Grave Concern, page 13
The night of the meeting, Kate sat in her car, parked beside the river a short distance from the school. From here, she could watch the attendees arrive. When she judged the bulk of them to be imminent, she scooted the car over to a stall in the school lot and joined a rag-tag bunch filing into the specially-unlocked entrance. She noticed the men each politely kept a hand on the heavy door for the one behind. She lowered her head as she passed through, and hoped the guy behind wouldn’t examine her hand too closely. They moved, singly and in ragged pairs, down the stairs and along a hall to the cafeteria. Kate struggled to remember to keep her arms out a little from her body and her knees straight over toes as she walked, to bend slightly forward from the butt and fall more heavily than came naturally on each foot — and, above all, not to gawk.
When Kate attended the school, this had been the drama and history wing. She yearned to peer into the old classrooms and around corners, even into the washroom — was school graffiti still basically the same? Or were kids beyond that these days? Maybe all the on-line “texting” and “sharing” and “liking” was a boon for janitors of the twenty-first century. In the event, Kate dared look neither right nor left, nor draw attention to herself in any way. She ached to raise her eyes to the wall above the lockers, to where portrait-sized photos of past graduates lined up in a neat row. Many old friends were up there. Kate felt their presence now. Somewhere along this hallway, she knew, a reasonably pretty eighteen-year-old gazed down on the middle-aged version of herself, skulking along in a ball cap and ill-fitting jeans. Kate wondered: Would young Katie Smithers be amused — or aghast?
The cafeteria chairs had been moved away from the long tables and set out in rows. Kate chose a seat to one side, near the back, and sat down heavily, remembering to keep her knees apart and her heels off the floor. She fisted her hands and folded her arms across her chest, which hurt a bit. She tugged at the peak of the cap and set one leg lightly bouncing. Okay, the bouncing was too much. Kate stopped that.
The meeting was called to order by Bill Chambers. Beside him, in chairs facing the attendees, sat a familiar crew: Foxy Raymond; Buck Miller, his leg bandaged from foot to calf; Hille’s husband, Ron Whatsisname; and another man Kate recognized but couldn’t place. Nicholas was, she noted, nowhere in evidence, either up front or in the audience.
“Hi. I’m Bill Chambers, in case anyone didn’t know.” A ripple of laughter passed through the group. Chambers went on, “So, I’m the chairman of this ad hoc committee—meaning, a committee we put together for this particular purpose. Now, I don’t know if there are any new ones here.” He looked up from his papers and around, and Kate held her gaze steady, praying the ball cap was up to its billing. Chambers’s eyes found her for a split second, then moved on. Kate breathed again. “I think there may be a few newbies. So thanks. Thanks, everyone, for comin’ out. We need all the help we can get. So you’re all welcome. I’ll get right to the point, here, so’s you can get back to your wives and families. Or the hockey game, whichever comes first.”
More laughter. Someone said, “Hear, hear!” and the cry was taken up around the room.
“We’re here meetin’ tonight, because, as many of us know, there’s something weird going on up at the cemetery. We’ve had a number of people reportin’ seeing something.”
“Smokin’ the whacky tabacky, I’ll bet!” someone yelled. Everyone laughed.
“Was it Hallowe’en?” someone else called out.
Chambers smiled and said there had been numerous sightings, Hallowe’en included, and they had been going on now for some months.
“Now a few of us,” he went on, “have been spending our Friday evenings after work, right up till dark and after, hanging out up there watching for anything strange. A couple of times we’ve thought we heard or saw something, but we could never get a good look. Now I know a number of you have your ideas of what it is. A bear, some have said. A wolf. We’ve had both of these animals around town before lots of times. But there’s others, guys that know what they’re talking about, say it’s not those at all. I’ve also heard deer or moose. Any of those we’d likely know by now. Especially the hunters in the crowd.”
Someone yelled, “My brother seen it — said it’s bigger than a wolf!”
