One Year in Coal Harbor (18 page)

I thought of Ked all alone and cold up north in some wasted landscape with maybe some father who was so awful he couldn’t even tell me about him, and I ran harder and harder. For some reason this worked Ruffian into a frenzy and he began barking and leaping up on me and
snapping until he bit my hand. I screamed. Then I threw down my end of the leash and shouted, “Just GO, then, if that’s how you’re going to be. Just GO!” I was suddenly sick of trying to care for this dog who didn’t appreciate it and was bent on trying to kill himself.

Ruffian was off like a shot and I sighed and Mallomar and I ran after him. He was a full block ahead of us when an old souped-up convertible turned the corner. The car bore down on Ruffian and for a split second you could see Ruffian speed up. He was going to make it to the other side, I thought thankfully, and then the driver, who clearly didn’t see him, sped up as well and there was a terrible bang and the car ran right over Ruffian and kept going. I don’t think the driver even realized what he had done.

By the time I got to Ruffian, he was dead. He had probably died on impact. I sat down on the curb and everything that had gone wrong caught up with me. Ruffian and Ked had found a safe refuge for so short a time and now they were gone. All the snapping and snarling had gone out of Ruffian and he was lying there so vulnerably I couldn’t bear it. I took my sweater off and put it on top of him so no one could see the vulnerable side of him he had been so careful to protect. Then I had to lie down right there on the pavement because I felt nauseated and faint. Mallomar lay down next to me, making soft whining noises. After a while she tried to lick me
back into some normal state but I didn’t think I would ever have a normal state again.

Suddenly there was a warm hand on my shoulder and I startled for one second, thinking it was Ked, as if he were reaching out ethereally for me. To tell you the truth, I can see how under stress people could lose their marbles.

“Primrose?”

I looked up and was so distraught that I wasn’t even particularly surprised to see Uncle Jack, who had been gone for weeks.

“I just got back into town. I stopped at The Girl on the Red Swing and they told me Kate was in jail so I was just going down there to make sure she had been bailed out,” he said. “What’s under the sweater?”

“Ruffian. Ked’s dog. A car hit him. Ked doesn’t even know. His dad took him to Yellowknife,” I said.

Uncle Jack nodded. “Yeah, Evie told me about Ked. They should have put a stop sign there a long time ago,” he said angrily. “Come on, Primrose, I’ll take you home, then I’ll come back and deal with it.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Where are your mom and dad?”

“Dad’s fishing and Mom’s at the protest.”

“Right,” said Uncle Jack. “Let’s take Mallomar home and then take care of everything else.”

After we took Mallomar back, I walked with Uncle
Jack to his office and we got a garbage bag and a box for Ruffian. We decided to take him to Uncle Jack’s office and then tell Bert and Evie what had happened and see what they wanted done with the body. After we dropped Ruffian’s body at Uncle Jack’s, we headed over to The Girl on the Red Swing, and I thought that all they needed was more unexpected sadness. On the way over I kept trying to think how best to break it to them, wondering if they would blame me for not keeping a tighter hold on Ruffian, but when I finally blurted it out, they just hugged me.

“It’s not your fault, Primrose. There was nothing anyone could do with that dog when he got that way. He was always a wild dog. And now at least they’ll put a stop sign on that corner,” said Evie.

“Not that it’s any consolation,” said Bert.

“And, Primrose, you know Ked wouldn’t blame you neither,” said Evie. “He’d know you were just as brokenhearted about it as he was.”

Uncle Jack seemed to sense that I couldn’t talk, and we walked over to the jail without saying much. When we got there we found out my mom had already bailed out Miss Bowzer earlier in the day.

“Where would she go then?” I said.

“Maybe she’s protesting with your mom,” said Uncle Jack.

So because I still didn’t want to go home and neither did Uncle Jack we decided to head out that way.

When we got to the end of Jackson Road we found my mother. She said Miss Bowzer had been drifting about but she hadn’t seen her lately. Uncle Jack and I strolled on, looking for her. It was noisy, between the sounds of chain saws and falling limbs and the singing and chanting. I was so rattled and vibrating already that it was giving me a terrible headache. The whole top of the mountain was bare.

