Muriel Gray - The Trickster

Katie had stomached enough of goddamn blasts and blackouts for one day. She switched off her worries, switched channels and sat down at the table to catch half an hour of a Green Acres re-run.

When Gerry turned up at the door, the snow was falling so thickly Katie could barely make him out. The snowman on the doorstep handed a conical shape to Katie and said, ‘Peace offering.’

She smiled, took the flowers already frosted with snow, and pulled Gerry in by the elbow.

Gerry shook himself like a dog in the kitchen. ‘Christ. This is going to make the ski company wet themselves.’

Katie already had the coffee machine back on. ‘Yeah. And not a whisper of it on the forecast. I want my money back from the weather channel. Grab a seat.’

Gerry installed himself at the kitchen table. ‘I heard from Billy at school. Is Sam okay?’

‘Yeah. He’s fine. We don’t know what all that fainting was about. Probably saw the hockey scores.’

She turned her back on Gerry and fished out a couple of mugs from the dishwasher.

‘Listen Katie … about the other night …’

‘Forget it, Gerry. It’s no big deal.’

‘It is a big deal. Claire’s my sister. Uptight corporate woman maybe, but my sister nevertheless, and I’m ashamed she upset Sam.’

Katie sighed and joined him at the table, toying with the defrosting flowers in their soggy paper wrapping. ‘You know the problem, Gerry. You’ve known us for nearly ten years. Sam just doesn’t think he’s an Indian.’

‘Kind of hard to forget. Especially when you look at Billy and Jess.’

Katie laughed.

‘I know. Sometimes I’m glad I can remember giving birth to them, or I’d think I had nothing to do with their creation at all. The Crosby DNA’s sure got mugged somewhere along the line by Sam’s.’

‘Is he mad at Ann and me for bringing Claire?’

Katie shook her head. ‘No. He’s mad at being born a Kinchuinick Indian and growing up on a reserve.’

‘Claire’s real embarrassed. She wondered if we could maybe have you all round to our place for supper before they head back to Montreal. But I guess if Sam’s not well …’

‘Let’s leave it, Gerry. But thanks for the thought.’

He nodded. The coffee machine gurgled its message that the brew was up.

‘So how’s school anyway?’

Gerry lightened up, his duty done. ‘It’s shit. As usual.’

‘The kids all talking about the explosion?’ She put two coffees in front of them.

‘And some. Of course now they’re also talking about this blizzard. They figure they’ll get time off if it keeps up.’

‘Billy seems distracted right now Gerry. Have you noticed?’

Gerry cupped the mug in his hand. ‘Can’t say I have. Was he upset by Sam collapsing?’

‘I don’t know. I just detect something disturbing him. Probably nothing. I thought you might notice, but I forgot teachers just practise riot control these days.’

‘Up yours.’

Katie laughed and drank her coffee. Gerry took one sip and stood up.

‘Look I really have to go. Just came to leave these.’

‘The coffee that good, huh?’

He kissed her on the ear and made for the kitchen door, then paused when he looked through the glass panel. ‘Hey, I think you should loosen up with the disciplinarian dog-owner bit and let Bart in. He’s carrying more snow than a blue trail.’

Katie came to the door. ‘I tried this morning, thanks Doctor Doolittle. He won’t come in.’

Gerry stepped into the blizzard again.

‘That’s huskies for you, huh? Bye!’

Katie waved goodbye, and looked over at Bart. Gerry was right. The dog was outside his kennel, almost completely covered in snow.

‘Here Bart. Come in boy.’ She patted her thigh.

Bart looked at Katie and then resumed his vigil, staring towards Wolf Mountain as if it were made of prime sirloin.

‘Jeez, a dysfunctional dog. That’s all we need. Next stop the Oprah Winfrey Show .’

Katie brushed the snow from her hair and shut the kitchen door.

Frank Sinatra was giving it all he had in the chorus of ‘It Happened in Monterey’, when Ernie Legat’s horny hand stretched out to the cab’s stereo and cut the cassette. Ol’ Blue Eyes was God to Ernie, but he liked to hear what the engine was up to when he hit Wolf Pass. In weather like this, with a full forty-ton load of frozen seafood behind him, he would be lucky to see second gear. That would be on the way up. On the descent into Silver, he could probably do with a parachute.

The snow was coming at him in the headlights like a corny asteroid storm on Star Trek , hypnotizing him with flakes that became rods of relentless white motion as they streaked past the windshield, and despite the work of the snowploughs, the road wasn’t giving away many clues as to where it stopped being road and started being ditch.

Ernie coaxed the eighteen-wheeler into a first cautious gear change as the gradient started to introduce itself.

‘Come on, you bastard.’

Ernie reached his paw out again to turn up the heater, figuring getting more heat in the cab would take some of it out of the engine. The truck was doing its best.

In the back, two hundred lobsters, bound for plates on the east coast, slid backwards an inch on their plastic pallets as the Peterbilt started its journey up the one-in-fourteen pass.

The snow was getting thicker with every foot Ernie climbed, making him curse that last coffee he’d had at Mabel’s. No wonder he hadn’t seen another truck for twenty miles. The sneaky sons of bitches waving hello to him back in Lanark must have known how bad stuff was up here and either left hours earlier or cut loose for the night in the parking holes down on the Trans-Canada. Not a sniff of trouble on the CB.

Well shit on them. Ernie liked to get where he was going, and even though this was shaping up to be one of the worst winters he could remember, it would take more than a blizzard to knock the stuffing out of his schedule.

He was getting near the summit now, and the old tub hadn’t put a wheel wrong. Nice and slowly, that was how to take it. Ernie could feel the road flattening out, and even though all he could see in the dark and through the snow was about fifteen feet of white featureless ribbon, he’d worked this godforsaken road often enough in daylight to guess he was right underneath the peak of Wolf Mountain. That meant at least two miles of even cruising before it was hang on to your hat for the slide down into Silver.

The chorus of ‘It Happened in Monterey’ started to form itself into a hum on Ernie’s lips. It died just as quick as he saw the figure up ahead. Standing at the side of the road was a man in a long black coat with his ungloved hand out, casual as you like, thumbing a lift. Ernie figured it must be at least minus thirty-five out there, but this guy was just standing in the snow like he was hitching a ride from some pals in a beach buggy on Sunset Boulevard.

Ernie started to brake. It was real fortunate for the guy in the coat that the truck was on the flat. Braking in snow like this was jack-knife city, but this was an emergency.

What the hell was a guy in a coat doing up here near midnight in a snowstorm, at least ten miles from anything remotely resembling civilization?

The truck managed a standstill about twenty yards past the man and Ernie watched in the wing mirror as the figure walked, not ran, but walked, slowly up to the passenger door, his face lit only by the red side-lights.

The company didn’t allow hitchers, but this was life or death and the way Ernie saw it, he had no choice. He hadn’t seen another vehicle either way for at least two hours. How long had the man been standing here, casually waiting for his lift?