6 The Wedding (5 page)

“So, do you think the Mountie will be back in time to hunt
for the wedding feast?”

I shrugged. It was in the lap of the gods.

Sasha and Horace were working clandestinely on their
fireworks display in an old shed they’d cleared out behind the Lonesome Moose. They’d
spent the morning on the roof of the tavern repairing the huge hole produced by
their failed rocket experiment. They were now exhausted but also excited by the
task at hand. While Horace worked on the shorter rockets for the pinwheels,
Sasha was painting the long tubes for what they now referred to as their CCCP
Specials. They worked in secrecy since Big John had forbidden them to build or
set off any more fireworks within a hundred kilometers of town. Both their
heads turned when they heard the wooden door of the shed creak open.

Standing in the doorway, wearing a worn and dirty parka that
was so big it looked like a full-length dress, was a little boy no older than
six. His hair was bright red, identifying him as a potential
Gulcher
. His eyes were wide, glued to the rockets that each
man held in his hand.
Wow
, the boy’s
expression said without the need of a voice to express his thoughts. Sasha and
Horace exchanged glances.

“Who are you?” Horace asked bluntly.

“Ricky,” the boy replied timidly.

Though the boy had answered Horace’s question directly, he
had failed to answer the question Horace had actually meant to ask. Horace
tried again. Kids had never been his thing. His wife had always looked after
Chuck.

“Where did you come from?”

“The stork brought me,” the boy said.

“A stork brought you here to the Gulch?”

“No. To a hospital in Los Angeles,” the boy corrected.

“He is child of Judy’s.…” Words failed Sasha. “He is a
stepson of the Flowers. The Wings brought him last night.”

“I see,” Horace said.

“Best you get out,” Sasha added gruffly. “Is not safe work
for a
child.
”

“Wait just a second. Don’t be hasty,” Horace corrected,
holding up a hand. “After all, we don’t want little mouths telling stories out
of turn.”

Sasha considered Horace’s point and nodded his head in
agreement. Horace set his project aside and went to the door to kneel before
Ricky.

“What do you want, Ricky?” he asked.

“I want to help. I’m tired of cooking.”

“Well, I don’t know about helping,” Horace balked. “We’re
making fireworks.”

“Let him help with small bombs,” Sasha suggested. “The
little one is not too young to learn.”

“Well,” Horace replied. “I suppose we could set him to
packing gunpowder into the firecracker shells. With his small hands, he’d be
good at it.”

Sasha nodded in agreement. Ricky’s face lit up in a broad
grin. Horace took the boy’s hand and led him to a free chair before an empty
work table.

“First, let’s roll up the sleeves on that coat. You’ll need
the use of your hands for this project.”

Horace took several moments rolling up the sleeves of the
thick down jacket then lifted the boy and placed him on the chair. The boy’s
head and arms could barely reach the tabletop. Horace brought a burlap sack and
a plastic bag to the table. From the sack he spilled out several spent shotgun
shells within the boy’s reach. He opened the bag to reveal that it was full of
black powder.

“What we need you to do is fill each of these shells to the
top with this black powder. Use this stick to tamp the powder down real well
like this.
But not too hard, eh.”

Horace demonstrated. The kid grabbed his own empty shell and
began filling it with pinches of black powder. When he’d reached the brim, he
used the stick as Horace had shown him to tamp the powder down, and then added
more until he had the powder fully packed to the rim. He set the finished
cracker aside and reached for a fresh shell.

“I think we’ve found ourselves a natural,” Horace announced,
ruffling the kid’s hair.

Ricky looked up to Horace and smiled before returning to his
work. Sasha watched the boy for several moments before shaking his head and
resuming his labors. Horace returned to his workspace and lifted the rocket
he’d been working on from the table. Soon the three of them were so absorbed in
their labors that they didn’t hear the door creak open the second time.

“What’s going on in here?” the voice of the Flowers rang
out, a full octave higher than usual.

