by John Farrow
“This is City Hall. It’s a public building!” The retired cop does irate quite well.
At last, the door opens an appropriate amount. The man is not taller than he is after all because he’s wearing elevated boots which lift him an extra four inches. He has a thin, pinched nose, scant fair hair that’s brushed forward in the front but sticks up in clumps at the back, and he’s sweaty. Very dark brown eyes. He’s wearing what Émile would describe as a kung fu or judo uniform—a thick short robe tied with a jute belt over white trousers that end at midcalf. While he still can’t figure out what could constitute the rhythms he overhead, he’s guessing they have something to do with martial arts. Behind the young man is a wall on which rain gear has been hung to dry, and behind that barrier lies an eerie silence. People are probably listening in, so he’s not going to get a full explanation easily.
“This is not City Hall,” the man informs him, his tone clipped, condescending, weary. “Maybe it used to be. Once upon a time. It is now privately owned.”
His emphasis on privately sounds like a slow incision.
“Ah. I see. Like for a judo studio, something like that?”
“If that satisfies your need to poke your nose in where it does not belong, then sure, something like that. Goodbye!”
“There aren’t any signs up,” Émile protests. “No advertising.”
“It’s a private building. Why do we need to advertise? The old City Hall name is inscribed above your head, but in stone, which is not easy to remove. Nor do we feel the slightest obligation to undertake the cost of doing that. Anyway, it’s part of the original look of the place, so we left it.”
“We?”
“We.”
“There’s a new City Hall, then. I need to find it. I have a dead dog.”
“I’m sorry about your dog.”
“It’s not my dog.”
“I’m no less sorry. For the dog. There’s no new City Hall. Years ago, long before you interrupted my afternoon, towns on this island were independent, each with its own City Hall. Since then, they’ve been amalgamated into one. By the province. Now there’s only one City Hall for the entire island and this is not it. Try North Head, but I’m really not sure and I am busy, so if you don’t mind.”
Whether he minds or not, the young man is closing the door on him.
“Kung fu?” Cinq-Mars asks. “Tai chi. Akido! Which is it?”
“Excuse me? It’s not any of those. Did you run over the dog?”
“It drowned. Karate!”
The man is still shaking his head.
“Bokator!” Cinq-Mars calls out. He wants to get this. “That’s from Cambodia. Choi Kwong-Do, that’s from Korea. Am I getting warmer at least?”
“We’re not a martial arts studio. Sir, I’m closing the door.”
“You’re not martial arts?”
“Sir, if you don’t leave, I’ll have you removed. Don’t knock on this door again. You are not welcome here. Do you understand? I’m trying to be polite. I could say this a different way, but you are not welcome here.”
“A different way. You mean the f word?”
He closes the door quite directly on Émile’s face. Rebuffed, Émile turns, and departs the stoop, miffed that he’s not guessed the activity inside, but now more curious than ever. “They’re not martial arts,” he explains to Sandra, forgetting that she possesses no reference to make sense of the comment. “And so much for island friendliness.”
“What? Who? Why should they be?”
“Friendly?”
“No, martial arts.”
“They pound around a lot and they’re private. They wear these skimpy robes with belts. They’re secretive, I’d say. Any guesses?”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Is this City Hall or not?”
“Not.” He starts the ignition. “I’m going to that general store again. I bet someone in there can tell me where to go.”
“I’m sure they won’t be the first or the last people to tell you where to go.”
Émile is too irritated to notice the ribbing.
“By the way, don’t be too quick to sully island friendliness,” Sandra advises him. “I’ve been sitting here reading license plates. Ontario. Nova Scotia. Rhode Island. New York. Even Quebec, and I don’t mean us. North Carolina. Michigan. Missouri. Can you believe that? Missouri. Here. On Grand Manan. So don’t blame unfriendly locals.”
