A Winnipeg Christmas

The sun had just come up over the endless frozen farmland when the train slowed down at the Winnipeg Exhibition Grounds. Liam jumped out of the boxcar door and rolled into a snowbank. If he stayed on the train as it squeaked and clanged its way into the yards, the railway bulls would be all over him. They'd as soon crack a man's head open as look at it.

It was an hour's walk from the Exhibition Grounds to Union Station, where Lieutenant Melville would be that morning, all fresh, smart, and upright in his blue serge uniform with its red epaulets and collars, ringing his bell, and calling out in his authoritative baritone, chiding passers-by to "keep the pot boiling". Liam had been one of the hungry indigent the Salvation Army fed, until the night before when he left Brandon with twenty dollars in his pocket. The feed store in the small town was closing after a busy day so the take was worth a good week's wages. He had disappeared into the hobo jungle on the bank of the Assiniboine, and when night fell he had climbed onto an overnight freight to Winnipeg. It was a cold start because he had to lie flat on top of a boxcar to avoid being seen. When the train stopped at Douglas to pick up more cars, like a frozen grizzly bear in mitts and long greatcoat, he climbed down from the boxcar and found an open door where he could hunker down out of the freezing wind. Christmas in Manitoba wasn't the time or place to be riding the rails.

The row of grain elevators and wooden-shack station at Douglas were familiar because they were only a few miles from Camp Hughes where he did his military training. He had been conscripted and sent there in what turned out to be the last year of the war. Although the Army kept him fed for six months, it wasn't much of an adventure because he was never sent overseas, not even to England to satisfy his curiosity about the old country. One thing his time in the military had made clear to him was that he intensely disliked people telling him what to do.

After tumbling into the snowbank in Winnipeg, he stamped his feet, brushed off his coat, and slapped his mittened arms across his chest. Once he was on Notre Dame he could see through puffy columns of steam, the distant huddle of square blocks that was downtown Winnipeg. The cold didn't matter because he had money in his pocket and would soon see his friend again. He'd have to think up a good story about where he got the cash because the Lieutenant was not one for criminal activity. He was like a saint in some ways, too elevated to know that after a long period with nothing, a man needs more for his soul than a kind word and a bowl of thin soup.

As Liam crossed the street in front of Union Station, he expected to hear the clanging hand-bell echoing from Lieutenant Meliville's usual spot. Instead there was silence and a breath-puffing clump of overcoated people, nodding and shaking their heads. The tripod, kettle, and Lieutenant Melville were nowhere to be seen.

"Never saw it coming," one of them said.

"Right out of the blue," a woman seconded him.

They stood around a dark smear on the pavement.

"God rest his soul." An old lady crossed herself.

"What happened?" Liam asked.

"Never took a cent," someone added. "The police picked up all the money. Some of it had blood on it."

"What happened?" he asked again, feeling his heartbeat quicken. "Where did they take him?" Saint Boniface Hospital was directly across the Red River, but the Lieutenant was definitely not a Catholic. If he had any life in him he'd insist on the Municipal Hospital.

"They carried him off feet first not more than an hour ago," one of the bystanders said. "And they weren't in no hurry about it."

"You'd most likely find him in a morgue," another said.

"Ay. There weren't no breath comin' out of his mouth," a woman added. On a below-zero morning of the day before Christmas, that in itself was a sure sign there was no life left in the man. Liam felt the blood drain from his face and his feet wouldn't move. He hoped he was having a dream and would wake up in the rattling boxcar but the cold wind on his neck told him the dream was real. Something terrible had happened to his friend. It was an hour since he had jumped off the train on his way back from an escapade the Lieutenant would have called a sin. "Thou shalt not steal," was written plain as day in the Bible. Not sure of God's mysterious ways, Liam couldn't help wondering if his crime had brought retribution down on the Lieutenant as a punishment for helping him.