This morning and before leaving for the city, her plan is to alter her appearance as much as possible, tie her hair up in a bun and hide it under a hat. She practises changing her speaking voice, with a slight French accent.
Wren arrives at the Tim Hortons parking lot before Billy does. It’s 8:27 a.m. As she watches Billy’s truck pull into a space beside her car, her breathing increases just a bit. She’s suddenly nervous about whether she can pull this off, and is hoping he doesn’t recognize her.
It’s been a decade since she last saw him. She prays he won’t remember. By sheer willpower, Wren stops her hands from shaking. It’s showtime. Her plan is to approach him, not confront him, but just meet him head-on, be polite. Kill him with kindness as it were.
“Oh, hello,” she says as he exits his truck. “I notice you do roofing. I’ve seen your truck here a couple of mornings now when I’ve stopped in for a tea.” Her French accent is iffy, though only a Francophone would detect this.
“Morning, ma’am.” Billy’s greeting is jovial, and it’s clear to Wren that he does not recognize her.
“I don’t know if you take jobs out of town,” she tells him, “but part of my roof needs some work. More so now that the weather has come in. I don’t want any further damage.” She tells him that the person she’d contracted earlier in the fall had some health problems so wasn’t even able to start the job and she doesn’t want to chance leaving the work until springtime. “Could you do an estimate? If you take out-of-town jobs that is.”
The two chat for a short while and Billy offers to come out to the farmhouse the next day.
“That won’t work, I have to head out of town for a few days for work. But on Monday I will be at home.” That’s the day Lord indicated he’ll be out of province.
Billy checks the work schedule on his cellphone. “I seem to be available Monday,” he says. “What’s the address?”
“It is a bit of a maze to get to my house, so I won’t give you farmer’s directions.” Billy gives a slight laugh at Wren’s comment because he’s been in southern Saskatchewan and gotten lost on the grids. Rural people know about the red barn by the slough where you’re supposed to turn left toward the Baker’s farm, whoever Baker is, and then make a right where there’s a fork in the road, marked only by an abandoned postbox. It’s rural lingo and farmer’s directions, understood and followed by the local folk.
“I’ll draw you a map,” Wren offers.
She doesn’t want to leave any type of electronic trail, so she jots down crude directions on the back of a pamphlet. She makes sure to keep her red leather gloves on while drawing—no fingerprints to leave behind. When Billy asks her for a phone number “in case there is a change of plans,” Wren writes down the number for a disposable cellphone she purchased recently for exactly this purpose.
“So, Monday, then,” she says and thanks him. “I’ll make sure to put the coffee on before you show up, then you can look at what’s needed and let me know if you can do this job. Lord knows I don’t want to go through my first blizzard without having it fixed. I swear, I saw a couple of shingles blow right off with that strong wind from the north the other day.”
Billy folds the pamphlet with the directions, slides it into his back pocket and heads to the coffee shop. Wren doesn’t follow him inside to order a tea. Instead, she feigns having to make a phone call. She waits for him to go in through the door and gets back into her vehicle, driving out of the parking lot feeling satisfied with herself. Contact has been made. A plausible trap has been set, which will soon lure Billy’s wretched soul to his doom.
Wren thinks about Stella and Jeremy as she makes the righthand turn back toward busy North Albert Street. Then she mutters the words, “You will take no more, Vespas.”
God’s Will
A few days after Lord leaves for business in Alberta, Wren is standing at the bathroom mirror, staring at her reflection. She notices a wrinkle between her eyebrows. She notices that she has no smile lines, but creases have formed in a downward direction at the sides of her mouth, frownlines indicating prolonged sadness. She stares intently, examining her face.
In that moment she has thoughts of vengeance again, then realizes that the feeling is a natural part of grieving or experiencing injustice. Even God does it, she assures herself, remembering stories from the Bible, including one told to her by her beloved kohkum. According to the Exodus account, Moses held out his staff and the Red Sea was parted by God. The Israelites walked on the exposed dry ground and crossed the sea, followed by the Egyptian army. Moses lowered his staff once the Israelites had crossed and the sea closed up, drowning the entire Egyptian army.
