by Lou Allin
Later that evening, just before she packed Spenser away (poor man was on a heavy case in tropical San Diego; did people get paid for working there?), Belle thought she heard a plane. She stepped out onto the mini-deck off her second floor master suite and tried to home in on the sound. The temperature was back to -30°, and the trees were snapping like rifle shots. Though the moon illuminated the white surfaces and the house lights radiated across the lower deck, a steady snow was beginning to obscure visibility. She turned her head slowly, shutting her eyes to concentrate. Too low and too noisy for a regular airport flight. It came closer, so much so that she ducked involuntarily. A small cream Cessna ski-plane landed and taxied to her dock, where the dish sat collecting snow. Was the guy crazy? Belle threw on a heavy coat, boots and hat and followed her snowmobile path to the lake.
“Good thing I saw your dish,” a man said, getting out of the plane and letting the motor idle. “Where’s Dan? Place sure don’t look like a lodge.”
Belle propped her hands on her hips and yelled over the engine noise. “What are you talking about?”
The man squinted at the house while the snow danced circles around his waist. “Say, isn’t this . . .” He wheeled as he bit off the words and climbed back into the cockpit, throttling up and off in a swirl. She watched him fly down the lake until he disappeared in the shrouded darkness. Too small for instrumentation gear, yet he hadn’t seemed low on fuel or in trouble. She made a note to call Steve Davis, a detective on the Sudbury Force. Besides, Steve owed her a dinner.
TWO
For once, the predictions had been accurate. The vicious storm which had buffeted the area left behind perfect conditions for snowmobiling, only -15° C with lots of fresh powder. Across the lake nestled pockets of fog, trapped in the line of low hills, a parfait of white and green to burn off in the bright daylight. The dog looked up expectantly. “Next time, Freya,” Belle promised. “I’m going too far today.”
Winter fought fairly on its own primitive terms: strap on cross country skis or snowshoes, or drive a snow machine. Sudbury’s graying population of retirees from the mining industry was well-represented, since the “sport” required little more than a strong right thumb and a resistance to cold; youth and muscle were secondary advantages unless breaking trail or attempting aerial stunts. Belle’s compact red Yamaha Bravo 250 lacked the benedictions of reverse gear, instrumentation, automatic start or cushy suspension, but she had installed handwarmers, a cheap but blissful fix. The dependable Volkswagen of the snow machine world got her where she wanted to go, and better yet, allowed her to view the scenery instead of just an eye-watering blur.
Freya moped in the computer room, her ample poundage curled up impossibly in her “cheer,” a stuffed plaid monstrosity shredded by long-gone cats and banished from polite company. Remaining there through the tempting aromas of bacon frying and toast browning signalled a grade-A sulk. Despite the pats and nuzzles, the dog pointedly ignored her, turning her head in a classic snub. Belle buried her face in the thick neck hair, inhaling the comforting smell of a clean, healthy animal. “Back in the Cro-Magnon caves, girl, you’d have kept me warm and safe, fleas aside,” she said as Freya finally sighed in resignation.
Can’t let a dog run your life, Belle told herself, collecting her gear: long red “thunderwear,” T-shirt, sweater, sweat pants, a versatile woollen cowl, felt-pack Kodiak boots and the bulky snowmobile suit. Dressing in deep winter seemed like running a Mobius strip, so she left everything in layers and piles, burrowing in and out with acquired skill. Under her helmet and face shield she wore a balaclava; heavy mitts which reached up her arm completed the outfit. The luggage container held extra oil, topographic maps, spark plugs, tools, lighter and a sinister pick designed for escape from a fall through the ice, useful in summer for preparing ice chips for drinks. Her survival gear, which included a tube tent, thermal blanket, rope, flare and chocolate, stayed permanently in the rear carrier.
Except for a few islands and its southern shore where Belle lived, most of Lake Wapiti was undeveloped Crown land or First Nations Reserve. Scientific opinion had called it the site of a meteor crater, a smaller version of the meteor bomb which had christened the Sudbury basin “Nickel Capital of the World.” Roughly eight miles in diameter, a crude circle, the lake was over three hundred feet deep in the centre. In winter, the sleeping giant opened onto thousands of miles of snowmobiling trails, stretching north to James Bay, east to Quebec and west to Manitoba and Michigan. It was an amazing secondary transportation network, complete with signage, restaurants and motels, slipping through small towns happy to snag the tourists in winter. Teenagers in outlying districts drove the machines to school, often following hydro tower trails to avoid the roads.
