Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (5 page)

Grey
sipped his beer, squinting into his mug.

“Christ,
Harley found somewhere to get hops?” He lowered his voice. “You’re busy right
now, and it’s maybe important. I’ll want to talk to you when you close.”

Josie
raised an eyebrow and nodded.

“Yeah,
there’s a guy runs them up from down south. They’re dear, but Harley swears by
them.”

“Well,
he’s right. This is the first real beer I’ve had in a long time.”

Josie
smiled a professional little grin and moved back down the bar. Grey watched the
two dozen or so customers drink. They soaked up the mugs of beer with smoked
fish and dried apples. He circulated, made small talk, and wasted time at the
Longliner's billiard table where Big Tom, the current Port master, was playing
poker dressed in an incongruous fawn dinner jacket and black wool beret. His
opponents were a group of traders out of Abbotsford, far to the west. They had
no news that interested Grey. The game eventually broke up with Grey breaking
even and Tom grinning at the scowling traders.

Lawrence
the bouncer rolled the last few drunks out as the eastern sky grew pink, doing
the heavy lifting while Josie used a bucket on a rope to dip lake water and
swill down the floor. Once Lawrence had left, Josie dropped the bar across the
door and came to sit at the corner table where Grey waited.

“What’s
with the cloak and dagger shit?” Josie asked, rubbing her eyes with both palms.
Grey thought she looked older than he remembered.

“Don’t
want to start rumors. Not yet.”

“So
if you don’t want rumors why are you talking to a bartender?” Josie shook her
head, held up a palm. “Never mind. Let me ask you something before we get to
whatever bad news you have.”

“Okay.”

“When
are you going to settle down?” Josie leaned back, making the old chair creak.

“I
am settled. The valley is home.” Grey looked into his empty cup. After a beat,
he pushed it away. “It wouldn’t work.”

“You
say that, but how do you know?”

Grey
looked at Josie again, half-smiled, and shook his head.

“Fine.
Fuck. Be mysterious,” Josie said. The skulls rattled testily as she shook her
head. “What do you want?”

“I
need to know if anyone’s seen strangers around - probably in groups of three or
more, with horses. They’d probably be around the south end, past the crater.
They’d be avoiding folks.”

Josie
wrinkled her upper lip and hissed through her teeth.

“Yeah,
there have been a few mentions of some riders; Cort Blackwell for one. He was
fishing the south end and saw them on the shore. Cort’s got those old army
binoculars, you know? He said they were armed; mostly guns, a couple of bows.
There’ve been other stories.”

“Did
anyone talk about what they were doing?”

“No
one seems to see them doing anything. They’re just drifting around the south
end mostly, though Kimmie Sato swears she saw horsemen up on the ridge at the
far end of the bridge.”

Grey
scratched at a chip in the mug’s enamel with a thumbnail, his eyebrows drawn
down.

“No
one’s seen them do anything but look at stuff?”

“Yeah
...” Josie paused, eyes widening. “Well, shit, I should have seen that myself.”
She gave Grey a keen glance and the muscles in her jaw bunched. “Who are they -
and when?”

“Not
sure who, but they’re trouble. As to when, I’d guess next summer. Keep that
quiet for a week or two. I’m going to Maggie’s to get her boys to spread the
word. Can you talk to the Reverend for me? I want to use the church for a
meeting.”

Josie
laughed. “He wouldn’t do it for you, but he will for me.”

“I
know.”

“When
do you want it?”

“Say
four weeks, let people get their crops in and give Maggie’s riders time to
spread word up to Northpoint and down through N’kmips. The end of October, I
guess.”

Grey
stood, stretching. Josie remained seated. Under the barge little waves slapped
the rusting hull with the sound of hollow bells. She stared at Grey, seeing the
fatigue that made his shoulders sag, that clawed the creases around his mouth.

“That's
it? Throw a Halloween party?”

“I
guess so. Thanks, Josie.”

Josie
smiled and rest her chin on her palm. “Where are you sleeping? I still have
that big bed, you know.”

“Room
for two?”

“Or
three.”

“You’re
a nasty girl, my dear.”

The
bed was warm. It always was with the four of them sharing it. The cabin had
been built as a hunting lodge, high in the mountains. It hadn’t had the room or
the need for more than a single platform bed. Heat came from a potbellied
woodstove that had come from a territorial mining camp a century before. Grey’s
father paid $200 for it at a junk shop in Deer Park years before.

Grey
climbed out of bed, his breath pluming in the October air and shrugged on his
pants and coat. His father opened an eye.

“You
off to hunt?” he asked in a low voice. The rest of the family was still
sleeping.

Grey
nodded. They had salted and smoked the meat of four deer, but winters were
long. He and his father had decided one more would be enough.

Outside
it was still dark and the brown fall weeds gleamed with bright frost. Overhead
the endless clouds and smoke flared and glowed, muttering as meteors died. Grey
watched for a while as his body shivered, heating up. He thought there weren’t
as many big ones - had been less for some time - at least judging by the
absence of the tooth-rattling booms the largest ones trailed.

He
pulled up his parka’s hood and shouldered his father’s deer rifle, moving out
to the logging road that passed the cabin’s weedy quarter-mile drive. He
stepped over the downed trees his father had pulled across the road. The
Willy’s was hidden behind the cabin, under a gray tarp, and its tracks had long
since faded.

His
mother and father argued sometimes. She was an optimist, Grey thought. She
assumed the government would have to start putting things back together - that
people would find a way to save it all. His father smiled but shook his head,
told her they’d wait and see. In his world it was always easier to break than
to make, and he didn’t expect much from people. Grey wanted to believe in his
mother’s hope. And sometimes he could, just before falling asleep.

