The Extinction Club (43 page)

“On top of the fridge!”

Yellow pages. Into the
V
’s once more:
Véhicules, Vêtements
…
Vétérinaires
. Looked at the clock, which was hard on ten. There’d be no one there, I’d leave a message, she’d get it tomorrow.

I picked up the phone and began dialling, but there was someone shouting into the line. With music in the background.

“I hate that fucking sound,” said Volpe, “when somebody dials into your ear.”

“I’m trying to make a call—an important one.”

“This is more important, something I forgot to mention. About your father’s car. It was found in a farmer’s field in upstate New York. With the keys still in the ignition.”

“Can I call you back?”

“You know anything about that?”

My mind was restless, zigzagging to other things. Sometimes it’s just not possible to shut things down.

“Nile?”

“What was the question?”

“Your father’s car—you know anything about it?”

“Can I take the Fifth on that?”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“You want it? As payment for your services?”

“Partial payment, you mean?”

“Right.”

“There’s no charge for my services, you idiot. I’ll have it put back in your garage.”

“You’ve got a key?”

“No, I’m going to leave instructions to have it driven through the garage door. Of course I’ve got a key. What are you going to do about the house, anyway? Who’s going to look after it?”

“I left the heat on.”

“And what about Paris?”

He was referring to a top-floor apartment in a building on the avenue Wagram.

“You want me to sell it?” he said.

No, there’s a girl here who might need it one day. “No, I might need it one day.”

“When are you going to sort through your father’s affairs? Hold on a second, got another call.”

He put me on hold not for seconds but minutes. For almost all of Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps to Heaven.”

“Nile? That was your ex. Brooklyn’s back, safe and sound. And now she’s got your number. So what I want …”

“Perfect. Can you set up …”

“… you to do now is—”

“… some sort of trust fund for her, education fund or whatever it’s called?”

“Nile, we’re talking at the same time.”

“Can you set up a trust fund for Brook?”

“Of course I can, but first what I want you to—”

“And leave everything else to Céleste Jonquères? Write it up and send me the papers?”

Silence. “Am I getting this? Leave everything else to
who
?

That smart-ass kid I talked to on the phone? What are you talking about, Nile? A
will
?”

“And sort through Dad’s private stuff and take whatever you want?”

“Nile, think about this, think about this long and hard, I don’t advise this, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, these wild impulses, a thousand times and—”

“Are you the Nightingale family lawyer?”

“What?”

“Are you, or are you not, the Nightingale family lawyer?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am but—”

“Then shut up and do as you’re told.”

One two three four five. “Spell out the girl’s name. And address.”

I spelled them out. “If for any reason I’m not around to sign, I want you to forge my signature. And the witness’s. Can you do that?” From what I’d heard, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You promise you’ll do it? On my father’s grave?”

“Of course, if you put it that way.”

“Say it.”

“I promise on your father’s grave.”

“Thanks, Leon. You’re a good man.”

For the second time that evening I stood half-tranced, staring at the telephone. Then punched in a number I now knew by heart, the veterinary clinic’s, and left a meandering message.

XXX

Skating on Ravenwood Pond was common in the olden days. My grandmother has a stack of black & white photographs to prove it. Lots of people, hundreds at a time, used to figure skate or play hockey or circle the pond in the moonlight. Kids would hurry out after school, rush home for a quick dinner, then go back to skate under the stars. One time back in the fifties, according to Grand-maman, the Wildlife Ministry built a bonfire, right on the Pond, for skaters to warm up.

Not anymore. The current policy is no skating allowed. Ever. Even if the ice is a foot deep & can support a fleet of ten-ton trucks. They don’t measure ice thickness like they used to, and certainly won’t be building any more bonfires. And not just because the ice isn’t as thick as it used to be.

There have been three fatal fall-ins in the Pond — in 1906, 1972 & 2002. On December 29, 1906, 11-year-old Wallace Ward fell through the ice while skating with two friends. On February 14, 1972, 7 teenagers aged 14 to 18 were playing hockey on the Pond despite “No Skating” signs. When one boy fell through the ice, the other 6 boys formed a human chain to reach him. More ice collapsed & all of them plunged into the water. Their bodies were never found.

On January 1, 2002, another person died, but not while skating. A 27-year-old woman was walking across the snow-covered
pond barefoot, according to the last person to see her alive. She was under the influence of drugs. Her body was never found either. That woman was my mother.

It was after she drowned that my grandmother’s obsession with ice began. She seemed to forget about her sermons altogether, and focused on her first love, mathematics. And in particular cryoscopy, the study of freezing points. I became her assistant, which was part of my home-schooling.

She wanted to find a numerical model to simulate the variables of lake ice growth & decay. In particular, she wanted to be able to predict future thicknesses of the ice on the Pond. To estimate how many days the temperature had to be at a certain minimum level to cause formation of a 5 cm thickness of ice, a 7 cm thickness & so on.

