Road to Thunder Hill (21 page)

23. TV Bingo

I
'M STILL REPLAYING THAT
conversation with Ray as I drive up the lane to Kyle House. I swing Billy around to the yard in front of the kitchen and just like that, I realize just how nuts I have become. There, parked right next to Uncle Leftie's police truck is Bear's Rover, and
poof,
all thoughts of Ray go flying out the window. How out of control is that?

I park as far out of view of Olive's kitchen window as possible, which means no one will be able to see me out here in the yard. I plan on sitting here taking deep breaths for as long as possible. Oh hell, there's no use putting it off anymore. I'll be face to face with Bear James in a matter of moments.

I slog through the slush until I reach the door to the summer kitchen. What happens next feels like slow motion. I open the door into the main kitchen and the first people I see are Olive and Leftie. They're standing over by the table, where Olive has spread out some old photos of my parents that she'd found in a bedroom cupboard. It's amazing how twenty-five years after my parents moved out of Kyle House, little bits of them still remain.

“Hi,” I say.

“Look who finally made it back!” says Olive. She actually winks at me. “Look Bear, it's Patricia.”

I glance into the pantry and there's Bear, arranging lemon slices around a large filleted salmon. He looks up quickly and then back down at his task. “Hey, it's Trish.”

“Hey yourself.” I look down at the salmon whose eye seems fixed upon me.

“That's all you have to say to each other?” Olive says, swooping towards us, causing me to step into the pantry until I'm standing so close to Bear I can smell his homemade beer shampoo. Then Olive is between us, her arms draped around our shoulders. She calls out to my uncle, “Say, Leftie, did you hear about the adventure these two had the other night?”

“Can't say that I did,” he grunts, like it's the last thing he'd be interested in. I know my Uncle Leftie though, and he's recording every word Olive has said about me so he can tell my Aunt Sybil later.

So Olive goes back out there to the table and tells him all she knows about our night at Hog Holler, about how we'd gotten so cold we'd been forced to cuddle up on the pool table. She's laughing about it the whole way through, like it was the cutest thing in the world.

I can hear my uncle clear his throat. He is the straightest man in the world and wouldn't see much humour in my being at the Hog Holler, let alone spending the night with Bear James on a pool table. I can just hear him and my aunt agreeing that it was no wonder Ray took that job down in Newville.

I feel shame colouring my face as I stand here in the pantry, not knowing if I should go out there and defend my actions or if I should run outside to Billy and drive away never to return to Thunder Hill for all time. And then Bear suddenly grabs me by the shoulders and kisses me on the cheek. I freeze, and he laughs.

“Gayl says she saw you over at the store,” he says, turning back to his fish. “I bet Alana was some pissed off when Danny got home.”

“You've got that right,” I manage to say.

“Those two,” he shakes his head and looks at me, one eye hidden by that forelock of his. “You'd think after all this time she'd know.”

“Know what?'

“That he's just being Danny.”

“Oh, I see. And because he's Danny he gets to get drunk with you while she's freezing her ass waiting for him to bring some wood?” I drop my voice. “She was starting to burn the furniture.”

“Well, I didn't force him to start drinking,” Bear says, looking up from his fish. What I see in his eyes is a blend of guilt and humour. And I start thinking that for a man, Bear really is different in how he sees the big picture of what goes on between men and women.

He says, “How's it going with Gayl? Did you speak to her any more about her moving to town?”

“No. Not really. I think it's because a part of me thinks it would be good for her, and but another part of me just can't imagine life without her. Not yet anyway. Not now.” I say this like I'm the only parent.

He rearranges his lemon arrangement for a minute before wiping his hands on a dishcloth and saying, “Ray know about it yet?”

“About?”

I must look really distressed about his question because he quickly adds, “About Gayl wanting to move to town.”

“Oh that. Yeah … He knows. He thinks it's a good idea. Easy for him to say isn't it?”

He clears his throat. “So you've talked to him? Lately?”

I nod. “Today.”

“Today.”

“Yeah. I guess he'll be staying in Newville all week.”

“Interesting,” he says. Now it's his turn to nod. He looks at me and I try to read his face again, but Olive chooses this moment to come barging back into the pantry.

