LITMIR.BIZ

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nothing fazed Miriam. Her voice assumed a preternatural calm as the grindings of logic began moving her sharp cerebral cogs. “I wouldn’t leave you stranded. You know that. I have a few people in mind.”

      “Jessie’s still in Israel.” Her venerable friend and the retired secretary of Uncle Harold, who had founded the business, spent many months a year teaching on a kibbutz. Figs and dates falling into her mouth, tropical plants and hot, dry sun.

      While Miriam ummed and ahhed to herself, Belle concluded with a panicky shudder that running the office on her own was out of the question. An answering machine gave a fly-by-night impression, and she’d have to close when she took listings, held open houses, and did the myriad chores Miriam shuffled with the deftness of a keno dealer. The smallest realty office in a town with an historic boom-and-bust mentality, her business skated on the edge of the edge. A couple of bad months in prime time could ruin her, and the downhill side of her forties was no time to train for a new career. She’d rather wrestle bears than go back to teaching Grade Ten English.

      Why was she sitting helplessly, waiting for rescue? Hadn’t Canada’s pioneer author Susanna Moodie advised souls lost in the wilderness to be “up and doing”? Belle grabbed the phone book to search for a temporary help pool. In a minute, she had located three agencies and started pounding numbers. Magna Personnel Resources had a listing no longer in service, Yours Temporarily had been hit with a bout of the flu and three unplanned pregnancies, and Bullworkers provided manual labour but nothing secretarial.

      Hands on her hips, Miriam marched over with an annoyed look as Belle shrugged her shoulders. The older woman snapped the Yellow Pages shut. “Stop that. I told you I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch. Those people aren’t trained in real estate. Probably a bunch of yahoos. I’m sure I have just the person. Her number’s busy, usually is, but I’ll call you tonight. I know she’s in town, because I saw her at Value Village last week.”

      Belle gave a sigh of relief. Value Village, too. Sounded like a sensible person. The used clothing store was no stranger to this loonie stretcher, who had grabbed a pair of Buffalo jeans for five dollars. Balancing optimism with fears, she nodded and tried to assume a grateful expression. Miriam was under serious pressure, and she deserved empathy and encouragement. In her youth, Belle had prized brilliance above all qualities in a friend, silver-tongued devils who cared nothing for feelings; now kindness was nudging into first place. “Jack will be okay. He’s tough. And I don’t want you taking the bus up Highway 144. Use the company car.” She spread her hand in a magnanimous gesture. Miriam leased a pink Jetta, and with her book-cooking accounting skills, had also wrangled a tricky tax-deduction deal for Belle’s Sienna van, complete with business logo, all-wheel-drive and automatic sliding doors.

      Leaving at five, Belle climbed into the van and slid a Statler Brothers CD into the slot. Listening to “The Class of ’57” always made her feel younger. She cast an eye at the mock Victorian home that housed the business on a shady cul-de-sac downtown. Massive cottonwoods were forming fluffy seed pods and mustering their leaves. Starting down the Kingsway, she ran into the only serious traffic in the Nickel Capital. Ninety thousand people lived in the core, though the City of Greater Sudbury served as healthcare and taxation centre, as well as shopping hub for another seventy-five thousand in outlying small towns.

      As she took Falconbridge Road north, she passed through Garson, the bedroom community with the nursing home where her father lived. Tuesday, Tuesday, their lunch day, was coming up. She was getting used to his double language and often used it herself, either an ominous or comical sign.

      Monitoring the landscape in this seasonal transition period, she blinked at the latest offering. At first a distant mist, the leaves were shy debutantes wearing spring-green dresses on the poplar and birch. The maple and oak foliage would be slower to unfurl but hung on stubbornly into the late fall. Approaching the airport, she gave a bemused glance at the venerable orange steam shovel that marked the entrance to a busy gravel pit. It was set up on crushed white stone and lit up at night like a proud icon of industry.

