Stones (5 page)

The flashlight had turned the window into a mirror. I was looking at my own reflection.

Muttering angrily at myself, feeling foolish but unable to shake the sense of uneasiness, I dragged two benches to the corner and spread out the sleeping bag, shaking it to give it loft. Then I opened the stove door and shone the light inside. It seemed functional. Beside it was a wooden box containing kindling and newspaper, and beside that a small stack of split wood. If I was economical, it would last the night. I set paper and kindling in the stove and heard the roar of flame and smoke sucked up the chimney and away by the wind.

I kicked off my boots, shrugged out of the anorak and climbed into the sleeping bag. Soon the warmth began to make me sleepy. The next day the snowplows would be out. I’d walk the road until I came to a house, call for a tow truck to pull the van out of the ditch, drive home, get some hot coffee into me, have a long, hot shower.

The wind howled along the walls of the old church, moaned at the eaves, whined at the window ledges, fistfuls of snow rattling the glass. As it warmed, the building creaked and cracked.

My thoughts turned to Raphaella. I pictured her standing in class during the debate, her pale skin and dark eyes, the plum-colored mark on her face and neck. I saw her walking down the hall, her long black hair swaying to and fro across her back. Her willowy body. She carried herself with a confidence and grace I hardly ever saw in other girls. She was intelligent and articulate and wasn’t afraid to show it.

No wonder I was in love with her. I ached to see her again, close-up this time. But how could I manage it?

I got up and put another small log on the fire. I scrunched down into the sleeping bag and, with her face in my imagination, fell asleep.

Once, a few years before, I had a vicious case of bronchitis that brought with it a high fever and bizarre, terrifying nightmares that left me breathless and sweaty. In the church, with the blizzard
raging outside and hard benches under me, I slept fitfully, slipping in and out of troubling dreams. Though I couldn’t recall it, each dream left a residue of dread that seemed to build as the night wore slowly on, until finally I was awakened by the rasping of my own rapid breathing.

Around me the rushing wind shrieked and moaned. The comforting crackle of the fire had died away. I swallowed on a dry throat, fumbled for the flashlight and checked my watch. It was just after two o’clock.

Gradually, like a theme emerging in a piece of music, a sound borne by the wind began to separate itself from the background howl. I strained to identify it, scarcely breathing, rigid with concentration. An insistent grumble, like a crowd makes in a movie or a play.

The grumbling intensified without being louder, became more human, the voices of men, at least half a dozen, double that at most. Their distant murmuring carried tones of anger, determination, fear. The sound swelled, stronger, more insistent. Then, like bubbles rising to the surface, one at a time, and bursting, I heard
eighty wish
…
now
…
go back!
…
no!
, each distinct word floating on a rumbling tide of rage and terror and, finally, hatred.

Eighty wish
…
go back!
…
no!
Then,
Stone
…
stone
.

It was as if the men were passing outside the church on their way somewhere.

The voices receded into the roar of the storm. I was half free of the sleeping bag, propped on one elbow, straining after the terrible sounds. I lay down again, trembling. I began to reason with myself, word by unspoken word regaining confidence. I was imagining things. A gusty wind like that could make strange effects, play with my mind. There were no men. How could there be, in a storm like this in the middle of the night? My nightmares, the stress of the day, loneliness and isolation had gotten to me. Hadn’t I thought I saw a man in the window a few hours before?

I took in a long breath and let it out slowly. Be reasonable, I repeated to myself. I wanted to go back to sleep, but in a way I was afraid to. There’s nothing to fear, I told myself. Don’t be a fool.

Three times that night the voices returned. By the time a weak grey light diluted the darkness
at the windows the wind had ceased its assault on the cabin, and I was a wreck.

When the light had risen enough to illuminate the inside of the church, I got up, made sure the fire in the stove was out, packed up my stuff and pushed open the door. The driven snow had been sculpted into ridges like frozen waves alongside and behind the building. In the flat light of early morning I saw that the log structure stood at the intersection of the Third Concession and the Old Barrie Road. Nearby was a stone monument, and on its far side rested the van, its left front smashed in.

Unable to stop myself, I searched the drifts around the church for footprints. I found nothing. Coiling my guide rope, I plowed my way to the van and stowed my gear behind the seat.

The engine started immediately and, with the heater pumping warm air into the cab, I tried once more to back out onto the road. No luck.

An hour or so later a county snowplow came by, snorting diesel smoke into the cold, still air, the blue light revolving on the top. The driver was happy to pull me out of the ditch. I followed the plow into town, glad to see the red streak of the rising sun in the trees beside the road.

chapter     

B
y failing to come home the night of the blizzard I had thrown a scare into my parents, and, as usual, they eased their nerves by ranting — after hugging and fussing over me when I walked into the house that morning. Then they ganged up on me as I was sipping a welcome cup of hot tea at the kitchen table.

“Why didn’t you call?” Mom demanded.

“That’s what the phone is for,” Dad put in.

“Yeah, but the battery was flat.”

“So? You could have recharged it from the cigarette lighter.”

“I forgot the adapter.”

Mom was leaning on the counter, arms crossed. “You drove off to the city without the adapter. Into the biggest storm in ten years.
With
the cell phone,
without
the adapter.”

“Don’t rub it in. I didn’t know it was going to snow.”

Dad added, “I keep telling you, don’t drive any distance in the winter without checking the Weather Channel first.”

I stood up. “I’d love to stay and let you two hammer away at me some more, but I’m going to have a long, hot shower instead.”

“Take the phone with you,” Dad said, and all three of us burst out laughing.

