by Jay Forman
Joshua’s lodge was different from anything I’d seen in Webequie. It was a two-storey log house, not a cabin. A big house. It could almost pass for one of the family camps that wealthy industrialists had built in the Adirondacks in the early 1900s.
“How many bedrooms are there in there?”
“Six.”
“And you built it?” It was gorgeous. Just as nice as some of the smaller cottage mansions near my place in Port Hamlin.
“Not by myself.” Joshua left the bag of guts at the bottom of the wide stairs that led up to a covered verandah that ran the entire width of the front of the house.
He held one of the two tall wooden main doors open for me and I walked into the two-storey high reception room. At one end of the room was a stone fireplace that rose all the way up to the ceiling and disappeared into the roof. The large comfy couches in the room were so big that they weren’t dwarfed by the height of the ceiling. On the wall opposite to the fireplace was a large painting that screamed Blaze. It was of Eagle Rock, with the river beside it and the forest behind it. The realism was so strong that I could almost feel it pulling me into it.
In front of the painting was a long dining table, with equally long benches down either side of it. Two white men were sitting on the bench on the painting side of the table, facing us. Another white man was half leaning-half sitting on the back of one of the couches. He looked embarrassed about something. A fourth white man, wearing a Houston Astros baseball cap, was arguing with one of the two OPP officers who were standing with their backs to us. All of the white men were wearing camouflage pants and shirts, but the man wearing the Astros baseball cap stood out from the others because of his size. He was huge, in every direction. Lying on the table were enough rifles to arm a small militia.
“Listen, we been through all this with that dumb squaw you sent over here yesterday.” Astros Man sounded like an ignorant shit. “She checked all of these. They’re legal. Now give me back my passport and get yourself out of here. We paid a lot of American dollars to come up here for a good time. This ain’t exactly a good time I’m having.”
“Sir, as I explained …”
I recognized the voice of the older officer who’d talked to me the day before and guessed that the officer beside him was probably the younger one who’d made the stupid comment about Stuart possibly getting an appeal.
“Sarge!”
Everyone’s head tilted to look up at the balcony that circled the open room.
Two more OPP officers were standing up there and one of them was holding a handgun. A big handgun. “It was under the mattress in his room,” he said as he and his partner came down the open staircase.
The younger officer by the table stood up a little straighter and slowly reached around to unsnap the pouch that held his cuffs on the back of his belt. This was going to get interesting.
The officer from the balcony carefully laid the gun on the table and then put the clip of bullets beside it.
“You got no right—”
“You’re a fucking idiot, Chuck,” the man leaning against the back of the couch said quietly.
“I got a permit to carry that.”
“You were required to declare all your firearms when you crossed the border, sir.”
“And I did!”
“You didn’t declare the Magnum, though, did you?”
“Like I said, I got a permit to carry a concealed weapon. If I went telling everybody I had it, it wouldn’t be too concealed, now would it?”
“It’s a restricted weapon in Canada.”
“So? I got a permit.”
“In Texas. You crossed an international border.”
“Come on, we all know Canada’s basically the 51st state.”
“No, sir. Canada is an independent country and when you are in our country you must obey our laws. You are legally required to declare all firearms in your possession when you enter our country.”
“Good to know. I’ll make sure I do that next time I come up here. Now give us back our passports and go arrest a drunken Indian or something. We got some bear huntin’ to do.”
“We’ll be keeping your passport, sir.”
“Now that’s downright illegal. I’m an American citizen and I have rights!”
“Shut up, Chuck!” one of the men sitting at the table spit out.
“Your passport will be returned to you after you’ve appeared in court.”
“I ain’t going to no court.”
“Then you won’t be getting your passport back anytime soon. We’ll be seizing your Magnum as well.” The older officer started to fill out a form that I guessed was probably a Promise to Appear.
I thought it was highly unlikely that Astros Man would willingly put his signature on a legal document that guaranteed his appearance in a courtroom.
“What you gonna do? Give me a ticket? Like that’s gonna scare me? I’ll just get on Hank’s jet and head back home and there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.”
The officer put his small silver clipboard down on the table and nodded to his fellow officers. One of the officers who’d come downstairs with the Magnum slowly moved over to position himself behind Astros Man. The younger officer pulled his cuffs out of the pouch on his belt and walked over to join his colleague.
“You will be charged with possession of a restricted weapon. It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay …” The officer with the moustache started with words that I’d heard once before. Words that had changed my life forever. “… You have the right to telephone any lawyer you wish and—”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Astros Man screamed at the officer who had started to put the cuffs on him.
“… and 1-800-555-0451 will put you in touch with a Legal Aid duty council lawyer for free legal advice right now. Do you understand?”
“I understand that your ass is mine! You just wait until I call my embassy!”
“Do you wish to call a lawyer now?”
“You’re damn right I do!
