by Joan Boswell
Harry knocked on the screen door. Mrs. Malinovka clattered towards him in the high-heel shoes he thought dumb, along with her sucky city clothes. After all, this was a summer camp. Everyone else wore Nikes and T-shirts.
She thrust her sourpuss face up to the screen and pursed her lips. “Sam’s not here,” she said.
But Harry could hear the off-key arpeggios of Sam’s practising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait out here until he’s finished,” he said.
“I told you, he’s not here.” She started to close the main door.
Harry refused to move, knowing Sam’s aunt only wanted to get rid of him. She resented his musical talent even more than the maestro did. “Such a waste,” Harry had once overheard her saying. “The son of a nobody cleaning lady.” His response had been to play even more brilliantly at the next recital.
“That’s Sam playing his violin,” he said.
Sam’s aunt laughed shrilly. “Ha! That squawking comes from my husband’s newest protégée.” And slammed the door on Harry’s face.
I don’t blame the lech, Harry thought as he clambered down the steps. Who’d want to be married to that old bag?
Harry trudged back to his residence.
Not like Sam to miss orchestra practice. Wonder what’s up?
He had a half-mind to go look for him, but didn’t know where to start. His buddy was like him, only interested in music and birding.
When he reached his small room, Harry wasn’t sure what he was going to do for the afternoon. He could practise his cello, but he didn’t feel like it. He could study for tomorrow’s music theory test, but that was boring. So he decided to go after sighting number seventeen and finally beat Sam. He felt pretty sure he could do it, for he’d already had one sighting of the golden plumage of the Yellow Warbler.
After lunch, Harry looked up the warbler’s preferred habitat in his bird book and laughed. This was going to be a breeze. He knew the perfect spot, and it was only a short distance from the Malinovka cottage, which helped to explain yesterday’s sighting in their garden. He shoved his binoculars, guide and notebook into his backpack. And, figuring it could be a long, hot afternoon, added a couple of cans of Pepsi and a bag of Doritos.
He headed back along Sam’s shady lane. He was almost past the stone building when he realized a cop car was parked beside the verandah.
Uh-oh, he thought, hope Sam’s not in trouble. But just in case, he decided to hunker down in the cool shade of a thick maple not far from the car. He’d find out from the cops when they came out.
He watched a large splotch of hot sun creep along the grass towards his bare legs. But before it reached his dirty Nikes, two cops walked out the front door, followed by Sam’s aunt. Afraid she might see him, Harry scrambled behind the tree. He heard voices, then footsteps crunching along the walk. A car door slammed, followed by another.
He stepped out from behind the tree and into the glare of Mrs. Malinovka.
“I should have the police arrest you for trespassing,” she snarled from the verandah.
The cop car backed out of the drive.
He called out, “Is Sam okay?” But Sam’s aunt had already escaped inside, with the door banging behind her.
Harry watched the gleaming car disappear around the corner. He didn’t bother to chase them, because he knew their visit had nothing to do with his buddy. Otherwise, Mrs. Malinovka would’ve marched him right up to the cops, telling them it was Harry’s fault her nephew was in trouble, just as she did whenever she caught them up to one of Sam’s tricks.
So Harry continued on his quest, figuring Sam was bird watching too and would be home when Harry returned this way.
Harry followed a narrow path through the woods to one of the many streams that trickled down Mont Orford. His guide said that the Yellow Warbler preferred mature deciduous forests, particularly along riverbanks. He knew of a perfect spot, off the beaten path with little chance of someone coming along and scaring his target away.
Another hundred metres and he arrived at a break in the hardwood forest, where the stream widened into a deep pool of clear crystal water. Large irregular boulders, some flat, some round, lined one side of the pool; dense thickets the other.
Jumping from stone to stone, with a refreshing soaker or two, Harry crossed over to the thickets. He found a small break in the bushes where he could hide and still get a good view of the other side of the pool. He removed his binoculars, notebook and a can of Pepsi from his pack and sat down to begin what he hoped wouldn’t be as long a wait as last year. He couldn’t. He had a cello masterclass at five.
