Fred sighed like a ten-year-old finishing a book report and tried to tuck his cheat sheet into his overalls without Badger seeing it. “Papa Joe thinks this is his farm, buh, buh, you and I both know whose farm it really is.” Fred cast an admiring glance at Taillon and began limping back to the house. “Um, um, when is the first home game?”
“I thought you’d have that chiselled on a stone tablet and tucked away under your pillow.”
“If I could chisel with one hand I would have done that, buh, buh, two weeks?”
“Good guess. I don’t suppose you’ve been thinking about it more than every minute of every day.”
“I would be more excited than a lottery winner if Papa Joe hadn’t told me he read in the paper that the team might move, um, um, then again you can’t believe everything you read and Andy made a promise, buh, buh, you have a friend who is high class and important with the team and if he told you something bad then you would say so and I might have to believe it because you always tell me the truth even if that truth sometimes slaps people in the face like a cold bucket of water from Helen Keller’s pump.”
“You lost me there.”
“You said that Helen Keller was a badass socialite.”
“Socialist.”
“And she did more than learn to spell water at the pump and became a Wobbly just like me, buh, buh, I wobble because I am handicapped and her wobbling was in some kind of union and she helped protect the little folks from the snobby, money-hungry people because she was handicapped and I guess that’s why I like her so much and I like you for telling me the truth about her so come see the log cabin I built.”
Fred limped on ahead. It was still baffling to Badger. One minute Fred Pickle couldn’t remember who you were, and with his next breath he was blurting out details that he had no business remembering.
Fred was right. Badger did know the equipment manager of the hockey team. They drank together at O’Malleys Restaurant and Tavern. And he had already warned Badger that rumours were true that Andrew T Madison, the team’s American owner, was unhappy with the season ticket sales and was thinking of moving the team south after the season. But Badger didn’t need to tell Fred that. Fred was looking forward to the season. And after the season was an eternity away for Fred.
“Don’t worry, Jack, I don’t need the heaviest one,” said Badger, peering down the stairs into the basement where Jack’s head had disappeared inside a freezer. The smell of burned steak lingered in the house.
Jack lifted a large plastic bag stuffed with various shapes and sizes of butchered lamb wrapped in brown paper. “How do you know I’m not looking for the lightest?”
Jack found one to his liking, pulled it out and slammed the freezer door shut.
Badger followed Jack and Pearl in the darkness to his dented, salt-eaten Georgie Boy motorhome, where Jack hoisted the bag onto its frayed seat. Badger began counting twenty-dollar bills into Jack’s hand. Jack was counting as well.
“Hey, Badger, can I ask a favour? And I hope it doesn’t bend your nose out of joint.” Badger counted the last of the money into Jack’s hand. “Thanks, it’s just that Fred really looks up to you and sometimes I worry.”
“You think I manipulate his damaged brain.”
“Well, now, don’t get me wrong, most of it’s pretty damn good but …”
“You don’t have to worry about Fred, he has politics sussed out for himself, which means he knows it’s all bad.”
“I don’t mean the politics necessarily, I mean the Palestinians.”
“The what?”
“The black-and-white checkered scarf those guys wear, what do you call that?”
“A kaffiyeh, it’s a headdress.”
“I finally got him to put it away last week but he had that damn thing on for most of the summer. He makes believe like I’m Israel and he’s fighting for his independence. He’s not a prisoner for Chrissake. He’s got a good life here and I’ve told you before, he didn’t do so well on his own. You didn’t know him then. It was a different Fred. Maybe it’s just best if things don’t get forced.”
“Jack, I have never suggested to Fred it might be a good idea to dress up like an Arab and throw rocks at your tractor. He probably saw it on TV. Besides, even if I did think it was a good idea, I don’t think it’s humanly possible to influence Fred to do anything against his will,” said Badger as he walked around to the driver’s door. “And that includes pitching hay.”
