The River Burns (31 page)

Spotting him, Samad turned nervous. Conspicuously, he cut the power to his lawnmower, and as the engine sputtered to silence he was searching around, as though contemplating a mad dash.

“Hey, Samad,” Ryan said. Stopping in front of him, he put his hands on his gun belt.

“How's it going, Officer?” Samad asked.

Ryan coughed up laughter, surprised by that remark. “Officer! You never call me that.”

Samad was nodding and Ryan half expected him to bow. “I don't know what to call you.”

“So then you know why I'm here,” Ryan said.

Samad looked away, then nodded yes, then shrugged, unable to decide.

Ryan helped him out. “You're right to think that this is an official visit. You're a smart man, Samad.”

“What's up?” Samad asked. He kept glancing back at his house to see if his wife was watching, or if she would be out soon to help.

“I'm trying to add up how many guys it took to burn down the bridge. Any guesses? There's Denny, you—”

“Me!” The man seemed apoplectic, and clamped both his palms on his chest.

“You carry that extra fuel for hunting. So it was you and Denny—”

“He's your brother!” Samad cried out.

“What's your point?” Ryan asked.

Samad looked clueless.

“Nice lawn,” Ryan mentioned.

“Thanks.” Samad gazed across it. They both did.

“Do you fertilize?”

“Oh yes, believe it, I fertilize. I weed to exhaustion. Joce, she won't let me use chemicals. Not even the legal ones. I keep the grass thick. That solves my problems. No creeping Charlie. My neighbours? Dandelions. On my lawn, not too many. Did I tell you? You can go look. Go. Look. My fuel barrel is full.”

“Say what? Your fuel drum? You mean on your truck?”

“It's full.”

Through the dark glasses Samad could not be certain that Ryan was glaring at him, but he felt uncomfortable looking back at himself reflected on the twin lenses. They were mirrors and he wanted to tell him so. “You know what that means, don't you, Samad?”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“You filled it up after it was emptied. I'll check, but I don't expect to find your truck on a video gassing up. I won't find a credit card trail.”

“No, no. You are right. You will never find that.”

“Because you're a smart man, like I said. You located a full forty-­five­­ gallon drum out in the woods somewhere, didn't you, at one of your old job sites? Filled it ahead of time and then refilled your own from that, so nobody's suspicious. That's good. On the other hand, that makes this entire episode premeditated. That's bad. Isn't it, Samad?”

“No. Yes!” He shrugged helplessly. “I don't know. Wait. I don't understand you, Ryan.”

“You went there after the bridge burning and refilled your drum. To make it look like it was never empty. But only a really dumb cop would fall for that one. You don't think I'm that dumb a cop, do you, Samad?”

The suggestion mortified Samad. “No, no, you're a smart cop, Ryan. Officer. Officer Ryan.”

“So André Gervais was the third guy with you. Who was the fourth?”

The trucker started to say something several times but no coherent word emerged. He finished with another elaborate shrug. Then he said, “Your glasses, they're like mirrors.”

“Look, Samad,” Ryan confided, “I really want to thank you for respecting me. You're an honest man. You've helped me out a lot today. Thanks.”

He turned to leave. Samad called him back and Ryan faced him again, hands still on his hips.

“I didn't tell you anything!” Samad protested.

“You didn't deny that it was Denny and André, Samad. I want you to know how much I appreciate that.” He walked towards his car.

“Wait a minute!”

Ryan kept walking.

“Hey, wait a minute! Wait! Ryan! I didn't tell you anything! I didn't do it, Ryan! None of us did! We didn't burn the bridge. It wasn't me! It wasn't us! It's just a rumour! I swear it!”

Ryan didn't salute him exactly, but he touched the fingertips of his right hand to the peak of his cap as he climbed back into his vehicle. Samad looked crestfallen, holding his hands out, palms up, as though imploring him to listen to reason as the policeman drove off. He looked as though he was ready to drop to his knees.

