“Tell us about your dream,” Carmen said.
“First we better offer these Thunderers our respects,” the old woman said, casting her eyes toward the noisy heavens. Her voice scratched like an old record; it crackled like a fire. “We want them to help us, eh? Not strike us down with their arrows. Not burn this house down. They are our grandfathers, some of them — First Thunder, the Searching Thunder, and Thunder that is Going to Hit. These are their names.”
“They’ve got names?” Romy asked.
Granny removed a soapstone pipe from her pocket along with a pouch of loose tobacco. Pinching some tobacco from the pouch, she packed it into the bowl of the pipe. Paisley handed her a Zippo. Granny lit the pipe, took a puff, then tilted her head back and blew the smoke upwards. It smelled vaguely of cherries. “Thunderbirds, how you doing, eh?” she began in a conversational tone. “How was your trip down south? Did you have a good winter? That’s good. Glad to hear it. One thing we ask for down here — it’s your help — help getting rid of this body, eh? We don’t want Verna here to get nailed for killing this no-good white man.”
“She’s talking to thunder?” Romy hissed.
Winonah made a low, growling noise, shook her head the way a bull does before it charges, and reached for her cigarettes. This had all the other smokers reaching for their cigarettes. Carmen took a pack of Du Mauriers from her Le Bag knockoff and Romy and Paisley dug around in their pockets for their Ultra Slims.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how bad smoking is for all of you,” Tai said reproachfully. (Thank God, thought Verna, another non-smoker!) Then, “I only started because it drove my stepmother crazy and now damned if I can stop. Can I bum one, Pais?”
Granny waited until everyone but Verna had a lit cigarette. “Okay,” she said. “Now I’m going to tell you my dream and you must listen carefully, because it was sent to me for Verna.” She cleared her throat. “Not so long ago, pawaganak came to me. Dream visitors. It was just after supper. Was that tonight? Seems so long ago! Anyway, these pawaganak, they took me to see Geezhigo-Quae, Sky Woman, the mother of our people. I got to ride on the back of a Thunderbird, eh? Pretty exciting. Remember that convertible that your Uncle had, Winonah? That was what it was like, riding in that convertible. I was afraid my hair would blow off, but it must be stuck on good, ’cause I still got it.” She grinned. “Now Sky Woman, when I see her, oh! She was so beautiful and like a sunset — all different colours. And she says, ‘Old woman, I know why the spirit of your grandson — that guy that choked there — has not gone to the Sky World. I looked down where you are and saw a bear walker sneaking around.’”
“What’s a bear walker?” Tai asked.
“A bad shaman,” Winonah explained. “One who takes the shape of a bear. Or some other animal. Maybe a dog. Sometimes he appears as light.”
“Thanks for clearing that up!” Romy snorted.
“Romy!” Carmen warned the girl. “Go on, Granny.”
“So I say, ‘What can I do, Sky Woman? If there’s a bear walker going around the place, I’m going to stay inside and not come out until he is gone far, far off.’ And she says, ‘No, no, Old Woman. You got to do something. You got to feed the bear walker to the mishepishu. The mishepishu is hungry and that bear walker’s no good. Your grandson is not going to be able to find his way to me with that bear walker around.’”
At the word mishepishu, Verna felt a fluttering sensation in her heart, like the beating of a bird’s wings. “Dad told us about the mishepishu. Fern and I figured that it must live in the water under the floor of the boathouse. It drowns people. Drags them under.”
“Like the Ball Grabber,” said Paisley.
Verna shook her head. “The Ball Grabber lives in outhouse holes.”
“They are both manitou,” explained Winonah. “The Ball Grabber is an underground manitou, while mishepishu is an underwater manitou.”
“Where exactly is this manatee supposed to be?” Romy asked. “In the boathouse? Because you didn’t tell me there was a manatee in the boathouse.”
Winonah winced. “Manitou!” she repeated. “Is there something wrong with your ears? Or is it your big head?” They glared at one another.
“Mishepishu is not in the boathouse,” Granny said. “Mishepishu is in the lake.”
“Which lake?” Romy asked.
Granny pointed. “That lake.” As she did, a bolt of white lightning poked at the lake, illuminating its roiling surface.
