Forty Words for Sorrow

34

AN ONTARIO HYDRO LINEMAN named Howard Bass was repairing a transformer out on Highway 63, about five posts north of the Trout Lake marina. The job required a whole new crossbar, and Howard had been up in the cherry picker most of the morning, freezing his ass off. Twenty feet up like that, he was catching a bad ricochet of sunlight off the snow that practically blinded him, sunglasses and all. A couple of hours into the job, though, and the sun had shifted around, casting a sharp shadow of Howard and the arm of the cherry picker across the snow.

Stanley Betts, who was driving today, had strolled back to the marina to buy them both a couple of donuts and Cokes. He came back whistling a risqué little tune called “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl,” the cat-eyed Lolita behind the counter having put him in that frame of mind.

This stretch of 63 was always busy. You had the traffic coming down from the NORAD installation, you had the people coming in from Temagami, and you had the residential traffic for Four Mile Bay and Peninsula Road. Stan was stranded across the highway for a good few minutes, waiting for the traffic to clear. “I’m turning into a dirty old man!” he called to Howie. “You shoulda seen the little babe at the store!”

Howie didn’t turn, didn’t hear him over the roar of a speeding eighteen-wheeler.

“I swear, Howie,” Stan said again, when he was across the road and clear, “I’m turning into a dirty old man!”

Although cold as hell, the day was perfectly clear. The yellow arm of the cherry picker seemed to flash against the blue of the sky. Howie looked strange up there, his breath making tiny white clouds. He was gripping the edge of the box in a weird way, looking down at something.

“What the hell you staring at?” Stan followed his gaze, but he couldn’t see over the six-foot ridge of roadside sludge. He clambered to the top of this and shaded his eyes. When Stan saw what Howie saw, one of the Cokes fell and burst open on his steel-toed boot, shooting a miniature brown geyser over the snow.