“Now you’re talking country songs.” Belle snapped down her ace in the hole card. “What about my dog, then?”
“Freya? What about her?”
“Oh, no big deal. I just got home last night to find her whacked over the head. She’s at Shana’s. Should be all right.”
“You should have called me! Did you see anyone? What about the tracks? Was there a break-in?”
Belle nearly dropped the receiver. “I had to get to the vet! Sorry that I didn’t have time to check my entire acre with a magnifying glass after dark when I finally got home. And that was after I bottomed out in the swamp. No, Steve, nothing in the house was touched. I doubt that they even got in. As soon as they opened the door, out ran the dog and they clobbered her with a shovel. Looks like they heard the car and took off just before I turned down the driveway. I didn’t see them, so they probably came by snow machine. As for tracks, forget it with the new snow.”
His voice relaxed. “Hmmm. Sounds like a simple break and enter. It wouldn’t be the first time on your road. Dubois had two chain saws taken in February, and Landry lost his snowmobile last week. That’s the thirtieth one this month in the region. The insurance companies are crying.”
Keeping her probes about Brooks to herself, Belle hung up after agreeing to meet soon at a new Indian restaurant, the Bengali. It sounded a bit vegetarian, but anything magma hot was welcome.
Belle sliced a blueberry bagel and popped it into her beloved coolwall oversize toaster. With all the charitable largesse from Hélène’s breadmaker, English muffins and other large pastries, she needed an appliance that could toast anything. Bypassing Meg’s jam with a flash of guilt, she lathered on cream cheese and added a dot of marmalade, remembering her mother’s corny joke about a baby chicken talking about the orange that “marma laid.” The juicy blueberries reminded her of that four-week phenomenon, summer. How long before she and Freya would again revel in the hot sun, picking and eating those cobalt jewels? The dog loved to strip the branches, nose out the berries, cool and tart in the shade of pines and birch, honey sweet and hot in the sun.
The sun through the windows was so bright, and the sky so achingly blue, the firs and cedars frozen in a picture of benign beauty, that she forgot how fierce the storm had been the night before. Time to clear all paths again, especially to the woodpile. Knowing that she would be working up a sweat, she threw on a medium weight jacket and went out to assemble an arsenal of shovels. If they knew anything about winter, Canadians knew its implements. First there was the broom for light attacks, especially on cars, then the snow scraper, good for the deck, several sizes of shovels for lifting deep snow, and the famous snow scoop, which floated massive chunks downhill. A growl, a scraping in the driveway and a few backfires sent her over to greet Ed. He leaned out of the cab of the plow truck, a 1957 Ford model with the bed rusted off and no windows. His dog sat beside him as supervisor, nosing a dab on the windshield. “Hi, pal. You must have come and fetched the truck last night,” she said, wondering if the presence of even a handicapped vehicle might have dissuaded the thieves.
“Yup, she needed an oil change and more anti-freeze, so I took her back to my garage when I heard the storm was on the way. Figgered we’d need the old gal in tip-top shape today.” He listened with interest as she told about the attempted break-in and the rescue. “Freya’s OK, though, eh?” he wanted to know. “I’ll have Hélène run you out some cabbage rolls. Look like you could use them. Oh, and you’ll have to show me where you got stuck in the swamp. Maybe I’ll put up a plaque.” With a wink, he turned the country station up to “deafen” and began his artful rearrangement of the snow in her large parking area.
As she dropped some dried shrimp into the tank for the discus, Belle’s heart skipped several beats with horror. The goldfish were still in the van, forgotten in the rush of the night. “My apologies, little friends,” she muttered as she retrieved the colourful chunk and set it to thaw in a soup plate. “It was you or me.”
Belle wasn’t surprised to find no telephone listing for Franz on the island. Would he be offended if she dropped off some thank-you gifts? Perhaps she could pretend that she was “driving by” anyway since his property overlooked the North River entrance to the trails. A trip to town took her to the newest chichi chocolaterie, Lady G, for a pound of butter-smooth hazelnut truffles, an experience which the clerk assured her left sex far behind, and, even at $30.00, was a better investment. At the liquor store, she added a bottle of an old favourite, German May wine with woodruff. Roses would be a classic European gift, but how could she carry them on the snowmobile?
Belle returned home to gas up the machine. The sliders could wait. Although Franz’s Jimmy navigated the ice road from the marina along with other trucks headed for the fishing hut villages, the van’s shallow clearance was not suited to deep slush. As she took the cover off her snowmobile and broomed away the drifted snow, she noticed a small piece of torn red checkered wool under the track. Brooks wore a shirt like that, but so did every other male in Northern Ontario and half of the females, including herself. DNA tests for dead skin flakes? OJ overdose. Steve would laugh in her face.
After tucking the shred into her pocket and stashing the gifts, she started across to the island, which jutted like an upturned egg from the lake bed. Belle was intrigued to be visiting Franz’s home. In the summer, training her binoculars on it while pickerel fishing at the North River, she had made out a paradise of pink and purple phlox dripping from rock gardens, while bronze or slender blue irises waved in the soft wind over silver mounds of artemisia. As she drew near, all was blanketed by snow. The main building, a two-storey log cabin, had three wings, melded so well it was hard to determine the history of the additions. Over the island loomed a large wind generator, its wings patiently humming.
She neared the docking area where the Jimmy was packed with garbage bags likely destined for the dump. Two tarped snowmobiles sat alongside. When a black and tan female shepherd trotted down the steps warily, Belle did a double-take at its Flash Gordon headgear. The animal gave warning barks but responded to a deep voice from the cabin door. “Blondi, hör auf mit dem Bellen! Das ist eine Freundin.” A wagging tail propelled the dog toward Belle, head low in deference while Franz came down the stairs to remove the dog’s strange headgear. Blondi’s eyes seemed full and dark, but Franz’s were sad and thoughtful as he rubbed the dog’s ears. “It’s Panus, an auto-immune disorder. She sees well enough to get around. Can’t be cured, but maybe slowed long enough so she can live out her life with normal activity.” He presented the glasses to Belle. “What do you think? I worked on these all fall. Sun hurts her desperately, though she lives to be outside.”
Squinting through the glasses and fingering the triple straps cleverly arranged to retrofit the apparatus to an animal, Belle said, “It works! So how come your side lost the war?” She stroked Blondi’s massive head, so much like Freya’s. “Dogs don’t need perfect vision. Smell and hearing are their greatest powers.”
“Are you on your way to the north trails? It’s good fortune to see you again so soon. You must come in.”
With a low bow, Belle offered her booty. “I come bearing gifts to my true knight of the road.” As she looked up, a shadow passed one of the windows.
Trying to suppress a shiver since he had left his coat behind, Franz acknowledged her tribute with a snap of his boot heels. “Knight? Ein Ritter! But of course, Fräulein. We have few visitors, but we haven’t forgotten our hospitality. I think Mother has a fresh apple strudel.”
As they climbed, Belle admired the sets of tiered stairs snaking upwards like an Escher perspective, glad that Franz had a firm grip on her arm. “The turns are more practical than you might think. Fewer stairs would be needed to go straight up,
