The Dells

by Michael Blair

  “Mm?”

  “Do you remember if Marvin Cartwright had any friends in the neighbourhood? Someone who might be at the homecoming?”

  Howard Schumacher rubbed his chin. He still hadn’t shaved and his jaw was bristly with grey stubble. “That was a long time ago, son,” he said. “I don’t recall anyone in particular. Your mother and I, we tried to be neighbourly, invited him to a backyard barbecue or two. He was never unfriendly or rude, but he never accepted. I don’t think he liked leaving his mother alone too long, in case she took a bad turn. I felt sorry for him, a young man in his prime burdened with taking care of his sickly mother. Had to admire him for it too, though. How many kids these days would do it? Stick old folks in homes nowadays, hire someone to look after them, instead of doing it themselves.”

  “What about the Braithwaites?” Shoe’s mother asked. She hadn’t been asleep after all. “He was friendly with Ruth, wasn’t he?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Shoe’s father said, “I did use to see him in the woods with Ruth Braithwaite now and again. I remember thinking that they made a queer couple, her family being so religious and all and him being an atheist.”

  “If you didn’t know him very well, how do you know he was an atheist?” Shoe asked.

  His father looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Not sure, actually. Maybe it was just talk.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Shoe’s mother said, not unkindly.

  “Now, Mother,” Howard Schumacher said. “I’m not an atheist. I’m just not a believer.”

  “Braithwaite?” Maureen said. “They live in that house off by itself at the end of the little cul-de-sac that sticks into the woods behind your place, don’t they? The one with all the religious statuary in the yard.”

  “That’s them,” Shoe’s father said. “The twins, Naomi and Judith, and Ruth. She’s the youngest. She’d be Hal’s age or so, I’d say, Naomi and Judith a year or two older. Mr. Braithwaite came from money. Liquor or tobacco, I think. His family owned most of the land around here before the war, but he sold it off to developers and started doin’ missionary work in Africa with his wife. They got themselves killed in the Congo or someplace. Left those girls pretty well off, too, I suppose. Financially, anyhow. Didn’t leave ’em very well equipped to get on in the world.”

  Shoe remembered Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite. Older than his parents, they’d been drab and stern and aloof. He had no recollection of ever having seen the twins, Naomi and Judith, but he’d seen Ruth in the woods a few times, usually with a drawing pad. Never in the company of Marvin Cartwright, though, or anyone else. He’d thought she was pretty, in a nervous, awkward kind of way, and had tried to speak to her once, but she’d fled from him as if pursued by demons. Neither she nor her sisters had gone to public schools, receiving their schooling at home from their parents or from the even drabber and unsmiling woman who’d looked after them when their parents were away, which they often were. Shoe had been in university when Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite had died.

  “Far as I know,” Howard Schumacher was saying, “none of ’em has set foot out of that house in daylight in thirty years. Get their groceries delivered. Front yard is more like a field than a lawn. Every so often kids’ll knock over some of the statues, or spray paint graffiti on ’em, but in the next few days they’ll all be standing again or painted over. I remember some talk, too, that Ruth may have been the first victim of the Black Creek Rapist, but if she was, she or her father never reported it.”

  “The Black Creek Rapist?” Maureen said.

  She’d grown up in another part of the city, Shoe remembered, and would have been only ten at the time. “There were a series of sexual assaults in the woods the summer Marvin Cartwright moved away,” he explained. “One of the victims died.”

  “And Marvin Cartwright was a suspect?” Maureen said.

  “Not the only one,” Shoe said.

  Howard Schumacher harrumphed. “No one with a lick of sense really believed Marvin did it.”

  “Do you remember how you heard that Ruth may have been attacked?” Shoe asked.

  “It was just talk,” Shoe’s father replied, with a dismissive shrug.

  chapter fifteen

  At noon, Shoe took his parents back to the house, where he helped his father fix lunch, tomato soup, mild cheese, and crackers for them, a meatloaf sandwich and an apple for him. He returned to the park while his parents took their afternoon nap. He found Maureen and Rachel in the kitchen shelter. With them was a stocky man with freckles and thinning red hair, and a woman with shaggily cropped inky black hair and light brown eyes. Shoe knew who she was as soon as she smiled at him. “Well, speak of the devil,” Tim Dutton said. “How the hell are you, Shoe? People still call you Shoe?”

