Thor's Child ©
by K Pelle
Chapter 5
The month of August seemed to evaporate before Tor could even blink, but then his whole family was on a strict timetable. The farm had to be in shape for his dad to care for everything by the time Tor's siblings left for university and Tor went back to school. Dag planned on leaving first and going the furthest from home, heading to Ontario to study veterinary medicine at the University of Guelph. That same week Björn was leaving to finish his studies in electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, with long term plans to go into computer technology. Alva would leave last, but was only going as far as Vancouver, where she was studying nursing at UBC. Then, come the first of September, Tor would only be able to help his dad part of the time because he'd be going back to school full time.
Since Tor's father would be doing most of the care for the animals during the next ten months, the family set out to streamline the amount of work he'd need to do each day. They rearranged corral fences to enable him to get a tractor and feed wagon in and around the corrals easily. They built storm shelters for any stock that would remain out in the open during most of the winter. They rearranged some of the pens inside the cattle barn to make handling stock easier and they built a new barn for the few pigs on the farm. They built Tor's mother a second chicken coop and another outside run, so she could separate the two breeds of chickens she now had. They bought an additional equipment shed, then hired a crew to put it up, since they had too many tractors and machines to store everything in the old building, but they didn't have time to build it themselves. In other words they rebuilt that old farm and worked from morning until night, almost every day of the month of August.
Somehow they also managed to cut, rake, bale and stack almost five hundred acres of hay which would be needed to feed the animals over the winter. On top of that Dag and Björn managed to plow, disc, seed and harrow two hundred acres of poor yielding grass and reseed it with fescue and alfalfa. They even found time to over-seed the field with a cover crop of annual rye to protect the more tender grasses. Alva and Tor shifted the goats out of the orchard for a few days, then with their mother's help, they picked all the apples, selling some to a local apple cider producer and storing the rest for winter. Finally, on the last two days they were home, Dag and Björn helped Tor and their dad spread a pile of well-cured manure on half an acre of land near the house and plow it in. That area would become the family's garden next spring.
Other things happened during that month as well though, because they did take some time off to relax and other necessities of life didn't come to a full stop.
Aunt Hanna must have gotten through to Tor's mom and dad regarding her concerns about his growth over the summer. During the second week of August his mom announced that Tor was taking Monday off to go to town to see the doctor. While she was at it, she wanted to do some shopping and had arranged that they would drop around the school board offices too, so she had the day all arranged. Sunny and Tor had to write an 'Out-of-Province placement test' for the school board at nine in the morning, then at one in the afternoon they both had appointments to see doctors. Whatever time was left over would be spent either shopping or having lunch at a restaurant Uncle Nils had recommended.
The placement test was meant to see which grade the education ministry of the province of BC felt Sunny and Tor could enter that fall. Since they'd both completed grade eight in Saskatchewan in June, they were hoping to go into grade nine, but the test would tell them if they qualified or not. Tor didn't know about Sunny, but he found the test to be a snap. It was supposed to take two hours, but the whole test was made up of multiple choice questions which he found extremely easy. So he was done in just over an hour and felt confident enough to hand it in, then leave. Sunny joined him about ten minutes later, and both of them were fairly certain that they'd be entering grade nine that fall, but they'd be sent their test results by mail inside of a week.
After they were both done the test, his mom, Mrs. Enright and Sunny had time to bore him silly while they went shopping. First there was a period when Tor was involved himself, because his mother was insistent that he needed some 'decent' school clothes. After that though, Tor could only stand around and watch as the others 'perused' the sales items in various stores. Finally they went for lunch, but by then he was starving as well as bored. Normally cafés and restaurants were not his favourite places to eat since Tor felt that most of them served small portions which were quite tasteless and overly salty. On top of that he knew that most of the restaurant staff were only there to earn a wage, but since they weren't very well paid, the customer often got poor service. Considering all that, eating in restaurants wasn't something he really cared to do. He was astonished that day though – the meals were a decent size, everything on his plate tasted great and the service was wonderful. It was no wonder his Uncle Nils had recommended the place.
Then it was off to the doctors. Once they were at the clinic, Sunny and her mom went one way, while Tor and his mom went the other. After they were shown to an examination room, a nurse took the copy Tor's medical file, then measured him for height and weight. In early June he'd been five-foot-two-inches tall and weighed a hundred and twelve pounds, but by August thirteenth, he was five-foot-seven and a half inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty-four pounds. So in two and a half months he'd gained five and a half inches in height and added forty-two pounds in weight.
