Читать книгу The Ladies Killing Circle Anthology 4-Book Bundle - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 23

R. J. HARLICK

Maudite neige!’ Jacques cursed as he fought through another deep snow drift. Those stupid old fools to go fishing in such weather.

With his eyes half shut against the stinging snow, he scanned the frozen lake, hoping to see his grandfather and great-uncle. The sooner he found Pépère and Mononcle Hippolyte, the sooner he could get back to his tape of last night’s hockey game.

“Impossible to see in this soup,” he muttered at the wall of swirling white. He pulled his hood tighter.

Wondering how far he’d come, he looked back to the shore and groaned when he saw the red blur of the barn, its light the only sign of life in this vacuum. Sacrifice! He’d only come a short distance. But then again, it meant the beer he’d abandoned was still within easy reach.

It would serve those two crazies right if he left them to handle things on their own. After all, it was their pig-headedness that had forced him out in this blizzard.

He wavered for a second. He could almost feel the smooth beer running down his throat. Then with a deep drag on his cigarette, he turned back into the storm’s fury. He had no choice; he had to find those stupid old men.

It was difficult going. And the blasted snowshoes didn’t make it easier. He heaved one foot out of the snow and slapped it onto the shifting surface in front of him. It disappeared under a foot of powder. He picked up his back leg and swung it around.

“Tabarnac!” he yelled when his leg, minus a snowshoe, plunged into the snow. He’d kill that old man when he found him. He jammed his boot back into the binding and cursed forward.

When he’d discovered that his new high-tech snowshoes were gone from the barn, leaving only the ancient bear-paws, Jacques had blamed his grandfather for taking them. Now he figured it was really his uncle’s fault. Hippolyte had put Pépère up to it, which wasn’t surprising. Ever since his younger brother had arrived, Pépère was doing things he’d never dare do before.

Like today. It was only because of Hippolyte’s goading that Pépère had risked ice fishing in such weather. After eighty years, his grandfather knew better than to go out on the snow covered lake in a blizzard, when you couldn’t tell sky from ground. Sure, it wasn’t snowing when the two of them had set out this morning, but Pépère knew those clouds on the other side of the lake meant it would be snowing like stink by midday, that’s for sure. He’d even said as much, but Hippolyte wasn’t having any of it.

“Eh ben! You gone soft behind the ears, old one?” Hippolyte challenged in his hoarse smoker’s voice. “Afraid of a little snow? Maudit crisse, you are truly an old man.” His grandfather didn’t even bother to reply, just stomped out of the room.

Next thing Jacques knew, the two burly shapes, loaded down with tip-ups, buckets and other ice fishing equipment, were lumbering down the hill to the flat plain of the lake. Each was the bookend to the other. Although there were ten years separating the two brothers, the passage of time had made them twins, short and stocky with thick spare tires around their middle, that even heavy duffel coats couldn’t hide.

And of course they both had the nose, the Tremblay nose that Jacques too had inherited. No one could miss it for the amount of space it occupied on the high cheek-boned Tremblay face. And from the side profile it jutted straight out with a sharp downward turn like the beak of some giant bird, which was why people around here called the Tremblays the Crow’s Beaks.

Unfortunately, a nose of this size had one distinct disadvantage in this weather. It froze. Jacques rubbed the numb tip with his icy mitt. He tried to see if there was any sign yet of the two fishermen and was blasted once again by the wall of blinding snow.

“Pépère, you there?” he shouted, praying they’d had the sense to fish in this part of the lake and not where they usually went. But the only response was the muffled rasping of the snow against his hood.

A quick backward glance brought on a faint lick of fear. The shoreline had vanished. He was cut off. And his track, the last reference to home, was fast disappearing.

He thought of the advice his grandfather had pounded into him since he was a child. “In a whiteout, stay put, mon p’tit. Don’t move, you’ll get lost, maybe even fall into a hole in the ice.”

Yeah, well, a fat lot of good that advice would do him now. He might as well fall into a hole rather than return home without his grandfather.

