The Snow Falcon (37 page)

“I was just taking a break,” he’d said.

She’d come inside and closed the door, not meeting his eye while she rearranged her expression.

“Want some coffee?” he’d asked. He’d got up and gone to the stove, wondering where the hell the coffeepot was, then remembering he’d put it under the desk after he’d taken a leak in it earlier because he didn’t want to go outside.

She’d shook her head and sat down.

“Not working?” he’d said. He’d put a log on the fire and tried to smooth his hair a little and straighten himself out.

“I asked for a couple of hours off. I didn’t want to do this at home, not with the kids around.”

Ellis hadn’t liked the way she’d sounded, serious and heavy with what he felt were likely to be unwelcome recriminations. It had struck him that he’d allowed things to go too far, and now she’d come to tell him that she was leaving. He’d known he shouldn’t be surprised; things always went against him, like he was constantly swimming against the tide. If he were one of those guys who believed in people living more than once, he’d think he must have done something particularly bad in one of his other lives and that this was all just so he’d suffer and know what it felt like. The trouble was, he didn’t believe in any of that stuff. It would be nice to think that sometime he’d get another shot and then things would be different because he’d paid his dues, but it was just a false hope. What you see is what you get. He’d tried to picture his life without Rachel. She

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would take the kids, and who would blame her? He’d end up some bum living in an old railcar, drinking cheap liquor from a brown paper bag.

“Listen,” he’d said, “I’m glad you came by. I wasn’t gonna say anything until later, but now that you’re here, I may as well give you the good news.”

“Pete, listen. We have to talk.”

She hadn’t even heard him. As he’d looked at her, he’d known she was absorbed in the speech she’d worked out in her head and didn’t want to be distracted from it. Her face had been set, but she hadn’t looked him in the eye, so he’d known she didn’t quite hate him yet.

“I don’t think I can go on like this anymore, Pete,” Rachel said.

“I’m trying to tell you, Rachel, everything’s gonna change now. I had some luck. I got a break finally.” He’d gone on, talking over the top of her. He must’ve sounded like he was babbling, desperate, and she’d stopped then and peered at him. He’d guessed she was wondering if he was drunk.

It had occurred to him then that he hadn’t been home since he’d got back from Calgary.

“How’d you know I was here?”

She’d given a little shake of her head, like it was hard for her to keep up with his train of thought.

“I’m gonna get some money. Tomorrow,” he’d told her, not waiting for her to answer him. “Things are gonna be different then. I mean, I need to stop drinking. I know that. Thing is, it’s hard for a guy like me, Rachel. You don’t know how hard it is sometimes. I never had a fucking chance, every thing I touch turns to shit. Except for you. You’re the best thing there is, and I know that. I’ve got this money coming, I mean it’s not a fortune or anything, but it’s almost a couple thousand. It’ll pay some of the bills. We can get started again, the way things used to be. I need you.”

He’d said the last part quickly, sensing she wanted to interrupt him. He’d wanted to stop her from saying whatever was on her mind. He’d known how pathetic he must have seemed. He was dirty, unshaven, and he probably stank.

She’d fastened her eyes on him. Seconds went by, and he’d felt her resolve fade away. Then she’d sounded suspicious.

“Where’s this money coming from?”

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“Just a deal me and Red did in Calgary. It was lucky.”

She’d looked at him as if she was weighing it up, deciding whether or not to believe him.

He’d known that it all rode on that moment. Somehow, if she believed him, it might all work out, but if she didn’t, that was the end of it. It seemed stupid that his life could rest on this one thing. In the end, she’d just kind of nodded sadly. He’d tried to get her to stay awhile so they could talk. He’d wanted to explain to her all his plans about the future, but she’d just looked at him as if she was dog-tired and said she’d see him at home. In truth, he’d been kind of relieved. She’d unsettled him, the way she’d looked at him. He hadn’t known, really, what had been going on in her mind, but he’d thought she’d given him some kind of a chance, maybe a day or a week. He’d just hoped she never got to hear about how he’d come by the money. Somehow he’d thought that might change everything.