The doctor seemed somewhat indifferent when asked about his growth, acknowledging that he'd grown quite a bit and that he was young for a growth spurt of that sort. He didn't think Tor's growth was excessive though. He looked at how large Tor's mom was, then asked if his dad was big too, and virtually shrugged his shoulders after hearing Tor's answer. After that, perhaps only to make Tor's mother happy, he checked Tor's blood pressure, listened to his lungs and his heart, then took a blood sample and had Tor step into a tiny bathroom to pee in a cup. Finally, he told Tor's mom that if he found anything exceptional he'd let her know and sent them on their way.
Back in the waiting room, Tor reread the jokes in a year-old Reader's Digest just to do anything to combat his boredom. Meanwhile his mom got into a discussion with another woman who was still waiting to see a doctor. They didn't wait long for the Enrights, but when they appeared again Mrs. Enright looked as if she'd just eaten a lemon, but Sunny looked like she'd been told a joke and was holding back laughter. Mrs. Enright immediately asked Tor's mom if they could stop at a pharmacy before heading home. When they got to the drugstore, both of their mothers went inside while Sunny and Tor sat in the car and waited.
"We had to stop here because I just got put on the pill," Sunny giggled.
"What pill?"
"The birth control pill, silly," She giggled again. "And no, it's not because I want to become involved that way with you or anything. It's because of the way my body reacts to my time of the month. The doctor said we could try using the pill to control the pain and cramps I've had to go through. You know how I get extremely grouchy for a few days every month? Well, the doctor says if I take the pill, it should stop that from happening."
"And why are you telling me this?" Tor stared at her. "I can't see why I should know anything about it."
"Urrsh, men!" Sunny grouched. "I'm telling you so that you know why Mom's not really very happy right now. She thought the doctor would just give me a prescription for some pain pills or something. Mostly though I'm telling you because Mom is going to be in a bad mood for a while and since you and I are so close, she might put some pressure on you about it. For instance she might take you aside and give you a talking to about this not being an excuse for you and me to try having sex. What I'm telling you is simply information so you know what's going on with my life, and it's a warning that Mom is on the warpath, okay?"
"Okay, since you told me that, then I suppose you want to know what my doctor said, do you?"
"Of course I do."
"Well, I'm now five-foot-seven and a half inches tall and I weigh a hundred and fifty-four pounds. The doctor checked me over, looked at how big Mom is and asked how big Dad was, then told Mom and me that he felt I was having a normal growth spurt."
"Well, what was your height and weight before?"
"On the first of June I was a hundred and twelve pounds and five-foot-two."
"That's it? You add almost six inches in height and over forty pounds of weight in two months and your doctor thinks it's normal?"
"Yeah, but it's almost two and a half months," he grinned. "Somehow it sounds a bit different when you say it though. You make it sound like a crime that I grew as much as I did."
"I didn't mean to make it sound bad, I just think it's very, very surprising that you grew so much, so fast."
"Well, I had nothing else to do for the last month, but work and eat. I suppose that combination made me grow more than usual. I was working about fifteen or sixteen hours a day, cooking and eating about two hours a day, then sleeping the rest." Tor shrugged.
"You were only sleeping six hours a day?"
"That's about as long as I ever sleep," he shrugged again. "When I do sleep, I zonk out and sleep solidly though. If I get sick, I sleep a lot more, but thankfully I don't get sick often."
"You're just plain weird."
"And you're perfectly normal? It seems to me you're the gal who can climb things, but can't get back down."
"I was only ten years old then and the ladder wiggled under my feet when I tried to climb back off the roof," she giggled.
"Well, how about the time you made cold liver sandwiches to take for lunch at school? That was just last year."
"I like liver, so what?" Sunny giggled even louder.
"And who was the girl that swiped my unwashed hockey jersey, then slept with it under her pillow for a week and wondered why her bedroom reeked of stale sweat?"
"How was I supposed to know that sweaty clothes stink worse and worse the longer they sit around? Besides, I didn't swipe that jersey, it was torn to pieces and your coach made you throw it away," she was laughing now.