Driving, Ryan checked his watch, wondering how this would time out. His next stop was at the home of André Gervais, as he expected that the man was not the first on Samad's call list. With luck, his arrival might be equally unexpected. Ryan was surprised when, minutes later, he strolled up André's walk to find him also working hard during his off-hours. A busy bunch of guys. André was hunched over a series of loose pipes, wearing a welder's mask and holding a blowtorch.

André watched him walk up, immobile except to push the hinged mask onto the top of his head, then nodding when Ryan got close. This time the policeman left his sunglasses in the car, judging that that ploy wouldn't work on this man, and anyway the sun was setting lower in the hills and trees.

“Hey, André.” Ryan chose to speak French. “I guess you better put that down. I wouldn't want to get the wrong impression.”

André turned off the torch and removed the mask altogether, which he tucked under an arm. “Putting in a backyard faucet, for the pool.”

“You have a pool?”

“Aboveground. A crappy vinyl thing. What's up, Ry?”

“I talked to Denny first, André. I owed him the courtesy, you understand. You know who I talked to second.”

André didn't. “Who?” he asked.

“Your weakest link.”

Rising from his crouch on sore knees took an effort for the large man. “Okay. Do you want to make sense anytime soon?”

Ryan sighed, moved to his left, then back. “Four of you were out that night. Must've been. One guy to drive the truck. One guy on the pump, another on the hose. Denny was alone on the town side, so he struck the match. That makes four. You. Samad. Denny. I'm guessing Xavier. Four. Right?”

Slowly, feeling some aches and pains, André bent over and picked up his torch-ignition device.

“You're barking up the wrong tree, Ry. Just like everybody else in town. You shouldn't listen to idle talk like that. Dumb-ass gossip is what that is.”

“You'll agree with me on this point, André. I was right to go to Samad before you. You're tougher, no question. But help your friend out here. If it wasn't Xavier, just say so.” He looked right at him, gauging his reaction. “So Xavier was the fourth. I thought so. Thanks.”

“I didn't say that,” André insisted.

“You didn't have to. You didn't say it wasn't him.”

“How am I supposed to know? I know nothing about it.”

Ryan already turned to leave but now, confronted by what he assumed to be a lie, retraced his steps. “Samad drove the truck. Woof. You sprayed with the hose. Woof. Xavier ran the pump. Woof. Denny lit the match. Woof. How am I doing, André? Close enough maybe? Am I still barking up the wrong tree?”

André turned his torch back on and snapped the flint. The torch ignited and between them that bright light burned and they listened to the wind of its velocity. This time Ryan was the one to nod to the other as he took his leave.

■   ■   ■

Denny was sitting on his
porch awhile, sipping beer, silent and brooding as the evening settled. Val ventured out once, drying a salad bowl in her hands.

“I just noticed the calendar. You have a game tonight. Did you forget?”

He looked up only briefly. “They can play without me sometimes,” he said.

She observed him closely. “I'll remember that in the future,” she said.

She went back inside and later called in the kids who were playing in the front yard where they caught more of the late-evening light. Momentarily, Boy-Dan came around to the back and repeatedly pounded a ball into his outfielder's mitt, as he was allowed to stay up later than the other two who took their baths first. Denny resisted the urge to ask him to be quiet, but Boy-Dan seemed to get the message anyway and quit the mitt pounding, and after a few minutes he went inside without being asked.

Darkness enveloped the yard when Valérie came back out. “Company,” she announced.

He was expecting cops. “Who?” he asked.

“Hickory, Dickory, and Dock, who else? Do you have beer out here?”

He gazed back at her without comprehension.

“Your fucking partners in crime. They're coming around the side.”

The remark was the first they shared concerning the fire. Ryan warned her to make a point of knowing nothing, and she kept her own counsel, and Denny was scared to death that she might confront him, for then what would he say? The truth? A lie? Either recourse seemed fraught with grievance and risk.

