by Lou Allin
In a valley farther on, a swamp full of stumps and fallen logs bordered the pole line. Belle was heading over to a tempting crimson flash in a bush when suddenly she noticed that Buffalo had tracked something down into the weeds. There was a huge splash, and with horror they watched him swim into the water. A large dark snarling object rode on his broad back, nimble black hands gripping his fur. Frantically, the dog paddled forward, his front raised like the prow of a sinking boat. Dogs drowned this way, she thought, powerless to help.
“Can’t we do something?” Micro clutched her arm, his misty eyes gathering despair.
They weren’t fifty feet from a hot bath like last time when he’d waded into the lake. Getting soaked would send their chances to zero. She explained with quiet authority, “You can’t go after him. Buffalo will have to deal with this. Make a lot of noise.”
As they yelled and clapped, the raccoon leaped onto a grey cedar spar which pierced the swamp. A yellow stream of urine rained down onto the dog, a final insult. Trailing noxious brown muck, Buffalo climbed back out of the water and performed an undulating head-to-tail hula, then tried to rub against Micro’s legs.
“Get off me. You stink like a big old rotten egg,” the boy said, leaping away with a grin.
“The least of our worries,” she added, her heart rate slowing. Despite the reek, she checked the dog for wounds, but his thick coat had protected him.
At the water’s edge, she examined the late arrival she’d spotted, highbush cranberries. They picked a cupful.
At five o’clock, the sky an ominous battleship gray, Belle looked again at the map. From her reckoning, they were traversing Oxo Creek, which led to Nipper Lake. “Are we going to stop and make a campfire?” Micro asked.
“I don’t have any matches or lighter, and the fine points of rubbing sticks I never mastered,” she answered, massaging her painful leg muscles. She pointed to a tiny dot. “This could be a cabin.” Or it could be the remains of a building from two turns of the centuries, either burned or abandoned. Topos weren’t updated very often, for reason of considerable government expense.
Micro pushed back the hood on his jacket and wiped his forehead. His voice wavered as he looked at her, his eyes losing their lustre. “I guess I can’t go much farther.”
She knew it was bruising his young male pride to confess that, and she felt the same. The last meal had been a twenty-four-hour memory. She’d noticed him struggling to hide a limp an hour ago. “How are your feet?”
He sat on a flat rock and took off his shoe and sock, flashes of misery crossing his face. “It’s only a blister. No problem.”
Ugly, broken and weeping serum. “I’ve had my share of those. They can really hurt. I promise you we’ll stop to find shelter in the next hour.”
Her sneakers were soaked and filthy, and one foot ached from a heel spur. A cold, light rain began to fall, the turn of bad luck she had dreaded as they walked a rickety balance beam. Hypothermia brought confusion and certain death. Belle searched with fatigued eyes for the thickest possible cover, but here the land had flattened and gone to birch and poplar. Two hundred metres ahead she saw the dark green of protective conifers. “Another five minutes.”
Dripping wet and bone-weary, they crested the top of a hill of feathery white pines, looked into a valley, and yelled at the same time. Nestled in neon-red sumach bushes, a small cabin sat at the edge of a shallow lake full of bulrushes and reeds, perfect moose territory. Beside it, a golden grove of quaking aspen whispered sibilants in the wind, their leaves rippling like a football crowd creating a picture. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan . . .” she said, her voice trailing off as she knelt in the soft cover of fallen needles.
“Xanawhat? Who’s Kubla?” He knelt beside her, shivering, his words stuttered, a sure sign of danger.
“An old poem about a palace, written by a talented man with a substance-abuse problem. This looks just as beautiful.” She could see a tarped stack of wood on the porch. Surely inside would be matches or a lighter. They were saved. For now. And now was what mattered.
Coming down the hill, their knees buckling from exhaustion, they passed a building with a crescent moon carved into the door. “Do they keep their lawnmower there?” he asked.
She stifled a snicker. “An outhouse. A bathroom. No indoor plumbing. No electricity either.”
“Looks cold,” he said, one brow rising. “Are there snakes?”
