Читать книгу Dead Cow in Aisle Three - H. Mel Malton - Страница 7

Why waste your money at a flower shop? Kountry Pantree’s prices won’t make you drop! Make our Bouquet Boutique your fresh flower stop!

—A full-colour ad in the Laingford Gazette summer supplement

The midsummer evening light had ripened into that particular golden colour which makes everything touched by it impossibly beautiful. From the top of the hill leading down into George’s valley, the big old brick farm house, weathered barn and outbuildings looked like they’d had warm honey poured over them. Curve after gentle curve of meadow, in diminishing shades of tender green and bronze, receded into a horizon wreathed in mist. Near the house, I could see the stooped figure of George, in a bright red shirt and straw hat, tending his vegetable garden, watched over by a scarecrow that looked more than a little like him. I’d made the scarecrow that spring, borrowing an old barn coat and hat from the mud room and using a mop head for the hair. Poe, George’s tame raven, perched on the scarecrow’s shoulder. (Nothing scared Poe except thunderstorms.)

Off in the distance, in the apple orchard, George’s goats were snacking on windfalls and grass, and could easily be mistaken for a herd of deer, if you didn’t know better. There was no sign of Susan or Eddie, but I figured they were probably in the barn, preparing for the evening milking.

I drove slowly down the driveway, savouring the scene. After the bustle of Laingford, this profound peace was reassuring. There really are some quiet places left in the world, I reminded myself, then wondered (as I often do) how on earth I had managed to live in Toronto for so long without going completely bonkers.

George straightened up and came over to greet me as I clambered out of the old Ford pickup. Luggy and Rosencrantz met him halfway, Luggy sniffing politely at his boots and Rosie trying as usual to climb up his body so she could lie like an infant in his arms.

“Off, Rosie,” I said in my best “I mean business” voice. She ignored me. George crouched to her level, gently squeezed her paws and placed them on the ground, then patted her head as she settled down.

“She is learning,” he said in his soft Finnish voice.

“Huh. Faster than a speeding pile of frozen molasses. How’s the veggie garden?”

“It has been a good growing season,” George said. “Too good. There is too much, almost. Tomatoes, zucchini—the zucchini is taking over. I should not have planted it so close to the onions.”

“The zucchini was Susan’s idea, wasn’t it?”

George looked at me a bit sadly. “Yes, it was her idea. A good one, Polly. I just put in too many seeds, that’s all.” What he meant was “stop being so critical of your aunt,” and he was right, but somehow I couldn’t help it. Once you start down the blame road, it’s hard to stop.

“Well, you’ll have lots of zucchini bread and frozen zucchini for the winter, anyway,” I said.

“Do you need any tomatoes? Let me give you some.”

“That would be great,” I said, and we spent a pleasant few minutes wandering in the jungle of George’s garden, filling a basket with warm tomatoes, ripe almost a month before their usual time, a couple of fat ears of corn and some green beans. I had spent a few frustrating seasons trying to make a vegetable garden of my own up at the cabin, but finally gave up after the deer, rabbits and groundhogs made it clear that anything planted so close to the forest belonged to them, not me.

“I’ll come down on the weekend and do a little weeding in here,” I said. Wild vines, the bane of every Kuskawa garden, were starting to get a stranglehold on the corn and beans.

“No need,” George said. “Eddie and his girlfriend are going to do that on Sunday.”

“Oh.” I should have been glad that Eddie was making such an effort to be useful, what with doing the barn chores and all, but I couldn’t help feeling redundant. The veggie basket on my arm grew a little heavier—yet another favour I wouldn’t be allowed to return.

I borrowed George’s little red wagon to haul my beer, a few other purchases and the veggies up to the cabin. I had a couple of hours to kill before Susan’s Social Justice meeting, and I didn’t want to stick around at the farm long enough to be invited for dinner. I wanted to sulk, and that’s best done alone.

When I got home, I cracked a Kuskawa Cream and rolled a small joint, smoking it on the porch and watching the tendrils of blue smoke curl up in a spiral overhead. I’m not a heavy dope-smoker, you understand. Just the occasional puff for recreational purposes. The previous year, when I’d met Mark Becker, and we’d given in to a ferocious mutual chemical attraction, I’d ruined it by offering him a post-coital joint. Not the brightest move in the world, considering that he’s a policeman who takes his job seriously. He’d gone ballistic, threatened to arrest me, and it had taken a long time to patch it up. Now we worked according to that U.S. military dictum: Don’t ask, don’t tell. I never smoke around him, and I confine my indulgence to the times when I’m certain not to be seeing him. He still looks steadily into my eyes whenever we meet, though, to see if I’m under the influence of narcotic substances. Not a very comfortable state of affairs, but it was the best we could do.

As usual, the dope lubricated the creative cogs, and I went back inside to do some more work on the Kountry Pantree sketches. Rosencrantz was asleep on her favourite chair, curled up into a unbearably cute ball of fuzzy puppyness, her tail wrapped around her nose. I wanted to gather her up and nuzzle her, but it wouldn’t have been fair to wake her up unless I was willing to put in some dog-time. One must let sleeping puppies lie.

I am a firm believer in developing tactile relationships with companion animals. I regularly get close up and sniff the various composite parts of Lug-nut and Rosie to make sure they’re clean and healthy. (This is not as disgusting as you might imagine, folks.) They let me examine their teeth and ears, massage their fuzzy necks, bellies and paws, clip their nails and do all those rather intimate things that responsible dog owners must do for their pets from time to time, and I like to think that their tolerance of such behaviour is because they’re used to it. Mother/Alpha dog and all that. They like to lick my legs after I have a bath, too, but that’s probably way more information than you need. It grosses Becker out, which is not surprising. Not only do I avoid smoking dope around him, I also try to remember not to stick my schnozz into Luggy’s ears when he’s around. I don’t doubt I’ll end up one of those eccentric old hermits who leaves all her worldly possessions to her dogs.

