The Snow Falcon (32 page)

She tried to picture them together and couldn’t. Sometimes David had taken Jamie fishing for the weekend, and Jamie would be excited about it for weeks afterward. Coop was waiting for her reaction, but she could already feel his disappointment at her hesitation. Maybe it would be good for Jamie, she told herself. Maybe it was what he needed. She reminded herself that he was starting to come out of himself a little.

“Why not?” she said, trying to keep the doubt from her voice.

“I’ll call this guy I know,” Coop said.

She wondered how she’d break it to Jamie, and decided she would need to pick her time.

“I could come over tomorrow and tell him about it,” Coop suggested.

It struck her she’d invited Michael over, and that if she invited Coop, too, it would be a chance for them to get to know each other. Instead of saying that, however, she said, “Maybe you should let me

tell him. Let me pick the right time.” She felt a stab of guilt, and made a show of looking for her keys.

Coop didn’t seem to notice anything. “Okay,” he agreed.

“I better get going,” she said, turning away before he saw something out of place in her eyes.

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MICHAEL WAS IN the den, sitting in the same chair his dad had always used, next to the old wooden desk, its surface scarred with a lacework of razor slits and hard pinhead-like globules of ancient glue. He ran his hand across the top and felt the rough texture against his palm. A person might wonder how a writing desk had come to be marked in this way, he mused. In fact, this was where his dad had spent countless hours in the evenings, drinking small shots of bourbon and working on his model ships.

Michael chose a book off the shelf and leafed through the pages. Mildew had marked the edges; the leather binding smelled of damp and mold. The pictures were all of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century tall ships, schooners and warships, some graceful, some blunt and heavy in their outlines, all powered by sail. Some of the pictures were still in good-enough condition to make out all the fine detail of the rigging and decks. His dad had built replica models to scale, from scratch and without any plans except those he’d devised himself. The work involved was immense, and the time for each one could be counted in the hundreds of hours. He would sit in this room, night after night, cutting and shaping pieces of wood with a hobby knife, joining them with glue and leaving his marks in the surface of the desk.

Michael had searched the house for the models, but they were definitely gone. He had no idea where. When he was growing up, he’d thought it odd that his dad’s models were never displayed somewhere proudly instead of consigned to shelves or even the floor in his study. He never talked about them unless he was asked, and he didn’t take trips to the ocean to see the real things when sometimes they came to Vancouver from England or the States, either restored vessels or replicas. He didn’t have magazines on the subject delivered, or possess any other books about them except the few on the shelf from which he copied his designs. Michael had been wondering why.

He’d decided there was a reason, and he thought he knew what it

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was. It was because his dad had never really been interested in ships. He’d built the models as a means of passing time. They were intricate and detailed and gave him a reason to be alone in his den for long hours at a stretch. Anything might have served the same purpose. He might have read, or made puzzles. It was possible he’d chosen to make ships simply because he already owned the books; maybe they’d been left to him by a relative. It struck Michael that he would never know.

There was a quality of ineffable sadness about the knowledge of all those hours spent in the den, and contemplating it drove Michael out of the house. His mother had always said that his dad went in there primarily to drink, and over the years Michael had absorbed this as truth. He needed air and to escape his own thoughts, and so drove into town.

Outside Clancys, he hesitated for a moment, unsure about being among people who were generally hostile. He thought, fuck them, and went inside.

The place was busy and all the tables were taken, so he bought a beer and found a spot at the end of the bar where he could be inconspicuous. Nobody paid him any attention. Country music played on the jukebox, and people were dressed either like lumberjacks or cowboys. The atmosphere was noisy, the bar full of people starting to think about the weekend coming up and drinking beer without a thought for the working day ahead of them.

Michael finished his bottle and ordered another. He thought about Susan stopping to talk to him earlier in the day and how she’d invited him to supper. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down across a dinner table with a woman, and he was unsure what they would talk about. Would he tell her stories about what it had been like in prison? Would they dance around tricky subjects and keep the whole thing on a safe level?

“Is this spot taken?”

He came to with a start, aware that somebody was speaking to him.

“I just wondered if you were keeping this stool to yourself.” Rachel Ellis smiled at him.

“Help yourself. Sorry, I was miles away.” She had a warm smile, but there was a melancholy quality in her eyes. He asked if he could buy her a drink.

“I actually just came in for cigarettes.”

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She offered him one, and without thinking, he said he’d given up smoking when he was in prison. She cast him a quick appraising look as she lit up.

“Maybe I will have that drink. What are you drinking?”

He looked at his empty bottle and signaled the barman for another.

“The same,” she said.

They touched bottles, and he asked her polite questions about her kids and where she worked. When he mentioned her husband, she looked away for a moment. Her eye scanned the bar, and when she looked back, she caught him watching her.

“Pete comes in here sometimes,” she explained.

“I knew him at school, I think. Pete Ellis, right? Biggish guy?”

She nodded slightly, her expression enigmatic. “Yeah, that’s him.”

He thought it strange that somebody like Rachel should end up with a guy like Ellis. He’d recognized the name the second he’d heard it. The only mental picture it formed was of a loudmouth kid who liked to push people around and get into fights. Maybe he’d changed, Michael thought, though since being in prison, he’d decided people rarely did, unless they had a powerful motivation. He studied Rachel as she fiddled with her beer bottle, her fingers restless. Maybe she’d been motivation enough, he decided.

She looked up. “Can I ask you something? Why did you come back here? Do you mind me asking that? I mean, I’m just curious.” She regarded him steadily, as if his answer was important to her.

