“Pervert.”
“How can I be a pervert when I am only nineteen?”
“In your dreams.”
“Wowee, it is actually a nightmare.”
“You’re old.”
“I am almost forty.”
“That’s old.”
“I am old in my heart and young in my brain so you shouldn’t think that I am an old man.”
“Freak.”
“Slut.”
“Retard.”
“Horny.”
“You wish.”
“If I had one wish, I wish I could be you for one hour and I would go inside the house and light a candle and touch myself everywhere.”
“I thought you wanted to buy a house?”
“After that.”
Claudia pulled a cigarette from a big bag and lit it.
“Um, um, um …”
“Shut up.” Claudia cupped and adjusted her breasts as her cigarette dangled from her mouth.
“Do that again.”
Claudia smiled and rolled onto her stomach. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. Fred patted her calf and pulled himself out of his chair. “Don’t get burned.”
Fred was just about to round the corner when Claudia’s tentative voice sailed across the yard. “Could you put some lotion on my back?”
Fred stopped immediately. “Okay, so who cares if that sounds like a reliable line from a porn movie.” He paused, his eyes blinking. “You can’t reach it yourself?”
“How can I?”
“Exactly.” Fred returned, pulling the lawn chair. He grabbed the tube of suntan lotion. Claudia turned her head so she was facing the other way. Fred was just about to squirt on some lotion but he jiggled the bikini top ties first. “Do I work around these or what should I do?”
“You can undo them.”
“Okay, okay, with your permission, so hold on.” Fred set the lotion down in the grass, paused.
“What’s the matter?”
“Um, um, nothing.”
Fred flicked a blade of grass from his palm, flexed his fingers above the knot, surveying, concentrating, planning the best way to do the deed with one hand. Eventually, he grabbed the end that seemed most suitable and gently tugged. The loose knot bloomed open. Fred slowly untangled the ties and placed each one to the side.
“You’re so quiet.”
“It’s not easy with one hand so I have to concentrate.”
“You did good.”
Fred squirted three globs of lotion onto Claudia’s back. He slowly began rubbing it into her skin. He was careful not to roam too far over the sides. He circled his warm hand over her shoulder blades and down her lower back but not too far. It was only when Fred’s hand found the sides of her neck that he heard something he had been longing to hear. He wasn’t sure if it was a sigh or a whimper.
His thumb worked deeper into the muscles of Claudia’s back. He couldn’t help but notice her bikini bottom rise up a little and squeeze back down. Fred’s breathing was now louder than the faint breeze.
It happened so fast that Fred had no time to think. Claudia rolled onto her back and sat up. Her eyes flared with hunger and fear. Slowly, she dropped her arm that was covering her breasts and her mouth parted to surrender her breathing, which was faster, almost spasming.
Fred kept his eyes on Claudia’s, not daring to look down. Her own eyes darted back and forth, never staying on Fred. Fred’s large hand inched forward and slowly cupped her breast. The nipple was rock hard but Fred felt nothing. His fingers were numb.
“Claudia!” squealed a girl’s voice. Claudia rolled onto her stomach. Fred threw his hand in the air as if he were under arrest. Three of Claudia’s friends came galloping into the backyard with towels, a boom box and beach bags. Claudia started to cry. Fred stumbled from his chair. The three girls backed away, terrified. Kenton, still watching from the upstairs window, let the drape fall back into place and pulled up his shorts.
“Get outta here!” yelled one of the girls.
“Call the police!” screamed another.
“Are you all right?” asked the third.
Fred limped away down the gravel road, so flustered he forgot his bike by the Feniaks’ front door.
Fred stood at the corral gate as Pearl ran the sheep through. His eyes were focused, scanning the flanks, occasionally looking to the sky for reassurance. When he saw the happy face at last, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Once all the sheep were safely stowed, Fred closed the big gate and fastened it securely with a bolt. Jack sauntered over, lighting a cigarette on the way. He didn’t look very happy. “You didn’t put the hay in the troughs.”
