The River Burns (6 page)

He acknowledged his son's serious tone with a nod. “Maybe I shouldn't interfere. You're all grown men. But sometimes I can feel my blame in this. That it's my fault in a way. The legend thing is bunk but I agree with you, it's out there. I feel my part in this because I led the logging drives that nearly killed the river. Some would say they did kill it. That the river's as dead as a doornail.”

Ryan could not comfort his father with idle remarks. Pain was evident behind his eyes.

“Talk to Denny,” Ryan urged.

“That's what I think you should do.” He added with a tight, sly grin, “Isn't that why I asked you here?”

Ryan pursed his lips, and thought about it. He concluded, “In this case, Dad, better you than me.”

Alex swirled the beer around in its bottle, creating a bit of foam. “Okay,” he said. “We'll see. Maybe you're right.”

8

S
he cased the joint. Her term for browsing, a little joke to herself in the midst of an uneasy mood. Tara was drawn inside by a sign in the window advertising employment.
Bet I look like a shoplifter to you, don't I? Ha!
His eyes, she determined, didn't merely fall upon her the instant she stepped through the door, rather his gaze slithered across the floor, then snaked around her legs. She felt bound by a constrictor. Long ago Tara made peace with a constant in her life—men were free to gaze, she didn't mind that so much, as long as they didn't give her the creeps. This one?
Borderline. Look, I'm not out to steal your precious merchandise, okay? Is that what you're hoping for? So you can pat me down? Demand to see what I've stuffed down my bra? Ah, wouldn't you like to know.
She circled the crowded aisles, a deliberate prowl. On the hunt, but for what?
A lure.
A hope. A path.
Some kind of a
sign
.
A sixth sense foretold that it might be lying around here somewhere.
Don't get your hopes up, Mr. Snaky Eyes. A lot of your stuff comes in between second-rate and doesn't rate. My shoplifting standards run higher than this.
She sniffed potpourris and cast an eye into amazing kaleidoscopes of ascending sizes and grazed her fingertips along the felt finish of a chessboard. Within the congestion of souvenirs and artefacts and the wares of artisans a few items were at least mildly interesting. Several she counted as tempting.
But it's only your wallet I'm after, Snaky. Yeah, come on over here. Bring cash. Oodles.

When the shopkeeper did commence to drift her way, she moved off, slithering a little herself.

Yeah, smile, buddy. While I pick your pocket blind.

She didn't know why she was entertaining this fantasy today. Being out on her own with no fixed address made her feel like an outlaw for a change, rather than an officer of the court. Tara could no more pick a wallet than she could rob a bank or shoplift penny candy. She knew she should
get real in a hurry
, she had a life to remake.
This time.
This place. Here.
Now. I know. So get on it.
At university, a fellow student once called her a ballbuster. Upset, she wondered how widespread the sentiment travelled before understanding that the guy was not merely being a dork, he was being a jealous
competitor
, someone who wanted her marks,
my scholarships
, her awards, her class standing,
probably even my looks. But what's mine is mine, buddy.
He had no legitimate claim on any of it or on her. She'd long since lost track of him but assumed that he was doing well,
creeping up the corporate ladder, whack job
?
He'd be cheered by her current circumstances, and Tara hoped that he never found out about her sudden, lapsed interest in their profession. Her demise.

He'd be unbearable.

She was not poor, but she was out of work and, essentially, homeless.

What have I done?

Thinking of him motivated her. Whatever she did next wasn't the point,
not so much.
The main thing was not to fail. Maybe that was her old lawyer training and natural competitiveness muscling aside fresh desires, but she couldn't kick the habit. She'd cut herself loose. Given up everything. She fled. Yet she was no saint and
I'm no latter-day hippie-dippie. Gawd
. She needed to succeed at something, only it had to be
something else.

An anteroom allowed her to slip away from the shopkeeper's scrutiny, but few treasures there sustained her interest. Until a notion, undefined, ephemeral, provoked her.
The possibility of a maybe. Hey. This is a thought.

