The Starlight Claim

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Likely’s not here, Dad. I had to break in. The camp’s still standing. But one of the escapees from the Sudbury Jail is dead. The one named Shaker. I’ve got him laid out in the work shed back at the camp. I’m not sure what to do about that. And I know the Budd doesn’t run tomorrow so I’m not sure what to do next. Over.”

  There was a pause and then Nate realized that even though he’d said “over,” he hadn’t let go of the talk button.

  “Let me make sure I heard you right,” said his father, while on the other extension his mother said, “You’ve got a dead man lying in the work shed?”

  “Yeah. And Calvin Crow is up here. I mean back at the camp. He’s been shot. He’ll need medical attention. What do I do now? Over.”

  His mother was saying “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God,” with Nate’s name thrown in now and then. “We’ll contact the authorities,” said his father. “Can you stay there until I get back to you? Over.”

  “Stay where? Over.”

  “At Likely’s — just until I phone you back.”

  “Yeah. I guess. But hurry, okay? It’s freezing here. And I need to get back to him . . . to Cal . . . Over.”

  There was a pause at the other end — just electrically charged air buzzing and crackling in the line. Had he been disconnected? Nate pushed the talk button again. “Here’s La Cloche’s number,” he said, and read it out. “Over.”

  “Good man,” said Dad. “Sit tight.”

  “Love you, kid,” said Mom. “Hang in there, you hear?”

  “Over and out,” said Dad.

  He lit a fire. He had no idea how long they’d be getting back to him, but even if it was only minutes, he was shaking like a leaf in a nor’wester. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the flames, rocking back and forth like a crazy person. The relief of speaking to his parents — of handing off some of the responsibility — had felt really good for a few moments, but in some weird way, it had undone him. Again. And he wasn’t sure how many undoings a person could go through before there was nothing left of him to unravel. He’d been holding on so tight, afraid to let go, afraid to give up. Now he just wanted to be home.

  “Enough already!” he shouted into the empty camp. Then, not able to sit still any longer, he got up and walked around, touching things and picking things up and generally trying to keep from screaming.

  There was a cane hanging on a kitchen chair at the table. Nate took it by its worn handle. He remembered seeing Mr. La Cloche with crutches. He got around pretty well on them. Didn’t seem to slow him down. He raised the cane, squeezing it tight, and was glad Cal Crow was a long way away right then because the temptation to hit him would have been too much. Then the phone rang. His father, all business. Told him the medevac probably wouldn’t get there until morning and the cops would come separately. They’d bring him out. “There’s a manhunt for those guys,” said his father. “Is it safe to go back to the camp? Is the other escapee still around? Over.”

  Nate hadn’t really even thought of this. He only knew what Cal had said. He’d heard a shot and a scream but had assumed Beck wasn’t dead, although he was probably in custody. He’d have to go with that. “Yeah, it’s safe,” he said, deciding that “I think so” wasn’t going to cut it. “I’ll get back there right away.”

  “Are you sure? Why not camp out there? I’ll get in touch with La Cloche, let him know what’s up. Over.”

  Nate looked around. No. He’d had enough of other people’s places. “I’m okay, Dad. I came down here on the Doo and she’s running perfectly. Over.”

  “Good man,” said his father. “Over.”

  “See you soon,” said Nate. “Over and out.” And he took his thumb off the talk button one last time.

  He pushed the Ski-Doo hard on the way, took as straight a line as he could, wondering all the while if there would be a dead man sitting in front of a dead fire when he got there.

  Cal was standing at the stove, cooking bacon and eggs.

  “Saw your light,” he said without looking up as Nate entered the camp, bringing a good piece of night coldness in with him.

  The aroma of the bacon and coffee made him weak in the knees. He struggled out of his outerwear, leaving it where it lay on the floor. But by the time he’d shaken the starlight out of his eyes, the scene had changed. Cal still stood before the propane stove with one hand on his hip and the other wielding a spatula, but he wasn’t doing anything with the spatula; it hung motionless in the air over the frying pan, and when Nate looked closer he saw that the man, for all his jaunty stance, was shaking from head to toe. And then he fell.

