The Cast Stone (36 page)

“Know what?”

“Your mother-in-law is a witch.”

“A witch?” Benji pulled off his hat, wiped sweat with his mitt, shrugged under the rifle strap that slid on his nylon parka and settled in the same spot on his shoulder.

“Maybe she sent that storm against us.”

“You're serious?” Benji searched Red's face for a hint of a joke.

“If she was pissed off at you, she could do that.”

“No, me and Rosie get along good.” Benji was serious too.

“There!” Red pointed over Benji's shoulder.

“Where?” Benji turned around. The moose looked more confused than Benji. It stumble-shuffled toward them.

Red waited. He wanted Benji to experience the kill, but Benji was taking way to long, fumbling with the rifle, tangled in the strap. The moose wasn't going to keep coming. It was going to see them, or smell them, and run. Red pulled the butt of his rifle into his shoulder, sighted centre, glanced over at Benji who had his rifle down looking at the mechanism, trying to find what was wrong, why the rifle hadn't fired when he pulled the trigger. Red looked back down the barrel of his rifle. The moose had its head up, stopped, straight on. The rifle kicked into his shoulder, cracked incredibly loud. The moose shifted back onto its haunches a little, then fell forward, its front legs buckling.

“I guess you didn't piss Rosie off after all.” Red found the jugular with a knife, let the animal bleed out for a few minutes before they began to skin it. “Unless it was her who put the safety on when you were trying to shoot.” Red smiled, he wasn't in the least serious.

Theresa poured dry cereal into a brightly coloured ceramic bowl, measured this bowl against the box, allowed for the next bowl and two more bowls tomorrow. Her daughters, Dorothy and Rose, eight and ten, sat sleepy-eyed at the table, quiet. There was enough cereal for tomorrow, but the milk was not going to make it. She made a note to herself to pick up a carton on the way home from work. She didn't want to. Monday was her day off and she would do a complete shopping then.

She checked the clock on the microwave. “You girls have twelve minutes to eat and get ready.”

Day shift on Saturday wasn't fair to the girls. It was their weekend. They should be able to sleep in. During the week she left them to get themselves ready for school, a five-block walk, lunches left on the counter and she would be home by four. But weekends meant they had to go to the sitter's and be out of the apartment by seven-thirty.

Her thoughts turned to the old man as she buckled the wide leather belt that held her pepper spray, handcuffs and baton. It matched the black uniform. She wondered where he was today, remembered how he turned and looked into her eyes before he limped through the gate. Looked right into her soul. She wondered if he liked what he saw there.

She tied her hair back, tucked it down, where it could not be grabbed. Safety first.

“Come on, girls, time to go.” Ben Robe was not her problem today. He was out. She had to go back in there.

“Aren't you afraid of criminals, Mommy?” little Rose asked, she squirmed under the seat belt that at her present size tended to run across her face.

“No, my girl, there aren't many criminals in jail, mostly it's people with addictions.”

“Junkies?” asked Dorothy.

“Where did you hear about junkies?”

“School, of course.” Rose answered for her little sister.

“All kinds of addictions, not just junkies. I'm . . . ” Theresa hesitated. “I'm more a counsellor than a guard,” she lied.

“But are there junkies there?” Dorothy asked with the shoulder strap under her chin.

“Not many.” Theresa really didn't know. “Mostly it's people who have troubles in their lives, one kind or another who get in trouble and can't find a way out.”

“But is it dangerous?”

“No,” Theresa lied again. “Most of them are addicted to tobacco.” She told the truth. Enough tobacco for a cigarette sold for more inside than either marijuana or coke.

Theresa kissed the end of her finger and pressed it to Rose's nose before her daughter could get out of the car and run to the sitter's.

“Love you back, Mom.” Rose found her pack with the books and crayons for Dorothy, and a snack.

“Hey, you girls want to go visit your grandma next weekend? I have four days off. Why don't you take Friday off from school and we'll go up north?”

“You are not going to work overtime.” Dorothy's words remained in Theresa's head as she drove her Land Cruiser, the Land Cruiser that almost belonged to her; two more payments. She liked this truck, all-wheel drive, heavy, reliable, Toyota technology. She liked the way it handled in the corners, its four hybrid engines, one for each wheel, computerized to apply the perfect amount of torque.

