by Lou Allin
The route led past an old friend, Spirit Rock, a personal shrine for Belle. This huge chunk of glacial erratic had been her private place for meditation. Seemingly fallen from the sky, it dominated the landscape. She stepped off the snowmobile and strapped on the snowshoes lashed to the rear carrier. One day she was going to retire her clumsy wooden relics with their bindings so tempting to hungry little rodents. Trailhead Equipment in Toronto advertised high-tech beauties in its catalogue, space age metal alloys so light that she would be gliding over the snow like Fred and Ginger in Top Hat. Even at a pricey $300.00, if they lasted forever, or longer than she would, the bite might be worthwhile. It took several sweaty minutes to reach the rock due to the clumsy snowmobile boots, meant for warmth, not walking. Breaking trail without a crust was no picnic either; the snowshoes could sink up to a foot and turn into scoops. And people bought treadmills when they could do this?
Lifting fifty feet into a cadmium blue sky, Spirit Rock was solid and dependable, pure Cambrian granite. Rocks and water and trees, the triumvirate of Shield country. After living with their power, Belle doubted if she ever would want to abandon them. What honest land refused to show its bones? Eons ago the mighty boulder, dropped in retreat as the glacier smothered the land, would have glowed silvery shell pink as the rock down around Killarney, but a century of acid rain had weathered it gray and tanned its folds like the skin of an aged elephant. Still, where the rock chipped, crystalline rose shimmered. A tiny cedar tree, indefatigable as the stone itself, shot its four feathery inches out of a narrow cleft. What a miracle for this stubborn natural bonsai to find the right niche, the perfect mix of dirt and moss. Near the top of her monument, a triangular dent revealed where a chunk of several tons had fallen. Now the fragment was covered in snow, but in summer, Belle could lift the giant piece in her mind, rotate it to complete the three dimensional jigsaw. How long ago did the huge weight submit to gravity, groan and break free? One hundred, five hundred, a thousand years? Did some passing Ojibwa startle at its earth-shaking fall? Patient nature ground slowly but exceedingly fine, like the mill of God. Not like police departments.
Placing her hands on the cold, familiar face, she said quietly, “Jim loved this land. He tried to preserve its integrity so that your beauty could live forever undiminished by man. Help me to find his killer and understand his death.” Lord knows, Mother, she murmured to herself, you can take the Anglican out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the Anglican. Bless that grand old Cranmer prayerbook.
After another half an hour on the route, Belle passed Larder Lake and turned to follow a deep groove in the snow that indicated an overblown trail. A few minutes later, she reached Jim’s small cabin. Anyone who wondered where moose went in the winter could have found the answer here. At least ten piles of droppings littered the clearing, the striped maples well browsed by this “eater of branches”.
Next to the cabin, no more than four walls and a door, someone had been quartering birch, stacking fresh pieces on the porch for convenience and protection. Sure enough, under the massive splitting log nestled the key, wrapped in a plastic bag. She opened the door with a sense of dread and regret, overwhelmed by the silence, then marvelled at the evidence of Jim’s soul. A closer look showed the care that made the simple hermitage neat and practical. Chinked logs had been carefully whitewashed, and the tin sheet base of the oil barrel woodstove was swept clean of ash. She noted a small desk and a rustic bed, a sleeping bag on a padded wire frame, and a wooden chair with embroidered pillows. The picture of Melanie that Ben had mentioned smiled brightly from the desktop, bringing cotton to Belle’s throat. Framed in art deco pewter, the pretty girl was clowning with Jim’s brother Ted, mugging into the camera. Belle skimmed through the book titles: Trees of Canada, Diseases of Conifers, Common Weeds, Peterson’s Edible Plants, The Woods in Winter: Wild Animal Tracks and Traces. And the usual Audubon guides to mushrooms, butterflies, insects and flowers.
Moving on, she rummaged through the small pantry. Rudimentary cold-safe provisions like Kraft Dinner and other pasta, dried beans and milk, coffee, flour and rice. An instant noodle package was crumpled in the garbage. Lunch perhaps on that last day. The pots were clean, nesting under the dry sink.
