The Night Wanderer (6 page)

It was already late in the evening and they were expecting this L'Errant guy any time now. Granny Ruth had spent the day puttering around the house making sure everything was spick-and-span. Meanwhile, Tiffany concluded the worst day of her life by massaging her ego and trying to create a habitable place downstairs. Sadly, her new bedroom lacked in certain graces. The walls were made of green carpeting, of which two large rolls had been left downstairs after the house had been renovated eight years earlier. Her dad had cut them up and hung them from the beam of the unfinished ceiling, simulating plush walls. He'd also stapled some to the overhead beams and laid some on the bare cement floor. Tiffany felt like she was living in a fuzzy green box. She tried to Tiffanize it with some posters and personal treasures from happier times, but she had to face the fact that there's only so much you can do with green carpeted walls. As it was, Tiffany realized the thin layer of shag was all that protected her from a potential spider onslaught.

“Tiffany, I'm going to make some tea. Would you like some? It will help you sleep.” It was Granny Ruth yelling down the stairs. Tiffany had never understood how anything with caffeine would help you sleep, but Granny Ruth had spent decades sleeping on a cup of tea before bedtime. Instead, Tiffany finished tucking in the corners of her bed, which was nestled against the wall just below the electrical box, before running up the stairs. “No thanks, I'm heading out.”

As she emerged from the darkness of the basement, her grandmother gave her a strange look. Then she chuckled to herself.

“What?” asked Tiffany.

“You got
asabkeshii-wasabiin
in your hair. You look old, like me.”

Tiffany quickly glanced at the mirror beside the refrigerator and saw her reflection. There seemed to be a fibrous gray cocoon around her head. She was indeed covered in cobwebs. What was even scarier was it
did
make her look more like her grandmother.

“
Son of a bitch!
”

Granny Ruth raised an eyebrow at the inappropriate language as her granddaughter disappeared into the bathroom grumbling. It seems the spiders had won the first battle in the war, but if she hurried, Tony wouldn't get the chance to see her as a casualty. She combed vigorously to get the silk threads out of her hair.

One last energetic shake of her head and all the evidence seemed to be gone.

“Tiffany, did you just swear?” It was her father, coming in through the back door. “I could hear you all the way outside. You know I don't allow swearing in this house.”

Tiffany grabbed her jacket and put it on. “Move me out of the basement and there will be less chance of me swearing.”

“Any more swearing and you'll be living down there permanently.” Keith saw that she was putting on her shoes. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

There was an ominous pause. The only sound to be heard was the zipper of her jacket.

“We have a guest coming. Any minute.”

“No, Dad, you have a guest coming. Any minute. I have a date coming. Any minute.”

Granny Ruth straightened out the collar of her jacket. “I thought you and Darla and Kim were doing something tonight. That's what you said last weekend.”

“
Goddamnit!
” For the second time that night, Tiffany swore in her father's house and for the second time Keith glared at his daughter. It was like he didn't recognize her anymore. “Was that tonight? What's wrong with me? Well, I'm seeing Tony tonight. They can find something fun to do without me. They're grown-ups. They don't need me babysitting.”

“But they're your
wiijikiweyag . . .”
said Granny Ruth, using the Anishinabe word for
friends
.

Almost as if on cue, lights from outside flooded across the living room through the large window and Midnight's familiar bark announced that someone had just pulled into the driveway. The old woman frowned. There was nothing wrong with a young girl like Tiffany having a boyfriend, but it should never take time away from her girlfriends, and recently, Tiffany had been seeing less and less of them. Darla and Kim were her best friends ever since any of them could remember. Now it was like Tiffany was abandoning them for this boy.

Keith glanced out the window and saw Tony's car. “It's late,” he grumbled.

“And it's going to get later. I gotta go.” Before Keith or Granny Ruth could respond, Tiffany ran out, leaving behind only the echo of a slamming door as evidence she had been there.

Both Keith and Granny Ruth watched her run down the driveway toward the young man's car. Keith was silent, but his brooding face made little guesswork of what he was thinking. He was not a happy man. Arguments and separate agendas were common between parents and children, but Claudia's departure and a lack of money had multiplied the impact of what might have been considered normal family squabbles. Even on the clearest, sunniest days, it was as if there was a black cloud hanging over them.

Granny Ruth watched Tiffany get into Tony's car. “It's not so bad. It's a Friday night. No school tomorrow. Let her have fun.”

Keith watched until Tony's brake lights disappeared as he pulled onto the main road through the village. “Friday night, a sixteen-year-old girl, and having fun. Not a good combination.”

Granny Ruth poured two cups of tea. “I remember a lot of Friday nights, a sixteen-year-old boy, and some fun. You survived and so did I. You want some
ziizbaadwad
?”

This always amazed Keith. “Mom, you've been making tea for the both of us for forty years. And you don't know if I take sugar?”

She blew slightly on her tea, cooling it. “Calm down. It gives us something to talk about.”

In the car, Tiffany greeted Tony but fell silent as she ran all the traumatic events of the afternoon and evening through her mind. And while her grandmother was far more religious than she was, Tiffany was convinced God had something against her. What else would explain all the cruel and inhuman events that were happening in her life? At least there was Tony, and if God was responsible for that too, Tiffany wished He/She would make up His/Her mind about how to treat her. This was all too inconsistent.

Once they left the reserve, she perked up. “We still going to Daniel's party?”

Tony smiled. “What else is there to do on a Friday night? Got some beers. Parents aren't expecting me home till late. And there's a bush party. Sounds good to me. What do you think?” He honked the horn in anticipation. “Hey, turn on some music.”

