Blackflies Are Murder. Lou Allin
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said in a mock scold, raising the face net and bending to pull at the yellow roots of a clover-leafed plant with a white star flower. “I see our goldthread’s back. Pharmacopoeia of the woods. Aboriginals used the roots for cankers, sore gums and teething.”
“We have a problem worse than a toothache,” Belle said. “I found a baiting spot not far from that grandfather yellow birch with the lightning scar.”
“Should have suspected that. I heard gunfire Saturday morning, and more than one strange truck’s passed. It’s ruining the hiking. If I’m not ducking at a shot, I’m looking over my shoulder for bears straying from their territory, attracted to the free lunch.” A black look crossed the healthy old face. “Last week a mother and two cubs were foraging near the swamp. Bears don’t scare me, mind you, but I do want to know where they are. Likely they feel the same. Still singing George M. Cohen songs?”
“On the same two notes, just like Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Belle ran a hand through her short reddish hair, discovering a delta-winged deer fly looking for a home in the greying strands.
“I thought the spring would be safe now.” Anni bristled like a venerable porcupine at bay, a slight sag to one eye lending an arch expression. “Cubs are learning to feed with their mothers. Fresh from their dens and hungry. God knows enough of them get shot in the fall.”
“Where the quota is limited to boars, but who checks? Shouldn’t we call the Ministry of Natural Resources?”
“Overworked and underpaid, the MNR. Don’t-call-us department, if you can get through that phone maze. Press this, press that. And last week in town they tranquillized a mother sixty feet up a tree. Died in the fall and orphaned two cubs.” With her stout oak walking stick she prodded the Beagle’s rump to prevent him from poking his nose into an anthill. “Tell me where you found this hellish site.”
Frowning at the description, turning over possibilities like coins in her hand, Anni said, “This calls for extreme measures. I don’t suffer fools gladly. Enough is enough.”
“What are you going to do?”
With a conspiratorial grin, she ticked off steps on her wrinkled fingers. “One, search and destroy. Rip everything down and bury it. And I’ll give a good, solid burn to that oily log, safe enough before the dry season. Two, any strange vehicle up to mischief gets tires flattened or a spark plug tossed into the brush. They’ll get the message.”
“Uh,” Belle said, shifting her feet uncomfortably in consideration of the Russell belt knife at Anni’s side, “that could be dangerous. Especially if they figure out who did it.”
A wry smile teased one corner of the puckered mouth, as innocent as Lillian Gish’s in The Whales of August. “But, my dear, how can they? There are so many cottages. And I have a perfect disguise. The old are as invisible as children. You have to do what is right. And in the end, we’re all bear bait, and nobody gets out of the forest alive. Not even the bears.”
No arguments there, Belle thought with mingled admiration and uneasiness at the picture of a senior citizen guerrilla. “Please be careful. And keep me posted.” She watched the slender form stride down the trail, a five-foot challenge to osteoarthritis, one tough person, living alone twenty-five kilometres from town. What else to expect from a daughter of Manitoba, a rugged place where men are men and moose take precautions?
Back down Edgewater Road Belle walked, heeling the dog, alert to the sounds of approaching vehicles muffled by the hills, noticing, as she passed smoking barbecues and laughing children, that life on Lake Wapiti had shifted seasons. The varying sounds of motorboats had returned, a different tenor from the guttural roar of snowmobiles. On April 20th, the last ice floes had drifted out, and until Labour Day, the boats would hold dominion.
She turned at the Parliament of Owls sign that marked her driveway. Serving as personal totems were Horny, a foot-high brown owl with yellow marble eyes and threatening eyebrows, and Corny, his innocent snowy brother. Ever hopeful, Freya dug up a pebble and dropped it at her feet like a precious gem. Shepherds were notorious stone-swallowers. Probably the bouncing rock resembled some chaseable creature in a Jungian doggie symbol mindset. “Chip your fangs, but remember that you can’t get falsies. This isn’t Toronto,” Belle said, skipping the prize across the gravel and climbing to the deck where ruby-throated hummingbirds back from Gulf Coast condos duelled for a sugar fix from the bright red plastic flowers of the feeder.
