This is a submission for the 2020 Winter Holidays event. I hope you enjoy it.
Since the characters are Canadian, I've tried to use Canadian spelling within the story. If I inadvertently introduced some Americanisms, I apologize to my northern neighbors (or neighbours, as the case may be).
—C
• • •
At first, I thought Chessie had gotten out of the barn. But once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized it was the wrong size and shape. Then I thought it was a white-tailed, but it silhouetted itself against the stars for a second and I saw the rack. That wasn't a deer. Caribou. I'd seen them from a distance, of course, but we'd never had one stray in so close.
I must have made some sound because the head came up and it froze, looking right at me. After a long staring contest, it lowered its head and went back to nibbling on the hay we kept outside for Mom's horse. That was okay. We had plenty and Chessie wasn't territorial.
It was still there in the morning, watching the activity up by the house and barn. It stood motionless by the far fence, its grey, brown, and cream coat an effective camouflage.
"Hmm," was all Mom said when I pointed it out. "Far gate must be open."
I reddened. I'd forgotten again. The gate was sticky, and sometimes I just shoved it and assumed it latched. More than once I'd heard, "If Chessie gets out,
you're
the one bringing her back." More than once I'd spent hours doing just that.
I sighed and started across the field. "Leave it," she said. "Otherwise, it can't get out. I'll put Chessie in the other field."
One day became two, became three. Once, from the kitchen window, we watched in amusement as Chessie and it touched noses across a fence before they whirled to gallop away from each other in response to something we couldn't perceive. And of course, the hay in the rack on the side of the barn diminished regularly.
"Looks like we have a semi-permanent houseguest," Dad said. "Free food and he'll never leave ... just like your Uncle Martin." The sly jibe at Mom's relative earned him a snap of the kitchen towel against his rear.
• • •
"God damn it, you good-for-nothing—" You could hear the howl all the way across the yard and inside the barn. "—dirty, farting—"
I poked my head out and started laughing. You have to admit: a 350-pound animal galloping in a panic to escape a 110-pound woman, its dark eyes bulging wide, legs churning the grass into divots, white muzzle coloured with what was either blood ...
highly
unlikely ... or the filling from Mom's newly baked cherry pie was pretty funny.
Make that pies, plural, I thought, glancing over at the kitchen window and seeing both tins lying on the ground outside it.
She finally wound down with, "—flea-ridden, shedding-everywhere, poop-everywhere-else
pie thief
!"
I thought the flea-ridden part was unfair. He wasn't, but the rest was pretty accurate. And somehow, from that day on, "the caribou" became Pie Thief.
He lived up to his name. Pies on the windowsill to cool? Gone. Cookies left on the seat of a truck with the window open? Gone. Birthday cake freshly iced on the kitchen table? Back door somehow jiggered open and ... gone.
It didn't matter if the paddock gate was latched or the mudroom door closed; it was constant warfare between him and Mom. The only evidence would be a "Who me?" look and a trace of fruit syrup or stray cream cheese icing caught on the hair around a lip.
• • •
Snow hit, catching us prepared-but-unprepared as was so often the way when it came in October in Ontario. Firewood had been laid by; snowmobiles had been untarped and tuned up, ditto snowblower; winter tires were on the vehicles. But as always, there was still stuff to be brushed off and put away in the barn, and that fell to me.
While I was working on it, I noticed that Pie Thief was hanging around, not disappearing for long periods like he sometimes did. It struck me that he thought the barn a pretty nice place out of the wind and snow. And one with good proximity to Mom's kitchen.
"You think the hay is enough?" I asked my father. "Do we need to get him any supplements?"
"You mean like your mother's ginger cookies?" We both laughed. "I don't know. Maybe talk to Mr. Coulombe at the TSC."
I had my chance when Mom sent me into town for a large bottle of Vitamin D to get us through the dark months.
"I don't know, Jed," Mr. Coulombe said. "You might talk to Kerstman. He owns a farm a way out of town with some herds ... not cows, other stuff. I've heard he has some bison, some caribou. My wife buys this goat kefir he sells. I could give him a call for you."
I nodded.
"Kerstman? It's Rene Coulombe. I've got young Jed Webbe here, and it seems he's acquired a caribou calf and could use a little advice."
He listened and then hung up the phone. "He says he'll stop by in the next week or so."
• • •
I heard what sounded like a bicycle bell. It came again and then a rhythmic crunching was added. I poked my head out of the barn. Coming up the drive was a middle-aged guy in a beat-up black sledge pulled by two caribou. Trailing behind was a bright orange, plastic something.
