The River Burns (20 page)

Not that he napped. Nor was it the idea. His eyes stayed open despite his desire to crash for a bit, and he adjusted the mirror to see who might come up behind him. While he remained in danger of falling asleep, and on any other day he might easily have done so, too much agitated his synapses for that to happen this afternoon. Really he looked more like a policeman trying to conceal his presence for surveillance purposes, albeit in a marked car, than a cop goofing off on the job. As further evidence of that, more than his cop radio was turned on. A CB brought in sporadic communication from deep woods loggers.

He knew where his brother was working today so chose this road to monitor, listening in to the crackling radio even while nodding off. When Denny emerged he'd drive this route and Ryan evaluated the pros and cons of stopping him, something he'd done only once, back then to give him the news that their mother had passed away. Over the years, his brother edged above the limit on his radar gun a few times, but nothing extreme, and if he stopped him today it wouldn't be to fine him. They just needed to talk. Denny would protest that he was hauling logs, that downtime and conversation cost him cold hard cash. Mentally, Ryan rehearsed a response. “I could talk to you here and now, or later at home in front of your wife and kids. You choose.”

Not that he wanted to have the conversation in either location. Yet theirs should be a secret talk with no one from the public noticing, and he presumed that Denny wouldn't want his wife within earshot either.

A few cars passed by, but the first vehicle of interest that came down the road was neither one of these nor a logging truck, but Mrs. McCracken on her Vespa GTV 250 speeding along at a good clip. She looked out of control. Secretly, Ryan wished he could have a ride on that thing himself, to see how it ran. Not a motorcycle by any means, but it seemed nimble. He calculated that coming from that direction she'd been up to the cemetery, a fairly frequent trip. Ryan kept his head down as she went by, but raised it up again as the vehicle's passenger, hanging on by gripping the chrome backrest, glanced behind her at his car.

Stunned by her beauty.

Her hair flew out from under a helmet, as if waving. Waving.

Ryan hesitated, but nowhere near long enough to think this through. He started the squad car, pulled out onto the highway, and went after them. Along the way, he turned on his revolving lights, although he decided that the siren would be overkill.

Mrs. McCracken pulled over.

Ryan parked on the shoulder of the road behind the scooter.

He thought about running the licence plate, but that was a reflex, a silly one in this circumstance. He took a deep breath and stepped out of the car instead, putting on his cap as he emerged.

Mrs. McCracken watched him walk up in the rearview mirror that hung off her left handlebar. She lifted the visor of her helmet and whispered to Tara, “I was not speeding.”

“Not by too much,” the young woman countered. “He's being picky.”

“It's the extra weight!” Mrs. McCracken defended. “It's hard to go slow down a hill.”

“Now you tell me. I could have walked.”

“Hello, Mrs. McCracken. How are you today?” Ryan asked brightly.

“I'm fine, Officer O'Farrell. Nice of you to stop me for a chat. Have you caught the criminals who invaded my home?”

He smiled, and shot a quick glance at Tara, who was removing her helmet and did not return the eye contact.

“Not yet, ma'am. They're still on the loose, I'm afraid.”

“I have every confidence that you'll leave no stone unturned.”

Tara combed her hair, knotted by the wind, with her fingers.

“You can count on it, but that's not why I stopped you.”

“I do hope that you are not about to insinuate that I was speeding. As you can see, I have a witness. She will vouch for me. And yes, I will make a federal case out of this. I don't care what your radar gun says, it's faulty.”

Tara leaned forward to whisper privately in her ear. “Remember what I do for a living. Or used to do. I'm an officer of the court. I won't lie for you.”

Ryan could not hear the whisper, although he wished that he could. He waited patiently for their secret chat to conclude.

“I'm not out here on speed control. My radar gun wasn't turned on.”

“Oh,” Mrs. McCracken said, assessing the news then recalibrating her defence, which now seemed unnecessary. “Oh.”

Tara was the first to recover. “Then why were you out here?”

He was glad that she posed the question, as it gave him a chance to look directly at her. Proximity only enhanced the woman's beauty and he loved her eyes and felt a knee nearly buckle.