Next a sonorous, vaguely English accent: “I myself have seen it, although it was semi-dark. You can rule out bear, not thick enough around the middle. And it’s definitely smaller than a moose.”
Chambers held his hands up. “Okay, okay. Thanks, everyone, for your comments. Later, we’ll get more ideas from the floor. We’re trying to be as fair as we can.” Kate noticed Buck Miller and the man whose name she couldn’t recall, turn slightly toward each other, raising their eyebrows skeptically.
Oblivious, Chambers continued. “Now, before we split into groups [at this, Kate’s heart sank], I’ve got a few things written down here that we want you to consider. Don’t worry, I’ve got copies here of the questions to hand out, so you won’t forget them. Here they are:
“Number one: Does it appear to walk on four legs or two [much laughter and some raunchy banter involving a third appendage]? Now, this may seem like a funny question, but you’d be surprised the things we’ve heard, including wings, if you can believe it.
“Number two: Have we had more sightings in the daylight or after dark (well, you can’t see in the dark but you know what we’re gettin’ at)? Does this thing come around more at morning or night? Let’s get accurate numbers on this one, folks, because the answer is going to affect number four.
“Number three: Considering this creature’s disappearin’ act, along with its dangerous nature, should the next armed person who sees it shoot to kill even if he can’t see exactly what it is? That one’s self-explanatory.”
At Number three, the two skeptics took particular umbrage. One (Kate racked her brains for his name) finally sputtered, “If you’ll pardon the interruption,” he said, “I believe these are not words agreed on by the committee.”
“Yeah,” someone yelled from the row behind her. “Leading question! Anyone here ever watch Perry Mason when you were kids?”
A tremor passed down Chambers’s thick neck, as though he’d swallowed something large. “Okay, okay,” he said. “How should we say it, then?”
A quiet murmur among the attendees grew into a roar. Someone yelled, “I knew it! The fix is in!”
Someone else looked pointedly at his watch and said if everyone didn’t shut up and get on with it, he was bloody well going to go out on Saturday morning and shoot the damn thing himself.
A short man wearing an old-fashioned red hunter’s cap yelled out that if anyone went out and summarily shot the animal, he would personally go to that person’s house and shoot him.
Another man cleared his throat loudly, opened his mouth to great expectation, then shut it again.
Chambers’s face, by this time, was as red as the little guy’s hunter’s cap. “Okay, everyone, you know what I meant. Don’t let’s confuse everyone with words. I’m going to go on, and them that don’t like it can leave.”
Kate noticed Buck Miller maniacally working a finger as though trying to unscrew it from his hand. The other man — Gupta, that was it! — pursed his lips and seemed to grab his chair tighter with his ample butt cheeks.
Chambers went on. “ ‘Number four … ’ Okay, before I get to question four, I’ll explain that so far, we’ve kept this whole thing quiet, due to pressure from an adjunct member of the ad hoc committee, a member that unfortunately couldn’t make it here tonight. He’s down at his head office in Toronto right now, that office being MNR. [A murmur swelled.] Anyway, this guy from MNR [why did Chambers speak as though he and half the people here hadn’t known Nicholas all their lives?], he thinks, from the thing’s behaviour [Chambers drew air quotations] it might possibly be a cat, a cougar even.” (Gasps) “That’s despite the fact they been extinct from this part of the world for a couple hundred years. MNR wants it kept quiet, so as people don’t hunt for trophy, ’specially in town limits, and also not to raise a panic in the general public.”
Someone holding up his iPhone shouted, “Get to the point, Bill! Second period’s starting!”
“Okay, Ray, hold your horses. So the question, question four, is, ‘Do we listen to MNR and protect this monster? Or do we take things into our own hands and stop predators creeping around, snatching people’s pets and kids?’ So that’s all. We’ll take fifteen minutes. Everyone divide yourselves into groups of four or five, and let’s get going.”