We finally found Miss Bowzer sitting on the top steps of the B and B. All Miss Clarice’s furniture had been moved down island, even the porch furniture. Miss Bowzer was staring at the mountain glumly. When she saw Uncle Jack, her eyes lit up momentarily, and then she turned her gaze back to the mountain.

“You look as miserable as Primrose,” said Uncle Jack, clearly floundering the way he always did around Miss Bowzer. He and I plunked ourselves down on the step next to her. My headache was getting worse and worse, so that it seemed to be vibrating as much as the chain saws.

“Of course she’s miserable,” said Miss Bowzer tartly. “Because Ked is gone. Everybody’s who’s been
around
knows that.”

“Ruffian was just killed by a car,” said Uncle Jack quietly. “She
saw
it happen.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Miss Bowzer. “What an awful thing to witness.”

They both looked at me sympathetically but not really
understanding at all, and it detonated all the stuff inside I had felt but not told anyone.

“I DIDN’T
SEE
IT HAPPEN! I CAUSED IT! I KILLED KED’S DOG! HE BIT ME SO I TURNED HIM LOOSE AND TOLD HIM TO GO PLAY IN TRAFFIC AND HE
DID
!”

Uncle Jack squinted as he sized me and the situation up and then he said quietly, “Don’t be silly. You didn’t think that would happen. It wasn’t deliberate.”

“AND I DIDN’T SAVE KED!” I said in new agony because this was the thing that had really been bothering me for some time.

“No, but you don’t know how things will turn out for him. Just because he’s out of our hands doesn’t mean nothing good will ever happen to him. It’s certainly his turn,” said Uncle Jack.

“I thought you didn’t believe in justice,” I said in surprise.

“I don’t but I believe in the occasional miracle. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be asking …,” and he was opening his sports jacket when I remembered something else.

“AND I NEVER TOLD HIM HE WAS MY BEST

FRIEND! I NEVER
TOLD
HIM! AND NOW HE’LL NEVER KNOW!”

Miss Bowzer, who had been looking concerned for me and irritated with Uncle Jack, frowned, looked a million miles away, and suddenly shot up, yelling, “I WANT TO
GET MARRIED! I WANT TO GET MARRIED. I WANT
YOU
TO MARRY ME!”

Poor Uncle Jack looked stunned. Women were leaping around porch steps shouting unexpected things with no apparent provocation.

After a pause to take in this new information, he said quietly, “Okay. Okay, I’ll marry you.”

“I DON’T WANT TO
MAKE
YOU MARRY ME! I DON’T WANT IT TO BE
MY
IDEA!”

Uncle Jack stood up, mopped his brow and took Miss Bowzer by the shoulders and whirled her to face him. He had beads of sweat all over his upper lip, and his hair was kind of standing on end. “That’s not what I … If you’ll just hold still one second, you’ll see I’m trying to declare myself.”

“Oh!” said Miss Bowzer, and all the air went out of her and she collapsed onto the steps with an audible whomp.

“Jeez,
Louise
!” said Uncle Jack. He opened his sports jacket again and from an inside pocket took out a small box and handed it to her. “What I was about to say before I was interrupted was that if I didn’t believe in the occasional miracle I’d never have the nerve to ask you to be my wife. I’ve been carrying this around for months.”

Miss Bowzer opened the box. Inside was a beautiful, sparkling ring. There was an emerald in the middle that I bet he got because it was the color of Miss Bowzer’s eyes.
Good ring choice, I wanted to say, until I remembered that this was supposed to be a romantic moment and not a jewelry critique.

“Do you suppose you could excuse us for a minute?” Uncle Jack asked, looking down at me. I realized what I must look like, staring up at them with my mouth open, my face all blotchy, practically drooling on the bottom step. I was hardly adding anything decorative to the occasion so I moved off.

I walked among the protesters but looked back at the porch steps from time to time to try to catch a glimpse of the big romantic moment, but Uncle Jack and Miss Bowzer had gone around the side of the house to have it alone.

