Enter, Night

cups of coffee. He didn’t look back at either Christina or Billy when he pushed open the door of the cafe. In silence, they both watched the cruiser drive off down Main Street.

Billy exhaled. “Whew,” he said. He looked at Christina and said, “So, friend of yours?”

“He is-was-a friend of my brother-in-law’s,” she said, her eyes still on the departing cruiser. “I haven’t seen him for a long time. I’ve been away.”

“Not the friendliest sort,” Billy said neutrally. If there was a backstory here, he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with her by accidentally putting that foot in his mouth. He was still wagering that there wasn’t one, but there was no point in risking it. It had been a long time since he’d been as attracted to a woman as he was to this Christina Parr.

You’re an idiot, Billy chided himself. You’re not a romantic, you’re a cynic. And this woman isn’t just out of the cop’s league, she’s out of yours. She’s too beautiful for either of you.

Christina shrugged. “This is a hard place,” she said sadly. “Life is tough up here in these little northern towns. It’s mean. It does things to people. It’s one of the reasons my husband and I left. My late husband, I mean. I’m sorry. I’m still not used to saying ‘late husband.’”

“I’m sorry,” Billy said sincerely. “For your loss, I mean.” He half-rose from his seat and extended his hand. “I’m Billy Lightning.”

“Christina Parr,” she said. Billy was acutely aware of the softness of her hand in his, and of its apparent fragility. Everything else in Parr’s Landing had been hard, or rough, from the people to the topography. Her hand felt like a sparrow had landed in his palm, one he might accidentally crush if he squeezed it too hard.

“Forgive me if I’m being too forward,” Billy said, “but would you care to join me? I’m not from here. I’m just visiting.”

Christina glanced around the cafe. While she and Elliot had been talking, the two remaining tables had been taken and she had no desire to sit at the counter with her back to the rest of the patrons. Some residual sense of small-town sensitivity to gossip rolled over in its sleep in the back of her mind, but since nothing good had ever come to her from this particular small town-and because if her “reputation” was that vulnerable to gossip, it was likely already toast when she got pregnant and ran off with Jack Parr-and mostly because she’d never been lonelier or more eager for a neutral conversation with another adult that wasn’t fraught with subtext-she found herself saying to Billy Lightning, “Thank you, yes. I can’t stay-I’m just going to have a cup of coffee. I have errands to run.”

“Please,” Billy said, indicating the empty seat in front of him. “I’d enjoy the company.”

Christina sat down at the booth. For a moment the two of them sized each other up in the way that men and women meeting for the first time under potentially complicated circumstances do-Christina trying not to be conscious of the looks they were getting from a few of the patrons of the cafe, and Billy not giving a damn about them, except for her sake. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake in inviting her to sit down like this. Of course, all of this happened without either of them giving each other any clue of what they were thinking.

“So,” Christina began. “You’re not from here, obviously. How do you like it?”

“Not much,” Billy said honestly. “They’re not very friendly to outsiders.” He didn’t add, especially outsiders who look like me, but Christina seemed to understand what he meant. She favoured him with a smile that was sympathetic but noncommittal, as though she were acknowledging the root of his problem- the fact that he was an outsider, and a Native outsider at that-but allowing him the space to elaborate, or not, as he saw fit or was comfortable. He was touched by her sensitivity.

“My husband and I left when we were very young,” Christina said. “We moved to Toronto just before our daughter was born. We raised her there, so nothing about this place is familiar to her. It has no memories.”

“Did you come back to be with family?”

Something passed over Christina’s face. “In a way. My mother-in law is here,” she said. “My daughter hadn’t ever met her, and I thought it would be a good time for her to get to know her a bit. It’s a big house, so we’ll be staying for a while.”

“Of course-the big house on the hill. The one that looks a bit like a Norman chateau.”

Christina raised her eyebrows. “A Norman chateau? I have to say, I’ve never heard it described that way before. Lots of ways, but never like that.” Her curiosity was piqued and she took a second, closer look at the man in front of her who spoke so politely and made references to Norman chateaus. “Where are you from, Mr. Lightning?”

“Please, call me Billy,” he said. “I’m originally from Benson, a tiny little town way outside of Sault Ste. Marie. When I say ‘way outside,’ I mean ‘way outside.’ I was adopted when I was twelve by a family from Toronto. I grew up there, except for graduate school-so basically, I guess, the short answer to that question is, Toronto. Like you,” he added.

“Graduate school?”

“You sound surprised.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said. Now it was Christina’s turn to be flustered. “It’s just… my husband-my late husband, Jesus I need to get used to saying that-and I never went to university. We barely escaped high school here by the skin of our teeth. What did you study in graduate school?”

“Lots of different things,” he said neutrally. “A lot of history. I’m a cultural anthropologist at Grantham University, in Michigan.”

“Now I’m impressed!” she said, laughing.

She has a beautiful laugh, Billy thought, feeling absurdly flattered to be the source of it.

“So, you’re not ‘Mr.’ Lightning, you’re ‘Professor’ Lightning.”

“Only to my students. And then, only in the classroom. I’ve always preferred ‘Billy’ to anything else. My father was the first person to call me ‘Billy.’ At the residential school, they always called me ‘William.’ It took a long time for me to hear ‘William’ without a lot of bad memories.”

“Billy it is, then. So, Billy, what on earth are you doing here? I know why I’m back, but what would bring a university professor to this shi… I mean, godforsaken town? Sorry, I’ve only been back a couple of days and my language is already starting to suffer.”

“It a shitty town,” he confirmed. “There you go. I said it so you don’t have to.” He signalled to the waitress, then said to Christina, “You still don’t have any coffee.”

When the waitress had refreshed Billy’s coffee cup and brought Christina a cup of her own, Billy continued. “To answer your question,” he said, “I’m here because my father passed away recently. He’d done an excavation up here at Spirit Rock in the early 1950s, on the site of the St. Barthelemy Ojibwa mission, the Jesuit mission from the 1700s. My father was a cultural anthropologist as well, at the University of Toronto. I was on his crew in 1952. Some strange things happened on that dig. My father’s death… well, my father’s death wasn’t accidental. I have some notion that it might be somehow connected to the work he did in Parr’s Landing in the fifties.”

She paused. “Not the kid who went crazy and heard voices coming from inside the cliffs and killed all of those people?”

“The very one,” Billy said. “He was on our crew that summer.”

“You mean that really happened? I mean, we all heard that story, but I always thought it was just made up to scare kids.”

“No, it happened,” he said. “But he didn’t kill any people-that part must be from the campfire story version. But he did attack one of the other guys on the team and hurt him pretty badly.”

“But why did you come back? What does this have to do with your father’s death? I’m sorry,” she said, chastened. “I don’t mean to pry. I know what it feels like to be asked these questions. I should know better. I’m sorry.”

Billy’s first impulse was to tell Christina the story he’d shared with the two cops, Thomson and McKitrick, but thought better of it. He had no doubt that Christina would treat it with respect, unlike the two officers had. At the same time, he realized that every time he told the story in Parr’s Landing, it stood a better chance of getting circulated as gossip in a way that didn’t flatter him. While he didn’t give a damn whether or not he was thought of in flattering terms by the residents of the Landing, if he was going to find any answers here, his personal credibility and status would have to stand on its merits and history in the face of people’s prejudices. His encounters with McKitrick and Thomson had shown that the ice was thinner than it looked where that was concerned.