The River Burns (8 page)

“It's an old family tradition,” Denny told them, but he kept his voice low. “Shooting deer off our back porch. Moms never like it. But when we have venison to eat, they change their minds.”

Valérie shouted from the kitchen. “Take your little sermon and stick it!”

Speaking below a whisper, Denny added, “But very slowly.”

“You missed the doe by a foot and a half,” Alex said. “I don't know why you bothered if you were going to shoot that far off the mark.”

“But I missed Valou by five feet. Not like when you shot deer over my head.”

“I never came that close to you,” Alex protested.

“One time, the bullet whizzed past my right ear.
Wheeeet!
Inches.”

“You exaggerate,” Alex said.

“Mom was going to kill you. You don't remember?”

“A vague recollection maybe.”

They both knew they were talking for the sake of the kids, teaching them the ways of moms and dads. A racket inside the house interrupted their conversation. Pots were tumbling inside a cabinet. A clatter of cutlery. Dishes were not being broken, though, which Denny deduced was a good thing. Val was venting her upset yet exercising reasonable control.

After the last pot rattled itself into stillness, Alex whispered, “Maybe I should go.” He thought he was speaking only to Denny.

“Stay right where you are, Alex,” Valérie commanded from inside. “Go now and I just might kill that evil son of yours.” The door flew wide open. “Kids. Inside. Wash up. Don't you dare argue or delay.”

They did not intend to defy her mood and jumped to the task.

She addressed the men. “Nitwit and Bigger Nitwit, don't think this is over. Alex, put the rifle away this instant and make sure you lock that door or you will not leave here alive. Fuckhead, set the damn table.”

She let the door slam.

The two men stood still in the deadfall of silence.

“Fuckhead,” Alex said. “I guess that would be you?”

He and Denny shared a glance, acknowledging that in the greater scheme of things they were getting off lightly, then moved on to their assigned tasks. Denny gathered up the cutlery. His shot missed. Everyone concluded it happened because Valou tripped. But he didn't think that way. He had the deer lined up. An easy shot. Somehow he missed. By as much as his dad said. Denny didn't want to let on that he was perplexed by that, that he couldn't figure it out. Still, he'd eluded that private talk his dad wanted, and for now and through the evening could keep him at bay, without being caught alone in his company. So all, at least, was not lost.

10

N
ight's fall is sudden upon a river town nestled amid rolling hills. Alexander Gareth O'Farrell detected a breeze through his bedroom curtains as he adjusted the blind half down, wanting to thwart the awakening glare of morning without impeding any possible circulation of air overnight. Across the stream below his window, a stillness remained palpable. Creepers burst out, a cacophonous blast, the racket easing as suddenly. A buzzy moth tested the screen, lingering awhile after the blessed light is shut, as if hopeful yet, ever expectant.

For Alex, sleep has not been a simple chore these summer nights, given the old injuries. His body resists being prone and struggles to find positions that ache less. The heat is welcome to succour these wounds, yet remains a distraction as he tosses and turns under a thin sheet. When that proves too warm he kicks out a leg, though he still desires his chest covered. Enough breeze will touch his skin to indicate that he will doze, eventually, in comfort. Yet soon his eyes blink open. He's caught wondering what that light might be. A waning quarter moon rising. The angle at the other window never so perfect as now to admit the shine. Alex inhales at length. Then breathes in calm rhythm. He feels, before he shuts his eyelids once more, the whole ache of the night upon him like these aged Gatineau Hills, ponderous, immense. Feels, as though at his feet, the scud of pond scum where the stream pools below his yard.

■   ■   ■

For Raine Tara-Anne Cogshill the
night exposes her as restless. The steady purr of an overhead fan a push and pull, the shimmy of air across her skin, alternately warm, light then heavy, cool, the humidity distressing.

She rises and gets dressed, and wanders outside.

By the backyard swimming pool and hot tub, lovers irritate her. To come upon them entwined is a catalyst for her own loneliness that, for the moment, feels unbearable. A trail follows the surge of water down through the woods and she surrenders to that route. The inn an old mill transformed. Here, water rushes over the dam, loud, hypnotic, and, oddly, triumphantly soothing. The terrace has been abandoned by diners, yet a few patrons committed to their drinks linger on above the tempest of the falls. The path down through the trees takes Tara lower and a boardwalk guides her to a place to sit by the stream, to catch water in her fingers over smooth broad stones. She adjusts her weight on a boulder and crouches there in the moonlight, the water dripping from her fingertips, a longing which to her feels vaguely soulful apparent in her gaze. Staggered by the confluence of events that have carried her here, she's a twig, she feels, on the tumbling stream.

