The Horn of a Lamb

by Robert Sedlack

  But he was happier to be dealing with Eddy than with his two drunken friends he had seen jumping from a slow-moving boxcar only minutes before. The two transients had threatened to beat Fred to a pulp and steal his knapsack. Eddy, though smaller than either of the men, had intervened. That was when Fred had guessed that Eddy was not to be messed with.

  Eddy, in turn, learned about Fred’s hockey accident, his team that had moved south, his rink. But Eddy wasn’t interested in Fred’s stories. He wanted his mountain bike.

  “I don’t believe it, if you really wanted to help me you would tell me how to get on a train.”

  “You can go your own way, limping man. But you’ll end up crushed, or frozen, or five hundred miles from where you wanna be. I know which trains to jump. And which cars to take.” Eddy sized Fred up. “You’d fit real nice in a grain car but you don’t know where or when and you don’t know how.” Eddy started walking away. Fred caved.

  “Buh, buh, okay.” Fred opened his knapsack and pulled out his green felt pen. He looked around on the ground for something Eddy could write on.

  Eddy grabbed Fred’s arm roughly, rolled up his T-shirt sleeve past his shoulder and began drawing. Fred giggled because the felt tip tickled. He became hypnotized by the sloping lines of the sketch. The grain car exploded to life at the bottom of Fred’s wrist. Up at the far end of the hand-drawn track on Fred’s shoulder, Eddy drew an angry beaver. “Not bad, not bad, you should be an artist or something.”

  “The only people who call themselves artists are fakes. I’m a painter.” Eddy finished and blew on the ink. “There’s a siding stop about half a mile up the track where trains pull over to let other trains pass.” Eddy looked at his watch. “Take the second one. That’ll get you close.”

  Fred’s eyes roamed up and down his arm. “This is too good to be true. You have drawn a secret chamber that looks like something out of a bedtime story.”

  “It’s there.”

  “Why is it there?”

  “Ventilation in the summer so the grain don’t explode in the heat.”

  Fred thought about that for a second. “That makes a certain amount of sense, buh, buh, why don’t they just cut holes in the side so it can be air conditioned or is that too easy and makes a mess of your scheming ways?”

  “You can’t have holes on the side if it’s raining. The grain would get wet.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Good luck, limping man.” Eddy grabbed Fred’s bike and started riding away. Fred’s heart broke as he saw his two-wheeled friend under the command of a stranger, even if that stranger was a great artist. Eddy did a big lazy circle and returned to Fred. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I tricked you. You didn’t need to trade your bike. You would have had to leave it behind anyway.”

  “Now he tells me and what if I told you that I knew it all along, buh, buh, for the sake of argument, why couldn’t I take my bike with me?”

  “There’s no room.”

  Fred looked at the sketch on his arm. “I see this little platform right outside the secret chamber and that is where I would have parked my bike.”

  “No, the engineer or one of the yard bulls would see your bike and you’d be toast.”

  “Um, um, we agreed that you would tell me how to get on a train and I would give you my bike, and now you say that you tricked me, buh, buh, just because you knew that I could not take my bike with me is beside the point because you would have had the bike anyway, so there.”

  Eddy thought about that for a second. “I don’t know if that’s right.”

  “I know you are not as mean as you think you are.”

  “I could still beat the living shit out of you.”

  “Um, um, that is probably true because I only have one good arm, buh, buh, that doesn’t change the fact that you thought you had to sound tough when you were leaving to let me know that you tricked me when you didn’t.”

  Eddy looked confused and angry. Fred raised his arm, blasted Eddy with his double-barrelled laugh and limped away.

  The first train had come and gone. Fred, who was behind some bushes beside the siding stop, waited until the long freight train rumbled to a groaning stop. He studied Eddy’s drawing and looked across at the cars, searching for a rounded car with a steel walkway across its top. The joy of discovery was short-lived. The sound of an approaching southbound train meant that Fred had very little time. Once it cleared, Fred’s train would leave.

