Cadillac Cathedral (18 page)

“Arvo,” he said. “But I’m afraid …” Of course he could not admit that he found nothing familiar about her.

“Of course! Arvo. We were in the same class for a while. In the earliest years. Across the aisle at least once. But you must have moved away. At least you weren’t still with us in high school. I was Gabriella Morris.” She held out a hand for him to take, or shake, or — it turned out — to feel her brief light touch. “Gabby.”

He had no recollection of a Gabby Morris, or of any girl who might have grown up to look like this woman — slight, expensively dressed. But still, there was something. Her eyes, maybe.

He explained that he no longer lived in the city, that his parents had taken him north to the country. “Retired now,” he said.

“Like the rest of us.” There seemed to be a note of regret in her voice. She crossed the gravel space beside the hearse, fished a gadget from her purse, and caused a beep to happen in the long silver Jaguar parked a few metres away. But before opening the door to get in, she turned back. “Did I only imagine you were chasing those boys away from that hearse a moment ago?”

“You didn’t imagine it. You may have witnessed two boys being saved from a life of crime.”

She abandoned her car, leaving its door open, and crossed to place a hand on the front fender of the Cathedral hearse. She had long nails painted green and several rings on her fingers. She may have had several marriages since they had been in school together. In any case, she had apparently accumulated some wealth.

“I remember this, or one just like it,” she said. “When I was a girl. I don’t suppose you remember who …”

“Myrtle Birdsong was in my class. Our class.”

“So you took over the business. Well no, of course you couldn’t have! The building was torn down some time after the old man died — replaced by yet another ugly condo.”

“But the family home is still there. The daughter …”

“Yes, of course. She has a relative of some sort living with her, I think.” She allowed a moment of silence to pass while she stared at him. “You’re not taking this to
her
.” It was not so much a question as an expression of alarm.

He did not want to risk having her phone the Birdsong household. “As you could see in the restaurant, I’m travelling with friends. A test run for the hearse. It’s possible it may need more work before I, say, offer it to a museum — which is where it belongs.” A lie that had occurred to him only now, since something like it seemed to be needed.

Gabby Morris decided to forgive him. “I’m relieved to hear it. If a man drove a hearse up to my doorstep, no matter how old or beautiful, it would be a shock.”

She slid in behind the Jaguar’s steering wheel and pulled the door closed. The engine roared into life. The tires crackled in the gravel as she backed out of the parking spot and swung to the right, then moved forward slowly towards the exit, preparing to join the highway traffic.

He hadn’t been aware that Cynthia had come up behind him until she’d put a hand on his arm. “Someone we know?”

“A rich woman admiring the hearse,” Arvo said.

As the Jaguar lurched onto the highway pavement its rear tires shot gravel out behind.

“She wasn’t trying to steal it?”

“A couple of boys were only admiring it,” he said.

“We could have used my car to chase them.” She looked as though she regretted that it hadn’t happened this way. An adventure.

“Yes,” Arvo said. She was grinning, maybe a little too hard. “But that doesn’t mean you’d be rewarded with that trip to California.”

“Well, I could have been satisfied with a drive to, say, Moose Jaw, where I have a cousin I haven’t seen for forty years.”

“I’ve been told that Moose Jaw is a friendly town,” Arvo said as they started back towards the entrance, “but it isn’t high on my list.” He’d worked, once, with a mechanic who’d come from Moose Jaw and referred to all other Saskatchewan towns by similar names he’d invented:
Cougar Crotch, Partridge Piss, Turkey Turds, Saskatchewan
.

“Well,” Cynthia said, starting back towards the restaurant steps.

Arvo caught up to walk beside her. “Did Peterson say anything more about going back for Herbie?”

“He did. But somebody kicked him under the table and he decided to wait till we’re on our way home.”

CHAPTER 11

WHERE THE HIGHWAY
was about to plunge downhill and disappear beneath dense forest, Arvo pulled over onto the gravel shoulder and stopped to take in the view. Also to catch his breath. His chest had begun to behave as though he’d run the whole distance from home. Nervous, he supposed, now that he was finally about to go down into Myrtle Birdsong’s city.

Only if you’d been this way before could you be sure the road would take you somehow through the forest to suburban blocks of condos, shopping malls and gas stations that attended your journey towards the city centre. In the distance, a few of the city’s towers rose high enough above the forest canopy to suggest their destination was
still where it was supposed to be. The curve of ocean beyond the city was barely distinguishable from the wide clear sky.

He had returned now and then since the move to Portuguese Creek — to visit an optometrist, to look for rare parts for an abandoned Citroen, to see a movie set in Finland that he knew would not be shown closer to home — but he had never approached the city with this uneasy sense that had taken up residence in his gut.

Well of course he’d known all along that he might eventually see this whole journey as something of a fool’s errand. So long as arriving at the city had been only imagined it had seemed a legitimate destination: his childhood home, the original home of the Cathedral hearse, the city where Myrtle Birdsong had grown up and married and become a widow in his absence.

And where, of course, she might not be even slightly interested in her father’s hearse. Not everyone was sentimental about a remembered childhood or a father’s occupation. She might even resent his assumption that she’d be happy to have the Cadillac returned.

She might have remarried, though the woman with the Jaguar had suggested a relative may be living with her. After the unhappy marriage to her father’s assistant she may have become distrustful of all men, a woman determined to resist any reminders of the past. She may have become a recluse who would open the door to him with one hand restraining a snarling dog intent on sinking its fangs into his throat.