“We’ll make arrangements for you to do that once we get you down to the station in Thunder Bay.” He immediately cautioned the Texan. “Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge? You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”
“You can’t do this to me!”
“It’s already been done, sir. You’re under arrest.”
Two officers escorted him out, one of either side of him holding his bent arms.
“Call Bob!” Astros Man yelled to his friends. “Tell him to get his ass up here.”
He continued to yell even when he was outside of the lodge.
“Either of you two have Bob’s number?” the man leaning on the couch asked his friends.
“I forget it.”
“My dog ate it.”
They all broke out in laughter.
“Let’s let him sweat it out for a bit. We can call Bob tonight.”
“Let’s go get some grub.” The man pushed himself up off the back of the couch and smiled at Joshua. “Sorry about that. Chuck’s a dickhead, but he’s married to my sister so I’m stuck with him. We still good for the bear hunt today?”
“Should be. My guys are out checking the stands right now. Take your time with breakfast and we’ll head out when you’re ready.”
The three Texans went through the open doorway beside Blaze’s painting.
“Thanks for the tip,” the OPP officer with the bushy moustache said as he came over to me.
“Do you think it’s the gun that shot Ross?”
“Could be.” He looked up at Joshua. “We’re going to have to take statements from your staff and your guests. How long are the guests booked to stay?”
“Four more days.”
“They won’t be leaving early. They’re not getting their passports back until we finish looking into this.”
“
Can we still do the bear hunt?”
“I don’t see why not,” he said as he walked to the doors. “The rest of their guns are legal.”
The doors had barely closed behind the OPP officers when they flew open again.
Marten, the boy with the amazing singing voice, burst into the room. “The bait barrel, down by the southern tree stand … ” he was gasping for breath and he had the same look of terror in his eyes that Mary had had when she first saw me in Sara’s classroom. “Joshua—”
“It’s okay, Marten. Calm down! It’s not that big a deal. I brought more bait down from the gathering camp.”
Marten shook his head so quickly that his face almost blurred. “That’s not it … oh shit, Joshua, I can’t tell for sure … the bears got into it … I … I think it’s Bernice in there.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The ravens told me when Joshua and the OPP officers made it to the barrel in the forest south of the lodge; they burst out of the trees like indicator minerals being blown out of a kimberlite pipe, then regrouped and started circling high overhead. God only knew what Joshua was seeing on the ground. I didn’t want to know.
The two teenage boys sitting on the log bench beside mine at the fire pit behind the lodge had seen what was in the barrel and they’d painted too clear a picture with their words. They’d been with Marten, wondered like him why there was a piece of cloth hanging out of one of the holes that had been punched through the side of the barrel. They helped him pry the top off the barrel.
Marten and another boy sat on the rear steps of the lodge. Marten stared at the ground. His friend shaved paper thin strips of bark, then wood, off of a birch branch with a small axe. He was the only boy who didn’t look upset; his body language sagged with boredom. When he looked at me I had to look away. He had predator’s eyes; light brown, so light they were almost amber.
I could see Webequie across the water through the trees and watched the NAPS plane land on the island and the pontoon boat eventually returning to the long dock carrying four NAPS officers.
Joshua came walking down the pathway from the south. He spoke briefly to the NAPS officers who were just starting down the path and then walked over to me.
“What’s he still doing here?” He jerked his head toward the boy who was sitting with Marten.
“I don’t know. Who is he?”
“Marten’s cousin from Wunnumin. I thought he’d gone home.”
When one of the OPP officers started walking toward Marten his cousin slunk away around the side of the lodge.
“I need to move. Feel like a walk?”
I nodded, stood up and followed him to a pathway that went east into the forest.
“Joshua!” We both turned around when Marlee yelled. “You can’t leave.”
“I can’t stay, either. I’m going to clear my head.”
The path narrowed as we got further into the forest. I gave Joshua all the silence he needed. Somewhere to our left water was running over rocks.
He pulled the little metal box out of the pouch on the front of his hoodie.
“Do you think you should be doing that now?”
“I can’t think of a better time to do it.” He lit a joint and held the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could. “They don’t know where Dad and River are,” he exhaled.
“They don’t think he—”
“I don’t know what they think. I don’t even know what I think anymore.”
“Was it Bernice?”
He took another long toke and nodded. “We weren’t sure at first. The … she … the carrion in the barrel was too torn up. I recognized her sweater. And her hand.”
Her hand? “How did you—”
“She lost two fingers on her left hand in an accident a couple of years ago.”
Oh God.
I knew he didn’t want to talk about what he’d seen, and I really didn’t want to hear any more about it, but I did want to know more about how they baited bears. Bernice hadn’t climbed into that barrel willingly. I went into travel writer mode and asked questions that were strictly for general information, not for information about what may have happened to Bernice. “I don’t know anything about hunting for bears. I thought you just sat in the woods and waited for them to walk by.”
