Somehow he and Ron got all the fighters out to the police cruiser. They fit four of them in the back seat. The father of one of the boys said he’d drive the last two over to the police station. Ron patted his shoulder and said, “See you there.”
I hoped this was not going to mean a lot of paperwork.
But of course it would.
Ron and Grady drove away, with the father’s truck following.
Chapter Six
Inside the community hall, the music hadn’t started up again yet. Outside, the night was quiet and cold. At least the snow had stopped.
This was the wilderness. Fighting and freezing, like in the olden days. The real country started just past Ron and Sharla’s place. The lines of parked cars were only temporary. Most days this would be an empty piece of road, going into nowhere.
Jade had gone back into the hall to check on her sons. They came to the door with her. Jade walked over to say goodbye to me and Sharla, the fringes on her jacket swaying.
Softly, so the boys wouldn’t hear, Jade said, “They’re pretty shocked, but that’s good. All those kids will be careful tonight. They say they’re going back to Donna’s place to have a party with her parents.” She turned to me. “Donna’s dad is the mayor. They’ll be safe.”
Sharla’s voice sounded loud in the cold, clear air. “Come on with us, Jade. We’ve got the hot tub going. And there’s lots to eat.”
For a moment Jade looked at her. “Okay,” she said, finally. “Twist my arm.”
She waved back to her boys, and we started across the road.
The clouds had parted, and stars were shaken like salt over the black sky. Jade stopped while Sharla lit a cigarette.
I went ahead of them. I was almost across the road.
There was no warning, only a shift in the air. A wind. And the ground shaking.
I thought a truck was coming, but no headlights cut through the night. Was it horses? Suddenly, huge shapes appeared, rushing down the road at me out of the darkness.
A buffalo ran right by me.
Another—oh God, another humped black shape pounding by, too close.
Another one coming—this one was going to run me down. My feet wouldn’t move, but I swung the car seat out of its way as far as my arm would reach.
The buffalo changed its path and raced past me. Giant shoulders, narrow pointed feet. A huge bulk, much bigger than I’d ever imagined. The warm depth of brown fur, and the horns. One bright eye, small in the huge head, stared at me. I could see it very clearly in that long half-second.
Daisy swung gently at the end of my left arm. The buffalo ran on, and the wind went with it.
Chapter Seven
Jade took the car seat, and Sharla grabbed me before I fell down. The buffalo could have— Daisy could have been killed.
“Fucking shit,” Sharla said.
My legs were shaking. I could still feel the pounding in the road.
“I guess the guys didn’t get them penned after all,” Sharla said. She told Jade about Ron and Grady going out to help the buffalo rancher.
“The fence could have been down somewhere else,” Jade said. “Buffalo are smart.”
“I wouldn’t raise those things for anything.” Sharla was right, they ought to be left wild. They always were wild—even behind a fence. Even when I was so scared, the buffalo had been amazing. To see one so close. I was shivering, but I was not cold.
Jade said, “Everything’s okay, Dixie. The baby’s okay, you did good. They’re gone.”
“Yeah. Now all you have to do is walk to the house,” Sharla said. “Look, it’s, like, twenty more steps.”
I thought they might have to carry me. But they wouldn’t be able to. I patted at Daisy’s blanket and pulled it down to see her face. She opened her eyes and laughed.
“Do it again!” Jade said. “She’d like another ride.”
Okay. Okay. We made it up the driveway.
“The thing is,” I said, “Grady would kill me if anything happened to Daisy. I mean, I’d kill myself. But he’d come along and dig me up and kill me again.”
“She’s fine, she’s fine,” Sharla said. “I’m fucking freezing, though, if you want to know. Come on, come inside.”
I stumbled up the steps between the other two and got inside. Now I really wanted a drink.
The house was hot. All the lights blazing. Sharla put the oven on and shoved in a couple more trays of M&M snacks.