“Oh, look at this salmon!” she says, picking up the platter. “Bear, you are a master at filleting. Among other things, I'm sure.” She has some nerve to wink at me again.

He bows. “At your service.” Then he winks at me too and I feel like melting into the floor.

Here I am, washing up the dishes in the bathtub, again. My wine glass sits next to the kerosene lamp. In front of me, a tower of pots and measuring cups and odd things like lemon squeezers threaten to topple over. Olive refuses to let Rena “lift another finger,” since she'd helped out so much while I was gone. So Rena's out there at the table sucking back her cranberry juice as fast as Bear and Olive are drinking their wine. If I lean back from my position in front of the tub, I can see them out there at the table. They all look pretty relaxed in their chairs. The talk has turned to my uncle. Olive is asking him about his miniature boat carvings, which have become very popular in the tourist stores around town.

“Not as exciting as police work, but at my age you start looking for ways to calm yourself down instead of trying to rev things up.”

In the candlelight, my uncle looks twenty years younger and so does everyone else. Excepting, of course, the kids, who don't age in even the harshest of lights. I can't help but notice how the candlelight magically fades the lines usually etched across Rena's face, and she looks almost as fresh as she did back when she was busy messing around with practically every man in town.

“Now, where did you catch this salmon?” Leftie had asked Olive awhile back, when we'd all been seated around the table. Biz and Gayl were saying how cool it was that the only light for miles was coming from the candles on the table.

“Actually, we caught it out in the snow!” Olive said, as she poured the wine. “Right Rena?”

Rena nodded. “She had to use a fishing rod to get him out.”

Olive's eyes sparkled. “He gave us quite a struggle, but we managed to reel him in.”

Then she explained how, yesterday, we'd had to move everything from the freezer, including the salmon, out into the snow. And that's when she started listing off all the wonderful things Rena had done today. It seems she'd brought in three armloads of wood, made a salad, peeled potatoes, scrubbed out the bathtub, and on top of all that, washed some of the twins' clothes. All of which were now drying nicely above the stove. Did we think Olive could convince Rena to move into Kyle House permanently? Rena grinned as she piled rice onto her plate, saying that keeping busy helps to keep her mind off her problems.

I excused myself then, saying I wasn't very hungry and that's why I'm now looking at this mountain of pots and unwashed dishes from lunch. And I'm thinking I should get Gayl in here to help instead of her sitting out there drinking and eating like being stranded at Kyle House with no running water is such a lark. But then that would mean I'd have to go out and sit at that table instead of being safe in here alone.

There's a scrape of a chair and I hear Uncle Leftie say, “Well, I'll be heading back to town right after I have a piece of Olive's blueberry pie. I can give anybody a lift in if they want.”

“Oh, no,” says Olive. “Stay here tonight. Everybody can stay!”

Is she serious? I look around the corner and see them all sitting there like they're actually considering it.

Bear says, “I'm heading into town too.”

Like an idiot, I rush into the kitchen “You are?”

Bear laughs. “It's
TV
bingo night. Can't miss that, now can we Trish?”

“Uh, not if we can help it,” I say, wondering if this is an invitation.

Olive says, “But isn't the road still blocked?”

“The
RCMP
were taking down the barriers when I went through,” Uncle Leftie says. “The salt trucks would have been right behind them.”

I'm sure I'm standing here looking like I don't know what to do next. Which happens to be true. Okay, now, all I have to do is walk up the back stairs, grab my things and drive to town with Bear. And while we drive we'll talk about what happened the other night. I wonder how I should react when he confesses that although he'd always desired me back when I was young and pretty, it was only after earth's gravity and time's mischief had done their work that my inner beauty began to really shine for him. Back there on the pool table, he had made a conscious decision to hold himself back in spite of the efforts of a certain someone by the name of Trish. Congratulations, Trish. You have completely grown out of maturity and back into adolescence. Next, you'll be blushing and giggling at the very thought of you and Bear doing the deed.

Someone mentions the time and Bear says, “We'd better get a move on Trish if we don't want to miss it.”

