Free A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex by Chris Jericho Page A

Lance could beat Chris, he’s so much better.” Even after eight weeks of training she still had the IQ of a kumquat. But kumquat or not, her statement hurt my feelings and increased my jealousy of Lance.
    Our graduation from the Hart Camp was nothing special. Those of us left at the end graduated with no ceremony, no diploma, no square hat; just a half-assed congratulations and a guarantee of nothing. While I was proud of myself for making it through the camp, I now had to contend with the more difficult task of finding a job.

 
    PART THREE WICHITA AND ELSEWHERE
     
     

     

 
     
    CHAPTER 8
     
     
    IRON WILL
     
     
    I was feeling uneasy about my future and my only plan was to stay in Calgary to try and get work. Thankfully, Ed erased some of the uncertainty when he allowed Lance, Victor, and me to continue training at the Action Center free of charge.
    I was thrilled to have a place to continue training, but that didn’t solve my more pressing problem of running out of cash. Luckily, I had some extended family that lived in Okotoks who knew a lady named Bev Palko and her husband, Jerry. She and her family lived outside town and were looking for someone to paint the fence in their backyard. It didn’t sound like the most exciting of jobs but I was thankful for the chance to make some money and I accepted the offer.
    The next day I drove outside Okotoks until I saw a distant farmhouse surrounded by what seemed to be a five-mile long fence. Not only was this the Palko house, but the Palko FENCE as well. Instead of painting a little old lady’s picket fence, I was going to have to whitewash the Great Wall of Alberta.
    Bev met me at the door and she was one of the friendliest people I’d ever met. She was in her mid-forties with salt-and-pepper hair and an infectious laugh and I liked her right from the start. She took me out to a garage filled with gallons of whitewash and paint rollers and told me to get cracking.
    After I loaded the trunk of the Volare it took me five minutes to drive across the field as my car bumped and lurched like a cheap drunk over the groundhog holes and rocks. Cows were grazing on haystacks while horses neighed in disgust and Lil Chris realized he wasn’t in Winnipeg anymore.
    I reached the end of the field, popped in the new Anthrax cassette and began to paint...and paint...and paint. Four hours later I was totally exhausted, with only seven feet of painted fence to show for my efforts. I’d just finished two months of the most intense physical training I’d ever experienced and now I was reduced to this?
    But there were benefits to painting the Palkos’ fence. Considering that I’d eaten most of my meals that summer at the Petro-Can (paying for them with my dad’s gas card), when Mrs. Palko yelled down the field that she’d made lunch, my stomach jumped for joy. The spread was basic but it was one of the best meals of my life. A thick ham sandwich served on homemade bread; fresh out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies, and an ice cold glass of milk. It was so heavenly it may as well have been made in the Vatican; or at least it seemed that way after eight weeks of burritos and Twinkies.
    The Palkos had two sons: Brad, another friendly Palko who I met at lunch, and Tyler, who ended up becoming like a brother to me. You wouldn’t have guessed it the first time we met though. No one had told him that I was going to be painting the fence, so he was quite surprised when a strange longhair in a bottle green jalopy pulled up at his isolated farmhouse and began rummaging through the garage. I was loading up my trunk on the second day when he came outside and eyed me up.
    “You must be Tyler,” I said. Then we both stood there staring at each other. After an eternity, he said “Yup” and went inside to ask his dad who in the hell I was.
    The Palkos had taken in foster kids for years and when they heard my story and figured out that I was dying to get out of the Willy, they offered me