Muriel Gray - The Trickster

Then on to the medicine bundles. Strange, small leather pouches full of herbs, used by shamans for good and bad medicine. All present and correct, except maybe one of the bad medicine bundles was responsible for a label peeling off at the back of the case. Bad medicine plays havoc with glue. Note two on the list. A stroll past the eagle feather wands and pipes completed her circuit, and ended, as always, with the model.

Just before closing, before she turned the model off at the wall switch, she always pressed the Corkscrew Tunnel’s red button and smiled as the tiny train started its last journey of the day through the mountain of paper: her own ritual.

Ritual was important to Katie Hunt. Perhaps not quite as important as it had been to Katie Crosby, but it was still up there along with breathing and eating. But if that love of ritual had endured the years, lots of things had disappeared forever; and they started to disappear when the twenty-three-year-old Katie Jane Crosby had first gazed into the delicious, mischievous black eyes of Sam Hunting Wolf. Mostly bad things. Things she was glad to have shaken off like dandruff. Things like Tom.

That had been close. Whenever Katie thought back about how close, she shuddered.

Was it really her who thought a Friday night barbecue at Tom’s sailing club was the height of sophistication? Yes it was. And it was Katie Crosby who used to practise signing Mrs Tom Clark on the telephone pad when she was doodling during a long call. A real close thing. She recalled her parents’ faces that night. Expressions of almost catatonic shock, the night she let them all down. But also the night she set herself free.

It was her own fault. She should never have let Tom own her the way he did. But the things you know as a woman are different from the things you believe as a girl. He bullied her. She knew that now. Then, of course, she thought he loved her, was telling her things for her own good. Christ, she’d lied to herself all those years. Lied when she saw a line for a blockbuster movie she ached to see, when she and Tom were heading for the art-house theatre to sit through a long dark European film with subtitles. Lied to herself when Tom told her that her college friends were young and silly and he couldn’t tolerate them, that his boat-owning friends were more interesting. Lied about liking to push weights, ride expensive mountain bikes and go roller-blading with the big muscle-bound dumb geeks Tom admired. She ate low cholesterol food to please him, and agreed with Tom that bed by ten-thirty was a good thing to help with a personal training programme.

A whole series of lies and self-deceit. It had left her awash and confused, wondering who the hell Katie Crosby was. Did she like Sylvester Stallone or Ingmar Bergman? Would she rather go to the private view of an exhibition of Corbusier drawings, or go and fly a power kite in a storm? Why did she long to skip ‘training’, sit up until 4 a.m. drinking beer and arguing with friends whether Kojak would look like Barbra Streisand if he grew hair? Her confusion had made her pretend she was full of certainty, boasting to her friends that she was settled and sure of life, that she had the answers. She was grown now and the answer was, she could like anything she wanted. No reasons necessary. But then, the answer had to be Tom’s way. It wasn’t his fault. It had been hers. She didn’t think she was at all pretty, and no one changed her mind. In fact everyone remarked on how handsome Tom Clark was. She was ‘lucky’ to have snagged him. He said he loved her because she was funny and bright and full of life, but in private moments, in subtle ways, he made it clear that one of them could have anyone they wanted, and the other one should be damned grateful.

He treated her degree in archaeology and anthropology as a curious and charming little hobby. It was his yacht chandlery yard that would keep them solvent, and she needn’t worry about a thing.

But she had loved him. Slim, tall, handsome Tom. Tom who bought endless magazines about boats, who wanted to be thought an expert on books, architecture, design and civilized living, but really only knew about his resting pulse rate. Tom who was like a child, as a direct result of trying so hard to be a man. And she very nearly married him. Warning bells had been sounding long before she met Sam, but she hadn’t listened to them. Sex with Tom had started to be so infrequent and awkward she dreaded him even trying. His clumsiness made him treat it like a chore, and every bungled attempt left them beached further apart on some strange shore. It was, after all, her fault. He told her so, often.

‘You never initiate making love.’

She hated that term, ‘making love’. Sounded like a school’s sex education lecture. It took the lust, the dirt, the fun out of it.

‘That’s the problem,’ he would say. ‘You have to start it sometimes.’

But for some reason she didn’t want to start it. She wanted him to want her more, to grab her like a plumber in a dirty movie and make her ache for him. But that was never going to happen. Remember, Tom could have anyone he wanted. She was ‘lucky’.

And all the time her parents welcomed him like he was the son they never had, never once noticing their happy-go-lucky only child growing increasingly more insecure, miserable and bitter.

Then there was Sam. The first time Sam had really made her laugh, she thought a flood-gate had opened somewhere inside her. A joy so profound and delicious burst from her that she felt intoxicated. It was almost as if she’d forgotten how to laugh like that. Crying with mirth, sides aching from elation. With the laughter, always a stirring of sexual passion that made her lightheaded.

And to think she nearly didn’t join her parents in Silver that year. Tom had asked her to forgo the yearly family vacation in Alberta and stay in Vancouver as his partner at some charity ball, and she had nearly said yes. Her parents didn’t expect her to come with them any more. She was a grown woman after all. The ball was tempting. Tom’s friends and business acquaintances were rich. There would be a marquee, and she could wear a taffeta ball gown and long silk evening gloves with a bracelet over the wrist. She would drink sparkling white wine and maybe break away from his iron-pumping idiot pals for a moment to find someone who would talk about something more than their own flesh and how they were keeping it healthy. But somehow Katie wanted to be a little girl again for a few weeks. She longed to wear an old sweater and stack her Dad’s woodpile neatly for him, the sensual touch and smell of the rough pine delighting her. Her routine. A routine that had survived for two decades. And she wanted to sit with her Mom as Mrs Crosby in her silly cotton hat made another futile attempt to capture Wolf Mountain in watercolour from the porch. She wanted all that warmth and security that Tom seemed to provide but really didn’t. So she went to Silver with her delighted, but surprised parents. And she met Sam Hunt.

He drove a bus. That’s what Sam was doing when she first saw him. Katie remembered everything about that day. It was hot as Hell, and she was wearing khaki shorts, a plain white T-shirt, a tiny tartan rucksack on her back, making her way to Lazy Hot Springs for a hike. And she was waiting to board Sam’s bus in the depot.

A big sign on a stand read Passengers wait here until driver checks your ticket , and so she waited by it. Funny thing was, everybody else just walked by her, out through the glass swing doors to the sidewalk and got on the bus. It sure was filling up. There were lots of Japanese, a few hiking couples and some elderly tourists. But they were all getting on the bus before her. She saw the seat she fancied was already gone, the front one opposite the driver where you can look out front from the big windshield, and she started to get annoyed. Where was the driver? Why didn’t someone in charge come and tell all these people to wait in line like the sign said?