  He grabbed his knapsack and lurched through the bushes, keeping out of sight. Once he was in line with the grain car he stumbled across the gravel.

  Fred grabbed a bar on the metal platform and tried to pull himself up. He couldn’t. He tried again. It was too high. He thought a running start might help. Before Fred could put his ambitious plan into action, a hand grabbed his shirt. “You’re not going up there,” said the voice.

  Fred didn’t even have a chance to see who it was. He was being pushed to the other end of the grain car.

  “Didn’t you read my instructions? You gotta get on the back end. The wind at the front will freeze you to death.”

  Eddy tossed Fred’s knapsack onto the metal platform, quickly checking to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Fred threw his elbow up. Eddy put a hand under Fred’s right foot and heaved him onto the car.

  Fred spun around as soon as he landed to thank Eddy, but he was already gone. Fred looked to the sky and pointed his thumb to where Eddy had just been. “Okay, okay, look after him for a day or two.”

  The grain car was laid out as Eddy had drawn it. Behind the platform was a small opening shaped like a pear, a foot and a half wide and a foot and a half high. Fred stuffed his knapsack through the opening and pulled himself under until his feet disappeared into the darkness.

  The base of Fred’s secret chamber was not flat. It was V-shaped and Fred’s bum rested at the bottom while his legs and torso bent up at a forty-five degree angle.

  The chamber was much smaller than Fred had expected, but if he tried hard enough he could almost imagine it was like a metal hammock. Fred suckled a big bottle. The refreshing water felt good running down his throat. But one bottle was it until the train stopped, so he rationed himself in case of delays.

  His feet came out first and then his hips. Once he was on the platform, he used one of the steel railings to pull himself up. His legs and arms were stiff. The train was moving quickly. He held the railing tight, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  The clatter of the wheels, the violent rocking and the roar of the wind would have unsettled most first-time train hoppers. But Fred revelled in it. No more snobby, money-hungry people. No more frantic cycling. No more stifling southern heat. The air was cold. And it felt good.

  Fred peered out at the dark shapes of passing hills and the twinkling lights of farmhouses. There were no images of the Four Seasons haunting him. Nor of Jack or the farm. He had nothing to look forward to and nothing to regret. He was in between, and in between was a great place to be. He sounded his double-barrelled laugh, which was almost as loud as the train whistle, and thought he could hear what sounded like a dog barking in the distance. It sounded almost like Taillon.

  He crawled back into his cave and, using his knapsack as a pillow, slept like a baby through the rest of the night.

  Fred limped along the shoulder of the interstate toward the port of entry. It was the same one he had crossed in the back of the rabbit driver’s truck. The finish line was now in sight. With heavy legs and palpable relief, he picked up his pace.

  He had awakened that morning to panic. It had taken him a while to remember where he was. A shaft of sunlight had cast a spear across his aching thigh and helped with his bearings. It had taken another ten minutes to realize he had fallen asleep in a grain car and that his train had stopped moving.

  He had managed to lower himself from the rear platform undetected and had lumbered over to the interstate.

  A fifty-minute ride in a farmer’s truck had left
him one big hill away from Canada. The farmer had been kind enough to pick Fred up but smart enough to drop him off before they arrived at the border. He had made enough crossings to know not to transport strangers.

  It was never Fred’s intention to try to sneak across. He assumed that because he wasn’t on wheels he could just walk. And if this border crossing had been busier, he might have succeeded.

  Fred was not worried. He was, after all, Canadian. And he was now back in Canada.

  “Citizenship?”

  “Canadian.”

  “Reason you were in the United States?”

  “Hockey game.”

  Fred confirmed that he had no picture identification. He proudly showed the inspector his library card, however.

  twelve

  Fred waited inside the small interviewing room for more than half an hour before someone told him he had to empty his pockets. During this time, several immigration and customs inspectors had passed the room, some even stopping, one of them smiling.