He's right. By now everyone at the Roll-a-Way Tavern will have been served their fish and chips. Bingo cards and beer bottles should be cluttering up the tabletops. Soon, hands clutching daubers will be poised above bingo cards as Dennis the bartender reaches up to turn on the television. There's no way we'll be on time. We'll enter the tavern and act all pissed that we missed it after all. The road was still bad? Terrible. We'll carry on as if we are still just good friends and not the two people who pulled off the side of the road just so Bear could fill me up to the brim and beyond.

Bear pokes my foot with the toe of his boot. “You coming then?”

I blush. But I stifle the urge to giggle and casually ask, “Got any bingo daubers in your jeep?”

“Daubers I got plenty,” Bear says, pushing his chair back from the table.

Leftie places his coffee cup onto his saucer and says, “I gather you're all coming in with me, then?”

“Thanks anyway, Uncle Leftie,” I say. “I thought I'd catch a lift in with Bear.”

“Doesn't look like Bear's driving anywhere tonight.”

Bear and I glance at each other before we sit back down like two naughty children. Uncle Leftie may have retired from the force, but to us he will always be Chief of Police. Bear has just finished four glasses of wine and Uncle Leftie is looking at him exactly like he did that night we got busted. That is, he's looking at us like he would a couple of criminals. I am feeling dizzy. So dizzy in fact, that I slink back to my spot in front of the tub and make like I'm washing more dishes.

24. Nurse Trish

“N
URSE!” THAT WAS A
familiar call weeks before the collapse of the farm. “Nurse! We need you now!”

We were practically delirious the night that Rena Dickson and Tripper O'Leery knocked on the door. While I got Gayl ready for bed, the others whisked Rena and Tripper upstairs to set things up. They were waiting for me because they thought my hits almost never left a bruise. When I think now of the things I prided myself on then.

Gayl was almost two at that time. Everyone at the farm had become horribly unhappy. Suddenly, the bills for food and power and phone had our men finding jobs like clearing brush from the sides of roads, or worse, scooping blueberries for my father. In the evenings they came home to us women, some of whom had been with babies and kids all day long and were looking for a little male attention. The men got grumpy and we women got bitchy. They wanted to drink beer and play cards at night while we sat in the kitchen fuming about them. All those dreams of life on a communal farm suddenly seemed pretty shallow. When I look back, I see how willing we were for something to bring us all together again. That “thing” turned out to be what nearly destroyed us all.

“Nurse!”

The voices were more desperate. I buttoned up Gayl's little bed sweater and tucked the covers around her neck.

“Night-night, sweet pea,” I said as I closed the door.

October was upon us the day that Rena Dickson and Tripper O'Leery arrived at the commune, and the days were growing shorter. Bear's crop had been drying in the barn for over a week, and he was bursting with pride. Those who'd helped him harvest the plants later told us that he was almost crying out there in the field when it came time to cut down his babies. But, as a result of Bear's careful devotion and care, there'd be enough weed to sell to make the mortgage payments.

As if growing and selling weed wasn't risky enough, some of us had also picked up the bad habit of dabbling in speed. It was pills at first, then snorting lines. Then Tripper O'Leery introduced us to needles. “Well, at least it's not heroin,” Danny had said at least twice in the past six months. “That stuff is fucking addictive.”

Besides Ray and me, there were Tripper and Rena, Alana and Danny, plus the American couple, Sly and Sheena. So that night, after Alana got her kids to bed, and I had finally gotten Gayl to sleep, they started calling for me.

“Nurse! Nurse!”

I ran down the hall.

As soon as I entered my bedroom, I could tell they had my work cut out for me. I took one look at the tracks on Rena's arms and said they looked infected, so there was no way I was going anywhere near those.

“Oh for fuck's sake, give me that,” said Tripper, taking the hit from my hand. “Now watch carefully. Rena sweetie, take off your pants like a good girl.”

Rena dropped her jeans to the floor and we watched him snap his finger at a vein on her groin. After, as she flailed around on the bed, groaning from the rush, Tripper grinned and said, “See? I told you it was good stuff.”

