by Lou Allin
“Like prison, you mean. I’d hate to see us get like the States. Building bigger and better jails seems to be fueling their economy.”
“Sometimes vengeance seems so belated that it’s purposeless. What about those ninety-year-old remnants of the Third Reich sent back to Europe to stand trial?”
She paused at the idea of law vs. justice, her usual argument with Steve. “Dragged out of nursing homes. They deserve punishment, but at their age, it seems a useless exercise.” A change of subject seemed in order. This was getting too morose. “What was your profession, Charles? You came from the capital, so I presume you might have had a government job like half the town.”
“Just a boring old auditor for a paint company. Nothing romantic or exciting. But no one wants to see him coming to check the books, you can bet on that. Persona non grata, even for the innocent ones.” He clucked and shook his finger. “Quaking in their boots that I’d make a mistake. Never did, though. Numbers are ruthlessly amoral, but they never lie.”
She gave him a ride home, noticing as she turned that a lilac Cadillac had pulled into the lot next door. The Rogers family, Sophie and Earl, used their camp in summer for the occasional weekend or holiday. Though heavy bush separated their place from Charles’ quiet refuge, Belle winced to see a passel of dogs leap out. Last year there had been three, helter-skelter blends of collie, shepherd and lab. Now she counted six.
The next morning’s unfinished chores found her at a shop which specialized in assistive devices, the endless varieties of canes, walkers, wheelchairs and scooters which were multiplying exponentially along the streets and in the malls of graying Sudbury. Doncaster Medical sold a gel cushion the nurses had suggested for her father. So many consecutive hours even in a padded chair was hard on old bones. For $150 she received a square plastic pillow filled with the space-age ingredient that plumped bicycle seats. “I can give you a good price on a hospital bed. Special rates for nursing homes,” the young female clerk said with an expression as mild as buttermilk.
Belle’s heart turned over at the pathetic image, and she whispered, “No, not yet.” Call it short-sightedness, even denial, but why rush the man to complete helplessness? Soon enough he might be sentenced to an official Procrustean hospital bed, the system in crisis, institutional pap meals trucked in from Ottawa, rumours went.
Parcel under her arm, she walked several blocks back to Brewster Street to find her van happily intact. Every town had a dark and musty basement, collecting the trappings of failures in an evil seine, those poor souls who didn’t have a shack of their own to celebrate Welfare Wednesday. All their slender needs were met within a few hundred yards. Shabby hotels and rooming houses, cheap apartments, pawn shops, check-cashing outlets, fly-blown restaurants with bargain breakfasts, and, of course, bars for every lowlife preference.
A tall man shambled towards her, head bowed, long black hair matted with grime. Despite the ripped jeans, stained leather vest, and filthy T-shirt, he reminded her of Steve. Undercover work? Should she speak to him? Belle cleared her throat pointedly, but he walked past, tripping scuffed boots on a piece of lockstone pavement lifted in the winter frost. As he fell to his knees with a grunt, she turned instinctively to hold out a hand, but he lurched off, covering his ears as a train blasted by, his mouth a frame of silent pain like Munch’s screamer’s. Quite the thespian. Steve had never mentioned acting in high school plays or amateur theatre. Unshaven for days, too. Poor Janet. And that ratty hair looked so real. Then she detected raw fumes of rum. What the police suffered for verisimilitude.
On the weekend, it was time to keep her promise to Anni. That moose stand’s hours were numbered. Having set her clock for an eye-opening five on Sunday morning and fueled up with hot coffee, she went alone into the woods to Surprise Lake, crowbar and flashlight under her arm, realizing with some trepidation that poachers liked early hours, too. As for Nick, how could he have been involved in setting it up? Moving a thousand pounds of moose quarters was too much of a job without a quad or a game trike.
Once shielded by the hills, she flicked on her flashlight, eager to slip in and out as fast as possible in the role of eco-saint. Dawn was an unusual time for a hike, a new sensory experience with eerie, unidentifiable noises of nocturnal animals. Fortunately they sounded small, skunks or weasels perhaps, maybe foraging rabbits. Feet tuned to the familiar bumps and roots of the path, she slipped the cumbersome flashlight into a loop on her coat when the first rosy glints of sun broke the dark.
