by Mick Lowe
“Heya, Sparky. Goin’ anywhere later?”
At first he couldn’t believe his eyes and ears, but there was no doubt he was staring into the familiar green eyes of Jo Ann Winters. Of course she looked different now—her chestnut-coloured hair was longer and half-hidden beneath a peasant-style headscarf, except for the few strands that had escaped and fallen around her shoulders. Her eyes were half hidden, especially in the dim light of the nightclub, behind a pair of rose-coloured, rectangular granny glasses, and she was clad in denim from head to toe in a funky workshirt and a long skirt that nearly touched the floor—but it was unmistakeably her, and Jake reached out for her instinctively, partly because she looked so good and partly to steady himself because he felt his knees buckling in the welter of emotion, the heat of the crowd and the steady throbbing of the kick drum and bass guitar.
She caught him, and pulled him close.
“Whoa, Jake! Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine … Just surprised, is all …” He held her out at arm’s length for a better look. “You look great! Different, but great …”
“You don’t look so bad yourself there, sailor,” and there was the same teasing laugh and mischief behind the eyes that still made him feel weak in the knees. It always reminded Jake of a line he’d picked up from a Russian poet in some half-forgotten but wholly disliked high school lit class: Women who laugh and remind us that we are men …
They stayed that way, swaying together to the music, clinging to one another, until after last call and the house lights went up, forcing them abruptly out of their trance-like state.
They retreated together to Jake’s place, which they had all to themselves because Foley was out for the evening. Jo Ann made a beeline for the living room stereo Jake shared with Foley, sorting through their LP collection, which was housed in a plastic milk crate. She quickly selected one, and turned to show it to Jake. He saw she was holding up Freewheelin’.
“Remember when you first heard this one?”
“Oh yeah, of course.” Jake settled into an armchair. How could he ever forget? Hard to believe it had only been just over a year ago—so much had happened since! Some of it good, some of it not so much …
Jake forced himself to shake off the memories to focus on the here and now and the fact that Jo Ann was here, in his living room, as tall and willowy as ever.
She crossed the room to sit astride the wooden arms of his chair, hitching up her long skirt, facing him—her legs were long enough that she could sit comfortably in Jake’s lap with her feet touching the floor, effectively pinning him into the chair. She reached into the breast pocket of her denim workshirt and extracted what looked like a skinny, hand-rolled cigarette.
“Ever smoked dope, Jake?” And there was that mischievous grin.
“Uh, no, but it looks like I’m about to …”
“Wanna try it?”
“Sure, why not?”
Jo Ann inserted the skinny cigarette into her mouth, wetting it between her lips in the most unmistakably suggestive gesture Jake had ever seen in such close quarters. He was instantly aroused.
She pulled the moistened joint from her lips and placed the tip of it in her mouth before lighting it; an acrid, skunky smell filled the close space between them, and for Jake the universe had suddenly shrunk to the dimension of this one time and space, this one chair. At the same time he felt self-conscious because of his erection, and overcome by shyness. He hoped she wouldn’t feel it.
Jo Ann sucked deeply on the burning joint before grasping it between her thumb and forefinger and passing it over to Jake. At the same time she had begun to rock back and forth over Jake’s crotch. She was feeling it, all right.
Jake inhaled on the joint and quickly began to choke on the unfamiliar, acrid taste of the stuff. He did his best to hold it in, but he soon began to sputter and cough, the hot smoke billowing right back out through his mouth and nose.
Jo Ann had a hearty laugh at his expense. “Oh no, Jake! You just blew your toke! What a waste!”
Once again she took a deep drag off the joint, closing her eyelids against the acrid smoke, before passing it back to him.
This time he was more cautious, taking care to temper the smoke by inhaling cool air around it, and this time he succeeded in pulling the marijuana smoke—or most of it—deep into his lungs. He held his breath as best he could before exhaling slowly. He waited for some special sensation but, disappointingly, he felt none.
