The River Burns

by Trevor Ferguson

  The trucker started to say something several times but no coherent word emerged. He finished with another elaborate shrug. Then he said, “Your glasses, they’re like mirrors.”

  “Look, Samad,” Ryan confided, “I really want to thank you for respecting me. You’re an honest man. You’ve helped me out a lot today. Thanks.”

  He turned to leave. Samad called him back and Ryan faced him again, hands still on his hips.

  “I didn’t tell you anything!” Samad protested.

  “You didn’t deny that it was Denny and André, Samad. I want you to know how much I appreciate that.” He walked towards his car.

  “Wait a minute!”

  Ryan kept walking.

  “Hey, wait a minute! Wait! Ryan! I didn’t tell you anything! I didn’t do it, Ryan! None of us did! We didn’t burn the bridge. It wasn’t me! It wasn’t us! It’s just a rumour! I swear it!”

  Ryan didn’t salute him exactly, but he touched the fingertips of his right hand to the peak of his cap as he climbed back into his vehicle. Samad looked crestfallen, holding his hands out, palms up, as though imploring him to listen to reason as the policeman drove off. He looked as though he was ready to drop to his knees.

  Driving, Ryan checked his watch, wondering how this would time out. His next stop was at the home of André Gervais, as he expected that the man was not the first on Samad’s call list. With luck, his arrival might be equally unexpected. Ryan was surprised when, minutes later, he strolled up André’s walk to find him also working hard during his off-hours. A busy bunch of guys. André was hunched over a series of loose pipes, wearing a welder’s mask and holding a blowtorch.

  André watched him walk up, immobile except to push the hinged mask onto the top of his head, then nodding when Ryan got close. This time the policeman left his sunglasses in the car, judging that that ploy wouldn’t work on this man, and anyway the sun was setting lower in the hills and trees.

  “Hey, André.” Ryan chose to speak French. “I guess you better put that down. I wouldn’t want to get the wrong impression.”

  André turned off the torch and removed the mask altogether, which he tucked under an arm. “Putting in a backyard faucet, for the pool.”

  “You have a pool?”

  “Aboveground. A crappy vinyl thing. What’s up, Ry?”

  “I talked to Denny first, André. I owed him the courtesy, you understand. You know who I talked to second.”

  André didn’t. “Who?” he asked.

  “Your weakest link.”

  Rising from his crouch on sore knees took an effort for the large man. “Okay. Do you want to make sense anytime soon?”

  Ryan sighed, moved to his left, then back. “Four of you were out that night. Must’ve been. One guy to drive the truck. One guy on the pump, another on the hose. Denny was alone on the town side, so he struck the match. That makes four. You. Samad. Denny. I’m guessing Xavier. Four. Right?”

  Slowly, feeling some aches and pains, André bent over and picked up his torch-ignition device.

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Ry. Just like everybody else in town. You shouldn’t listen to idle talk like that. Dumb-ass gossip is what that is.”

  “You’ll agree with me on this point, André. I was right to go to Samad before you. You’re tougher, no question. But help your friend out here. If it wasn’t Xavier, just say so.” He looked right at him, gauging his reaction. “So Xavier was the fourth. I thought so. Thanks.”

  “I didn’t say that,” André insisted.

  “You didn’t have to. You didn’t say it wasn’t him.”

  “How am I supposed to know? I know nothing about it.”

  Ryan already turned to leave but now, confronted by what he assumed to be a lie, retraced his steps. “Samad drove the truck. Woof. You sprayed with the hose. Woof. Xavier ran the pump. Woof. Denny lit the match. Woof. How am I doing, André? Close enough maybe? Am I still barking up the wrong tree?”

  André turned his torch back on and snapped the flint. The torch ignited and between them that bright light burned and they listened to the wind of its velocity. This time Ryan was the one to nod to the other as he took his leave.

  ■ ■ ■

  Denny was sitting on his porch awhile, sipping beer, silent and brooding as the evening settled. Val ventured out once, drying a salad bowl in her hands.