“You did not just do that,” said Paisley.
Granny smiled, revealing a scattering of worn teeth.
“And then what happened?” Carmen asked Granny. “In your dream, I mean?”
Granny blinked. “I woke up.”
“And that’s it?” Paisley asked. “That’s your dream?”
Granny nodded.
There was a moment of silence. “And this means … what?” Tai ventured.
“Isn’t it clear?” Winonah asked.
“Not exactly,” said Tai.
Winonah sighed. “We should throw J.R. into the lake,” she explained. “That’s what the dream is telling us.”
“What?” Verna asked in disbelief. “Begging Granny’s pardon and all, but . . . you know … it’s just a dream!”
“What do you mean just a dream?” said Winonah. “The manitou sent it to Granny for a reason — so that you would know what Sky Woman wants us to do. Why else would she have sent Granny such a dream?”
“But that’s crazy,” said Verna. “We can’t throw J.R. in the lake just because Granny had a dream. I mean, just imagine what would happen if everybody did that.”
“Well, it makes perfect sense to me,” Carmen chimed in. “I mean, there it is — a deep lake, probably at least sixty feet if it’s like the other lakes around here — as deep as a six-storey building — and you own it and all the land around it. Where else are you going to dump him?”
“We have to get rid of the body somehow,” Paisley pointed out.
“Think about it, Verna!” Carmen urged her. “This is a guy nobody’s looking for. Nobody. No family. No friends. He’s not on anyone’s radar and, honey, this is northern Ontario — it’s a big old place to go looking for somebody nobody knows is lost, somebody nobody wants to find. People disappear up here. They go into the bush and never come out. Or somebody comes across their bones later on and everybody says, ‘Gee, I wonder who the hell that poor bastard was? Bear must have got him.’”
“But won’t he just … I don’t know — swell up and rise to the surface and bob around.” Verna asked. “Accusingly? Isn’t that what corpses do?”
“Don’t look at me!” Carmen begged off. “I don’t know what corpses do.”
Verna turned to her nephew. “Tai?”
“He’s nothing but skin and bones,” Tai said. “No fat to float him. And the lake’s deep and cold. Chances are he’d stay down pretty good.”
“We could put stones in his pockets!” Romy suggested. “Just to make sure.”
“You and your stones in the pocket!” Verna said. “And what if he doesn’t stay down? What then?”
“You’re forgetting something,” said Winonah. “The mishepishu will eat him. There won’t be anything left to bob around.”
“Come on, Winonah,” Verna protested. “You don’t honestly believe there’s some sort of monster in the lake. If there was, I would know it.”
“How?” asked Winonah.
“Because I was in the lake,” replied Verna. “Today. This morning.”
“Were you in the whole Lake?” Winonah asked.
“Girls! Girls!” Granny interceded. “The mishepishu doesn’t live in the lake. The mishepishu moves around. Sometimes he’s in Whitefish Lake, sometimes Georgian Bay, sometimes Lake Manitou. All the lakes are connected. By underground passages. He would eat this bad guy here and then go off somewhere else. To eat some other bad guy thrown into some other lake.”
“You know, this just might work,” Tai said. “And what i
f he does surface? Heart failure, drug overdose, hitting your head.… They all look like drowning if you don’t look too close. Sometimes even if you do.”
“And it wasn’t like he had anything to live for,” Paisley pointed out. “He was dying, after all. Who knows? Maybe he took those painkillers himself …”
“That’s it, Paisley!” Tai cried. “Bingo!”
“Bingo?” repeated Granny.
“Suicide,” explained Tai. “He committed suicide. Where’s that bottle of OxyContin?”
“In the kitchen. On the counter. But …”
“I’ll get it!” Romy volunteered. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the utility lantern and headed for the kitchen.
“We’ll put the empty bottle in one of his pockets,” said Tai. “That would explain why the drug was in his system if he turned up and they ran a toxicology screen on him.”
Romy returned with the orange pharmacy bottle and handed it to Tai.
“What about fingerprints?” asked Paisley. “On the bottle, that is.”
“I don’t think they’d survive under water,” said Tai. “We’ll wipe it clean, in any case. I have Latex gloves in my bag and wipes.”
