The River Burns (30 page)

So he leaned into her. And placed his trust in her hands. “People in this town are ready, as you say, to lynch my brother. If not literally, they'll do what they have to do to make him pay. They're being somewhat overly emotional about it right now, even a little extreme.”

“Granted,” she said.

“But, if outside investigators come in, suddenly they'll clam up. They'll mind what they say. Their threats, their lies, their exaggerations, the rumours they've concocted to be facts, the shreds of information they've reconfigured as elaborate conspiracies, suddenly will vanish, because this town will not shovel shit onto one of their own to outsiders. No matter who, no matter the crime as long as it's short of murder, and I'm not even sure about that. We'll eat our young, but we won't force-feed them to outsiders.”

Tara was getting this. She was impressed. “So you bring in the SQ and suddenly the rumourmongers shut up.”

“They're run to ground. It's my way of making this town shut up, so a proper investigation can take place, not a rush to judgement based on hearsay and rumour and innuendo. And rage. And past grievances. My brother catches a break this way. If he's guilty, he's guilty. But now it won't be a bloody lynching.”

She admired his passion, startled by the intelligence behind the intensity. She was in trouble here, but she was routinely in trouble whenever she took up a fresh romantic interest.

Something else, as well. This guy devised his strategy on his own, he could risk no confederate. He probably did a lot of that. He was well liked in his community, but he had to be a lonely man.

He continued to try. “So how does this play out? After the big fib?”

His words, his look, his smile, conspired to make her laugh a little. “You're talking about our kiss good night later on? Because only that is up for grabs, pardon the pun. It's still on. But that should mark the limit of your ambitions for the evening. You lied to me, bro. You gotta be punished for that.”

Consciously ramping up his charm, the intimacy of seduction, he lowered his voice yet another notch. “Now about this kiss. Can it linger awhile, at least?”

A fleeting blush betrayed her, in its way a form of concession.

She leaned towards him as well, and lowered her own voice, and covered his hands in hers. “See, sweetie, this is the deal. I'm complicated. You're not. You fall for complicated women. That's your problem. It does you in. Your dad says so, and anyway I can see it in you. I don't fall for simple strong guys like you. I prefer crash-test dummies. Maybe it's time for a change. Who knows? But, whenever I have a dalliance with a straightforward nice guy, it turns out I'm too complex for him. So the deal is, we're wrong for each other, so wrong, and you should know that and get it through your noggin at the outset. I'm not getting on the fast track to disaster here. Even though I'd survive. Would you? Odds are, no. So don't rush it.”

“If you think we're so unsuited—”

“Why bother?”

He nodded.

“I got a crush on you, Ry. Okay? Not stop-the-presses or anything, but I do. I'm old enough to know that there will always be another handsome dark stranger farther on down the road who'll seek me out. So. There's that. Why risk hurting someone I'm finding out I kinda like? Because I'm finding out that I really kinda like you, Ry, and I can't dismiss that, and because . . . you're a bastard, you know, but damn it, despite your country-hick status, aren't you just about the smartest man I've met? Who's my age anyway. And doesn't that fucking appeal. Am I right or am I fooling myself? Let's just say, I'm willing to stick around and find out. But here's the kicker, Ry—I hope you can tell I've thought about this—I'm holding out. That's a conscious decision. This isn't going to be easy for you. If things go badly, you can thank me later. If they go well, and the odds are they won't, then at least I'll have learned something along the way.”

Ryan was not convinced that she was as complicated as she claimed, or that he was as straightforward as she judged him to be. Yet they'd arrived at a threshold. What lay beyond was worth pursuing in his mind and heart, so he wasn't sure if he should argue the case just yet. But he did.

“Give me an example,” he suggested, “of how you're so complicated.”

“You poor lamb,” she said.

“Just one example.”

She mulled that over. The question was fair, she considered, and to answer was fair to him. “Okay. Just one example. I think your father is hot. I don't mean cute, or that I admire his rugged good looks. I think he's attractive. At least to me. Hot.”

He wished he never asked.

