[From”The Boy On The Road and other stories.” Copyright 2002/2003  ISBN 0-9684789 ]

I SURE DO MISS HER

“I still say ‘we’ though she’s been gone for a year…”

Billy paused in the midst of his monologue with me hardly listening at all, intent as I was on building a pump-house before the cold weather set in. It didn’t seem to matter. The old man’s lips still moved even while the shrill of the saw rendered all conversation impossible. He merely needed an excuse to voice his thoughts, I decided, if only to the prevailing wind that this morning had a bit of a bite to it, although it was not yet September.

”Yeah, I sure do miss her,” I heard him declare, as if in response to a query. “Too bad it wasn’t me who got the cancer.” The expression on his chubby face was one of wide-eyed longing. Billy was fifteen years my senior but he was blessed with far more hair and less wrinkles than me. There was an air of innocence about him that made him appear less intelligent than he really was. His pale eyes glistened wetly in the sunlight. He’d been at my place watching me work since daybreak. It was time we both had a coffee.

”Yep, I was married once too,” I told him. “Had a couple of kids. I’ve not seen them since they were babies. I was drinking a lot back then and one day she just took the children and left. Don’t blame her a bit. I was a real asshole in them days.” Billy nodded his head sorrowfully. “Men need to treat their wives with respect,” he said.

Billy lived just down the road from me in a small white house surrounded by a picket fence with roses and vines trailing here and there. Flowerbeds and shrubs nursed over the years by his wife appeared to be still well-tended. A weathered sign proclaiming “Bill and Marge” lived there was tacked to a roadside tree. The couple had no children of their own but, according to Billy, a daughter from Marge’s former marriage and three grandkids used to visit almost every Sunday. I’d been thinking of adding another bedroom so that the grandkids could stay overnight,” Billy told me. “Marge loved those hellions so much! So did I. Still do, though I never see them,” he added wistfully.

We had drained the coffee pot and polished off half a package of cookies when Billy stood up, put out his hand and thanked me for putting up with his company. “I get lonesome, “ he said apologetically. “Come on over anytime,” I replied. “Anytime at all.” Strangely enough, I spoke the truth. I usually wasn’t much for conversation but I’d enjoyed the chit chat.

He went home and I continued the task of getting my place habitable before winter set in. When I had purchased it in the spring I knew there was plenty of work ahead for me. No one had lived on the property for at least ten years. The broken-down log house had been infested with packrats and nesting swallows. There was nothing I could do but convert the entire building into firewood. The old well and outbuildings were salvageable but also in a state of disrepair. Over the course of the summer I had managed to construct a small cabin. Now I planned to install some of the amenities, such as running water and a satellite dish so that I could watch the Canuck’s play hockey on TV. I might even invite Billy over sometime, if it happened that he was a hockey nut like me.

There were twelve families living on the equally-portioned plots of land that comprised
McColley’s Subdivision, named after one of Billy’s ancestors who was the original owner of the entire property. They must have been a short-lived bunch because Billy was the only McColley left.
Everyone in the neighborhood except Billy and me had a dog or two and some chickens or rabbits. There were even a few goats. And of course their children were everywhere, buzzing around on bicycles and all-terrain vehicles. I could peer out my window and observe the activities associated with young people and their families without having any of the responsibility. That suited me just fine.

My boys should be in their late teens by now, I calculated. Even Charles, the youngest, probably had his driver’s license. My mind wandered as I cut boards and pounded nails. Compared to building the cabin, constructing a pump-house was a job I could do in my sleep. My oldest son, Gordon, named after me, was the serious one whereas Charles was a born extrovert. Of course their personalities might have changed depending on life’s circumstances. A feeling of shame washed over me as I recalled how completely I had isolated myself from them. For awhile after the separation, I had sent support money to various addresses in the BC Central Interior. Their mother had moved a lot before she married Dave. Good thing she married him too. It was around that time that I ended up in jail for drunk-driving causing a death. A teen-aged girl had died because I couldn’t stay away from the bottle. I hadn’t told Billy about that…. Only good thing was I never touched a drop ever again.

Following my three-year incarceration I’d managed to earn a sparse livelihood by working at odd jobs for about twelve years. A steady job was out of the question because of the back injury I’d sustained during the accident. Sometimes it hardly bothered me at all, while at other times I couldn’t even get out of bed. Last year I finally attained permanent disability status and received a lump sum from an old pension fund. But I was still incognito as far as anyone in my previous life was concerned. I think I would rather the boys starve than learn that their dad was a jailbird.
Besides I had no idea where they lived. They may even have left the province.

After the leaves turned color, the weather warmed and—just like that—it was Indian summer. The nicest season of the year when and if it happened. I’d been pushing myself hard thinking winter would set in early and my back was telling me it was time to slow down. I decided it was time to do a little fishing. Billy had an aluminum boat and plenty of tackle and had been hinting about a lake only a few miles from the subdivision that was chockfull of rainbow trout. The road was bad, he’d warned, but nothing that my four-wheeled drive truck couldn’t handle.

We managed to load the surprisingly heavy boat into the back of my truck, despite the infirmities associated with Billy’s advancing age and my own misspent youth. The trail was a bit rough but the grade down to the lake was easier than I’d expected. The lake’s surface gleamed like a mirror in the bright sunlight and was broken only by the blips and splashes of the fish. Billy couldn’t wait for the boat to be launched. He’d brought his fly rod and begun casting from shore. I did the same after I noticed him reeling in enthusiastically. It wasn’t long before both of us had achieved our limit. We never did put the boat in the water.

During the following weeks Billy and I traveled up to the lake several more times to fish. Once Jimmy, the youngster from across the road, begged to accompany us, promising to help load and unload the boat. The kid had been a close buddy of Billy’s youngest step-grandson. Jimmy loved to fish and he loved to talk. He told us that he and the grandson, Chuck, who now resided in Quesnel, e-mailed each other all the time. Billy was delighted to hear that Chuck and his family planned to visit Grampa’s soon, probably just before Christmas. He told Jimmy to relay the message that everyone was welcome to come and stay for as long as they liked.

My pump-house was doing the job it was supposed to do and I was jubilant when water finally began dribbling from the taps. The biggest celebration of all though was when I got the flusher working on my brand new toilet. Billy and I drank two pots of coffee and admired its process several times. My back seemed to be holding out pretty well and I was enjoying a relatively painfree life. So in a masochistic moment, I suggested to Billy that if he wanted to renovate his house to accommodate visitors I would help him do that.

We began work on the extra bedroom in late October and, proceeding slowly, completed the job— outside and inside—by the second week in December. Billy had it planned that the grandsons would sleep there while the youngest, a little girl, would share the big waterbed in the master bedroom with her mother. Billy would sleep in the living room as he had done since Marge passed away. “I couldn’t even go into the bedroom until a few weeks ago,” he confided. “Left everything the way it was – her dresses in the closet and my clothes, too. It got plenty dusty in there. But it’s clean now.”

We took time out from the carpentry work to watch the Canucks play hockey on my brand new TV. Billy liked to cook so he would concoct the snacks at his place while my job was to supply the endless cups of coffee. Jimmy would sometimes stop by to watch the games with us. The reception on the television at his house was snowy, he explained. The kid ate so many of Billy’s snacks it was as if he’d inhaled them. It was a wonder he wasn’t fat, I thought in amazement. But the sixteen year old was a tall, gawky lad with no surplus meat at all on his bones.
”I got an e-mail from Chuck,” Jimmy told us one evening, “If his Mom’s car is working properly, they’ll be out for Christmas for sure. His mom will phone before they leave.”

We were just putting the finishing touches on Billy’s extra bedroom when the cold weather hit. The thermometer plummeted to 35 below Celsius and stayed that way for three days. Then it snowed. Typical northern BC winter weather. The snow was a welcome sight because it flushed away the extreme cold but the white stuff didn’t know when to quit. My snow-blower hardly even cooled off. I did my own driveway several times and Jimmy borrowed it to plow Billy’s as well as his own. I was getting so I liked that kid a lot. Despite his lanky frame he had plenty of energy and ambition.

Billy’s guests arrived three days before Christmas. I noticed the nineteen eighties vintage Dodge veering its way past my place shortly before noon. Got a glimpse of a dark haired woman behind the wheel, a child in the passenger seat and two young men in the back. The driver knew what she was doing on the unplowed road, maintaining just enough speed to keep from getting stuck but not enough to end up in the ditch.

That evening Jimmy and his friend Chuck arrived at my place to watch the Canucks play hockey. Billy stayed home although I knew he was itching to watch the Edmonton Oilers get licked. The three of us inhaled an ice-cream bucket half filled with Christmas goodies that Chuck’s mother had baked. The boys chatted loudly and enthusiastically between plays. No wonder they were good friends, I thought, their personalities were identical. Chuck was a head shorter than Jimmy but from what I could gather, was a top-notch hockey player.

”Hey, you wouldn’t believe how this guy can skate.” Jimmy informed me in admiring tones. He added the information that Chuck had been scouted by the Prince George Spruce Kings. But his mother had decided he was too young for that.

During the game’s quieter moments the boys wrestled and cavorted on the floor, launching into loud yahoos and groans of dismay when the action on the ice speeded up. Halfway between the second and third period Chuck returned from a trip to the bathroom and laid a huge bombshell on me. He held a photograph in his hand that I had mounted in a homemade wood frame and hung on a wall in the john. That way I could observe the wrinkled black and white print of my small boys at least once a day.

”I guess Grampa Billy must have given you this picture of me and my brother?” Chuck inquired.
“Mom’s got the same one on her bedroom dresser, only it’s enlarged.” My mind catapulted into a state of shock as I gazed into his smiling blue-eyed face. I muttered something he must have taken as an affirmative because he went on, “Grampa Billy really likes you. Says you’re quite a guy which is a high compliment coming from him. You’re invited for Christmas dinner, by the way,” he added.

My mind raced and I wished fervently for the hockey game to resume. I recalled receiving the photo in the mail years ago from my ex-wife. It must have been shortly before she married Dave. “Will your dad be up for Christmas?” I asked.

”You’re too fussy, honey” Peter had retorted, “Olaf was pretty poor as a child back in Norway and they didn’t have plumbing. There’s not a heck of a lot of water at the log house either. He’s probably not in the habit of flushing after every spit.”

“My dad died four years ago, “Chuck replied, then turning to Jimmy stated, “He wasn’t my real dad, you know. My real dad was a hero in the Vietnam War – wiped out a whole bunch of
Vietcong before he was killed.” Then making noises like a machine gun, he began to pummel Jimmy, who was more than willing to retaliate.

The space vehicles were airborne once again and were just now approaching a small moonlit circle of water. ”Jan!” Jo screamed excitedly. “Look down there—just below us on the shore of that small lake! My God, have you ever seen such a specimen of male perfection in your life? He would be a hunk on anyone’s planet. I’d love to get to know him!”

The Canucks won their game but later I couldn’t even recall the score. I hardly slept a wink all night and at one point even dug out my old suitcases. My impulse was to cut and run. I wondered who had told Chuck that cock and bull story about me being in Vietnam. That was an American war and
I was a Canadian! I finally decided that the kid had made up the story himself. Maybe Dave hadn’t been such a good dad? Why else would he have found it necessary to idealize me.

The following morning just as I was working on my second pot of coffee, who else but Billy comes trudging up my driveway. His face was red as a beet although it wasn’t cold out and I could see that he was staggering a little. My heart was in my mouth as I rushed outside to meet him. “Yeah, I’ve got chest pains,” he groaned. “Guess I should see a doctor. But the oldest boy’s got my truck and the others are still sleeping.”

I got him into the house and gave him an aspirin which is supposed to thin the blood and prevent heart attacks. Then I took a couple myself because my back was attempting to kill me—probably because I was as tense as a rabbit in a den filled with foxes. Billy coiled himself into a fetal position on my couch while I dashed outside to warm up the truck. When I came back in the expression on his face was serene, almost joyous. “Don’t go to too much trouble, son,” he whispered. “I can hardly wait to see her.”

But Billy didn’t die, at least not then. As I told him later that would have spoiled my Christmas. I snapped the truck’s transmission into four-wheel-drive and in spite of the slippery road conditions made it to the emergency clinic in record time. From there, Billy was loaded into an ambulance and transported to the hospital in Prince George. I followed along behind in my truck. I’d phoned
Billy’s home number before leaving the clinic and for the first time in my life talked to an answering machine.

”To hell with working on a Sunday!” Celia rose abruptly from her chair and punched in Maria’s number on the telephone. The two women enjoyed each other’s company immensely, although at work Celia was technically the boss. Even then their employer-employee relationship sometimes appeared to be the other way around. Maria was the office manager and she was good at her job.
And she was seldom the one to be humble in any way, shape or form.

“Thank god for modern technology,” I thought with intense relief. If my ex-wife had answered the phone, I might have ended up on oxygen and riding in the ambulance with Billy.

Billy was extremely lucky that his heart remained undamaged the cardiologist told him, while I listened in at his bedside. It was likely because of the aspirin and the speedy treatment he’d received at the emergency clinic.

“I

“But I want to keep you in hospital overnight for observation,” the doctor went one. “Perhaps tomorrow you’ll be able to go home with a prescription for nitroglycerine pills and blood pressure medication.”

”Gad, you must be bored – even thinking about work on a Sunday!” Maria’s contralto vibrated in her ear. The woman had Italian blood in her veins and it showed. Especially when it came to her voice, which was loud and musical. She could have been a world famous opera singer, Celia had often told her.

That night I slept in a motel in a section of the city that had been my old stamping grounds many years earlier. In fact I had met my future wife in a bar just a few doors down from where I stayed. Both of us had been under the legal age for drinking. She was with some yahoo who eventually passed out in the men’s room and I ended up being her hero because I was sober enough to drive her home. She looked a little like Elizabeth Taylor with those blue eyes that Chuck had inherited and dark hair. He had her personality too—open, outgoing and trusting.

The following morning Billy was pronounced as good as new and we headed for home. I mentioned that I had spent the night in what used to be the rubby section of town. “Oh yeah, that’s where you two met,” Billy answered casually.

She squashed the mosquito and learned why it had flown so slowly. It was chock-filled with blood. Must be Peter’s—the creature had hitched a ride with him into the house. Now a goodly portion of his Type 0 Negative was spattered over her hand, halfway up the wrist. What a mess! And as Celia was quick to point out to Peter, it was all his fault. If he’d stayed in bed like normal people do on a Sunday morning, the mosquito would have bitten someone else.

”Don’t you worry your pretty little head off about me,” replied her ever-cheerful husband. He reached for his binoculars and camera from the entry room closet. “I just want to peer at a bird’s nest I noticed earlier—this time without Rudy, who might inadvertently frighten its feathered residents.”

A few seconds later he took notice of my obvious astonishment and went on to explain, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything to her but I did. I told her about you on the phone before she came up from Quesnel.” He hesitated again, “I’ve known you were the boy’s dad ever since I saw that picture on your wall. She has fond memories of you, you know…. Dave was such a jerk, you seem good now in comparison.”

I was suddenly pissed off. Last summer my life had been going so smoothly with no worries and little stress. At the moment I wished passionately I’d chased Billy home to his lonely house the morning he’d watched me work on the pump-house. “You think you know so damned much about me!” I spat the words out at him like projectiles. “Did you know that I spent three years behind bars for drunken driving causing a death?”

”No I didn’t know that,” Billy replied, “But I suspected something made you curl up in your shell like a sick turtle.” He grinned and suddenly my misdirected anger dissolved as if it had never been.
I recalled the thrill that went through me the other night when I learned that Chuck was my son. The feeling had been one of purest joy. “Thanks, old buddy,” I said to Billy. “Anytime,” he drawled, “Anytime at all.”

What bothered Celia the most about her marriage was the lack of love-making. Right from the beginning she had been the aggressive one but Peter had always responded wonderfully. “I must be losing my touch,” she thought worriedly. She vowed to see her hairdresser soon and also begin an exercise routine. Those love handles around her waist were certainly not attractive. Claude, husband number two, had suggested it was her less-than-perfect figure that had caused his extramarital flings.