“All gone to hibernation. Ontario doesn’t have any poisonous varieties up here. Just the midget Massasauga rattler farther south.”
As a rush of energy thrilled her muscles, she began to walk faster, water squelching in her shoes. It was an unwritten law of the bush that people in serious trouble could break into a camp. On the porch, she found an axe beside the tarp and snapped the old padlock on the door. Micro caught up, and they entered, shaking off the rain. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Maslow’s Hierarchy. Get warm. Find food. Sleep. Under pressure, life simplified itself.
The building had only one room, about twenty-by-twenty feet, easy to assess at a glance. Two rustic camp beds. Rag rugs on the floorboards from a time when nothing was wasted. A woodstove, table and chairs. A kitchen with a sink and handpump.
“We’ll take care of your foot later. Making a fire is job one,” she said, fixing on the stove, a homemade version using an oil drum. It looked like it could warm a mansion. A wooden box held pine splits. The cabin had been used this summer, according to the dates on the Field and Stream and Outdoor Canada magazines on a barrel table. She passed them to Micro. “Crumple up these pages one at a time. No cheating. Then add the kindling. Get the driest wood you can from the porch.”
“Any cardboard?” His smile sent a signal that he was better already. How quickly the young revived.
“If your preparation is careful enough, we won’t need it.”
While he busied himself, she found matches and a long BBQ lighter on the counter. Passing them over when he returned with an armful of pine and maple, she began to hunt for medical supplies. In an alcove, a dry sink had a bucket hung below the drain, a disposable razor, and a shaving cup with soap and brush. What stared back at her in the silvered mirror had hair plastered to its head, a scratch on its nose, and muddy streaks on both cheeks. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “Come here often?”
In the metal medicine cabinet, she found an ancient first-aid kit with a blackened bottle of World War Two-vintage iodine. No sissy painless sprays for them.
From the crackling sounds which tickled her ears, Micro had the blaze going. She returned to find him placing two lanterns on the table along with a tin of fuel. “I found these in a cupboard,” he said.
“Excellent.” They shrugged off their sodden coats and hung them by the stove. “We’re on a roll. Sit down, and let’s check that tootsie.”
He plopped onto a bed and pulled off his shoe and sock, yipping as the tender skin blisters ripped away.
“Ouch,” she said, brandishing a pad. “But don’t worry. I have just the thing. Moleskin.”
“Yuck. Like from a mole?”
Chuckling, she placed strips of the pliant material over his heel and wrapped them with adhesive tape. “Soft like a mole.” Then she pulled out the iodine. “This stuff’s going to hurt, soldier. We’ll only cover the major scratches on our face and hands. You paint me, and I’ll paint you.”
Soon after, still smarting from the cruel applications, each one uttering not a whimper, they put their soaked pants over a wooden chair, then pulled two more seats close to the stove, drinking in the warmth like cocoa. The place would be a bakery in twenty minutes. Where was Buffalo? Then she noticed him making himself small and cozy behind the stove, nose under tail. He’d take hours to dry, poor fellow. The downside of hair.
While Micro poked at the fire, adding maple once the pine got going, she prowled the cupboards. The owner leaving so recently was a promising sign. She took down canisters and opened them, coming up with what she expected. A choco
late bar would have been too much of a bonus.
He came to her side, peering at the collection. “Is there food, Belle?”
She arranged her treasures on the counter. A bag of flour, brown sugar, salt, baking powder and a can of bacon drippings. “Nothing else? How can we eat that? Are you going to make bread?” he asked, a crease between his brows.
“Bread without yeast.” She laughed and chucked his dimpled chin. “We’re going to set a world record for eating the most bannock in an hour.”
“Ban—?”
“Where are those cranberries we picked? Check our coats.” She worked the pump. Nothing. “There’s a bucket under that dry sink. Get water from the lake to prime this.” Willing as any man expecting a meal, he went out in his underwear and T-shirt.
Bannock was a lifesaver, nourishing and portable. They could eat their fill and make pounds more for the next day’s travel. She found a bowl, measuring the ingredients by eye, adding extra sugar for energy, and saving the plump berries for last.
