by Jeremy Bates
“Restrooms are right over there,” the woman said, indicating a set of doors at the end of a log counter stacked with tourist brochures.
“There you go, bud,” Rex said, ruffling his hair with his hand.
Bobby took off.
“Mind you, there’s no toilet seat!” the woman added.
Bobby hesitated at the door with the MENS decal, glanced back.
“It’s okay, bud,” Rex said. “Just don’t fall in.”
Bobby slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Wow!” Ellie said, staring up at the wall where an eight-point stag mount presided over them. “A deer head!”
“Ran right into the museum, that one did,” the woman said with a lopsided grin. “It wasn’t suicidal. Deers are rarely suicidal, you know. So it must have been real dark. But that’s how I found it in the morning, head sticking through the wall, just like that.”
“Was it okay?” Ellie asked, concerned.
“Dead as a mackerel,” the woman stated bluntly. “So I lopped off the body on the other side of the wall and that was that. Been up there ever since.”
Ellie was speechless for the first time all day.
Rex was too.
Crouching before Ellie, so they were at eye level, the woman continued, “But never-mind that. How do you like our little town so far, lovely?”
Ellie said, “We saw some Abodidinals.”
“Aboriginals? Very good. A lot of young people often mistakenly call them Indians, but that’s not correct. A long time ago, you see, Christopher Columbus set sail for what at the time everybody called India, or the Indies. But then he accidentally landed on an island in the Caribbean instead, which is just south of the U.S.A. Thinking he was in the Indian Ocean, he called the people Indians, and the name stuck for all the different native people in North America.”
“I knew they were Abodidinals because T-Rex taught me that.”
“T-Rex?”
Ellie pointed at Rex. “That’s T-Rex, my mom’s boyfriend. And that’s my mom. She looks like me when I get bigger.”
“Oh—oh my, I see.” The woman glanced up at Tabitha, who was blushing, then at Rex, then at their denuded ring fingers.
“I’m Rex,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “This is my partner, Tabitha.”
“Call me Barb,” she said. Then to Ellie, “And you, little princess, are absolutely right. There are a lot of Aboriginals in Lillooet. In fact, just over half the town are St’at’imc. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“You’ve seen the big river outside?”
Ellie nodded.
“That’s the longest and most important river in British Columbia. Several streams converge with it right around here, making this area a great fishing spot. Aboriginals have been coming here long before Lillooet was called Lillooet, some archeologists think for thousands of years, specifically to catch migrating Chinook salmon.”
“Huh,” Rex said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Sure,” Barb said, nodding her head sagely. “They also believe it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited locations on the continent.”
Ellie scrunched her nose. “I don’t like salmon, and I don’t like mosquitas.”
“Mosquitos?” Barb said. “No, not many people do, do they?”
“Abodidinals do.”
Barb raised an eyebrow. “Do they now?”
“Because they made the mosquita face on the big totem pole, and T-Rex says the most important face is at the bottom, so that means they probably like mosquitas.”
“Rex—or T-Rex, I should say—is exactly right. And you are too, in a way. The Aboriginals don’t like mosquitos how you might like a cute puppy, with affection, I mean, but they certainly hold great respect for them.”
“Why do they respect them?”
“Ellie,” Tabitha said, “that’s enough questions for now, I think. I’m sure Barbara has better things to do than—”
“Oh, not at all,” Barb said. “I’m honored to have such an inquisitive young lady in my museum.” To Ellie, “Would you like to hear a story, lovely?”
“Yes!”
Barb took Ellie’s hands in hers and said, “A long, long time ago, long before there were white people in Canada, and when Lillooet was just a longhouse village, some of the St’at’imc were out on the river in their elm-bark canoes—”
“Fishing for salmon?” Ellie said.
“That’s right,” Barb said. “Fishing for salmon. Only on this morning they didn’t get a single bite in their usual spot, so they tried a new stream. They didn’t get any bites there either, and so they paddled farther and farther into uncharted territory. Suddenly along the tree-lined bank there was a loud rustling sound and then”—she made an astonished gesture— “something thin and tall burst through the thick vegetation and snatched one of the men!”
Ellie covered her eyes with her hands. “Did it eat him?” she asked, peeking through her splayed fingers.
“Nobody knew what happened to him,” Barb replied. “But back at the longhouse village, the chief wasn’t happy. So the next morning he sent his best warriors to track down the creature.”
Ellie lowered her hands reluctantly. “Did they find it?”
“They did. But they weren’t strong enough to kill it. Instead, it took another one of the men and injured several others, who quickly fell sick and died over the next few days.”
“Oh poo!” Ellie said, frowning in despair.
Rex cleared his throat. “Maybe we should pause the story there for now—”
“But I want to hear what happened!” Ellie protested, looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“I don’t want you to having nightmares tonight.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I promise.”
Rex glanced at Tabitha. Her daughter, her call.
Tabitha shrugged. “Ellie’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions.”
“Well,” Barbara continued, picking up from where she had left off, “the chief wasn’t just angry anymore. He was scared. What was this creature that could defeat his best warriors with such ease? He decided to send messengers to the neighboring St’at’imc villages to warn them about the creature—and much to his amazement, the other villages already knew about it. In fact, they had a name for it too. Zancudo. That means long-legged.”