He divvied up our share. We smacked our lips in anticipation. I'm sure Tripper could tell how hungry we all were too, because he took his sweet fucking time spooning those crystals onto a mirror and dividing it into lines.
Click, click, click
went the razor blade. He laughed while he did this, knowing full well the power he held over us all. I'm sure our teeth were grinding in total agreement.

A sudden knock on the door made everyone jump about a foot. We were some jittery bunch.

“We got any more baggies, Trish?” Bear said from the doorway. I told him no, that he'd have to use tinfoil to separate his ounces. He stood there watching us for a minute before saying, “You guys are fuckin' nuts, you know.”

None of us had slept for days. Ray was pacing the floor, making these little ticking sounds in his throat that normally only occur in his sleep. Tripper was tightening a belt around one of his own arms while I tied off the other. He wanted to try something he'd heard about called a “double-barrelled shotgun.” Really, I think we all thought he was being greedy for taking two hits at once, but it was his stuff and we were grateful that he'd decided to share it with us. He could have stayed in town and sold it on the street for a far better price. We knew he'd come all the way out here because he thought we were cool.

“Just don't blame me if you overdose,” I remember saying as I pushed both plungers at once. Tripper's eyes opened wide as he lurched forward in his chair. We all held our breaths.

“Fuck, Trish, you're good,” Tripper croaked, before he fell back into the chair. A huge grin appeared on his face. “God, I love all you guys!”

We exhaled.

I guess it was just about then that we heard Bear's voice croaking from the kitchen. “Narcs, you guys! Narcs!”

Just like that, we were busted.

When we heard the word “narc,” there was a scramble to gather up spoons and syringes. Tripper began hyperventilating from the shock and the speed, and, banging his fist against his heart, shouted, “Help me! Nurse!” In that moment I saw my future flash before my eyes. Trish Kyle: in prison for having administered a fatal dose of speed to Tripper O'Leery's heart.

Concern about Tripper's heart all but disappeared when I realized what had brought the
RCMP
down our lane in the first place. As it turned out, they hadn't come down to bust us at all but rather to make a delivery. When I peeked out the bedroom window and down into the yard, I saw the cruiser open and the light come on. In the back seat was a policewoman with a kid in her arms. Even though it was dark, I could tell it was Gayl because she was wearing her little yellow bed sweater. I cried out before running down our stairs so fast I slipped and skidded down the last few steps on my spine.

In the kitchen, the cops were busy busting Bear for the pot. One of them made a move to catch me as I raced for the door, but then he must have realized I was Gayl's mother because he turned his attention back to Bear. Bear, I knew, was in deep shit since he already had a possession conviction.

Out in the yard, the policewoman rolled down her window and put her finger to her lips, saying, “She's asleep. It's probably best to keep her this way.”

Later, I would learn the
RCMP
had received a call from Jean and Vern Bradley who lived down the road, saying there was a lost little girl named Gayl sitting in their kitchen. It seems the biggest yahoos in the county, none other than Clayton and Perry Card, had found her wandering in the woods, and not knowing who she was, had taken her over to the Bradley Farm. Later, those boys were hailed as heroes, even though everyone knew what they'd been up to with their flashlights and hunting rifles. Deer jacking, as far as we were concerned, was a far greater crime than growing marijuana. What if they had shot little Gayl?

Meanwhile, the yard was suddenly filled with more
RCMP
cars than I thought existed in the entire county. By now the narcs had been called in. They roamed around the house for an hour or so before packing four hostages into their cars. One was Tripper who kept insisting they send him an ambulance. Instead, they kept him in the back seat of a cruiser. They let Rena ride with him, I think to convince him that he wouldn't be dying that night. Ray was put into the third cruiser. While I'd been out in the yard, shivering with fear at the sight of Gayl in a police car, Ray had stepped forward to claim the weed as his own. Ray had just saved Bear's hide.

I didn't know any of this as I watched a cop duck Ray's head into the cruiser. Everything seemed to be happening quickly. It was still warm out, and I remember this because the crickets were screeching in my ears.

“Where are you going with her?” I said, as one of the officers slid into the driver's side of the car. “I have to put her to bed.”

