Cold Skies

by Thomas King

  Dedication

  For Emily, Xavier, and Ariella

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  About the Author

  Also by Thomas King

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  Bob Tatum wheeled his suitcase from the baggage area to the car rental desk and tried to work the stiffness out of his back and legs. The flight from Seattle to Great Falls had been on time, but the commuter from Great Falls to Chinook had developed a mechanical problem and had sat on the tarmac for almost five hours.

  Always a crowd-pleaser.

  He had wound up next to a bony blonde with a collection of shopping bags, which she arranged around her seat like party pillows. Tatum had tried to ignore her. He rolled up against the window, his neck bent at an awkward angle, while the woman opened packages, removed cellophane, and pulled tape off designer boxes. In the confines of the small plane, it sounded as though she were ripping tin off a roof.

  And the sandwich.

  The flight attendant had called it a “Ham and Cheese on a French Roll.” Tatum had never been to France, and he was reasonably sure that the roll hadn’t either. A little lettuce would have been nice. Maybe a slice of tomato. There wasn’t even any mustard or ketchup to set an edge and brighten the taste. The sandwich had been the size of a small log, and each time he tried to take a bite, a glop of thick white goo had squeezed its way out the sides of the bun.

  It wasn’t mayonnaise. He was sure of that.

  THE YOUNG MAN at the car rental desk had a gold badge that said, “Orem.”

  “I have a reservation. Tatum.”

  “Mr. Tatum,” said Orem, looking at the computer. “Seattle.”

  “I reserved a compact.”

  Orem glanced at the computer. “It’s your lucky day, Mr. Tatum. We’d like to upgrade you. How does that sound?”

  Rental upgrades, along with airline food, delayed flights, and irritating passengers, were just another of the many minor annoyances of travel. In his years of moving around the country, Tatum had only gotten a compact car once. Every other time he had been “upgraded,” which was the expression the car rental companies used to make you feel as though you had won something, as though getting a larger, clumsier gas guzzler was first prize in a lottery.

  “I reserved a compact.”

  “Unfortunately, we’re out of compacts at this moment, but there won’t be any additional charges for the Suburban.”

  Tatum set his bags down, closed his eyes. “Do you have anything else?”

  “It’s very comfortable. And it has a sunroof.”

  “Something smaller?”

  Orem looked slightly hurt, as though Tatum had just told him that they couldn’t be friends anymore. “Well, there’s a Jeep Cherokee. It’s sort of a compact.”

  REGIONAL AIRPORTS HAD the advantage of having everything within walking distance and the disadvantage of not having a shuttle to take you and your bags from the terminal to the parking lot when you were worn out and grumpy.

  The night air was cool. Tatum dragged his bags toward the cars and wondered, once again, if life would have been different if he had finished university. His major for the first three years had been sociology, but then Kathleen had come along, complete with a job in her father’s company. At the time, the job had looked good. Kathleen had looked good too.

  The rental cars were lined up like horses at a hitching post with not a compact among them. The black Suburban was more elephant than horse. If he had his way, he’d drive a sports car, something agile and quick. But sports cars didn’t seat a wife, three kids, and a six-figure mortgage all that well. Maybe when he retired and the kids left home, he’d get a used Jaguar or better yet a Corvette, an older model with red and white tuck-and-roll upholstery.

  There were two Jeeps parked next to each other. He checked the key tag. It simply said, “Jeep.” No licence plate number. No indication which horse was his. It was hard to tell colour in the dark, but one of the Jeeps looked as though it might be green. He’d try that one first. The colour of spring. The colour of new beginnings.

  The door wasn’t locked, and, as Tatum pulled it open, he tried to remember if today was Tuesday or Wednesday.

  The man slumped across the front seat didn’t look as though he was going to tell Tatum any time soon.

  Tatum stood by the open door and looked up at the heavens. That’s what he liked best about the West. There were still places where the world seemed enormous and full of promise.

  “Excuse me.”

  Tatum had a momentary urge to shake the man awake, but the smell stopped him. It wasn’t your usual rental car mix of air freshener and Armor All. It was more a taste, bitter, like copper, with an unpleasant undercurrent that brought the airline sandwich back into focus.

  “You okay?”

  There had been a CPR seminar that Tatum had had to attend as part of the company’s workplace-safety program. He tried to remember the three steps of CPR. The first had been to call out to check for responsiveness. He had done that. Twice. The second step, if he remembered correctly, was to tilt the head back and check for breathing. If the victim wasn’t breathing, you were supposed to pinch the nose and blow into the mouth. Step three involved some form of chest compression.

  He had never seen a dead body, and he wasn’t sure he was looking at one now, but whatever the man’s problem, Tatum didn’t think CPR was going to help. Or more to the point, given the disagreeable odours that had rolled out of the Jeep, step one was as far as he was willing to go.

