The empty glass and full jug went flying across the carpet.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ian spoke on automatic pilot, as if this were a social visit. He knew it was not a social visit, far from it, but Ferguson kept up the pretense that it was.
He sat on the arm of the teak chair. It fell off, and he landed on the floor. Ian grinned. Ferguson dusted himself off and stood up, thrown off for a moment.
“So, you have injured your back?” The information had been all over the village the moment Dr. Dunn had left his patient’s house.
“Yes. Afraid so.”
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Can you walk?”
“No… I…uh…what does it matter to you?” Ian was alert. This man might be a killer. At the least, he had killed his wife by neglect. His presence here was unnerving.
“Just inquiring, as a neighbour. What about…when you need to relieve yourself?”
Hardly a neighbourly question, Ian thought.
“I have ways,” he said.
“I see.” Ferguson inclined his head. “So you really cannot walk at all?”
Ian didn’t answer. He saw now that Ferguson had backed him into a corner, that he had been trying to establish if Ian could move. He couldn’t. Even if he were to say he could, the lie would be uncovered. He could not walk. He could barely blink his eyes without a severe pain in his neck.
He could tell that Ferguson knew from the look in his eyes. The eyes that now shifted from him back to Jasmine.
“No one else here? Just us three?”
For a moment, all three froze.
***
Warmed by the fire, Hy tried to shove the Annaben back into the water. Impossible, but anything was worth trying. It seemed the only way of escape. She couldn’t haul Dot across the dunes. The times she’d crossed them with only the weight of a backpack had been a challenge.
She couldn’t do it. And she wouldn’t leave Dot and head out herself to bring back help. That had crossed her mind. It entered and left in the same moment. Impossible. Unless she wanted them both to die.
Hy gave a last, desperate push at the boat and collapsed down onto the rocks, tears of frustration spilling from her eyes.
She picked herself up and, shaking off the self-pity, grasped onto a slim line of hope.
Someone must find them in the morning. They weren’t invisible here. The Annaben was gone. That would be noticed.
Surely.
***
“I can’t do this anymore.” Jamieson crouched down in the sand, hands on her back, stretching. “How much farther?”
“A half-hour, maybe.”
“Too long. Too long since those flares went off. They could be anywhere – on shore or at sea.”
“Still not too late to go back to Plan A.”
“Refresh my memory. What’s plan A?”
“Take a boat. It’s calmer now. It wouldn’t be dangerous. We’d get to them faster.”
To Finn’s surprise, Jamieson caved.
“Okay. But we do it my way. You go get the boat, and I’ll continue through the dunes.”
Finn was about to object, but she lifted a hand to silence him.
“I can turn a blind eye to what you do, but I can’t actually take one of those boats myself. Even if I didn’t get called on the carpet, the fishermen would never let me live it down.”
“Couldn’t you commandeer it?”
“Requisition it? Maybe…but let’s do it my way.” The way she said it made it clear that was exactly what they were going to do.
“Will you be okay?” Concern crossed his face.
“I’m a triathlete. I can make it over those silly dunes in less than half an hour, trust me. You’d just slow me down.”
“A few minutes ago, you were giving up, saying you couldn’t do this anymore.”
“I meant I couldn’t do it the way we were doing it. Waste of resources. Better to have a two-pronged attack – at land and at sea.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“We’ll keep in touch by cell.”
“You think so?”
For a moment Jamieson had forgotten there was no reception.
“Keep trying. If you get service, we may still be able to call in the coast guard. We may get lucky.”
“That’d be a nice change.”
***
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Hy had decided to spare the boat and search for more, dry driftwood. She’d walked far along the shore.
Propped up against a big chunk of sandstone was…
A toboggan.
She picked up her pace, pitched forward a couple of times and scraped her hands on the shells and stones. She didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel a thing right now – except the joy of an escape.
A possible escape.
As soon as she was close enough, Hy grabbed the toboggan. She checked it out. It was firm, unbroken.
What was it doing here?
Strange things got washed out to sea, and back in again. It might have come from the kids who brought their sleds out here to ride the big dunes, summer and winter. She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She could put Dot on this and drag her to safety.
As a plan, it had holes, but she chose to ignore them. To ignore the fact that Dot, while slim, would be a heavy load. That Hy herself was played out physically by what she’d been through.
It was all she could do. She couldn’t let Dot die.
Chapter 34
Ferguson began to move, to glide across the floor, seamlessly, toward the object of his desire.
Jasmine. He was going to kill the bird.
As soon as he could get his hands on her, he would throttle her. Break her neck. End it. End any threat. That the threat should be a bird was laughable. He should feed her to the cats.
Ian could see where Ferguson was headed and what his plan was. With a great deal of pain, he had turned his head in her direction and tried to signal her.
Signal her to do what?
She wasn’t budging. She was frozen in place on the back of the chair at his desk. Ian knew her not-going-anywhere posture.
Not now, Jasmine, he willed. Don’t be stubborn now. He wanted to shout it, sure that she would understand, but he couldn’t. He must keep silent. He felt impotent, unable to help her, the bird he had once rescued, given a second chance at life.
