Fever Season (5 page)

Hall swung his stick in anger as Lalonde sped by.

“Did you see that?” David asked his father.

Everyone had.

“Boo!”

“Punition!”

“Penalty!”

But the jeers for Hall quickly turned to cheers for Lalonde as the Canadiens' centre headed straight for the net. David was on his feet with the others.
“Shoot! Shoot!”

But Lalonde passed to Smith, and the speedy winger scored. Now the applause was louder than ever. Spurred on by their fans, the Canadiens continued to attack. By the time the bell rang to end the period, they had upped their lead to 2–0.

The ten-minute intermission barely gave the fans time to warm up in the lobby, but David didn't care about the cold. He couldn't wait for the second period to start. Shortly after it did, Hall took another swing at Lalonde. This time his stick connected with Newsy's ankle, and the Canadiens' captain fell to the ice. Lalonde said something to the Quebec badman, but the referee got between them before anything could happen. Hall was sent off the ice to a chorus of boos.

The Canadiens didn't score while Hall served his penalty, but they were still pressing when the Bulldogs put him back onto the ice. Smith had the puck and was racing toward the Quebec goal. Berlinquette was hot on his heels.

“Allez-y!”

“Let's go!”

Smith sent the puck across the ice to Berlinquette, who played it behind him to Newsy. Lalonde was racing forward with all his might. He picked up Berlinquette's drop pass and ripped a shot on goal!

The Quebec netminder deflected it into the corner.

“Ohhh!”

With his momentum still carrying him forward, Lalonde chased the rebound behind the net. Hall pursued Lalonde.

“Watch out, Newsy!” David cried.

But there was nothing the centreman could do. Hall shoved him from behind with his stick. The cross-check knocked Lalonde to the ice, and he slid headfirst into the boards. Players wore nothing to protect their heads, and a pool of blood formed on the ice. There were shrieks of protest from the crowd.

“Dehors, Joe!”

“Va-t'en! Va-t'en!”

“Get out, Joe! Get lost! Go away!”

But Lalonde was still lying on the ice when the referee led Hall away, and soon the angry shouts gave way to concerned silence.

“Will he be all right?” David asked.

“It was a dirty hit,” David's father said, “but they don't come any tougher than Newsy Lalonde. See, his teammates are helping him up.”

The fans applauded as Smith and Berlinquette led Lalonde off the ice. Blood gushed from two cuts on the star's forehead. He sat on the bench for a couple of minutes but then made his way to the Canadiens' dressing room. Hall was sent to his dressing room, as well.

“A match penalty,” David's father said. “That means Hall's gone for the rest of the game.”

Lalonde didn't return, either. Both players were replaced by substitutes, but the loss of their captain seemed to leave the Canadiens disorganized. Quebec scored twice in the next two minutes, and the second period ended in a 2–2 tie. It looked as if the Bulldogs might win the game, but the Canadiens pulled themselves together during the ten-minute break. They scored twice in the third period and held on for a 4–3 victory that sent the noisy crowd home happy.

It was a long ride home from the Arena, and the streetcar that went along Sherbrooke Street was packed with people who had also been at the game. One man who spoke only French told David's father that it had taken ten stitches to close the cuts on Lalonde's forehead. There were a lot fewer people onboard the next trolley after David and his father transferred at Papineau, and there was almost no one around when they walked the last two blocks to their building on Chabot Street. Not much traffic was left on the road at that time of night, either, but in a few hours the milkmen and their horses would be making their rounds.

“Did you know,” David's father asked, “that when I first came to Montreal even the streetcars were pulled by horses? And there was no such thing as cars. I never even saw one until around the time you were born. The sound of the engine used to scare the horses. A lot of people didn't like it much, either.”

“I guess cars are pretty noisy,” David said.

“But at least they don't poop on the street.”

David laughed.

His father smiled. “Race you to the stairs!” he suddenly shouted.

David took off after his father, half running and half sliding along the snow-covered sidewalk as they turned from Dandurand onto Chabot. At the last moment as they reached the flat David skidded past his father and reached the staircase first.

“You win,” his father said.

Mr. Saifert's breath was heavy, and the clouds it made in the cold nearly blocked out his face. David was puffing clouds, too. He suspected that his father had let him win, but he smiled, anyway.

Once their breath had returned to normal, David and his father climbed the winding stairs to their flat. It was dark when they got inside. Cold, too.

“I guess your mother's gone to sleep already. The fire's almost burned out.”

David's father put two logs into the Quebec heater — a small black potbelly stove that wasn't used to cook but to provide extra heat in the flat on the coldest winter nights. The two of them sat in front of the old stove to warm up before going to bed.