A ridiculous picture — at least he hoped it was. But he knew that he did not feel as brave now as he’d felt as the boy who turned the pages of her music and helped her clean up her science experiments.

Of course she could ask what had taken him so long. Why should she be pleased that it had taken him so many years to come down to see her, and, even at that had waited until he had an excuse that
depended upon her affectionate memory of her father? He could expect to be no more welcome than a total stranger who’d found the hearse abandoned on the side of the road with a
Please return to
note on the seat.

The women in her book club or her gardening circle would have a good laugh at his expense.
Imagine the nerve! Did he think you’d been wasting away all these years, dreaming of his return? A country hick! Was there cow manure on his boots?

If he could decide that he was only doing a favour for a remembered classmate he might relax a little. There would be nothing then at stake. And there was nothing to say he couldn’t still change his mind at the last minute and decide to go nowhere near Myrtle Birdsong but simply drive to the hospital and pick up Martin Glass. Since the others didn’t know of his plan, they would never know that he’d cancelled it.

Cynthia’s Honda had pulled off the road and stopped behind him. He supposed she might have guessed there was something about this journey he hadn’t shared with her.

“Oh my — this view is beautiful!” she said, slamming her door. Cynthia had a way of behaving as though the world’s every surprise was a gift meant especially for her. At a time like this you could imagine how she must have looked as a twelve-year-old girl.

For a moment they watched a pair of tilted white sails moving side-by-side along the bulging coast.

“You must be relieved,” she said. “You probably wondered if that old thing could bring you this far without some sort of disaster.”

“I’ve kept my fingers crossed.”

“Well,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “It can’t be easy, puttering along in something so slow. I have to keep reminding myself not to be impatient. After all, nobody begged me to come.”

This was true, of course, but now he found it hard to believe they hadn’t invited her to come along. She had often described herself as “just one of the guys.” It was clear, now, that she was enjoying this as she might a true adventure.

When the Henry J had returned to see why the hearse and Cynthia’s car had both disappeared from the rear-view mirror, Peterson and Lucy got out to stretch limbs and calculate aloud how much longer it would take them to get there.

“The chance of running into police will be greater,” Peterson said. “We better keep our eyes peeled.” He leapt across the ditch, walked the length of a dead log with his arms out for balance, then jumped down to push his way through huckleberry bushes and disappear into woods.

“Needs to pee,” Lucy said. She stood on one foot to remove a small stone from her shoe.

Soon, the Henry J again led the parade, with the
SLOW VEHICLE FOLLOWING
sign out front and with Lucy sitting in Herbie’s passenger seat. Cynthia’s Honda brought up the rear with
SORRY WE’RE GOING AS FAST AS WE CAN
removed from the hearse and attached to her rear bumper.

Arvo was not sorry to have the Cadillac to himself. This was how he’d left home; this was how he would arrive. And being alone gave him an opportunity to try sorting out his confused thoughts after that conversation with the woman who drove the Jaguar. If she were Myrtle Birdsong she would probably phone the police. Should he telephone first, to prepare her? Should he wait for morning?

Should he, maybe, forget the whole idea?

The road led them downhill to wind their way through woods and alongside a rushing river and past a roaring white waterfall and a few clusters of houses sitting in clearings carved out of the forest.
But the descent itself seemed to increase the mix of anxiety and anticipation that had set up residence in his stomach.

He did not want to think about the hospital morgue. He especially didn’t want to think about Martin laid out in the morgue. To imagine Martin in a hospital bed had been bad enough, especially when the hospital was this far from home. What was even worse was having to ask yourself, now, why you hadn’t come down to visit while Martin was still alive. Well, he’d been in that hospital for only a few days, which hadn’t seemed so long at the time. If he’d been there a week you might have driven down to visit. You certainly hadn’t thought you’d be driving down to take him home in a box.

Eventually the road broke free from forest to enter the first serious evidence of civilization: a cluster of houses on either side of a Corner Store. A traffic light, and then a large shopping mall. At the first service station on his side of the road, Arvo pulled in by the gas pumps, with Cynthia right behind him. By the time Peterson and Lucy had come back to see why the others were once again no longer behind them, Arvo was making use of the water hose to rid the hearse of the dust accumulated during Herbie’s detour.

“This is a good place to get ourselves some ice,” Peterson said. “It’s going to be a long drive home for a corpse.”

“But not tonight,” Arvo said. He had glanced at his watch and done some calculating. It was late afternoon already. “We’re too late to pick up Martin today and get all the way home before dark. We can thank Herbie for that. We might as well find ourselves a motel and get Martin in the morning.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry,” Peterson said. “This driving slow takes more out of a person than I’d thought.”

“Let us hope for a motel with more than one available room,” Arvo said. He hoped, in fact, for three or four.

“What you really mean is you want to go to the fiddle concert,” Cynthia said. “A chance to see the Carmichaels in action!”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Lucy said. “On a Friday night, when most of the stores’ll be open?”

Arvo recognized that something in him had relaxed. “I’ll phone the hospital first thing tomorrow,” he said. “Let them know we’ll be by to pick up Martin.” He glanced at his watch. “There’s probably nobody at the morgue this time of day.”

“Nobody alive, anyway,” Lucy said.

He would put off stopping by Myrtle’s place until morning.

With most of the dust washed from the hearse, he could see that despite the few dents and scratches, the vehicle still looked rather exotic — and was beautiful or unusual enough to have drawn an admiring crowd that applauded as he pulled away from the pumps to drive ahead and park in front of the long white two-storey motel next door. Peterson pulled up beside him and offered to go in and see what was available.