Grave Concern, page 26
“Doesn’t look good, Kate.”
Kate chose not to ask whether he meant the little cougars or her embrace. “Well, what about the little ones?”
“We just don’t know,” said Nicholas. “They, or it, were nowhere to be seen, dead or alive. One in a zillion they’ll survive, I’d say. The cubs grow up pretty quick and they’re probably okay hunters at this point. But when you consider the wolf packs in the park, bears, traplines, mishaps, you name it …” Link trailed off.
“But there’s hope,” Kate said, definitively. “Plus, if there are cubs, there must have been a daddy, right? There is hope, Nick.”
“Whatever,” said Nicholas, as sober now as the soberest judge alive.
Nicholas saw his chance. The barkeep had gone into the main room, the woman with the sandwich had also somehow dematerialized; not, however, before letting fly a loud fart that Nicholas could smell behind his door. All this none too soon. Nicholas’s arms ached for release from the weight of the case. He scooted into the empty kitchen. If all else failed, he could throw the booze out through the large window propped open over the sink. Not ideal, as the whole mission would be thus nullified.
Luck held, however, and Nicholas spied a recess behind the very door that had hidden him, some kind of old closet where a bunch of junk was stashed. As a temporary measure, it would do. He covered the case of booze with what appeared to be an ancient army blanket, then straightened up and pulled his long bangs down over his face. A pack of cigarettes had been left on a counter, and he swiped it and tucked it in the sleeve of his T-shirt. He’d look like an idiot, but hopefully older. Took a deep breath and walked out into the tavern.
Nicholas moved quickly, trying to look confident. He made his way between some tables, looking for any exit. The front door was obvious, but impossible with the booze. He would have to keep looking. He circled around, dancing through the crowd packing the dance floor, and eventually found an unmarked door near the Men’s and Ladies’. To his delight, it wasn’t locked, and he darted through, only to find himself in a short hallway that led back into the kitchen. He’d done a complete circle, but with one difference. From this new vantage point, he saw it: the side exit he’d intuited was there, the working entrance of the establishment.
Within a minute, having retrieved the case of booze, Link walked proudly down the loading ramp onto a patch of grass and gravel between the hotel and storage shed. A dark figure approached. That would be Foxy, waiting to help him carry the booze to their bikes. How they would ride with the stuff was another thing altogether. But so far, so good. Link flicked the bangs off his face, in a gesture of pride and complicity.
The figure stopped. Shouted, “Hey, you! Where do you think you’re going?”
Shit. Link nearly dropped the box — twelve bottles. But he hung on and froze. With any luck, he could charm his way out of this. The dark figure laughed — a familiar sound Link couldn’t immediately place. “Shit, man. What’s with the case?”
Nicholas let out his breath. “Jesus fuckin’ aaay, J.P. Ya scared the shit out of me.” With a clunk, Nicholas put down the load it seemed he’d held for years. “Thought you were down in the city.”
J.P. play-punched Link’s shoulder, lit up a cigarette. “Want one?”
Link shook his head.
J.P. talked around the cigarette. “Came up for a visit, man. Got a problem with that?”
Nicholas punched him back, which brought a smile to J.P.’s lips. “Hey, what’s with the box?”
“Foxy and me’re stockin’ up for a party, a.k.a. ‘Chemistry Study Group.’ No smoke around.”
J.P. tongued his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth. “Give you a hand?”
“Damn right. Fuckin’ weighs a ton.”
J.P. bent down, coughed once or twice as he picked the box up. “Fuckin’ hell. You’re not kidding. Where’s it goin’?”
“Fucked if I know. Foxy’s supposed to have a brilliant idea. I’m guessing not. We only got our bikes.”
J.P. walked to the parking lot. “You’re in luck,” he tossed back around the cigarette. “Kid’s got wheels now, eh. I’ll drive you back.”
“Fuckin’ ay,” Nicholas said, feeling only envy. What he would give for a car.
Foxy appeared from nowhere, hissing something at them in the dark.
“What’s that, Foxy? Can’t hear you.”