Olde Gold Antiques and Collectibles was a narrow, two-storey red-brick building with The Magus, a bookstore, on one side and an espresso bar on the other. The store occupied the main floor, with a showroom at the front, a small office and a workshop out back. Overhead was a stamped-tin ceiling, thick with many coats of paint, and the floor was made of pegged oak planks. There was a cellar, dark and creepy, where the bathroom was and where we stored pieces waiting to be refinished or repaired.

Business was transacted in a time warp: cash only, unless the customer was local; then we would take a check. Each sale was recorded on
an invoice, white copy for the buyer, yellow for us, and rung up on a huge ancient cash register with heavy nickel-plated trim. When the big round keys were pressed, labels popped up into a window, showing the amount of the sale, and the contraption let out a
ring!
that they could probably hear across the street in the library. There was no computer, no credit cards, Air Miles, special offers, coupons or mailing lists, no money-back guarantee.

“Buy it, give us the money, and keep it” was Dad’s retailing motto.

I worked there on Saturdays, opening up at ten and closing at five. I usually had the place to myself. When she wasn’t off chasing a story, Mom would be at home and Dad was usually on the road hunting up treasures at auctions and garage sales. There was a brass bell hanging over the front door that summoned me from the workshop when somebody came in.

I liked the job. There had been a time when I’d had a burst of independence, insisting on a “real job” somewhere outside the family business. I found one, at a department store in the mall. After I’d been there a couple of months the manager told me to follow an old woman around the store and keep an eye on her. She
was wearing a ratty old cloth raincoat with a scarf on her head. A toddler, wearing clothes that were too small for him, stood in the shopping cart, pretending to pilot it through the store as his grandmother pushed. I watched the woman pocket a kid-size toothbrush, a comb with a cartoon character head on it, a packet of gum. She got on the elevator and I slipped in just as the door was closing.

“They’re watching you,” I said to the doors. “They know what you’re doing.”

She rode the elevator back down, got off and put all the stuff back. It touched me when she did that. She could have dumped the items on the elevator floor or laid them on a shelf somewhere and walked away. They caught her putting the comb back in the display case. Security had called the cops.

When the manager ordered me to tell Security what I had seen I said, “Nothing.” Red-faced and cursing, he fired me on the spot. When I left the store, the old lady and her grandson were sitting in the back of a police car. I guessed I wasn’t hard-hearted enough for the commercial world.

Anyway, on a sunny Saturday a week or so after the blizzard, I opened the store as usual.
Cars hissed past, throwing dirty slush to the edge of the sidewalk, and shoppers walked briskly in the chilly air. Across the street the giant icicles hanging from the eaves of the opera house were turned to crystal by the morning sun.

I put a Mozart CD on the stereo and switched on the electric heater in the shop. Then I ducked into the espresso bar for a double-shot latte, took it back to the shop and put on my apron.

I was working on a replacement slat for a crib bed — an easy job, just a matter of cutting it to length and planing it smooth. It was a slow morning, normal for that time of year. I sold a few pieces of the pottery we take on consignment from a local artisan, and a couple of old medicine bottles. Just before lunch the bell tinkled again.

I brushed the wood shavings from my apron, drained the last of the latte and went into the showroom. Standing in the doorway, wiping her boots on the mat, was Raphaella.

She was wearing a red woolen Hudson’s Bay coat and a floppy white tam. The cold air had
raised a bit of color in her pale skin, seeming to darken the birthmark. She caught sight of me.

“Oh” was all she said.

I couldn’t find my voice. I felt my neck and face flush hot, and something leapt in my stomach.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” she said, pulling off thick knitted mittens.

“Er, we own the place.”

“Oh. Well, that’s great.”

Her eyes roamed the room. Mine stayed locked on her. How many love songs had I heard that said, “She takes my breath away”? Now I knew what that line meant. My legs were numb. My vocal cords didn’t seem to work properly any more. I was painfully conscious of my stained apron and the block plane in my hand.

“You have some nice pieces here,” she commented, running her hand along a maple sideboard.

“Thanks. Dad finds them.”

“I wouldn’t have figured you for the antique type,” she said. “No offence.”

“I refinished almost everything here,” I blurted. “The furniture, I mean.” I shut up before I made another stupid remark.

One corner of her mouth turned up in a half-smile. She touched a water jug and porcelain basin sitting on a pine dry sink, then traced the grain in the wood with her finger. “Nice work.”

“Thanks. Um, can I help you with anything?”

“I hope so. You know, the OTG is putting on a musical at the beginning of the summer.”

“Yeah, I heard something about it.”

The Orillia Theatre Group put on plays and musicals regularly. Mostly musicals. I hate musicals, but I tried to look interested.

“We’re doing
The Sound of Music.”

Great, I thought. The musical I hated most. A cute governess who knows everything, nauseatingly cute kids, cute songs, a few Nazis who were so stupid you’d wonder why anybody was afraid of them. And nuns.

“I’ll have to try and take it in,” I said. If she was in it, I’d see it.

“Good. Well, the reason I’m here, I’m the stage manager, and the official props-gofer. I was hoping your store — you — might lend us a few pieces of furniture for the set.”

If she’d asked for the deed to the store and everything in it I’d have handed them over, no questions asked. Briefly, I wondered if Dad would mind if I agreed to lend the OTG what
they wanted. Freddy Graham at the bookstore occasionally borrowed stuff from us for his window displays. Then I had a thought.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll lend you anything you want.”

“Thank you. You’re very —”

“On two conditions,” I cut in, bolder now. What do I have to lose? I thought.

Raphaella smirked. “And they are?”