“Restroom,” Tara announced, and unwound from her chair. Then she leaned over him while standing and indicated the endless cascade of water into the gorge below. She whispered, “Down there, where the water slows, where it's deep enough to have a dip? My first night here, I swam in the moonlight. Nude. Think about that while you're moderating your ambitions for the evening.”

While she was gone, Ryan called for the cheque. Waiting, watching the steady tumble of smooth black water, he grinned. He knew that she was perfectly correct in one instance, and wondered if his father told her things about him that tipped her off. Complicated women were his undoing a few times in the past. He thought that he won her over for a moment during their discussion, but as always, she could not part company until she attained the upper hand. A compulsion with her, he gathered. A complication. He chuckled silently to himself, knowing that he didn't mind. At least, for the time being, not yet.

18

B
elinda proved kind to Jake through a good portion of the night, until he fell into a deep, remorseful slumber. He accepted that he had lost his life. Later he awoke intermittently, both exhausted and restless. To readjust. She slept in such odd positions, mainly on her tummy, with her mouth askance emitting a strange clatter and blast. Several times he had to shove her off him—a foot once, an arm, her breath from his face—but he gathered that this is what people did when they slept together, especially in a bed that drastically sagged in the middle, bodies harnessed by that sad gravitational pull. He'd never previously slept overnight with a girl while reasonably sober and the enterprise proved surprisingly revelatory to him. Once he was afraid he couldn't breathe, and failed to figure out if he was having a bad dream or if he was quietly suffocating against the press of her back.

In the morning, Jake was awake for a while yet didn't budge, couched in her comfortable softness and oblivious to the world. He considered going for a piss, only to crash and snore. Then he was wide awake, startled and disoriented to discover that he and his new girl were not alone.

“Skootch? That you?”

In the morning shade in a corner of the room the tall man seemed to levitate inches off his seat, his hands as high as the top of his nose at rest on a walking stick. Flies alighted upon his skin. Although he seemed immune to their trespass, Jake Withers did catch him blow one away with a gust of breath.

“Dude, put some clothes on. Mother of God, you're giving me a hard-on just looking at you over here.”

Hastily, Jake yanked up a sheet, a motion that gave Belinda cause to stir.

“What're you doing here?” he demanded.

“Waiting for you to wake the fuck up, what do you think? Trying to resist masturbating myself.” He tapped his stick four times, a ­hollow-sounding beat. “Do you do that, Jake? Cast your seed upon the dark waters, like a sailor boy? Across the dusty earth like some randy farmer lad?”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh my. He's got his dander up. Anyway I agree. Enough dillydallying. You slept so long a fellow might think you never been inside pussy before. Let's get a move on, man. We're sailors today.”

“What?”

“You heard me! Get dressed.”

“Get the hell out of the room first,” Jake insisted, the sheet wrapped tightly around his midriff.

“What? Are you Presbyterian now? Get up!”

“Get out!”

“Jesus!”

Jake wasn't sure if Skootch was storming out or just doing a pantomime of storming out, but momentarily he heard him opening the fridge door and shaking cereal into a bowl, so he couldn't be in any genuine bad mood. He dressed quickly and Belinda was awake now, not the least concerned about her nudity as she stretched her arms and yawned, then grinned. “Kiss me,” she said. Then she picked grit from an eyelid.

He kissed her anyway.

“Mmm,” she said.

He didn't know if she was referring to their time through the night or the morning peck but either way he accepted her murmur as being complimentary.

“Skootch is here,” he said.

She examined what she'd scraped from her cornea. “What's he want now?”

“Maybe just breakfast.”

“He'll want more than that. He always does.”

Jake was pleased that she put something on as she got out of bed, before padding across the floor in her bare feet to tramp outside to the communal outhouse to pee.

“Kid!” Skootch was yelling, so he ventured out to the kitchen.

“What do you want, Skootch?” Jake asked him.

“We're sailors today. Have you seen my raft?” He was all but nude and scratching the back of his naked right thigh.

“What raft?”

