Cadillac Cathedral (17 page)

The sky above was clear enough, the few white clouds moving quickly, as though in a hurry to get out of his way.

Today the sidewalks were crowded with visitors in loud flowered shirts, wide shorts, and sunburned noses — window-shopping, or comparing purchases with other tourists, or studying maps laid out against the walls of their gigantic travel-homes. Some licked at icecream cones. The largest tourists shoved greasy chips into their mouths with a sense of urgency that made Arvo think of shoving dry kindling into a stove where the fire was in danger of dying out. He supposed most of them would have asked for “fries” rather than “chips” since they’d have gravitated towards the shops that were identical to the ones they were used to below the border.

Through the spaces between tall glass hotels and squat motels you could see that the tide was out, the bay a wide flat expanse of grey wet sand and shallow rivulets of left-behind water and gleaming ribbons of purple kelp. Here and there, couples walked out towards the foaming waves. Children crouched to shovel sand into their buckets, probably crabs as well.

The restaurant where he was to meet up with Peterson was a former cookhouse still sitting on the skid logs it had been built upon in one of the early logging camps. Some time ago it had been hauled down here, given a new metal roof, and placed near the entrance to the outdoor logging museum — a few acres of woods with a collection of donkey engines, antiquated tools, and ancient trucks on display.

Peterson’s Henry J was parked near the cookhouse door, beside a Dodge pickup and a pale green ’89 Honda identical to the one he’d fixed up for Cynthia.

Of course it was Cynthia’s license plate number. And it was Cynthia who hailed him from near the restaurant entrance. “I stopped just now when I saw the Henry J and was about to go in but couldn’t see the hearse,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

“Off the beaten path,” Arvo said. “Decided to sneak up on this place sort of sidelong, like a wary old hound.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cynthia said, smiling up at him. “You tend to come at most things that way — as though you think the rest of us might bite. A good thing I recognized Bert’s car or I’d have gone flying past and disappeared from the world.”

Wild honeysuckle grew thick along the picket fence on either side of the entrance to a pathway into the woods. The smell was sweet in this afternoon sun.

She’d changed her clothes since they’d left her behind. Instead of her usual slacks and hanging-out shirt, she was wearing a skirt, with a pale blue jacket over a white blouse. She’d even put on a little makeup. Either she’d driven home from town to change or she’d borrowed these clothes from her sister. In either case she was more “dressed-up” than he seen her since Henry died.

“You haven’t chased me down to nag about California?”

“Not necessarily.” She looked away and raised her chin as though she might have resented his question. “It’s just that sometimes I can’t stand to be left out of things.”

“Well then, shall we go in and eat? I think I can smell something good wafting out from the old cookhouse.”

As they crossed the crunching pea-gravel towards the restaurant he mentioned that he was surprised her flowers had still not bloomed. “In the back there, with the coffin.”

“Of course they wouldn’t have,” Cynthia said. “Not before they’re
there
!”

“Oh.” You sometimes couldn’t be sure that Cynthia was being playful.

“They have a way of knowing.” Apparently she was serious now. “You’ll see. They’ll come out all of a sudden, expecting applause.”

Cynthia was a woman whose mischievous eyes suggested she knew things that others could barely imagine, things that could not be explained in mere language. She could read in your tea leaves that a close relative of yours was about to die, and predict the hour of death, but would refuse to give you a name. She engaged in conversations with the flowers and vegetables in her garden much as others did with their pets, and claimed that she could sometimes learn from them about deficiencies in her soil or the foolishness of planting certain flowers against the northern wall of her house. It wasn’t surprising that Cynthia would grow flowers with minds of their own, deciding for themselves when they would bloom.

Cynthia had known immediately that the woman from Thunder Bay would be trouble. Naturally she’d hesitated before mentioning this, but afterwards apologized for not warning him. Though you shouldn’t take Cynthia’s predictions too seriously, you probably shouldn’t be foolish enough to ignore them altogether.

He often wondered if she’d taken this tendency to predict the future into the classroom with her.
Your handwriting hints at a career in espionage. Those bread-crusts you’re not eating tell me you’ll end up working in a bank. I’d eat them if I were you, since math is not your strength
.

