by Warren Court
A woman in a stained white t-shirt and tight faded blue jeans answered the door. She held an infant in her arms.
“Yup,” she said.
“I’d like to speak to your husband. He helped me out I think the other day. Just wanted to thank him properly.” A lie. Armour had thanked the farmers more than enough.
“Stan.” The woman screamed and the baby started to cry. “Hush,” she told it.
She didn’t offer to let Armour into her house. Just let the screen door slam closed and went into the living room. Stan came to the door with a meat filled sandwich in one hand and a big bottle of Erdinger beer in the other. He stared at Armour for a second then recognized him. He set the bottle down on a small table near the door and pushed the screen door open. Armour backed up.
Armour said. “Stan, right? Remember me? You helped me out there the other day.”
“Yes.” He smiled and Armour saw chunks of pastrami hanging from his teeth.
“Remember my car?” Armour pointed back at his Model T in the driveway.
“Oh right. Yeah, the funny dressed feller who ran off the road. How you feeling?”
“Much better.”
“You wanna beer?”
“Sure.”
“Linda, get two more beers.”
He showed Armour to a picnic table. There was more crying inside and Linda came out, looking none too happy, with two unopened bottles, plunked them down and went back inside.
Stan finished his sandwich got up and grabbed one of the bottles of Erdinger and twisted it. Armour tried to do likewise with his but the cap wouldn’t budge. It just cut into his skin. Stan laughed and grabbed it out of his hand, another twist and he gave it back to him. They clinked bottles.
“Stan. Were you around here in the nineties? When the Truscott girl was found dead on the Scotch Line road?”
“Uh huh. My dad took me out to see it. I was a teenager. Cops everywhere.”
“They come and talk to you?”
“Oh yeah. Had the old man down to the station, answering questions.”
“Your father?”
“Uh huh.”
“And where is your father now?”
“Cemetery. Died two years ago. I got the farm then. My boy and I work it.”
“Right, that was your son with you that helped me out of the ditch. Mark?”
“Uh huh.”
“So, getting back to the Truscott girl. Do you remember your father saying anything about it?”
“Just that it was a sad thing. Poor girl, too young to go like that.”
“I see. Anything about any suspects?”
“Nope.”
“Was your dad suspected?”
“Come again.”
“I mean, did the police think your dad had seen anything suspicious. They often question everyone around if they saw anything.”
Stan chugged the remainder of the beer and chucked it without looking into a blue bin next to the front door. “No,” he said.
“I don’t mean any offense.”
“Course not. You some sort of cop? You don’t look like no cop.”
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of it. Anything else you remember from that day?”
“I was in school then I had football practice afterwards. I must have driven right by her when I came home but it was dark. Next day the search parties showed up and started walking through our fields and we pitched in. Then someone started hollerin’ that they found her way down that way.”
Stan pointed west in the direction of the bridge. Not at the part of the road where Armour had passed out.
Armour thanked him for the beer and left. No closer to the truth.
7
Armour drove back and forth several times on the Scotch Line road where he had passed out. He even drove a kilometre down past that point and the woman’s farm house. He made sure to keep in the center of the road, just in case he blacked out again. Nothing, not even an inkling that a spell might come on. He should have known better. As long as he’d been having these episodes he had never been able to artificially create one. They just happened.
He checked his watch and saw it was getting late in the afternoon. Time to head back home. He did one last three-point turn to head back to Hamilton when he saw the woman at the side of her house. She must have just come out as he hadn’t seen her only moments before. This time she was trying to chop wood with a huge axe. She was choked up on the handle and he could see she was having a hard time of it.
She paused when Armour stopped in front of her house. He got out and came onto her property. She raised a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes form the sun but kept the axe in the other hand.
“Do you need some help with that?” he said.
She said nothing.
“It’s just that the way you’re doing that you could get hurt.”
“I’ve been chopping wood on my own since I was ten.” The woman told him, her soft voice cutting through the stiff country breeze.
“Really? I’m a city boy. I never get much of a chance. It’s a very fulfilling exercise. Please.” He extended his hand. She had a log on a stump ready to go and she handed over the axe and stepped back. Still cautious. She was wearing a soft white country dress, very simple. Her hair was tied up with a checkered scarf.
Armour put the axe between his legs and spit in his hands. “I seen them do this in the movies,” he said.
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
“No chance, really.” Armour hefted the axe high above his head and in one committed motion he brought the blade down smooth and strong and split the log in two sending each half flying off the stump.
“Bingo!” he said. “That was fun. How many more you got?” Armour had fibbed, the fireplace in his living room was the main source of heat in the winter months. He was well versed in chopping wood.
She put another one on the stump and stepped back. Another resounding chop and two more pieces for the fire. Armour worked up quite a sweat, splitting about a dozen and a half logs. The woman told him that was enough, she already had half a cord cut. They piled the work he’d done on top of it.
