South of Elfrida (20 page)

“You're going to need a lawyer.” The officer handed her a list and told her to use the phone in the cell. She wondered if the line was bugged. She selected a name from the list and punched in the numbers. A lawyer in Vancouver answered the phone himself. He sounded young too, another kid. He asked her for the facts, and, just as she was starting to explain things, he said, “Stop. Look. I don't get paid for this.” Again she was just getting a new story together when he interrupted: “You're a babbler.” She tried to object. He raised his voice: “If you say one more word, I'm hanging up.” Then he added, “Are you stupid? Are you an idiot? You are in real trouble. Keep your mouth shut.” This last he shouted.

A tall, dark-haired man in jeans arrived outside her cell door and asked if he could come in. “Okay.” She agreed as though she had a say in the matter. He brought a bottle of water for her. This thoughtfulness was touching, but she supposed that getting on her good side was his job.

He was muscular and wore a black T-shirt that read,
RCMP
. Handcuffs dangled from his belt.

He set the water on the floor and then eased onto the bench and sat so close that his shoulder touched hers. “Sorry for the wait. I'm Mike. I was up by Invermere.” He handed over his card. The card read:
UNDERCOVER.

“How can you be undercover if your name is on this card?”

His brown eyes were soft. “You must be tired and upset.”

You bet she was upset. Tears welled up and dripped onto her jeans.

“Sorry about the wine. A little grass might have been understandable.”

She thought the mention of the grass was a trap.

“But . . . a gun?”

She shrugged and stayed silent. Man, she didn't know anything, wouldn't say anything, she regretted the whole pitiful day, and being identified as a babbler cut to the quick. Maybe, just maybe, to avoid lying Barb would have to keep her mouth shut.

There was a long drive to a police station for fingerprinting.

Back at the border she had a choice: they would compound the trailer and she could continue home without it, or she could go back with it across the line.

The back seat and storage area of her car looked like it had been the victim of a robbery; God knew what the camper would look like inside. It was easier to drive than think. At two in the afternoon she turned back to Idaho.

In a border town, she spotted a phone outside a Safeway.

Kids in camouflage skated past her as she pressed the numbers. She imagined herself at home, sorting through mail, when her brother in Arizona answered.

“Sure, I'll look up criminal lawyers—barristers, whatever they call them up there. Give me a call tomorrow.”

Anxiety was making her scalp itch. “Call before noon. Please.”

“You sound upset. Get some rest.”

She wasn't going to cry now.

“Sis, I'm on it.”

Something not good and not formed by her own imagination—hello, real world—had found her.

Where to leave the camper?

It turned out that in northern Idaho there were plenty of
RV
and camper storage facilities, mostly located on farms no longer farms. Storing motor homes and fifth-wheelers for Canadians was a whole sideline business, a quiet cross-border agreement that, unlike free trade, Barb thought, benefitted both parties. Too bad she hadn't known about this enterprise before.

The road ambled next to a river. She drove past stored
RV
s with
US
plates, owned, no doubt, by fellow Canadians not wanting to pay those pesky taxes. Barb came to an old wooden barn with faded words painted in curly letters:
CAVENDER'S PIGS, FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1898
. On a new steel structure she read:
CLEAN, SAFE RV STORAGE
.

Thinking of Rodney, she turned in and parked by the sheds. She opened the camper door for the first time and shut it again.

Walking across the yard, she heard a strangled cry. She hurried onto the porch and looked through the screen door. She pulled the door open and strode in, to see a woman about her age in front of the fireplace, hands up over her head. A strapping boy, around fifteen, was pointing a
BB
gun at her.

The boy's worldly cover was familiar to Barb—instead of a ring in his lip, like Louis, this boy had a ring in his ear. His face was red, as though he'd been crying or shouting. He used the back of his free hand to rub bubbles of mucous off his face and then swung the gun in Barb's direction.

“Oh, for God's sake, put that down,” she said. “I've just about had it for one day.”

Customs had emptied the cupboards, jumbled all her clothes, and yanked sheets off the bed. Her herbs and spices were dumped in the sink. The bathroom's contents—cosmetics and shampoo and everything private and personal—had been tossed on the floor. She could hardly stand to think about it—
she
was the one who stopped in the first place. And now here was this preposterous situation.

“I am a certified criminal and that is the truth,” she said. “I have a record. Do you see these dark marks on my fingers? Those are from being fingerprinted.”

The scowl on the boy's face deepened. “Who are you?”

“Better you don't know.” She tapped her leg. A big-screen
TV
dominated the living room, and this boy would figure “hidden weapon.” The
BB
gun wavered. Barb crossed the room, clapped her hand around the barrel. The kid let go of it and slammed out the back door.

“Tuck it under the sofa for now,” said the woman, heading for the kitchen. Barb overheard her on the phone asking a neighbour to talk to the boy.

After introductions, Alice Cavender gathered a mixing bowl, chocolate chips, butter, and flour, while Barb sat at the maple kitchen table. “He's worried, like we all are. He wants to hold a dance here—a rave, they call it. He says they'll pay us. A rave here, right here on our farm. This is a pig farm.”

The sun shone on the dish drainer. Alice beat the butter with a hand mixer and when the noise stopped, she said, “He misses his Grandpa Henry. I do too.” She glanced at Barb. “Henry always liked a sip midday, and you look like you could use one yourself.” She poured a whiskey into a crystal glass for Barb, then added a dollop to her own coffee cup. “Truth is, last pig went on Thursday.”

“There's more money in music than pigs, so I've been told.” Barb studied the amber liquid in the glass and started her story, about the grandsons and the wine. It was a rambling story, even to Barb's ear.

