Читать книгу The Dells - Michael Blair - Страница 17

After breakfast, Shoe and Rachel walked to the small park behind the houses across the street. Shoe had never known its name, but a shellacked wood sign identified it as Giuseppe Garibaldi Park, a testament, he supposed, to the many people of Italian descent who’d lived in the area, and did still. He carried the heavier of a pair of file boxes of pamphlets and papers, and the rolled-up woven blue polypropylene kitchen shelter he’d helped Rachel get down from the rafters of the garage. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and, despite the omnipresent yellow haze of pollution, the mid-morning sun had a savage bite. Fortunately, the humidity had dropped a bit more overnight and there was a slight breeze, insufficient to disperse the pollution, however.

The park was a hive of activity. Where the outdoor skating rink had been every winter when he was growing up, a group of bare-chested, sun-baked men with bandanas tied around their brows was erecting a big white open-sided tent, driving two-foot metal stakes into the hard ground with sledgehammers, and stringing wire-rope guys to sturdy metal poles. A white five-ton truck stood nearby, “Rain or Shine Party Rentals” emblazoned on the sides, from which two men off-loaded folding tables and stackable chairs. Dozens of men and women and kids bustled about, setting up community action kiosks and crafts tables, portable garden gazebos and more camp kitchen shelters; dragging gas barbecues into position; lugging picnic coolers and boxes of hot dog and hamburger buns and cases of soft drinks from the backs of minivans and SUVs parked along the street on the south side of the park; and dumping bags of ice into a child’s plastic wading pool next to which stood tall stacks of shrink-wrapped flats of single-serving bottles of spring water. Pennants fluttered and clusters of balloons bobbed from the Victorian-style lampposts scattered throughout the park. There were waste receptacles and recycling bins everywhere. Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America” blasted from a huge boom box on a table in front of a first aid station manned by teenaged boys and girls in scouting scarves, shirts encrusted with merit badges.

“What can I do?” Shoe asked.

“You can help me set up the shelter,” Rachel said. “Otherwise, everything seems to be under control.”

Between them, they put up the kitchen shelter, banging the pegs in with his father’s carpenter’s hammer, unzipping and rolling up the bug-screen sides to let in some air. Between the extra-long poles of the door fly, Rachel strung a banner that read “Welcome to the Umpteenth Annual Black Creek Weekend in the Park.” When Shoe commented on it, Rachel said, “Saves us from having to paint a new banner every year.”

Shoe unfolded the legs of a rental table inside the kitchen shelter. Rachel laid out the contents of the file boxes. It was good to get out of the sun. Rachel placed an IBM laptop on the table, opened it, but did not turn it on. She placed a cellphone beside it.

“Tim Dutton is supposed to hook up a solar-powered battery charger for the computer and my phone,” she said.

“I’m surprised he still lives around here,” Shoe said.

“He likes being the big fish in a small pond,” Rachel said, frowning. She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be so hard on him. He contributed a lot of money and materials for the homecoming. But he’s as big a jerk as he ever was. Wait till you see his house. When he took over his father’s business, he moved his parents into a retirement home, a nice one, of course, then bought the houses on either side of his parents’ house, tore all three down, and built a new place. It’s hideous. A dog’s breakfast of architectural styles. God knows who the architect was. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tim designed it himself. Patty hates it.”

“Patty?”

“Tim’s wife. His second, actually. Wait till you meet her. She’s absolutely stunning and smart as a whip. Tim doesn’t appreciate her at all. She even calls herself his tarnished trophy wife. She and I have become pretty good friends. She’s the chairperson of the homecoming committee. Patty’s worked her ass off to make this weekend a success.”

“Nevertheless,” a woman said, as she came into the shelter, “it’s still far too big.” She placed a file box on the table next to Rachel’s laptop.

“It is like hell,” Rachel said with a smile. The woman was attractive, with fine, even features, medium-length blonde hair, and an excellent figure, albeit perhaps slightly too long-waisted. Rachel and she exchanged quick kisses. “Patty, meet my brother Joe. Joe, meet Patty Dutton.”

“Joe,” Patty Dutton said, taking Shoe’s hand and gazing up at him with cool green eyes. “Pleased to meet you. Rae talks about you all the time.” She held his hand a little longer than necessary. “What do you do for a living, Joe? Crush rocks with your bare hands?”

“Not quite,” Shoe said. His hands were large and strong, like Shoe himself, but he’d been doing a lot of masonry and carpentry work on the marina and motel lately and his hands were harder and rougher than usual.

