It took Mutt, Fred’s brother, to make it real. Six months after Vera’s funeral he brought up the idea of a sheep farm, something Jack had been talking about for years.
Jack didn’t know the first thing about sheep farming, but within days Mutt had mailed him two hundred dollars’ worth of books. Jack felt obligated to read everything because Mutt had spent so much money, and when he was done reading it didn’t seem like such a crazy idea after all.
Life was hell during the first few months. Jack was convinced he would wake up in the morning and find all of his sheep dead so he napped on the recliner, with Norman purring on his neck, and checked on them every half-hour.
Jack lit a smoke. Fred stirred from his slumber in the passenger seat. “Um, um, could you poison me only a little bit?”
Jack rolled the window down just enough to let the smoke suck out into the cold night. He glanced over at Fred’s head, lolling against the seat. Everyone in the family used to joke that Fred’s head was made of concrete. They’d seen it elbowed and high-sticked and smashed against glass. One or two of them had even called him cementhead.
Jack remembered going to Fred’s amateur hockey games in the city. It wasn’t often because Fred’s team, the Wheat Kings, took a bus from Brandon and they only played the junior team in the city a few times a season. This was years before the city council approved the fancy new arena and landed themselves a professional NHL franchise. It was hard sometimes for Jack to acknowledge that Fred hadn’t always wiped his snot on other people’s jackets.
eight
Jack had been flushing his ewes for several weeks. It sounded so silly to Fred he asked Jack many times a day, “What are you doing?” and Jack would say, “I’m flushing the sheep,” and Fred would giggle, shake his head and walk away.
The mechanics of flushing were simple. In fact, all Jack did was add a sack of heavy grain to the maintenance feed of his ewes. The supplement boosted nutritional levels, which increased ovulation rates, which produced more lambs, more pounds of meat, more money. But Fred couldn’t care less. It was about as exciting as watching someone diet. Deworming was different. Deworming had action.
Marching back and forth inside the corral, Fred banged a metal spoon against a cooking pot tied to his waist. He didn’t like scaring the ewes, but they needed to be herded into a narrow alley where, one by one, Jack stuck a knee in their ribs and a dose gun in their mouths.
Fred thought Jack looked like a space invader with the medication tank strapped to his back, the tube coiled over his shoulder, the injection device clasped in his hand. Jack was more skilled than he used to be at immobilizing the sheep. He had learned not to be too dainty about it. Sheep were sturdy. They could take a knee to the ribs.
Jack didn’t win every battle, however. He sometimes ended up on his butt. Fred thought that Jack with his green tuque knocked sideways and his hair sticking up was the funniest thing he had ever seen and told Jack so, repeatedly, until Jack told him to find something else that was funny.
Once the ewes were flushed and dewormed, Jack separated them into two flocks. For the next thirty days his four rams would service the ewes—two rams with half the ewes for the first fifteen days and two rams with the other half for the last fifteen. It was important to stagger the breeding so the lambs weren’t all being born at the same time.
The gestation period for Jack’s ewes lasted one hundred and forty-six days, give or take. He could expect the lambs sometime near the end of April and into May.
nine
Jack’s red tractor had been patched up with everything from baling wire to a Kokanee beer can that replaced an extension cap on the air filter. Nobody else, not even an Avro CF-105 Arrow engineer, could have started it up. Jack knew every connection to tighten and every cranny that needed a squirt of oil or a thump from a hammer.
With the tractor engine fighting and belching in the cold air, Jack strapped Fred into a harness that looked like a straitjacket. Like almost everything else at the farm, it was homemade. Once Fred’s harness was tight, Jack ran back and lowered the tractor bucket.
Two steel pipes stuck out from the bucket like the prongs of a carving fork. Across the ends of these pipes Jack had tied a pole. In the middle of this pole was a hook. Jack repositioned Fred so that a steel ring on the back of Fred’s harness slipped over the hook.
