“You won’t be the first one or the last.” She squatted next to the body and reached into the dead man’s pockets. A brown leather wallet was tucked inside his nylon jacket. She scooped it out and flipped through the credit cards and bits of paper until she found his driver’s licence. She held it up to her good eye. “David Williams from Toronto. Look, Sun. Do you figure this is his wife and kids?” She held out a photo of the man with a blond woman and a boy and girl in their early teens.
Sunny glanced at the photo. “Probably. I wonder if they’ll miss him.”
Lily shrugged. “They might be glad to be rid of the dirty old bastard.” She picked up the bloody rock and started walking toward the river.
The fear started up again as Sunny watched Lily walk away from her. Lily was angry and shutting her out. Sunny felt a wave of loneliness and panic fill her. She couldn’t bear to have Lily mad at her. She stood and ran toward her.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” she called. “I’ll help you push him into the river.”
Lily stopped walking. She turned and faced Sunny. She looked at her for a few seconds as if weighing something. Finally, she nodded. “Then help me find some rocks. After we get rid of him and clean you up, I’ll drive his van back to town, dump it somewhere, and call Roger to come get us. I’ll just have to hope the cops don’t pull us over and figure out I’m underage. But first, I’m going to throw this rock that I hit him with as far into the river as I can where nobody will ever find it.”
Lily was waiting for Sunny when she stepped off the school bus that brought her back to Birdtail Creek reserve. It had been a month since the man’s death, and they’d kept away from each other, not wanting to draw attention to themselves or say something by mistake. Lily was dressed in a buckskin jacket and ripped blue jeans. She’d braided her hair and a beaded band encircled her head, resting low on her forehead. She flicked a glowing cigarette into the dirt as Sunny approached. They started walking toward the house, not speaking.
Lily pulled Sunny into the trees part-way up the property. There’d been a cold snap on the weekend and the leaves were starting to turn colour. Sunny craned her neck back to look at the shades of yellow in the alders and the blue sky overhead. A string of Canada geese was honking its way to the marshes south of the reserve. She waited for Lily to start talking.
Lily leaned against a pine tree. “You okay?”
Sunny nodded. “You?”
Lily shrugged. “I’m not sleeping so good. Nightmares.”
“Is Roger still mad about us being out so late and your black eye?”
“He got over it. He wanted to track down the girls I told him I’d had the fight with. Took a while to keep him from charging back to town to start hunting them down. Luckily my story kept him from figuring out we were with the city man who disappeared. Did you get into trouble coming home late?”
“I don’t think they noticed. The police still looking for that man?”
“Big mystery. They can’t figure out why he left his van and nobody’s seen him. He grew up near here. His parents still live in Miniota. Roger and I were in town two days ago and I saw that guy’s, you know that David Williams, I saw his wife yesterday sitting in the coffee shop. Well, the same woman as in that picture. She was sitting all alone having lunch.”
Sunny shivered inside her down vest. She’d tried to forget about that day and already bits of it were getting fuzzy. She wasn’t too happy to have Lily show up and remind her even if she was glad to see her.
“Anyhow,” Lily said, “the reason I’m here is because I wanted to tell you that I’m leaving. They’ve decided I need to get me a real education so I’m flying out tomorrow for Winnipeg. Some family is putting me up while I get my grade eight. It’s all arranged.”
“You never let them take you off the rez before,” Sunny said. Tears came to her eyes. She lowered her head and blinked hard so Lily wouldn’t see.
“Well, I never killed nobody before neither,” said Lily. “Things change.”
“I wish I could come with you.”
Lily’s voice softened. “Are they still treating you okay?”
Sunny shrugged. “They have six other kids. Half the time we don’t have much to eat. I think they’ve already asked for me to be moved.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t work. “If you go, I won’t have any family left.”
“I’ll always be your family, Sun. No matter where I live. I just can’t …” Lily took a deep breath, “I just got to get away from here. I can’t take knowing what I did.”
“You had to. He wasn’t going to let us go.” Sunny let her mind flit to an image of the man on the ground and all the dark blood coming from his head before she closed it off. She couldn’t think about it because thinking about it made her stomach hurt and her head fill with screams that wanted to get out. Sometimes, she woke up in the night crying. She knew she couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Lily. Lily had her own nightmares.
“Does Roger want you to go?”
Lily shrugged. “I think he hoped that if I stayed, my mother would come back. Maybe he’s starting to wake up to reality. She was only with him two years. It’s not like he owes me nothing.”
“We’ll be together again one day, won’t we Lil? You’ll get me when we’re old enough to live on our own?” Sunny moved closer until she leaned against Lily. She rested her head on Lily’s shoulder. Lily stiffened for a moment before she wrapped an arm around Sunny.
“Yeah, we’ll be together again little one. We’ll have our own house and nobody will do nothing to us that we don’t want. We’ll have good jobs and money and lots to eat.”
“And I won’t have to keep Rascal tied up outside and I’ll have my own bed.”
“Yeah, your own bed. You won’t have to share with the other kids.” Lily laughed. “Can you imagine, Sun? We’ll have real lives and people will envy us.”
“Let’s promise to find each other. Promise we’ll be together again.”
“I promise, Sunny. So help me God, I promise.”
“And I promise too.”
1
Tuesday, December 20, 10:45 p.m.
Tom Underwood looked across the room at his wife and wondered how it would feel to place his hands around her slender neck and throttle the life out of her. He imagined her sinewy veins under his fingers and the satisfaction of hearing the bones crack as he twisted in a quick motion — like putting his hand around a jar lid and applying pressure in one glorious snap. Her red lips would form a soft “o” of comprehension as he tightened his hold and her eyes would widen before freezing open in death. He’d seen people murdered in enough films to know the drill. Would it be better to get rid of her before or after Christmas? He could return the gifts he’d bought her on Boxing Day if she were to die within the week. That could be the deciding factor. The gold link bracelet he’d bought her was overpriced. He took a long swallow of Scotch, and kept his eyes on her, then blinked back the dream.
Laurel