Once a week we measured the Pond’s snow depth & density, ice thickness & temperature. With an ice augur we bored holes into the ice. Ice at the edges is thicker than in the middle, so we needed to test a lot of spots. We fastened a 30 cm brass rod with a nylon string attached to one end to a 10 m tape measure & lowered it through the newly drilled holes. Once it was through the ice, we slowly pulled the tape measure upward, allowing the brass rod to catch on the bottom of the ice cover. We then recorded the distances from the bottom of the ice cover to the water level, and to the top of the ice cover. The difference between these two measurements (“freebore”) gave us an idea of the topographical features of the ice cover, and the density of the ice. We would finish our ice coring around Easter & measure the melt rates throughout the spring.

During her third winter with me at the rectory, Grand-maman began to work part-time for Parks & Wildlife as a volunteer, measuring the thickness of ice on the surrounding ponds & lakes. And posting warning signs if necessary. No Skating, No Snowmobiling, things like that.

She began to discover that Ravenwood Pond is not typical of the bodies of water in the area. Not at all. It has some very strange properties. It’s almost perfectly round for starters, and though not huge, it’s VERY deep, much deeper than any lake or pond for miles around. It’s easy to estimate the thickness of the ice on the others, easy to determine when they’re safe for skating or snowmobiling or ice-fishing. Often by colour alone. But not the Pond.

Here is our “colour code”:

• Black ice — this is new ice, very common early in the season.
  
• Clear blue, black or green ice — this is the strongest for its thickness.
  
• White ice/opaque — this ice is usually found midwinter, after the temperature has been below freezing for many days. It must be twice the thickness of clear blue, black or green ice to support the same weight.
  
• Mottled (“rotten”) ice — this ice fools you because it may seem thick at the top, but it’s rotting away at the centre & base. It’s most common in the spring & often has browns from plant tannins, dirt & other natural materials that are resurfacing from thawing. Not suitable for even one footstep!
  

Here are our safety guidelines:

• 7 cm (3”) (new ice) — KEEP OFF
  
• 10 cm (4”) — will hold approx. 200 lbs.
  
• 12 cm (5”) — suitable for one snowmobile or ATV
  
• 20-30 cm (8”-12”) — suitable for one car, or group of people
  
• 30-38 cm (12”-15”) — suitable for a light pickup truck or a van
  
• 60 cm (25”) — suitable for 13-ton aircraft
  

On Ravenwood Pond, there’s really no such thing as “safe ice.” It can be rock hard in one spot & open up like a trapdoor in another. Mostly because of its natural springs & currents, which are warmer and weaken the ice from below. They’re dangerous because they’re not easily noticed. Or predictable. Especially near a rocky patch at the northern end. There’s no rhyme or reason to them.

But there are other reasons that the Pond is hit & miss. First of all, it has dark patches of vegetation sticking out, or floating beneath the surface (like the hair of suicides?), which absorb heat & transmit it into the ice. Decay also generates heat. So areas where there are sedges and weed beds are much weaker than areas where there are none.

Second, the Pond is brackish, briny. Salty ice is weaker & needs to be thicker to support the same weight as fresh water.

Third, ice forms more quickly over shallow water than over deep water. At the northern part, near some “submarine crags” or black outcrops of rock, the Pond is unbelievably deep — maybe as deep as Loch Ness, who knows? There are Algonquin legends & 19th-century tales about the bottom of Ravenwood Pond, but they’re mostly forgotten. Only my grandmother & the village librarian (& me) seem to have read them. In one tale a man falls
in and his body is found years later, floating in a lake in China. In another, at the Last Judgment, the Pond becomes the Lake of Eternal Fire, which all sinners are thrown into. God pours them out like “a bag of nails.”

No one’s ever measured the depth near the outcrops, and no one has ever been able to figure out the springs & currents around them. They move in mysterious ways. But after spending the last few days skating around there with Nile, drilling & measuring & pounding, I think I’ve got at least a few things figured out.

   XXXI   

T
hey came not in snowmobiles but in trucks. An old snowplow with a barrel sticking out of its Plexiglas turret, and a black pickup with raised chassis and bulldog grille, its empty headlight socket staring back at me. This time there weren’t as many of them, only two—the forest king and his fool—and this time it was in broad daylight.

Céleste spotted them first, through the lens of her telescope. She sent me a mayday—not on the walkie-talkie, which was broken, but with a two-finger whistle: one short and one long, one short and a long repeated, an owl’s warning cry that set our plan in motion. Her plan, I should say.

We met in the kitchen, each of us unaccountably calm, as if all this were a shared dream that would soon end. There was a beatified radiance of resignation about Céleste as she laced up her snowboots. I held out the Kevlar vest for her, trying to keep my hands steady.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I’m not wearing it.”