The Horn of a Lamb

by Robert Sedlack

  “Buh, buh, he is the baddest dog in the whole damn town, badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog and he has work to do so he doesn’t have time for you.”

  Kenton threw himself onto a large inner tube beside Fred. “Did you see the game last night?” asked Kenton.

  Fred turned his attention from Mrs. Feniak climbing up into Jack’s tractor. “You ask that like there is something else I would have been doing except watching my favourite team in their fancy road uniforms on television and there is a big word for that.”

  “Redundant.”

  “Exactly, buh, buh, watching it on TV is not the same as being there.”

  “Ryan heard on the news that Andrew Madison was in Houston.”

  “I heard Memphis, um, um, did I tell you that I know Andy and have watched hockey games in his luxury box?”

  “About fifty times. And I think it was one period of one hockey game.”

  “A nice fellow would let me embellish, with relish, a little bit or better yet, tell me he hadn’t heard the story at all, buh, buh, Memphis must be warm at this time of year and a nice place to visit and see where Elvis lived.”

  The short drive to Butler’s quarter section was interrupted five times when Jack’s two-ton stalled. Mrs. Feniak waited patiently in the tractor. When they finally arrived at the cleared land, Mrs. Feniak saw that Jack hadn’t exaggerated how much wood there was. She saw more piles than she could count. Big piles. Big logs.

  Jack jumped out of the truck and Pearl followed. Mrs. Feniak stepped down from the tractor. Jack had to shout above the noise of the engines. “All right, let’s think about this for a second.” Jack started a slow, deliberate walk around one of the log piles.

  Mrs. Feniak smiled, amused at how seriously Jack was contemplating what she saw as a fairly simple task. Jack confirmed a fact that was obvious to her from the moment they arrived: “We’re gonna need to cut ’em in half.” He spread his hands apart to make his point and then he slapped them together and rubbed.

  With three logs pulled from the pile, Mrs. Feniak stopped the tractor. “Jack?”

  “Yes, you’re doing fine.”

  “I think we need to pull more than one at a time if we’re going to get six cords done.”

  Jack ran his tongue over his bottom lip, thinking.

  “Otherwise it’s not really gonna be worth it, you know?”

  Jack was disappointed to hear her talking about things being worth it. He was tempted to ask her whether she was enjoying herself. “I thought we’d work our way in that direction once you got the hang of the tractor.”

  “I think I have it figured out.”

  “Great!” Jack dragged the chain to the pile. With five logs bound, Mrs. Feniak dragged them clear. In short order Jack had counted enough logs to fill the truck. He grabbed his chainsaw from the front seat.

  Jack pulled the starter cord. Nothing. Again. Nothing. He fiddled with the motor. Pulled again. Almost. Mrs. Feniak stepped down from the tractor and came over. “I do not know what is wrong with this damn thing. It started just fine before.” Jack pulled the cord again.

  “Let’s see,” said Mrs. Feniak.

  Jack held the saw as Mrs. Feniak pulled a screwdriver from her jacket pocket. She poked and turned. “Try it now.”

  Jack pulled the cord. The saw started so suddenly that Jack almost lost his grip as it sprang up and came close to clipping Mrs. Feniak. “Easy, cowboy.”

  “How ’bout that,” said Jack.

  Fred was bombing down Greaser’s Run on the big tire tube. His face was a mix of lunacy and joy. The tube hit a bump and threatened to roll. By the time he reached the bottom, his voice was hoarse from screaming. Kenton waited on the idling snowmobile as Fred glided to a stop.

  “One more?” asked Kenton.

  “Buh, buh, isn’t it your turn?”

  “My legs are tired.”

  Fred looked forlornly at the boot tracks that Kenton had been making up the hill. “That makes me so mad. One bang on my head and I cannot even drive a snowmobile.”

  Kenton dropped Fred at the top of the hill and sped back down. As Fred started sliding forward he heard the whine of another engine. He dug his left heel into the snow.

  Another snowmobile with two people on board roared up. The passenger jumped off and limped toward Kenton. The two appeared to be talking. Then arguing. Then Kenton was pushed off his snowmobile. The bandit jumped on and took off. The other snowmobile quickly followed.

