by Beth Goobie
Carefully, he maneuvered himself into a crouching position, then rose to his feet, one hand on the pillar. “D’you come here much?” he asked, looking out over the river.
“Who, me?” asked Shir, immediately on her guard.
The boy glanced at her, a tiny smile riding his mouth. “No,” he said, “the wind. Of course, you.”
“Oh,” said Shir, feeling a flush shoot up her face. “I guess.”
“Well,” he said, turning to work his way around the pillar. “I’ll see you again then, I guess.”
“Yeah,” said Shir, straightening to watch him go. “Yeah, I’ll see you, too.”
“Just wait,” said the boy as he stretched one foot around the outside of the pillar. “I’ll let go of this thing or my foot will slip, and I’ll fall into the river. Then I’ll be a moose head.”
Laughter bubbled unexpectedly through Shir. “Yeah,” she snorted. “A drowned moose head. One hundred proof.”
“One hundred proof,” echoed the boy. Flashing her a grin, he ducked around the pillar. For a moment, all she could see was his hand and foot, and then he appeared on the other side, scooting down the incline on his butt. Intent, Shir leaned around her pillar, keeping him in sight as he repeated the process with the second pillar, and slid down the rest of the arch. With a wave, the boy jumped to the ground and took off up the riverbank. In seconds, he was out of sight.
Slightly stunned by what had taken place, Shir settled back against her pillar and let her eyes roam the river’s rippling surface. A guy had talked to her, she thought, disbelievingly. Really talked. Not like someone talked to a dog or a piece of crap you don’t want to get stuck to the bottom of your shoe—it had been a real conversation, with listening and back-and-forth comments.
But maybe it had been just another nothing-conversation to him, like most of his conversations seemed to be. Catching her breath, Shir considered. No, she thought slowly. Before he had left, he had asked if she came here much. And then he had said he would see her again. People didn’t do that when they were bored with you. She had listened in on enough Collier High conversations to know when a kid really wanted to talk to another kid or was faking it, losing interest. And the boy with the black cap hadn’t lost interest. At least, he hadn’t seemed to. Unless he was a very good faker.
Opening her gym bag, Shir stashed her empty beer can and got to her feet. She was going to have to be careful working her way back along the arch, she thought, studying the way down. The wind had picked up, and she was stiff from sitting so long in one position. One slip of a hand or foot, and she could end up in the river. Then she would be a moose head.
With a giggle, she slid her gym bag over a shoulder and took hold of the pillar. A moose head, she reminded herself smilingly, like the beer label. They make it in New Brunswick.
Sliding her foot around the outside of the pillar, she began to work her way down.
Eight
Settling in behind the wheel, Shir put the delivery van into gear and backed carefully out of its parking space behind the store. In the alley, there wasn’t much room to maneuver, especially with an oversized vehicle, and today Mr. Anderson had parked his Honda Civic so close, she had been forced to ask him to move it. This had happened before, and the first time she had been so certain he would fly off the handle and fire her on the spot for incompetence, she had been trembling as she had confessed she couldn’t move the van unless he reparked his car. But instead of getting upset, Mr. Anderson had simply smiled his usual amiable smile and reparked the Civic, leaving her a meter to spare. Today had been a repeat of that first incident, minus Shir’s panic. Over the past few months it had come to her that there might have been a reason behind her boss’s seeming carelessness—that he had intentionally parked too close in order to find out if she was a hotshot driver too big for her britches, or one with the sense to see that some things simply couldn’t be managed.
Sneaky man, Mr. Anderson, in spite of the grandfatherly look, thought Shir, and if he had been testing her today for common sense, she had passed. The same could not be said about the algebra quiz that she had taken earlier in the day. Ms. Khan, her teacher, had sprung the quiz on the class without warning, just to make sure they had all been bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and following everything she had said over the past week with bated breath. Unfortunately, Shir’s breath had not been bated, and she had flunked royally. Now, if the quiz had asked a question about her current vote total as posted at a particularly nasty dot-com web site, she thought grimly, she could have nailed the sucker exactly: 392. It would have been impossible to get that answer wrong, since she had been receiving minute-by-minute updates from other students as long as she remained on school property. At lunch hour, someone had even tracked her to the parking lot behind a nearby convenience store to let her know the other two contestants had been declared officially out of the race, but an ongoing tally was being kept just for her.