“I don’t feel anything, Jo. Maybe this stuff isn’t that good …”
“Shh, Jake, don’t be silly.” She touched his lips with a cautionary upraised forefinger. “This is the very best dope to be found anywhere on campus …”
“Campus! Where—What campus? Where have you been, Jo?”
She answered with a shrug. “Ryerson, in Toronto. After Daddy died, Mom never really got over it. She passed away just a few months later … They left me some money for tuition, so after I graduated high school I enrolled at Rye High.”
“What did you study down there?”
“Nightlife on Yonge Street mainly, but I chose Photography as a major.”
“Sorry ’bout your mom.” He hadn’t heard a thing. Normally it was his mother who read the obits and kept him informed, but they’d all been so caught up in the raids …
“Thanks. With both my folks gone and being dumped by my boyfriend, there wasn’t really anything keeping me in Sudbury, so I decided to split …”
“What? Oh, yeah …” Although she was sitting on top of him it suddenly felt as if Jo Ann was talking over some grand distance, and in a language that he didn’t immediately understand. He couldn’t take his eyes or mind off the buttons on Jo Ann’s shirtfront, now mere inches away from his face. The top two were unbuttoned, exposing her throat and, tantalizingly, the top of her chest. What, he wondered, would happen if he reached up to unbutton more of them? It was something that part of him longed—even ached—to do, but also something another part of him deemed an impossibly bold gesture.
Finally her words sank in—the part about the boyfriend. Jake felt he must say something. He reddened in confusion, his inward desires at odds with the discomfort of being called out so, and of having caused her so much pain …
“Oh, yeah, about that … I didn’t mean to dump you Jo, really I didn’t, but it was just that when that thing with Ben happened I …” his voice trailed off. He had gone as far as he dared.
“Shhh, Jake, it’s okay, baby …” Jo Ann assumed he was talking about their bizarre parking episode, that night at the slag pouring. She plucked the reefer from her mouth and put it right back in between her lips lit end in first, somewhat to Jake’s alarm. Then she brought her face close to his, leaning forward while gently cradling his head in her hands. “It’s okay, Jake, let’s get you stoned … Here, open your mouth …”
He did as instructed, more confused now than ever, and she blew a stream of red-hot marijuana smoke directly into his mouth. It burned the back of his throat, but Jake gulped back as much of it as he could.
“That’s called shotgunning,” she informed him after she quickly removed the joint from her mouth.
Jake could only nod his head in wordless wonder. His head was spinning at all that was happening, at the nearness of her, at the thought of those tantalizing buttons.
“You—you’ve changed, Jo.”
She laughed lightly. “So have you! But yeah, it was good to get away, see different things. There’s a lot happening out there, Jake …”
Jo Ann was continuing to rock back and forth over his crotch in time with the Dylan songs on the album, and Jake felt a kind of pink, happy glow wash over himself. At last he reached up for her buttons, which he unfastened one by one. She did nothing to stop him, only looking down to watch and, if anything, grinding herself across his lap even more ardently.
He stopped after four or five buttons, and the shirtfront parted of its own accord, revealing Jo Ann’s breasts. They weren’t
very large, but the sight still took his breath away, and he reached up to cup them gently in his hands. His work-roughened hands against the warm, rounded smoothness of her gave her goosebumps and he could feel her shiver as she pressed down on him even harder, riding him now ever faster. He gently tweaked her nipples between his thumb and forefingers and she grinned almost half-apologetically at him. “Still not much there, eh Jake? But you know what they always say—More than a handful’s a waste!”
He pulled her to him then and stood up. She wrapped her legs around him and somehow he managed to get them into the bedroom, unsteady as he was with the room starting to spin and the sudden onrushing unsteadiness of the dope washing over him. He stumbled into the next room and they fell awkwardly together onto the softness of the bed, which struck Jake as hilariously funny somehow … Jo Ann was laughing, too, as they landed, but she still managed to land on top of Jake, and he just laid back and watched and felt what he felt as she opened his shirt and pants and climbed up on him before guiding him gently but surely inside her.