“I don’t trust that God-cursed Hippolyte,” Maman had shouted from the kitchen. “No saying what he’ll get up to in this tempest. Turn that TV off now and go find your Pépère.”

And when Jacques hesitated, she shouted “And if something happens to him, you’ll answer to God.”

So what choice did he have? Besides, he knew she was right; he didn’t trust Hippolyte either. With a last drag on his cigarette, Jacques turned back into the driving snow.

For sure, his grandfather and uncle were fishing in the bay at the other end of the lake, next to English Bait Point. Since the big storms always blew from that shore, he figured if he walked straight into the wind he’d eventually stumble into them.

There was a curious thing about this particular fishing spot. Before his uncle came to live with them, the old man had avoided it like it was the devil’s curse. Instead, his grandfather fished winter and summer near Indian Rock, convinced the biggest walleye hung out in the surrounding deep water. In fact, he fished there so often people had renamed the giant slab of granite “Crow’s Beak Rock”.

It had taken some convincing by Hippolyte to get his brother to go against habit and of course his fears: Pépère clung to the belief that even one step on the neighbouring water was a step towards death. Hippolyte had argued hotly and loudly that his brother was a silly old fool to believe in such superstitious nonsense. It had happened so long ago that it was only crazy old men like his brother who still believed that death would come to those who walked over the dead man’s bones. Besides, everyone knew that the bones had long since been reburied in the Protestant cemetery at Mont Georges.

At first, Pépère wouldn’t budge. As far as he was concerned, Indian Rock had been good to him. Indian Rock was where he was going to fish come hell or high water. Hippolyte could go fishing where he damn well pleased, but he’d go alone. Atleast that was what his grandfather had said, until his uncle came home with the biggest, meanest looking walleye Jacques had ever seen. Next time Hippolyte went ice fishing, he didn’t go alone.

“Tabarnac!” yelled Jacques, as his boot slipped out of the ancient bindings again. He struggled to retrieve the snowshoe and promptly lost his balance, landing nose first in the snow. Sputtering in frustration, he fought with the icy powder until he gained enough purchase to push himself onto his feet.

They deserve to freeze to death, he thought as he kicked his boot back into the binding. He jerked the strap tight. It broke. He tied the broken end of the strap to the webbing. It broke again. In a fit of anger he flung the snowshoes away.

Sacrifice! He was screwed. But he couldn’t turn back.

He lit up another cigarette and struggled through the deep snow. It felt like he was moving a ton of bricks with each forward step. Tabarnac! He’d never reach his grandfather in time. A sudden squall sent him reeling backwards. But he braced himself, and, bending into the wind, ploughed onward.

It was curious how Hippolyte had just turned up out of the forest one hot day last summer. Why, Jacques didn’t even know he had a great-uncle by the name of Hippolyte until the gnarled old man was standing in the doorway, swatting black flies and demanding to see his brother. Even his grandfather seemed a bit puzzled by the stranger in the crumpled suit, clutching the tattered suitcase. But as recognition dawned—for you couldn’t mistake the Crow’s Beak nose—Pépère’s face cracked first into a suspicious scowl then into a weak welcoming smile. “Hippolyte? C’est vrai? It is really you? Unbelievable. We thought you were dead, that’s for sure.”

And so Hippolyte came to live with them, but not without considerable opposition from Jacques’ mother. As far as she was concerned, looking after one old man was enough; two would make it impossible, particularly since the newest arrival probably hadn’t lifted a finger to do any work in his entire life. She searched through the family for another home for Hippolyte.

Of his eleven brothers and sisters, only three had the courtesy to reply. Sister Claudette, the youngest, pleaded that a convent was no suitable place for an old man. Father Jean-Paul, the second eldest, said he had no room in the presbytery. And Madeline, the bluntest of all, said that not even for an audience with the Pope himself was she having a crazy live with her.

