***
He was there.
All of him.
Naked.
The waves were pushing the boat into shore. He was standing in the back, the big fish splayed across the bow of the dory with its bright yellow and red stripes. His big yellow mac was flying open in the wind, the fasteners ripped off by the gale. Where were his long johns? His Tilley hat obscured his face, clinging to his head, the wind cord tied tight.
It was Abel, bowlegged and stubborn, Abel.
The boat was low in the bow from the weight of the fish. He stood, legs astride, arms raised up, and two fingers on each hand in the victory sign.
The boat hit the sandbar, and he pitched forward. He went flying out.
The weight gone from the back, the big fish slid into the water. Abel struggled to grab it, but the coat got in the way. He pulled it off, and flung it over the cod, trying to slow it down.
***
Ferguson couldn’t believe what his life had come to. Vandalism. He was bound to be charged with vandalism for what he’d done to Ian’s house. Vandalism and worse, far worse. The murder of Letitia. He was sorry about that. He kept telling himself he was sorry about it. She didn’t deserve it. Now he’d as good as confessed to killing her. He’d been so vicious about the bird, the bird confessing murder in his voice; they’d be bound to put two and two together. Crab asthma wasn’t as well known on this particular patch as in Newfoundland, but someone would know, Ben would blab about the lobster and the crab.
He pressed his foot on the accelerator. The needle on the speedometer edged up, until he was going two hundred kilometres an hour. Ferguson was setting a record and didn’t know it.
He was going too fast on the rain-slicked road rutted by heavy farm equipment and transformed into an ideal surface for hydroplaning. Add a curve and a swerve, a cat streaking across the road, a truck hauling a trailer transporting a hay baler ripping down the opposite lane, and he didn’t stand a chance. His vehicle slammed into the baler and went off the road, upended, its wheels spinning in the air. Ferguson’s last thought as the airbags exploded was who will feed the fish? The hay baler pointed to the sky. It looked like it was giving the finger. The trucker was. Once he got over the shock, he jumped down from his vehicle. He peered inside the driver’s window of the SUV, and felt more compassionate. The roof was crushed flat. There was an unending beep, beep, beep sounding from the dashboard.
Chapter 38
Jamieson hadn’t expected Ferguson to die on her.
She hadn’t expected to be the one to kill him.
She and Finn had been driving through the dark dawning of the day, windshield wipers unable to keep up with the water sheeting from above and splashing up by the bucketful from the ground. They tore along, bumping and scraping, on muddy clay lanes rutted with holes, crossing the island in a zigzag, the shortcut to the train tunnel.
They caught up with him, barrelling down the main highway. Jamieson put the pedal to the floor, and the needle of the speedometer climbed up into the red zone – 180, 190, 200. She didn’t hesitate, not for a moment, strong and sure behind the wheel.
On his ass, her siren sounding through the night.
It was a shock when Ferguson hit the trailer and went cartwheeling into the ditch. Jamieson slammed on the brakes. The police cruiser hydroplaned across the road and screeched to a halt within inches of being the third vehicle involved in the collision. That it wasn’t was sheer luck.
Jamieson was paler than usual as she emerged from the cruiser. Finn was so unnerved, he tried to get out without undoing his seatbelt.
Jamieson gave the trucker a curt check to see that he was okay. She walked over to the upended SUV.
It was clear that no one could have survived. She called in the accident.
“Two-vehicle collision. Possible fatality.” That’s what she said, although the driver was clearly dead.
Ferguson.
Finn came up behind her and put an arm on her shoulder.
She turned around.
“I killed him.” Nothing like this had ever happened to her in years of police work.
He pulled her close to him.
“I killed him.” Her tone was flat, without emotion.
“You’re not responsible.” He stroked her hair.
She buried her face in his chest, like a reluctant cat surrendering her affection. He put a finger under her chin and lifted it up. The rain streamed down on them, so he didn’t detect the tears on her face. If he had, he would have been the only one who had ever seen her cry, other than her parents when she was very young. They were dead. That was the last time she had cried.
She wasn’t safe in this world of emotions.
But in Finn’s arms, it felt as if she might be.
Some of her distress was uncharitable.
So many of her murderers ended up dead. It bothered her. That’s how they got away. Not from justice maybe, but from her. This one hadn’t got away from either.
***
Gus stirred in her chair. Her chair? She had thought she was in bed. She wasn’t sure if she was asleep or awake.
She didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t anymore.
A stream of villagers flocked down the Shore Lane, across the bridge, over the pond, and onto the beach, Jamieson and Finn in the lead. Behind them, Gladys Fraser leading the ladies of the Institute, with Estelle Joudry bringing up the rear, reluctant to confront her second dead body in a week.
Well behind was Gus, aided by Hy, scurrying to catch up.
From the other side of the run, a flock of cats, led by Jasmine, undulated over the landscape. Somehow, the parrot had managed to interfere with the litter system to free the felines. And somehow, they all looked like Ralphie. Exactly like Ralphie. A column of big, fat, self-satisfied ginger cats following the smell of fish. Their meows rivalled the squawking of the gulls, flapping into the sky as the cats cascaded down the cape.