  Fred launched himself down the hill. This time there was no joy on his face. Just rage. Fred fought his way out of the inner tube and stumbled forward, almost falling. His face scared Kenton, who’d never seen him look so fierce.

  “It was just Ryan.”

  Fred’s anger ratcheted down a notch. It was a brotherly feud, not a pair of snowmobile thugs stealing from a boy. Kenton stared at the endless carpet of snow that surrounded them and then looked down at Fred’s left leg. “How are we supposed to get back?”

  —

  The third and final load of lumber was stacked in the back of the truck. Jack sat in the cab and tipped a Thermos. The last of the coffee trickled into Mrs. Feniak’s mug. Jack’s arms were so tired his hands shook. He slumped in his seat, dragged his tuque off and ran his fingers through his matted hair. “I think we got ’er licked.”

  Mrs. Feniak sipped her coffee and looked around at the many piles that remained, knowing now that each pile was worth several thousand dollars. “It’s a good little enterprise, Jack,” she said with a smile. “Thanks.”

  “What the heck for?”

  “Letting me in on it.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Marilyn, will you listen to that, there’s no way in hell I could do this alone.” Jack reached across and patted Mrs. Feniak on the knee. “You’re a natural with that tractor.”

  “Glen wouldn’t let me drive ours when we had the farm.”

  Jack couldn’t remember the last time he had heard Mrs. Feniak talk about Mr. Feniak. It was jarring to hear his name mentioned. There wasn’t much Jack felt he could say about their tractor without insulting Glen or Mrs. Feniak, so he lowered the window and lit a cigarette.

  “Does Fred know that Andrew Madison went to Memphis?” asked Mrs. Feniak.

  “He heard but he’s probably forgotten.”

  “What are you going to do if they leave?”

  “Jump for joy. I won’t have to drive into the city any more. And with the bundle we’ll save on season tickets I’m gonna buy a big satellite dish so he can sit with a bowl of potato chips and watch all the games from Memphis or Vegas or Houston or Portland or wherever else they end up.”

  “Poor Fred.”

  “If the worst thing that boy’s got to deal with is watching his team on TV, then he’s luckier than the rest of us. Besides, he’ll get eighty-two games, not the forty-one home ones and the nine or ten they televise from the road.”

  Mrs. Feniak heard the tension in Jack’s voice and didn’t believe that everything was that simple.

  “I got a bit of a confession to make, Marilyn.”

  Mrs. Feniak’s face froze. “Oh, Jack, don’t.”

  “Now wait just a second.”

  “We’re neighbours.” Mrs. Feniak reached for the door handle. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “But there’s certain things …” continued Jack until he saw the door opening. “If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”

  “You haven’t offended me.”

  Mrs. Feniak jumped from the truck and almost ran to the tractor. She was halfway back to Jack’s farm when she looked over her shoulder and saw that Jack wasn’t following. She slowed down, stopped, heart pounding, thought of Jack sitting in his two-ton, cursed loneliness, did a U-turn and headed back to Butler’s quarter section.

  Kenton had the rope to the inner tube tied around his waist. His little arms jabbed back and forth as he marched forward. He was trying to keep to the snowmobile track where the snow was a little more compre
ssed.

  “He was my best friend and the boss of a construction company. He had lots of men working for him and he would tell four of them they were playing that night and they didn’t have a choice. You have not lived until you’ve played hockey at midnight on a fresh sheet of ice. You get to skate without a helmet and pretend you are Guy Lafleur.”

  Fred felt a gentle breeze blow. He touched his fingers to his hair. “I met Brad and his friends at a bar called Whiskey Pete’s. We snorted cocaine and did other bad things young men do when they are away from home. I think you have heard this story one hundred and fifty times, buh, buh, you are being so quiet maybe you don’t mind.”

  Kenton trudged ahead. Fred appeared quite content as he listened to the crispy mowing of the tube being pulled along the snow. “Brad was a party animal and an excellent hockey player. He had a slapshot that broke glass. I saw it twice. Too bad he hurt his arm at a lumberyard and had to quit. You would think he would have been so mad, buh, buh, he started his own company and forgot about it. Brad showed me there was life after hockey and I thought of him when I was so depressed I almost put a plastic bag over my head.”

