“Davey, where are you?” Andy shouted.
“I’m upstairs,” Davey yelled back.
“Where’s Carmen?”
“She’s up here, too.”
“I’m up here, Daddy!” Carmen yelled.
“Okay.” Andy opened the icebox. “Want a beer?”
“I feel bad about you losing your stripes, Andy.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing. Not making less money but for Linda to get a job. She might not worry so damn much about everything.” Andy pulled out two beers. When he turned around Wilf was smiling at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking about the glories of domesticity. And who might have a small truck. Do you know anyone? I’ll pay for the rental and the gas.”
Andy flipped off the tops and handed Wilf a beer. “And the help? I suppose you’ll need some help.”
“I might need a little help.”
“I’m happy for you, you know. I’m happy for you both.” Andy raised his beer in a toast. “Here’s to Carole. Here’s to Wilf.”
Wilf raised his. “Thanks. We’re hoping it might be a little more peaceful out there.”
“It would have to be, wouldn’t it? What’s she think about Scarfe Telfer?” Andy was leaning up against the table and looking innocent enough.
“Do you think she should be frightened or something?”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t plan them. All these things. I didn’t want them.”
A heavy silence descended on the kitchen.
Wilf looked away. He took a sip of his beer.
* * *
“You know, this is the first time I’ve ever driven in the back seat of my car,” Clarence remarked. Wilf was behind the driver’s wheel. Carole was sitting stiffly beside him. Clarence didn’t want to sit in the front; he said he’d prefer the back. It would feel more like he was being chauffeured.
Carole was looking a little feverish, Wilf thought, her face shiny and slightly flushed in the passing street lights. They were going out for supper at the fancy restaurant on the edge of town. Clarence had insisted. Wilf glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught a glimpse of his father. He seemed surprisingly relaxed.
The previous evening Wilf had told him that he and Carole were seeing each other and that they’d made a decision to live together. Clarence was sitting at the kitchen table reading over a copy of the statement Wilf had given to the OPP and looking increasingly concerned. When Wilf began to talk about Carole, he didn’t turn to look at him. He just stared at an invisible point on the opposite wall.
“I think the world of her,” Clarence finally said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t just live with a girl like Carole and then decide not to live with her. You don’t do that.”
“I’m not intending to do that.”
“Are you engaged?”
“No.”
“Are you planning on getting engaged?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think we’ve thought about it.”
Clarence turned then to look at Wilf. He smiled. “I’m sure Carole has thought about it. You dope.”
“We’ll see how it goes.”
“Uh huh. I wonder what her parents think about all this?”
Wilf was trying to keep his patience. It was for Carole’s sake. “I don’t know. She doesn’t want me to talk to them. I don’t think her father was too excited. And her mother cried, but Carole says that’s actually a good sign.”
“And why do you think Carole didn’t want you to talk to them?”
“I guess, because it’s not the best time, with everything that’s going on. You know. In town.”
Clarence nodded.
Wilf could see that his father had decided not to pursue that line of questioning. It was too painful.
“Carole’s nervous that you’ll be angry.” Wilf continued on, “That you’ll think she’s been disrespectful. That it will affect how you think about her and her work.”
“Christ. I’ve liked Carole from the first day she stepped into my office and asked me if I had any openings.” Clarence smiled at the memory. “As if I were running this huge law firm. There was only me and Dorothy Dale, and Dorothy had gone out for lunch. This is how I look at it. If she loves my son, that just makes her all the more valuable to McLauchlin and McLauchlin. Must mean she’s even smarter than I thought.”
“She’ll be relieved to hear that.”
Wilf could see, as the situation sank in, that relief was beginning to brighten his father’s face as well. A person who cared for his son had arrived just in the nick of time. To share his burden, his worry.
“I’m glad for you, Wilf, I really am,” his father had said.
Wilf pulled the car off the highway and into the restaurant’s parking lot.
“I’m up for a steak,” Clarence announced. “What do you think, Carole?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Sirloin? T-bone? Rib-eye? Porterhouse? Filet?”
“Oh my god,” Carole said.
Carole had the porterhouse. Clarence had his usual twelve-ounce t-bone. Wilf insisted on everyone ordering a Manhattan. He’d never tasted one before but the name sounded appropriately celebratory.
Wilf chose the white fish.
Carole was sitting on Wilf’s side of the table cutting her remarkably thick steak as neatly as she could and sipping her Manhattan. She’d swept her hair up in some kind of dramatic way and she was wearing an off the shoulder dress that showed off her good bones and slim waist. Wilf thought her neck and creamy white shoulders looked spectacular. Her whole person looked surprisingly spectacular, prettier than he’d ever seen her before.
To this point, no one had said anything about living together, not at work earlier that day, partly because Carole had set a new record for non-stop typing, and not through the first round of drinks and the appetizers.
Wilf looked around the restaurant, at the subdued lights, the rows of empty tables with their white shining linens, and he felt a kind of hallucinatory, drifting detachment. He’d been trying to get his mind around Chasson’s news for the past five days. The injection. The plague. His mind wouldn’t respond. It wouldn’t go there.
He glanced over at Carole. How could she possibly eat her way through that steak, he thought to himself. She must be doing it to impress his father.
“I’ve always wanted to live in the country,” Clarence said.
Carole’s face went red.
“I’ve always thought that there’d be something very pleasant about it. All that air. Sky. Wind. A kind of freedom, you know. And no neighbours. No close neighbours anyway. That’s a bonus.”
Carole kept eating.
“Are there any close neighbours out where you two are going, I wonder?” Clarence asked.
Carole looked up from her steak. She glanced at Wilf. He was smiling at her as if he wasn’t sure, as if she was the only one who would know the answer.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “There must be someone. There’s a farm down the road on the other side.”