Jack raised the bucket. Fred’s snowshoes left the ground and Jack couldn’t hear the laugh because of the engine but he saw the left arm punch into the air. Jack put the tractor in gear and Fred swung back and forth like a puppet.
The tractor rolled forward and Fred, suspended in mid-air, was carried over the snowbank. Jack waited for Fred’s signal before he began lowering him.
Once Fred’s snowshoes touched the snow Jack continued to drop the bucket until the hook disengaged from Fred’s harness. Jack backed the tractor away, leaving Fred trapped behind the snow wall of his rink.
Jack had become aware of just how trapped Fred was a few years ago when he had left him inside the oval while he went to buy groceries. It had started to snow and Jack didn’t get back for three hours. He searched everywhere for Fred. It wasn’t until he called his name that a hand emerged from a large snow-covered lump in the far corner. Two days passed before Fred forgot why he was angry.
Fred had a precise method for packing the base. He tromped, cutting vertical paths, then countering with horizontal and finally diagonal paths. The snowshoes weren’t perfectly flat and tufts of snow always escaped his weight, so this cross-packing was essential.
The steel ring on the back of Fred’s harness clicked in rhythm with each step. Fred had to be careful when he made his perimeter turns not to stab the tail end of his snowshoes into the snowbank, since any punctures would become escape channels once he started flooding.
Fred loved the impressions that his snowshoes left—the wide, confident rim of the toe, the spiderweb print of the mesh, the stark compression of the long, narrow heelpiece that reminded him of porcupine trails in the snow.
Fred finished packing one side of the oval and stopped. He sniffed the air and looked at the heavy, grey clouds. He growled.
Jack’s green tuque bobbed over. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but there’s snow forecast for tonight.”
“I know, buh, buh, sooner than that I think.”
Small flakes started to float down. Fred looked at the work he had done and realized it would all have to be repacked. By the time Jack had Fred hoisted out of the oval the flakes were as big as quarters. On any other day Fred would have been catching them on his tongue. But on this day he went straight to his bedroom and shut the door.
Fred was on his mattress tilting a Polaroid photograph this way and that, seeing how the image was there one second and then obliterated by glare in the next. Jack tapped on Fred’s door. “Kenton’s going to watch his brother.” Jack waited. “It’s snowing anyway, you can’t do any packing.”
Fred put the Polaroid down and brought his hands up. The skin on his left hand was hard and thick. The nails were long and chipped. His right hand was soft, almost delicate, and the nails were neatly cut. The left hand looked bigger than the right. Not grotesquely so, but enough to notice.
The Polaroid, taken during the previous hockey season, was of Fred and Andrew T Madison. It showed Fred nervous but deliriously happy. It showed Madison in a sharp suit with a sharper smile and an arm around Fred.
Andrew Madison had bought the team two years earlier. He had endured a rough first season as an American owner of a Canadian professional sports franchise. He had been quoted in a newspaper as having called Canada a socialist country. In another interview he had called Canada the fifty-first state. He had brought in a larger American flag to fly beside the now-smaller Canadian flag at the arena. After enough fans complained, he said it had been an honest mistake and replaced it.
Madison flew in on a private jet on game day, drank expensive wine in his luxury box, slept overnight in a five-star hotel and flew
home the next morning. Nobody liked him much. It wasn’t anti-Americanism, although Madison dealt with that question by saying the dislike was just jealousy. No, Andrew Madison had just enough car salesman in him to make people uneasy.
Meeting Madison was a story Fred loved to tell. How he spotted him climbing the stairs to the luxury boxes. How he had snared him in a conversational trap that only Fred Pickle could set. How this brief chat had turned into an invitation to watch a period of hockey in the owner’s box, much to the dismay of Madison’s snobby assistant.
How Fred had been told some words of wisdom that Madison kept framed in his office: The American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it. The name beneath the quote was Al Capone.
How Fred had learned that Madison had made his millions by supplying military software and was worth $500 million by the time he was thirty. How the “T” in his name was never followed by a period because, like Harry S Truman, the middle initial didn’t stand for anything.
