by Lou Allin
Before he could reply, she was gone around a turn, walking as fast as her mid-forties legs could carry her. Though Freya bounded ahead, the walk was spoiled. She felt her blood pressure simmering. Hunters, quadders, snowmobilers. Now trappers. Was she living in a North of 60 rerun? Her once-peaceful road with barely a dozen full-timers now had over forty. What next? An Indy 500? A Wal-Mart?
Stopping to catch her breath and savour one last moment, she admired a sleek apricot mass on a maple tree. One-inch-by-two, it encased the Hebrew moth’s eggs. She had wondered, weeks ago, why the sand-brown creature with dark script-like markings was biding quietly. Stopping the next day, she had perceived the patient laying, a velvety covering protecting the hatch from winter’s savage assault. Gently she stroked the case like a present to open in spring.
Taking a deep breath, she headed back to the trailhead and along Edgewater Road. As she came to the “An Old Crow and a Cute Chick Live Here” sign with gaily painted cartoon birds, she turned into the driveway of her retired friends, the DesRosiers. Ed was tinkering in the open garage with his snowmobile, a snazzy Phaser, too rich for her blood, and as a pensioner nearing seventy, too fast for his. The Northern version of a sports car convertible.
He gave a wave, and their chocolate-red mutt Rusty ran up for a pat, grovelling on the ground in submission. Freya was her elder, so she respected her status. “Come on in for a coffee. Catch up on the news about these damn murders,” Ed said, wiping his hands on a rag.
She groaned, wrenched back to civilization with its own terrors in the night. “It’s the lead story for all the media. I’m glad I live out here, or am I?” She told him about meeting the trapper.
“Ford 100, eh? Had one myself. Three hundred thousand K and had to beat it to death. Don’t see many of those old guys. I’ll keep an eye open.” Ed had forged his own paths far into the woods decades ago and had a healthy suspicion of strangers. A recent hip operation had cancelled bush hikes, and even he drove a quad down the road occasionally to give neighbours a hand with their plumbing, his former profession. If cake was served, it wasn’t his fault.
Passing a small oak festooned with plastic juice jugs of seeds, she noticed the rose and grey splashes of a pack of pine grosbeaks chattering in the branches.
Inside, around the corner in the kitchen, Hélène was rolling out pastry. “Decaf’s fresh. It’s all we drink now that Father has angina.”
Ed grunted as he propped up his fancy carved cane in the corner. “I’m not your father, woman. Or I’d take you over my knee.”
“Baby those knees. The health care system’s not your personal orthopedic clinic.”
A Swedish enamel woodstove in the large living room maintained an even temperature in the cooling afternoons, though their floor-to-ceiling windows in the cedar bungalow led to bitter complaints about hydro bills. Belle took off her jacket and pulled up a chair at the combination kitchen and dining room table. Dusting off her hands, Hélène poured coffee and presented a heaping plate of Nanaimo bars. “Low-cal. Made them with sweetener.” She plopped down a bottle of French Vanilla Coffeemate. “This has no fat at all. Or do you want two per cent milk?”
“Milk’s fine.” Paint had no fat either, but she wouldn’t drink it. Belle tested the confection. Nuts, cocoa, butter. Hélène took no shortcuts. With curling grey hair and an urge to feed the world, she filled the role of an older sister or perhaps a younger mother. Ed’s belly scooched over his belt like a bag of flour. His slim wife, with energy to burn, never glanced at a scale.
A copy of the Sudbury Star lay on the table. Belle gave it a scan. “No arrests yet. Not even a person of interest, or whatever they call it.”
Ed cocked his head toward a .22 mounted on the wall. “A lady’s best friend. City folks ought to keep one handy.”
“My shotgun’s wrapped in a garbage bag in the basement rafters. Safe from thieves but hardly handy,” Belle said. “And no, it’s not registered.”
“ ‘Peace and good government’ is our country’s motto. Not ‘Life, liberty and a handgun in every drawer.’ ” Hélène paused thoughtfully. “I worry about my girlfriends in town who live alone.”
Belle nodded, taking another bar. It was only three o’clock, not that close to dinner. “Radio said that a task force is already on the job. Maybe there will be a break this week.”