This restaurant had begun life as a floating cook-house on Axel Anderson Lake. It had looked then much as it did now, except that it had rested on floating logs beside a row of floating bunkhouses. The
hillside there was too steep to build on — though it was perfect for dragging the logs down to the water’s edge. Arvo had eaten his “grub” in this building a few times, years ago, when he’d taken the Company boat up the lake in order to see what could be done about a yarding machine’s engine, and had stayed long enough to dismantle and completely rebuild it.

From the doorway, he could see Lucy at a large table in the back corner, examining her nails. Peterson had his elbows on the table while his raised fork emphasized some point he was making for Curly and Maureen Hagen. Curly wore the large straw hat he’d worn since returning last winter from Mexico. You could almost forget he was bald. Even from this distance it was possible to see that Maureen’s hair was a sort of auburn today. She liked to change her hair to suit the clothes she’d chosen to wear. One day a blonde, the next a brunette. Arvo didn’t want to think what colour she went to bed with at night. It was even possible that both of them slept bald. Two shining globes on their pillows.

“About time,” Curly said, standing to shake hands. “We were about to give up on you.”

Maureen stayed seated and lowered her sunglasses to look over the top at the late arrivals. “Where have you been? The rest of us have eaten. Me and Curly have to be on our way.”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Curly said to his wife. “Arvo is driving a hearse. It’s a miracle he got here at all.”

“You’re leaving?” Cynthia said, when Maureen rose from her chair.

“Honey, we’re heading the same direction as you,” Maureen said, offering Cynthia her chair. “I need my city clothes-store fix. And we’ve got tickets to a concert tonight. We’ve eaten and had a good visit with Bert and, uh, Lucy. So now we have to run.”

“Hnnnn,” Lucy said, without looking up from her nails.

“Fiddle concert,” Curly explained.

“Andy Carmichael’s bunch are in it,” Peterson explained to Arvo. “Curly showed me the program.”

“Here you go,” Curly said, passing a leaflet across the table. “It’s in a church. We’re on somebody’s mailing list. I may still talk her out of going.”

This was identical to the program Carmichael’s granddaughter had shoved into his pocket. He passed Curly’s to Cynthia and dug out his own. On the front of the folded paper was someone’s sketch of a tall stone church with a tower and a wide bank of steps up to the front doors. When Iris’s tickets fell out on his lap — there were four — he slipped them back into his shirt pocket. Inside, the program promised a junior fiddle orchestra, three songs:
Big John McNeil, The Merry Blacksmith, Celtic Thunder
— unfamiliar titles. A senior fiddle orchestra, four songs, equally unfamiliar. Wilf Carter followed immediately after the intermission, singing ‘The Blue Canadian Rockies.’

“Wilf Carter?” Arvo said.

“An impersonator of course,” Maureen said. Her tone of voice said,
We’re not fools
. Then she put a hand on Curly’s arm. “Darling, we need to go.”

Iris Carmichael and her Old Time Band were the last act before the intermission.
I am a Man of Constant Sorrow
, was their first song.
Let Us Gather at the River
followed. That bloody river again.
Killing Floor Blues
and other songs were not familiar. The titles could explain why some were willing to throw themselves into the river.

Once Curly and Maureen had left, Arvo began to study the menu for something he could imagine eating. A plate of fried oysters? He was in the mood for something substantial.

“Herbie stayed outside?” Peterson said.

Cynthia looked up from the menu, confused. “Good heavens! I didn’t think. What have you done with Herbie?”

“He refused to come,” Arvo said. To Peterson he added, “He figured you two were thinking of getting back together and didn’t want him underfoot.”

Lucy sighed and crossed her arms.

“He stayed behind at Sandy Macgregor’s,” Arvo said. “Made arrangements to stay in an old dump of a neglected motel. He probably never intended to come the whole way.”

“Dammit,” Peterson said to Lucy. “We shouldn’t’ve talked in front of him.”

“We decided.” Lucy’s fierce glare was aimed at Arvo.

“Dammit anyway!” Peterson said. Now Arvo was the one at fault. “I’ll have to go back and get him.”

Heads turned at other tables. What terrible crime had someone committed? Chairs scraped the floor so people could turn to see better. Cynthia bowed her head and closed her eyes.

