The Horn of a Lamb

by Robert Sedlack

  The Feniaks used to run a modestly successful dairy farm. Mr. Feniak loved his cows and he also loved taking long walks down the country roads after dinner. It was during one of these walks that he heard but did not see the truck that brought milk production at Feniak Farm to an end. A suspected drunk driver doing twice the posted speed lost control on the gravel and veered sharply to the right.

  It was Mrs. Feniak, called to the scene by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who identified a piece that was her husband underneath a blood-stained blanket. The police did not need to show her the other two pieces. For reasons known only to her, she collapsed, not after identifying the face, but a week later when she saw a strip of Mr. Feniak’s clothing still stuck to the barbed-wire fence.

  Mrs. Feniak might have tried to keep the dairy farm but Ryan, her eldest, had started receiving notice for his hockey playing. This meant driving him to practices, usually at four in the morning, and driving him to games, sometimes to “local” arenas three hours away. Mrs. Feniak had no one else to help with the farm. So she sold the cows and milking equipment. Her compassionate eyes, sultry smile and sassy strut weren’t officially included in the deal, but she lost these as well.

  Depression wrapped its gelid fingers around her ankles and dragged her into her bedroom for months at a time. She had three children, no husband, no income and no way to rid her mind of that piece of Mr. Feniak’s shirt quivering in the wind. Then, along came Rip.

  He had come out to the farm one day to buy what little remained of the equipment. He was twenty-five years older than Mrs. Feniak but she took a shine to him after he fixed a freezer that had been broken for six months.

  It was effortless for Mrs. Feniak and Rip to find comfort with one another but impossible for anyone else, especially Claudia, Mrs. Feniak’s fifteen-year-old daughter, to understand how or why.

  Rip collected junk. Junk made the Feniaks a lot of money. The children almost forgave their mother for letting this old man move in after Rip sold a repossessed grader for forty thousand dollars and bought the family a new truck and a satellite television system.

  Rip was the one who suggested they get a pair of guard dogs to patrol and protect the junk. Ryan, being Ryan, had always wanted pit bulls, so they bought two. He named them Bonnie and Clyde.

  Rip had to hire four men to help reinforce the fencing around the property after Bonnie and Clyde escaped one night and chased a neighbour’s farm dog all the way to the highway. A school bus hit the dog and the livestock farmers kept a wary eye on Feniak Farm from that day on.

  The community grew to like Rip. He had rescued Mrs. Feniak from a long stay at a psychiatric hospital and if anyone needed a good deal on tire rims he usually had them. What he didn’t have one day was a stapler. Or at least that’s what he told Mrs. Feniak when she caught him rifling through Claudia’s underwear drawer.

  Saying, “I’m looking for a stapler, honey,” was a bad answer to Mrs. Feniak asking, “What are you doing?” He was packed and gone by sunset.

  No one, including the Feniak children, was ever told what had happened. This was the result of a promise Mrs. Feniak had made to Rip before he hightailed it out of there. She wouldn’t tell anyone, and he would leave everything but his suitcases behind.

  Once Jack heard that Rip was gone, he offered to help Mrs. Feniak get rid of the junk. Jack didn’t hate the junk, he hated worrying about what Bonnie and Clyde would do to his sheep. But the junk stayed and so did the dogs. And Mrs. Feniak’s belief stayed—a belief that a vehicle would one day be towed into her yard with a new headlight fixture and evidence of her deceased husband’s blood on a crumpled fender. When she finally stopped believing, she finally started living.

  The neighbours had to adjust their thinking to accommodate the new Mrs. Feniak, the proudly self-sufficient version. She wasn’t the wife of Glen Feniak, the tragic widow, or the girlfriend of the junk man any more. She also didn’t want people referring to her property as a junkyard. It was a salvage yard. And sometimes she called it a recycling yard.

  It was Mrs. Feniak, balancing a stack of shelves as she stepped off her truck, who noticed first. “Flag’s up.”

  Kenton stood, shielded his eyes from the rising sun, made the sighting and scampered off. Mrs. Feniak looked once more at Fred’s flag. And like most folks that morning, it made her smile.

  six

  By the time the first neighbours arrived, Fred had plotted the day’s labour. Using stakes and premeasured string he carefully created a perimeter for his skating rink. This was no easy task.

