Chapter Five

SATURDAY

Squinting in the low yellow light, Velma shifted her feet on the fruit cellar floor and examined her pickles. Rough timber rose in midget bunks lined with the dark glasses of preserves. The blades of Velma’s forearms were crossed on her flat breast to trap the collar ends of the cardigan draped on her back, and she felt her shoulders curve round away from the dry chill of the wooden room. A dim, bulb-lit den of canning jars, a crypt, a mausole… That’s enough! Straighten up and stop fiddling with your sweater, you’re here to count the icicle pickles and… Dear Lord! The light! “Vera!” It was a scream.

“Velma?” Querulous, questing, clearly from the top of the stairs, “Yes, dear? Where are… Oh, is that you in the cellar, dear?” There was a pause, as if an answer were really expected.

“Vera!!”

“Oh, aren’t I silly, of course it’s you. I didn’t realize you were down there, dear. I could just see that the light was on and this door was…”

“Vera!!”

“Oh, yes dear. I’ll just… there, is that better? You’re so brave to be down there alone, spiders and whatnot. D’you have your sweater on?” Vera crossed her own knobby wrists to hold the collar ends of the cardigan draped from her shoulders. Her fingertips gripping the round light switch, she bent to peer down the worn stairs, “Why are you in the fruit cellar?” Just like Father, always down in the cellar poking at… “Are the brandied pears still…”

“Yes!!” Velma’s hiss rattled some empty mason jars. She never touched liquor. Maybe a little forced sherry as manners required, and of course there were medicinal needs, but she didn’t drink. It’s for the sake of the pears, Vera, as I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s the pears. When you need a pear in February, there’s no alternative.

Since they shopped in tandem, Vera knew quite well that in February, as in every other month, at least three varieties of pear were set to roll off the fruit bins at McGee’s, and that the brandy, which they drove sixty miles across country to buy in a German-settled town, it being unlikely they’d ever know any Lutherans, did not, in fact, just evaporate into thin air once a jar was broached. I’m not the fool she thinks I am. “You know, dear, I think there might be something wrong that this switch keeps…”

“Get your hands off that switch! You come down here right now, Vera Lettie, and help carry up these icicles, they have to be wiped and watched. I can’t be expected to make them and have to carry them up and down these dreadful stairs!”

Since Vera had sliced quite as many cucumbers as Velma, she thumped her shoes down the first two steps while flicking the lightswitch a quick off and on, “There! You see? Faulty,” and scurried the rest of the way down to the fruit cellar door before Velma could finish inhaling. “Do we have enough to make a good show, dear?”

It was heard said after, over cocktails, “You know that Katherine Bailey? She’s dead.” Heads nodded, glasses rose in salute, the music changed and more drinks came. It was the sheer accident of it that made it no one’s fault. Although blood alcohol had to be checked, it had happened early enough in the day for the result to be muzzy insofar as anyone was going to get the paper worked up over an obvious single-vehicle, clear-visibility, no-hazard fatality. An own-fault situation, no call to be cruel about it, after all, they couldn’t really breathalyze her. It was an accident of judgement, a lapse of control, a failure. She forgot to think at all for a moment and the road rose up and broke her head. How she felt about it, she never knew.

It happened Saturday, not long after noon. She’d taken it into her head she had to get to her mother’s and she hadn’t allowed for the week’s accumulation of lost cells. She was aswamp with sensation, booze and sex and sights and hillbilly music, but she built herself a raft of codeine with a vodka chaser and away she went. The road they found her on was one of those wrong-angled stretches, some contractor’s idea of a shortcut when there’s more money than sense in the county budget, an unhappy road laid against the grain of the landscape, fifteen minutes gained and plenty of roadkill. She’d touched the shoulder and pulled back sharply, tripped and rolled for a bit on an incline and scraped to a stop on her side, slumped in harness, head on the asphalt in the window of the door, all broken and gone in an instant of tremendous sensation, the explosion of heart and mind together that she’d lived for.