More than a common consideration perhaps, an intuitive flash.

On closer inspection, the little room presented itself as a quaint disaster. A confusion of tastes, a litter of bad ideas, a place where items impossible to sell were ostensibly displayed when really they were being shunted aside in the faint hope that somebody might steal them or accidentally break them, or that their creators would return to remove them to a loving home under a rock somewhere.
Way deep.
Plaster owls and plastic bouquets and commemorative plaques and plates honouring old inaugurations or civic anniversaries or jamborees. A hodgepodge of kitsch. Unwanted, untended, each surface dulled by dust. Too late to vacuum and now the shopkeeper was edging her way.
You're not so borderline creepy anymore. Just more creepy. Do you, like, practise? Is it an art form with you?
As he entered the room and moved closer she marked down his appreciative gaze to being an ill-concealed leer.
There, that's it, that's the look I despise.
The man's left hand plucked a figurine from a shelf as if the scantily clad buxom Indian princess and her brightly beaded elephant really did deserve and command the whole of his attention.

She turned to him and, before she could rethink or censure herself, put forward, “About your sign in the window.”

That changed his expression entirely.

He needed to collect himself, to reconfigure his approach. He put down the Indian princess. “You have experience in retail?”

“For this job?” She should not have said that, her tone an insult, but the words slipped out lickety-split. Tara recovered with a smile and cheerily declared, “Plenty.” Then quickly rambled on. “I'm not asking for a job. Here's the thing. I'd like to present you with a business proposition.”

She was thinking on her feet
lightning speed.

At least he seemed as startled on the outside as she was internally.

She quavered, grateful for the opportunity to say next, “Ah, there's a lady at the cash, sir. You may want to attend to her first.”

He nodded, bowed slightly, and backed out of the room.
Dude, you back out of a room bowing, who does that?
He beamed broadly upon his paying client, yet his glance repeatedly returned to the small antechamber and the mysterious visitor there.

Tara contained her desire to bolt. If she fled now she'd be
running away from running away
. Instead, she wandered out to the main section of the store. Someone entered—a little old lady balancing a pie on each palm—and she turned at the sound of the door's jingling bell. The old lady grinned
beamed!
and shyly she returned a faint flicker of a smile. This seemed a friendly sort of town.

The scent of berry pies reminded her that she was starving.

The bell began to jingle repeatedly, a crescendo to any retailer's ears as passengers off the train kept wandering in. If nothing else, they found a reprieve from the heat. Tara stepped up to the side of the cash while the proprietor rang up a sale and the elderly visitor waited patiently, balancing her two pies. The woman beamed brightly once more and said, “Another hot one.
Whoo!
”

Tara felt a need to match her friendliness. “You aren't going to—Well, you look like you're going to—”

The old lady gazed first at one pie, then the other, then fell into a fit of the giggles.
She gets me
. Just like that,
This old lady gets me
.

“Oh no, dear,” she laughed. “I'm not going to throw these in anyone's face. Although
you
could. They're for sale. You can buy one in a moment.”

“A little difficult to carry in a backpack.”

“You're off the train?”

“I am.”

“On your own?” Rather than curiosity, the question expressed dismay.

“Another reason I can't buy a whole pie just yet.”

“People are after me to bake smaller ones. I'm considering it.”

The first customer in line moved off with her bag of trinkets, allowing the elderly woman to put her pies down on the counter. Each was protected by a cellophane wrap punched with small steam holes. The proprietor was marking up the sheet that maintained a record of their transactions while she removed the wrap.

“They smell great,” Tara marvelled. “You must sell a lot of pies.”

“I started as a cottage industry. Now I'm a major conglomerate.”

Tara laughed. “Because of you I need lunch. Suddenly I'm famished.”

The proprietor's look mingled surprise and intrinsic regret.

“You're swamped, sir. I'll be back,” she said, which appeared to mollify him. “We'll try again after lunch.”