  Fred’s right leg dragged through the deep snow and he sometimes caught his toe and he sometimes fell. When Fred fell in snow it was a quiet event. He had fallen so many times he knew how to land softly. But when he fell he sometimes couldn’t get up.

  There wasn’t a predicament Fred hated more than being stuck on his back. It was a cruel blow to the athletic coordination, and pride, he had once enjoyed.

  Jack was experienced in these matters. He knew not to make a big production of it and had learned to hoist two hundred pounds of Fred to his feet as swiftly as possible. The greater the struggle, the more Fred would be upset. Jack was lean but strong and Fred was grateful for it.

  So Fred made sure he had the perimeter staked before the neighbours arrived. The children respected him. They didn’t need to see him on his back.

  Fred wasn’t being lazy by having his neighbours help. It was impossible for him to push and lift a snow shovel with one hand. In spite of the fact that nobody doubted this, Fred would ask a few of the neighbours to try. And, of course, they couldn’t do it either. And Fred would say, “Okay then.”

  The piling of the giant snowbanks was back-breaking work. They needed to reach a height of one metre. The oval was almost the size of a professional hockey rink. The snow was retrieved from the surrounding yard. The undisturbed snow on the inside was Fred’s responsibility and would wait for another day.

  “That makes me so mad,” said Fred. “All these friendly neighbours working so hard and where are the lazy ones who will come later and say, oh, what a beautiful rink, happy days are here again?”

  “Some people have to work,” said Kenton, perspiring as he shovelled snow into a wheelbarrow attended by Claudia.

  Fred tried to keep his eyes on the snow piling up in the wheelbarrow and away from a blue thread on Claudia’s tight sweater that was dangling just above her pert breasts. “You see? One bump on my head and I forget that I live beside hard-working farmers, buh, buh, your brother never comes and who uses the rink with all his friends?”

  “He’s sleeping,” said Claudia.

  “That no-good, low-down snake-in-the-grass, wouldn’t let him in my house if I had a mongoose in the kitchen.”

  Kenton and Claudia laughed because they enjoyed hearing their older brother described in this way. “Just tell him he can’t use it,” said Claudia.

  “Tell the boy wonder he can’t come skating? He’d sic his dogs on me for sure.” Fred shook his head and the tail on his Davy Crockett hat waved from side to side. “I don’t care that he skates, buh, buh, he brings his bad friends and they drink beer and leave cigarette butts on the ice.”

  Fred reached out to grab the blue thread. Mrs. Feniak caught Fred’s hand inches before it reached its target. “I thought you told me you got mad at Ryan because you used to be just like him.”

  “Wowee, I wish you wouldn’t remember everything I said that I can’t remember.”

  Mrs. Feniak pushed the wheelbarrow away and Claudia followed, telling her mother she wanted to go home.

  “Guess where he might be playing junior next year?” asked Kenton.

  “Prison?”

  “With the Wheat Kings. One of their scouts was talking to him. He might get listed. He’s really nervous so don’t ask him about it, it’ll just piss him off.”

  Fred pumped his fist, braced himself for a laugh and then remembered it was Ryan Feniak he was celebrating.

  “Wouldn�
�t that be something?” asked Kenton. “We might have to fly out to Brandon for a few games.”

  “Buh, buh, that is too far away.”

  It wasn’t until early afternoon that the last of the snow was finally piled. Fred stood with a metre stick in his hand and watched as Jack and a few remaining neighbours aimed their shovels at the oval snowbank and packed it down. They circled and packed. And almost as one, they stopped.

  Fred crouched and, with a hand over his eyebrows, checked to see if the snowbank was level. “Not bad, not bad.” Next he plunged the stick into the top of the snowbank and kept pushing until it disappeared. Then he bobbed his arm and rewarded everyone with his double-barrelled laugh.

  Jack dashed into the house and returned with a large bucket stocked to the rim with beer and pop. Fred pushed the cans and bottles around until he found his favourite, a Schweppes raspberry ginger ale.

