THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  Jess loved Bunny, her two-year-old hormones already tingling to the six-foot, golden-tanned antipodean hunk. Occasionally he would come and drag Sam out for a beer after work, sweep Jess into his arms and do a mock tango while Sam fetched his jacket. Sam had watched Katie watching Bunny and preferred not to examine the emotions he felt. Bunny was a good guy, a friend of the family.

  The last card had come from Hawaii, where Bunny was surfing. There was a picture of a model with big breasts holding a surfboard under her arm, which Bunny had defaced by drawing a beard on the girl’s chin. The card had been addressed to Sam Two-Dogs-Fucking-Big-Chief-Skis-Like-A-Cow, and after initial irritation, Sam had laughed and stuck it on the door of the refrigerator, where all the other postcards lived. He hoped Bunny would be back this season. Sam never thought he’d have friends like that. Big, funny, happening.

  White.

  That was the truth. White friends. That’s what made him happy, and unhappy at the same time. Real unhappy, remembering what big tanned guys like Bunny used to mean to him when he was young—a time that didn’t get head space, not if Sam Hunt could help it.

  Still, winter was good.

  Like most Silver residents, the Hunts preferred winter to summer, but whatever the season, it was a bitch of an expensive town.

  When the grimy railroad workers had built Silver over a hundred years before, original name Siding Twenty-three, it was nothing more than a collection of tin and wooden huts in a clearing cut in the pines.

  Now, any real estate agent’s window in town would make the ghosts of those guys swoon. Photos of houses were displayed like pornography, their doors open wide, their interiors on show to the casual viewer. And printed below, in discreet blue type, were prices that read like telephone numbers.

  Since only the seriously rich owned nice property in Silver, the workers who kept the town ticking lived in Stoke, ten miles away, in cheaper accommodations. But the Hunts were lucky. Katie’s family had vacationed in Silver all their life, and when her father bought a holiday house in 1955 it had cost about the same as a good canoe. It was their daughter Katie’s house now, its holiday function forfeited so that their grandchildren could have a house and a home. Sam thought for possibly the ten thousandth time what a great house it was, as he and Billy pulled into the drive.

  It sat high on Oriole Drive, south of the main street, looking across the roofs of smaller houses to the mountains that hemmed in Stoke. You could just make out the railroad as it appeared between the pines on the edge of town, but the Trans-Canada highway was hidden, reminding the Hunts of its presence only when an easterly wind brought the distant sound of trucks to their door. Sam had painted the two-story, detached house powder blue last fall, a choice that Katie had first disputed loudly in the lumber store, then applauded when she was enchanted by the result. Yes, it was a great house, and for the most part its wooden walls echoed to adult laughter, children’s squeals and the good-natured barking of Billy’s husky, Bart.

  Bart was out there before the car stopped, bounding around the Toyota as Light 96 died with the engine and Sam stretched into the backseat to pull out the groceries.

  Inside, Katie Hunt chopped tomatoes and silently rehearsed a grouchy reception for her tardy partner, while Jess earnestly dragged crayon across paper at the end of the table.

  Sam and Billy had been rehearsing too.

  Sam began.

  “OK. You want an explanation. It was a dinosaur in the supermarket. Billy spotted it first, in the canned vegetable aisle. Took us nearly an hour to fight it off with a roll of kitchen wipe.”

  Billy nodded, smiling.

  Katie stopped chopping. “Aw, come on, guys. I needed that stuff light years ago. They’ll be here in an hour and a half.”

  Sam put down the brown bags and from behind circled his arms around his small blonde wife, and kissed her ear.

  “Sorry, babe.”

  She was softening, but not quite soft.

  “Yeah, well sorry’s not going to fix dinner for six.”

  “For sure.”

  “Where were you?”

  “The railroad.”

  “Dice those onions.”

  “OK.”

  Bart, outside, watched through the kitchen window as the Hunt family reunited and got busy. He whined once and lay down in the snowless patch at his kennel door to watch the sun slide away behind the peaks.

  4

  “… OK, so let’s just get this straight…”

  There was a communal moan from the other five diners.