Thinking about it now, on Somers’s property, Ellis wasn’t sure what to do. He had this feeling that if he went ahead with what he was planning, he was crossing some kind of line, that there would be things he’d have to live with as a result. Down below, the house remained quiet and still. He didn’t understand why he was holding back. He didn’t owe Somers anything, that was for sure; the whole fucking town would’ve been glad if he’d never come back. Even Coop had his own agenda here, for chrissakes. Nobody was ever going to blame Ellis for what he was doing if it ever came out. And the falcon—well, that was his, anyway, by rights. He still couldn’t make the idea sit easy in his mind. He kept thinking about Rachel, what she’d say, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place now. Somehow he had to get the money, and he was damned if he could think of any other way. He started down, creeping around the rear of the house.

IN A DREAM, Michael was speaking with his father. He was showing him around the store now that it was almost fixed up, restored to the way it had once been, and then they were looking out a window together. Across the snow they watched a man and a boy flying a falcon. He was telling his dad how he’d found the falcon, then he was telling him about the boy and his mother, who lived in the house through the woods. All the time he talked, his father looked out the

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window at the man and the boy, then at last he turned toward Michael and smiled.

He woke, the bedclothes twisted into knots around his legs, and sat up in bed. The dream that had been so vivid just moments before receded and became vague, the emotions he’d felt so clearly were almost forgotten, vanishing back into his subconscious mind. He got out of bed and went to the window, aware that something outside had woken him. Looking down across the clearing, he saw darkness chase the gray light of the moon across the snow as clouds gathered overhead. A pair of fiercely amber eyes shone from what he thought was a point midway across the clearing, perhaps a few feet from the ground. Nothing more was discernible except these bright points of intelligent light that he felt were staring up at him. He went downstairs and opened the front door to step onto the porch, a little warily, his heart thudding in his chest. The darkness before him was empty, but then a sound from around the back of the house reached him, like a door opening, old hinges squealing.

A rising wind rattled the bones of trees as he rounded the corner, and the moon appeared through thin cloud, casting soft light on the squat shape of the woodshed. A figure moved in the doorway, a solid shape in the dark.

“Hey, who is that?” Michael called out, suddenly alarmed.

The moon vanished again and plunged everything into darkness, but Michael heard something moving, stumbling, going back along the rear of the house. He hesitated at the corner, torn between pursuit and returning to the woodshed, unsure if Cully was still there. Fear and dread quickened his heart as he looked inside, but she was there: safe, unharmed, a pale shape. When he went closer, she stepped onto his fist when he offered it.

Outside, he heard the faint sound of an engine growing fainter, then all was quiet and there was only the wind in the trees. From then, he decided, Cully would stay in the kitchen, with the door locked, and he took her with him to rig up a perch.

It wasn’t until the morning that he found animal tracks in the clearing, and he remembered those eyes he’d seen, which for a while he’d thought must have been a dream. The tracks looked like those of a big cat. In an Indian legend he’d heard somewhere, a mountain lion contains the spirit of a dead person.

He shook his head. Crazy.

“HEY,” SUSAN SAID, REACHING OVER TO

mock-thump Jamie’s arm. “You look like

^^ mmaif’ you’re going to a funeral.”

She rolled her eyes and thought, Damn, terrific choice of words. Jamie, however, didn’t appear to have noticed. She wondered if he’d even heard her. Since she’d told him that Coop was taking him fishing, he’d shut down on her.

“Come on, it’s just for a couple of days,” she’d said. “You’ll have a good time.”