This gives Cinq-Mars pause. People have come a long way, and from many different places, to make pounding noises not connected to martial arts. As the man said, it was none of his business, but in saying that, he might as well have waved a red flag before a bull. His vacation is cracking up to be all that he expected and yet challenging, as well. Nothing galvanizes his attention more than people behaving in a secretive, indeterminate way, especially if they’re on his doorstep, or he on theirs.
At the general store, Émile briefly waits for the cashier to become free. She seems an affable and mature woman, in her forties, whereas others nearby are quite young and might take the death of a dog to mandate either a maudlin or dramatic response. He need not have been that discriminating, for once he speaks to her, she promptly broadcasts the news to everyone within earshot, then proceeds to ask over a loudspeaker for a “Margaret” to come to the front of the store.
“Who’s Margaret?” Émile wants to know.
“A fisherman’s girlfriend,” he’s told. When he returns only a blank stare, she explains, “A bunch of them have black Labs.”
Margaret shows up and is told about the dog in the Jeep and immediately falls into a near panic. The very thing that Cinq-Mars was hoping to avoid. “Oh my God, it’s not Remington, is it? Is it Remington? Oh my God!”
She throws herself out the front door, running from car to car, so that Émile has to chase her down. He cautions her to take several deep breaths, and she does, clutching her chest, before he opens the hatch to his Jeep. “Easy, now.” This seems an impossible instruction for her, but once the hatch yawns wide, she relaxes.
“It’s not Rem. Rem’s a guy dog. This is a girl dog.”
“I explained that to the cashier, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
“It could be Alex Waite’s. He’s got a girl dog.” She’s digging under her apron, which is some bother, then her hands resurface with her mobile phone. Sandra entered the store with him and probably hasn’t noticed this kerfuffle, as she remains inside. He scans the windows for a sign of her, but she’s elsewhere, probably lost in the store’s vast hind room. “Alex,” the girl is saying into her phone, “it’s Margaret.” She is no Peg, this girl, no Maggie. “How’re you doing?”
She crosses her fingers while listening to her friend’s response.
“That’s good to hear. Do you know why?”
Émile hears the man on the other end ask why.
“Before I tell you that, how’s Sass doing?”
She’s doing fine, he says, but the young man is losing patience.
“Okay, that’s good. You know why? Because there’s an old guy here with a dead black Lab. Looking for its owner, yeah. It’s a girl dog, too. Like Sassie.”
Émile waits while she listens to a spiel, and adjusts to being referred to as an old guy. The girl’s expression grows sad. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’ll tell him. Okay. Yeah. That’s too bad, yeah. Yeah. You, too.”
She clicks off her phone.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” Émile repeats, encouraging her.
“The dog is Gadget. I know, a bit weird that name. Anyway, it’s Gadget, and she belongs to Pete Briscoe. He’s brokenhearted, my friend Alex says, because last night Pete was out fishing, only he wasn’t really fishing, he was just riding out the storm, but anyway he was out on his boat and at some point, Pete doesn’t know exactly when or what happened, but Gadget went missing. Off the boat. Into that wild sea. Alex says that Pete’s been bawling his eyes out ever since, that he was on the radio last night telling th
e other guys about it at sea and bawling his eyes out over the radio. He wanted to search along the shoreline. The guys were warning him off that because it was too damn dangerous and Gadget was either going to make it or she wasn’t. So I guess she wasn’t. Will you tell him? He doesn’t live far from here. You’ll probably have to wake him up like I did Alex—those guys had a rough night—though I’m sure he’ll appreciate that he can give Gadget a proper grave and that. You know what?”
She appears to be waiting for an answer. Émile asks, “What?”
“It’ll be better for Pete in the long run going out to sea knowing that Gadget’s not floating around out there somewhere. I sincerely do think so.”
Émile assures her that he will take the remains to Pete Briscoe if she will be kind enough to give him directions. “I’m only a tourist. I’ve got all the time in the world, so that’s good, but I don’t know my way around.”