At the word “monster,” Kate had heard a gasp. Next thing she knew, a coffee cup, not yet completely drained, landed with a splat near her foot. Assuming she hadn’t been the target, she turned to see the Perry Mason aficionado grab the red hunter’s cap from his neighbour and pitch it Frisbee-fashion at the thrower of the cup. Kate edged toward the door. Just as she was about to make her exit, a chair landed squarely on Hille’s Ron’s head, causing him to roar something extremely rude.
“Uh, gotta run,” she said to no one in particular and made for the hallway, struggling to keep her masculinity intact.
Safe at home, if slightly stunned, Kate immediately called Leonard.
“Hey, Leonard,” she said. “That was definitely the strangest meeting of my life. Sort of a vigilante recruitment drive disguised as public consultation.”
On the other end, listening to her narrate the evening’s events, Leonard was clearly just as confused. “So what did they decide in the end?”
“Dunno. Nothing. It turned into a bit of a brawl, and I left. Thought I might blow my cover getting involved. You think I was chicken?”
“You should have at least stuck around to see who won! Kidding. You were smart to get out. I sure would have. Overall, I think you’re brave. Very brave.”
Now it was Kate’s turn to blush, as luck would have it, out of Leonard’s visual range.
“So,” Leonard went on. “What now?”
Kate’s heart leapt. Just the way he said it implied some kind of future. For them. Together. “Uh. Dunno. But,” she hesitated, “Leonard, did you carry me up the stairs and put me in bed the other night?”
“You were falling off the chair,” Leonard said.
“I’m so sorry,” said Kate. “What an ass. Really. I’m not always, uh, out of it like that.”
“Obviously,” said Leonard. “But a concussion on top of cracked ribs wouldn’t have been much fun, I’m guessing. That’s why I took you to a safer place.”
“Anyway, thanks. A lot. I appreciate it.”
“My pleasure,” Leonard said.
At the word “pleasure” coming from Leonard’s lips, Kate felt a lick — more like a slurp — of a feeling she tried not to contemplate.
Kate’s cold knuckles knocked painfully on something. Yow! She sucked the sore fingers a moment, probed gently in the pocket again. A bottle! She took hold and pulled it out. A mickey. She remembered the term from something her dad said once. She unscrewed the cap and sniffed. Whew! Revolting. Plugged her nose and took a swig. Yecchh. But a welcome liquid fire coursed down her esophagus and gushed warmth along her limbs.
Years ago, Kate watched her dad tinker with the furnace. Suddenly, he jimmied up a little metal window and pointed inside the monstrous machine to a hissing blue flame. “See that?” he said. “That’s called a pilot. Our survival through winter, yours, your mother’s and mine, depends on that little light. Without that, the furnace can’t do its job keeping us warm.”
“Could it go out?” Kate had asked.
“Sure could,” her father said. “That’s why we keep on top of it. We check to make sure everything’s working the way it should. Keep the fire stoked.”
That’s what the rum was doing now. Lighting the blue flame that had gone out. And Kate would have to keep on top of it. She raised the bottle again. And again.
Soon the warmth spreading through Kate seemed to originate in her belly. She felt better all over than she’d felt in some time. It occurred to her to check the other coat pocket. Not much there. Just … a packet of matches. A packet of matches. Kate screwed the lid tightly back on the bottle, so as not to lose a drop, and sat down on the floor to contemplate this new treasure. Placing the bottle carefully down, she opened the matchbook. She tore out a match and, feeling for the rough striking surface, struck it once, twice, three times without success. On the fourth try, the match flared, and Kate saw her cell for the first time.
The cabin interior was much as she’d imagined, nothing much but the plank floor, filthy with the dust of time and the dirt of previous illicit visitors like herself. There wasn’t so much as a chair or table, but there was a large wooden bench, shoved against one wall. A bench. Of course! Her predecessors had gotten out somehow.
