Ragged Lake

by Ron Corbett

  The cook was not moving. He lay on his back snoring. The bottle of Canadian Club he had snuck from the bar lying on the bed beside him, the last few shots roiling in the bottom whenever he moved. The cigarette he had in his mouth when he passed out had smoldered and burned away a hole the size of a baseball in the comforter. The down inside the comforter had burned like incense sticks for a long time and there were even small flames for a while, but the cook was protected for some reason. Kept alive. God making the sort of decision he makes routinely, keeping a worthless man alive while somewhere a good one died in pain. The cook, oblivious to such cosmic machinations, to the eternal riddles of philosophy and religion, woke up to finish his bottle of rye, then went back to sleep.

  . . .

  The tree-marker knocked on the wall of his room, waited a few seconds, and knocked again. The waitress sounded scared and confused when she answered.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me. The tree-marker.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk. How are you doing?”

  “How am I doing? How do you think I’m doing? There are people killing people around here.”

  “That’s why I knocked. To see how you were doing.”

  This silenced her. She wondered if it might be true. That he was being kind.

  “We could hear the explosion and see the fire from our rooms,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “I know. I saw a refinery fire once down in Springfield, but this was worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “I’m telling you. The flames out at that bunkie seemed higher to me.”

  “Did you see anyone get burned?”

  “Saw someone came running out of the building who was all on fire. But he got shot right away.”

  “By the cops?”

  “No, by the guy he was with. It was an accident.”

  “My Lord. I can’t believe what is happening here. A meth lab? I’ve been working at the Mattamy two years. I had no idea. How can you keep a thing like that a secret?”

  The boy leaned closer to the wall, almost pushed his ear against the drywall so he could hear the girl clearly.

  “It might not be all that hard,” he said. “People don’t ask a lot of questions around here. Did you know there was an Englishman, who came over here once, came right to the Divide, and he pretended to be a great Apache chief from the Dakotas, and he got away with it. People bought the story.”

  “You’re making that up,” said the girl.

  “I am not. They got an exhibit of the guy at a museum in Springfield. He was famous. He wrote books and everything.”

  “Didn’t he speak with an English accent?”

  “You would think. But people didn’t ask him a lot of questions. Hell, they didn’t even want to know how he learned to write books.”

  “I don’t believe it. People aren’t that dumb.”

  “You can look it up. And I don’t think people are that dumb. Sometimes people just don’t want to ask a lot of questions.”

  “You found the bodies of the squatters, too, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What was that like?”

  “I’d never seen dead people before. Now I’ve seen three of them. Each one shot up. That would be a horrible way to die. Metal ripping you up. Metal coming your way, no accident about it, not getting lopped with a chainsaw or something like that. Cut up with metal because that is the way someone wanted it to go for you.”

  “What is happening around here?”

  “Bikers. They pretty much run High River nowadays. That cop, Yakabuski, he flat out nailed the one we got in the freezer. Sucker punched him cold.”

  “The cop?”

  “Yeah, the cop. Everyone’s acting weird right now.”

  The waitress said nothing for a minute, not knowing what to say next, wanting to say something halfway normal. Eventually, she asked, “How long have you been working for O’Hearn?”

  “Same as you here at the Mattamy. Prit’ near two years.”

  “You like it?”

  “I like it a lot. I love the bush.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous? Being out there without people?”

  There was a wall separating them and no familiarity, so the girl had no way of knowing the tree-marker was smiling right then. Feeling good for the first time in days. Already knowing the waitress came from Buckham’s Bay and already reminding him of girls back home, and now for reasons he could not articulate, although he would think about it for the rest of the night, he felt closer to her than he had felt to anyone in a long time. Just by her asking that one question. Wanting to know if a place without people was dangerous. After everything that had happened the past two days.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said gently. “In some ways, it’s better.”

  . . .

  The Tremblays took their medicines one after the other, carefully counting the pills, unwrapping the paper around the glass in the bathroom, sharing the water. They had been allowed to bring toiletries, pyjamas, and robes from their home, and they hoped to have a more pleasant evening.

  “I cannot remember the last time I was this tired, can you, Gaetan?” asked Roselyn, and Gaetan yawned, not saying anything afterward, as it struck him as a good answer.

  “Maybe it is time we left Ragged Lake,” she continued. “This place has seemed cursed for a long time. Now this. I do not think this place will ever be good again.”

  “A place is not good or bad, Roselyn. It just is.”

  “How can you say something so silly?”

  “How can you? Something bad has happened. A few bad things. But it was done by people. It has nothing to do with this place.”

  “Place is everything, Gaetan. It is who you are. If I were not born in Kes’, would I be the woman that stands in front of you today? Would I be a different person if I had never lived at Five Mile? How could it be any other way?”

  “I’m not sure, Roselyn.” He sat down on the bed. “I read an article once about twins who were separated at birth. They met each other years later and they looked exactly the same. Even wore the same clothes. Where they lived seemed to make no difference.”