Since the day was clear, the sand cliffs or “Dunes” at the North River loomed sharply. This tributary had played a vital role in the lumber trade at the turn of the century. Millions of board feet of pine, oak and maple had floated down it, bypassing rapids via wooden plank runways called “flumes.” The logs were gathered near the river mouth to be transported by a narrow gauge railway straight to town. Much of the wood had rebuilt Chicago after the fire. Within a ten-mile radius of the original smelter in adjacent Copper Cliff, the acid fumes of the open pit nickel smelting, which continued until 1928, had destroyed the remaining growth. Once the vegetation vanished, the fragile topsoil ran down the hills, leaving the notorious moonscape where astronauts came to train.
In a long-overdue response to the ecological disaster, not to mention the embarrassing publicity, forces from industry, government and the community had joined to arrest and repair the damage. The erection of the 1250 foot Superstack in 1972, aggressive liming and reseeding (“Rye on the Rocks”) and summer programs which hired students to plant thousands of trees had started coaxing the shell-shocked landscape back to life. It was a slow process, but by the nineties, black was becoming green again.
Stopping at a pressure ridge where the ice plates collided to form sinister hedges, Belle searched for a safe passage around the weak spots. No one was in danger of going through on such a massive lake, though. Most drownings occurred farther south when novices pressed the season’s start or finish, or on smaller lakes where springs ran all winter, even at 35 below. The year’s snowmobile death toll stood at forty in Ontario, most from crashes into fences, rockcuts, other machines and even trains. She passed one ice hut village and drove on to the next, where trucks and cars were gathered round, chimneys puffed out warmth and hardy children flew Canadian flag kites in the stiff breeze. Although a few lone huts parked over personal hot spots, most people preferred togetherness over privacy. Ice fishing was a social event complete with card games, meals and matching beverages. At the shack beside the customized Phazer reading “Rocket Man” on the hood, she cut her engine and knocked at the plywood door. Inside, his feet propped up near a small tin stove, sat Ed DesRosiers, warming half a tourtière on an aluminum pie plate. A freshly opened pack of Blue Light made her shake her head, but only one bottle had been opened.
“Ready to go?” Belle asked as she settled into a battered lawn chair next to one of the holes, jigging the bait and peering down a turquoise crystalline tunnel of ice to the waterworld below. Raising a polite eyebrow at Ed, she broke off a piece of the meat pie, sinking her teeth with satisfaction through the flaky lard pastry to the spicy filling seasoned with a touch of nutmeg, Hélène’s signature.
“Let me pack up and get my duds on. Got to run this brew back to the house so’s it don’t freeze. Fire’s nearly out,” he said.
Behind the carton of beer, a yellow-brown form with black mottling lay still on the floor, chin whiskers and tubular nostrils giving it a prehistoric look. Belle felt a small shudder. “Ugh. Talk about the Creature from the Black Lagoon. What in God’s name is that thing?”
Ed finished his bottle with a happy burp. “Cod’s name, you mean. Freshwater, otherwise known as ling. My grandpère used to call it burbot, mud fish. Lots of people throw t
hem back on account they aren’t so pretty, but they’re tasty—white and flaky flesh. Smoked is even better.” He stroked his catch with affection and tucked it into his carrier. “No scales to speak of, but the skin is some tough.”
“Say it’s trout if you serve it to me. I don’t want to know.”
Shortly after, they gunned up the steep hill to the top of the Dunes, sand base exposed from the traffic. Accessible by an old logging road in the summer, the Dunes had served for decades as an unofficial park where locals planted their trailers Newfie-style to enjoy the beaches and the fishing. The proposed development would bring thousands of tourists from crowded Southern Ontario, as well as the United States, at a high cost to the environment. “Sad to see this wilderness disappear if that plan goes through,” Belle said as she flipped up her facemask. “We’ve had this bush to ourselves for so long. The casual camping is dangerous, though, especially because of the fires. That should have been stopped years ago. No manpower for patrols, I guess.”
“You can say that again,” Ed said. “I see them bonfires clear across the lake June to August. Let the wind come up and she could burn every hectare between here and North Bay, never mind how many water bombers they keep at the airport.”
