This counter was a wood-framed showcase, its shelves packed with chocolate bars and jars of the penny candy I hadn't seen since grade school. A computer cash register looked incongruous beside the boxes of rope licorice and piles of newspapers that shared the top with a lottery board. A carousel of paperback thrillers and romances was propped between one of its corners and a wall of shelves filled with
canned soup, boxes of instant meals, bottles of household cleaners and a pile of mousetraps. A refrigerator unit hummed to my right, its dim light reflecting bags of milk and neat rows of soft drinks. Beside it, a red warning flashed on the lid of a giant chest freezer.
Under the high windows that fronted the store were more shelves, these lined with fishing rods and nets, baskets of lures, boxes of reels, rolls of line. A row of plaques and notices in bright neon colours were tacked above the door:
Fishing Licences Available; Beware Of Dog; Sale By Owner; The Fisherman's Prayer.
From hooks on the ceiling hung sweatshirts printed with wild animals and beer slogans; a cascade of baseball caps and brilliant orange hunting hats obscured a glass case on the other side of the counter. I thought I saw a rifle inside, boxes of shells. As I moved forward to get a better look, something stirred in the shadows of the hall.
“Help you?”
It was more a grunt than a question. I blinked as light filled the store, bank after bank of fluorescents turning on. The TV went silent. A man stood framed against the black rectangle of the hall. A boy actually, trying to disguise his age by the aggressiveness of his stance, groin in tight blue jeans thrust forward, bare tattooed arms crossed over the picture on his black cropped sweatshirt. He couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen: there was no sign of moustache or beard on the deeply tanned skin of his face. He wore his long black hair gelled straight back from his forehead and gathered into a pony tail. A cigarette smoked between his lips. Elvis, I thought. James Dean.
“Have you got soda water? Juice?”
He pointed to the fridge.
“Wet weather, isn't it?” I forged on. Other than milk and a few tall cartons of orange juice, the shelves were stocked with different brands and flavours of pop, artificially sweetened and over-carbonated. I finally settled on root beer and turned back to the boy.
He slouched against the hall doorframe. I could feel him staring, but when I turned, his eyes slid away to his own feet. His mouth was pursed around the cigarette, his full lips twisted in a smile as if he'd judged and found me wanting, too old and
too ordinary to be interesting. My hair had frizzed with the damp into a mess of brown curls that tumbled down over the shoulders of the oversize neon pink T-shirt I wore over black denim jeans. It was too early in the year for a tan and, as I never wore make-up, I knew how pale my face must look in this harsh light, how my eyes were magnified by the thick lenses I had to wear.
I'm forty years old, I told myself. I'm too old for this. And he's much too young. But I could feel myself flush, hot blood burning my cheeks. I banged the can on the counter. “How much?”
“Dollar.” He straightened up, flexing his shoulders to draw attention to the muscles of his upper arms. A snarling cougar leaped across his chest. He leaned forward and I stepped back, but he was only reaching for an ashtray. He stubbed out his cigarette, grinding the tip into the bed of ashes and butts. I rooted in my wallet for a loonie. He held out his palm for my money, the middle finger curled in. I put the coin on the counter.
“How close is the road to Cook's Lake?”
“Cook's Lake?” he repeated. He glanced down the dark hall. I thought I heard someone moving there, a strange whispering rush, but could see nothing in the gloom. “You visiting there?”
I nodded.
“You want the Indian Point cottages? You missed the road; you gotta go back down the highway about five miles. Its the Fifth Line you want; you'll see the sign. Road's not paved, but the grader's been through this week.”
“Actually, I'm going to the Cook cottage. It's on a private road, I think. Do you know it?”
“You got business with that woman?” a new voice interrupted. The same soft whisper announced a wheelchair which now slid into view. Its occupant was an old man, older even than Mr. Ross. His legs and feet were entirely wrapped and bound in a frayed multi-coloured quilt. His hands were folded on his lap, a white handkerchief pressed between long and perfectly manicured fingers. The deep red stone on his ring glowed. He wore a suit jacket, a white shirt with high starched collar, a thin blue tie. One lock of thick gray hair fell carefully over his high forehead, the combed eyebrows, the clear and steady deep blue
eyes. The wrinkles around these eyes and at the corner of his full lips only added character to a face sculpted with high cheekbones, square chin.