How Fred had heard with his own ears that Madison would never move the team because he had promised the league, the city and the fans, and if he broke that promise he would look ridiculous and Madison told Fred that a man in his position could not afford to look ridiculous.
It was painful for Fred to watch number 10. He couldn’t remember why he disliked him so much. Why he couldn’t slap his hand on his thigh when Ryan scored. Or answer Kenton when he asked him if he thought Ryan was better than Fred had been at Ryan’s age.
Fred retained a lot from his playing days. When he had played midget hockey in Vancouver, nothing had come easily. He had scratched and clawed for every inch. It was insulting to see how effortlessly Ryan played the game. He couldn’t understand how anyone could be so effective with so little effort. Fred couldn’t take his eyes off Ryan, though. He hadn’t seen him play in a year, and what he was seeing he could not deny. The kid was good. He was better than good. He was a natural. It was enough to make Fred sick.
Mrs. Feniak sat on a bench in a dreary hallway, away from the ice, away from her son. She hadn’t moved since Fred had left her at the start of the first period. As she saw him lumbering toward her, she lowered her book.
“I think I will stand here and enjoy your perfume.”
“I’m not wearing any.”
Fred patted Mrs. Feniak’s knee and plopped down with a groan. “You are the world’s greatest mom. You drive all this way and won’t watch your son because you are so scared he will get hurt and so you sit here in a dirty place and don’t seem to mind at all, do you ever get lonely?”
Mrs. Feniak smiled patiently. “I’m too busy.”
Fred bobbed his hand and laughed. “That’s what Papa Joe says and you two are just a stone’s throw from each other and it wouldn’t be too much trouble at all to sit in a museum and hold hands, buh, buh, you are probably not interested because ever since he has become a sheep farmer he has looked old, um, um, I think he worries too much.”
“Farming’s not easy, Fred.”
“Wowee, I don’t believe it, he is up before the crack of dawn and in between naps with Norman the Great, he doesn’t stop until bedtime and still he has no money, only fourteen cents a lamb, Fred, buh, buh, did they ever catch the man who ran over your husband?”
Mrs. Feniak gave Fred a look he had seen before, a look that said it was time to stop. Her cellphone chirped inside her purse.
“Okay, shhh.”
Ryan didn’t really walk when he moved, he slithered. His fluid movement across the snow-packed parking lot annoyed Fred almost as much as it did on the ice. Kenton was the first to greet his big brother with a high-five. Fred stood off by himself, finding, it seemed, something interesting to stare at beside his boot. Ryan ambled over to Fred and nudged him with his knee. “So, Freddy, what did you think?”
“You skate well. Your wrist shot is good. Your slapshot not so good. You joke around too much on the bench. You don’t backcheck or pass the puck enough.”
Ryan paused, took it all in, then put his arm around Fred. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Freddy. The guys I’m playing with, in case you didn’t notice, are not very good. Do I do too much? Probably. Will I have to learn to play better? Definitely. Did I score three goals tonight? I did. Is that pretty fucking awesome? It is.”
Ryan kissed his mom on the cheek and started toward a red truck filled with shadowy heads and a thumping woofer.
“You’re not coming home with us?” asked Mrs. Feniak.
“I’m just going to Tod’s. I won’t be late.”
“Mo called.”
Ryan stopped on a dime. “Why didn’t you tell me? When?”
“During the game. You got listed.”
Ryan let out a whoop, ran back and hugged his mother.
“Um, um, who is Mo?”
“A scout for the Wheat Kings,” said Kenton, beaming.
“You hear that, Freddy? I’m gonna be playing for your old team.”
“Hey, hey, let’s not count the chickens before they cross the road. Getting your name on a protected player list means that you can act like a big shot until training camp starts, um, um, I should know because I did, buh, buh, major junior is a big step up from midget hockey and if it doesn’t work out then everything will be okay because the world can always use another hot dog vendor, buh, buh, you might make it, your third goal was a nice one.” Fred patted Ryan on the back and made his way to Mrs. Feniak’s truck.
ten
Fred woke up and before he put on his ski pants he looked out the window after touching his log cabin for good luck. This was the toughest part of making the rink: getting the snowshoe packing started, seeing two inches of fresh snow and having to do it all over again.