Denny held a deep breath, then released it slowly. He glanced at her off and on. For as long as he knew Val, she possessed a foul tongue. They went to the same schools together, but being three grades apart kept them from meeting until they were both out in the world. He met her, finally, over a pool table, and seven of the first nine syllables out of her mouth were curse words. He didn't know it back then but she was going through a hard time. Her father, a logger, left the family home. She was an adult by then but three years later, after they'd been married for a year and a half, she told him that she was the reason her dad left. She kicked him out, leaving the house to her and her mom. And then she married Denny, leaving her mom on her own, which caused a steady stream of guilt to flow for some time, before her mother moved back to another logging town where her sister was widowed and her mom and aunt lived in houses side by side across from the house where they were raised. “Happy,” Val once said, “as they can be. Two clams.” Which did not mean, she explained to Denny, that they were as happy as they should be.

He asked her then if she was happy. She answered that a lot of people have thought a great deal about how much a child inherits from the parents, “psychological and DNA and stuff like that,” and that she had a mean streak in her that she got from her dad, “although he wasn't so bad really, he just talked like a sailor for no reason and everything that came out of his mouth was a complaint. I got tired of him. I probably wouldn't kick him out today, now that I'm older, wiser, but even today I'd just ignore him.” And she confided that she had a sad streak in her that she got from her mom, “but I don't get depressed like her, hardly ever, her problem is chemical and I don't have that.” Then she said that a happy streak that ran through her was uniquely her own, she couldn't say where it came from, but that he could rely on it because she had throughout her life so far and never been let down.

“Yeah,” he told her on the porch. “I got beer.”

Val closed the door behind her quietly as she went in, to not wake the kids upstairs as André, Samad, and Xavier came around the side of the house. Xavier went to the trouble of offering his hand, which was odd, although Denny shook it, while the other two made themselves comfortable on porch chairs and cracked open beers. Xavier then went down to the lawn below them and sat on a picnic table bench, facing out at them from the table, using the edge of the tabletop as a backrest. He chugged from his bottle.

“We weren't supposed to meet up, remember?” Denny reminded the three.

“We can't pretend we're not friends,” André said.

“That's more suspicious,” Samad concurred.

“People already know we're friends,” André said.

“I know,” Denny said. He sipped. “Yeah. Even Samad knows that much.”

“What do you mean, even Samad?” asked Samad.

“Give him a break, Denny. Your brother skinned him alive tonight.”

Denny looked up, curious about this turn. Xavier nodded to confirm that the comment was true.

“I'm not used to being interrogated,” Samad complained.

“Interrogated!” Xavier quietly scoffed, and took a long pull on his beer.

The others weren't laughing. “So what happened?” he asked. He held the neck of his bottle between two fingers.

André seemed angry. “Don't underestimate your brother, Den.”

“I don't,” Denny assured him.

“He sold me down the river,” Xavier maintained.

“Who did?” Denny asked.

“I did,” André admitted.

“Wait a minute,” Denny said. “You—”

“Basically, he made me say the fourth guy with us was Xavier. He gave me no choice. Either I said that or I said nothing. So I said nothing. Which gave us all away. I never knew he was such a hard-ass shit, your brother.”

Denny waited for more, but nothing further was forthcoming, so he assessed what they'd told him. Took a deep breath.

“He's going to fuck us over, Denny,” André said with conviction.

“He buttered me up,” Samad confessed. “Then he barbecued my butt.”

“My brother's not so tough.”

“Rein him in, Denny. Rein him in or we're screwed.”

“I got screwed,” Xavier commented, “by fucking Samad and André, my amigos.” He chugged his beer. “I don't know what's going to happen when he talks to people who don't like me.”

“Guys, you're missing the point,” Denny contended. “Ryan helped us out.”

“You're missing the point,” Samad decreed, an assertive statement for him. “My butt he barbecued. He stuck a thermometer up my ass to make sure I got done to perfection.”

“For God's sake, Denny, we could do hard time for this if your brother doesn't let up.”

“Actually, he was doing us a favour,” Denny maintained.

“He wasn't doing me no favours,” lamented Samad.

“Especially you, Samad. He was pointing out our flaws. Especially yours. Xavier, didn't he talk to you?”