A hot breeze stirred the trees. A dragonfly flicked back and forth over the still water. He caught sight of a flutter of movement in some foliage on the opposite bank, but the colours were orange and black, not the gold he was waiting for. He wiped his brow, sipped his Pepsi and tried not to think about how good a swim would be.
He’d finished the Doritos and was starting into his second Pepsi when he saw a brief shimmer of gold further downstream. It vanished then appeared again a few seconds later, this time closer. He sucked in his breath and held it. And finally let it out in one low whistle, when the female Yellow Warbler landed directly across from him on one of the flat rocks.
I was right, he thought gleefully. Now all she had to do was make her call, and he’d finally beat Sam.
He silently raised his binoculars and focused them on his target. Wow! Too much! This was the best sighting of all. None of the others had revealed so much. He couldn’t wait to make Sam turn green.
And when the first tentative notes of the call finally drifted from the rock, he almost peed his pants. Too bad, though, the call didn’t go with the looks.
He watched and waited, certain of what would happen next. And sure enough, within fifteen minutes the menace arrived, bobbing along. The American Robin—though he could hardly be called “American”—with his puffed up red breast.
But rather than leaving as he usually did, annoyed at the intrusion, Harry stayed and watched. His eyes almost popped through the lens when he saw what happened next. Way better than health class. He should’ve stuck around those other times too.
He was surprised, however, by how little time it seemed to take for the action to reach its climax. Before he knew it, he was left panting for air, while the robin calmly sauntered away, his red breast puffed out even further.
Then he noticed another robin, this one a female, peeking through some bushes beyond the rocks where the Yellow Warbler preened. Curious, he watched this new red-breasted menace bob from tree to tree until she stopped behind a large maple not more than a few metres away from his target.
But when he saw the look in her black beady eyes and a wing that wasn’t a wing slowly rising, a sudden chill went down his spine. He was about to discover why his two other sightings had gone missing.
“Zoë, get out of the way!” Harry yelled, bursting from his cover. “Mrs. Malinovka has a gun!”
Zoë dove into the water, Harry after her. The gun exploded.
Feeling like a bull’s eye, he clung to the naked girl on the bottom of the transparent pool and waited for another bullet to rip through the water.
Lungs bursting, the two were forced to come up for air. Harry broke through the surface fully expecting to hear another gun explosion. Instead he heard radios. Police were scrambling over the rocks. In their midst stood Sam’s aunt, in a red blouse, looking more like a trussed chicken then a bobbing robin. And behind them beamed Sam’s freckled face, his fingers raised in victory.
Feeling as though they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Harry and Sam told the police about their bird watching contest. Except instead of the feathered variety, which had become boring, they owned up to spying on girls who played their musical instruments alone in the forest. They targeted only girls whose colouring and instrument sound corresponded to that of an actual bird. Twice, Maestro Malinovka, whose name meant robin in English, had ruined the sightings
with his bobbing intrusion.
Next day, Harry led the police to the locations where he’d spied on the Eastern Bluebird, their name for Chantal with the blue streaked hair, and freckled Yvette, the Hermit Thrush. It didn’t take the police long to uncover the girls’ bodies. Sam’s aunt had taken to getting rid of her husband’s protégées before he got rid of her.
From his buddy, Harry learned that Sam was the one who’d brought in the police. Turned out Harry hadn’t beaten Sam after all. Yesterday, while Harry had been crowing over his sighting of Yvette, his buddy had been less than a hundred metres away. As Sam was leaving, he’d seen his aunt walking in the same area. Later he’d caught sight of her hiding a gun. When he heard Yvette was missing, he went to the police.
Unnerved by their experience, and with a strong warning from the police, both boys ended their contest. In future they’d stick to real bird watching.
Besides, after Zoë’s thank you kiss, Harry decided looking at girls up close was way better.
R.J. Harlick, an escapee from the high-tech jungle, decided that solving a murder or two was more fun than chasing the elusive computer bug. This is her second story to be published in the Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies. Another story, “Lady Luck”, won third place in the 2002 Bony Pete Awards.
