Cadillac Cathedral (12 page)

One question and he was already saying more than he needed to.

“You found this in the mountains and fixed it up in your workshop.”

“Fixed it up and now returning it to its first owner, who probably doesn’t even know it still exists and definitely doesn’t know that it’s back on the road again.”

The woman spoke even while writing in her notebook. “And what is the name of this owner?”

“I’ve answered enough questions,” Arvo said, getting to his feet.

“You can’t just tell me the name of this owner you’re returning it to?”

“Can’t.” Arvo spoke now from beside the hearse. The woman had stood up but was still on the far side of the log. “But if you keep in touch with Matt Foreman he’ll tell you when it’s about to be used again for its original purpose. You just might get a decent story then.”

“Matthew Foreman knows about this?”

“Matthew Foreman doesn’t know a thing, but he will.”

“Shoot,” she said. An old fashioned sort of woman, despite the modern look in her eye. “I was hoping I’d catch you off your guard, but I can see you’re nobody’s fool.”

Arvo dipped a shallow bow to acknowledge the compliment. “Give my regards to Matt. Remind him that some people take their locked doors with them when they travel. Well, he knows me well enough to know that. You’d think he’d’ve done the decent thing and told you.”

He waited until her VW had gone from sight, then backed away from the log and eased the hearse out onto the road. He could see no point in sitting still any longer. No doubt Lucy had found chores for Peterson to do. Maybe he would stay for the rest of the day.

The highway followed the irregular coastline on the left, sometimes open to the water, sometimes with a stand of firs and low bushes of wind-stirred ocean spray between him and the beach. On his right, driveways went uphill from newspaper boxes on posts to houses that looked out over or through the tops of trees to the water.

A good thing the sky was still clear — except for a few faint clouds to the east. He had his umbrella but in this roofless cab it would be little protection against rain. The people who’d designed this thing must have been thinking of California, or summers-only funerals in Saskatoon.

For a short while, it was possible to see the sea to his left where a tugboat pulled a series of log booms south to sawmills — moving even slower than he was. To his right, the purple hills that rose beyond forest appeared to be naked except for a narrow feathery fringe of timber the loggers had left to re-seed the ground. And, rising even above this, a sharp sloped triangle of snow leaned against the sky. A level streak of cloud might have been jet-stream breaking up in the wake of an airliner heading for Japan.

Ahead, a very large man removing the newspaper from its green box-on-a-post could not be anyone other than Big Andy Carmichael.

Of course he’d known but forgotten that Carmichael had moved down to this area after Eleanor died — to live with a married granddaughter and her husband. He’d even been down to visit once, a few years ago, in their long grey bungalow up a slope, flanked by a pair of big-leaf maples.

Arvo waved when Carmichael looked up, but immediately wished he hadn’t. If he hadn’t waved, Carmichael could have been so intent on studying the hearse that he might not have noticed the driver. And he certainly wouldn’t have guessed that an antique hearse was being driven by someone he knew. Now, having drawn attention to himself, Arvo had little choice but to pull over onto the gravel shoulder and stop.

More time would be lost.

“What the hell you doin’ in that rig?” Carmichael trapped the newspaper beneath his arm and took hold of Arvo’s hand to give it a shake. “Driving yourself to your own funeral?” He laughed, but quickly sobered. “Well, I guess I’d rather see you in the driver’s seat than laid out in the back. Who you got in back?”

“No one yet,” Arvo said, stepping out onto the gravel.

Carmichael dropped his jaw and scowled. “You weren’t planning to turn in here?” He backed up a step just in case. “If you poke me, you’ll see I’m still alive enough to holler!”

“My guess, you’d poke me back.”

Carmichael bent forward to laugh. “You got that right.” Then he turned and shouted towards the house. “Iris!”

One, two, three figures appeared above the veranda railing. One of them came rattling down the stairs in a hurry, then marched down the dirt driveway towards them, a skirt swishing around her knees.
This was his granddaughter, a short, dainty young woman — especially short and dainty compared to Big Andy. She stood on tip-toes to peck at Arvo’s cheek.

