Then she lay prostrate on the ground and howled, peal after banshee
peal, till Finn—now badly frightened himself, though still not sure of
what—bolted past Sadie towards the trail, shouting at the top of the
lungs for her to
COME
!
The Labrador was on her feet like a gunshot, galloping behind Finn
as though pursued. Neither looked back—not until Finn’s lungs felt like
they were burning, not until both boy and dog were well within sight of
the familiar path that led around the lake, and not until they’d taken the
turn that led towards the safety of home.
Through the windshield
of his blue Ford Ranger XLT pickup, Billy
Lightning saw the dark-haired boy with the black dog close at his heels
tearing out of the woods as though they were being chased by the Devil
himself. From the direction the boy was running, Billy knew he’d come
from the vicinity of Bradley Lake. Billy felt a snake-strike of sharp dread,
but immediately dismissed it as unwarranted.
The boy was probably late for school or something, or for breakfast.
He chided himself for living so much in his head that he automatically
assumed the worst. On the other hand, if one were going to automatically
imagine the worst about anything, especially right about now, Parr’s
Landing would be the place.
Billy turned left onto Main Street, then, thinking better of it, took
the network of rural roads that allowed him to circle the town at a more
leisurely pace. His eyes restlessly scanned the tree line behind the houses
he just passed, seeking out the omnipresent boreal forest beyond it that
always seemed to be waiting hungrily to grow wild again, perpetually on
the verge of reclaiming the land from the settlers who’d forced something
never meant to be domestic into subjugation.
Billy couldn’t decide if this restless cruising in the truck was some
inherited hunter’s instinct, or if he was just delaying the inevitable,
which was walking through the front doors of the police station in Parr’s
Landing and telling the constable in charge that something terrible had
woken up and was, even now, slouching towards his town.
Police Constable Elliot McKitrick
looked up from his paperwork
when the tall, broad-shouldered Indian, wearing a leather jacket over a
lumberjack shirt tucked into old blue jeans, came through the door. The
man’s thick black hair was tied back in a neat ponytail. His features were
refined and vaguely ascetic, and the horn-rimmed glasses he wore lent
him a scholarly air. He looked anywhere on either side of forty-five. The
leather jacket looked expensive and was certainly not from around here.
For Elliot McKitrick, who was not without certain ingrained cultural
prejudices when it came to Indians, the authoritative demeanour of the
man coming towards him struck him immediately. The man carried
himself as though he were accustomed to going where he pleased and
being listened to when he spoke. Elliot disliked him instantly.
“Help you, sir?” Elliot asked politely, betraying none of his private
assessments.
“Yes,” Billy said. “I’d like to see the officer in charge, please. My name
is William Lightning.”
“That would be Sergeant Thomson, Mr. Lightning. He’s currently
away from his desk. Is there something I might help you with?”
Billy sighed. “When will he be back? It’s rather important.”
“Couldn’t say, sir. He was on an out-of-town call early this morning
in Gyles Point. I suspect he’ll be in later on today. I’d suggest you wait—”
Elliot shrugged, indicating the hard-looking wooden bench near the
doorway of the station. “—but it might be a while. Perhaps you’d like to
tell me what this is all about, or else come back later on today when the
sergeant is back at his desk?”
Billy hesitated, as if unsure of how much information to share. “May
I ask, have you had any unusual occurrences in the area lately?”
“Unusual, how?” Elliot replied warily. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Billy said in a neutral voice. “Prowlers, break-ins,
anything like that?”
Elliot stiffened. “Sir, that’s not the sort of information we randomly
share with just anyone who walks in off the street. Is there a specific
reason you’re asking? If there is, I recommend that you tell me right away.
This isn’t sounding very good for you from my point of view right now.”
Now it was Billy’s turn to bristle. “I beg your pardon, constable?
What do you mean by that, please?”
“Sir,” Elliot said, putting a slight patronizing emphasis on the word
“sir” that made Billy seethe inside, “an Indian comes into this detachment
office and asks me if we’ve had any break-ins, but won’t tell me why. If there had been any break-ins, I’d have to wonder why you knew about
them, and why you were asking about them. As it happens, there haven’t
been any, but I’d still like to know why you’re asking.”
