Grave Concern (36 page)

“And you did,” said Kate, confused. “Walk it off, Nick, walk it off.”

“Yeah well, that's what I
wanted
to tell you. But it's not quite the truth.”

Oh. Kate sensed a depressing downward trend.

“Kate, we could positively identify the print because the foot that made the print wasn't far away, uh, attached to the body. Adult female, caught in a leg trap. Old man Jorgensen still running a trap line just outside the park. The cat bled to death trying to escape.”

Link himself looked like a boy who had lost his mother.

“Oh Link!” Kate threw her arms around him. “I'm so sorry!” A pungent alcohol haze still clung about him, and Kate only mildly regretted it when Nicholas pushed her away.

“Doesn't look good, Kate.”

Kate chose not to ask whether he meant the little cougars or her embrace. “Well, what about the little ones?”

“We just don't know,” said Nicholas. “They, or it, were nowhere to be seen, dead or alive. One in a zillion they'll survive, I'd say. The cubs grow up pretty quick and they're probably okay hunters at this point. But when you consider the wolf packs in the park, bears, traplines, mishaps, you name it …” Link trailed off.

“But there's hope,” Kate said, definitively. “Plus, if there are cubs, there must have been a daddy, right? There
is
hope, Nick.”

“Whatever,” said Nicholas, as sober now as the soberest judge alive.

Nicholas saw his chance. The barkeep had gone into the main room, the woman with the sandwich had also somehow dematerialized; not, however, before letting fly a loud fart that Nicholas could smell behind his door. All this none too soon. Nicholas's arms ached for release from the weight of the case. He scooted into the empty kitchen. If all else failed, he could throw the booze out through the large window propped open over the sink. Not ideal, as the whole mission would be thus nullified.

Luck held, however, and Nicholas spied a recess behind the very door that had hidden him, some kind of old closet where a bunch of junk was stashed. As a temporary measure, it would do. He covered the case of booze with what appeared to be an ancient army blanket, then straightened up and pulled his long bangs down over his face. A pack of cigarettes had been left on a counter, and he swiped it and tucked it in the sleeve of his T-shirt. He'd look like an idiot, but hopefully older. Took a deep breath and walked out into the tavern.

Nicholas moved quickly, trying to look confident. He made his way between some tables, looking for any exit. The front door was obvious, but impossible with the booze. He would have to keep looking. He circled around, dancing through the crowd packing the dance floor, and eventually found an unmarked door near the Men's and Ladies'. To his delight, it wasn't locked, and he darted through, only to find himself in a short hallway that led back into the kitchen. He'd done a complete circle, but with one difference. From this new vantage point, he saw it: the side exit he'd intuited was there, the working entrance of the establishment.

Within a minute, having retrieved the case of booze, Link walked proudly down the loading ramp onto a patch of grass and gravel between the hotel and storage shed. A dark figure approached. That would be Foxy, waiting to help him carry the booze to their bikes. How they would ride with the stuff was another thing altogether. But so far, so good. Link flicked the bangs off his face, in a gesture of pride and complicity.

The figure stopped. Shouted, “Hey, you! Where do you think you're going?”

Shit. Link nearly dropped the box — twelve bottles. But he hung on and froze. With any luck, he could charm his way out of this. The dark figure laughed — a familiar sound Link couldn't immediately place. “Shit, man. What's with the case?”

Nicholas let out his breath. “Jesus fuckin'
aaay
, J.P. Ya scared the shit out of me.” With a clunk, Nicholas put down the load it seemed he'd held for years. “Thought you were down in the city.”

J.P. play-punched Link's shoulder, lit up a cigarette. “Want one?”

Link shook his head.

J.P. talked around the cigarette. “Came up for a visit, man. Got a problem with that?”

Nicholas punched him back, which brought a smile to J.P.'s lips. “Hey, what's with the box?”

“Foxy and me're stockin' up for a party, a.k.a. ‘Chemistry Study Group.' No smoke around.”

J.P. tongued his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth. “Give you a hand?”

“Damn right. Fuckin' weighs a ton.”

J.P. bent down, coughed once or twice as he picked the box up. “Fuckin' hell. You're not kidding. Where's it goin'?”

“Fucked if I know. Foxy's supposed to have a brilliant idea. I'm guessing not. We only got our bikes.”

J.P. walked to the parking lot. “You're in luck,” he tossed back around the cigarette. “Kid's got wheels now, eh. I'll drive you back.”