“Do you mean Marilyn Finch? She's my cousin.”
“Cousin?” The old man said, his voice breathy and high. “You're George Cook's granddaughter? Beatrice found you after all.”
“You knew my aunt?”
His laugh was the creaking of skeletal doors, dry and without amusement. “Oh, yes. I knew her. And your grandfather too. Stole my land, they did. It doesn't belong to them, or you. I worked it. It's mine, by right of that, if nothing else.”
The boy put his hand on the old man's shoulder. “Take it easy, Grandad,” he cautioned. He glanced at me. “It's an old story.”
“You must be a McDonnel,” I stepped forward eagerly. “I'm pleased to meet you. We're related somehow: my name's Rosie Cairns now, but my father was George Cook.”
“Cooks,” he snorted. “Never had time for them folk. Thought they were too good for the working man, they did.” He pushed the chair back a bit and peered up at me. “Not your fault, though. I guess.” He nodded at the younger man. “He's your second cousin, twice removed â Hank McDonnel. And I'm Henry McDonnel, his grandfather, your great-uncle.”
When we shook hands, Hank held on too long and squeezed too tightly. Whatever message he was trying to convey, I didn't want to receive it. I spoke only to the old man. “As far as I know, the land belonged to my great-aunt, and she willed it to me.”
“Thieving bastards. Just because the Cooks had money and paid the taxes don't give them the right to the land.”
“They had title too,” I pointed out.
“Title,” he snorted. “You're a modern woman, one of them libbers, I bet. What do you think of an old man wouldn't let his daughter and her husband inherit the property, even though they stayed in the big house with him when her brother left for the city. Eh? What do you think of that, then?”
I shrugged uneasily.
The old man coughed. “The son makes money burying folks and his son comes back up here, bold as brass, wants to
build a summer home on the lake. Summer home! I been working that land since I was fourteen years old. Fourteen. And not one holiday then or since.”
“She doesn't want a whole life history,” Hank interrupted.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I don't know any of this. Is this your store?”
“Oh, aye. Farming don't pay. Specially when the land's not in your name. I had an accident,” he gestured at his legs. “Couldn't work any more. My son's dead.” He shrugged his grandson's hand off his shoulder. “Just him and me now.”
“I'm sorry,” I said.
He glared at me. “That land's mine because I worked it, because of the blood it took from me. No one's got the right to take it away, not you, not that fancy woman from the States. Divide it all up for a bunch of city slickers to come play on. Waste of good land. It's a sin.” His voice rose to a shout.
“Take it easy, Grandad,” Hank repeated. “Remember what the doctor said about your blood pressure.”
“Doctors,” the old man snapped. “What do they know? My time'll come when my time comes. And not soon enough, I say. When a man's land is taken away from him, for some slip of a girl he doesn't even know.”
The car horn blared. We all jumped.
“Someone waiting for you?” Hank asked me.
“My husband.”
“You're married? You got kids?” I shook my head.
“A grief and a blessing,” the old man muttered. “I know I sometimes wonder what use children are supposed to be. Comfort in my old age. Hah.”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, I have to get going. I haven't even been to the cottage yet. I'm sorry about what happened in the past, but it's not my fault, and the lawyer tells me the land's mine legally.”
“Legal,” the old man snorted. “Law belongs to who has the most money. I'm talking moral here. I'm talking about what's right.”
“I don't know,” I said. “Beatrice left the land to me and that's all I know about it.”
“Outsider. Know-nothing.” He turned his wheelchair
around and disappeared into the darkness of the hall. A moment later, the television switched on in a roar of laughter.
Hank wiped his hand across his mouth and turned away as if to follow his grandfather back indoors. I thought that if he'd been chewing tobacco, he would have taken this moment to spit. He had that air about him.