“Upriver. Not far. A short hike for a fit man. We'll sail her merrily downstream into town. Me and you. Moor her up there. Consider it a project.”

“Oh yeah?” Jake shook out cereal for himself, Cheerios, although as he poured the milk he felt the urge to urinate intensify. He started into the cereal and caught a dribble down his chin just as Belinda returned. A cat slipped inside in the nick of time as the ill-fitting screen door thunked shut. Belinda topped up the cats' bowls while Skootch bored in on a second helping. “How big is this raft? What kind of raft?” Jake asked.

“It's fucking enormous,” Belinda attested on her way through to the bedroom to get dressed. “Why are you moving it, Skootch?”

He answered with his mouth still full of Cheerios. “Because I can.” He chewed and swallowed, then explained. “Occurred to me in my sleep. Call it a revelation if you want. The bridge is gone now. So I can sail downriver as clean as a whistle. There's no structure to stop me. Except for deadheads.”

“Deadheads?”

“Logs stuck in the water from the old days. Know any sea chanteys, boy?”

Belinda came back to the bedroom entryway, where a light curtain hung in lieu of a door. Struck by a thought, she said, “The rapids.”

Skootch winked. “Don't worry your pretty little head about anything so trivial as the rapids. Thanks for your input, though. So sweet. But Jake will see us through! He sure looks like a river rat to me. Doesn't he to you?”

Skootch was positively beaming, and Jake wondered what Belinda would say, whether or not he looked like a river rat to her, too, as he stepped outside to piss on the forest duff.

■   ■   ■

The plan, initially,
f
o
r
e
saw setting
up shop in the centre of town to catch tourists disembarking from the train. Mrs. McCracken went so far as to erect a table under a sun umbrella, then sit on a folding chair to await the locomotive's telltale toot. Yet before the train arrived, she abandoned the strategy, and decamped to the road leading up to the old covered bridge which was no more.

An inspired move.

Sitting alone in the railway yard she began to feel foolish. Hot under the sun, she felt her confidence ebb. Something did not seem right. She gleaned that she would probably come across as an old kook on a mission, and not in any way that she could turn to her advantage. She'd find it necessary to pontificate and argue, relentlessly urging people to sign her petition. How else would she keep the throng from slipping away,
to have their fun,
or from avoiding her altogether? At the bridge entrance, on the other hand, she need not say a word. The silence of the missing span would speak for itself and for her cause. As many tourists per day as once tramped upon the old relic now visited the austere vacant space, for the fire made the national news and the site—where nothing remained to be seen—was suddenly a landmark for prurient interest.

On her table, Mrs. McCracken placed stones with enough heft to guard her collection of photographs against the breezes. Pictures of the bridge in flames. She needn't initiate a word as the minions arrived. They gazed upon the vacant space and the river. They checked out the snapshots in her collection. They smiled, and read the petition with interest. They signed, while she sat comfortably under the protection of trees and did little more than smile.

She was further inspired. As the train made ready to depart,
that
was the appropriate time to set up shop by the locomotive. By that time of day, word would have circled around. Visitors would be less suspicious, more friendly. Some might urge their travelling companions who'd not signed to do so. What's more, while they were waiting, she'd sell pies. And lemonade. And make a mint.

Locals contended that her idea was absurd, that no level of government in a million years would rebuild the old covered bridge to re-create the very problem they were failing to resolve. And doing it privately was financially ludicrous. The wood alone would cost millions, the labour, thrice that. Yet outside visitors were both more open-minded about such matters and less influenced by garish opinion. They wanted the bridge back. They thought it was a grand idea. They were willing to sign a petition to make it happen. Especially because the old lady seemed so sweet.

While they were at it, a number of travellers, just before they climbed back on the train, surely would purchase her lemon meringue. Her strawberry-rhubarb. The apple crumble. Mrs. McCracken felt giddy with the joy of her idea. “Nothing ventured, Buck!” she advised her cat after her first foray by the bridge, for she was giving herself an hour off before returning to the rail yard. “You watch! More than nothing will be gained.”