Tiffany smiled too. Tony's car was a sanctuary. It delivered her from her inconsiderate family and took her to places where she could have fun. And Tony was always behind the wheel. On second thought, it was, indeed, a good life. She hit a button on the car stereo and Nickelback flooded the car. It was a good omen because this was one of Tony's favorite songs.

“Excellent.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. This night might be salvaged after all.

Ahead, they both saw two headlights cresting the highway. The car was heading toward the reserve. Light from the volunteer fire hall illuminated the approaching vehicle. “Hey, look,” said Tony. “It's one of those new Camrys.”

Tiffany was not normally a car person, but if Tony was, then she'd learn. The car roared past them, like a bat out of hell. Tony watched it in the rearview mirror. “Do you know them?”

Tiffany shook her head. “Nope.” She didn't care about Camrys, strangers in her room, or anything else. Tonight was party night. She cranked up the tunes and they both started to bob their heads to the music. The Dodge Sunrise drove off into the night. Destination: anywhere but Otter Lake.

SIX

I
'M TOO DAMN OLD for this, thought Moses as he swung his heavy ax, splitting a beautifully aged block of elm. He'd been chopping wood for about half an hour now—or for more than fifty years, depending on how you wanted to measure it—and was ready to call it quits pretty soon. If Edith, his wife, wanted more wood, let her cut it. Her back was better than his. Their house had gas heating now, for God's sake.

“I like the way the wood heat feels,” was all she would say. So at least once every two weeks, Moses found himself cutting a sizable pile of wood for no good reason. Grumbling every time. Twenty-nine years of marriage will do that to you. But then, he still got her to cut his hair, even though she was half blind and he was half bald. Again, the things twenty-nine years of marriage will make you do.

Moses and Edith lived on the edge of Jap Land where the road turned into Hockey Heights. Their big living-room window meant they saw everybody who drove into the reserve. They weren't nosy. It was just that the lights always shone through the window at the turn. When their house was first built there twenty-four years ago, they had not expected such an annoying intrusion. Now, after all this time, they no longer noticed it.

But tonight, something in the cosmos—or perhaps it was some primal instinct left over from more primitive times—somehow, someway, made Moses feel, in mid-swing of the ax, that more than light was about to come streaming across their lonely strip of land. A car came driving by, low to the ground. Curious, Moses stopped chopping wood and watched. As it grew closer, it slowed down to almost a crawl, reminding Moses of a cat creeping along the ground toward prey, ready to pounce. The car's high beams glared through the misty night, directly at him. It was eerie, and Moses knew someone or something in the car was studying him. Intensely.

A chill went down Moses' spine even though he was sweating. The old man's hands gripped the ax a little tighter, and he took a step backward. For the first time since they moved into this house, he cursed their remote location. He was about to call out to the person in the car, but he couldn't find his voice. For a very brief moment, he was sure he saw something small and red, about head high, in the driver's seat. Then it was gone and the car zoomed off. Whatever curiosity the driver had was fulfilled. But the chill down Moses's spine remained.

Moses wasn't superstitious, but like most people who lived close to the land, he knew when things weren't right. There was a natural order, and an unnatural one. And he could tell where that line blurred or broke. Something about that car or, more accurately, something in that car wasn't right. And it troubled him. The screen door behind him opened and his wife stepped onto the porch.

“I thought I saw a car slow down. Was it anybody we know?” asked Edith.

“I hope not,” replied Moses. His heart was still pounding, but not from chopping wood.

Several miles away, Trish Martin sat on a picnic table in the playground next to the school. She knew it was late but she didn't care. She still had four cigarettes left before she had to go to what could laughingly be called a home. The sixteen-year-old had as little regard for her parents as they had for her. Unlike Tiffany's relationship with her father, Trish's was not troubled or in denial. It was non-existent. Basically, she was just a roommate in the house. She bought her own clothes, made her own meals, and provided her own direction in life. She usually stayed out as late as she could before the night and tiredness would force her home. But tonight it was still early, and though she shivered occasionally, she was enjoying herself.

So there she sat, under stars far older then she could contemplate, smoking her cigarettes. She was thinking about her cousin Tiffany and her new boyfriend, wondering if someday she'd get a boyfriend. Or if she wanted one. Every relationship she'd seen start up had eventually come apart. Many times, especially on beautiful nights such as this, she thought it was better to be alone. The peace, the quiet, maybe it was better to spend your life alone, just you and your thoughts. She had never bought into all that romantic crap anyway. Nothing could beat a peaceful evening like this. Sharing it would mean talking, and there would go the peace.

Then, off in the distance, coming down Joplin's Turn, she noticed a car approaching. She didn't recognize it, and it was getting kind of late for strangers to be driving the reserve roads. It was driving slow, like it was lost. Or looking for someone. It drove around the day care, then suddenly turned toward her in the playground.

Trish became uncomfortable. Living in a small community she knew who to avoid and who to trust. But this was a strange car, and all bets were off. Trish put one foot on the sandy ground as she slowly slid off the picnic table, ready to run if necessary. Admittedly, she was curious, but she was smart enough to know curiosity could cause a lot of damage if you weren't careful.

The car came to a stop directly in front of her. The engine hummed, almost silently, as Trish put her second foot on the sand. There was something definitely creepy about the car and the way it just sat there. Like it was judging her. Around her everything seemed to go silent. In fall, most of the insects were gone, but there were still enough animal noise coming from the grass and bush to let you know you weren't alone on the land. But now, silence. Just the sound of the car idling.