      While operations had closed in Cobalt, Kirkland Lake and other more remote outposts, the gigantic Sudbury deposits, courtesy of a meteor two billion years ago, were revealing deep pockets. The lode of high-grade nickel, gold, silver and platinum ran thirty miles into the earth’s core. The International Nickel Company (INCO) and little brother Falconbridge once had twenty thousand workers. Now the number had fallen below five thousand, but the tons of mined ore rose steadily thanks to modern machinery. Owned by Swiss and Brazilian consortiums, they were a combination powerhouse on the international scene, with the base metal at a twenty-year high.

      Belle collected her mail at the kiosk and turned down Edgewater Road, passing Philosopher’s Pond, a kettle lake left by glaciers, then reached the road to the former Blue Lake mine, now Nickel Rim South. Though the mine had closed in the Fifties, scientific advances were permitting deeper excavation. Nearly four hundred million dollars had been spent on the venture, including a massive complex rising from the crumbled foundations of the old site. But industry came with a price. The project was squeezing both people and wildlife. No longer could she ramble its wide, dozed roads to avoid bears and blackflies in the first weeks of summer. A massive parking lot had been backfilled onto a swamp, and above, a gleaming headframe bestrode the hill like a colossus, fed by an army of marching hydro lines.

      As she drove along the ten-kilometre road skirting the western edge of Lake Wapiti, the rare conjoining of another meteor crater, she became aware of a shape behind her and tensed as a cheeky horn tooted. When she’d built years ago, only a dozen full-timers lived here. Now they numbered forty-five, buying cottage properties, tearing them down, and constructing monster houses even on toenail properties, windows a stone’s throw from the road. She kept her speed at forty, fast enough for the blind turns and hills. Her rearview mirror framed a red Jeep Liberty. On they drove, the Jeep sniffing Belle’s bumper. Though thoroughly annoyed, she searched her mind for a safe pull-off. Why enrage a neighbourhood jerk?

      Time didn’t permit her courtesy. On a wicked stretch over a high culvert with a creek tumbling freshets far below, the Jeep thundered past on the narrow, hard-surfaced road, its gravel and tar crumbling at the edges.

      Belle read the license as the Jeep kicked up a load of dust: HOTTIE. Not likely a last name.

      Another mile ahead, she saw the Jeep parked in a steep drive. She chuckled to imagine how that incline would strike fear under the demands of ice and snow. The house had changed hands three times in the last decade.

      Finally, she pulled into her long driveway, passing her routed sign, “The Parliament of Owls”, displaying the white, beaked Corny and brown, frowning Horny. Slamming the door, she could hear deep-chested barking, the world’s cheapest burglar alarm. Freya, a senior German shepherd, bounded out, ran circles, and left for her ablutions. Ten hours was no problem for her elimination needs; she seemed to sleep the day away in yogic bliss.

      Inside the two-and-a-half storey cedar house, Belle shook out chow, plus a spoon of fibre for the dog, refreshed the water bowl, and headed up to the master suite for a bath. Minutes later, towel-drying her short, red hair, now peppered with grey, she put on comfortable yoga pants and a T-shirt. The wood stove was on simmer, but it warmed the house like a bakery.

      Dinner was a quick linguine puttanesca with black and green olives, a fresh tomato, and tangy Sicilian olive oil, mounded with grated pecorino. Settled in the TV room in a pasha chair with massive ottoman, Belle tuned her television to her only satellite subscription channel, Turner Classic Movies.

      Doris Day and Rock Hudson were starring in Pillow Talk. Remembering his death from HIV/AIDS, she watched the film with an ironic new subtext and an academy-award performance. So many of the screen’s leading men had secret lives. Some, like Charles Laughton, arranged publicity marriages. Raymond Burr made massive donations to children’s charities.

      As the film ended, the gibbous moon began its silvery rise across the back of her yard. No word from Miriam. Should she succumb to nerves and call, or trust her cohort?

      Half an hour later, she was immersed in the wilderness of Rocky Mountain National Park in Nevada Barr’s Hard Truth. If she were to imagine herself an author, Barr,

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