  “Come on! This is serious.”

  Gerry was leaning forward on the table, using his fork, which still speared a tube of pasta, to emphasize the importance of his words.

  “We agree that Bewitched was a subtle statement about the rising threat to men from feminism in sixties America. We agree that Samantha was subduing her massive and powerful superiority over Darren in order to keep him, the man as child, happy, and the home stable. But we can’t agree whether the program was pro-woman or anti-. Am I right?”

  Gerry’s wife, Ann, mumbled through a mouthful of food, “Of course it was anti-woman.”

  Katie jumped in again.

  “No way. It was the most important piece of feminist TV ever made. It said men are weak, women are strong. Men only just manage by the skin of their teeth to keep women in their place by emotional blackmail.”

  Across the table Gerry’s sister, Claire, threw her husband, Marty, a look, as if pitying Katie, and moaned. Gerry waved his fork again, clearly deciding he was chairman of this debate.

  “Right. Right. But by portraying Samantha as an individual only interested in shopping and hoovering, was that itself not undermining the women’s movement? Saying quite categorically, it doesn’t matter how strong women may be, at the end of the day they just want a credit card and cushions that unzip for cleaning?”

  Katie shook her head. “Totally wrong. Women understood the subtext of that show.”

  “I took it as an anti-woman subtext. Quite clearly, as a matter of fact,” said Claire, raising an eyebrow.

  Sam stood, dropped his napkin on the table and cleared two empty wine bottles from the center of the debris. “Anyone for more wine?”

  Marty put in his two cents. “You see, there was a lot of angst going down then. Guys didn’t know the score.”

  Sam, realizing that grabbing their attention would be as easy as getting Bill Clinton to come and mow his lawn, took the bottle and walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out another cold Chablis while the voices from the dining room shouted each other down. To the sober man, the drunk is a curious beast. Sam always wondered why alcohol affected people’s volume control. An hour ago they were all talking normally, but now five of them were shouting like they were trying to be heard over a baseball crowd. Sam couldn’t imagine why, but then Sam had never had a drink in his life. Worried about the noise, he sneaked out of the kitchen and upstairs, the bottle still in his hand, to check on the kids.

  The shaft of light from the open door to Jess’s bedroom illuminated one tiny hand on top of the comforter holding the arm of a monkey.

  Sam waited until his eyes adjusted to the contrast of light and dark, and was rewarded by a glimpse of the small dark head of his daughter lying peacefully on its pillow.

  As he watched her chest rise and fall beneath the cover, he heard a whimpering from next door. He backed out of the room and stepped quickly to Billy’s door. Pushing it open, he saw Billy writhing on the bed, his comforter lying on the floor in a heap where it had been thrown off. Sam put the wine on the floor, picked up the bedcover and laid it gently over his dreaming son.

  Billy was obviously in some distress. With the door fully open his face was clearly lit. It was light enough to see he was suffering some imagined agony. Sam toyed with waking him up, hugging him and telling him his dad was here, but his decision was made for him as Billy sat up suddenly with a yell.

  “Hey, hey, hey. It’s
OK. Everything’s OK, Billy boy.”

  Sam had him in his arms before the yell died on the boy’s lips. He held the small panting body close to his chest, rubbing his back with a large hand.

  Billy’s tears came. “Dad. Make them stop. They have to stop.”

  “It’s just a dream, Billy. Nothing’s happening.”

  “It is happening, Dad. You have to warn them.”

  Sam hugged him closer. “OK. OK. You tell me, and I’ll make them stop.”

  Billy was sobbing, his whole body heaving under its Calgary Flames T-shirt. “They’re gonna let it go, Dad. You can’t let them.”

  “Who is, Billy? What are they going to let go?”

  The boy started to cry again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. The wolf told me. I just know it’s going to be bad. I saw them. Two of them.”

  Sam rocked him back and forward, his hand stroking Billy’s hair. He sat that way for a minute or more. “Sshhh now. I’ll stop them. It’s just a dream. Go back to sleep.”

