by Lou Allin
At the office, Yoyo was working on the week’s ads, her tongue cleaving her blossom mouth in a pose of deep thought. Belle gave her a wave and went to her desk, dialling up a client with an open house. “Drop of vanilla on the oven racks. Then set it at three hundred degrees for an hour. Gives a homey touch. I’ll be there tomorrow at one. And it’s a good idea to take the Dobermans out with you.”
Yoyo, who wore a demure cardigan over her cherry-red vinyl bustier, came over with the copy for the weekend newspaper. “How’s this? And I updated the website, put up pictures of all the new listings.” Her voice sounded odd, as if she were working her tongue around something or unable to open her jaw.
“What have you got in your mouth?” To her credit, Yoyo wasn’t a gum chewer.
“Tooth-whitening strips. Another five minutes for the uppers. Then I get to have a reward. One of these cinnamon pinwheels my neighbour brought from a boulangerie in Sturgeon Falls. Help yourself.”
Belle nibbled the rich pastry, full of brown sugar and spice. Then she turned to the text. “Perfect. I think you’ve got it, my fair lady. Nice job with the pictures.”
“Noooo problem. Comes with the territory.” Yoyo basked for a moment, then inspected her nails. “Ummm, there is . . .”
Wiping a fleck of pastry from her mouth, Belle asked, “What is it?”
“I need to leave at three today.”
Belle tossed down her pen with a sigh. She’d been buttered up but good. “What for? Things are heating up. We’ve had people in every afternoon this week.”
“My mom has a . . . bail hearing. Got into a little fracas at the National last night. Didn’t like no . . . I mean anyone calling Elvis a fat pig. Her bedroom’s decorated with those velvet pictures, and she even bought a cool rug of the King off a guy who had a display on the street corner.”
Coco was her daughter’s cross to bear and probably vice versa. Flipping her daybook, Belle said, “You’re very lucky. I’m clear. But never again. Someone else will have to rescue your mother.”
Yoyo headed for the back room and returned with the dog on leash, a plastic bag in the other hand. “I’m taking Baron for a whiz.”
Mutt called that night as Belle was drying off from a kiwi bubble bath that soothed the knots in her neck caused by opening the latest property tax bill. Hers had gone up nearly eighteen per cent for no water, no sewer, no sidewalks and no streetlights. Just a view, frozen five months of the year. “Want to go down to Bump Lake? The police said they left the canoe on shore. Belonged to the Ministry for all they knew. Could be it’s gone already.”
She flopped into the waterbed. “I agree. What a shame to lose it. Count me in.”
“Are you busy on Saturday?”
“Morning’s open, then a quick listing on Richard Lake. That’s on the way back from Burwash, so it would be convenient. Are you an early riser?”
“When I’m writing, I sometimes start at dawn. It’s great to watch the sun come up here on the lake.”
“How’s the research?”
“I need to go back to the Ministry for another look around his office in case something turned up about those last two weeks. Hope I don’t run into that Dave guy. I wouldn’t put it past him to sabotage Gary’s work, now that I think of it.”
Belle blew out a breath. “That would be dirty. Too bad Gary had to put up with him.” And how much more harassment through the decades? Only recently had gays been included in the Charter of Rights.
That night Belle awoke at three o’clock, as Freya began a roo-roo. She walked out onto her tiny papal-blessing balcony and peeked around the corner at the deck below. The moon was full and bright, illuminating the empty lot. A hunched black figure was pounding the garbage can by the door, with moves rarely seen outside of the WWF ring. She yelled and banged the railing. “Get out, bear! Go away!” Freya’s howls added to the chorus. The animal bumped its rump down the stairs and disappeared into the McNairs’ yard next door. She feared telling Jeannie about the visit, even though the family wasn’t out for the summer yet. The retired principal wouldn’t even walk the road, much less dare the bush. Bears were creatures of habit, too, returning again and again when rewarded by a bacon wrapping or yogurt container. Despite the inconvenience, she would now lug everything up to the locked box by the road. It had a metal top and was fastened with chains to a pair of four-by-fours driven into the ground.