Christmas Day was great, although sometimes a bit confusing with my ex-wife and myself pretending we’d only met for the first time. She was still a darned fine-looking woman and I suspected that despite my balding hairline she didn’t find me that unattractive either. I mentioned I was getting a telephone in soon and might give her a call. Chuck looked pleased when I said that. His brother Gord was more on the serious side, as he had been as a baby. Right now, Gord was serious about a girl he’d met who lived right here in the subdivision. When the two were not together, they were joined at the ear—via the telephone. After dinner Billy and I took turns playing electronic games with eight-year-old Vicki. Vicki had inherited her mother’s outgoing nature and also her beautiful blue eyes.

Peter used to tell her that she was his best friend. Lately, she had suspected Peter sometimes visited with Olaf during his long habitual rounds through the bush. Perhaps Olaf was his new best friend? Celia could not really blame her husband for seeking company. She was booked up most evenings with all the volunteer work she’d somehow not been able to say “no” to. Her latest venture had been into small town politics. She was now Councilor Celia Engstrom.

It seemed to Celia that Peter disappeared a lot lately, ostensibly to go for long walks in the dense bush that surrounded their tiny acreage at the edge of town. Sometimes he took Rudy along while at other times the dog stayed home. Celia seldom paid attention to the solitary whims of her husband, recognizing that he had a need at times to be alone. It was a Scandinavian thing, she had decided. Peter’s ancestors hailed from somewhere in that same cold, remote part of the world that Olaf came from. Perhaps that was why he liked the guy?

Billy died one week after his guests went home. Jimmy found him in the bedroom stretched out on the waterbed stiff as a board. Billy had one of those wood stoves that have to be filled twice a day. The kid had been suspicious when he saw that no smoke was coming from the chimney. It had been colder inside the house than it was outside.

”What freaked me out the most,” Jimmy confided later, “Was that he looked as if he’d died with a smile on his face….”

THE WATER WITCH

I’m a believer,” Mandy stated firmly. “I never used to be but now I’m a believer.” I still can’t make it budge,” my daughter-in-law continued. “In my hands the rod is as dead as a doornail. But when Mrs. Vogler grasps her straightened wire coat-hanger it literally springs to life.” ”She handed me the rod when she’d finished,” Mandy’s cheeks were flushed with enthusiasm. “I could feel an energy sizzling through the wire. Like an internal vibration. After a few seconds it stopped. I suppose the inertia in my own body had cut in….”

During the five years of their marriage Celia had suspected that when Peter was at his most eloquent he was not telling the truth. She had never caught him up in a deliberate lie. But after 15 years in court she had become a bit of a cynic. Celia had defended criminals who were very good liars. Whenever they attempted to fool people with a really big one they did it with charm and eloquence.

It was not my imagination,” she added defensively. “I wasn’t expecting it to do that.” ” We believe you Mandy—even if no one else does,” commented Katie my sixteen-year-old daughter. Her two best girlfriends were at the supper table and they each nodded in agreement. Last semester Mandy had been their Home Economics teacher and her youthful exuberance had made her a favorite with the students. Right now she was on a maternity leave of absence from the school.

After Peter had left for his jaunt back into the woods, Celia sat down at her computer to draft out the summation of a client’s defense. The document wasn’t due until Tuesday so she really wasn’t that pressed for time. She glanced idly around the room wishing for new office furniture to replace the old, ugly mahogany and ended up staring blankly at her computer screen. “A lawyer’s work is never done,” she thought dejectedly and then immediately acknowledged the lie that she was telling herself. The truth was she was just killing time. There was no way she had to work on a beautiful Sunday morning.

Mandy was six months pregnant and married to my youngest son Michael. The couple had recently moved in with me while they remodeled an older-style house that was just across the road from my place. Michael had been at work this morning when Mandy was cleaning and putting the finishing touches on decorating the baby’s room. The shallow well on their property had a habit of going dry and my daughter-in-law who was raised in the big city, suddenly found herself without a drop of water. Her husband had agreed that the old well was unreliable and although it would be expensive, they needed to drill a new one. But what precise spot on the property should they gamble their hard earned dollars on that a generous vein of water flowed beneath the surface…? On an impulse she had driven to the next farm and picked up old Mrs. Vogler who had the reputation of being the most accurate water witch in the valley.

Jeremy doesn’t think so, but I’ll bet you big money that he’s gay!” Celia was still upset by her daughter’s blunt allegation of more than 5 years ago. She had not spoken to Joy since.

She had been married to three different husbands during her lifetime, each one a definite improvement on the last. An only child, a daughter named Joy —a misnomer if there ever was one—was the product of a brief, traumatic mating with husband number one. Joy had expressed a dislike of her new step-dad shortly after being introduced to Peter.

During the week Peter worked hard at his job extracting copper from the mountain that for so many years had defined the skyline of the small Northern BC community. The multi-national company he worked for had markets for the metal all over the world. In return for permanently disfiguring a local landmark and very likely polluting the environment for miles around, Peter’s employer— according to Celia’s caustic estimation—paid its employees a mere pittance for the privilege of working there.

Michael picked methodically at his pork chop while his pretty dark-haired wife held court across the table. She was regaling her teenage audience with humorous anecdotes about the day’s mishaps and happenings. Mrs. Vogler apparently had a fondness for smokeless tobacco and spat thither and yon wherever she witched. Mandy had to approach with extreme caution to avoid being spitted upon by her streams of snooze.

”Are you leaving me again? So soon?” she queried, when she noticed Peter lace up his still damp hiking shoes. “Where are you going and what are you up to? You’ll catch your death by wandering around in those wet boots!

As Celia had often supplicated, she made enough money as the town’s only lawyer to support them both. Peter should take advantage of the opportunity to hone his creative writing and other skills by staying home and taking college courses online on the computer. He could even finish writing the book he’d been scribbling at in longhand for so many years. But her husband was a master of the character trait known as “passive resistance.” Peter seldom disagreed with Celia but then again he seldom followed up on any of her suggestions. As Celia had often lamented to Maria, it was infuriating.

Her dearly beloved grinned at her, displaying the perfect white teeth and cute dimples he’d inherited from somewhere. Not from his mother or father, she’d seen photos of them smiling. Nary a dimple between them! Peter twisted his cheery smile into a fearful grimace.

“I don’t trust that old woman,” Michael finally spoke up, “And I don’t believe in witchcraft,” he sounded peeved, “What did she tell you – that if you danced naked in the grass at midnight, water would ooze up in your footsteps?”

”No, she did not,” Mandy’s gray eyes were steely. “She worked for more than two hours scouring every inch of our property searching for an abundant source of water. I could see her rod bobbing up and down several times. She has to wear leather gloves to protect her hands when it does that.
It’s actually called a divining rod and it has nothing whatever to do with witchcraft. People have been relying on diviners for centuries to detect underground streams of water. And Mrs. Vogler doesn’t accept money for her efforts until after the well is drilled and producing. She’s staked ours near the south-west corner of the garden. The water’s at the two hundred foot level and there’s lots of it.” Mandy had a satisfied look on her face. As she had stated earlier, she was a believer.

Michael did not appear at all convinced. In fact he looked downright uneasy. His father, my husband Henry who had died of a heart attack five years ago, used to warn against the dangers of witchcraft and how unwary people could easily be duped by sorcery. As time went by he had included everything that could not be explained by modern science in that category. It wasn’t until after his death that I learned my husband’s bizarre personality traits were likely caused by a mental disorder, possibly schizophrenia. But despite his bouts of paranoia he had remained, essentially, the same sweet gentle man I had married. So far I had not found it necessary to tell his children that their father had been mentally ill.

When I was fifteen Henry had rescued me from a childhood that had been dominated by the pervasive, often drunken presence of my father, a man I had not seen nor heard from in more than twenty-five years. Henry was only seventeen at that time but he looked older. We lied about our ages and were married soon after. I have always been grateful to my husband for that and have even found it in my heart to love him from time to time over the years.

My father was a mean sadistic drunk who transformed the early innocent years of my life into a frightening, confusing nightmare. My brother Lenny and I could never anticipate when he would explode into violence. We were his favorite targets. I cannot recall him ever as much as raising his voice to our mother although I have scars on my buttocks and thighs that are visible to this day. And if Lenny were still alive I’m sure he would have to.

I have a few hazy memories of the woman who meekly complied with her marriage vows of obedience and blind acceptance of her husband’s inclinations no matter what they were. She cleaned and polished constantly. Over and over again, until everything in our small dark hovel of a house gleamed. My mother never smiled or expressed any affection for her children. Or for her husband. Then one day when I was about ten she died. I still harbor guilt feelings because I was unable to cry at the funeral. Or later. But she must have had some maternal instincts—she would flee from the room whenever he beat us.

My marriage to Henry had produced two sons, David who was now twenty-five and practicing law in the city of Prince George and his brother Michael, twenty-three, who has remained a country boy at heart. Michael makes a decent living, running a feller-buncher machine for a local logging company.

Our youngest, Katie, arrived on the scene seven years after I thought I was all through having babies. She was a beautiful child with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes just like her father. Despite a strong stubborn streak which she has probably inherited from me, everyone in the family loves her dearly.

”So Michael, you don’t believe in witches?” Katie confronted her older brother. “Don’t you know that witches are a part of an organized religion that began long before Christianity? They’re actually called wiccas and as far as I know they don’t cause any trouble at all.”

”Now Katie, don’t confuse the issue,” Mandy interrupted. “The people who dowse for water have nothing to do with religion of any kind. They are perfectly normal everyday people who have a special talent that most of us do not have.”

”Yeah,” growled Michael, “So you consider Mrs. Vogler to be a perfectly normal human being? Mandy, I’ve known that woman all my life! Once she took a broom and chased a bunch of us kids away from a big saskatoon bush that had branched out over her fence and onto the road allowance. She screamed bloody murder, insisting that all of the berries were hers even though they were on government property. She had a husband then and he was even weirder than she was; and dangerous. The miserable bugger had a thirty-thirty rifle that was always loaded. Anybody’s dog that ventured onto their property ended up being a dead dog.”

”Do you remember, Mom?” Michael had a pained expression on his face. “That’s how I lost
Patches.” I nodded my head. Yes, I remembered all right. My son was eight years old at the time and he was inconsolable for weeks. Paul Vogler had been The Devil dressed up in manure-stained overalls and gumboots. He’d enjoyed killing other people’s pets. But his widow had my sympathy.
Stella and I had known each other since we were children. She’d been raised in an even poorer and more spiritually deprived family than my own. Stella and her sisters seldom attended school after freeze-up because they’d no warm clothes to wear. Or winter boots. Their dad drank up every penny of the money he’d earned cutting ties for the railroad. Half the time there was no food on the table. No wonder Stella had married the first sex-starved itinerant that set foot on the property.

”Stella Vogler is not old,” I informed my son and daughter-in-law, who were glaring at each other from across the width of the table. “She’s only two years older than me. We were friends once…
She was crazy about my brother Lenny…”

”Katie, we have to go,” one of my daughter’s friends whispered impatiently. It was Sandra, who had arrived clutching a brand new driver’s license and driving her mother’s old clunker of a car.

“The school dance starts in half an hour.” That was my cue to reiterate the rules: “Drive carefully, “
I impressed that admonition upon Sandra and then, to all three: “Be back by the stroke of midnight.”
Katie’s friends would be staying the night and most of tomorrow. They probably wouldn’t be out of bed until noon.

The kitchen door slammed amidst hurried goodbyes and assurances to Mandy that all three girls would indeed have a good time. This was followed by fervent promises to Michael that none of them would have too good of a time. My heart swelled as I listened to the exchange. Katie and her friends were good kids. And despite their frequent quarrels, Michael and Mandy were made for each other. They would make good parents.

The latest dispute between my son and daughter-in-law reared itself once again at the breakfast table. They had purchased a secondhand refrigerator that looked to be as good as a new one; one of those double-door models with a freezer on one side. It had appeared to be immaculate but Mandy planned to spend her morning scrubbing it thoroughly both inside and out. “I want to kill off every one of the former owner’s germs,” she explained.

”Well, don’t use up all the water, honey,” Michael requested, “I want to wash and wax the pickup while the sun shines.”

”That settles it, we need a new well as soon as possible.” Mandy sounded determined. “Now that we know where to drill I’m going to call a company in Prince George that does that sort of work.”
Michael suggested that she quell her enthusiasm until after they’d picked out a more sensible location. He was opposed to the idea of having a well more than fifty meters away from the house.

“It’ll cost us a fortune to drill,” he stated, “Why should we pay more money to a backhoe operator to string a water line any further than we need to?”

Mandy’s eyes were as cold as the Arctic sea and she replied in her schoolteacher educating-astudent tone of voice, “There are no steams of water closer to the house. The only decent flow is over by the garden. If we drill anywhere else it will still cost us a lot of money and all we’ll end up with is a dry well.”

”Why do I think I am in the minority here?” Michael said sarcastically. “There is absolutely no scientific proof that water-witching is for real. As old Jimmy Jordan used to tell us kids, there’s water in this valley anywhere you choose to dig. You just have to dig deeper in some parts. Jimmy had no faith at all in Stella Vogler’s talents.”

I remembered old Jimmy Jordon. He had been one of my dad’s drinking buddies. For that reason alone I had no interest in anything he might have said. My dislike for the man—long dead of some alcohol related disease—overrode my resolution to stay out of this dispute. “Sorry Michael,” I interjected, “I know for a fact that Stella Vogler has the ability to find water.”

”Okay Mom, I know when I’m outnumbered, “ Michael sounded cranky. “Tell you what,” he turned to Mandy. “I’d hate to stake our good money on the assessment of just one witch. Find me another and if they both point to the same place, I’ll be a believer too.”

”I’m going out to the logging site for a load of firewood,” he added, rising abruptly from his chair. “Mandy, you can use all the water you want to at the house. I won’t wash the truck ‘til next weekend.” He stalked out the door without so much as a good-bye to his wife or mother. A few minutes later my daughter-in-law left to annihilate the germs from her refrigerator and I was all alone with my cup of lukewarm coffee. I sat there wishing fervently that I had been born with a talent for witching water.

My first and only attempt at witching had occurred when I was twelve years old and my brother Lenny had just turned fourteen. Dad worked at a camp job that summer and to our relief was away from home for weeks at a time. Shortly after our mother died he had hired a housekeeper, an overweight passive woman in her forties with a three-year-old named Bobby. Mary managed to ignore her employer’s abuse of his own children but the one time he attempted to lay his hands on Bobby, she attacked him with a cast iron poker that we used for the woodstove. Dad was drunk of course but he managed to crawl outside before she injured him too badly. He never went near Bobby after that.

The Department of Social Services had recently moved Stella Ingram and her sisters into town from their ramshackle home in the bush. They were living with a foster family while their dad cooled his heels in jail. I don’t recall whatever happened to their mother. The foster home was just across the street from our place and, every morning, there was Stella at our door visiting. Mary would usually invite her in if Dad wasn’t around to object. Stella always insisted I was her best friend but I’m sure it was my tall, gentle, good-looking brother that she really liked.

Lenny had found a tattered book at the town dump which described the various methods that people in nineteenth-century England who were known as “diviners” had used to detect underground streams of water. Some of these diviners had held pieces of wire or other metal objects while they searched, but most used forked sticks that were cut from the branches of a living tree. My brother had cut his from the big willow that grew near our property line. He had succumbed—as I knew he would—to my pleas to be the first to try it out.

I had held my palms upward as Lenny positioned the fork’s tines between the first and second fingers of each hand. He said it was important that I keep my fingers and thumbs tightly clenched on the tines; and to make sure that the other end of the branch was pointing toward the ground. That end would lift itself up—at times vigorously—when you stepped across an underground stream.

To my bitter disappointment I could not make it move—even a little bit. I traipsed around our halfacre lot willing the branch to raise itself up at every turn but it had remained limp and heavy in my hands. Every once in awhile I felt a tingling sensation in my chest and upper abdomen but, thinking back, that may have been from holding my arms in an unnatural position. I had lingered where Lenny thought the water line that led into the house should be but still nothing happened. I finally relinquished the rod to my brother.

Almost immediately it came to life. Lenny had been standing a short distance away from the house when the stick suddenly lurched in his hands. It looked to me as if he was having trouble hanging onto it. It was then that Stella showed up wearing her skimpy skirt and tight sweater.

