veins of every leaf on every tree. I could have counted the pine needles beneath me, one by one.
“It was only a bear!” I said and started laughing. “He stank. He ran. He ran away!” It was the funniest joke in the world and it was a moment before I realized that I was crying as well.
Francy came over and kneeled down beside me, touching my shoulder.
“You okay?” she said.
I smiled up at her, and she helped me to my feet.
“That was fun,” I said. “Sort of cleansing. I think I might have wet myself.”
Francy giggled, the amusement in her eyes making me feel warm and human. “So, now the hamster is banished, right?” she said. “The bear rules. Got any beer at your house?”
“Yup.” We hurried the rest of the way, not for fear, but for thirst and clean undies.
It was chilly in the cabin. I had banked up the fire in the morning, getting it nice and hot and then pouring a bucket of ashes over top, which usually kept the coals burning agreeably for hours. Not this time. The damn thing was out.
When you rely on a wood stove for heat, you develop a relationship with it, learning to feed and nurture it like a lover. Like most of my lovers, this one was demanding, temperamental and, unless it got enough attention, cold. There were times when I felt like whanging it across the damper with a two-by-four.
Francy stood in the middle of the room, shivering, as I started to shovel ash and lay a new fire.
“Beer’s in the icebox,” I said.
There’s no hydro at my place, and so a fridge would be silly. I got the icebox from Rico Amato not long after I moved in. He thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to use it for its original purpose. He had stripped it down to bare wood and varnished it (it was pine under the enamel paint) and the price tag matched its intended new life as a chic bar unit for some wealthy cottager.
I fell in love with it when I saw it in Rico’s shop, nestled between an old steamer trunk covered in stencilled roses (five hundred bucks) and a vintage sled full of dried cattails (one fifty plus GST).
Rico knew his customers, kept on top of all the latest trends as laid down in Architectural Digest and Country Home, and the icebox was priced accordingly. The number on the tag was more than I’d made for the last puppet-building project, more than I had in the bank, and more than I would ever pay for anything smaller than a trip to Mexico, but Rico cut me a deal. I guess he liked me.
I get my ice in winter from the creek out back, hacking it out and storing it in straw in a small lean-to next to the cabin. It works, just like they tell you in Harrowsmith. The straw keeps the ice solid well into the fall.
Francy cracked a couple of cold Algonquins and sat down in my guest chair with a huge sigh. I was whacking away at a piece of kindling with my hatchet and making a big racket. I stopped and looked up.
“Is this noise going to upset Beth?” I said. Francy just shook her head. The baby, still wrapped in her snuggly and leaning against her mother’s chest, was watching me with wide open eyes. I was amazed at how quiet she’d been throughout all the fuss.
“Does that kid have a larynx? Does she ever use it?”
“Oh, she uses it all right,” Francy said. “She just never cries when you’re around. Maybe you send out soothing psychic waves or something.”
“More likely she recognizes that if she started, I’d join in,” I said. Babies scare the crap out of me, and Francy knew it. She was always trying to convince me that there was nothing to be frightened of. That they were safe, really. But I still refused to hold Beth. I knew what would happen. I’d panic and drop her. Her skull would split open like a ripe melon and then I would have to kill myself. It was a kind of anti-maternal vertigo, and there was no getting around it.
“She will start yelling if I don’t feed her, though,” Francy said, opening her shirt and waving a breast, like an icecream cone, in her daughter’s face. “It was hard to breastfeed at Carla’s,” she said. “As soon as I started, Carla would get real uncomfortable. She’d go red and sort of fidget, like she was itching to go get the holy water and sprinkle it all over me.”
“Maybe she was afraid of how it would affect Eddie,” I said.
“Oh, Eddie’s seen it before. He’s over at our place all the time. It doesn’t bother him any.”
“I’ll bet Carla doesn’t know that.”
“She’s such a damned priss,” Francy said.
“Well, she’s religious. Plenty of religious folks are hypermodest, but that doesn’t necessarily make her a priss, Francy.”
Francy looked up at me, her face oddly blank.
“There’s things you don’t know,” she said. “Take it from me. Priss is being kind.” The blank look scared me, so I changed the subject. Beth was grunting wetly, making the kind of sounds I make when I’m knocking back an Algonquin on a hot day.
“What does that feel like?” I said. I’d always wondered, but the only other person I’d known well enough to ask was a girl I went to high school with who had a baby in grade eleven. We were too young to talk about that kind of stuff, then. Not too young to have sex, though. When I asked her, in a rash moment, why she hadn’t used a condom, she told me that she hadn’t known the guy well enough to feel comfortable asking him.
“Breastfeeding feels like heaven,” Francy said. “It’s sort of sexual, but not. Like she’s pulling my soul out, if you know what I mean.” I didn’t. Motherhood. The great mystery. Count me out.
I finished getting the fire going and joined Francy at the table.
“You ready to talk about last night yet?” I said.
“Not really, but I will if you want me to.”
“Why are you so scared of the police?”
She laughed. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” she said. “You’re the one who insists on hiding in the bathroom to smoke a joint. You’re scared of them, too.”
“Yeah, but possession isn’t the issue here, Francy.”
“Look, I didn’t shoot John, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s why I can’t understand why you’re afraid to talk to them.”
“John wasn’t dead when Eddie and I left. I’m sure the kid didn’t hit him that hard, just enough to knock him out. We left him snoring on the kitchen floor. The only reason we got out of there is that I knew when he woke up he’d be loaded for bear. I didn’t want either of us to be there.”
“So who do you think shot him?”
Francy looked exasperated, and there were tiny white marks around her mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her so much, I thought. But still, her icy calm was getting to me.
“I don’t know. There were plenty of people