  Fred assumed that his illegal entry into the United States was a big deal to the inspectors. But of course it wasn’t. No, the reason they kept stealing looks at him was because he was a bit of a prize catch.

  The media interest had run a predictable path. It began with the video footage and print photographs from the Four Seasons. Questions about the identity of the mysterious suspect who had limped into the night wearing a tailcoat and top hat became a media curiosity. It was rumoured he was a disgruntled fan; there was speculation he was Canadian. It wasn’t until the avenger had a name that the story became personal.

  Fred had no idea that he was a bit of a celebrity. But he did enjoy the half of an egg salad sandwich that one of the inspectors was kind enough to share with him.

  Fred was introduced to an RCMP detective and two immigration inspectors who came and sat down with him. The detective laid out Fred’s dime novel cover on the table. “Can you tell me a little bit about this?”

  Fred looked at the cover before the detective turned it over to reveal his scrawls. “Buh, buh, there is not much to tell, I think a grocer went to the bottom of a lake and found more gold than he could fit in his submarine.”

  “Did you have any help?”

  “You might think it is impossible to plow an acre of land with the horn of a lamb all by yourself, buh, buh, anything’s possible if you have strong legs or in my case one strong leg.”

  The detective pointed to Fred’s note, “Don’t tell anyone, especially Papa Joe. Who’s Papa Joe?”

  Fred said nothing but his face became agitated.

  “That wouldn’t be Jack would it?”

  “You are so smart it hurts, um, um, he used to be a suspicious policeman just like you, buh, buh, now he is a poor sheep farmer and he will be madder than a bull with a skinny cowboy on his back when he finds out so don’t go thinking he aided or abated his nephew.”

  “So, why’d you do it, Fred?” asked the detective.

  “Um, um, because someone had to start the revolution.”

  “What revolution?”

  “If you have to ask then I can’t tell you.”

  The detective looked at the two inspectors. “Anything else?” One shrugged and the other nibbled on his lip. The detective nodded at the lip nibbler, but he shook his head.

  “It’s not important,” said the inspector.

  Fred leaned forward. “Buh, buh, don’t say that, you have been as quiet as a church mouse and you have just as much right as the man who asked all the questions, so c’mon down, Charlie Brown, and join the interrogation.”

  The inspector turned away from Fred and caught an exasperated look from the detective. He turned back to Fred and blurted. “What kind of pie was it?”

  “Um, um, a berry pie, buh, buh, I don’t know exactly what type. You will have to ask Mr. Madison to be sure.”

  Fred raised his arm and blasted the three men out of the room with his trademark laugh. They left behind a tabloid newspaper. The picture on the cover showed a shocked Andrew Madison wiping red pie filling from his face. The headline read, TOUCHé.

  Twenty-five minutes passed and the door opened again. The RCMP detective returned as Fred was reading the comics in the newspaper. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “I am free?”

  “I hope you realize how fortunate you are. If you hadn’t made it back to Canada you would have been facing assault charges, punishable by up to one year in prison. Our extradition treaty with the United States only covers offences that are punishable by a minimum of one year and a day.”

  Fred moved his fingers, counting. When he arrived at a satisfactory sum, he beamed. “Saved by a day, O Canada, I stand on guard for thee.”

  The detective handed Fred his knapsack. “This doesn’t mean you won’t face a civil suit.” The detective held the door open for Fred. “You don’t want the newspaper?”

  “Um, um, it is old, and I have read the comics already.”

  Fred limped outside. It was a beautiful day. He smiled and looked up at the blue sky. “We are so lucky to have a sun.” The detective motioned him over to an RCMP car.

  Fred threw his knapsack in the back seat and climbed in. “Hi, guys.”

  Fred sat up in the back seat and pointed across a brown, barren field. “Turn right, just past the Spindletop Motel, buh, buh, I don’t believe it, where is all the snow?”