”Whatcha doing?” she had asked my brother, ignoring me completely. Without waiting for an answer she had wriggled up to him saying, “You know Lenny, I tried to witch for water once but I just can’t do it. Pa says I need a true witch to charge me up and then I’ll be able to. Will you do that for me?” She had smiled provocatively at him and of course he’d have agreed to anything. It is hard to imagine nowadays but back then Stella was pretty. She had blonde hair and a good figure and all the boys fantasized that she was the second coming of Marilyn Monroe.

Stella had held the rod while Lenny slouched into position right behind her. She directed him to reach over her curvaceous shoulders with his long arms and grasp her wrists with his hands. That way, his ability to witch for water should kick-start her own powers, she told him.

I snorted out loud. All Stella was really interested in, I thought, was having my brother’s arms around her. The two of them began strolling—all locked together—and sure enough the rod came to life almost exactly where it had for Lenny. When the rod lurched in her hands, Stella was startled and she flung it from her as if it were a snake. Just then the formidable shadow of my father had staggered into view. I found out later that he’d been fired from his job and had been drinking heavily for days.

”You son of a bitch!” my dad began yelling at Lenny,“Fornicating in broad daylight!” He was a big strong man and although drunk still in control of himself physically. Lenny was tall and skinny and he didn’t stand a chance. Stella had whimpered in fear as Dad approached and then darted across the street to the haven of her foster home. I had crept off into the bush where I lay on the ground shivering and shaking in the tall grass and fireweed. The summer sun shone warmly but I had been chilled right through to the bone. Through the sparse tree cover I could hear Dad ranting and raving and then the sound of a thump followed by Lenny’s screams.

My brother never did fully recover from that beating. He had walked with a limp up until the day he died. But Lenny’s worst wounds were not the physical kind. Almost overnight he had turned into a stranger who seldom spoke except in a demanding and angry tone of voice. The only good thing was that Dad left him alone after that. He continued to slap me around once in a while but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

Lenny began to use and abuse alcohol and three years later, on his eighteenth birthday he had smashed up the only automobile he would ever own. Thank God there was no one else in the car when it hit that concrete abutment—head on. I was already married to Henry at the time and living way out here on the farm. My father was at the funeral, all dressed up and sober as a judge. He stood there hand-in-hand with passive, overweight Mary and her son Bobby. I am grateful that the last time I saw Dad he appeared to be sober. It’s harder to hate a drunken man.

Stella had attended the funeral without her idiot husband, Paul. Her hair was stringy and her eyes were all red – as if she’d cried for a week. We hugged each other and reminisced over coffee and cake. I had asked Stella if she’d ever witched for water since the day my brother had charged her up. She answered proudly that, yes, she’d tried it several times and, as a matter of fact, quite successfully. She’d located a good stream on a property near my place. They were thinking of buying it.

”Yes,” I thought to myself. Stella and Paul had purchased the property but instead of being good neighbors, they’d been antagonistic, preferring to stick to themselves. They’d had a daughter the same age as our David but our families had never visited—not even once. The very last time I’d chatted with Stella had been on the day of Lenny’s funeral.

I sipped the last few swallows of my ice-cold coffee and tried to recall that long ago conversation. I was certain neither one of us had mentioned the horrible incident with my father. It seemed that we’d been stuck on the topic of witching for water. I remember telling Stella how affronted I’d been back when I was twelve and I was the only one who could not make the forked stick move.

She had said something like, “Oh, but that was because Mary hadn’t started the laundry yet….”

A few weeks ago I had watched a television documentary about people who witched for water. It suddenly occurred to me now, what Stella had meant by her remark. Mary had washed clothes all that day and the next. Like my mother before her, cleaning was her way of coping with Dad’s behavior. And of course when she’d turned the taps on, it had caused the water to flow through the outside lines. Witching rods cannot detect water except when it’s running. No wonder the rod hadn’t worked for me, even though I knew deep down inside that I had been born with the talent for it.

I heard the sound of a motor approaching. Michael was pulling up in the driveway in his pickup truck and it didn’t look as if there was any firewood in the back. My son had a hangdog expression on his face when he walked through the door. “I decided to get the firewood during the week— after work,” he explained, answering my questioning look. He sat down at the table, “You know Mom, I did some serious thinking up there in the bush. Just because I have no faith in witching doesn’t mean I should impose those sentiments upon Mandy.”

”I only wish I could have seen it done,” he added wistfully.

”Go out in the back yard and cut me a piece of forked willow,” I said to Michael. “I’ll find my coat and boots and we’ll go over to your place. This may surprise you, son, but I think your mother is a witch.”
A DEFINING MOMENT

The defining moment in nineteen-year-old Travis Stoner’s life occurred on a gloriously sunny morning in late September while he was out moose hunting in the vicinity of Shovel Lake with his granddad, Karl. It was their first hunting trip of the year even though the season was now three weeks old and the old man had been champing at the bit ever since it opened. Karl had even considered venturing out by himself except that his daughter – Travis’s mother – would have worried herself sick every minute he was gone. He’d had a serious attack of angina in the spring and she’d lost faith that his eighty-year-old heart would beat much longer. But as far as Karl was concerned, he really didn’t care: “What’s the difference if I die when I’m by myself or if someone else is there with me?” he had demanded. “I’d be dead, either way.”

Travis who’d been catching up on university classes after a long summer break had finally made it home during the late afternoon of the previous day. He’d purchased a license and tags and accompanied the eager old gentleman to an abandoned gravel pit where they could sight in their rifles while there was still enough daylight. Travis watched his granddad bulls-eye a paper target through the open sights of an ancient 303 and decided not to pressure him into purchasing a newer telescopic sight. It was obvious he didn’t need one.

A familiar wave of excitement in anticipation of tomorrow’s hunt, together with a warm sense of camaraderie swept through the younger man. As far back as he could remember Karl had been his role-model. He loved and respected the crusty old bushman. It had been his granddad who had taken him fishing when he was just a kid and shown him how to throw a baseball. And it had been his granddad who more recently had taught him how to shoot a rifle – swiftly and accurately.

Travis’s father had been a cowardly loser who’d pulled a disappearing act two weeks before the birth of his son. The last anyone heard of the man he was living on a Native Indian reserve in Southern BC with a wife and seven kids. The woman whom he had once professed to love and honor had never married although she’d had a few significant others over the years, none of whom Travis had particularly liked. He was proud of his mother’s accomplishments though. She’d worked hard to obtain a teacher’s certificate and make her way up the seniority list to where she was now Vice Principal at the high school.

Last year Travis had made his mother proud when he’d enrolled at the University of Northern BC in
Prince George. The courses he’d chosen would lead to a degree in Environmental Studies. But
Granddad Karl wasn’t sure if he approved of the line of work that the studies would qualify him for.

“Environmentalists are what’s ruining the forest industry, with their silly complaints about the rights of the spotted owl,” he had growled. “You’ll end up being one of those gawdawful tree-huggers and I’ll have to disown you!”

The kitchen radio was blaring away the following morning as Travis rolled out of bed in search of long-johns and warm clothing to shield himself against the early morning chill. The radio sounds were abruptly silenced when he entered the room. Karl’s unshaven face – he refused to shave the morning of a hunt – expressed his irritation. “It’s Sunday and the sky pilots are spouting their religion on every station,” he growled. “We sure don’t need to listen to that!”

The one thing that Travis’s granddad despised more than tree-huggers or any other facet of human endeavor was organized religion. He wasn’t prejudiced, as he was so fond of reiterating, he hated them all – equally. Travis suspected the old man’s animosity stemmed from a childhood experience on The Prairies where he’d accompanied his mother to an old-fashioned tent revival meeting. The preacher had shouted fiery retributions while members of the congregation moaned and rolled on the ground as if in agony. ” I had nightmares for weeks. I even peed the bed a few times.” Karl extrapolated whenever he had occasion to tell the story. To top it off he’d spotted that same preacher a few months later, pawing at a young woman who wasn’t his wife.

Karl had been inside a church only twice in his lifetime. Once when he was married and thirty years later when he had attended his wife’s funeral. For weeks following her death he was plied with cakes and pies by some of the ladies in the community. But when the invitations came out for him to join their various congregations, he’d proclaimed in no uncertain tones that he was an atheist. “Can you believe that the little church down by the lake and that big one up on the hill were fighting over my soul?” he had exclaimed later in horrified tones. Nowadays Karl tried to avoid people of all religious faiths. When his favorite niece Krista was eighteen she joined the Baha’i Faith and Karl had refused to speak to her for weeks. He finally came around after learning that the Faith had no churches or clergy. “I guess you’re old enough to make your own mistakes,” he had growled by way of reconciliation.

On the morning of the hunt Karl had risen from his bed at four am to prepare a ritualistic breakfast for Travis and himself. Ignoring the electric coffeemaker that was plugged in on the counter he had placed a blackened enamel pot half-filled with water and coffee grounds on a slow burner to boil. That was how you made good coffee, the old man informed his grandson. But it was even better, he added, when it was brewed over an open campfire. Pancakes were made and thick slices of bacon sizzled in a cast iron frying pan. After they were sufficiently rendered, Karl broke six large eggs into the bubbling pool of grease. “Too hell with worrying about cholesterol,” he flashed Travis a mischievous grin. “I’ll wear it off later while I’m skinning out my moose.

Tiny glints of sunlight shot forth from the tops of shadowy evergreens as Travis drove his granddad’s truck up a steeply graded logging road leading to the old trail into Shovel Lake. The ground was white with frost at the top of the hill and there was ice on the puddles. But shortly after edging down the narrow crooked trail with the truck locked in four-wheel-drive they encountered an entirely different landscape. The sun illuminated a lush valley thick with poplar, birch and willow trees flaunting all the magnificent splendor of autumn’s colour scheme. Poplar saplings still displaying green leaves and intermittent clumps of plump young pines contrasted nicely with the brilliant foliage. The sky was a deep shade of blue and in the distance so was the lake. Travis’s heart swelled as he beheld the scene and he barely missed hitting a stump with his right front wheel.

“Hey watch where you’re going, young fellow,” spoke his granddad in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice. “It is kind of pretty,” he nodded, as if in agreement. Just then a pair of trumpeter swans flew overhead. Their powerful wings gleamed whitely against the blue of the sky. “Funny, you don’t usually see them this early….” the old man sounded surprised. “It must be getting cold already up north.”

Karl surveyed the scenery as they were passing through: “The beauty of nature is just about the closest we’ll ever get to what the preachers call God,” he stated dryly. As they approached an old logging road that appeared to follow the swampy end of the lake the old man leaned forward in anticipation. Moose tracks were everywhere– in the dirt and in the mud. “Here’s where they cross to get to water when they come down from the hills,” he told Travis. “The road turns just ahead and goes up to an old logging site. It’s pretty well grown up so there’s plenty of cover for the moose. And there’s lots of young willow for them to browse.”

Travis parked the truck on a graveled landing that overlooked the clear-cut on the opposite side of the road. They lingered inside the cab, combing the vast hillside through their binoculars, “Do you see what I see?” the young man exclaimed. “I sure do,” was the reply. “I’ve counted the antler tines and there’s two on one side. That bull-moose is legal in this management region. He’s out of range so we’ll need to go for a walk.”

The moose browsed near the edge of the timber along the far side of the cut. Thick alder and willow brush bordered the road where it meandered in that general direction. It provided adequate cover for them to approach on foot to where they were in closer proximity. Karl stayed put in shooting position on the road while Travis made his way up through the timber to where he could play dog with the young bull, causing it to retreat downhill. They had used this strategy before with good results. Last year it had been Travis who’d shot the moose. This year, after everything proceeded according to schedule, it was Karl’s bullet that did the damage.

Travis heard the second shot, which indicated Karl had most likely downed their quarry. He was suddenly fearful that his granddad might over stimulate his heart and drop dead alongside the moose. He scurried downhill slipping and sliding through a jumble of hidden rocks, logging slash and wild raspberry bushes. He found Karl hunched over a log sharpening his knife. Beside him the moose lay crumpled ignominiously in the grass. Travis felt a twinge of sympathy for the animal. As Native Indian hunters had done in days of yore, he whispered his gratitude to it for providing sustenance. As far as Travis was concerned there was no greater feast to be had than grilled moose steak with onions.

“You’d best take it easy, Granddad,” the young man suggested hesitantly. “Just relax and let me do the work.” “Hell no!” was the instant reply. “When the day comes that I can’t even gut-out my own moose, I want you to plant me six feet under!”

“You just go and get the truck,” Karl’s voice sounded cranky, “I’ll need the axe to quarter this animal. And there’s a thermos of that good strong coffee I made. You and I deserve a cup or two of that.”

Travis did not have the heart to tell the old man that he didn’t like his boiled coffee. Hoisting his rifle with its strap across his shoulder he began trudging toward the road. When he was with his granddad he sometimes felt as if he were still a little kid. Travis supposed that was natural. The grandparent-child bonding roles which had developed when he was a youngster would always be there. But he was no longer a child. Lately he’d developed some thoughts and opinions that were contrary to a few of Karl’s strongly held convictions.

The truck wasn’t visible from where Travis stepped out of the bushes and onto the road His boots left their prints behind him in the dust as he retraced the same markings heading in the opposite direction. After topping the crest of a small hill and rounding a corner he could see Karl’s old Ford pickup about 100 meters in the distance.

Straight ahead and about 50 meters away were three brown animal shapes with distinctive humps on their backs that Travis instantly identified as a sow grizzly bear and two half-grown cubs. The wind was just right for momma to have picked up the odor of the freshly killed moose. Travis’s presence was – for the moment – was only a mere irritant. He was distracting her from following the scent of a delicious meal. Pulling herself up on her hind legs she barked – a loud “woof” – causing the hair on the back of the young man’s neck to stand up.

The cubs darted off into the timber, as their mother dropped back upon all fours. With head down, ears back and mouth wide open, she launched her attack. Travis slipped to the ground on one knee and brought his rifle up into position. Leaning his elbow against his upright knee for support, he took aim and fired. His speed and fluidity of motion carried through as he ejected the spent shell, causing another to snap into place. He aimed once more at the now wounded and furious animal. But this time when he pulled at the trigger, nothing happened. He attempted to eject the faulty shell but it would not budge. The firing mechanism of Travis’s rifle was tightly jammed.

The grizzly was gaining speed, its powerful muscles rippling beneath its glossy fur. The young man saw the malevolence in its round raisin-colored eyes. Once again he attempted to unjam his rifle but it was solidly unresponsive. Through a haze of terror his senses suddenly became magnified. Although the bear was still ten meters away, he could hear the faint gurgle of a death rattle from deep within its vital organs. The animal was running solely on willpower and momentum. But it was very capable of killing him. And probably would. He could smell the savage fury that emanated from every orifice in its body.

The gap between them narrowed swiftly. The young man sprang to his feet and flung the useless firearm into the face of the beast. Hunching the muscles of his legs and lower back he began desperately propelling himself toward the far-off sanctuary of the truck. His antagonist paused for a moment to shake off the distraction before veering sharply in the same direction. Travis could hear its muffled coughs approaching him from behind. He considered throwing himself to the ground and playing dead but knew that his heavy breathing would give him away. He felt the heat of the bear’s breath and heard the snap of its powerful jaws aiming for his buttocks and realized he would be the sow’s last meal. At least her cubs would have something to feast upon after the death of their mother.

The tightly coiled ball of fear inside Travis’s gut began to unwind to be replaced by a sense of calm acceptance. He felt his entire body being enfolded by something wonderfully warm and comforting. A huge white bird with shimmering wings had scooped him off the ground and was carrying him far away from the grizzly’s reach. The young man reposed upon a nest of interlocking feathers as he was transported high above the landscape to where he could see the shoreline of Shovel Lake and the beautiful valley on the other side. In the opposite direction a man–most likely his granddad–was hightailing up the road. Directly below him the mortally wounded bear had fallen to the ground. Her cubs still crouched amongst the trees, no doubt waiting for an all-clear signal from their mother.

Following a dizzying fast descent Travis found himself being dumped unceremoniously into the gravel alongside the truck. His head ached and his eyes were blurred and sore but his heart soared with emotion. He was convinced that his survival was due to nothing less than divine intervention.
It was a defining moment for the young man and he knew his life would never be the same.

