rails It began to tip sideways skidding on the gravel track and pulling the caboose over with it The terrified lion pawed the wooden floor trying not to slide against the bars Sam Hibbins grabbed Daisy as they were thrown out of bed Another jolt caused him to tumble head over heels right out the open car door He landed in some dense bushes that grew along the track The bushes scratched him up but also cushioned his and Daisy’s fall But the lion was trapped in the cage The car began to slide down the slope of the track bed Sunny was tossed sideways banging his jaw against a bar The cage twisted buckled and split apart sending splinters of metal and wood in every direction The lion was thrown free of the debris He landed in bushes a hundred yards farther on Sunny lay there for a minute or two before rising painfully bruised on his thigh and shoulder and ribs He shook himself and limped past the bits of wood and metal to begin walking up the dark hill ahead The lion came to a post in the ground He smelled on it the disagreeable odor of the many dogs that had stopped there to lift their legs Attached to the post was a sign Welcome to High Park No Littering Of course Sunny couldn’t read but he could smell earth trees grass wildflowers water He limped on
2 The Pie Maker’s Daughter I hate the way he watches me from the window Sadie Menken said to her father Strawberries had just come into season and he was pouring the red filling into the pie crusts while Sadie evened it out with a spatula He goes from one window to another Sadie went on Sometimes he holds things up Yesterday it was some dumb hand puppet Or he makes faces Maybe next time I’ll bring a rotten tomato with me Then I’ll throw it at the window splat That would show him Maybe he’s curious about you her father said He put a flattened circle of dough over a filled pie trimmed it and began to pinch the edges When they had finished twenty-five pies were lined up on the wooden table waiting to be baked Maybe he’s lonely and wants a friend her father went on picking up a pie with each hand while opening the heavy oven door with his foot Rich people can be lonely too Sadie pretended to choke herself and then fell to the ground gagging When her father merely continued to work she got up again
And you could use a friend her father said I’m too busy I have responsibilities She used her most adult voice I know you do Too many in fact You need to have some fun But you’d better be off or you’ll be late for school Oh don’t worry I’m sure the school wouldn’t dare to start before I got there You sound awfully important her father said with a smile You have no idea how important I am in that place And how popular Why I’m the most popular person in school It just can’t run without me With that Sadie turned around and headed to the front hall to pick up her satchel Sadie and her father lived in a small house on Radford Avenue just a few blocks from High Park In 1925 Toronto was a city of horse drawn wagons and rickety streetcars and noisy Model T Fords Electrical wires crossed overhead from pole to pole like spiderwebs It was a city of red brick and gray stone and small houses lined in rows but big houses too There were hotels and movie palaces and department stores and factories with tall chimneys spewing smoke Boys wore knee-length breeches and girls wore dresses Even Sadie Menken who liked to spend her time catching frogs and climbing trees wore a dress and stockings and well-shined shoes To Sadie High Park was the best thing about the city It was so big it was almost a country of its own It was part valley part forest and part plains Here and there were clearings for a playground a garden a picnic area a tennis court Small streams trickled south down the
slope towards Grenadier Pond at the bottom Sadie would have spent all her time in the park after school if she didn’t have to deliver pies There are many stories about children without a mother or a father or both A reader might think that every child in the world was an orphan And yet here is another for Sadie Menken had lost her own mother That was how her father put it Lost But she wasn’t dead Instead she had left them for the dream of becoming a Broadway actress in New York She hadn’t yet become a big star but she hadn’t come back either Sadie could barely remember her Sadie loved her father and only wished that he wasn’t so busy As a pie maker he had to get up at five in the morning to begin rolling out the dough and warming up the ovens By the time Sadie got up he had already finished his first batch He made pies in many varieties depending on the fruit in season rhubarb strawberry cherry peach plum blueberry apple His pies were delicious and he had a standing order from the King Edward Hotel as well as several restaurants and private homes He would bake all day pausing only to make dinner after which he would spend an hour preparing for the next day before falling into bed exhausted Sadie knew how hard her father worked When she was little she would keep him company sitting on a stool and chatting as she played with a ball of dough But as she got older she began to help Now she could roll out the dough cut up the fruit make the cross hatches in the top of the pie to let out the steam as it baked But her main job happened after school Every day she delivered six or eight pies to houses in the neighborhood She had an old Red Bird delivery bicycle with a square iron basket between the handlebars where the pie boxes could be stacked Although she was small Sadie had grown used to pedaling the heavy bicycle and