Horace almost broke his rocket in half trying to hide it
before turning to face the voice. Sasha merely stopped his painting and looked
up.

“Ricky! What is that in your hand?” the Flowers demanded.

Horace turned to see Ricky sitting in his chair holding a
spent shotgun shell packed to the brim with gunpowder.

“It’s a bomb,” Ricky replied with delight.

The Flowers’ face turned bright red in anger, which is an
especially scary sight to see on a redheaded woman.

“You come with me,” she said, grabbing Ricky and setting him
on the floor. “And put that horrible thing down.”

Ricky tossed the packed shell onto the table as the Flowers
dragged him toward the door.

“Bye,” Ricky said, waving his free hand.

“I’ll be back to deal with you two after I’ve got my boy
safe.”

The Flowers slammed the door behind her and silence followed
in the tiny shed. Horace and Sasha exchanged a glance.

“Whew, that was close,” Horace observed.

“But she is coming back,” Sasha pointed out.

The two men flew from their work tables and began
barricading the door with anything they could find. And they did so just in
time. The Flowers returned with an axe to grind. Fortunately, she hadn’t taken
the time to retrieve the axe from the woodpile. Instead, she used a huge fallen
branch to beat on the door while the two men leaned their full weight against
it from the other side.

Big John heard the noise and stepped out back to see what
was the matter with his usually calm daughter
. He didn’t
intervene until the Flowers began packing wood and old newspaper around the
base of the shed, fully prepared to burn the building down around its occupants’
ears. He carried the Flowers kicking and screaming into the tavern to try and
calm her down.

Finding that the Flowers had at least temporarily suspended
her assault, Horace and Sasha snuck out of the building carrying boxes of
supplies and disappeared into the woods.

*
 
*
 
*

“Okay,” I said, glancing over at the Flowers who
was
chewing on her nails. Her eyes were wide, crazy. “So we
don’t let Horace or Sasha
babysit
.
Ever.”

“Oh, God!
What if he’d been killed?
I am such a bad mother! One day here and he almost got blown up.”

“But he wasn’t hurt. And Sasha knows about these things. He
wouldn’t have let Ricky do anything really dangerous.”

At least, I didn’t think so.

“And you are not a bad mother.” This probably wasn’t the
moment to point out she wasn’t a mother at all. She didn’t need to be reminded
that she was a pinch hitter.

I was driving slowly as we talked. It wasn’t because I was too
distracted to be safe. We had another five miles before we reached a paved road
and the terrain was a challenge even with good shocks. Big John had suggested
that I take his daughter to Seven Forks and try to talk some sense into her so
the Mountie wouldn’t need to arrest her for murder when he got back home. Meanwhile
Big John would take Ricky to visit Wendell and see the new litter of wolf
puppies. Everything would be fine.

Of course I agreed, but I wasn’t sure but what I should let
Judy take an axe to my soon-to-be father-in-law. No wonder Chuck’s mother had
been the primary parent in his life. Horace was a menace.

*
 
*
 
*

The meeting in the old church, which also served as the town
hall, had just concluded. Everyone had given the Mountie an earful. It began
with the man in the dusty bib overalls standing behind the altar.

“What do you mean, you released him?”

“I thought he was a prisoner of Woody Sykes,” the Mountie
explained.

A low grumble rolled through the congregation. The Mountie
heard the actions on several firearms being readied.

“He said his name was Andy Smith.”

“My name is Andy Smith,” the man behind the altar clarified.
“And I don’t much like him taking it in vain.”

From that point on, the conversation degenerated into
shouting and finger-pointing. The man in the bib overalls, the real Andy Smith,
tried to gain order and failed. The Mountie joined him behind the altar to
assist but failed. Anatoli finally pulled Chuck aside.

“Perhaps we should let them vent,” he suggested.

