or girdling skyscraper aspens, leaving them to wither. With beaver hats in disfavour since the American Civil War and coats a dangerous fashion statement, the mammals were overbreeding. Obstructive dams often pooled water in the interior, then burst forth into streams, flooding out nearby homeowners.
“What do you get for a pelt these days?” she asked. Fur might be making a comeback, but times had been lean for decades. He didn’t finance that ten-thousand-dollar machine on this career.
“Hell, no more than twenty bucks at the North Bay fur auction,” he replied. “This is just a sideline since I retired from Mother INCO.”
Sudbury’s International Nickel Company together with little brother Falconbridge had employed over twenty thousand people in their Seventies heyday. Now only six thousand remained on the payrolls, but thanks to modern technology, still produced the ore for one-fifth of the world’s metal. Until recently, increasing numbers of retirees barely maintained a shrinking population as the young left for greener urban pastures down south or out west. Since miners often started work at eighteen, the trapper could have retired before fifty, a just reward for half a life underground.
“Word was passed on to me from a survey team on the Nickel Rim South Project about a nuisance pair back there at the swamp lake. They’re putting in a tailings pond, and you know how these watercourses all connect up,” he explained.
The new mine. Flags from surveyors had started showing up everywhere, paths chopped into the forest. How she resented intruders with heavy lug tires despoiling the trails she ambled. Boys and their toys. “So that’s it for you in here, then?” she asked in a brusque tone, still cautious as she remembered the strange deviations into the bracken. Beware of men bearing dead beavers.
He rummaged in a canvas pack, handing her a wooden apparatus the size of a shoe box. “I’m scouting places to put up a few of these.”
“What are they?”
“Marten traps.”
Belle clamped her jaw in recollection of the rare sight of the dry-land counterpart of the familiar mink, a boreal forest inhabitant. Weighing in at only a few pounds, the weasel family members were fond of blueberries, a signal feature in their small scat, usually on a prominent rock in the middle of the trail. Wild animals had a sense of humour. She was unfamiliar with the finer points of trapping, but alarms were ringing. “Where do you put them?”
He pointed down the trail. “You might have seen that fir grove near where I drove off. Martens make their dens in conifers. So I nail these on.”
She peered into the trap, a coffin with a cruel spring vice inside. “What’s the bait?”
He waved his gnarled hand, red with toil. “Hamburger. Porkie strips if I catch one. Martens are fierce little creatures. Take your finger off.”
Belle’s stomach churned in disgust. Martens were rare and shy. She’d seen only a few in her lifetime, these cousins of Herman the Ermine, who lived under her boathouse and kept mice at bay. “And what do you get for their skins?”
“Around sixty bucks. Enough to add a bit of Christmas cheer.”
She flipped back the trap. “Make sure you don’t catch any dogs in the process of accumulating that cheer. My friend’s mini-poodle could crawl into this.” She turned away and stalked back down the trail, calling over her shoulder. “Too much trouble to go to the real wilderness? Why not use the bus and trap downtown in Bell Park?”
Before he could reply, she was gone around a turn, walking as fast as her mid-forties legs could carry her. Though Freya bounded ahead, the walk was spoiled. She felt her blood pressure simmering. Hunters, quadders, snowmobilers. Now trappers. Was she living in a North of 60 rerun? Her once-peaceful road with barely a dozen full-timers now had over forty. What next? An Indy 500? A Wal-Mart?
Stopping to catch her breath and savour one last moment, she admired a sleek apricot mass on a maple tree. One-inch-by-two, it encased the Hebrew moth’s eggs. She had wondered, weeks ago, why the sand-brown creature with dark script-like markings was biding quietly. Stopping the next day, she had perceived the patient laying, a velvety covering protecting the hatch from winter’s savage assault. Gently she stroked the case like a present to open in spring.
Taking a deep breath, she headed back to the trailhead and along Edgewater Road. As she came to the “An Old Crow and a Cute Chick Live Here” sign with gaily painted cartoon birds, she turned into the driveway of her retired friends, the DesRosiers. Ed was tinkering in the open garage with his snowmobile, a snazzy Phaser, too rich for her blood, and as a pensioner nearing seventy, too fast for his. The Northern version of a sports car convertible.
He gave a wave, and their chocolate-red mutt Rusty ran up for a pat, grovelling on the ground in submission. Freya was her elder, so she respected her status. “Come on in for a coffee. Catch up on the news about these damn murders,” Ed said, wiping his hands on a rag.
She groaned, wrenched back to civilization with its own terrors in the night. “It’s the lead story for all the media. I’m glad I live out here, or am I?” She told him about meeting the trapper.
“Ford 100, eh? Had one myself. Three hundred thousand K and had to beat it to death. Don’t see many of those old guys. I’ll keep an eye open.” Ed had forged his own paths far into the woods decades ago and had a healthy suspicion of strangers. A recent hip operation had cancelled bush hikes, and even he drove a quad down the road occasionally to give neighbours a hand with their plumbing, his former profession. If cake was served, it wasn’t his fault.
Passing a small oak festooned with plastic juice jugs of seeds, she noticed the rose and grey splashes of a pack of pine grosbeaks chattering in the branches.
Inside, around the corner in the kitchen, Hélène was rolling out pastry. “Decaf’s fresh. It’s all we drink now that Father has angina.”
Ed grunted as he propped up his fancy carved cane in the corner. “I’m not your father, woman. Or I’d take you over my knee.”
“Baby those knees. The health care system’s not your personal orthopedic clinic.”
A Swedish enamel woodstove in the large living room maintained an even temperature in the cooling afternoons, though their floor-to-ceiling windows in the cedar bungalow led to bitter complaints about hydro bills. Belle took off her jacket and pulled up a chair at the combination kitchen and dining room table. Dusting off her hands, Hélène poured coffee and presented a heaping plate of Nanaimo bars. “Low-cal. Made them with sweetener.” She plopped down a bottle of French Vanilla Coffeemate. “This has no fat at all. Or do you want two per cent milk?”
“Milk’s fine.” Paint had no fat either, but she wouldn’t drink it. Belle tested the confection. Nuts, cocoa, butter. Hélène took no shortcuts. With curling grey hair and an urge to feed the world, she filled the role of an older sister or perhaps a younger mother. Ed’s belly scooched over his belt like a bag of flour. His slim wife, with energy to burn, never glanced at a scale.
A copy of the Sudbury Star lay on the table. Belle gave it a scan. “No arrests yet. Not even a person of interest, or whatever they call it.”
Ed cocked his head toward a .22 mounted on the wall. “A lady’s best friend. City folks ought to keep one handy.”
“My shotgun’s wrapped in a garbage bag in the basement rafters. Safe from thieves but hardly handy,” Belle said. “And no, it’s
