by Thomas King
“Cows are dumb.”
“I think they are beautiful. They look real soft. Jimmy says if you put salt on your hand, they’ll lick it.”
“The bears would eat those cows in a second.”
Papa was a preacher. He preached for the Nazareens and then he preached for the Baptists. The year before the accident, he went to preach for the Methodists in Loomis. The church gave us an old, two-storey house in the trees near the river. It had been newly painted—sky blue with yellow trim—and the kitchen had shiny pink linoleum squares filled with green and white flowers. Mum said the cupboards were solid wood. Mary crawled into the stone fireplace in the parlour and said you could see all the way to the sky. We took turns looking up that chimney. It was true. You could see the sky, all right, a small patch of blue surrounded by darkness. Luke said it was like looking down into a magical well, but, if you stayed there long enough and your eyes adjusted, you could begin to see the edges of the bricks and the long streaks of soft, black soot on the walls. William said it smelled like vampire bats to him and that they really liked old chimneys. I didn’t believe him, but he scared Mary and Luke.
After we brought the boxes in, Papa gathered us together, and we stood in the kitchen and held hands. “Thank you, God,” Papa said, “for bringing us through the storm to this safe place. Thank you for this new beginning and for sharing your goodness and mercy with us, Amen.” Luke and Mary found a board and William found a can of paint in the cellar and made a sign, but he spelled it wrong because he was too proud to ask me.
“Mum screams at night, Caroline. Sometimes it wakes me up.”
“That’s the zoo, silly. Whenever it gets dark, all the animals howl at the moon.”
“The ducks don’t howl.”
“The real animals do.”
“Cows don’t howl, either.”
“Cows are dumb.”
“And she cries, too. Sometimes I can hear her crying.” “Animals love to howl at the moon, Luke. It sounds like screaming, but they’re really having a good time.”
Mum didn’t cry when Papa died. Neither did I. Luke was too little to understand anything, so he didn’t cry either. Mr. Bennett called to tell Mum what had happened, and she just sat down. It wasn’t like in the movies at all. She told us to sit down, too, and then she said that there had been an accident and that Papa and William and Mary were with God. That was all that happened. There was the funeral, and we went to live with Granny.
It would be only temporary, Mum said when we got off the bus. We wouldn’t be staying long. We had to walk to Granny’s. Luke got to carry the green suitcase because he was smaller than me. “What if Granny doesn’t want us?” Luke wanted to know. “Does she have a television?”
Mum carried the leather case, and we stopped at the end of each block to let Luke catch his breath. Everything was going to be good this time. Each time we stopped we sat on our suitcases, that’s what Mum would say. We walked miles that day, dragging our bags along Ross Street until we got to Granny’s house and stood on the porch in the shade and rang the bell and waited for her to let us in.
Granny smoked. You could smell it everywhere. And Mum said there was something wrong with her eyes but that we shouldn’t ask her about it. Granny liked to sit in the kitchen and smoke.
“Those cigarettes sure do stink, Granny,” Luke told her.
“You’ll get used to it.”
In the late afternoon especially, Granny would sit in a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, in the dark, and smoke.
“You’re the man of the house, now,” Granny told Luke. The blue smoke would curl off her cigarette and flow over her face and hair.
“I’m older than Luke.”
“It’s just a figure of speech, Caroline.” Every so often, she would blow smoke out her nose, like frosty steam on a cold morning. “Luke’s a boy, and you’re a girl.”
Mum got a job at the auction yards, at first. Then she worked for the Railroad Café across from the fire station.
“Why does Granny sit in the dark and smoke, Caroline?”
“Adults like to smoke.”
“It smells awful.”
“It’s what adults do.”
William hung the board on the fence. You didn’t spell it right, I told him. He didn’t care, he said. Everyone would know what he meant and sometimes there were different ways to spell the same word. Papa said he was going to borrow a camera and take a picture of all of us standing by the fence. But he never did.
That winter, the river flooded and put the fence underwater. We watched the sign slowly disappear, and, when the water receded, it was gone. As soon as the ground dried to a soft mud, we waded out to the fence. William had to carry Mary on his shoulders. Luke found the sign face down in the mud, and we cleaned if off as best we could and William nailed it back up. Mary thought we should say grace, so we did, and, after, as we trudged back to the house, William held the hammer above his head and sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and we all joined in.
“I don’t believe you about the animals, Caroline.”
“Okay. On Saturday, we can ask Mr. Noah.”
“I don’t like Mr. Noah.”
“You’re afraid of everything.”
“I am not. I’m the man of the house.”
“Boy, are you dopey. It’s just an expression. That’s all it is. It doesn’t mean anything.”
The new calves were in the field. We stood at the fence and watched them perched on their long, thin legs, leaning against their mothers. They had the same crazy eyes as the cows, and their mouths were full of white slobber. Luke sat on the fence and counted them.
“There are fourteen babies, Caroline. You see that brown one over there? Her name is Lucy.”
“It looks like a bull.”
“That one is Mabel. And that one is Mary.”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s go see the bears.”