A pair of lovingly-varnished snowshoes hung on the wall, along with a tattered rabbit pelt, maybe a childhood trophy. Topo maps were pinned up marked with sites of interest: oak grove, white pine growth, moose pasture, springs and bear dens around the other Burian hunt camps. Of the several record books lining the shelves, one leather log listed hundreds of flowers Jim had noted, starting with spring’s first, the bright yellow marsh marigold (the pickled buds resembled capers, he had told her) and the last to leave, the durable pearly everlasting. From a well-dusted shelf of specimens, Belle picked up a small piece of fungus, chicken of the woods, a savory treat when sautéed with eggs. On their hiking trips Jim had provided a never-ending banquet from the bush for an amazed Belle, who had thought that raspberries and blueberries were the limit. “What do you imagine the natives lived on before the white man traded his flour and sugar?” Jim had asked, with a gentle tease. And over the nights they had camped together on the edge of shimmering Lake Temagami, he had brewed pine tea, plucked pickerelweed from a swamp for a salad, fried up milkweed flowers and shaken off cattail pollen for pancakes.
Small memories of small rituals of the heart. Thank God she had seen him that one last day. These simple belongings impressed on Belle, as the funeral had not, that she would never see her young friend again. And she wept for the loss. Sitting on the hard floor of the cabin, Belle used her sleeves to brush away the hot tears.
The rows of diaries drew her from the pain. She skimmed the contents until she found a large looseleaf binder for the current year. The 30th, the day of his death, contained observations of tree size and number north of Wapiti. “Inspected medium growth birch grove by Marian Lake for evidence of frost cankers and borers.” Other lists counted white or red pines over 24 inches in diameter. Belle pressed the bridge of her nose until it hurt. “Here’s a trick to remember the difference between the two: white pines have five needles for five letters. It’s easy,” she heard him say. The lessons kept rolling back as if two friends were warming their hands together over a quick spruce fire. All of a sudden she narrowed her eyes, shifted the page to compensate for her myopia. “Think I saw Brooks near Damson Lake last night when the moon was so bright, a large duffel bag strapped on his sled. What would he be doing out here?” Then followed only a final few sentences, messier, scribbled in haste. “4:00 p.m. Heading back before storm gets any worse. Mom probably worried. Hope I don’t have the flu.” So Jim had been on his way home, not bushwhacking. How then would he have gotten off the trail when he could have navigated these woods in his sleep? And he had seen Brooks the night before, an important discovery.
Before leaving, Belle made a final sweep, ending at the medicine cabinet. Though the cabin had no bathroom, only an outhouse, a place for supplies was useful. Aspirin, bandages, nail scissors, iodine . . . then a cold pill blister pack, three missing. So Jim had taken medication. Was Monroe right? Could that explain the disorientation?
She left the camp as she had found it, resisting the urge to take even the small token of the chicken of the woods. The memory of their good times would be the best souvenir. Belle thought that she had better tell the Burians about her visit. Though they had said they wouldn’t be out any more, she looped by the lodge anyway.
Lost in thought, she snapped to happy attention at the familiar white smoke trailing from their chimney. The “closed for the season” sign was still tacked on the door, but the Burians were back. She found them in the kitchen, Ben brewing coffee and Meg rolling a pie.
“I didn’t know if I’d find you two here,” Belle said. “I took a chance coming from Jim’s cabin.”
“Fresh sorrow and all, it’s still the most beautiful place in the world to us,” Ben said. “We couldn’t stay in the damn city and rot th
e rest of the winter, eh, Mom?” He put an arm around her gently and pulled her close. “In a way, Jim will always be with us here. In every flower, every bush, every tree we see. This was his real home.”
Meg’s eyes held a tender hope which made Belle melt. “Did you find anything?”
“Data for his projects. Apparently he had lunch and then left around four, according to his diary. He wanted to get home for supper and save you the worry. And in the last line, he noted that he might have the flu.” She paused as Meg’s shoulders sagged. “Perhaps that explains why he took that wrong turn in the storm.”