“You—you’ve done this before!” It was both a sudden epiphany and a statement.
She had removed the granny glasses and she looked him straight in the eyes, with a sober, thoughtful expression as she moved against him. “Maybe,” she smiled shyly. And that was all the talking they did, communicating instead by caress and steady, tender wide-eyed gaze, and by touch as his sandpaper-rough hands scraped against the smooth, lean curving roundness of her, arousing shivers and shakes wherever they touched and wherever they wanted in their wandering wanton way. Sandpaper over satin … She was so wonderfully responsive to him, so lean and tall and lithe that her nerve ends must be very near the surface, Jake realized, in what was his last coherent thought before he was thrusting up into her there! and there! and, oh Lord there! and he was utterly spent, spasmed out and breathless with exertion and wordless wonder.
“Oh Jo Ann, I’ve missed you so,” he told her finally after he’d caught his breath.
“I never forgot you, either, Jake,” she confided, looking deep into his eyes.
Foley positively beamed at them the next morning when he found them both at the kitchen table, still bathed in the morning-after afterglow that was a telltale sign to Gilpin.
“Hey, Jake! Good night?” he grinned at his youthful roommate.
“Not bad,” Jake deadpanned, barely suppressing the urge to wink, before catching himself. “Uh, Foley, this is Jo Ann Winters. Jo Ann, this is my roommate, Foley Gilpin.” Such formal introductions were rare among Sudbury’s working-class men, who usually regarded them as both pretentious and unnecessary. That it was volunteered now by Jake was both an earnest sign of the affection he felt for both Foley and Jo Ann and a good omen.
Gilpin poured himself a coffee and pulled up a chair to join Jake and Jo Ann at the table.
Jo Ann smiled shyly at Gilpin. “So”, she began, “Jake tells me you’re a reporter … Who do you work for?”
“The Globe and Mail in Toronto, mainly. I do a bit of freelance work for them.”
“Foley’s a real veteran,” Jake interjected. “Big-time American papers, investigator, and everything.”
“Really!” Jo Ann seemed impressed, and then became pensive. “How odd …”
“Why odd?” queried Gilpin.
“Because I had a visit from an investigator just yesterday …”
“About what, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“He was an insurance investigator, interested in the way my daddy died …”
“Oh?” Gilpin looked over at Jake, who now took a sudden interest in the conversation.
“But that was almost a year ago now, Jo. I would’ve thought all that would’ve been settled long ago …”
“Oh, it was … The insurance company paid out on Daddy’s policy just a few months after it happened … Of course, Mommy passed not long after that, so most of the money came to me …”
“So I don’t get it,” Gilpin frowned. “What’s left to investigate?”
Jo Ann shrugged. “Well, all I know is this investigator told me that new information has come to light …”
“What sort of new information?” Gilpin pressed.
“Oh, some kind of new eyewitness to what happened,” replied Jo Ann. “Apparently he claims it wasn’t an accident, after all.”
“Not an accident!” Jake exclaimed. “But what else could it have been?”
Jo Ann shrugged once again, wide-eyed in disbelief. “Now they’re saying that maybe Daddy was pushed in front of that bus …”
“But who’d want to do such a thing?” Jake wondered. “Your dad was such a mild-mannered guy …”
“I know,” agreed Jo Ann. “It makes no sense …”
Gilpin attempted to remain nonchalant, but he couldn’t resist the urge to shoot a meaningful glance at Jake before posing his next question. “Did they say who this new witness was?”