Without waiting for a response, Tara used only a facial expression to say good-bye to the old lady as she departed the counter and the store. The wee bell tinkled overhead. On the street she was surprised, and waited a moment to verify the image. The pie lady emerged to find Tara admiring her scooter, which carried two more blueberry creations cradled in a basket.

“This is yours?” Tara asked her.

“Are you worried I'll run over your toes? You should be. I might!”

“On purpose?”

“No, silly. But accidents happen. Especially when I'm driving.”

The woman started up the scooter and pulled on her helmet. Slow-moving traffic obliged her to delay a moment. Tara felt transfixed by this geriatric on a colourful, gleaming motorized bike sporting a bright blue blaze of a helmet. She was finding this town charming in unexpected ways.

“I'm Mrs. McCracken,” the old lady told her in response to her scrutiny, her voice muffled by the helmet and its visor.

“I'm Tara.”

“Of course you are, dear,” Mrs. McCracken declared, almost as though she did not believe her, then swung her scooter out into traffic.

■   ■   ■

As she arrived home, Mrs.
McCracken felt perspiration leak down the back of her neck. A change of dress might be in order, although she reconsidered as she entered the relative coolness of her home. Fans fluttered the curtains and the house itself stood in the lee of a tall sugar maple and a great eastern pine. The cooling effect may have been more psychological than what could be demonstrated on a thermometer, but certainly the shelter of the house was welcome after the blazing sun.

“I could bake a pie on the sidewalk,” she told Buckminster, her tabby, who, languid on a patch of cool bare floor, could not care less.

She needed to tidy up the kitchen after her baking and deliveries and was concluding the chores when the doorbell sounded. Her old one broke and a new remote bell that allowed her a choice of chimes was installed by her neighbour's gaunt son. A mystery, that boy. Just when you were guessing that he was good for nothing he turned out to be good for any chore that contractors charged a fortune to accomplish. He accepted payment but without concern for the amount and only seemed happy when he was tinkering. He came over sometimes to see if she'd baked more pies than she was able to distribute, but unfortunately, he wasn't the one at the door today.

She spoke through the screen to a red-haired lad, a stranger.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon, ma'am!” he fairly bellowed. “My name is Jake Withers and I represent the Rathbone Company?”

She didn't know what was wrong with a whole generation that couldn't make a simple statement without it sounding like a question.

“Is that a good thing?” she asked.

“Pardon me?” Jake Withers was having difficulty making out the woman's form on the other side of the screen, although she seemed slight, old, and, from the sound of her voice, easy pickings.

“I've never heard of the Rathbone Company.”

“We're very well established. I can show you references.”

“I've never met a Rathbone. Are they from around here?”

“Well, we're a company, you know. A company. We're from everywhere, like. We're old.”

“Old is good.”

“If you were to come outside, I'll show you how I can accelerate your property value.”

Mrs. McCracken opened the screen to have a peek at him. He seemed like a nice enough young man. He was backing away from her, which she appreciated. He was not acting as though he planned to storm the premises and tie her up to a kitchen chair. These sorts of things never happened
here
, of course, but one never knew when
somewhere else
suddenly became your very own doorstep. She stepped outside into the glaring light.

“Property values don't interest me one whit,” she explained to him. “I'll die before I sell. So improving property values can do nothing more for me than raise my taxes. But feel free, talk away.”

Jake Withers, she saw, was staring at the patch of yard where her scooter stood parked. Old ruts from another era remained perceptible along the rising lawn to the garage behind the house where her husband used to park his car. Lawn tools were stowed back there now, and her scooter over the winter. “Just imagine,” the young man brayed, “a gleaming black driveway. Ma'am, for the addition to your property value you should really pay me double, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I won't charge you double. In fact, because you're a senior and I respect seniors, I'll give you a discount right off the bat. Ten percent, no questions asked. I'll also cut the deposit in half. Ma'am, it's too hot a day to bicker or barter, so I'll just give you the best deal possible and lay it on the table. Or on the lawn,
ha-ha
. First, I want you to imagine that gleaming black driveway up from the road to your garage. A beautiful thing, no? A beautiful thing, indeed. Imagine it!”