Travis felt a pang of remorse when he drove past the body of the dead grizzly and was thankful that her cubs appeared old enough to learn to fend for themselves. His rifle lay in the dust at the junction. It didn’t look that much worse for wear–its brand new scope needed replacing and there were a few scratch marks on the stock. Around the next corner and halfway down the hill his granddad sat slumped in the grass at the side of the road. The old man appeared to be exhausted.
Travis noticed he moved stiffly as he approached the truck.

“When I heard that truck start up it was like music to my ears,” Karl commented as he arranged his bony frame into the passenger seat. He gave his grandson an inquiring look: “I heard the bark of a grizzly. Twice I think… Then I heard a shot. Only one shot?” The old man shook his head in disbelief. “Never thought I’d find you in one piece….”

“It’s quite a story, Granddad. One you probably won’t believe. I’ll tell it to you after we’ve butchered out that moose.” Travis spoke in self-confident tones, “What I mean is after I’ve butchered out the moose. I want you to stay inside the cab and rest.” His granddad did not argue. As soon as the young man stepped from the truck Karl’s head began to droop and he fell into a deep sleep.

According to Travis’s watch it was two-thirty in the afternoon when he finished drawing, quartering and loading the large sections of meat into the back of the truck. He was amazed to learn there was still so much time left in the day. After his harrowing experience that morning it seemed that a lifetime had passed in a few short hours. Karl emerged from the cab bearing bologna sandwiches and the inevitable thermos of coffee. He seemed refreshed and as feisty as ever. “How come it took you so long to cut up that meat?” he chided good-naturedly. ” It’s probably aged enough now to make nice tender steak.” He handed Travis a mustard-smeared sandwich. “But I guess we’ll have to eat these instead.”

“Granddad, I think we’d better hit the road. I just realized I need to report that dead grizzly to the conservation officers. Then I suppose I’ll have to lead them up here to the scene of the crime. I’ll be lucky to get back to Prince George tonight before midnight.”

“From what I can gather, you’re damned lucky to be going back to Prince George at all,” the old man stated caustically. “Okay, we’ll eat in the truck. And you can tell me the story about why you’re still alive and not grizzly bear bait.”

Between bites of sandwich Travis managed to fill his granddad in on the greater part of the morning’s ordeal. He stopped the truck at the site so that Karl might examine the body of the hapless animal. “She’s a big one all right.” the old man declared enthusiastically as he stepped back into the cab. “You were one lucky bugger to get away!”

“Okay Granddad. Now I’m going to tell you the part of the story that you won’t believe.” Karl listened impassively as Travis described the circumstances of his miraculous escape from the approaching grizzly.

“Yeah well, when you’re scared stiff your mind can come up with some peculiar ideas,“ was the old man’s response. “You likely got a second wind,” he added flippantly. “The energy that speeded you up probably sucked all the oxygen out of your brain. It caused you to imagine things.”

“So how come my footprints in the dust stopped abruptly about fifty meters away from the truck?” Travis demanded. “I looked closely and there just aren’t any more.” His granddad had no answer for that.

As they approached the shoreline of Shovel Lake, Karl noticed two white birds flying high above the water; “You know, it’s a funny thing,” he looked thoughtful as he peered up at the sky. “Those swans were flying directly overhead to where you were just after I heard you shoot.”

• * * * * *

Late one night in mid-November when bull-moose season was pretty well over in most parts of the area, Karl was awakened by a phone call from his grandson: “Hi Granddad. Just wondering if you’d like to go for a ride in the bush tomorrow morning?” the young man inquired. “I have a friend here who wants to see the country. This fellow works with disadvantaged people on the streets of Prince George. I’ve been helping him out on weekends. Only thing about him you may not like is that he’s a preacher….”

So that’s why Travis hadn’t been home for a visit in almost two months, the old man thought with dismay. He’d been hanging out with a preacher…. Karl wished he’d ignored the ringing of the phone and stayed in bed. “Garth’s a really good guy,” his grandson continued, “His parents are nice people too. You’d like them. They’re not the least bit religious.” He paused for a moment. “Garth likes to fish and hunt,” he added. “He has a limited entry tag for a bull moose in Region 6…”

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place!” the old man replied indignantly. “If he’s got a limited entry tag and wants to hunt moose, he must be an all right guy even if he is a preacher!”

THE BOY ON THE ROAD

Dave rolled down his side window and relaxed back behind the wheel of his dust-spattered pickup truck. “This has to be the strangest November weather I’ve ever seen…” he thought with mild amazement.”No frost, not a flake of snow on the ground and it’s as warm as summertime.”

He was a big, burly man in his early forties who had resided for most of his life in the hilly, thicklywooded Cariboo Region of the BC Interior. Dave and his wife, Hazel, had been working hard for the past three and a half years to clear out a farm from the stubborn alder and spruce wilderness. So far the thin virgin soil had yielded just enough hay to winter a few cows, and the pony Dave brought home the day Hazel announced they were expecting a child.

“Must be someone ahead of me by the looks of that dust on the corner? Probably a logging truck…” Dave worked part-time, felling trees, for the company that was presently hauling logs out of the bush to the sawmill at the end of the road.

“It’s a good thing the company straightened out and graveled our crooked old cow-path,” he thought. “Otherwise, I might have had trouble getting Hazel to the hospital on time…especially if it was raining.” Hazel was due to have the baby in a few weeks time. “Maybe sooner” the doctor had said. A small frown creased his forehead and his foot tightened up slightly on the accelerator pedal.

The rays of the late afternoon sun shone obliquely across the wooded hills, brightly accentuating the tops of the tallest trees. Their fading warmth lingered on the high slopes of the open fields. A few golden threads sifted through the underbrush that bordered the road. These were quickly dispersed in the dust billowing up behind a laboring logging truck.

The gawky figure of a young man materialized suddenly on the road just ahead. Braking frantically,
Dave managed to stop the truck in a swirl of loose gravel and dust. “Jeez,” he growled to himself, “That kid must be in a daze or something…” Leaning out the window, he hollered: “Hey kid, you know I almost ran you over?” His voice softened, “Guess I was travelling a bit fast. I must be losing my grip. It was almost as if you appeared out of nowhere – right in the middle of the road!”

He peered into the youth’s expressionless blue eyes. “It’s been a long time since I saw a young fellow with hair that short.” he thought. The boy wore a cotton shirt and denim overalls. No coat.
He was carrying books – must have missed the school-bus…?

“Want a ride home? How far you got to go?” Dave noticed a faint light dawning in the boy’s eyes.
Almost like an awakening. Could the youngster be mentally retarded? he wondered.

“Just to Harrison’s, please sir,” The boy spoke in a low, hesitant voice. “It’s… I guess it is… ’bout a mile down the road.” He sounded confused. Slowly and almost reluctantly he climbed into the truck. “I’m sure it is,” he added, as if to himself.

“Nobody around here by that name,” Dave stated positively. “Unless you mean – you don’t mean the old Harrison place past the big slough, do you?” The boy nodded. “Nobody lives there,” Dave discouraged. “Not since them hippies left a year ago. They had a greenhouse set up. Grew their own marijuana plants. Think they got busted… Hey, you’re not one of them, are you?”

The boy didn’t answer. “Back in his own little world again,” Dave decided. He mentally pictured the log shack that once was home to the people named Harrison: broken windows, decaying floorboards, sagging roof. “Probably caved in by now,” he concluded.

He brought the truck to a halt near the grassy outline of a narrow road that led deep into the bush. A few strands of barbed wire dangling between rotted fence posts marked the roadside perimeter of the old homestead. “I guess this is where you get off,” Dave informed his passenger. “That is, unless you want to come home with me?”

The boy smiled and shook his head. After a short struggle with the latch, he managed to open the door and step out of the truck with a polite “Thank you”.

“Don’t start worrying about that kid,” Dave advised himself as he watched the youth stroll into the woods. “He probably only wants a place to smoke his pot, and you’ve got cows to milk at home before you can even have supper.”

Dave finished his coffee and pushed his chair back from the kitchen table. “I don’t know why,” he spoke to his wife, “but that kid I picked up – the one I told you about – preys on my mind. I think he was only about fourteen. Big for his age, though… He didn’t look like a hippie. I wish I could get him off my mind.”

Hazel yawned and stretched in her chair. She was a tiny, small-boned woman with a mass of dark curly hair and huge blue eyes. “I don’t know what it is with some of these parents,” she retorted. “Now this little guy here,” she patted her rounded abdomen, “is going to have so much love he won’t think of leaving home until he’s twenty-one!”

“I think I’ll drive up and talk to Bob Donovan for a bit. That is, if you don’t need me?” Dave questioned. “Bob said something about wanting a milk cow and we sure don’t need two. At least not yet, anyway.”

“Go ahead,” Hazel smiled. “Maybe some cow talk will take your mind off that boy.” “Maybe Bob knows something about him,” she added.

“That’s possible,” Dave agreed. “The old trail where I dropped the kid off is just below his fence line. You know, Bob mentioned something once about the Harrison place. He talks so much- especially since his wife died- that I don’t pay attention to everything he says. I think some kind of tragedy happened there years ago…?” He impulsively reached for an extra jacket as he went out the door. “Just in case I see that boy on the road,” he explained.

“This is sheer stupidity!” Dave berated himself. In the distance he could see Bob Donovan’s back porch-light shining like a beacon through the trees. “What’s got into me anyway? Winding my way through the bush with a flashlight at nine o’clock at night, just to check on a kid I don’t even know!”

It was just that the youngster had seemed so … what was the word..? Vulnerable. That was it! Mentally retarded maybe, or more likely, just a dreamer. But innocent and vulnerable as a newborn babe.

His reverie was rudely shattered when he stumbled and almost fell over a small log, half-hidden in the swamp grass that bordered the big slough. His flashlight picked up the barely discernible path ahead. Windfalls. And the tangled results of years of indiscriminate logging by beavers. He would have to move up into the timber if he wanted to get through sometime tonight. The moon was up already. “Quite a few clouds up there,” he mused. “Maybe we’ll get some snow after all.” “No”, he corrected himself. “Too warm for that.”

The moon peeked indifferently through the gathering clouds that almost shrouded the western sky. It faintly illuminated the swamp, the slough and a collection of fifty year old buildings. Its weak rays barely penetrated the outskirts of the heavily wooded forest.

“Damn!” Dave swore out loud. “It’s been years but I know the old homestead is around here somewhere…?” He tripped over yet another small log as he emerged from the bush and entered a clearing.

Yes, there was the old house just ahead. And a light shone in one of the windows…?

The grass felt suddenly shorter underfoot. The old buildings should be surrounded by hip-high wild hay this time of year? The silhouette of the log house seemed straighter, sturdier… “I am losing my mind,” Dave concluded. He could hear a radio playing, chickens, a cow.. voices!

A door opened and he heard a woman call, “That you, Dan? Can you bring in some wood? The fire’s low…”

Dave turned off his flashlight just as a man’s deep, irritated voice sounded out from behind the house. He detected a dark form approaching the doorway. The man carried a lamp; a dimly lit coaloil lantern. “For Gawd’s sake, woman! Can’t you get that kid to do anything? I work all day at the sawmill and he can’t even milk the cow properly. I got another quart out of Brownie! I suppose he’s got his nose in one of those war stories and one ear glued to the radio listening to the baloney about war heroes!”

“Don’t be too hard on the boy,” the woman’s voice cautioned. “Just be thankful he’s too young for the draft.” Her voice rose and a note of passionate hysteria crept into it. “We got a letter from Vancouver today, Dan. Minerva Donovan picked it up at the post office. Mother wrote that my cousin Mary’s youngest son isn’t coming back. That makes two they have lost. I don’t know how Mary can stand it! I couldn’t… I know I couldn’t!!”

Dave’s breath felt thick in his throat. The loud staccato beating of his heart sounded in his ears. The woman had clearly said ‘Minerva Donovan’ had picked up her letter..? Bob Donovan’s wife had died almost two years ago!

He stumbled into the security of the bushes, the beam from his flashlight bobbing ahead. Panic stricken Dave began ploughing through the thick underbrush, zigzagging around stumps and fallen trees. A packrat scurried underfoot, nearly tripping him. The new quick stab of fear turned to warm sympathy when he spotted the rodent crouched within the small circle of light. Packrats were real.
Maybe he had imagined those people back at the old Harrison place…?

Anyway, there was Bob Donovan’s porch light shining in the distance. “I’m almost at the big slough already,” Dave thought. “Guess I travel a lot faster when I’m scared right out of my mind!”

“Dave, what are you doing here this time of night?” Bob Donovan looked worried. “Hazel’s not having the baby early is she…? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

“No Bob, Hazel’s fine.” Dave’s voice was composed. “Can I use your phone to let her know I’ll be home soon?”

Bob Donovan’s eyes shone reflectively under bushy gray eyebrows. He filled his pipe slowly and carefully with tobacco. “It’s funny that you should ask about the Harrison’s, Dave. I was thinking about them today. Always do around the eleventh of November. We were their nearest neighbors- the wife and I. Dan Harrison was a worker. The kind of fellow who considered hard work to be the greatest of virtues. His wife was quite a bit younger than he was. A city gal. Pretty little thing.” “You know, it doesn’t seem that long ago.” Bob paused to light his pipe. “The Second World War I mean. Missed both of them myself. Too young for the first and too old for the second… Anyway, the Harrison’s had a son – apple of his mother’s eye. The kid ran away to war. Lied about his age. It was too much for his mother…”

He paused again, puffing hard on his pipe. “I’ll never forget that year. No snow at all until after Christmas. And warm! But it was snowing the day I found them. She’d taken the 30 – 30 off the wall. Harrison always kept it loaded in case he seen a deer. She’d shot him first and then herself.”

Dave shivered, “What happened to the boy?”

“Well, I guess that’s what set her off. You see he was with one of them groups of our Canadian boys that was sent to Dieppe. The telegram was there on the kitchen table.”

The midnight sky blended with the earth below in darkened harmony. A sudden, icy wind heralded the approaching winter. In the swamp a dead tree toppled to the ground. Snow would soon fall upon the unsheltered living and blanket the unburied dead. In the old tumbledown log house a packrat, its belly filled from foraging, reunited with its young.

THE BIRD IN THE LOFT

Margaret climbed the weathered rungs of the nailed-on ladder which led up the side of the old barn to the loft above the calf-feeding pen. It was 1947 and she was ten years of age—nearly two years older than her brother—and it wasn’t fair that Joey got to do important jobs on the farm, along with Dad, while she had to help Mom with the boring indoor chores.

She wondered if Joey thought he was a big-shot just because Dad had him drive the horses while they hauled a slingload of hay from out of the wagon and up the pole ramp to where it dangled from a pulley that was attached to the inside of the barn roof. At that point Dad would holler
“whoa” which was Joey’s cue to halt the horses and get them to back up. The bundle was then lowered on top of the mound of other hay that covered the barn floor. Dad had to crawl through all the new loose hay to unfasten the rope sling; then string it back in the wagon all ready for the next load. He and Joey were just now heading back to the field.

Margaret’s job, and she was looking forward to it, was to tamp down the lovely-smelling clover and alfalfa by leaping and tumbling into it over and over again from one of the lofts that were accessible by rickety ladders on both sides of the haymow. The north loft was the one across the hay from where she now stood poised for her first dive. It provided the roof over the horse stanchions and the cow stable.

Leaping and romping in fresh hay was purest bliss, Margaret decided happily. Almost as much fun as doing the same thing in winter in the snow. But it had been more fun when Joey wasn’t needed to drive the team of horses in the field. The siblings had tunneled huge caves in the piles of hay and played games such as hide and seek. When they heard the clank of the wagon and the squeak of the harness which signaled that the horses were approaching, they had gleefully destroyed the evidence. Dad did not want any holes in his haystack. But there was no longer any chance of that, Margaret thought despondently. She could not play hide and seek all by herself.

