by Lou Allin
Halverson’s Funeral Home had been an institution since World War One. One of the first brick buildings, it had given permanence and charm to the downtown clapboard in the boom days of the mining city. Over the years it had inhaled competing businesses to gain a near monopoly except for the suburban burial societies. Everyone who was anyone ended his career at Halverson’s. It was an expected tradition.
Walking slowly to the door, Belle had to urge herself forward. Her family had hated these ceremonies, preferring simple cremation. Open caskets were the norm in Northern Ontario, maybe a European custom which arrived with the many Greek, Italian or Ukrainian immigrants. Inside the quiet, formal foyer, a middle-aged lady in tasteful shades of gray at a reception desk lifted her pince-nez delicately to consult her program: “The Burian Party, yes, just down to the end of the hall, if you please.”
From the hallway, she saw other “parties” gathered to whisper in the adjoining rooms. Music drifted by, very soft and understated, a touch of Pachelbel in the night, or was it Mozart? Belle shuddered, willing herself against all odds to relax. A delicate lily of the valley scent wafted along the corridor mixed with the more cloying perfumes of older matrons. Suddenly, she remembered a story her prim and proper mother had told her. Inching along in a receiving line at her school superintendent’s funeral, she had anxiously searched for appropriately consoling words. When she had reached the widow, Terry Palmer had leaned forward, gently taken the woman’s hand, and murmured, “Thanks for a lovely day.”
Finally, Belle entered a divided room with a sitting area of padded chairs and sofas in Laura Ashley chintz. Homey and reassuring. Turning reluctantly, she saw the casket, taupe with brass fittings, accessorized with palms, candelabra and lavender glads. Several floral arrangements flanked the bier, a white and red rose selection particularly resplendent. What a monumental waste of money when Jim would have preferred the subtle beauty of wildflowers or the spicy resin of pine branches. She walked over to pay her respects, forced her gaze up. And by God, Jim did look good. Healthy, even. And that glowing skin tone. If there were an art to find the mind’s construction in the face, Myron Halverson was a genius. The innocence and goodness that framed Jim’s life could be read here by the blindest sceptic. She knelt on the velvet prie-dieu, murmured a small non-denominational prayer and stood awkwardly, wondering if anyone was noticing the tremor in her hands. Why did funerals make people feel like actors wandering without scripts? What words could form in a moment beyond the limits of speech?
The Burians were seated in the corner, Meg twisting a handkerchief, Ben thin and stiff in his black suit, and Ted leaning next to his mother, blinking away tears and loosening his collar. Belle was surprised to see old Tracker, grieving in the honest, canine way, ears back, head on her paws, her liquid eyes trusting that Jim would return. “Thanks for coming, Belle,” Meg said. “You were such a good friend of Jim’s.” Belle embraced the older woman tenderly, strangely protective about mothers since her own had died.
“He had so many friends,” Belle said, summoning up platitudes and hating herself for the failure of eloquence.
But the Burians were lost in a family tableau missing a central figure. “Yes,” Ben said, his eyes shining. “They’re all here from the university. And Tracker, too, his special pal. Halverson said it would be OK.” There would be no burial, just a crypt until the May thaw, common practice in the North. Graveyards were lonely places from December to April, only the tips of the highest monuments spearing the white desolation.
Belle slipped aside to sign the guestbook as a frail woman with henna hair and a purse affecting her balance tottered with a cane towards the Burians. In one corner, some professorial types, three-piece suits and beards, nodded sombrely. She caught a few words, “foolish . . . never should have” and bit back the temptation to offer her opinion. What did these ivory tower characters know about the bush and its rules? They might as well live in Toronto, driving their Range Rovers to work. Mel sat at the other end of the room, next to a man in what looked like an actual mourning suit, a fashion more read about than seen. Handsome and compelling, perhaps European, he put his arm around the girl briefly. Melanie shook her head as an answer, looked up, and gestured to Belle.
“Belle, you know Franz Schilling?” she asked
He extended his hand and bowed his head in a courtly manner. For a moment Belle thought he was going to kiss hers, as he raised it slightly and seemed to align his heels. “Hello, Belle. Melanie told me what a comfort you have been. It is very tragic to meet under these circumstances.” What else could be said?