The next morning, she shook her head at the fang and claw marks in the plastic receptacle. The weight of the animal had popped off the top and scattered coffee grounds, eggshells and corn husks on the deck. After she cleaned up, she drove down to Mutt’s with Freya, and they left in Gary’s truck at seven. For maximum storage, the back seat had been replaced by a level platform covered with a blue tarp. Mutt had added cushy towels for a pasha effect, leaving the dog in comfort.
They pulled into Connie’s on the Kingsway for a truck-stop breakfast. Three eggs in each selection, stacks of dollar pancakes, bacon, sausage and home fries. Connie’s would never offer Egg Beaters, but at least the brown toast added one healthy touch. As she filled up on breakfast, Belle wished she had worn comfortable sweatpants instead of jeans. “I should have had a bagel.”
“Gary had a tough time keeping his weight down, he told me. One diet after another when he was in university. Once he got into the field, things got easier. Apples and jerky were his favourite lunch. Of course, I didn’t know him then. It’s hard to imagine.”
She’d hardly recognized him herself. “I have some old school pictures, if you’d like to see them.” They’d been in a shrine on her desk through school, but she’d put them away when she’d graduated. Not thrown them away. Perhaps she had kept them all these years for just such a karmic moment.
Mutt took one hand off the wheel to rub his jaw. On his lips was a bittersweet smile. “Good thing someone was his curator. He told me he didn’t want anything around to remind him of the porker he used to be.”
Belle closed her eyes for a moment and saw the dust of freckles on Gary’s nose. The deep tan of the man would have covered them. And always the striped shirt, whether at twelve or seventeen. His mother’s idea to achieve a thinning effect? Hair carefully combed and parted on the right. A shy smile, but never hard to coax. “He was boyish, cherubic. Not that heavy.” Some of her favourite silver-screen actors were on the portly side. Laughton, Ustinov and Greenstreet.
“His voice changed, too, he said. He used to be quite a tenor.”
“I can help you there. I have a bootleg tape of our high school’s production of Brigadoon. Would you like to hear him?”
“You’re amazing. You kept it all these years?”
She cleared her throat as a Greyhound bus with a Vancouver sign roared by. “It hasn’t been that long.”
His eyes darted her way, as if aware of twitting an older woman. “There’s a tape deck at the house. I’d like to . . . hear him again.” He turned to her as he slowed for a red light. “Do you think that’s morbid?”
She pondered her answer. Technology was changing the world of grief. Videotapes were common. It wasn’t as if he was watching it every night. “Not at all. I’d like to hear it, too.”
As he switched to Paris Street with its monster potholes, Belle felt the truck rock, its heavy suspension demanding a price. “The City of Crater Sudbury. You can’t imagine this in winter.”
Mutt adjusted his legs in the wheel well. Wearing cargo pants and a jersey mariner’s top, he had chosen a light musk aftershave. “Down south is no picnic. Toronto gets a foot of snow, and they’re paralyzed until the mayor calls in the army.”
At the Four Corners, they took Route 69 South, after gassing up at Canadian Tire. Mutt tucked the store’s bonus money in a compartment overhead. “Gotta keep it sorted like Gary did. Nickel bills at the bottom, five-dollar ones at the top.” Soon they were at the bypass, then passing the Tourist Board Welcoming Centre and the last motel. At the long hill overlooking Rock Lake, the treacherous nature of the only ar
tery to Toronto flexed its muscles, with an occasional centre passing lane, invitation to a head-on for impatient motorists. Sharp rock cuts and the occasional swamp punctuated the forests of fir and spruce. The azure sky was broken by lazy cumulus clouds, a painter’s dream. Except for transports, most of the traffic was headed to camps on one of two hundred lakes, or along the Wanapitae or French Rivers.
The area had a colourful history as a connecting point for the Voyageurs. In 1613, Seigneur Champlain had taken the traditional canoe route to Georgian Bay and Superior by coming down the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing, then being paddled down the French itself, losing his astrolabe navigation system in the process, uncovered in a farmer’s field in 1867. After that, except for sending its lumber to Chicago to rebuild after the Great Fire of 1870, it had slept until the railroad came through in 1883. Sudbury might have become one of many temporary construction towns had a workman’s pick not revealed the nickel payload. Capitalists had struck quickly, buying rights for a dollar an acre, and within three years, blasting had begun at the Copper Cliff mine. Life was rugged, and so was the lifestyle for the six thousand citizens. “The people of Sudbury are, one might say, as rough as their surroundings” was a contemporary commentary from the outside world.