  “I’m fine, Tim,” he said as they shook hands. “And, yes, I’m still called Shoe.”

  “Shoe?” Marty Elias said.

  “A nickname I gave him in high school,” Dutton said.

  It had been Janey Hallam who’d started calling him Shoe, but Shoe chose not to contradict him. “How are you, Marty?” he said instead.

  “You remember me,” she said, her face lighting up with surprise and delight.

  “Of course.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Dutton cut her off. “What’re you doing with yourself these days? Not still a cop, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Still living on the left coast? Not back to stay, uh?”

  “Yes and no,” Shoe said.

  “Isn’t that a kicker about Marvin the Martian?” Dutton said. “Coming back to the old neighbourhood after all these years just to get beaten to death by some wacko in the woods. Too bad. He was a bit weird, I guess, but he was okay.”

  Marty frowned and shook her head. Dutton glared at her. Dutton had been one of the neighbourhood boys who’d played some of the nastier pranks on Cartwright, Shoe remembered. He’d once bragged about breaking into Cartwright’s house when Cartwright’s mother was in the hospital, and the house was empty, and defecating in the middle of the living room carpet. Shoe again chose not to contradict him.

  “You gonna be in town for a while?” Dutton said. “We should get together for a beer or two some time. Right now, though, I gotta get this computer working or I’ll never hear the end of it. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

  They left Tim Dutton to his devices. Outside the tent, Maureen excused herself to check out some of the crafts tables and flower displays. Rachel said to Shoe, “Claudia Hahn came by looking for you. I can’t believe she was one of your junior high school teachers. She hardly looks old enough. How old was she? Twelve?”

  “She’d have been in her mid-twenties,” Shoe said.

  “That would make her at least sixty now. She doesn’t look it.”

  “No,” Shoe agreed.

  Tim Dutton called to Rachel from the tent. Rachel excused herself, leaving Shoe alone with Marty.

  “I’m surprised you remember me,” Marty said.

  “Why wouldn’t I? You were like a second sister, you were at our house so much.” Until her assault, he reminded himself, after which he’d hardly ever seen her. “How have you been?”

  “Kicked around some for a time,” she said. “And got kicked around some too. But things are okay now. Been worse, lots worse, that’s for sure.” She scrunched up her face and suddenly, for a brief moment, she was eleven again. “You look like you’ve gone a round or two yourself. I might not’ve recognized you if Tim and Rachel and your sister-in-law hadn’t been talking about you. I’d forgotten you were a cop.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “I lived with a cop for a while ten, twelve years ago. Met him when they busted a strip joint where I was working in Vancouver. Some of the girls were doing more than taking off their clothes, if you get my meaning.” She laughed. “What a hoot, eh? Can you imagine this old broad a stripper. Listen to me. God. Give me another five minutes and I’ll be telling you about — well, never mind. Always sort
of hoped we’d run into each other, but — well, Vancouver’s not as big as Toronto, but it’s big enough. And it’s not like we hung out in the same social circles, is it?”

  Shoe smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Marty.”

  “You too. I had an awful crush on you, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “You never wondered why I could hardly talk when I was around you?”

  “Yes, I noticed that.”

  “I was going to marry you, Rae was going to marry Joey, and we were all going to live happily ever after.” She scrunched up her face again. It seemed to be her way of shrugging. “What is it they say about expectations? If you don’t have any, you’ll never be disappointed. But hell, what’s life without a little disappointment, eh? Have you seen him?”

  “Seen who, Marty?”