“Everyone’s talking. Even my cousin Bea is concerned for her female workers.”
Bumble Bea Bakeries. The venerable family business downtown had been a legendary source of luscious breads and pastries. Hélène had said that Bea’s grandfather named it for her.
“I have some news about her that might concern you,” Hélène said with a mischievous grin that brought out her dimples.
For Belle, good news came in colourful pieces of paper bearing the pictures of prime ministers. Fall was a slack time for realtors, especially in cottage country. Such a cheat to enjoy the property during the fleeting summer then opt to sell in the fall, except what buyer wanted to freeze in an uninsulated camp with no water until the following May? Didn’t Bea live in her grandfather’s home on John Street overlooking Lake Ramsey? The city’s first luxury homes had been erected there early in the last century by upper management at the mines. Now it was an enclave of doctors, lawyers and other professionals with six-figure incomes. “Am I going to owe you? I’m five dinners behind.”
Hélène stirred her coffee with leisure, pulling out the moment like saltwater taffy, gauging Belle’s cash-register eyes. “Bea wants to sell the property and move to a smaller home, maybe in the Kingsmount area.”
Sell. The musical ride. She took a sharp breath. “That deal could be worth a million or more, depending on the lakefront. A thousand a foot on serviced lots.”
Hélène shrugged. “They used to own acres, but her father tore down the old coach house and sold parcels on either side in the Sixties to finance the bakery’s expansion.”
One dismaying thought entered Belle’s mind. “How old is the place?”
“Cayuga House dates from the twenties, eh?” Ed said as Hélène nodded. “Brass plate by the door like it was owned by some English lord.”
Belle was already calculating her commission. Every sale counted for the smallest realty in town. “If the house is that old, a new owner might demolish it. Time, roofing and plumbing march on. I’ll bet that the heating system needs an overhaul, too. There’s a dinner at Verdicchio’s in your future if I ace this.” She named the most expensive restaurant in town. The bill could qualify as a tax deduction.
“I don’t think you’ve ever met her. Bea is such a dear, and what she’s gone through.” Hélène’s face lost its customary sunshine and turned sombre.
“Health problems? Or please don’t tell me the bakery’s going belly up. Their sweet rolls are better than yours, and you wouldn’t deny it.”
“I gave Bea the recipe.” Hélène recounted how seven years ago, her much younger cousin had lost her husband Michael Bustamante and six-year-old daughter in an accident on Lake Ramsey. “Bea saw it all from her garden. July 1st holiday, it was. Mike was canoeing with the girl, life jackets of course, when a drunk driving a speedboat blasted into them. Mike died instantly of head injuries. Dear little Molly . . .” She stopped, gulping back a sob.
Ed patted her back with his walrus paws and turned to Belle. “Couldn’t get her to stop crying for a week.”
“The propeller. Her injuries were traumatic.” Reaching for a tissue, Hélène continued. Left to raise her five-year-old son, Michael Junior, Bea had married Dave Malanuk a year ago, a fundraiser for local charities. He’d adopted the boy, but left him his birth father’s name.
Belle hardly knew what to say except to make compassionate female noises. Some families were magnets for tragedy; others skated free and complained about hangnails.
“Malanuk. I know that name. Didn’t he organize the Run for the Cure?” With a memory of her co-worker Miriam’s breast-cancer scare, Belle had jogged five miles and collec
ted two hundred dollars from her neighbours.
Hélène nodded, wiping her soft grey eyes. “He’s a wonderful guy. Just what she needed to restart her life.”
“Sounds like a solid man.” Belle couldn’t imagine the challenges of a single parent. “Kids need a father.”
“It’s been bumpy. Micro loved—”
“Micro?” Belle leaned forward as if she’d misheard.
Hélène blew her nose and managed a smile. “Michael Junior. Kids and their nicknames. Computers or something. Anyway, he loved his father and won’t accept a replacement. Problems spilled over his last year in elementary school. A bullying situation.”
Engrossed in the sports section of the paper since Hélène had calmed down, Ed finally joined in. “Some rotten kid stole his lunch. Micro was just standing up for himself. Nothing wrong with a good shove.”