“The flu. Well, Ted had it the week before. Do you think that proves the police theory that it was an accident, Belle, that he was confused, feverish maybe?” Ben asked.
“I might agree except for one odd detail. His diary pinpoints Brooks as having been in the area the night before.”
Ben gave the table a sudden pound. “Brooks! Jim worked for him when he was a boy. I never liked that man, but I find it hard to believe he’d turn to murder.”
“If there are drugs involved, nothing is past imagining,” Belle said.
As they sat and talked, Meg poured coffee, rubbing absentmindedly at her chapped hands, hardly listening to their conversation. Finally she cleared her throat and rummaged in her apron. “Belle, there is something. Haven’t even shown it to Dad. Didn’t turn up until the wash. Silly of me, but I had to set his things aright, even if I was going to give them to the Sally Ann. Couldn’t throw away good clothes when folks is out of work. His pants, you see, I found this deep in the pocket as I was ironing them.” She held out a tiny gold tear drop.
“A piece of jewelry?” Belle asked. “I’m no metallurgist, yet it looks like unworked gold. Pure. Natural.” She turned it in her hand, sensing a warm magic.
“Something special he was having made for Melanie?” Meg wondered. “Her birthday was coming up. But he never said nothing to us.”
Belle balanced the puzzling object, lifting it up and down in assessment. “Surely not even an ounce. Hardly enough for an earring. Let me keep it for now and think about it.”
Belle followed a short cut of Ben’s back onto the main trail, her skis slipping in and out of the wider tracks. Surely she deserved better suspension, more comfort and padding now that she was about to join the older set. She paused under a feathery pine, inhaling its sweet balsam perfume. A quirky play was writing itself, a repertory of Jim’s death scene, his sculpted hand in the ice pointing the way to eternity. Painful or not, she knew she would have to force herself to visit the site of Jim’s accident again. Afraid of missing the cutoff, she poked along, searching for the tell-tale pine loop. When saw it, she sighed, removed her helmet and reached for the snowshoes lashed to her carrier. Almost two feet of snow had fallen since Jim’s death; the curious side trail had vanished.
Swinging her feet, brushing back heavy branches, she plunged into the deep forest. It was as remote as she remembered. Such a good place for a murder, she thought.
Just as her sweat was beginning to build, the lake appeared, pristine and innocent, oblivious that a life had disappeared into its depths. Nature, the great director, played no favourites, didn’t care if its performers lived or died. It was completely amoral except for ruthless contempt for stupidity and carelessness. Then it would close the curtain and bid another act begin. How many minutes she stayed at the deserted lakeshore with the wind rising and teasing puffs from the unmarked snow she could not tell, except that at last her chapped face and ears warned her to return to her machine and put her helmet back on.
Jim hadn’t been stupid, not with woodlore, naïve and innocent though he might have been with human relationships. Sitting sidesaddle on her sled, chin on her hands, Belle replayed the scene leading up to Jim’s death. Frame by frame, she tried to recall each detail. On that trip, she’d been slipping in and out of the trail, following that tempting path Ed had discovered. Even with the light snow cover, the grooves had been inches wider than her own, and, she thought with sudden inspiration, larger than the tracks of Jim’s Ovation. There had to have been another sled. But why had there been no sign of its having turned around or any sign of footprints? A murderer didn’t vanish into the air in this country without a skyhook from a helicopter. Another answer, another question.
A pair of ravens, their blue-black feathers dishevelled like a chimney sweep’s coattails, wheeled through the sky, croaking, likely on their way to the Burians where a few bread crusts might await. In the Ojibwa mythology, Raven was a famous trickster. Whoever had orchestrated Jim’s death was a similar master of deceit.
Around four, Belle glided up in front of her house and parked the machine under the deck, covering it carefully, after refilling the fuel and oil. A trip to the bank in town was in order, to transfer funds from her father’s Florida account where his social security was deposited.
When she saw the jammed parking lot, her blood pressure spiked. Inside, the only working machine had a line of ten, while at the wickets, motherly tellers tried to keep the crowd moving through the corded labyrinth.