Badger pulled the squeaky door shut, winked at Jack, tried three times to start the old engine, succeeded on the fourth and rolled out onto the gravel road. Jack watched until the one tail light that worked disappeared from view.
Jack walked across to the barn. He found Fred, downcast, sitting on a hay bale petting the old tomcat that been there since before Jack bought the property. Jack had put so much effort into finding a good name for his Great Pyrenees he had nothing left for the barn cat, so he just called him Tom. Half of one of Tom’s ears was missing and his crooked jaw was chewing something he’d just snagged from a dirty bowl.
“I hope you’re not feeding him your steak.”
“It is just a little bit, and you don’t feed him enough anyway.”
“He gets plenty.”
Fred pushed a finger into his own protruding stomach. “And I get too much so he can have some of mine.” Fred stuck his tongue out at Jack. “Besides, look how happy he is to have some overcooked steak.” The contented cat, finished with his bowl, began grooming his shoulder.
A row of roosters, sound asleep, sat atop one of the lambing pens. “Goddamn squatters,” Jack spit, “you gotta keep that door shut, they shit everywhere.” Jack knelt down, scratched Tom’s head and addressed his nephew’s slumped shoulders. “We weren’t fighting, Fred, we were having a spirited conversation.”
“So what if Badger didn’t want potatoes with his supper? He said he was allergic and you argued.”
“Nobody’s allergic to potatoes.”
“Badger says he doesn’t eat french fries or potato chips either so you should believe him and not get mad.”
“Just tell me they’re fattening, that’s all I was waiting for. Allergic to potatoes. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Why did you call him a Red at the supper table? Was it because his face looks like a turnip when the two of you argue?”
“It’s just a name.”
“What is a Red?”
“A communist.”
“And Badger is a communist?”
“He used to be.”
“And communism is dead, right?”
“Deader than a stick.”
“Badger says Fidel Castro takes better care of pregnant women than the U.S.A. does.”
“Don’t you go believing everything Badger tells you.”
“If capitalism is such a good thing why do you get so angry when the bills come in the mail?”
“They’re part of life. You don’t like the last home game of the year any more than I like paying the gas company.”
“What is next after capitalism is deader than a stick?”
Fred waited for an answer and then limped to the door. “Just because Badger doesn’t like the snobby, money-hungry people doesn’t mean he is a bad man.”
Jack turned to the row of roosters and pitched a plastic pail against the pen. The roosters squawked and jumped but held their position. “You dirty bitches.”
Jack clicked off a work light hanging from a beam and the barn plunged into total darkness. He hit a shin on his way out and yelled loud, loud enough that Fred heard him halfway to the house.
“Um, um, that is sure to leave a mark,” said Fred to himself and then he looked up at the stars. “Thanks, God.”
three
Winter never officially began around Jack’s farm until the ribbon was cut on Fred’s homemade rink.
If the groundhog was the Grim Reaper for winter then Fred was the hangman for the dwindling days of autumn. And like the groundhog, Fr
ed kept his own calendar. He only emerged from the farmhouse with his flag to get things rolling when he felt the snow was good and ready.
Fred even managed to look like a groundhog with his short legs, squat body and compact, muscular frame. Even his cheeks, buried as they were under a tangled, reddish-brown beard, seemed to be bursting with seeds. His eyes were nothing like a groundhog’s, though. They moved slowly and deliberately as if they were heavy marbles being pushed with great effort from one edge of the socket to the other.
As Fred stood at the kitchen window, his heavy eyes were hypnotized by the big snowflakes tumbling through the hazy glow of the porch light. Fred cracked the window up with his palm. Cold air swirled inside, sending a paper napkin across the table. Fred wiggled his fingers in the frigid current.
Jack stretched his long, sinewy body at the kitchen table and tilted a stained coffee mug to his mouth. He was glad for the snow. It meant that Fred wouldn’t be asking him fifteen times a day about the first hockey game.
“Um, um, when do the Boston Bruins come to town?”
That was only nine for the day and they had just finished dinner. The snow was working its magic. “Thursday.”
