his face as he gave a cover-up cough and shifted his feet. “Couldn’t be better. Melanie’s in the nursing program, so we see each other for lunch or coffee. Study at night together, too. I took her on some of the old canoe routes in the early fall. Remember the Elk Lake loop?”
“When it rained for five straight days, and I nearly got hypothermia? I’ll say. We should have stayed in camp, except that we were tired of salty rice and noodle dinners and the same Agatha Christie novel. I’d read a page, rip it off, and toss it in the fire to lighten my load,” she said, laughing.
Jim pushed back his empty plate, wiped clean with toast. “Boy, can she carry a pack! Forty pounds is no problem.” He rotated his coffee cup in reflection. “Taught that city girl everything she knows about the woods. Call me Caliban, the monster of the forest. ‘I’ll show thee the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries; I’ll fish for thee and get thee wood enough.’ ”
Belle realized how much Jim had matured in the last few years. His parents had confided that as a boy he had been so insecure, especially with strangers, that he had refused to meet anyone’s gaze. “I see you remember the Shakespeare we read for your grade twelve finals. I thought that you hated it.”
He nodded at the reference.
“Besides,” she went on, “Caliban was my favourite. He had substance, and he smelled out hypocrisy. Miranda was so boring with all that ‘Brave new world’ stuff.” The back of her hand swept over her forehead in a stage gesture.
Jim’s smile widened as the sun brightened the room. “I’m happy with Melanie. We’re so easy together, so easy that it’s a miracle.”
Belle knew him well enough not to pry further about his plans; he guarded his privacy like a Cayman Islands bank account number.
He downed the last gulp of coffee. “Got to go now, but how about a tour? I haven’t seen your house since it was framed.”
“The computer room,” she said, leading him down the hall, following the salsa beat as Manny Calavera, travel agent for the dead, voyaged to the Underworld to save his client. Needing no help, Ted was operating the controls like a pro, flipping through Manny’s inventory, manipulating his scythe.
“If you’re short on ideas for my Christmas present,” Ted said to his brother, “this would be great.”
Belle cleared her throat. “I, uh, got the system more for the information connections. Our business webpage, too. I belong to several forums, tropical fish, mystery, classic films. But don’t ask about alt.sex. It might as well be old.sox at my age.”
“I’d kill for an Internet account at school. Our research facilities are pretty feeble,” Jim replied.
Belle escorted him to the TV room where she trained her Chaparral system on Ted Turner’s sanity-saving TNT classic film network. “How long have you had your satellite dish?” he asked. “It’s quite the piece of art on the dock.”
“Ha! Art would be cheaper. The cement base was poured in September, but I finally saved enough this month to add the electronics. Too bad aerial reception is so poor out here. Cable’s a century away. Maybe man wasn’t meant to live in the boonies.”
On a sturdy stand by the window, her fish family splashed in their fifty-gallon aquarium, bumping the glass in hungry frustration. She turned off the pump, sprinkled on some dried shrimp and dropped in a few food tablets. “It’s always Tanganyika or the Amazon rainforest for these lucky brats,” Belle said. Mac, the African knifefish, paraded his spots, eight on one side and thirteen on the other. Li’l Pleco, the plecostemus, leisurely rolled onto his back to suck food from the surface like a boat turned turtle, confident that a stray pellet would drift into his sucker maw in payment for rasping the algae from the tank. In contrast, Hannibal the needlefish lurked at the top in imaginary weeds. Prisoner of his genes, he ate only live prey and had been spoiled by the summer’s excellent minnows, now reduced to an occasional goldfish. “He was a #2 pencil, now he’s a pregnant Orson Welles,” Belle said.
After the tour, Jim reassembled his clothes with a sigh. “Hate to go back into that cold, but I think I’m stoked enough to ward off frostbite for the half hour to the lodge. Thanks for the meal. Drop by if you can. I’ll be out at the hunt camp during break week to work on my paper.” He started to fasten his helmet, then paused. “Say, I wanted to ask. Have you seen any small planes around the lake, seen lights in the night?”
Belle cocked her head, trying to recall. “Maybe once. I thought it was a fluke because I know they’re not allowed to land after dark without instrumentation. What’s up?”
“Nothing good.” He rubbed Freya’s ears, and the dog gave an imitation of a purr. “I spend a lot of time in the bush, especially at odd hours coming back from the hunt camp. I’ve heard small prop jobs at night and seen signs of ski landings on Obabika, Stillwell, places no one should be.”
“See any people?”
“Are you kidding? They’re in and out in minutes. And why go there anyway? Those lakes are way off the main trails, too shallow for fish. It’s a transfer, Belle, and I’m talking about drugs. What else?”
She nodded. “Used to be that was just an American problem. Then a big city problem. Everything’s twenty years late up here. We’ve been lucky.”
Jim’s hands trembled as he pulled on his mitts, and his voice grew cold. “They’re going after kids now. Ted’s in grade nine, for God’s sake, and several of his classmates have used that junk. If anyone ever tried to turn him on, I’d take care of them.” He punched his fist into his leather gauntlet. “I love that little guy.”
Ted had to be pulled from his game, but he thanked Belle before he left, which earned him an approving wink from his big brother.
As the machine faded into the distance, Belle found herself worrying about this new side of Jim, a personal rage against drugs. If she read him correctly, serious anger was not an emotion he’d had to deal with much in the past. Well, he was a grown man now, not a high school student. Shrugging off her concern, she beamed into the weather channel. It always cheered her to see that compared to the Arctic, her world was relatively tropical. It was -45° in Rankin Inlet up in Hudson Bay, -40° in Resolute, and a whopping -48° in Iglulik. For a sweet minute she felt toasty . . . until she noticed a monster blizzard sweeping down from Superior. Another day of grace before the plowing would resume.
The phone rang, and a grizzly voice asked, “How about a run to Mamaguchi Sunday? It’s me, Rocket Man.” Her neighbour, Ed DesRosiers, had just sold his plumbing business and retired. She envied Ed his racy new Phazer snowmobile with its killer headlamp housing sitting up like a beacon. It was as unlikely a machine for a fat old coot with a dickey hip as it was for a sort-of-middle-aged woman hourly expecting arthritis.
“Why not? There’s a storm on the way, but it should clear by then.”
“Come out to the ice hut around ten. Only ling biting, but it helps to pass the time. Hélène’s going to early-bird bingo, but she’s making a batch of tourtières.”
Belle’s neighbours were few, especially after the cottages closed up for the winter. Those hardy souls who wintered over were well-bonded, tolerating each other’s idiosyncrasies in exchange for the loan of a handy tool, an egg or cup of milk, some gas, a newspaper or videotape, and most importantly, a watchful eye for strangers. In this primitive cooperative, one person was good with electricity, another with pumps, another with snow machines;