For that, as it turned out, was the problem with Mononcle Hippolyte. It was also why Jacques and his mother didn’t know about this youngest boy of the Crow’s Beaks, the one the family had hoped and prayed was long since dead.

Fifty years ago, Hippolyte had been locked away in an asylum for something so dreadful that the family had given part of their land to the church to atone for his sin. They were so ashamed, they’d even asked the priest to excommunicate their son and erase his name from the parish records.

It had taken much pestering by Jacques to discover what Hippolyte had done. At first his grandfather had refused to discuss it, saying it was best left alone. Even his uncle didn’t want to talk about anything other than fishing and the weather.

Then one night after a bit too much piquette, the moonshine Pépère bought from Papa Drouin, the two brothers finally divulged what had really happened. Hippolyte had killed a man, an Anglo to be exact, which made Jacques wonder why his family had been so upset. After all, fifty years ago, killing a man, especially an Anglophone from Ontario, was no big deal. And still wasn’t, as far as Jacques was concerned. But it turned out the family’s shame came not from the murder but from what Hippolyte did to the body afterwards.

All that summer, Hippolyte had been trying to catch a hundred pounder. Several times he’d almost caught the enormous muskie, but each time it got away. Until one day he arrived at his secret fishing spot just in time to see the giant flapping fish being hauled into a boat by someone who had no right to be there.

At this point, Hippolyte said he didn’t remember much, just sparks going off in his head, and next he knew he was hauling a big sucker of a muskie into his own boat with some strange looking bait stuck in its mouth. “Then,” he said, his eyes wide in remembered wonder, “them fish started jumping out of the water like the devil himself was snapping at their tails. I figured maybe it was this funny lookin’ bait, so I put another piece on the hook. I tell you, Jacques, us Tremblays lived like a monsignor that night, eh Pierre? And for the rest of the summer. We never had it so good. Why people called me Seigneur Poisson, eh, Pierre? Sir Fish, much better than Crow’s Beak, that’s for sure.”

But the Tremblays’ feasting was brought to a sudden and sickening close when hunters discovered the mutilated remains of a body hidden amongst the rocks on an isolated peninsula, the one people now called English Bait Point. It didn’t take the police long to discover Hippolyte was the one who’d killed the man and chopped him into tiny bait-sized pieces.

Jacques shivered, and not from the cold. He wiggled his fingers to make sure they were still there and wiped the icicles from his nose. Exhausted from pushing through the drifts, he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last. English Bait Point had better be straight ahead.

A few minutes later, he stumbled over a rusty metal bucket with a broken handle. He sighed with relief. The old man’s fishing pail. He was on the right track.

Feeling more optimistic, he pushed forward with renewed energy. However, the farther he moved away from the stranded bucket, the more he questioned why Pépère had thrown it away. Maybe it was useless for carrying gear, but for sure it was better sitting on an overturned pail than on snow.

This uneasiness increased when he discovered the augur. This was serious. Not even for a free jug of Papa Drouin’s piquette would Pépère throw this new drill away. Even if he had his old homemade spud with him, he didn’t have the strength any more to drill one hole with it, let alone the five he always made in the ice. But then again, Hippolyte was more than strong enough for the two of them.

Fear for his grandfather took over when Jacques uncovered the clump of pink crystals in a nearby mound of churned snow. There was no mistaking the signs. The two old men had been fighting. And one of them was hurt. That must be why Pépère had dropped his gear.

Jacques reached behind to ensure the long case was still slung over his back then picked up his pace. He prayed he wasn’t too late.

A short distance later Jacques spied the looming mass of shore and hoped he’d arrived at English Bait Point. He turned to follow the shoreline in search of the cliff that marked the end of the peninsula. Once around it, he should see some sign of the two fishermen.

Jacques couldn’t understand why his uncle insisted on fishing next to this reminder of his bloody crime. At first Jacques had thought maybe Hippolyte wanted to seek forgiveness from his victim’s spirit. But after more pestering, it came out that throughout his long stay in the asylum Hippolyte could think only of the gigantic muskie he’d caught beneath the cliff of English Bait Point. He was bound and determined to be Seigneur Poisson once again.