  Roselyn stared at her husband and pity came to her eyes. Then kindness and love, and she went to lie beside him. Of all people, Gaetan should see the obvious, but for some reason he refused. As if place could be denied. As if newspaper stories ever amounted to anything.

  Tobias O’Keefe stared out at the storm, the wind pushing around the snow in great billowing sweeps, like God shaking out a blanket, he thought. David Garrett sat on a bed, untying his boots, gazing not out the window but at the back of the front door. Garrett did not understand why it had been necessary to share a bedroom. It seemed an inconvenience. If he had been sharing a room with anyone other than this man, he would have complained. Surely you’ve made a mistake. Does O’Hearn need money so badly it can’t spring for two out-of-season hotel rooms in Ragged Lake?

  But he had said nothing. Tried to see this trip as an opportunity. A chance to further his career. He had been jolly on the train. A good companion during their meals at the Mattamy. A diligent worker when they were out on the field, making note, he was sure, of things others would have missed. Machinery that would be eligible for a recent tax change allowing for faster writeoffs on such obsolete equipment. A treasure trove of old seeding records. Contact information for a manufacturer that O’Hearn thought had gone out of business but had instead only merged, and that alone might speed up a retrofit by six months.

  Yet his companion never seemed to warm to him. Looked at his work with the impatient indifference a teacher might show if he were about to go on holidays but still had a dull child’s essay to mark. For long stretches of time, Garrett was even left on his own — the other man more interested in ex
ploring the countryside on his snowmobile — to work in the shuttered darkness of the mill over a conical space heater, using a flashlight to find old documents.

  Sharing a room made no sense. Why not give him a room to continue his work when he got back to the Mattamy? Why go through this charade? The basest possibility for such a decision left him unsettled, an effect magnified whenever his companion stepped naked from the shower or on the rare times he smiled and seemed to lick his upper plate at the same time.

  “Quite a storm,” he said once his boots were off, but as usual O’Keefe said nothing. Kept staring out the window. Not even acknowledging his companion’s question.

  . . .

  Yakabuski stared at the treeline of spruce and pine bending in the wind. They didn’t look like trees to him. More like summer hay. Or cottonwood strands thrown to air. He had rarely seen wind this strong. The creaking and groaning of ice on the lake was mixed with sounds from the forest. The thunderclap banging of trees as they fell. The whistling of branches being ripped from trunks and flying through the air.

  There had been no way to make it back to the squatters’ cabin. He went through his day once again, but did not see how it could have been done. He took off his parka, placed it on a chair next to the bed, and tried not to think of the bodies in that cabin. Still lying where they had fallen. How their faces would have looked, for there would be slight differences, even in this cold. He wished now he had turned down the eyes of the young girl. As if that family had not been abandoned enough. Now they were locked in their death poses until the world found the time to collect them.

  There seemed to be abandoned people all over the Northern Divide these days. People not connecting to anything anymore. Not working anywhere. Not knowing what they would be doing two months from now. Rootless, desperate people living in a world that had abandoned them, something that had been going on so long now there were people drifting around who couldn’t recall any other way of living. Couldn’t remember a time when people grew up and always did a bit better than their parents. When people had a job until they decided they didn’t want a job. When they knew what they would be doing next Monday morning.

  The sure things in this world had vanished. Along with decorum and decency and just plain neighbourliness, it seemed to Yakabuski. Everyone was on the take these days. And how could that be? After ten thousand years of progress, after the fabled march of civilization, most people were still left wondering how to survive. As if we were still cavemen looking with fear upon a dwindling fire. It was almost embarrassing.

  Yakabuski took the journal from the inside pocket of his parka and sat on the edge of the bed. He suspected the police chief had seen it by now: bikers killing that squatter family was a convenient story that explained away all the problems, but there was no witness. No one you could ask ten thousand questions so you could feel better about the story. Left owning a tale of happenstance and bad luck — wrong place at the wrong time — and they were supposed to be all right with that.

  If O’Toole hadn’t thought of that already, he would think of the gun soon enough. A heavy-bore shotgun. A duck gun. Used by people — if you believed the story — who used military-grade assault rifles with tracer bullets.

  Maybe they were wearing overalls when they killed that family. Chewing strands of hay. Left the turnip truck running outside.

  No, there was something wrong about that story.

  Yakabuski opened the journal, flipped to the page he had turned down, leaned the book a little closer to the bedside lamp, and began to read.

  FIREFLIES IN THE SNOW II

  Guillaume loved the plan right from the start. If you were looking for a way to slip off the edge of the planet, it was a pretty good plan. He never once asked a question that made me think he was unsure of what we were doing. That he had doubts. He was tired and it was time to move on. We both felt that way.

  I never heard from Sean or Tommy again. Guillaume moved in with me and that helped me feel safer. I thought about telling him the whole story but never did. I was confident again.