"So now you admit you rummage through garbage bins too, huh? Man, talking about throwing stones while living in a glass house, you take the cake."
One thing about Sunny, she could be teased and wouldn't get angry. So by the time their mom's came back to the car they were both laughing and teasing each other.
"You two seem happy." Tor's mom looked at them before getting in the car.
"Oh we were just trying to decide why Sunny was so weird," Tor snapped quickly. "I was reminding her of liver sandwiches and my old stinky hockey jersey."
Mrs. Enright had been frowning when she got into the car, but that must have tickled her funny bone because she snorted, then laughed openly. Of course Sunny reached over and swatted his arm and he made a big deal about being injured. The fact that the two of them were acting normally seemed to reassure both of their moms.
Tor was fairly certain that his mom had been clued in to the reason for Mrs. Enright's bad mood, so after they were dropped off, he took his life in his hands and broached the subject.
"Sunny, told me why her mom was annoyed with her doctor and I think she's worried that Sunny is growing up too fast, but I don't think you need to worry about it. I'm sure not ready to get that serious and neither is Sunny. No one will bother her at school either, because I'll pound anyone else that might hit on her. Oh, and you should know, Sunny thinks the whole thing is funny. We went to see the doctor because you thought my hormones were out of whack and it turns out that her hormones are the ones with a problem."
His mom almost drove in the ditch as she turned to look at him, then snorted. "I was wondering how to bring up that subject and I'm surprised that the two of you would talk about it so openly."
"Mom, we're both farm kids. All we need to do is go out in the barnyard and we can see the animals making more. We know what kind of problems immature animals can have if they get pregnant and both of us are smart enough to know that we're too young to get into that kind of mess. We know sex isn't a game."
Of course that wasn't the end of it. He got a review of the old 'birds and bees' lecture from his mom, and a different version of the same thing from his dad a day or two later.
On top of that though he got a surprisingly frank discussion on self-defence and a few lessons on how to handle bullies from Dag and Björn on a couple of evenings. Both of them had been the biggest kid in their grade at school and had both run into 'wannabe tough guys' who were out to make a name for themselves by fighting the biggest kid around. Besides, they liked Sunny a lot, but they knew Tor would do his best to protect her, so they wanted him to have any advantage possible. They did some fooling around with Dag's boxing gloves, out in the hayloft of the barn, and Tor thought he surprised both of them by anticipating their moves.
"Damn, you have fast reaction times!" Dag barked after Tor had seen a left jab coming and sidestepped it, then tapped Dag on his open left cheek with the tip of his boxing glove.
"Well, you telegraphed that swing from somewhere east of Winnipeg," Tor teased and winked.
He wasn't positive at first, but it wasn't long before he felt he might be getting a 'bleed-over' of telepathy from them, as if he was 'hearing' what they were planning to do before they did it. If that was true and worked with normal 'tough' guys, instead of just with his brothers, he'd have a distinct advantage in any fights that might happen. Tor wasn't hearing their thoughts or anything, instead as he watched them move it seemed he just 'knew' from the way they moved what they would try to do next. It was as if he had a voice in his head that gave him warnings; 'left jab next' or else 'a right cross now.'
Okay, so it was weird, but what was happening in his life that didn't seem a bit weird right then? He'd given up expecting normality.
At any rate the guys decided Tor would never be a very effective fighter, because they didn't think he had the 'killer instinct' needed to hurt someone badly. Instead they set out to teach him how to defend himself and how to immobilize an attacker. Björn was easily the best teacher for that, because while he had been at the university in Calgary he'd joined a dojo and had begun to learn defensive style Jiu-Jitsu.
Tor really liked those Jiu-Jitsu moves, because they used the attacker's speed and strength against him while protecting the defender from an aggressor. It just seemed to be appropriate to make the 'bad guy' provide the power needed to defeat him if he attacked you. In fact the whole philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu seemed to be ultimately appropriate if he wanted to be able to defend himself, but wasn't really interested in being an aggressor.
At some point, Björn mentioned Tor's interest to their dad, who called Uncle Nils and had the phone passed to their cousin Kai. Kai was an amateur boxer, but knew several of the martial arts people in the area. Kai appeared at their house shortly before lunch a few days later with a small fortyish looking man along with him.