Humans in one flowing stream; cats in another. Two columns of movement, streaking forward down to the water in a V-shape, like Canada geese.
At the point of the “V,” where the humans and cats were both headed, was a big lump, shrouded in a bright yellow fisherman’s mackintosh.
For the second time in these long days of wondering where he was, Gus was struck with fear, fear for Abel. She stopped walking. Stopped and stared.
Was Abel the lump lying there? Unmoving? Dead?
The cats had reached the lump before the humans. Jasmine pulled at the mackintosh and slipped it off to reveal a fish, a cod, a three-hundred-pounder at least. It bore a long stripe down one side, smudged in the middle.
The fish flipped. It wasn’t dead.
Nor was Abel.
He sat up, slapped his trophy, and got to his feet.
***
On the way back to The Shores, Jamieson had followed the ambulance into Winterside. Like a border collie rounding up its sheep, Jamieson gave in to the impulse to go to the hospital to see if she could bring Hy, and maybe Dot, home.
They were standing outside the entrance to Emergency, Dot clinging to the Tilley hat. Jamieson pulled up and opened her window.
“Have you been discharged?”
They both nodded, unwilling to put a sound to the lie.
“Get in then.”
It was an awkward moment. There was Finn, sitting in front with Jamieson. Dot and Hy climbed into the back.
It was a silent ride to the village. Dot finally broke the silence with the question that should have been on their minds, rather than the awkward position in which they found themselves.
“Any sign of Abel?”
***
The hush created by the sight of him was loud enough to drown out the waves.
Such a silence had never been heard before in The Shores.
It w
as as if the sea had stopped swelling, the waves no longer rushing to the shore.
The gulls had ceased to squawk, the wind to blow, the rippling of the grasses stilled. All that could be heard was one big silence that drowned out all the other sounds, drew into it the shore, the village, and the villagers, and halted time.
The silence was broken by some of the women giggling, clutching their hands to their mouths. Gladys Fraser was frowning and darting dirty looks at the Institute women. April Dewey was trying to cover the eyes of her six children with two hands, while nudging her partner Murdo Black to do the same. Murdo was too busy grinning to pay attention.
Abel Mack. Round-bellied, bowlegged, and hairy everywhere except on the top of his head, Abel Mack appeared clearly before the villagers for the first time in decades. It had been his failure to land the fish – the original big cod – that had sent him underground in his own life.
Gus was mortified at the naked Abel, his hands covering the part of him that had produced eight children. “The Big One,” Wally Fraser whispered behind his wife’s back and winked at Germaine, so he’d know he didn’t mean the fish.
Gus elbowed her way through the crowd and threw a blanket over Abel’s shoulders.
“I told you he wasn’t dead,” she said, looking straight at Jamieson.
She must have spoken out loud, because she woke to the trace of the words on her lips and in her ears.
She had a fleeting image of herself and Abel, arm in arm, plodding up the lane, while, behind them, the pond sparkled with the tropical colours of hundreds of fish – turquoise, brilliant orange, deep reds, greens, blacks, and electric blue.
She’d only ever seen them on her computer screen. Never before in her dreams.
***
Gus woke up as dawn was streaking the sky with fierce flashes of fire red. Red sky in the morning.
She was in her chair.
In her chair.
She must’ve fallen asleep after supper, for she remembered nothing between then and waking. But she remembered everything from the dream, the dream that had seemed so real.
She flushed. She’d seen Abel naked in the dream. All of him. She’d never seen him that way in life, not in over sixty years of marriage. He always wore his pyjamas over his boxers.
She eased herself up from the chair, every part of her aching. Not just joints and bones and muscles. Every part of her. Skin sensitive to the slightest touch. Blood racing through her body, her heart thumping as if it wanted to escape from her body. Her breath hurt, too – the breathing was ragged, shallow. She became dizzy and almost fell but righted herself. Hanging onto the chair, she managed to slide her feet into her slippers, fallen off in the night.
The red streaks in the sky pointed the way to the back room, the room with the view of the shore. She was fully expecting her dream to be realized, to see Abel thrown from the boat, the big fish up on the shore, being eaten by the cats.
***
She should have known it would not be like the dream.
It was not at all like the dream.
Gus gazed down from the back room, her eyes following the curve of the run from the pond across the stretch of sand and to the water.
Not at all like the dream.
There was no stream of villagers heading for the shore. No cats flowing down the cape. Nor Jamieson. Nor Hy. She, Gus, was not there either. She was here in the back room, a smile growing on her face, tears streaming from her eyes.
One thing was the same.
Abel.
No. Two things.
Abel and the fish.
Not the conquering hero giving the victory sign and baring his flesh to the world. No. Abel, in his yellow coat and tattered long johns, a pink knapsack slung across his chest. No Tilley hat.
There he was, kneeling in the inflatable boat, perched atop the biggest cod Gus had ever seen. The fish was headed, with Abel and the boat on his back, down the deep run toward the open sluice gate and the pond. Abel was smiling up at the house as if he could see her looking down. He could not, not from that angle. Still she felt as if he could. If she were younger, she would have run down to him, but she couldn’t. She was used to waiting for Abel. A few more minutes didn’t matter in a long life together.