“No sir, buh, buh, what I really want to know is whether you think Lucky Lucy will be a prize-winning mother with all the babies she will make for you and don’t forget to tell everyone that I was the one who saved her.”
“She’s a peach. I hope I remember not to toss her in the trailer with her brothers and sisters when the time comes.”
Fred’s face dropped, and it took a grin from Jack to help pick it up again. “You can make a joke about some things, buh, buh, don’t even think about getting her mixed up with the rest of your lamb chops.”
“We’ll mark her again at the end of summer just to be safe.” Jack took one final drag and dropped his cigarette into an old coffee tin that was half-full with other butts.
A truck roared up to the house, leaving a swirling stream of dust behind it. Jack saw that it was Marilyn’s truck and was pleased. By the time she had jumped out and marched past him, he was confused. When she headed for Fred with pruning shears in her hand he ran after her.
Fred was already flat on his back thanks to a forearm to his chest. He had landed softly in a pile of hay. Marilyn stood over him, the pruning shears pointed between his legs. “You touch her again and so help me God I’ll cut your balls off!”
Jack was scrambling to get between Marilyn and Fred. He was too late.
Taillon cleared the corral fence in a single bound and took up a protective position directly in front of Fred. He didn’t growl. He just sat down and looked up at Marilyn calmly. The presence of the white giant took some of the fire out of her eyes.
She was disoriented, disgusted. She jumped when Jack put an arm around her. “You bastard!” she yelled at Fred.
Jack walked her back to her truck, trying his best to calm her down.
Taillon stayed with Fred. Fred looked between his legs and shuddered. “Wowee.”
four
The pressures to act mounted. The reminders were constant: the piles of neglected hay in the corral, the stench in the hallway from Fred opening his bedroom door, the stink-bomb attacks, the mountain of firewood that Jack passed several times a day, the frosty response from Marilyn when he went to visit.
If Jack had been honest, he would have acknowledged that the reception at Marilyn’s front door was the only reason for his plan. She didn’t invite him in. She made him stand on the porch and her eyes suggested enough derision that Jack could tell she thought he should feel guilty for having been negligent in his role as guardian.
The subject of pressing charges against Fred never came up, but Jack knew that Marilyn had every right to pursue it. Any reasonable parent might. Three witnesses had seen Fred with his hand on Claudia’s bare breast.
What Jack didn’t know was that Claudia hadn’t spoken a word about what had happened. One of Claudia’s friends had told her mother, and she had phoned Marilyn. When Claudia was asked about it by Marilyn she burst into tears and ran to her room. That’s when Marilyn grabbed the pruning shears.
Since then Claudia had remained silent. Her three friends, however, did what any fifteen-year-olds would do. They told everyone at school. And the stories they shared were much better without the facts. One version had Claudia pinned to the ground with Fred trying to pull her bikini off with his teeth. Another had Claudia in a headlock with Fred forcing her to perform fellatio. In another, he had knock
ed her cold and was masturbating on her.
All of these versions, and several others not initiated by the three friends, bounced around the schoolyard and many found their way to service stations, dinner tables and the fields of farmers and ranchers.
It was left to the parents to decide what was possibly true. Those who had never trusted Fred believed the worst—that Fred was a retarded predator who had molested Marilyn Feniak’s daughter. Those who knew Claudia talked about her tight T-shirts and Fred’s poor judgment. Most conceded that Claudia, while legally a child, was not really a child, and that Fred, while legally an adult, was not always an adult.
The drive getting there was quiet. Fred had no idea where he was going. Jack preferred it this way. Fred’s discomfort grew as Jack pulled in. Several RCMP cars were parked in front. Jack jumped out first. Fred stayed where he was. “Um, um, what is up, buttercup?”
“Let’s go.”
Fred looked at Jack skeptically.