Kaleidoscopic shards of light were penetrating the forest as she reached the perch and started dismantling the boards. Hastily erected, one nail where two should go, it fell apart quickly under the crowbar. Breaking into a sweat, she took off her coat and hauled the lumber into the woods, biffing it into a small ravine to lie concealed under thick cedars. Then as she turned, wiping her hands, she was startled by a strange movement. For a moment she couldn’t make out the shape in the shadows. Then as she approached, the picture cleared. Over a branch someone had draped a moose hock, which dangled in the rising wind, hair clinging to the scraps of skin in an obscene parody of Claudette Colbert’s shapely hitchhiking gam in It Happened One Night. A grotesque mockery? A drunken joke? Gingerly she removed the bones and buried them under leafmeal.
Halfway back, satisfied at her demolition, moving as quickly as her thoughts, at one open stretch she stopped for breath at the bottom of a hill. A soft pounding made her turn her head. Looking up, she gasped. Two cubs were rollicking toward her, eight paws hitting the ground in three-quarter time. Emergency advice flashed across her brain, all ignored. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to climb. And bears climbed well, too, especially agile cubs. A mere fifty feet from her, a bark stopped them, and they turned to look at Mother, appearing over the ridge. With disappointed bleats, they followed her into the deep bush. Belle fell to her knees, still holding the crowbar like a useless sword, and forced herself to wait until they had cleared the area. Then she limped home on a prayer.
NINE
Steve had invited her for lunch at the new Szechuan place downtown. With Janet and Heather on an all-day bus trip to Canada’s Wonderland, perhaps he was lonely, or better yet, had information about Anni. As usual, he was late, so she entertained herself with the drink menu. Its tempting pictures brought back a childhood in Toronto, the occasional treat of a Chinese dinner at the elegant Lichee Gardens. Her mother would let her choose an exotic cocktail and try a clandestine sip. Feeling sentimental and expansive, Belle ordered a zombie. Valuing time over manners, she gave the waitress their order.
“Don’t choke on the paper parasol,” Steve said minutes later, shedding his leather Sudbury Wolves jacket and easing long legs into the padded booth. “Another salt mine like those margaritas at Pepe’s?”
“A zombie. Self-explanatory. Anyway, how’s Heather? All of our conversations lately have been about murder. You haven’t filled me in on the joys of parenthood.”
“She’s fine. Remember how we sweated about the possibilities of fetal alcohol damage? Too young for the definitive tests when we got her. But scratch that now.”
“What do you mean?”
He flashed a two-thumbs up reply to match his grin. “What’s to test? She finished at the top of her class.”
“They rank them in junior kindergarten? Poor babies.” She sipped her expensive experiment and grimaced at the syrupy overkill. Heather had been adopted at three from an abusive family. Now she’d have more love and attention than Belle’s first pup. Some things were right with the world. “I’m really glad. When I babysat for you and brought Freya, she seemed happy and confident.”
“You were right about the bonding. Once she saw that Janet trusted me . . .” He gave her a resigned glance. “Don’t sweet-talk me to disguise your agenda. You want to know if we’ve made any progress with the Jacobs case. The answer is a big no. All the leads except Zack have petered out, unless somebody talks, which has been known to happen.”
“Except Za
ck?” Had Steve found out about the missing jigsaw?
“Claims he drove to Detroit to check out CDs, but the store he visited is closed. The owner went to South America for a month. And of course our nephew slept in his car. Too poor to spring for a motel.” He turned in surprise as the waiter set down a platter. “You ordered? Pretty nervy.”
The hot-sour soup arrived, followed by spring rolls, roast duck with winter melon, braised pork and celery and sizzling shrimp. A large glass of ice water cut the sting, but her tears flowed. “Why do we do this to ourselves?” She was sure that Steve was summoning all of his macho to keep up. Maybe he had prepped with Maalox. No chiles remained on his plate while on hers they formed ziggurats.
“How about the MNR? Any reports on bear mutilation?”