“Wipes?” asked Romy.
“My stepmother is very clean. I inhabit a wiped universe.”
“Don’t forget his glass — the glass he drank out of,” said Paisley. “And the mortar and pestle.”
“We’ll clean them with bleach.”
In the meantime Romy had been working up a scenario. “How about this?” she asked excitedly. “J.R. gets out of prison and where does he go? To this cottage, where the love of his life — a woman whose death is on his conscience — died. To this cottage where they were going to build a life together. To this cottage to which he has a key.” She produced the cottage key she had taken from J.R.’s pocket.” “He feels a terrible despair, deep remorse. He knows that his own days are numbered and that he will probably die in pain and all alone. So he has a few drinks and decides to end it all. And what better way than by overdosing on his dead lover’s medication … so that they can be reunited again in death!”
“Hey!” said Carmen. “You know, I have to say I’m impressed.”
“Let’s make sure he has the key on him,” said Paisley. “In the same pocket as the bottle.”
Romy tossed her the key, which she caught deftly.
“And when does this happen?” Tai asked.
“Just before Auntie Verna comes to the cottage,” replied Romy. “Last Tuesday. He was squatting here, after all. Right up until she arrived.”
“That could work,” said Tai. “Time of death is very hard to pin down when somebody’s been in the water for more than forty-eight hours. There are ways to tell if someone has died by drowning — the position of the body, the appearance of the eyes — but we’re not suggesting that he drowned, so that won’t be a problem.”
“This is … like … reverse CSI!” said Romy.
“And, if he turns up, who’s more surprised than us?” said Paisley. “We never heard of the guy. We didn’t even know that Mom had AIDS.”
“So how does he end up in the lake?” Carmen asked. “Does he walk into it?”
Tai shook his head. “He’s got to be in deeper water if we’ve to have any chance of keeping him down.”
“Guys …” Verna protested. They were acting like this was a game. Didn’t they realize that being accessories to murder was a serious matter? “Maybe I should just turn myself in. Throw myself on the mercy of the court. I don’t want you all putting yourselves in jeopardy for a crime I committed. Surely to God they would take extenuating circumstances into account.”
“Don’t be crazy, Auntie Verna,” said Tai. “They’ll throw the book at you. Manslaughter, for sure. And that carries a four-year minimum sentence.”
“You would so not look good in an orange jumpsuit,” Romy told her.
“You’re not to say another word about it, Auntie Verna,” said Paisley. “You were avenging our mother. And you’re all we have left. Everyone else is gone. We won’t hear of it.” She turned to the others. “Will we?”
Romy and Tai shook their heads.
“We’re just doing what Sky Woman told us,” Granny pointed out.
Paisley turned to the realtor. “And you’re okay with this?”
“A-ok,” Carmen replied. “The bastard killed Fern and that other gal besides. And, trust me, this probably won’t be the lake’s first secret. Or its last, I warrant. This is northern Ontario, after all.”
“We’re agreed, then,’” said Paisley. “Now, where were we? Oh, yes. What if he jumps off the dock?”
Tai turned to Verna. “How deep is it at the end of the dock?” he asked.
“Five feet. Maybe six. But …”
“Too shallow,” Tai said. “If we could only get him to the middle of the lake, that would be perfect.”
Romy and Winonah looked at each other. Their eyes lit up. Twinkled. For once they were in agreement.
“Now where did Lionel put that duct tape?” asked Winonah.