The sky looked like it was up to something mean, and it was getting late in the year, but it was Saturday, so it wasn’t long before some weekenders looking for the beerstore with a cell phone turned up, called the cops, left a look-out and went on for the beer. And it wasn’t long after that before a half dozen pickups and old sedans were strung out either side to funnel traffic, while the men protected the seventeen year-old from Scarboro, who looked like the weathergirl, who’d been left by the roadside to die a thousand deaths and worse while her friends went for beer. The men knew perfectly well they weren’t to touch the body, the one in the wrecked car, and after they’d had a look-see for anything useful that might have fallen out, the jack came loose with a kick, they put down a tailgate despite the weather. Somebody had a full thermos, there was a bottle and smokes and the girl got so horny and scared at the same time that she fought with her boyfriend after and ruined the weekend.

So, the ambulance showed up and said, “Piss on it, we’re not waitin’ around for those friggin’ cops to show up.” But they did, nothing they could do anyway, far as the body was concerned, and they had more coffee and a bunch of sandwiches. When the beer got back to pick up the weathergirl, it didn’t stand a chance against the dry sarcasm, and the weathergirl’s friend was the pretty one, so the boyfriends were sent to get themselves another box of beer, “…before the store closes and the cops’ll be showin’ up in a minute and they wouldn’t wanta see that bottle in your hand, boy. They’ll have ‘er cleaned up by the time you’re back. We’ll be here.” And that’s what happened. It was probably the chugging of the second box of beer that ruined the weekend.

On tiptoes to examine his ass in the bathroom mirror, Paul admired its hard peach roundness and wished it luck. In a week he’d had more sex than he’d had in six months in the city, but he hadn’t yet had what he wanted most. He wasn’t surprised that coming home to Bannock had made him horny, arrival anywhere pumped blood to his privates, always had. Adventure caused sex, he figured, explained a lot of history, and except for those hardy boys who were dad’s lads and didn’t even jerk off, it pretty much explained the behaviour of anything that pissed standing up.

So, you think David’s going to be horny? I know it. Hotel corner at high noon? He’ll be horny. He’s obviously not getting any and he hasn’t let go of her yet, all wussy and maudlin about family shit, man hasn’t been laid in a while. And he’s coming up here, where he knows Sammy’s puttin’ the blocks to her, so yah, his pecker’ll be out of his pants. And you think you’re going to grab it? How much more bizarre can it get? Enh, we’ll play it by ear. Yah, both ears in a tight grip. Shut up and get on with it. After a shave and a shower he dressed three times before he got it right.

Dawdling still left him lingering, trying not to loiter on the hotel corner where bad boys hung for all the town to see, when a hand rested on his shoulder and his crotch melted a block from his mother’s house and he turned to David and knew he was inprinting like a duckling on a hen and he didn’t care because lust and love were all the same with a friend, “Hey, you made it. Can we get off this corner? Where d’ you want to go?”

“They got beds in this hotel?”

David had parked in the hotel lot as Paul had told him__ “Simplest way. I’ll meet you.” __and tried to press the kink from his back into the too soft car seat that he ought to have spent more time adjusting before he raced to escape the city. In the mezmerising dash to squirt beyond the gravity of concrete, he’d clutched the wheel and given no thought to his back.

He’d made it up to Bannock in one long push. Paul having warned him of the trap of Peterborough, he had studied a map, fixed the highways in memory, and managed, when confronted with a confusion of arrows and meaningless names, to play the numbers, jogging east and west and north again. It was a tedious drive, economy having ruled the lines, the route seemed designed to avoid any point of interest, destination over-ruling passage. The relief of arrival dissolved his trance and he noticed he hadn’t seen a thing for the last fifty miles.

A half hour early, he’d unbent himself from the too small car, looked about to know where he was and went for a walk, which didn’t help much and he worried about his back and being out of shape and feeling foolish. What am I doing here? This’s ridiculous. You’ve got your head down and you’re looking out the top of your eyes. You’re looking for her, aren’t you? I’m not. Straighten up. You are and you’re afraid she’ll be with this Sam guy. I am not. And she’ll think you’re following her and… Fuck off, I’ve got more important things to worry about than her, like the whole rest of my life, for instance. He’d lifted his chin in a long bold look at the rising length of the block of shops and spotted Paul on the corner.

