tall, Miles can see that it belongs to a young man. A kid stretching his neck to show a face burned black. And smiling. His teeth long and shining as ivory keys.
With a spastic lurch Miles swings around on his stool. He pounds his fist against his chest to show the room it’s only a swig of beer that’s gone down the wrong way. Even when the others return to their conversations Miles refuses to look beyond the pool table.
‘Nice one.’
‘She is.’
‘Where’d you get her?’
‘Come up on a flatbed to Carmacks.’
‘Used?’
‘They’re all used. But this one’s not as used as others.’
Without asking, Miles knows that Wade and Crookedhead are talking about trucks. Men speak of half-tons up here in the same covetous, technical way that others might speak of power tools, laptop computers or women. Everything else that happens in Ross River might ultimately boil down to a tale of foolishness or mild humiliation to cling to its subject for years, but trucks alone are taken seriously. If he closes his eyes and listens selectively to the drinkers around him, Miles can pick out the names of the Big Three manufacturers, each brand spoken with reverence, as though ancient gods. Dodge. Ford. Chevy. Once, and only once, a Toyota made an appearance so scorned that its owner, Crookedhead James, was compelled to drive it to Whitehorse and sell it, coming home on the once-a-week bus with a hangover that made his nose run, four hundred dollars, and a gym bag of newish skin magazines.
‘Nice truck,’ Wade says again, although this time about a new arrival in the parking lot.
‘Wade?’ Margot calls. ‘Bring me and the Baders here another round, would you?’
After a time long enough to let Margot know she will later pay for addressing him in this way, Wade turns to the bar and leaves Crookedhead to follow whatever movement there is outside.
‘ Thank you, Wade,’ Mrs Bader gushes. ‘I’m notsure when I last had so much beer to drink. I mean, usually I just have a single gin, and that’s only at functions !’
Jackson Bader says nothing. Everyone in the room except for his wife has heard someone at the door, and they have shifted in their seats to see who will open it.
‘Oh, Margot. You’re so lucky to live way up here, where you can do things like this all the time—not just drink beer, but enjoy the real things. The wilderness. Cowboys and Indians! Good heavens. You’re not supposed to say Indian anymore, are you? And most of you are—well, I only meant—’
Elsie Bader’s face is slashed by the light coming in through the open door. It is against this illumination that two strangers appear. A woman in her late twenties holding the hand of a little girl.
The two of them come inside but the door remains jammed on a raised crack. The woman lifts her sunglasses. Without a change in either of their expressions she spots Miles and, after the most brief of pauses, the two step toward him.
The Welcome Inn patrons are a transfixed audience to their march. Everyone hopes, no matter what is about to take place, that the woman doesn’t ask Miles about the mottled burns that, in the sudden light, look like crimson ink splashed from his temple to his shirt collar.
Miles’s eyes won’t leave the little girl holding the woman’s hand. Her just-brushed hair shining blue against the twilight. A summer dress patternedwith strawberries down to her mosquito-bitten knees. Maybe five. Maybe six.
He doesn’t recognize the woman next to her. Not at first. But although Miles is certain he’s never seen the girl in the strawberry dress before, she smiles his way, and without thinking, without touching his scar, without the ongoing work of forgetting what demands to be remembered, he smiles back.
The girl smiles at him and he smiles back and he knows.
Less than fifteen miles away, where the even ground outside Ross River gives way to the first sloping of the St Cyr foothills, a cold rain falls windless and straight
With a spastic lurch Miles swings around on his stool. He pounds his fist against his chest to show the room it’s only a swig of beer that’s gone down the wrong way. Even when the others return to their conversations Miles refuses to look beyond the pool table.
‘Nice one.’
‘She is.’
‘Where’d you get her?’
‘Come up on a flatbed to Carmacks.’
‘Used?’
‘They’re all used. But this one’s not as used as others.’
Without asking, Miles knows that Wade and Crookedhead are talking about trucks. Men speak of half-tons up here in the same covetous, technical way that others might speak of power tools, laptop computers or women. Everything else that happens in Ross River might ultimately boil down to a tale of foolishness or mild humiliation to cling to its subject for years, but trucks alone are taken seriously. If he closes his eyes and listens selectively to the drinkers around him, Miles can pick out the names of the Big Three manufacturers, each brand spoken with reverence, as though ancient gods. Dodge. Ford. Chevy. Once, and only once, a Toyota made an appearance so scorned that its owner, Crookedhead James, was compelled to drive it to Whitehorse and sell it, coming home on the once-a-week bus with a hangover that made his nose run, four hundred dollars, and a gym bag of newish skin magazines.
‘Nice truck,’ Wade says again, although this time about a new arrival in the parking lot.
‘Wade?’ Margot calls. ‘Bring me and the Baders here another round, would you?’
After a time long enough to let Margot know she will later pay for addressing him in this way, Wade turns to the bar and leaves Crookedhead to follow whatever movement there is outside.
‘ Thank you, Wade,’ Mrs Bader gushes. ‘I’m notsure when I last had so much beer to drink. I mean, usually I just have a single gin, and that’s only at functions !’
Jackson Bader says nothing. Everyone in the room except for his wife has heard someone at the door, and they have shifted in their seats to see who will open it.
‘Oh, Margot. You’re so lucky to live way up here, where you can do things like this all the time—not just drink beer, but enjoy the real things. The wilderness. Cowboys and Indians! Good heavens. You’re not supposed to say Indian anymore, are you? And most of you are—well, I only meant—’
Elsie Bader’s face is slashed by the light coming in through the open door. It is against this illumination that two strangers appear. A woman in her late twenties holding the hand of a little girl.
The two of them come inside but the door remains jammed on a raised crack. The woman lifts her sunglasses. Without a change in either of their expressions she spots Miles and, after the most brief of pauses, the two step toward him.
The Welcome Inn patrons are a transfixed audience to their march. Everyone hopes, no matter what is about to take place, that the woman doesn’t ask Miles about the mottled burns that, in the sudden light, look like crimson ink splashed from his temple to his shirt collar.
Miles’s eyes won’t leave the little girl holding the woman’s hand. Her just-brushed hair shining blue against the twilight. A summer dress patternedwith strawberries down to her mosquito-bitten knees. Maybe five. Maybe six.
He doesn’t recognize the woman next to her. Not at first. But although Miles is certain he’s never seen the girl in the strawberry dress before, she smiles his way, and without thinking, without touching his scar, without the ongoing work of forgetting what demands to be remembered, he smiles back.
The girl smiles at him and he smiles back and he knows.
Less than fifteen miles away, where the even ground outside Ross River gives way to the first sloping of the St Cyr foothills, a cold rain falls windless and straight