Black Fly Season (31 page)

‘Your poetic ancestors, it has been suggested, are Coleridge and Baudelaire.’ Martin Amis was back, his handsome sarcastic face hovering among the pines. ‘How often do you suppose those literary giants found themselves pilfering narcotics from their sleeping associates?’

Not now, Martin, not now.

‘True, Coleridge owned to a taste for laudanum - he even gave it the credit for Kubla Khan. But one can’t quite see him sneaking around the woods of northern Ontario in a desperate search for smack, as you call it.’

Well, of course not. Laudanum was perfectly legal.

‘Nor can one imagine him associating with known murderers. Can you spell out for your readers exactly how this is necessary for your art?’

Beat it, Martin. Maybe I’m not a poet, okay? Maybe I’m just a stone junkie.

Amis and his sardonic smile faded into rain and pine.

Kevin prayed Leon’s door would be unlocked. He turned the knob ever so gently, an eighth of an inch every second or so, until it would turn no further. Locked.

Kevin had the key with him. It went into the slot without a sound. Really there was nothing to worry about if you didn’t turn quite the whole way: far enough so it would clear the doorframe, but not so far that it would spring open with a clack. He leaned against the door, and it opened a half-inch. So far, so good.

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him without latching it. He pressed himself back against the wall. If Leon woke now, Kevin was a dead man. Every muscle in his body tensed as he listened for Leon’s breathing. It was hard to hear over the pulse beating in his own ears, but it was there, slow and rhythmic. He could see Leon’s outline: curled up, facing the wall.

Leon’s jeans were hung, as usual, on the back of his chair, but Kevin had to cross the room to get there. He knew a couple of the floorboards creaked, the one with the large knothole, and the one that was directly in line with the bottom

corner of the window, but there might be others. That Red Bear would kill him, he had no doubt. The only question was whether he would do it himself or ask Leon to do it for him. See, this is exactly why I’m quitting dope. It gets me into untenable positions.

A floorboard creaked. Leon stirred but didn’t roll over. Kevin was one metre from the chair. He wouldn’t risk any more floorboards. Instead, he bent from the waist and reached out. It was a painful position, but he could just touch Leon’s pocket. Straining to stretch even further, Kevin was now balanced on his toes. Then he had the chain in his hand and tugged it upward to extract the keys from the pocket.

He wasn’t even halfway home. He had to silently separate the keys from the chain, then get over to the supply cabin, remove some dope, and then - even when he had successfully completed all that business - he would have to return the keys to Leon’s pocket without waking him up.

Using the chain, Kevin managed to pull the jeans close enough that he could unclip the chain from the belt. Then, he pivoted on one foot and took one giant step toward the door. No creak. Leon’s breathing remained slow and steady. One more giant step. No creak. Now he was at the door and out in a flash. He pressed it closed silently, but didn’t lock it.

He jumped down from the stoop and darted around the back of the cabin.

Now, I just have to get myself enough smack to see me through until Monday, and then I’m clean and sober. For the rest of my life. None of this One Day at a Time crap. I’m done, I’m through. My mind is so all over this I can feel I’m already recovering.

Where he actually was, a moment later, was on the porch of the supply cabin, inserting Leon’s key into the lock. He glanced over at Red Bear’s place. Still dark. He had a sudden image of Red Bear leaping out of his front door, carving knife in hand, chanting the way he had done that night of the pig.

The motherlode cabin smelled different from the other cabins. It was constructed of concrete and smelled like a basement. Even the windows had been filled in with concrete blocks. They kept it looking like a tool shed. There was a rake, a lawnmower, a bucket and pail. And over in the far corner there was an open bag of cement. Nothing to excite the interest of the casual break-and-enter artist.

Kevin went straight for the cement bags and reached inside. There was more dope than he had expected. Red Bear must have added to the product without mentioning it, because there were three one-ounce bags of smack and there was no way Kevin could have forgotten that. It was a golden opportunity. Suppose I take all three bags? Just light out of here now and sell the stuff down in Toronto? Make a little extra, shoot a little extra, get me through the transition period.

