handsome to us, but Mel was the best medicine.” His voice trailed off.
Belle looked outside and left him with his thoughts. Then she resumed. “Listen, Ben, there’s something else. What did Jim say about suspicious plane landings?”
Searching his mind, he flicked a lighter on and off, as if he wanted more than anything to start that stove again. “Well, sure, when you’re up in the bush, quiet as it is, you notice everything, specially if it’s out of order, odd, if you understand me. Small planes at night. Landing, too, from the sounds and tracks he saw on Obabika. Told me he was gonna have a word with you about it, you knowin’ that policeman.”
“Where else?”
“On Stillwell and Marmot, too. Come and go in ten minutes. Risky stuff in the dark. Fellow here last winter flipped the plane when his wing touched down. Had to lift the whole damn mess off by ’copter. Wasn’t good for nothing but scrap.”
“When you were at the new hunt camp, was anything out of place?”
Ben looked out the window to a squirrel digging a pine cone from its store under a stump. “Built it all himself. Axe, hammer and chainsaw. No, nothing was out of place, not that I’d notice. Not much there, anyways, a bit of food, furniture, some of his school stuff. I wish to God he hadn’t tried to make it back that night in the storm. Stupid waste.” He went to a shelf and picked up a folded topo map.
“See, here’s the one. Not so far from that damn lake where he . . . Look, Belle.” He set his jaw and passed his hand over his brow. “How in hell did he get off the main trail when he could have found his way home blindfolded?”
“I see what you mean.” Belle ran her finger over the route. “It’s as if he headed home, then made a left turn miles before he should have. And then drove on and on, even though he was obviously going the wrong way, finally making another wrong turn. Mistakes that a panicky beginner would make, not a pro like Jim.” She checked her watch. “One thing more. How do I get in?”
“Sometimes he didn’t even lock the camp, but I’ll tell you where the key is anyway. Under the big splitting log.”
“Thanks, Ben.” As she searched his gray face, today so suddenly an old man, she forced herself to ask about the event she would have preferred to have avoided. “What time at Halverson’s?”
“Five o’clock. We made it later so’s Jim’s friends . . .” he wiped at his eyes, “could come after classes. Melanie put the word out around the university. Suggested that we start a scholarship fund in the Forestry Program. I would never have thought of that. And she’s been a help to Meg.” Outside, his wife stood wrapped in a heavy parka, still scanning the silent lake, sparkling silver between the granite hills. It was a postcard, but the wrong one for the moment. Did she still expect to hear a familiar roar come echoing down the paths, to see Jim race in, bringing her a handsome lake trout or a brace of partridge?
By the time Belle reached home, her engine had been coughing and jerking for ten minutes, and she had been chanting, “Please, please, please. I don’t want to have to walk. New plug’s on the way.” The motor gave a final lurch and expired half-way to the backyard. When she unwrapped the new plug, however, with hands stiffened in the windchill, she managed to drop it on the cylinder head and crack the ceramic base. Just one more addition to a wonderful day. Still, the old faithful had made it home. That’s what counted.
Later that afternoon, she stuffed herself into a black linen suit, a sop to civilization she had picked up at Eaton’s downtown just before the venerable Canadian institution went belly up. There was only one problem. In the supercold, the van should have been plugged in so that the block heater would keep the oil warm. You don’t want to go to the viewing and you did this deliberately, she chided herself, as the van door creaked in arthritic pain. She plopped heavily onto the seat, which greeted her with the hardness of the Cambrian Shield. Gingerly she fingered the ignition of the hybrid engine. It ground, ground and then flooded, eliciting curses to every Northern god. No good to wait it out. Fuel-injection did not operate like that.
Bruno’s Towing promised to come with the advisement that the jaunt to the boonies would cost an easy hundred. When a man arrived a hour later, she climbed grumpily into the truck and asked him to drop her at Halverson’s, before towing the van to Cambrian Ford. Cheaper than a cab, and she was already paying royally, she rationalized with an internal growl.
Halverson’s Funeral Home had been an institution since World War One. One of the first brick buildings, it had given permanence and charm to the downtown clapboard in the boom days of the mining city. Over the years it had inhaled competing businesses to gain a near monopoly except for the suburban burial societies. Everyone who was anyone ended his career at Halverson’s. It was an expected tradition.
Walking slowly to the door, Belle had to urge herself forward. Her family had hated these ceremonies, preferring simple cremation. Open caskets were the norm in Northern Ontario, maybe a European custom which arrived with the many Greek, Italian or Ukrainian immigrants. Inside the quiet, formal foyer, a middle-aged lady in tasteful shades of gray at a reception desk lifted her pince-nez delicately to consult her program: “The Burian Party, yes, just down to the end of the hall, if you please.”
From the hallway, she saw other “parties” gathered to whisper in the adjoining rooms. Music drifted by, very soft and understated, a touch of Pachelbel in the night, or was it Mozart? Belle shuddered, willing herself against all odds to relax. A delicate lily of the valley scent wafted along the corridor mixed with the more cloying perfumes of older matrons. Suddenly, she remembered a story her prim and proper mother had told her. Inching along in a receiving line at her school superintendent’s funeral, she had anxiously searched for appropriately consoling words. When she had reached the widow, Terry Palmer had leaned forward, gently taken the woman’s hand, and murmured, “Thanks for a lovely day.”
Finally, Belle entered a divided room with a sitting area of padded chairs and sofas in Laura Ashley chintz. Homey and reassuring. Turning reluctantly, she saw the casket, taupe with brass fittings, accessorized with palms, candelabra and lavender glads. Several floral arrangements flanked the bier, a white and red rose selection particularly resplendent. What a monumental waste of money when Jim would have preferred the subtle beauty of wildflowers or the spicy resin of pine branches. She walked over to pay her respects, forced her gaze up. And by God, Jim did look good. Healthy, even. And that glowing skin tone. If there were an art to find the mind’s construction in the face, Myron Halverson was a genius. The innocence and goodness that framed Jim’s life could be read here by the blindest sceptic. She knelt on the velvet prie-dieu, murmured a small non-denominational prayer and stood awkwardly, wondering if anyone was noticing the tremor in her hands. Why did funerals make people feel like actors wandering without scripts? What words could form in a moment beyond the limits of speech?
The Burians were seated in the corner, Meg twisting a handkerchief, Ben thin and stiff in his black suit, and Ted leaning next to his mother, blinking away tears and loosening his collar. Belle was surprised to see old Tracker, grieving in the honest, canine way, ears back, head on her paws, her liquid eyes trusting that Jim would return. “Thanks for coming, Belle,” Meg said. “You were such a good friend of Jim’s.” Belle embraced the older woman tenderly, strangely protective about mothers since her own had died.
“He had so many friends,” Belle said, summoning up platitudes and hating herself for the failure of eloquence.
But the Burians were lost in a family tableau missing a central figure. “Yes,” Ben said, his eyes shining. “They’re all here from the university. And Tracker, too, his special pal. Halverson said it would be OK.” There would be no burial, just a crypt until the May thaw, common practice in the North.
