Stones (8 page)
My father was as churned up as I was, for a different reason. Strictly speaking, he hadn’t participated in the auction at all. He had preempted it by contacting the Toronto lawyer handling the Maitland estate and offering a lump sum for the entire contents of the house. The remaining items — lawn tractors, patio furniture, two cars, some old farming equipment — went on sale to the public.
“He thought he was pulling a fast one on a country bumpkin awed by his big-city sophistication,” Dad said, still going on about the lawyer. “He pulled up in his luxury SUV, wearing a Peak Outfitters parka, brand-new hiking boots, every inch the outdoors man from downtown, and talked to me as if I was a cretin. I played along, trying hard not to drool out the corner of my mouth or say ‘aw shucks’ while we worked out the deal.”
All I knew of the Maitland farm was that it was old, one of the original pioneer homesteads
in Oro going back to the early 1800s. According to Dad, who was up on all that stuff, the original farmhouse had been added to and refurbished over the years. The last surviving Maitland, who lived in California and had left the farm unused for two years after his mother died, finally put the whole place, chattels and all, up for sale.
Dad really had scored a big one this time. Along with a lot of junk there was furniture, some of it priceless, original paintings, silverware, lamps, carpets, blanket boxes — enough to keep Olde Gold Antiques and Collectibles stocked for a long time. The loot, as Dad called it, would keep me busy for another century, it seemed.
I set the boxes aside, mumbling that we had enough cracked-leather-bound Dickens and Thackeray and Haliburton and Susanna Moodie to outfit a geriatric library. But nothing could ruin my mood that day.
I had kissed Raphaella and she had kissed me back.
chapter
F
or someone about to fly halfway around the world, my mother was traveling light. Aside from her laptop in its leather case and a roomy carryall, she had only one bag. The three pieces sat in the hallway by the front door.
Dad was teaching that morning and had already left the house. But, as usual when Mom was off on one of her career-enhancing jaunts, she and Dad had stayed up most of the night talking, drinking wine, putting off the dawn as long as they could. They’d had breakfast together and said their goodbyes before he left for work.
When she bounced down the stairs that morning in her usual traveling outfit — work shirt, jeans and leather moccasins — she looked more like a senior counsellor on her way to
summer camp than a tough-minded journalist. But tough-minded or not, she seemed vulnerable to me, not at all equipped to dig out facts in a dangerous place. She hadn’t left yet and I was already worried.
I hugged her tightly when the airport service mini-bus came to pick her up. “Be careful, Mom. Don’t do anything dumb.”
She kissed me and pulled the door open. “Okay, Gramps.”
Moving day was, to use an oxymoron, a hectic bore. Dad had planned the whole operation like a military campaign. He went to the new house on Brant and I stayed at the old one. The movers loaded up the truck under my eyes and unloaded again under his.
I packed up my room — or some of it — and stowed my stuff in the van, because I was moving out to the mobile home, which I hadn’t even seen yet. I was looking forward to living alone, but at the same time I was a little scared by the idea of being independent. I was also pretty sad about leaving the house I had grown up in.
Late in the afternoon, after the movers had driven off with the last load, I drifted from room to empty room, my footsteps echoing hollowly. The walls of the living and dining rooms had light oblongs on them where paintings had hung or furniture had stood against them. Dustballs lurked in corners. In the kitchen, cupboard doors hung open to reveal empty shelves.
All day I had been putting off this dark moment. My home was to be occupied by strangers. My mother was halfway around the world. My father would be buzzing around, humming cheerily in the house he’d waited years to buy.
I decided not to leave yet. I phoned Dad and told him my plans, then went out to the van to get the sleeping bag, recalling with a bit of a shiver the last time I had used it. I called out for a pizza, ate it in the family room, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, listening to tapes of old radio shows from Dad’s collection: “The Shadow,” “Inner Sanctum.” Then I went to sleep.
I dreamed that I woke up with a fire in my belly, fueled by triple cheese and pepperoni — heartburn. At first I thought I had left the tape
deck running. I reached over and pushed the power button. But the voices kept on. Voices I knew.
“Oh, no,” I moaned. “No.”
Eighty wish
, I heard.
Eighty wish
.
I
picked up Raphaella at the end of her street late the next morning after having breakfast with Dad at the new house. He was happy as a kid on Christmas morning.
“You’re late,” she said as she got into the van.
“Rough night.”
“Oh?”
“A combination of too much pizza and a nightmare.”
“So you’re quoting Shakespeare to make you feel better.”
“Ummm …”
“In
Macbeth
. The morning after he murdered Duncan and before Macduff and Lennox discovered the body. They’re talking about storms and stuff, and Macbeth, who was half out of his mind with guilt and fear, says, ‘ ’Twas a rough night.’”
“Oh.”
“It’s kind of ironic. Understatement. Get it?”
“Moronic?”
“Ho, ho. You were also upset about leaving your old house for the last time.”
