A neighbour called, virtually kicking herself with suppressed delight to be the first to fill him in on the details, such as they were. They burned the bridge! The tone of conversation shifted, and Alex believed she was fishing, to see if he’d stoop to accusing his son, which apparently was going around.
“Why on earth,” he asked at last, still dealing with her news, “would my son burn the old covered bridge? Anyway, which son do you mean?”
“Not Ryan!” the batty neighbour retorted with some consternation.
“Denny is not a pyromaniac either. What are you insinuating?”
“I’m just saying. It’s going to be difficult for Ryan, don’t you think, if he has to . . . he may have no choice . . . if he, you know, investigates his brother. Do you think he will?”
“Will what?”
“Arrest him!”
No one slammed a receiver down, but the two extricated themselves from their discourse and hung up and that’s when Alex noticed the age of the house and went into the kitchen to scrub his hands. He felt an odd subliminal relief that his wife was not alive to hear such distressing talk about her second child. If she was, Alex reflected, the report might’ve killed her.
If she was alive, he reconsidered along a different vein, he never would have done it. That’s when he realized that he himself believed, on no evidence, just suspicion and intuition, that Denny was responsible.
He repeated his son’s name twice aloud, both times softly. “Denny.” A quiet, loving, forgiving sound. “Denny.” This time rife with dismay.
Then he went around the house trying to locate his car keys, and after that drove into town. Assuming the tale was true, that the old covered bridge burned and sailed on down the river in flames, then he wanted to observe the gap for himself before he considered any subsequent move. He needed to observe the evidence firsthand, despite having been forewarned that absolutely nothing remained to be seen.
■ ■ ■
Arriving at work, many of them late, truckers were advised not to start their engines. “You’ll be going nowhere soon,” the dispatcher’s assistant let them know. Off and on they caught sight of the dispatcher through the window of his office, on the phone and pacing, and whenever he hung up he was obviously expecting the blessed thing to ring again. He was giving out no further information.
The men were remarkably subdued.
In pairs, a few of the younger guys balanced on a hefty log and endeavoured to wrestle one another off it. Denny considered the sport silly, given that the log lay flat on dry land. Float that thing in the river and then see who could stay upright on it and for how long. This is what they should have been doing with their lives, riding logs downstream. Any battle for supremacy then would not have been a mere logger sport but a life-and-death daily activity that determined their worth, and a skill that aided their ability to survive. Instead, number 2 diesel fuel ran through their veins and a few younger guys thought that balancing on a log on dry land meant something. Denny quashed an urge to yell, or even step right up to the fellow who apparently won that absurd contest and punch his lights out. He exhaled, to let his unbidden rage subside.
Older guys smoked and kicked around a few ideas about what would happen now, and out of that discussion one wizened, diminutive fellow started up a pool in which the object was to guess the date a new bridge would open to traffic.
“One thing wrong with that idea,” Big Bill Fournier touted.
“What’s that?” a sidekick asked.
“Who says a new bridge will ever get built?”
He spoke loudly, as though he knew whom he was talking to, but Denny didn’t rise to the bait. For the time being, he let it pass. If Big Bill thought that burning the bridge was a bad idea, he could suck his own tailpipe, and Denny was on the verge of saying so. He’d offer to help shove it down his gullet.
Those few comments aside, the morning was remarkable for the lack of references to the fire. People kept their opinions to themselves, and no one was willing to publicly harangue, or celebrate, the arsonists, whoever they might be. By the same token, no one was so foolish as to speculate that the fire might have been an accident. Truckers knew what happened. They believed they’d be the beneficiaries, eventually, so it stood to reason that a few of their number were guilty of the crime.
Silence, then, was a form of thanks, rather than misgiving.
Denny came close to asking André Gervais for a cigarette but caught himself, realizing how bad that would look, the two of them huddled around a lit match. An image that snuffed out the craving.
The dispatcher ventured out at last and men came away from their logs and rigs and huddled groups to form a semicircle around him. Denny found himself in the front row. Not that it mattered a whole hill of beans, but he’d prefer being farther back. He respected the dispatcher, a muscular fair-haired man in his forties with a punched-in nose who’d never been a driver. He once worked in the woods felling trees until a bad back helped him graduate to a desk job, a task he performed well and with equanimity under pressure.
“Listen up, guys. I just got the word, okay? This is not my doing, so don’t complain to me. We’re going up north, east of Maniwaki. We’ll haul timber there for the next few weeks until we get this figured out. The haul times won’t be so bad, you should be able to get your loads in, except for today, because today we have to drive up. Tomorrow, you’ll start up there in the morning. A longer drive to get to work for you guys, but that’s just how it has to be.”
“You mean we’re leaving our rigs up there?” a voice inquired.
“That’s it,” the dispatcher said.
“Where exactly do we go?” Denny couldn’t see Samad in the gathering, but caught the sound of his voice somewhere behind him. He didn’t know why but wished he’d shut up. They’d not spoken since separating the night before, but he had lain awake afterwards thinking that Samad’s wife, Joce, was the only person who could put the four of them together at the same time prior to the fire. He could not articulate why, but he just wanted Samad to stay completely quiet. In that way, to follow his lead.