“Shhhhhhhh! What the — ? That you, J.P.? What the hell you doin’ here? Anyway, shut up, both of you. There’s someone lurking ’round back, having a smoke. Could be watching.”
J.P. paid no attention, kept walking toward his vehicle, ash from his cigarette dropping on the box.
“Link, back pocket. Keys.”
Nick fished J.P.’s keys from his jeans and opened the trunk.
J.P. muscled the box in and wiped his hands on his pants. “Okay, guys. Where to?”
Cemetery work had a way of turning one’s gaze on the past. Today, as Kate preened and pruned the gravesites with skill, she considered yet again the only past she knew much of anything about — her own. It seemed obvious that one’s history, both long ago and recent, made up the sum total of one’s experience. But what about one’s very existence? The food she’d eaten, the things she’d done and places she’d seen; the books she’d read, the people she’d known — were these, all together, Kate? Was there something of comfort or truth in the fact of J.P.’s having, if only briefly, set his sights on her? Was J.P., therefore, not just a passing experience but an indelible part of her being? And the corollary: Did her unrequited feelings nevertheless still reside in him, an irrevocable piece of who he was?
Such questions, Kate generally found, led to poetry. She thought of Yeats, with his ever-receding Maud Gonne. (“Maud Gone” they had called her in undergrad.) She thought of George Eliot and Daniel Deronda, in which the Someone-or-other had bitterly averred, “A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.” The Contessa’s cynical summation had stuck in Kate’s head the moment years ago when she’d first set eyes on the passage. She’d always thought, What a sorry statement of things! Now the Contessa’s words seemed to Kate more than just sorry — terrifyingly acute.
“Gronk!”
For a second, Kate thought she was having a heart attack. That infernal, overgrown corvid was back, hopping about in a kind of tease. Kate felt a strong urge to grab its feathery neck and wring it out like a wet sweater. As it was, she could swear the odious fowl was taking pleasure in having tipped her from restful reflection hard into cold reality. Her pounding heart about to leap from her chest, Kate picked up a clump of dirt and threw it at the beast.
“Gronk, gronk!” it bellowed, and danced a little more.
“And good riddance to you too!” muttered Kate under her breath. She eyed the great, unkempt, ugly thing, hopping and scratching at the dirt. To her surprise, it stopped grovelling, tilted its head and eyed her.
“Make fun of me, ya little — ” Kate raised her arm as though to throw something again.
“Grand! Grand!” said the bird.
“Grand! What?” Kate shot back.
“Grand?” Gronk hopped nearer.
“Ah, it’s been grand — has it?” said Kate. “You’re a quick study, you are. Well, Gronk, It’s been grand.”
“Grand! Grand! Ten grand!” said the bird.
“What? Say that again!” commanded Kate.
But Gronk refused. Was it her tone? Kate lightened up, chirping “Grand!” a couple of times in a high voice, but the bird seemed to be exhausted — either of talent or patience. It returned to hopping around in silence, except for the rustle of feet and feathers in the grass, looking for all the world like a teen with a chip on his shoulder, shying away and dipping its head as though sulkily wishing her gone. Now Kate was hopping. Hopping mad.
Could she have heard right? Or was working at the graveyard working on her mind? Ten grand, Gronk had said. so it seemed. Where in the world had a bird learned that? What on earth was going on?
Well, she was hardly going to spend her Friday evening being insulted by this shabby sack of feathers. Kate rapidly began to gather her gear.
She looked Gronk firmly in the eye. “If you can perform displacement activities, Bird-brain, then so can I,” she said, and immediately thought, My God, I’m justifying myself to a raven. Had her social life really come to this?
Strolling toward the car, Kate pondered her present social network: a half-mad, be-grieved doctor from Newfoundland who communed with a horse and a lobster; a thirty-six-year-old Gilles Villeneuve wannabe and film addict still living with his parents; a guilt-wracked, recovering-alcoholic conservation officer suffering a possible mid-life crisis; an all-grown-up childhood friend, now half-plasticized; and last but not least, a beady-eyed, broken-down corvid with control issues — and these were the friends!