After the mound of new hay was sufficiently tromped, Margaret lay back on its warm prickly mattress and peered at the sky through the tiny holes in the shingles of the barn roof. The barn and a nearby log cabin had been built in 1910 by some people who had long since moved away.
Margaret recalled visiting with the last family that had lived on the place. The father had been proud of the new house he’d built out of planed lumber with sawdust for insulation. It had three bedrooms with a combination living room and kitchen. As she often did Margaret fantasized that Susie, the daughter that was her own age, had stayed behind to be her sister. It would have been purest bliss, Margaret thought sleepily, to have had a sister.

It had been two years since Dad moved his family up from the Coast to reside on the partly-cleared quarter section in the Cariboo Region of the BC Interior. He loved having a piece of land to work on, even though he couldn’t make a living from it and had to labor in the sawmills to pay the bills.
Mom couldn’t help much because she was sick a lot, but Margaret and Joey were available on weekends and during the long summer break from school. That’s when Dad needed their help the most—during haying season. The team of horses, Paddy and Peggy, had been busy all summer.
First they had to pull Dad around and around in the fields on the mowing machine to cut the hay.
After that they towed the big rake which gathered it all up into loose rows.

One outdoor job that Margaret hated was stacking the rows of hay up into haycocks, using a pitchfork. Joey didn’t have to do that because earlier in the summer he had stuck a fork right through his foot. He had screamed and screamed and it had bled a lot, but at least he didn’t have to slave in the hot sun making the haycocks just right so Dad wouldn’t complain. They had to be rounded on top so the rain couldn’t get in and rot the hay. The only good part was when Mom would come out with a pitcher of lemonade and some Melting Moments cookies.

Margaret’s dream was to have a saddle pony to ride the two miles to school just like the big kids did who lived a further two miles down the road. Once when Margaret was eight and Joey wasn’t in school yet, Joanne the eldest girl, had pulled her up to ride behind her in the saddle. It had been purest bliss even though they arrived at the school barn behind everyone else because Joanne made her horse walk every step of the way. She’d been afraid that Margaret would fall off if they trotted or galloped. Margaret had been too shy to tell Joanne she had ridden Peggy bareback a few times and was not afraid of falling. Peggy was way higher up from the ground than Joanne’s little pony.

Despite all of Margaret’s pleadings, she and Joey continued to walk the distance to school because
Dad believed saddle horses were dangerous – besides being a big expense. He could not bring himself to trust any horse other than the stodgy old team that he loved. On Saturdays when Mom and Dad had to buy groceries and stock up on sacks of grain and feed for the chickens and pigs, the horses were their means of transportation. Margaret had spent many a boring hour gazing at the big harnessed rear-ends of Paddy and Peggy as they ambled slowly down the dirt road toward town, pulling the family sleigh in winter and a big-wheeled wagon anytime after the snow had gone. Peggy was the oldest, a gray mare with a huge potbelly, while Paddy was a tall brown gelding with a black mane and tail.

“Town” consisted of a general store with post office and a feed shed. Further down the road were the community hall and the school. Sometimes Margaret and Joey were allowed to go there and play on the school swings while Mom and Dad spent their time shopping and visiting with the other customers. That is when Mom was well. Lately she was in bed more often than not.

Most people in the Cariboo still used horses for transportation but occasionally there was a car that shared the road. Joanne’s dad owned a red Chevy pickup that spooked poor old Peggy every time they met. Margaret and Joey would laugh themselves silly at Peggy’s futile attempts to break and run. She was solidly hitched to Paddy who was heavier and very calm—to the point of being nearly comatose at times. He was that way whenever Margaret and Joey wanted to ride him. If he was not in his harness Paddy didn’t believe he should move at all.

There were a few times when Margaret and Joey were required to ride Peggy into town to replenish the family’s supply of groceries. Margaret always looked forward to these infrequent expeditions. She didn’t really mind that Mr. White would laugh heartily as they rode up. The storekeeper liked to refer to their potbellied, swaybacked steed as “the horse built for two.”

To compensate for his joke Mr. White would give them each a free piece of candy. He would load their twin grain sacks with whatever was on Mom’s list, making sure that the weight was evenly distributed before tying them together and carrying them outside to sling across Peggy’s ample shoulders. As the oldest child, Margaret’s position was up there behind the groceries and Joey’s was behind her. On the way home she would pretend she was Gene Autry and sing “Back in The Saddle Again” in her loudest voice. Joey, who seldom agreed with her about anything, would break in with “Happy Trails to You,” which was a Roy Roger’s song.

The problem with Peggy was that unbeknownst to Dad every so often she would bolt, causing her human cargo to fall to the ground. With her big belly and Margaret and Joey’s short legs, there was no way they could hang on. The last time she had done this was while they were on the way home with a full load of groceries. Joey later blamed Margaret’s singing for Peggy’s transgression but that wasn’t so. Peggy had a vivid imagination and would sometimes shy at unusual shadow configurations cast by familiar stumps and trees. Margaret had clutched desperately at the grocery sacks even as they hit the clay-hard ground, with her on top and her brother alongside. Despite Mr.
White’s best knots, the sacks had fallen apart.

Dented cans and crushed boxes of crackers and cereal littered the road and the ditches. Joey had run ahead to catch the silly old mare, while Margaret attempted to patch up the evidence that could lead to Peggy’s being put out to pasture for good. Dad would never again allow them on her back if he learned what had happened and riding old Peggy was better than not being allowed to ride at all. In the end Margaret had to tell a lie. She made Joey promise to back her up in a tale that would completely exonerate Peggy. She explained to Dad that the dented cans and damaged boxes were all Mr. White’s fault. The storekeeper had not tied the sacks together properly.

They had been ambling down the road ever so slowly when the knots had loosened, causing the grocery sacks to tumble to the ground. Dad fell for the story. In a huff he accosted Mr. White who apologized and knocked a big discount off their grocery bill. Margaret’s conscience had bothered her for awhile after that.

A breeze wafted through the open areas of the barn causing the temperature to drop a few degrees. Margaret snuggled in between the layers of sun-warmed hay and fell asleep. She dreamed that she and a pretty blonde girl named Sarah were flying through the air on a pair of winged palomino ponies. They were having a wonderful time joking and laughing as they sailed over the barn, the chicken house and the log cabin. Sarah was especially interested in the old cabin. She was a bit distressed by its tumbledown state. “Maybe someday your dad will fix it up,” she suggested. “It’s small but its warm and cozy.”

As they were approaching the house with its smoke-spewing chimney, Margaret noticed Mom out in the garden with a shovel. “She must be feeling better than she did this morning, “ she confided to
Sarah. “She’s digging up potatoes for supper.”

“I know all about potatoes,” Sarah answered with a grin. “My dad had me hoeing weeds in the potato patch for days on end.” She appeared contemplative: “The garden was somewhere near where the chicken house is now,” she said finally. Margaret had no idea what her new friend was talking about but she really didn’t care. She was having too much fun.

”Is it all right if I talk to Mom?” Margaret queried. “You can try,” replied her blonde companion. The horses lowered their wings and descended ever so slowly without being reined or directed in any way, until they were just above the garden fence. Margaret took a deep breath and yelled “Hi
Mom!!” in her loudest voice. Sarah flinched and raised her hands up to cover her ears but Mom failed to notice or respond. She must have suddenly gone deaf, Margaret surmised. Or perhaps she was in another dimension, like those people on the radio show that she and Joey had listened to the other night?

”You’re pretty close to the truth,” Sarah stated as if she knew exactly what was going on in Margaret’s mind. “But it’s not your mom. It’s you and I who are in another dimension. You fell asleep and your dream is what brought us together.”

From what Margaret would remember later about the other dimension, it was purest bliss. She and Sarah soared through the air for what seemed like hours on their winged ponies, stopping every now and then to inspect places of interest on the farm. Margaret wanted to see if the huckleberries along the edge of the lower field were ripe. They were, and the girls’ teeth and tongues were soon an unsightly shade of blue. Margaret was wearing her oldest jeans and a plaid shirt but Sarah wore a dress, an old-fashioned pinafore that displayed some stains rather quickly. Last year Margaret had been in big trouble when she’d worn a school blouse in the huckleberry patch. But
Sarah didn’t seem to be worried at all.

As they flew back over the barn Margaret could see the tiny figures of Dad and Joey sitting on top of another big wagonload of hay. Paddy and Peggy looked tired. Their heads hung down almost to their knees. Margaret knew she must wake up from her lovely dream even though she didn’t want to. Sarah was like the sister she’d always dreamed of having. “Don’t worry, we’ll see one another again, very soon,” the blonde girl promised. “When you are awake look up at the hayloft. The north loft.”

Margaret opened her eyes and reluctantly allowed the real world to envelope her consciousness. She could hear Paddy snort which was his way of complaining; and then the shrill shriek of a wagon wheel as its metal rim ground across a rock that was just outside the stable door. Suddenly she heard the flapping sound of wings from somewhere up in the north loft. A large white bird swooped down and flew over Margaret’s head before exiting through the open back side of the barn. A snow white feather spiraled down through the air and landed just where Margaret was lying. Before going to bed that night Margaret put the feather under her pillow, hoping it would bring her back to the other dimension with Sarah. It didn’t work. Mom’s energy had been all used up preparing a delicious meal of roast chicken, salad and mashed potatoes. She went to bed right after supper. Margaret heated the big potfull of water on the wood cookstove to wash and scald all the dirty dishes. After that she and Joey took turns cranking the handle on the butter churn until the cream finally became lumpy. It was Margaret’s job to strain out the lumps and compress them into a blob of lovely yellow butter. Then she had to wash and scald the churn. She was so tired that she fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow and did not dream at all.

Next morning she wrapped the feather in tissue paper and stored it in her special box along with
Grandma’s rhinestone earrings and a beaded necklace that a nice old Indian lady had given her. Mom was still not feeling well so Margaret was busy all that day. She picked the fattest peas from the long rows in the garden and shelled them until her thumb tips were green and sore. She also picked a row of butter beans which had somehow managed to escape the nighttime frosts. Every hour or so Joey would holler at her in his high, smart-alecky voice that they were between wagonloads and it was time for Margaret to tamp the hay.

Joey was her brother and Margaret knew she was supposed to like him but his attitude was beginning to get on her nerves. She fervently wished that Sarah lived in the same dimension and that Ellen—her best friend at school—had not moved to the Coast. The three girls would have had so much fun. Margaret reminded herself to write a letter to Ellen. Maybe she would write about Sarah and the strange coincidence of the white bird.

Margaret never saw the white bird again and try as she might she could not dream her way back into
Sarah’s dimension. Months later when she had nothing better to do and it was snowing outside she told Joey the whole story. Her brother was actually interested. He had spotted the white bird in the barn several times over the summer. It had appeared to be nesting in the north loft, although it was late in the season. Joey had been curious and one day climbed up there to look for the eggs.
“There’s too much junk stored up there to find anything,” he complained to Margaret. “There’s pieces of harness, bridles, even an old side saddle. And boxes and boxes of smelly magazines and books.”

Margaret’s passion was to read and she was forever bringing home library books from school. If there was any daylight at all coming through her bedroom window she would read until it was gone. But in winter it got dark way too early. Dad blew the kerosene lamps out at 8:30 so everyone went to bed right after the chickens did. Margaret vowed that as soon as it was spring she would investigate the boxes in the north loft. She’d read everything in the house including Dad’s boring farm magazines.

It was a sunny afternoon in May when Margaret finally made her way through the nearly empty haymow and climbed the ladder to the north loft. Joey had been right. There was so much stuff stored up there, especially in the dark corners. Dad hadn’t been any help either. His empty feed and grain sacks were everywhere. But the boxes of musty-smelling magazines were not hard to locate. Margaret didn’t find any books but she was enthralled when she saw Life Magazines and Saturday Evening Posts dating as far back as when the last war began in 1939. Best of all she discovered a stack of movie magazines filled with photographs of Hollywood actors and actresses. She stepped in and around the debris to where she had spotted the white bird flapping its wings the previous summer. She looked for a nest but couldn’t see one. Then, sticking up amongst some coiled remnants of rope, leather and twine, Margaret noticed a snow white feather. It was even bigger and more beautiful than the one she had at home. Something else was caught up in the pile of dusty old farm supplies: a varnished wooden box that was slightly longer than the palm and fingers of her hand. It fit easily into Margaret’s jacket pocket, along with the feather.

Later Margaret examined the box in the solitary confines of her bedroom. It appeared to be handcrafted and very old. The words “To My Daughter” were carved into the bottom and a flower decorated the top. Small ornate hinges had been set in on one side, with a matching clasp on the other. Margaret held her breath while she undid the clasp. The box was lined with dark red silk and reposing upon it was a tiny porcelain doll. It was exquisitely painted and glazed with red lips, blue eyes and yellow hair. The doll wore a pinafore similar to the one Sarah had stained with huckleberry juice. Margaret was ecstatic. She was positive she would dream about Sarah that very night.

She placed the box in the top right hand drawer of her dresser. That’s where she kept her other precious things including the latest feather. After that, every once in awhile, Margaret would notice a faint golden glow emanating from the drawer. It disappeared when she opened it. It must be her imagination, she decided. Mom used to tell her she had a good imagination.

It wasn’t until three years later, on December 14, 1951, that fourteen year old Margaret finally dreamed of Sarah. All evening long she had struggled with the pain of her mother’s death two weeks earlier. “It wasn’t fair that Mom had to die so young,” Margaret told herself for the millionth time. “Maybe if I had complained less about the housework and worked harder she would still be here.” It was then that the golden glow had materialized from inside the dresser drawer, slowly enveloping the room, and Sarah appeared. She looked exactly the same, except that the huckleberry stains on her dress were gone. Margaret was positive she wasn’t dreaming. She was sure that she was awake.

”No you’re not awake,” Sarah had corrected her with that same impish grin. Don’t you remember, the only time we can communicate is when you’re dreaming? There is someone with me who wants to talk to you.”

Mom was suddenly kneeling beside the bed with her arms tightly embracing her daughter. She seemed to be alive and full of energy. “Please Margaret don’t ever blame yourself for my death,” Mom was pleading. “It was my time to go. I feel so much better now than when I was alive and sick .” The following morning all Margaret could remember of the rest of her dream was Mom and her crying and vowing they would love each other through all eternity. Sarah wasn’t there at all. * * * * * *

One day after Margaret was all grown up and living and working at the Coast she received one of her infrequent letters from Joey. Her brother still lived on the farm with Dad. He wrote that Paddy, the old workhorse who had been put out to pasture after Dad purchased his tractor, had finally died.
They’d buried him in the vicinity of where they’d buried Peggy years earlier. At the end of Joey’s letter—almost as an afterthought—he’d written:

”…Thought you might be interested. When we were kids you thought you saw the ghost of a young girl. Dad and I have been tearing down that old log cabin for firewood. It had been built in two separate sections. The one part was added on much later, probably by a different family. The added-on part was what we tore down first. Underneath, there was a bit of a depression in the soil and I noticed a metal plate that, I guess, had come off a coffin. I gave it to a lady from the
Historical Society.”

“The lettering on the name-plate read: ‘Sarah Jane Williams. Born October 10, 1905. Died
December 14, 1915….’”

DUMB BUT BEAUTIFUL

“Things are sure not what they used to be,” Becky thought miserably. She felt like having a good cry but then the tears would ruin her makeup. She wanted to look nice for Rick when he came home from work. Maybe he had remembered that today was the six-month anniversary of their wedding. Maybe he would bring her a present. Or flowers.

”Six months today I became Mrs. Richard Beddows and I was so proud,” she sniffed gingerly into a Kleenex tissue. “Three months of wedded bliss and then that disgusting old man moves in—bag and baggage!”

”It just isn’t fair,” she thought bitterly. “Rick isn’t home all day and the old man usually behaves himself when his step-son is around.” ”I don’t understand it,” Becky puzzled for the millionth time. “I thought Rick hated the old man ever since he was a little kid? I never thought he’d let him stay in our house for one minute!”

She had met Rick Beddows almost a year ago at the drive-in hamburger joint where she worked as a car hop. She recalled the revealing costume she’d had to wear as part of her job. It had make her look so sexy. The trouble was it brought out the worst in some of the customers. That night a middle-aged creep in a fancy car had made a pass at her. In fact it had been more than a pass. Becky had been scared stiff for a few minutes—until Rick roared up in his Harley Davidson motorcycle. She’d thought he was going to kill the bum even though the guy was twice his size.
Becky had moved into Rick Beddows’ pad with him that same night.