  “Sorry. Joey.”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Typical Joey,” she said. “Out of the blue, he shows up at my place at half past two in the morning, half in the bag and smelling like he’d slept in a dumpster. He’s got a bit of a problem with drink, does our Joey,” she added with a mock British accent, straight out of Coronation Street. “Anyway, he has a shower, then insists I have a drink with him and get caught up. At three in the morning, can you believe? He was still sleeping it off on my couch when I left for work in the morning.”

  “You and Joey have stayed in touch then.”

  “On and off for — well, a long time. He stays with me when he’s passing through, every couple of years or so. That’s Joey. Always passing through. He used to crash with me when I was in Vancouver, too, before I hooked up with Robby. I like him, even if he’s got enough baggage for half a dozen guys. He’s asked me to go on the road with him more than once. Not sure why I don’t. He’s — ”

  She was interrupted by Tim Dutton’s voice from the shelter, not quite shouting. “What the hell’d you do, anyway? I told you not to screw with this stuff till I got here. Shit!”

  “Oh, fuck off, Tim,” Rachel replied, not quite shouting back. “I didn’t touch a goddamned thing.”

  “Oops,” Marty said. “Tim thinks technology works better if you yell at it. People, too, sometimes. I’d better get in there before they start beating on each other with the chairs. It’s real good seeing you again, Joe. Uh, Shoe.”

  She went into the tent. On his own, Shoe strolled through the small park. It was crowded and bright with colour and noise. Kids of all ages ran three-legged races and played ring toss and splashed in inflatable wading pools. Barbecues, attended by sweating men in aprons and drinking beer from bottles or cans in brown paper bags, flamed and smoked and filled the air with the aroma of singed meat and burning bread. Competing boom boxes blasted out rock and country and opera. A band was setting up on the raised platform at one end of the big tent shelter, two men and two women, all middleaged, all a bit overweight, and all dressed in jeans, baggy T-shirts, and sandals. Shoe couldn’t guess what kind of music they played, but judging from the size of the amplifiers and speakers, it was loud.

  It saddened him, but didn’t surprise him, that Joey Noseworthy had apparently become an alcoholic. The first time he and Joey had tried alcohol, taking a bottle of rye that Joey had swiped from his father into the woods, they’d both hated it. Nevertheless, Joey had taken a second sip, then a mouthful, then another, before it had gone to his head and he’d fallen down, smashing the bottle. He’d had an awful headache the following day, and he’d vowed never to try it again. Obviously, he had.

  Shoe was browsing at a table selling second-hand LPs, cassette tapes, and CDs — his music collection, such as it had been, had gone down with the Princess Pete and he hadn’t replaced much of it — when Miss Hahn appeared at his side. She tilted her head to look at his selections.

  “Kiri Te Kanawa and Pink Floyd. I prefer Placido Domingo and early Rolling Stones myself.” She examined the rows of CD jewel cases on the table. “Oh, look,” she exclaimed, picking up a pair discs bound together by an elastic band. “Tom Waits’s The Asylum Years. Every time I hear ‘The Heart of Saturday Night’ I’m eighteen again and cruising down Yonge Street in Billy Hunter’s convertible. And I could never respect a man who doesn’t tear up just a little the first time he hears ‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You.’”

  “I’m not familiar with either, I’m afraid,” Shoe said. “Let me buy them for you.”

  “What if I don’t like them?” he said. “I don’t know if I want to risk losing your respect.”

  “Perhaps I’ll adjust my standards. After all, Tom Waits is something of an acquired taste. Please accept it, Joseph. Consider it a belated graduation present.”

  “In that case, it would be ungracious of me to refuse,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Transactions concluded, carrying the discs in a used supermarket bag, Shoe reciprocated by treating her to a soft drink and a bag of potato chips, which she called “crisps.” They sat in the shade of a garden umbrella. Despite the August heat and the rising humidity, she managed to look cool and comfortable in an off-white shirtdress that parted on her knees when she crossed her legs. Her dark hair was cropped short and streaked with grey at the temples, whereas when she’d been his teacher, her hair had been long and wavy. Her complexion was pale, smooth, and clear. Had he not known her age, he would have guessed that she was younger than he was.

