by John Moss
“‘April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of —’”
“Discontent. How through the winter of our discontent do lilacs breed?”
“Doesn’t scan,” he declared, counting off the iambs against his leg. “Actually, it does.”
They lapsed into silence again, pleased with themselves. She nurtured bittersweet recollections of the games she used to play with Danny Webster; he tried to recall the name of his girlfriend in Siena. In another life, they agreed, they would be students of literature. Each remembered more from English classes in high school than anything else on the curriculum.
When they came to an unheralded crossroads hamlet, they found a large pond extending from one quadrant, a dilapidated wooden mill in another, an impoverished-looking general store in another, with a nondescript service station to the side, and in the fourth, an unpainted frame house beside a huge old barn with a corrugated steel roof in bad repair. The barn loomed over the water, completing the circle.
Strategically erected against the near side of the mill was a crimson sign inscribed with gold lettering: DETZLER’S LANDING GRIST MILL, 1820–1988. Below, on a separate line, was the word MUSEUM. To the side was a laboriously carved, gold-enhanced rampant gryphon. In a lower corner: R. OXLEY, PROP. 1997. An attachment fixed to the bottom of the sign gave the times of business: THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, 8:30 TO 4:30, MAY 24 TO OCTOBER 1. ONLY.
“Government grant,” said Morgan. “It doesn’t look safe.”
“They just got enough for the signage,” she quipped.
“Want to go in?”
“With great care.”
“It’s supposed to be open. We’d better check it out to justify parking here.”
She had pulled into the three-space parking area in front of an apparently superfluous picket fence. “We could park in the middle of the intersection,” she said. “No one would notice. Have you ever seen such a droopy-looking place?”
“Droopy?”
“Droopy. There’s not even a stop sign.”
“Technically, Miranda, it isn’t a four-way intersection. The road between the barn and the mill over the dammedup part is more like a driveway.”
“There’s a house in behind. Must be the original farmhouse.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a village girl, Morgan. You wouldn’t build a house behind a mill like that, but you might build a mill in front of the house. Anyway, look at the walls. Those casements are a foot and a half deep. I’ll bet it’s log under the clapboard, a settler’s cabin from the first land grants.”
“The Indians were here thousands of years before you guys.”
“You guys?”
“I’m from the city. Why would anyone settle here, anyway?”
“Rock and swamp and scrub bush,” she said.
“Land was probably given to demobilized cannon fodder after the War of 1812. Authorities wanted it settled so roads could be forced through to connect the better land all around.”
“We burned down Washington.”
“What?”
“In 1813 we burned down James Madison’s White House,” Morgan said.
“The Brits did.”
“Dolley Madison had the table set for forty guests. The invading British troops sat down and had dinner, the officers, I imagine, then burned the place to the ground.”
“Very British.”
“We were the Brits.”
“No, the Brits were us. There’s a difference.”
“We were British.”
“I’m Irish. Quin, remember?”
“Anglican, with one n.”
They walked along the dirt lane that crossed the earthen dam between the mill and the pond until it petered out in front of the old house. Turning back, they stopped on the dam. Miranda moved from the reinforced concrete on the pond side to the mill side and looked down into a deep flume that was empty of water except for leakage trickling through a sluiceway of green boulders at the bottom.
“A perfect place for trolls,” said Miranda.
“Trolls? I haven’t seen trolls since I was a kid.”
“Where?”
“In the Toronto ravines. Under the bridges around Spadina. Under the Bloor Street Viaduct. You know, troll places.”
“I had them under my bed. You were allowed to play in ravines?”
“Yeah, that’s before anyone knew they were dangerous. It was where city kids played if you wanted trees and mud.”
“There were trolls living under my bed for one whole winter,” she said.
“Then I convinced them to move under my sister’s bed, and she was too dumb to notice.”
“Same room?”
“No, we had separate rooms. I put a whole wheat peanut butter sandwich under her bed to lure them away. They liked her dust bunnies better than mine and never came back, even after she found the sandwich and had a conniption because it was mouldy green. Trolls like green sandwiches, but she threw it out.”
“Maybe they moved here,” said Morgan, leaning over to peer into the flume, fascinated by the dark reflections of slime-coated walls, reinforcing rods of rusty iron running criss-cross, draped with dried detritus, fractured reflections of a few rotting boards that might have been the remains of a walkway, and by his own diminutive image in water-shard fragments looking eerily like a creature from another world.
“Where’s Billy Goat Gruff when you need him?” Miranda had forgotten about “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” the Norwegian fairy tale about a trio of goats who overcome a troll. They were an important part of her story, but what she remembered vividly was the presence of trolls under her bed. They had been almost her friends, and sometimes she missed them after they moved in with her sister.
“The secret is unbelief,” she said.
“What secret?” asked Morgan, still trying to comprehend the figure in the depths of the flume that moved when he moved but didn’t resemble him in the crackling water.
“The secret to trolls. If you say ‘Do I believe in trolls?’ I’d have to say no. If you say ‘Do you not believe in trolls?’ I’d have to say no.”
“You have a theory of trolls.”
