Grave Concern (28 page)

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —

Whether something something tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Something something all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —

On this something horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —

Is there —
is
there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

She repeated the last line several times: “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore'! Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore'!” Really, one could never declaim a line like that enough. Doubly pleased with herself, since she'd caught the green light, Kate peeled out onto the highway. The squeal of tires playing in her ears, Kate roared west toward Cemetery Road.

Early evening was normally quiet in Pine Rapids, everyone home from work and eating dinner. Under a high steel sky, this evening seemed quieter than most. So it was with some surprise that Kate discovered she was not alone. Dead ahead, on a steady, if slower, course, drove a spotless white pickup. Only one truck that clean around here. Kate lightened up on the accelerator and let the Impala slow from a juddering run to a clanking trot. She pulled down the visor and reached for the ball cap recently yielded up by a newly dug grave. One of the town gravediggers, she figured. On the front: the Nike swoosh, upside-down, and “Just did it” written underneath. Stupid, she knew. Puerile. Still, you had to smile. Pulling the cap low on her brow, she fervently hoped Nicholas wouldn't recognize her.

It wasn't long before he turned down Cemetery Road. His destination now certain, Kate pulled into the barely visible dirt driveway of the kind, if slightly addled, Dixie Burton, an old friend of her parents'. Few people knew Dixie lived there, reclusive as he'd become, and so fat he seldom left his little house in the woods. Kate found a small clearing partway along Dixie's driveway, ditched the car, and headed through the bush toward the graveyard. Undergrowth caught at her ankles; mosquitoes waged their age-old blood vendetta.

At the edge of the graveyard, mildly frantic, moderately sweaty, and extremely itchy, Kate gave in and slathered on the
OFF
! that lived in her glove compartment. Better a little chemical poisoning than death by madness and blood loss. As she tucked the
OFF
! back in the pocket of her pants, she caught sight of Link's truck on the opposite side of the road, parked facing the direction they'd come. Equipped now for insectival warfare, Kate stayed in the bush and skirted the rear of the cemetery. Emerging where she'd be least likely to draw attention, Kate continued along the cut grass, hugging the woods' dark verge.

Kate heard the truck tailgate bang down. Still unable to see, she kept on toward the far corner of the graveyard, trying to get a better view. But when she got closer, and saw what she saw, Kate was sorry she'd come at all.

Nicholas yanked and heaved, heaved and yanked. Finally, in a cloud of blue language and primal grunts, an enormous black plastic bag dropped heavily from the truck box. He let the bag sit while he put up the tailgate, locked it shut, and donned some rubber gloves. He took hold of the bulging bag and dragged it through the ditch and up into the woods across from the cemetery. But the horror was this: as the bag sat on the sandy verge, a dark stain had spread steadily outward from it. And there was no question what that stain was.

Kate stood transfixed, her reason for coming, something about a skin between worlds, completely forgotten. A pinnacle of horror had been reached, and Kate was the sole witness. Kate trod with shaking knees across the cemetery, then hid in the near ditch for a while, before making her break across the road. On passing behind Link's truck, she slowed her pace and stole a look at the dark smear. Should she be afraid? Should she be doing what she was about to do? But it was
Nicholas — Link —
old Cow-Eyes, the person she knew best in the world — that is, considering things on a lifetime scale.

It wasn't hard to follow the trail of broken bracken and blood-stained leaves. The mosquitoes, she noticed, were particularly frisky, sensing an all-you-can-eat buffet. After only five minutes or so, Kate came upon him with a start, having forgotten how much more slowly he would be moving, burdened by the body bag. Link, preoccupied with his terrible errand, still hadn't noticed Kate — all to the good, as far as Kate was concerned. On the edge of a small clearing hardly worthy of the name, Kate pulled up behind a tree and watched.

Link let go of the bag with obvious relief, stretched his arms up and circled his shoulders a few times. Then, taking a multi-tool type device from his pocket, he began snipping along the bag's length. Kate sucked breath. Link snipped and pulled, snipped and pulled, and Kate's lungs fairly burned. Gradually the thing inside was revealed. A fawn-brown belly — that was the main bulge. Four stiffened, bloodied legs — those were the mysterious poking things. Down at the bottom, hardly there at all, was the flopping neck and graceful head of a young deer. Road kill. Kate breathed out with a loud sigh and a half hiccup.

Link looked up and groaned.

“Oh my God, Kate. Can't a man do
anything
in private around here?”

