LITMIR.BIZ

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around.”

      “Maybe so, but Derek is on my list for a chat. He owes me a favour.”

      “Derek Santanen! He’d better know zip if he knows what’s good for him. When we finally got our lad last time, he’d have been knitting in Millhaven pen. But no, you felt sorry for his old folks and pulled him early probation with that job at Snopac. Let Mr. Blimp make his own mistakes. The next one will put him on a ten-year diet.”

      It seemed prudent to change the subject, so Belle asked about Janet. A few months earlier, Steve had been talking about a trial separation. It wasn’t the despair that was killing him, but the hope. He and his wife were opposite personalities, his brooding seriousness versus her sunny, carefree disposition. One raw nerve had been their childlessness. Maybe Margaret Atwood and her Handmaid’s Tale had been prophetic; sperm motility had dropped 30 percent in the last few decades, according to The Globe and Mail. This time, however, an unusual brightness lit his eyes as he talked of the latest chapter of their marital saga. “It’s a turning point, Belle. Keep your fingers crossed, but we may be able to adopt at last. Our name’s on the list, and we’re supposed to get a call Friday.”

      “So soon? For a newborn?”

      “You must be joking. We gave up on that a long time ago. Our best bet is a three or four-year-old, possibly mixed race. Janet seems calmer now that we’ve made the decision, and it couldn’t have come soon enough for me. This old man is forty this year. And no, don’t put one of those ‘Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty’ ads in the paper.”

      When the bill came, Belle handed her Visa to the waitress. Steve could use a treat with the toys and clothes and godknows-what kiddie stuff in his future. “My part of the bargain. Least I can do for faithful, underpaid government servants.”

      He shook her hand with an over-under-over seventies move she had taught him. “No contest. What about that Clint Black concert next month? Would you like tickets? I’ll get extras for my security duty at the Arena.”

      “Why not? Poor Clint coming up here to the back of beyond! Sudbury simply must show the colours.” Belle laughed. After coffee, they returned to the blasts outside, temporarily warmed by chilies never intended to grow north of Chihuahua.

      On the pretext of needing parts for her Bravo, Belle visited the local Yamaha shop, Snopac. Derek Santanen was wiping grease from his meatloaf-size hands as he smiled at her across the parts counter. A mammoth bag of Cheetos Paws lay nearby, spilling its goodies in a little golden avalanche. He seemed good at his job, but Belle had known that his snowmobile mechanics were sounder than his eating habits when she had promised his parents that she would speak up for him in court.

      Sweating even at twenty below, Derek seemed to put on rather than get into the rusty VW bug that he bumped along their road. No wonder he told her that he had gone through seven sets of tires. Still, he had pushed her up the worst hill during an ice storm, splitting his pants in the process.

      “Derek, I need a set of sliders and a couple of plugs for my Bravo,” she said. “And maybe a bit of information.”

      His mouth opened and closed like a hyperventilating ox as a drift of ancient Old Spice aftershave mixed with sweat wafted across the counter. “I don’t know nothing, Miss Belle. Been minding my own business.” He rummaged for a handful of Paws and crunched them noisily.

      “Don’t Miss Belle me, Derek. Stop tugging your forelock. Anyway, you couldn’t tell the truth unless you thought you were lying.”

      He gave a tentative laugh and passed her the bag, which she summoned heroic willpower to refuse. Paws had just the cheesy flavour and toothsome resistance which had contributed generously to her ten pound Christmas bulge. “I been clean as these here sliders I’m getting for you,” he insisted as he plucked a box from the shelves. His huge Barenaked Ladies shirt rode up his back, revealing overlapping folds of fat, pockmarked chicken skin and coarse black hair. Poor guy.

      “You may be clean now, and I say may . . .” she said as he gnawed his chapped lips, “but I won’t beat around the bush.” Bad Cop was a difficult role; she nipped a smile as it headed for her mouth. “You had the contacts. Tell me about the drug landings north of the lake.”

      “Hey, I’m no pilot. You really wanna know, I made my buys at the Bearden or at Yukon Jack’s. If I’d spent more time at my camp and less in the bars . . .” He paused and chewed thoughtfully. “Lake drops? Maybe. Couple summers ago when we had those big winds for over a week, supplies got short. Bomber, that was my main man, said something about conditions being bad for delivery. I didn’t think much about it. Come to think of it, I didn’t think much period.” He seemed pleased with the symmetry of his explanation and smoothed his greasy hair with a pudgy hand. Brilliantine or graphite, Belle wondered?

      “Well, you haven’t been much help, Derek, but maybe that’s a good sign.”

      She paid her $45.00 tab with a roll of her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t need me to put them on?” Derek asked helpfully. “Kinda hard in the cold. I mean . . .”

      “Never mind, Derek. I think Ed will let me use his garage. And one more thing. You know people who ride the trail system. Anything unusual around the lake?”

      He pondered, searched his elephantine brain until she expected a tortured grinding of gears. “Well, I’m probably screwing up my interests, so don’t say nothing about this. Dan Brooks at the Beaverdam had me doing repairs there. Some old Arctic Cats. But guess what! I got curious about four funny shapes under tarps in the corner and took me a look. Wowee. Two new Mach Z’s. First time I saw one up here. They’s the 796cc liquid-cooled Rotax triple, R.A.V.E. and flat-slide TM-38 carbs. Big-o-mundo power revs with those ponies. Like to knock your socks off, especially on lakes. They say it’s whip, blend and liquefy goin’ through them gears.” His eyes were glazing over like small, round hams; powerful machines came a close second behind his passion for food.

      “You’re a natural poet, Derek. Is that it?”

      “No, ma’am. A Polaris XLT and a Ski-Doo Formula Z. You can run with the big dogs with those beasts. When Dan saw me, he blew up. Then he calmed down, talked about cashing in an old life insurance policy. Said he’d got to be ready to roll when that park opens. Figures he’ll need at least ten to hire out. But that’s nuts. Too good for rentals. ’Course he could be fencing them in a chop shop.”

      Belle tossed her sliders into the van and stopped at Poulton’s for hot wings night. She packed up a few pounds, along with a container of potato salad, coleslaw and rolls. The Canada Food Guide had a special provision for Northern Ontarians: total grams of fat per day had to be double a person’s age. If she were going to hell in a handbasket, let it be well-provisioned. The little liquor store in Garson sported a bottle of Wolf Blass cabernet, which cheered her, since usually Gallo tankcar #3333 was its sole concession to foreign wines.

      When she got home and had reduced the wings to bones, American Movie Classics was featuring Mutiny on the Bounty. Laughton had been abandoned with his officers, promising to row thousands of miles in order to see justice done (and he did). In a more pleasant fate, Clark Gable leaned his handsome profile toward Morita’s, and the crew of the Bounty was safe on Pitcairn Island, to interbreed and become tour guides by the nineties.

      Belle flopped into her waterbed, reminding herself that she had not changed the sheets in about two weeks. Muscling the cumbersome rolling beast was a miasma. Though the process took only six minutes, she hated the chore so passionately that she spent a week on one side and a week on the other. As she drifted off to sleep, she heard the ice making prophetic groans, flexing its great shelf. While the cold still held, it would be interesting to visit the Beave.

      SEVEN

      Six eyes beat two, so after Belle changed the plug, she drove down to Ed’s place, a winterized cottage which the DesRosiers had expanded and modernized after selling their bungalow in town. Rusty, their chocolate-red mutt, chased out to meet her, a deflated soccer ball in her jaws, running crazed circles around Freya, who treated her as an undisciplined but

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