  But he was already asleep. In fact, Sam wondered if he’d been awake at all. Billy’s body was a dead weight in his arms, breathing steadily, arms hanging at his side.

  Gently Sam let Billy back down on to the pillow and pulled the comforter up to his chin. He stood by the bed for a while, waiting to see if Billy would go back to the dark place he’d been in, but the crisis was over for now. From downstairs, a roar of indignation reminded him of his other duties, and he walked slowly out of the room, retrieving the wine as he went.

  Looked like he hadn’t missed much. Ann was hard at it.

  “Well, you can say that, but the kids I teach, and the kids Gerry teaches, haven’t a fucking clue what the whole movement was about.”

  Katie was in a corner, holding the lions back with a chair. “Then it’s your duty to remind them. Unless you want all those little guys to grow up thinking they rule the world.”

  Claire laughed sarcastically. “They do, Katie. And they will.”

  Sam picked up the corkscrew, opened the bottle and started filling glasses. “Yep, we do. Take it in turns as it happens. When it’s my turn I’m going to make it illegal to have waiters tell you their names before they bring the menu.”

  Marty and Katie laughed. Claire was annoyed not to be taken seriously. “Yeah. Cute.” She paused, taking stock. “Now, I don’t know you, Sam. In fact, this is the first time I’ve met you. But I’d say you’re an old-style kind of guy. Am I right, Katie?”

  Claire picked up the wineglass that Sam had filled, and half-emptied it again.

  Katie looked up at Sam with love. “No. You’re wrong. He’s cool.”

  Claire was undeterred. “Gerry, Ann, help me out here. You’ve been friends with Sam and Katie how long?”

  Gerry smiled and made a space between his palms that stretched, the way a fisherman lies about his catch.

  “So is this guy for or against women?”

  Sam took his seat again, and looked cheerfully around the company with a smile of comic innocence. He beamed across at Katie, “Oh, go on, honey. Tell them how I leave you the key to the chastity belt when I travel.”

  Katie smiled again. “Yeah, but leaving it in the men’s washroom at the bus depot doesn’t count.”

  Claire didn’t laugh. She folded her face into a mask of censure. “You know, in my job women have eighty-five percent less chance of promotion than men. Eighty-five percent. That’s no joke.”

  Sam took a swig of soda. “Don’t that put you right off being a lumberjack, then?”

  Everyone laughed this time, and the fact that Marty sniggered into his wine let Claire out of the cage. She ran a finger around the top of her glass. “I would have thought that given your background, Sam, you’d be slightly more sympathetic to a statistic like that.”

  Katie shot Sam a glance. Sam held Claire’s gaze.

  “Sorry, not with you.”

  “No, I’m sorry. Sorry if I’m the one to remind you that Native Canadians don’t do too hot in the promotion stakes. That is, if they can get a job at all.”

  Sam looked steadily at her. “I got a job.”

  Marty put a hand on Claire’s. “Claire.”

  She pulled her hand away. “No, come on folks. Let’s face up to it here. What kind of job have you got exactly, Sam? A good job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, well, pardon me once again. Gerry led me to believe you were a manual groomer. Not exactly executive status, unless Silver Ski Company’s started recruiting from Harvard.”

  Sam said nothing.

  Claire softened her voice, and if the intention by doing so was to paper over the cracks, it was wasted.

  “Look, all I’m saying is that I know how you people must feel. I’m a woman. I get shit on too.”

  Sam looked into his soda like there was something dead in there. “I can believe that. The last part anyway.”

  Marty wiped his mouth with his napkin. “OK, time we were hitting the road. Listen, it was real nice meeting you. We’re staying with Gerry and Ann another week. Maybe we can all ski together.”

  Katie was still looking at Sam. She slipped a hand beneath the table and wound her fingers between his. “Yeah. That’d be neat. I don’t know if we can take time off, but if we can, sure.”

  Sam looked across at Claire. “If we can’t, I sure look forward to sweeping the snow off your car.”

