The Carpenter

course fifteen years ago.

Stan drove them out of the bush and they passed through open country. Ahead of them dust rose in the headlights. Then they were coming up to the drive-in. A screen stood out against the horizon. The box office and the concession stand and one of the other screens had burned down the year before. Some people around town whispered about a collection on insurance. Stan had been able to see the glow of the fire from the second floor of his house. He’d gone in his truck. The town fire department and the volunteer firefighters had already had the burning screen and the concession stand cordoned off when he arrived, but he’d come ahead of the police. The cops, when they finally showed up, were young. He hadn’t recognized them and they didn’t know who he was.

Now, passing the drive-in with Louise beside him, Stan saw how the thin new moon shone on the windshield of a car. The car was parked halfway to where the burned movie screen stood in deeper black against the stars. The car was dark. He thought about it and did not think about it.

Then the drive-in disappeared behind them.

Before long he merged onto the highway. The lights of town lay ahead. Louise put her head on Stan’s arm.

Mary and Frank Casey had a modern split-level house east of downtown. The windows were lit. Parked in the driveway were Mary’s Volvo and a provincial patrol car. Mary opened the front door as Stan came up the walk, carrying Louise, who had fallen asleep.

He took her upstairs and put her into her bed, and then he stood back and spent a moment looking at her. He wondered, vaguely, how many more years he would get to see her grow up.

He followed Mary back down to the living room.

— I hope I didn’t get her home too late.

— No, Dad, it’s fine. Thanks. She loves it.

Mary sat in the loveseat and Stan sat down on the couch. Next to it, against the wall, was a Clarendon upright piano. Stan put his hand out and dallied his fingers over the keys but did not press them. Frank came out of the kitchen. He was wearing a grey T-shirt and his uniform trousers.

— Thanks for taking Louise, Stan.

— It’s never any trouble. Where’s Emily?

Frank sat on the arm of the loveseat and said: She’s seventeen. You can guess where she’s at.

— A new boyfriend?

— A boy. I don’t know that I’d call him more than that. With her, it’s the stray cats.

— She has good sense, Frank, said Mary, putting her hand on his knee.

— How’s the detachment? said Stan.

— Labour Day is over. All the kids are back in school, let’s put it that way. That makes me happy.

— Fall was always a quiet time, said Stan. A lot of people were too busy on the farms to mess around.

— Well, if things didn’t change like they do, I wouldn’t need half the cops I have now, fall or not. But that’s how it goes.

— That’s how it goes, said Stan.

Stan was back on the road a short while later. He was only eight years retired from the local detachment, despite what it had meant for his pension. At one time he’d known every street in town. He turned off the highway and five minutes later he passed the drive-in again. His headlights caught the same car he’d seen earlier.

Stan drove by. Then he pulled off to the side of the road. Gravel snarled against the underside of his truck as he moved from the hardtop to the shoulder. He brought the vehicle to a stop and sat holding the steering wheel. Then he got out of the truck and took out a D-cell flashlight that he kept under the seat. He didn’t turn it on just yet. There was enough light from the stars and the moon to bring everything out in halftones. He walked into the drive-in lot.

The silhouette of the car resolved itself. Stan looked to see whether it was rocking and he listened for the creaking of springs. He sniffed the air for dope smoke. This would be better, he thought, if Cassius was with him.

He turned on the flashlight, at first pointing it at the ground. He waited for something to happen and when nothing did he brought the flashlight up and shone it on the windshield. He moved the light along the side of the car.

One of the back windows was rolled down a few inches. The space at the top had been stuffed with a towel. Stan could see a garden hose tucked through. The hose was looped down through the wheel well and around to the rear of the car. He moved up.

The flashlight cast a yellow glow into the back seat. The girl’s face was slack, dismayed. Her eyes were marbled.

Stan stepped backward. He looked at the dark shapes of the drive-in, black against the stars and the frame of the old screen. When he looked again he knew who she was. Her name was Judy Lacroix. Recognition was a hand pulling at his shirt sleeve.

Not that he’d ever forgotten it, how it was his arrest and testimony that had hanged the dead girl’s uncle.

At six o’clock in the morning on Thursday, Lee went into a diner called the Owl Cafe, a block away from his apartment. He took a stool at the counter. He was wearing his new work boots, carrying his new tool belt. These he’d purchased the day before. He’d also purchased a measuring tape and a hammer and a retractable knife and a small collection of pencils, which he’d carefully sharpened. He put the tool belt on the stool beside him. There was a colour television behind the counter playing a morning news broadcast. The picture was coming in and out. A waitress passing the set reached up and adjusted the antenna before she came over to Lee. Her face was warm and the name Helen was embroidered on her shirt. Her hips and breasts were round and full.

— Morning, hon.

— Morning yourself, said Lee.

— Anything catch your eye?

— You mean on the menu?

She grinned: Come on. You just got here.

He ordered eggs and home fries and extra bacon. She brought him a cup of coffee and then she moved away and passed his order through a wicket into a steaming kitchen. Lee lit a cigarette. Seated around him were a few other patrons. He didn’t think he recognized any of them. There were a couple of truckers and a nurse along the counter, and four old men in a booth. A man with long dark hair and sharp features, wearing a down-filled vest and sitting near the window, might have been studying Lee if he allowed himself to think so. Lee tapped his cigarette into an ashtray. He flexed his toes inside his new work boots.

Helen came with his breakfast and refilled his coffee.

— Enjoy, Brown Eyes.

He slathered ketchup on his food and he hunched forward and dug into his breakfast. He sensed that Helen was watching him, amused. He looked at her.

— I don’t know where you usually eat, said Helen, but nobody’s going to steal your food here.

Before Lee could reply, she went back down the counter to take someone else’s order. The man in the down- filled vest raised a hand at her, snapped his fingers, but Helen ignored him. It was a different waitress who went to refill the man’s coffee.

Lee finished his breakfast. He got up and collected his tool belt and went into the washroom. When he came out, he saw Pete in a small car outside. The long-haired man with the sharp features was gone. Helen came over and Lee asked what he owed. After he’d paid, Helen said she hoped he’d come again.

He left the diner, feeling good and loose-limbed. Pete popped the trunk open and Lee dropped his tool belt beside the spare tire. He closed the trunk and got into the car.

— Morning, said Pete.

— Top of the morning to you.

— Ready for your first day?