“Things to think about. I needed the quiet time.”

“Then why did you stop us?” Her question was pointed, cutting.

“Because,” Ryan started, boldly at first, but he quickly felt the air in his balloon deflate. He looked away to recover, then back at her. “Because I wanted to meet you.”

Tara snapped a look at him then, her curiosity heightened, but she also felt a familiar defensive mechanism take charge. She paused before speaking, to let both sentiments subside, and relaxed on the seat. She glanced back at the squad car. The revolving cherries were still flashing.

Mrs. McCracken twisted around to observe her reaction.

“What,” Tara asked the cop, still facing away, “no siren?”

Ryan grinned. “I considered it, but didn't want to scare anybody.”

She liked that answer. She snapped her head back and poked her chin towards Mrs. McCracken. “Does he have a reputation for this sort of thing?”

“He does now.”

That made Tara grin, too. Ryan chuckled under his breath.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I've seen you about town. I know that my brother mentioned me and I was worried that my dad might have plans to do so as well.”

“What?”

“It's insane. Family. You can't live with them and, well . . . So I was hoping to meet you before they got on your case. Really. This is not standard procedure. I just wanted to say hi.”

Tara was more than intrigued, although she wished she didn't feel so jumpy. He was a cop, which did not impress her, but he was also damned cute and this meeting smacked of being borderline off-the-wall romantic. “Hi,” she said. She stuck out her hand, needing to do something. “I'm Tara.”

“She's Tara,” Mrs. McCracken jumped in. “This is Ryan O'Farrell, dear, Wakefield's finest.”

Ryan took Tara's hand to shake but now was staring at the older woman with his mouth slightly agape.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Did I get it wrong? You're Denny.”

“No. You got it right. That's why I'm in shock.”

“Oh my. I didn't even think about it. It just popped out.”

“Hi, Tara,” Ryan said to the woman he so wanted to meet, who'd not disappointed him as yet with a squeaky voice or a vulgar tongue or through any indication of innate stupidity. On the contrary, she seemed, on first impression, to be as bright as she was beautiful, and conducted herself through this odd meeting with humour and charm. Élan, even. “I'm Ryan.”

“Ryan,” she said, and finally slipped her hand loose.

“I'm free this evening, Tara, and I wonder if you might be as well. Short notice, I know. If so, I wonder if you would care to have dinner with me? I'm sure that Mrs. McCracken will vouch for my character.”

“I will do no such thing,” she stipulated. Over her shoulder, she added, “Such a pill in school, dear.”

“But would you have dinner with him, if you were me?” Tara asked her, in a way teasing them both.

To gauge her reply, Mrs. McCracken looked the policeman over, then confided in Tara, “He's cute enough.”

Tara, laughing, briefly buried her face in Mrs. McCracken's shoulder. For the first time she was embarrassed and emerged blushing. She covered herself by putting her helmet back on.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Fine. Seven? Pick me up outside Potpourri?”

“Delighted,” Ryan said.

“Yeah,” Tara said. She found both his grin and his renewed confidence attractive. “Delighted.”

Mrs. McCracken was revving her engine. “Are we free to go, Officer?”

Grinning, Ryan waved them on their way. As they sped off and he walked back to his car, he stopped himself from pumping his fist in the air. But under his breath he did express,
Yes!

■   ■   ■

First in, last out.

The rigs parked forward into a holding area, then the last truck to arrive was the first to back down to the loading station, and the first to then be free to go. Today the road was clear so they drove out immediately and Denny was the last to be loaded and released.

Dust from his predecessors hung in the air as he sped down the narrow gravel road. Light branches swished against the front bumpers and occasionally smacked his windshield.

He spotted a hawk at the top of a dead birch. Then the bird caught sight of him right through the windshield. In a vague way, he felt hunted.

At a straight section that formed a shallow valley, descending gently then rising, he began to slow. His habit was to speed up here but this time he geared down. At the top of the low hill, before his line-of-sight became obstructed by a bend and a dip, he spotted something, but didn't know what. The closer he got the more anomalous it appeared, as if some strange unearthly animal challenged him, then the image ­became perfectly clear but equally bizarre. In the centre of the road, in the wake of the three logging trucks that recently went on ahead, blazed a fire.

