by Lou Allin
“Guess the sweet old soul heard me wrong.” Belle tapped her ear. “If you’re interested, why don’t you round up a few concerned people and give me a call? Here’s my card.” She opened her wallet and found one.
“You’re so good to spend your time like this. With your business and all. And I want you to meet Phil.” A frail, whey-faced man in an overcoat, leaning against the wall in obvious agony, reached forward a palsied hand, his grip cold and feeble. “And Bobby, my son, visiting from Gander for a few weeks. He works on the oil rigs.”
Belle greeted the bald bruiser she’d seen in the basement, putting Phil Richards, unless he was the world’s best actor, into the “forget it” category.
Twenty-One
Since Jack’s leave had ended and he was heading back to Timmins, Belle had invited him for a farewell dinner at her home. From Miriam’s apartment lot, where he’d been able to move the snow machine during the distraction of the latest blizzard, he planned to cross Maley Drive, cut over the golf course, and pick up the pole line through Garson, leading straight to Wapiti. Later, taking the west arm to Capreol would send him to the northern connections. “Driving at night is crazy. Stay over, start in the morning,” she said. “There’s a couch in the rec room.”
He arrived after lunch, his duffle shockcorded onto the rear of the macho neon yellow sled. “Did 120 klicks in the time trials on Lake Abitibi,” he said, as she marvelled in scarcely disguised jealousy at the high-tech dash, complete with radio and CD player.
“Fifty’s fast enough to pummel what’s left of my shrinking brain to mincemeat,” she said, pointing to her humble Bravo tarped under the deck, its seat recently duct-taped. “Wapiti froze weeks late, then thawed twice. I don’t trust it. Even the trail plan scouts didn’t put out markers. Besides,” she said, “Freya needs the exercise and so do I, not to mention the two-hundred-dollar pass and insurance. Or maybe I’m getting too old.”
“That’s no excuse. All’s you need is a muscular thumb.” Jack said, miming the effect with a suggestive grin.
A no-fail casserole sat in the fridge: spiral whole wheat pasta, black olives, bechamel sauce with a topping of shredded Fontina, Ceasar salad, and for dessert, a miraculous supersweet pineapple from heaven, or Honduras. While Jack tossed tennis balls for the dog, sending her scrabbling down the hall, Belle prepared a thermos of coffee and placed it into a small knapsack.
“I’m sorry Miriam couldn’t come,” she said outside, Freya whirling in anticipated pleasure of the hike.
“She’s worried about Rosanne. Gave her a wicked migraine. A couple of Cs on exams and that girl’s into panic mode. They were having a long jaw.”
“Let me show you my country,” she said. “The trails are tamped firmly. Boots should be fine.”
As they started up the steep hill from the road, she peered at the hardpacked snow. “That’s funny.”
Jack looked down. “Lose something?”
“Someone’s been on this path,” she said with a perturbed expression. “My snowshoes have two large cleats on the bottom. These have only one, like the lighter Redfeathers I loaned Miriam.”
“Trespassers? Do you own all this property?”
“Dream on. It’s Crown land. Call me a bit territorial, like a wolf. I don’t begrudge the use to foot traffic as long as they don’t hack the landscape with a snowmobile or quad.”
Within twenty minutes, they crested the open maple ridge and were moving easily along a level trail. A large yellow birch had grown a secondary trunk branching off at a ninety-degree angle a foot from the ground. “ ‘Kneeler,’ I call it,” she said. “A fallen seed sprouts on a cedar stump. Roots shoot out, then the stump rots, leaving this living wooden sculpture.”
“Cool,” Jack said, shielding his eyes to scan the forest, then pointing with a mischievous smile to another anomaly up the hill, a sugar maple with two bulging chancres on the trunk. “Burl?”
They tramped for an hour into a Boreal forest, a mix of deciduous and conifers, passing through the Limberlost Swamp, nosing a brief, gaseous burp from rotten vegetation which lay beneath the pristine white surface. “The only time to visit,” Belle said. “Winter may be a country, ‘Mon pays, c’est l’hiver,’ as the poet says, but it offers a welcome freedom.”
“No blackflies, you mean. Who misses the buggers?” He mimed a slap to his face.