  Tatum closed the door softly, just in case the man was asleep and easily startled. Then he looked up at the bright stars in the cold sky one last time and trudged back to the terminal.

  Two

  Thumps DreadfulWater crouched under the folds of the dark cloth and examined the upside down and backward image of the river and the mountains on the ground glass of the field camera. The air was crisp. The land was quiet. The only sound was the mosquitoes as they hovered about trying to get at him, and Thumps was reminded once again what he disliked about spring.

  Bugs.

  Not all bugs. Mosquitoes and blackflies to be exact. They came at you in clouds, the blackflies first with the mosquitoes hard on their heels. The flies lived and bred near moving water, which was where some of the best images were, while the
mosquitoes would go anywhere for a warm meal.

  Thumps came out from under the cloth, slapped at several of the bloodsuckers that were stuck to his neck like darts, and shooed away a flock of gnats that had settled in front of the lens. He set the aperture and the speed, cocked the shutter, removed the dark slide, tripped the shutter, and slid the slide back into place.

  The sad truth about photography was that even the best lens was a poor substitute for a good set of eyes. Under the bowl of the sky, looking in all directions at once, you felt small and lonely and calm. The finest photograph in the world couldn’t match standing on a bluff overlooking a river valley with the light streaming through the clouds, and it couldn’t capture the feel of the wind or the smell of the sage.

  What a landscape photograph captured was romance, an emotion to hang on your wall so you could remember an imagined moment and forget that the wind had been sharp and that the smell of sage had been cut with diesel fumes from the trucks as they lumbered along the interstate.

  Normally, photography had an invigorating effect on him, but today the trip out to the river and the hike up to high ground had been exhausting. And for no good reason. Sure, the camera and the backpack and the tripod were heavy, but it was more than that. Claire would have told him it was depression, but that was because women liked depression, did not see it as the weakness or loss of control that men did.

  So, he wasn’t depressed. Didn’t feel depressed. As a matter of fact, life had been unfolding rather nicely lately. Claire was affectionate once again, and he had just finished arranging his kitchen, a task that always made him feel good. There was nothing like imposing a little order on spices, cereal boxes, and cans to make a person believe he was in charge of his world.

  The fatigue, however, was annoying. It was as if someone had opened a vein and drained him dry. The sudden urge to pee was a different matter. Both had come out of nowhere. He had made the mistake of sharing these anomalies with Archimedes Kousoulas, who owned the Aegean bookstore in Chinook.

  “When was your last physical?” Archie had asked.

  “I don’t need a physical.”

  Archie’s glasses were too large for his head and made him look like a Greek barn owl. He was the kind of friend everyone needed. Whether they wanted one or not.

  “All men over fifty need to get a physical every two years.”

  “I’m not fifty.”

  “You look fifty.”

  Archie had pulled several medical books from the shelves, looked up Thumps’s symptoms, and cobbled together a diagnosis.

  “You’re not pregnant,” Archie had told him, “so it’s either cancer, a bad thyroid, or diabetes.”

  “Archie . . .”

  “Course, there’s no reason it couldn’t be all three.”

  THE LIGHT ABOVE the river had brightened, raising the contrast beyond the levels film could manage. Thumps checked to see if there were any clouds on the way to soften the glare and smooth things out, but the sky was high and fierce.

  A year ago, Thumps had gone to Toronto for a week-long photographic conference that included exhibitions, workshops, and seminars. One afternoon, he had wandered the city and stopped at a camera store near the corner of Queen and Church, where most of the sales staff was under thirty. There was only one guy who looked to be Thumps’s age.

  “I’m John,” said the man. “You look like a film guy.”

  “Four-five field camera,” said Thumps. “Goerz Dagor lens.”

  “Good gear,” said John. “And you’re wondering if it’s time to switch to digital.”

  Thumps shrugged. “Is it as good as film?”

  “Nope,” said John. “It’s just different. What’s your pack weigh?”

  “About forty pounds.”

  “With the tripod?”

  “Fifty pounds.”

  “That’s the difference,” said John. “You looking to trade in the four-five?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Good,” said John, “because it’s not worth shit.”

  Thumps looked at the rows of digital Nikons and Canons and Fujis on the shelves behind the counter. They did look compact. And light.

  “The big companies have stopped making most of their films and papers. Even the chemistry is being phased out. Another five years or so and it could all be gone. You remember electric typewriters? Most of the kids in this store have never seen one.”

  “I do my own chemistry.”

  “Sure,” said John. “I did the same thing. Used to love to sit in the dark and mix up nasty shit in graduated beakers like some mad scientist. Course the fumes pretty much ruined my liver.”