I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles
Lou Allin
When Bill opened the grocery bags Myrna had tossed onto the kitchen table, he knew his paycheque hadn’t vanished at the supermarket. A dozen boxes of Kraft Dinner, several cans of no-name peas and one head of rusty lettuce.
“Finally, the discus are getting their own display,” she said, setting up the new hex tank in the only open corner of the living room. All of the chairs and the sofa had been shoved into the basement storeroom. “Their spectacular colours disappear when they’re cluttered up with the rest.”
Bill squinted through his bifocals at the receipt on the table. Four hundred dollars. Every set of breeders had a separate home: mollies, swords, catfish, characins and angels. The fifty-gallon tank was reserved for Bubbles, the African clown knifefish, too fond of her fellows.
Five nights later, while his wife ate her noodles directly from the pot in order to watch the fish feed, Bill decided he couldn’t stomach another supper of ersatz cheese sauce and mushy vegetables. What could he make? He recalled taking Myrna to Pancho Villa’s on her fiftieth birthday. “Flaunting poverty. A cuisine based on tortillas and beans!” she had snorted after the meal, forbidding him to leave a tip.
His taste buds tingling, he drove to the supermarket for ingredients, then dared to toss together a hot chili: pintos, tomatoes, onions, jalepeños and a handful of five-alarm powder. The redolence filled the house, and he was stirring home-made cornbread for the private feast when a shriek came from the living room. “You idiot! Look what your stinky food is doing!”
He put down his Corona beer, saved from a Christmas splurge, and joined Myrna to inspect the tank. The fish, normally passive at night, were swimming up and down. “Don’t think they can’t smell that foul air when the pump is spewing it all over. Are you trying to poison them? Open a can of Spam and make a sandwich.” And she rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the boiling pot and hustled it outside, where she dumped the contents contemptuously into the garbage can, slamming the lid like a cymbal. Then she arranged a portable fan and opened all of the doors. After anticipating the chili, Bill didn’t feel like anything else, so he took another Corona and sought refuge in Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp. Too bad they didn’t live near a major dam site, he thought. Flash floods had their good points.
Later, in a rare social gesture, Myrna subjected Bill to fish imitations. While he read, she peeked out from behind a chair and then retreated when he looked over. “Guess who?” Spot, of course, the shy catfish. Then she rubbed her knuckles over Bill’s close-cropped grey head like Bubbles scratching herself on the coral. Building to a climax, she concluded with a pantomime of the meanest small fish in the tank, the bumblebee cichlid, aka the Terminator. Her breath hot with sherry, she rushed at Bill and butted him in the chest, cackling like a demented parrot.
Myrna rarely spoke to Bill except about the daily problems with the fish. “Bubbles is outgrowing her tank again. We’ve got to get that one-hundred-gallon job,” she wailed as Bill limped in from the 37°C record Toronto heat. Buses had broken down, the fans were off at work, and his ancient Aries needed new ball joints.
“Why not give her back to the store? Maybe they’d trade for that needlefish you’ve been wanting,” he offered, picking up the mail from its pile under the slot. It was stifling in the house, but Myrna wouldn’t allow an air conditioner to alter the tropical conditions. Tonight was his washing and ironing night, he remembered with dismay as he stripped off his wet shirt.
Myrna dipped into a small holding tank for Bubbles’ supper. “Are you kidding? Even if she bullies the others, she’s the queen of her species.” As she warbled “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” her ritual during feeding time, the mammoth jaw of the twenty-inch leviathan vacuumed up the feeder guppies.
The costs escalated with the new glass fortress. Along with lavender gravel, Myrna had to have the latest bionic filter system, which required constant monitoring for weeks to establish a balanced chemical cycle. Bill would come home to her stunned face peering at a murky test tube. “Not more ammonia! She’s swimming in a toilet. Time for another water change.” And out snaked her Python syphon hoses to drain and refill the tank. No bath for Bill until midnight. And if it wasn’t ammonia, it was too much chlorine or iron. Delivery men lugged in spring water in gargantuan proportions. Subscriptions to Freshwater Aquariums and Tropical Breeders littered the coffee table. That was where she learned about the fluval, a costly refinement which sold so rarely that the pet store owner made a mark on the wall when one left the shelves. “Now I can relax at last,” she said. “This baby will filter out anything!” And the new toy hummed away.