Denny rapidly double-clutched down through the gears. Then braked.

His rig lurched to a stop.

He waited as dust swirled up around his cab. He couldn't comprehend this. His diesel belched and coughed and remained boisterous in idle.

A collection of small dry branches had been piled and set ablaze.

His eyes darted to the right. He distinguished movement there. Then out of the woods strode a scantily clothed man, smoking.

In climbing down from his cab, Denny took his tire iron with him. He could make a show of nonchalantly tapping his tires but now held a weapon.

Skootch took up a position near and behind the fire and sucked on his joint. Denny went around and stood by his left front bumper and silently stared at him. Then Skootch flicked his miniscule roach into the flames.

“Nice of you to drop by,” the tall, skinny, unclad man said.

“You're the one trespassing,” Denny pointed out.

Skootch invested in an elaborate shrug, as though to convey his regal lassitude. “It's a free forest. So, Denny, you pitched around my third baseman. How come?”

“Pure hunch.”

“Hunch, hunh?”

“I didn't like his haircut.”

“Too bad. I wanted to see him hit. I still don't know if he can.”

“Don't you? The game was on the line, Skootch. I played it safe.”

“Probably a good call. I'm counting on you to play it safe.” He parked his right hand under his left armpit. “Do you know who Stradivari is, Denny?”

The trucker made himself more comfortable. He couldn't risk driving over the flames until they subsided and he didn't have the means to extinguish them himself. He moved close to the centre of his truck and propped himself on a narrow shelf of bumper and crossed his arms. He deliberately let the tire iron hang down his side in a manner that left it visible but not otherwise threatening.

“You're holding me up, Skootch. I know that you have no concerns about time or money, but you're taking both away from me.”

“Sorry to hear that, Den. This fire . . .” The man in the weathered vest and skimpy bikini-like bottoms waved his free hand as if the gesture constituted an explanation. “Spontaneous combustion.”

“If that's your story.”

“Sticking to it, yeah. Stradivari, Denny. Any thoughts?”

“Violins.”

“Ah! Denny. You never cease to amaze me, man. Who would think that out here, on this dusty old fire road—which is aptly named today, don't you think—a trucker, a drinking man, a pretty fine third baseman to boot—great hit the other night, by the way, that was rank—”

“What do you want, Skootch?”

“Immaterial, Denny. What I want. He came into woods like these, do you know this? He walked through woods like these—”

“Stradivari.”

“Antonio Stradivari, yeah, maker of the Stradivarius violin. Woods like these, Denny. Do you know what he'd do? This was the secret of his mad genius, this is why he was able to make violins that've never been duplicated for their quality or sound.”

Denny waited.

“Do you want to know that secret or not, Denny?”

“I presume you'll tell me, Skootch, whether or not I want to know.”

“Why would you
not
want to know this? Aren't you curious?”

He looked down, then up, smiling now. “I'm all ears, Skootch.”

“He spoke to the trees.”

“Sure he did.”

“He talked to the trees, Denny. No mere tree hugger, our Antonio. He
asked
the trees, I kid you not, he asked who among them desired to be a violin.”

“Volunteer trees would put up their hands, I suppose.”

“Something like that, Denny. Something like that. They communicated back to him, and that's how he knew which tree to cut down.”

“Kind of difficult for any of them to run away, I suppose.”

Skootch stepped to one side of the fire to elude smoke.

“Among themselves, the trees chose who'd make the best violin.”

“Save those stories for your groupies, Skootch. I'm sure your tales are worth a lot of tits and ass to you.”

The tall, skinny man tugged on an earring, musing. “Wood is vulnerable, Denny. Trees are vulnerable. You should know this. Whole forests can vanish with a lightning stroke. You know that much. I asked myself, just like Stradivari asked the forest, ‘Who do I speak to if I want to protect what needs to be protected?' The answer came back, holy, irrefutable. ‘Talk to Denny O'Farrell.' As if God was speaking to me, I swear.”