Smoke River (9 page)

Mitch felt keenly then how different he is from his son, whose limbs are long and flexible. It took an unaccustomed thrust of his shoulder to get his short arm to extend upward to the cool neck of his quarry. When he gripped the bottle, there was a sudden, jabbing pain. In reflex, Mitch yanked back his arm. The bottle of Scotch flew downwards and bounced off the counter to the tile floor. If there’s a sound that can break a man’s heart, it is the simultaneous
thunk
and
crack
of an unopened bottle of pricy Scotch hitting unforgiving slate. His centre of gravity shifted, the spill on the counter added glide, and seconds later, Mitch bounced off the counter too, following the bottle with a bruising thud of his own.

The sight of the Scotch’s amber puddle roused him like an electric shock. He uncrumpled himself, stood up, grabbed a roasting pan from the oven drawer, scooped up the leaking bottle, and placed it in the pan, where it opened like a boiled clam, releasing a gush of peaty liquid. Tipping the roasting pan as if salvaging turkey juice for gravy, he poured the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer into a tumbler. He swirled it with anticipation, took a long, loving sniff, and brought it to his lips. He would have drunk it too, were it not for the thought that a little shard could make its way past his tongue, begin a hidden insurrection in his pulpy depths, a rent in his throat or stomach, that would widen, infect, ultimately fell him in the prime of his life. And what kind of legacy was that to leave for his wife, his kids?

Already one investor was making noises about the development acquiring the tarnish of a troubled project. To compound matters, the representative of a numbered company approached his lawyer two days earlier with an offer to buy Jarvis Ridge at just below the original price, reasoning that the barricade had greatly devalued the property. Mitch dismissed the idea without hesitation; he was certain that the law and his good name would prevail. And there was not just a fat profit to be made but enough to ensure that a future community centre would be named in his honour. There had been so many other calls, but he never pressed for details.

No, he wasn’t going to make it easy for everyone with a premature death caused by a reckless chug of compromised liquid. Mitch emptied the glass into the sink, tidied the kitchen, and, realizing he was still thirsty as hell, drove to the store to get a virgin bottle before he gave up on the whole enterprise.

He gets out of the car, turns his head in a 180-degree survey, peers through the display windows as he walks towards the entrance. Not seeing anybody he recognizes, inside or out, he lets his chest deflate and walks into the liquor store.

When Elijah Barton spies the unmistakable soft and inoffensive profile of Mitch Bain stooped by the shelf of single malts, reading bottle labels, he can’t resist the tug of his own history. In the 1980s, before Doreville could justify its own high school, most adolescents in the interlake basin were shipped to Central Pemcoe Secondary. It was a sprawling school filled with the sons and daughters of farmers, bankers, and merchants, all of whom made their money, one way or another, from tobacco. On the outer edge of the basin, the reserve had its own high school, a temporary building made of siding that was always in violation of the fire code or without sufficient teaching staff.

Elijah Barton was one of the region’s three dozen non-status native kids forced to attend Central Pemcoe. He was neither tall nor short; he wore his hair cropped above the ears, long in the back, with a thin single braid that reached farther down his spine and was tied with an osprey feather he’d found in his backyard. Years later, former students would remember the boy with the thin braid, the pocked cheeks and flint-coloured eyes, but they would never connect this memory to who Barton became: a wealthy man with a collection of limited-edition Sedona watches and bespoke shirts, the man who ran the reserve’s most profitable business and was its only legal manufacturer of cigarettes.

For Elijah, his two years at Central Pemcoe meant inhabiting all the spaces the squat, gregarious Mitch didn’t have to – under the stairwell, in the back of the cafeteria, and hours and hours in the smokers’ pit. Even here in the liquor store, three decades later, what Elijah sees is the sixteen-year-old Mitch, his chin a scrub of hair tufts and angry pimples, turning in his seat and accusing Elijah of copying answers from his grade ten general-level math exam.
Go ahead and cheat, fuckhole. You’re not even going to graduate. You’re going to be a loser all your life
.

It turned out that the first part of what Mitch had predicted was true. Elijah did give up on high school before that semester ended. But he tucked Mitch Bain’s taunt like a shiv into his sock; he wasn’t going to let a milk-breathed, dough-faced boy predict his future. Especially one who was only taking general-level math himself.

Elijah takes a route around New World Wines and approaches Mitch from the imported beer aisle. As adults they encounter each other at the biannual Chamber of Commerce general meetings. He had a meal – a memorably awful one – at the man’s house just this past September. Their respective business ventures make it into the pages of the
Interlake Post
. Elijah has yet to see a flicker that suggests the man remembers his own words from all those years earlier, or has the humility to take them back.

He clears his throat. “Looking for a good Scotch? Can I make a recommendation?”

Mitch turns, offers a quick grunt and weak smile. “Oh, hey, Elijah. Yeah, yeah, sure …”

Mitch straightens and silently curses himself for not having done a more thorough reconnaissance. Elijah is going to be smug about the barricade; he won’t be able to stand it. He’ll have to divert him with another topic and keep him on it.

“Can’t choose between the Dalwhinnie and Laphroaig.”

“Laphroaig. No question.”

That sureness, it feels almost arrogant
, thinks Mitch. But wasn’t it the same smirk, slightly wry, that drew him to Barton when they met at the Caledon Club a year ago? Mitch was taken aback that a native man could afford the fees. It soon became clear that Barton had more money than most of the members, certainly
many times more than the Bains. He racked his brains when Elijah said he’d attended Central Pemcoe, that they’d even been in classes together. He couldn’t remember him, nor any native kids for that matter. Still, Mitch thought it shrewd to cultivate such a business ally. He invited him to dinner.

