Road to Thunder Hill (15 page)

“Don't go much below freezing over there, I don't imagine,” someone had said.

“These pictures remind me of those
National Geographic
magazines I looked at as a kid. Closest I ever came to watching porno.”

Jean Bradley said, “Coffee is served.”

They stayed on a while, longer as Olive helped serve up the cakes and squares the women had brought. I was glad she'd had the good sense not to demonstrate the mating dance she'd shown me that afternoon.

Then the talk moved on to Maynard Fleming's young fellow who was building houses and barns out of bales of straw.

Someone said to Maynard, “Didn't you teach your boy about the three little pigs?” Everyone got a kick out of that.

Olive and I climbed into Billy and started down Perry Card's lane. The questions began. How in the world had I ended up at Hog Holler? What had I done all night that made me look so damaged? That was the word she used, “damaged.” She kept looking over at me when she wasn't busy steering Billy in and out of the tracks she'd made earlier driving up the lane to Hog Holler. To avoid her questions, I made a point of turning around to ask the twins how their ballet recital had gone. Then I asked her how she'd found me anyway.

I got the whole story. How she'd awoken this morning to a cold house and the sight of a quarter inch of ice coating everything outside her window. How she'd lit a fire in her big old Enterprise stove and gone out to the summer kitchen to the old hand pump and wasn't it fortunate that she hadn't gotten rid of that old thing because with the electric pump out, there was no running water to be had! She'd filled up the reservoir on the stove and then bundled up the twins, saying there would be lots of cold and hungry people out there who'd need rescuing this morning.

I nodded and settled in for the blow-by-blow of how she came to rescue me.

She said that next she had driven, no, slipped and slid all the way to the Four Reasons. Through slush and snow and ice, they charged, “Because, Patricia, you know how Billy loves a challenge.”

Inside the store, Alana and Danny were at the freezers pulling out food and stuffing it into burlap bags. Alana told the twins to help themselves to the ice cream since it was all going to melt anyway and while they were insured for most power outages, they weren't sure they were covered for ice storms. So they were hauling it across the road to the Bradley Farm, which, and did I know this, had a generator large enough to serve the house as well as the dairy barn. The power lines were down all over the county and no one knew when they'd be back up.

“But I still don't get how you knew I was at Hog Holler.”

“That's what I'm getting at. Just as Alana was saying that at least her phone wasn't out, Gayl phoned, looking for you.”

“And Alana knew I was at Hog Holler?”

“No, Alana thought you were still at your house. In fact, she told Gayl you were likely sitting in front of your stove reading a book with your feet up on the oven door. That's when she remembered the flue fire, which came as a total surprise to me since I'd just been over to your place yesterday.”

I shrugged. “It only takes a minute for it to happen.”

“Well, I decided you might need rescuing and I was just about to head out in Billy when Gayl phoned back saying she'd *69'd your call to her last night, did it sound familiar? Alana knew right off it was Hog Holler's number.”

Olive took her eyes off the road to stare at me.

I pretended to concentrate on the road ahead of us. The sun had disappeared and now it was snowing again, sleet really, and ahead of us the tracks that Billy had made on the way to Hog Holler were barely visible.

We'd almost reached the curve in the road just before my lane. I said, “You can just drop me off here, thanks.”

“I can't do that. You have no heat at your house, remember?”

“I'll manage,” I said, trying to sound firm.

“Quite frankly, Patricia, you don't look like you're in any condition to be alone.”

I must have looked pretty green at this point because the next thing I knew we were pulling into the Four Reasons and I was opening the door and puking my guts right in front of the gas tanks. The rest of me just about followed it to the ground, but Olive was suddenly there, catching me under the armpits. I caught a glimpse of the twin faces staring at me from the window as Olive half dragged me towards the store.

Then I was lying under an afghan on the couch at the back of the store and Alana was passing a wet cloth over my face. I could hear Danny muttering that someone was going to have to go out there to clean up the mess I'd made.

I jumped suddenly when I saw something slink around the cooler. When I realized it was a cat, I looked up at Alana expecting her to react like it was a rat. But she didn't and
that
more than anything almost had me jumping out of my skin. Had I landed in some sort of parallel universe? A person disappears for one night and suddenly their whole world changes?

Danny said, “Alana had a change of heart when the cat left a dead rat at the door. She actually opened the door for the cat.”

Alana said, “Go figure. Cats. The lesser of two evils.”

“Admit it,” Danny said. “You like the cat.”

Alana muttered something about it not being so bad. Then the bunch of them followed the cat up to the front of the store. For a second there, I even fell asleep. Then I heard Danny say, “Don't even think about driving Trish into town. The road's closed anyway.”

Olive said, “But what if she has food poisoning?”

Alana said, “Looks more like rum poisoning.”

One of the twins piped up. “Is Aunt Patricia drunk?”

“No dear, she's just a little off her oats today,” Alana said, her voice unnecessarily loud. “Who wouldn't be, spending a night at Hog Holler?”

“With Bear James, no less,” Olive said.

“Bear? Bear was there?” This piece of information had Alana rattled. I could tell by the way her voice kind of cracked on “there.” Everybody knows Bear James goes to Hog Holler when he's feeling lonely. She lowered her voice. “Are you sure he was there?”

“Well, his Rover certainly was.”

Alana marched over and stood in front of me with her hands- on-hips pose. “Bear was there? You spent the night together?”

“Guilty as charged. We even slept on the pool table.” I added a laugh here and rubbed the back of my neck. “But I wish I hadn't, because now I have an awful crick in my neck.”