“My name’s Armour.” He extended his hand.
“I’m Cathy.” She reluctantly shook it. Despite chopping wood since she was ten her hand was as soft as her voice. “Can I offer you something cold to drink?”
“Sure, that would be great.”
Cathy walked to the side door of her house. Armour took the axe and swung it down and submerged the blade in the stump. It gave Cathy a little jump then she smiled and continued on inside before coming back out with a glass of water.
“Do you live around here?”
“No,” Armour said. “Hamilton.”
“Oh, bit of a drive.”
“Yeah out for a drive in the country.” Armour thumbed back at his ford.
“My brother had a car like that.”
“Really?”
“He wrapped it around a telephone pole couple of years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He’s okay, just can’t talk right sometimes. Car was sold for scrap.”
“That’s a shame,” Armour said.
Cathy shrugged. He finished the water and looked around her property.
“Why were you driving back and forth out there?” Cathy said.
“I’m investigating something,” Armour told her. No way he was going to tell her about his spells. “Do you remember the young girl that was murdered? They found her on that road.”
Cathy shook her head.
“Anyways, I’m looking in to it,” Armour said. He looked down at the empty glass then raised his head and looked around the property.
“You have a farm but no barn,” Armour said.
“Barn burned down. My husband. He...”
Armour felt his face grow hot. Why hadn’t he considered that this woman was married? She was very beautiful in a simple way. Not a trace of make up on her and her hair windbl
own and her brow sweaty as his. But she was beautiful, something enticing about her eyes. They drew Armour in and seemed to suck the power of speech from his throat.
“My husband worked at the plant down the road,” she finally said. “But it closed down. Bad times, you know.”
Armour nodded and wondered what plant. Nanticoke, through which the Scotch Line road ran, had at one time been a hub of heavy industry, even being incorporated into a city. Now it was just considered a hamlet. The coal fired hydro-electric plant had been shut down and the smoke stacks imploded. Maybe she meant that. Dozens of windmills had taken its place.
There was still a major steel mill in the area belonging to US Steel. Armour had seen a billboard for it that said We’re Hiring. He was about to mention that to her, for her husband’s sake then thought better of it.
Cathy looked down at the ground and then up out at the overgrown field. There was a vegetable garden staked in with chicken wire, a couple of small outbuildings and a row of fine looking rose bushes and other flowers.
“You have quite the green thumb,” Armour said admiring the flowers.
“Thanks.”
Not being much of a conversationalist he handed her back the glass and made to leave. Armour looked over his shoulder as he drove away. Cathy was tugging at the axe to get it out of the stump. That was stupid – he shouldn’t have left it like that. He was about to stop and turn around, any excuse to return to her, when he saw her wrest it free. She was a strong woman, had to be out here all alone. Armour sensed her husband wasn’t around much. There was no car, neither time he had been at her house. There were no tire tracks on the dirt driveway.
Armour was back at his house before the sun went down. He ate sparingly, his mind focused on the Scotch Line road, and a certain attractive farmer’s wife who lived there.
“No,” he said out loud. “She’s married. Don’t bother with it, Armour.”
He walked outside onto his porch in the fading fall light, a South Side Gin Fizz in his hand. He remembered what Melanie had said about the boy, now a man, coming home from prison. That photograph of him in his mother’s arms. He finished his drink, knowing what his next steps were.
8
Melanie answered before the call went to voicemail.
“Armour, what a surprise.”
“I catch you at a bad time?” Armour said. Cars whizzed by and a truck blew its air horn.
“Where are you?” Melanie asked.
“Truck stop, highway six just outside of Nanticoke.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah I’m fine. It’s just I was out this way again. Near the Scotch Line road and I just thought, well maybe I’d check on the Macintyre boy, the man who was released and cleared of the murder. Just to try and wrap things up.”
“Did you have a spell?”
“No, try as I might.”
“What do you mean?”
“I drove back and forth on the road, tried to bring one on. No such luck.”
“You and I know it wouldn’t be as easy as that, Armour. So how can I help?”
“The man’s parents, the Macintyres… if they’re still alive, maybe you could find me the address on that thingamajig.”
“My iPad? Sure Armour. I would be more than happy to harness the powers of the internet to help your investigation.”
“I’d hardly call it that.”
“Hold on.”
Armour saw two men standing with their hands on their hips admiring his Model T. Armour had wiped her down good the night before and it did look resplendent in the sun. The newly mended and painted front bumper looked great.
Melanie came back on the line. “Okay I went to 411.com. Typed in their names, and one address came up.” She read it off to Armour who held the phone between his cheek and his shoulder and wrote it down in his notebook. “How will you find it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. How about a map? Or maybe I’ll resort to old fashioned just plain asking people.”
“Well good luck with that. Call me back if you like. I’m working a double shift at the library so call me there.”
“Okay I will.”
