Chapter 16
Aisha was glad to see me. I could tell. She said, “What? Tired of sleeping on rocks or something?”
But she gave me a big hug and a passionate kiss, and didn’t ask me a thing. She got me out of my clothes, led me to my recliner, and set a cup beside me. Into it she poured a large whallop of Jamieson’s Irish Whisky. Then she put a fire on in the fireplace, cooked me a massive steak, and handed me the remote control for the TV. “I recommend you become mindless,” she suggested.
It suited me. I did, naked as a jaybird in that hot room, sipping whiskey and flipping channels while Aisha read a book. When I was done the steak, she brought me a bowl of chocolate ice cream, and a large pitcher of water.
I woke up the next morning beside Aisha. I had the requisite headache. I have a tendency to get depressed when life overwhelms me, and there’s a strange link between a nasty headache and a nasty case of the blues; I can’t be depressed when I’ve got a headache. Don’t ask me why.
“You poisoned me,” I mumbled to my wife.
“I could have given you soy spaghetti with tomato sauce and tofuballs,” she said. “And a nice glass of organic apple juice. Your pills are on the table.”
After breakfast, we went for a walk along the river to the grocery store. While we walked and looked at the ducks, I told her the whole story. Actually, Lakefield’s not that big, so we had to go around the block a few times, dragging an empty two-wheel grocery cart.
“So you think the geobuddies offed George for a diamond mine,” Aisha said, as we approached the IGA grocery for the fourth time.
“Makes the most sense to me,” I offered, “and you told me to watch out for those two.”
“Oh, you’re probably right, but you don’t know for sure.” She kicked at a pile of maple leaves on the sidewalk. “And that’s going to bother you.”
“Hercule Poirot I am not.”
“It won’t matter. It’ll bother you.” She held open the glass door to the grocery. “And that’ll bother me.”
She was right. I thought about going back to some lake and taking another picture, and it just didn’t seem worthwhile. I had bins full of great negatives and drawers of great prints. But not many sales. If anyone wanted a print of a the wilderness in the rain, I already had more than a lifetime’s worth.
Then I thought about putting a new cedar gunwale on the canoe, and decided, what the hell, it would last for another season. Or maybe I could do it in spring when I had more ambition.
Then I thought about putting some more apples into the shopping cart, and I decided I didn’t really want any more apples. I’d probably eaten a lifetime’s worth already.
Then I tried to think of something that was actually worth doing, or maybe a distraction, like visiting somebody or renting a movie. And I couldn’t name a friend I actually wanted to see or a movie that didn’t promise to annoy me.
By that time, Aisha had cornered the store’s supply of acorn squash, and most of their tofu.
Aisha was silent as we walked home.
She served me some mysterious soup with mysterious chunks in it. Some chunks wiggled when I pushed at them, some didn’t. It helped my stomach a bit, and I took another couple of codeine pills for my head.
I wandered down to the basement, but there didn’t seem to be anything worth doing there. All my projects promised discouragement rather than inspiration.
For a while I stared out the big patio doors to the backyard. But the idea of raking leaves didn’t appeal to me. I sighed a few times and tried to decide what to do next.
Aisha appeared beside me, and I found myself raking leaves after all. We have two large maples in our back yard, and they drop lots of leaves onto the ground, the patio, the goldfish pond, and my canoes.
The more I raked, the more fresh air I breathed, the more my circulation improved, and the grumpier I got. By the time I’d hauled my fourth wheelbarrow load to the leaf pile in the back, I was planning on chainsawing both trees. But if I didn’t clear out the leaves, the grass would die. I thought of paving the whole back yard.
Eventually, I checked my watch. It was almost noon. I leaned the rake against the garage and took off downtown before Aisha could see me.
I bought a copy of the Globe. The fish and chip shop was open. I ordered a large plate of pickerel and chips, and sat in the most remote corner of that tiny shop, hoping nobody would talk to me. I didn’t want to make eye contact with anybody, so I scowled at the walls, and tried to read the paper.
There was nothing in the paper. Same old news, recycled. I divided the paper into two categories, “that’s not news” and “who cares”. All that was left was the margins and the comics, which weren’t funny.
I started on the crossword, but suddenly I thought, what am I doing this for, and put it away.
After I’d finished the fish, the fries didn’t appeal as much. But I ate them anyway, out of spite for life or something.
I became aware of someone standing beside me. I looked up; it was the cook.
“Your wife called,” he said. “She said she’s made an appointment for you to talk to Bob.” He hesitated. “Whatever that means.” He shrugged, and went back to the fryer.
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“You what?”
Aisha continued to stir whatever was in the slow cooker. “I called the lodge. Bob the Brit is still there.”
“Why would I want to talk to him, for God’s sake?”
“Because you’re bothered by this thing. And you’re going to eat yourself into a quintuple bypass if you don’t do something.”
“And I’m supposed to talk to Bob? What the heck does he have to do with this thing?” I refused to sit down.
“You’ve got to talk this out. You’ve got to answer a few questions and be sure about a few things.” She turned to me. “Let’s start with Bob.”
“You think he might have killed George?”
“Not likely. He did have a fight with George, you said, and he was missing when George died. So there are some questions he can answer.”
“And,” I said, “we don’t know where he was when the shooting started.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Aisha said.
“You really think this is going to help me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But you’re either going to have to go to the police about the spirit drawings and the diamond ore or else you’re going to have to suppress it. You know that. You can’t tell the police you think someone killed George unless you tell them why someone would want to kill George.” Aisha added a few chunks of something yellow to the mix.
I took a chair, sighing. She’d got to the point, as usual. I couldn’t stand the thought of no one looking into George’s death. But I really hated to bring out the whole story. I didn’t want anyone controlling that country, but if I had to choose, I’d have preferred to have the Indians control the petroglyphs. Diamonds (if there were any in that lake) might help the economy, but they’re basically rather useless items to rip open a country for.
And that was a nice hill. I liked the view.
But if the facts about the diamond ore and the petroglyphs became known, who might know where it would end? The only real loser would be the solitude. That was the only real certainty.
On the other hand, if I suppressed the whole story, I wouldn’t be responsible for what eventually happened. But I might be helping hide a deliberate killing.
On some other hand, George hadn’t long to live anyway. And he’d have wanted the land without mining roads built into it.
Then again, on the other hand, someone was certain to build a road to the petroglyphs anyway. Maybe a smaller road, but still a road.
Like a good economist, I’d run out of hands long ago. My head still hurt. Aisha was right; I had to do something, however senseless.