They were gone so long I had time to replay everything that had happened in one year in Coal Harbor. As I did, my temples slowly stopped throbbing and my headache began to dissipate. For a small town an awful lot had gone on. A lot of it had been sad and now some of it was my fault. But at least, finally, something really happy had happened.

Miss Bowzer and Uncle Jack were returning to the porch and there was a point I was suddenly curious about.

I ran over. I noticed that the ring was now on Miss Bowzer’s finger.

“Why did you wait so long?” I asked Uncle Jack. “If you already had the ring?”

“I wanted to have things worked out first,” said Uncle Jack.

This was so like him. He always wanted all the pieces in his deals put together perfectly and all the angles figured out before he acted on them.

“I wanted us to have something we could do together, Kate, or at least in proximity,” he said, turning to her. “At first I thought I’d get a successful restaurant going and then we could have two restaurants. I thought you’d
like
that. I certainly didn’t want to continue working down island so much after we were married, that is if you decided to accept me.”

“Oh, you!” she said, smiling and nudging him in the ribs with her elbow, which put her diamond-clad hand at a particularly good display angle. I imagined we were going to see the hand at that angle quite a bit in the weeks to come. And why not? Miss Bowzer had waited a long time for someone who would go out into the storm after her, forsaking all else.

“Then when I realized you wanted the B and B—”

“When I
told
you she did,” I interjected.

“Right, when Primrose told me you did, then I decided to sell a bunch of my holdings down island and buy it. Dan and Miss Clarice, soon to be Mrs. Sneild, had asked me to find them a farm down island to transfer her buffalo enterprise, so I was busy with that as well.”

“Dan Sneild is marrying Miss Clarice?” I interrupted. “Oh, the snake! He was courting Miss Bowzer!”

“Oh, hush, Primrose, I knew about Miss Clarice all along,” said Miss Bowzer. “Dan followed her up here
from Duncan and told me the first night that he was going to try to convince her to move back with him.”

“Well, you certainly had
me
fooled,” I sniffed.

“Hush,” said Miss Bowzer again. “I want to hear what Jack has to say.”

“Oh,” said Uncle Jack. “Well, I figured once I had the B and B secured, I would ask you to marry me. I was going to put an offer on it today, actually. Miss Clarice knew I’d be making one as soon as I could. But now, looking at that clear-cut, I’m worried about this B and B doing business. Maybe we should look for another with a better view.”

“No,” said Miss Bowzer stubbornly. “I want this one. I’ve always wanted this one.”

We all stared at the big ugly bald strip across the way.

“All right then,” said Uncle Jack dubiously. “But hey! Here’s a happy thought—we can serve all the French food we want!”

“Oh! So that’s what that was about? You were
auditioning
me?” And Miss Bowzer started to turn an irritated scarlet, proving that she could get prickly even at the most romantic of moments. I could tell they were going to have some spectacular dustups in the years to come.

I decided to change the subject before the French food could be further explored and my own nefarious part in the
boeuf bourguignon
affair be revealed.

“It’s too bad you can’t buy the
mountain
,” I said hastily, “That would stop the logging.”

And that’s when Uncle Jack stood up and left. Without a word.

“NOW WHAT!” said Miss Bowzer, to no one in particular. “NOW WHERE DID HE GO?”

She was still shouting everything as if she weren’t aware she had a volume control.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know that look on Uncle Jack’s face. He didn’t just disappear. He has a plan.”

That’s how Mendolay Mountain ended up with a statue of Mr. Honeycut on top of it. The strip that had been clear-cut was planted in wildflowers and kept tidy by the Honeycut Park Preservation Committee. Even though there was a lot of grumbling about it, I was kind of glad Miss Honeycut got a statue of her father up there. Although he was a pretty scary-looking guy. You’d think they’d at least have made the statue smile but instead they gave him a frown and a huge nose down which he could look at all of us forever. Which maybe Miss Honeycut would have liked, I don’t know. She never came to see it. We invited her for the dedication ceremony but I think she was at someone or other’s dying bedside and just wrote a letter to be read, saying a mountaintop park had exceeded her expectations and how clever Uncle Jack was. This part made everyone snicker.