“High taxes up there, I hear,” Alice finally said.

The drink, and the hospitality of a stranger, had loosened her tongue, but Barb could not admit everything; it was too embarrassing—the jail cell, the irrevocability of being locked up, the ugly finality to the personal story she'd been weaving as she drove and camped, saw vistas and sunsets, visited family, laughed with strangers, made up stories. She wiped her cheeks.

“Now, now,” soothed Alice, dropping dough onto a cookie sheet. “You might be a liar, but your timing was good. Some things seem predetermined to happen. You showing up when you did.”

A wind rustled the leaves outside. “What will you do with the
BB
gun?”

Alice frowned. “Do with it? You think that's the only gun in the house?”

Strange how matter-of-fact Americans were about guns. Americans had encouraged her to carry a gun in the first place.

Alice said, “We live in the country.”As though that would be reason enough.

“Oh.” The explanation sounded rational in Idaho but didn't make sense across the border.

“My dear, he didn't mean any harm. His parents were in the military, both killed in Iraq. Didn't used to take women for combat duty. This is my daughter's third anniversary. Killed fighting for her country. It's not what we raised her for, but Henry and I were both proud of her.” The cookies slid into the oven.

Barb sipped her drink. “I'm sorry about your daughter.”

“And sorry about the war too, I take it, you being from Canada who didn't go.”

The pig salt-and-pepper shakers on the white doily were both pink and had smiles. Barb wondered if Louis and Rodney had such easy access to guns. Would her son-in-law allow it in Flagstaff?

“You weren't worried?”

“Naturally I was worried. You don't like to see a boy that upset. He had his reasons.” Alice opened the oven to check on the cookies, turned and peered at Barb over the rims of her glasses. “They fingerprint you just for wine?”

Reality twisted like a knife in the heart and it was painful. Barb stumbled through the story of the gun.

“Oh, isn't that ridiculous,” Alice Cavender snorted. “To treat you like that, as though you were a common criminal. As though a woman your age would be a danger to anyone.” She removed the cookies from the oven, slipped them loose with a spatula. “Here now.”

The kitchen smelled sweet and homey. Barb reached for a cookie, let it warm her palms. When she had entered the house, she'd witnessed a boy boiling with rage and nearly out of control. Mall shootings, theatre shootings—it was a criminal act to bring a handgun into Canada. That was a fact. She should have known better. She hadn't even known where to keep it—in sight or out of sight, the gun was always on her mind. Barb said, “Actually, I'm glad they found it.”

Alice shook her head “To each his own. You can camp here tonight, there's an empty hay shed, nice and clean, where you can sort through your things, if you like.”

“Thank you.” Barb sighed with relief. One short walk to her bed, one short walk to her home on the road.

Alice lifted her apron over her head, hung it on a hook. She came back to the table, the Jack Daniel's in hand. “Canadians,” she said, in her tone something both sorrowful and accepting, as she poured another shot for each of them.

If Sheila's companion, Delilah, were a colour, she would be orange. A dusky orange that sends out occasional flares, but mostly the colour of kindling burnt to embers. Sheila construes that Delilah is this colour partly by what she says, but also by the way she speaks, with the modern artifice many women in broadcasting have, front teeth biting off words, lips softly chewing them. Sheila notices these women on
TV
and listens to them on the radio; the way they speak seems contrived and unnatural. She doesn't know about Delilah's tongue or lips or what she looks like. Delilah speaks to her on 94.9 MIX FM, beginning at 9:00
PM.
Delilah is the voice of lovelorn southeast Arizona.

In Sheila's experience, neighbours in Arizona aren't so much visited as observed. If seen at all. She's more likely to see a feral cat skulking about than a human taking a stroll. Even here, in what calls itself a village, people drive cars from one end to the other, and except for the people who work in the retail shops, everyone else seems to have gone on holiday. You never see anyone sitting in gardens or on patios. You seldom hear a thing. Twice a day the train goes by, and the birds, cactus wrens and quail, carry on conversations among themselves.

Thank goodness for her only real neighbours, the young couple from Michigan, Amanda and Vincent, with their baby, Josephine, who live across the road. They built their adobe house on land inherited from a travelling grandparent. Josephine has a mop of very black hair that the blondish father jokes about. Sheila likes to imagine why; she's being preposterous, of course, but there are so many sweet-faced Mexican boys around here.

From her balcony, Sheila sees their window aglow with candlelight. The candlelight in the golden room reminds Sheila of when she helped Amanda sort through paint chips to create just that lovely effect. She was part of the house project since its inception—offered advice on window placement and flooring and watched over tools left in the yard by workers. Consequently, her neighbours' house—real adobe, a Southwest tradition—is a pleasure that feels like her own.

Yet there's that eucalyptus tree, far too tall for a house that lies so low to the ground. The couple built around the tree, to save it, but Sheila objects to it. From her second-floor balcony, looking across the dirt road from her apartment above a jewellery shop —chunks of turquoise and the work of Navaho silversmiths—the tree spoils her view of the mountains to the east.

Amanda and Vincent's most recent concern was the impending visit of an uncle from England. After visiting friends in San Diego, he would be hopping over to Tucson on a commuter flight. The uncle, a bachelor, was a concierge at a posh English hotel. Sheila looked up the hotel online. Nice, not showy, established, discreet. Due to Josephine, he couldn't stay with them; he'd have been driven mad by the fretful crying and early dawns.

“Of course your uncle can stay at my place,” she'd said, handing them a jar of her homemade jalapeno jelly. “What's his name?”