All summer and fall until the lake froze over, Hippolyte had spent the daylight hours trolling back and forth in the water around the point. But other than a few good-sized muskies, no giant had snagged his line. Surly to begin with, he’d become more so as the season progressed. Once, he had rammed the boat of another fisherman who had dared to fish in his spot.

Hippolyte had begun to experiment with bait. First, he’d tried worms, crayfish and other standard fishing lures. But when that had failed, he’d tried raw chicken. With bloody chunks of freshly killed rabbit he had some luck, so he’d started trapping them in earnest. Before long, Jacques’s mother, revolted by the blood and squealing rabbits, screamed at him to stop, and when he didn’t, at Pépère to do something about it.

For a time, they thought he had returned to normal bait, but one day not long before the lake froze over, Jacques had discovered his great-uncle chopping a deer haunch into tiny bait-size chunks. However, since this was on English Bait Point and well out of sight of his mother, he’d decided not to say anything, particularly when the next day Hippolyte had brought home his largest catch of the season.

Unfortunately, it was not the largest fish caught by the Crow’s Beaks that season. Pépère had brought home one monster fish after another, muskie, lake trout, you name it. He had the golden touch. And with each large fish his grandfather had brought home, his uncle had become quieter and quieter, while his eyes had grown colder and colder.

Then accidents had started happening to Pépère. The first one had occurred in the barn when a pitchfork fell out of the loft, skewering the old man to the ground. Fortunately, it had pierced the loose material of his jacket, not his chest, so he had walked away, yelling at Jacques for leaving it in such an unsafe place. But Jacques was sure he’d left it beside the manure pile.

Next, his grandfather had almost sliced his leg in two when the ax had ricocheted off the piece of firewood he was splitting. Close inspection had revealed a nail hammered into the center of the log. Pépère had put it down to just one of those things. Jacques remembered seeing his uncle with a can of nails and a hammer shortly before the accident.

Once the lake had frozen over, things calmed down for as long as the two brothers couldn’t fish. When the ice was thick enough to support them, each had returned to his own special fishing spot. Except this time, it was Hippolyte who brought the big fish home. A thirty-pound walleye was followed by several others of equal size. No one dared ask what kind of bait he was using. Pépère was so infuriated he moved to English Bait Point.

And the race to become Seigneur Poisson had geared into overdrive. To this point, Pépère had only been toying with Hippolyte’s obsession. Now he was determined to take the crown away from his brother. So far there was no clear-cut winner. Both brothers were bringing home monster walleyes the like of which made Jacques decide he’d never swim in the lake again. It also made Jacques begin to suspect the kind of bait his grandfather was also using.

Then last week, another accident had happened. Hippolyte had been cleaning a rifle when it accidentally fired. The bullet had knocked the toque clear off Pépère’s head and he had only escaped the next bullet because he’d hidden behind the milk separator.

That was when Jacques’s mother had decided enough was enough. One bullet could be labelled an accident; a second bullet was something else altogether. She had told Hippolyte to leave. Today was his last day. Tomorrow he was to go to a group home a hundred miles away run by the good Sisters.

This was the reason why Jacques had agreed to abandon Les Canadiens to come out in such weather. While normally Pépère could look after himself, Maman was right, there was no saying what the God-cursed Hippolyte would get up to today when you couldn’t see sky from ground.

Through the lessening snow, Jacques could see the outline of the cliff at the end of English Bait Point. He slipped the gun case off his shoulder and unzipped it. When his mother had said “Go find Pépère”, he knew he might be needing his rifle. He pulled it out of the slender case and ran his fingers along the well-oiled stock. He’d killed many a deer with this. No reason why he couldn’t kill Hippolyte if he had to.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out some cartridges. He jammed them into the magazine and hammered the bolt home. He was ready.