“I knew that.” Fred sighed impatiently and shut the window.
“Those kids are gonna have school on Monday,” said Jack, “you might want to think about getting started.”
“Do you think I can tell Mother Nature to stop snowing?”
“I thought you and Mother Nature had everything pretty much figured out.”
Fred erupted with a laugh that jolted the little stray cat from a deep sleep. And the cat was in the basement. “You said that, not me,” said Fred, grinning from ear to ear.
Fred had his own way of doing things, and his double-barrelled laugh was one of them. It came in two stages. The first part sounded like a dying man taking his final, desperate breath of air. The second part blurted out like a whoopee cushion, a feat Fred accomplished by rattling his tongue against his molars. Nobody could imitate it. Jack had tried. He had almost hurt himself, so he never did it again.
Fred’s laugh was unavoidable, unpredictable and not at all infectious. On calm mornings it travelled to faraway farms and caused cows to start lowing in their fields.
Pearl inched forward and put her paw in the air. Jack put his plate on the floor and Pearl started licking up the gravy and bits of potato that had escaped Jack’s fork.
Fred grimaced. “Um, um, that is so disgusting.”
“She’s been a good Pearl today, haven’t you, girl?” said Jack as he scratched the top of her head.
“She gets all the nice treats and lonely Taillon has to sleep outside and nobody’s petted him once.” Fred frowned at Pearl and then looked as if he had remembered something. He cocked an ear to the ceiling. He nodded. “Okay, and I know that she is your friend and helps you forget Aunt Vera.”
Jack used to get upset when Fred’s words pinched. He had since learned to throw a bone, preferably one with sexual ribbons, and Fred would scamper after it. “She doesn’t sleep with me. I do draw the line somewhere.”
Fred wagged a finger, “You little devil.”
Jack smiled in spite of himself. He knew Fred was like a child at times and then he’d be like a nineteen-year-old and then he’d act like he was thirty-eight years old, which is how old he really was. It was hard to keep up, and Jack had long ago given up trying.
four
Fred slept on a bare mattress on the floor. There were plenty of sheets, including one that was fitted for that particular mattress, but tucking under the four elastic corners with one hand was something Fred had tried. Once. It was more trouble than it was worth. But he was fastidious about folding his clothes. Shirts, jackets and vests were hung in the closet. Pillars of folded pants, underwear and socks leaned against the walls like sandbags stacked for an impending flood. On top of one pillar was a checkerboard with the black and red pieces positioned for a game, a game, more often than not, that Fred played by himself.
Being so dedicated to the hanging and folding of his clothes as soon as he took them off meant Fred rarely had a pile of dirty laundry. As a result he could never tell which clothes needed washing. So Fred left his wardrobe where it was. Hanging, folded and stinking.
The resulting odour meant that Jack rarely ventured inside Fred’s room. If he needed Fred for anything, he tapped on the door and yelled. And once he heard Fred stirring, he dashed away before the door opened.
There was usually a small pile of papers beside Fred’s mattress that looked like the beginnings of a bonfire. These were reminder notes, mostly from Jack. Without them Fred’s life would become a chaotic, meandering mess. And without them he would have nothing to look forward to.
A model-kit log cabin sat where it had for years, inside the wide sill of the only window in the room. It had plastic evergreen trees surrounding it, a stack of firewood and a dog that didn’t come with the kit but since Fred thought that no respectable house was complete without a dog he had glued him near the front door. Another accessory that didn’t come with the kit was a tiny Not for Sale sign that jutted out from the base. On the sign was a quote, typed neatly on Jack’s typewriter: Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all—Helen Keller.
Close at hand was a small brush, which Fred used to clean the cabin when it accumulated dust. It was the only household chore that Fred performed religiously.
Given Fred’s enthusiasm for the game, a visitor to his room would have been surprised to discover that it was not a hockey shrine—no posters of his favourite players, no hats of the home team and not a single NHL trading card. Jack asked him about this once and Fred just shrugged his shoulders. There were in fact only two hints that a hockey fan resided here. One was kept under his mattress and the other was propped against a stack of socks.