“It’s a nice town. Quiet. I grew up here.” He took a pull of his beer. He hadn’t felt the need for a cigarette for a long time, but now he did. Perhaps it was because she was smoking, or because he was in a bar with a beer in his hand. “That’s three reasons.”

She didn’t smile at his humor. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I’m a little touchy. My social skills have gone all to hell.” He grinned at her. “The truth is, there were a lot of reasons. Some were practical, because there was nowhere else for me to go, others were about getting things sorted out. I’m not even sure I could tell you exactly. It’s something I’m still working on.”

“I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”

“I know that.”

“Will you stay here, do you think? I mean, it must be hard for you here. You could just go somewhere else. Who needs it?” She peered at him intently, and then suddenly, as if she realized what

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she was doing, she smiled, laughing at herself. “Don’t take any notice of me,” she said.

“It’s okay. I haven’t decided yet, anyway.”

She thought about that, then emptied her beer and set down the empty bottle. “Sometimes I wish I’d gotten the hell out of this town. Thanks for the drink. I have to get home.”

“Anytime.”

“Maybe I’ll run into you again, and it’ll be my turn to buy you a drink.”

“I’d like that,” he told her.

She hesitated, and seemed on the verge of saying something else. “It was nice to talk to you.”

He watched her go, wondering about their conversation. It seemed that her questions had more to do with something about herself than about him, as if she’d been looking for answers to dilemmas of her own. He ordered another beer, deciding it would be his last. On impulse he asked the barman if there was a phone he could use, and was directed to the rear of the bar.

He went back there with his beer and a pocketful of change. It was quieter, but there were still people drinking in the booths, and on one side of the room some guys were playing pool. For a while he watched them, considering what he should do. He leaned against the wall, then made up his mind. He had Louise’s Boston number in his wallet, and after he’d fed change into the phone, he dialed and listened to the ringing tone. Then somebody picked up, and a voice at the other end said, “Hello?”

ELLIS WAS AT the bar when he saw Rachel come in and go to the cigarette machine. For a moment he thought she was looking for him, and he experienced a sickening horror that she’d come over and start asking what the hell he was doing in there drinking. He thought she must have noticed he’d taken twenty bucks out of her purse that morning without telling her. He could just imagine the sneering comments from Hanson and Red Parker if she confronted him. They’d say he was pussy-whipped and laugh about how he should run on home. It was a big fucking relief when she left again without the others noticing, but he wondered what she was doing talking to that Somers guy.

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Ellis hadn’t even seen Somers before that, standing in the corner where nobody would notice. He watched as Somers went back to the phone. Then Red saw where he was looking.

“Ain’t that that guy Somers? What the hell is he doing in here?”

Ellis took a drink. “How should I know?”

“He’s got some nerve.” Red belched softly and put his glass on the counter. “Your round, ain’t it, Ellis?”

Ellis waited for some smart remark about whether he needed a loan to pay for a couple of pitchers, but nobody said anything, though he thought he saw Hanson smirk a little. All the stuff about when he was coming into the money he’d talked about had finally lost its interest, which was one thing he was glad about. He ordered a round and fished in his pockets, counting out change and crumpled bills. After he paid he had about a buck and half left over, but Hanson still had to buy a round to even things out, so he had at least one more coming, and there was a pint of bourbon on the floor of his truck that wasn’t finished yet.

He was drinking a lot, he knew that—more than he should, but he was going through a bad patch at the moment. It was bad enough that he had no work to speak of, but things at home were getting steadily worse. Rachel was acting strangely, going around so quiet all the time, like she had things on her mind. He wanted to ask her what they were, but he wasn’t sure she’d want to tell him, or even that he’d want to know if she did. He thought maybe he should let things alone for a while. It was probably the best thing: give her some space and wait till she came around.

He’d got up to take a leak the other night and found she wasn’t in bed; the sheets on her side were cold. He’d been halfway down the stairs when he looked over the edge and saw the glow of a cigarette in the kitchen. He’d stopped, wondering what the hell she was doing. She was looking right at him in the darkness, but he knew she didn’t see him; her mind was somewhere else. He’d thought about going down and making some coffee, maybe sitting down and talking things out the way they had years ago. In the end, though, he’d decided he ought to just let things ride, and he’d gone back upstairs to bed.

He looked back toward the phone again, and Somers was still there. It still bugged him that Somers had practically stolen the gyr falcon from him. That two grand would have made a difference to the way

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things were—still would, come to that. It had preyed on his mind for a bit, and he’d thought maybe he should do something about it, but thinking and doing had remained for him two separate things. All the same, seeing Somers was a harsh reminder of all the shit he’d had to put up with, a lot of it Somers’s doing. He wondered again what the hell Rachel had been doing talking to him, and it occurred to him that he wouldn’t even be able to ask her, because if he did, she’d know he’d been in Clancys, and he wasn’t about to open that can of damn worms.

“What are you looking so steamed up about, Ellis?” Red demanded of him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just that Somers guy, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, what do you care about him?”

There was a note that Ellis didn’t like in Red’s tone, as if Red knew about the falcon and was trying to be funny about it, but then Red just looked past him at Ellen Tilley’s ass.

“I wouldn’t mind getting me a piece of that now,” he commented, cupping his balls with a casual gesture.

“In your dreams,” Hanson said. “Rill Tilley’s got a pecker bigger’n two of yours put together, Red.”

Ellis snickered, glad the subject had changed, but Red smirked at him.

“What the fuck are you laughing at, Ellis? At least my woman ain’t sitting around bars drinking beer with jailbirds.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see her in here before,” Red insisted. “Shit, you went as white as a damn sheet there for a minute. She was just sitting over there with that Somers guy you keep staring at.”