“Were there more like it?”
“Nobody knew. Nobody knew much of anything about it. Not where it came from, nor how many of them there were, if there were indeed more than one. Only that it was very dangerous—and that the attacks kept happening. So after much worrying and consulting, the villages decided to work together. They organized the biggest hunting party yet. With their bows and arrows, war clubs and hunting knives, dozens of warriors tracked down the Zancudo, overwhelmed it with their sheer numbers, and chopped it up into pieces.”
“They killed it?” Ellie said.
“They did indeed. But while they were celebrating, the strangest thing happened. Tiny little insects appeared in the Zancudo’s spilled blood. Swarms of them took to the air, turning the sky black. Buzzing and biting, they attacked the warriors, killing many and driving the rest back to their villages—and returning every summer thereafter to seek their revenge.” The old woman smiled. “And that, little princess, is the origin of hateful mosquitos, and why the St’at’imc people have a grudging respect for them.”
Ellie scrunched her nose. “Is that true?” she asked skeptically.
“It’s what the St’at’ime people believe.”
“Is it true, Mommy?”
“You heard the woman, honey,” Tabitha said.
“Little mosquitos came from a big one?” She chewed on this. Then, “Do other big ones still exist?” she asked worriedly.
“I have never seen one—”
The door to the men’s restroom opened, and Bobby stomped out, fiddling with his belt.
“All good, Bobby?” Rex asked, happy that they c
ould finally get going. There was something about Barb that bothered him in a vague and undefined way, almost as though she were in on a joke they knew nothing about.
“Yup!” Bobby said, coming over. “It was just me and my penis.”
Rex cleared his throat. “A bit too much information there, bud. Now thank this lady for letting you use the bathroom.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said shyly.
Barb stood. “Where are you staying in town, if I may ask?”
“We’re not,” Rex replied. “I have a cabin on Pavilion Lake.”
Her eyebrows went up in surprise. “Is that so?”
“I spent summers there as a kid. Haven’t been back since.”
“Rex… Rex Chapman,” she said, her disposition changing in a heartbeat—and in her face…something like fear? Her eyes went to his prematurely white hair for just a moment. “Your parents were Troy and Sally Chapman.”
Rex nodded tightly. This was the last conversation he wanted to have right then.
“I was in my twenties then,” Barb said. “I remember…well, I don’t remember too much. I heard…” She cleared her throat. “I never saw you after your family… They took you away…”
“Where did you go, Daddy?” Bobby asked.
“It’s time we get going, guys,” he said, placing a hand on each of the kids’ shoulders and turning them toward the door. “Last one to the car’s a rotten egg!”
Yelping and clawing at one another to gain the advantage, they bolted through the door and down the porch steps.
Rex placed a hand on the small of Tabitha’s back and directed her outside after them.
“Mr. Chapman?” Barb’s voice rose behind him, striking a concerned note. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go back to that cabin? Perhaps we could talk in private, please? Mr. Chapman? Rex?”
Without replying, Rex unlocked the Mazda with the remote key and slipped behind the wheel. When everyone else was buckled up, he turned on the ignition. The engine cranked and started, purring loudly.
Tabitha frowned at him. “Are you okay, hon?”
He nodded, clicking on the headlights. “Fine,” he said, though he felt far from fine.
“Did that woman know you, Daddy?” Bobby asked from the back seat. “When you were a kid like me?”
“I suppose,” he said lightly. “Everybody knows everybody in a small burg like this, bud—and they all have long memories.”
“But you don’t remember her?”
“No,” he said, pulling out of the parking lot and turning right onto Moha Road, into the darkening shadows of dusk.
CHAPTER 2
Paul Harris, who had become known affably by the townsfolk as Policeman Paul over the years, was not only the Chief of Police of Lillooet, but he was also the township’s patrolman, detective, traffic cop, crime-scene investigator, and search-and-rescue guy. He had assumed all of these roles not by choice but by necessity.
He was the last man standing on the now one-man police force.
This had not always been the case. Paul’s first deputy had been his father’s old friend, Ed Montgomery, who had lived behind the still-standing Chinese restaurant. Since then Paul had gone through a handful of different deputies, the last one being a spunky mother of four named Fiona Marshall. Paul had gotten along great with Fiona. He would have liked to have kept her, but she moved with her husband and kids to Saskatchewan two months back to be closer to her sisters.
A few people interested in filling Fiona’s role had approached Paul, but he hadn’t made any decisions yet. He didn’t want to choose hastily. Besides, it wasn’t like Lillooet was drowning in major crimes. His duties were pretty mundane. He performed firearms inspections to ensure farmers were storing their guns according to regulation. He enforced traffic and attended collisions. He searched for hikers, mostly tourists, who ventured off the official trails and became lost in the wilderness. The two most serious offences over the last six months had been an illegal lighting of a fire during a fire-danger period and an opportunistic burglary.
