by Lou Allin
Stopping at the mailbox pavilion, Belle opened a letter from Joyce Fitzgerald, a distant relative, who had once sent her genealogy information logged from the Latter Day Saints’ database. The letter said that it seemed that they shared a great-great-grandfather, William Palmer, married to a Mary Chalmers. “We are wondering about William,” Joyce wrote. “In the 1871 Ontario census, that name appears only once. The background is described as African, his religion Baptist.” Using the Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid website, Joyce had located a place where a William and a Mary Palmer were interred and was tracking down the inscriptions on the tombstones. Lakeside Cemetery in Sarnia, a huge burial ground on the Michigan border. Belle made some fast connections. Did that ethnic origin explain his son Reuben’s enlistment in the Civil War? And Reuben’s son Thomas, Belle’s grandfather, who’d died the year she went to university, had a broad face, a deep tan and lustrous curly white hair. If Thomas Palmer were a quarter African, a quadroon, that made Belle’s father an octoroon, and Belle a . . . ? What a sign of the times that there were once such fine distinctions. Mary Chalmers, of obvious Irish ancestry, marrying a former slave in the early 1800s, would have been a singular woman, braver even than Bea. William could have crossed the border to Canada through the Underground Railroad. She remembered reading about Black farming settlements in frontier Ontario. Knowing her father, when she told him this information, he’d say that it explained why he’d won Charleston contests in his teens. Poor Henry Morgan would get his ear worn off listening to his new blood brother.
Checking her watch, she looked left towards the short distance to Skead and decided to double-up on her tasks. Steve was right. She needed to set this Collins girl straight. A few minutes later, she entered the former logging village of three hundred, passing St. Bernardine’s, where Hélène worshipped, and parking at the small general store, which, except for Tony’s Marina, was the only business. A boy barely in his teens was restocking the video rental shelves.
“I’m looking for Deidre Collins. Do you know where she lives?”
“Just missed her. She should be walking toward Kevin Street. Poor kid. Someone stole her bike a couple of weeks ago.” A tongue ring made him click when he talked.
Belle exited the store and drove a few blocks until she approached a lanky girl toting a quart of milk. “Diedre?”
The girl’s freckled face, thin and suspicious, narrowed into an expression of sheer terror. “Leave me alone. I know who you are.”
Despite Steve’s caution, Belle got out of the van and walked over, hands up in an unthreatening approach. “You don’t know. That’s why I’m here.” She stood in front of the girl, noticing her patched parka and jeans worn at the hems, less from fashion than want. A pair of dirty white runners were on her feet, one toe duct-taped. A scab on her chin completed the image of a tomboy, or could it mean abuse? Suddenly Belle felt like a bully.
“You left a note on my van and damaged my wiper.”
Diedre smudged a hand across her runny nose. “You can’t prove it.”
Belle sighed. “True enough. But I didn’t put those pot plants in the woods, and I certainly didn’t harvest them. I just walk there.”
The girl’s tiny button eyes narrowed, and she flipped back her braids. “That’s what they all say.”
“I’m Belle Palmer, and I sell real estate. Anyone in Skead will tell you I’m no law breaker, or ask the police. You must have better things to do than ride by my drive.”
The girl gave a bitter laugh. “My bike’s been stolen. Why do you think I’m walking now?”
Belle gave her a half-smile. In some strange way, the plucky girl reminded her of herself at that age. “I might be able to use someone for snow shovelling this winter, cleaning off my woodpile from time to time. Interested? I’ll pick you up.”
The reply was tenuous but promising. “Maybe. The only job for a kid over here is the paper route, and that’s taken. But I’m going to ask Sergeant Rick if you’re okay.”
Satisfied that Diedre hadn’t been involved in the sauna incident, but concerned that she might be a target of someone more dangerous, Belle resumed her trip to town. She stopped at the darkened office to collect her file and a contract. Parking at the TD bank to make a withdrawal, she saw a local eccentric, Marty Melnor, dressed in woollen monastic robes covered by a thick velvet cloak, her elongated head exaggerated by a silken turban over a bronze buzzcut. Belle had met the forty-year-old woman at the magazine rack at Black Cat Too, a local bookstore and café. From literary conversations in the Café Matou Noir in back, she’d thought Marty was a professor. Then she learned that the former librarian was on a disability pension for a bipolar condition.