It
was
a bicycle bell I heard: when he saw me, he reached over to one screwed onto the ... I didn't know what to call it ... the gunnel, I guess ... of the sledge and gave the lever a couple of firm pushes to produce the "tzzing, tzzing, tzzing." He gave a little click of his tongue and pulled to a smooth stop.
In the stained and faded brown coveralls, the old knee-high Kamiks, and the Canadian Tire toque perched on his head, the wiry little man could have been any local out for some firewood or mending a fence. But the animals gave him away.
"Mr. Kerstman?"
"That's me." He looped the reins and hopped down, extending a hand. The clean-shaven face was ruddy from the cold and his blue eyes—the kind Mom called "dreamy Paul Newman eyes" when she wanted to tease Dad—crinkled as his face split in a grin. "Just call me Kerstman. You're Webbe?"
I wasn't used to being called that. If anything, that was my dad. "Uh, yeah, I guess."
He laughed. "Good that you know who you are ... I guess." It was hard not to smile along with him. His attention swung to the paddock. "There's the boy."
I turned and saw Pie Thief hanging over the fence, studying the three newcomers intently. He made his grunting sound and was answered by one of those behind me. Kerstman walked over and reached into his pocket. From the sudden, rapt attention on Pie Thief's face, I knew that it emerged with some kind of treat. What, exactly, I wasn't sure since it disappeared in one quick inhale. Kerstman clambered over the fence and walked around Pie Thief, one hand maintaining contact all the time.
"Looks like he's close to full grown; weight seems okay. He's having no problem finding grass and lichen?" Kerstman glanced back at me as he asked.
"We don't close the far gate"—I gestured—"so he can get out any time he wants. We just close this one to keep him from the house. Not that it helps much," I muttered.
He laughed again. "Coulombe told me about how he got his name." He reached out and ran a hand down Pie Thief's neck. "Sugar's not the best, but I don't think he's hurting from it. If he knows where to get food now, he'll be okay in the snow."
I looked over at the animals that had come with him. "They're a lot bigger than Pie Thief."
"He looks like a barren-ground caribou. They're smaller. I have some of them. But those guys over there are boreal woodland caribou, the largest type. The one on the left is called Thunder because—" Just then a monstrously loud cervine fart ripped through the air. "Well, I guess it's pretty obvious why. And just for symmetry, that makes his partner Lightning."
"I've never heard of a caribou farmer."
"Well, there are some up north, mostly subsistence."
"Why do you do it?"
He shrugged. "There's a market, so someone will. It has less than half the lactose of cow's milk, which attracts the business types who've noticed that low-lactose products have doubled in sales. Where there's a demand, there's always someone willing to make a buck off it." He smiled at the way of the world. "And artisanal cheesemakers love it because it's twenty-two percent milkfat. That's five or six times what you get out of a cow."
He turned back to Pie Thief. "He's still got his antlers. That's unusual for a male this time of year. Males tend to lose theirs about now, females in the summer. They regrow them every year." I noticed both of his still had theirs. He saw me notice and shrugged. "There are exceptions who don't shed on schedule."
He clambered back over the fence. "I brought you a sled. It'll let you get around in the snow."
"Umm ... I kinda like my snowmobile."
"I get that. But when it's thirty or more below and it won't start because you forgot to set the choke before stopping the last time, or forgot to plug in the block heater, well ... And hauling a trailer of firewood behind a snowmobile is awkward." He gave me a speculative look. "Besides, don't you sometimes just like to hear yourself think out there? You can when it's quiet."
Another loud fart split the silence and we both burst out laughing. "Well,
usually
it's quiet."
He tipped his head. "Come on. Take a look. This is a pulk." I peered at the orange contraption that looked something like the rescue sled you saw at ski places crossed with a rowboat. "It was developed by a band called the Sámi and has the advantage of working in just about any kind of snow."
He shook out an arrangement of leather, canvas, and wood. With a few deft moves, he unhooked Lightning from his sledge and showed me how to harness him up: some straps around his chest and belly, and then a long single rope stretching back underneath and out between his legs to the pulk.
Then I tried it with Pie Thief. He thought the whole apparatus looked rather sketchy. It didn't
look
like a grey wolf or a bear intent on caribou tartare, but ...
Trying to buckle a strap on an animal half-again as big as you are, and who keeps sidling sideways and spinning to put his antlers toward you ... umm, no.
Kerstman laughed and took the harness from me. Brushing his hands down the wiry fur, he murmured softly as he slowly worked. "This is called a round collar. Don't use a chest collar because they put all the pressure on a small area." He picked up a wooden yoke-thingie and let Pie Thief sniff it. "This is the hame. It ..." The quiet voice droned on, lulling, as he named each part and described what it was for.
When he was done, he reversed the process. Then he handed me the collar. "Slowly. Talk softly as you do it. Remind him what each piece is for."