They made the usual lump-in-throat exchanges, and then Melanie added, “Franz is in charge of the Stop the Park rally.”
Franz smiled and then spoke quietly, his gaze fixed on Belle. Though his hair was silver-blond and groomed to perfection, his darker eyebrows had a hypnotic effect. “And our efforts should have an effect. If only Jim could be there to march with us. What a tragedy his accident was.”
The women’s eyes met. “Perhaps not, Professor. Some things are not what they seem,” Belle said.
He arched an eyebrow and looked over at the casket. “Melanie has told me her doubts, and yes, I found it hard to believe, knowing how careful Jim was as a researcher. But still, I remember the night. Very bad. If he had wanted so much to get home and missed a turn in the blizzard . . .” His voice trailed to a whisper.
“Yes,” Belle answered. “His parents told me how important the Sunday family supper was for him. He always arrived in time, no matter what he’d been doing.” Memories of those evenings shared with Jim were too much for Melanie, who started to cry softly.
“I’ll bring you some water,” Franz said with a slight bow and left for a moment. The girl turned to Belle, struggling for control.
“Have you found anything yet?”
“We can’t really talk here. And I’m getting claustrophobic. I can hardly breathe.” Belle passed her hand over her clammy brow. “Why don’t we meet at the Konditorei in about an hour.”
After making a unobtrusive exit from Halverson’s, Belle was amazed that she felt like eating as soon as the fresh air hit her. Death could be a great appetite builder, a life-affirming ritual rivalled only by sex, a less convenient option.
An hour later, Melanie eased into the other side of the booth, removing her parka and gloves, her face flushed from the cold. “Were you able to get to the camp yet?”
“Not yet. My machine needs a new plug. Don’t get your hopes up. Ben says there’s nothing much there.”
“But Jim did all his work at the cabin. Said he needed the quiet for concentration and inspiration. Perhaps there’s a map showing clusters of the old pines. Maybe that’s where he met or saw someone. You could look for clues,”
“Clues. Come on, Mel. Don’t be naïve. The only sensible possibility seems to be that he stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have. He suspected drug drops, and you know how he felt about drugs. But to meet someone on the spur of the moment? And how would the killer make it look like an accident? Or get him to that lake? It wasn’t a landing spot like the ones he mentioned.”
“Talk to Franz about the planes. He told me he had seen the same thing, thought he had, anyway.”
“Why? Where does he live?” Belle asked.
“On an island near the marina on Wapiti. You must have passed it. Quite a log cabin complex, from what I’ve heard.”
Belle searched her memory. “There are a number of camps on islands, but I think I know the one you mean.” Then remembering Franz’s courtly solicitude at Halverson’s, she asked, “Are you two good friends?”
“Franz and I met when I took his physical anthropology course first semester. Of course all the girls were in love with him, but he was always correct and professional, and besides, you know how strict universities are with these sexual harassment cases. Anyway, a couple of people saw him out to dinner with one of the art teachers.”
Belle teased the girl. “He’s quite appeal
ing. Reminds me of Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music.”
Melanie laughed hesitantly, as the shift in topics relaxed her. “Come on, Belle. He’s not that old.” She seemed in the mood to talk, friendly, interested, an ideal nurturer with her pleasant manner and frank eye contact. “Jim mentioned that you were from Toronto, Belle. How did you happen to come north?” she asked.
Sudburians were always flattered that in defiance of the moonscape publicity, anyone would join their community. As their bumper stickers proclaimed, “Proud to be a Northerner,” they welcomed newcomers with a frontier sincerity. “I’ve been here for over twenty years, Melanie. My family lived in Toronto, but I spent every summer with my uncle at his camp on Lake Penage. After majoring in English, I went to Teachers’ College.”
Melanie looked surprised. “English? But you’re not a teacher now. What happened?”
“Ha. I respected literature too much to try to pound it into bonehead teenagers. This revelation came when I was practice teaching tenth graders. That’s a wicked age, let me tell you. Just as I read the line in ‘Kubla Khan’ about ‘Alph, the sacred river,’ the class broke up. Who would name a river ‘Alf’? The kids laughed so hard that the principal left his office and poked his head through the door. That day I hopped a bus for the North, where I’d wanted to live since I was a kid. Uncle Harold put me through a crash course at Nickel City College, offered me a partnership in his realty business and helped me establish a client base. Then he made sure I got my appraiser’s license. It’s a steadier income. Best of both worlds.”