When he returned, with several arthritic squeaks, the pump plunged into action. Belle found a kettle to boil water. It looked clear, but no telling what might lurk in the aquifer. A couple of teabags from the pantry helped the taste, slightly metallic from iron deposits.
With darkness fast arriving, Micro filled and lit the lamps under her direction. Then Belle patted the batter onto a greased griddle. They waited, their grins spreading in a wordless communication, drips of drool at the corners of their chapped mouths. Savory aromas filled the air, and the dog joined the group, coming to rapt attention and raising a paw. She felt nauseous from hunger.
“Eat slowly,” she said as she slid a golden cake onto his enamel plate, her hands shaking from low blood sugar. “Finish this one and wait a few minutes. I went to too much trouble to have you vomiting.”
He explored the heavy pancake with a fork, the berries jewels in the crown. His light brown cheeks, streaked with iodine warpaint, filled like balloons. “Goobgh.”
Belle had abandoned the concept of grace before meals when she left home for university, but she brought from her pants pocket the ceramic bear, one ear broken. She touched it gently as she placed it on the table and watched Micro smile. “Something is watching out for us in the forest.”
“Really? Like an angel? A ghost?” He raised his arms and flapped them.
“A spirit. Remember the Deer Prince?”
“Now I’m glad I touched his nose.”
As she enjoyed the carbohydrate fix, savouring the tart berries that exploded in the mouth, Belle explained her philosophy that all creatures shared the wilderness and had to respect each other.
“Have you seen a bear?”
“Lots of them. Nearly every day when I walk the flats in May and June. They’re hungry, foraging on fresh spring grass before the berries ripen. I avoid the dense forest until August, because we can’t see each other until it’s too late. They need lots of room to run away.”
“And they do? Always?”
She spread her hands. “Here I am to tell the tale. Noise helps, like with the coon. Some people wear bells or carry whistles. I sing. That’s enough to scare King Kong.” Recreating the woodland scene, she thought of Freya. Thank God she was with the DesRosiers and not waiting in a dark house for a mistress who hadn’t returned to give her dinner. She mashed a couple of the cooling cakes and served them to Buffalo, giving him a pan of water as well.
She noticed that they hadn’t mentioned what had sent them to this remote place. Perhaps that was good. They needed strong, positive thoughts to reach Thor Lake. Micro had finished all of the bannock, and he pushed back his plate. “I feel better, Belle. That was great.”
“I’m proud of you. Any other kid would have folded.” She could swear he blushed at the praise.
“Nanny of the Maroons, meet Alexander Bustamante, first Prime Minister of Jamaica,” he said, shaking hands.
“Yes, your mother told me about him.” How long ago, and how many life lessons since?
He gave a burp after patting his stomach. The cabin was home, and they were content for the moment, their clothes finally dry. “No bath?”
After draining her mug, she tossed back his teasing smile. “I think not. We’ll splash off in the lake tomorrow morning.”
Above the table, she saw a drugstore wall calendar and thumbed it forward. Was today October 13th? She traced it with her finger.
“Important day?” Micro asked.
“My mother’s birthday.”
He blinked, his thick velvet lashes almost girlish. What a heartbreaker he was going to be in a few years. “She’ll be worried about you.”
“She died some time ago. Cancer.”
“Not your father, too?”
“He’s in a nursing home, but he’s fine.” She explained how he had given her the clue about Aikenhead.
“Won’t he wonder where you are?”
“He doesn’t know anything’s wrong, and . . . and we’ll be back tomorrow.” There, she’d said it. Was it the big lie?
“Do you miss your mother? What was she like?”
Belle sat back and tried to put a long history into a few words. In a law-enforcement motif applied to her family, Father had been the good cop, Mother the bad. Father praised the As on her report card, Mother speared the lone B. A legal secretary who could have been a Queen’s Counsel had she been born later, her mother had been an immensely talented woman, gardening, sewing and drawing. She just hadn’t been a cuddler, nor did she coo over babies. Not until she was nearly seventy had she become nostalgic during Belle’s yearly visits to their retirement home in Florida. Belle still recalled the last time she and her mother had hugged. Terry Palmer had been frail from chemo, her spine shrinking with age, a grey-haired child to her daughter, but spunky enough to tell Belle that her mashed potatoes needed garlic and should have been whipped with the mixer. “Maybe that’s why I never thought about having—” She noticed that his eyes had closed.