Ferguson got closer. Neither Ian nor Jasmine moved. He, because he couldn’t. Not even to save her. And she? Resigned to her fate?
It appeared so. She didn’t move, she didn’t flinch as Ferguson’s big hairy hand reached out to grasp her.
***
Jamieson waited a few minutes until Finn was out of sight. She reached forward and undid her boots, pulled off her socks, and wiggled her toes. She stood up, stretched, and, head down, meditated for some minutes. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Then she tilted her head back up and rotated her shoulders and neck several times.
And took off.
She wasn’t, as she’d planned to be, out of sight of Finn. He had scaled one dune and turned around to see if he could catch a glimpse of her.
A glimpse was all he could get as she streaked across the dunes.
A barefoot speed runner. A skill she’d exhibited only once before in The Shores, and not to Finn. It remained part of the mystery that was Jamieson.
He watched, but she didn’t reappear.
She was long gone.
Of course. Triathlete. And something about being a barefooted runner like the ones in Africa. One of Jamieson’s secrets. Her many secrets, beginning to reveal themselves, the more time she spent in the village, the more she allowed The Shores to penetrate her outer defenses. It would be Finn who pee
led away the last layer.
***
It was harder than Hy had imagined it would be, pulling the toboggan. Nearly impossible. She had managed to roll Dot onto it, relieved to find she was breathing, that her breath was stronger, that she even co-operated a little when Hy pushed her over. The toboggan wasn’t long enough, and Dot’s legs stretched beyond the end and dug into the sand when Hy tried to pull it forward. She had harnessed herself to the sled, and, still tied to it, she slipped down onto the sand.
***
Time stood still. Ferguson’s hairy hand was poised to grab Jasmine. Jasmine, frozen with fear, was glued to the back of Ian’s computer chair. Ian, nearly unable to move, was stretching his neck beyond its pain threshold, keeping his beloved bird in his sight.
The three of them might have been there always. Their entire focus was on the moment.
“Aaaawk.”
With impeccable timing, Jasmine took off from the chair and, screeching in fluent bird, swooped at Ferguson’s face and aimed her beak at his eyes. She dove at him as he fell back and stumbled over the footstool next to Ian.
Experiencing excruciating pain, Ian had ducked his head as Jasmine swooped by. He had no reason to fear her, but a bird flying wild in a room is an unnerving and scary thing.
Jasmine kept moving. Not for a moment was she going to give Ferguson a chance to get near her. She had him down on the floor now, and she swooped within an inch of him, too fast and too unpredictable for him to grab her. She flew around and around the room, until both Ian and Ferguson were dizzy with watching her.
Ferguson was having trouble getting up off the floor. Counted down by a bird? Ridiculous.
He regained his feet. Jasmine swooped low over him.
“Aaaaawk,” she screamed in his ear as she darted by. The piercing sound left his ears ringing, his balance uncertain.
Jasmine took a victory flyby, but her triumph was premature.
Ferguson had grabbed the poker from in front of the wood stove.
Jasmine had perched a safe distance on top of an antique lamp made of solid iron.
Ferguson leapt forward and brought the poker slashing down. It hit the lampstand, and the force of the collision sent tremors through his hand and arm.
“Bloody bird. I’m going to kill you!” Ferguson’s face was engorged with rage, skin stretched to bursting and face an unhealthy red.
“Killed her. Of course,” Jasmine screeched back and began to laugh the hyena laugh she hadn’t used in a couple of years – not since Moira Toombs showed up at Ian’s with a tight new perm.
That fired up Ferguson even more, and he began flailing about with the poker, knocking pictures askew on the wall, almost smashing Ian’s computer, and Ian himself.
Jasmine’s bird brain had been working on a new strategy, instead of just flying about randomly. That had been effective, but now she began to fly, back and forth, across the picture window. She was too fast for Ferguson, who smashed away with the poker, constantly missing her, but coming close to the glass. Finally, the timing was perfect.
Jasmine stalled for just a moment. The poker slashed through the air. She budged. The poker smashed through the glass. The glass shattered, and tiny bits flew across the room, some like Christmas tree needles to places from which they wouldn’t emerge for years.
Ferguson had dropped the poker and ducked.
Ian slipped down under his blanket for a moment but emerged to see Jasmine fly out the window through a bird-sized hole at the point of impact, the glass around it shattered but not broken.
Ian felt a huge relief as he watched her get away.
He hoped she wouldn’t come back until Ferguson was gone.
He didn’t know she’d left to get reinforcements.
***
“Jamieson!”
Was she seeing things? Hy thought it might be a mirage. She’d never seen anyone move that fast. Except Jamieson. When she got closer, the bare feet confirmed it, before the facial features fell into shape.
“Jamieson!” Hy had slipped out of the harness and she was running, arms outstretched, as if –
As if she would hug Jamieson? Had she ever? No. Never. And it wasn’t going to happen now.
Jamieson slowed at the sight of Hy. Hy ran toward her. Jamieson came to a full stop and stared.
“McAllister. You’re looking pretty rough.”