Well, she decided, gripping the steering wheel firmly, she didn’t want to think about that now. Now she was at work, where no one knew about the web site and she was treated like an actual human being. To top that off, she had eight deliveries to complete, seven to regular customers who always tipped. Casually, she switched on the radio, and shifted the dial from Mr. Anderson’s talking heads to something that had a decent beat. Then she adjusted the rearview mirrors and headed down the alley, gearing herself up for two hours of Friday rush-hour traffic and a few hit-and-run conversations, delivered with the standard Bill’s Grocer polite, professional smile.
As she turned onto 34th Avenue, Shir spotted Mrs. Duran moseying around her front yard, tying the still-leafless vine that hung down one side of her porch into place with binder twine. “There you are, Shirley,” she warbled as Shir climbed out of the van with her order. “How kind of you to make my delivery first. My granddaughter and her children are coming over for dinner, and you’ve got half my recipe supplies in that box.”
Setting down her ball of twine, she led the way to the back door, quavering on about her three great-grandsons while Shir followed with the box of foodstuffs, throwing in the occasional “Uh huh” and “That’s real nice, Mrs. Duran.”
“Now, do you have time for a cookie and some iced tea?” asked the elderly woman, peering up intently as Shir deposited the box on a small table inside the back door. Although she had known in advance the question would be coming, Shir hesitated. The house was already working its usual magic, the lace window-curtains quietly filtering the light and making each room feel like a cupped handful of peace. From the kitchen wafted the rich scent of nutmeg, and she could almost taste the first home-baked cookie crumbling on her tongue. However, eight deliveries was more than usual, and Mr. Anderson had asked her to be back by 6:30 because one of the cashiers had to leave early. In addition, she could feel the memory of last Tuesday afternoon’s encounter with Wade and Ben hovering uneasily between herself and Mrs. Duran.
“Maybe not today,” she said hesitantly, her eyes flicking away from the elderly woman’s. “Mr. Anderson told me—”
“Yes, Mr. Anderson,” interrupted Mrs. Duran, taking Shir’s hand and patting it. “Mr. Anderson would certainly want you to have a cookie in your stomach to help you concentrate while you’re driving.”
Without further ado, she began steering Shir down the hall and into the kitchen, where an opened ice-cream pail of cookies stood on the table. “Help yourself,” she quavered as Shir sat down. “Take a few extra to keep you going on the road.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Duran,” Shir said weakly. As she took several cookies from the pail, her gaze fell on the multitude of children’s school photographs that had been taped to the front of the fridge—Mrs. Duran’s great-grandchildren, every one of them beaming and cute as a button. On the wall above them ticked an antique clock, counting off seconds of tranquility.
“Um … how old is that clock?” asked Shir, pointing to it with a thick peanut-butter cookie. If things went as usual, a question about the c
lock would get Mrs. Duran started on her childhood and the war, and then neither of them would have to think about Wade Sullivan, red maraschino cherries, or layaway plans.
“Older than I am,” chirped Mrs. Duran, taking a pitcher of iced tea out of the fridge. “It belonged to my parents, you know, when they were living in Europe.” And then she was off, warbling through stories about France and the war years, Nazi soldiers, and the underground movement that had taken her brother’s life. “Seventeen,” she said softly, stroking the lace doily that sat under her glass of tea. “Just seventeen. So long ago. So very long ago.”
In response to her words, an image of Wade Sullivan’s face flashed through Shir’s mind. Wade also happened to be seventeen, but he was hardly part of any underground resistance movement. With his personality, mused Shir, he probably would have volunteered to join the other side. “Too bad kids today aren’t like that,” she muttered, half lost in her thoughts.