“That’s old school. When people pay to do it they don’t want to have to wait that long. So we build tree stands—”
“What are those?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.” He veered right off the path and I followed him into the woods.
I started to recognize signs of humans having been in the area – branches broken, footprints, a place where something big had been dragged through the leaves on the ground.
“Look up,” Joshua said when we stopped by a tall pine tree.
Several branches had been cut off the trunk, leaving one side of the tree bare. Someone had hammered a series of short sections of pressure treated 4x4s into the trunk that could be used as steps to climb up the tree. High above us a wooden platform had been built around the trunk.
“That’s a tree stand. Two guys can sit up there. It keeps their human scent up high enough so that the bears won’t know they’re here.” He turned and pointed to a square of bush that had been cleared. Sitting in the middle of it was a metal barrel, like the metal oil drums I’d seen at the airport when I landed in Webequie. Wide holes had been punched into the sides of it. “We put the bait in there a couple of weeks before the hunters come and then keep an eye on the bear activity around them. A guy who owns a hunt lodge in northern Manitoba told me this was the best way to guarantee that your guests have a successful hunt. The bears smell the bait, come over to check it out, and then stick their paws through the holes to pull out the meat. It keeps their attention focused on the bait, not the hunters who are lining up their shots.”
It seemed kind of unfair to the bears. It wasn’t hunting. It was picking off unsuspecting victims. “How many of these have you got out here?”
“Six barrels, but only four of them are active right now. One for each hunter and their guide. I had to draw a map for the cops, showing them where all the barrels are. We spaced them out over a pretty wide area.”
“And the one this morning, the one Marten went to— ”
“It’s the furthest one from the lodge.”
A mighty convenient coincidence that Bernice had been put the barrel that was the furthest away from the lodge. “Who knew where the barrels were?”
“Dad didn’t, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t, I didn’t mean to—”
“Yeah, you did.”
He was right.
“My guys knew. And me.”
“The boy who was sitting with Marten, the one you said was from Wunnumin, did he know?” He’d given me the creeps, but that didn’t mean he’d done anything to Bernice.
“Joey? Yeah, he came over to work here getting the place ready for the Americans. Why?”
I couldn’t answer that question. It was just … something about him … the way he moved, the way he slowly, methodically, cut the thin strips off the birch branch, the way he looked at me. He’d been stripping me with his eyes with the same precision as his axe had been stripping the wood. “No reason. You seemed surprised to see him there, that’s all.”
“Oh, Joey’s full of surprises, none of them good.” He sucked hard on his joint; the weed burned down until the paper around it was burning his fingers, then tossed it on the ground and stepped on it. “I’ll take you back. Aileen should be here soon.”
The conversation was over. Joshua didn’t say another word until we made it back to the lodge. “Shit,” he said under his breath when he saw the ATV that Marlee was driving out of the woods south of the lodge.
She was towing a small trailer, followed by several officers walking in her wake.
It was easy to see the shape of the barrel that was on the trailer. Someone had draped a blue tarpaulin over it but there was no mistaking wh
at was under the plastic sheet.
The two First Nations boys who’d been on the log bench next to mine stood up and walked slowly beside the trailer. Three First Nations men came out of the lodge and joined the procession. Joshua stepped in beside them. I stayed back. I didn’t want to intrude on the funeral procession – even without clergy that’s exactly what it was.
While the police, both OPP and NAPS, carefully lifted the barrel onto the pontoon boat the boys and men who worked at the lodge stood silently on the dock.
I took a few steps to my right so I could clearly see the flotilla of boats on the river through the trees. None of them were running their engines. They were just floating in two lines, making an aisle across the water to Webequie that moved with the current. The pontoon boat slowly putted its way down the aisle.
Bernice may not have been anyone’s favourite, but the respect her community was showing her was moving.
I wanted to take a picture, but knew that my camera wouldn’t be able to capture the solemnity of the moment.
I wondered if Arthur was in one of the boats or if he even knew about what had happened to Bernice. Obviously, the police were going to want to talk to him. I pictured the quiet man I’d spoken to just the day before. He couldn’t have done something to Bernice, could he? What reason would he have had to hurt her?
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I heard a male voice snarl from somewhere behind the lodge.
I walked over to the side of the lodge and then slowly made my way along the wall to the back of the building, stopping just before the corner.
“We have to! I have to! Don’t you get it? What if whoever did that to Bernice is the same guy who killed the prospector?”
I so wanted to poke my head around the corner to see who was talking, but couldn’t risk being seen.
“So what?”
I didn’t have to look to know who’d said that. His voice was just as chilling as his stare.
“I won’t tell them about … you know, but I have to tell them that we moved the dead guy and the gun. What if we messed up some evidence or something?”
“You aren’t going to tell anyone anything.”
“What are you going to do to stop me? Cut me, too? I told you, I won’t tell them about—”