Rick was a good looking street-wise young man of nineteen. Two years younger than she was but older by far in experience. And he had brains! He had somehow managed to survive on his own since he was fifteen without ever holding down a real job. Becky knew she wasn’t that bright but she had a face and figure combination that had earned her the descriptive title of “that blonde knockout” back in her hometown high school days. Rick had called her “dumb but beautiful” and had added, “You’re all I need baby. If you were brainy, it would be too much!” That had been the night he had asked her if she wanted to make it legal and get married.

A few days after the wedding Rick traded in his beloved motorcycle on a second hand car and found a regular job as a salesman. And he was good at it! Rick was a natural con artist, Becky decided. He’d probably picked up the knack in the poolrooms and gambling joints that had been his old hangouts. Now he and Becky were a respectable couple living in a small, furnished apartment on the outskirts of the city.

”If only the old man had died when he’d had that stroke,” she thought bitterly. Rick had said the same thing too—at first. He had told her a little about his childhood once. Shortly after they met.
The night they’d gone out and gotten slightly bombed on beer. ”I’ll never know why my mother married that devil, “ he had said, more to himself than to her. “He was twice her age. I guess she was shook up after my father died. I was only about three at the time.”

”I think he must have been sterile. Maybe even impotent. I read something about that once.
Couldn’t have kids of his own so he took it out on me! I remember how he used to enjoy beating me. I’ve still got some of the scars. I was petrified all of the time when he was around. My mother died when I was nine and for awhile he had me all to himself. Until the welfare workers stepped in.
The home where they put me was a miserable place but it seemed like Heaven at the time…”

”I haven’t seen that devil since,” Rick had finished, then added viciously, “If I ever run into him, I’ll kill him on the spot!!” But he hadn’t. He’d been livid with rage though when he received that first phone call. It was from a lawyer. Apparently the “old gentleman” had money now and Rick was his only living relative. ”I suppose that’s why I have to treat his step-daddy with tender loving care,” Becky thought despondently. “So Rick can inherit his money. Well I wish he would hurry up and die!”

”Blondie! Get your rear-end in here right away!” That was the cracked, authoritative voice of the old man now. He knew she hated him calling her Blondie. “Help me to the can. Otherwise you’ll have some sheets to change—soon!” This last was followed by a high pitched cackle.

Becky rushed into the stuffy, foul smelling bedroom. Their bedroom. They had to give it up when the old man moved in. Now she and Rick shared the lumpy daybed in the living room. She attempted to drape a bathrobe around the bony shoulders but the old man swatted irritably at it with his good right hand. His entire left side was paralyzed but the right was as good as anybody’s.
And he was strong! She’d had to avoid the cruel and sometimes slyly intimate advances of that wrinkled right hand more than once.

”I don’t need that thing,” he snarled querulously at her. “You’ve seen men before. A hell of a lot of them, I’ll bet!” He leered at her, a horrible old man’s grimace full of false teeth. She managed to get him out of bed and into the wheelchair without much trouble. Either he was losing weight or she was getting stronger. God, how she hated these sessions! The old man refused to use a urinal or the bedpan she’d recently purchased.

The bathroom was too narrow for the width of the wheelchair so Becky had to park it in the doorway. She supported his paralyzed side while he hobbled to and from the toilet with the help of a cane. The contact of his large, emaciated frame repulsed her to the point of physical illness. She had worried lately that she might be pregnant. “Not now, please God,” she prayed. “Not while this horrible old man is still alive.”

She helped him lower his torso back into the bed; then reached down to raise the useless left leg from the floor. As she did so, the old man grabbed a handful of long blonde hair and pulled hard.
Tears came to Becky’s eyes as she struggled to release herself from the imprisonment of that powerful grip. She managed to find his arm and dig her nails blindly into the thin, fishbelly white flesh. She clawed viciously until he finally relaxed his hold on her hair. She had drawn blood, Becky noted exultantly.

”You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you Blondie?” The old man was smiling malevolently. ”Well, why don’t you? I can make it easy for you. I’m sick of living, crippled as I am and I want to do away with myself. But I need your help!”

”Think it over, Blondie,” the old man croaked harshly as she fled, disheveled and nearly hysterical, from the room. “You’ve got nothing to lose!”

Rick had remembered their anniversary! He’d brought home six beautiful long-stemmed roses and a bottle of sparkling wine. They had a lovely supper and Becky was deliciously happy. Later she tried to tell him about the old man. Rick responded casually to her account of the afternoon’s ordeal and laughed heartily when she told him how she had scratched the old man’s arm. “Good for you, honey. I know you can handle him. After all he is old and crippled.”

”But watch your temper baby, “ he added seriously. “I don’t want you to hurt him too badly. Try to humor the old devil.”

”Humor the old devil,” Becky thought darkly. “What does he think I’ve been doing all this time?” ”I know what you’ve been through,” Rick consoled her, “And I appreciate it. But it’ll all be worth it in the end. He’s been real friendly to me lately. Maybe his conscience is bothering him? He even invited me to his room later for a nightcap.”

The following morning Becky woke up feeling nauseous. Once again she wondered if she could be pregnant. “There’s no way I want a baby in the same house as that old man,” she vowed. “Rick thinks he’s a changed man but I don’t think so. Strange, what the old devil said yesterday. That he wanted my help to commit suicide?”

The old man swallowed a pain killer from where he had stashed them inside the pillowcase. Easing himself back down in the bed he waited for the powerful opiate to take effect. He was taking them about once an hour now. “I probably won’t last out the month,” he acquiesced somberly. “But there’s no way I want to go into the hospital. Those nurses would just love to give me an enema like they did when I had that stroke!” He shuddered at the memory of the experience.

Last night’s wine and chit chat with Rick had been interesting. Just as he’d suspected, the boy hadn’t informed his wife that her patient had terminal cancer. “Too damned self-sufficient,” the old man muttered to himself, “Doesn’t credit others with any brains at all! Just like his mother was.” He still hated that bitch even though she’d been dead for ten years. Some women could make a man feel less than a man! After she died he thought his problems would be over but she had ruined him for other women too. The boy looked like his mother. The old man wished fervently he’d willed his money to somebody else. “

Too late for that now,” he realized. “I must have been out of my mind when I contacted that lawyer!”

But the legacy was large enough, he reminded himself, that it could be considered a motive for murder. He’d been thinking about how to arrange the circumstances of his death so that his stepson would be blamed. “I wouldn’t mind dying a few weeks early,” he decided, “If it meant that bitch’s kid ended up in jail!”

The wine glasses from last night were still on the bedside table. His remained untouched and the other one—the one with Rick’s fingerprints on it — was half-full. What to do with the wine? God, how he hated being crippled! He sure didn’t want to smudge those lovely fingerprints. With his good hand he pulled open the table drawer. Wrapping a finger around a corner of the bedsheet he wiped the glass’s rim free of any lip prints before tipping its contents over himself. He eased the empty glass into the drawer and closed it.

”Blondie, come here! I had a little accident. You’ll have to change the sheets,” Luckily it was white wine, he thought, as he squirmed in his wet pajamas. Even a dumb blonde would recognize red wine stains for what they were. She didn’t look so beautiful this morning. Awfully pale. He’d have to handle her just right. “Blondie, you just might have me on your hands for a long time,” he began. “Doc says my heart is good. Not that it matters. I figure I’ve lived long enough. Sure wish I could mix up some of that white powder by myself….”

She bit as he knew she would. “White powder? What white powder?”

”Oh, just some stuff in my suitcase. It can be mixed with water to put a person painlessly to sleep forever. I’ve had it for awhile but there’s no way I can get at it and open the package by myself.”

”Yeah,” Becky replied, “If I helped you, they’d stick me in jail so fast. They’d think I murdered you.” ”No way sweetheart. I’ve got a suicide note here.” He showed her the wrinkled piece of paper he’d retrieved from the pillowcase. It read: “Being of sound mind but unsound body I hereby wish to kill myself. I state firmly that Richard R. Beddows and his wife had nothing to do with my death.” The note was signed with his usual scrawled signature.

”Now listen, all you have to do after you get me cleaned up is find the package and open it. Get me a spoon and a glass of water. Your fingerprints will be on them but that won’t matter because everyone knows you wait on me. Put everything on the night table and leave the house. Go somewhere where there is people and establish an alibi. It’ll be awhile before that stuff takes effect…. It’s eleven now. Don’t come back before one o’clock. I have my nap during that time, anyway. No one will wonder why you weren’t here.”

Becky rooted through the ratty underwear and unmatched socks in the old man’s suitcase until she uncovered a tightly wrapped package that apparently contained the lethal white powder. “I’m not touching that,” she said suddenly, recoiling. “My fingerprints would be on it!”

”Put some rubber gloves on first,” the old man advised soothingly. “I’ll handle it right away so you’ll know the only fingerprints on it will be mine.”

Becky let the front door slam when she left the house. The old man grinned despite the paroxysm of cancerous pain that wracked his body. “If you want something done right, get someone dumb to do it.” he said to himself. Blondie had set things up exactly as he’d told her to. “If she only knew she was helping me put her husband behind bars, “he exulted, “And all for nothing too—she’d have been rid of me soon enough!”

The biggest part of the ordeal was ahead of him but right now the pain was clouding his ability to think straight. He swallowed a painkiller before opening the table drawer. Becky had raised the head of his bed as high as it would go. It made it easy for him to transfer the water from the glass she had given him, into the one that had contained Rick’s drink. The old man stirred in the white powder and gulped it down. “My final cocktail didn’t taste that bad at all,” he reflected. “There’s no turning back now.”

Lowering his good right leg until his foot touched the floor, the old man struggled to manuever the rest of his body into an upright position at the edge of the bed. Becky had left the wheelchair handy with the bedpan perched on the seat—just in case. Nice girl that Blondie. She didn’t want him dying with a full bladder! He crumpled the suicide note with the package wrappings and stuffed them into the enamel receptacle.

Without having someone to support his paralyzed side his cane would be no help to him at all. Grasping an arm of the wheelchair with his good hand the old man balanced precariously on one foot before allowing himself to collapse slowly toward the floor. He lay there for a moment with his right arm resting on the wheelchair seat and then released the brakes. By leaning on the seat with his elbow and pushing hard with his foot, he managed to propel himself slowly toward the bathroom. “I won’t need to go back into the bed,” he decided, “Animals instinctively head for water when they die. They’ll just think I did too.”

The old man crawled slowly and awkwardly on one knee the length of the bathroom, shoving the shiny new bedpan ahead of him on the floor. Upon reaching the toilet he lay face down for a minute on the small semi-circle of rug. God, he was sleepy. The painkiller was a mistake, he realized. He needed to stay awake. First things first. With his right hand and his teeth he ripped the note to shreds and spit them into the toilet bowl. Now came the hard part, the cardboard carton that had contained the poison…. Hell, he wasn’t squeamish—he’d be dead soon, anyway! Dropping the box into the toilet bowl he allowed the water to soften the material. There, it was soggy enough. Lifting it up,

dripping wet, the old man ripped small pieces off with his false teeth, spitting them vigorously into the toilet until all evidence of complicity in his own death lay floating in the receptacle. He flushed the toilet and spat the dentures from his mouth, stashing them in a pajama pocket. “That should do it, “ he chortled toothlessly, relishing the noise of the running water. “That son-of-a-bitch won’t think he’s so smart when he’s in jail!”

Becky strode down the sidewalk in a state of tearful self-recrimination. “If I am pregnant my baby will be the child of a murderess,” were the damning words that reverberated through her mind. No matter if her involvement in the old man’s death remained forever a secret, the tainted memory would always be there in her conscience. And what if Rick should find out? He had cautioned her against harming his stepdaddy. Through her tears she noticed the bright blue and chrome of a telephone booth across the street. If she dialed 911 it might not be too late.

He awoke to the shrieking of an ambulance siren, his sedated brain not quite remembering why he was lying on the bathroom floor. The only symptom so far of the poison he’d taken, the old man began to realize, was a dull ache in his lower abdomen.

Blondie was suddenly there beside him, sobbing and making out that she cared. The blue, polyester clad legs of two paramedics sprang into view, armed with blood pressure monitors and other medical gee-gaws. The ambulance attendants loaded his unprotesting body onto a cot while the old man listened bitterly as the paramedics sucked up to that bitch, Blondie.

“I hope your father-in-law appreciates your concern, Mrs. Beddows,” the pimply-faced one was simpering. “The poison had not yet entered his bloodstream so his vital signs are still okay. We’ll take him to the hospital where they’ll pump out his stomach and give him an enema. Now don’t you worry, he’ll be just fine.”
MURDER IN ROOM 221

For the past five years I’ve worked as a chambermaid in a small but fairly modern hotel. I suppose you’d have to say it’s a part of the sawmill and welfare community that straggles along on the opposite side of the highway for a half mile or more. The wood-frame shacks are interspersed with a few old paint-blistered house trailers; each with its untidy collection of dilapidated outbuildings. Almost every home has a chicken house and a shed for a cow or some other poor underfed animal.

The only other business in the area, besides the sawmill with its smoke-spewing burner in the distance, is a combination general store and post office. It is distinguishable from the other buildings by the bright red and blue “Drink Pepsi” sign out in front. The poor sad spirit of the community is evident at first glance. Everyone who was ever going to be anybody has moved to Bedford, twenty-five miles down the highway. Bedford is a bustling town of 5000 people with modern stores, schools, a hospital and apartment buildings. Someday when I retire, I plan to move there.

Meanwhile I walk the short distance from my home to the hotel every morning. I am usually not that busy except during the tourist season. I work slowly but when I am finished cleaning a room, the carpet is spotless and the furniture gleams. And one thing I have to say, working there is seldom dull. The oddest kind of people frequent small country hotels!

Susan, my boss, is fond of collecting stories about these people. She often says she would like to write a book someday. She and her husband manage the business and Susan fills in as room clerk or waitress whenever the situation demands it.

Last weekend a couple came in and rented 219. The nicest room in the house. Susan said they were dressed like man and wife but the husband was almost too nice to the little woman. She, in turn, played the shy, simpering bride role to perfection. The next morning Susan could see, in the cold light of the day, that the ‘wife’ was badly in need of a shave and would be banned from the Ladies Room in most of your prestigious establishments!

Small hotels have their mysteries too. For the past month or so, most often on a Thursday night, Room 221 has been occupied but nobody has checked in. The bathroom has been used and the bed slept in, but the room is always empty when I arrive. Whoever it is must have a pass key because none of the room keys are missing. Two twenty-one is not supposed to be rented out anyway. Susan likes to keep it ready in case her daughter and son-in-law arrive unexpectedly. My daughter, Nancy, is the night clerk but she doesn’t know anything about it either.

Let me tell you a little about myself and my family. Nancy is the youngest, a beauty with a real talent for singing, but married too young to an uneducated sawmill laborer. My son Bob is doing well, making big money on construction projects up north. He sends me money occasionally and in his letters, worries about me working too hard and my being a “soft touch” for Nancy. A good boy but sometimes a little impatient with his sister.

My older daughter May is me all over again. Hardworking, honest, a good mother to her two children, but not much in the line of good looks! She has a good, steady husband, though, which is more than I had. I should be proud of my two older children and stand on my record as a good mother. But I worry about Nancy. Maybe I am too wrapped up in her personality–when she’s in the right mood–her talent and her good looks. I can’t help it though…. She reminds me of her father, wherever he is. She has my dark hair and brown eyes but her long eyelashes and infectious smile are his. Her mercurial disposition and lazy indolent ways are also inherited from her father.

Her marriage is pretty shaky, I think. I have seen her with one of the fellows that work in the bar. I don’t say a word to her and she never confides in me. But I worry a lot.

Susan is in her usual good mood this morning. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t put on a few pounds this morning Pat,” she grins, “Wouldn’t hurt you to gain a bit of weight. We only rented four rooms last night, all singles downstairs. Five, if our phantom guest was back in 221… I suppose you’ll want to check it out before we have our coffee?” Susan and I always have a coffee first thing, if I am not too busy.

I go upstairs and unlock the door to Room 221. I open it and my heart almost stops before I close it again, quickly. This time there is someone in the bed! The bathroom light is on and the fan is running so there is probably someone in there too…I hurry downstairs and tell Susan. She hollers into the bar at Paul, her husband, who is busy getting things set up in there for the day, and for the weekend coming up.