The people were grumbly but not mutinous. Canadians subscribed to the “Peace, Order and Good Government” policy instead of the more militant American “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The right to bear arms would never be inscribed in the Charter of Rights; the right to arm bears, maybe. During the wait, Belle’s hand kept finding its way to the gold drop in her coat pocket. What might Melanie know about this tiny talisman?
A phone call to the Nursing Residence told her that Melanie had just left for dinner next door at the hospital cafeteria. Fifteen minutes later, Belle found the girl at a corner table, probing a grey chunk of shepherd’s pie, heavy on the mashies and dotted with mushy peas. She looked up and smiled. “I’d invite you to join me, but I have too much respect for your good taste.”
“I just got back from the camp.” Belle shook her head. “I know . . . finally.”
“Any luck?”
Belle told her what Jim had written in the log. “He seemed fine the last time I saw him, but that was days earlier. I guess the flu could explain some distraction, but to go so far off the track? And he mentioned seeing . . .” She glanced around the crowded room. Better not use names. Sudbury was small enough to be quite an intimate little family, especially where locals were concerned. She hummed to herself. “Our lodge friend up there in the bush.” Melanie squinted up her eyes in a question, then caught on as Belle continued.
“What about your investigation at the university?”
“It’s been slow. I start to bawl every time people tell me what a great guy he was. Gone through a box of tissue.” She paused and wound a strand of hair around her finger. “Except . . . Father Drew, the chaplain who teaches one of the crisis counselling courses we have to take. He’s a good man to talk to. He gave me to understand that Jim had consulted him once about a student who had a crush on him. More of a bother than anything else.”
Belle perked up. A lady of mystery in Jim’s past? Hard to believe. “Who was it? What did she look like?”
“Forget it. You know Jim. Never a word. I find it strange that he asked for help. Certainly he never said anything to me. He gave me the impression that I was his, well . . . you know.” She lowered her eyes and cleared her throat. “What’s next, then, Belle? Do you have any more ideas?”
“At least the log convinces me that I’m on the right track. The next step is to find a definite connection between Brooks and the drug trade,” Belle said. “And Mel, I have something to show you.” She presented the drop. “Meg found this when she washed Jim’s pants. Could it have been a gift for you?”
The girl accepted the gold like a holy relic, her face softening. “Jim’s? I don’t know. Where would he have got it? It looks like a tear from an angel. God, that sounds so trite. May I keep it?”
How could she say no? Belle told Melanie that she had to consult a few friends who worked with gold first, from raw material to fin
ished product, to discover exactly what it was and where it came from.
Freya got some chow before Belle stirred up a quiche with shredded Emmenthaler and Black Forest ham for herself. Thirty-five minutes later, she hunkered in front of the oven, watching an edible television show. The savory cheese was bubbling, the chopped chervil and capers peppering the top. Finally she could wait no longer, tested it with a piece of spaghetti and doused on hot sauce. Then she watched Miriam’s precious tape of Wild Orchids as a torrid Garbo pirouetted around the hapless Louis Stone. Not too convincing for the twenty-four-year-old to be in love with a man pushing seventy. Had MGM believed the public that gullible? Belle suspended her disbelief and sat back to enjoy the quintessence of the silents, the subtle techniques that made words superfluous. Silent films had been called “shadow plays”, and these shades fluttered around the actors with stunning effect: while Garbo waits tentatively outside her lover Nils Asther’s bedroom door, light suddenly washes over her as the door opens, and his shadow begins to move up her body; and as the image of his cupped hand falls over her breast—she disappears. Just like the solution to Jim’s death is forever pulling away from me, Belle thought.
After the movie, she began her bedtime routine, marshalling an artillery of vitamins, a 400 mg E (not natural, but cheap!), halibut oil, a 1200 mg lecithin and a new B-75 bomber horsepill. She assembled them on the bathroom counter along with her favourite old-timey glass from Mother’s Pizza in Barrie, bearing a wistful portrait of Mary Pickford, Canada’s sweetheart. Slow down, Belle thought, and bite the big ones in two. Or learn how to apply the Heimlich manoeuver to yourself.