Following Raphaella’s train of thought wasn’t always easy. In the short time we’d been together I had grown used to the feeling that sometimes came over me when I was with her — that she could read my mind. Or, to put it more accurately, she could read my feelings. Raphaella was like an antenna for emotions. I told her it was spooky. She said no, it was
intuitive
, and that people underestimated intuition.
“Yeah,” I said. “I spent a long time chasing memories from room to room. It’s funny, isn’t it? After all, it’s just a building.”
“There are buildings and there are buildings,” she said.
I drove west on Highway 12 where it skirts Orillia to the south. Buses lumbered past in the opposite direction, carrying gamblers to the casino in Rama at ten-thirty in the morning. I turned onto the Old Barrie Road. The sun was directly behind us and we chased our own shadow along the two-lane secondary road.
Raphaella was wearing loose cotton pants
and a T-shirt that said “Global Ecology Not Global Economy.”
“Do all your T-shirts have captions on them?” I asked.
She smiled and pulled her hair back, looping an elastic band around it to make a long ponytail.
“I prefer them to corporation logos. Anyway, want to tell me about the nightmare?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Okay.”
We drove in silence. In the distance the slanting sun illuminated the greening fields and the trees blushing with new buds. The road wound in gentle turns through the low hills.
Raphaella didn’t press me about the dream. She didn’t pry, ever. And she expected the same from me. There was still a lot I didn’t know about her. Like who or where her father was. Where she and her mother had come from — they’d been in Orillia for only three years. Why she had transfered from Park Street Collegiate in the middle of the semester.
What I did know was that she lived on Couchiching Point in a house on the canal. Her mother preferred to live on the water, Raphaella had said, typically refusing to elaborate. Her
mother owned and operated the Demeter health food store in town, where Raphaella worked in her spare time — which she had lots of, because she was a half-time student. That was about it.
I was curious, but I didn’t press things. If she wanted me to know she’d tell me, I’d learned. If she didn’t, there was no way to pry anything out of her. That was okay with me. I was in love with her, not her family or her background.
“So, where’s this trailer park, anyway?” Raphaella asked.
“Do you mind?” I said in a mock British accent. “One doesn’t say trailer park. One says mobile home estate.” Then, in my normal voice, “It’s on the Third Concession Line.”
“Ah, yes,” Raphaella intoned. “An enviable address indeed. Just past the bustling metropolis of Edgar, I believe.”
I laughed. As she spoke, we were passing through Edgar, a four-corner nowhere village with one store.
“That’s the Third Concession up ahead,” I pointed out. “We go left.”
A lone building at the crossroads came into view.
“We’ll, I’ll be —”
It looked different in bright spring sunshine. The large windows were trimmed in white that contrasted sharply with the dark plank walls. The lilac bush by the door was in bud. When I turned off the paved road onto the gravel concession line, I saw the stone and mortar structure. The one I had crashed into.
“Yup, that’s it, all right,” I said to myself.
“Why are we stopping?” Raphaella asked. “And what’s what?”
“That’s the church where I spent the night last March. Remember? I told you about getting trapped there in the blizzard.” I hadn’t told her about the dream. “Let’s take a look,” I said.
We crossed the road. Sure enough, the stones were chipped and there were faint traces of blue paint on the mortar.
“It’s some kind of monument,” Raphaella said, her voice uneasy. “Look.”
On the side opposite the one I’d hit was a bronze plaque that told us that the African Methodist Church had been built in 1849. Below the notation was a list of those “who worshipped and are buried here.”
“African?” I said. “I don’t get it.”
Rural Ontario was a long way from Africa.
And you could count the black families in the area on one hand.
I looked around. “There aren’t any gravestones. So where are the graves?”
Around the church, the grounds were grass-covered. About thirty yards away was a forest of maple trees.
“I guess the grassy part is the cemetery. Come on,” I suggested. “Let’s look inside.”
“Maybe I’ll wait in the van,” Raphaella said quietly.
“Just a quick look, then we’ll go.”
I soon regretted my decision. Like dampness from cold stone, the church gave off an atmosphere of dread that I could feel on my skin and in my bones. Determined not to give in to my uneasiness, I pushed on. It’s a sunny spring day, I told myself. Birds are chirping in the trees. This isn’t Castle Dracula.
I led Raphaella along the side of the church and looked in the windows, recalling the fright I had had that night when I had thought I’d seen a man watching me. Inside, the place appeared as I had left it. The benches that had been my bed stood before the stove.
“Look,” I said to Raphaella, “you can see
where the original logs have been covered with siding. And there’s —”
Her face was ashen, and she held her hands at her waist, fingers interlocked, knuckles white.
“What’s the matter?”
“There are spirits here,” she whispered, her eyes wide.
“What? How do —?”
“Something bad happened around here somewhere. Something evil. Garnet, please, let’s go.”
She clutched my arm as we walked back to the van. Which of us was more scared I didn’t know.