“I’ll leave my name,” Billy said coldly. “Please ask Sergeant Thomson
to call me when he’s back.” He wrote
William Lightning
on a pad of blotter
paper and handed it to McKitrick.
“Where are you staying?”
Billy noted that the policeman had omitted the word “sir” this time.
“I’m going to check into the Golden Nugget motel,” he said. “On the edge
of town, near the road in.”
“I know where the Golden Nugget is, Mr. Lightning. I live in this
town.”
“
Dr
. Lightning, Constable—” Billy squinted at Elliot’s nametag. “—
McKitrick. Please have Sergeant Thomson call me. I drove all night to get
here, so I’m going to rest for a few hours. Please have him call sometime
after twelve noon.”
When he reached the door, Billy turned back. The look he caught
in Elliot McKitrick’s eyes before he quickly glanced back down at his
paperwork was like a slap across the face. It had been decades since he’d
seen that look, or felt the way it was intended to make him feel.
For one vertiginous moment the present fell away and Billy saw
himself reflected in the cop’s eyes: a small bronze boy with a crude
bowl haircut cut and fearful eyes—one child among fifty other children
marching in two flanks through the streets of Sault Ste. Marie, all with
the same bowl haircut, dressed in identical woollen jackets the colour of
cardinal’s wings flashing crimson in the winter sun.
He let the door of the police station slam behind him as he stepped
into the street and crossed over to where his truck was parked. Only
when he opened the driver’s side door and stepped up into the seat did
he realize he was shaking.
Morgan Parr had awakened
at six a.m. in her canopy bed in her new
room at Parr House feeling entirely rested for the first time in months.
She stretched languorously and wiggled her toes under the yellow silk
duvet. She’d glanced out the window and seen that it was still dark
outside. Unlike the neon-spackled darkness at home in the city, this
northern darkness was absolute and unyielding. She thought perhaps
she detected a band of lighter black, not quite yet grey, in the eastern
window.
So tired had Morgan been the night before, after the final leg of
their journey north, that she’d barely registered her surroundings before
falling into a thick sleep. Now, she took the room’s measure slowly, one
luxurious detail at a time.
There was a delicate scent of lavender and violet wafting from the
eighteenth-century yellow-rose-flowered Meissen hard-paste porcelain
bowl of potpourri sitting on the mirrored dresser on the wall adjacent
to the bed. Morgan had never seen or smelled potpourri before and
was charmed by the mix of dried flowers and lavender seeds. The
walls themselves were smoky cream, the windows framed with heavy
yellow velvet curtains. On the walls hung a variety of oil paintings—
some Canadian wilderness scenes that featured Lake Superior and the
surrounding shield, a scattering of English watercolours of gardens and
seascapes. There was also an oil portrait of a young girl who, even then,
had the features of the adult Adeline Parr, but without the hardness
Morgan had seen in her grandmother’s face last night. The portrait, she
realized, was of Adeline at roughly the same age Morgan was now.
Morgan discovered that the room had an adjoining bathroom. (
My
own bathroom!
she’d thought delightedly, stamping her feet on the thick
cream carpet of the bedroom in a little dance of girlish euphoria.) She’d
splashed her face with cold water in the sink, and then turned on the
shower. Under the hot spray, she’d washed her hair, sluicing away the
grime and sweat of the long car ride.
After towelling off and dabbing some Johnson’s baby lotion on
her face, Morgan combed her damp hair with a wide-toothed comb and
dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a soft blue sweater. She looked at her
Timex. It was seven o’clock.
Checking her image in the mirror over her dresser one last time, she
smiled at her reflection, well pleased with what she saw there. She took a
deep breath, then headed downstairs for breakfast with her grandmother.
When Morgan entered
the dining room, her mother and Jeremy were
already seated. They were looking down at their plates. Jeremy’s face
was red and Morgan’s mother was furiously buttering a piece of toast.
The tension in the air lay like a miasma over the table. The only person
who seemed unaffected by it was Adeline, who looked up from her gold-rimmed breakfast plate and smiled pleasantly at her granddaughter.
“Good morning, dear,” Adeline said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Grandmother.” Morgan looked inquisitively at her mother and
her uncle, then back to Adeline. “Thank you.”