Of course, Paul also dealt with all the day-to-day interpersonal drama that came with policing a township of less than three-thousand people. Concerned mothers and fathers telling Paul to “have a word” with boys they didn’t want their daughters dating. Bitter wives urging him to lock up their no-good alcoholic husbands. Those same husbands bitching to him about how their ungrateful wives were lazy cows that didn’t lift a finger around the house. Others wanting him to settle boundary disputes with neighbors, or gambling debts with former friends, or God knows what else. It was always something or other. And it never seemed to matter that “parent” or “marriage counselor” or “surveyor” or “fixer” weren’t in Paul’s job description. As the only cop within a hundred-kilometer radius, he had been nominated, whether he liked it or not, as the town’s jack of all trades. So he listened politely to everybody’s concerns, offered whatever support he could, and most importantly, remained objective in his actions. Be friendly but not a friend his father had once told him, and it was a mantra he now lived by.
Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a deputy along again for those domestic violence call-outs, Paul thought. These usually involved the same two or three families in town, mind you, who were generally more belligerent than violent…but you never knew. Sometimes it was the most ordinary folks who turned out to be the craziest in the head. Take Chad Burnett, for example, a charismatic sheep farmer on fifty acres a few kilometers north of town, who had also served as mayor between 2008 and 2012. He had been respected by everyone young and old, Paul included, so it was to Paul’s great surprise when he gave his pretty wife Hula two black eyes, three cracked ribs, and a broken foot after she hid the TV remote because she believed he was watching too much pay-per-view porn. And let us not forget Maggie Williams, fulltime muckraker and grandmother of four who once tripped out on a cocktail of anti-psychotic meds and Chardonnay and terrorized her neighbors by banging on their windows and tearing up their garden. She’d nearly taken off Paul’s head with a steel-toothed hand-rake before he and Fiona were able to cart her off to jail.
Maybe I should start looking a bit more seriously for Fiona’s replacement, Paul mused as he rolled down the Crown Vic’s window and lit up a cigarette
Inhaling deeply, tobacco crackling in the still air of the cab, he returned his attention to the sprawling hotel across the street. Two weeks ago, after Troy Levine plowed his Ford pickup truck through the pioneer cemetery out in front of the old Anglican Church, Paul had decided it was time to crack down on the drunken driving that he had mostly turned a blind eye to over the years. So last Saturday—the first of the month when the welfare checks came in and you couldn’t find an empty seat in any of the town’s licensed establishments between noon and midnight—Paul had staked out the same hotel he was now watching, which ran the town’s largest and busiest pub, and busted a few patrons over the point-oh-eight threshold who attempted to drive home. Word had clearly gotten around, because today the parking lot was only half full.
Paul took another drag on the cigarette, which set off a series of phlegmy coughs. A tickle in the back of his throat kept the coughs going for a good ten seconds.
The price you paid for smoking a pack a day your entire adult life, he supposed.
The back door of the hotel’s pub opened, and a man beneath a cowboy hat emerged, his face hidden mostly in shadows, though he appeared unsteady on his feet. He disappeared around the west side of the building, and Paul figured he was either taking a leak or walking home, when he returned a short time later in the saddle atop a chocolate Quarter Horse.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Paul mumbled, flicking the cigarette out the window. He put the cruiser in gear and eased up behind the horse. He blurped the siren. The man glanced over his shoulder, and Paul recognized Sammy Johnson of Fraser River Meats.
Sammy reined the horse to a stop.
Putting the cruiser in Park, Paul got out and flanked the steed. “Eveni
ng, Sammy,” he said, looking up at the bleary-eyed butcher.
“Didn’t see you out here, Paulsy,” Sammy said, slurring his words. “Where you been hiding?”
“You been drinking, Sammy?”
“Had a couple, maybe.”
“You want to blow into this for me?” He raised a small handheld breathalyzer.
“I got a medical condition that don’t—”
“Hell you do, Sammy. Now let’s just get this done with.”
Scowling, Sammy leaned toward the device—and for a moment Paul feared he was going to topple head over heels to the ground. But he kept his balance, placed his lips on the device’s mouthpiece, and blew.
“Harder,” Paul said.
Sammy blew again.
After several seconds, Paul checked the digital readout.
“One-point-three, Sammy.”
“Those things ain’t accurate, you know that.”
“Accurate enough. You’re going to have to come to the station with me until you sober up.”
“But I ain’t even driving a car! It’s a horse! And a sober horse at that!”
“I suppose technically that’s only half a DUI then, but I still gotta take you in.”
“Come on, Paulsy. We went to school together.”
Paul got this all the time. “It’s a small town, Sammy,” he replied. “Everyone went to school together. There’s only one damned school.”
“Can’t you just—”
“No. Now enough bullshitting. You’re coming with me.”
Paul helped the drunk butcher down off the horse, then tied the reins to the top rail of the fence that ran parallel to the sidewalk. He would come back later for the animal.
With Sammy in the back of the patrol car, bitching and moaning about his constitutional rights being violated, Paul drove the half klick to the police station, pulling over at the curb out in front of it.
Built the same year Winston Churchill was born, the original wooden structure had burned to the ground in 1926. The stone building that stood there now rose in its place, along with the iron-clad stables, long since demolished, and the constable quarters, which were still there, and which have housed every officer and his family since.