Fever Season (20 page)

“If it wraps up early, we'll play some exhibitions game in Vancouver and Victoria to make a few extra bucks. So you might have as little as a week in Seattle, and certainly no more than two.”

David could see that once again what was best for him wasn't what was best for the players. They stood to make more money from the trip if they won the Cup quickly. David wanted as much time in Seattle as he could get.

“I know you've got things you want to do there,” Mr. Kennedy said, “but I told the boys you'd be working to earn your keep. So when we need you, you're going to work. It'll be busy the first couple of days, but after that Al will handle the practices himself and you can do what you've got to do. But on game days I'll expect you to be around. Understand?”

David nodded. “Yes, sir.”

It was still winter when the team left Montreal. A couple of feet of snow had been on the ground, and though the weather was warming up the temperature hadn't been above freezing for months. Along most of the route west winter was apparent, but when the team arrived on the coast it was definitely spring.

“It's hardly ever cold out here,” Joe told David when the team got off the boat in Seattle on Tuesday morning. “Something about the way the mountains trap the warm air coming off the Pacific Ocean. Of course, it also makes it rain a lot, too.”

As if on cue, it began to drizzle.

Everyone put down their things in order to turn up the collars on their overcoats. Everyone except David. His load was too awkward to lower. Each player carried a suitcase, and a canvas duffle bag stuffed with hockey gear. Mr. Kennedy didn't have any equipment, but he'd brought two suitcases. Al was lugging his own suitcase plus David's. David was carting the players' hockey sticks bundled up in his two outstretched arms. They'd been tied together with ropes at either end, which made it a lot easier. That was good because he was having trouble keeping his mind on what he was carrying.

David kept looking all around. If his uncle was in Seattle somewhere, there was a chance that any man he passed could be him.

Well, not any man.

David knew that his uncle was about five years younger than his mother. That meant he'd be about thirty years old now. With dark brown hair and light blue eyes. Like his. Would he really be able to pick him out if he saw him?

“Hey! Watch where you're going, kid!”

It was Billy Couture. David had nearly run into him when the players stopped in front of a taxi stand.

“Lay off him, Bill,” Joe said calmly. “He's just excited we're here.”

“Doesn't mean he shouldn't watch where he's going.”

Mr. Kennedy had arranged for three big cars to meet the team. They pulled up before any more harsh words were exchanged and everyone piled in.

The team was staying at the Georgian Hotel, which was at 1420 Fourth Street in the heart of Seattle's business district. It was only a short ride to there from the waterfront, but it was long enough for David to see that Seattle was a much newer city than Montreal.

Seattle had been founded in the 1850s. With the many forests that surrounded the area, the city became an important lumber town and grew quickly. Even a terrible fire that destroyed the downtown in 1889 couldn't slow Seattle's growth. In fact, the downtown was rebuilt with structures of brick and stone to replace the burned-out wooden buildings.

More and more money poured into Seattle after gold was discovered in the Klondike during the summer of 1896. There was no gold in Seattle, but by 1897 it had become the main transport centre and supply depot for the fortune-seekers who sailed north to Alaska and the Yukon. Shipbuilding soon replaced lumber as the city's biggest industry, and Seattle kept growing into the 1900s. Shipbuilding had been more important than ever during the war, so Seattle had continued to prosper.

David knew none of the history of the city, but he could certainly see its effects. Unlike the narrow streets of Montreal, the roads in Seattle were wide and smooth. The downtown buildings were tall and impressive. The Smith Tower near the harbour stood an incredible forty-two storeys high! Except for some of the mighty skyscrapers of New York City, the Smith Tower was the tallest building in the world.

No other building in Seattle could approach the Smith Tower for height, but there were many others that were equally impressive in different ways. The Cobb Building was down the block from the Canadiens' hotel. It was only eleven storeys high, but its beautiful red brick with white plaster embellishing the top and bottom floors made it a marvel just the same. Across the street were three other fancy structures known collectively as the White-Henry-Stuart Building. Together they filled an entire city block. David had to crane his neck to stare up at them through the window of the taxi as they drove by.

But for all of Seattle's man-made beauty nothing matched its natural surroundings. The waters of Puget Sound were on one side of the city and Lake Washington was on the other. To the south there was Mount Rainier. Although it rained a lot in Seattle, the view of this snowcapped ancient volcano rising above the city on a clear day was spectacular. People in Montreal called Mount Royal a mountain, but it wasn't even eight hundred feet high. It was really a big hill. Mount Rainier was more than fourteen thousand feet high!

Like so many other buildings in the city, Seattle Arena was something special, too. It was probably the nicest rink in all of North America. From the outside it looked nothing like a warehouse or a factory as so many other arenas did. The bricks were pale yellow and the roof copper green. There were large arch-shaped windows all around the arena, and the ones above the entrance were outlined in white.

Inside, the rink was even nicer. There were only seats around three sides of Seattle Arena, but they weren't made of wood as in most other rinks. They were padded the way they were in a theatre. And it was warm inside, too. Because of the mild weather on the West Coast, Seattle Arena needed artificial ice. Refrigerated pipes running beneath the floor kept the ice hard, not freezing temperatures. That meant coal didn't have to be fed into a stove in the dressing room, either. If it ever did get too cold inside, the rink had electric heat to warm things up.