  I worked at the McDonald’s until I was eight months pregnant, and on my last night Mr. Rodriguez took me to an Irish pub in a strip mall across the street where there was a cake waiting for me and three tables of people who worked at the McDonald’s. There were baby presents wrapped in expensive paper and a card they had all signed. It was rather sweet. I wasn’t expecting it. Although I knew we would be leaving Springfield and would not have Guillaume’s truck much longer, I made up a story about him struggling to fit a car seat into the truck and they all laughed. It seemed the least I could do for them.

  I had my last session with Dr. Mackenzie the next day. We spoke like people about to part for summer holidays or some long journey. I miss him some days and hope he is well.

  “I have you blocked out for two months, Lucy,” he said when I arrived. “I have the missed appointments starting the week of the eighth. Is the fifteenth still the due date?”

  “Yes.”

  “It looks like you could come any day. How are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine. Better than I did a few months back.”

  “You saw the doctor this morning?”

  “She says I’m fine as well. Healthy baby girl. She won’t be a small child.”

  “Well, you look good, Lucy. You must know that. I don’t think there is a way, really, that you could ever look anything but . . . good.”

  He stammered the last word, as though he had come to the end of the sentence and regretted where he had found himself. Wishing he could start over. After blushing for a second, he asked me about Guillaume.

  “He’s good,” I said. “I know you have your doubts about him, Dr. Mackenzie, but he’s a good man. I love him and he’s good for me. We’re at the same place in our lives. This only works because of Guillaume. I know that’s the sort of thing you don’t want to hear, but I feel lucky to have him.”

  “Well, I only want what is best for you, Lucy. Guillaume may well be a good man. From what you have told me, I am inclined to believe he is. But be careful. Be aware. You know what you are dealing with. You know what your diagnosis is. No therapist has ever told you anything different.” He stared at me and I didn’t like him right then. For sounding like a doctor.

  “Do you think I’m going to be a good mother?” I asked.

  To his credit, he didn’t hesitate. Didn’t take off his glasses and think for a minute, make out like this was a question that needed to be pondered, considered, reflected upon with all the time you need to reflect upon the big stuff, the stuff you’re not certain about.

  “Yes. I think you will be a good mother, Lucy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you will love this girl. You will protect her. You will always have her best interests as the thing that motivates your actions. She will never feel unloved or . . . abandoned.”

  Again, he stammered out the last word. As though saying something he wished he had had a bit more time to think about. We hugged at the end of that session, and I promised to bring my daughter with me when I came back for the first appointment after the break. Guillaume would come as well. I told him we had already bought a car seat.

  . . .

  Guillaume went to collect the midwife the following Monday, one of those early spring days that lacked warmth but felt like spring all the same. A day so clear it was disorienting after a season of dull winter skies. There were no shadows or clouds that day, and the wind built steadily so that by early evening, when my water broke, it was a high keen outside our window and the stop signs on the street below were rattling.

  We had found the midwife at the Odawa Friendship Centre, an old Cree woman from Kes’ who lit sticks of cedar incense when she arrived and made me lie on our bed, where she wrapped hot towels over my body as I listened to the storm move in. Shortly before midnight, the rain started. Splats of w
ater that landed on my window with so much force it could have been children throwing rocks. There was thunder in the distance, and the midwife started to chant an old song I remembered hearing as a young girl, not sure where it would have been, not from Johnny, couldn’t have been Johnny, a Cree lullaby about the founding of the universe, three brothers setting out on a journey, two to die, one to prosper. The wind was now rattling the stop signs with so much force the sound had become a constant metal clanging, a thing out of control, rising in pitch and intensity until it mixed with the wind and the rain to become some new sound, some mad, high-pitched scream announcing the cleansing of Springfield.

  The midwife was still singing a sad song about three brothers setting out on a journey when our daughter was born at four in the morning. She was born at the high point in the storm, when trees were being ripped up along the shoreline of the Springfield and tossed like cabers into the river, when cars were crashing on the Trans-Canada Highway and power was going out in every home and business in the Upper Springfield Valley.

  We had already chosen her name. From a children’s book of myths and fables we had purchased at a second-hand store, both of us loving the name and the story that went along with it. There was nothing about her birth to make us reconsider. Cassandra.

  . . .

  We left Springfield ten days later. Drove Guillaume’s truck to High River and sold it to a dealer on the edge of town who drove us the rest of the way to the train station. For the first two hours, the train travelled the southern tip of the great boreal forest, rising and falling on the uneven grade, going around granite hills and over trestle bridges that spanned rivers we could only dimly see in gorges far below. The forest was spruce mixed with some outlier maple and oak at first, but after that came the grand sweep of the Upper Springfield Valley and the white pine, the white pine that towered and shimmered over other trees, the trees that brought lumber companies this far north in the 1800s, when they were looking for squared timber to build English naval ships. There were some old-growth stands still ringing the train-line. Looked like mountains when we passed. The height unknown.