He looked at his plate. “Glad I’ve finished eating. What I learned made me lose my taste for bear meat. Dick King in Kirkland Lake found four or five carcasses already. He’s had some luck tracing connections to herbalists in Toronto or Vancouver. Wouldn’t mean much, though. You could FedEx a package anywhere in a day. And guess what? It used to be legal in Ontario to possess bear parts, but not sell them. Makes some sense, eh?”
“I shudder to ask, but what do they use the paws for?”
“A gourmet soup. Especially a tender cub.”
Coughing, she covered the last egg roll with her serviette. “Hunters are still in the area. I found a moose stand down by Surprise Lake on another trail. Lumber fresh enough to indicate that it was built this year. The big guys aren’t in season yet, but that makes no difference.” She paused and cocked her head, feeling a bit disloyal. No use leaving a turn unstoned. “And, there is this strange guy on our road.”
Steve listened patiently to Nick’s description. “Worth a try. Can you get the number of that truck? I’ll check the registration with motor vehicle authorities and see if there’s anything to follow. Seems to me that he overstays the season. Suspicious for a young guy. All that first-rate gear, the Rolex and no apparent means of support, you say?”
“Look, he seems like a decent person. I don’t want to get him into trouble.” Belle poured cups of steaming green tea to settle the meal. “One other thing. You weren’t doing undercover work on Brewster the other day, were you?”
A dark cloud crossed his face as his large hand reached unsuccessfully for the tiny cup, splashing tea onto the linen tablecloth. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw your doppelgänger. Your double. Maybe I shouldn’t have . . .”
He tossed the serviette onto the mess. “Just like me, but drunk, right? Dressed like a bum.”
Belle held her breath and counted to ten. If people were books, Steve read like a large-print thriller. “Did I ruin a setup? Were you undercover?”
The tone of his voice assumed the burden of bitter resignation. “It’s my brother.”
“You have a brother? You’ve only mentioned an older sister in the Sault, the one who helped you find Heather.”
“I don’t like to think about Craig, much less talk about him. I’d say he’s da black sheep of da family, but it’s not a joke like the song.” His strained humour couldn’t disguise the conflict.
“Sorry, Steve. It’s really none of my business,” she said without conviction, wishing that she could summon magic words to ease his pain.
“You might as well know. Simple enough on the surface. Craig’s an alcoholic. Menial jobs back and forth across the country, far as I ever learned. I thought it was a good sign that he finally came here, even if I saw him panhandling.”
“Sounds like he wanted to reach out. What went wrong?”
“Maybe I tried too hard, playing social worker. I gave him the numbers for AA, the shelters and a couple of places for casual labour. No use. He’s lost, Belle, but . . .” Steve looked out the window to where a mother pushed a triple stroller. “When I left home for the navy, he was nearly twelve. What a smile he had, like a sunflower.” Near poetry for Steve, a solid man with little use for the trappings of language.
She swallowed around a hard lump in her throat that no tannic tea would dissolve. “He was gone when you got back?”
“Ran away from his school my first year in the navy. Didn’t like the formal discipline, I guess.” A happier recollection brought a slight smile to his face. “When I was his age, I lived with my Uncle Eddie in the bush working his trapline. Taught me to read and write with an Eaton’s catalogue.”
“And you were out of touch all these years?”
“No word, nothing. Once in a while a relative out west said that he’d been by, so at least we knew he wasn’t dead. But he never came home. Not even for Mom’s funeral.”
“How can you help him if he won’t let you?”
He picked up the discarded parasol and twirled it absently. Suddenly the frail stick snapped in his massive hands. “If I see him on the street, I pass him a few bucks. That’s all he’ll take. Won’t even come over for a meal. He’s so broken, a shadow in the night. I hope to God he gets enough food at the soup kitchens and maybe some medical attention. TB’s on the rise again, especially with our people. That’s how Mom died. She was only forty-five.”
“You must feel helpless. But there are support groups, counselling.”
“Not for him. I don’t even know where he sleeps, how he lives. Maybe that’s why I spend so much time with Big Brothers, because I can’t rescue my own.” He massaged the back of his neck as if to knead away an ache, then checked his watch. “I’m due at headquarters.” He flipped down a couple of twenties. “My turn this time, I think.”