It’s a Bible passage that will always stay with Wren. She remembers it from her childhood when she and Raven would cuddle on the couch with Kohkum. They’d have a plate of sugar cookies in front of them, baked with love, and they’d watch The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston playing the role of Moses. Along with other feature films, that movie was always on television, always a part of the Christmas season. Not too many weeks from now, it’ll be Christmas again. But without the movie, without Kohkum, without her Raven.
If God can decree that some people need to be put to death, then am I doing anything wrong if I do the same? Wren asks herself, remembering that stern punishment has always been a part of her culture as well.
She recalls a story that her kohkum used to tell when the girls misbehaved. Kohkum told the story as a lesson to always be mindful about how we treat others, that bad deeds do not go unnoticed, that doing good will be rewarded, and if we cause harm, it will be met with the same.
Kohkum’s story centres around a group of bad young men. She called them the Young Dogs. They were a group of wayward youth who had been banished from their Cree and Nakota tribes because each had committed crimes too unspeakable for a young girl’s ears. Kohkum didn’t go into details about how the Young Dogs brutalized Elders and those who were two-spirited, nor how they sexually molested many, even children. They were poisonous, and poison needs to be removed, so each was banished and forced to leave the safety of the tipi villages to set out on their own.
So these wandering and ostracized young men found each other in the bush. They banded up and travelled together, raiding what they could from nearby camps when the night would fall. They would capture women, taking them hostage and using them as sex slaves. That’s how the story is always told.
On a clear summer’s night, one young woman managed to escape, hiding amongst reeds at the edge of the lake where the Young Dogs had set up camp. It’s at this time that Creator sent a fire from heaven. Thunder and the most violent lightning storm touched the ground with vengeance, burning up each of the Young Dogs and the tents they had been sleeping in, leaving only dark patches of burned-up grass in their places. The lightning struck only in one part of the valley that night and disappeared as quickly as it arrived. The young woman hiding in the reeds was spared—the only one left alive. When all was quiet, she ran back to the safety of her family and the encampment a few miles away. This story has been handed down since the middle of the nineteenth century, a time before the white man settled in the valley.
Creator has rid the world of filth and danger many times, Wren tells herself. She checks her reflection in the mirror. She makes no attempt to wipe away the tear that rolls, ever so slowly, down her right cheek as she thinks of Raven. Later this morning, Billy will be arriving as planned to check out the roof, or so he thinks.
It’s almost eleven, the scheduled time for Billy’s appointment at the farmhouse. Wren looks out the kitchen window toward the grid road to see if his roofing vehicle might be coming down the long and winding driveway. It is.
During these passing moments, Wren remembers her prayer to Kohkum last night asking for advice about her coming plans. She didn’t dream of a scarecrow but was instead awakened during the early-morning hours by the sounds of something ru
stling outside. When she glanced out the window, Wren saw a deer. It was a white-tailed buck with a magnificent set of horns digging under the snowfall and looking for nourishment.
Wren needs nourishment, too. For her soul. She’s been reading the Bible over these last weeks looking for answers. An eye for an eye and all that. The Ten Commandments. She knows the Bible condemns killing but in her mind, Wren doesn’t see this as killing. It’s more like silencing a bad noise, like the Red Sea when it swallowed up a whole army, like fire from the heavens that burned a village of Young Dog ne’er-do-wells who only caused pain and suffering. Evil must be destroyed.
But the time for pondering has come to an end. Billy Vespas has abused women—her, Stella and who knows how many others since she last saw him. How much harm and evil has he inflicted upon this world? Wren wonders as she hears a truck driving up and then its door slam shut.
She checks the mirror again. This time she sees not her own reflection, but the eyes of a mother bear.