Iris had been followed by a long-haired young man with a fiddle dangling from one hand. He viewed the hearse in a suspicious sidelong manner.

“Oh my,” Iris said, laying a hand against the nearest fender lamp. “This gives me a funny feeling. All the people that rode in the back of this — I wonder how many you and Granddad knew?”

“I never seen this thing before,” Carmichael said, but exaggerated a shiver. He was an enormous man still — as tall as Arvo and far too heavy. He breathed noisily, as though with effort. His face was an unhealthy flushed-up colour, as it had always been, but his white hair made this more noticeable.

“Come on up,” Iris said. “We’ve been practising. You can tell us how we’re doin’.”

“Can’t,” Arvo said. “I’m already taking too long to get somewhere.”

“Come up for a drink,” Carmichael said, slapping the newspaper against an open hand. “This young fella eyeing up your vehicle is Buddy Woods. Him and Iris and Johnnie up there have been practising for a concert tonight. Also Saturday night’s Old Time Dance. You can tell them if you think they’re ready.” He did a few quick steps to demonstrate the sort of dance he meant, took Iris’s hand, and let her do a complete turn beneath his raised arm and curtsey to his low bow.

A white Toyota Camry honked as it raced by.

“Can’t afford the time,” Arvo said, though he knew it would not be possible now to drive off without hurting Carmichael’s feelings.

“Five minutes!” Carmichael promised. “Ten at most. We’re trying out my latest batch of dandelion wine.”

“Not for me,” Arvo said, following up the slope. “Chances are I’ll get stopped by cops at least once while I’m driving that thing, and I don’t want liquor on my breath when it happens.”

Clearly impressed, Carmichael raised both eyebrows and grinned. “Well, I see a coffin in the back. If you’re forced to kill the cop you’ve got the perfect place to hide the body.”

“C’mon,” Iris said, leading the way up the slope. “It’s been ages since we’ve seen you.” Before going up the steps to the veranda she added, “Now don’t you two start in with your logging talk! I don’t care if I never hear ‘slack the haulback’ or ‘damn that whistle-punk’ again.”

“We promise,” Carmichael said. “Anyway, Arvo spent his life in the machine shop and didn’t hear much of that bush-monkey talk.”

“I heard enough of it,” Arvo said, taking the small glass that Carmichael held out to him after pouring from a tall slim bottle he taken up from the floor. “You’d be surprised what you hear when you’re bent over an engine or looking up at the underside of a stripped transmission.”

Iris lifted a banjo off one of three yellow chrome-and-vinyl kitchen chairs and sat. “We’ve been practising ‘Hard Times’ — for something slow while the dancers recover from the Virginia reel.”

The young bearded man holding a guitar was not introduced, but nodded to Arvo anyway. Iris’s husband. Arvo had probably met him at some wedding or funeral in the past.

“They’ve been practising out here in the open in case Ralph Stanley drives by on a holiday and likes what he hears,” Carmichael said. “They’re hoping he’ll offer a job in Nashville.”

The three musicians laughed.

The fiddler said, “He’s serious.”

“In the meantime,” Carmichael said, “they’re getting limbered up for tonight.”

Now the two men joined Iris on the kitchen chairs and prepared to continue, he assumed, from where they’d left off. Instruments were placed where they were meant to be; Iris counted softly, nodding her head, “One, two …” And then she tore like a whirlwind into:

“
Wi … ill you miss me?
”

The two men sang: “
Miss me when I’m gone.
”

“
Wi … ill you miss me?
”

“
Miss me when I’m gone.
”

Iris grinned happily as she sang. The bearded husband scowled down to watch his own fingers at work. All three stomped out the time on the floor.

“So,” Big Andy Carmichael said, after the song was done. “You haven’t told us why you’ve gone into the hearse business.”

“You’ll remember Martin Glass,” Arvo said. “Died in the city hospital. I’m headed down to bring him home.”