As the road widened for a passing lane, Mutt pulled to the right to let a speeding van streak by. People got frustrated waiting their turn at death’s roulette wheel. Not a kilometre later, the pair laughed and traded satisfied smiles as they saw the van pulled over by an OPP cruiser.
At last they turned west past open hay fields and a golf course, snow-covered half the year, but a tourist draw for cottagers. One distant hill had been used for military training manoeuvres and bore a large set of bullseye targets. They drove in several miles to Burwash before parking at a turnaround overlooking the remains of the old town grid.
“Years ago, I came here to dig up perennials. Even asparagus. It’s a hardy plant,” said Belle. “Maybe we can get enough for a meal.” They parked and wandered along a street to nowhere. Many of the houses had been post-and-beam construction, without foundations, so their traces had vanished, except for the oddment of broken glass or demolition debris. Gardens and flowerbeds were long overtaken by wild raspberry canes and stubborn weeds like goatsbeard.
In a sunny, sandy area, with the shoulder-high dried plumes of last year’s crop to guide her, Belle located a dozen luscious shoots and plucked them. Mutt seemed amazed as he placed his hands on his hips. “You forage, too? What other talents do you have?”
“I’m developing them even as we speak,” she said, flattered into a rare blush. They returned to the truck and wrapped the vegetables in paper towels for protection.
Mutt opened up a bag of sweet-sour jerky and offered her some. “So where to now?” he asked.
“Let’s check that topo to locate Bump Lake. A number of dirt roads branch out from here, and we don’t want to scratch this pretty truck,” she said, patting the dash.
He reached behind the seat for a fishing rod case. “Kept his maps rolled in here nice and tight,” Mutt said. “Here’s the one we need right on top. Seems to have been tracing water routes from Bump. See his pencil marks?”
“Is that usual for elk research, or just a way to reach the interior?”
“Both, I suspect.” Mutt nodded as he scanned the paper. “Game trails often follow the water. Animals know what spots dry up and which ones keep flowing.”
Belle watched the compass attached to the dash and made some educated guesses about directions. “Take that track to the right. It’s the best used. We’ll drive as far as we can go.”
After another half-mile on a rutted road that would have challenged her van’s undercarriage, they dead-ended in a field of daisies and hawkweed. Belle shielded her eyes as she studied the trees on the border. “Uh-oh. Hold on a minute.”
“What are you looking for?” Mutt asked as Freya nosed a clump of vetch, and a grasshopper jumped into the air. The dog’s teeth snapped, and she swallowed in satisfaction.
“A tag or blaze to show the portage.” She pointed to the left. “Good thing it’s not fall. Red and yellow are hard to spot when the leaves turn. Blue is best.”
A red plastic “flag” circling a sturdy sapling brought them to a well-trampled trail. Belle looked at the topo. “Shouldn’t be that far.”
Twenty minutes on, the leaf-mould path wound a serpentine way past early mushrooms like velvet shanks sprouting near a dead oak. The Ojibwa had feasted on them, along with the choice meadow and horse mushrooms and the occasional monster bolete. Finally they reached the edge of weedy Bump Lake, a perfect spot for browsing moose or elk. The sun warmed them, and a pleasant breeze wicked sweat from their faces. Insects were asserting their dominion on the water, striders on the surface and clouds of gnats massing above. A purple glow of pickerelweed bloomed a few feet out, surrounded by white and yellow water lilies. Mutt pointed to a school of minnows, a clear sign to Belle that the acid rain that had decimated lakes nearer to town had not reached this far. Some had been “buffered” back to a normal, life-sustaining PH balance. Birds were the best judge. The eerie ululation of a loon broke the absolute quietness, and from the other end of the crystal waters came a sensual reply in kind.
“Mating season,” Belle said. “They have a different set of calls for this time of year. Yodelling and laughter. At night or before a storm, ha-oo-ooo.”
