I wasn’t happy about my temporary assignment but I knew that the surrounding area with its busy streets and parks would be ideal for schooling the young horses I was working with. The horses were already nickering for their breakfast when I entered the stable on my first day and since no one else was there, I doled out a generous helping of oats and bran to each of them, then stowed my kitbag in the tack room. I was sitting writing in my memo book when I heard the door to the stable open and close. I shifted my position and craned my neck to see who was coming in. I didn’t know anyone at the station and was about to get up and introduce myself but stopped short. The fellow didn’t notice me and walked directly towards a row of tall green lockers that lined one wall and opened the door to the first one. The only part of him that I could see was his back and he didn’t look big enough to be a policeman. When he eventually turned towards me I realized he was just a teenage boy.
“Hi, who are you?” I asked. He didn’t seem startled. Smiling with that special innocent grin that only kids with Downs Syndrome have, he said “Me Jimmy, where Cy?” I said that I didn’t know where Cy was and watched slightly confused as he kicked his way out of a pair of old running shoes, dropped his trousers and squirmed out of a tattered T-shirt. He paid no attention to me as he pulled clothing out of the locker and dressed himself in some pretty respectable duds. After tightening a belt that I recognized as police issue, he took a toothbrush and some paste from the top shelf and went over to the horse trough and brushed his teeth. Returning to the locker, he stood admiring himself in a small mirror mounted on the inside of the door and pulled a comb through his hair.
The boy was just closing the locker when the stable door swung open again and an older policeman hurried over to him and handed him a brown paper bag. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, “Here’s your lunch. You better hurry along.” As Jimmy left the stable the cop, who seemed to be playing mother, noticed me sitting in the other room and came over and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Cy.” I had already figured that much out myself but I was anxious to find out more about the scene I had just witnessed. Being a new man at the station I didn’t want to ask too many questions but I was surprised when Cy never even mentioned Jimmy. In fact, he avoided the subject altogether and simply told me about the other men I would be working with and described the various patrol routes we used. More of the crew began to arrive but they never mentioned Jimmy either and I was reluctant to ask about him. I actually had to wait until the end of the day to find out what was going on.
It was quitting time and we were on our way to our cars when one of the cops confided in me. He said that Jimmy was Cy’s project; he’d sort of adopted the boy. The relationship had started one day when Cy was on horseback patrolling one of the back lanes in the area. He heard shouts and laughter coming from behind a board fence and when he stood in his stirrups and peered over the barrier, he startled a group of teenage girls who were circled around a very naked and crying Jimmy. By the time he dismounted and made his way into the yard, the girls had all disappeared and the very upset boy was leaning on the fence sobbing. Cy gathered up the boy’s clothes and helped him get dressed. Then with one arm around the kid’s shoulder and his other hand leading his horse, he walked him home.
Cy was not very impressed with the reception he got from Jimmy’s parents. They acted like they didn’t care about what had happened and as Cy looked at the seven brothers and sisters that crowded in the doorway, he thought he recognized two of the girls he had seen molesting the boy. The proper thing to do would have been to call Child Welfare but Cy was Old School and didn’t relish the thought of the boy ending up in an institution. He thought that it would be better if instead, he kept an eye on the situation and made sure Jimmy wasn’t mistreated in the future.
Jimmy was always wearing shabby hand-me-downs. When Cy heard that the boy was about to start attending a special school, he decided to buy him some suitable new clothes. Jimmy looked pretty spiffy the first few mornings as he passed the station on his way to school but it wasn’t long before he was back in his old rags and his brothers and sisters were all wearing pieces of his new wardrobe. That’s when Cy decided to give the boy a locker of his own at the stables and in it, another set of clothing, He then arranged for Jimmy to come and change before heading to school each day.
The new arrangement worked well and Cy even addressed the matter of the boy’s personal hygiene, buying him a toothbrush and toothpaste and insisting that he take regular baths in the horse trough. The boy seemed very content and always had a smile for everybody as he went through his daily routine. By the time I arrived at the stables the arrangement, with the collaboration of the other cops assigned there, had been going on for several months so I happily joined the conspiracy.
It was about a month after I had been at the station when things changed. Jimmy came to the stable one day with tears in his eyes announcing that he and his family were moving. Family Services had decided to move them from the hovel they were living in to a house in the extreme west end of the city. It would be more than an hour away by streetcar and an impossible distance for Jimmy to walk. It was a sad day when Cy helped Jimmy empty his locker and pack his few belongings into a cardboard box and then reluctantly turn the boy over to his parents. He hoped that now that Social Services was involved things might be better for the little guy.
Several weeks of a long hot summer had passed since we had said goodbye to Jimmy. On one of the hottest days of all and my last at the station I was packing my gear into my car and looked up to see the boy staggering into the stable yard. He looked exhausted; he must have been walking for hours. As he got closer I could see that he was holding something in his arms. “Where’s Cy? I want show Cy my pup” he said. Draped over his arm was a large Collie puppy, glassy eyed and very dead. He kept stroking the puppy and asking for Cy as I helped him into the stable and onto a chair. I found Cy in the station turning in his gun and memo book at the end of his shift and when I told him about Jimmy and the pup, he said, “You head out. I’ll handle this.” I never saw Cy again but I‘ve never forgotten my last glimpse of him. Framed in the tack room doorway, he sat kneeling in front of the boy still seated in the chair holding his dead puppy in his arms. His big hand was covering Jimmy’s as together they patted the pup while the old cop searched for something to say.
Several years after I had left the police force, I was shopping at a farmers’ market in Stouffville, north of Toronto, when a minibus pulled up and several people from a group home piled out and headed for the foodstalls. The last person out of the bus must have been in charge of the home mascot because he held a beautiful Border Collie dog on a leash. As he passed me our eyes met and his face broke into a wide smile. I know he didn’t really recognize me-- Jimmy smiles at everyone.