She considers something outside her norm. Solitary in this darkness she could undress, wade out upon the smooth flat stones, succumb to the embrace of the river where the stream idly circulates, turns, and gyrates awhile before travelling on. She could swim, dog-paddle in circles at least, in the deep black pool under the leer of wanton moonlight winking through the trees.

■   ■   ■

Kitty-corner across town, Mrs. Alice
Beauchamp McCracken has enjoyed her evening. Never did she mind the heat at night and for a change the shows on television amused her. If given her druthers, she is content with cops and robbers, or their near equivalent, cops and killers. Vile big-city goings-on. She is confident that she has prepared herself well as she crawls into bed—doors locked, pills taken, water on the bedside table, Buckminster safely ensconced, alarm set—and yet, she is no sooner under the sheet and comfortably upon her side than she struggles back up again. She's forgotten the light. Switching it off, she's astonished by the moon's bright glow bearing down upon her. The interruption changes her plan, and she informs Buckminster, who has at that moment landed on the opposite side of the bed with a bound, “I think we need the symphony tonight, dear.”

Having missed the introduction, she does not know which otherworldly philharmonic comes through on the radio, nor is she adept at attributing music to composers. Mrs. McCracken enjoys the dulcet tones of the announcer and so regrets having missed them. Some nights, his words alone lull her to sleep.

His talk, tonight, proved unnecessary. An interval of at least forty minutes passed, the station programmed to play that long, when Mrs. McCracken awakens to a thump, one she cannot trace to a percussion section as the radio has automatically switched itself off. The night, as she listens for further sound, bears the silence of its warmth, when not enough breeze passes by to a rustle a leaf.

She hears the tinkling of glass.

Her hair stands on end.

Swiftly wide awake, intent, petrified, without knowingly commanding herself to do so, Mrs. McCracken sits erect.

All ears. All fear.

Buckminster, too, cranes his head up, listening.

Mrs. McCracken cannot properly interpret what it is she hears next. While her imagination conjures the covert entry of thieves she also tries to dismiss the threat as an old lady's batty nerves. She knows from long experience with false alarms that there is no earthly reason why she should guess at a sound's significance when she can as easily, and probably more quickly while saving herself considerable fret, go investigate.

Bravely putting her feet down on the floor, she works them into her slippers. Her lightweight housecoat, a flimsy thing, awaits on the bedside chair and she throws it on. She hurries—then thinks that she has detected something. What was that? Someone . . . whistling?
Impossible!
Mrs. McCracken pulls out the drawer of her bedside table and reaches in to where her husband's antique duelling pistols sleep. She withdraws the case and places it on the bed, opens it, and takes out both pistols, one in each hand.

They are both fully loaded.

They always are.

With blanks, but what thief knows that? Her secret.

Mrs. McCracken sucks in a sharp breath. With a wag of her chin she commands Buckminster to be still, although he shows no interest in moving,
no gumption whatsoever
, then she steps through the bedroom doorway.

Silence.

She moves to the landing at the crest of the stairs.

Her hearing seems electric, superhuman.

A frog by the shore of the Gatineau, a long way's off, croaks.

A board creaks and she flinches. She almost leaps.

Then, in defiance of her trepidation, she heads down the stairs.

A whistling!

One step at a time, slowly, slowly, until two-thirds of her descent is complete.

Mrs. McCracken sees a thief move before she hears his next whistle. She spots his nasty dark form scurry rat-like through the living room in haste. Then she detects more such phantom shapes. The temerity not to at least be quiet! As bold as you please! A whole gang of intruders, or ghosts, or wraiths at this hour of her death but in any case she's having none of it and Mrs. McCracken raises her right pistol in defiance of them. Then raises the left. She stands there waiting for the next spooky shape and when one crosses her line of sight she fires.

The roar of the blast nearly knocks her over, the sound of it alone, and she's aware then that the apparitions are on the run, and that she's hearing things, shouts and words and multiple voices and crazy running, and she's aware that she's still firing, point-blank, both guns, as if the weapons have seized control of her hands and blast away indiscriminately as she sits where she's tumbled on the stairs, wildly shooting thieves.

