cut to the Bay Trail. She headed for the area where the trapper had verged into the bush. The dog lagged behind, flaring her nostrils at a mustard-yellow mound of grouse poupon under a branch.
“Leave it, girl. We’re on dawn patrol.”
Brushing aside drooping alders, she marched up the peaty path, narrowing her eyes and scowling at black tips of delicate earth-tongue fungi and a brilliant fly agaric dislodged by the quad. She imagined serving him the poisonous reddish mushroom on a silver platter. Rounding a turn at the Paper Tree, a birch divesting itself of bark like the dance of the seven veils, she spied his tracks trampling a lovely grove of interrupted fern as the quad verged from the trail. The four-foot plant boasted fragile brown seed pods dripping like caviar from its fronds. Freya started going wild with scent, plowing into the bushes, raising her ruff. “Come here!” Belle commanded, but the dog ignored her. Something reeked. All she needed was for the dog to start rubbing herself over a carcass or even eating it.
As she ran, she pulled the leash from around her neck. Rarely did Freya disobey, but this temptation even her excellent Schutzhund lineage couldn’t ignore. Belle’s yells distracted the dog and slowed her pace as she neared a low mound buzzing with flies. Leaping over a cedar stump, Belle lunged for the chain collar. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked in a firm, low voice. Never yell into a dog’s face. They had a clear sense of rudeness.
She looped the leash around a small oak, then clipped it to Freya’s collar, giving her hand signals to reinforce the verbal commands. Sobered by the rare physical message of a leash, Freya sat and began a small whine, swivelling her plumed tail in agitation. With caution, Belle approached the shapeless mass. It was the flayed carcass of a beaver, gnawed by a series of flesh eaters in the usual food chain. Foxes had been on the scene, judging from the appearance of the entrails. She looked around with concern, aware that a wolf pack had territory less than a mile away. One December she’d seen their tracks on the ice of Surprise Lake and noticed a young moose drinking in the broken shallows below the beaver dam, a deep gash raking its flank. With this wholesale baiting, the trapper could be inviting guests very unwelcome to hikers, perhaps even an opportunistic, omnivorous bear. Feast on, fellow carnivores red in tooth and claw. The late Mr. Castor would be bones before a few more sundowns. Until then, she’d stay off the trail.
Scrabbling through the underbrush toward the fir grove, she located several marten traps, all nailed a good six feet up the trunks. At least he was keeping his promise about placement. Grabbing a sturdy grey stick, she broke off the side branches, squinted up into one trap and began to poke. Snap! The cruel spring gave way. A wad of ground beef, greasy and grey, splatted onto the leaf mould. Snickering, she followed suit with the rest. It wasn’t as if the man was making a living from the sales, but so many people used the bush as a supermarket or woodlot.
Finally she released Freya, giving her a warning wave, and they headed back down the trail. A few minutes later, she relaxed at a job well done, checking a rare patch of Indian cucumber root in a shaded maple grove. A single purple berry rose from leaf whorls blood-streaked in the centre. Suddenly she was aware that the dog was absent. “Not again!”
Seconds passed, and a brown form came barrelling through the undergrowth. Belle looked down in horror to see quills protruding from the dog’s muzzle. “Jesus. You’re a handful today.” Making her sit under the wrath of Mom, she yanked each one quickly, and the dog made no moan. She ran her eyes over the rest of the body, satisfying herself that Freya had been either smart or lucky. Some dogs ran wild with pain, driving quills into their pads and even blinding themselves.
After a long day at the office, she arrived home at six and opted to go vegetarian, making a potato curry with a can of Madras sauce. Diced zucchini, green onions and a sprinkle of mustard seeds completed the medley. Soon, nutty aromas of basmati rice floated from the microwave. For some reason the dog wasn’t eating her chow, but slopping her chops as if something was bothering her. Belle tipped Freya’s head back, parted the giant jaws, and nearly cancelled dinner. A porcupine quill was lodged deep in the ribbed roof of the animal’s mouth. She closed her eyes, unable to imagine the discomfort. Then shaking herself into action, she took pliers from the utility drawer and pulled it free. Without delay, Freya began steamshovelling her kibble.
After assembling her meal, Belle relaxed on one of the pasha chairs with ottomans in the television room and beamed up to TCM. The Television Police, aka the CRTC, limited Canadians to Bell Express Vu and Star Choice. Neither offered Ted Turner’s Classic Movies Network. Many neighbours had pirated systems, but she dutifully paid her fifteen dollar yearly subscription to a grey-market address in Southern Ontario. She sipped a mild New Zealand beer, an antidote for the flaming curry, and tuned in.
Silent films night. Marie Dressler in Tillie’s Punctured Romance. The Cobourg, Ontario, native had left a music-hall and stage career which climaxed with her smash hit as Tillie Blobbs singing, “Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl.” The Rosie O’Donnell of her day, she’d broken into pictures in 1914 with Charlie Chaplin. As the movie unfolded, Belle noticed why Bea had looked strangely familiar. Belle was used to Marie at nearly sixty in Garbo’s Anna Christie, which had rejuvenated her flagging career. And yet there she was at Bea’s age, flaunting comic talents as big as her size, a huge, hatchet-faced woman in love. Belle found herself laughing as hapless Charlie manouevered the woman on a dance floor like steering an elephant dressed in tulle, Marie’s wild hair flying loose, except for a curl pasted around each ear. One leg bent back as Chaplin moved forward.
Later, upstairs in the master suite in her snug waterbed, she tamped a cigarette into Adolphe Menjou’s jewelled holder, which her father had bought her at Universal Studios in Florida on their last visit before his collapse. In typical Canadian fashion, the pack of Number 7s, a cheaper brand, bore a warning: “Each year, the equivalent of a small city dies from tobacco use.” A horizontal bar chart tagged car accidents at 2900 and tobacco-related deaths at a whopping 45,000. Homicides were the smallest category. Only 510, probably the same as Detroit. Belle hoped that the two latest deaths would be the last, an early Christmas present, but logic implied what the police hesitated to mention, that often another killing had to occur if only to provide the vital clue. A few tots of bargain-basement scotch smoothed her evening as she savoured Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent. What a coup the former park ranger had achieved by making the landscape hundreds of feet below in Carlsbad Caverns as vibrant and alive as the desert surface.
What would the trapper do when he found all four snares sprung? The Fur Managers’ website said that the traps had to be checked daily. Who monitored that? Getting up to gaze through the patio doors over the tiny balcony, she watched the moon gleam through the scudding pewter clouds, the waves pounding her rockwall. The lake was perilously high for September. The elusive and all-powerful Hydro One Keeper of the Keys hadn’t opened the dam at Outlet Bay yet, leaving the levels for better boat access, especially at Rocky’s, the restaurant and marina at the Wapiti First Nations Reserve.
The next morning she let Freya out, and busy getting ready for work, didn’t notice that the animal was AWOL again. Rarely did she go to the road, unless a passing dog challenged her. After that porkie attack, what next? A skunk? No tomato juice in the cupboard, nor enough toothpaste, an apparent miracle worker when diluted.
Belle went to the side deck, scanning the yard. The wretch stood at the corner of the septic bed grass, her muzzle working at something which had to be food. “You sneak!”
She ran down the stairs to the parking lot, motoring towards the dog, who ducked her head in shame and backed away from a familiar green plastic LCBO bag. Out of the container spilled the remains of pale ground meat. Freya was still licking her black lips as Belle’s heart did cartwheels in shock. “What have you done now?”
FOUR