Jade and I got our coats off slowly. Daisy sat and bubbled at me. She reached out her arms for me, wanting to nurse. I could feel the milk flooding down into my breasts because of being scared.
I picked Daisy up and went to the velour couch. I sat still, nursing her, stroking her silky hair. The buffalo’s thick, curling fur had looked so soft.
Jade said to Sharla, “Looks like you had a party on tonight.”
“Not really,” Sharla said. “We thought maybe the guys from Smoky Lake detachment would come down. But the snow...”
Sharla seemed a little embarrassed. Like she should have invited Jade, but she hadn’t.
They both came and sat on the long couch.
“Over at the dance—what was that fight about?” I asked.
“Who’s sleeping with who, of course,” Sharla said.
“They were really mad,” I said. I felt stupid for saying that. Of course they were mad.
“My kids said it’s the new teacher at the high school,” Jade said. “She wasn’t there, but they say she’s having some kind of thing with a student. One of the boys wanted to report her, get her fired. They got worked up. Donna was part of it all, too. She’s got a talent for setting people against each other. But she doesn’t mean any real harm.”
“That girl is a raging bitch,” Sharla said.
“Her dad is smart. He’s got Donna taking the rest of the kids over to their place. He’ll keep them occupied. No more fighting tonight. Just lots of talk.”
Sharla got up to make drinks. White Russians this time. Brown Kahlua in the bottom, cold milk on top. Lots of ice. They looked so sweet. My mother didn’t nurse me at all, and look, I’m alive. But the books all say you should breastfeed for a solid year. And nursing is easier than washing bottles.
“I do have some powdered baby formula in the diaper bag,” I said. “The nurse gave me some free samples and a plastic bottle. I carry the stuff around, just in case, but I’ve never tried it before.”
I looked at Jade. She would know, having two boys.
Jade nodded. “Finish nursing her now, then have a couple of drinks with us. We’ll make Daisy a bottle for the morning. You don’t have to stop nursing yet, just get her to take a bottle instead sometimes. So you’ve got the option.”
Sharla pulled another glass from the cupboard and shot ice into it from the fridge door. I’ll never be rich enough to have a fridge with ice in the door. She poured another drink and put them all on a tray with chips and dip.
“There!” Sharla said. Finally happy, now that I would have a drink. “It’ll be waiting for you.”
Daisy finished nursing. I changed her diaper and put her in a fresh undershirt. She was happy, too. Fresh and clean and full of milk, she wanted to get down onto the carpet. Jade took her hands and let her stand up and stagger around for a while.
“Okay, ladies,” Sharla said. “That hot tub is not going to soak itself.”
I took the car seat and Jade brought Daisy. We all went back into the misty sunroom. Sharla put on music and made the jets in the tub whirl the water into froth.
This time I didn’t think about it. I stripped off Sharla’s shirt and the jeans she’d given me and got into the tub in my underpants and t-shirt.
I took Daisy back from Jade and slid her diaper off. The water was a bit too hot for her, but she could sit on the island of my knee. She loved it.
The other two women stripped down, too. Sharla had no bodysuit this time, and neither did Jade. They just got out of their clothes without thinking about it. Like wo
men in the gym sauna, easy about being naked. I wished I could do that.
They were both pretty in their skin. Sharla pink and gold, thin but soft. She was right to make herself a blonde. It suited her. Jade’s dark hair fell over her shoulders and back. She looked like a police woman, like a runner. Strong and lean.
RCMP women, wives and female members, seem to come in two kinds. Tin, strong-willed, and pretty, like these two. Or kind and dumpy, like me.
But Jade was kind, too.
And maybe it’s just that all women come in those two types. Hot tub and non–hot tub.
Drinking the White Russian while sitting in the hot water made the treat even colder and sweeter. I stretched it out for as long as I could.
Chapter Eight
It was New Year’s Eve, after all. Sharla and Jade talked through what had happened over the last year. I talked a little, too. Where we’d been (me nowhere; both of the others to Vegas). Who had died or got married. The bad and good things.
