When Is a Man (28 page)

“Most I've met seem nice,” Paul offered.

“The new breed,” he scoffed. “Polite young gentlemen apologizing about the past and doing nothing about it. Bunch of softies waffling about downstream benefits, so-called compensation—putting in a few parks and rest stops. And their goddamned garbage fish.” He fluttered his hands overhead like an ardent preacher. “Protect the garbage fish.
Save
the garbage fish.”

The bathroom was spare, the walls undecorated except for a tarnished mirror above the sink. Not even a shower curtain to pull around the clawfoot tub. A window looked out toward the forest, the panes old and warped. Like the rest of the house, though, the floors, windowframe, and door trim were dark and solid, and the heat from the woodstove warmed every corner. If this were another person's house, another time, he might have been immensely grateful to be sheltered in such a place. His reflection in the mirror was slightly warped. The whisky was going to hit him hard if he didn't slow down.

“You piss a lot,” said Hardy when Paul returned to his seat at the table. “Who's the old man here?”

Paul chuckled nervously. Hardy was wearing him down, had somehow put him on the wrong track, had him asking the wrong questions.

Outside, snow gathered in drifts below the porch light, and the darkness squeezed the cabin from all sides. Drunk, Hardy began to mutter to himself, a winter's conversation with his father's house, whispering and then railing against the wooden creaks and groans that answered. The kitchen light flickered, surged, and steadied. On the counter, an oil lantern and a stack of candles stood at the ready. Hardy's eyes had lost all sense of acuity and gave way to confusion, despair. Finally Paul saw the man who had pointed a rifle at him.

“Kai,” Hardy began. “No good in the bush, that one. His father had him daydreaming about university, building bridges and highways, making it big off real estate. Meanwhile, Arthur had run off and taken Marcus away to die in some city somewhere.”

“Kai,” interjected Paul, trying to steer the conversation.

“Kai Soules, goddamn you. I promised I'd take care of him the way his grandfather Marcus looked out for me when I was a boy. But he couldn't drop a ten-foot lodgepole without nearly killing himself. So we put him to work with a peavey, down from where the log chute met the river.”

Paul's digital recorder blinked numbers—four hours, twelve minutes. At least something could keep pace with Hardy, because he was lost.

“We got back to headquarters about five o'clock. We said to my dad, He went into the rapids. He's fucking gone. We're sorry as hell. And he says to us, Did you try to save him at least? We tried, we tell him, We did everything but jump in after him. And he says, Well, bully for you cocksuckers.”

The kitchen and porch lights flickered again, and Hardy wiped at his eyes and then fumbled for the oil lantern. He had it lit a few seconds before the lights finally went out. Paul grabbed a candle and looked for a holder. Hardy gestured toward a drawer and went to throw more wood in the stove. “There.”

In the drawer lay an assortment of metal and clay candleholders, dented or chipped and covered in wax. Some must have been more than fifty years old. One was a fine piece of pottery, heavy in the hand, the glaze spider-webbed from age. Someone had painted tiny cherries around the edges. He imagined dozens of identical candleholders at the bottom of the reservoir. Within a few minutes, he and Hardy had placed candles around the house.

Hardy put his face against the window. “Look. You can see it better now.”

Paul stood beside him and smelled old sweat trapped in wool. Outside, a blanket of white among shadowy tree trunks and then the dark gap where the pool swirled.

“My father, you see, had already known about Kai—the body had showed up in the pool that afternoon, then kept drifting by, he told us.”

Outside, the river took shape, a negative space in the white landscape except where crests of water caught a minute source of light. Hardy was mumbling now, his eyelids drooping. “Cyril always says this pool's as good as a grave, and when you go, we'll bury you there if you like.”

Paul, groggy and leaning against the cold windowpane, jolted upright. Cyril had told him he hadn't talked to Hardy since the mill had folded, decades ago. Either Hardy's sense of time had slipped, or Cyril had lied to Paul.

“I told him I might,” Hardy said. “I might like that.”

Steady, gurgling breaths came from the bedroom where Hardy had passed out. Paul opened the woodstove and rustled the coals with a poker until they flared, then added a piece of birch. The fire kept the small house warm, but he needed blankets. The shelves and windowsills were filled with books and artifacts—old belt buckles, tins, and coloured medicine bottles, an empty bottle of Mitchell's Old Heatherdew Whiskey. A rusted harmonica, a penknife, a yellowed doily beneath a scattering of wooden buttons. Leather-bound encyclopedias dating back to the 1940s or earlier. On another shelf, a stack of dog-eared mystery novels and penny westerns, thrift-store books.

A large chest made of dark, oiled wood, girded by bands of riveted metal and two heavy brass handles, took up one corner of the living room. He set aside the jumble of old trousers and flannel work shirts piled on top and lifted the lid. Inside lay a jumble of objects: a leather caulk boot, a set of pruning shears with its wooden handles pale and cracked like driftwood, a few empty burlap sacks with “Wallace Ranch Apples” printed in bold red letters. Beneath the lettering, in faded yellows, greens, and blues, were houses, fields of apple trees and open skies, the fruit-seller's promise.