“And, Armour.”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful. You’re poking your nose into some family business that is probably extremely painful for these folks. Go easy.”
“Roger wilco,” Armour said and hung up.
Despite Melanie’s skepticism, Armour made out just fine. He went back into the truck stop he was at and purchased a $13.99 modern map book of the area and found the street. It was in a residential area of Port Dover, the fishing and beach resort community on Lake Erie. Armour had a special fondness for Port Dover, as a teenager he spent many a summer weekend driving to and from Dover and the surrounding camp grounds like Turkey Point where he’d just spent a night.
Armour came down the hill into the town and over the bridge that spanned the river that spread out into the harbour. He knew the centre of town well but had never ventured off main street and had to pull in to the Shell gas station near the pier. The attendant asked him if he had GPS and, when he said he didn’t, forced the kid to show him which way to turn.
The map of Port Dover showed quite a large residential area, more than Armour could have imagined. A sign on the way into town pegged the current population at over 6000. But still the core part of it had not changed much. There was the gas station with a Tim Hortons next to it; a main street with coffee shops and boutiques, the odd barber or hair styling place. There seemed to be a preponderance of shops geared towards the motorcycle set, photos of shapely women decked out in full leather garments.
He left his car at the gas station and walked down to the pier and the beach. The crescent-shaped beach was even smaller than he remembered. Lake Erie was calm and barely licking the shore. Callaghan’s beach restaurant was still there – he remembered that from his youth. One afternoon in July in particular with some friends, sitting on the patio and getting served beer when he was underage. Thinking this is the life. He walked past the manicured front lawn of the Erie Beach motel and thought of Bess. Then he carried on out to the pier with its light house at the end and wooden benches dedicated to prominent people from Port Dover and fishing crews or individual captains who had worked and perhaps died plying their trade. He looked back at the shore and the vacant spot to the west of Callaghan’s where the Moon Glow dance hall had been. He’d never seen it himself, it had burnt down decades before he started coming out here. But there were a nice set of photographs of the Moon Glow in Callaghan’s and there was something else. He felt a special connection to that place, that somehow, he had been there. He could see it in his mind, the dancing, the food, the women in elegant gowns and the romance.
Before getting back in his car and carrying on to the Macintyres’ house he stopped by the Arbor Dog, the famous hot dog stand, just as you came into town. It was closed down, too late in the season for hot dogs. A few yellow jackets buzzed around looking for last remnants of an Orange Glow syrupy drink that the Arbor served. No such luck.
After his trip down memory lane, Armour found the address Melanie had given him and pulled over. He parked three houses up from the Macintyres’ and let his car idle. He checked his fuel, he was down half a tank. He would have to gas up before leaving town.
The street was quiet, only four or five houses on it and no cars in the driveways, the lawns neatly kept. Armour turned his car off, got out and approached the house. The garage door was open and the rear of a maroon coloured sedan poked out.
As he walked up the driveway he heard some scraping sounds coming from deeper in the garage and then saw the silhouetted head of a man. He waited half up the driveway for the man to turn and see him, then he waved.
“Hello there,” Armour said.
There was a final bang and the man emerged. He was tall, over six feet and he did not look happy. He looked like the best part of his life had been taken and smashed. Armour instantly recognized the face of Kevin
Macintyre, the man who had been imprisoned for the murder of the Truscott girl. But this couldn’t be him, this man was in his eighties. It was his father.
“No solicitation please, no flyers.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Whatever it is, I’m not buying.”
“I’m not selling. See?” Armour held out his empty hands. “No order book, no sales case.”
“Oh sorry,” The man said in typical Canadian fashion. Always apologizing. “How can I help you?”
“I’m doing a bit of research on a book I’m writing.” Armour knew of no other way to broach the subject and he might write a book – lord knows he could use the money.
Armour saw anger come over the man’s face and then exasperation, or was it the other way around.
“Get off my property,” the man said.
“You don’t know why I’m here.”
“Of course, I do. Every goddamn journalist and writer from Toronto to Detroit has come by here. You people are all the same.”
The man was coming at Armour now, spittle flying from his lips and his face becoming all red and puffy. Armour didn’t know what to do, he wasn’t going to knock an eighty-year-old man on his ass. This was what Melanie meant about being careful. He dismissed it at the time but she sure was right on this one. He took two steps back and put up his hands. Palms out and facing the man.
“It’s not what you think, I’m not a journalist. Least I’m not any more. It’s just–”
“Just?” the man screamed. “Just what? Hasn’t my son suffered enough?”
The front door opened but the senior Macintyre was oblivious to it. He had backed Armour almost completely off the driveway now.
“Dale, what are you doing?” It was a woman.
“Go on, get the fuck out of here.” The man raised his fist to clock Armour.
The woman came rushing down the driveway and grabbed Dale’s arm. It must be his wife.
“Dale don’t, you’ll get arrested again, come on.”