Mutt breathed deeply, his eyes crinkling in delight. “I heard them last night. Going to bed and waking to that sound instead of sirens is a privilege. Northerners are lucky.”
If Gary’s last heartbeat had stilled in a place as beautiful as this, it was a fitting background. Far better than ticking life away on a hard hospital mattress, wired to a collection of whispering machines. She dreaded such an end for her father. But he was on the mend, now, wasn’t he? She needed to visit the hospital.
They spotted the canoe overturned under a silver birch near the water’s silty edge. Belle admired the sleek lines of the red Kevlar canoe, a perfect blend of art and utility. She lifted one end. Not too heavy. Still, returning was going to be rough. Portaging was not her favourite activity, especially in bug season. And she’d forgotten to bring the bug dope.
Mutt rubbed his hands together in preparation. “Fifty-eight pounds, Gary said. A cinch.”
The blast of a gun in the woods to the left made them duck on instinct. Freya’s ears flattened. She hated the sound and, though scouted by a neighbourhood cop when a pup, would have washed out of any Canine Unit.
NINE
Mutt pulled Belle to the ground with him, one arm over her shoulder. In turn, she reached for the dog’s collar. “Down, girl.” Together they huddled, faces pressed to the fresh grass. When another report sounded, she tried to home in on the direction. Sounded more like a shotgun than a rifle. It wasn’t hunting season, but that mattered little out here. In nearby St. Charles, forty-eight hunters had been arrested and over one hundred and fifty charges laid. Then again, someone might be after partridge or rabbits.
“Stop shoooooooooooting!” she screamed, and Mutt joined her with a baritone haloo. After a long silence, they struggled tentatively to their knees, their heads craning around and their hands up.
“What the hell?” yelled a voice from a thicket seventy-five feet to their right. Then the pesky alders rippled alive like an optical illusion, and Belle nearly squeaked in alarm. Head to toe, the man looked like a walking leaf pile, or perhaps the Creature from the Black Lagoon, only his eyes alive in the matching balaclava. She’d seen the gear in an outfitter’s catalogue. He carried a shotgun safely broken over one arm. From the other hand dangled the iridescent plumage of a partridge. A jolly springer spaniel trotted at his side in perfect heel. Pulling off the headgear, he appeared to be in his sixties. He gave them a serious stare as he assessed their pants and shirts, variations of green and brown. “Sorry for the scare. You folks ought to wear red or something. Coulda gotten plugged.”
Mutt
spoke up. “What about you, then?”
The man shuffled his shoulders as he stuck the partridge, purple feet first, into a canvas game sack slung over his shoulder, its head lolling out, tongue poking through its beak. “I’m the hunter, aren’t I? It’s my job to disguise myself. I’ve got a blind back there, and the birdies come to me. So what are you all doing here, anyways? It’s not hiking territory.”
As her nose worked, Freya narrowed her eyes in a primitive gesture. In one quick move, she nipped the head off the grouse and began munching. Belle grabbed her collar, but the dog had already swallowed her snack whole. “I’m really sorry. She’s a sucker for grouse.”
The hunter grinned. “Saves me the trouble. Does she skin, too?”
Still mortified at her dog’s bad manners, Belle made the introductions, then said, “We came to collect that canoe over there.”
He closed the sack with a wink to Freya, then extended a horny, weathered hand. “Patch Wells. Sorry if I sounded unsociable. Don’t get many visitors.”
“Especially not if you shoot at them.” Belle let a smile soften the warning.
He toed the ground with one boot. “You say you’re after the canoe? Nobody showed, I was gonna make off with it myself. Nice boat.”
“Yes, but it belonged to the man who drowned here. He was our . . . friend.” Mutt said, his eyes searching into the distance.
Patch nodded sombrely, waved his cap at a mosquito. His balding head ringed with curly steel hair afforded no protection. A black eye protector gave him the appearance of a pirate. “Myers, eh? Coulda knocked me over when I heard about it where I gas up the quad. Had many a chat with Gary when I fished Bump Lake. Shared a mess of perch one time. Only fellow other than me I ever saw eat the little buggers. Tasty if you don’t mind the bones.”
Belle had seen no vehicle in the area. The quad explained that. “Do you live around here?” she asked, bending down to pet the spaniel’s silky fur.