“Did you have a good time tonight?”

“Yeah, Dad, it was lots of fun. But how did you learn to speak French like that?”

“When I was a boy, I worked on a farm in the Eastern Townships. I was only fourteen then, but I was pretty big for my age — the farmer thought I was seventeen — and I was strong enough to do the work. But I had a hard time getting along. I'd only just come to Canada, and we'd done things much differently where I grew up. So I watched the other farmhands and was careful to do exactly what they did. I learned to speak French by listening to them. But I hated it there. The farmer treated me like a slave.”

“Where were your parents?”

“My mother and father both died when I wasn't much older than you are now. I came to Canada by myself.”

David could see by the expression on his father's face that this was something he didn't want to talk about, so David asked him a question about hockey instead. “Did you really see Joe Hall punch a referee?”

His father nodded.

“What happened?”

“It was four years ago, almost exactly. It was January, but the weather was much warmer than tonight. The ice in the rink turned soft and slushy, and the players were having a hard time skating on it. You could see that they were losing their tempers. Of course, Joe Hall was at the centre of it all, swinging his stick and punching at people. Finally, a fight broke out, and when the referee tried to pull Hall off the other player, he punched him in the face. It took three of his own players to finally pull him off the ice.”

“How come hockey players are allowed to fight?” David asked.

His father shrugged. “I don't know. It's always been a part of the game, I guess. But because men like Hall and Lalonde go around beating each other up doesn't mean you can, too. You have to find a better way to handle your problems at school.”

The next day David saw Kevin Bull talking to his friends. He could hear that they were talking about the hockey game.

“Then Hall hit him over the head with his stick and Lalonde had to go to the hospital,” Kevin said.

“That's not what happened,” David whispered to Sammy. And suddenly he realized his father had given him something to talk about with Kevin Bull.

Summoning up all his courage, David told Kevin, “That's not how it happened.”

Kevin sneered. “Oh, and look who thinks he knows something about it. How would you know anything, Cupcake?”

The other boys snickered, but David held his ground. “I know because I was there.” He still had his ticket stub in his coat pocket and took it out to prove it.

“Lemme see that!” Kevin barked, reaching out to snatch the ticket from David's hand.

David was ready for him, though. He pulled his arm away, and Kevin grabbed nothing but air. Then David flourished the ticket again. “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”

Kevin stared at David for a moment, not quite sure what to do. Sammy seemed scared. David held his breath, but Kevin merely nodded and studied the ticket.

“He was there!” Kevin said to his friends. There was almost a tone of amazement in his voice. “So what happened?”

David released his breath and told Kevin and the others about the game. Every day after that David checked the newspaper for hockey stories. He was especially interested in any about Newsy Lalonde. Sometimes he'd cut them out and paste them in a scrapbook. He put pictures of Newsy and some of the other players on the wall in his bedroom.

Keeping up with hockey news gave David something to share with his father, and it stopped Kevin from picking on him. Everything finally seemed perfect. Then the war began.

C
HAPTER
4

The nighttime sky was ablaze with lights. Noise seemed to come from everywhere. All summer long people had been wondering. Now that the war had begun, they wanted to celebrate. Soldiers paraded in the streets, while crowds cheered and sang.

Tromp, tromp, tromp, the boys are marching.
I spy Kaiser at the door.
We'll take a lemon pie
And we'll throw it in his eye.
And there won't be any Kaiser anymore!

“Why's he called the Kaiser?” David asked.

“It's a word like king,” his father said. “Kaiser Wilhelm is the king of Germany. Only in Germany they call him an emperor, not a king.”

David's father had brought the whole family downtown to watch the soldiers march from the armoury on Cathcart Street and to see the fireworks above the park on Mount Royal. To cheer, not for war, but for king and country. And for victory.

Boom!

A new batch of fireworks burst over Mount Royal, colouring the sky red, blue, and white. Some were just streaks that sped across the sky; others twisted like spirals. Alice squealed with delight.

“Look at that!” their mother cried. “They look like falling stars.”

Soon a new group of soldiers strode out of the armoury to the cheers of the crowd. A band began to play military tunes, and the music got right into the feet of the bystanders. Many of them moved out of the mob to strut along the street behind the soldiers. Some of them had obviously been drinking and wobbled as they walked. Normally, it was a crime to be drunk in public, but tonight people laughed about it.

“Why are we going to fight a war with Germany, anyway?” David asked.

“We're fighting because England is fighting,” his mother explained. “Canada's part of the British Empire, so when England's at war, we're at war. That's why the Canadian government is sending soldiers.”

“But why is there a war at all? What are they fighting about?”