The
young man followed the logging road for almost an hour. It was beginning to get
light enough to see when he turned aside and climbed the shoulder of a low
hill. Below was the brushy regrowth of an old clear cut. Saskatoon berry
bushes, alders and young aspens competed with spindly lodgepole pine. The ground
was a leg-breaking crisscross of old treetops and poles left by loggers after
the best trees had been cut and hauled. Old roads crisscrossed the cut, their
borders thick with the low brush deer liked to feed on. Grey settled on the
hill, rested the rifle over a stump, and waited.

The
first birds began their chorus as he sat, shivering. Fifteen minutes later a
pair of chipmunks emerged to dart along the fallen trees, tails flagging as
they chirred at each other. The frost had nearly gone when a trio of deer - two
does leading a fork buck - paused in the tree line on the far side of the cut.
Grey moved as slowly as he could, dropping his cheek to the rifle stock and
slowly swinging the weapon until he could see the deer through the scope. The
varnished wood of the stock felt like ice against his face.

His
father had impressed on him the importance of not wasting what ammunition they
had, so he waited for the deer. He knew he could probably hit one, but the
distance was perhaps three hundred yards. Slowly, heads up and ears cocked
forward, the deer moved deeper into the cut. Grey steadied his breathing and
waited.

Before
the deer had closed the gap, the lead doe cocked her head, looking off to her
left. The others followed suit, standing stock still. A second later all three
were gone, the flare of their white tails flashing an alarm through the shadows
under the trees.

Grey
was wondering what had spooked the deer when the sharp crack of a gun echoed
through the morning. Several more followed, some in a rattle, one shot atop
another.

He
ran all the way, but it was finished long before he reached a hilltop
overlooking the cabin. The bodies had been dragged out and dumped off the
little slate steppingstone path his father had made a few years before, when
they’d camped here during summer vacation. It led from the cabin to the
seep-spring that supplied the sweetest water Grey had ever tasted.

In
the morning light the blood was so red.

Grey
could see four men, all armed. He steadied the rifle against a tree and tried
to find the first, but his eyes were blurred and the gun shook too badly. He
lowered the rifle and took shuddering breaths, listening to the low keening he
was making with a chilly corner of his mind.

Two
more men came out of the cabin, and began piling up the canned goods and the
venison. Two of the others left, but came back in ten minutes with a pair of
mules. They began loading the food.

“Our
food,” Grey hitched, teeth clenched. He wiped his nose with his parka sleeve,
leaving a silver trail of snot. “That’s our food.”

He
watched through the day as the men stripped the cabin of what they wanted, and
something very cold began to grown in his chest. He welcomed it. It burnt, but
it felt much better than the terrified sorrow that lay beneath it. It grew
heavier as time passed and finally pressed the urge to sob down, burying it
deep.

He
waited to see if the men would stay at the cabin, or go to a camp elsewhere. He
had something to do. He held that thought and let nothing else intrude. He had
something important to do, and he had to do it right.

“Jesus,
wake up,” Josie muttered, elbowing him until he did.

“What?”
Grey blinked, rubbed his eyes. It was nearly morning.

“You’re
having some kind of nightmare and kicking the shit out of me. I think your
toenails peeled all the skin off my shin.” She poked a finger into Grey’s
chest, making him yelp.

“Ah.
Sorry,” Grey muttered, rising. “Chicory?”

“In
the big jar. If you make some I’ll forgive you for the beating.” Josie sat up,
pulled the blankets around her and shivered. “You were mumbling about
‘something to do’?”

Grey
measured out a small handful of dried chicory roots, dropped them in Josie’s
old blue coffeepot and started to build up the fire in the stove.

“It
doesn’t matter anymore.”

Grey
left the Port at sunrise, after a few quick trades, the best of which was a bag
full of .270 cartridge cases for a gold ring and a tin of Bayer aspirin. The
trader, one of the Sikhs who had settled here a century ago, let Grey know he
was in the market for deer or elk horns for his brother, a knife-maker. Grey
promised to bring some in the next time he visited.

Grey
skirted the shore, keeping watch on the buildings as he made his way to the
bridge. A few faces peered out of glassless windows, pale blurs against the
darkness behind, but he met no one. Seagulls and crows moved from their
rookeries to the beach, squabbling over flotsam and fish guts. The breeze off
the lake was sweet; it pushed the stink of the squatters deeper into the ruins.

The
bridge lay straight and level across three fifths of the lake, rising at its
far end into an arch that allowed sailboats to pass beneath. It was nearly a
half-mile long. Old timers told Grey there had once been a floating bridge. How
a bridge could float he had no idea, but this one was set on massive pilings
and had survived the years with little decay. A few potholes scarred the paving
of the deck, and the disintegrating heaps of rusting cars stained the concrete
red-orange, but that was it.

Grey
stayed in the leftmost lane, walking steadily. Years back some enterprising
thugs had tried to set up a roadblock on the bridge’s arch. They’d started
demanding tolls while offering “protection”. Their handiwork was long gone,
only a few pockmarks and dark smears of lead on the concrete side rails marked
their mistake. The traders and locals had simply gotten together one night and
removed the issue.

From
the crest of the arch, Grey scanned the route of the old highway as it curved
up and around the rocky bluff ahead. A horse cart was headed slowly down, the
carter leaning on the brake lever, and Grey slung his rifle before approaching.
Their paths met where the bridge ended.

The
carter was a ruddy-faced man, wearing canvas pants and a homemade leather
jacket, neither old nor young. They exchanged greetings and a few meaningless
pleasantries. Grey asked of strangers, and the carter shook his head, but
promised to keep an eye out. When they parted, Grey took a sweet-fleshed pear
with him as a gift.