Inside the two-storey cedar house, “Fireworks Polka” by Strauss was playing on the CD player, a lively treat with explosions of gunfire. Belle took a bath, talced up, and chose a T-shirt with a picture of Clayoquot Sound: “Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth.” After pouring a glass of tankcar red wine, she opened The Toronto Star. Referendum, wheneverendum, neverendum. Would the Quebec dilemma plague Canada until the rest of the provinces joined the US along with the multi-cultural city of Montreal? Protection of Francophone heritage or just plain blackmail? Humiliated spouse or whining wife? Nervous ethnic and Anglo votes had tipped the last “Leave Canada” results to a narrow 50.6% NO victory, though the shenanigans with balloting resembled the Florida mess. None of this uncertainty was helping the confidence of the nation, interest rates, the stock market and Palmer Realty—her own gagne-pain—bread and butter.
Mealtime in a rush meant sensible Kraft dinner. Why were people so snobbish about the legendary blue box? Hard to beat the price, the convenience, the taste, or the plenitude, and the stuff was undeniably nourishing. Leftovers fried up into crusty magic. A salad of California red lettuce, artichoke hearts and green peppers rounded out the meal with a vinaigrette of balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil. Now there was a paradox. The satellite dish on the dock creaked to the American Movie Classic channel and brought Garbo’s growl in Anna Christie: “Gif me a viskey. Ginger ale on the side. And don’ be stingy, baby.” Between noisy bites, Belle mouthed the words along with the young prostitute and smiled on cue at the scene where Marie Dressler (a fellow Canadian from Cobourg), the archetypal barfly, maneuvered her bulldog face and bag-of-toys body, weaving a hand through a hole in her tattered sweater with drunken bemusement. “Know what? You’re me thirty years from now.” Had they really had an affair? The spate of kiss-and-tell books after Garbo’s death at eighty-five had been a gothic horror parade. Handstands after intercourse as a birth control method? Blasphemy. At fifteen, Belle had seen her first glimpse of the enigmatical ice goddess. Now, at forty-five and ten pounds over fighting weight, she was beginning to identify with Marie.
TWO
Driving by Anni’s house a few days later, Belle craned her neck to spot the woman’s rusty little Geo, but it was gone. Anni was a woman of her word, no-nonsense, expedient. If she said she was going to demolish the site, she would. Might be a good idea to give her a call soon.
Belle’s four-by-four van, a compromise between comfort, space and the practical needs of a Northerner, passed along the Airport Road, the puffs of the 1250 foot Superstack in the distance, emblem of the International Nickel Company, aka INCO, the once-dominant employer. Supposedly the friendly giant cleansed the exhaust of 90% of pollutants and was monitored like a preemie, though intermittently it gave a dyspeptic burp that hit the papers. A molten bombshell from space nearly two billion years ago had crowned Sudbury with a thirty-mile ring of ore deposits, a blessing and a curse. The region was finally recovering from the systematic rape of resources that had left a war zone around the Nickel Capital. First, its timbers had been shipped to Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. Then open pit smelting had destroyed secondary vegetation and leached soil from the hills. No wonder astronauts had come to the blackened moonscape to train. Fortunately the last decades had seen a massive liming and seeding campaign. Acid-tolerant pines and rye grass were covering the scars, and trout, pickerel and pike were biting again as the lakes recovered.
En route to her office downtown, Belle stopped at the latest addition to their food chain, a bagel shop. She scanned the counter, barely mastering the canine urge to drool. Fifteen kinds, including sourdough, cheese and bacon, and a dubious chocolate chip. A cooler offered cream cheese in tempting flavours: dill, olive, peach and smoked salmon. For