With a sudden shout, Sharla jumped out of the tub. “Shit, I did it again!”
She grabbed a short terry robe and ran to the kitchen. Whatever she had in the oven smelled good.
“Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone!” she yelled back.
That left us with nothing to talk about.
After a minute I said, “Ron told us your husband went to Vegas for some golf.”
Jade laughed. “We won a trip in the hospital lottery.”
“That was lucky,” I said.
She said, “Nah. Who wants heat and sun anyway, when you can have weather like this?”
I shuddered.
“I’m from up north,” Jade said. “I don’t mind the cold. I’d like to go home to Yellowknife. But it costs too much.”
“Do you golf, too?” I asked her.
She laughed again. “No! Tim doesn’t either. Golf is just an excuse.”
“What’s he gone for, then?”
“He’s leaving me.”
Jade moved in the water. She swept her hair back and leaned her head on one hand. Water dripped from her hand and face.
She corrected herself. “He’s thinking about it, about leaving.”
I thought she might be crying, but her voice was calm.
I said I was sorry. Looking at her, I couldn’t imagine her being left. She was so beautiful. How could he find somebody nicer?
“The boys are old enough now. They’d be okay. It’s not like we haven’t thought about this before. I used to think about it all the time, when the kids were little. About how I’d leave him. What I’d do. I was going to get a bachelor apartment in Edmonton. I used to look at the apartments for rent section in the newspaper.”
I wanted to tell her I did that, too. But it seemed disloyal to Grady, to tell someone that I thought about leaving him. Thought about it pretty much every day.
“What—” I broke off. None of my business.
“What what?” Jade flicked water at me.
“What happened, I was going to ask. That your husband’s going to leave you.”
“I told him I’m in love with somebody else. I have been for a while.”
Sharla shouted from the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what she wanted.
“The stupid thing is, I’m not even doing anything about it,” Jade said.
I didn’t say anything.
Jade’s hands clenched and unclenched under the water. She looked at the fans her fingers made. “He’s married.”
You are, too, I thought.
“He doesn’t know,” Jade said. “I mean, the guy. I haven’t told him. It’s just hard.”
She was staring at me, trying to tell me something in code.
I thought, it’s Grady. She’s trying to let me know.
But that was dumb. Grady had never even met Jade, as far as I knew.
But he might have, when he was on a course or something. Or at the hockey tournament. I couldn’t go last year because I was pregnant and sick. I was pretty pissed off that Grady went, in fact. He got his mom to come and help me out while he was gone.
Sharla came back with a tray, carrying the police radio by its antenna. The radio was crackling again.
I could hear Ron. He was saying, “We’ll be 10-77, you can reach us here.”
In the radio code, 10-77 is at home.
Just as I figured that out, Ron put his head around the sunroom door. He grinned at us and waved. He said 10-4 into the small radio on his shoulder and clicked it off.
“Hey, ladies!” Ron said. “Grady, we picked the right time to come home! It’s a strip show!”
Grady stuck his head around the door, like a cop checking the scene before entering. He can’t help it. In a restaurant he always has to sit with his back against the wall.
“This is Jade, Tim Lamont’s better half,” Ron was telling Grady. “Really great you could make it, Jade—I thought you were stuck helping with the teen party?”
Sharla talked over him. “We found her at the hall. Did you guys even see us? I was right there on the dance floor when that all started.”
Sharla was trying to cover up the mean thing she’d done, but it was too plain. She must have told Ron that Jade couldn’t come. But really, she had never invited Jade.
Jade looked at Ron, then at Sharla. “I—no, it turns out. They went to Donna’s, so they didn’t need me.”
Ron didn’t seem to notice that Sharla had been mean. Or that Jade had figured out the truth and was playing along, being kind. Guys miss things. They expect everyone to be as straightforward as they are.
Grady had seen the truth, though. He didn’t like Ron being fooled.
He passed Sharla and came to say hi to Jade.