  Ryan Feniak strolled casually into the yard with his hands in his pockets. His sullen, pretty face had somehow escaped the ravages of puberty and countless hockey games. The most prominent scar, running below his eye to just past his chin, looked temporary, as if it had been inflicted overnight by the crease of a pillowcase. He smiled. He had, after all, arrived just in time. The work was done.

  “So when do you start flooding, Freddy?” asked Ryan.

  Fred limped over and put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “As soon as you find out whether you’ve been listed with the Brandon Wheat Kings, buh, buh, do you know what would happen if I turned a hose on that virgin snow, um, um, snow that is a foot deep in some places?”

  “Thought that’s what you do when you make a rink,” said Ryan, more than a little irritated.

  “He thinks because I am handicapped I don’t know what I’m doing, buh, buh, I will give him a hint and tell him I wear snowshoes, hey, hey, hey.” Fred fished in his pocket for a scrap of paper. His lips moved as he read to himself and when he was done he pumped his fist. “Okay, bye.” Fred patted Ryan on the back and limped over to Mrs. Feniak. He didn’t hear Ryan mutter “asshole” under his breath.

  Fred dropped to a knee. “Thank you, Mrs. Feniak, for driving that little tractor and getting this ground level and now I can really set my sights on the perfect rink.”

  Mrs. Feniak hugged Fred. “My pleasure.”

  Fred inhaled the scent of Mrs. Feniak’s soft, black hair and sighed. “Um, um, could you say, my pleasure, one more time while we are so close to being intimate.” Mrs. Feniak smiled and eased Fred off. His eyes went wide. “Look at Taillon. He wants to be a part of the action. C’mon down, Charlie Brown!”

  Everyone looked over to see the great loner inching closer to the perimeter. He almost seemed to be inspecting the work that had been done. One of the children broke from the ranks and started moving toward him. “No,” said her father, “that’s a livestock dog, sweetie, he won’t let you near him.” And just as the father predicted, Taillon trotted away as soon as the girl came too close.

  Fred laughed and shook his Davy Crockett tail. “I love that little doggie.”

  By late afternoon the neighbours were gone and Jack, having awakened from a quick nap with Norman the Great, went looking for Fred. He found him picking cigarette butts out of a tin, putting them in a plastic bag and telling Taillon how much he hated picking up cigarette butts. Taillon, unimpressed, rested a stone’s throw away on a big mound. This dirt mound, now a snowy mound, was crowned with a sheepskin and was Taillon’s watchtower.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t forgetting something.”

  “Better check your pockets.”

  Fred pulled a note from his zippered pocket, glanced at it. “Um, um, I have already thanked Mrs. Feniak.”

  “I think you might have another one in there.”

  Fred rummaged in his pocket again. He pulled out a pack of sugarless chewing gum and then another note. Fred’s eyes scanned the note carefully. His left hand curled into a fist and began bobbing up and down on his thigh.

  Taillon knew what was coming. He stood up, stretched his hind legs and trotted away just as Fred’s trademark laugh sent the sheep stampeding to the far end of the corral, where Taillon nuzzled noses and restored calm.

  seven

  Fred and Jack set off under a naked sky at twilight. Jack loved this part of the day. It was the only time he gave any thought to the possibility of eternity.

  The radio in Jack’s temperamental ‘79 Ford truck was tuned to a country music station that droned in and out of range. A raspy speaker in the dashboard further distorted the crooning. Fred hated country music, so Jack kept it at a low volume.

  A snowmobile went bombing past on an embankment to their left. Jack checked his speedometer. “He’s doing over a hundred.” The snowmobile did a tight U-turn, almost tipped and sped back. Jack craned his neck to get a better look at the driver.

  “It is Ryan,” said Fred, trying to look unimpressed.

  “He’s gonna kill himself.”

  The sight of Ryan Feniak caused a shiver in Fred’s spine. The roar of an engine. No helmet. The typhoon in his ears. Fred sometimes dreamed of pretty girls and he often dreamed of buying a house, but right there and then he dreamed of a motorcycle with a throttle on the left.

