It's time for the talk...
Chapter Seventeen
Jean and Polly were clearing up…
Jean and Polly were clearing up after a delicious meal of fried chicken and salad, mashed potatoes and gravy. Jean was scraping stuff off into the garbage, and loading the plates into the modern, built-in dishwasher. Miss Andrews was clearing the dishes and cups from the table and stacking them beside the sink.
She took the tablecloth out of the back door and shook it off outside.
Jean mentioned something about doing a laundry as Polly put the kettle on, rustling around. She put a bunch of cookies on a plate and set it on the table. She had a color TV in the kitchen. Polly snapped it on and tuned it to a popular game show. She and Jean sat there watching for a couple of minutes.
Soon a few letters had been revealed. Someone was buying a vowel.
“Hah. A fortune cookie.” Jean was pretty sure.
Sure enough, he was right.
“That’s pretty good.” She would have gotten it in a while, though. “Jean. I think this is a good time to talk.”
He sighed.
“Yes, I suppose we have to.”
“In a sense, I’ve been tied here.” She began in introspective mode. “First I was tied to your great-grandmother, and then to the house itself.”
She explained further.
“Independence might be nice, but then freedom might not be all it’s cracked up to be.”
This brought a small smile to the listener.
“I can afford my house trailer in Florida. But it’s the reality, the very suddenness, even though I’ve been planning this, or at least thought I had, for many years.”
She was sixty-three years old, she told Jean, and had never been married. She had been looking after his great-grandmother for the last fifteen years of her life, then almost two more years alone in the place. Two years alone, cooped up with a series of seemingly inconsequential memories of someone else’s life, lived vicariously, as if through binoculars.
“I sometimes wish I could take a couple of steps back, and look at myself differently.” She said that it might be helpful...
For the old girl to pick up and move off to Florida might be kind of a frightening prospect. In a sense, she had been in a prison of her own mind for many years, and freedom was maybe more a kind of fantasy than anything else.
Now that her opportunity was here, she was at a loss as for what to do with it.
Freedom, what a concept.
“Well, I kind of assume that I can’t keep the house.” He was frank with Polly. “To divide it up into little bachelor apartments would be somehow appalling. And it would take money.”
He went silent.
“I agree with that.”
“I don’t know what kind of a job or income it would take for a single man to support such a pile of a building.” He went on. “I don’t know. Maybe a bed and breakfast, or maybe some kind of antique store?”
“One reason for the high property evaluation, was the fact that the contents of the house are included.” Polly submitted this for his consideration. “There are no mortgage payments. It’s just feeding the place.”
He had never really thought of it. It should have been obvious. She seemed like a sensible woman.
“Then the initial stock will come from the house.” Jean allowed with a deep sigh, in the case of an antique store. “And I mean seriously. The Jaguar in the garage was a shocker.”
She nodded.
“While I would need to go to my trailer for a while, I have no idea of whether I might actually like it.” Polly sat there sort of hugging herself unconsciously. “I will be alone in a strange town, after all. Then there’s the hospitalization.”
Jean understood, you had to retain residency or something. Besides, she would get an old age cheque, fill out tax forms. That sort of thing was complex and intimidating to the elderly or even the uninitiated. They sat there thinking it through and talking it out.
***
Not too far from town, Harry and Slick were cruising along discussing the situation.
Slick found himself bending low, to peer upwards from under the rim of the windshield, trying to identify a big white filmy-looking thing in the top of a roadside tree, barren of leaves but not without a stark beauty all its own.
“Look.” He gasped and Harry tried as best he could to locate it.
“Holy fuck, a great snowy owl.” Harry watched in a kind of fascination, perhaps even love. “Wonder what a taxidermist would pay for that.”
As the vehicle braked to a halt, the big bird lurched off the far side of the limb it sat upon, and dropped away, wings slowly flapping in confident rhythm. It moved a hundred metres, then began curving back in to check out another roadside tree branch.
“There were these two vultures sitting on a branch overlooking Death Valley.” Harry had always loved this story. “One of them turns to the other and says, patience my ass, I’m going to go kill something.”
Slick nodded appreciatively. The owl was a good portent for the future. It was an omen. He put the vehicle in drive and moved off again, reaching over from time to time to sip from his cardboard cup of coffee, resting snug beside the ash tray.
There weren’t too many squirrels outside of town. They were mostly city dwellers, but he did notice one or two as they drove. He always had the window down a bit. Crows clacked and cawed, over behind a red-painted barn. The older buildings were becoming rarer, but there were still a few of them around. The modern ones were all slab-sided with pre-coated metal siding. That old, distinctive barn roofline would eventually become a thing of the past.
“If that Frenchie goes out in the woods, he’s going to stick out like a sore thumb.” Slick finally broke the subject. “Everyone else will be on a snow machine, or a quad runner.”
“That’s true. But then he’ll hear everything coming for miles.” After a moment of silence, and a deep sigh, Harry went on. “Don’t this beat all.”
Harry: Don't this beat all.
“Yeah.”
They had agreed to take over at seven, tomorrow morning. They both had cell-phones, all the trucks had CB radios, and Harry was supposed to show up first thing with a minimum of a half-tank of gas in his pickup. It was supposed to be a twelve-hour shift. Twelve hours in the vehicle with Harry. Well, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t endured before. The worst part was that Harry would be driving. He chucked a cigarette butt and rolled up the window.
The snowy owl sat on its branch, watching the truck slowly proceed down the muddy side road. It was almost like he didn’t trust it. Then he dropped off the branch again, and swooped along, just under the murk of low-hanging dark clouds, colorless and monochromatic. Silent air currents supported his body and made his maneuvers crisp, yet stealthy, sudden yet smooth.
Suppleness and grace rode the burgeoning breezes.
Drifting flurries fell to earth at an oblique angle, shimmering in the errant sunbeams cutting through blue shafts in the cumulus above. Harry and Slick cruised along, taking it all in. The four had agreed not to hunt individually, but to focus on this one thing for a while. After some discussion, they had decided not to bring in anyone else.
There were no rifles or shotguns in the truck. They weren’t taking any chances. They were just killing time. The rasping, grinding noise of the truck’s wheels squelching through gravel and puddles echoed, then faded off into the foggy morning stillness. Both men had doubts, those doubts included whether they would actually get the chance. If only they got the opportunity, they were sure they could make it happen. The only question was when? How long would they have to wait?
“One thing that keeps coming back to me is that fuckin’ Frenchie was in that canyon.” Harry considered other possibilities. “I suppose that could just be a coincidence.”
Slick didn’t know, and he didn’t think just staking out the canyon was a good idea.
“We have to watch him like a hawk. Sooner or later he’s bound to catch on. If we’re going to do it, we’d better do it right.” Slick had an ominous feeling, and then yet another thought. “We don’t want one of them dummies to kill him. One of them fuckin’ dummies will probably kill him before he can even talk—then is it worth it?”
Harry thought that over for a while. What if Gagnon died or something, and they didn’t even get any money out of it?
“That’s what I’m saying. We have to do it right. It’s not worth doing it, and then just fucking it up. We all got to know our part. That’s what I’m saying.”
Slick: What if one of them dummies kills him? What then.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Jesus.” Morden agreed, absolutely, in his own words. “But that’s the way it is, if you want your hundred and twenty-five grand.”
How could Slick argue with that kind of logic? It’s not going to happen, but if it does, you get a bag of cash. It all sounded so simple, perhaps too simple. Slick knew for sure it wouldn’t be so easy. It couldn’t be. It all came down to a question of luck.
END
Images. Louis.
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