The constable eased the cell door shut. He could have slammed it, but in this particular instance it didn’t seem right. “Okay?” asked the constable.
“Thanks,” said Jack.
The constable jangled his keys and walked away, wondering how long he had been walking around with that yellow hair on his jacket.
Fred rubbed the yellow hair between a thumb and forefinger and listened to the intermittent squeaks until they disappeared. “They must be new shoes, buh, buh, they are nice shoes.”
Jack heard snoring and looked over his shoulder to see a man curled up on a bed. Jack saw grey hair and greasy jeans. The man still had his workboots on.
“Buh, buh, do you think he is an exhausted mass murderer or someone who had too much to drink?”
Fred rattled his cell door. Jack paid full attention to a stain of oil on his finger joints. He rubbed it slowly. Fred shifted nervously. A faint smell of vomit reached his nose. “I thank you so much, you have cooked up an excellent lesson to show me where bad people go, buh, buh, it would be even better if I could remember what I did that has made you so mad and now we can leave and I will do a hundred chores and pitch hay until the sheep come home.”
Jack looked down at his watch, stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled slowly down the hallway.
Fred stuck his face into the bars. “When are you coming back?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Papa Joe?”
Jack saw the red truck as soon as he passed the Feniaks’ house. It was parked outside his house and he thought he saw someone at the back door. Jack didn’t recognize the truck. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator.
By the time he turned onto the intersecting road that led to his driveway, the red truck was passing his gate, a gate Jack knew was tied shut before he left. The red truck didn’t stop. It turned as Jack approached and roared off.
His instincts told him that the three heads he barely made out behind the tinted windows of the crew cab should be followed, if for no other reason than to remind them that when they opened a farmer’s gate they should shut it. But he was too tired to chase. “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Jack said to himself as he pulled up to the house.
Pearl seemed nervous and sniffed his shoes when he opened the back door. His bladder bursting, Jack hustled to the bathroom. While he was relieving himself, Jack felt a surge of adrenalin. Something was wrong.
The water in the toilet gurgled as Jack touched his hand to Fred’s bedroom door. It was open six inches. A chill ran up his spine open. He swung the door open. He barely noticed the stench. Jack raced through the house. The television. His gun. Nothing, as far as he could tell, was missing.
Jack filled a glass with water and drank it slowly, trying to calm down. Maybe Fred’s door had been open when he had left. He kicked off his running shoes and stuffed his feet into his big rubber boots.
The walk to the pasture was supposed to give Jack some time to contemplate the mysteries of the red truck and concoct some theories. The sound of squawking roosters from inside the barn interrupted him. The sheep and the lambs were in the fields. The roosters never squawked when Tom moved around, but they always squawked when there was a stranger in the barn.
Jack grabbed a pitchfork. He motioned with his hand for Pearl to lay down. Her ears suddenly pricked forward. Jack listened. He thought he could hear something moving around inside. Jack stepped through the door.
As soon as Marilyn came around the corner Fred let go of the bars and reached for his testicles. “Relax, Fred, I didn’t bring the pruning shears.”
“Buh, buh, did you bring a cake with a file because I will saw through these bars and be out in no time.”
Marilyn stopped outside Fred’s cell. She looked at Fred and he returned her steady gaze. “Um, um, if this is a staring contest you will win. You have three teenagers and have more experience with this kind of thing.”
Marilyn said nothing, but continued staring. Fred broke eye contact, turned and sat down on his bed. “When was the last time you went on a date?” asked Marilyn.
“Last night. Miss July. She was delicious and nutritious and liked hang-gliding.”
“Not since Brandon I suspect.”
“Not since my birthday and I think I fondled Bridget in her truck, um, um, I kissed her once or twice for sure and might have squeezed her bum, buh, buh, I pray you will be a lady and keep this a secret.”