“See how the mothers watch over them. I’ll bet if we tried to get close, the mothers would run us over and trample us to death.”
“Come on. We’re going to miss the feeding.”
“Mum was screaming again last night.”
“It’s the animals you hear.”
We had never even so much as said hello to Mr. Noah before. Some of the kids at school said he was real mean and had bad breath. He looked fierce all right, like the animals. Luke stood back a ways and watched the calves in the field, while I knocked on the door.
When Mr. Noah opened the door, he had a white apron tied around his middle and a butcher knife in his hand. He was even scarier up close, and you could smell the sweat. His beard shot out in all directions, and the hair around his mouth was lighter, as though he had sucked all the colour out of it. He was smiling, standing there with that knife. But it was his eyes you saw first. Clear, blue eyes, so bright and blue you could imagine that there were tiny fires burning behind them. He looked at me and then at Luke and then at me again, smiling all the while. Some of his teeth were missing.
“Well, children,” he said. “Come in. I think you’re just in time for some cookies. You children like cookies?”
Luke was behind me. “We like cookies,” he said. And before I could stop him, he just walked into Mr. Noah’s house. The house was light, and there were plants everywhere. The room smelled of apples and oranges and fresh-cut vegetables. “Come in, come in. What kind of cookies do you children like?” Mr. Noah sat us down at the kitchen table and brought us each four chocolate cookies and a glass of milk.
“I see you, you know,” said Mr. Noah. “Hanging in the fence like little monkeys. You like to watch me feed the animals, do you?”
“I like the bears,” I said.
“I’m glad you came around to say hello.”
“The cookies were good, and the milk was cold. “My brother doesn’t believe that animals howl at the moon.”
Mr. Noah wiped his mouth with the red handkerchief. “Oh, they howl all right. They howl about everything. Just like
people. They howl when they’re hungry or when they’re hurt or when they’re scared. They even howl when they’re in love. You children ever hear a bear in heat?
I shook my head.
“You children are old enough to know about this, ain’t you? Your father ever tell you about these things?”
“Our papa was a preacher,” said Luke.
“A preacher, huh? Well, then, you children must know the story of Noah’s Ark.”
“Sure. Our Papa was a Methodist.”
“How the animals came on the Ark two by two?”
“Sure. Everybody knows that.”
“How Noah looked after those animals like they were his own children? How he protected them from harm and fed them and cleaned up after them?”
“Just like you do, Mr. Noah?”
“That’s right, children,” said Mr. Noah. “Noah was the first zookeeper. The very first zookeeper in the world. Your father ever tell you that?”
“Our Papa’s dead,” said Luke. “William and Mary too. He was drunk.”
“Luke!”
Mr. Noah shook his head. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Animals die too, you know. Just like people. I lost a turkey last year. Old age. Lost a gibbon, too. Somebody shot her with an air pistol. I was real fond of her. Five of those young ones in the cage are hers. Every so often, at night, you can hear one of them crying.”
“See,” I said.
“Is it because they miss her?”
“Could be, child. Who knows why monkeys howl?”
“But animals howl at the moon, don’t they?”
“Some do.”
“Our Mum screams at night,” said Luke.
“Always hard losing loved ones,” said Mr. Noah, “always hard to go on without them.”
“At night, I’ll bet they howl loud enough so that we can hear them all the way to our house,” I said.
“Most of them sleep at night,” said Mr. Noah. “Just like us.”
“We can hear them from our house.”
Mr. Noah went to the cupboard and came back with a handful of raisins. He made two little piles on the table. “You kids know who makes the most noise around here? It’s the cows out in that field. Sounds like a couple hundred tubas.”
“Why do they do that?” asked Luke.
“It’s when they bring in the bull,” said Mr. Noah. “You best ask your mother about that.”
We stopped at the field, so Luke could name some more of the calves. “Look, Caroline. They’re having lunch. The one with the white patch is Cynthia.”
“You shouldn’t tell strangers about Papa, Luke.”
“Mr. Noah is nice.”
“Granny says we should forget the past.”
“I miss Papa, Caroline. And William and Mary, too.”
The sign stayed there until the night Papa came home singing, missed the driveway, and drove through the fence. He wasn’t hurt. He was still singing when Mum and William went out and helped him back to the house. But the sign exploded into a thousand splinters. When you make a new one, I told William, spell it right, C-A-N-A-A-N, three A’s. But he never did. He could see the bad times rising again.
“There are fourteen calves in the field, Mum,” said Luke when we got home. “I’ve named ten of them. You want to see them?”
Mum was sitting in the kitchen, smoking, her eyes all red from the cigarettes. “It’s okay, honey. Maybe tomorrow. “
The calves grew quickly, and, instead of huddling by their mothers, they began running around the field like idiots, playing with each other. Luke would sit on the fence and watch them. One of them, Mary, according to Luke, came all the way over to the fence to let Luke pet her. “I didn’t even have salt on my hand. Bet the bears wouldn’t do that.” On the weekends, when we crossed the field on our way to the zoo, the calves would bounce along behind us like rubber balls, all the way to the creek.
