The Night Wanderer (15 page)

“Beautiful night, isn't it?” came a quiet voice from behind her.

“Yaaaa!” was Tiffany's immediate, loud, and undignified response. Sheer reflexes made her jump about two feet or so to the right, directly into the lake, soaking her scruffy Nikes and lower pant legs. Turning around, she was ready to move farther into the lake if necessary—after all, Tony's house was directly across the lake, and if she had to Tiffany was positive she could half run/half swim the distance. She searched the shoreline for whoever spoke. Pierre L'Errant squatted on the hill overlooking the sandy beach. Still dressed in black, it was as if he melded into the twilight. He stood up and moved effortlessly down the embankment toward her.

“
Stop doing that!
” she cried. And as with most lakes and watery conduits, her voice reverberated up and down the water's surface, alerting all lakefront residents that Tiffany Hunter was annoyed. “My feet are soaked!” Studies have shown that when you're cold and frightened, you tend to state the obvious.

Pierre stopped approaching when he came to the shoreline. “Forgive me. It's a nasty habit I've picked up over the years.” He waited on the embankment as Tiffany splashed her way to the lake shore. She climbed up the sandy beach, leaving little rivulets of water behind her.

“Bad habits were meant to be broken.” She knew she was upset when she found herself quoting her grandmother's cliches. Both of them could hear the
squish squish
as she walked around, hoping most of the water would drain out of her shoes. Without them, it was back to the loose shiny black shoes and that was not an option.

“You never answered my question,” he stated.

“What question?” Kneeling on one knee in the sand, she tried wringing the water out of one pant leg. Standing up and repeating the operation with the other leg, she discovered her knee was now covered with sand and debris.

“Beautiful night, isn't it? Would you like me to repeat it again?” Pierre had his back to her, gazing up at the rising moon. He and that moon were old friends, and it was comforting to see it here, in his ancestral lands once again. He knew every crater by sight, and had lost count of the times he had been alone with only his thoughts and the pale round satellite in the sky.

Standing, Tiffany was in a state to disagree. “It was. Now I'm wet, and sandy, and late for dinner. How does that make things beautiful?” She was sure she couldn't feel her feet anymore.

Pierre continued to stare skyward. “So you are wet. You will dry. So you are sandy. It will fall off. And there will be food at home regardless. There are far worse things in this world to regret.” He was talking but not to her, it seemed. “It's all a matter of perspective.”

“Just what are you doing out here? Scaring people?” Tiffany was still put out. Philosophy did not go well with two wet pant legs.

Pierre smiled and turned to face her. Tiffany couldn't help notice how the light reflected off him, almost making it look like his skin was glowing. It was kind of freaky.

“I am . . . exploring.” As always, he chose his words carefully.

“Exploring what?”

He held out his hand. Tiffany peered at some small objects cradled in his palm. It was hard to tell what they were in the darkness of the night, so she picked one up. “It's an arrowhead. They're all arrowheads. Wow.” She held it up to the moon to get a better look. About an inch and a half in length, chipped from rock. Probably flint or something similar, she thought. Her cousin Paul had two he'd found somewhere, but these were the first she'd ever seen with her own eyes. When she was young, some of the kids at school had asked her if she shot a bow and arrow, lived in a tepee, or rode a horse. Frustrated, Tiffany would tell them contrary to popular belief, not all Native people carry arrowheads or sweetgrass with them everywhere they go. No more than all Australian Aboriginals have a boomerang in their back pockets. She knew this for a fact because she had seen it on television.

“Hey, these are cool. Where did you find these?” She took a second one and also held it up to the moon. It was slightly darker, and the tip was broken off.

“Along the shoreline, near a big rock. Over in that direction.” He pointed northeast.

“How'd they get here, I wonder.”

Pierre smiled. “Obviously somebody dropped them.”

Tiffany rolled her eyes. “Well, I know that. But how would they end up here? And how did you find them?”