■   ■   ■

“Does it even float?” Jake
asked.

“I think so,” Skootch speculated. “Though it's been a while.”

The raft, about fifteen feet square, supported three levels of shambles stacked one on top of the other. A banged-up kitchen stove and a ceramic toilet with its lid a-kilter stood out in plain view. The deck was littered with baseball bats and ropes and children's toys and a set of aged downhill skies without the bindings and what appeared to be a small car's axle. The edges of the planked deck were rimmed with slices of frayed truck tires retrieved from where they'd blown out on highways. A flag of a foreign country Jake could not identify flew on a leaning wood mast erected in pieces and bound together. Scraps of wood, junk pottery, and bicycle parts were piled in what might charitably be called the bow. The first storey of the teetering plywood shack growing out of two-thirds of the raft housed sleeping quarters. A mattress slept inside. The room reeked. Above that level, up a wood ladder hammered to the outside walls, a space purported to be a den, although it could serve as a kid's playroom as only small fry need not duck the low ceiling. An old sofa and an even older armchair and a simple wood bench toppled onto its side welcomed adults who slouched in, but any such visitor, Jake saw, first stepped over a litter of junk. On the outside, black tarps were fitted as eyebrows above the windows, which could be lowered into place during a storm, although Jake guessed that the interior would then feel much like a coffin's.

The ladder ascended to the roof, what Skootch called the sunporch.

Broken-down old patio chairs were strewn about up there, the webbing on one busted clean through. A squirrel skittered off as they arrived.

“We can sun-bake in the nude!” Skootch exulted.

“
You
can,” Jake corrected him. Then he asked, “So it doesn't float?”

The forward edge of the craft rode upon mud.

“It might. Probably it floats. We won't find that out until you go.”

“Me?
I
go?”

“Look. Somebody has to meet you with lines to grab her as you sail past. Otherwise you'll sail on down the river and never stop. So that'll be me. I'll volunteer. Because I know ropes. I'll moor you to the shore in town.”

“That's only if it floats, if it gets that far and through the rapids.”

“You can swim, can't you?”

Jake could not deny that he could swim.

“But what if I can't catch the line you throw me?”

“Then I'll throw you another! Anyway, you'll catch it. Know why?”

“Why?”

“You won't have a ton of choice. It's catch a line or sink, Jake.”

“Shit,” Jake said.

“Okay,” Skootch concurred. “We'll fix her up some, make her look pretty, then you'll sail her down the beautiful Gatineau River into Wakefield.”

Every engine onboard—and there were several, Jake calculated, as he looked around—appeared unattached to any fuel source, and in any case heralded its shabbiness, already culled for critical parts.

“With what form of propulsion?” he inquired.

“The current, Jake. You told us you saw that bridge sail away? If a dumb-assed burning bridge can sail downstream, imagine what a raft can do! A houseboat built for the purpose! You'll be our riverboat captain, Jake. Think of the adventure. The whole town will watch as you surge through the rapids, they'll cheer as you come ashore. You'll be a local hero, boy. You'll make the news.”

“As long as it's not on the obituary page,” Jake said.

“God Almighty, I wish I was you,” Skootch attested.

■   ■   ■

Late afternoon settled upon the
town. Nothing seemed at risk to Ryan Alexander O'Farrell as he drove down Main Street. Tourists were dispatched back to the city aboard the steam train, and the evidence from the day confirmed a creeping worry: the train wasn't booked to capacity. The lack of a covered bridge perhaps eroded the visitors' numbers, a trend likely to worsen as time went by.

While Ryan received the official count from the train's conductor, no one else noticed the 16-percent drop in passengers. Tourists remained ubiquitous throughout town, and the corresponding fall in revenues would only show up over time. If the numbers indeed went further down, then passions might rise.

He drove out of town into a keyhole residential development, where he spotted Samad Mehra in his trucker's garb, mowing the lawn. Ryan stopped the squad car in front of Samad's house and donned sunglasses and a trooper's hat. He did not do this routinely, but he wanted to strike a badass pose.