Across the table, Mrs. Duran sat silently, still stroking the doily. “Children today,” she said finally. “Well, it’s a different time, isn’t it? A confusing time, when it’s hard to find your way. The war … is different now. Not outside ourselves, in uniforms, like it used to be.”
Startled, Shir shot her a glance and found the elderly woman sitting with her eyes carefully lowered as if talking to the tablecloth. “Yes,” Mrs. Duran murmured, folding her hands meticulously together. “Yes, today the war is different, more difficult to recognize. The war on terror, it is inside us, too. We go after each other for no reason. We forget …”
Her voice trailed off, wobbly as ever. “We forget,” she repeated almost aimlessly, then sat silently, watching a bead of water slide down the outside of her glass. The old clock ticked, children’s faces beamed from the fridge, and Shir sat uneasily, cookie in hand and waiting for the elderly woman to bring her mind back from wherever it had wandered. Abruptly, the house quiet felt like a weight pressing down, and she had to get out of there. Blundering to her feet, she picked up the clipboard and handed it to Mrs. Duran.
“Thanks for the cookies,” she said gruffly, keeping her eyes lowered, “but I have to get going. Could you please sign for the delivery?”
“Sign for the delivery,” repeated Mrs. Duran, as if using the words to pull herself back to the present tense. Without looking at Shir, she took the clipboard and signed next to her address, the pen scratching gently across the page.
“Here you are,” she said with forced cheerfulness, handing back the clipboard. “Now you can get on with your deliveries and leave this old woman telling her stories to the wall. Come along, I want to get you a tip.”
Head lowered, Shir followed the elderly woman to the jewelry box by the phone and waited as she fished out a loony and several quarters. “Well,” sighed Mrs. Duran, pressing them into Shir’s palm. “It was lovely to see you again, Shirley. I always enjoy our chats.”
With another pat of Shir’s hand, she opened the door, and then Shir was stepping out into a brisk April afternoon, descending the three porch stairs, and heading around the small house to the street. After getting into the van, she sat for a moment, working her way back through the conversation and trying to shake the feeling of an invisible weight pressing down. Without warning, her eyes were swarmed with tears—heated, acidic, full of tiny pinpricks. Crying, she thought, brushing at her wet face. Why was she crying now, when she had yet to blink a single tear in response to the ugly contest web site?
Grunting in exasperation, she turned on the van and headed down the street. The next address on the clipboard was Joe’s Pizza, then the seniors’ home, a hotel kitchen, and several residential addresses. At the bottom of the list was the new customer, a pub located across town. Better give it some gas, she told herself—the drive there and back was going to eat up time. Over the next hour and a half, she worked her way through the addresses on her clipboard, making sure she was polite but efficient, and not stopping to dawdle as she had with Mrs. Duran. Still, it was verging on 5:45 when she finished the fourth residential delivery and headed off toward the pub. Double-checking the address on the clipboard, she frowned thoughtfully. As far as she could tell, the pub was on the other side of the Forest Heights district. Wasn’t there a grocery store in that area of the city that made deliveries?
Eyes squinted against the low-lying sun, Shir drove steadily through a residential neighborhood, keeping out a sharp eye for skateboarders and kids on bikes, then turned onto 53rd Street. Within seconds, a small mall came into view and she pulled into it, scanning the various businesses. There it was at the mall’s south end—a pub with a dark green sign called The Fox and Brier. And, she realized, breathing in sharply, seven doors down from it, a Sobeys, stocked with everything Bill’s Grocer had on its corner-store shelves, and more. Far more.
Bewildered, Shir sat, her gaze darting between the Sobeys and the pub. Was it possible she had gotten the address wrong? she wondered. But no, she had double-checked, and besides, the name of the pub matched the one on the clipboard. Weird! she thought emphatically. The whole thing was weird, but so what? Her job was to deliver the goods, not ask questions.