Back into the woods, the narrow trail linked with a snowmobile path to Surprise Lake, where under the snow, pink lady slippers gathered strength for their May curtain call. The night had been a soft two degrees Celsius, and Belle noted where a machine had been stuck, the dynamics of moving a mass of hundreds of pounds doubled by the miasma of slush. Battleship-grey cedar spars had been broken off to serve as levers.
Huffing at the pace, they stopped to sit on a fallen spruce trunk, passing the steaming thermos. “What will we do without you? Can’t you take more leave?” she said, already missing his lively spirit. Jack’s presence had given focus to Miriam’s nightmare, and he’d scouted places she had been unable to visit.
He hesitated, his eyes crinkled with a curious introspection. Then he looked away. “Let’s say . . . I might have overstayed my welcome.”
Had he and Miriam traded words? Was that the real reason for her absence? Or had he been insulted by Belle’s occasional curt treatment? Stereotypes aside, men had feelings, too. “I’m sorry if I—”
Waving off further comments, he wiped sweat from his brow. She followed his gaze to tree limbs where sinuous snakes of melting snow hung in frozen undulation. “Snow boas,” he said, watching her reaction.
“Snowaconstrictors.” Glad that he was rejoining her game, she beamed with approval and gave him a thumb’s up. “You have an eye for nature metaphors. Have you thought of writing poetry?”
His cheeks flushed, and he rolled his neck in a distractive motion as a downy woodpecker tapped diligently for grubs on a rotten birch down the trail. “I used to. For Mimsy. Valentine’s Day and stuff. That was a long time ago.”
Belle felt an irresistible urge to play matchmaker. “Surely she must have forgiven you after all these years. And you have her laughing again.”
He shrugged, reached for a pine cone to toss for Freya, smiling as she capered after it. Above them, an eerie creak sounded. Two mature cedars, growing perilously close and rubbing wounds on each other. “Like my marriage,” he commented. “We needed more room. Don’t think I’m no hermit, though. I’ve taken out a few women, I’ll confess. Lonely up north, darker than here in the winter. Know what the last sweetie told me in the middle of what I thought was a rip-roaring good time?”
Another joke? She rode along with the humour and shook her head.
“Are we having sex yet?”
Sad and funny that he’d confess to such a deflating comment. “Your date’s a plagiarist. I read that on a bumper sticker.”
Jack lit a cigarette and puffed slowly in the cold, still air, his breath a duplicate of hers. “I don’t like leaving this mess. Dead ends everywhere. Tell me honestly about Mimsy’s chances.”
“I’d know better if I could talk to Steve. Now he’s relieved from duties in a departmental investigation, and I’m left with a stalker.” She told him about Dumontelle’s escalating harassment.
He smacked his bare hand into the palm of his glove. “Why did you keep quiet? I could have cleaned his clock.”
Belle shook her head at Jack’s failure to appreciate the danger of probing a cobra with a stick. “He’s an officer with plenty of buddies. You’re in his territory.”
One squared finger traced his jaw line. “Maybe so. My mouth’s always been faster than my fists.” High in nearby branches, a white-throated sparrow back for a spring fling staked out his bailiwick with two clear, then three wavering notes: invitation to the dance. Jack stubbed out his butt half-finished and put it into his pocket, a gesture of respect for her trail.
At a glacial erratic boulder the size of a tank, they turned onto a new loop route Belle
had taped with blue flags on branches. The way was clear of snowy overhangs, her hatchet marks on fir and spruce stands and hand-broken alders. “I like to pass by landmarks, visit old friends,” she said, as a turn led them to an enormous poplar, its smooth greenish-grey bark a subtle texture and colour against the snow.
“That’s a big daddy,” Jack said.
“Check the bottom.” Barely visible under the settling snow lay the gnaws of a girdling by a beaver, whose eyes had outstripped its means.
“Almost all the way around,” she said. “Must have been chewed when the water was high, because now we’re hemmed in by conifers. No dam, no lodge. Is the tree dead or alive? A mystery. I don’t come here in summer because it gets swampy.”
Finally, they reached the naked top of a hill overlooking the lake. Granite outcrops kept trees at a minimum and allowed for a 360° degree panorama. Snowmobiles scuttled across the distance like mobile sofas. Wooden huts the size of abandoned packages clustered in villages around choice fishing spots. Set on a pole in the ice, a Canadian flag flapped.