Don’t go crazy, he told himself. Just cover the weekend. He opened all three bags and took a spoonful from each. Oh, hell, he took one more just for good luck. Then he took the little container of cornstarch he had brought with him, and added a spoonful to each bag. He resealed the bags, shook them to mix the powders, and put them back into the cement bag.

A sound from behind.

Kevin whirled round. Red Bear was standing behind him, with a pitchfork aimed at his back.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Kevin said. ‘You scared the shit out of me. I thought I heard someone in the stash and I came to ‘

Red Bear smiled.

‘Where did you get the key, Kevin?’

‘The key? Oh, these are Leon’s keys. I went over to wake him up and found them still in his door. He must’ve gone to bed drunk or something. I couldn’t wake him up.’

‘No, I said good night to him and he was quite sober.’

Kevin shrugged. ‘Well, anyways. Dope’s all present and accounted for.’

‘I could push this pitchfork right through your throat. Watch you drown in your own blood.’

‘Uh, you don’t want to do that.’

‘No, I do want to do that, Kevin. Very much. But I’m going to control myself.’

‘Okay, cool,’ Kevin said. ‘Maybe I should just move out, huh?’

‘The reason I’m going to control myself is that it is time for another sacrifice.’

‘Oh, no. I don’t think we need to go into that, man. I’ll just leave now, okay?’

‘You are going to be that sacrifice, Kevin. Then I will be sure that you are working for us. Not against us. You will be firmly on our side. Just like Wombat Guthrie.’

Kevin made a run for it. Red Bear lunged at him with the pitchfork, and Kevin felt a searing pain in his side. He kept running for the door, though. Got outside. And was just about to leap off the stoop when something crashed on to the back of his skull and then his mouth was full of sand and everything went black as if the world had blown a fuse.

The Crisis Centre was better than the hospital, Terri decided. For one thing, it was a house - a grand old house - the people who had lived here long ago must have been wealthy. A railway tycoon, maybe; the place occupied a big corner lot on a street called Station, and Detective Cardinal had driven past a charred, boarded-up terminal on the way here. That tycoon must’ve had ten kids, to judge by all the rooms, and Terri felt a pang for the Victorian wife who had no doubt worked as the tycoon’s slave for her entire life before dying in childbirth bearing number eleven.

The guy who ran the place, Ned Fellowes, wasn’t that bad either - a former priest, one of the other inmates informed her - but nothing pious about him, nothing holier-than-thou. He was just a bony, fortyish man with thinning sandy hair and a pleasant smile. He had signed her in with a minimum of fuss, entering her information on a computer surrounded by tipsy stacks of psychology journals. The Crisis Centre, he had told her, was originally

intended solely for the protection of battered wives, but they took in people for other reasons, too, if they had room. Certainly a bullet in the head seemed to qualify.

‘We’re not a jail, and we’re not a hospital,’ he told her in his jaunty we-can-all-get-through-thistogether voice. ‘We assume that all of our guests are adults and able to look after themselves. We have very few rules, but we expect them to be followed.’

Terri’s room was surprisingly large for an institutional place. A double bed with a scarlet coverlet proved to have an acceptable mattress, and the overstuffed armchair by the window was almost comfortable. An ancient rug, just this side of threadbare, covered the floor. The bathroom, located at the far end of the hall, was shared but clean.

A couple of her fellow ‘guests’ seemed like decent people, though Terri didn’t for one minute consider that she had anything in common with them. One bore a cast on her arm, the other had blackened eyes. Terri didn’t tell them about her bullet wound, and people in this place knew better than to ask about injuries.

So, all right, yes, it was better than the hospital. She wasn’t confined to a bed or the sun room. There was a real kitchen instead of a candy machine. But in the end it was still like being under house arrest.

She was not supposed to go out, according to

Detective Cardinal, and Ned Fellowes absolutely concurred.

‘We’re not a jail,’ he repeated. ‘And we’re not your parents. But clearly, until whoever did this to you is behind bars, you’re in serious danger and you should not be out on the streets.’