Susan and I follow Paul upstairs. He knocks loudly on the door before opening it. He ignores the woman on the bed–we can see she is a woman by her long dark hair–and carefully kicks the bathroom door open all the way. There is no one in there. The woman is all alone and still sleeping.
I stand back while Susan reaches for her hand. She lets it go quickly, as if it were a snake.

“Paul” she whispers “I think she’s dead.”

My heart almost stops for a second time that morning. In the dim light that long, dark hair reminds me of Nancy. I know it isn’t Nancy though. She is at my house this morning. She surprised me by stopping by for breakfast. When I left for work, I suggested she stay and have a nap on my bed. She gets off work at 1:00 A.M. and I knew she could not have had much sleep last night. That is, if she had any.

Susan is right. The cook, Betty, is a qualified R.N. I watch over her bacon and eggs in the kitchen, while she dashes upstairs. It doesn’t take her long. “The girl is dead and Susan is calling the cops,” she informs me matter-of-factly, before resuming her kitchen duties.

“I wonder why the police have to be called?” My thoughts are a bit fuzzy this morning. ” I suppose they have to investigate when someone dies in an unpaid for room?”

Susan is at the desk in the lobby. “The girl was only about sixteen, Pat…. A little Indian girl…. I know her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Alec MacLeod. A real nice couple too. Paul says they were in the bar last night but they seldom drink very much. Guess Friday is Alec’s day off from work….”

“That girl should be in school today….? Oh yes, it’s a day off for the secondary students….A teacher’s conference or something ….” Susan realizes she is babbling. “Oh God, I hate this!” her voice breaks. “I… I have to tell her parents and Betty thinks there is something funny about her death.”

She looks up as a couple enters the lobby door. “Oh,” she whispers, “there’s Mr. and Mrs. MacLeod now. Someone must have told them already…?” Alec MacLeod is a tall loose-jointed man in his early forties. His craggy features attest to the Scottish ancestor in his native Indian background. His wife is a short, plump, wide-eyed woman. She appears to be dominated by Alec’s outgoing personality.

“Hello there! Alice isn’t down yet? Boy, I’ll have to speak to that girl, she’s getting so lazy!” Alec MacLeod’s good humor reflects his pride in their daughter. Susan has recovered her composure. She quietly relates to them in her warm, sympathetic manner, what has happened. She leaves out the fact that the police are coming; and also what Betty has said about there being something funny about Alice’s death. Susan places one arm comfortingly around Mrs. MacLeod and leads her toward the quiet, empty dining room area of the cafe.

Alec is a different matter. He wants to see his daughter and he wants to see her now! Susan gives me a pleading look and I nod back. “I’m sure the police will let you see her when they get here,” I assure him.

“The cops are coming? But why?” Alec is highly agitated. “God, that must be them now!” Two squad cars pull up to the lobby doors. Paul quickly ushers three uniformed officers and a man I presume to be a medical doctor toward the stairs. Alec MacLeod doggedly follows them up the carpeted steps.

My daughter Nancy walks into the lobby through the back entrance. She looks like a breath of spring in her beautifully tailored yellow and white pantsuit. She glances nervously at the parked police cars outside.

“Have you seen Susan, Mom? I didn’t mention it earlier but I’m blowing this place and I need my paycheck.” I tell Nancy briefly that a girl has been found dead in room 221 and the police are up there now. Nancy doesn’t appear to be that interested. “Those Indians. Always getting themselves into trouble,” she says disparagingly.

Her careless remark cuts through me like a knife. Doesn’t she remember or possibly care that my mother, her grandmother, was a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian? And how does Nancy know that the dead girl is Indian, anyway….?

She realizes her mistake right away. “I didn’t want to tell anyone about that girl, Mom. I felt sorry for her. Every Thursday night she came in, dead tired, while her parents boozed it up in the bar. I know I shouldn’t have but I let her in for free.”

Nancy let an Indian girl in for free? I knew my daughter better than that! I was suddenly positive that Alec MacLeod would have made sure his daughter had money. Yes, I knew Nancy pretty well…. She had pocketed the money for herself after charging the girl for a double room when she only needed a single!

Paul is coming downstairs. “Don’t go away girls,” he warns Nancy and me. Alec MacLeod is behind him. Bewilderment mixed with the beginnings of the slow onslaught of grief are openly written on his face. He bypasses us silently to join his wife in the cafe.

Sergeant Andrews, who is a big gray-haired man, and a younger, blond policeman follow Paul into his office. The other policeman and the doctor are still upstairs. Betty is questioned first. Then Nancy. I hold my breath at times trying to control myself while Nancy is in the office. She is in there for a long time. The third policeman, together with the doctor, file silently downstairs and disappear into the cafe.

The young policeman from Paul’s office walks down the hall and knocks on the door of room 109. He engages the occupant of that room in short conversation; he then comes up to the desk and asks for “Mrs. Patricia Jorgenson.” Me. He asks if I am Nancy Brown’s mother and I croak in a dry trembling voice that I am.

“Please go into the office. Sergeant Andrews would like to talk to you. The young policeman hurries toward the cafe. Nancy is crying. I resist the urge to throw my arms around her, as Sergeant Andrews indicates a chair. “Please be seated Mrs. Jorgenson,” he intones quietly.

Nancy pulls her chair up to mine and places one small hand on my arm. Her tears have ruined her makeup. Her mascara is running. “That good for nothing husband of mine did it, Mom. He was jealous and he thought that little squaw was me. He must have seen me go up into that room earlier.”

Nancy frowns as the young blond policeman enters the room. Sergeant Andrews rises from his chair. “Mrs. Jorgenson, will you please take your daughter to your home? We have your phone number and we’ll call you when this is settled.”

“I must warn you Mrs. Brown,” he speaks sternly to Nancy, “Not to leave town. My men are going to your trailer now, to pick up your husband for questioning. We will probably want to talk to you later.”

Nancy follows me out of the office. Suddenly she begins to laugh. “That’s a good one! Just when the guy in 109 was going to get me a job singing in a lounge in Bedford. Now I’m involved in this mess.”

“All my life everybody screws me around. My father leaves when I am just a baby. My mother is a dumb Indian.” She raises her voice. “I hate you all! Especially that drunken jealous husband of mine!” She is screaming now. “I knew what he was up to last night! I saw the look in his eyes when he stumbled up the stairs. He had a passkey from the desk and he was going up there to kill me!”

“Go get him!” she spits out at Sergeant Andrews. “He’s passed out in the trailer. You cops should be able to handle that fat, good-for-nothing creep!”

Sergeant Andrews takes Nancy firmly by the arm. “I’m going to have to take her into custody after all, Mrs. Jorgenson.” I nod dumbly. “Mrs. Brown has admitted to a knowledge of her husband’s state of mine last night. It is entirely possible that she was in a position to prevent a crime from happening.”

I walk out into the lobby. Mrs. MacLeod is sitting in there staring straight ahead. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. Impulsively I run over and kneel down in front of her on the carpet. I grasp one of her plump brown hands with my own. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

She looks at me impassively. “I’m sorry too. For you. ” she whispers back.

There is more than one way to lose a daughter.

THE CROP CIRCLE PHENOMENUM

On an unusually warm night in late August after the haying season had ended but while the grain crops still remained unharvested in the fields, Mildred Thomas awoke from a sleep that had been brought on by sheer exhaustion only a few hours earlier.

The upper floor of the two-story farmhouse retained the heat of the day like a thermos and Mildred—menopausal as she was—had tossed and turned for hours. No danger of rousing Jake her husband of thirty-five years. As usual he slept like a hibernating bear in winter. Snored like one too.

Mildred decided that this year she might even welcome winter despite the season being nearly six month’s long in the BC central interior. It had been a hot dry summer and snow sounded like a comfortable alternative. If at any time she yearned for the sight of green grass, she could always spend time with daughter Debbie and family at the Coast.

Right now, Mildred was sick and tired of grass in any shape or form. She had been on the tractor all summer long, cutting and baling the stuff that grew on their three hundred and twenty acre—mostly cleared—farm. That, on top of housecleaning and making meals for Jake and their youngest son Clarence who had really not pulled his weight around the place this summer but would be off to college soon and she knew she’d miss him. Clarence had driven into town this evening to say goodbye to his friends. By now he should be sleeping comfortably, Mildred thought with a twinge of jealousy. His room was on the other side of the house and didn’t get the heat from the afternoon sun.

Her bedroom window was open wide and the outside air was finally beginning to cool the indoor temperature. Mildred pulled the top sheet up for protection from the chill she knew would come with the dawn. Jake slept beside her naked as a jaybird, oblivious to all sensory changes. His wife curled up on her side, envying him to the point where she almost hated him. She was dog-tired but not able to slip back into slumber. She could hear a humming sound coming from somewhere. Perhaps her hearing was improving and it was the refrigerator downstairs? Now Mildred detected a faint but distinctly foul odor. Surely that noxious smell had not come from her husband….? It became more pronounced and Mildred realized it was coming in through the window. A burnt chemical odor—worse than the smell of burning garbage! Probably wafting in from the molybdenum mine that was sixty kilometers or so to the west. God only knew what they burned off up there in the dead of night! She threw herself out of bed and slammed the window shut. Jake never changed the tone of his snoring but Rex, one of their two dogs, began to bark excitably.
From far away at the next farm she could hear a bevy of canine replies.

The alien pilots expressed their jubilation in radio communications with each other. The whirling strobe lights of their twin conveyances pierced the darkness as they hovered a meter and a half above a field of barley in a remote section of the planet. According to calculations they had located the general area where two of their fellow explorers had landed and inscribed emergency crop-circle messages almost exactly two Earth years earlier. It had taken eleven crop circles of varying sizes, swirl-textures and groupings for the explorers to convey their story.

The messages–detectable on their home planet with the aid of powerful telescopes–told a tale of a voyage marked by misadventure and culminating in misery and deprivation. The instruments on both spacecraft had malfunctioned, probably because they’d pulled in too close to an asteroid laden with magnetized minerals. One of the vehicles’ fuel recycling systems and both inter-directional diatribes had shut down the following day. By the time they reached the solar system referred to in the manual as “X” they had used up most of their supplies, including those necessary for nourishment.

By sheer luck they had landed on the one planet in the system that was habitable. There they were met by members of a biologically similar species who, despite the language barrier, had shared nourishment with them and made them feel welcome.

In a jagged postscript sculpted the following morning, the explorers had divulged they were on their last dregs of fuel—both for flight and for messaging. They arranged a set of biodegradable message cones within the confines of a circle to estimate approximately where on the planet they were stranded; finishing it all off with a plea for a quick rescue.

”They sure had a hope,” spoke the alien named Jo. “Without a functioning inter-directional diatribe it’s amazing that they pinpointed their location as closely as they did.”

“Yes,” replied the other whose name was Jan. Both pilots were female. “When they composed that message they had no way of knowing about the approaching season of snowstorms and freezing temperatures that made it impossible for anyone to land on this part of the planet. And the summer season was just too short.”

”Our modern space ships are no sanctuary in this harsh climate,” Jan continued. “They are constructed of a lightweight super-alloy that quickly disintegrates under the unfiltered rays of that potent sun. Which is why our mission must be completed within two revolutions of the planet.”

”Oh well, it’s highly unlikely those explorers were able to survive two half-year episodes of abhorrent weather,” Jo stated flippantly. Of the two pilots she was the least compassionate. Jan was older, a veteran of many search and rescue missions who thrived on helping others. On the other hand, Jo was more physically appealing. Members of the opposite sex found her irresistible.

At 2:30 am eighteen-year-old Clarence Thomas herded his father’s pickup truck between the gateposts and switched off the headlights. With his hands on the steering wheel but driving blind, he allowed the front tires to seek out the contours of the dark winding driveway. “I hope I can walk as well as I can drive,” Clarence giggled to himself, his inebriated brain believing he’d made it home safely because of skill and not just pure luck. He had exceeded by more than two hours the curfew limit set by his father. If Jake even suspected that his son had over-indulged in alcoholic spirits and then driven the pickup home while in a less than sober state of mind there’d be hell to pay.

Clarence parked well away from the lighted presence of the farmhouse. As far as he could tell from beneath the darkness of a clouded sky he was near the barn and the horse pasture. Cautiously he opened the truck’s door and attempted the arduous journey down from the driver’s seat. In so doing he tripped over his own feet and fell heavily to the ground. He lay there face crumpled in gravel and horse dung, his head hurting and with the earth spiraling all around. Then the young man’s stomach began to rebel against its own contents and he vomited.

The cloud cover that had obscured the light from a three-quarters waxing moon began to disperse and the farm buildings, trees and landscape were suddenly illuminated. Clarence opened his eyes and rolled away from his befouled resting place. He could hear tiny whimperings coming from nearby. Rex, the Labrador retriever, and a smaller nondescript mongrel he had named George were both gazing at him solicitously. They could not have cared less that their human hero was layered in dirt and puke, as well as blood from a facial wound, and that he reeked of stale alcohol. When they saw that Clarence was alive and reasonably well, their tails became wildly animated. The young man’s heart warmed in gratitude. “Any guy whose dogs think he’s great can’t be all that bad,” he consoled himself. But deep down he knew better. He’d been a jerk this evening and, in fact, been one all summer long. By all rights his parents should disown him.

Clarence rose unsteadily to his feet and discovered he was able to place one foot in front of the other despite being dizzy and experiencing pain—both on the inside and the outside of his skull. What he desperately needed now was a shower. But he knew he dare not enter the house in the shape he was in. His dad was a heavy sleeper but his mother would detect his presence the moment he walked through the door. Especially if he stumbled and fell. Clarence decided to find his way to the big slough where he had learned to swim as a youngster. It was only about a half a kilometer away and the trail would be easy to see in the bright moonlight.

Ten minutes later he approached the round, brightly moon-washed pond. A breeze riffled through the trees stirring up silvery ripples on the water. Rex was already splashing happily amongst the reeds. George had stayed behind. The little dog which had showed up at the Thomas’s door about a year ago, was probably older than he looked. Clarence was enjoying the view and feeling quite sober as he doffed his clothing and prepared to ease his muscular teenage body into the warm, teacolored water.

Suddenly two large objects swooped through the sky only about ten or fifteen meters above his head. Glowing red beacons outlined their dome shaped peripheries and ribbons of rainbow-hued lights emanated sporadically from what appeared to be revolving sets of windows. Clarence could hear a dull humming sound and a foul burning-chemical odor permeated the air. He dived headlong into the water. Rex leaped for the shore where he barked and growled for a full five minutes.

Mildred peered at the clock. It was 3:15 am and Jake was still snoring up a storm. In less than two hours it would be daybreak and he’d be wanting his breakfast . There was no use trying for any more sleep. She tiptoed downstairs, the moonlight shining through unblinded windows guiding her way.

She peered out the kitchen window and with a sense of relief spotted the truck half-way up the driveway. “Why on earth does Clarence park way back there?” Mildred asked herself. Last week he had mentioned something about stray cows blocking his way. She wondered what story he’d come up with this time. Oh well, at least he was home and in one piece. Some of the kids he hung out with were known for their drinking. Clarence prided himself on being the designated driver but a mother could never be sure.

The little dog George was rolling around out there in the dirt. It almost looked as if he were trying to remove the fancy collar he’d come with. Perhaps he was suffering from ear mites? Mildred made a mental note to check him out tomorrow. At the moment she was dying for a cup of tea. She plugged the electric kettle in and got the teabags out.

Mildred knew she shouldn’t but who would know? She stealthily removed two large store-bought doughnuts from their package, munching them contentedly along with sipping her tea. The doughnuts didn’t taste half as good as homemade ones so they probably weren’t as fattening. “And anyway,” Mildred defended herself to her own conscience, “I’ll probably skip breakfast.”