Kneeling, Pierre dipped one hand into the water of Otter Lake and brought it out again. He watched the liquid slowly drip through his fingers. “My . . . family told mea lot about thisplace. As I explained to your father and grandmother, my ancestors came from Otter Lake. I was told so much about it that I feel like I've actually been here. That is why I am here. But I am confused. Some things are not as they should be. This lake for instance I do not rememb . . . the water shouldn't be this far up the shore. It has changed.”

This was something Tiffany did know for sure. Everybody in the community knew about the changing water levels. You couldn't go out onto the rivers and lakes without seeing half-submerged logs and tree stumps, remnants of what appeared to be underwater forests. Poking up out of the water, they were frequent hazards to boaters.

“Oh, that's because a couple decades ago, the government thought it would be a good idea to fiddle around with the rivers around here. They put in some sort of lock system that regulated the levels of water. Took some water out of some places and put it into other places. Around here, the lake rose a couple of feet. My grandmother tells me this shore extended out about two dozen feet or more when she was young. There's now a swamp over there. Supposedly the whole shoreline has changed.”

“Thank you. I did not know that.” Tiffany still had the arrowheads in her hand and held them out in her open palm for Pierre to take, but instead he took her hand and closed it around the arrowheads. “They are yours. I have others.”

She looked at them again. They might make a good set of earrings. But since one was broken, maybe a nice choker or necklace instead. For now, she put them in the front pocket of her jean jacket. “You know, I've always heard stories there was a Native village somewhere around here, hundreds of years ago. But nobody knows where it was. Hey, maybe you found it.”

“I've always been . . . lucky in finding things,” said Pierre. Again his voice sounded sad.

There was an awkward pause as the wind returned, moving across the lake to do magical things with their hair. Once more, Pierre closed his eyes as he lost himself in the flow. Watching him, Tiffany noticed how he seemed at peace with the now-chilly wind. Even the man's jacket seemed to move with its pulse. Tiffany stated the obvious. “You like the wind, don't you?”

Pierre opened his eyes. “The wind likes me.”

“You're a very strange guy.”

“It's all a matter of perspective. But thank you, regardless.”

“You do love that word
perspective
, don't you? And not a lot of people would think being called weird was a compliment.”

“To me, strange is just another way of saying unusual. And unusual is just another way of saying special.”

Inside Tiffany's head she was thinking, No, strange is strange. Perspective or no perspective. “Anyway, thanks for the arrowheads. But I'm late for dinner already. I'd better be heading home. I'll leave you here, with the wind.” With renewed energy, she scrambled up the grassy hill, back to the muddy trail leading home.

Pierre stood up, his long, thin coat flapping in the wind like leather wings. “Would you like me to walk you home? It might not be safe.”

Already a little creeped out by this basement guy, Tiffany took an involuntary step backward. “Thanks, but it's just a little farther on. I've been down this trail a thousand times.” The man seemed nice but those weird eyes, being friends with the wind and all, and the way he talked. . . guest or no guest,Tiffany planned to keep her distance.

Suddenly, Pierre turned his head and shoulders to the left with astounding speed, his senses attuned. His whole face seemed to blur in the motion. “What? What happened?”

Still staring off into the woods, he said, “Something just died.” He sniffed the air once. Then twice. “It was a pheasant. A fox caught it. Killed it almost instantly. A quick death.”

Tiffany took a long look, but the darkness of the night, and the deeper darkness of the woods, revealed nothing to her. “How can you tell?” She didn't know if it was Pierre or the breeze off the lake that was now giving her the shivers.

“I can smell the blood on the wind.” It was definitely Pierre that was supplying the shivers. “And I heard it die. With barely a sigh.” With that cryptic statement, he turned back to face her, and this time, she was sure of it. His eyes . . . something about those eyes definitely left her feeling uncomfortable. They were looking right through her in some bizarre way. “Perhaps my hearing is better than yours.” Yeah right, thought Tiffany as she took another step back. And this guy was sleeping right below her—scary dreams tonight.

“Well, lucky fox. I like pheasant. Anyways, gotta go. Dinner and all. Bye. Have a good night.”With that, she ran home as fast as she could.