  Nate raced around the table, pushing the big chair out of his way. He flipped off the gas burners and then knelt down beside the old man. He was convulsing. Nate took him by the shoulders and half carried, half dragged him to the chair. Once he’d gotten him seated, he propped up his leg and was about to cover him when he felt Cal’s forehead and realized he was already feverish. His breathing was fast and ragged. He felt Cal’s chest; his heart was beating fast.

  Nate stood over the man, breathing heavily himself. Septic shock. The words came to him from his Red Cross training, but nothing much came along with them. All he knew was that the bullet in his leg had to come out. And it had to come out now. He buried his head in his hands. How? How was he supposed to do this?

  Leave it to the medics.

  He looked at Cal’s face, pain tugging at every muscle. His mouth open in a silent scream. He looked down the man’s throat, and what came swimming into his mind was the image of a gut-hooked bass. One of those greedy buggers you didn’t know you had on the line until it was too late and they’d swallowed the hook down into their gullet.

  And that’s when he knew what he had to do.

  The fire in the woodstove had burned low, but the water in the kettle was still steaming. Nate raced to the corner behind the door where the fishing gear was stored. He found his tackle box and opened it up, grabbed his needle-nose pliers, and raced back to the kettle. He dropped the pliers into the kettle to disinfect them, then he turned back to Cal and tore off his sweatpants and the dressing, exposing the wound. He only looked at it long enough to figure out whether he’d have to open it up larger than the bullet hole. If he did, he’d need his filleting knife. Strange. Two days ago he’d been prepared to use one on this man — an intruder — and he couldn’t do it. Now he was going to have to.

  He threw the knife in the hot water as well and went to get the first-aid kit.

  The water was too hot to put his hands into to recover his surgery equipment, which was a good thing, really. But he’d need to clean himself up. So he poured some of the steaming water into a big white enamel washbowl and added as little cold as possible. Then he lathered up as best he could, flinching at the heat, loving it, too, as it helped to melt away some of the stress. He grabbed the knife and the pliers, pulling them out with a pair of tongs, and laid them down on a clean tea towel. He found a stack of other clean towels to have on hand. This was going to get messy. He wished there was some kind of sedative he could give his patient, but Cal had drunk it all.

  Nate knelt on the floor staring at the wound, knowing he was as likely to kill the man as save him. But to do nothing was to reduce the choices to one. So once again, he chose the opposite of nothing.

  Standing over Cal with his bright-yellow washing-up gloves on, holding his pliers and his filleting knife, he said, “This is going to hurt.” He wasn’t quite sure who he was saying it to.

  Nate entered the front room into bright sunlight. It didn’t look much like an operating room. Didn’t smell like one, either. Still smelled like bacon. He had eaten all of what Cal had cooked up, right after the surgery, without sitting down. Just stood there at the stove picking up the warm, greasy pieces out of the pan with freshly washed fingers and popping each strip into his mouth one after the other, his hands shaking. He’d eaten the cold eggs from the spatula, too tired to get himself a plate and utensils. Then he’d wiped h
is chin on his T-shirt and stumbled off to bed and instant oblivion.

  His patient wasn’t dead.

  His chest was rising and falling. His temperature seemed to have dropped. But his face was ghostly pale. Nate had rebandaged the wound after pouring all that was left of the rubbing alcohol on the site. He hadn’t had the energy to find Cal yet another pair of old pants, so he’d covered him with blankets. It was all he could do.

  There was a lot of blood. On the floor, the chair, the blankets — on pretty much every towel they owned. His tools lay on the floor, marked with drying gore. The bullet lay in a small enamel bowl. He wondered if it would be used as exhibit A in a future murder trial. He hadn’t put the bullet in Cal’s leg, but he couldn’t help thinking maybe he’d finished Shaker’s job for him.

  He looked again at Cal, his mouth closed, his face surly in repose but not, it seemed, in pain. And suddenly, unable to stop himself, Nate started to laugh. Couldn’t help it. He shook with it, covered his mouth with both hands to stop it bursting out. Finally, he leaned on the table, shaking his head as the surge of it dissipated.