“And for the last five. I’m soft on public servants.”
“Stay out of those woods for a while,” Steve yelled over his shoulder as they left. Good thing she hadn’t told him about her recent sabotage. He was wound up enough about his brother. What had started as a friendly chat had turned into an emotional roller coaster ride. Just as things were working out with Heather, the spectre of Craig was stalking the gray areas of Steve’s black and white life.
At the office, Miriam had booked an appointment for Belle to take the Balbonis from Toronto out to the Kalmo property. They were in their early forties, junior managers at the Taxation Centre, one of the government transfusions which had injected new blood into the community as the mining base shrank with the increase in technological efficiency. Mark Balboni wore a crisp beige summer suit which made Belle wonder where she had last seen her iron. His wife was fresh and bouncy in a Laura Ashley shirtwaist and low-heeled pumps. “The house is close to the city,” she said as they drove. “Down 69 through the Valley and you’re there in half an hour.”
“No more Metro gridlock. That’s one of the reasons Joanie and I jumped at the chance for a transfer.”
His wife gave a tinkly laugh like ice cubes meeting ginger ale. “Our friends couldn’t believe that Mark and I would agree to move to a . . .” She paused, pulling out a compact to arrange a few stray hairs.
“Mining town?” Belle asked with a wry smile. “Sudbury just cracked the top ten in the best cities in the country according to Canadian Living magazine.” Next week she would apply to the Chamber of Commerce for a grant.
“We passed that big old stack. It doesn’t smell so bad,” Joan said, craning her neck, remarkably free of chicken skin for a woman her age. No lip lines. Collagen? Belle kept quiet, knowing that air quality in Sudbury was downright ethereal next to southern Ontario where a perpetual haze coiled over the Big Smoke like the wreath from Santa’s pipe in an old Coca Cola ad.
Now that the owner had eaten the cost of the access road, the house was a bargain. Beamed ceilings, a California kitchen with island, expensive cabinets, quality ceramic tile, and easy-care Berber carpets. Two bathrooms, one with a Jacuzzi. A heat pump and air conditioning. Down south even on a puddly lake, double the price.
“Looking good so far,” Mark said. “The boys would love the water. Make a great hockey rink, too. How’s ice time for youngsters up here? Are there many leagues?�
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“Sure thing,” Belle answered. “Midget, bantam, any age you want. And don’t forget our Sudbury Wolves. They could probably beat the Toronto Make Believes.”
He frowned, scraping mud from his wingtip. “Did you read about that scandal at Maple Leaf Gardens, for Christ’s sake? Trading sticks for sex. That place was like a shrine to youngsters.” Over sixty victims had phoned in already, with three men in jail. Too bad the ringleader had died ten years ago.
Despite the gigantic lunch, she cooked up one of the frugal gourmet’s recipes that night, fried bacon and onions, adding canned baked beans, a chopped apple, and a soupçon of maple syrup from the local érablière or sugarbush farm. Hearty French Canadian fare. Cheap, simple, packed with carbos for red-belted voyageurs who broke down at age forty packing two-hundred-pound loads for the Hudson Bay Company. Unable to decide what wine complemented maple syrup, she chose Dragon’s Breath beer, one of the many microbrews and exotic imports elbowing Labatt’s Blue to the side.
On television, Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan was insisting that there was no such thing as a bad boy. What an idyllic world, Boystown. The mailing campaigns with those heart-tugging pictures had created one of the world’s richest charities. Now anti-monopoly laws were demanding divestment of its holdings. Spencer would probably have gagged at the commercial monster his character’s noble efforts had fostered: “He ain’t heavy; he’s my brother.” Belle thought of Craig. Did he live on the street? What would happen to him when the icy winds of November shrieked across the Cambrian Shield? Unlike in Toronto, where people slept over heating grates or huddled with their loaded buggies in sheltered alleys, in Sudbury no one could stay outside in the winter, clear suicide at -40°C. What if she had a brother in trouble? Hard to imagine. Her parents had needed seven years to construct her before immaculate conception technology, too weary for a second try.