A Beauty (21 page)

Running up Main Street, Peg saw the glittering tarpaper strips spiralling off the roof into the dense black smoke and thought her magazine picture had come to life.
Starry Night
, mid-afternoon in Charlesville. She arrived at the hotel in time to see Albert tying his handkerchief over his nose and mouth and going in. He wasn’t entering that inferno as a hero. He was going in to be punished; she knew that by the way he bowed his head.

It was hell he walked into, and he didn’t believe he’d walk out. Yet it was a slow-motion hell, almost peaceful in its own, inevitable way. The centre of the hotel was gone. Emptied, a black, black
hole. Once, he’d seen a shotgun wound, a man who’d been hit in the chest, hollowed out. He thought of that. The staircase skeleton hung like a flimsy ladder leaning into space. Reminded him of himself. Any moment it could fall. And still the fire made a sucking sound as the flames ran up against the remaining structure. And every few seconds something fell from above; chunks of plaster fell, smouldering furniture fell, whole timbers fell. Ashes fell. Hot tar fell. The flames themselves fell. Calmly, he advanced.

You couldn’t tell him, afterwards, that he was a hero, although he got the four out of the hotel alive, dragged them out, unconscious, Beasley and Conrad out the front and the Macklins out the back. It was possible to do that because of the wind. The updraft it created had sucked the worst of the smoke up and out the collapsed roof so that by the time Albert was in, he could breathe. Of course, at the same time, it spread the fire, and most of the south side of Main Street – the hotel, the pool hall, Milt’s Pawn Shop, the Ambassador Café, Verna’s Beauty Salon, and the Capitol Theatre – burned down.

“The burns will heal. The throat – I’m not sure, the next few hours will tell,” the doctor said. “Sometimes the swelling increases and then – well. We’ll do all we can for the pain.”

But he was okay; the critical hours passed. Peg visited him in the hospital and found his mother and his two little girls standing by his bed. His mother gathered the girls like chicks when Peg walked into the ward, and herded them out of harm’s way.

“Don’t go,” Albert whispered, when Peg backed off. “Mother!” he hissed. “Bring the girls here. I want them to meet Peg.”

The little girls hung back by their grandmother, twisting their bodies identically towards her, but she looked her son calmly in the eye, and pushed them forward. They were around eight or nine, only a year apart. They didn’t say a word when Peg said hello. They ducked their heads, their lips shut tight against saying a word, and then their grandmother took them away.

Peg sat down on the chair by Albert’s bed. His nice square hands were thickly bandaged. The side of his face looked as if he had a bad sunburn. His eyebrows and lashes were gone and chunks of his hair were missing. Little black craters peppered his head where cinders and bits of burning tar had dropped on him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, to let air onto the burns that looked like polka dots on his shoulders and down his chest. Beasley and Conrad had the next beds and Mr. Macklin the fourth in the ward. Mr. Macklin was fitfully sleeping; the other two watched Albert and Peg through a dull, drugged haze, ready to hear whatever they had to say to one another. They didn’t say much although Peg stayed for an hour, while Mr. Macklin whimpered and Beasley or Conrad, she didn’t know which, fell asleep and cried out without waking.

Albert closed his eyes after a while; it was to let her go, she knew. She said, “You don’t have to be polite.” He lifted his lids slowly, like a comedian expressing staged surprise. “We’ve gone past that,” she said.

“How do you know?”

She just looked at him. “I’ll do my best to make your girls like me,” she said.

“The boys’ll be easier, except Garth, maybe. He’s the oldest,” he whispered.

“It’s hard to talk, isn’t it? It hurts?”

“Tiring.”

“You rest. I’ll talk.” She went on, quieter. “I’ve been thinking. We’re not going to waste time on guilt over this. Neither one of us. Responsibility is one thing, guilt’s another. You’ve done your time in that department, and I never was any good at it. Maybe they’ll fire you. Or they’ll make you a hero. Likely they will, because it’ll make them feel good about themselves to have a hero among them. It won’t matter to us what they do or what they say.”

Albert nodded. She touched his shoulder, finding an unhurt spot, felt the soft layer of flesh over the muscles, and capitulated. Knew the second it happened. Like a kid crying uncle after fighting an unfair arm-wrestle, knowing it had to end that way. “I love you,” she said.

