The Trickster. Muriel Gray
at all, and second, that for nearly fifty minutes of his blackout he’d been shouting and muttering in Siouan. Sam hadn’t spoken a word of Siouan since before they were married, except once when they’d had a minor car accident while Billy was a baby. He’d sworn briefly and violently in the ancient Indian tongue as Katie screamed, clutching Billy, and the car skidded off the highway, to rest harmlessly and mercifully on the verge.
He never used it again. The language of losers he called it. Whatever was bugging him in his dreams was powerful enough to turn back the clock for Sam and pull that long-abandoned language out of his past and into his mouth. It made Katie uneasy, although right now she couldn’t say why.
In half an hour she would go and collect Jess from Mrs Chaney, but now she could use a coffee and some time to herself. In the tiny kitchen, she switched the TV and the coffee machine on at the same plug. The local cable station was talking about the blast. Two ski patrollers killed, half the mountain gone above the Corkscrew tunnels, the railway blocked by rubble and ice. It was also a mystery. Some nervous reporter in a big anorak was standing in the car park beside Ledmore Creek stuttering that so far they could find no explanation for the size or violence of the blast but that theories included a pocket of methane gas detonated by chance.
Behind him blue lights flashed and people walked about pointing aimlessly. Katie poured herself a coffee, smiling at the ineptitude of local news, but deep down she was still worried why Sam had measured his length on the path not at the precise moment that pocket of methane had gone up, but moments later when they looked up at the smoke. The doc said it could have been the shock-waves if Sam was already feeling lightheaded from an encroaching infection. Katie didn’t think so. Shock waves don’t take that long, and Sam sure didn’t look like he was coming down with anything other than usual early morning grouchiness.
Katie had stomached enough of goddamn blasts and blackouts for one day. She switched off her worries, switched channels and sat down at the table to catch half an hour of a Green Acres re-run.
When Gerry turned up at the door, the snow was falling so thickly Katie could barely make him out. The snowman on the doorstep handed a conical shape to Katie and said, ‘Peace offering.’
She smiled, took the flowers already frosted with snow, and pulled Gerry in by the elbow.
Gerry shook himself like a dog in the kitchen. ‘Christ. This is going to make the ski company wet themselves.’
Katie already had the coffee machine back on. ‘Yeah. And not a whisper of it on the forecast. I want my money back from the weather channel. Grab a seat.’
Gerry installed himself at the kitchen table. ‘I heard from Billy at school. Is Sam okay?’
‘Yeah. He’s fine. We don’t know what all that fainting was about. Probably saw the hockey scores.’
She turned her back on Gerry and fished out a couple of mugs from the dishwasher.
‘Listen Katie … about the other night …’
‘Forget it, Gerry. It’s no big deal.’
‘It is a big deal. Claire’s my sister. Uptight corporate woman maybe, but my sister nevertheless, and I’m ashamed she upset Sam.’
Katie sighed and joined him at the table, toying with the defrosting flowers in their soggy paper wrapping. ‘You know the problem, Gerry. You’ve known us for nearly ten years. Sam just doesn’t think he’s an Indian.’
‘Kind of hard to forget. Especially when you look at Billy and Jess.’
Katie laughed.
‘I know. Sometimes I’m glad I can remember giving birth to them, or I’d think I had nothing to do with their creation at all. The Crosby DNA’s sure got mugged somewhere along the line by Sam’s.’
‘Is he mad at Ann and me for bringing Claire?’
Katie shook her head. ‘No. He’s mad at being born a Kinchuinick Indian and growing up on a reserve.’
‘Claire’s real embarrassed. She wondered if we could maybe have you all round to our place for supper before they head back to Montreal. But I guess if Sam’s not well …’
‘Let’s leave it, Gerry. But thanks for the thought.’
He nodded. The coffee machine gurgled its message that the brew was up.
‘So how’s school anyway?’
Gerry lightened up, his duty done. ‘It’s shit. As usual.’
‘The kids all talking about the explosion?’ She put two coffees in front of them.
‘And some. Of course now they’re also talking about this blizzard. They figure they’ll get time off if it keeps up.’
‘Billy seems distracted right now Gerry. Have you noticed?’
Gerry cupped the mug in his hand. ‘Can’t say I have. Was he upset by Sam collapsing?’
‘I don’t know. I just detect something disturbing him. Probably nothing. I thought you might notice, but I forgot teachers just practise riot control these days.’
‘Up yours.’
Katie laughed and drank her coffee. Gerry took one sip and stood up.
‘Look I really have to go. Just came to leave these.’
‘The coffee that good, huh?’
He kissed her on the ear and made for the kitchen door, then paused when he looked through the glass panel. ‘Hey, I think you should loosen up with the disciplinarian dog-owner bit and let Bart in. He’s carrying more snow than a blue trail.’
Katie came to the door. ‘I tried this morning, thanks Doctor Doolittle. He won’t come in.’
Gerry stepped into the blizzard again.
‘That’s huskies for you, huh? Bye!’
Katie waved goodbye, and looked over at Bart. Gerry was right. The dog was outside his kennel, almost completely covered in snow.
‘Here Bart. Come in boy.’ She patted her thigh.
Bart looked at Katie and then resumed his vigil, staring towards Wolf Mountain as if it were made of prime sirloin.
‘Jeez, a dysfunctional dog. That’s all we need. Next stop the Oprah Winfrey Show.’
Katie brushed the snow from her hair and shut the kitchen door.
Frank Sinatra was giving it all he had in the chorus of ‘It Happened in Monterey’, when Ernie Legat’s horny hand stretched out to the cab’s stereo and cut the cassette. Ol’ Blue Eyes was God to Ernie, but he liked to hear what the engine was up to when he hit Wolf Pass. In weather like this, with a full forty-ton load of frozen seafood behind him, he would be lucky to see second gear. That would be on the way up. On the descent into Silver, he could probably do with a parachute.
The snow was coming at him in the headlights like a corny asteroid storm on Star Trek, hypnotizing him with flakes that became rods of relentless white motion as they streaked past the windshield, and despite the work of the snowploughs, the road wasn’t giving away many clues as to where it stopped being road and started being ditch.
Ernie coaxed the eighteen-wheeler into a first cautious gear change as the gradient started to introduce itself.
‘Come on, you bastard.’
Ernie reached his paw out again to turn up the heater, figuring getting more heat in the cab would take some of it out of the engine. The truck was doing its best.
In the back, two hundred lobsters, bound for plates on the east coast, slid backwards an inch on their plastic pallets