Now Kate noticed she had not left Gronk behind. Like one of those levitating monks one saw years ago yo-yoing fuzzily up and down on TV, he would squawk and flap up off the ground, land again and once more bounce off in a flurry of wishful flight. Unlike the monks, though, Gronk stopped now and then and marched in a circle until Kate caught up. Then the whole routine would begin again. This time, rising and dropping, Gronk veered off to the right.
“Gronk,” he clearly said. Kate looked up.
“Yah, same to you, buddy.”
Gronk flapped still farther along his chosen trajectory. “Gronk.”
“Oh I get it,” she said. “Follow the leader, is it?” More intrigued than she let on, Kate changed direction and followed the bird. Gronk flapped again, leading her completely astray.
“Gronk.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
“Gronk, gronk.”
What harm could it do?
“Just a minute, hold your horses.” Kate lay down her grave-keeping implements by the stone of her Grade 8 history teacher named, aptly enough, Cecil Graves.
Gronk led Kate to the edge of the cemetery and down into the bush — toward J.P.’s grave! Kate’s stomach was a shaken snow globe, acid and anxious. She had a distinct feeling this bird knew as much as she, or more, about this place. Ignoring the nausea as far as possible, Kate plodded on, following where the raven led.
Gronk led them straight to the true grave of J.P. — still missing its marking stake. Gronk didn’t seem the least bothered by this, sure of his destination. Kate glanced over toward the spot she’d led John Marcotte to believe was his son’s burial place. Gronk continued to strut and preen atop J.P.’s grave, but Kate was no longer paying attention. She stared across at the false grave. Was she seeing what she thought she was seeing? Was the ground around the picket a darker colour, overturned, torn up? Leaving Gronk to his chicken dance, Kate wandered over.
No, she was not mistaken. All around the picket (now on a drunken slant) the ground was unnaturally disturbed. Someone had been digging.
August, and already the silver maples showed the first tinges of red. Nicholas called Kate on his cell; he was on the road, he said, on his way back down to T.O. — for good. The dead cougar had been shipped off to the government labs for a proper necropsy, which would hopefully yield some solid information into which they could sink their teeth. He apologized again for the abuse of her sink, and thanked her for a nebulous sort of something. Kate wasn’t sure, exactly, to what he referred (the cell was cutting out), but she assured him it was nothing, any time. She told him she hoped he would be back some day, merrily tracking cougar cubs through the undergrowth.
“And say hi to Kathleen for me,” Kate said.
“I certainly will,” Link replied, and hung up.
Suddenly bereft, Kate phoned Mary. “Hey there, want to go for a walk? I’ll drive to your place.”
It was a long way from Mary’s house west of town to the graveyard farther west, but then, in a place the size of Pine Rapids, “long” was relative. It could be walked in under an hour. On the way, Mary told Kate stories of her own hometown in Newfoundland, stories rekindled and revised on her recent trip. When Kate showed suitable amusement, Mary prolonged the fun by explaining how Eamon continued to take great pleasure in telling everyone about Kate’s party, disabusing them of their notion that Ontarians were boring. Of course, the party got wilder with every telling. Mary could hardly wait to hear more about it a year or so on.
For her part, Kate told Mary about the mysteries that had kept her busy while Mary was gone. The day out with Adele Niedmeyer, with its attendant suspicions. Buck Miller’s shooting, of course, and the weird, unfinished feeling it had imparted. Nicholas’s fickle, mysterious behaviour around the cougar issue, though perhaps that could now be considered resolved. The moving of the grave marker, the subsequent diggings. And strangest of all, the chatty raven who had apparently learned his English at a casino. She deliberately left out mention of Extraordinary Wayne.
Mary listened to it all, and pronounced herself baffled. “Dunno, Kate. I missed ‘Diagnosis of Crones and Corvids’ at med school.”
As they walked along the endless gravel road where Mary lived, her word, “crones,” rattled around Kate’s head. A word little used anymore, but it struck some kind of chord. “What exactly is a crone, Mary?” she asked now. “I mean I know basically what it means, but how would you define it?”