Gus went back to the kitchen and lowered herself into her chair. To wait.
***
Jamieson dropped off Hy at her place, but Finn didn’t get out there. She drove Dot to Gus’s, and he didn’t get out there either. He stayed with Jamieson, his only word “goodbye.”
Dot looked in his eyes.
Goodbye goodbye.
“He’s back,” Gus said, when Dot came in the door.
“Where?” She looked around her.
“He’ll be at the pond. With the fish.”
“He got the fish?”
Gus nodded. “’Spect he did.”
Dot wanted to dash down to the pond to see her father, but Gus had other ideas for her.
“Why don’t you phone Estelle for me, let her know Abel’s back?” Gus knew that if Estelle knew, the whole village would know soon.
“Abel?”
“Abel?”
“Abel?”
The one word that everyone said on hearing that Abel had returned. Their surprise gave Estelle a satisfaction she hadn’t felt since she’d told people decades ago that she and Germaine were getting married. Then it had been:
“Germaine?”
“Germaine?”
“Germaine?”
Estelle had thought it meant they were surprised she’d made such a catch, when actually they couldn’t believe the pair had ever hooked up. He spoke only French at the time, and she only English. How had he communicated his desire to marry her? Maybe the marriage had been a misunderstanding.
Estelle was so excited to be the bearer of the news that Abel was home, she even phoned Jamieson, something she’d never done before.
Jamieson was puzzled by Abel’s so-called reappearance.
“I went over to see him” she told Hy later, “but he couldn’t be found.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“I suppose not, but –”
“It means everything’s back to normal. Gus didn’t say he was missing again, did she?”
“No, just that he was around somewhere.”
“Then I think you’d better accept it. Whatever it means. Things are back to normal. Abel isn’t missing anymore. Wherever he is. I’d say that fish is the visible proof of it.”
They were at the pond, the immense fish making frustrated circles in the water. The sluice gate had closed automatically behind him, keeping him captive. The cod appeared to have tried to eat the inflatable boat; it was punctured in several places and losing air fast. Hy had brought a crate of lobsters and was tossing them in. The big cod was swallowing them whole in one gulp.
Finn joined them.
“Ian’s trying to get up on his feet,” he reported.
“Bad idea.” Hy tossed in the last lobster. “He’s done that before, and it makes it worse. I better go talk some sense into him.”
She looked at the fish again. It appeared to be making love to the rubber boat.
It was grunting, so maybe it was.
The cod was trapped, thought Hy. So was Ian. She knew he would be feeling put out by being left out of the action, sidelined by his injured back. She’d better pay him some attention.
***
Dot felt trapped, too, staring down at the pond from the back room of the house, deciding whether to go or to stay in the village. She had to make a decision soon. Little Dottie would be missing her. Dot hadn’t actually seen her father but was satisfied he was home, if Gus said he was. She hadn’t rescued him, but she had somehow done her duty by him, but, in the doing, she had come face to face with her own wanderlus
t. Burst from the cocoon of The Shores by her father’s adventure, or misadventure, she didn’t want to get back inside.
Not even for Finn?
No, she thought. No.
She never did get down to the pond for a close look at the famous fish that had caused all the trouble. Hy had left, but Dot watched Finn and Jamieson crossing the bridge over the run, side by side, hands held, heads inclined toward one another, talking. They were peas in a pod. Tall, lanky, pale skin, and an abundance of jet-black hair. Mirror images. Male and female made in the same mold. Waiting for the moment when they would meet and meld.
At least, that’s what it seemed like to Dot. Oddly, she felt released. She was free. It was time to go.
***
Hy was going to do it. Abel had been granted his catch, and now it was time to release.
Hy crept out of the house, although there was no one to wake. Finn had found somewhere else to sleep. Jamieson’s? Would she allow that sort of thing in the police house? Jamieson five years before wouldn’t have, but now…Hy picked up her pace and ran across the backyard, taking the shortcut to the Shore Lane.
The sun was barely visible on the horizon, streaking a thin line of gold, the promise of a new and glorious day, through a bank of black cloud moving off the shore. The clean beginning after a dirty season. The air was clear. The smoke from Quebec was gone.
She was carrying a crowbar.
The sky began to lighten and she became energized, swinging the crowbar at her side and striding with purpose, anxious to do the deed.
To set the fish free. To let him go to his happy grunting grounds, she thought with the twist of a smile.
Down she went. Down the Shore Lane. Down Wild Rose Lane. Down to the tip of the run where Ferguson had installed the sluice gate. She reached with the crowbar and tipped open the latch, then grabbed at the gate with the hook and yanked it open.
The fish came streaking out, its tail splashing water, drenching Hy as it raced by. Out. Out into the ocean. Out where it belonged. The one that got away. Twice.
A three-hundred-pound cod should not be held in captivity.
Nor eaten.
It was gone.
Cod Only Knows Page 26