“How are you, Marty?”
“No complaints. Yourself?”
Belle gave the so-so sign, then turned to notice the familiar cowboy-hatted man seated on a bench sipping a coffee, the dog snoozing at his feet. Belle caught Marty’s eye and inclined her head. “I heard about his situation. So young. Sad, eh?”
Marty’s unashamed unibrow rose over a teardrop-tattooed eye. “Allan Ritchie? He’s doing fine these days. Got him a nice room at the Park Hotel down the hall from me. Drives an old Honda Civic, too, instead of walking. Says he found a parttime job at Bingo One.”
Len would be glad to hear about Allan’s turnaround, Belle thought later as she picked up 144 North, notching the bedroom communities that ringed the city. First Val Caron, Francophone Chelmsford, Dowling, then Onaping with its ski hill.
She passed Cartier and Benny, defunct railroad depots fast becoming ghost towns. At Halfway Lake Provincial Park, she drove open-mouthed by the remaining destruction of what weather experts had called a microburst. A few years ago, the violent storm had cherrypicked its way through the popular spot, turning hundred-year-old trees into matchsticks, leaving campers in shock and awe.
Then the bush got lonely fast, and gas stations were rare. Prepared for the absence of radio signals, she plugged in a tape of classic musicals and began tapping her toe to Roz Russell croaking “One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man” from Wonderful Town. The line about correcting the boyfriend’s grammar made her grin. Yet for some elusive reason, the name Ritchie kept tickling a corner of her mind. Her cousin in Etobicoke was Barb Ritchie, but where else had she heard it recently? In her reverie, she didn’t notice that a giant transport had barrelled up behind on the narrow two-lane and was attempting to pass. His downdraft nearly sent her blocky van careering onto the soft berm into a rock cut spray-painted “Yves and Danielle 1988.” She pulled to the side a hundred feet later to let her heart still. The adrenaline rush shook her leg with palsy. No room for error on these roads. She didn’t want to be driving them after dark.
Thirsty from breakfast, she took a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap, enjoying a long drink. Allan Ritchie. Didn’t someone with that name buy the old brewery Cynthia mentioned? That didn’t jibe with what Len had told her about Allan’s homelessness. Did he have a trust fund, family money as the realtor had hinted? She put down the bottle and wiped her mouth. Maybe Steve was right about Len’s shadowy past. Were the two working a con about Micro to extract money from Dave? A hundred thousand wouldn’t be chump change for either. She shook her head. The timing was wrong. The brewery had been purchased before the boy disappeared. Len was a comical figure, but she trusted that two-eyed, two-armed flying purple people eater.
The maples splashed peach-melba tones against the buttery birch leaves. A huge aspen shot fountains of golden coins in her path. At intervals, the conifers opened to ring lily-padded swamps or the occasional lake. In the summer, these places provided free camping. Yet it was Paradise Lost. She could see remains of garbage, burn piles and broken glass at some sites.
She wasn’t going as far as Mesomikenda Lake, but it wasn’t a place she’d forget. Ten years ago with her friend Jim Burian, she’d canoed a route which ended by traversing that long body. A violent storm had hit during their last hour of paddling. The sky had dropped a black
velvet curtain as thunderheads loomed. Seconds later, a deluge of water filled the canoe, and they had barely made shore, no gentle beach, but a steep climb with packs. Unable to raise the tent in the wind, they had sheltered under a tarp, fighting hypothermia, while, tied to a branch, the canoe filled with water. With more nostalgia than horror at the selective memory, she wondered if Micro would like canoeing. Several islands an hour’s paddle from her home had level campsites and would make an easy . . . Then she pounded the steering wheel and concentrated on the road. Entertaining happy thoughts about him was as useless as expecting the worst.
At eleven she reached Route 560 and headed east to Shining Tree, centre of an old gold mining area. On an Ojibwa canoe route between Temagami and Mattagami, the town was named for the profusion of gleaming white birches. It was a fur-trading post by 1905, and in 1911, a rich metal find had brought miners from all over the country. When a fire had burned out the undergrowth, explorations were expedited. The lode measured fifteen by a hundred miles. In 1933, the New York Times had called it the biggest gold rush since the Forty-niners and the Klondike. Now the old roads and trails were used by quads or snowmobiles. She crossed small streams, then the CN rail tracks before passing a few tourist-supply businesses and a liquor outlet. Belle was getting concerned about the time, but she’d play it as it laid.
