem.

“The door's locked,” David whispered out the window.

“Can't you find da latch or something?”

“No, there's a big piece of wood across it, and it's held in place with a padlock.”

David heard J-P mutter some words that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap if he were a kid at the orphanage. Then he said, “I'll have to come in through da window then.”

“But it's too high for you to reach.”

“Maybe dere's something you can throw down for me?”

David looked around quickly and spotted the perfect thing — a stepladder about three feet long. He lowered it out the window, and J-P climbed up effortlessly. The ladder was even tall enough that J-P could reach out the window and haul it back inside. But when he did he caught the sleeve of his coat on something sharp on the metal frame around the window and tore a long rip in the fabric.

“I can fix that for you,” David said without thinking.

J-P wasn't really listening, though. He just glanced at his sleeve, then ignored it. “Come on. Let's get outta here before da workmen get back.”

From the inside, Jubilee Rink seemed a lot more like Westmount Arena, but on a much smaller scale. The ice was the same size, but where Westmount Arena had twelve rows of seats, Jubilee had five. In some places there were just three. And it only had seats on the long sides of the rink. There was nothing but standing room at the two ends. Up in the rafters, large globe-shaped bulbs hung down to light the playing surface. There were also flags of all different sizes, shapes, and colours suspended from the metal beams that supported the wooden roof.

David and J-P made their way to the far side of the rink from the maintenance room and blended into the crowd standing behind the net at that end.

“C'est quoi le score?”
J-P asked the man standing next to him.

“Un-zero Canadiens,”
he said.

“Qui a marqué?”

“Lalonde,”
the man said,
“un but de tout beauté.”

After that the French words were too fast for David to follow. J-P filled him in when the man was done.

“With da weather so cold, he say da ice is much faster tonight.” Jubilee Rink had natural ice, so the weather could make a big difference. “Da Canadiens came out flying from da start. They kept Toronto bottled up in their own end, but they couldn't score. About halfway through da period, Lalonde rushed da puck from end to end for a beautiful goal. After that Toronto came on strong, but Vézina was too good for them.”

Just then the two teams returned to the ice and lined up to start the second period. Toronto would be coming their way this period. Georges Vézina was in the goal right in front of them.

“I see he's still wearing his toque,” J-P said.

Vézina always wore a toque in the Canadiens' colours of red, white, and blue. When he joined Montreal in 1910, the rules said goalies had to remain standing all the time. They weren't allowed to fall on the ice to make saves. Those rules had changed, but Vézina still rarely left his feet. He played with an extra-long stick and used it to knock down as many pucks as he ever caught in his glove, and he always seemed so cool and calm while guarding his net that he often appeared bored by it all. Playing goal was tough, but nobody ever heard Vézina complain. In fact, they rarely heard him speak at all. In French, people called him
l'Habitant silencieux
.

The Canadiens had Joe Malone at centre to start the second period and dropped Lalonde back to play defence with Joe Hall. Malone won the faceoff, pushing the puck ahead of him and then rushing it into the Toronto end. The Canadiens put the pressure on quickly, but they couldn't fire the puck into the net. From where David and J-P stood, it was a long way down to the other side, but they had a pretty good view soon enough. Unfortunately, it wasn't what they wanted to see. Toronto defenceman Harry Cameron went end to end and beat Vézina for a goal. Just one minute in, the score was tied 1–1.

The crowd groaned and was still grumbling as the teams lined up for another faceoff. Malone won it again, but this time he drew the puck back to his former Quebec teammate, Joe Hall.

J-P shook his head, seeing the Bad Man in the red, white, and blue
tricolore
of the Canadiens. He muttered something in French. David didn't know what his friend had said, but he imagined it was something like “I can't believe it.”

Hall was still as tough as ever, but he was one of the good guys now. He skated quickly across the blue line and fired a forward pass to Didier Pitre. At five feet eleven inches and 185 pounds, Pitre was one of the biggest men in hockey. French newspapers now called him
le
75 de la NHL
after the powerful seventy-five-millimetre field guns from France that so many armies had used in the war. The husky right winger was the player picked on the most for being out of shape in the opening game. He seemed determined to make up for that in this one. Pitre launched a booming shot from just across centre ice. His Cannonball blast put the Canadiens back on top less than ten seconds after Toronto had tied it! The fans cheered while his teammates mussed his hair.

Shortly after the next faceoff, Odie Cleghorn sprang Lalonde free with a forward pass. He didn't shoot from centre but carried the puck all the way into the Toronto end. It was now 3–1 Canadiens, and the second period wasn't even two minutes old.

The speed slowed down after that, but Pitre kept going at a furious pace.

“Nothing wrong with him tonight,” J-P said.

Shortly before the period ended, Pitre scored again and the Canadiens took a three-goal lead into the intermission.

“It's a good rule change, da forward pass,” J-P said. “It really speeds things up.”

David agreed. “I hope they score as many goals when they're coming into our end this period.”

During the break in play, three workmen came out onto the ice to shovel off the snow. David watched them nervously at first, thinking they might somehow spot him in the crowd and know what he'd done.

J-P noticed the tense look on David's face and smiled. “Don't worry. If dey're thinking anything, it's only ‘I thought I left that ladder over dere.'”