  The inner tube came to a sudden stop. Kenton dropped to his butt, trying to catch his breath. Fred couldn’t see the tears that were dripping from Kenton’s jaw onto his jacket but he eventually heard what sounded like crying.

  “Buh, buh, don’t be sad, if I did not get drunk and stoned that night God would not have punished me and I would be sitting on a deck outside a big house with my second wife after a ten-year career in the NHL and I don’t think I would be as happy as I am now.”

  “Ryan says I’ve got cancer,” blurted Kenton as he hung his head and began drawing circles in the snow.

  “Huh?”

  Kenton struggled to speak. “He said it’s the penis cancer.”

  Fred was baffled that Kenton hadn’t been listening to his story. “I have heard of lots of cancers, buh, buh, not that one. When did Ryan get his diploma in medicine to go along with the one from snake-in-the-grass university?”

  “He said two of his friends had it. One died, and the other ended up paralyzed from the neck down.”

  “I am confused, how did Ryan think this?”

  “He saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “My penis.” Kenton took a deep breath. “It was all stiff like a corpse,” said Kenton as he held his finger up, “and it wouldn’t go down. Ryan said that’s exactly what happens when you get the penis cancer, said it’s just a matter of time.”

  Kenton pushed himself up and started pulling the inner tube again. Fred could hear him sniffling. “You only have to be a donkey for a little longer, buh, buh, I will tell you some things that your dad would have told you if he did not go for his walk when you were just a little boy, um, um, do you know what a vagina is?”

  six

  Fred didn’t know how long he’d been lying there. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? He couldn’t be sure. He didn’t remember hitting his head, but in spite of the howling wind he could hear what sounded like bees buzzing in his ears. What had started out as a broken rule was quickly turning into a dangerous situation.

  It was a house rule that Fred was never to skate unless someone was around. But Jack had left in such a hurry after getting a call from Mrs. Feniak that he forgot to remind Fred, who was wearing his skates and playing checkers by himself at the kitchen table.

  Jack was off to fix a heater in Bridget’s greenhouse. There was some urgency. A cold front was moving in and Bridget was worried she might lose her plants and flowers.

  It was rare that Fred fell on the ice. And when he did it was usually the result of roughhousing with the older boys. Fred had picked a bad night to fall with nobody around. The temperature had tumbled to minus thirty-eight. The wind chill was plunging this even further.

  Fred forgot Jack wasn’t there. He called his name until his voice became hoarse. Then he yelled for his dad. By the time he was pleading for Taillon, his voice was a whisper.

  He thought he could stay where he was until Jack found him. This was a bad miscalculation because every minute that he lay there was another minute for the bitter cold to numb his body. He was shivering badly, but this was a good sign. It meant his body was trying to keep his vital organs warm the only way it knew how.

  Fred had known numbness on his right side since his accident. But now when he tried to move his left arm it was as uncooperative as his right. He rolled onto his side and, using his left hand, tried pulling himself forward. His arm was too weak. His mitten did nothing but slide back.

  By turning onto his stomach Fred was able to bend his left leg and push himself forward a few inches with the toe of his skate blade. It was a long way to the rink’s entrance. The ice was too big, too slippery—a monster of Fred’s own making.

  Fred tried rolling. He managed to do it twice. He needed traction to achieve consecutive rolls and there was none to be had. Fred was close to the snowbank. If he could get to the perimeter, the ice was choppier, and with better traction he might be able to drag and kick himself to the carpet that led to Eddie Shack.

  Fred made it agonizingly close to the carpet. But he was exhausted, delirious. He rolled onto his back and rested against the snow.

  Taillon’s big, white head appeared over the adjacent snowbank like a luscious full moon. Fred would have called out, but he could not speak. Taillon knew something wasn’t right. He also sensed how cold it was. It was stinging his nose. He whined ever so softly before turning away.

  Fred’s chin found his chest in short, soothing bobs. He thought of a little brown wood frog Jiri had told him about that hibernated in winter. If you found one under a fallen log you could tap it with your finger and you’d think you were tapping a stone. The heart of the frog had stopped beating. There was no brain activity. By all known measurements of life it was dead. Yet, if you took it somewhere warm it would thaw and hop away. Jiri had marvelled that this little brown frog could do what science had never achieved.

