Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  So she must watch and wait. She climbs out of the car into the coolness of the evening. Somewhere far off she hears the drone of a truck changing gears on a long hill. All around her are the sounds of the bush at night. These are not alien sounds to her. She has no fear of this. She locks the car, pockets the key.

  She heads back down the road. It is just light enough that she would see someone approaching. She will need all her hunting smarts. What was it Spence had taught her about moose hunting? You don’t look for moose; you look for something that doesn’t look right.

  She must keep her eyes and, more important, her ears alert for something that doesn’t seem right.

  None of it seems right, really. She thinks back to the discussion she’d had with Blink about purgatory. Not just a place but a state of mind. And as she walks down the road toward where it ends at the lake, she realizes that this is purgatory’s end.

  There is a low rumble of thunder.

  By the time you’ve waded to shore dragging that fool boat behind you, you’re about as tired as a human can be. It’s a deep tired, deeper than your bones. It’s a give-up kind of tired. The Captain must have drowned out there in the bay, because you don’t feel him inside you anymore. There is no alarm left in you, Blink. The battery ran out. Surrender has sucked the last drop of juice right out of you just like the mud of the bay is sucking the last bit of strength out of your leg muscles. You hang your head in defeat.

  If there is any hope left in the world, it is in that girl with the dove-colored eyes, Kitty Pettigrew.

  You hand the end of the yellow rope to Wallace, still standing at the end of the dock. He squats to tie the boat back up again while you wander those last few feet to shore, your legs heavy now from the soaking and growing cold as the night air gets at them. For one brief moment, you think about making a run for it in your mud-heavy sneakers, but the knife hidden in your shoe isn’t going to make running any too easy. And when you look up toward the lodge, you realize that Niven is standing there, and you can hear the whine of the ATV getting louder as Tank makes his way back. With Kitty? You send up a soggy prayer to the God you knew as a boy that she has not been captured. You remember her escape from you at Union Station with all your money in her hand. Was that only this morning? You recall how quick she was. How quick her mind is. This is all you can hang on to.

  You stand on the silted shoreline, looking at Wallace, wavering a bit as if you might collapse. He is coming, and for some reason you want him to be the one to claim you as his captive. He takes you by the arm and leads you up the hill toward the lodge. He must feel the breakdown of your spirit, for he barely holds on to you at all.

  “You’re limping,” he says, staring down at your left foot.

  “I twisted my ankle,” you say.

  Niven wrinkles his nose and waves you away. “Show him the shower, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to talk to him in that state.”

  One of the sheds turns out to be a sauna with a shower in it. Wallace points at something on the roof and explains how they run the generator and fill the drum up there with water from the lake, and then heat it with a woodstove in the sauna.

  You look at the bay. “I’m going to wash in that shit?” you say.

  He chuckles. “The line goes way out to where the water is fresh.”

  You aren’t about to argue with him because Tank is back, his ATV rumbling and grumbling as he brings it around to the back of the shed. He’s alone; good. But his face is clouded, angry. So you head into the shower house quickly, and Wallace doesn’t follow you, which is also good. There’s a little front room where you strip down, palming the knife before you enter the sauna. There is a shelf of towels where you find a place to hide the knife for now.

  The stove has made the whole place warm, and the smell of cedar, pungent and soothing, fills your lungs. The water from the shower scalds until you get the mix right and then washes away the muck of the bay, the muck of days and days. When was the last time you washed? You feel your muscles relax. You look down at your skinny self and see a new batch of bruises blossoming, ones you got from your daring escape. The only thing you got from your daring escape. Well, other than the knife.

  You wash your hair with some lemon-scented shampoo. You wash it twice, putting off what is coming, though you don’t really know what is coming.

  When you finally step out of the shower and into the little front room, there are ironed and laundered clothes waiting for you: jeans, anyway, and a thick plaid shirt. No underpants or socks but a pair of moccasins for your feet. They’ve taken away your beautiful blue two-day-old sneakers and your brand-new gear from the Army Surplus. There’s some ornate stitching on the back pockets of the jeans, and you guess they must have belonged to a woman, though you haven’t seen one around. They’ve put your money back in your pocket. How weird is that? The pants are loose on you. There is not much of you left, child.

  There’s a little mirror lit by a battery-operated lamp. You comb the tangles out of your hair and recover your hidden weapon from its hidey-hole. The knife fits better in the moccasin than it did inside your sneaker. Then you step outside to face the music.

  Tank is standing next to Wallace, steaming.

  “You think it’s funny wasting my time?” says Tank.

  You do what Niven does and ignore him. You stare straight at Wallace, as if Tank is speaking in some other language and you need a translation.

  “Tank here says he couldn’t find no car keys.”

  “I hid them,” you say.

  “They’re nowhere on the Jeep,” says Tank, his voice raised as if this is an insult directed at him.

  You shrug and he makes a move toward you, but Wallace stops him. Then Tank points his finger at you, like it’s the barrel of a gun, and pulls the trigger.

  There’s more trouble with Tank when you get to the lodge. Wallace sends him away.

  “What?”