  John gave Thumps a quote on a Nikon body with three lenses, a canvas camera bag, and a lightweight tripod with a quick-release head. “You know the one thing that hasn’t changed about photography?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The cost.”

  OKAY. NO MORE photography today. As Thumps hogged the backpack onto his shoulder, he felt his stomach nudge him in the ribs. Time for breakfast. His favourite meal. In Chinook, breakfast was limited to two choices. At least so far as Thumps was concerned. Either you made it yourself or you ate at Al’s. Thumps could certainly construct a fine breakfast, but one of the pleasures of modern life was to have someone else make it for you. Especially if that someone was Alvera Couteau, or Al as everyone in town knew her.

  Normally, quaint local hangouts with a reputation for good food and fair prices, in interesting but out-of-the-way places such as Chinook, turned into hot spots during the summer months, forcing locals to stand in line behind tangles of tourists bristling with backpacks and guidebooks. But even though Chinook had its fair share of visitors, few of them ever made their way to Al’s.

  First of all, the café was difficult to find. It was sandwiched in between the Fjord Bakery and Sam’s Laundromat, with no sign marking the place other than the turtle shell Preston Wagamese had superglued next to the front door, with the word “Food” painted on it.

  Tourists did occasionally find the place, but they didn’t stay. Not that the café looked threatening in any way. It was, in fact, unremarkable. Little more than a long, narrow aisle with plywood booths huddled against one wall and a run of scruffy chrome and red Naugahyde stools wedged tightly against a lime-green Formica counter.

  To be sure, the place was dark. The only light came in through the window next to the grill. And it was damp. With the sweet smells of grease, burnt toast, strong coffee, and sweat forming currents and eddies that ran through the café like tides. Thumps imagined that the main sensation people had, when walking in off the street for the first time, was that of being shoved under water.

  The regulars all sat at the counter as close to the grill and the coffee pot as they could get. Al’s wasn’t going to be featured in one of those restaurant-beautiful magazines any time soon, but the food was five-star.

  Al was one of the few people in the world who knew how to scramble eggs. Most places polluted perfectly good eggs with milk or water and cooked the unholy mixture in a non-stick pan. The secret to scrambled eggs was to whip the eggs gently with a fork and pour them au naturel into a hot cast-iron skillet seasoned with butter, and just as they began to firm up, toss in a chunk of cold butter. This slowed down the cooking process and allowed the eggs to come together in a smooth and delicate dish.

  BY THE TIME Thumps got to Al’s, the place was empty. He found his favourite stool, seventh from the end, and settled in.

  “You missed everyone.” Al strolled the length of the counter. “You want coffee?”

  “Absolutely,” said Thumps.

  “You out taking pictures again?”

  “I’m a photographer. That’s what I do.”

  “Used to be a cop,” said Al. “You used to do that, too.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not a cop anymore.”

  “You look a little tired.”

  “Photography’s hard work.”

  “Maybe you should try so
me B12,” said Al. “Supposed to kick-start your energy levels.”

  “My energy levels are fine,” said Thumps. “I just need to be fed.”

  “Your little buddy thinks it’s cancer.”

  You could get breakfast out at Shadow Ranch. The ambience was nicer, the portions were larger, and no one there cared whether you lived or died. But the food wasn’t as good.

  “Archie’s full of shit.”

  “That’s not news.” Al waved the coffee pot at Thumps. “You get that new stove yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Must be expensive as hell.”

  Actually, it was more expensive than that. When Thumps bought the bungalow on Water Street, the house had come with an electric stove. It was adequate enough, but Thumps wasn’t fond of the time the elements took to heat up, or the way they created hot spots in his sauces, or the springy, tinfoil feel he got whenever he set a pot on a burner.

  Four burners. How could anyone cook effectively on four burners? If you put a large pan on the front burner, it took up space on the back and side burners as well.

  Six burners. That was the only way to cook. And gas. But not one of those sealed systems where the heat roared out of narrow ports like an acetylene torch.

  Open flame. That was the trick. Where the heat gently rolled over the bottom of the pan, warming everything evenly.

  “This about that stove in the window of Chinook Appliances?” Al snorted. “No way Danielle is going to put that on sale.”

  “Almost the end of the model year.”

  “You should give one of those induction thingies a look-see.”

  Induction cooktops were all the rage. Thumps had looked at them and decided that he would rather cook in front of a microwave with the door off.

  “That electro-magnetic stuff is supposed to be quicker than hot grease.”

  “Not so sure it’s good for your health.”

  “That’s what they said about microwaves.” Al tossed a clean towel on her shoulder. “You going to the conference?”

  “Conference?”

  “The big water conference at Buffalo Mountain,” said Al. “Archie hasn’t signed you up yet?”

  Thumps had already heard Archie’s name enough for one morning. “You know what I eat, don’t you?”