The River Burns Read online

  “There’re better jobs than this,” Alex reminded him.

  Jake Withers studied the row of houses. Driving by on a scouting trip, he thought he’d struck the mother lode. He was less certain of that now. While it was true, as the man said, there were other jobs, he never seemed to land them, and anyway it was also true that there were other driveways, including those in more civilized communities. He strode back to his car, tossed his book of glossy photos of pavement samples into the backseat, and slammed the door. Going around to the other side he nearly slid down the embankment, but he found his footing and clambered up and piled himself into the car. He bolted forward, then braked, turned into Alex’s gravel drive and backed up in a cloud of dust to change his direction, then roared off again, hammering the steering wheel with a fist. His eyes welled up. Before he did anything else, he was going to call the cops on that old man. He was going to mess with that old geezer and settle this score no matter what. The only way to do that was to sic the cops on him. See if he liked that so much.

  To hell with him and his shotgun anyway. He was going to make that call.

  On his front lawn, Alex O’Farrell ruminated that not every sport gave him the kick it once did. That’s what happened when a part of him sympathized with his victim’s circumstances. Wisdom was a bother, and made him less ruthless. Poor kid. The sun was hot now and Alex was perspiring and dirty from his garden work. He turned back to the house, ready for a quick shower and a morning nap. After that it would be noon, and time for lunch.

  Another day. At least this one dished up a dose of entertainment.

  5

  She begrudged this train its old-world comforts. Especially its nostalgic joys, the cosy mystique. She resented the staged evocation of an earlier, purportedly simpler, time. The lives of young women were different then. I should’ve caught a derelict bus if buses were available to catch, been aggravated throughout the trip, crouched in a seat that long ago lost its cushioning while penned in by a lout with a shrill voice and a ringing desire to chat her up. Hitchhiked, then, okay? Picked up by a half-blind octogenarian, half the ride veering over the white line taking the curves in the wrong lane, dropped off by the roadside in a sweltering broil. A crazy idea, the craziest. Then get picked up again and probably molested. Worse. Dumped in a ditch after. Crazy, crazy notion. This train, though, is a pretty crazy idea, too.

  A seer’s advice. Drive your truck into the ground, she was told. But don’t stop there. Travel to the end of the line.

  She was running away.

  Going where that witchy woman said.

  Schoolkids ran away, didn’t they? Teenagers. Husbands fled. Draft dodgers and deserters. Thieves on the lam. Lovers eloping. Cats ran away sometimes but they came back after crossing whole continents if you could believe the myths and what adventures they experienced! The best. Was that it, then? She was looking for adventure? Deadbeat dads ran off. Fraud artists who tripped up got the hell out of town, trying to beat it down to a Caribbean island void of extradition laws. Wives ran away from desiccated marriages. Lambs fled wolves. Or so she supposed. But lawyers, lawyers didn’t run away. Or did they?

  Always, they had better things to do.

  And yet, I’m a lawyer and although others might vehemently disagree that she had nothing better to do she’d decided that her best option in life was to Scram. Beat it. Run. So I’m running away.

  Vamoosing, she called it.

  Perhaps this is what lawyers did. They vamoosed. In style.

  I’m a storm now. The wind. That’s the thing. I can’t argue career choices when all I am now is a whole gale in the dark of night. Even when it’s noon.

  The sedate comfortable pleasure of an antiquated steam engine and passenger train wending its way along a lovely riverside on a sunny day seemed, in oblique ways, enchanted. But she would much rather arrive wherever she was bound like a thunderclap, all wind and downpour, crackling hail and tempest.

  I’m pending, she supposed. The calm before the—

  Raine Tara-Anne Cogshill, who commonly and professionally used only the first half of her middle name, knew little of the place where she was headed. She just wanted to be travelling on the run and got into a slight tiff when she was refused a one-way ticket. The ticket seller, an older man less tall than herself, was adamant. Only round-trip fares were sold. She was resolute about not returning, while he was equally stubborn, stating that she would either pay to come back or she would never leave, not on this train. The quandary was solved only when he commented that once she paid for the round-trip ticket no one could prevent her from missing the return leg.

