The Trickster. Muriel Gray
and long silk evening gloves with a bracelet over the wrist. She would drink sparkling white wine and maybe break away from his iron-pumping idiot pals for a moment to find someone who would talk about something more than their own flesh and how they were keeping it healthy. But somehow Katie wanted to be a little girl again for a few weeks. She longed to wear an old sweater and stack her Dad’s woodpile neatly for him, the sensual touch and smell of the rough pine delighting her. Her routine. A routine that had survived for two decades. And she wanted to sit with her Mom as Mrs Crosby in her silly cotton hat made another futile attempt to capture Wolf Mountain in watercolour from the porch. She wanted all that warmth and security that Tom seemed to provide but really didn’t. So she went to Silver with her delighted, but surprised parents. And she met Sam Hunt.
He drove a bus. That’s what Sam was doing when she first saw him. Katie remembered everything about that day. It was hot as Hell, and she was wearing khaki shorts, a plain white T-shirt, a tiny tartan rucksack on her back, making her way to Lazy Hot Springs for a hike. And she was waiting to board Sam’s bus in the depot.
A big sign on a stand read Passengers wait here until driver checks your ticket, and so she waited by it. Funny thing was, everybody else just walked by her, out through the glass swing doors to the sidewalk and got on the bus. It sure was filling up. There were lots of Japanese, a few hiking couples and some elderly tourists. But they were all getting on the bus before her. She saw the seat she fancied was already gone, the front one opposite the driver where you can look out front from the big windshield, and she started to get annoyed. Where was the driver? Why didn’t someone in charge come and tell all these people to wait in line like the sign said?
Then a young man appeared in the blue company overalls, holding a styrofoam cup of coffee. A young, impossibly handsome man. Sam was twenty-five, six feet tall, his black shiny hair swept back from a noble forehead. His blue tunic top was open by three buttons, revealing a T-shirt beneath and the suggestion of tight brown pectorals. He was obviously Indian and to Katie’s surprise, he was also undeniably gorgeous.
This driver from the planet sex stopped and looked at Katie, and then at the nearly full bus through the glass doors. Walking over to her he handed her the coffee. ‘Can you hold this, miss? I’ll be right back.’
She took the cup, astonished.
He boarded his busy vehicle and she could see through the doors people standing and milling about on board. In seconds the passengers were pouring off the bus, back through the doors into the depot concourse.
Sam was at their back, waving his hands and shouting, ‘Come on, that’s it … hurry along … quick as you can …’
The passengers milled around grouchily, complaining under their breath, in front of Katie. She was going to be last again.
Sam pushed his way through to where Katie stood, took her by the hand not occupied holding his coffee, and led her to the front of the line.
He cleared his throat, and clapped his hands together twice. ‘Could I have your attention please, ladies and gentlemen?’
They grew silent, some fishing around in bags for the tickets they were now going to have to present.
‘I’d like to introduce you all to a very special person.’
Katie looked at him, horrified. What was this? The crowd started to look curious.
‘This young lady is unique in Canada and it’s a great honour to have her with us today. We, at Fox Line Travel, always knew that one day she would grace us with her presence, but now it’s happened, and all I can say is that I’m humbled to find that I’m one of the people to witness it.’
The crowd started to buzz with low conversation, heads bobbing up to get a look at the woman this bus driver held by the hand.
Katie was blushing to her feet. What on earth was this man doing? Who did he think she was?
Sam held up a finger. ‘Now I know there’s not much time for speeches or nothing, what with the bus already a few minutes behind schedule, but let me, on behalf of the bus line, just say this.’ The crowd were expectant. Sam turned to Katie, smiling, and under his breath said, ‘What’s your name?’
Stunned by the warmth of his smile, she replied. ‘Katie Crosby.’
Sam looked to his audience. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Katie Crosby, the only, and I mean only, woman in Canada …’ he paused. ‘Who can FUCKING READ!’
There was a stunned and shocked silence and then Katie burst out laughing. The crowd exploded into an irritated hubbub of noise, peppered with well really and cheeky son of a bitch.
Sam smiled and stood defiantly by the sign, tapping it with a finger. He let go of Katie’s hand and waved her through. ‘Keep the coffee. It’s milk, no sugar.’
She smiled and got on the empty bus, into her favourite seat. Opposite the driver.
Through the window she could see Sam smiling at his frowning passengers, and lip-read him saying tickets please as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
That was a great journey. They talked, of course. All the way to Lazy Hot Springs, until Katie had to get off. She’d gone off the idea of a hike by then. All she wanted to do was stay on that bus and talk more to the handsome funny guy at the wheel. But she got up and made to leave and when he asked her for her phone number she told him. He smiled, opened the hydraulic doors and said, ‘Fox Line wishes you a nice day. Driver Sam wishes you a shitty one for not taking him with you.’
She laughed and waved goodbye, still waving as the bus pulled away, with windows full of glowering people staring at her like she was the Anti-Christ.
All she thought about on the hike was Sam. Her head was spinning and she walked further than she intended, striding out in a trance. Why would she give a bus driver her number in Silver when she practically lived with Tom? But she didn’t regret it, and when the bus back that evening was driven by a middle-aged pot-bellied man with a moustache, she was crestfallen.
The phone call came the next day, her father getting there first. He asked who was speaking in a very careful and deliberate way and then called Katie to the phone in the parlour. He held the receiver out to her as if showing a child something it had damaged and waiting for an apology.
‘A Sam Hunt. For you.’
Katie’s heart had started pounding. She was as excited as a sixteen-year-old on her first date and her father could see it through her mask of indifference.
She took the receiver without putting it to her ear and said thank you. Frank Crosby understood the gesture and left the room.
With that first Hello? she knew it was over with Tom. She and Sam met that afternoon in town and walked up through the trail in the forest to the old fire lookout hut. And they had sex that nearly made Katie die with ecstasy. She’d known Sam for less than twenty-four hours but her appetite for him was insatiable and she thought as she lay in his powerful dark brown arms between all that rapture, that she would never be able to live without him again. With Sam it was fucking, not making love, although each act contained more love than Tom had given her in her whole life. And they talked. They talked so much Katie felt she’d known Sam since she was born.
She didn’t tell her parents a thing. Her father never asked about the phone call, and neither seemed to show any signs of suspecting that each time she went out she was meeting an Indian bus driver who would alternately make her laugh until she cried, and then cry out again in pleasure when he peeled off her clothes, high above town in the pines, or in the tiny wooden bed in the staff accommodation hut behind the depot.
She knew the ugly name for it of course. Indian-struck. That was what white people said when any white girl fell for a Native Canadian man. But Katie wasn’t Indian-struck at all. She was in love with Sam: the man, not the Indian, and she wanted to make sure he knew it.
The night before the Crosbys were due to leave she met him at the fire hut. She held his hands and