“Listen, Buster, it's a bloody good thing I came, excuse the pun. I was just about to spend some time over at the graveyard. If you're trying to lure cougars or whatever, leaving gory carcasses around, you might as well just hang a sign on good old Kate Smithers saying ‘
LUNCH
.' ”

“I thought you were finished work for the day. I was going to remove it in the morning.”

“Leaving a mess of blood and guts around. And by the way, why here? Why can't you drag it up the Wycliffe Road somewhere, or into Algonquin Park, where you're not going to get us all killed?”

“Because this is where — ”

“Yes?”

“Because this is where I've chosen.”

“That's not what you were going to say.”

“You don't know what I was going to say.”

“True. But I'd like to find out. Now, as you were saying, ‘This is where …' ”

“Give it up, Kate. You don't know what you're talking about.”

“That seems to be a common refrain with you, Link.”

“Don't call me that,
Katie
.”

“Why not,
Link
? What's the big deal with the name? It's not like it's rude. Not like some of the names you used to call each other. Do you hate the past so much?”

“Yup. I just want to finish the job and get as far away from here as possible, if you want to know the truth. So will you do me a favour and get out of my face? The bait'll be gone by tomorrow morning.” Link took off the daypack he'd been wearing and pulled out a water bottle and what looked like a Gore-Tex shroud.

“What. You gonna sit here all night and wait?”

“Yup. That's my job.”

“You're not worried you'll be eviscerated?”

“Nope. Why bother wrestling me when there's fresh meat right here for the taking?”

“You've got a point, there,” said Kate. “Plus you probably taste bad. Bitter, I'm guessing.”

“I'm sure of that. Now, scram, Kate. This beast might have a sweet tooth.”

“Aw, thanks.”

“You're welcome. Now beat it, eh, so I can crawl into this bivy bag before the blackflies carry me off piece by piece.”

Kate reached into her pants pocket. “Here.” She tossed Nicholas the bottle of
OFF
! “For a guy who was never shy about chemicals, I'm surprised you never thought of this.”

Nicholas softened slightly. Tucked the bottle in his pack. “Thanks,” he said. His eyes lingered on the upside-down Nike logo and the crude assertion beneath it.

“Nice hat,” he said, with a grin.

Kate dove into the Chevy's bug-free oasis — and processed her strange day. Spying a water bottle forgotten under the seat, she shook what remained of its contents into her palms, and rubbed them over her face and neck.

Link —
Nicholas
— certainly did play his cards close to his chest.
This is where —
what?
What had he been going to say? This is where the cougar has been sighted? This is where something would appear in the sky? Gupta had noticed the sky-scanning. Okay, what would Link have been looking for? Kate grabbed her head and shook as though some kind of sense might fall out her ears into plain view. What would appear in the sky — a bird? And what flew around here habitually other than the odd crow? The odd crow — or raven? Is that what Nicholas had been watching for, a raven? And would said raven be generic or specific? J.P.'s raven, say? Some waited for Godot, others for … what had Hille called him … Raw-Raw?

Kate started the car and roared out of the bush onto Dixie's lane, from Dixie's lane onto Cemetery Road, from Cemetery Road onto the highway back to town.

Since she'd left work — it seemed hours ago now — Kate had been trying
not
to think of another event, in some ways the worst of her day. Just before quitting time, John Marcotte had called the office. Explaining he'd been sick with a cold followed by a long bout of shingles, all of which had prevented him from looking for J.P.'s grave, he was anxious for Kate to take him there soon. Despite knowing this day would come, something about Marcotte's reminder had sent shivers up Kate's spine.

In practical terms, there was nothing to his request; having visited the grave often, Kate could easily locate it. No, there was no earthly reason to keep Marcotte in the dark, just as there was nothing reasonable in Kate's misgivings. But her misgivings continued nonetheless. Still, what choice did she really have? Cooler weather had been forecast for Thursday, and they had agreed that would be a good time.

From Dixie's laneway, Kate backed onto Cemetery Road with every intention of heading back to town. But some urge took her the other way, back toward the cemetery. Passing Link's truck, she stopped on the opposite side farther down, as close as she could get to the place in the woods where J.P.'s ashes lay. She got out of the car and, checking no one was around, dipped into the trees, heading for the simple grave.

When she got there, it was gone.