  “Why did you get so mad when that fat rancher who shovelled more snow than anyone called our place a hobby farm?”

  “Because it makes me think of some fool skipping around on his hobby horse.”

  Fred giggled and beat his thigh with his fist. He enjoyed the visual and he enjoyed seeing Jack get worked up.

  “What kind of hobby takes eighteen hours a day, seven days a week?” asked Jack, his voice rising into a rare whine. “Those are fulltime workweek hours times three.”

  “Three-point-one-five and you worked that out on your calculator, um, um, I think he meant that because you have your police pension you wouldn’t have to blow your brains out if the farm went belly up, buh, buh, I know how hard you work and I told him so.”

  Fred patted Jack’s shoulder.

  The season tickets Fred and Jack had been buying every summer weren’t cheap. Fred’s father kicked in the lion’s share and Fred and Jack made up the rest. Five thousand dollars was too much for a mediocre product, but Jack figured that with three hundred and sixty-five nights in a year it was a good investment if forty-one of those nights were guaranteed happy ones for Fred.

  Jack didn’t make every home game, because a sick ewe or a busted fuel pump sometimes got in the way. Anyone who knew Jack within a fifty-kilometre radius could be called at a moment’s notice. Most adhered to the same principle as Jack—if they didn’t have a really good excuse, they would go. This was no minor sacrifice. It was a two-hour drive from Jack’s farm to the city. And that was when the roads were good, which wasn’t often the case during hockey season.

  Driving Fred through a blizzard was a rite of passage. It wasn’t quite like rescuing an infant from a burning wreck, but Fred made the driver feel as if it was.

  Jack had been back to the city so many times that it no longer served as an emotional trigger, for good or bad memories. The springs and coils were stretched and smoothed, which made his journey through the streets easy and methodical. Jack preferred it this way.

  He had been a policeman in the city for twenty-five years. His wife had died of breast cancer there. If it weren’t for Fred or the occasional sheep conference he wouldn’t go into the city, or miss going. He was a rural man now. The city was too crowded, the people in too much of a hurry, and common courtesy was a rare and elusive bird.

  Jack was sensitive about manners. Most of the city’s retail workers rang up his charges, took his money, bagged what he’d bought, slapped his change down and then looked to the next customer in line. Not a word of thanks.

  It sometimes took hours for Jack to get over a cold and silent exchange. He wanted to remind these folks that the simplest gesture could tip a person’s mood one way or the other. Why
not tip it toward something good? But Jack kept his mouth shut and suffered as a result.

  Jack had noticed a similar deterioration of courtesy in the police department. He had started out as a foot patrol constable and had thrived. He had an easy way with people and this made him popular. When the city started yanking men off the street and sticking them in cars, Jack grew restless. The new breed of cop didn’t seem to enjoy the company of civilians at all. They wore expensive sunglasses and didn’t talk much. Jack talked far too much and he knew they made fun of this fact behind his back.

  Jack stayed long enough to guarantee his pension and then he was gone. Besides, his wife fell sick and she needed him more than the city’s smart-ass rookies did.

  O’Malleys Restaurant and Tavern was five blocks from the arena and the first stop for Fred and Jack before any game. Like all good diners it was an efficient mix of cultural diversity. An Irish name. Two Austrian owners. A Greek cook. And a rotating roster of waitresses who smiled first and asked the usual questions later.

  It was a place that didn’t leave french fries under a heat lamp. The milkshakes were big and made with real ice cream. The pickles were firm and the prices were low.

  Ernie, one of the owners, had taken a shine to Fred and always made sure he had a table. His brother, Walter, didn’t trust Fred at all. It was Walter who had seen Fred haul off and smack some guy a few years back. Ernie was in the kitchen and never saw what Walter called “an explosion of rage.”Walter saw Fred as a dangerous, retarded man.

  The love of Fred’s life was whoever served him food at O’Malleys. It might take him a few games to remember her name, but it was still love at first sight. On this night it was Rachel. Fred pushed himself up from his chair and held out his arm. She knew the routine. She came close enough so he could pull her in for a hug. “Wowee, you smell like Parmesan cheese which smells like the stuff between my toes, buh, buh, you wear it well.”