“No! No beds, they don’t have rooms anymore. I don’t care where we go, just off this corner,” Paul tried not to dance from foot to foot, eager to duck from sight, “It’s a small town, doesn’t matter if you’re just waiting for the light to change, you’re on this corner, you’re up to no good. Drugs, sex, a little joy ride, sex, a little B an’ E, sex… Please, can we go?”

David blinked, “You know, I grew up in a small town too, but I’ve never thought about it that way. Must be ‘cause you’re queer. Let’s go, then. Go get a beer.” As they crossed with the light, an ambulance quietly rounded the corner toward the hospital, and in a police cruiser rolling behind, a head turned for a look.

“You know what I’d really like?” Paul had to force a foot up onto the curb, “You said you had some good bud? I’d rather get a coffee and go for a drive and smoke a joint. Lay back. We do that, I’ll give you a…” He forced the other foot from the gutter, “…a tour of the backroads.”

Dead on arrival. Where did she come from? Where’s the return address? Fortunately for the police, one of the lads from over to Manooth, who’d been in to the garage with a leaky rad Tuesday past, had been leaning on the tailgate next to the accident and said he’d seen Salmon tuck that there vehicle in with the junkers out back of the garage, “Came for his truck in ‘er. That’s the plate. Don’t know about her. It’s a her, eh? Yah, thought so, looks like a purse thing hangin’ off that shoulder there. Be her pocketbook? Don’t know what he was up to, he was bein’ awful careful, though. Yah, Canned Salmon, Sam, the other side of Bannock, him.”

So Sam got the call and went in to the cop shop to keep them out of the house. Sure, he could identify her. Hell, long as the weasels hadn’t got at it, he’d know any pussy he’d ever… “Toronto. Don’t know. The Arlen. Last Sunday. Puttin’ the blocks to ‘er. Ever since. Paul Magarry knows her. Yah, knew her. Yah, married, but she wasn’t home, was she? She wanted it. Well, believe it. Around noon, little before. Over to Strawbridge. Said she had to go see her mother. Yah, Strawbridge. Don’t know. Don’t know, he might. At his mother’s. It’s in the book. Yah sure. You feel like a goof in that Smokey hat, Constable?”

But Paul’s mother hadn’t seen him and when the cops phoned Toronto and heard Katherine’s message about feeding the pitbulls, they didn’t hear the joke and got cranky enough to look for trouble. So they called more cops over Strawbridge way, where the dispatcher at least was still local, who, with a quick holler home to doublecheck, kept a Swat team from making a fool of itself in Bea McAlpine’s yard. As it was, Bea cuffed her own wrists, at first to her heart to stop it falling, and when her mother reached to touch in pity, Bea snatched them behind her back that they mighn’t strike and tear at anything. Tillie said tea, Bea said no, she’d go now, and put on her hat. Tillie and the cop said no together, “You’re in shock and they’ve got somebody over there who’ll identify her.” Bea got her purse and her keys and put on a coat, took it off to use the toilet. She dragged the coat to dodge her mother at the door and had one horrible shrinking moment when it felt like a fur in a manicured hand and she a tragic diva. And she steered the car with a grip that had nothing else to hold.

When they got the word that the victim‘s mother was coming, the cops told Sam to go home. He went hunting Magarry and sat to have tea and tell a tidy version to Paul’s mother and worry up a wonder where he could be. Sam needed the sympathy, he was used to women leaving him, but they always lived to tell the tale. He had to say he felt vulnerable before he got chicken sandwiches and more tea. Not only that, he’d been figurin’ on this job, this house the woman had wanted him to build for her. Shoulda got a deposit. Paul’s mother shook her head with reget over Sam’s long body sprawled at her kitchen table and got out the cookies. His need for a cigarette finally cut through the sugar buzz and Sam left, believing Paul’s mother would pass on the message.

“Certainly, he can’t stay out all night. He hadn’t better start thinking he can start that again under my roof. I’ll tell him to call you. You be careful driving. I worry about those old roads.” She had another pot of tea, shut down the lights and got into bed. If she didn’t hear Paul come in, he wouldn’t be up before she got back from church in the morning. If she went. She thought she’d better, death was getting uncomfortably close. She turned on a light to reassure herself that the outfit hanging on the closet door was a nice one, got up to give it a brush, took a pill and went to sleep.