Fred was downcast until he saw a crumpled note beside his mattress. He read it, as he had done already, once after Jack wrote it, twice at Ryan’s hockey game and once again before going to sleep: I will make you pancakes in the morning. It was Jack’s bribe to get Fred to go to Ryan’s hockey game.
Fred looked to the ceiling as the pancakes, stacked eight high, steamed at the centre of the table. “Thank you, God, and please, please, tell Mother Nature to take a few days off so I can finish my packing, buh, buh, tell Papa Joe to slow down.” Jack never bowed his head but he also never reached for his fork until Fred was done.
Fred had learned to pray in church. And as long as there wasn’t a hockey game that afternoon, he went every Sunday. Jack refused. He said it would be hypocritical. Mrs. Feniak took Fred most of the time.
The maple syrup reached the edge of the stack and dripped down like heavy oil. “So, is Ryan the next Gretzky?”
Fred, his mouth stuffed with pancake, raised his hand to tell Jack to wait until he swallowed. “Um, um, how dare you.”
“Sorry. The next Bobby Orr.”
“I have told you before that there will never be another Bobby Orr, buh, buh, don’t get me wrong, I have always had a soft spot for Wayne Gretzky even though he never had to drop his gloves and fight his own battles like Bobby did, hey, hey, what do you call a player who is only excellent when he has the puck because Bobby Orr set a record for the plus/minus and it was one hundred and twenty-something, not bad, and Gretzky never even broke a hundred because he was on the ice for too many goals scored against his team.”
Jack knew that Fred loved to downplay Wayne Gretzky and it didn’t take much prodding to get him going. But Jack was gentle. He usually gave Fred some slow underhand balls to smash around the kitchen for a while. “You can’t argue that Gretzky wasn’t the best playmaker.”
“I get angry when everyone calls him the greatest even though he was the first player to tuck his jersey into his pants, um, um, maybe he was too much of a gentleman to be the greatest, I don’t know.”
Jack enjoyed putting Fred in a twister but he also saw it as good exercise for his brain. An
d Jack assumed it made Fred feel less handicapped because it showed there were parts of his brain that controlled memory that still worked.
“What about Rocket Richard? Or Gordie Howe?”
“I only talk about Bobby Orr because I saw him play when I was just a little guy. I remember Valery Kharlamov and he may have been a Russian Bobby Orr if Bobby Clarke had not busted his ankle in 1972, which still makes me mad when I think about it, buh, buh, it was a black mark on Canadian hockey and if you can’t win honestly then don’t be a jerk.”
Fred had been in elementary school at the time of the Summit Series in 1972, and he had actually pulled for the Soviets when the series started. They had been huge underdogs against the great Canadian players and Fred had felt sorry for them. He had ended up in several fights defending his allegiance and was chased home by a mob of outraged classmates following the unexpected massacre of the Canadians in game one. Some had even called Fred a communist.
After the Soviets had won two games, tied one, and lost one, Canada had had the daunting task of going to the Soviet Union, needing to win three of four to claim the series. Fred had felt like a traitor when he saw Phil Esposito, sweat dripping off his chin, tell the nation during a post-game interview that the guys were doing their best.
“I started rooting for Canada, buh, buh, don’t forget that Phil Esposito tried to sell the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds to some Americans. He didn’t care about the little people in that town and that still puts a bad taste in my mouth so I will stop thinking about it.” Fred pretended he was spitting on the floor. “I will think of Paul Henderson instead and I will be happy as a clam.”
Fred closed his eyes and watched from his desk as his schoolteacher rolled a television set into the classroom. If Canada won the final game, they won the series. And the culmination of this improbable comeback, after winning two of the first three games in Russia, was obviously more important than raising your hand and telling everyone the square root of eighty-one.
The Horn of a Lamb Page 5