“Last year, when that big one hit at Chapleau, you could smell the smoke across the province. And on a clear day a charred birch leaf dropped onto my lawn like a silent message,” Belle said, remembering the filigreed threads, a telegram of gray lace.
“Lotta money for somebody, though. Killarney’s full up all summer. Crazy fools in Toronto willing to drive three, four hours on weekends just to get out of the Big Smoke. The lodge owners will do a fancy business in boat rentals, not to mention food, booze and bait. The Beaverdam, Dan Brooks’ place on the lower east shore. That’s the nearest.”
“I wouldn’t care if the Beave closed up forever,” Belle said with a snarl. “Its traffic goes right by my house, one pee stop away. Two a.m. on weekends, I’ll bet ten or fifteen guys stop at my dish like a landmark, yelling to each other and roaring their motors so loud I need a second set of earplugs. Anyway, I heard Brooks was going under. His old dump hasn’t had a facelift since his father built it.”
“Funny,” Ed said, “because Paolo told me that his nephew was hired last summer to build new cabins. At least ten. Would have to mean a big septic system, too. That’ll cost.”
They gazed up the frozen North River, more inviting than a hilly trail, but too undependable for travel with its treacherous currents beneath the smooth snow. “Stumps show where the old bridge used to be,” Ed pointed. “Great place for pickerel. Those Belcourts who drowned were fishing there when the storm came up. One boat went to the shore; the other fool went straight across.”
“What happened? That was before my time.”
Ed shook his head as if he wondered how anyone could have been so stupid. “New motor was too big. That’s how they tipped. Then night hit and no one could go after them. Had to stay with the overturned boat, and you know how cold this bugger lake is. Only the two kids left by dawn. And the poor old aunt never come up.” A common rumour had it that the chill and depth of the water often kept corpses from surfacing.
The Drift Busters Club Bombardier groomer (“Your trail pass money at work”) chugged by. A tall tank with a heated cab, it inched along on huge treads. Sometimes Belle watched it creeping across the lake at night, a powerful beam reaching out like a cyclops eye. Now the trail to the lodge was level and wide, offering ample room for seeing around tricky corners. There was a speed limit, but how could a few volunteer marshalls enforce it on endless wilderness trails? And snowmobile horsepower had risen dramatically thanks to the competition for market share. Belle’s Bravo 250 was a baby; 650cc was common, and trade magazines reported that the new Thundercat 1000 was capable of over 180 km/h on a lake. The weekend before, two riders had collided on Lake Nipissing, sending up a fifty-foot flame on impact which had melted their expensive full-face helmets.
Once underway, the pair passed through the typical Boreal forest at a steady pace. Stretching across Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, this hardy microclimate consisted of deciduous aspen, balsam poplar and white birch as well as the conifers, white and black spruce, tamarack, balsam fir and lodgepole, and jack pine. Since Sudbury also skirted the southern forest, the spectacular hues of maple, oak and yellow birch hardwoods painted the fall like an artist’s palette.
Half an hour later, into the Mamaguchi territory, pines three feet thick towered over cathedrals of spruce and cedars bent by heavy snow. A chickadee flock rustled the birch bark for grubs and the pads of a lynx pair crossed the trail and exited in lengthening strides after the tell-tale triple prints of a rabbit. An arrow with a large happy face marked the turn for the Burians’ lodge.
Finally they reached a tiny clump of log buildings dwarfed by massive pines on the shore of a long, narrow lake. Ted, with a fat black Lab ambling around him, was unloading jerry cans of gas from a Bombardier hauler. The small lodge sold fuel to those too lazy to carry their own, but at a high premium. A dollar-sixty a litre, nearly eight dollars a Canadian gallon. The gas and provisions had to be lugged eighty kilometres from town, including the last twenty by sledge on a snowmobile trail. “How many last weekend at the poker run, Ted?” Ed asked, cutting his engine.
“We fed over a hundred,” the boy said proudly. “Mom was stirrin’ up spaghetti out of everything she could find.”
Belle gave the dog, Tracker, a quick pet as she and Ed shed their helmets and heavy jackets before entering the small main building. Inside were a large kitchen, a dining room with a homemade industrial drum woodstove and four pine tables, and the entrance to a sleeping nook for the family. High over the stove hung a simple but effective clothes dryer: a metal bed frame for wet mittens, scarves and boot felts. A black bear head with whimsical antlers bore a brass plate reading “Old Ned, 1982.”