That was when Verna officially gave up and withdrew into herself, curling into a ball that occupied only the small corner of the sofa into which Carmen had not spread. Eventually she unfurled herself, stood, and wandered off to the study. From its accustomed place on the credenza, Donald’s Macallan Highland single malt winked its golden eye at her from within its Bohemian lead crystal decanter — like a cat’s eye, it glowed in the dark. She located the decanter with trembling fingers on the credenza, poured herself a glass, and sat down at her father’s desk to drink it. Jude, who continued to be tormented by the Thunderbirds, whimpered and flinched in the knee hole below, while the others talked deep into the night, planning how they would get the body to the boathouse (there was a wheelbarrow in the tool shed), how they might get the skiff to the centre of the lake (they would repatch the hole with duct tape, tether the skiff to the canoe, tow it there, and then cut it loose), when they would do it (when the storm broke), and how they would remove all traces of the crime from the house — the glass from which J.R. had drunk, the mortar and pestle (bleach, antiseptic wipes). They talked of other things, too. Of the cult from which Paisley had been rescued by her father. This had been news to Romy, who was too young to remember her own rescue from the same cult. Of Paul Doucette’s numerous wives, each younger than the last and Romy’s own downward spiral into anorexia. Of Tai’s stepmother and the bitter vendetta she continued to wage against his father’s memory of Fern. Of residential schools and beatings and humiliation. Of the brother who had choked to death at a pow-wow. Some of this Verna heard snippets of, but most of their conversation she registered as a low, muffled drone under the thunderstorm’s ongoing racket. Later she curled up on the floor next to the shivering dog and slept brokenly until grey dawn leaked over the horizon and poked her awake with sly and chilly jabs.
“Huh?” Verna hoisted herself up on one elbow and looked blearily around. Floor to ceiling shelves crammed with moldering books and old magazines, the English drop-dial wall clock that thought it might be six o’clock … six o’clock? In the morning? What was she doing on the floor of the study?
“Jude?” she whispered urgently.
But the dog was not there.
“Damn!” Verna crawled up onto her knees, then used the chair to pull herself upright. It felt like someone had whacked her a few good ones with a baseball bat. Her head throbbed and her mouth tasted like kitty litter. “Jesus!” she muttered. “What the …?” She eyed the empty decanter and winced. Then she remembered. “Shit! J.R!”
She limped into the living room to find Granny asleep on the sofa. Someone had covered her with the afghan. In the cold light of dawn the old woman looked incredibly fragile, skin like ancient parchment, bird-boned; the orbs of her eyes roiled beneath papery lids — the dreamer was in.
Verna tiptoed to the window and peered out towards the lake. It was still as glass under a cloudless sky, its eastern edge a blaze of
reflected light. There on the dock stood Romy and Carmen — Jack Spratt who could eat no fat, his wife who could eat no lean — and beside them, Jude, dancing with impatience. Winonah stood at dock end, her two hands raised to shade her eyes against the newly risen sun’s glare as she peered out towards the lake’s centre.
Verna stole to the front door, closed her eyes, and steeled herself. She had never seen a dead person before. Well, not sober or, at least, relatively sober, and not in the light of day. Things happened to corpses. Lividity. Rigor Mortis. He’s bound to look just awful, she told herself. Prepare yourself. Then she opened the door, and, a moment later, managed to convince herself to crank her eyes open just enough to discern that there was no body on the porch.
She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. Looked again.
Still no body.
“What the …?” Verna stepped out onto the porch and, crossing to the screen door, opened it. Wheelbarrow tracks cut deep into the soggy lawn heading towards the boathouse. Oh, man! Did they actually go through with it? If that was the case, where were Tai and Paisley? Verna stepped outside and, cupping her mouth with her hands, cawed crowlike, “Romy! Carmen!”
Romy turned. “Auntie Verna!” she called. She waved broadly, standing on tiptoes and rocking from side to side like an eager child.
Verna lurched across the sopping lawn (at some point during the previous evening she seemed to have lost a shoe) and climbed the steps to the dock, which creaked like an old tire swing in the dawn breeze that blew off the lake. “Where is he?”
Romy pointed excitedly towards the centre of the lake. Her lips were blue. She was white as whey. “Yay!” She threw her arms around Verna and gave her a hug — it was like being hugged by a Halloween skeleton, jangling, hapless and cheerful. “You’re just in time! Look.”
Verna untangled herself from Romy’s embrace, shaded her eyes with her hand, and peered in the direction of her niece’s finger — there at the approximate centre of the lake were Paisley and Tai in the cottonwood canoe. Tethered to the canoe was the skiff, which she could see was riding very low in the water. Tai, who was seated in the back of the canoe, turned around, leaned over the stern deck, and untied the tether. Then he and Paisley appeared to confer for a moment before reverse paddling a few strokes. Once portside the other craft, they began poking at the skiff with their paddles, causing it to take on more water, to sink faster.
Surface Rights Page 24