Hy grinned. She really did want to hug Jamieson. She wondered if anybody ever had, other than a lover. She wondered if there had been many of those. Surely one. Jamieson couldn’t be a virgin. Could she?
“You’re looking pretty fast.” Hy cocked her head in a query, a query that wasn’t answered. She wasn’t surprised. Jamieson had been close-mouthed about her fleet- footedness the last time she had demonstrated it, when swift movement had been necessary to rescue the village children from a collapsing wind turbine.
“Wish I’d been faster. You look like you could’ve used some help a while ago.”
Jamieson surveyed the debris – the Annaben beached, the shelter in the cape, the embers of the fire, Dot bundled aboard the toboggan.
“What’s been going on?” Jamieson walked over and knelt beside Dot.
“We were aboard the Annaben.”
“We?” Jamieson’s eyebrows raised and looked down at Dot.
“Dot and I.”
Jamieson flicked her eyes at Hy.
“With permission?”
Hy didn’t answer right away.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly, or not at all?”
Hy said nothing. Jamieson knew what that meant. She sighed. She’d given up threatening to charge Hy. The threats over the years had all been valid, but empty.
“And there’s Fairweather’s Cape Islander,” Hy mumbled.
“You took that?”
Hy said nothing.
“Two boats. Two boats? Where is the second?” Jamieson looked around but saw only one.
Hy shrugged. “I had to abandon ship to save Dot.”
“I assume you’ll make reparations.”
“Of course,” said Hy. She had the money to buy several lobster boats and more.
Jamieson had been examining Dot. Now, seemingly satisfied, she secured the blanket around her. “She’s breathing, but she’s unconscious. Little we can do but get her medical care as soon as possible.”
“And how do we do that?” Hy looked behind her at the dunes, and then back at the water.
All the while thinking: was Abel out there?
***
Propelled by a giant wave, the rubber boat had flown above the water, smacked down on the deck of the Cape Islander and slid into the shelter in the middle of the boat. The simple structure protected the old man from the wind and some of the rain. He tried to start it up, but the boat was out of gas and was moving at the will of the waves. Moving, like the giant cod, in circles. Around one after another of the tiny islands that dotted the gulf at the entrance to Big Bay.
Abel worked the wheel for a while but couldn’t fight the rough seas.
The Cape Islander was like a creature set free on the water, riding the wind and the waves. He sat back to enjoy the ride.
***
Ferguson was staring out the hole in the window, through which Jasmine had disappeared. Ian was trying to prop himself up to do the same thing, when they both heard it. The unmistakable whining siren of an ambulance.
The whole village heard it. It was one of the sounds on which their world turned. With each new bar of sound, a light went on in the village. The first to hear it, the first to turn on the lights.
Lights went on in sequence at the Joudrys’, Macks’, and April Dewey’s, illuminating the Shore Lane. The Toombs’s lights beside the Hall went on. Throughout the village, all the way to Nathan the paramedic’s house, the ambulanc
e siren could be heard. Nathan flipped his lights on and raced outside in his boxers, his skinny legs shining white in the light, so he could find out what was going on
It wasn’t his glued-together van that was making the noise. It wasn’t there. He’d forgotten it had been stolen. He wondered if Jamieson had made any progress finding it.
No, it wasn’t Nathan’s van. It was Jasmine. Summoning help, with one of her favourite sounds, one common in The Shores, a village heavy on the elderly. The ambulance siren. She blared it over and over again, and people looking out their windows were confused about where it was coming from, and, more importantly, going. The phones were ringing all over the village as Olive and Gladys and Rose Rose, the minister’s wife, tried to figure out where the ambulance was headed.
Jasmine was now exhorting Ben Mack out of bed to come to Ian’s help. He was the biggest and most able villager she knew. So far he and Annabelle had managed to sleep right through her siren imitation, perhaps because Ben snored so loudly.
But Jasmine’s imitation of an old girlfriend of Ian’s pierced Ben’s night. An imitation of that woman having an orgasm.
It woke Ben up. And Annabelle. They looked at each other in surprise. They heard the ambulance siren. So close. Gus. She always came to their minds when they heard that siren. It was not for her.
This sound was at their window. There was a beak tapping on it.
Jasmine.
Ben eased himself out of bed and opened the window.
They could see the lights at Ian’s from here. They could see the lights all over the village. It wasn’t a real ambulance. It was the bird.
“Something must be up.” Ben was pulling on his jeans while Jasmine watched from her perch on the bedpost.
“Shall I come?” Annabelle had volunteered, but she really didn’t want to get out of bed and go into the stormy night. If it were something Ben couldn’t handle, she couldn’t help.
Jasmine hopped onto Ben’s shoulder after he put on his old fisherman’s sweater. It smelled deliciously of fish to Jasmine. Ben pecked Annabelle on the cheek, while Jasmine nuzzled into his beard. She’d always had a soft spot for Ben, and it wasn’t just because he smelled of fish. She loved burrowing into his beard and hair and pecking around to see what she could find in there. She did find stuff. Snacks.
Cod Only Knows Page 23