  “I just noticed the calendar. You have a game tonight. Did you forget?”

  He looked up only briefly. “They can play without me sometimes,” he said.

  She observed him closely. “I’ll remember that in the future,” she said.

  She went back inside and later called in the kids who were playing in the front yard where they caught more of the late-evening light. Momentarily, Boy-Dan came around to the back and repeatedly pounded a ball into his outfielder’s mitt, as he was allowed to stay up later than the other two who took their baths first. Denny resisted the urge to ask him to be quiet, but Boy-Dan seemed to get the message anyway and quit the mitt pounding, and after a few minutes he went inside without being asked.

  Darkness enveloped the yard when Valérie came back out. “Company,” she announced.

  He was expecting cops. “Who?” he asked.

  “Hickory, Dickory, and Dock, who else? Do you have beer out here?”

  He gazed back at her without comprehension.

  “Your fucking partners in crime. They’re coming around the side.”

  The remark was the first they shared concerning the fire. Ryan warned her to make a point of knowing nothing, and she kept her own counsel, and Denny was scared to death that she might confront him, for then what would he say? The truth? A lie? Either recourse seemed fraught with grievance and risk.

  Denny held a deep breath, then released it slowly. He glanced at her off and on. For as long as he knew Val, she possessed a foul tongue. They went to the same schools together, but being three grades apart kept them from meeting until they were both out in the world. He met her, finally, over a pool table, and seven of the first nine syllables out of her mouth were curse words. He didn’t know it back then but she was going through a hard time. Her father, a logger, left the family home. She was an adult by then but three years later, after they’d been married for a year and a half, she told him that she was the reason her dad left. She kicked him out, leaving the house to her and her mom. And then she married Denny, leaving her mom on her own, which caused a steady stream of guilt to flow for some time, before her mother moved back to another logging town where her sister was widowed and her mom and aunt lived in houses side by side across from the house where they were raised. “Happy,” Val once said, “as they can be. Two clams.” Which did not mean, she explained to Denny, that they were as happy as they should be.

  He asked her then if she was happy. She answered that a lot of people have thought a great deal about how much a child inherits from the parents, “psychological and DNA and stuff like that,” and that she had a mean streak in her that she got from her dad, “although he wasn’t so bad really, he just talked like a sailor for no reason and everything that came out of his mouth was a complaint. I got tired of him. I probably wouldn’t kick him out today, now that I’m older, wiser, but even today I’d just ignore him.” And she confided that she had a sad streak in her that she got from her mom, “but I don’t get depressed like her, hardly ever, her problem is chemical and I don’t have that.” Then she said that a happy streak that ran through her was uniquely her own, she couldn’t say where it came from, but that he could rely on it because she had throughout her life so far and never been let down.

  “Yeah,” he told her on the porch. “I got beer.”

  Val closed the door behind her quietly as she went in, to not wake the kids upstairs as André, Samad, and Xavier came around the side of the house. Xavier went to the trouble of offering his hand, which was odd, alth
ough Denny shook it, while the other two made themselves comfortable on porch chairs and cracked open beers. Xavier then went down to the lawn below them and sat on a picnic table bench, facing out at them from the table, using the edge of the tabletop as a backrest. He chugged from his bottle.

  “We weren’t supposed to meet up, remember?” Denny reminded the three.

  “We can’t pretend we’re not friends,” André said.

  “That’s more suspicious,” Samad concurred.

  “People already know we’re friends,” André said.

  “I know,” Denny said. He sipped. “Yeah. Even Samad knows that much.”

  “What do you mean, even Samad?” asked Samad.

  “Give him a break, Denny. Your brother skinned him alive tonight.”

  Denny looked up, curious about this turn. Xavier nodded to confirm that the comment was true.

  “I’m not used to being interrogated,” Samad complained.

  “Interrogated!” Xavier quietly scoffed, and took a long pull on his beer.