I pulled the library books out of my “I Brake For Frogs” book bag and turned to the top-quality chapter on cows I’d found in Farm Animals Explained. Not that I really needed to know about the four stomachs of a bovine ruminant, but if you’re going to build a costume that looks like a cow, you have to have some idea of how the common cow is put together. Goats I knew back to front and sideways, but my experience with cows was limited.

An hour or so later, I had a fairly respectable sketch of Kountry Kow, complete with apron, udder and a cunning tail that, if the cow mascot made the final cut, would swish, thanks to a secret wire inside.

I slugged back a cup of elderly coffee, washed my face in a basin of rainwater and headed down to be grilled by Susan and her Social Justice League.

George’s driveway was crowded with vehicles, several of them bearing store logos. A purple mini-van announced that “Emma’s Posies (45 Main Street E.) are Bloomin’ Lovely.” A boxy, boat-shaped sedan had “Downtown Drugs: Your Family Drugstore” written on the door, and I guessed that the yellow Camry belonged to the owner of the Laingford photo shop, because it had a huge plastic camera mounted on its roof.

As soon as I arrived, I realized I’d neglected one of the first rules of etiquette which govern rural meetings at somebody’s home. You’re supposed to bring food. I came in the back door leading into the kitchen, to find Susan bustling around making coffee, surrounded by plastic-wrapped plates of goodies. There was a platter of small cakes, a mound of little triangular sandwiches, some miniature pizzas and a box of After Eight mints with a gift bow on the top.

“Somebody having a birthday party?” I said to hide my embarrassment. I should have whipped up a batch of granola bars or something, I thought to myself, except for the fact that it was too warm for me to have the woodstove going, which would have been the only way to bake them. Luggy, smelling food, threw himself to the floor and grovelled at Susan’s feet. Rosie, who generally copied everything he did, followed suit.

“I’d forgotten that people always come with offerings,” Susan said. “We’ll never get through this lot. You’ll have to take some back with you, Polly.” She halved one of the sandwiches, made the dogs sit, then handed the pieces over. I’d finally given up asking my aunt not to spoil them. I wasn’t about to give her grand-nieces or nephews, after all. The dogs knew better than to try the begging routine with me.

“Maybe I should have a meeting of my own,” I said. “I’d never have to buy groceries again.”

“If you want to live on sugar-laden squares and white-bread sandwiches, go for it,” she said. “You go in and introduce yourself. We’re still waiting for a couple of people. I’ll be there in a moment. Oh, wait. You can take this with you.” She handed me a tray of coffee-things, which I manoeuvred through the door into George’s living room. The dogs stayed in the kitchen with the goddess of food.

Sitting beside George on the sofa was Pete Somebody, who ran Pizza Madness, next door to the Gazette office. I’d bought a slice from him often enough to know who he was, though we didn’t exactly run in the same social circles. I’d seen him coming out of Kelso’s, Laingford’s West End girlie-bar, enough times to figure him for a regular. He nodded at me, then turned back to George, whose ear he was obviously bending. George puffed on his pipe and slipped me a sly wink.

Two men were having an intense conversation by the window, their backs to the room. One was pear-shaped, dressed in baggy jeans and a black T-shirt with “Shutterbug” printed on the back. The owner of the camera-car, I guessed. His hair was blonde, flat-topped in a crew cut, and he gestured wildly with a lit cigarette. The other guy just had to be the Downtown Drug guy—not hard to pick out, as he was wearing a white pharmacist’s coat. Either he had come to the meeting directly from work, or he wore his badge of office all the time. I had a sudden, goofy mental picture of Mr. Drugstore climbing on top of his wife in bed, buck-naked under his white coat. Must have been the dope I’d smoked. He could have been a bachelor for all I knew, and the image wasn’t the kind that you’d go looking for, if you know what I mean.

“Why, hello, Polly,” a woman said as I put the coffee tray down on a side table. I turned to see a vision in pink bearing down on me from the hallway leading to the bathroom. She was about Susan’s age, dressed in what appeared to be a frilly bathrobe—all flounces, set off by a rope of pearls the size of marbles. She hugged me.

“Umm . . . hi,” I said. “How are you?”

“Who am I, you mean,” the woman said and gave a whoop of laughter. “You don’t know me from Adam, do you, dear? Never mind. I remember you when you were just a little thing. Your mother and I were great friends, and you used to come to my shop and play with the dried flowers while we had tea.”

“Oh,” I said, still completely at a loss. I was ten when my parents died, and I’ve managed to do some pretty heavy-duty forgetting since then.

“I’m Emma Tempest,” the woman said, putting me out of my misery. “I run ‘Emma’s Posies.’ Your mother was my ‘Glad Lady’.”

Another image rushed in on me like a freight train, me and my Mom in her old Mazda crammed full of fresh gladiolas as tall as I was, pink and yellow and orange, an Eden on wheels. We’d deliver them to the flower place where a nice smelling lady gave me little sugar cakes and sweet, milky nursery tea while Mom conducted business. “Well, if it isn’t the Glad Lady and her little flower girl,” she’d say.

“You’re Miss Tempest,” I said. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

“Call me Emma,” she said. “It’s nice to see you grown up, dear. Now I hope you’ll follow in your mother’s footsteps and help us nail these development rascals to the wall.” Follow in my mother’s footsteps and become a fanatical religious do-gooder who never talks to her daughter and ends up getting creamed by a drunk driver on a Kuskawa back road? Not likely.