“Herbie’s a grown-up,” Lucy said. “He’s doing what he wants.”

“Shsh!” — from a nearby table.

“He’s doing what
you
want,” Peterson said to Lucy. He turned his fiercest frown on Arvo, his face an unhealthy grey. “You were supposed to keep an eye on him.”

“No,” Arvo said, keeping his voice as level as he could manage. “
You
were supposed to keep an eye on him, but you let someone scare him out of your car. He’d rather be in Macgregor’s old motel than be treated like someone you could throw away so easy.”

“That’s it — blame
me
!” Lucy said.

A waiter hovered behind Cynthia’s chair, clearing his throat, obviously unsure how to put a stop to this.

“Shee-oot!” Peterson said, pushing back his chair to get to his feet. “I’ll have to go back and get him.”

“Sit down,” Arvo said. “He won’t leave — not if it means being the third person in the house.”

Cynthia leaned forward to address Peterson “You’ll be able to have it out with Herbie on the way home.”

Teacher had spoken. Peterson sat but did not remove his angry glare from Arvo.

Suddenly Curly was back, his hand on Arvo’s shoulder. “Don’t want to alarm you, but if that old hearse is the one Peterson told us about, you might want to go out and check. A couple of youngsters look a little more interested than I think they should be.”

From the cookhouse steps Arvo could see that the Cathedral hearse was still parked where he’d left it, but a youth in a black T-shirt leaned in as though to study the instrument panel. Near the back, a boy with orange hair peered in through the glass with hands to either side of his face. Maybe he hoped for a glimpse of a corpse, or the sound of desperate knocking from inside the coffin.

“I’ll leave them to you,” Curly said. “We’ve gotta go. You could just shout to scare them off.”

Curly could have done the shouting himself, but didn’t. Arvo didn’t plan to shout but started across the noisy gravel taking long strides, just another diner heading for his car.

Three stout men stepped out of a silver Corolla, all laughing, all slamming doors,
thunk, thunk, thunk
! A remote lock beeped after they’d started towards the cookhouse entrance.

It didn’t look as though these two boys were planning to push the hearse in order to jump-start it. This would have been just about impossible anyway, in this loose gravel. And he could see no tow truck waiting to haul it away.

They could hardly be blamed for their curiosity. At their age, given the chance, he would have had his nose under the hood. He would have gone down on his back to examine the undercarriage. But would have kept an eye peeled for the owner. These two did not seem worried about being caught.

“You boys planning a funeral?”

“Jeeeeez!” Whether he had reason to feel guilty or not, the boy leapt back from the rear windows. “You scared me!”

They were young — fourteen, fifteen. Neither of them would have a driver’s license.

“I hope you weren’t planning to take her for a joyride,” Arvo said. “You could run faster than this old thing at top speed.”

He’d made sure he sounded serious but of course he could not help but grin. Unless his smile seemed somehow evil they would know he was teasing. Even so, the freckled red-head who’d been studying the controls had flushed up scarlet. “Just admiring her, sir. You don’t get many chances to see one as old as this.”

“Well I’m almost disappointed I didn’t catch you trying to get ’er started,” Arvo said. “I could’ve opened up that empty coffin back there and accused you of stealing a corpse — just to see the looks on your faces.”

“There’s nobody in the box?” the boy at the windows said, clearly disappointed.

“It could have been something to tell your friends. Accused of stealing a corpse.”

His tool kit was still on the floor where he’d left it. Of course Herbie’s duffel bag was with Herbie, back in that run-down motel.

By the time the boys had gone off down the trail through the woods and he’d started back towards the restaurant, several women were spilling out through the front door and down the steps to the gravel, where they embraced and said goodbye to one another. When they’d dispersed, one of them started across the parking lot towards him.

She might have been his own age, he supposed, dressed smartly in a green dress, her hair a tidy silver helmet. “I saw you inside and
thought
you looked a bit familiar but now that we’re in the sunlight
I’m sure of it. We were in school together. Weren’t we?” She laughed a rather apologetic laugh. “Ages ago, of course! It isn’t that you look the same! But there is
something
. Arthur? Artie? I hope I’m not making a fool of myself.”