  Marty stood up, and the others followed his example, scraping their chairs on the wooden floor, and fussing over their possessions. Marty moved around the table, kissed Katie and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “No hard feelings, Sam. Lighten up. Everyone’s a little wasted.”

  Sam nodded solemnly.

  There were polite noises made and Katie herded everyone out without the assistance of her husband, who remained seated, staring into the middle of the abandoned table. He heard the door close and their footsteps crunching in the drive, and was aware of Katie standing behind him, leaning against the door frame.

  “She was a jerk. Wasn’t it enough to just let her be one and leave it at that?”

  “Should have been.”

  Katie pulled up a chair beside him and put her head on his shoulder. He slipped his arm around her.

  “I didn’t even get to serve the after-dinner mints.”

  “I should do it for a living, huh? Dinner parties cleared in minutes. Call one-eight hundred-SAM HUNT.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Sam sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve been kind of cranky all day.”

  Katie undid the top three buttons of Sam’s silk shirt, ran her hand over the bone amulet he wore around his neck on a leather thong, and let her hand rest on his warm belly.

  “In fact, cancel cranky. Replace with asshole.”

  “Can I help?”

  He smiled down at the blue eyes in her pale oval face, the face of a Victorian china doll.

  “Sure. You can load the dishwasher.”

  She guffawed and bit his shoulder. He lifted her head and kissed her small, rosy mouth.

  When Sam and Katie Hunt got to bed an hour later, the dishwasher was still empty. The cushions on the sofa, however, were going to need some recovery time.

  Billy heard his parents climb the stairs, and he lay awake in the dark listening to their hushed voices as they turned off the hall lights.

  His forehead was beaded with sweat and his hands were fists, clenching and unclenching across his chest. He knew he’d had a bad dream, nothing more, but the taste of it was still with him. Lying awake now, he wondered why he didn’t call out to his parents, bring them into his room to sit on his bed and talk to him in calm voices. But he didn’t want to see his parents right now. He wanted to see Bart. The wolf had told him to trust Bart, but Bart was in the yard, banished nightly from the house. Billy waited until he heard Sam and Katie’s door close gently. He gave it a minute and then reached out and turned on his bedside light.

  He paused to see if the light from his room would bring an enquiry from
next door, and when it didn’t he slipped out of bed and pulled on his plaid jacket.

  Finding a flashlight in the toy box and opening his door carefully, Billy picked his way downstairs and through the house to the kitchen door by the light of the slim beam.

  The sky was clear outside, a million stars glittering behind the black jagged silhouette of the mountains. Bart was standing outside his kennel, ears high, nostrils blowing clouds of vapor, face staring toward Wolf Mountain. There was only a tiny twitch of recognition and a small noise from the back of the animal’s throat when Billy knelt beside him and put his arms round Bart’s thick, spiky coat.

  Boy and dog looked out toward the mountain. Upstairs, man, woman and child slept.

  5

  Lenny Sadowitz shifted a rogue piece of gum from between his cheek and back teeth before squinting up at the mountain, preparing to holler at his colleague.

  “C’mon, Jim. I got a life to lead!”

  The word lead bounced off the rock, returning to his ears in a thin, piping voice barely recognizable as his own. He watched his breath swirl in front of him, blew a few rings of frozen air, sucked the cold between his teeth and continued to chew. He leaned forward on the handlebars of the snowcat and watched his companion’s silhouette move silently between the other cat and the unexploded charge he was investigating.

  Lenny hated being on avalanche rota. What was the point of being a ski patroller if you ended up miles away from the action on the trails, stuck in godforsaken gullies like this one with as much chance of getting some skiing in as Jim had of pulling that dreamboat waitress in T.J.’s Diner?

  Having a white cross on your back impressed the public. It did nothing for the coyotes and the whiskeyjacks, and that was all there was for company in this part of the mountain.

  This whole exercise was getting on Lenny’s nerves. Why they should have to avalanche the cliffs on Wolf was anyone’s guess. If the loading slopes were a risk to the railroad, then the frigging railroad workers should come up here and blast them themselves. Lenny sure didn’t recall railroad maintenance as part of his job description when he signed up as a patroller.