Ed reached for a fifth bar and received a tap on the hand from his vigilant wife. “I remember our sons at twelve, don’t you, Ed? Always testing limits.” He grunted, and she continued. “And shamefully enough, for some ignorant people, there is his ethnic origin.” Belle guessed from the context that she used “ignorant” in the sense of “rude,” a Northern trademark.
“Bustamante? Sounds Italian, like your side of the family, or is it Hispanic?”
Hélène gave a bittersweet sigh. “No one ever said Bea didn’t know her own mind. When she was thirty, still unmarried, pouring her life into the business, she took a singles’ cruise and met Mike in Kingston, Jamaica. Love conquered all. It was a fairy-tale marriage. He was a fine doctor. Once he’d qualified in Ontario, he set up an office in Onaping, where they’d been without a general practitioner for years.”
“She must have been a brave woman.” In large metropolitan areas, interracial marriages were common, but not in the North, where people of African or Caribbean descent had been as rare as roses in May. Hélène had spoken of the benighted days in which a mixed marriage involved a Catholic and a Protestant.
“Bea was an only child, so she had her father wrapped around her pinkie, and his word was law with the relatives.” She began to chuckle, poking Ed. “Except for Great-Great-Aunt Mafalda. Eighty-eight. Five feet of firecrackers. Pounded up to the main table at the wedding. ‘Have to see this darkie for myself,’ she said, waving her cane. Mike just gave a bow and tamed her like an old pussycat.”
“A darkie. You have to be joking. Shades of Stephen Foster,” Belle said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
Ed added, “We had the family over for fishing this summer. Dave pulled out all the stops. Took Micro to Ramakko’s for new tackle and gear. Didn’t he land a big pike off the rock wall. He’s a quiet lad, but a good boy. Give them time. They’ll get over this.”
TWO
September 1st struck the coup de grâce for Northern gardeners, a dust of frost at -2°C that morning. Carrying a steaming coffee and dressed in her long green terrycloth robe, Belle walked out onto the huge deck which wrapped the front and side of her storey-and-a-half cedar home. She stared down over her garden, site of the old cottage. The carrots and beets were snug and the broccoli impervious, but this was game over for the tomatoes. She’d pulled in several pounds on the vine last night to ripen in the cool of the basement utility room.
Across the eight-miles-by-eight meteor-crater lake, a shallow fog kissed the far shore, rolling down the North River like a phantasmagorical glacier, another sign of fall in this cinemascopic window on the four seasons. Facing north by northwest, her property bore the brunt of the fiercest winds instead of snuggling in a safe bay. Along the boathouse, a cement walkway led to a dock, which connected to a wooden crib with a concrete pad bearing her huge satellite dish, an historical artifact now used as planters by inventive owners. From there, a double telephone-pole bridge led ten feet to the protective rockwall.
Before leaving for work, remembering the trapper and his evil boxes, she logged onto the Ontario Fur Managers’ site. “Managers” of a business governing the heartbeat of a soul. There she learned that in the early 1900s, over sixty thousand marten pelts were sold in Canada, driving the animal to near extinction and entirely out of Prince Edward Island. With a keen sense of smell, martens were easily baited in their ranges from two to three square kilometres. One sickening fact hit home. Trappers often left beaver carcasses near marten grounds in order to provide food and increase the carrying capacity of the habitat. Whether or not he’d been sent after a nuisance animal, he probably had availed himself of this trick after he’d stripped the pelt. It reminded her of the witch fattening Hansel. She’d have to return soon and find his site.
On the way to her all-wheel-drive Toyota Sienna van, Belle peered at squiggly bike tracks in the yard. Too cheap to subscribe, she got no paper delivery, knowing that Miriam usually brought hers to work to check their ads. Had someone selling school candy come by? Then she saw a paper slipped under the wiper, which was bent at an awkward angle. From a scratch pad, it bore the official logo of CRIME STOPPERS. A crabbed, childish scrawl read: “Your place in the woods has been puled down. Don’t try it again.” What the hell? Belle hadn’t as much as set a nail in the bush, used it only to stroll and admire the sights. Was this about the bear and moose stands? She’d knocked a few boards from them herself out of sheer spite. On Crown land, the stands weren’t illegal, so what was Crime Stoppers griping about? After crumpling the note, she tore a cuticle trying to straighten the blade.