“What was that all about?” I asked him.
Hank shrugged. “Old man gets upset easy these days. That Beatrice, she treated him like dirt. Always promised she'd do right by him, then turns around and gives the land to a stranger. Beg your pardon, but there you are. Makes him a bit hot.”
“It's not my fault. I never even knew my father, or any of his family.” The old hurt welled up again, my mother huddled on a kitchen chair, clutching herself, rocking back and forth, cursing his name over and over. I sighed. “I didn't ask for the land. Apparently Beatrice wanted me to have it.”
The car horn blared a second time.
“You been married long?” Hank asked.
“Twenty years.” I expected his whistle of disbelief and added the joke I always used. “I was a teen-age bride, married for money. Student loans, actually. We got married in our last year at university.”
“Kind of boring, isn't it? Twenty years with the same old man?”
“It's not boring and he's not old.”
“No?” His tongue ran around his lips. “Maybe you want to come by sometime when you're up here on your own. You going to be up here much?”
“I don't know.” I opened the door.
“Say hi to my old cuz, Marilyn, will you? Tell her she ought to drop by, I got some bones to pick with her.” He giggled. “We're kissing cousins, you know. You know what that means?”
“I don't think I want to know.”
“It's all in the family,” he grinned. “So to speak.”
The door slammed behind me. I took a deep breath, preparing to run through the rain.
Hank's voice came through the screen, so close I could feel his breath hot on the back of my neck. “Just maybe I'll drop by,” he added. “One of these days â or nights.”
“What took so long?” Will asked.
“More relatives.” I groped for the box of tissues we keep in the car. There were only a couple left, enough to wipe the wetness from my glasses.
“Cousins or something?”
“Something is right. Henry McDonnel and his grandson Hank. Second cousins twice removed. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“My mother would know.”
“Goes back generations anyway. And so does the grudge. Apparently they feel the land belongs to them.” I sighed. “I wish Aunt Beatrice had decided to keep her guilt to herself. Or died sooner.”
“Rosie! That doesn't sound like you.”
“Not the dying part. But this land business has been one big headache. First Roger Markham and the litigious Dr. Finch. Now the McDonnels.” I shivered. “Hank gives me the creeps.”
“Why?” Will eased the car to the edge of the parking lot and waited for a break in the traffic. The rain was letting up.
“It's his attitude. He's just a kid, but I swear he thinks he's Elvis come back from the dead. All tight jeans and cigarettes. He implied that he and Marilyn were rather close. Kissing cousins, he said.”
“Isn't he kind of young for her?”
“You'd think so. She's my age and he looks like he's barely in his teens. She'd be robbing the cradle.”
“He must have been putting you on.”
“Teasing? Maybe. I keep thinking about what Robin says all the time.”
“What's that?”
“You can pick your friends, but not your family.”
Will laughed. “Or your family picks you. You realize that you're all at the end of the line, you, Marilyn and Hank.”
“Unless there's a Mrs. Hank in the offing. He's awfully young, though.”
“We weren't exactly elderly when we got together,” Will teased.
“It's not the same. Besides, he didn't look married.”
“Not haggard and hen-pecked like me?”
I punched him softly on the shoulder. “Cut it out. That's not what I meant. He's only a boy.”
“So were they surprised to meet you?”
“Hard to tell. They weren't exactly overjoyed. I hope Marilyn's a bit more welcoming than that.”
“We could always forget about going there and go straight to my parents' cottage.”
“What are you so worried about?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. The whole set up seems odd. Why wouldn't she want me to stay too?”
“Perhaps she feels she'd be more comfortable with just me by myself.”
“Maybe she's got something else in mind. Remember what Wilson implied about her and Markham, that they're up to something.”
“I don't believe she would have anything to do with her grandmother's death. Markham, maybe. But he's in the city.”
“She needs money.”
“Everyone needs money. Besides, too many people know I'm going to be there alone with her. She wouldn't dare try anything.”