Fairies
Wren has always wondered about magic and other worlds. As a child, she saw specks of light along the landscape when she’d wake up during the night to get a glass of water. Kohkum always told her, “They are fireflies,” but to little Wren, those lights belonged to fairies. Maybe even to Little People reminding her that they would always stay close, protecting her from harm.
The forecast says there is mild weather for the rest of the week but Wren wants it to snow. She wants to see those large flakes fall and cover her tracks. Cover her plan. Her Red Sea parting. Wren has asked the fairies for help today. She’s asked them before and they always come through. Let it snow. As Wren hears Billy knock on the door, tiny snowflakes begin to fall from the sky.
“So glad you could make it,” she says while hiding three small blue pills in her cardigan sweater pocket, “Come on in. Coffee is on.”
The thing about Zopiclone is that it can leave an aftertaste, so Wren talks about her apiary and how the bees this year seem to have been attracted to alfalfa instead of other types of wildflowers.
“Because of all that, the honey in your latte will have a distinct flavour.”
Wren doesn’t use the regular coffee maker, but instead uses the espresso machine, one of the only things that Lord brought into the farmhouse from his previous home. He likes that the machine can produce a froth of milk stacked as high as meringue on a pie.
“It’s good,” Billy says. “I didn’t know you were a beekeeper. That’s cool.”
Wren makes small talk with Billy for the next half an hour, waiting for the sleeping pill to take hold and for her plan to take flight. She glances out the window at the falling snow: fresh, white and falling steadily. Wren understands it as a sign that she’s on the right path, that what she’s about to do will be muted and covered. Like it never happened.
“So, I noticed your shingles,” Billy says, his speech beginning to slur a bit. “They look in good shape to me, but there’s no harm in being sure.” He sets down a brochure that outlines quotes for various roofing projects.
“Muffin?” asks Wren, extending a freshly baked plate of baking laced with more Zopiclone. “I have butter if you want. Here.”
Billy eagerly takes one of the drug-laced muffins. There’s no more need for small talk. He hurriedly eats the baked treat and passes out right at the kitchen island. He falls off his stool to the floor with a thud. Wren slaps him across the face, hard, to make sure he’s no longer conscious, no longer aware of what’s happening. When she’s sure he’s out cold, she ascends the stairs to grab vials of her husband’s insulin.
Wren returns to the kitchen seconds later and fills up a syringe. She removes the boot and sock from Billy’s left foot, not an easy task when someone is a dead weight on the floor, unmoving. She slips the needle between his toes and presses the clear liquid in deep. The excess insulin in his system will stop his heart soon. She gives him a second injection between another pair of toes. “Just to make sure,” she mutters, knowing Billy will be dead soon.
Wren takes a sip of her coffee and heads outside. She gazes peacefully at the rolling pasture, the rustling leaves in the trees, the delicate flakes of snow falling on everything. She will add wood to her outdoor kiln soon. She’ll turn Billy’s bones to ash.
Ashes
Wren lives in the valley. Her old farmhouse is tucked away between several buttes and far out of sight from the main highway. There are no other homes in any direction for miles. There was no one to witness Billy’s death, just as there was no one to witness Raven’s disappearance. Wren generously feeds the kiln with the birch a neighbour down the road supplied earlier in the year. Billy’s body is heavier than Wren ever imagined and she has a hell of time dragging his corpse outside from her kitchen floor. Wren decides she will use the ashes from Billy’s burned bones to make a vessel for kitchen utensils, like potato mashers or spaghetti spacers.
“For once, you will provide something useful,” she utters to the skin and bones. Wren’s disassociates herself, imagining she’s dragging nothing more than a heavy load of dirty laundry stuffed into a duffel bag. She removes the cowboy boot from his other foot to hang on her fence. She decides to paint the boot a hue of fluorescent pink before displaying it. Or maybe rainbow colours, she thinks and laughs. But what about the roofing vehicle? The lake is frozen. Not thick but frozen.