After cleaning up, she turned out the lamps as they settled into the bunks with satisfied sighs. Buffalo snored on Micro’s bed, emitting pungent farts at intervals. The army-surplus blankets were raspy but thick. She nosed mildew on the lumpy pillow, letting a drift of smoke lead her towards sleep. She needed to think, plan more than a day ahead in case . . . Then she erased the blackboard of worry. What they would find at McKee’s Camp on Thor Lake, they would find. Que sera.
She lay like lead, wide awake, her recovering muscles twitching with intermittent galvanic shocks. Her brain refused to accept the rest it needed, so she reviewed Micro’s story, trying to piece his fragments with hers. The men hadn’t laid out the complete scenario for the boy, just enough to speculate. Dave had hired a hit man for Bea, hoping to piggyback onto the two other murders, tossing in the missing payroll for motive. Was it Len? Allan? One of the Quebec crew? For all his duplicity, she didn’t see her chubby ex-friend as a cold-blooded, hands-on murderer. Dave’s next step was pure brilliance: hiring crafty old Len to search for the killer. She seethed as she recalled how he’d shared selected information, sent her on fool’s errands, made suggestions about Leonora, Sean Broughton and Jason Lewis, even about Dave, the mastermind himself. Micro’s running away had given them a lucky break. Of course, Dave knew about Camp Sudburga, and he’d found the boy easily. By the time he and Belle had arrived, Micro had been relocated to the brewery. Orchestrating his death would have taken some planning, but it would have come. Presiding at yet another funeral would have been Dave’s finest hour.
She reviewed her actions in Shining Tree, doubting that a rescue team was on the way. Only the geezer at the gas station had heard her questions about the brewery location, and he’d been en route to Thunder Bay, a day’s travel to the northwest. Finding her overnight bag and a few clothes, the motel would sound an alarm, but with what results? They might think she’d been abducted.
She dozed off but sat up suddenly at an eerie call in the night, quickly answered by another, and
for a moment she thought she was in her own bed. Then she felt the hard mattress and turned over, pounding the heavy pillow. One dawn she’d seen five wolves cross the ice. Usually they were very circumspect beasts, a threatened species. What were she and the boy? Prey or predator? Mice scuttled under the camp. Micro groaned in his sleep.
Later she heard him get up to go outside. “Take the flashlight on the table. Don’t bother with the outhouse,” she called. “It’s probably full of spiders.” In return she heard a squeak.
Finally, in the glimmers of the tardy autumn dawn, she awoke with a start as a roar blasted over the cabin.
TWENTY-THREE
For a gut-wrenching moment, she wondered if they’d been tracked, if Dave had fixated on the pole line, too, instead of believing them hopelessly lost in the woods, waiting for death. She peeked out the window, craning her neck to make out in the clearing sky a white plane, Bearskin Airlines, the red-eye from Timmins, heading due south to Sudbury. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she wasn’t co-starring in a Bond film with swooping Apache helicopters, hi-tech all-terrain vehicles, and rocket-propelled suits. Travel was slow and dirty in the North. The bush respected foot travel or canoe. Even in winter, with ponds and lakes frozen, snowmobiles couldn’t manage the rough terrain she and Micro had breached in their first agonizing hour.
The stove was dead out when she got up, leaving her warm bed with reluctance. She found a knapsack and plastic bags, and packed the bannock, several lumpy pounds. After this orgy, she’d probably never eat it again, but it would serve them well on their cold march.
At the noise, Micro got up, stretched cat-like as if he had no worldly cares, and ran a hand through his curly hair. “Morning, Belle.”
“Morning to you. One guess what’s for breakfast.”
“Yum, yum,” he said, laughing as he pulled on his pants. Then he took Buffalo outside for their ablutions.