He lay down on the sofa, piling Hardy's trousers and work shirts over himself. The couch's loose springs pressed against the fraying material. Flames flickered in the woodstove's vents, the muted roar of the fire akin to the sound of the river's dark snaking beneath the ice.

Hardy's earthy and sour breath woke him. The old man had him by the shoulder, shaking him. “Get up now. You've slept too late.”

The trees outside were faint purple shadows. Paul kicked off the pile of jackets and trousers. Hardy was pulling on his coat. “They'll be coming by soon,” he growled.

“Who?”

“They plow the road themselves. Like to jump ahead of highway maintenance.”

“Maybe they'll get my truck out.” Whoever they were.

Hardy grunted, his hand already on the door. “Maybe they'll make things worse.”

Paul threw on his coat and backpack and followed the old man out into the cold. They waded through the fresh snow down the steps. The firs and spruces stood ghostly, bone-straight like white menhirs. Ahead of him, Hardy grabbed two shovels from the woodshed. Snow had erased all tracks and treads from the driveway, turned Hardy's truck into a humble mound.

In the bleak light, they dug out the front wheels of Paul's vehicle, their shovels meeting the resistance of the crusty bank underneath the fresh drifts. The old man attacked the snow with surprising ferocity. “Get some sand from the woodshed,” he said. “There's bags. Go.” Paul heard the faint sound of an engine, a metallic scrape, a few kilometres away at most. He jogged down to the shed, wondering why they were racing against whoever was clearing the road. He found the sandbags, cradled two in his arms back up the drive, the weight sinking him past his ankles. Hardy crouched in front of the grill, poking the shovel underneath the bumper, opening up space for the tires. He rolled away and back to his feet, face in a ruddy sweat.

“Crack them open,” muttered Hardy, gasping and hawking phlegm. Paul gave him a questioning glance, and the old man winced as, closer now, the blade of an approaching plow struck frozen earth, ice, and steel on stone. “They won't like that you were here,” Hardy said. Suddenly, Paul understood. He dropped the bags and then thrust his shovel down hard until the sand spilled. They scattered it under the tires like a hasty offering, swept the windshield free, and chipped the ice off the driver's side. He yanked the door open and flung himself inside. The engine wouldn't turn. If the cold had drained the battery—“Christ Almighty,” he hissed. The motor revved into life, and he flicked the windshield wipers to see Hardy waving him on. “Ease it forward, gentle, don't gun it,” the old man shouted between breaths. He sounded like a grizzled foreman—the man was like a set of bagpipes, puffed up one moment, deflated the next.

The wheels spun, the vehicle swaying and foundering on the high drift until finally the right front tire caught a pocket of grit. The bumper lurched and dipped, and then he slid onto the solid road. Hardy shouted directions: come ahead a few feet at an angle, turn the wheel, back up, go forward then back again. The old man hopped from foot to foot impatiently. A twenty-point turn later, his rear wheels skidding and threatening to bog down in the drifts, Paul had the vehicle facing south. He leaned out the window again and could hear the other truck clearly now.

“Mr. Wallace,” he said.

“Ah.” Hardy looked too alert, too alive, eyebrows lifted to the edge of his toque. “
Go
, for the sweet love of fuck.”

Paul gunned it and almost put himself in the bank again, his back end nearly clipping Hardy—he checked the side mirror to see him gathering the shovels and lurching down the driveway. The front wheels searched for traction as snow sprayed over the bumper, and Paul jerked the steering wheel from left to right like some manic cartoon character. He'd only just eased into a steady glide when he came to the first corner and saw fog lights cut across the road. A moment later, a black pickup pushed its yellow plow straight at him, and he swung wide and let off the gas, grazing the high drifts. The two vehicles brushed past each other, less than a metre gap between them, and there was Billy behind the wheel, cap pulled low across his forehead, with Cyril in the passenger seat. Billy's mouth dropped open as he met Paul's gaze. Then the Pathfinder hit the cleared road, the tires chewing into the sudden firmness and rocketing him forward. He pressed down slow and sure on the accelerator, rolled up his window, and let out a long, shuddering breath.

The banks on either side of the road towered above him, the trees bent into misshapen arcs. Sometimes he would hit an icy patch and fishtail. Mostly it felt like he floated above the road, lost in the vacuum-like roar of the defrost vents and the dashboard glow, the crunch of snow beneath his tires the only thing keeping him grounded.

Had the old man been worried for Paul's sake or his own? The Wentzes must have come to dig Hardy out, check on his supplies, bring him more food.

Gina had made the stew and bread.

It was bewildering. Everyone he'd talked to, all those interviews, and for what—the slightest tip of the iceberg, the faint beginnings of a truth. And Gina, connected somehow, but to what? Bloody secrets, he thought. The people in this damned valley.

The Immitoin reservoir appeared before him, a slate-coloured eye in the furrowed white brow of the world. Old cars and tree stumps, broken fence posts, the skeletons of barns, sheds, and houses—all pushing from underneath to give shape and texture to the smooth, rolling dream of snow.