“Chimbly Hill, I call it,” Belle said, pointing to a squared rock formation poking through the snow, its cracks resembling brickwork. She brushed clean the small inukshuk she’d built on top.
Jack zipped his coat as a sharp breeze sucked warmth from their bones. “I’m going to miss this place.”
“So come back for a visit. No charge,” she said, moving closer to shield against the cruel wind, looking at his craggy face as his keen eyes admired her world.
His pupils dilated, one corner of his broad mouth twitched, and he bent as if to kiss her. Instead of planting a comradely peck on the cheek, he cupped her chin. Catching his intentions, she jerked in impulse, and he stumbled forward as a sharp pop sounded. Freya barked, suspicious of the aborted embrace. With childish satisfaction, wondering how he had entertained the idea of romancing her, she watched him try to balance in the deep snow. The dog continued to raise the alarm, pointing her head east into the hills.
“Quiet! Haven’t you ever heard a backfire?” Belle looked down across the road a quarter mile ahead, a narrow strip where cottages nestled among the trees, then across the giant platter of the lake, a virtual sounding board which confused directions. She saw no vehicle. Jack fell to his knees, and a scarlet patch christened the snow.
Twenty-Two
Jesus, I’ve been shot.” Jack’s mouth pulled into a grimace as he rolled onto his back with a groan and stretched a glove toward his right thigh, where blood saturated his tan pants, the cloth fragmented around a gaping wound. “My leg.”
Time froze as Belle knelt and stared, almost afraid to touch him, wishing this were a bad dream and he’d jump up with a cartoon grin. “Can you stand?” Dumb question. Her hesitant voice seemed to belong to someone else.
“Even if I could, I’m bleeding too much to walk.”
Cold fear charged down her spine, and her heart raced in panic. Get him comfortable first, then find help. The path was narrow, but with a few rough corners hacked, a snowmobile with a sled might get through. Welcome to the nightmare of the North, the gamble of peace and quiet in exchange for ten-minute access to medical care. No rescue helicopter could land on this uneven terrain.
Jack read her thoughts, reaching for his leather belt, yanking it off with a wince of pain. “First aid’s a required course at the mine. Get a tourniquet on this and go. I’ll be all right. And use my Yamaha. Key’s in the ignition.”
Belle adjusted the belt with a thick twig for maximum tension. He promised to loosen it every few minutes, but suppose he passed out? She shrugged off her down coat and spread it over him, waving off protests. “I’ll heat up running back. This will keep the chill off.” Luckily his Gore-Tex parka would waterproof his long torso against snow melt.
Then she turned to Freya, who was softly whining. “Lie down, girl. And stay.” The panting dog smelled the primordial warning of blood and sensed the tension. The man was hurt, and she liked him. Obediently, she lay cradled in Jack’s arms.
Belle wheeled and began a slow, deliberate jog, careful not to come down too hard on the path and posthole into a broken ankle. Twenty minutes later, she was home, dialling 911 between gasps. “A man in the bush has been shot,” she said. “1903 Edgewater Road.” Clarifying the location, she was asked whether the air ambulance could land on the lake. Only a few weeks ago, two elderly snowmobilers had gone down into open water on the East Arm. The ice was still suspicious. Minutes could make the difference, yet . . . “I wouldn’t trust it. There’s a tourniquet on him, and he’ll be at the road when the ambulance arrives.”
Her next call was to Ed. His pricier Phaser had the guts her little Bravo lacked to bring Jack back, and she was too unsure of Jack’s beautiful beast. Whether or not the trip would cause more damage was a calculated risk. The faster he reached safety, the better. Her great-grandfather Reuben Palmer had chopped off three toes in Muskoka as a logger and lived to see ninety. In 1880, medical care consisted of a bottle of castor oil, boiling water and a sharp knife.
Ed’s snappy red machine, “Rocket Man” painted on the hood, roared into the yard minutes later, towing a light, fibreglass sled used to transport supplies, namely beer, to his ice hut. She ran to meet him as he hit the kill switch. “Where the hell is this guy? Up your geezly little trail? How are we . . .”