  The others weren’t laughing. “So what happened?” he asked. He held the neck of his bottle between two fingers.

  André seemed angry. “Don’t underestimate your brother, Den.”

  “I don’t,” Denny assured him.

  “He sold me down the river,” Xavier maintained.

  “Who did?” Denny asked.

  “I did,” André admitted.

  “Wait a minute,” Denny said. “You—”

  “Basically, he made me say the fourth guy with us was Xavier. He gave me no choice. Either I said that or I said nothing. So I said nothing. Which gave us all away. I never knew he was such a hard-ass shit, your brother.”

  Denny waited for more, but nothing further was forthcoming, so he assessed what they’d told him. Took a deep breath.

  “He’s going to fuck us over, Denny,” André said with conviction.

  “He buttered me up,” Samad confessed. “Then he barbecued my butt.”

  “My brother’s not so tough.”

  “Rein him in, Denny. Rein him in or we’re screwed.”

  “I got screwed,” Xavier commented, “by fucking Samad and André, my amigos.” He chugged his beer. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when he talks to people who don’t like me.”

  “Guys, you’re missing the point,” Denny contended. “Ryan helped us out.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Samad decreed, an assertive statement for him. “My butt he barbecued. He stuck a thermometer up my ass to make sure I got done to perfection.”

  “For God’s sake, Denny, we could do hard time for this if your brother doesn’t let up.”

  “Actually, he was doing us a favour,” Denny maintained.

  “He wasn’t doing me no favours,” lamented Samad.

  “Especially you, Samad. He was pointing out our flaws. Especially yours. Xavier, didn’t he talk to you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “That bothers me.”

  “What do you mean, our flaws?” André asked him.

  “Ryan’s not on the case. The SQ is taking this one up, because the bridge was so valuable. That makes it a major crime. When the property damage is that high, the SQ has to come in, the local cops bug out.”

  Denny drank from his bottle and for the first time that evening, the beer tasted good. He knew that he was figuring something out. He was guessing that he finally had help, and was surprised by the source of that assistance.

  “Oh shit,” André said.

  “Provincial Police,” Samad said. “I will be a Butterball.”

  “You guys don’t get it,” Denny stressed. “Ryan showed us what to do.”

  “He did not indicate no such thing like that to me,” Samad insisted. “You are the one who does not get this.” For the first time he shouted, “He spread butter on my ass. Do you get that, Denny?”

  Probably Valérie was listening all along. In any case, she poked her head out to say, “You will not raise your voices. My kids are trying to sleep. They will not hear you talking because you’re going to be quiet. The next man who raises his voice goes home.” Not waiting around for anyone’s acquiescence, she shut the door.

  Samad apologized to Denny. “Sorry, man. But he did not help me out.”

  Xavier seemed to understand. He drew himself in from his sprawl on the bench and sat up straight. He noted, “He has to cover his own ass.”

  “Of course he does,” Denny agreed.

  André seemed to draw an understanding as well. “I can handle the SQ, but Samad . . . ?” He let his voice trail off.

  Denny and Xavier nodded in concurrence.

  “What about Samad?” Samad inquired. “I can handle SQ.”

  Denny tapped the base of his beer bottle against Samad’s thigh. “You’re too nice a guy, Samad. You have no experience at being a lying shit at heart, not like the rest of us. So handle this,” he instructed him. “An SQ cop interrogates you, asks you a question, you say, ‘I wanna talk to my lawyer first.’”

  Samad looked around at his friends. “We got lawyers now? Who?”

  “I don’t know who,” Denny fumed. “Do I look like somebody who knows lawyers?”

  “So how come Ryan never talked to me?” Xavier wondered.

  “He knows you were with us,” added André.

  “Thanks to you,” Xavier reiterated.

  André got mad but managed to keep his voice down even as his resentment leaked out. “I told him sweet fuck all but it didn’t matter. Tell him nothing, it’s still like you gave away the password to your online bank account.”