“I know Tim from a course,” he said.
Jade looked up—she had been staring down into the water.
“He taught the new member course when Ron and I were on it a couple of years ago. Good guy.”
“Yeah,” Jade said. “He likes teaching. Means a few weeks away from here.”
“He’s an excellent teacher,” Grady said. He undid his parka. “Hot in here!”
Sharla hurried through. Her robe was coming open, showing the top of her pink chest.
“Now you can finally relax,” she told Grady. She pressed a White Russian into his hand.
He took the glass but didn’t drink.
Ron threw his coat on a chair. He undid his collar.
“Wish I could jump in there with you,” he said to Jade. “Grady, you should peel off. Hey, Sharla, no drink for me?”
Sharla gave him a dirty look. She went back to the kitchen.
“What took you guys so long?” she called back.
“Had to wait for a guard. Those boys needed some Band-Aids, too,” Ron said. He smiled at Jade. “Can’t let their moms see them like that. Good thing your boys weren’t in on the fight. I’d hate to have to deal with their mom later. I hear she’s a firecracker.”
Jade laughed, her face bright and happy. “They only fight with each other. That’s enough blood for me.”
Daisy began to kick her legs and complain, reaching with her arms. She wanted to go to Grady. He heard her and came over. He lifted her up with his big hands and settled her in the crook of his arm. He didn’t seem to mind the water getting on his shirt.
“Who’s the baby?” he asked her. “Who’s the baby girl?” Sap. Daisy loved it, though.
“We did meet,” Jade said to Grady.
She smiled at him. Her teeth were as nice as Sharla’s. But she was way better looking, I thought.
And way more Grady’s type.
“We met at Moxie’s, in Edmonton,” Jade told him. “During the course. I went in a few times to have dinner with Tim. I remember you. And Ron.”
Grady laughed. “I was in a daze, trying to remember what I’d been taught. Hoping not to screw up in front of Tim, probably.”
Hearing about Grady being out with other people always makes me jealous. It’s just because I hardly
ever get to go.
But if I met him, I’d be in love with him. I mean, when I did meet him, I was. I am. I should not have had that drink, I thought. It’s making me stupid.
“Who did your hair?” Grady asked me. “You look like Princess Buttercup at the wedding.”
“Yeah, Robin Wright, The Princess Bride!” Sharla said. She had brought Ron’s drink in from the kitchen. “She was my idol. I looked like her, back then.”
She put down a platter of egg rolls and slid out of her robe and into the water like a bare pink fish. Sharla still looked like a princess, a lot more than I did, anyway.
“Sharla did my hair,” I said. “She did a good job, eh?”
Grady looked at me over Daisy’s head. He crossed his eyes.
“Oh, yeahhh,” he said, in a voice that meant, What the hell has she done to you? Where’s my real wife?
I laughed.
I stopped worrying. Jade was not in love with Grady. He wouldn’t do that, let someone be in love with him.
Ron picked up his drink and sat on the edge of the hot tub between Jade and Sharla.
“So,” he said. “When do I dare get out of this uniform and make you women happy?”
The radio jumped on the tray.
“Jinx,” Grady said.
“We forgot to tell you, the buffalo got out again,” I told him. We should have phoned Control. It hadn’t occurred to me then. I didn’t say anything about nearly getting mowed down.
Ron was already up and in his coat.
He moved fast, talking to the control room. An MVA—motor vehicle accident.
Grady gave me Daisy and his untouched drink, grabbed his coat, and went out the door with Ron. Daisy looked after him, lost and lonely.
“It’s okay, baby,” I told her. “He’ll be back.”
Ron turned and gave us a quick wave. I looked over at Sharla—she didn’t look up from her egg roll.
But Jade was watching him go. Her face had the same look as Daisy’s. Like she’d been left by her beloved.
Oh shit, I thought—and thank goodness, tangled up in the same thought. It’s Ron.
Chapter Nine
New Year's Eve Page 3