Glancing out the window Mildred could see the first tiny glimmerings of approaching daylight along the horizon. All of a sudden a couple of airplanes or else helicopters with red flashing lights on top darted across the sky faster than any aircraft she’d ever seen. “Maybe they’re flying saucers…”

That thought raced through Mildred’s mind before she could suppress it. She’d heard more than enough talk about extra-terrestrials two summers ago when a neighbor’s oat field was vandalized by what was referred to in the newspapers as “crop circles.” Scientists and reporters had flown in from all parts of the country to photograph the oddly intricate formations. And nosy people arrived from everywhere with their children and even their dogs. Mildred and Jake had sympathized with the Merrill family. If their oat crop wasn’t completely ruined by all that invasive artwork, the tourists had certainly finished it off.

Mildred read later that the scientists thought whirlwinds or some other natural force had created the formations. It was only the science fiction buffs and idiots who believed in extra-terrestrials. Her husband was convinced that the whole thing was a hoax, likely instigated by the young fellows their son regarded as his friends. Mildred was supremely grateful that Clarence had been at home that night.

The alien pilots had completed the swathing of a simple four-circle memo within the confines of the
Thomas’s barley field. Jan was not able to extricate her elongated metal probe with its heatproducing stenciller from where it was stored at the base of her craft. So Jo whose talent for circleliteracy was not as well-developed had been forced to compose a somewhat sloppy outline of their experiences.

Jan’s task had been to arrange a selection of message cones inside one of the circles to convey to the bosses back home that faint beepings had been picked up on their LF receivers, indicating one of the missing explorers may still be alive.

”Fat chance of that!” Jo managed to communicate a sneer along with the remark. “If we do locate the life-force monitor that’s been beeping it’s probably attached to what’s left of a corpse. If anyone was still alive he would have contacted us by now. “

”Contain yourself, Jo,” Jan advised. “You know the rules. We must refrain from close association with any member of an indigenous species. Even if their physical attributes do resemble our own.
There are health issues as well as ethical issues.”.

”Oh Jan, don’t be such a fuddy duddy,” countered Jo as they elevated their spacecraft simultaneously until they orbited a thousand meters above the wide expanse of farmland. “I was merely fantasizing. You’ll have to admit that he was very attractive as he stood there on the shore.”
She paused and then continued, “The instructors described that species during one of our orientation seminars. Apparently they are not very intelligent. There is also a latent tendency toward violence.”

”What do you mean ‘latent’?” Jan demanded. “I understand they can be at one another’s throats at the drop of a hat! Absolutely barbaric! That may be because they lack the one important biological trait that separates them from highly civilized beings such as ourselves.”

Jo yawned. She was fast becoming fatigued. Both pilots had slept little during their daytime respite. The temperatures on this part of the planet were unusually warm for the time of year.
“Why don’t we cruise the area just one more time?” she suggested. “If we can’t locate the source of the beeping, we’ll set the controls on automatic pilot and sleep with a clear conscience through the first lap home.”

Clarence back-stroked his way to the surface from beneath the murky waters of the pond. He permitted himself a quick breath of air and a frenetic glance at the sky before submerging once again. No sign of the UFOs if that’s what they were….? The young man realized the alcohol he had imbibed still affected his nervous system but he was positive he hadn’t imagined those space ships with all the brilliant, psychedelic lights. And that smell! It was the same odor he’d remembered from two years ago when the crop circles had appeared in the Merrill’s field.

That pilot Rick Thorklesen had telephoned Danny Merrill’s dad about what he’d spotted from the air. Clarence was Danny’s best friend so he got to be one of the first on the scene. Neither Danny nor his dad could smell anything. But every now and then as the three of them strolled through the field, Clarence would get a whiff of that awful smell.

Rex was still barking but Clarence noticed the intensity of his yelps had abated. Cursing himself for a coward the young man began swimming toward shore. After reassuring his dog with pats and kindly phrases he found a relatively clean portion of his shirt to blot the surplus water from his shoulder length blond hair. He donned socks, shoes and jeans and felt as if he were a regular human being again.

The young man and his dog sprinted along the trail until they were once again in the vicinity of the farmyard and the house. It was now 3:45 am according to Clarence’s watch. Just as he’d suspected a light shone in the kitchen window indicating his mother was already up. He’d have to climb the ladder which led to the porch roof and slip inside through his bedroom window.

George bustled out to welcome them, his stub of a tail wagging enthusiastically. Rex returned the greeting with affectionate whines and sniffs. Clarence reached down to pat the silky fur which was damp and matted in places with cockleburs. “You poor little thing,” he crooned softly. “I’ll bet you’ve been wandering around all this time trying to find us. And you’ve lost your collar somewhere along the way….”

The little dog squirmed with delight. He’d been vastly relieved when he detected Rex’s approaching scent and that of Clarence, his biped companion. The two represented George’s newer happier life on this backward but peaceful planet. God only knew what would have happened if Rex had become caught in the clutches of those female pilots. From what George had gathered in the gossip circles back home Jo was a real predator when it came to good-looking males. She might even have dog-napped him and taken him home with her although it was against the rules.

Thankfully, George thought, it was the male canines who were the important beings on this planet. That cute cocker spaniel on the next farm was content in her role as mother to his puppies. Despite the language gap she had appeared to worship the ground George trotted upon. Their only anatomical disparity was an absence in her species of the extendible front toes with their larger opposing digits that had enabled his planet’s species to create a vast technological empire.

George had been keeping his toes inside their paws for the past year and a half. Ever since his partner had died of wounds inflicted by those savage canines known as coyotes. He had barely managed to escape the pack, making his way to the Merrill farm and then later, to the Thomas’s. There’d been no necessity for extending his toes since that time. That is, until tonight when manual dexterity had been required to remove his collar with its built-in life force monitor. Otherwise he could have ended up on board a space ship bound for home and away from this beautiful planet.

During the time that Rex and Clarence were at the big slough George had been extremely busy. Unbeknownst to them he quietly dogpaddled into the deepest part of that same body of water and submerged the offending collar into its murky depths. After that he wriggled and crawled his way through the thick swamp grass and brush in the direction of where the odor of freshly-stenciled crop circles had assailed his nostrils.

Sure enough several various-sized circles were clearly visible in a field of grain. George was uninterested in the content of the message that they conveyed to the universe. His concern was with the smaller-sized communications regarding the beepings that had been picked up on the pilot’s L.F. receivers.

The little dog enjoyed himself thoroughly, knocking the message cones over in every direction. He realized that within a few hours of daybreak their metal casings would break down from the unfiltered rays of the sun and their message would disintegrate into dust. But George wasn’t taking any chances. The dogs in charge on his home planet could be quite persistent….

”Hey you guys,” Clarence was back after a furtive perusal of the back porch. “Look what I found— some doggy biscuits.” The young man extended his hands each of which held a portion of the delicious tasting morsels. Rex whined in excitement and George found himself drooling before he even had a bite. Life was good on this planet!

THE COP AND THE DAY-OLD DOUGHNUT

It was a slow day in the cafe until the cop took notice of a day old doughnut served next to his tepid coffee. The cop whose name was George practically lived at Riley’s Diner, for that was the name of the cafe; Riley being the cook and also the owner.

Riley’s Diner was a typical greasy spoon restaurant located one block away from the more lucrative downtown section of the small city. It was a friendly place where the waitresses actually conversed with their customers when they were not too busy. The food having been baked, broiled or fried by Riley who had missed his calling drastically; he should have been a pro wrestler or a used car dealer, was mediocre at best.

George was not that interested in the quality of his meals anyway. As a rookie cop in an unfamiliar town he was lonely much of the time, especially when he was off-duty as he was now. Marianne who worked in the kitchen had agreed to go out with him when her shift was over–in exactly five minutes–at four P.M. They would likely go to a nice restaurant for dinner and then to a movie. As George had just explained to the lone customer at the counter, a wimpy looking college professor type, Marianne had suggested they see an old movie called “Thelma and Louise”. George who hated movies about woman had found himself saying, “Why not?”

Having been raised on a farm in the heart of the Bible Belt in Southern Alberta, George was slowly becoming accustomed to the rough and tumble ways of a pulp mill town in Northern British Columbia. The dog-eat-dog attitude of some of its citizens had been a definite culture shock. He had arrived only six months ago. Since that time his big soft farmboy heart had hardened considerably.
But with but a sprinkling of crusted sugar still on the outside….

With a start George realized the analogy he had idly concocted in his mind to describe his new tough attitude also applied to the doughnut that Polly the waitress had placed in front of him. “Polly,” he chided, “This doughnut is too old to be recycled for human consumption.” The college professor at the counter giggled effeminately.

“Besides it’s not mine. I didn’t order it.” he added.

“Oh George I’m sorry!” Polly’s apologetic smile stretched from ear to ear. Even when she spoke with humility she looked a bit mischievous, George thought. “You did order the doughnut though when you were in here earlier. Don’t tell me you’re losing your memory?” This time her smile definitely mocked him.

“What the hell do you mean when I was in here earlier?” George demanded. For a quiet country boy he was sometimes explosive. His voice softened. “Okay Polly, I should know you by now. You’re always so full of it!”

Polly’s smile faded. “George, I don’t know what’s going on! I just watched Marianne and you–or your twin brother–leave the cafe a short while ago. I thought you’d dropped Marianne somewhere and then came back?”

The man at the counter turned around. “She’s right. I thought you looked familiar when you came back in.”

George reached for his coffee cup and glared at Polly. “I came in a few minutes ago and helped myself to a cup of your gawd-damned awful coffee!” He gestured toward the coffee machine on the counter with the “Help Yourself” sign taped above it on the pie cupboard. “I sat down and then you directed that doughnut at me. Marianne told me she wouldn’t be off work ’til 4:00…?” He glanced quizzically in the direction of the kitchen.

“She got off at 3:30 George.” Polly looked thoughtful as she strolled towards the kitchen.

George took a sip of coffee and shook his head. It was no big deal if Marianne wanted to go out with someone else. He was not struck on seeing that movie “Thelma and Louise” anyway. Besides he should go home and type up yesterday’s police reports. There was one he’d have to phone Jason, his partner, about. Jason had taken notes when they’d interviewed that woman who’d given a bunch of money to a con man. She said she’d thought he was a policeman, for gawd’s sake!”

Polly strode out of the kitchen with Riley in tow. Riley lumbered toward the cash register and began rummaging through the drawer. He pulled the drawer out and peered under it, then shook his head in frustration, “Gone! The envelope’s there but there’s nothing in it. I should have known that woman was a thief!” he roared. “I knew she was a liar! She lied to me when I hired her. She said she was experienced in the kitchen.” He made a fist and grasped it convulsively with the other hand.
“There was no damned way she even knew how to clean a grill properly!”

“What are you saying about Marianne? That she robbed you?” George asked incredulously. “How much did she take?”

“I had an envelope in there–Riley pointed at the cash register–With twenty thousand dollars cash that I made in a deal with a real estate agent. His lawyer dropped it off today during the noon rush. I was going to take it to the bank before it closed at six. I didn’t think twice when Marianne asked if she could take a twenty out of the till for pantyhose or something…. After all she was going out with you–a cop!”

“Gosh, George, “Polly interjected, “That guy she left with sure looked like you. Same build and height. Course I didn’t see him close up. He was wearing a policeman’s hat, too,” she finished.

“Well, I’m not wearing my hat because it’s supposed to be my day off. But I guess it’s up to me to report this business even though I won’t get paid for it,” George stated as he got up to go to the phone. The man at the counter shook his head sympathetically. Riley scooted after him. “Don’t tell the other cops that the money was not part of the take-in for the cafe,” he pleaded. “I’d appreciate it because I’m not sure if my insurance policy for theft covers extra cash or not.”

“Well, Riley,” George admonished. ” I like to be honest but I’ll tell you what; I won’t say a word unless someone asks.”

“There’s going to be a bunch of cops here right away! “George hollered as he hung up the phone. “We need you to stay here as our only impartial witness.” He spoke to the customer at the counter who seemed to be actually enjoying his second doughnut on top of an equally ancient piece of lemon meringue pie.

“Riley, I guess you’ll have to close up shop.” The restaurant owner reluctantly punched the lock on the door of the cafe and placed a closed sign in the window. “Not only do I get robbed but I’m missing out on the suppertime business too!” he snarled.

When the police officers had finally gone, George and Polly left Riley all alone in the cafe with a bottle of overproof rum, and got into the unmarked police car that was George’s mode of transportation for the day.

Polly laughed, “Well, we got away with it! There’s no argument that the guy who left with Marianne and the money was just a guy who happened to look like you. That customer thinks you were set up and Riley is probably convinced of it too. The cops in this town are not that bright either!”

“Yeah, well I was a little worried when Marianne didn’t seem to know what to do with the money. What she did was stash it in a black plastic bag that was filled with stale doughnuts. She took the bag outside along with some other garbage that was ready for the dumpster. When we left we rescued the bag, doughnuts and all and shoved it into the trunk of Marianne’s car. She said she would drop the money off at her uncle’s cabin before dashing up to the airport to catch a plane”

George frowned. “She’s the only one of us that the police will be looking for, so she’ll have to hide for awhile.”

“You don’t need to worry about Marianne,” Polly assured him. “She’ll just get a new hairdo and change her makeup and her own mother won’t recognize her. I’ll quit Riley’s place in a few weeks and get a job in another city. Marianne will get on the payroll and then we’ll think up another scam.”

“It’s sure nice to have a handsome young cop to help us out this time, though,” she added.

George grinned happily. “Like I told you before, I can sure use my share of the loot. A rookie cop doesn’t make much.” He laughed. “It’s a good thing those doughnuts in that bag were old and hard and not fresh and sticky. The sugar on them will just sweeten up our money a little bit!”

The cabin in the wilderness that Marianne’s uncle had built as a retreat within commuter distance of the city was not exactly an architectural wonder. In the fading daylight George noted it had been slapped together out of rough lumber with a bit of tar paper for insulation. The windows were covered with clear vinyl instead of glass and George could see that the plastic film had torn loose in a few places. It looked as if the door was partially open for some reason…?

George fished in the glove compartment for a flashlight. With Polly right behind him, they slipped open the car doors and stepped carefully and quietly in the direction of the cabin. It looked as if the door had been literally torn off its hinges. It hung awkwardly from where it was still attached to the frame. The flashlight revealed that whoever had broken in had ransacked the building and then left. It looked as if a tornado had struck inside. Clothing, papers and bits of foodstuff were everywhere. “Good Lord!” Polly whispered, “What’s that smell?

“Funny,” George thought, “How women always notice smells.” But of course he knew that pervasive odor. He recalled a childhood camping trip and returning to a torn tent with a mound of excrement in the middle of the floor. “Bear turds!” George laughed with relief. “Watch you don’t step in any of it, ” he warned Polly. “Our intruder was just a bear looking for some food.”

“George!” Polly cried, “I think he found some. See that doughnut on the floor? And there’s a halfeaten one on the table. That bear must have taken the whole bag away–the one with our money in it!”

“Oh my gawd!” George groaned, “They do that! I’ve seen bear caches of garbage, sometimes quite a ways from the dump. We’ll be lucky if we ever find any of it in that swampy jungle out there!
Any of it that the bear hasn’t damaged or eaten. They love sweet stuff!”

“Oh well,” Polly philosophized, “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight. There’s no way I’m going out there in the dark and I sure don’t want to spend any more time in here with that smell.
How about it?” she smiled. “We do have a date you know. Let’s go see that movie “Thelma and Louise.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow morning about ten,” she continued, as George propped the cabin door shut and strode despondently toward the car. “Luckily we both get the day off. You can come up to my place after the show.” She smiled provocatively at him in the dark.

“Why not,” George agreed sadly. “As a criminal I make a much better lover…. I think I better stick to being a cop, ” he added, as he opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel.

“Oh well, if anyone comes up here there’s nothing left to connect us to the crime. Other than those few pieces of doughnut, the evidence is all gone. It’s out in the bush; soggy, torn, eaten!” He slapped his hands hard against the steering wheel. “I think I’ll kill myself!”

“Let’s go!” Polly commanded. “The movie starts in fifteen minutes!”

“

Oaf was originally from Norway. He was a fairly attractive young man with blue eyes, blond hair and a beard but he chewed snooze. His teeth were beginning to turn yellow and the one time he’d been over for supper, he’d disappeared into the bathroom periodically to spit. And he hadn’t even bothered to flush! Celia hated the disgusting habit. She had suggested to Peter that he never invite his carpooling crony back.