“Sounds like a great guy.”
“Yes, I miss him. Made it to eighty on three packs of unfiltered Camels a day. Now I run the place myself with one other woman.”
“Jim told me about your house. You must be doing well on your own.”
Belle laughed. “If you saw my bank balance, you wouldn’t think so. And speaking of balances, I’ve got a mammoth account payable coming at the garage. Can you give me a lift?”
Melanie drove Belle to collect her van, which was thankfully ready to go, for a mere $200.00 to cover oil and filter and plug change and the extortionary tow from Bruno. “Coulda done it yourself, lady, and saved yerself big bucks,” the mechanic said.
“Oh, just chip the oil out of the pan at twenty below. With a blowtorch?”
Belle tooled out of the garage in a pique; her new gold card Visa bill would have to be sent parcel post. Tuning in the news, she was just in time for the obituaries. A thirty-oneyear-old had died when his Corvette had hit a rock cut on Highway 144 to Timmins, a deadly combination. She tugged her seat belt to double-check. A person spent the first four decades going to weddings and the next four going to funerals. And everyone wanted to die young as late as possible.
Brushing her teeth before retiring, she checked the mirror: the elder elf look, red peppery gray hair, but good skin and clear eyes. What was the use of make-up and fifty-dollar designer haircuts if you had to smash and smear them with toques, face masks and scarves? Living in a city was one thing; living in the bush was another; living in Sudbury fell somewhere in the middle, and maintaining a civilized veneer through a six-month winter of waterline-bursting temperatures or daily avalanches was a fool’s labour.
Belle climbed gingerly into her water bed and lined up five cigarettes and the latest Robert B. Parker. She tucked a cigarette into her Adolphe Menjou holder, a delicate filigreed gem from the MGM Studios Memorabilia Shop at Disney World in Orlando. Her father had bought it for her when they had made the rounds of the theme parks after her mother’s death. Had he been the oldest person to take the “Back to the Future” virtual reality ride? She could still remember taking his hand, cool and gnarly, as the Delorean rocketed them in dizzying speed toward the mouth of a tyrannosaurus. “Close your eyes,” she had said.
SIX
Steve Davis had been a family friend since Uncle Harold had used the young officer for apartment security work back when a few extra dollars were welcome. Though he and Belle sat on different sides of the law vs. justice scales, they met over a meal from time to time when his wife used an argument as an excuse to flounce off to her parents in Thunder Bay. The marriage had been one long, stormy snowshoe uphill, he complained. Why did he keep making the effort?
No police presence had been evident at Halverson’s during the viewing. She wondered what countermeasures the department had undertaken to control the drug trade and whether the lake landings had been investigated, so Belle called Steve to set up lunch. The Cedar Hut had opened a Mexican room, a nine-day wonder for the mining town, and Belle wanted to awaken her taste buds after years of drought. From a Christmas in Mexico City, she remembered the drum tortilla makers that sizzled on every corner, jolly mamacitas slap-slapping dough onto griddles with the rhythm of a mariachi band.
Knowing Steve would likely be late, she made her selection, eyebrows herniating at the prices. Belle ladled hot sauce on her combination platter of chicken enchilada and beef burrito and lined up a chilled Dos Equis in readiness to quench the anticipated fires.
Just as her pupils were beginning to return to normal after the first bites, Steve trudged in, shaking the snow from his parka, and Belle flagged the waitress for a margarita. He manoeuvered his six-six frame into the booth, flashed his handsome black eyes at her, a legacy from his Ojibwa grandmother who had captured the heart of young Rod Davis, a surveyor for the E.B. Eddy Lumber Company. “Olé!” he said after a quick sip of the margarita. “What is this salty stuff, anyway? It’s not bad. Sorry to be late, Belle. A couple of drunks at the Paramount tried to settle an argument about the merits of the Habs against the Leafs. At ten in the morning? What an end to my shift. Say, does Mexican food keep you awake?”