Evidently he hadn’t seen it that way. He mooched around the house, sullen and uncommunicative. It startled her to think how quickly she’d been able to forget what he could be like. She’d got used to seeing him come home excited, his eyes shining after being with Michael and Cully. It even seemed as though he was starting to come out of himself more, and maybe she’d allowed herself to nurture a seed of hope. Once or twice she’d caught herself daydreaming that he might speak again. Sometimes on the way home she imagined opening the door and he’d be there and he’d say hi and she’d smile and say hi back and go on through to the kitchen. Then it would hit her and she’d stop dead in her tracks, her heart thumping. She’d turn around and Jamie would be grinning at her, and she’d sweep him into her arms, laughing and crying at the same time, and… and life would be a fairy tale, she thought. Which it never was. It was just a daydream. She looked across at him and he was hunched down into himself, as remote as ever.

When they arrived in town, she pulled up outside her office and

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switched off the engine. They were a couple of minutes early, and Coop hadn’t arrived yet. She smoothed Jamie’s hair, a reflex action he responded to by brushing her hand away irritably.

“Listen, Jamie, I want you to be nice to Coop,” she said. “He really thought you’d have a good time. He’s doing this for you.” She lapsed into silence for a moment, uncertain whom she was trying to convince. “Listen, Cully will still be there when you get back.” She had spoken to Michael, just to let him know Jamie would be away for the weekend. He’d looked at Jamie, who had wandered off and was kicking the porch step with a monotonous thud. She’d thought he was going to make some comment about how Jamie seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea, but then he’d gone over and spoken to him, though she couldn’t hear what he’d said.

“I just told him I’d wait until next weekend before I take Cully hunting. I think he thought he might miss it,” he’d explained.

“Hunting?” she’d said.

“Her training’s over. All she has to do now is show she can still catch her own food.”

“Oh.” She’d nodded, not sure at first why the idea made her uneasy. “What happens then?”

“I let her go, I hope.”

She’d looked across at Jamie then, and wondered if he knew. She’d thought Michael understood what she was thinking when their eyes met, but he hadn’t said anything.

Susan looked at her watch, wondering where Coop was. From down the street she could see John Heelman’s truck coming toward them. It stopped, and John got out to climb a ladder so he could string lines across the street from which later he’d hang the winter festival decorations.

She pointed him out to Jamie. “This year we’ll have a great time,” she promised, knowing she sounded as if she was trying to make it up to him.

Privately, she thought how quickly time had passed. It was hard to believe a year had gone by since the last festival, the first they’d spent without David. It had been a hard time for them both. Any celebration or anniversary had seemed like a reminder. Now her primary feeling was one of mild panic. What had changed in a year? Where would they be next year?

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At that moment, Coop’s truck pulled alongside her own, and he climbed out to greet her. “Everything okay?”

“I guess so.” She glanced back toward Jamie.

“How is he?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried talking to him. Listen, Coop, I hope you know what you’re doing here. I’ll understand if you want to change your mind.”

Coop smiled. “That bad, huh?”

“He’s not in what I’d call a terrific mood.”

“Maybe he’s worried about my cooking.”

She smiled at his joke. “Maybe.”

“Well, he’ll be okay once we get going,” Coop said confidently. He went around to Jamie’s door and opened it. “Let’s go, Jamie. We’ve got to get moving if we’re going to eat fish for supper.”

Susan got Jamie’s things out of the car and transferred them into the back of Coop’s truck. She kissed Jamie good-bye, and as they pulled away, she raised her hand, but he didn’t respond. She saw him watching her through the window, his face getting smaller as they drove down the street. When they turned the corner, she felt suddenly alone.

THE HOUSE WHERE Rachel and Pete Ellis lived was on the western edge of town. It was a two-story weatherboard place with a garden and a garage. Once, Rachel had loved it. Much of her spare time had been spent planting the garden or scraping and painting, planning how the house would look when the rotted railings on the porch were replaced, the foundations reblocked, and all the windows and doors rehung. At first they’d lived in one room and the kitchen, the rest of the house being uninhabitable. Then, room by room, they’d gone through and done the worst of the repair work. When the baby had arrived, that had slowed down progress. She hadn’t minded, though. Finishing the house became a dream she could hang on to, a vision she could take out and look at now and then, when the lumberyard and the kids took up less of her time.