Barton stares at him.
He expects me to start talking about the barricade
, thinks Mitch,
and I won’t. I just won’t
.

“You know, I’m leaning towards the Dalwhinnie,” he says instead. He can hear the waver in his voice, the tentativeness it betrays.

The dinner started with ceviche for an appetizer, followed by seafood risotto with braised fiddleheads and a salad of bitter greens. The menu was Mitch’s idea.
I think he’s probably like most men and would prefer a steak and some roasted potatoes
, Ella had said. (
Dessert?
she’d asked, and he shook his head.
Bad idea with all that diabetes in their community
. She’d made a snarky remark about why, then, they’d purchased enough wine for a wedding party.)

When Ella came out in a lovely grey peau de soie blouse, worn with trim dress pants and shiny flats, Mitch stood back and shook his head.
Would you consider that black cocktail dress I bought you last Christmas?

He didn’t want Barton to judge him on their centre-hall-plan home alone. Ella was the showpiece, the proof of his prowess as a man. Twenty years into their marriage and there’s still a bit of the not quite tall, not quite handsome, not quite affluent son of a grocer left in him. Not quite worthy of coppery, lithe Ella Nagy, swishing past the grocery store windows in an eyelet skirt that lifted ever so demurely in the breeze to reveal a pale flash of thigh. A year older. A star athlete. A conscientious student. There are still days when he asks himself where he got the balls to pursue her with such a gentle, unrelenting sureness. And even now, despite the internecine pettiness of a long marriage, he’s still not sure he deserves her. Let other men think he does:
there always comes an ineffable spike in regard after he introduces Ella as his wife.

The cocktail dress was a tight shift with a daringly exposed back – too formal for a dinner at home. And when, five minutes before their guest was expected, Ella swanned into the kitchen accessorized with teetering pumps, sheer hose, and a dainty diamond tennis bracelet, he regretted his request. There was something geisha-like about her in that outfit as she carried in hot dishes, tossed the salad, and cleared the plates; it irked Mitch, tempting him to whisper that she tone it down.

All that effort, and for what? When Mitch offered a chilled Viognier he described as unoaked and fruit-forward, Barton asked for beer. It hadn’t occurred to Mitch to see if Las had left any. The Arborio rice was undercooked. Ella fished through the risotto to retrieve its morsels of salmon and shrimp as if she were beachcombing, but Barton ate his serving with gusto. Did that mean he was undiscerning or just polite? Mitch couldn’t tell.

“The fifteen-year-old Dalwhinnie has too much ethanol on the palate, weird finish – probably too much attack for a man like you. The ten-year-old Speyburn is probably more your speed,” says Elijah.

Mitch feels warmth spread out from his sternum, creep up his neck. He had welcomed Barton into his home and the man thanked him by letting his eyes stray along the curve of Ella’s hips, down the backs of her legs as she filled his glass with Perrier or poured him a cup of coffee. When she admired the rose gold of his watch, its corona of tiny diamonds, he held it out towards her.
The band is farm-raised Louisiana gator
, he said.
Give it a stroke
. She reached out and ran her fingertip along the shiny strap. Mitch watched her face brighten like a tulip.

Now here’s Elijah in jeans and a black golf shirt, standing with one foot propped on the lowest shelf of liquor, revealing a flash of caiman-skin boots. Mitch tries to imagine himself
in such footwear but can’t. He won’t be talked out of the Dalwhinnie, dammit. And
attack
is exactly what he is after. But “I dunno” is all he can muster.

“You see, the Laphroaig – and I’m talking the Quarter Cask here – is more of a peat monster. It risks being a bit offensive, all that iodine and sea salt in it. Tarty as hell … the way I like my women.” Elijah throws his head back and laughs at his own joke.

Mitch gets a buzz in his jaw that he hasn’t felt since high school gym class, when the football players fell to their knees and waddled after him in the locker room, as if he wasn’t already painfully aware of his short legs. He doesn’t laugh or smile, but the other man is undeterred.

“Lots of smoke, lots of history in that Scotch. Probably not for you, though. Speyburn is much more vanilla, more palatable.” Elijah winks.

There’s a smarting sensation behind Mitch’s eyes. Alertness pulls his shoulders tighter. “Yeah, but look at the difference in price,” Mitch says, reading the shelf labels. “With the Dalwhinnie I can get a fifteen-year-old Scotch for the same bucks as the ten-year-old Laphroaig.”

Elijah moves his foot, claps his hands together. “Ah, but waiting longer does not necessarily improve the payoff. That’s the trick.”

“With Scotch?” Mitch asks, suddenly unsure whether they’re talking about the same thing.

Elijah stays silent. Mitch grabs the Dalwhinnie bottle by its neck and nods. As he is about to pass, Elijah sticks out his hand; it feels more like a challenge than a gesture of amity. Mitch grasps it, imagines that Elijah’s boots feel much like his palm, cool and slippery smooth. But then the grip tightens. There is a grin on Elijah’s face again, and it somehow feels like four knuckles have been rammed square into Mitch’s solar plexus. By the time he gets back to the car with his bottle of Scotch, he is
shaking. His thirst for a drink has disappeared. He feels its absence like a spiritual void.