Granite and Dry Blood
By Lenny Everson
rev 1
Copyright Lenny Everson 2011
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Cover design by Lenny Everson
****
"There's a loon over about five o'clock," Tony said, pointing with his paddle. He was beginning to natter; he was sure of it. He'd known it was bound to happen. He liked to think of himself as the strong, silent type, but he was sure the truth would come out.
The truth was, good-looking women made him nervous.
At the front of the yellow canoe, Connie stopped paddling, took up a small pair of binoculars, and observed the bird in silence for a moment. Then she said, "That's a pretty bird. Are they edible?"
"Ah, I doubt it," he said, a bit startled. "I imagine they'd taste of fish." "I guess she really is from out of country," he thought, still trying to place the slight accent. He'd wondered if she was American at first, but the accent had a definite trace of Old World.
He was till trying to accept the fact that he'd started out from Oshawa on a solo canoe trip, and was now paddling down South Channel with an astonishingly good-looking redhead. "Life changes so quickly," he thought. "Would you pass me one of those apples?" he asked. His stomach was a bit aflutter.
Overhead, a small red float plane buzzed its way to the west, and was gone.
"No problem." She reached under the canoe seat, and pulled out a Granny Smith. She briefly contemplated the syringe in one of the pockets of her packsack. No, she decided. There'd be plenty of time to do the deed at Creswicke Lake. She passed him the apple, smiling.
****
Several miles to the south, a tan-and-brown car pulled up to a public launch point, where the lake came close to the road. For a moment it sat there, just another car with a canoe in this lakeland, until the only other there car loaded its canoe and left.
Two men, both in their late 30s, got out of the car without speaking. They unloaded a small, light canoe in seconds, sliding it down the embankment and into the lake. The taller man then took a day pack and an aluminum case out of the car and tossed it to the other one, a short man.
In less than three minutes, the canoe was disappearing around a point in the lake. The man in the car watched it without emotion. Then he drove back to the highway, watching for other vehicles on the road.
The car drove less than a mile down the highway, before pulling off into a laneway leading towards a cottage.
Once out of sight of the highway, the car came to a halt. The tall man removed the roof racks, then peeled a layer of brown vinyl off the roof, turning the car into an all-tan vehicle. Finally, he removed the Quebec plates from the car, replacing them with a set of Ontario plates. Satisfied, he removed his blond wig, got in the car and returned to the highway.
Out on the lake, the short man in the canoe got out a map and a GPS. He figured he was five hours at most from Creswicke Lake. Tony would pass through Creswicke Lake, he decided, maybe camp there, so Creswicke Lake it would be. Satisfied, he continued paddling quickly towards the west shore, where a portage sign was tacked to a beech tree.
Under his seat, in the aluminum case, was a small rifle with a very long barrel and a very expensive scope. And ten bullets, each hand-loaded. He could put out the eye of a squirrel at three hundred yards. A guy in a canoe would be no problem.
****
A small red float plane passed high overhead. The lone pilot, a singer by trade, took a long look below him, picking out Creswicke Lake.
Further away, he saw a yellow canoe. It matched the description, and was in the right place. It puzzled him a bit that there were two people in the canoe, but maybe someone had just forgotten to tell him the details.
He sighed, knowing what he had to do.
Oh, well, maybe he could make a song about it. He tilted the plane to the east, towards Parry Sound. He'd be back in a couple of hours, looking for the yellow canoe.
****
Crouched in the shade of a rock, the bear looked out over Creswicke Lake, and licked her back leg.
Coming here this summer had been a mistake; for she'd been injured in a fight with a bigger male bear a week earlier. She'd come to this point of land for the blueberries, not knowing the land had been claimed by the other bear.
The resting place was on the end of a rocky point, and there was hard country and maybe the other bear between her and the deep woods. Her attempts to climb the rocks then to swim across the lake had been turned back by the pain.
By this time, she had eaten all the berries and grass she could reach, and was hungry. Very hungry.
Her nose twitched, smelling the faint odors of food clinging to the campsite in front of her.
****
A couple of thousand miles to the south and west, an aging crew went over the old B-52 one last time. The desert winds blew grit against five hundred mothballed aircraft, most of them B-52s. This one, once named Buffalo Baby, was the only one with the protective covering removed.
General Paul Glosser, retired and leaning heavily on a wooden cane, considered his last mission, looking at the map of Ontario, and planning a route in his head.
He sighed, running his hand along the bomb bay doors of the old plane. War was hell. "Next stop," he thought to himself, "Creswicke Lake."
Wherever the hell that was.
****
It took a just over four hours to get to the first portage.
Connie seemed to catch on fairly quickly to the art of paddling. "You'll have to teach me," she'd told him, "I've never paddled anything but a rubber dinghy." But she turned out to be a surprisingly strong paddler. "Too bad we're paddling into the wind, she said at one point."
"Almost always into the wind," Tony assured her, "no matter which direction you're going. It's the Great Curse of the Canoe God." From a hillside there was a brief flash. Someone must be up there, he thought, watching through binoculars.