She spent almost an entire day in her room. She had tried the communal lounge for a while, but people wanted to talk too much -Where are you from? What do you do? - and she didn’t feel like answering them. She tried to concentrate on a paperback some previous guest in crisis had left behind, but it couldn’t quiet her mind. Finally, she threw the book across the room. She got up and put on the green hoodie, checking herself in the mirror. Just the thing. Run, Run, Run.

Once out on the streets, she felt much better. The night air still tasted of spring: scents of new flowers, wet soil. A strong breeze was blowing and she had to hold the drawstrings of her hood.

She found Main Street easily enough. There was not much traffic, but there were lots of cars in front of a place called the Capitol Centre - a concert of some sort. After a couple of wrong turns, she found the bar Kevin had taken her to, the Goat in Boots. It was his unofficial hangout, he had said, when he wanted to get away from Red Bear and the others. Smoke assailed her nostrils the moment she entered and she coughed. It was a typical English-style pub, and didn’t look

remotely dangerous. Terri pushed her hood back and went up to the bar.

The bartender was a young blonde woman, very pretty. ‘I’m looking for a guy named Kevin Tait,’ Terri said. ‘He’s my brother, actually. Long dark hair, about six feet tall, always with a notebook? Comes in here quite often.’

‘I think I know who you mean,’ the bartender said. ‘Kevin, yeah. I never knew his last name. Haven’t seen him today, though. Haven’t seen him for a while, in fact.’

‘Can you ask the other bartender?’

‘Hey, Dora! You seen Kevin lately? Skinny guy with the dark curly hair, always carries a notebook?’

The other bartender looked up from the draught tap and shook her head.

‘He’s staying at some kind of defunct summer camp. I don’t suppose you happen to know where that would be?’ Terri said. ‘It’s kind of urgent.’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘Do you see anybody here who might know him? I’m from out of town. I don’t know who his friends are here.’

‘Friends. I don’t know about friends …’

The bartender narrowed her gaze against the smoke. ‘There’s a guy I’ve seen him talking to a few times. But I don’t know if they’re actual friends.’ She pointed to a small, bearded man at the far end of the bar. He wore wire-rim spectacles and clutched a paperback in his fist as if squeezing the juice out of it.

‘Thanks.’

Terri moved down to the other end.

‘You always read in bars?’ she said to the guy.

He looked up from his book.

‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘It beats small talk. Or staring at the TV screen. The only reason I come to this bar is it’s the only one that keeps the sound turned off.’

‘You’re a friend of Kevin Tait’s, right?’

‘Yeah. Well, I mean, I know him. I only see him when he comes in here. Which isn’t too often lately. We talk about poetry.’

Thank God, Terri said to herself. Not a dope associate.

‘Well, here’s the thing,’ she said. ‘I’m Kevin’s sister. My name’s Terri.’

‘I’m Bob.’ He stuck out a damp hand to shake. ‘Kevin mentioned you to me.’

‘He did?’

‘Yeah. We were talking about Yeats. You know. B. Yeats?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘He has this great poem: “Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom, So great her portion in that peace you make. By merely walking in a room.” Do you know it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Kevin said it always reminded him of you. He also said you had the most amazing red hair. And that you were a really good actress. What happened to your head? Somebody shoot you?’

Terri was stymied for a second., until she realized he was just joking.

‘I was in a car accident. A bad one. I was lucky to get off with just a concussion. The result is, I can’t remember Kevin’s address and my address book got lost in all the turmoil. I need to find him.’

‘Gee, I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t got a clue where he lives. All we ever talk about is poetry. Did you try the police?’

‘Yeah. They can’t help me. It’s not like he’s a missing person.’

‘Well, I don’t know. He sure reads a lot. You might try the library or the bookstores.’

Terri wanted to hug him for saying that. Here was someone who knew only Kevin’s good side.

‘Thanks, maybe I’ll do that.’

He showed her the cover of the book he was reading. ‘Baudelaire. You ever read him?’

Terri shook her head.

‘He’s nifty. They’ve got the French on one side and the English on the other. I know enough French to know it sounds really good. Makes me want to learn it for real, though. Listen, why don’t you sit down and wait for him? He comes in quite late sometimes.’

‘No, thank you. I’ve got to find him. It’s urgent. If he comes in, would you give him this?’