  Spring break.

  “You need to know somethin’.” The voice in the room caught Nate off guard. “You need to know what happened.”

  Nate was tidying up, checking out the sunporch window every few minutes for the medevac copter, hardly bothering to look at his patient for fear he’d take a turn for the worse. Everything else had the last few days. But now here was the patient actually talking.

  “You hear me, Nathaniel?”

  Nate pulled a chair over from the table and sat by his side, quietly, slowly, as if the slightest noise or rapid movement might do the old man in.

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Listen good.”

  “Let me get you some water.”

  “No. Just sit. Listen.”

  So Nate listened, and all he heard for most of a minute was the man’s breathing, but he could see something in his face, even though Cal’s eyes were closed. He could see a coming together of something. Cal was preparing to tell him some terrible thing — he could feel it. And it disturbed him more than he could say, frightened him. It was hard to believe anything good could come out of Cal’s mouth. And that turned out to be true.

  “Did your dad tell you what happened? What really happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When them fool neighbors of yours come up here. The day they all died.”

  Nate shook his head, and not hearing him reply, Cal managed at last to open one of his eyes.

  “Burl didn’t tell you?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean I think I know what happened. I’m just not sure what you’re getting at.”

  Cal nodded. He swallowed and made a face. Nate got him a glass of water and Cal accepted it, drank a few drops as if it were the last thing in the world he really wanted.

  “Likely La Cloche told me about what happened,” he said. “’Bout the three of them arriving there. Him standing out on the dock trying to talk sense into . . . what was his name?”

  “Hoebeek. Art Hoebeek.”

  “Right. Art. I remember that now. Likely told ’em it was a damn fool thing to do, the weather could change anytime, he’d put their fridge up for them until —”

  “I know all that,” said Nate.

  Cal stopped. Took another sip of water from the glass, some of it dribbling down his chin.

  “Okay,” he said. “But I wonder if your dad saved you from your friend’s part in it.”

  “Dodge?”

  “Right. The boy you was pretending to be when I barged in on you over there.” Weakly, he cast his hand in the direction of the Hoebeeks’ camp.

  Nate shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “He didn’t tell me that.”

  “Figured as much,” said Cal. He looked down for a moment, and then his eyes refocused on Nate and it felt to Nate as if he were being strapped into his chair.

  “I won’t waste your time,” said Cal. “Ol’ Likely pretty well had Hoebeek turned around. He was seeing sense. Nodding instead of shaking his head. Which is when Dodge calls his dad over, takes his arm, and walks him down the dock a bit, away from La Cloche.” Cal’s face clouded over and Nate held his breath at what was coming. As if in just a moment he were going to hear Dodge’s voice, just as he’d been hearing it the last few days and in his nightmares for going on five months.

  “What?” he said.

  Cal maneuvered himself into a sitting position. “Likely’s an old geezer, so folks maybe think he don’t hear so good.” Cal shook his head. “That kid . . .” He shook his head again. “He says, ‘Dad, don’t be such a wuss.’ Something like that. Maybe it was ‘don’t be such a pussy.’”

  Cal turned away and then quickly glanced sidelong at Nate, with a look in his eye as if expecting Nate to argue with him — deny what he’d said. Nate just stared back at him, waiting, already knowing somehow what was coming.

  “So Art, he starts to say something to the boy and Dodge just cuts him off. Just wipes his hand through the air and the old man stops. ‘He’s a gimp, Dad.’ That’s what he said. ‘Are you going to let some old cripple tell you what you can and can’t do?’”

  Nate sat motionless, cold all over. Started shaking his head.

  “I’m only tellin’ you what Likely La Cloche told me,” said Cal. “Swear to God.”

  “No,” said Nate, almost under his breath. Then he said it again, more firmly. “No.” He stared daggers at Cal.