Dressed in her second warmest coat, a puffy nylon jacket, Belle waved a hatchet at him. Then she untarped her machine, freed the skiis with a wicked kick, pulled the starter cord, and turned it on its side to clear the track, muddy from last April’s parking. Her back gave a small tug, which she ignored. Finally, she shockcorded the tool and two striped Hudson Bay blankets to the rear carrier frame. “It’s steep at first, but the path is solid. We may have to cut a few saplings. Don’t get fancy, or you’ll bog for sure.”
Following her sled, Ed gunned his motor up the trail from the road, navigating around bushes and narrowly missing trees. Luckily the firm snowshoe trail held their weight. Reaching the top of the maple grove, he called, “How far?”
“Ten minutes if we get lucky.” As they came to a narrow curve, Belle jumped off her sled to attack several inch-thick maples that would have to exit the gene pool. She coughed at the noxious exhaust cloud blowing her way. She used to inhale it like fine perfume, the signature of liberty in the winter. “We were at the overlook when Jack was hit. I thought it was a backfire.”
Frown lines creased Ed’s smooth, round face. With no helmet, his silvery hair fell in limp strands across his forehead. “No one hunts now except for grouse, maybe a dumb rabbit. And that’s buckshot. Wouldn’t have carried far. What the hell’s going on?”
Finally they reached the outcrop, where Jack lay under the coat with Freya licking his chin. His eyes were fluttering, clear evidence of a lapse into shock. “Poor bugger,” Ed said, as Belle tramped around to pack snow for a base. Otherwise, they’d be up to their armpits, reaching awkwardly over their heads to manoeuvre the man.
Jack mumbled, “Mimsy, let me in. I’ll never . . .” They bundled him in blankets and eased him into the small sled, his boot heels dragging off the end, frozen pills of blood dotting the path like scattered highbush cranberries. “It’s cold, hon. Can I put my feet on your . . .” Then his head lolled to one side.
Belle gulped back a sob as she secured his arms. “He’s Miriam’s ex-husband.”
With only a few dicey spots, now that the trail had been widened, they returned to the house in less than ten minutes. From afar, a siren wailed, loud then soft as the vehicle wove between hills. She stopped before the final steep descent to the road. “We could lose him at this point if the sled topples. Let the paramedics handle this.”
After skidding into her drive, she returned to hail the ambulance by standing on the road. “It’s a gunshot wound in the thigh. He’s passed out.”
“So where’s . . .” One of the paramedics peered into the woods while Ed yelled and waved his arms. Within minutes the three men ha
d used a portable stretcher to ferry Jack to the waiting doors of the unit. Vital signs were taken, and an intravenous and an oxygen mask set up. The driver wrote down their names and addresses.
To her chagrin, Belle watched the rear door shut. “Can’t I–”
“Sorry, only in the movies. He’ll be at St. Joseph’s, the old General,” the driver said from the window.
“Take care of him.”
Her knees were shaking from the tension and physical exertion, a boost of energy that was dissipating and leaving her weak. “I don’t know if I can drive to the hospital right now,” she told Ed, who placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder.
“You’re pale as snow. Don’t faint on me. Stay awhile. Hélène will fix you up.”
She rode with Ed to his house, Freya galloping behind. He was right. No use outracing the ambulance. Jack had looked so vulnerable. With that boyish charm and energy, he seemed younger than his early forties, but losing that much blood was dangerous at any age. In a daze at the kitchen table, she shivered in her coat.
“How about a coffee royale?” Ed asked, hoisting a bottle of Canadian Club.
“God, that’s the last thing I need. My nerves are shot.” She laughed bitterly at the unfortunate choice of words as she proceeded to tell his wife the grim details.
Hélène opened a Tupperware container of butter tarts. “This is a good time for sugar. And I’ll make sandwiches if you’re going to be hanging around the waiting room.”
“Waiting is the operative word. Free, but you die before you see the doctor. The leaner, meaner system.” She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, dislodging a spruce cone, aware that she reeked of sweat. “That’s not true. My father got great care in that choking disaster last year. And so did Miriam.”
“And Ed’s new hip is making it hard to outrun him. Jack will get through this.” Hélène plopped down a plate.
Belle bit into the flaky crust, and a golden drop of buttery syrup, maple flavoured, oozed down her frozen chin. “Thanks. And I’m going to foist the dog on you again. It’s going to be a long night.” Fasten your seatbelts, as Bette advised in All About Eve.