  Fred hardly noticed the first sign, held by a solitary old farmer standing by the side of the road. It said, Welcome back, Fred.

  He turned in his seat to see who it was and almost missed the next sign, held by a teenager. This one said, Good shot. Another sign further along: It’s a great day for hockey. Fred couldn’t see who held that one.

  These roadside vigils, some with signs, some without, continued and became more clustered the closer Fred came to the farm. It wasn’t until he overcame his astonishment that Fred began waving back. By that time, there was no shoulder to be seen on the road. Just people, packed two and three deep.

  Fred thought he recognized many of the faces, and he should have. Most of them had skated on his rink. Others were friends of those who had. And still others were friends of those friends.

  The crowd parted as the RCMP car passed Jack’s gate, respectfully ending its homecoming reception right there. Fred turned and watched as the crowd closed once more at the gate and continued waving.

  Fred’s face flushed with embarrassment. He was so amazed, in fact, that he barely noticed Pearl woofing and circling the car. He definitely didn’t notice Jack standing on the back porch with his hands on his hips. Jack wasn’t waving.

  thirteen

  “Are you sure you’re not hungry?” asked Marilyn.

  “Um, um, I will eat something when I am done here.”

  Fred carried an armload of croquet mallets and set them down beside his snowshoes, which were leaning against a hockey net, which was the centrepiece of a sprawling pile.

  “You go in when you’re ready, I made sandwiches.”

  “Thank you so much for thinking of Mister Belly while I make amends to my angry uncle, buh, buh, what happened to his nose?”

  “Fred, I told you, a policeman hit him.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  Fred lumbered back into the garage. Marilyn could hear banging beside the barn. There was no doubt in her mind that Jack was imagining it was Fred’s skull on the other end of his hammer. She climbed into her truck, loaded with firewood, and drove off to make another delivery.

  Fred’s mission to the United States hadn’t just brought Jack and Marilyn breakfast in bed. His recent status as local legend made selling firewood a lot easier. Suddenly the logs were flying. The farmers and ranchers wanted wood, but they wanted to hear what had happened even more. Jack was a lousy source. He wasn’t talking.

  Fred wandered into the kitchen. Jack was eating a sandwich at his desk and listening to his answering machine. He was now getting five or six messages a day, when in the past he would have b
een lucky to get one a week. Most folks wanted firewood or lamb, but there were also messages from the city’s newspaper reporters. Not many, but they were persistent. Jack had already told them to go to hell.

  Given that Fred could not be trusted to remember what had happened, Jack was concerned that a wrong comment in a newspaper might be used against him in a civil suit. They had Fred’s name and that’s all they were going to get. At least if Jack had anything to say about it.

  Fred opened the fridge and grabbed an apple. Jack took a seat at the kitchen table and continued to eat his sandwich. His nose would never be the same. There would always be a bump halfway up it. Marilyn thought it looked sexy.

  Fred sat down across from Jack. Jack wiped his crumbs from the table and went outside.

  “Okay, fine.”

  Fred had told Jack he had hidden the gun because of what had happened to Taillon. He couldn’t, however, remember where he had hidden it. Jack had told him to start looking.

  Fred had already turned the house upside down. He went about his search silently but not sullenly. Jack was worried he had tossed it somewhere by the side of a road where a kid might come along and pick it up. Finding the gun was obviously important to Jack, but these labours were also Jack’s way of telling Fred he didn’t like his reason for hiding the gun.

  The implication that Jack, a respected former policeman, could not be trusted with a gun was a slap in the face. And it only added to the sting that Jack still felt when he looked at his broken nose in the mirror.

  So when it came time for Fred to visit Taillon, it was Marilyn who drove, not Jack.

  fourteen

  Marilyn didn’t like what she was hearing. Jiri was sitting in his living room, calmly rubbing his cat’s belly. “I love animals, Marilyn, you know that. Don’t make it seem like I’m being cruel. I don’t have a choice.”