“Only an idiot would drive on that ice at this time of year. Too risky. Too thin yet,” Wren chirps. “Only an idiot, like this roofer from the city, would drive his truck out on the ice. A cidiot.” She laughs at her own joke while stoking the outdoor kiln. She’ll feed the body in first then set it aflame.
Wren makes a promise to Raven as she pushes Billy’s body into the cavity of brick and mortar, “If anyone has harmed you, my lovely sister, this is where they will find themselves. Please come back to me, Raven. Let me know you are unharmed.” Tears stream down her face.
The body in the kiln reminds Wren of an mri, except this one will not take photos. She’ll need to stoke the fire often over the next couple of days. She’ll need to feed this fire day and night. It’ll take two days to burn the bones to ash, and she’ll have to wait another day for the kiln to cool before she can harvest.
The smell of Billy’s burning flesh doesn’t bother Wren, but instead reminds her of smoked ribs, smoked turkey, smoked meat. Before Lord returns home, there will be nothing but a pile of ash in her kiln. The kiln Lord built. Leaving only bad ash, thinks Wren. Now wiped from the earth and her sacred soul. The soul of all women. Bad ash. Red Sea parting. Young Dogs destroyed by fire, a riddance of filth and those who leave nothing behind but pain.
As Billy’s body slowly cooks, Wren lights a bonfire in the firepit. A place where years earlier, she sat with Kohkum and Raven and roasted marshmallows. A place where she will dance and say prayers tonight. Wren goes back into her house to fetch a portable stereo and a favourite cd: Andino Suns. She will play their rendition of “Weichafe” and set the stereo to repeat.
“Weichafe”, a melody dedicated to revolution and rebuilding, to what she is doing now. Wren dances around the large blaze that has sparked in her firepit, while saying a prayer for Billy’s soul. That he will harm no more. She stabs at the naked sky with the flaming end of a stick. There are no stars out tonight. There is only cloud cover and the light falling of snow. That light falling of snow. She thanks the fairies for this perfect gift.
Wren locates the keys which she took from Billy’s pocket earlier. “Time for an accident,” she whispers, knowing the ice on the lake will not support the weight of Billy’s truck. It’s too early in the winter season to be driving on the lake, especially if it’s parked on a fault where the current is active. Wren has observed the lake for years. She knows and respects its power. It can and will devour.
Red Sea parting. Fire from the sky.
The Lake Holds Secrets
Wren has walked or biked al
ong the pathway that runs along the lake so many times. As a child, it was where she and her sister would hike, toward what used to be called Butler’s but what is now the Bluebird Café. They’d get a plate of fish and chips with the money they’d earned for doing chores at home. Wren has studied the lake during winter, spring, summer and fall. It can appear so calm and serene but underneath are deadly undercurrents where even fish don’t swim. There are several of these such places, where water churns, dragging the unknowable down to murky depths from which there is no return.
Kohkum used to call it “the Edge.” The place where sea monsters live; a portal where good and evil meet. Wren will drive Billy’s truck there, to a spot where she knows the lake heaves, a current runs and the ice is thin. She’ll leave that red roofing truck on a fault during this snowfall. The lake will swallow it up, and this world will forever be rid of Billy Vespas’s violent fists. Wren can still see the faint bruising on Stella’s face.
It’s midnight when Wren drives Billy’s truck off her property, under the cover of darkness. She made sure to clean out the truck’s cab before driving away. She’ll get rid of his cellphone and notepads, which could leave traces of jobs he’s done recently, including coming out to see her. She’ll burn them. Wren drives to the end of 16th Street in Regina Beach and turns toward the bike path at the base of the hill. There’s a small opening where this truck will fit on the pathway. It’s a gamble though because the path is narrow and not meant for vehicles.
“Turn to the right and make a wicked drive down the embankment,” Wren mutters to herself, “and, don’t hit any boulders. Shit. Get on the ice and hope not to sink before halfway on the lake where the monsters live. Billy, you’re a monster. This is where you belong. This is what you deserve.”
Bone Black Page 8