  “Get back to the camp,” says Wallace.

  “Jesus, Wally,” he says, shaking his head, his teeth gritted. Then he looks at you, Blink, as if yet again you’ve screwed things up for him. You can’t help it: you give him a wave. He doesn’t lunge this time. He smiles the wickedest smile you have ever seen.

  “You have rubbed me the wrong way one too many times, punk,” he says.

  He throws up his hands to stop Wallace from scolding him anymore and heads off back across the yard, still shaking his head and rolling his shoulders like a heavyweight going to his corner but dying for the next round.

  The door into the lodge leads through a kitchen area, where something is bubbling on a gas stove. Wallace looks you over in the light and then finds some thick string in a kitchen drawer and hands it to you.

  “You’re going to need this to hold your pants up, eh,” he says.

  You pass it through the belt loops and tie it. “Thanks,” you say. You want to keep this one on your side as much as possible.

  Meanwhile, he has ladled out some soup into a big bowl. You can see beef and potato in a rich broth. The savory smell makes your knees weak.

  He indicates the table. “Take a load off,” he says. He shoves a spoon into the chest pocket of your oversize shirt.

  You carry the soup in two hands toward the table. You recognize it. There is the chipboard wall from the video. The table in front of it is enameled white metal, with benches on either side. You remember Alyson trying to tell you that she saw a stain on that wall when she saw the video. How many stories did she have lined up to tell you — how many layers of lies — until she convinced you? Except that they really didn’t know who you were at first, you remind yourself. It wasn’t a setup. Well, it hardly matters now. Your street smarts are no match for the games these people play.

  When you’re finished, Wallace leads you through a long dining room that opens up into a huge living room. There is a fireplace in the center of it, big enough to stand up in. It’s built of pink and yellow and deep gray stone and rises into the darkness of varn
ished yellow-gold timber beams. There’s a rustic stairway of thick planks notched into a single, central tree trunk, with branches forming the balustrade leading up to a gallery that looks down on the living room. The lights are low and solar powered. That’s what Wallace tells you, like you are a tourist or in the market to buy the place. The fire is bright and crackling. There are stuffed deer heads on the walls, a couple of sets of moose antlers, long, sharp-nosed fish mounted on plaques. There’s a rack for fishing rods and a gun rack with a half dozen rifles in it.

  “Are we just about ready?” says Niven. You’ve been avoiding looking at him as long as you can. From the look on his face, his patience has worn thin.

  He’s sitting on a couch, working on his laptop. He’s got his feet up on a wide coffee table. He closes the top of his computer, and Wallace leads you before him. Niven nods toward an ugly, old easy chair across the coffee table from him. You sink down so low, your knees stick up as high as your chin. Not something you’re going to leap up from any too quickly, assuming you had any leap left in you.

  Wallace takes a chair nearby, just in case you have such an idea in mind. His chair is of about the same vintage and ugliness. All the furniture is old and homey, with colorful blankets thrown here and there to cover holes and stains — that’s what you figure, anyway. It’s the same as your mother’s idea of home decorating. The blanket on this chair doesn’t do much to lessen the effect of the spring that’s sticking into your backside. But what did you really expect?

  The coffee table between you and Jack Niven is heavy and hokey knotty pine.

  Niven looks at Wallace first. “Did he find a vehicle?”

  Wallace nods. “And it’s not some punk’s ride.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a late-model Jeep Wrangler.”

  You watch Niven’s face darken, his eyebrows knot. “What color?”

  “Yellow.”

  “Really?” He glances at you, perplexed.

  “That’s what Tank said.”

  There is a flash of panic in Niven’s face. “Where did you get that car?” he asks. And although his voice is not raised, there is trouble in those piercing blue eyes. There is no point in fooling around.

  “From Alyson.”

  “You stole my daughter’s car.”

  “No way. She lent it to me.”

  “Do not lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying. She had this idea you might be up here, and she couldn’t come herself to find out. So she asked me to do it.”

  “Asked you to do it.”

  “To come up here. To check. She was worried about you.”

  He clears his throat but can’t speak.

  “How would I ever find a place like this in the middle of nowhere?”

  He rubs his face with his hands. There are bags under his eyes. He looks down at the table in front of him, shaking his head. You glance at Wallace. His eyes are on the boss. You turn back as Niven raises his head and looks at you hard.

  “You saw something at the hotel. You saw us leave the room. Is that it?” You nod slowly, just once. “And then you contacted Alyson?”

  “She phoned you. I just picked up the call.”

  Niven’s eyes close for just a moment and then open again. “And you told her what you saw.” You nod again, but the look on his face gives you a sinking feeling. “And she . . . what?”

  You shrug. “She didn’t believe me. I was just, like, trying to tell her that you were okay. That’s all I was doing, honest. I figured she’d want to know. I didn’t get it . . .” You stop there. Niven’s face looks gray. He stares at the fire for a moment. You can see the fire in his eyes. His hands are clenched. The room is silent but for the crackling of the logs.

  He rubs his face again. “So what exactly was the plan, Brent?”