  “The point is,” Denny intervened, feeling hopeful for the first time in a couple of days. He was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and hoping that it wasn’t a train. “Everybody says sweet fuck all from now on. If the SQ claim that they got us on video, they’re lying. Whatever line they string you, it’s not live bait, no. Don’t fall for it. You had no idea what you were up against before. Now you do.”

  “How come?” Samad needed this explained.

  “Because my brother gave you a dry run, Samad. He’s not investigating the case. It’s not his case. He gave you a taste of what it will be like, a chance to do better next time. So do better next time. What will you say?”

  Samad thought it over. “I want to talk to my lawyer first. A lawyer I don’t have, but maybe I will have one soon.”

  “Not that last part. The first part is fine.”

  “I don’t sound guilty?”

  “Do you want your ass barbecued or not?” Denny pressed him.

  “Not.”

  “Good. If a cop says you sound guilty because you want a lawyer, tell him that people in town are telling lies about you. You need to protect yourself against those rumours and lies.”

  “What rumours? What lies?” Xavier asked him, assuming the role of an officer.

  “I want only to see my lawyer. First, I want to find one, then I want to go see him.”

  “Same goes for everybody,” Denny said. “But look, there’s one more mistake you made tonight. Do you know what it is?”

  No one had a clue.

  “Ryan questioned two of you, and right after that you three came running over here to see me, putting the four of us together. Don’t do that, okay? When the SQ calls, and they will, don’t call each other up, and for fuck’s sakes don’t run to me. If it was the SQ who talked to you tonight, and they didn’t know who the fourth man was, or the third, or the second, they would know now, just by following one of you here and seeing who else showed up. Remember, we don’t know who the SQ will talk to first, second, or third. No contact afterwards, until we see each other on the job, like usual. Okay?”

  They agreed that next time they would do things properly.

  In close unison, the three vis
itors polished off their beers and this time each shook Denny’s hand. Xavier and André nudged his shoulder, and Samad shared a knuckle bump with him. When it seemed that they might take too long, Valérie came out onto the porch, and they said their final good-byes to her as well and went on their way. Val sat in a chair close to her husband.

  The night air was lovely, the darkness pervasive now.

  They sat together in silence awhile.

  “Kids down?” Denny asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she answered. “Denny,” she started, but her impetus stalled, and she waited awhile.

  Denny spoke next. He braved the threshold he’d been unwilling to cross, to include her. “I’m sorry about this, you know.”

  “Are you? Does it do any good, being sorry?”

  He didn’t know what to make of the question, and felt his defences rising. So he gave it time to let a visceral reaction pass.

  “At this point, Denny,” she went on, “regret doesn’t mean much. I might lose my husband to a prison cell. My children will be without their father for who knows how long. With no income, the house will be gone, and then what?”

  “Val, I don’t think that—” He meant to say that he did not believe that things would come to that, but she stopped him short.

  “That’s right. You don’t think. You believe that everything will work out in the end. Well, you know, I’ve always loved you for your optimism, Denny. But I never thought I was married to a criminal, and now, apparently, I am.”

  “Val.”

  “I hate this, Denny.” She spoke quietly. “Do you get that? Are you hearing me? We’re in danger now. We’re in big fucking trouble. No matter what you intended, or what you expected, it wasn’t this, but this, this is what we’ve got.”

  “Val. Listen.”

  “No, Denny. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what you want to say. Just fix this. Somehow, some way, before our lives get washed down the drain, fix this. Do what you have to do, but for fuck’s sake, fix this.”

  A great breath expired from her, and she slumped forward to let it just go, to allow her grievances and pain and worry to slide loose. She just couldn’t bear it anymore, this descent into an oblivion that she foresaw as inevitable but which Denny was denying as even remotely possible. In this matter, she knew she was right and that he was misguided. She wanted to get him to face reality or everything they both cared about would be forever lost. All that might be lost anyway.