Gowganda was a pretty little settlement on the Montreal River. Then she continued in the direction of Elk Lake, taking a cut-off north at an old two-storey abandoned house, weathered to grey, its tin roof bleeding rust. Originally the front entrance would have sported a braced porch and balcony, but it had rotted away, leaving above an eerie “suicide door,” as Alice Munro had termed it in one of her matchless short stories about small-town Ontario.
Reading the expensive routed sign for “The Bilbo’s,” she winced at the ubiquitous apostrophe error, but it was not a realtor’s role to correct clients’ grammar. The humpbacks in the grassy road punished her undercarriage. At a few deep mud puddles, the all-wheel-drive repaid its cost.
At last, she reached a tidy A-frame on Bobber Lake, an oil-drum diving raft the only sign of people around its azure depths. High on a dead spar, the wide nest of a long-departed blue heron testified to its supply of fish and frogs. A tall, wiry man with huge ears and a handlebar moustache, Eino Bilbo offered her a delicious shore lunch of crispy lake trout with tangy whole-grain mustard and fried potatoes, which nearly made up for the trip. She gave the camp a tour, changing to her hiking boots to walk the lines, to admire his raspberry patch, and to list the place at a reasonable $30,000.
Her watch read two p.m. Eino scratched his grizzled jaw. “Hell, you’ll never make it back to Sudbury before the sun sets. You could bunk here, or if you want a head start, there’s a motel in Shining Tree. Food’s good, too.”
With those last magic words in mind, Belle opted for the conservative side, and an hour and a half later, pulled in at the Three Bears Camp.
“My, yes, we’re always busy,” Serena Johnson, a pudgy woman in the office said. “Bear all fall and moose for another few weeks. Grouse year-round. December we’ll get the snowmobiles. Makes a change from Windsor, where I was raised in the banana belt.”
Wearing a thick Scandinavian sweater over Farmer John’s, Serena showed Belle to her cabin, northern-style with pine panelling and heaps of colourful Hudson’s Bay blankets. She turned on the electric baseboards below a paint-by-number picture of Lake Louise. “Frost tonight. You’ll be cozy in no time.” Gesturing to the TV, on which sat an ashtray in the shape of an elfin catcher’s mitt, she said, “Satellite. Tons of movies. Got us a hot tub and sauna at the lodge, sixty-inch TV at the bar and grill. And when you’re hungry, tonight’s the moose stew special with dumplings, soup and salad. All homemade. My husband’s the genius in the kitchen.”
Belle took a long, hot shower. Thoughts of Micro crept back unbidden, especially after the news about frost. For the sake of sanity, she pushed them aside. Her throat was dry from the trip. Wouldn’t a cold beer go down well? And what about some scotch to take to bed? She’d forgotten to bring a supply. No way was she paying by the shot, though. Palmer family rule. What about that liquor outlet on the way in?
Later, she tuned the TV to a numbing number of programs, appreciating the peace of her recent media fast, and checking only the Weather Channel. Ugly stuff coming late tomorrow. Possibly white. By then, she’d be back. She looked at her watch. Only four. Drive to the LCBO, come back and relax in the hot tub. Cancel that. No suit. She’d brought along H. Mel Malton’s Dead Cow in Aisle Three. The antics of the witty puppeteer who lived in a cabin with her dogs in cottage-country always made her smile.
As she drove west and stopped to fill up at a self-serve Petro Canada station, wincing at the frontier surcharge of an extra fifteen cents per litre, she found a signal and dialled Hélène to tell her not to worry. The line was busy. Her father also needed to know that lunch would not be a go tomorrow. He should be watching Judge Judy, complaining that she was a bossy shemale next to wise Judge Wapner. Though he didn’t have a phone because of his long distance shenanigans a few years ago, an aide would bring the portable model residents used.
“Nurse’s station.” God bless the towers, knitting the North together. There was a delay of a minute after she explained herself, then his voice came on, mellow, resonant, fifty years younger than his flagging body.
“Pardon? You can’t come Tuesday, Tuesday?” He paused, and she heard a polite bark. “Yes, Puffball. Dinner’s ready. A piece of meatloaf has your name on it. Gravy, too. Don’t tell Nurse Debbie, the old battleaxe.”