“Fuckin' ay,” Nicholas said, feeling only envy. What he would give for a car.

Foxy appeared from nowhere, hissing something at them in the dark.

“What's that, Foxy? Can't hear you.”

“
Shhhhhhhh!
What the — ? That you, J.P.? What the hell you doin' here? Anyway,
shut up, both of you
. There's someone lurking 'round back, having a smoke. Could be watching.”

J.P. paid no attention, kept walking toward his vehicle, ash from his cigarette dropping on the box.

“Link, back pocket. Keys.”

Nick fished J.P.'s keys from his jeans and opened the trunk.

J.P. muscled the box in and wiped his hands on his pants. “Okay, guys. Where to?”

Cemetery work had a way of turning one's gaze on the past. Today, as Kate preened and pruned the gravesites with skill, she considered yet again the only past she knew much of anything about — her own. It seemed obvious that one's history, both long ago and recent, made up the sum total of one's
experience
. But what about one's very
existence
?
The food she'd eaten, the things she'd done and places she'd seen; the books she'd read, the people she'd known — were these, all together,
Kate
? Was there something of comfort or truth in the fact of J.P.'s having, if only briefly, set his sights on her? Was J.P., therefore, not just a passing experience but an indelible part of her being? And the corollary: Did her unrequited feelings nevertheless still reside in him, an irrevocable piece of who
he
was?

Such questions, Kate generally found, led to poetry. She thought of Yeats, with his ever-receding Maud Gonne. (“Maud Gone” they had called her in undergrad.) She thought of George Eliot and
Daniel Deronda
, in which the Someone-or-other had bitterly averred, “A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.” The Contessa's cynical summation had stuck in Kate's head the moment years ago when she'd first set eyes on the passage. She'd always thought,
What a sorry statement of things!
Now the Contessa's words seemed to Kate more than just sorry — terrifyingly acute.

“Gronk!”

For a second, Kate thought she was having a heart attack. That infernal, overgrown corvid was back, hopping about in a kind of tease. Kate felt a strong urge to grab its feathery neck and wring it out like a wet sweater. As it was, she could swear the odious fowl was taking pleasure in having tipped her from restful reflection hard into cold reality. Her pounding heart about to leap from her chest, Kate picked up a clump of dirt and threw it at the beast.

“Gronk, gronk!” it bellowed, and danced a little more.

“And good riddance to you too!” muttered Kate under her breath. She eyed the great, unkempt, ugly thing, hopping and scratching at the dirt. To her surprise, it stopped grovelling, tilted its head and eyed
her
.

“Make fun of me, ya little — ” Kate raised her arm as though to throw something again.

“Grand! Grand!” said the bird.

“Grand!
What
?” Kate shot back.

“Grand?” Gronk hopped nearer.

“Ah, it's been
grand —
has it?” said Kate. “You're a quick study, you are. Well, Gronk,
It's been grand
.”

“Grand! Grand! Ten grand!” said the bird.

“
What?
Say that again!” commanded Kate.

But Gronk refused. Was it her tone? Kate lightened up, chirping “Grand!” a couple of times in a high voice, but the bird seemed to be exhausted — either of talent or patience. It returned to hopping around in silence, except for the rustle of feet and feathers in the grass, looking for all the world like a teen with a chip on his shoulder, shying away and dipping its head as though sulkily wishing her gone. Now Kate was hopping. Hopping mad.

Could she have heard right? Or was working at the graveyard working on her mind?
Ten grand
, Gronk had said.
so it seemed. Where in the world had a bird learned
that
? What on earth was going on?

Well, she was hardly going to spend her Friday evening being insulted by this shabby sack of feathers. Kate rapidly began to gather her gear.

She looked Gronk firmly in the eye. “If you can perform displacement activities, Bird-brain, then so can I,” she said, and immediately thought,
My God, I'm justifying myself to a raven
. Had her social life really come to this?

Strolling toward the car, Kate pondered her present social network: a half-mad, be-grieved doctor from Newfoundland who communed with a horse and a lobster; a thirty-six-year-old Gilles Villeneuve wannabe and film addict still living with his parents; a guilt-wracked, recovering-alcoholic conservation officer suffering a possible mid-life crisis; an all-grown-up childhood friend, now half-plasticized; and last but not least, a beady-eyed, broken-down corvid with control issues — and these were the
friends!