In fact, everything hummed day and night. And Bill, never a heavy sleeper, lay tossing for hours, Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” running through his mind. One night when he got up for a glass of milk in the wee hours and switched on the kitchen light, Myrna was crouched in the living room with the glow of the tanks giving a ghastly pallor to her skin. “Douse that, jerk!” she yelled. “I just got the boys and girls settled. The reflection is confusing them. Look at Bubbles, gone behind the condo, just as I dropped down her favourite tiger shrimp.” A grinning plastic skull coughed up air as its teeth met and parted.
Deciding on a drink instead, Bill overturned the ice cube tray into a tumbler, added a double thumb of bourbon, then took a long swallow. Several minutes later, he was relaxing in bed with The Outcasts of Poker Flat. Blizzards, he thought. Convenient, quiet. Easy to run off the road in deep snow, leave Myrna, go for “help.” How long would it take come January to drive up to the wilderness north of Sudbury? Six hours tops! Suddenly he gagged. “What is this?” he yelled as he pulled bits of pale ragged flesh from the glass.
Myrna appeared in the doorway, a smile flickering. “Silly Billy. Just some cod I froze for Bubbles for slow release. Won’t hurt you.”
A few weeks later, when Bill tried to use his VISA at the Shell station, it was rejected. Myrna, responsible for paying the accounts, blamed an oversight. But then he found the warning letter from the tax department and handed it to his wife, who was crumbling white mosquito larvae. “So sue me,” she said, tapping on the glass at an inquiring discus. “Do you know how long it takes a bank to foreclose? Nearly two years. By then, your GIC comes due.”
“Myrna,” Bill said, a catch in his voice, “I saved that for a fly fishing trip to the Yukon.”
Myrna didn’t answer, admiring her new red cap oranda, its lumpy pompon plastered on like an exterior brain. It was lurching around the tank, gobbling whatever came near. Bill blinked at his wife’s henna hair, sculpted eyebrows with that perpetually surprised look, exaggerated lipstick outline. Only Lucille B
all got away with that.
Later that month, as Bill watched Myrna flipping through Getting Started in Salt Water Aquariums and making an ominous list, he could see his last dollar sinking faster than the loonie. And when the nursing home called to tell him they hadn’t received the monthly check for his mother’s care, cold sweat formed on his brow and his chest pumped like the Aries going up a hill. Not Mom’s trust fund! “Did you send out the Happy Valley payment?” he asked.
Myrna clipped a romaine lettuce leaf to the tank for Annie the ancistrus and hummed a little tune. “Don’t worry your pea-brain about that. Bunny Bagshaw says everyone’s doing it.”
“Doing what?” Bill gasped, his knees weakening.
“Liquidating, of course. That way the government picks up the tab quite nicely. The supplement for indigents kicks in. What a country.”
“Indigents! You mean you told them Mom is broke? It meant everything to her to pay her own way! She trusted us!”
“Don’t be a fool. She doesn’t have to know, but she will have to leave her semi-private for a quad. Big deal. Give her more company anyway.” She attached the Python hose and began to suck up Bubbles’ tank, swirls of debris forming miniature tornados.
Bill braced himself against an onset of vertigo. As Myrna started the refill, with a strange and sudden focus, he saw the dangling electrical cord for the immersion heater. He had connected the system and knew the dangers. What would cause Myrna to be careless? The death of one of her favourites? Bubbles? Yet Bill hated to see even a guppy suffer. He heard Myrna open the front door. “I’m going to Popeye’s for some Fung-All,” she called. “The barbs have been scratching.” The door slammed, and the Aries groaned into action.
Bill rummaged in the basement freezer. There it was, a nice medium sized Pacific salmon languishing through the months since Myrna had stopped cooking. He gently removed the wrappings and scrutinized it from all sides. It resembled Bubbles, or would with the lights off.