Located on Fifth Avenue between Seneca Street and University, Seattle Arena was two blocks from the Georgian Hotel. The Canadiens had a practice at noon, so Al took David over to the rink with him early to set up. It didn't take long to unload the equipment from the duffle bags and hang it up in the lockers, but it took more time to get everyone's skates sharpened. David couldn't help with that, so while Al handled the skates, he inspected the uniforms. With so much time to kill on their travels, David had made any necessary repairs to the players' uniforms on the train. Still, he checked them again. Everything looked good.

Twelve days had passed since the Canadiens had wrapped up their playoff series with Ottawa, so Newsy Lalonde put the team through a hard workout when they hit the ice. Once word got around that the Canadiens were inside, the rink began to fill up with fans. After a while, there was a pretty good crowd.

This wasn't the first time the Canadiens had visited Seattle. The Montreal team had faced the Mets — Seattle's team name, short for Metropolitans — two years earlier. The 1917 series had been a disaster for the Canadiens. They won the first game 8–4 but then lost the next three in a row. The Mets beat them 6–1 and 4–1 before wrapping up the series with a crushing 9–1 victory. Seattle fans wanted to get a look at this year's Canadiens to see what their favourites would be up against this time.

David also sat in the stands, watching the practice with Al and Mr. Kennedy. As the workout wound down, David noticed a man approaching them. He was well dressed in a jacket and tie with an elegant overcoat and matching cap. As he got closer, David saw that he was quite short but had big jug ears.

Mr. Kennedy smiled as the man reached them, then stood to shake his hand. “Royal Brougham of the
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
.”

“At your service,” the reporter said with a little bow.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions, George?”

“I'd be disappointed if you didn't!”

Brougham pulled out a notebook and pencil from a pocket in his coat and took a seat in the stands beside Mr. Kennedy. He got straight to business. “I imagine you're expecting to make a better showing this time around.”

“Indeed. We're anxious to avenge our defeat. The team's a lot better than it was two years ago.”

“Pete Muldoon's making no secret of his plans for the series. He says he'll send out his boys to skate your guys off their feet.”

Mr. Kennedy chuckled. “We're pretty fast, too.”

“Not fast enough last time.”

“Look, we know Seattle has one of the fastest teams in the history of hockey and we know they'll give us a battle, but I think we'll turn the tables on them this time. My boys have never played as well as they're doing now.”

“So you think you can outskate 'em?”

Mr. Kennedy flashed a sly smile. “I'd say we can match your speed better than you can match our muscle. Joe Hall might be one of the oldest players in the game, but he's still the best defenceman in hockey and wields a pretty mean stick, too! And Corbeau, his partner, tips the scales at nearly two hundred pounds. We'll see how fast Frank Foyston and Jack Walker are moving once Bert starts throwing his weight around.”

“So what's your prediction for the series?”

“Well, let's just say I'm expecting to win tomorrow night.”

But Mr. Kennedy was wrong. Not only did the Canadiens lose, they weren't even close. Seattle won the first game 7–0.

C
HAPTER
20

Although the newspapers said the game was closer than the score made it seem — Vézina had a terrible night, while Seattle goalie Hap Holmes stopped at least six sure goals — David was glad to get out of everyone's way on Thursday morning. The players had been pretty angry on Wednesday night and cleared out of the dressing room as quickly as they could. David stayed late to help clean up, but as Mr. Kennedy had promised, Al would now take care of things by himself when the club held practices.

With game two not scheduled until 8:30 on Saturday night, David had the next two and a half days to search for his uncle. Even the weather seemed to co-operate. After two days of rain, the sun was shining on Thursday morning and the temperature was the warmest yet.

David had gotten a copy of the
Seattle Street and
Car Line Guide
at the hotel. Using that, he'd been able to figure out where most of the addresses on his list were located and how to get to them. Only one address had him confused. Benton Embree, a lawyer, had his home address listed as Pontiac Lake. His work address said 417 New York Block. David asked the man at the front desk of the hotel about those.

“Pontiac Lake?” the clerk said. “I don't know Pontiac Lake. You must mean Pontiac Bay near the top of Lake Washington. There are some pretty fancy homes on Sand Point up there. That would make sense if this man's a lawyer.”

David flipped through his guidebook. “I don't see it. Do you know how to get there from here?”

“The streetcar lines don't run that far. There's a train that runs out past there a couple of times a day, though. The King Street Station's not too far from here. You can probably walk it in twenty minutes or so.”

“What about the New York Block? What's that?”

The clerk smiled. “It's an office building, and it's only about ten minutes from here.”

The clerk gave David directions, which were simple. He only had to walk west to Second Avenue and then go south a few blocks to Cherry Street. “It's not too far from the Smith Tower,” the man explained. “As long as that's still in front of you, you haven't gone too far.”

Dressed in his new pair of pants, his best shirt, and the suit jacket Mrs. Wolfe had tailored for him, David headed into the sunshine. Staring up at the buildings he saw and into the faces of the men he passed, it took him more time than the clerk had told him, but it still didn't take long to reach his destination.

The New York Block was a seven-storey office building as wide as it was tall. It had been one of the first brick-and-stone buildings built after the horrible downtown fire of 1889. Many prettier buildings had gone up in the thirty years since then, but the New York Block still looked sturdy and important.