“I dunno, dear — used to hear it now and then back on the Rock. An old lady with wisdom of some kind. Kind of outside the regular realm of folks, eh? Menopause required. Someone who’s been there, done that, and seen it all — all at once. Although I think people mostly use it in a more negative sense, as in an ugly old cow no one wants anything to do with.”
Kate stopped dead in her tracks. “Mary! That’s it. You’re a genius!”
“Dear, I wish you would tell the hospital administration that. They generally prefer the term ‘difficult.’ ”
And Kate told Mary an old story of her own: about the summer fair and Madama Della, the fortune teller.
“You know, she told me I’d marry a tall, dark stranger,” said Kate in a bright, earnest tone.
“No — really?” Mary said. “I’m amazed, dear. Shocked.”
“But Mary, think about it. Who am I seeing?”
“Uh …”
“Leonard, Mary, Leonard. And he’s talking marriage! Well, sort of. Not really. If he ever gets back from the ends of the earth. At any rate, he wants me to meet his parents.”
“Marriage? You don’t say.” Kate could see Mary striving mightily not to show shock. “Okay, so he’s, uh, not so tall and dark,” Mary continued, obviously unconvinced on the prophecy front. “His hair’s dark, I’ll give you that. Would you call him a stranger?”
“Well, he was until I got to know him.”
“Isn’t everyone, dear, if it comes to that?”
“Okay, okay. Maybe all that was a red herring. But Mary, I’m serious about what I’m going to say next.”
“Uh huh,” Mary looked skeptical.
“I’ve been going over her name, ‘Madama Della,’ in my mind. Something about the rhythm of our walking: Madama Della, Madama Della. It turned into Madame Adella, Madame Adella. Adella, Adella, Adele. Would you say, Mary, that ‘Madama Della’ could have been a gypsified version of ‘Adele’? She took the ‘A’ off the front of her name and stuck it onto Madame to make Madama, then slightly altered the rest? Whaddya think?”
Mary, more impressed with this line of inquiry than the talk of tall, dark strangers, nodded knowingly.
Fired up now, Kate went on. “When you said ‘crone,’ Madama Della hopped straight to mind, even though I only saw her once, a thousand years ago. And then my mind just took a beeline to Adele Niedmeyer, the only other arguably crone-like person I ever knew. Other than you, of course.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Mary. “I’m flattered.”
“So work with me on this,” Kate said. “Why would Adele never have said a thing that whole afternoon I spent with her about our encounter when I was a girl?”
“Kate, dear, she’s over ninety! You can’t expect her to remember something so long ago! And, dare I say it, trivial.”
“Trivial! Yeah, okay, but at the time she asked me all this stuff about when I was born, and the colour of my eyes, and if I liked school. And my name. So she knew who I was: the daughter of her once best friend. But I didn’t recognize her. I mean, I was so young, and she was so wrapped up in scarves and skirts …”
“She was filling in time, dear. Likely asked everyone the same. To give her some clues as to what to predict.”
Kate grew pensive. “And all those years, I never thought it strange that a town like Pine Rapids could snag an exotic gypsy for a summer fair. I mean, really, where are you going to find a gypsy, up here? Local volunteers! And get this, Mary. Adele told me that afternoon that she’d always loved circuses and fairs. So that makes sense. A way for a housewife and mother to get involved.” Kate sat back and laughed. “When I think of the thick accent she put on. Of course, being young and naïve, I thought it was for real.”
“No doubt cheesy as sin,” Mary said.
“No doubt,” Kate agreed.
They walked along in silence for a while. They crossed the highway, quiet on a summer afternoon, and stopped in at McPhail’s Dairy for a cold milkshake before continuing on their way. Fortified for another twenty minutes’ walk in the heat, the two women ambled along dusty laneways and gravel roads, like schoolgirls on holiday.
Kate turned to Mary. “You’re a good friend, Mary. I’m sure you have better things to do on your day off.”