Climbing out of the van, she opened the side door and reached toward the back passenger seat for the single remaining box. One more delivery! she told herself exultantly. Then it was back to the store and stocking a few shelves, mopping the floor, and heading out with her pay to pick up a few black-market beers. Carelessly, her mind on 9 PM and her first sip of the magic fluid, Shir took hold of the box and pulled it toward herself. But as the box slid over the edge of the seat, it unexpectedly tilted and slipped free of her grasp, crashing to the van floor and spilling its contents.
With a hiss, Shir began collecting cans of soup and tuna, then picked up the half-empty box to discover it wasn’t the top that had come open as assumed, but the bottom. For some reason Mr. Anderson had taped the top of this box closed—something he did to the odd delivery order—and the pressure of the fall had broken the older tape across the box’s base. Which meant, Shir realized, disconcerted, that she was going to have to repack everything upside down, then carefully replace the ruined tape with some packing tape Mr. Anderson kept stashed in the glove compartment. None of the box’s contents had been affected by the fall; with luck, the customer wouldn’t notice the damage to the bottom, and no one would ever have to know about her single brief moment of unprofessional, unforgivable carelessness.
Carefully, Shir rearranged everything, righting the cans that hadn’t fallen out and straightening a bag of flour. As she was repositioning the latter, a small package slipped out from behind it. Curious, Shir picked it up and examined it. Wrapped in plain brown paper, the package had no label and flexed easily in her hands. At most, it weighed three, maybe four hundred grams.
Drugs: the thought hit Shir, sudden and so hard that she almost blacked out. When the shock cleared from her head, she found herself still sitting on the van’s back passenger seat and staring at the package in her hands. Cocaine! she thought crazily. That was what this had to be. How many times had she seen TV-drama images of the white powder packed into small plastic bags? “Snow”—that was what they called it, wasn’t it? And it always came as a powder that was laid out in a line, then snorted. She had never seen cocaine in real life—the most she had done was some weed and a few pills she had bought from a neighborhood pusher. The weed had been okay, but the pills had left her feeling dizzy and sick, and she had stayed away from them after that, even when a guy had offered her some for free, as a sample.
Cocaine, here in her own two hands, thought Shir. Or maybe ecstasy—did that come as a powder? Did you snort it? Heart thundering, she hefted the package again. If this really was the white powder, she thought with a sinking feeling, she was holding a lot of toonies in her hands. Had all of today’s delivery boxes contained a package like this one? Had the box to Joe’s Pizza? The hotel kitchen? Mr. Anderson had also taped shut the tops on both those orders. And, Shir realized abruptly, a box tha
t had gone to one of the residential addresses. Come to think of it, the top to the Sunnyville Rec Center’s order had been taped closed, too.
Not Mrs. Duran’s, though, she thought, staring at the package. Or the other two residential addresses.
Dread thudded through her, a dull tolling bell. Imaginary police sirens wailed through her mind, she saw TV images of gunfights, a man’s throat being slit, a dead body pushed into a river at night, a horse’s head in a bed. How long she sat like that, staring at the unlabeled package, she didn’t know, but abruptly the thought, Don’t be crazy! came to her, and she found herself fervently shoving the mystery package back into its original position behind the bag of flour. Cocaine mixed in with a bunch of grocery supplies, she scolded herself angrily—it was insane. She was insane for even thinking it. What a crazy imagination she had. The unmarked package probably contained more flour, or maybe some icing sugar—something like that. The Fox and Brier had needed a bit of icing sugar but not a whole bag, and Mr. Anderson was giving them a deal, probably for free.
But then, Shir wondered suddenly, why was the package taped so securely—both ends were a mass of packing tape. For another endless moment, she sat staring at the delivery box’s upside-down contents. Then, with an uneasy shudder, she shrugged the whole thing off. Whatever, she thought gruffly. It’s none of my business. Quickly, she finished repacking the box, shifting the unmarked package so that it would sit underneath the flour. Then she folded the box’s bottom closed, and resealed it with the packing tape and a pair of scissors from the glove compartment. Finally, pulling the box to the edge of the seat, she very carefully hefted it, right side up, into her arms.
Sure is heavy, she thought, stepping cautiously out of the van. Fortunately, someone was coming out of the pub as she approached the door.