4

The Prize

A month or so after the night in the cabin, Kate was walking home from the library along behind the school. She smelled it first — the cigarette smoke — a sure sign of kids hanging out behind the gym. Slowing, thinking how to avoid them, she heard a familiar voice and stopped to listen. Out of sight, around the brick corner, the unlikeable Annabel and a friend were conversing — on the subject of J.P. The friend, Kate realized with a shock, was Greta Krebs, her old friend from public school, who lived on J.P.'s street. Greta's voice, unmistakably.

“I used to have a thing for J.P.,” Greta said. “
Used
to have. You know what that prick did last Friday night? He rode my bike off that wall by the school straight into the river!”

“You get it back?” Annabel said.

“Nah, it was miles down, fuckin' twenty feet, at least. Water's too fast, anyway.”

“What did you tell your mom and dad?”

“Told them it was stolen, eh, but my dad gave me hell anyway. Said I was irresponsible. Couldn't even look after a fuckin' bike. Well he didn't say fuckin'. I did. Then I called him a bugger. He was pissed. Grounded me for a
whole month
.”

Then what was Greta doing here?
But the real news was what came next.

“Nope, haven't seen the asshole since,” said Greta now to Annabel's question. “There's no way J.P.'s around, or else I would've seen him go past our house. Split the Rapids, I'm pretty sure. No way he's coming back. That's what his brother said, anyways. I say good riddance to bad rubbish. Jerk.”

Kate walked right past Annabel and Greta, as though she'd just happened along that minute.

“Oh,
hi
, Kate,” sneered Annabel.

“Oh,
hi
, Kate,” echoed Greta.

Kate straightened her spine and sped up, ignoring their mingy greetings. It didn't matter what they might say or do now. It was their earlier conversation, with its terrible information, that had done the damage.
J.P. gone
. Kate's heart was broken. Sunk like Greta's bike in river mud. Irretrievable.

Not the grave, exactly. The marker. The marker was gone. As fast as reason concocted explanations, emotion stepped in to render them impotent. The result was an unhinged Kate, a Kate of mindless motion and undisciplined limb, a Kate that Kate herself might have scoffed at, scampering hither and yon through old leaves and undergrowth in a desperate bid to locate the missing marker stake.

Eventually, miraculously, the splintery old thing turned up, apparently thrown atop a blueberry bush. So relieved was she to locate it, Kate dodged the nagging question of how it got there. With a trembling hand, she retrieved the picket and carried it back to its proper spot.

It was as Kate stood atop J.P.'s buried ashes, preparing to drive the stake back in its narrow hole, that the idea came. What if, instead of reinserting the picket where it belonged, she just moved it a few metres over? And Kate could keep the knowledge of J.P.'s true whereabouts a secret, which seemed suddenly important. A special place in her heart no one could touch. For mourning purposes, John Marcotte would be near enough. Selfish, perhaps. But what harm was there in it? As they said, it was all good.

On Thursday, as agreed, Kate met John Marcotte at the graveyard.

Marcotte climbed out of his car in a kind of funeral suit that, judging by the thick dust lines along the shoulders, must have sat on a hanger for years rather than months. He wore good shoes, a good forty years old: black patent leather whose soles, Kate could tell, would be slippery. The toe box was dull and dried out, cracking across the top.

Was this really the man who had seemed to a young Kate the epitome of good taste and living? The man who travelled the country, maybe even the continent, attending auctions, wheeling and dealing, to bring back the very best antiques? Now he just looked dowdy and defeated. Had he come down in the world, or was Kate's memory faulty? Could the place she had thought so fancy, luxurious beyond reach, really have been just a plain old junk shop?

But no. Kate's mother, a lover of beauty, used to call Marcotte's shop a “tasty retreat.” For years, Kate understood the phrase in terms of those delicious peppermint suckers until, as a teenager, she realized what her mom meant. It was about that time, too, that Kate noticed her mother never bought much on her visits. She overheard her mother confide to a friend on the phone her frustration with Kate's “tightwad” dad, who had little use for furniture that cost more just because it was old. So Molly would buy small things, a silver napkin ring or a tortoiseshell comb, more to pay for the pleasure of looking, as you do in such a place. It was a big deal when Dean agreed to having two chairs reupholstered, in a complicated tapestry fabric of Molly's choosing.

At the sight of Marcotte, looking as he did, pity climbed up on the sadness Kate already felt. She hadn't felt this bad for months. Suck it up, she told herself, and walked up to greet him. She put out her hand, soaked with nervous sweat. Marcotte took hold, and his hand was so strong, like a farmer's, Kate thought hers would be crushed. It, in fact, began to go numb. Finally, Marcotte let go, and with the lump on the end of her arm she could barely feel, Kate gestured toward the woods.