Anatoli succeeded in stepping outside to wait. Chuck wasn’t
so lucky. He made his way for the door but was grabbed by a burly mountain man
to have his ear chewed on. Chuck spent most of his time warning the citizens of
Soda Springs against touching a police officer. They all wanted to be heard and
eventually they were, though this didn’t seem to mitigate their anger much. Succeeding
in applying some organization to the complaints and name-calling coming in,
Chuck was eventually told where he could stick his head by all thirty village
members before they dispersed into the woods. Andy Smith was the only man who
stayed behind to lock up.

“I think that went well, Mountie,” Smith said with a wry
laugh as they left the church and Chuck finally understood why some animals ate
their young.

“Mr. Smith, I have a report to radio in,” the Mountie said
tiredly.

“Can’t.
There
ain’t
no
working radio. Woody Sykes broke it.”

Smith locked the church doors shut by lacing a heavy chain
through the door handles and locking the chain closed with a simple key-activated
padlock.

“Then there’s no way to communicate with the outside world?”

“None whatsoever.
Unless you
brought a radio with you, being as I see you as one of those who need to be
calling in a lot for help.”

Chuck struggled to hang on to his temper. He couldn’t go
around shooting people, even if they deserved it for dragging him away from his
wedding.

“Mr. Smith, can you recommend anyplace that I might sit for
a while in silence and write out my remembrances for my report? In fact, I
think I should make special note of several of the townsfolk and check criminal
records when I get back to Winnipeg.”

“Mountie, I suggest that you and your friend, Tonto here,
leave town as fast as you can. I suspect that some of the others are gathered
someplace right now deciding whether to track down and string up you or old Woody.”

Chuck opted to take Mr. Smith’s warning seriously. Trotting
down the main street with Anatoli by his side, the Mountie and the Russian made
good time back to where they’d stowed their motorbikes. They sprang two more
nonlethal traps along the way but didn’t stop to admire their delicate design
or observe their intricate functionality. Instead, they kicked up some dust
with their heels.

As Chuck reached his bike the first arrow landed in the dirt
not two meters from where he stood. It took only a moment to look back toward
the church and see that a posse had formed in the street out front. He supposed
the arrow indicated that they’d already chosen their intended prey. He heard
Anatoli kick-start his bike. This example brought Chuck back to the present,
leading him to deftly kick-start his own. Anatoli peeled out, performing a
perfect 180 turn back the way they’d come. The Mountie’s front tire was no more
than a meter behind Anatoli’s rear wheel as they raced away down the trail.

They rode well into the night, beyond the time at which it
could still be considered sane to speed down winding mountain tracks lit by
nothing more than a single dirty headlight. In fact, they stopped only when
they were completely lost, the GPS had stopped working, and their bikes ran out
of gas; they had planned on refueling in Soda Springs.

*
 
*
 
*

“But Sasha, I nearly have the last of the pinwheels
assembled,” Horace complained. “All I have to do is fasten the
rockets to the last wheel.”

“There is always time for explosives,” Sasha countered. “Now
we must go.”

Sasha kept tugging at Horace’s sleeve until the elder man
relented. He then led Horace out of the makeshift lean-to they’d assembled to
house their laboratory in the outskirts of the woods and into the center of
Main Street. There they stopped as Sasha insisted on Horace accepting a black
blindfold the Russian tied tightly around his friend’s eyes.

“This is silly,” Horace noted.

“This is going to be great,” Sasha said, borrowing one of
Horace’s favorite phrases.

With Horace’s eyes bound, Sasha led his blind comrade across
the street and up the stairs of the Lonesome Moose. Horace shuffled his feet
slowly, feeling uncomfortable at not being able to see. They nudged their way
through the door of the tavern and once inside Sasha pulled the blindfold from
his friend’s eyes.

“
Failte
,
mo
charaid
!
” the men in the tavern greeted him in Gaelic.

Horace was surprised to see that all the men in town had
gathered in the Lonesome Moose to await his arrival. Each of them had a glass
of whisky in their hand which they raised in a salute to the newcomer. Horace
cracked an awkward smile and stepped further into the room as men rose to pat
him on the back and shake his hand.