“I’m going to get a good job, soon,” Mum said. “I’ve got my name in at the big companies in town. This is just temporary. We’ll be back on our feet in no time.”
“How come you cry at night, Mum?”
“That’s a nightmare you’re having, Luke.”
“It’s the animals at the zoo he hears,” I said.
Mum got a job at the Woolworth’s store, but she didn’t stop smoking. When Star Wars came to town, we all went to see it. Granny, Mum, Luke, and me. Even Granny liked the movie. Mum bought a big bag of popcorn, and Luke and me each got a medium soft drink.
We didn’t hear the cows until we got home. Granny lit a cigarette and blew a silvery stream into the night sky. “They’ll go on like that for days,” she said. And she opened the porch and went in.
Luke and me stood in the yard and listened. It was the strangest sound, low and urgent, almost a wail, as though the cows were calling out to each other in the dark. Luke covered his ears.
“It’s the bull,” I said. “You’re too young to understand. ”
The cows kept up the racket for the next couple of nights. Granny said she could hear them all day long, that they never stopped. But, by Saturday, when we got up to go to the zoo, the cows were quiet.
The sun was low in the trees, when we got to the field. The grass was bright and wet, and the cows were moving through it, their heads dug in to the ground. They didn’t even look up when we climbed the fence. Luke was the first to notice.
“Where are the calves?”
The calves were gone. The field wasn’t very large. You could see along the fence line and all the way down to the creek. Luke walked out among the cows. “What happened to the calves, Caroline?”
“Maybe they had to move them. You know, when they brought in the bull.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they just did.”
“Maybe someone stole them.”
“Come on. We’ll miss Mr. Noah feeding the bears. You can ask him about the calves.”
But Luke didn’t want to leave the field. He ran down and looked in the brush as if the calves were hiding in holes by the water. By the time we got to the zoo, Mr. Noah was already feeding the foxes. He saw us as we watched through the fence.
“Good morning to you!” he bellowed. “You children come to watch old Noah feed his family? They’re hungry, today. Can you hear them roar?”
Mr. Noah put the buckets down. He wiped his hands on his pants and came over to the fence. “When I’m done with the feeding, I might be able to find a few more of them cookies”
Luke looked back toward the field. “What happened to the calves, Mr. Noah?”
“The calves?”
“The calves in the field,” Luke backed away from the fence. “What happened to the calves in the field?”
“Don’t know for sure. Took them to the feed lot, I suspect,” said Mr. Noah. “Thompson generally does that as soon as the calves are big enough.”
“When do they bring them back?”
“Don’t bring them back, son. They fatten them up and then it’s off to the slaughterhouse.”
“They don’t kill them?”
Mr. Noah shook his head. “Where do you think such things as steaks and hamburgers come from?”
For the rest of the morning, Luke wouldn’t come out of the field. He stood near the fence and watched the cows. I knew he was upset, and so was I, I guess, but I was hungry, too. Mum was in the kitchen when I got home.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “Where’s Luke?”
“He’s watching the cows.”
“Well, I’ve got something wonderful to tell the both of you.”
“They took the calves in Mr. Thompson’s field to the slaughterhouse, Mum. All of them.”
Mum took a cigarette from her purse. “I got a job today with the telephone company, honey. A real one. I have to take a week’s training in the city. Granny’s going to look after you and Luke while I’m gone. Maybe we can all go to a movie when I get back.”
Luke came home later. We didn’t talk a
bout the cows. Mum told us all about her new job and how we might be able to get a television set for Christmas.
“We won’t be able to get our house right away,” she said. “That’ll come later.”
I had trouble getting to sleep that night. The air was humid with the promise of a hard rain, and, even with the window open, I was sticky and uncomfortable. I listened for the cows, but the field was silent. Later, I heard one of the gibbons cry out in its cage.
Where the Borg Are
By the time Milton Friendlybear finished reading Olive Patricia Dickason’s Canada’s First Nations for a tenth-grade history assignment, he knew, without a doubt, where the Borg had gone after they had been defeated by Jean-Luc Picard and the forces of the Federation. And he included his discovery in an essay on great historical moments in Canadian history.
Milton’s teacher, Virginia Merry, was not as impressed with Milton’s idea as he had hoped. “Milton, ” she said, in that tone of voice that many lapsed Ontario Catholics reserved for correcting faulty logic, bad grammar, and inappropriate behaviour, “I’m not sure that the Indian Act of 1875 is generally considered an important moment in Canadian history.”
“Why not?”
“But I am positive that there is no significant correlation between the Indian Act and Star Trek.” She said this with the natural assurance that the well-educated are able to manage, even though she had never read the Indian Act and only knew about Star Trek because her husband watched it every night while they ate dinner.
“But it’s all here,” said Milton. “Pages two hundred and eighty-three to two hundred and eighty-nine.”
“Your handwriting could use some attention,” said Ms. Merry, and she wrote a note on Milton’s paper in thin, delicate letters that reminded him of the doilies on the back of his grandfather’s easy chair.
When Milton got home from school, he showed his paper to his mother, who sat at the table and looked at the grade for a long while. “Sixty percent’s not too good, eh?”