“It isn’t about believing at all. It’s about knowing. If you know they’re there, then you can enjoy them, or frighten yourself with them. We lose that — the ability to know without understanding. That’s when childhood ends.”
“I see a troll down there,” said Morgan. “Come and look. I’ll bet there are two if we look carefully enough.” He put his arm around her to steady them both so she could lean past and peer into the shimmering darkness.
“Can I help you?” asked a troll.
They both flinched in amazement, nearly tumbling into the flume.
“Can I help you?” asked the voice again through a vertical chink in the side of the mill. “Just a minute. I’ll come around. The mill’s closed for repairs.”
A middle-aged man appeared through a makeshift door. He had a full beard and wore floppy overalls with no shirt, despite early autumn in the air. The stranger wore rubber boots folded over at the tops the way boys once did before running shoes became the universal footwear of childhood. He welcomed his visitors, speaking in a rustic twang that Miranda recognized as pure affectation. The man flaunted a slight Southern drawl as if he had learned to be country by watching reruns of Petticoat Junction.
Morgan noticed his teeth. They were crooked but healthy, despite the ragtag beard and stringy hair. He was probably English. Miranda and Morgan both marked the lack of underwear. When the man stood close, they could see down along his hips where the denim gaped away from his body. They kept backing away from him as they talked.
“You must be R. Oxley, Prop.,” said Miranda.
He acknowledged he was and in his function as curator seemed not at all interested in their identities. “I don’t know anyone called Bray,” he said responding to their question. I’ve researched this town to the roots. There’s no Brays, far as I know.”
Morgan could always tell when someone distorted grammar intentionally. He saw it sometimes with cops, and men in hardware stores. There ain’t no Brays would be trying too hard. There’s no Brays was just about right
“You could try asking around,” Oxley said, “but I’ve read everything there is to read ’bout Detzler’s Landing. And the township, this part of the county.
“There must be a lot,” said Miranda equivocally. Then, with appropriate deference, she asked, “Do you know why it’s called Landing?”
“Used t’be river traffic. You can see where the banks of the river were higher, couple of centuries ago, before the invaders moved in. It was Huron country, but they couldn’t farm it. It was just for travelling through. They were wiped out, and Algonquins took over, Ojibwa hunters. It was better for hunting. They were followed by Iroquois stragglers up from the Finger Lakes who didn’t like life on the reserves. Then Frenchmen came through even before that and established a post here, just a storage shed really. But it was the new settlers who called it Detzler’s Landing. Named it after the first mill owner, who changed the flow of the river. A German who fought with Isaac Brock and Tecumseh. He was wounded, an officer on half-pay, the lord here of his own little realm.”
“You rebuilding the mill?” Morgan asked.
“Restoring. It’s kinda tough. There’s parts from every era. It’s like archaeology in reverse — trying to work your way through from the past to the present.”
“What a lovely project,” said Miranda, quite moved by the man’s sincerity.
“I don’t know about lovely. But it’s fun. Daunting, but fun.”
“Daunting,” said Morgan. “Where are you from?”
“Right here,” said Oxley.
“Sometimes I sleep in the mill. I’ve got a cot. I keep out the vandals that way. They don’t know when I’m here and when I’m not, not when I park out back.”
“You have much trouble?”
“Village kids. You know, nothing better to do. They’re not so bad. They’re used to me now — getting protective, some of them. When it was a mill, they would never have bothered the place. Then it was empty and they figured it was theirs. Now I’m filling it with history, and I got it just about workin’ again. They respect that.”
“How many?” Morgan asked. “You make it sound like hordes.”
“Heathens at the gates? You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of houses and abandoned farms with people living on them.”
“Squatters?”
“Old families mostly. They let the farms run down generations ago and they live on in the houses. It’s a small pocket of poverty here, surrounded by some of the richest farmland in the country. You’ll find more like this over in eastern Ontario, along the edge of the Canadian Shield.”
Someone from around Detzler’s Landing wouldn’t have said Shield, Morgan thought.
“Any fish in there?” Miranda asked, nodding toward the still waters of the pond.
“Carp. Some say walleyes and pike. I’ve only seen carp. Sometimes one’ll get caught in the grid when I’m running the water. D’y’know, this mill powers a turbine combine from water? There’s a steam drive, as well. I’ll have it working by spring. Are you two cops?”
“Why do you ask?” questioned Miranda.
“Just wondered.”
“Did you buy this place from Gryphon Mills?”
“Yeah, Robert Griffin. I never actually met the gentleman. Read where he’s dead. Are you here about that?”
“Did you ever meet someone called Eleanor Drummond?” Miranda asked.
“She sold me the place. She handled the paperwork. Is she dead, too?” He observed them warily as if trying to decide whether they somehow held him responsible. Deciding that wasn’t the case, he relaxed.
“She was a stunning woman — too bad.” They hadn’t confirmed her death, but he knew.
“A very high-class lady.” His drawl had fallen away, and the abbreviated sibilance of what Morgan recognized as residual Cockney pulled his vowels askew.
“Very high class. You don’t find many like her. Sorry, Constable …”
“No offence taken,” said Miranda. “It’s detective.”