“Be ready to bug out in twenty minutes,” the dispatcher replied. “A company pickup is on the way. A lead truck will follow it. Then everybody, just follow the truck in front of you. I’ll be in the pickup. I’m setting up in a tent for our spell there. What a joy that will be. Tonight, a bus will drive you guys back here to your personal vehicles.”
Satisfied, the men began to disperse, but the dispatcher whistled for the resumption of their attention. Everyone returned to being quiet.
“One more thing, okay? We’re going up there as one long line of trucks. Spread yourselves out for safety’s sake so cars can pass, okay. Keep in touch by radio. Nobody goes off course, okay. Don’t get lost. Understand?”
Few did.
“Look. Face it. We’re not in everybody’s good books right now. More than a few people are pissed off. I’ll let you guess why, but we’ve received some threats already. At head office, and apparently, down at city hall.”
“What kind of threats?”
A legitimate question, but it caused the dispatcher to examine his clipboard. He didn’t want to reply.
Denny fully expected to remain silent himself, as he wished Samad had done. But after putting his hand up to get the dispatcher’s attention, he repeated the question that another man initially raised.
“What kind of threats?” he asked in a quiet and calm voice.
The dispatcher looked at him, eye to eye, and reluctantly he shrugged.
“Crank calls, man,” he said.
“What threats?” a stronger voice asked, now for a third time.
The dispatcher looked around. “Potshots. Fires. Shit like that there.”
The men absorbed the unwelcome report. If somebody wanted to pick a fight, that was one thing, bring it on, but a shot out of the
trees into a windshield was something to fear.
“They better be cranks,” somebody near Denny muttered.
He was not alone in being surprised by what was relayed. Crank calls. Like everyone else he hoped that that was the case. He hadn’t thought about dealing with anything more than that when plotting to do this. But everybody knew that plenty of sharpshooters lived in the hills.
■ ■ ■
After visiting the site of the old bridge, now a mere gap, a glimpse of the rapids, Alex O’Farrell needed a pick-me-up. As did others, he walked along the road to where yellow police tape and a few sawhorses barricaded the steep drop into oblivion. A visit that did not go unnoticed. Whereas others could look out over the stretch of water and not believe their eyes, he couldn’t believe his ears.
“If you got something to say about me or my family,” he finally challenged the flock of people behind him who were demonstrating a propensity for whispers and remarks, “say it to my face. Come on. Who’s got the guts?”
He’d turned slowly to face them in a manner vaguely threatening, which he expected was enough to forestall any reply, while forgetting that he was no longer a young, lithe, and muscular logger whom people naturally feared to cross. That he might actually fight someone was nonsensical, and consequently a man even older than himself dared respond. “Did Denny do it or what?”
“How the hell should I know?” he fired back, then realized in an instant that that was not the reply his son might expect from him. But he had nothing more to add, and with two dozen people watching he walked off. For once he was grateful for his aches and pains from old logging injuries, as they prevented him from stomping away in a snit. Instead, he deployed a simple, if somewhat out of sync, amble. Elegant enough. Proud enough. He wouldn’t call his stride a limp, but being self-conscious about his exit from the fray he admitted that he was probably a touch more disjointed recently, and hoped his hips were not on the cusp of giving out.
Time to see a quack, perhaps.
Although his car was handy, he chose to leave it parked and gave his legs and hips and restless sciatic nerve a workout. Never a man to just take a walk—he required a destination—he nurtured now a hankering for raspberry pie. Raspberry in particular, but he’d accept blueberry, and if he still remained bereft of a choice, an apple or maybe a rhubarb-apple would do. He wanted pie, that’s what he knew. And if he happened to eat the whole damn thing by midafternoon he wasn’t going to get on his own case.
This was a day to consume a pie.
So he walked across town to Potpourri, where he could pick up one of Mrs. McCracken’s, as he preferred hers to the bakery’s. Besides, if he went into the bakery he’d also buy donuts and cookies and then be obliged to actually give himself a good talking-to.
Due either to a mild absentmindedness these days or because he was disheartened and preoccupied, he completely forgot who was working down at the gift shop when, pie in hand, a waft of raspberry enticing his nostrils, he paid Willis Howard the discount rate for a day-old pie as Mrs. McCracken hadn’t shown up that morning. “I was craving one of her fresh ones.”
“I called,” Willis told him. “She’s taken the day off to mourn the bridge. Personally, I don’t blame her, and anyway she was probably up half the night. You’re celebrating, I suppose.”
Alex stifled an urge to swat him. In an earlier decade he might have done just that. Instead, he turned to leave and at that moment, a woman emerging from the front corner alcove snagged his attention. She was quietly chatting with a second woman whom he knew from the bank. A light went on for Alex. He recognized the first one from the town meeting, the one his eldest had taken a tumble for, and remembered now that this was where she worked.