In a way, Pierre admired the girl's confidence. In these woods filled with their own kind of death, she didn't seem to fear much. He wondered if she knew there were things in the night far worse than mosquitoes, bats, bears, or anything a girl in central Ontario could have experienced. Though his stomach needed different nourishment than Tiffany's, it still announced when it was hungry, and the proximity of the young girl's warm body had awakened it. But for reasons of his own, Pierre chose to ignore it.

Instead, he listened to her travel the path all the way home. He heard her stumble over a root, slap to death at least three mosquitoes clinging to the remnants of Indian summer, and heard the whining of Midnight as she ran past his doghouse and up the stairs to the front door. Of course, the remaining mosquitoes were uninterested in him, as he stood there silently on the shore.

SIXTEEN

D
ALE MORRIS AND Chucky Gimau were not nice people. As the saying goes, they were “known” to the police, and just about everybody else. They had grown up in Otter Lake, and other than a four-year stint traveling a small part of the country enjoying some of the finer local and provincial jails, they were content to live at their dead uncle's house and do what they could to survive. Often at other people's expense. They were known to fight at the drop of a hat, and whether they won or lost was often irrelevant. Who they fought sometimes seemed an afterthought too. They just loved the feel of a bony hand crashing onto a chubby chin, or a workboot burying itself deep in the belly of some poor fool. They were simple people with simple pleasures.

They grew small amounts of pot way back in the woods, which helped offset the expenses of their slothlike existence. Neither would know what to do with a job application form unless it was to roll it up into a joint. Though Dale was remarkably handsome, substantially more than his slow-witted cousin Chucky, both had the look of people who were just marking time until the law, God, or some other larger influence swooped down and saw to it their ending was much more interesting than their life.

Chucky's real name was Maurice, but for a number of reasons he had willingly taken the nickname of a demented and possessed doll made famous by a string of supernatural horror movies. First of all, he was shorter than Dale, by about five inches. And secondly, “Like the doll, I always come back!” he liked to say proudly. Mainly though, he changed it because when he was young, most of his family shortened his real name, Maurice, down to Mo when they referred to him. And “Mo” is an abbreviated Anishinabe word for
shit
. Everybody, except Chucky, found that quite hilarious.

At this very moment, both were driving back from town, where they had just picked up some beer and groceries which included several boxes of Kraft Dinner, something they considered their own personal manna from heaven. On special occasions, they would add chopped wieners to the pot. Despite their poor diet, they had managed to grow fairly strong. This made pushing people around and beating them up far simpler.

Tonight, however, payback had come to town.

“Hey, look,” said Dale. He was pointing to the ballfield. Chucky squinted in the darkness. Since it was late and there was no game, the floodlights were not on.

“Where? Where . . . where you pointin'?”

Dale shoved his arm right past Chucky's nose, almost taking the tip off. “Over there, you idiot, on the bleachers. There's somebody sitting there.” Dale slowed the car down, an old beat-up Honda Civic. Two bags of groceries fell over in the back seat, spilling boxes of macaroni and cheese all over the floor. “See him now?”

Not wanting to disappoint his cousin, Chucky's eyes scanned the bleachers as ordered. There! He spotted what Dale had seen, on the top row of the bleachers near the first baseline. Somebody outlined against the glow of the moon on the clouds. “I see him . . . don't know him. Can't really see, though. How about you?”

The car came to a stop. Dale took another peek. “Nope, too dark. Hey, wanna have some fun?” He smiled and a thin drop of chewing tobacco juice trickled down his chin. He quickly rubbed it away. Chucky smiled in anticipation. As was always the case with duos like this, one person came up with the ideas and the initiative, the other followed because that's all he was capable of doing. Dale had only to say “jump” and Chucky would make somebody jump.

They opened their car doors and emerged into the night. They passed through the batter's cage toward first base, walking with confident swaggers. There, they could see the person better. He hadn't moved. In the near darkness, they couldn't tell if he was even looking at them. Dale moved to the right side of the bleachers while Chucky sauntered over to the left. Still the man didn't say move or say anything. Probably scared stiff, thought Dale.