Heart of the Jaguar. Katie Reus
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of employment in ranch country, no matter how shorthanded an outfit might be. Country people had long memories.
YES, GLORY WAS on his mind, but damned if he was going back there this time. It was a good three-hour drive to Edmonton, with an eye out for radar traps, and he intended to spend the first couple of days in the province’s capital city. He kept a studio in an apartment-hotel, right downtown on Ninety-Eighth Avenue. Bed, table, stove, fridge. He never cooked, but the fridge was handy for beer and leftover pizza. He wasn’t sure why he rented the apartment, since it was expensive for the use he got out of it—maybe a week a month, if that. But Lewis liked having his own place, no matter how barren and impersonal. Ma’s run-down homestead, a cell in the lockup at Fort Saskatchewan, cowboy bunkhouses, mattresses on the floor at various friends’ places in town—most of his life had been spent under someone else’s roof.
One day Lewis intended to change all that. The apartment was a start.
This weekend was the big event that Bethany had been waiting for. He’d known Bethany Cook for six months. They’d been lovers for four, although Lewis was aware that the relationship was cooling off. Bethany, he knew, saw other guys when he was out of town. Which was okay by him. When you were contemplating a split, it was always easier when the other person had been no saint, either.
He’d offered to help Bethany with her deliveries and setups this afternoon for the big riverboat event. She ran a small florist shop on Whyte Avenue— Bethany’s Blooms—and this reception on the Alberta Queen for the new dean of science at the University of Alberta was a huge coup for her, one she hoped would lead to more university business.
Miles of lonely muskeg and thickets of black spruce swept by on either side of the highway. It was a grim landscape, but Lewis barely noticed. He was used to it. Once in a while he’d catch sight of a coyote skittering off into the ditch. Or a deer or moose. Sometimes he’d see a black bear browsing in the lush grass beside the road; it wouldn’t even look up as he drove by. He’d driven this road a thousand times, it seemed, in the past few years.
As he got closer to Edmonton, the scruffy forests gave way to cleared land, first bare-knuckle little farms and ranches, scraped out of the muskeg and trees, then more verdant hay and grainfields, fenced pastures with cows. There was no cattle ranching here on the scale of southern Alberta, but the district grew plenty of grain and hay to supply the ranchers and feedlot managers. Wheat, too. Some of the fields showed tall stands of winter wheat, almost ready for harvest. Lewis noted the mallards and pintails that had already raised their families in the weedy shallow sloughs that lay in the hollows of the hills; they were still hanging around, resting up, building reserves for the long flight south.
Summer made him restless. The truth was, every change of season had that effect on him. Closer to the provincial capital was plentiful evidence of Alberta’s new emphasis on agribusiness. Telltale clutches of feed silos marked the windowless, vented barns of broiler and hog operations nearby.
Poor trapped creatures, Lewis thought. Never even glimpsed that high blue sky. Just scrapping for their share of chop, chewing on each others’ tails and ears out of boredom, then the short one-way ride to the slaughterhouse.
Nothing like old Molly Baskins, the black-and-white Berkshire sow he remembered Ma keeping when he was a child. Old Molly Baskins had just lain down in the orchard one day with a great sigh and never got up again. They’d had to dig a hole right there and roll her in and cover her up, Ma bawling her head off the whole time. That sow had had the best possible life a pig could have. Table scraps, rotten apples, oats and barley chop, pleasant afternoons spent rooting through the orchard for succulent roots and smelly old fungi. An ancient collie for a pal in her last years. A mud puddle to lie in on a hot day in August.
Lewis grinned. Quite the life, all right! Then he frowned—why the hell had they called her Molly Baskins? Probably one of Billy’s crazy ideas. Who ever heard of a pig with a last name?
Finally Edmonton loomed on the skyline—a spread-out prairie city located on the wide winding valley of the North Saskatchewan river.
Was this home? It didn’t feel like it. Somehow he’d never felt really comfortable living anywhere he couldn’t see the Rocky Mountains.
BETHANY AND HER PART-TIME helper had really outdone themselves. By the time Lewis got there, ready to help load and deliver the flowers, the floor of the small shop was crowded with arrangements and loose, freshly cut flowers in buckets, ready to go to the riverboat where the reception was being held. The Alberta Queen was a recently launched tribute to the old-time riverboats that had once plied the North Saskatchewan from York Factory to Edmonton, delivering freight and passengers. This modern riverboat delivered Dixieland jazz and passengers up and down the river on scenic cruises, for a price.
“Oh, Lew!” Bethany flew into his arms and kissed him. “Thank goodness you’re here. I just said to Reg—” Reg was her assistant “—that it’d be just like you to get here two minutes before the reception—”
“I told you I’d be here,” Lewis said firmly, with a smile at the overwrought Bethany and a nod to Reg. “And here I am. Ready to help.”
Bethany kissed him again in a frenzy of new energy, and Lewis grimaced as he stepped back and removed his jacket. Bethany Cook in this mood was, well, hard to take. She was a fine woman, but her constant and varied enthusiasms wore him out. He liked a little more quiet in his social life, a little less excitement. Reg, nineteen and a floral-arts student at the local community college, fed Bethany’s flames with his constant reminders of potential disaster. His what ifs and his did you remember to…s drove Lewis nuts. They were quite a pair.
Lewis loaded the van without saying anything else. He took the map Bethany had drawn and studied it for a moment or two before getting into the driver’s seat. Then he dropped it on the passenger seat beside him; he knew where the riverboat dock was.
The reception, Bethany had told him, was scheduled for four o’clock. Apparently the high-up civic muck-a-mucks and the university crowd were going to munch and nibble during a river cruise. Speeches, probably. Smoked salmon. White wine. He could imagine the type of thing. B-O-R-I-N-G.
It was two o’clock now. Plenty of time for Bethany to get set up. She and Reg were coming behind him, in her little car, with some of the other arrangements. He, Lewis, had instructions to unload the flowers. Period. Bethany and Reg would do the arranging.
Which was fine by him. Flower arranging wasn’t one of his specialties.
He had the flowers unloaded by half-past two. Where was Bethany? He waited for her in the van, watching as a few early birds pulled into the riverboat parking lot and got out for the short walk through the trees to the actual dock. The nervous types, worried they’d be late. He watched them go, women in fluffy jackets, short skirts and pearls, men in navy blazers and gray flannel pants. All laughing. All merry. All looking forward to a pleasant outing on the river.
Lewis idly wondered what could shake up their worlds. Losing a job? A call from Revenue Canada? A botched dry-cleaning job? A daughter caught stealing lipstick at the local drugstore?
“Lew!” Bethany jumped out of the small red car that had just pulled up beside him. “Omigosh! We’re late. We couldn’t find the new carton of floral clay I’d ordered and—can you hang around and help us, Lew? I really need your help!”
How could he say no? So Lewis got out of the van, locked it and helped Reg and Bethany cart the special arrangements down to the boat. These were small arrangements that she apparently wanted on each table. The loose flowers were to be arranged in large vases on the decks and under the canvas awnings.
Lewis wasn’t happy. This was typical Bethany Cook. Bad planning. Lousy logistics. It was the kind of thing that bugged him because organization was so critical to his own job. What if he forgot to order some crucial element on a two-week drilling job? Say, dynamite. Or grease guns. Or extra chewing tobacco in case the men ran short. He’d be out of a job so fast he’d have a headache.
But he knew Bethany—somehow she’d muddle through and it would all come off just fine in the end. He had to admit