“Oh dear,” Iris said. “The politician?”

“I heard he’d passed on,” Carmichael said. “There’ll be a funeral?”

“There will,” Arvo said. “Once I’ve got him back where he belongs.”

“Well, maybe these young folks could play for it,” Carmichael said. “If you’d like,” he quickly added. “But they might not be good enough yet to play ‘Hard Times.’”

“We wouldn’t play ‘Hard Times’ at a funeral!” Iris exclaimed.

“Not ‘Oh, Death’ either, I hope,” Carmichael said.

“It will have to
be
 …” Iris said, and struck another chord on her banjo. Immediately the others joined her. “
Shall we gather at the ri-ver, the beautiful the beautiful the ri-i-ver? Shall we gather at the ri-ver that flows by the thro-one of God?
”

There were more verses to this song than Arvo could have imagined. What seemed at first to be an invitation to a picnic gradually
began to sound like a race to be the first to drown, and then a cheerful acceptance of being swept out to sea. He had a visual image of crowds rushing eagerly down from every town and pasture in order not to miss out on the big occasion, lemmings rushing towards the thrill of throwing themselves off a cliff and into the racing current.

Still, he applauded when they were done. In fact, he was surprised at how good they were. Not that he knew much about music. He put his glass of dandelion wine on the floor, hoping that Carmichael was satisfied he’d taken one good sip. There was too much at stake to risk more. “I’d better get a move-on,” he said. “I’ve a ways to go and that hearse doesn’t exactly break the sound barrier.”

Anything that distracted him from a job for any length of time would soon have his stomach in an uproar. Some warning signs had already made themselves known.

“You have to come back for a decent visit,” Iris said. “Maybe we’ll have a new song to surprise you with — an original, about a man driving a beautiful old hearse. Where is he going, and why? What is the secret he holds in his heart, so powerful it drives him to the city, and so mysterious that he blushes a little when you ask?”

“Yeah, well,” Arvo said. He could think of nothing to follow this.

“Maybe you’ll come down this way for an Old Time Dance,” Iris said, right behind him as he went down her stairs. “The community hall’s just down the road a ways from here.”

“I was never much of a dancer,” Arvo said. He didn’t add that it had been forty years since he’d been to a dance. “These two clumsy feet never learned to take orders from this one clumsy brain.”

“He’s afraid he’ll be dragged out on to the floor by some woman who’s a serious threat to his bachelorhood,” Carmichael said. “Your grandmother had a crush on him once, before I came along, but she told me Arvo hardly noticed her. Had his eye on some other woman.
Now Iris, did you give him one of your programs for tonight?”

“I did not,” Iris said, slapping a hand against the side of her face. “What’s the matter with me?”

“Go back and get him one.”

To Arvo he said, “You’re probably going to look up friends, but if you get bored you might be glad of an excuse to escape. A fiddle concert could save you from a hand of bridge or a TV show — who knows?”

His flesh shaking from silent laughter, he accompanied Arvo the rest of the way down the driveway. When they’d reached the hearse, they shook hands again. “You’ll let us know about the funeral? I’ll have them practise something. Of course
this bunch
wouldn’t know Martin Glass from Winston Churchill, but I always admired the man. I probably even voted for him once, though I don’t remember for sure.”

“Here you are!” Iris shouted, thumping down the driveway. Since Arvo was already behind the wheel by the time she reached the hearse, she inserted the folded paper into his shirt pocket. “In case you’re desperate for entertainment and every movie house in town is showing
Spiderman
! I’ve thrown in some complimentary tickets to tempt you. Share them around!”

Once he was out on the road again, it wasn’t long before he was aware that Iris’s singing was going to continue in his head for a while. Would Martin want to hear
Shall we gather at the river
at his funeral? He knew already that he wouldn’t. He knew, too, that the damn song was going to play itself over and over in his head until he had someone or something to talk to other than a 1930 Cathedral hearse.

CHAPTER 8