“Are you on the river side of the road?”
“Yes. Aren’t we, Wilf?” Carole gave him a desperate look.
Wilf reached over and took her hand. “I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. That’s all I know.”
“I’ll second that,” Clarence said.
* * *
Wilf and Clarence hadn’t arrived back in the house for more than ten minutes when the phone rang. Wilf glanced at his father. Clarence had been doing all the phone answering lately but at that moment he seemed determined to ignore the insistent ringing. Maybe he thinks it’s Carole, Wilf thought to himself. Or maybe, with Carole in the picture, he’s decided to give up his job of deflection and protection. Or maybe he’s just given up.
It was Andy. “Found you a truck. We can pick it up tonight if you want. I have tomorrow off. We can get an early start.”
“We don’t have that much stuff. It won’t take all day.”
Wilf looked across the room. Clarence was studying the statement Wilf had given to the OPP again. His brow began to furrow.
“All right, I wouldn’t mind going out,” Wilf said.
He got his coat back on, told his father where he was going and picked up Andy a few minutes later. They headed out of town.
“Uncle John says he doesn’t use it all that often. Just to take hogs or cattle into market now and then. Things like that.” Andy was lighting up a cigarette.
“To market?”
“Don’t worry. He said he’d get my crazy cousins to clean it out if you wanted to use it. I just called him back and said, ‘Order up that cleaning detail.’ It’ll be fine. We can put a tarp down if you like.”
“Carole has a bed and stuff. She probably doesn’t want it smelling like hogs and cattle.”
“It won’t,” Andy said.
Andy’s uncle didn’t live all that far from Duncan Getty’s place, just two concessions north and on the same side of the river. Wilf could see a full moon riding over the dark hills ahead of him. The sleet from earlier in the day was still lying across the fields in scattered ghostly patches. He rolled down his window and breathed in a frosty stream of air.
“I’m freezing,” Andy said.
Wilf didn’t hear him. He continued to drive along with the window open thinking of Carole. Her bare shoulders in the soft restaurant light.
He took another deep, frosty breath.
And something was moving inside, swimming through his bloodstream. Gone now though. According to Chasson.
To the one side of the car he could see a line of tall trees marching up a hill, still leafless, a darker dark against the sky. And all he wanted to do was to come alive. Feel joy like he once did. And natural affection. And harmless ambition.
“Try to stay on the road. It gets narrow through here,” Andy said.
He was on the threshold of a new beginning. He could feel it. The stone cottage. Butterflies. All he had to do was concentrate on every breath. Get stronger somehow. Hold on to Carole. Keep everything else away. Cruikshank and dead airmen. Basil and a generation slaughtered. Sylvia and Bradley and mothers and children herded onto freight trains, all gone now, black clouds evaporating into a new day now.
“Watch out!”
Wilf corrected his trajectory and slowed the car down. He could hear dogs baying off in the distance somewhere.
Andy grinned. “Ralphie’s out with his hounds again. Young Earl will be with him, too. Hope they cleaned up the truck first.” He pointed out a lane up the road.
Wilf turned into it and tried to settle himself down. There was no settling himself down. “What are they after?”
“Anything that moves. Raccoons, mostly. They’ve got themselves a Blue Tick hound and a Black and Tan bitch. Ralphie’s trying to breed them but they don’t like each other. She’s come into heat twice, but she won’t stand still and after a bit of trying the Blue Tick just goes and lies down. Sounds like Linda and me, I said to Ralphie.”
The car eased over a sharp knoll. “We have company,” Wilf said.
Someone was standing in the middle of the lane holding up a lantern. Wilf came to a stop and Andy rolled down his window. “Ralphie. What are you doing? Are you lost?”
An excited-looking boy of about sixteen came up and peered in through the window. “I just felt like walking up the lane. Couldn’t wait. Dad wants to see you.”
“About the truck?”
Ralphie shook his head. “We just found something. Me and Earl. Dad wants to show you, you being a policeman and all.” Ralphie looked over at Wilf. “Hi there.”
“Ralphie, this is Wilf.”
“Why do you need a policeman?” Wilf asked.
“You’ll see. I’ll hitch a ride on the running board.” Ralphie grasped the top of the open window.
“Hold on,” Andy called out to him, “Wilf’s got his own peculiar way of driving.” He looked over at Wilf and shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”
The house was low slung and rambling and sitting in a frost-tinged valley. Every light was on in the place and a woman was looking out the side door.
“That’s my Aunt Bess. Jesus, I hope Earl didn’t get hurt or anything.”
Wilf stopped the car. Ralphie jumped off the running board and Andy got out.
“Where’s Uncle John?” Wilf could hear Andy asking Ralphie.
“Down in the woods. I’ll show you.”
Wilf got out of the car.
Andy was looking across the yard toward his aunt. “Where’s Earl?”
“Mom won’t let him come out. She says he’s too young.” Ralphie headed off into the dark. Andy waved toward his aunt. She didn’t return his wave or change her expression. She just continued to stare. Ralphie was already halfway around the corner of the barn. “Come on. I’ll show you!” he called back.
Andy started after him.
Wilf leaned against the car and looked back toward the house. The noise the dogs were making was deafening. He could see their dark shapes running up and down in the backyard now, leaping up against a chain-link fence. Aunt Bess was still standing at the door. Wilf knew who had switched on all the lights in the house. And as much as he wanted to resist the thought, he knew why.
Andy was already circling around the barn following Ralphie and his lantern when Wilf turned away from the woman. He walked across the yard, past the barn and out into a wet frosted pasture. Sleet lay in random patches in front of him. He could see fresh dog tracks crossing them here and there, streaking them with flying mud. The hounds had been out and running. He looked off toward Andy and his young cousin. The lantern had come to a stop. The edge of the woods stood out in darker relief against the sky.