“Not with a supply of Zantac,” Belle said. “But count yourself lucky. At least it wasn’t a gunfight.”
“That’s one advantage the police have up north, along with following footprints in the snow. Even the convenience store robberies usually involve knives or bats. Fine with me. They don’t go off accidentally.” He browsed through the menu and followed her suggestion of tamales with a guacamole salad.
Belle watched him dig into his meal, wary of the green gunk at first, but clearly relishing the flavours. “Well, I can’t exactly identify it, not that I’d want to,” he said, “but it tastes good. And at least it’s food. Remember that Japanese place I tried in Ottawa?”
“Where you ate the potpourri?”
“Yes, problem was, it tasted better than the meal.”
They both laughed. Steve seemed in a good mood, so Belle pressed her case. “I need to talk to you about Jim. Has anything else turned up?”
His smile faded as he tightened his lips and let out a long breath. “There’s no point in pursuing this, Belle. I knew him, too. Jim’s the last one I ever figured would make a mistake like that, but he did. Stop torturing yourself. It’s over now.” He toyed with the candle lantern, then dipped a tortilla chip into the salsa, crunching noisily as if to drown out her inquiries.
“Humour me for one more chip, Steve, and I’ll get the cheque. There is one trail we didn’t follow. I wasn’t even thinking about it in the rush of the accident. On some of his trips through the bush, Jim mentioned suspicious landings on small lakes. Lakes where nobody had reason to be. No ice fishing, no camps, no roads.” She looked at his expressionless face, waiting for some nuance of change.
Steve shrugged and dug into his tamales as soon as they arrived. “Dum da dum dum. Let me guess. You’re clueing me in about drugs? Why, the traffic has tripled up here in the last few years. Did I say tripled? More than that. What can you expect when the economy has diversified so fast? Like the cartoon strip goes, “for better or for worse”, now that we’re the regional centre in the North for health care, education, shopping and government, why not for mind-altering substances as well?”
“In other words, location, location, location.”
“You’re a fast learner. We’re not sure exactly where it
’s coming from, but east and south, the U.S., port of Montreal. Last week in Newfoundland a bust landed five million dollars of cocaine. The week after that two women were stopped at Mirabel Airport with over half a million. Nice retirement package. Next time Prince Edward Island, home of Anne of Green Gables, for Christ’s sake. Now Toronto’s getting shipments of khat.”
“Whaaaat?”
“Khat, an evergreen leaf grown in Kenya and Ethiopia. It has to be chewed fresh one to three hours before the high is reached.”
“Come on! What an ordeal! Who would bother?”
“It’s a social event in many cultures, brought over by our increasing refugee population, but its side effects lead to physical violence.”
“Much too energy-intensive for the North.” She signalled for coffee. “So if the traffic is increasing, as you say, why choose the bush?”
“Belle, you can’t make illicit transactions at our small airport very well, you know, not big deals. Records are kept. Mechanics, security guards, waitresses, anyone might take note. The fewer people, the better.” He shrugged. “Then again, these fairy tale landings might mean dick-all. Just fooling around.”
“Maybe so, but Derek is on my list for a chat. He owes me a favour.”
“Derek Santanen! He’d better know zip if he knows what’s good for him. When we finally got our lad last time, he’d have been knitting in Millhaven pen. But no, you felt sorry for his old folks and pulled him early probation with that job at Snopac. Let Mr. Blimp make his own mistakes. The next one will put him on a ten-year diet.”
It seemed prudent to change the subject, so Belle asked about Janet. A few months earlier, Steve had been talking about a trial separation. It wasn’t the despair that was killing him, but the hope. He and his wife were opposite personalities, his brooding seriousness versus her sunny, carefree disposition. One raw nerve had been their childlessness. Maybe Margaret Atwood and her Handmaid’s Tale had been prophetic; sperm motility had dropped 30 percent in the last few decades, according to The Globe and Mail. This time, however, an unusual brightness lit his eyes as he talked of the latest chapter of their marital saga. “It’s a turning point, Belle. Keep your fingers crossed, but we may be able to adopt at last. Our name’s on the list, and we’re supposed to get a call Friday.”