It seemed Mr. Chance lived on a small farm on the outskirts of town and was just starting a dojo to teach Jiu-Jitsu, but hadn't officially opened for business. For the next ten or fifteen minutes he had Tor play aggressor and Tor got thrown around the front lawn like a sack of feed. Then Tor decided he had enough grass stains on his clothes. He concentrated and was able to 'see' Mr. Chance's moves coming, just like he had with Dag and Björn. He rolled through one of the throws, but managed to hang onto an arm and downed his teacher for once. He'd never seen anyone look as surprised as Mr Chance did when he looked up and saw Tor grinning down at him.
"Show me that again!" the older man barked as he hopped to his feet.
He shifted slightly as Tor moved toward him that next time, but Tor countered and again rolled with the throw, pinning his instructor. Tor was completely surprised when the man began to laugh while being pinned down.
"You catch on very quickly," he nodded his head as Tor offered him a hand to get to his feet. "If you want to learn, I'm willing to teach you. Although you're young and quite large for your age, you learn quickly and you move well."
All Tor could think to say was, "Thank You."
Of course Kai and his friend were invited in for lunch and the whole family learned a little about Tor's new sensei, which everyone learned was Japanese for teacher or master. Rick Chance was the youngest of five brothers and said he'd always been the 'runt of the litter' so he'd been given the nickname of 'Small' Chance early in his life. Mr. Chance had been born in California, in an area where several Japanese-American families had truck farms, and when he was about twelve he'd begun to study martial arts from the local Japanese. He'd started to learn Jiu-Jitsu because he was tired of being pushed around by his brothers, then had learned to love the sport and the people who taught him. Then he'd been drafted during the Vietnam war, barely making it into the infantry due to his small stature. However, since he was familiar with much of the Japanese culture, he had never served in Vietnam. Instead he had been stationed in Japan and while he was there he had studied Jiu-Jitsu even further. In fact he had even married a Japanese woman.
Tor never learned why Mr. Chance had left the states, but he was now a landed immigrant in Canada and lived about ten miles from the Eklund farm with his Japanese wife and three young children. They grew organic vegetables on their small farm, but as well, Mr. Chance was setting up a dojo in an old barn on their property.
Of course he wanted to know a little about Tor, but particularly his reason for wanting to learn Jiu-Jitsu. So Tor explained that he wanted to be able to defend himself if he was attacked or if Sunny was threatened, but didn't feel right about being aggressive. Björn chimed in at that point and told Mr. Chance that Tor just didn't have the killer instinct to be a boxer, but that he definitely had the speed and the right physique.
It didn't take long before they made arrangements that once school started Tor would drop by his place after school two afternoons every week and take an hour long lesson in Jiu-Jitsu. For the time being they planned to visit one evening during the next week to discuss what he wanted to learn, but the visit would give Tor's family a chance to see the dojo as well.
One other thing happened while Mr. Chance was there having lunch and it took him completely by surprise. Mrs. Eklund hadn't said anything to anyone, but while they had been cleaning up before coming to lunch, she'd phoned Mrs. Enright with the idea of Sunny learning self defence too. Sunny thought it was a wonderful idea, and she called both Emily and Sami.
Everyone had just finished lunch when Sunny and her mom arrived, followed by Mrs. Craigmiller, Kevin and Emily, then Sami came peddling into the yard. Kevin and all three girls were interested in learning self defence and both Mrs. Enright and Mrs. Craigmiller were all for it. Sami was going to have to convince her father to let her join, but Tor's mom just winked at her. Sami knew her dad had already had dealings with Tor's Aunt Hanna and she recalled how that had gone, so she grinned.
As it was, their new Sensei had come to see one possible student for his new dojo and was leaving with five students committed to his first class. From that one meeting he now had several students who would meet twice a week, which gave his dojo a head start toward success. Tor could see his new Sensei talking animatedly to Kai as they drove away and could imagine what the conversation was about.
Before all of their other visitors left though, Tor had a chance to talk to Kevin for a short while and the conversation took a twist Tor wasn't expecting. Kevin asked if Tor played hockey and if he did what level he played.