The match flame licked Kate’s fingers, and she shook it out. Crazy with delight, Kate opened the rum again and considered the bench. A good dose would get it moved.
Kate bumped into Mary at the post office.
“I hear you’ve thrown me over for that young video dude,” Mary said. “Cougar’s come out of the woods, I’d say. Can’t say as I blame you, mind. I’m just about cross-eyed these days from lack of social life.”
“Oh, Mary, I’m so sorry. It’s been kind of crazy lately. Let’s go for coffee. What about now?”
Mary grinned and placed a hand on the door marked CROWCROW. She turned her head to talk to Kate. “Sorry. Work. Gotta run. Maybe Thursday?”
Through the door glass, Kate saw old Buck Miller limp towards them, his foot still heavily bandaged.
“Mary, watch — !” Too late.
With a preoccupied air, the burly Buck yanked wide the very door Mary was holding, and Mary flew halfway across the sidewalk before she half-rolled, half-skidded to a stop.
Kate rushed to pick up her friend. A fine layer of skin had been torn from one knee and shin. A few sharp pieces of gravel clung to the moist corner of her mouth.
“Uh, as I was saying,” Kate continued, “I think someone’s trying to get in.”
Between wrangling Grave Concern’s errant accounts into their proper Excel paddocks and doing her taxes (not necessarily in that order), Kate sat in her now-violated commercial space on her brown-and-chrome office-chic, trying to solve the Sphinxian riddle of the so-called “simple life” back here in Pine Rapids. Robust questions and limp, wobbly answers ran breathless laps around her mind, until Kate put a stop to the madness by pinning them down:
1. Something is lurking around the graveyard. Many people have seen it — or them (more than one?). My own sighting consistent with others’. Can’t be sure what I saw. Movement. Something quite large. Always in the corner of my eye. What did meeting conclude? Are conclusions of any use or interest?
2. If said Thing is a cougar, as some suggest, would tail or other cat-like traits not be obvious? What about tracks in snow and/or mud? And colour? Still no consensus on whether it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral. Or popular delusion.
3. Greta caught trying to muscle in on my business. At least it’s out in the open now. But what about this thing J.P. supposedly told her about me? Was it just a bluff? What purpose would bluffing serve?
4. Bill Chambers caught in my office looking for something. What? And is he, for some reason (what?) in cahoots with others, i.e. Greta and/or Foxy?
5. Hille Hatter could be helpful with her knowledge of local history I missed out West. Knows of the Marcottes and J.P.’s life and death. Does she know any more than what she said the day we staked out the graveyard? If I open up, can I trust her not to spill? Of course, I have leverage in knowing of boob debts. (BTW, I never really helped with that. Can something be done on that front?)
6. Marcotte came to see me at roughly the same time I personally first saw the Thing. Is this coincidence? Or is it all a set-up of some kind? Moreover, did he already know where the grave was? (Doubtful on last: body language, look on face.)
7. And, further (this totally paranoid?), is there anything nefarious or calculated in Adele Niedmeyer’s request for me to play chauffeur come spring/summer? Am I coming completely unglued ?????
Kate read over the list a few times, with a feeling something was missing. Okay, there was the Guy/John Marcotte mystery. Ancient history, and of doubtful relevance, but writing it down would, with any luck, release Kate from eternal mulling:
8. What was going on at the Marcottes back in the day? If it was Guy, and not John Marcotte, beating on J.P., as the niece, Sylvie, suggests, what difference did it make? What would inspire a brother to do parental dirty work?
Okay. That was it. All she wrote. Kate dearly hoped that, exhausted, itemized, and exposed, this intense curiosity would relax its stranglehold. A measure of peace would be hers at last.
When Kate walked into The Beanery as arranged on Thursday, Mary sat at their usual table with a Heath-Ledger-as-Joker gravel rash running up her cheek. Kate’s green tea non-fat latte was ready and steaming at her favourite place, with a view out the window onto Main Street.
