I’ll never forget my terror at what happened next. Darko and the others held me even more tightly.
"Andrewchuk, tied him to the tracks."
Using the willows, they tied my hands behind me, and then tied my ankles. They toppled me onto the tracks, tying me to the rails. Darko’s eyes narrowed as he squinted at his watch.
"Next train comes in seven minutes. Ever put coins on the tracks, punk? That’s what you’ll look like." Then they vanished beyond the canal, into Korolenko Park.

Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t move. I thought of my mother’s warnings, of all the stories we had heard about going west, west of the tracks. I was going to die. But at the same time, a great peace came over me. Grey clouds floated overhead. Redwings sang from the slough, their syrup warbles reminding me of happy visits to my Uncle Jack’s wheat farm.

When Broken Hand found his friend Jed, the old trapper’s face had been peeled to the skull. Great slices of his arm and leg were missing, boiling up with maggots. Broken Hand took a large needle from his saddlebag and cut some of Jed’s buckskin fringes for thread and began to stitch the old man’s face together so he’d at least look good for his burial...

In that calm, a great strength came over me. I easily pulled free from the willows at my hands, then used a sharp stone to hack through the ones binding my feet. I heard a train in the distance, possibly on another line. I jumped up.

Jed stirred. Hey man, watch out with that needle! You could wound a man! Just sew me up and let’s get the hell outta here.

I never knew if Darko knew I would free myself so easily. I later heard others admit to the same humiliating initiation but we had never heard of anyone actually being run over. Probably, Darko would know the exact times when the trains came and plan his ritual accordingly, knowing the victim would escape in a matter of seconds. Or else Darko and his gang would actually cut their prisoner free at the last minute.

Hughie avoided me for a while but we soon renewed our friendship. Sasha came back to play and we all forgot about the tree episode. We gave her some chocolate. I soon moved to another part of the city and never returned to the neighbourhood around Korolenko Park.

I did meet Darko indirectly. Many years later, after a divorce, I began to date a Ukrainian girl named Marisha who had grown up not far from Korolenko Park, though she was born in Odessa. I was in poor health and had lost a lot of weight through illness and worry. Marisha fed me up on Schi, Kapusta, Bliny and Pirozhki. Her house did smell of cabbage, a familiar and now welcome smell. I asked her once if she had ever known a kid named Leshy Darko.
"Everybody knew Leshy. He was a neighbourhood hero and icon. The last I heard, he was working as a roustabout on the oil pipeline way out west somewhere. Alberta I think. Said he really liked the West, likes the wide open spaces. Says he would never come back East again. Needs his freedom, does Leshy."
Marisha laughed. Dogs barked. A train rumbled past.

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