Mrs. Burian greeted them, face flushed from the steam and flour dusting her apron.
“Hello, Meg. I finally made it. What’s cooking?” asked Belle.
“Spaghetti, garlic bread and apple crisp, with plenty of country cream to fatten you up, Ed, from my brother’s dairy in New Liskeard,” the woman replied as Ed snapped his suspenders. Her gray hair was yanked into a sensible bun, but in her dervish toils, wet tendrils framed her face. Belle had rarely seen her sitting; if she weren’t preparing food or cleaning, she was hanging washing out to freeze-dry. A minute later Meg plopped two chipped, steaming mugs before them.
“Jim stopped by and told me to get myself up here,” Belle said. “He seems to be doing well at the university. You must be proud of him.”
She had hit the right chord. Meg’s face lit up like a generous April sun, hands framing her ample hips. “Likes his course in Forestry Management real fine. All As last semester. Right now he’s at one of our hunt camps to write up some project. Had the big storm, so I guess he’s taking his time getting back. Sunday supper, he’ll make it. Moose stew’s his favourite.”
“What do you people think about that new park?” Belle asked her as two more snowmobilers came in with a rush of cold.
Meg opened up the stove and tossed a birch log into the flickering flames. “None of us is too happy, I guess, more people, more trash, more problems. In the summer, of course, it might bring canoe trade, but that’s our vacation time. And then there’s the pictographs.” She pointed to some black and white photographs on the wall which outlined vaguely human shapes, stars, circles and crosses on a rock face. “Ben took me up there canoeing on our honeymoon. Better than Niagara Falls. Those red ochre images have been on that old Champlain canoe route since God knows when but won’t last long now, people get to rubbing at them. Jim tell you about that rally at the university?”
“Sounds like a good idea for us cottagers to go, too. It’s rush hour every Saturday night the Beaverdam is open. The noise never stops,” said Belle as she and Ed dug into the spaghetti. Alphabet letters dotted the tangy sauce, but i
t tasted sublime. And the dessert surpassed all promises, thick swirls of cream over tart apples.
As they paid the token five dollars each, Belle asked after Ben. Meg opened the door and peered out, shielding her eyes from the reflected sun off the snow. “Here comes Pop. Took the sled over to the ridge to pick up some down-and-dead.” In certain wilderness areas, the Ministry issued permits to harvest fallen trees and widow-makers.
“So where have you been? First time all year,” Ben said, hitting the kill switch on the small sled designed for light bush work. He picked up an axe and lifted a five-gallon gas can over his shoulder. “Loading up on Mom’s special, I’ll bet.” A lean sixty, his face tanned and creased from outdoor work at the small lodge on weekends, Ben had retired early from Falconbridge, Inco’s little brother, a mining corporation. He passed a few minutes with Belle and Ed complaining about the weather.
“Don’t go yet,” Meg called as she ran up bearing a small jar wrapped in a calico cloth. “Wild gooseberry jam. Jim picked me a bounty last summer, and I forgot to give you one at Thanksgiving.” Belle thanked her and wedged the jar firmly into the carrier.
“I could have stood a nap after that meal,” Ed said.
“No wonder Hélène calls you an old bear.”
The slap of -10° C revitalized them as they topped up the machines from a carrier jug. Ed and Belle had marked a trail north through a ridge system, down through Laura Lake and back to Wapiti. After a half hour, they stopped at an unusual pine loop. “Might make a good picture,” she said. Then they noticed a track snaking into the bush. Not many drivers left the main routes, and with good reason. Without a snowshoe path, machines had rough going breaking trail, especially on fresh, heavy snow. Travelling unbroken lakes was even riskier, since a layer of melt often lurked under the pristine snow blanket. Yet it looked sooooo good, so tempting, that a rider just had to make a track across, put his mark on the landscape, cut the birthday cake. A machine could, however, be trapped in this treacherous slush until a freeze allowed its owner to round up burly friends to chop it out of the ice. Rescue by helicopter was an expensive proposition. “Looks firm enough. Trapper’s cabin? Good fishing hole?” Ed wondered as he backed up, then revved his engine like a young kid. “Might lead somewhere interesting. Want to have a go?”