“We'll take her into Children's Aid until things get sorted out,” said the policewoman. “Does she have a special toy we could take?”

“No,” I said. “No, you can't take her.”

A fresh set of headlights bounced down the lane just then and like a miracle my Uncle Leftie appeared in front of me. I guess he'd heard on the police radio that we were being busted and decided to drive out here in case his sister's kid needed help. That was probably the only time in my life that I wrapped my arms around him and stayed there while he worked something out with the officers. They agreed to follow him to my parent's house in town where Gayl could stay until things got sorted out.

“Don't worry,” my Uncle Leftie said. “We'll get her back to you.”

When I saw how teary his eyes were, I broke right down. Next thing I knew, I was being held by Bear and he wouldn't let go until the taillights were lost to the highway. And then a thought struck me stronger than any jolt of speed could have — I had just managed to lose my entire family. Bear sat with me at the kitchen table while I sobbed. My life was over.

As it turned out, I was able to pick up Gayl at my parents' the next day. She didn't seem at all traumatized by what had happened the night before, although she did say she got scared in the cornfield when she thought she'd lost the kitty. The story my parents had managed to get out of her was that she had heard a kitten crying and had simply gotten out of bed and went down into the yard to help it. No doubt the kitten, knowing full well what Gayl's idea of “help” was, had scampered into the cornfield.

That day I sat with Gayl in my lap in my parent's' living room and admitted I'd made a terrible mistake. My mother drank while my father paced and ranted. He said there were mistakes that people made in life and then there were criminal acts. What had happened out there, last night, was criminal, plain and simple. Things were going to change, he said, because he vowed he would see to it that his granddaughter never found herself in the back seat of a cop car again in her life. For starters, he had already called his lawyer Bob Morton who would see to it that Bernie Kyle's granddaughter's father stayed the hell out of prison. I didn't even try to argue. There are times when you have to admit to being wrong and during those times, you don't turn down help. I also had to promise to throw everyone out of the farm and turn it into a normal family home.

Even though the
RCMP
had had no warrant when they stumbled upon Bear's crop it was still considered admissible evidence. My father's lawyer managed to have the charge of cultivation for the purpose of trafficking reduced to a possession charge. The parade of good citizens who testified on Ray's behalf, plus the fact that he had a clean record, helped to keep him out of jail. We didn't stay out of the papers though, and for weeks Thunder Hill Road seemed to be the most popular drive in the county. Family cars crept by our lane, children's faces peering wide-eyed from windows, their parents, no doubt saying, “Imagine, letting that little girl wander around at night. I'm surprised they let them have her back!”

Today Gayl knows all about the farm, how we did try to live a dream where people could live happily in a world made of home-grown food and free-range animals. She also knows that homegrown marijuana was a part of the dream as well.

A few years ago we told her about how she slipped out one night without anyone seeing her. At the age of two, kids are like that. We even told her about the bust. We talked about how dumb Bear was to have the entire crop on the table that night, and even dumber that he had the Grateful Dead up so loud he couldn't hear the dogs bark when the
RCMP
cruisers drove down the lane to bring a lost little girl home to her mommy and daddy. We were quick to tell her how it was the sight of our little girl crying for us from the back of the police car that made us realize she was our most important reason to be on this earth.

She also knows all about Ray taking the rap for the pot, that he has a police record, that they have his fingerprints. Even after all this time, there are
still
repercussions. Ray lost his job as a school bus driver just last year because some uptight parents who had moved here from the city heard about his record and caused a big stink about it, even though it had happened more than fifteen years ago. We told Gayl that the bottom line was that we had been sometimes very foolish in our youth and that we've paid the price ever since.

But when it comes to telling her about the other stuff, that's where we stop short. There are some things we'd rather forget. It's one thing for a little girl to slip out of the house at night when her parents are busy in another part of the house, and it's quite another that we were too busy poking each other with needles to notice she was missing. And now, looking out there and seeing Uncle Leftie and Bear and Rena all sitting at the same table as my grown-up daughter, I realize that no secret is ever safe. And here I'd thought the past was something that could be locked away, like a diary you can open to revisit, but still manage to avoid other sections altogether.