When he reached the end of the cliffs, the snow suddenly stopped, and the sun came out. At first he was blinded by the sudden brilliance, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw what he had come to find. From one side of the bay to the other ran a familiar line of orange tip-ups; the specialized ice fishing rods his grandfather used. They reminded Jacques of a cemetery of lopsided wooden crosses, each stuck into a mound of ice at the edge of a small hole. Before the first lopsided cross sat a figure covered in snow.

Jacques was about to call out when he realized he was seeing only one fisherman. Anxiously, he searched for the other. But the bay remained as empty of other human life as the lake behind him.

Sacrifice! He was too late. It had happened.

Ignoring the cold, he removed his mitts and felt the icy steel of the trigger. It was now up to him to finish this off.

He moved cautiously towards the hunched back of the silent figure. He was halfway there when he began to wonder why the fisherman hadn’t moved since he’d first seen him.

He was about thirty feet away when he noticed a dark patch at the feet of the still figure. At first he thought it was just a shadow. But when he drew closer, he realized with dread it was frozen blood, a pink crystalline mixture looking much like the snowcones he bought at the carnival.

He pointed his gun and pushed silently forward. The fisherman still didn’t move. Jacques was beginning to wonder if he was still alive.

Suddenly the cross bar of the tip-up jerked down into the hole. The figure lunged forward. Next thing Jacques knew, a gigantic silver fish was flopping on top of the packed frozen snow.

“Arrête!” shouted Jacques, “Stop, and raise your hands high above your head.” Jacques had seen enough westerns to know these were the right words.

The figure remained rigid, then the hood slowly swivelled around and pointed the long Crow’s Beak nose towards Jacques.

“Come on, Mononcle, hands above your head!” Jacques jabbed his gun towards the silent figure.

Two icy mittens slowly rose.

“Eh ben! What have you done with Pépère?”

“Jacques! My grandson. It’s me…your Pépère.” The man struggled to raise himself from the overturned bucket.

“Stop right there. How do I know it’s you?”

“Mon Dieu. What is the world coming to that a grandson doesn’t know his own grandfather?” One mitten brushed back the hood while the other lifted the toque from the high cheek-boned Tremblay face.

Jacques relaxed with relief when he saw the familiar bald pate and the twinkling brown eyes, but stiffened when he saw a deep gash extending from his grandfather’s eye to his mouth. A frozen trickle of blood still clung to his cheek.

“Tabarnac! What did that crazy man do to you?”

His grandfather removed his mitt and ran his hand over the bloody gash. “This? It is nothing. A disagreement,” he replied with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Where is Mononcle?”

Pépère crossed himself, then pointed. “Sainte-bénite! There’s been an accident.”

Jacques followed the line of the pointing finger to a spot beyond the last tip-up, not far from where the inlet flowed into the bay. It took him a few seconds to discern what looked to be tracks spoiling the smooth surface. Then he realized they led in a direct line to a patch of black water. A frozen red toque lay at the edge of the hole.

Jacques looked back at his grandfather. “Mononcle Hippolyte?” he asked.

“Oui” Pépère crossed himself again.

Jacques was tempted to look into the hole where his uncle had fallen through, but he didn’t, knowing as did anyone who fished on this lake that the ice where the river flowed into the bay was never thick enough to support a man. Still, he was a bit confused by the presence of a large patch of what looked to be frozen blood close to the hole.

“Oui. I told him to stay put in the white-out, but Hippolyte wouldn’t listen,” continued Pépère. “He was sure the big fish were over there, eh?”

By his grandfather’s feet lay a number of equally enormous fish, each with a perfectly round staring eye, some frozen, others limp with glistening water. Next to them, on the patch of icy pink were chunks of raw bait.

As horror slowly engulfed Jacques, Pépère beamed and said, “Now I am Seigneur Poisson, that’s for sure.”

R.J. HARLICK, an escapee from the high-tech jungle, decided that solving a murder or two was more fun than chasing the elusive computer bug. When she’s not inventing the perfect murder, she’s roaming the forests near her country home in West Quebec. “Seigneur Poisson” is her first published short story.