South Channel had a number of cottages along it, most of them unoccupied in this weekday in September. One tour boat wallowed by as they entered Seven Mile Narrows, and Tony showed Connie how to turn the canoe to face into the waves.
"So what are you going to call this book?" she asked as they coasted to the shore. A small indent in the rocky bank marked the best portage route. There was no sign on the tree, and almost none that any other canoe had ever stopped there. Tony knew better: there were few places that canoers or hunters hadn't scouted. Besides, he'd done a bit of scouting a couple of years before.
When they got out of the canoe, Connie handed him a copy of Canoeing the Georgian Bay Inlets and a pen. "Autograph, please," she demanded.
"Ah, the pleasures of being a famous author," he said, wondering what to put into the inscription. "I'm thinking of calling the next book, Canoeing the Massasauga Wildlands. But how did you figure I was going to write another book?"
"For the money?"
"My take on Georgian Bay Inlets was just over seventy-eight dollars, net."
"The fame?" She smiled broadly, hoisting her one large pack easily out of the canoe.
"Let's see; you're the …. third person that's recognized me in the last year.
"Well, then, maybe because you added a couple of pages at the back saying you were going to do your next book about this area."
"I guess I did." At the time it had been just a hope. He signed the book with "For my Favorite Paddler". Considering how unsocial he was and the fact that his previous girlfriend hadn't liked canoes, Tony figured it was a safe bet.
The portage to Speyer Lake wasn't too bad. Tony had never gone all the way to
the lake, but there was a faint trail to follow.
Connie seemed enthralled by the lake. "And there's nobody here at all?"
"Nobody, as far as I can see. People don't bother to build cottages on a lake this small when there's all of Georgian Bay and thirty-thousand islands out there."
Rather than go straight across the small lake, Tony followed the shore, showing Connie the northern shoreline. They paused ten minutes to watch a mink search for food among the fallen logs, and he explained as much as he knew about the plants and animals. It was good to have an attentive listener.
For a moment, Tony thought he saw another flash of light from along the far shore. That puzzled him - he could see there was no-one else on the lake, and no hunting cabins. But the north country is full of strange things, and he put it out of his mind.
The portage to Creswicke Lake was shorter, but less pleasant. The first part of the trail was crossed with fallen trees, and the last part was squishy with pools of water forming in their boot tracks. He carried the canoe and one small pack, while Connie managed the two heavier packs.
It was past five when Tony and Connie launched the yellow canoe onto Creswicke Lake, and the day was getting a little cooler.
They followed the north shore from the west end all the way to the east end, where the lake met a pink granite cliff. Almost all the shore was at a steep angle, looking like a boulder collection that had gone wild, covered with moss and deep forest.
"The only reasonable place to make camp is at the tip of that point of land." Tony indicated a rock point.
Connie turned to watch where his paddle was pointing, and nodded. "I guess there aren't any regular campsites here," she said, looking at the dark forest.
"Nope. But someone's camped at the point before: I saw where they've cut a tree for firewood.
Finding a place to land the canoe took a bit of effort, but it was eventually done, and they began hauling their packs up the slope to the top.
"Wait!" Tony held up his hand and set his pack down.
"What is it?"
Tony pointed at a section of the ground, where lines of quartzite and gneiss ran like snakes through the granite. "Blood. Lots of it, and not that old." He looked slowly around. His first thought was that someone had caught and cleaned a mess of fish, but there were no scales among the bloodstains.
"Should we leave?"
"No place to go, at this time of night. Probably just a deer, caught and killed by a bear. Anyway, a bear won't attack a human, especially if it's just killed some animal." Tony wasn't as confident as he sounded, and suddenly had a primeval urge to protect the woman, preferably with a bazooka and a flame thrower, to start with. To show his confidence, he set up the tent on the flattest piece of ground he could find, then got out the cookstove.
The shadows were getting long when he found a bit of dry wood along the shore and made an after-supper fire. He picked a toilet spot behind a nearby bush, and didn't venture into the hemlocks behind the camp, so he didn’t see the wounded bear.
A red float plane appeared over a hill, altered its course to pass directly over them, then disappeared to the east.
They had a supper of freeze-dried stew, shared from Tony's small supply. Connie had brought some food, but not, Tony thought, enough for long .
Afterwards, Tony decided to make some tea. Luckily, his kit had two small plastic cups in it. "I'll make it," Connie offered.
"Great. I'll get a bit more firewood."
When he came back with a few more dry branches, Tony rummaged in his pack for some powered milk while Connie unrolled the sleeping bags into the small tent. Tony had a sudden thought. "You like milk in your tea?" he called.
"Black, thanks."
He'd already added milk to her cup. Damn, he thought, then switched the cups. He didn't mind milk in his tea, though he usually drank tea black.
They drank their tea and watched the last of the twilight disappear and the stars come out. It was inordinately peaceful.
"Did you come to see the wilderness?" Tony asked. "Or just to get away from it all?"
"Well, I've always wanted to see the Canadian forest," Connie said, "but I really had a more specific reason for being on this trip."
"You wanted to meet a rich and famous author?"