  “So, nobody will stop me from not getting back on the train?” she wanted verified.

  “The railroad has no hounds,” he told her. “We won’t hunt you down.”

  So she bought a round-trip ticket with no intention of using the return leg.

  A brochure informed her that the town at the end of the line was charming, quaint, and small enough that she could walk to everything. Perfect.

  “Enjoy the trip,” chirped the man at the ticket counter.

  “Only the first half,” she told him, and boarded.

  As the train approached Wakefield it slowed, not that the relic was ever swift, but half speed became one-fifth, and as it entered the town’s limits where the narrow-gauge tracks were planted hard against the main drag, with virtually no separation, men, women, and even children on foot were strolling faster than the train in its deliberate crawl. She could climb out and push and arrive at their destination sooner and assumed that this was supposed to be charming, too. A lawyer’s frenetic pace still resided in her bloodstream. Perhaps she had that to subdue. In places there seemed to be no gap between the tracks and road and in other sections between the tracks and a walking path. Under the passenger car window, patrons having an early lunch on a restaurant’s rear patio were so close she could count the chicken wings four down, four to go on their plates and study an emblem on the flatware. I know zip about heraldry. This was unlike any town she’d visited. Where else did cars, pedestrians, and diners jostle for space with steam locomotives?

  Perfect.

  A weekday, a goodly portion of those onboard were either retirees or railroad aficionados on a mini-holiday, and none of the latter and few of the former were in a rush to disembark as they pulled into the station. They loved sitting on the train in the station. Only slowly did they stow scant belongings into light backpacks, retrieve cameras and binoculars. Tara Cogshill carried a purse and a small backpack that contained the sum total of her earthly possessions—she’d sold her stuff and her furniture, dropping a good deal of her clothing off at a Goodwill. If she was truly leaving she wasn’t going to bring her belongings with her. She’d left the bed of her little red pickup bare, guessing that sooner or later the truck would break down. When it did, she was unencumbered, a garage taking the truck for parts, and she had next to nothing to carry off it. The only item beyond bare necessities that she could not do without was her cell phone, although she’d been tempted, during the train ride, to toss it in the river. One final act of separation, but she resisted. This was a new beginning, a fresh start, and she was well satisfied to be first off the train.

  Tara declined the conductor’s hand to guide her onto a step. Hands off. A beauty, and due to her striking looks she was accustomed to the attentions of men, including those who would find any excuse to graze her skin. She hesitated on the train’s lower rung and allowed her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness. The delay was not meant to put herself on display. The opposite, she wanted to take in the moment, for this step off the train marked the conclusion of her old life, and a fresh start.

  She stepped down onto the platform. Feeling famished.

  Soon enough, resigned to it, tourists disembarked as a swarm, ready to commence a bee-like buzz about town. Tara looked around awhile, just observing, deciding on a direction
, then adjusted her backpack—thinking that perhaps she’d brought along more than she needed—resisted the bakery across the street, and started walking.

  So, town. Her lips moved with the intensity of her query. Whatcha got?

  6

  After lunch, the men waited for timbers to be loaded on their

  trucks. They were deep in the forest now, comfortably in the

  wild and their element. Amenities were primitive, yet their lives in town and even at home fell away once they entered this realm. Here, the order of their lives went unchallenged. Each man’s worth was attributed and valued. Standing amid the rampant noise of machinery and the constant dust, encircled by the forest’s stately presence, they felt privileged. In another era, their forebears passed whole winters in these woods before emerging to the care of families and friends. This generation entered the forest they depended upon for their livelihood daily and departed again each evening, yet here they feel at ease, and the truckers believe that it is legitimate to call themselves loggers, no matter that none of them cut down trees or load the logs onto flatbeds.

  Machines perform the bulk of that labour now.