Marilyn wasn’t paying much attention to what Fred had to say or she might have asked him about his birthday and then told him that humping a hooker and groping Jiri’s wife didn’t constitute a proper date. She ran her fingers along the cold steel of the bars, reflecting upon her months spent in bed. The feelings were surfacing. She remembered taping newspaper over the mirror in the bathroom, the drapes closed, the suffocating silence after the school bus chugged away. “Do you feel ugly?”
Surprisingly, Fred was not caught off guard, but he took a deep breath anyway. “What do you think?”
“I don’t mean your handicap,” Marilyn said gently, “or the fact that you use it as an excuse. I mean deep down.”
“Like if I got in a submarine and went to the bottom of a bottomless lake and found a sunless city?”
“How can a bottomless lake have a city?”
“How can a lamb have a horn,” asked Fred, extending his hand away from his forehead, “about yea big?”
“We all lose things, Fred. And there’s things we can get back and things we can’t. It’s the things we can get back that matter most.”
“Um, um, have you found the things you lost after Mr. Feniak left without saying goodbye?”
“I’m trying.”
“I am too.”
“Not hard enough.”
“Says Papa Joe.”
“Says me.”
“And who are you?”
“Someone who cares enough to come here and see how her neighbour’s doing. In spite of what he did to her daughter.”
Fred rolled his tongue around his dry mouth. “I am no good sometimes, um, um, I love Papa Joe more than my dad and I love Badger more than Papa Joe and I love Taillon most of all. It’s not fair because Papa Joe has been good to me, buh, buh, I am not a farmer or a farmer’s right-hand man.”
“What are you then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up and tried to find out?”
“I won’t find it on a farm that kills lambs, buh, buh, maybe a log cabin in the woods.”
“Nobody’s fooled by your cabin in the woods, Fred. It’s not going to happen. And you know it. What you lost is not out there. Anywhere. It’s inside that thick skull of yours. And in that big heart that builds a rink every year. The sooner you find it, the better. The clock’s ticking. You’re not nineteen any more.”
By the time Fred lifted his head, Marilyn was gone. But he could still smell her. It wasn’t perfume. It was stronger. Something maternal. Something Fred hadn’t smelled in a long time. It brought a smile to his troubled face.
&n
bsp; —
It seemed to take forever for his vision to adjust to the darkness of the barn. Jack stepped gingerly. He had seen three heads in a crew cab that sat four. Maybe someone had been left behind when the others saw Jack’s truck coming.
Jack felt very vulnerable. He realized he should have grabbed his gun, but it was too late now. It was just him, his pitchfork and whatever had spooked the roosters.
A shape darted for the open door. It was a short stretch for Jack and he managed to grab a handful of shirt. The shoulders beneath the shirt struggled and twisted. Jack reached around and pulled both hands behind. His weight carried them both to the ground. Jack had his burglar and he was pleased. So was Pearl. She barked and spun and licked the face of the intruder. “Please don’t hurt me, Mr. Pickle,” said the voice of a man in the body of a boy.
“Jesus Christ.” Jack lifted Kenton to his feet and, because he was so light, almost propelled him into the sky. “What the heck are you doing?”
Kenton was trembling. “You promise you won’t tell my mom?” A big teardrop oozed over one of his eyelids.
Jack knelt and squeezed Kenton’s arm. “Did you know the boys in that red truck?” Kenton looked over Jack’s shoulder to make sure the truck was gone.
“Number fifty-seven said to number three, you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see, sure would be delighted if you played with me, c’mon, Charlie Brown, you can do it.”
Jack saw a toilet paper roll fly from one cell across to Fred’s. The cardboard roll bounced off the bars and landed on the floor. Fred’s hand jabbed out and pulled it inside his cell. Before Fred could throw it back, the constable jangled his keys and Fred looked at him, disappointed.
“One more, we are tied and it is not as easy as it looks to throw this through the bars in the other guy’s jail.”
The constable unlocked Fred’s door. “That’s it, you’re free to go.”
The Horn of a Lamb Page 24