“I’ll be there Wednesday, Wednesday instead,” she said, imitating the double language he sometimes used.
“Got a letter from Mary LaGrotta today. We need to remember her birthday. December 3rd.” He was referring to his girlfriend in Florida, a lovely, zaftig Italian woman from the Life-Goes-On group who had made him laugh like a teenager as they chatted daily on the phone in those happier times.
“Sure. I’ll get a card. She loves flowers. We can wire an assortment.” Using the word “we” made him feel included, as he should be.
“Perfect, perfect. Any sign of that boy?” he asked. Last week over lunch, she’d finally filled him in on Micro’s disappearance when he’d asked why she had looked so sad. Children in trouble were a painful subject for him. He didn’t understand a world in which it was even possible. “Doesn’t make sense. Runs off. You find where he was hiding, but he’s gone. Then he calls you. What did he say again?”
Belle warmed at his healthy interest in the case. Charging the minds of the elderly kept them active. She dreaded the day when his intelligent blue eyes would stare straight through hers to an emptiness from which he’d not return. “He said he had an aching head.”
“What? Speak up. I can’t hear you. Where are you anyway? Out of the country?”
“Of course not. I’m up north in Shining Tree. He said he had an . . .” Something caught in her throat, and she cleared it with a cough, then bellowed. “An aching head!”
“No need to yell. I’m not deef, like the fossils around here. Aikenhead’s Ancient Ale. Every time I had to get the old LaSalle and drive a can of film up to Parry Sound because they were going to have a dark house in the Strand Twin Theatres, I’d put in at the Brunswick Hotel. Always ended up in the lounge with a pack of travelling salesmen. Bunch of practical jokers. But why is a boy drinking beer? I thought you said he was a nice—”
“What’s that about ale?” Belle’s heart doublebeat, and she placed a hand on her chest.
“Aikenhead Ale. Haven’t seen it since St. Laurent was PM. Uncle Louis.”
TWENTY-ONE
Promising him on her mother’s ashes that she would bring lunch with double ice cream, Belle sat back on the seat, trembling as she sifted through several topo maps of the region. She selected the one named for its largest landmark, Opikiminika Lake, with a dirt road to the southwest as Cynthia had indicated. It passed the lake
, crisscrossed the hydro pole lines, bridged rivers and creeks on its way south. Then it ended where a cluster of dots and a grid indicated a building site. A rail spur linked it with the Ruel stop on the CN main route to the west. The vast wilderness to the south boasted over eighty lakes and virtually no inhabitants, leading south to the Thor Lake region, where her favourite marten trapper had gone.
Aikenhead. It was giving her an aching head, too. What did the old brewery and Allan Ritchie have to do with Micro? Was she spinning the world’s most irrational theory? Did Len lie to her, or did Allan lie to him? Was either man keeping the boy at the brewery in a scheme to extract that hundred thousand from Dave? If so, why hadn’t contact been made? And why buy the place, for God’s sake? All she could hear was his small voice, static in her ear, then a sickening click that shook her to the core.
For a moment she thought of calling the police, or at least asking Serena, the woman from the hotel, about the exact location. Then an old man gassing a rattletrap pick-up noticed her consulting the map and strolled over, unlit cigar in his mouth. He tipped back his ball cap. “Help you, lady?”
“I’m trying to find an old brewery, Aikenhead’s.”
He drew his finger along the same road she’d located. “That’s her, all right. Hear the place got sold. After all these years. My grandpa used to work there. Mines closed and lots of fellows needed a job. Free keg of beer at Christmas. Damn good stuff, too. Old German recipe. Not like today’s sissy swill.”
“How’s the road? Any washouts?”
“Good clear to the end. I got some partridge there a few days ago.” She nodded her thanks, and he moved off. “Gotta hit the trail. It’s the Kap by midnight, then on to Thunder Bay to see my new granddaughter.”
She headed west a few miles to the logging road, then stopped and scrutinized the map with more care before folding it into her coat pocket. From her observations, the road snaked into the bush for fifty kilometres, passing Opikiminaki Lake, then a series of creeks, Little Meteor, Meteor, Raven before heading west into a flat area where the brewery was located. The forest closed around her like a cloak, opening only at occasional interstices with the hydro lines. In almost an hour, she passed no one.