a piece of material, filthy with coffee. He shook it. With dread, I realized it was Marie’s red dream scarf.
Without saying a word, he looked up at me. We both knew what the mess pointed to. Seeing Marie’s scarf without Marie confirmed it. She was in trouble.
“Where’s your father, Tommy?” I asked, very worried that Louis had beaten her up in a drunken rage.
“Supposed to be in the bush.”
“Not any more. No one else would do this.”
With his young face a mask of stone, his fists clenched, Tommy brushed past me into the main room.
“Dorothy,” he said, walking out the front door. “Dorothy will know.”
I ran after him.
By the time I reached my truck on the other side of the woodpile, Tommy was backing his mud-spattered Honda Civic down the drive. He rolled down his window and shouted, “I’ll take it from here.”
But he wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I had just as much right as he to make sure Marie was all right. In fact, I was feeling guilty I hadn’t ensured she was okay the night before.
I tried to keep up with him, but he soon left my truck in a whirl of dust. At least I knew Marie’s friend, Dorothy Tremblay, lived in Eric’s Acres, as the band jokingly called Eric’s improved housing initiative.
I manoeuvered my truck around the potholes of the one and only street of this miniature replica of faceless suburbia and headed towards the last square bungalow on the street. While they wouldn’t win any awards for innovative design, they were a considerable improvement over the older form of reserve housing.
Dorothy had tried to give her bungalow a bit of flair with a coat of pale yellow paint and dark green trim. A small flower garden wound its way along a brick path leading to the front door. Next to the house stood one of the village’s few garages, which I attributed to her status as a teacher at the school.
The front door was closing as I stopped behind Tommy’s car. I raced up the walkway, as Dorothy swung the door back open.
“Meg Harris!” she exclaimed, clearly surprised by my presence. Tommy glared at me from over her shoulder. “What brings you here at this hour?” She turned around to Tommy. “Both of you?”
A few years older than my early forties, Dorothy was tall, with a certain feline elegance to her walk. She was dressed in a simple earth-tone skirt and turtleneck sweater. Her thick hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back like a shawl of ebony satin.
I didn’t know her well, but what I’d learned from Marie I liked. I had the impression Marie confided much of her troubled life into Dorothy’s care and saw her as a sanctuary when things became just a little too unbearable.
“You’re lucky. I was about to leave for school,” she said. Her warm brown eyes arched in worry. “It has to do with Marie, doesn’t it?”
She led us into the front room.
While the outside of her house was sedately suburban, inside was an exotic world. The walls were a riot of rainbow coloured creatures. Some I recognized as paintings by the native artist Norval Morrisseau. Others were less familiar, but equally dramatic. Sprinkled amongst the cavorting creatures were other staring faces with empty eyes peering through cornhusk masks, their tongues sticking out in mock derision.
In the window hung a dream catcher. The circle of delicate webbing with seven long slender feathers flirted gently with the sun. Dorothy had hung it where Marie had told me to hang mine, in a spot where the morning sun could turn the bad dreams trapped overnight by the web into dew. It had worked. I was no longer bothered by nightmares.
“I want you to tell Meg to leave, Auntie,” said Tommy. “This has nothing to do with her.”
Before I had a chance to state my case, Dorothy replied, “Meg’s presence says it does. Quit your complaining and tell me what’s happened.”
Dorothy gestured us to sit in the two wing-backed chairs, one on either side of the fireplace, dark but for the faint glow of a few dying embers. I took one of the chairs, while Tommy remained standing, arms crossed in front, an angry scowl on his face.
“Mooti’s not at home. I’m hoping you know where she is,” Tommy said.
“What has Louis done now?” Dorothy said in a voice that suggested more resignation than surprise.
“Hell, how should I know? Probably nothing, but it looked like there was some kind of argument or fight. Thought she might’ve come here.”
“God, the number of times I’ve prayed he’d just disappear into the bush and never come back.” Dorothy shook her head. “Sorry, Tommy, but your father should have been locked up years ago.”
“I’d just as soon not get into that now, if it’s okay by you.” Tommy’s blue eyes flashed quickly in my direction, then back to Dorothy.
Insulted by his inference, I shot back, “Tommy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to hide from me. It doesn’t take too much brainpower to figure out what your father was doing to her. Besides, don’t think you Indians have cornered the market on abuse.”
“Okay, okay, just tell me where she is, Noshenj, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Relax, Tommy, you’re not going anywhere until we all know.” Dorothy sat down on the velvet sofa across from me and motioned Tommy to sit too. “Where’s your father?”
Tommy remained standing. He glanced at me, then turned back to Dorothy. “Thought he was in the bush. Not sure now.”
Dorothy continued. “I don’t know where your mother is this moment, but she was here Tuesday after work, two nights ago. She was okay then. Do you know when this fight took place?”
“Tuesday night, last night, what does it matter?” Tommy wrenched his tie from his neck and tossed it with his jacket onto the chair.
“It matters a lot,” I retorted. “Say the fight happened after she left here. Say your father injured her badly. That would mean for the past two days, your mother has been lying hurt and unattended, possibly outside in this cold.”
“Okay, I get the point,” he replied.
“But you’re lucky,” I continued. “The fight probably happened yesterday between the time she phoned me and the time I was supposed to meet her at the store. Still, one night outside in these near freezing temperatures wouldn’t do her any good.”
Dorothy added, “I can’t believe Louis would hurt her that badly. He always seems to stop just short of doing her serious harm.”
Without a word, Tommy pulled Marie’s dream scarf from his pants pocket.
Dorothy’s shoulders fell. “Are we sure it was Louis? Maybe something else happened?”
“Perhaps, but what? Louis beating her up is the only explanation that makes sense,” I replied. “But before we go too far, I think we should at least check to see if by some miracle there wasn’t a fight, and she’s working this very moment blissfully