“Hear, hear,” came from the next bed. She’d spoken louder than she’d intended. She looked up, flustered. But then she laughed.

“Sorry,” Beasley or Conrad muttered.

“Not at all,” she said.

“I’ll introduce you two another day,” Albert rasped.

“I’m going now,” Peg said. “You all need to sleep.”

A nurse came in right then and tapped her watch, although she must have heard what Peg had said. Maybe she hoped for an exasperated sigh or some sign of irritation, but Peg turned to her with a soft, incongruous smile, the kind of smile you just didn’t expect from this short, dark piston of a woman. Some of the starch went out of the nurse; it was almost as if only her stiff uniform held her back from embracing the little woman, even though she knew the gossip about her and believed it.

T
he talk in Virginia Valley was all about the Royal George in Charlesville. Gossip about the event had spread as fast as any fire, and everyone was free in speculating the cause and even the results, as if those were variable and unverifiable, too. Jerry Wong heard at least six different versions of what had happened.

In those days you would seldom come across a silent person. It was deemed unfriendly, perhaps suspicious, to keep your thoughts to yourself. People would accuse you of moping, if they knew you, and of being stuck-up if they didn’t. So the man who’d arrived in town stood out. He would have been noteworthy on a day when there was no news. Even for a stranger, he was taciturn. Jerry’s brother-in-law remarked on him and Jerry glanced out the window they’d cut into the wall between the restaurant and the kitchen so people could watch them cook and see that no stray cats went into the chop suey. The man was eating with a quiet solemnity that could have been copied by other clientele, in Jerry’s opinion. He was a tall, dry man, looked as if he didn’t sweat, and if so, he was the only one in the valley who wasn’t, today.
A blistering sun had set itself up over them; it must have been a hundred degrees in the shade. He’d ordered a Denver sandwich, the cheapest thing on the menu. No coffee, just a glass of water – meant he couldn’t afford the coffee. Jerry picked up the pot. Cups and saucers were always left on the tables.

“On the house,” he said.

The man tipped his head politely. His grey hair flared silver in the light coming in from the window. In the few seconds after those eyes looked up, they looked alarmed, and that surprised Jerry. He would have thought this was a man you couldn’t easily rattle. He turned to see what was going on behind him. Nothing in the restaurant was different from before, but outside a vehicle had pulled up in front of the hotel. Two Mounties were climbing out.

“Ah,” Jerry said. In a second he made up his mind. “Come.” He pointed the way to the door tucked behind the screen; it was the door that led from the restaurant to the back of the hotel. He walked behind the man, as if his smaller body could hide him from the Mounties’ eyes if they came in before he and the man had made their exit. He led the man up to a vacant bedroom and left him there.

He was back downstairs in less than a minute. He didn’t worry about appearing out of breath. Chinamen were always hurrying, bustling around, trying to give the best service. It was one of the things, he thought, that made them ridiculous.

They ordered lemon meringue pie and coffee, their faces wet and raw-beef-red above their tight collars. Jerry’s brother-in-law watched him deal with them, and said nothing. Just before they’d arrived, the informal afternoon men’s group, ranging anywhere from three mostly old geezers to eight or nine of all ages, had departed. The man was lucky, there. The only other occupied table was two girls, teenagers who’d made their Cokes last a long
time. Their pop bottles were drained, the paper straws sagging over their glasses. Before he brought the pie and coffee out, Jerry got his brother-in-law to go to the girls’ table and take their bottles and glasses away. Then he glided up to the Mounties with the pie in two plates along his left arm and the pot in his right hand. He heard the girls’ chairs scrape. He apologized for the pie as he set it down. “Too hot for meringue,” he said. “It so weepy it got golden teardrops.” He often found it useful to speak as people expected him to. He knew the men, although not by name. They were from the detachment in Charlesville. Probably they were the whole detachment. They didn’t stop the girls from leaving. They asked him if he’d seen any strangers yesterday or today.

“Tall old man,” he said. “Earlier.” He wasn’t going to get into any trouble if he could avoid it, and they’d be sure to find out the man had been in Virginia Valley as soon as they asked around.

“We’re investigating the fire, you’ll have heard of it? At the hotel in Charlesville. Following up on suspicious persons. You’ll let us know if you see him again.”