  Above a scrimmage of screech and roar, the men talked. So familiar was the robust bedlam at their backs that they never noticed themselves raising their voices. If magically the cacophony could be switched off they might be shocked at how boisterously they were shouting, of how their neck muscles bulged and contracted with the strain.

  They had much to bellow about, the day an affront, a partial misery.

  News about the bus being off-loaded and the old folks tottering across the bridge had gone around. Versions were embellished to include more buses, more wheelchairs, more elderly over ninety, virtually all of whom were dependent on canes or walkers. Wildly exaggerated, the stories still polished an essential nugget of truth, that not only were matters with the bridge not progressing, they were deteriorating more rapidly than anyone could salvage.

  “At some point, you gotta call it what it is, what this is here.”

  “What do you wanna call it?”

  “The last frigging final fucking straw.”

  “You’re right. Totally. Call it that.”

  Denny O’Farrell remained quiet. He wanted to hear fresh ideas, not another endless rant. Only ideas could save him now. He heard the complaints, repeated them himself a thousand times. What he needed was a proposal equally as abrupt and as convincing as their anger, and far less terrifying than the gambit he now embraced. He remained still, and quiet, because he was beginning to feel boxed in, surrounded, ambushed by his own notions, as foreign as they might be. He’d proposed a plan, to a few, and those within his inner circle were bound to secrecy. They would not proceed unless they had no choice, and right from the outset Denny prayed that matters would never reach that juncture, that declared point of no return.

  Yet the moment appeared to be drawing near.

  “A blockade!” one of the big talkers pronounced, as if the scheme hadn’t already been recklessly discussed multiple times, and rejected as often. Denny supposed they’d argue it through once more for good measure. Samad was there, smoking and nodding but not saying much, and Xavier was chipping in with comments. André made suggestive gestures in response to aggressive statements, but mostly he made eye contact with Denny as though to confirm that the time to do something was coming soon. Denny wished he’d stop. The big talkers could be counted on to work themselves into a lather, but they’d think differently when things became complicated, or dangerous, or rife with consequences. They wouldn’t talk so loud when matters got down to the nitty-gritty, the particulars. When the time arrived for risky action, some men would find an imaginative way or even a dumb way to be absent. Oh, but they’d still goad others to do the dirty work. They’d inflame others with talk about dumping logs across highways or planting bombs in government buildings or abducting key figures or, since the environment garnered such attention these days and the environmentalists opposed their idea of a new, fast bridge, why not create an oil spill in the river and see how people liked that, eh? Guys like Big Bill Fournier and Max Klug and Lee Stemniuk, those guys, they were talking big because they always talked big, and Denny once thought that they were the guys, the leaders when you needed to change the world. Over time he learned otherwise. Those guys never took a risk, but oh man, they loved to talk, they loved to pressure others.

  Someone once mentioned firing a bullet out of the dark forest through a windshield. That way, no one could ever find out who pulled the trigger. A few guys talked about something like that because they themselves would never hold that rifle in their hands, but someone like himself, who might actually do something, kept his mouth shut. The only way, he thought.

  “What do you think, Denny?” Big Bill Fournier was asking him. “You’re so quiet. What’s up with you?”

  Thanks to that remark, quite a few of the men were looking at him now, not just André. As if they knew. Or if they didn’t know, they were good at guessing. He was leaning back against Big Bill’s truck, both hands in the front pockets of his jeans, sticking to the shade. A damn scorcher today. Perspiration matted the front of his shirt and every man’s shirt showed dark patches under the arms. He could smell their sweat. Big Bill’s diesel rumbled at idle at his back and he felt that gentle shake although, as close as it was to him, the engine was virtually inaudible, overwhelmed by the charge of the forklifts snapping up timbers like twigs then releasing those logs to drop onto the beds of the trucks, including at the moment his own. A thunderous tumble. One after another. Every truck, not only Big Bill’s, rumbled with its engine on, the three being loaded and the four in a row waiting. What was he supposed to say?

  “We’ve been down this road before,” he yelled, unaware that he was yelling. “Blockades don’t work if the first guy in line loses his contract.”