"Well, I played last year in Saskatchewan and was in the Bantam division, but I've grown so much this year that I don't know if I'll play out here. You see I know what most coaches and lots of teams expect from a guy with a build like mine. Sure as heck I'd be asked to be an enforcer, but I don't like that idea at all. Last year I was a forward and I loved it. I was lucky too, so I scored once or twice every couple of games and had more assists than goals. Let's face it, I was a skinny twerp who could skate fast and handle the puck well, so Wayne Gretzky became something of a model for my style of play."
Tor's dad had been close by and overheard them, so he spoke up then. "Your mother will be very disappointed if you don't play, Tor."
"So will I," Kevin added quickly. "I play on our local team in the Midget division and near the end of last season the coach of the Juvenile division pulled three of our best players up to play for him. I know you're not even fourteen, but you'd tower over the guys in Bantam, and we need players in Midget, which is under seventeen out here, so you won't seem as big on our team. If you're fast and handle the puck well, we really need a centre because we lost the centres from our top two lines last spring."
"I don't know," Tor sighed. "Just look at the time involved. What do you normally have, two early morning practices and a game at least one evening every week? Add in two afternoons for Jiu-Jitsu, then figure in time for the occasional school function and Dad will hardly have any help around here for chores and stuff."
"I don't think you're really considering the way we have the farm set up now, Tor. We've changed everything and made it so convenient that I'll easily be able to do the chores on my own. There's far less to do here than we had in Saskatchewan and your hockey playing didn't interfere with the farmwork there," his dad smiled. "Your mother and I were counting on you becoming more involved with school activities too, so the time you'll be spending on Jiu-Jitsu is already considered in one way or another."
"Well, even then, I don't know," Tor frowned. "I saw what happened to Dag and Björn when they were playing hockey. As soon as they got bigger than everyone else on the team they were expected to play enforcer and act like goons. I'm sorry, but I just don't like that idea."
"Tor, if you can score a goal every second game, and add a pair of assists during that same time, I'll bet my coach will have enforcers protecting you," Kevin laughed. "The coach has lots of gorillas on the team, guys who can hit like a steam train, but we don't have enough guys that can stick handle well or score very often. If you can skate fast as well, I can almost guarantee you a position as forward or centre, and probably on the number one line."
"Hey, what are you guys talking about?" Emily said as she, Sunny and Sami came over to them.
"Tor was saying he might not play hockey this year," Kevin blurted out.
"Oh no way, Tor," Sunny squawked. "I love watching you play. I love watching you going down the ice, and it's zip, zip, zip around the other team's defencemen, then you deek out their goalie, snap the puck in the net and whole rink erupts. 'Eklund SCOOOOOORRrrres!!!' You've just gotta play. I want a team jersey from this team to add to my collection and I want to scream myself silly while I'm watching you score goals."
"We'll see," Tor rolled his eyes. "Look what you started Kev. I'm going to be under pressure from all sides now."
"Good," he grinned. "We need a fast prairie kid on our team to give us all a boost."
"Huh and what if all this weight and height gain means I can't skate or stick handle any more? I refuse to go out there and be a goon just to have my brain scrambled in a useless fight over some silly blind-side hit that should have been called by the referee in the first place."
"Well, tell the coach that you won't play the enforcer," Kev shrugged. "He probably won't like it, but he still needs players who know how to use their heads in the game."
"Use his head? Sometimes I think Tor gets inside the other teams' heads. He seems to know where the puck is going to be before it ever gets played there. Last year some wise guy was screaming 'Gretzky rides again' every time Tor stepped on the ice, because Tor seems to read the plays the same way Gretzky does," Sunny bragged.
That did it. Tor glared at Sunny, then spun on his heel and stomped away. He was so angry it was unbelievable, but there was nothing he could do about it. 'Gets inside the other teams' heads,' she had said and bragged about it. Lovely, now he had the gal who claimed to be his girlfriend bragging that he could read peoples minds. The problem was, he really could, but he didn't want anyone to call attention to it, because if people found that out he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of reaching the age of fourteen.
"Oh Shit!" Tor heard her squawk. "I screwed up and bragged about him and even compared him to Gretzky. He hates that!"
'Oh wonderful, Sunny. Now that you've realized you've let your mouth run away on you, you feel remorse. Just frigging wonderful!' he thought.
"Tor, come back, I'm sorry." she called.