He backed away from the table as obsequiously as he knew how, thinking of himself as if he were in a movie, one of those stupid characters who aids the villain against the honourable Mounted Police – and against all reason, because in the movies the Mounties always got their man. Those stupid characters could get themselves killed; the villain might find it advantageous to get them out of the way, or they could get caught in the crossfire during a shootout. Theirs was a useless, foolish, laughable nobility. Jerry didn’t concern himself with that. He knew people. He might not always spot a villain, but he knew a good man when he saw one.

“I have no money to spare,” the man said when Jerry went to tell him he’d better stay overnight and maybe wait a few days, not
take the ferry any too soon because the Mounties could be there, waiting for him at the river.

“It’s okay,” Jerry said. “Every once in a while I do something for nothing.”

The man inclined his head. His shoulders sagged. He said, “I’m looking for my daughter.”

“The one in the gold car, eh?” Jerry said, realizing who the man looked like.

Mr. Huhtala stayed at the Windsor two nights. There was no problem about a room; they hadn’t used the No Vacancy sign for years. If not for the restaurant, the hotel would have failed long ago. Jerry got to know the Mounties pretty well in that time. He fed them their every meal, although they slept at the Balmoral. Maybe they were spreading the bounty around. He got a kick out of them. The older was about forty; the other, nearer twenty and still the earnest young recruit, didn’t know the older fellow was baiting him, setting him up for his own amusement as they discussed “the case.” The younger guy had explained their theory that the hotel fire had been deliberately set by Communist agitators. The older Mountie had sat back in his chair and picked at a pimple on his chin and said the truth was they were just hanging around Virginia Valley because nobody for miles around made better pie.

Jerry knew that by holding out on them, he was going against what would have been his wife’s wishes. If she’d been here, she’d have wanted him to turn the man in. She was a timid woman, always anxious to stay out of trouble, always seeing danger around every corner. If she’d been here, she’d have begged him to think of his reputation; she’d have called him reckless. Of course, she’d
lived through worse times in China than he had here, the last dozen years, and he supposed she had a right to worry he was risking the business. She wouldn’t have understood he was adding to his own private stature, or she wouldn’t have cared about that.

He didn’t get to know Mr. Huhtala very well, and he hadn’t expected he would. He wasn’t a man you’d question. On the third day, the Mounties didn’t appear at noon. Jerry asked around and found out they’d been called back to Charlesville, to a shooting accident. A woman, apparently unused to handling a rifle, had shot herself and was dying. Mr. Huhtala asked who she was, but Jerry didn’t know. The name hadn’t been released yet.

“You can take the afternoon ferry,” Jerry said.

“Mr. Wong,” he said, “I will pay you back, some day, for your kindness. I’m sorry I can spare nothing now. I have about enough for the ferry.”

It was awkward to offer to lend him money, but Jerry did offer, then.

“No, my friend. I’ll hitchhike after that. I can pick up odd jobs along the way. It’s what I’ve been doing the past weeks.” He went to the window. “I believe a young fellow who drives a Lincoln will be heading for the city,” he said.

By the time they walked down to the water for the five o’clock departure, word of the shooting incident in Charlesville had spread all over the southwest part of the province, and Jerry was able to tell Mr. Huhtala the name of the woman who had killed herself. Amy Sparrow, a housewife who’d thought she’d clean her husband’s rifle, or that was the official story.

Mr. Huhtala bowed his head. “I shouldn’t be relieved,” he said. “But I am.”

“You were worried about someone you knew,” Jerry said.

“It wasn’t someone I knew well.”

“People are gossiping,” Jerry said. “They say there was trouble between this Mrs. Sparrow and her husband, over another woman. They say she did it to show them.” He hesitated. “Do you think that’s what makes a person –?” It was impossible to go on and yet he was sure Mr. Huhtala knew the answer.

“To cause pain? To show them? No, my friend, I think it is just hopelessness, you know?” For a moment, he looked as if he might say more, even as if he might reach out a hand and lay it on Jerry’s arm, but he didn’t.

Jerry nodded slowly, judiciously. He’d noticed himself using Mr. Huhtala’s gestures, his tone of voice and even his rhythms. He felt he was thinking like the man. He wanted to say, “I hope you find your daughter,” but Mr. Huhtala would not have said that.