Patty smiled and released his hand. “Rae wasn’t exaggerating about your size. How tall are you?”

“A fraction over two metres,” he said. Patty Dutton crossed her eyes comically. “Six-six and a bit,” he translated.

“You’re what, Rae?” Patty said. “Five-four, five-five? You got shortchanged.”

“There wasn’t enough fertilizer left over for me after Mum and Dad grew Hal and Joe,” Rachel said.

“It’s quality that counts, eh, Joe? Not quantity,” Patty said.

“That’s right,” Shoe said.

“Speaking of quality,” Rachel said, grasping Patty by the shoulders and turning her around. “Tell her that her ass is just fine.” Patty blushed and laughed and waggled her backside at him.

What could he do? “It is fine indeed,” he said.

“Thank you, kind sir,” Patty said, placing a finger under her chin and performing a quick curtsy.

“Where’s Tim?” Rachel asked. “He was supposed to bring some stuff to hook up the laptop.”

Patty lifted the lid off the file box she’d placed on the table. “I brought it, but I haven’t a clue what to do with it. How about you, Joe? You’re a guy. Guys know about these things.”

“Not this guy, I’m afraid,” Shoe said. “I’m a Luddite when it comes to computers.”

“Modest, as well as handsome. How come you’re not married?” She smiled. “Tim should be along soon. When I left the house this morning he was still going on about that man who was killed in the woods the other night. Tim says he used to live where the Tans live now. He was a pedophile, Tim said. Is that true?”

“It’s shit,” Rachel snapped. Patty Dutton’s eyes widened. “Sorry,” Rachel said. “No, it’s not true. Marvin Cartwright was not a pedophile.”

“You knew him?” Patty said.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “He — ”

She was interrupted as a burly elderly man and a strikingly handsome middle-aged woman came into the shelter.

“Hullo,” Rachel said brightly. “Welcome to the Umpteenth Annual Black Creek Weekend-in-the-Park.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, smiling.

She was in her mid-fifties, Shoe guessed, slim and elegant. The man was older, in his late seventies, grizzled and bear-like. They both looked familiar, but Shoe couldn’t place them. Rachel handed them each a photocopied list of events and map of the park and asked them if they’d like to sign the guest book. The haunting strains of Carlos Santana’s guitar introduction to “Samba Pa Ti” began to wail out over the park from the boom box by the first aid tent. Patty Dutton half closed her eyes, hummed softly to herself as she arranged material on the table. Her fine backside began to sway with the music.

The kitchen shelter was getting crowded, so Shoe went out into the hard, hot sunshine and purchased a bottle of water for two dollars from a Girl Scout sitting beside a plastic wading pool of ice in the shade of a beach umbrella. Most of the ice in the pool had already melted. He was standing in what shade there was outside the shelter when the man and the woman came out. The woman looked at him and smiled. He felt he should recognize her, but he didn’t.

“You’re Joseph Schumacher, aren’t you?” she said. She had a faint British accent. “I thought so. You don’t recognize me, do you?”

Suddenly, he did recognize her. Something in the way she’d spoken his name. He didn’t recall that she’d had a British accent when she’d been his ninth-grade English teacher, however.

“Miss Hahn,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you, Joseph,” she said. They shook hands, his hand engulfing hers. She turned to the older man standing quietly beside her, whom Shoe had also recognized. “Jake,” she said, “you remember Joseph Schumacher, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” the man said in a rough, gravelly voice as he and Shoe shook hands. “But my memory isn’t what it used to be. My apologies, Mr. Schumacher. I assume you were one of Claudia’s students.”

“Yes, sir, I was.” Jacob “Nine Fingers” Gibson had been the principal of Black Creek Junior High School when Shoe had been a student there. He had been called Jacob Nine Fingers because he was missing the ring finger of his left hand. The legend was that he’d lost it during a school fire drill when he’d fallen on the stairs and his wedding ring had caught on a railing.

“There were so many students, Mr. Schumacher. And only one of me.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Joseph,” Miss Hahn said. “Perhaps we could get together later and talk. Catch up. I expect you’ve led an interesting life.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said.

“Good,” she said. She took Mr. Gibson’s arm and walked him toward a craft table featuring hand-painted ceramic figurines.

Rachel came out of the welcome tent and stood beside him. “That’s your old junior high school English teacher?” she said. “No wonder you had a crush on her. She’s beautiful.”