  She returned his appraisal unselfconsciously. “When I look at you,” she said, “I see both the awkward fifteenyear-old boy I knew thirty-five years ago and the man he’s become. Almost like a double-exposed photograph, taken years apart. It’s quite disconcerting.”

  “I don’t know whether to be flattered you remember me,” he said, “or embarrassed. Was I that difficult a student?” “Not at all,” she said. She smiled. “I was very young and it was quite unsettling to have a student of such apparent maturity in my class.”

  He smiled. “Have you kept in touch with any of your other students?”

  “I didn’t return to teaching after my rape,” she said, coolly matter-of-fact. “I got married, got divorced, got some counselling, then moved to England, where I got married again, divorced again, and got more counselling. I came back to Canada two years ago. I’m an editor at a small publishing house. The only person with whom I maintained contact was Jake. Mr. Gibson. I had no family of my own and he and his wife took me under their wings following my rape. They arranged for me to stay with his wife’s sister when I went to England after my first divorce. He’s been very lonely since his wife died, but our relationship is strictly platonic — and not altogether satisfying for either of us. There you have it. My life in a nutshell. What about you, Joseph? They say the face is the map of one’s life. The road you’ve travelled appears to have been a bumpy one, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I was with the police for a while after graduating from university,” he said. “But resigned after my fiancée, also a police officer, was killed on duty by a drunk driver. I’ve lived in Vancouver for almost thirty years. Until last year I worked for a man named William Hammond, first as his chauffeur, bodyguard, and general dog’s body, then more recently as what my personnel file called a ‘corporate development analyst,’ which was just a fancy title for a sort of corporate snoop. I took early retirement after Hammond died last Christmas. I’m currently the proud new owner of a rundown marina and motel north of Vancouver. I’ve never been married. I could probably use some counselling.”

  “You seem quite well-adjusted to me,” she said.

  “Looks can be deceptive,” Shoe said. “Miss Hahn — may I call you Claudia?”

  “Certainly. I may have been slightly more than half again your age when I was your teacher, but now nine or ten years seems hardly any difference at all, does it? But what shall I call you? You seem to wince whenever I call you Joseph. Do people call you Joe?”

  “Most people call me Shoe.”

  “My, what an intriguing name. I like it. Shoe. If you�
�ll pardon the expression, it fits.” She smiled. “You hear that a lot, I’m sure. Now, you were about to say … ”

  “You must be aware that the man suspected of being the Black Creek Rapist was killed in the woods behind his old house the other night.”

  “Marvin Cartwright. Yes, Jake Gibson told me this morning that he’d heard on the news that Marvin had been murdered. Beaten to death, he said. How sad. But Marvin wasn’t the man who attacked me, I can assure you of that. The police briefly considered him a suspect, but he was definitely not the man who raped me. And it follows that he did not attack the others, either. I knew him, you see.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Well enough to be certain he wasn’t the man who attacked me. Jake knew him better than I. They shared a keen interest in birdwatching. Actually, to call it ‘keen’ is an understatement. Given half an opportunity, it’s all they would talk about.” She laughed, light and musical. “They were so incorrigible that we set aside the first five or ten minutes of every meeting for them to get it out of their systems. It usually took longer.”

  “Was he a teacher?”

  “No, he was a writer. Whether he was a good writer is open to interpretation. Jake Gibson thought so. Marvin was an authority on the birds of east-central North America. He also wrote historical adventure and romance novels under a number of pen names. Jake liked the adventure novels. I read one of each and while they were competently written, as I recall, they were not my cuppa. He could have done well, I think, had he continued — the genres are popular these days — but Jake thinks he must have stopped writing fiction after his mother died. I got to know him because he spoke regularly at schools in the area, about writing and birds and chess.”

  “My sister told me he was a chess player,” Shoe said. “Quite a good one, she thinks.”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “His interest in birds was common knowledge, but no one in the neighbourhood knew he was a writer or lectured at schools. I don’t recall attending any of his talks, but I wasn’t particularly interested in chess, birds, or writing. Did you or Mr. Gibson keep in touch with him after his mother died?”