Sandra chooses that moment to poke her head out from the massive carnival that is the general store. She’s only checking on his whereabouts, and pops back inside again.
“Lord God Almighty!” Margaret suddenly exclaims. “Can you believe this day?”
“Ah,” Cinq-Mars says, “ah, how so?”
“First Orrock dies!”
“Who’s Orrock?” he asks.
“Only the boss and owner of everything! He owns the fish plant, a lot of the boats. He owns the lobster pounds, the salmon-fishing farms, most of the property. I’m told the only thing he doesn’t own on the island are the banks, but he owns most of the money in them, so there you go. What difference does that make?”
“I see. But I thought this province was owned by the Irving family.”
“Sure it is. But what they don’t own around here, Orrock has a hand in.”
“And he’s passed away?”
“In his sleep. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Too young a man, was he?”
“Old enough. But he didn’t deserve to die in his sleep. He should’ve been drawn and quartered. He should’ve been cut up in slices and tossed over the side as fish bait.”
“I take your meaning. Not well liked.”
“Despised, pretty much. He wasn’t sliced up though. Reverend Lescavage, he’s like a shiny penny, a lucky one, the sweetest little guy, littler than me anyway, but he’s the one who gets sliced. Not in his sleep either, poor guy. At least I don’t think so. He didn’t get fed to the fishes, but apparently, apparently, it was gruesome what happened. The birds ate some of him. What a terrible way for a sweet man to die. Don’t you think so? And on our island! A murder!”
Émile Cinq-Mars is grateful that Sandra has stayed inside and is not hearing this, or she might pack them both up and leave. For his part, he has to acknowledge that as much as he is happy to be on the island, and his first impressions are positive, matters are starting to get interesting.
“Now you show up!” Margaret exclaims.
He’s momentarily confused. How could she possibly know who he is?
“With a dead dog!”
“Oh … right. Right. It’s been quite a day around here.”
“That’s three dyings all in the same little while!”
“Yes, I see,” Émile says, and is more glad than ever that his wife is not within earshot to glean that the dead appear to be falling out of the trees on Grand Manan. Then he has an idea. He’s amazed that he has solved the identity and the mystery of the dead dog by talking to the right person. This may be a place where any investigation into anything can be supported by local knowledge, rather than with what he’s put up with throughout his long career—namely, witness silence. So he says to Margaret, “Listen, I was just down to the old City Hall. To inquire about the dog and what to do. It seems to be occupied by an unusual group.”
“Oh them,” she says.
“Yeah, them,” he says, hopeful. “Do you know what they’re doing in there?”
“Well,” she says, and for the first time her voice falls to a whisper, as if a secret is about to be conveyed, “they think that we don’t know.”
“We,” Cinq-Mars repeats.
“Us. The people. The town. The whole island, for that matter.”
“But you do. Know.”
“Of course we do. We even have video.”
“Really.”
“Yup.”
“So what is it? What are they up to?”
“They’re learning how to fly. I kid you not. I do not yank your chain. Hey, let’s go back in. I’m supposed to be working.”
He walks with her across the parking lot.
“Margaret, ah, what do you mean, fly?”
“Not in airplanes,” she whispers with that conspiratorial inflection again, and adds once more, “We have video.”
“Who does?”
She shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody. It’s been shared, so maybe everybody by now. They sit on the floor and cross their legs and do their meditations and go “Ooommmm,” and nobody minds that so much. Each to their own, right? Then they go bouncing around on the floor, banging their thighs and knees on the floor trying to bounce up into the air. So they can learn to fly. They’re a bunch of loonies. They believe—we saw a group like them on the Internet—they think they’ll fly someday. You know, levitate and like that?”
“How do you think they’re doing?” His question is intended less to find out about a group of initiates, most likely spawned by an East Indian cult, than to discover how seriously the locals take them.