"Actually," she said, "I've come here to kill you."
Tony tried to laugh, but Connie wasn't smiling. The lake seemed very dark all of a sudden, and the lights of civilization very, very far away.
"Ah, how are you going to do it?"
"I poisoned your tea."
"It tasted alright to me." He was still trying to find a joke in the whole thing.
"It does. You'll notice the effects in a couple of minutes. Be dead within an hour." She smiled broadly.
"Why?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Why not?"
"That bit at the back of your book." She waved her arm at the dark hills. "You seem to have found something that wasn't supposed to be found."
"I can forget it, you know."
"You will, in a minute or two."
"And there's no antidote?" Tony felt his stomach tighten.
"Nope. Bend over. Kiss your butt goodbye." Connie came up with a chocolate bar, but didn't offer to share it.
"In my tea."
"It doesn’t take much. You got more than enough."
"Don't you feel a bit funny?"
"Nope," she said. "I like killing people. And walks in the rain and London Dry Gin."
"I mean, like I switched cups. When you were in the tent."
"You're kidding me." She laughed.
"Well, no, actually. I put some powdered milk into your tea and then you said you liked your tea black and I, ah, didn't want to do anything wrong and I like my tea black but I can drink it with milk, so I switched the two cups….” Tony realized he was beginning to blither again.
"Damn," Connie said, trying to stand, and failing. "Damn."
"Damn," Connie said again. "Damn." She thrashed around a moment on the ground, groaning, then lay still, breathing heavily. "Get my pack," she whispered.
Tony looked around, as if there were a hospital or something available in the growing darkness. The first stars were coming out, and a loon mocked him from the end of Creswicke Lake.
"Your pack?"
After another interesting episode of thrashing, in which she almost rolled into the campfire, she managed to say it again, "Get my pack."
"Why?" Tony couldn't figure it out. "You said there was no antidote to the poison."
She said some phrases that Tony had never heard, even when his father was fixing the car. "Okay," she whispered, "so I lied." She lay disheveled in the shrubs, holding her stomach. "Please get the pack."
Tony was confused. "If you get better, you'll want to kill me again."
"Schmuck," she said. "I could have killed you any time, if I'd wanted to. I know nine ways to kill you with one blow." Then she was off and rolling around, finally going down the slope and ending up with her face in shallow water among some arrowhead plants.
Tony dragged her back up near the fire, then contemplated his options. None of them looked good. "What if I don't get the pack," he asked.
Gulping air, Connie said, "I'll live. It'll just take a day or so to get this stuff out of my system."
"It doesn't kill people."
"Just makes them wish they were dead." She tried to crawl to the pack, but didn't make it.
Tony dragged the pack over, dumping the contents onto the ground.
Connie grabbed at a small sack of dried potatoes, dumping the food onto the ground.
"The potatoes?" Tony asked.
"No, the sack. Soak it in water."
About half an hour after drinking the black drink, the worst of the effects seemed to have worn off. Connie leaned against a rock sipping at a mug of hot chocolate. She looked very pale, even in the dim firelight.
"So what were you planning on doing with me?" Tony asked
.
"Just getting a little information."
"And then killing me?"
"Of course not."
"Good thing I believe everything you say." Tony looked up at the stars. It was getting cold and he was wearing a wool jacket.
"I'm not going to sleep very well tonight," Tony said. "Maybe I should tie you up to a tree or something."
"You'd still wake up every ten minutes just to be sure I didn't get loose."
"I could tie you tight enough to be sure."
"Then you'd spend the night wondering if you'd cut off my circulation."
"You've got a point there." Tony felt all worn out. Above him the stars seemed cold and far away. The September night was closing in all around him. He shivered.
There was one of those long pauses that happen between people whose relationship has been strained by poisoning and threats of murder.
Tony broke into his stash of energy bars and ate three of them. Abruptly, he put a few more into his pockets and grabbed his sleeping bag. Stumbling down to the shoreline, he tossed the sleeping bag into the canoe, grabbed a paddle, and pushed off.
"Where do you think you're going?" Connie asked, trying to get up and not making it.
"Home," Tony said. "Home where the sane people live."
"You can't get home in the dark!"
"Just watch me." From the end of the lake, the loon laughed again.
In the dark, he crossed the lake. He noticed one thing really quickly; it was really dark.
In the dark, it was possible to see the sky, but the land was a mass of velvet black. The tops of trees looked like fangs. Below that, it was impossible to tell distances or make out hazards in the water.
He found rocks by running against them. He found the far shore by running into one of the logs that floated next to it. He found overhanging branches when they brushed against his head, depositing spruce needles and sleepy spiders onto him.
Finally, figuring he was far enough down the lake, he ran the canoe into the shore, then crawled out, keeping his feet dry more by accident than anything else.
He dragged the canoe into the trees, then turned it over. Throwing his sleeping bag under it, he crawled in.
His head was under the canoe; his feet out in the wild. The whole thing was on a slope. The ground was a trap of mossy rocks and fallen branches. After shuffling and wiggling, he managed to get his body into a contortion that was only hellishly awful.