“After you,” she said.

“No, you first, please,” said Marcotte. Was that a tear suspended on his lower lid? You never knew with old guys. Their eyes often looked leaky to Kate — either that, or too dry. They would be red-rimmed for no particular reason.

Kate headed into the bush toward J.P.'s grave, Marcotte following in the slippery shoes as best he could. Kate slowed to a crawl so as not to add Marcotte's humiliation to the downer the day already was. Finally, they came to the place. With a bare glance toward the marker, Marcotte fell to his knees, right in the forest debris, mindless of those however-old patellas.
Patellae?
As Kate pondered her Latin, a siren went off. The sound was not so much a siren, Kate would later think, but more foghorn-like, similar to the town whistle that used to blow precisely at 4:35, when the men got off work at the electrical station and the mill. The whistle, which looked like a smokestack, let the wives know to start thinking about supper, and the wives in turn used its reliable blast to round up the children: “Come home when the whistle goes, or else!”

But the whistle hadn't blown for years. Kate realized now where the sound was coming from. Marcotte, his face in his hands, wailed as though Hell itself was blowing its stack.

On July first, Canada Day and a statutory holiday, Kate's phone rang at an inhuman hour. Seizing the thing from her bedside table, Kate bellowed into it, only to hear a still more determined voice, talking over her epithets in a firm, steady stream.

“Kate, Kate. You have to do this! Now listen, I've got my money on B5, 6, 7, and 8. If you put yours on C3, 4, and 5, I think we've pretty much got 'er covered. I know this one, Kate. She lives next door to us, and she never poops but on clover. I've been studying up on this, Kate. It's a sure thing.”

“Mary, what on earth are you blathering about?”

“Rosie the cow, girl! You know it's Cow Patty Bingo day up at the Roadhouse Museum, right?”

“Oh, my God, Mary. You phoned at this hour to tell me this?”

“Oh, c'mon, Kate, dear. Humour me a little. And it's hardly early. It's eight o'clock!”

Despite Kate's best efforts, a smile played about her lips. So Mary hadn't disavowed their friendship after all. It felt good to be back in its bosom, even in a semi-conscious state.

“Listen,” Mary continued, “I've been up all night at work anyway. And waiting to call you, dear, to boot. You know the prize they're giving out.”

“No, Mary, I don't.”

“Tickets to Vegas.”

Kate said nothing. Her mouth fell open.

“I'm kidding, dear. The prize — it's way better than that. Get this: a stupendously
beautiful
motorbike
. Some kind of a Harley. I don't know who got their hands on it. Anyway, I've always wanted a motorbike.”

“Why don't you just buy one?” Kate asked.

“Because it's so much better to
win
it, dear. Surely, even you can see that.”

Kate's consciousness was growing. “
Even
me? What's that supposed to mean?”

“Turn of phrase, dear. Figure of speech.”

“My ass.”

“Okay, basically, I'm trying my damnedest to get you out of bed. Stop mooning around, Kate. You're as bad as Rosie.”

“Pooping on clover, is that what you're getting at?”

“More or less. Now c'mon, have some coffee and let's go up to the museum. There's lots of stuff going on. Bovine bowel movement due at noon. It's your country's birthday. What kind of patriot are you?”

Picturing Mary's
Republic of Newfoundland
T-shirt, Kate said, “About as much as you.”

“You going to help me win this motorbike or not?”

“It's not like you're impoverished, or soon to be, like some of your friends …”

“Give it a rest, Kate. You've got a perfectly good roof over your head. It's not as bad as all that.”

Perhaps it wasn't. But there was a pretty good chance it was. The roof over Kate's head wasn't, in fact, “perfectly good” anymore. Repairs were needed, on it and many other things besides. Despite a paid-off mortgage and the benefit of her parents' very modest life insurance payout, there were taxes and bills for both home and office and general living expenses, not to mention retirement, to consider. With the downturn in business, Kate wondered if her deep funk wasn't, in fact, more justified than even Mary could guess.

“Here's what I think, Mary,” said Kate. “I think my so-called ‘mooning around' is more justified than
even you
could guess.”

“Touché!” said Mary. “So I'll pick you up in an hour, okay?”

“Whatever,” said Kate.