  Fred was thinking he’d freeze solid like that little frog. Then Jack would find him, hit him with a hockey stick and think he was dead. He’d drag him inside the house and Fred would warm up and hop away. This was what Fred was imagining as his chin came to rest on his chest.

  Jack finished fixing Bridget’s heater. Her plants and flowers were safe. But he wasn’t going anywhere soon. She insisted on a pot of tea and some home-baked shortbread cookies. Jack was itching to ask her about a few of the plants in the greenhouse that looked like marijuana plants, but he convinced himself that they were just exotics.

  Fred slowly opened his eyes and saw a big snow boot and a blue walking cast. At first he thought there was a clanging noise inside his head, but he realized it was coming from the little stove in Eddie Shack. Fred craned his neck to see who the snow boot and walking cast belonged to. “Buh, buh, what are you doing here?”

  Fred had only just regained consciousness, but he was immediately uneasy to be lying on his back. He turned his head away.

  “You feel like getting up?”

  There was nothing in the world that Fred wanted more. But Ryan Feniak was the last person in the world he wanted helping him. Fred sighed, his eyes blinked rapidly. “Did I crawl in here by myself?”

  Ryan was not comfortable playing the part of rescuer. He looked away and yawned unnecessarily. “Ready to get up?”

  “Yes, please.” Ryan swooped down and tried to lift Fred. But he was too heavy. Fred crashed to the floor.

  “Sorry,” said Ryan.

  “You are not as strong as stringbean Papa Joe, buh, buh, serves you right for not lifting weights.”

  With Fred doing most of the work, Ryan managed to get him over to the bench and sit him down. Ryan surprised himself by almost feeling sympathy. Dragging Fred from the ice had been different. Ryan had no reaction to that. Fred had been unconscious, so it was like dragging a sack of grain. But helping Fred off the floor was different. Fred looked like a baby
, eyes big and watery, so helpless, dependent.

  The sound of a siren cried in the distance. Ryan made a move for the door and wiped white hairs from his hands. “I’m gonna wait outside.”

  The paramedics attended to Fred inside the shack. His vital signs were normal and he didn’t have any obvious symptoms from hitting his head. Fred assured them he had fallen on sidewalks many times. He hadn’t been called cementhead for nothing. By the time Fred was assisted outside, Ryan was gone.

  Jack arrived just as the paramedics were helping Fred into the warm water of the bathtub. He was a little unsteady on his feet and had the giggles. Jack, not Fred. Jack assumed he had inhaled a bit of natural gas while fixing Bridget’s heater. Jack’s giggles didn’t last long once he heard what had happened.

  Fred had a small patch of frostbite on his nose but he was reassured that it would not fall off. Nobody noticed that Fred’s clothes were covered in hair.

  Once Jack heard the story from the paramedics and then from Fred, he called Ryan Feniak. Ryan said he had been driving past the farm, seen Taillon on the road barking and thought something might be wrong. This was a lie. Taillon was never on the road.

  What Ryan didn’t tell Jack was that three of his friends from the Christmas dance had showed up drunk. They had just come from Fred’s rink where they had planned to tie Fred up with hockey tape and have a game of shinny, using Fred as the puck. They were also going to urinate on him and call him mean names. But they found Fred, unconscious, poked him with their hockey sticks and thought he was dead. Nobody thought to take him somewhere warm and see if he’d hop away.

  Ryan, unsure whether his drunken friends were telling the truth, drove to Jack’s farm. He didn’t find Fred at first. He found Taillon, lying on top of Fred. And Taillon, picking up the scent of Bonnie and Clyde, growled at Ryan and almost sent him scurrying back to his truck. But Taillon never charged. He slowly crawled off Fred and went back to his snowy mound, keeping a suspicious eye on Ryan.

  Had Ryan told Jack that Taillon had kept Fred alive by smothering him in his thick, white coat, Jack probably wouldn’t have believed him. Nobody but Ryan knew the truth. And Ryan couldn’t tell Jack because Taillon had to be either on the road or on top of Fred. He couldn’t be in two places at once. And Ryan had already placed Taillon on the road to explain why he had come over. He obviously couldn’t have told Jack he had come over because three of his friends had gone to torture Fred and then left him for dead.