“Hmm,” said Alana, her foot tapping the floor. “Must have been crowded on that table.”

“It was. Especially with Suzie sleeping on it too.”

“Hmm.”

“A pool table?” Kira asked. “Wasn't it uncomfortable lying on top of all those balls?”

Alana suddenly snorted, and said to Kira, “It all depends on whether or not the balls stayed in their pockets, my dear.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” I said, wondering where the hell Alana got off suggesting such a thing, even as a joke. But I answer, “No it didn't hurt at all, dear, because all the balls stayed in their pockets. But I can tell you this … Kira,” I had had to search for the mole on Kira's earlobe as this was one way to tell the twins apart, “sleeping on a pool table is no fun at all.”

No fun sleeping on a pool table, indeed, I was thinking, even if you are lying in the arms of a man who's rubbing you like you're someone pretty special. And you're rubbing against him like a cat in heat. That thought must have crept into my face, in the form of a silly smile no doubt, because Alana cast me this I think you're hiding something from me look.

I chose that moment to say that I should probably call my mother and Gayl.

According to Gayl, everything in town was operating as usual, with just the regular problems a snowstorm brings. Places were closed, shovels and scrapers were out, getting around was difficult, but not impossible. At least they had power.

“How was your night, Mom?”

“Lovely, dear, it was just lovely. Gayl had a friend over and I watched them play Scrabble. Did you know that Gayl has an excellent vocabulary?”

I could tell that my mother was trying to keep me from asking about her. She needn't have worried. I didn't have the energy to get angry about her drinking, because to do so would be calling the kettle black, now wouldn't it?

“What friend of Gayl's?”

“Dixie. Lovely girl.”

Dixie. I didn't know any Dixie. I used to know all her friends.

“Dixie who?”

“Now, I'm not sure about that. Why don't I pass you over to Gayl?”

“Wait, I haven't…”

“Hi Ma,” Gayl was cheery.

“Who is this Dixie person?” I ask.

“A friend of mine,” Gayl said. “What were you doing at Hog Holler last night?”

“I … I …” I began.

“And thanks for lying to me about it too. You're busted.”

“Busted? Why?”

“Because you told me you were going to the Four Reasons.”

“No,” I said, in the firmest voice I could muster. “I said I
might
go.”

“I'll be sure to remember that line myself, cause I'd be in big trouble if I ever told you I was going somewhere and ended up somewhere totally else.”

“It's not the same thing at all,” I said. “The circumstances were unusual, I didn't want you to worry.”

“Worry? We all thought you were dead in a drift somewhere. But instead you were tying one on at Hog Holler.”

Take control of this conversation, I told myself. Know when to admit you were wrong. “I'm sorry. I should have let you know where I was.”

“Hey, no problem, Ma. Just remember this the next time you freak because I'm a little late getting home.”

“Whoa. That's where you're dead wrong, kid,” I said, and seizing the moment, added, “I am an adult who is responsible for my own actions. You, meanwhile, are still my responsibility and therefore you have to answer to me.” I said all of this in a calm voice too.

“Pretty hard for me to answer to you when you're out drinking with a bunch of dirt bags.”

“I was with your godfather, for Pete's sake. And we just happened to be there when the power went out, and you might as well know, because I'm sure it will be all over Thunder Hill by tomorrow, we had to sleep on the pool table because Clayton Card was already on the couch, and the floor was cold, and I hurt my ankle, and we couldn't drive home.”

“Wow, so now you slept with Bear James. Dad know yet?”

“Don't be silly, it was no big deal. By the way, your grandmother doesn't know I was at Hog Holler last night, does she?”

“No.”

“Good. Let's leave it like that. You know how much she worries about silly things.”

Gayl laughed. “Yeah, okay, responsible adult, but you owe me big time.”

Okay, I told myself, maintain the calm that's supposed to come with maturity. Resist the urge to blurt out, I owe you? Why, you owe me so much that you'll never know how much you owe until you have kids of your own. And believe me, I hoped to be around to see that day because revenge was surely the greatest reward for any parent. Instead, I said something like, “And how are you doing, dear? You think you can handle your grandmother alright? You could make her some tea. She likes that when she's … off her oats.”

“Way ahead of you, Ma. You know, I was thinking. Maybe I should move here into town. That way I could look after Gran, and then you wouldn't worry about her so much.” Typical Gayl. Picks the worst time to throw something huge into the arena.

Before I can answer, she adds, “So can I? I already talked to Dad and he said it was okay.”

He did, did he? Typical fucking Ray. Telling Gayl whatever it was she wanted to hear just so he wouldn't have to deal with her nagging him about it. Let me be the bad guy.

“Look, could we talk about this later?”

“Like when?”

“Like when we get the power back and the road gets cleared and you can bring my car home. How's that?”

“Think about it, okay Ma? You know how lonely Gran gets.”

I got off the phone thinking that Gayl was like a bulldog, the way she grabbed onto something and hung there until she got exactly what she wanted. Sometimes I admire that quality in her and I tell her so. That sort of persistence, I told her, is how her grandfather did so well in the blueberry business. Now, if only we could get her to channel it into something besides bullying her mother.

I remind myself it was the promise of a hot bath that put me here at Olive's house. I'm sitting at her big oak table in the kitchen listening to her go on about the wood stove that my parents hauled out of this kitchen forty years ago in order to install the avocado-coloured electric range, and about how Olive had happened upon its rusty cast-iron self in the back of the barn, and had it restored and reinstated into the kitchen, and to think how fortunate we are to have it at this moment.