Later she guesses that only their laughter made her stop. Their laughter and their coarse invective. Not that she wanted to stop or considered it prudent, but she ceased the noise of her pistols to ascertain if her ears really heard what she thought she was hearing. And they did. The intruders were
guffawing, that's the word for it
.
They're guffawing!
Yelling, also, and swearing vilely, although probably not in fright as first she suspected. They sounded more like fans at a hockey game whose team just scored.
They're hooting!
She wanted to keep on shooting them but felt too perplexed. Why were they laughing at her in her own house while she was trying to shoot them dead?

At least, she summed up then,
at least,
they were leaving.

One said to another, “Come on. Let's piss off.”

She didn't know how many they were. Three? Four?

She tried to shoot once more, but the hammer clicked, her ammunition spent.

Oh dear.

The roaring of the gunshots in her ears, her nerves assailing her so that she could neither think nor breathe nor cry out, Mrs. McCracken fell back lower on the stairwell, convinced that the end was near. She'd done it now.
You old galoot.
She was in for it. She'd given herself a heart attack and could only wait for the ambulance, preferably, or perhaps she'd have to wait for that dreadful morgue's pathetically morbid van,
black, if you can believe.

Oh, you've gone and done it now, you silly old ninny. Foolish girl!

■   ■   ■

Goose-bumpy cold, the water, but
she didn't mind. She held on to a rock on a shallow ledge, allowing her legs to float up in the current above a deep cavity, gently kicking her feet to keep her more or less stationary. Tara looked a sight, she knew, her bum up above the water's flow, the twin orbs, she guessed, shining in moonlight. No one seemed to be peering at her, though, and anyway, what of it? She had the lone woods to herself and if an intruder impinged on her sport she'd throw stones, plenty were handy, and shout, scream if it came to that. The inn was nearby. Yet it seemed that she was free to commune with the stream under an overhanging arbour of branches in perfect solitude, as if the forest conspired with her to conceal her frolic. Imagine, being this free, to cavort, like some mystical nymph from antiquity, a captive maiden on the lam, a nun popped over the wall. Sheer bliss.
I love it.

Yet she emerged. Her body adapted to the water temperature, the coolness a delight after the day's swelter, but soon she shivered. Easy does it on the slippery stones. She wished now that she planned this and brought down a towel, at least. Tara dabbed her skin with her summer dress, then drew it on over her head and along her wet torso. She pulled back her hair, wet in places, and retied a band to hold an impromptu ponytail. She sat by the stream, needing to dry at least a little before the trek through the lobby to the elevator and up to her room.

Out of the water, the sensation of being buoyed by it remained. She felt suspended, and consciously breathed deeply awhile.

Through the trees, flickering moonlight teased her.

She felt it, like a bump, and could have stopped everything right there but chose not to do so, allowing herself to nudge a certain eroticism distilled by the muggy air. The woods could hold her now, be her lover here. She resisted any imprudent behaviour in the stream but the forest's intentions remained indecent. She could walk a path that appeared to have been cleared by moonlight. She saw a fence. Annoying. Limitations. Lines drawn. She was not the first to be down here, not the first to have done this, although perhaps the first to have done this on her own. Maybe. Insect rattle and squeak. The tumbling stream. Leaves shimmering. Her movement was not involuntary, fully premeditated, for she cast a long glance over both shoulders first and back up towards the mill to check that she stood there alone and unobserved. She commanded her senses to be sure, to make absolutely certain that she could not be seen, a ghost in this realm, before she reached up under her left breast and held that slight weight and raised the breast higher before she tweaked the nipple already stiffened by the water's chilly wash.

Her hand eased back to the middle of her chest where she felt her heart thump.

Then she stopped.

Looked around once more.

If she carried through on fantasy now these woods would indeed be her lover. These trees. This very breeze. The stirring caress of the water.

Tara fell still, feeling somewhat mournful.

She was thinking of this: she missed no one. She remembered no one.

Did anyone, anywhere, she pondered, miss her?

■   ■   ■

A stranger might think she'd
shot the devil through his evil eye. Such hubbub!

That dodo police officer
Oh, I know he's had his troubles but he's parked on my lawn!
never turned off the rotating red light clamped to the roof of his car.
What was he thinking?
To draw more attention from the neighbours like that.
The moment he arrived, hurrying across the grass to see to her welfare, he managed only to utter her name, “Mrs. McCracken,” before she felt compelled to interrupt.

“How do you keep that thing up there?” she asked.

Momentarily at a loss, he swallowed his next question and looked back at the unmarked car. Despite the paucity of clues, he extrapolated her meaning. “With a strong magnet. Mrs. McCracken, are you okay?”