Fifteen minutes later, leaving Edgewater Road to turn right onto the airport highway, she passed a dozen cars angled into the bush, collectors of the season’s last blueberries, a local industry. Finally she could tune in the CBC local news. In an effort to comply with the 911 system, nine hundred streets in the region would have to be renamed. There were eleven Pines, eight Maples and eight Firsts, nine Birches, seven Alberts, and so on down. This challenge could take five years with unimaginable costs. Think of the stationery, maps, and street signs. She blew a sigh of relief. Her business was located on Disraeli Court, one of a kind. Punching more buttons, she found a strong signal at 105.3. “Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul” drummed from the speaker. A good song, but every half an hour? She grabbed an Enya CD and let “Marble Halls” smooth her journey past the airport, where she watched the plume of INCO’s 1250-foot Superstack rise over the distant hills, symbol of industry. West wind as usual, blowing what remained of the scrubbed smelter air to North Bay.
Navigating the busy Kingsway and swivelling around Lloyd Street, she noticed that a large cement wall had been spray-painted with a bulbous, cartoonish “Nix” tag in red and white. It was rather artistic, but she didn’t suppose the owners appreciated the effort. On one of the few residential streets downtown, she pulled into the parking area of a mock-Victorian house which made a convenient business address for Palmer Realty, founded by her late Uncle Harold. When she’d left Toronto behind twenty years before, kissing off a stressful high-school teaching job without a second thought, he’d paid for her realty courses, then made her his partner. The upstairs rented to a quiet and reliable snowbird couple. She gazed up at the mighty cottonwoods, the few large trees spared from the core ecological damage of the last century. The day had warmed up, so she hung her plaid jacket in the van, leaving her in designer jeans and a red silk blouse.
“Life is just a bowl of blueberries,” she said to her only employee, Miriam MacDonald, her elder by ten years and a hundred grey hairs, whose baba’s bunion legacy enjoyed a daily massage from a wooden foot roller beneath her desk. “And to mix a metaphor or two, if my new lead pans out on Lake Ramsey, we’re in the proverbial clover, four leaves every one.”
Miriam munched at a cheese croissant, wiping crumbs from her mouth and pointing at a brown bag. “You mean Bea Malanuk? She dropped in this morning looking for you. Brought a half-dozen of these. Don’t you love their dark rye? It’s more sinful than an Aero bar.”
Belle struggled to maintain a cautious optimism about the dream sale. Cottage properties we
re her cornerstone, so six per cent of a possible mid-six-figure range nearly made her drool like a St. Bernard, especially when the average price for a home was a piddling $115,000. In a region with forty other realty companies and home sales last year of only 2167, the pie was getting smaller, even if prices were gradually rising. She needed to average four or five closings a month to make a slim profit, buy kibble, and keep Miriam in foot rollers. “What’s she like?”
“Tall, broad shoulders, strong arms. Probably comes with the baking territory, all that kneading. Nice, though. She reminds me of someone from those classic film tapes you give me. Can’t place the name and face. A formidable woman with a great comic talent.”
“Marjorie Main?”
“Ma Kettle? Don’t think so.”
“You have me intrigued.” After grabbing a croissant en route to her nearby desk in the compact office, Belle saw the note with Bea’s number at the bakery.
The busy clatter of a business set a background for the woman’s upbeat, mellifluous voice. “Hélène’s told me so much about you, Belle. I’m surprised we’ve never met.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. Business is slow in the fall.” And winter and spring. Slower than maple syrup poured onto the snow for an instant candy treat. Except for Cynthia Cryderman, the biggest realtor in town, with San Antonio-size hair and a pink stretch limo to accommodate it. Her advertising bill alone doubled Belle’s salary, even if the mindless radio jingle set teeth on edge. Sometimes she woke at midnight hearing its annoying words bouncing off the corners of her mind like billiard balls. But media coverage worked. That was the galling part. Cynthia sold nearly three hundred houses per year.
They set a date for three thirty that afternoon. In the meantime, Belle logged up her morning’s calls and browsed a real estate tabloid. “Listen to this headline. ‘Unshamed quality’. Do they mean ‘unashamed’? And ‘enter the lovely foray’.” Miriam clucked disdain as she stuffed envelopes.