“You’ll find breakfast laid out on the sideboard over there,” Adeline
said, indicating the gleaming silver-domed platters on the sideboard’s
surface. “Beatrice will be removing them and clearing the table promptly
at seven forty-five, so I advise you to select what you wish to eat and
begin. You don’t want to be late for your first day in your new school.”
Morgan looked around. “Who’s Beatrice?”
“Beatrice has been with this family for most of her working life. Her
husband, James, is our driver, and he will be driving you to school this
morning shortly after you’re finished with breakfast. There will be forms
to fill out, I’m sure. You don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”
Christina looked sharply at Adeline. “I’ll drive Morgan to school this
morning, Adeline. I was sure I made that clear earlier.”
“Out of the question,” Adeline replied. Her tone was peremptory and
dismissive. “Morgan will be fine on her own. She’s fifteen. She doesn’t
need mollycoddling, and frankly I’d like her to have the advantage of
starting school with a minimum of gossip to deal with about—well,
about recent life events.”
“Jesus, Mother.” Jeremy looked disgusted.
“Are you referring to her father’s death?” Christina said, hearing a
certain shrillness in her own tone that was entirely alien to her. “Or are
you referring to the fact that her uncle doesn’t love women? Or that her
mother has brought her back to this town she swore she’d never even
think of again because she had no other way of providing for her? Which
‘recent events’ are you referring to, Adeline? Which ‘recent events’ should
stop me from driving my daughter to school this morning?”
“How you—”
“Mom, maybe Grandmother is right,” Morgan interrupted. She
looked beseechingly at her mother, as though imploring her to concede,
if only just this once, for the sake of peace. “I’ll be fine. I’ll tell you all
about it this afternoon when I get home.”
Christina recognized at once that her daughter was trying to avert a
scene between herself and Adeline, and she was momentarily chagrined
that she’d allowed Adeline to draw her into yet another power struggle
so soon. She was particularly struck by Adeline’s willingness to fight in
front of Morgan, consequences be damned. This was not going to be easy,
living here with this woman. She took no prisoners. No wonder both her
sons had fled as soon as they were possibly able.
“All right, Morgan. If you’re sure.”
“Of
course
she’s sure, Christina,” Adeline interrupted, her voice once
again the creamy matriarch’s voice, the one that brooked no dissent
from staff or other inferiors. “For heaven’s sake. She’s fifteen years old.
Morgan will do very well. She can meet her teachers and make some
new friends without her mother hanging off her like an old secondhand
winter coat.” Adeline laughed softly at her own joke. “Besides, Christina,
you and I have a great deal to do this morning, a great deal to discuss. You
also, Jeremy.”
“I don’t know what you think we have to discuss, Mother. I’m going
out for a drive today. I don’t intend to be back until dinnertime. I’ve been
away a long while, and I’m going to explore some old haunts. It’s going
to be a beautiful day, according to the radio, and I’m going to look at the
leaves.”
“Yes, and why don’t you go visit some of your old friends from school,
son,” Adeline said cruelly. “You have so many. I’m sure they’d be happy to
see you back in town.”
Jeremy’s laugh was forced, but defiant. “Maybe I will at that, Mother.
Maybe I will.”
“I think I’ll join you, Jeremy,” Christina said, surprising herself with
her own defiance. She guessed that Adeline was unlikely to be able to
retaliate against both her and Jeremy’s defiance, at least not right away—
and frankly the notion of being trapped in Parr House all day with this
woman was more than she could bear right now. “I’d like to look at the
leaves, too. Shall we pack a lunch and make a day of it, Jeremy?”
“Young woman, you are not on holiday,” Adeline snapped at
Christina. “I’ll have you remember that while you are under my roof.”
Adeline looked across the table at her granddaughter, pale and
staring at her plate, not eating her breakfast. Her mouth tightened in
frustration, realizing she’d been outmanoeuvred into choosing between
causing a disruptive scene in front of Morgan, or letting it go. Adeline
had no compunctions about chastising either the common strumpet
who had killed her eldest son, or her youngest son, the depraved invert
disgrace to his name, but she was intent on winning Morgan to her side.
She was shrewd enough to realize that this was not the way to do it.