  You swallow hard. “I was supposed to drive up here and check and then drive right back and let her know. She’s expecting me back, like, by eight — nine at the latest.” You’re not sure if you should tell him this. Someone is expecting you — that should be a deterrent to him trying anything, except that the person expecting you is his daughter. His well-loved daughter. It doesn’t look good.

  He looks at you again, and the concern on his face melts away and shifts to a wry smile. “Do you really expect me to believe this?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Who put you up to this, Brent?”

  “Listen. I’ve got her car, right?”

  “Apparently, and you’re trying to tell me my daughter — my highly intelligent daughter — just handed over her new set of wheels to a scumbag street kid — a thief, no less? Is that what you’re telling me, Brent?”

  You reel a bit from the force of what he’s saying, but you also hate him for it — him calling you a scumbag. Your jaw clamps tight to hold back the rage you feel percolating up inside you. Then you look down and see a cell phone on the table in front of Niven. There are no cell towers up here, but this one has a heavy-duty antenna on it. You look right at him, eye to eye. “Why don’t you phone her and find out?” you say.

  Niven leaves the room. He just ups and leaves. Doesn’t take the phone, doesn’t say good-bye. He gives no instructions to the Moon. You look over at Wallace; his hands are folded on his belly, his face giving nothing away. You lean your head back, close your eyes, and try to think what the last expression was that you saw on Niven’s face. Something happened to that cool exterior. And you remember once when Da came to pick you up, out of the blue, and your mother tore into him. She still had a bit of fire in her then, and she called him a disgrace. “You’re a disgrace, Ginger Conboy,” she said. And Ginger, for all his smiling and winking at you, had this look — this flinching — as if she’d struck home. Was that what he saw on Jack Niven’s face? Shame. Could a man like that feel shame?

  You drift off to some restless turbulent place that is as far from sleep as it is from wakefulness. You’re jarred back to consciousness by the sound of a door slamming. You look up, bleary-eyed, but it’s not Niven returning but Tank with a tool belt on and a cardboard box in his hands.

  “What are you doing here?” says Wallace.

  “Keep your shirt on,” says Tank. “The boss got me to take a padlock off one of the sheds. I’m supposed to put it on one of the bedrooms upstairs.” He looks at you with a smile that he’s been soaking in some solvent. “Seems like we’ve got ourselves an overnight guest.” As he passes you by, he leans down to speak in your ear. “Hope you call for room service,” he says.

  He heads upstairs, chuckling. You close your eyes again, and even though you try not to, you fall asleep to the sound of an electric drill. Next thing you know, Wallace is shaking you awake. You look around and rest your gaze on Niven, sitting on the couch again.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “The cops will find the Jeep in Toronto somewhere. Stolen and abandoned.”

  You think about Alyson’s friend Jason, who was supposed to have borrowed the car to go to Ottawa. But that’s not your problem, and you’ve got enough of your own.

  “We’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

  “Boss, we didn’t find no keys.”

  Niven chops the air with his hand. “We’ll deal with that tomorrow, Wallace,” he says. Then he clasps his hands together and examines you a moment like a man wondering whether he wants to soil his shoe by stepping on a cockroach.

  “I do not appreciate you dragging my daughter into this business,” he says. “Mistakes were made. That happens. We are going to clear up those mistakes. But she is never going to know about this. Ever. Do you understand me, Brent?”

  You nod. You almost admire him. How amazing it would be to be loved so much.

  “Good,” he says. He looks down at the coffee table for a moment. When he looks up, his face is all business.

  “So, Brent, what do you think is going on here?” You shrug and he leans forward, rests his chin on his fists. “This can be done quickly, or we can take all night, b
ut I think you’ll be a lot happier if you choose the quick option.”

  His voice is straightforward, but there’s no mistaking the threat. He’s not a man who has to try very hard to be frightening.

  “If I say I don’t know nothing, will you just let me go?”

  “No,” he says.

  “So, why not just kill me and get it over with?”

  “Not unless you really piss me off,” says Niven, which makes Wallace laugh. He gets up to stretch. You look at him in the firelight. He gives you a little encouraging nod, as if maybe this thing could still get turned around.

  “Brent,” says Niven. “Can we just do this?”

  That’s what Alyson said. Can we just do this? Maybe it’s a Niven family thing.

  You look from him to Wallace, who nods at you again.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “First of all, I want to know who you’ve talked to about this, apart from my daughter. You could lie to me, but I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “No one,” you say.

  Niven nods. “Okay, good. Now tell me what you know — what you think you know.”

  “Okay. So you own this land, and you want to open a mine on it. But there’s these Indians who say it’s their land, and they don’t want you mining uranium because it’s like a major pollutant and ‘everybody lives downstream’— that’s what this guy in the paper said.”

  Niven looks peeved. “Go on,” he says.

  “So, anyway, they’ve got this big protest happening that is getting lots of press and making you look bad, and you say you’re willing to back out if the government takes the land off your hands for forty-eight million.”

  Niven is looking at you with interest. “Am I supposed to think you figured this all out yourself ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No one coaching you?”