  Cal was a liar and a crook — a mean-spirited scoundrel. But even in his weakened state, he held Nate’s gaze, and Nate could see nothing in the old man’s eyes of malice or spitefulness. Right here, right now, he was telling Nate the unvarnished truth. And Nate knew it. He could hear it. Hear those words coming out of Dodge’s mouth.

  “That’s so . . . so . . .”

  “Stupid? Damn straight, it’s stupid,” said Cal, thumping the arm of the chair with his hand. “But I’ll tell you what was a whole lot stupider.” He leaned forward. “His old man agreeing with him,” he said. Then he leaned back again, exhausted and with a look in his eye Nate hadn’t seen before that looked an awful lot like sorrow. As if this is how it all happens, all the time. You know all the reasons not to and then someone convinces you to do it anyway.

  There was nothing to say. All Nate could think of, suddenly, was Trick, Dodge’s little brother. A worrywart, frightened of his own shadow, but smart and funny and full of imagination. Enough imagination to know what could go wrong. What did he say, or did he get to say anything? Nate didn’t dare ask. Couldn’t bear to know. Knew anyway.

  He slumped in his chair, looked down at his hands loosely clasped in his lap. He was too weak to hear more. Powerless. Behind it, a wave of hopeless anger was building, but then it subsided almost immediately. What was the point?

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked up and Cal was staring at him. “I figured maybe your dad wouldn’ta told you that.” He waited and Nate nodded. And Cal nodded back at him. “I figured you needed to know, is all.”

  And the two of them sat there then, with nothing left to say until the medevac copter came and took Calvin Crow away.

  The de Havilland Beaver seemed to tumble out of the sky, skimming down the hills behind the camp and landing on the lake off the north shore. The pontoons of summer had been replaced by skis. Once it had finished landing, it turned and made its way toward the camp. Nate stood on the seat of the Ski-Doo down on the beach, waving at the plane like a survivor at sea on a raft.

  The plane was deep-blue and white with gold stripes and the word police in caps along the fuselage. Seeing Nate, the plane angled toward him and approached until it was about as far out as the swim raft usually sat. Then the engines were turned off and the revs slowed down until you could make out the shape of the propeller. Nobody did anything for a minute or so. From the passenger-side door, an Ontario Provincial Police officer stepped out onto the strut and waved at Nate, altho
ugh his eyes were surveying the yard, the sunporch, the trees, and Nate realized that, to the cops, he could just as easily be a decoy as a kid who was utterly alone. No wonder they’d stopped so far out.

  Satisfied, the officer threw a pair of snowshoes down onto the snow, put them on. From the back of the plane, another figure emerged through the passenger-side door. It was Burl.

  A second officer stepped out and handed down a rifle to the first. Both of the officers approached Nate with their rifles aimed at the ground but ready for anything.

  Nate embraced his father and neither of them said a word. Then he looked at the first officer and said, “The dead guy’s in the shed.”

  There was enough room for both Nate and the corpse in the de Havilland. They’d brought along a body bag. Nate craned his neck to look behind him at its flat blackness, imagining himself inside there. It could have gone that way. He had a lot of explaining to do. Meanwhile, the cops had been to visit Cal in the hospital. He had even more explaining to do. And there was a guard at the door to make sure he didn’t get any ideas about leaving.

  Nate looked out the window as the plane lifted off, leaving the glittering, snow-covered lake behind. They’d be back again on the weekend, his dad said. Up Saturday, back down Sunday. Astrid would come as well; they’d make an outing of it: spring cleaning.

  “You cool with that?” his dad asked.

  Nate nodded. There was that old adage about getting back on a horse as soon as possible once you’d been thrown.

  “Maybe we should ask Paul to come,” said Burl. Nate paled, but his father only raised his eyebrow a little. Then he narrowed his eyes at Nate, and there was as much fear in his expression as there was reproach. And there was relief in it, too. This could have all gone so terribly wrong.

  There was no chance to talk further in the plane because of the engine noise, and Nate was left alone with his thoughts. All too clearly, he could see Dodge manipulating his foolish father. He could see him bullying Trick into submission. Taking over. And what would Nathaniel Crow have done at that moment? He would never know, and it would probably haunt him forever.