“Sorry again, Detective. It’s just that Miss Drummond wasn’t someone you’d expect to see around here. She wasn’t murdered, was she? I suppose she was. You don’t die in your prime except from murder or suicide or accidents or disease, I suppose …” He seemed to be reaching for more possibilities to reinforce his litany of premature death.
“She came out to Detzler’s Landing then?” asked Miranda, trying not to look down the gaping side of his overalls.
“A couple of times. To show me around. To bring out the papers.”
“Did she know anyone in the village?”
“Lord, no! She walked across the dam once, just over to the edge of the old lady’s property. For a minute I thought she was about to pay her a visit. You know how someone stands when they’re stuck between coming and going? Then she turned back, and so far as I know, she never touched ground in the village except on this property.”
“She made quite an impression,” said Miranda.
“Yes, she did.”
“Did she ever return?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you think the old woman in the house might answer some questions?”
“She doesn’t say much. Taciturn, she is.” He savoured the word. “Bit of a recluse. Has her groceries delivered. We got into a fence dispute a couple of years ago. Had to get the fence viewer in. Kids leave her alone on Halloween. I don’t quite understand how she’s immune, but she is. She’s long past her allotted four score and ten.”
“Three score,” Miranda said.
“She’s old,” said Oxley.
“Will you buy her property when she dies?” asked Morgan.
“I dunno. It belongs to the Griffin estate. If they’ll sell …”
Miranda exchanged glances with Morgan. “We’ll see,” she said.
“Yeah,” said R. Oxley, hitching up his overalls and turning away. “Meanwhile, back to work. Come tour the mill sometime.”
Miranda and Morgan walked up the slight incline toward the house. It was on a virtual island since the main flow of the river ran around behind it and over another dam where it fell across a tumble of rocks and converged with the channelled sluice water that flowed out from under the mill.
“I paid for it myself, you know,” said Miranda. “The coat … with my own money.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I didn’t want you to think it was on Griffin’s account. I am a woman of means, somewhat modest perhaps, but I can pay my own way.”
“I have not the slightest doubt.”
They ambled across the grass to the house and stepped up onto the porch.
“It seems deserted,” said Morgan, looking at the faded crewelwork hanging lank beyond small panes of glass in the door. They moved to the edge of the porch and gazed beyond the pond to where the river emerged from a channel in the marsh. “Carp and koi,” he said, not feeling the need to explain the equation. “Imagine this river teeming with koi.”
“They used to shovel them out in the spring for fertilizer.”
“Carp?”
“Out of the streams when they were swimming to spawn.” Miranda touched his arm. “Do you really think my coat’s too big? It was the only one I tried on.”
“I like it.”
“Good. I like it, too.”
They turned back to the door that strangely projected an emptiness inside. As they were about to knock, it swung open.
“I’ve been observing you,” said an elderly woman, not at all what they expected. She was slender, small, bright, absolutely solid on her feet, and smiling. “It’s a lovely view. You two seem to be having a very good day.”
Thrown off guard, Miranda blurted, “Do you know Molly Bray?”
“Of course, dear. She’s my granddaughter
. Come in and have some tea. The water’s near boiling already.”
10
Crayfish, Walleyes, and Pike
“Let me describe her,” the old woman said, blowing across the top of her cup. She looked from Morgan to Miranda and back again, then talked into the space between them. Her voice was warm, embracing the past, inviting them to share in her affection, while her eyes moistened with images visible only to her.
“She was an angel and a devil, Molly Bray. It would make your head spin. As a wee girl, she’d march along beside you like nobody’s business. She wouldn’t hold your hand, mind you, but she’d be close enough you could feel her little body against your leg. Do you know she had her own garden? She wouldn’t let me help. She grew a whole garden of radishes one year.”
“She lived here with you?” Miranda asked, sipping her tea, trying to be as subtle as possible about straining the loose bits through her teeth.
“Oh, yes, from an infant. She was such a good baby …”
“Where was her mother?”
“She didn’t have a mother. What’s your name, dear?” They had introduced themselves when they came in, but the old woman was busying herself with tea paraphernalia and hadn’t paid attention.
“I’m sorry. I’m Miranda Quin. This is David Morgan. We’re —”
“She didn’t have a mother and she didn’t have a father. In those days we looked after our own.”
“That wasn’t so long ago, Mrs. …?” Morgan asked. The woman had neglected to give them her name, the tea ritual taking precedence over niceties apparently deemed less important.
“Former times. I’m thinking of my parents’ day. When you don’t have a family of your own, you do that. I’m Miss Elizabeth Clarke. I’m an old maid. I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Morgan. Would either of you like a dash of hot water?”
“No, thank you,” said Miranda and Morgan simultaneously.
“I have my tea mailed to me directly from England. This one’s Lapsang Souchong. Do you like it?”
“It has a distinctive flavour,” said Miranda. Morgan, who wasn’t so diplomatic, said nothing.
“If you’d prefer, I have some Tippi Assam.”
“You buy it in England?” asked Morgan, succumbing to the notion he had to say something on the subject. “Are you English?”