The former was a Polaroid. Fred didn’t keep it under his mattress because he was hiding it. He knew if he left it lying around he might lose it. And if he lost it he’d never remember that, like Badger, he had friends in high places.
The latter was a large framed photograph that cried out for a more prominent place in the room. But this would have required a nail and two hands or an uncle who could come into the room without reminding his nephew that they had detergent and a washing machine in the basement.
The framed photograph was two feet by three feet. Taken in a restaurant, it showed a hockey player in full equipment, balanced on top of a dinner table. His skate blades, shining bright beside the plates and cutlery, pinned the tablecloth, creating ripples of fabric. The player was crouched, stick at the ready for any advancing wingers or waiters. His teammates, not in uniform, smiled admiringly from their chairs. Their faces reflected a shared sentiment—leave it to Fred Pickle to pose for a picture like that.
Fred was nineteen in the photograph. He wore no helmet, so his mangy hair dangled unobstructed to his shoulders. His face was shaved and revealed strikingly handsome features that would end up buried under thick, protective hair. The lingering effects of a black eye and a stitched cut across his nose were scars of battle that Fred’s face wore proudly.
There was not the slightest hint of youthful innocence. On the contrary, a nasty sneer warned all that this was not a lad to be trifled with.
The rare visitor to Fred’s room was reminded, without the slightest hint of anger or regret, that the picture had been taken two days before his accident.
The snow had stopped falling sometime in the night. Fred pushed open the back door. Jack had already cleared a path from the small porch to the flagpole. Fred gazed at the snowbanks and beamed. Four days of snow had closed the schools and left a beautiful bounty.
Jack had inherited the flagpole from the farm’s previous owner, and on this calm morning a Canadian flag hung at its top, the red and white fabric folded over, making it impossible to distinguish an image. Fred unwrapped the rope from the rigging and slowly lowered the flag. The small wheel at the top of the pole squeaked.
/> Fred carried the flag unceremoniously under his armpit into the house. Jack was at the kitchen table sipping coffee and checking grain prices. He looked up as Fred stuffed the flag into a drawer and went to his bedroom. Jack waited until he heard the back door slam before he opened the drawer and folded the flag properly.
Fred limped to the pole with a long piece of fabric draped across his shoulder. He fastened it to the rope on the pole with two small clamps.
The piece of fabric, which became a flag as soon as the small wheel at the top of the pole began to turn, had been painted by Fred’s left hand, which wasn’t the hand he had used to pitch snowballs when he was a boy.
Fred’s attempt to create a giant, three-dimensional puck resulted in a blob that looked more like a black egg. Two green hockey sticks stood guard on either side of the puck. Three-quarters of the way up the shafts, the green was striped with bright bands of yellow, white and blue in ascending order. The tops of the sticks were gold.
The blades were too fat and the shafts too short but Fred didn’t care. It wasn’t the artwork that was important. It was the tingling in his belly that started as soon as he had it hoisted to the top. As if to share in his enthusiasm, a light breeze began to blow.
five
The fluttering flag affected more than just Fred’s stomach. Scattered around Jack’s farm were other farms and ranches. And inhabiting these were families with children who owned ice skates. For them the flag was a community reveille. It was a call to arms.
Kenton Feniak hadn’t yet noticed the flag. He was too busy scurrying around in the snow, collecting brackets that had fallen from a recent load of rusty shelving units. Kenton was twelve, tiny and wore a freckled face that appeared to be in a perpetual state of disbelief.
The Feniaks had a big sign over the entrance to their driveway that said Feniak Farm. This was a bit misleading because it had been five years since the land had functioned as a farm. They had another sign that said Beware of the Dogs. It had been hammered into a post by Kenton’s seventeen-year-old brother, Ryan. This sign wasn’t misleading at all.
The Horn of a Lamb Page 2