“Yes. Apparently it was the guy who was driving the bus …”
33
Summer in the City
The early months of that summer just zoomed by, with Jake preoccupied by a new wrinkle at work, and Jo Ann settling in to her new summer job slinging beer at the Coulson. No matter what, they remained inseparable, with Jo Ann becoming more and more of a fixture at the apartment Jake shared with Foley. Fortunately they all got along—Foley soon came to enjoy Jo Ann’s company almost as much as he did Jake’s. They were both such strapping, healthy-looking youngsters, that, it sometimes seemed to Foley, they might have come from another planet. They were, in fact, the product of several generations of Sudbury inbreeding that had resulted from company strictures on hiring—strict height and weight requirements were rigorously enforced—with the result that the residents of the Nickel Range tended to be taller and more athletic than elsewhere, or so it seemed to Foley. Never in his life had he felt like such a short person as he did here, though at five nine he was at least of average height. Yet whenever he went out in public in Sudbury he was invariably the shortest man in the room.
For Jake the early weeks of that summer went by in a blur because of a new challenge that was presented to him out at Frood—induction into the mine’s rescue team. An elite group handpicked from among a group of volunteers, Mine Rescue team members were schooled in the basics of a host of professions, blending the skills of firefighters with hard rock mining, and even those of a paramedic. They were taught how to use highly specialized equipment like Scott Air-Paks—a self-contained breathing apparatus that featured pressurized oxygen pumped into a tight-fitting helmet. The gear was bulky, heavy and not overly comfortable, but it allowed Mine Rescue to safely enter dangerous areas of a mine where a fire had consumed all the oxygen or where a failure in the ventilation system had left pockets of dead—and potentially lethal—air. Such emergencies were exceedingly rare, but Jake and his fellow team members were capable of daring, and at times dangerous, rescue missions that could save the life of a fellow miner.
The training itself was physically gruelling, and Jake was ordered to climb a dizzying series of ladders, often carrying great weight, over daunting vertical distances. Besides the considerable weight of the miner’s daily garb there was also the bulky Air Pak, and its air hose, valves and helmet. And then there was the additional weight strapped to him to simulate the dead weight of an inanimate body being hauled through a smoke-clogged drift or up ladders in a manway.
But Jake relished the challenge and the camaraderie of the team. No little prestige attached to joining an elite group of first responders trained to save lives in the most hostile environment imaginable. Morale and skill was kept razor sharp by a series of annual contests pitting Mine Rescue teams against one another, first within Inco and then against the best teams from other mining companies across Northern Ontario.
It all meant he often arrived home after work utterly exhausted, but Jake knew that his father and uncles, veteran miners all, were immensely proud that he had made it onto the Mine Rescue t
eam.
Besides, there was always the distinct possibility that Jake might some day save a life with his newly won skills. That just such an opportunity would present itself so soon, and so close to home, Jake never imagined.
34
To Catch a Killer (II)
Foley discovered the transit bus drivers were out on strike—they had been organized by Mine Mill into Local 902—which made his job just that much easier. He approached the picket line, identified himself as a reporter, and asked for the picket captain. He was waved toward a tallish, portly bespectacled man wearing a white t-shirt that had the words “Mine Mill and Proud” emblazoned in blue on the back. Once again Foley identified himself, and he began to chat up the strike leader. After what he hoped was an interval of small talk sufficient to disguise his true interest, Foley asked casually whether the driver who’d been involved in that unfortunate accident downtown last summer happened to be out on picket duty that day?
The picket captain nodded, and pointed Gilpin toward yet another striker. Gilpin fished out his notepad and approached the man, who solemnly affirmed that he was indeed the driver Gilpin was seeking.
The reporter dissembled, hoping once again to disguise his true purpose, and asked the bus driver if they could sit down together and discuss the unfortunate accident over coffee in a more private setting. Gus’s Restaurant, perhaps?
Gus’s was a more private venue than a picket line, but only just. The popular coffee shop was a beehive of activity at lunch hour. With its location just up Elm Street from the courthouse—an interval that was heavily lined with law offices—Gus’s was often packed with the city’s most notorious gossips: its lawyers. The interior layout did little to enhance privacy, with a row of comfortable, low-sided booths running up the centre of the room. Foley and his interview subject slid comfortably into one such booth. It was an instant’s inattention to his surroundings that would nearly cost Gilpin his life.