Margaret flashes a smile. “Let’s just say that nobody’s seen anybody hovering above the treetops just yet.”
They arrive at the store’s front steps at the same moment that Sandra is coming out. She’s accumulated more shopping bags and wears a rather sheepish grin. Émile laughs. “No matter,” he consoles her. “We’re on vacation. This helpful young lady is giving me directions to the home of the dog’s owner, then we’re off.”
ELEVEN
Madeleine Orrock slept during the day.
She made up the king-size bed in the guest room, a place she’s never slept in previously and rarely visited except as a child, and then only if she was looking for a place to hide. The moment her head hit the pillow she expected to be down for a fortnight. So much rolled back over her. Her father’s death, his inert body, their lives together, all that ancient history, as well as the sea she was tossed upon to arrive here, that bucking boat, a thrashing rain, and as she fell helplessly into slumber—one part mental fatigue to three parts physical exhaustion—a darkness befell her even as the sun rose higher in the sky outside her window. Too tired to get up and pull down the shade.
Whether it’s bad dreams or a festering hunger or sunlight that wakes her she doesn’t know, but her deep sleep lasts only three hours. Awakening, she considers staying right where she is, at least until dark, though she soon realizes she’s utterly famished. She recalls her miserable seasickness on the crossing. She’s been running on empty, or at least sleeping on empty.
She thinks about making herself lunch, but once up she’s too light-headed, perhaps too lazy. She locks up and strolls into town to hunt for a café. Invigorated by the sea air. Maddy was born on this rock, and the taste and smell of the air is every bit a part of her DNA she believes as is her gender, her height, her skin and bones. Assuming that her arrival is late enough, that the tourists won’t be jammed chockablock into the Compass Rose—she’s right on that score—Maddy settles into the cozy waterfront restaurant. She’s spacey after her half nap and from her lack of nourishment, so it takes a while to detect that others have noticed her presence.
While she might come across as just another tourist to the younger set, older folks among the staff and local customers have recognized her, her name whispered among them. Oh yes. This is part of living here. Being an Orrock, wearing what her father called a mantle but what she knows to be a yoke.
Yes, she wants to call out, not too loudly but quite firmly, I am an Orrock. My father’s daughter
. Live with it. God knows, I do.
Here anyway, on Grand Manan, she lives with it. Years away, she can forget what that’s like, but returning home it comes back upon her like an enemy’s sweet revenge.
She’s been enjoying her lunch. Now she can’t get out of there fast enough.
Spooked on the way home, as well. This time, eyes observe and access her, appraise her, dismiss her, evaluate, condemn, and despise her. Or simply remember her, even though she is incapable of remembering the people who do. That was always a problem for which she found no sympathy. Everybody on the island could identify her by name while she was acquainted with only a smattering of people. She always felt at a disadvantage and exposed, especially during times that are best enjoyed privately. Slipped on the ice? Everybody knew. Kissed a boy? The gossip might as well have been on television. Flew off the handle in a rage for no reason? Every person on the island psychoanalyzed her and most pegged her as either crazy or dim. No matter what she did or which way she turned or where she hid or how she conducted herself, well or badly, she was always on display, and here it is happening again. The added aspect now is that her family is dramatically the subject of conversation today: her father is dead.
Maddy enters the house and immediately recalls, with apprehension, what she has done so many times before, fleeing home even though it was the last place on earth she wanted to be. What a silly girl I am! Some things are so hard to outgrow.
Still. She feels sheltered behind that closed door. And recognizes an ancient reprobate of a feeling. On the one hand, she’s sheltered and safe. On the other, she’s trapped.
Like I’m my own endangered species.
She’s surprised, alarmed even, when someone rings the doorbell.
She hopes Simon Lescavage has come over at last, and if not she reminds herself to pay him a visit. He should be able to advise on what to do next with respect to the funeral arrangements. But it isn’t him. Plainclothes Mounties are on her doorstep. The two men show their badges.