Ryan teased that when Alex saw her she’d literally take his breath away, give him a heart attack. The boy either didn’t understand how things worked as time trudged along or he was trying to buoy his spirits, but nonetheless he did appreciate the look of her.
Reserved expressions and hushed voices between the two women revealed the subject matter of their discussion—what everyone was talking about, a burned bridge. Alex O’Farrell took five steps to leave, then hesitated.
He didn’t want to go just yet.
Although he knew that he should.
Whoo-hee. A rare beauty in any town, but certainly in this one. Without realizing what he was doing he was staring as he did before, in a manner that even he might judge as inappropriate and inexcusable. But in one quick mental snapshot she both captured his interest and proved that he was not yet too old to welcome the phenomenon. Beguiled, he then seized on the mystery of what signified beauty. Somehow, when his senses were truly struck numb by a woman’s presence, she was not someone he ever imagined. Anytime he conjured a certain style of beauty, and the woman of his synapses appeared on the street or on the screen, and even when she exquisitely fulfilled the dream, that sort of beauty was not as lovely as once perceived. Women who possessed the power to take his breath away or, as his son insinuated, give him a heart attack, were those who did not previously audition before his imagination. Surprise, then, was a big part of their look. The shock value of beauty, perhaps. As he continued to stare, Alex was also postulating that beauty was never about perfection.
He’d not bothered to think this through before, but was perfection with respect to beauty not a bore? Tiresome? Which is why a screen beauty at times was more enticing if she was muddied and scraped and wore a man’s old shirt and jeans. Dolled up, forget it, that was trying too hard. This one was not dressed down, nor was she muddy, but she didn’t try even a little nor did she have to, not with that skin. His chin flexed back as if deflecting a glancing blow. Yes. Her skin. The thought helped Alex grasp why he was not thinking pretty, or cute, although she certainly fit the bill to a T, rather beauty, and he was also thinking rare. As a film siren, some Hollywood dimwit might have altered the nose and enhanced the hair to de-emphasize her forehead, or committed the real horror, a boob job.
Luck was on his side, Alex decided, as the woman’s client shook hands with her, shared a laugh, and departed just then. Oddly, the new woman in town knew to turn her head only slightly and tilt her chin just so, to stare right back at him.
Then she glanced at what he carried.
“If you’ve come here to share that pie, sir, you’re in the right place.”
Chuckling, Alex took a few steps closer. Further progress was stymied by a rack of gaily coloured hand-woven straw baskets from Argentina. He didn’t think he should say what he was thinking, but did so anyway. “I wonder if my son fell for you as quickly as I just did. As I recall, I believe so.”
At least she was taken by surprise also. She took a more analytical and anatomical survey of the fellow standing before her—she’d seen him once before, at the town meeting—and mouthed the name Ryan.
Silent as well, he nodded.
She lifted her hand over the baskets and they shook as he balanced the pie on the fingertips of his left.
“Tara,” she said.
“Alex.”
Then she crossed her arms and looked at him more closely.
“What?” he asked.
“That means,” she assayed, “that you’re Denny O’Farrell’s father, too.”
“The one guy everyone is talking about, yes.”
“The bridge burner. At least, that’s how they’re talking about him.”
“You know what they say about bad news. In my mind, the only news that travels faster is gossip.”
“Would you like to come in?” she asked him.
A puzzling question. “I am in,” he said finally.
She smiled. “To my part of the store. The side room.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize. Sure.”
She went ahead while he backtracked and found the aisle that took him through the maze. Waiting for his arrival, she noticed his cane, mere
ly slung over an elbow for the moment, and the laboured walk.
“Are you in much pain?” she asked.
“Only when it hurts,” he admitted.
“Mmm. Looks like you need to loosen up. I know exercises for that.”
“I garden,” Alex said.
“Probably the worst thing you can do.”
Twice he elicited a smile from her and each time she made him laugh in return. He detected a desire to keep doing so. “Can we eat pie here?”
“Only carefully. And that’s no way to eat pie.”
“I have to tell you. It’s day-old.”
“I know. Poor Mrs. McCracken. She’s upset.”
Alex nodded, not requiring an explanation. Then he looked around. “Hey, you’ve changed things up.”
He didn’t know why, but his expectations were overridden by a bizarre dawning compulsion, and he knew that he was going to buy one of her grandfather clocks. They did look quite splendid, lined up as dutiful sentries in sartorial spiffiness in a perfect row. He was tempted to salute. And then he did. That made her laugh out loud, so he did, too.
Then she said, quietly, “I wonder how Ryan’s dealing with this. It can’t be easy.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to either of them yet.”
Alex saw that she found the admission curious.
“They’re both working,” he explained. Having seen for himself that the bridge was completely gone, he thought he’d visit Val, find out how she was handling all this, suss out if she knew anything. But he saw no reason to share that thought with this other young woman.
Tara directed her gaze to the tall clocks. “So, what do you think? Do you wanna buy a watch?” she asked, laughing.
Alex said, “Sure. Maybe. I dunno.” He was spellbound. Not a good time to dicker.
The River Burns Page 22