He had no intention of going back though. Instead Tor went around the house and headed for the far end of the valley, running as fast as he could go. He got about half a mile from the house when he heard a noise coming up behind him and turned to see Björn coming on his little cross country motorcycle. Unfortunately Sunny was riding behind him and Tor was still too annoyed to talk to her, but he knew Björn wasn't about to let him get away. Björn stopped the bike about fifty feet away and Sunny hopped off, then before Tor could stop him, Björn turned the bike and headed back toward the house.
"Look, I don't want to talk to you, Sunny, so you might as well walk back to the house and get your mom to take you home. Maybe in five or ten years you'll learn to think before you start jabbering and stirring up shit."
"Tor! Please! What did I do that was so bad?"
"If you don't know, then you're definitely not as smart as I thought you were," Tor snapped. "For cripes sake, you stated outright that I read minds and you did it in front of people you know tell secrets to strangers. Do you have any friggin' idea what people would do to me if they thought I really could read minds? Did you know that Gretzky has been asked to will his brain to science because of what he does? When he dies, they want to study his brain, just because he reads the plays of a hockey game so well and they want to know if he reads minds because they think his brain is different from normal. What you don't know is that through people calling me a second Gretzky, I've been singled out too. I even had a university professor come up to me after a hockey game last year and ask me to will my brain to his university so he could study it. Do you realize you might just have put a million-dollar reward poster on my forehead and a bullseye on my chest? I'm not a rich and famous person like Gretzky though. I can't afford to pay bodyguards to keep me safe from the mad doctors who want to cut open people's skulls to look inside people's brains for possible mutations.
"Why do you think I really don't want to play hockey anymore? It puts me out in the public eye and when I'm on the playing hockey, I seem to be able to do things that other people can't do. Somehow I can look at a player who has the puck, see where his eyes go, watch his hands shift, see his muscles tense and guess where he's going to play that puck. Just being able to do that in a fraction of a second makes me an oddball and people have already started wondering if I can read minds. I was a big enough target before, but I'd moved out here where no one knew me and I could hide, only now I'm screwed, because of your big mouth. You've just made me a bigger target than I ever was by bragging about what I do in front of relative strangers who you already know are gossips and will repeat the story, so I'm as good as dead. When you hear word that I've disappeared and the cops tell you they think I was kidnapped, you'll know it's true. You'll be able to brag that you gave the clue to some bounty hunter who came to collect the reward being paid to find a guy who showed the same talents as Gretzky. You'll be able to tell them that because of your big mouth, the KGB, or the Mossad, or the CIA, or some other spy agency has kidnapped me and is dissecting my brain to find out how it works.
"So thanks a million. Now go away. Go home. In a few years I may forgive you for being a loudmouthed braggart, if I manage to live through the next few months."
"But I didn't know," she protested, with tears streaming down her face.
"No. That's not true. Instead of saying you didn't know, you should be honest and say that you didn't want to know. You heard that I didn't want to play hockey, but you didn't ask me why I felt I should no longer play. Instead you tried to coerce me into playing, just so you could sit in the stands and brag that you were my friend and had known me for years. Well, it ain't gonna happen. Now I have one last thing to say." Tor paused and stared at her tear stained face. "Goodbye."
And with that he turned and walked away. He was devastated that she would be so selfish. He was hurt that she hadn't even taken the time to ask him why he didn't want to play. He was angry that she'd said the things she had in front of people she knew gossiped freely. He was frightened by the effects her little tirade might cause. He was disgusted that she would do something like that to a friend, and he felt a thousand other disturbing feelings.
Tor knew he had been far harder on Sunny than he could have been, but she had caught up to him before he had time to think of anything but the hurt, the fear and the anger at being betrayed. Sunny had always been his best buddy and he'd trusted her, but she'd exposed him, told others the one fact he wanted and needed to keep hidden. She had openly announced her suspicion that he was a functioning telepath and she'd done it in front of Sami and Emily, people she KNEW were gossips. She might as well have taken out an advertisement in the local newspaper.
Right at the moment he had wanted nothing more than to be completely alone so he could try to put a lid on the terror that was welling up inside him. Instead she had chased after him and forced a confrontation. Now he was feeling even worse than he had felt before.
Now he was ashamed of losing his temper and hurting Sunny because she had exposed his secret – a secret that circumstance had prevent Tor from sharing with her. Yet because of Sunny, his secret had been broadcast to the world and was now common knowledge.