  “But if everybody goes,” Big Bill was saying as if he hadn’t said it before, “every last one of us, at the same time, they can’t fire all our asses.”

  “Sure they can,” Denny pointed out to him.

  “They don’t have to,” Samad interjected, because he’d heard this debate a hundred times over himself, everyone had.

  “Start at the front and work their way back. Cancel contracts on the first couple of guys and it’s over,” André said.

  “The rest will fall,” Xavier conceded. “Like bowling pins.”

  “Guys, we can hold tight, refuse to load up if somebody’s canned.”

  “Then stand first in line,” Denny suggested. He’d never been that cruel before. “We’ll line up behind you, Big Bill, back you every inch.”

  Without saying so, Big Bill’s body language conceded that that strategy put a different spin on things.

  Denny wanted some other idea, which he knew he didn’t have, and probably his unhappiness stemmed from an intuitive conviction that the only workable idea was the one that he and André would not speak aloud in the company of others. This was going to fall on him, he could feel that. Maybe that’s why he’d been mean to Big Bill, called him out for being a wuss. This was going to fall on him, and Big Bill Fournier, a big talker, could never get to the bottom of what that might mean.

  “It sucks,” Denny said above the raucous booming down the line, and he didn’t mean the bridge or how their day was going. He meant that any solution would by necessity fall on him and he hated that. André was still glancing over at him and he wanted to punch him in his left eye, close it with his fist.

  Lee Stemniuk, usually a mild-mannered sort with only a pair of bar fights to his credit, said, “Maybe we can kidnap some fucker’s ass.”

  They chuckled a little, but Denny looked up, gazed at Lee.

  “Whose?” Big Bill wanted to know. He wasn’t taking the idea seriously either but he wanted to play along, have a lark.

  “Some CEO fuck,” Lee said, and shrugged. “Some politici
an shit maybe.”

  Denny wasn’t laughing and despite the heat he crossed his arms over his chest and buried his hands beneath his biceps. He didn’t like the rancour embedded in the false humour. He knew that some of the men discussed these things in whispers, and considered it all, and went on flirting with it all. Kidnap some fucker’s ass. Get attention that way. They’ll find out how serious we are then. A new bridge in the blink of an eye after that. Lee was a mild-mannered man who could get rowdy when pushed, he’d seen him in one of his two fights, but the day was doing this. The heat, the blocked bridge, the long drives that limited the number of loads they’d carry, the forfeit of a measure of their pay, the rising cost of fuel, the buildup of frustration, the erosion of hope—these things caused Lee to make a joke, but under that joke lurked a venom, and a potential that Denny judged to be dangerous.

  “Fucking assassination, that’s the way to go,” Big Bill added on.

  Unimaginable deeds felt plausible when they could laugh about them.

  “Pop off the old people,” Xavier put in, and he took aim and fired an invisible rifle, “when they walk across the bridge instead of taking the bus. That’d get a reaction.”

  “You think?”

  They were laughing and having a good time now, their humour virulent, but Denny knew they were building themselves up to justify an action, some kind of an action, any action. Denny didn’t crack a smile. He wasn’t going to build himself up that way. When it came time to take that action, he’d probably do it. Otherwise it might not get done, or worse, the wrong sort of thing would happen instead, something that could damage their prosperity, even wreck their lives. So the matter fell to him. He not only had the vision to know what to do and how, he was willing to see it through. And he was not some hothead, although he knew people liked to think so. He made it a personal point of honour. Everything needed to be carefully considered, with attention to detail, and just. He could never speak of his solution to anyone beyond his trusted group, not ever, for that would be tantamount to a public plea of guilty before the commission of the crime. The wrong remark now could land him in jail later. So he detested the heated words spitting around him, as no one seriously contemplating an action would dare speak of it aloud. Something was brewing, so deep, so dark, that not only could he never speak of it, but neither could he bring himself to laugh along with these other imaginary escapades. His silence, he assumed, could never convict him.