She accelerated hard at the change of the light. The truck responded with a smooth, quiet rush of power. She was reminded for a minute of the reason she had purchased it, her excitement about the cross between the rotary gas engine and an electric engine, how one fit inside the other, how she had phoned her brother Dougie to tell him about it, and his excitement.

“So they must've built the armature into the rotary part of the gas engine. That means the stators must act as seals.” He figured it out in his head. “It would make one hell of a welder.”

“I don't know how it works, I just know it's really easy on gas.”

“A rotary engine has unlimited RPM. There's no top end.” Dougie's mind was working with this, imagining it from a thousand kilometres away.

“It goes as fast as I want.” Theresa didn't need details.

“No, think about it. What you have there are three things all together. First you have a rotary gas engine, an electric generator, and an electric motor all in one unit. It's brilliant.”

Theresa liked it that her big brother approved. It was a good truck to take to Moccasin Lake.

Red dropped the front quarter of the moose onto the table, slid it off his shoulder, red meat and bone. He straightened once the weight was off, stretched his tired shoulder. “This is the last of it.”

Benji looked for space on the table for the set of ribs he held away from his body, not wanting to bloody the front of his parka, his arms tired.

Red made space on the counter and helped Benji to lay it out. “There's some good eating there.” He noted the layer of fat that covered the outside of the ribs.

Lorraine put a knife to the flesh, separated gristle and bone.

“Lots of people are going to eat good for a while.” Rosie moved the men away from the meat with her hip and shoulder, simply took up the space they occupied until they stepped back. They had no business here. This was her place, her business.

“You men must be tired, that's a lot of meat to pack.” Rosie was reminding them that they should go sit down now, relax, drink tea, tell stories. They should be keeping an eye on the children running around, gently teasing, scolding the more mischievous ones. There should be children here. Rosie looked away from the meat, around the room — the only child was Rachel. Three women and two men, enough people to get the work done, but there should be more, more women laughing, more men bragging, more children getting in the way, learning.

“It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.” Benji got Elsie's attention by touching her elbow. “Red made a sleigh out of the hide. We just wrapped all the meat in there, tied it with a rope and pulled — amazing how easy it dragged.”

“Trick to that,” Red was happy to explain, to teach, “is pull in the right direction. All the hairs lay one way. You have to pull it forward.” Red felt good, tired, sore and complete. He brought home meat, he fed his friends. It was said that when Red shot his first moose he was holding his diaper up with one hand. That wasn't quite true. He shot his first moose when he was eleven. Uncle John and Simeon had shot a moose across the bay from the village, a cow moose; they were saying that the calf was still out there. Red and three of his buddies went looking with a .22. Red saw the calf first, put a bullet between its ribs, came home a man, with that same complete, strong feeling he was feeling today.

Dean wasn't thinking about his wife, Vicky, he had not thought about her in a long time. His thoughts rolled back to the Canadians who killed his son Ricky. He tried thinking about other things, tried thinking about the farm, the equipment that needed repairs before spring seeding, about the cattle. When she was there, or when he was there on the farm, they talked, said “hello,” “good morning,” “I love you.” Then he went back to the world of thoughts; in this world revenge dominated. The Canadians took his son, a cheap, dirty trick. Dean would not stoop that low. He imagined he would kill a Canadian honourably. Walk up to him, face him like a man, put the gun in his face, look into his eyes.

He did not tell Vicky about the handgun. He was not keeping a secret, he didn't care if she knew or not. They just never talked about things like that. She refused to leave the farm, gave Dean lists to take to town, odd spices and particular flour, specific ingredients for the constant baking, creating, cooking. He ate well when he was home, pastries to try, something new and different every supper. Strange breakfasts beyond eggs Benedict that included fruit and smoked salmon.

Dean stayed in his mind, even when he was all the way over to Minneapolis, in the big mall, wandering from store to store with Vicky's lists. Then he found the handgun, an American-built handgun in the Mall of America, a forty-four calibre, an American calibre, not a foreign nine-millimetre, something heavy, something steel, and solid, a gun that fit a man's hand.

A small box of ammunition, nothing extravagant, little cardboard box, not much bigger than a deck of playing cards really, fit into a shirt pocket easily. Now all he needed was a Canadian.