Arctic Floor Read online

  ‘Yeah, he’s proud,’ said Winter.

  ‘I know,’ said Gallen. ‘He rescued that crap out of the trash. I don’t have the heart to take it down.’

  ~ * ~

  Before they reached the house yard, Gallen felt something was wrong. There were no lights on in the house and the big floodlight that hung over the main sliding door of the barn wasn’t working.

  ‘What’s up, Dad?’ said Gallen. His father’s whisky-fuelled snores rasped from the back seat where he was lying.

  ‘Lights out,’ said Winter as Gallen stopped the truck. ‘Power?’

  Winter walked to the front door and tried the switches. Gallen could see him shrugging by the light of the truck’s headlamps.

  ‘Power’s off,’ said Winter.

  The two of them carried Roy to his bed.

  ‘You know about this?’ Gallen asked as they stood in the kitchen.

  ‘No,’ said Winter. ‘You think he was ducking the bills?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Winter took a kerosene lamp and headed for the bunkhouse, a hundred-year-old wooden shack that had once housed the farm labourers of Sweet Clover, the Gallen family spread.

  Watching the mysterious Canadian pad across the house yard, Gallen noticed a sense of containment and caution in his stride. Like many soldiers, when the war was over some habits couldn’t be erased.

  Grabbing a lamp, Gallen went to Roy’s study and sat down at the desk. A pile of papers, envelopes, bank files and ledger books rose and spread like a mountain range in front of him. Sorting through them in the dim light, Gallen cursed quietly as he assembled a pile of the bills that seemed to have been paid, judging either by the ‘paid’ scrawled in Roy’s hand or because Gallen could find the clearances in the bank files. Roy’d paid the cattle haulage and the cattle feed and the hay man. And he’d repeatedly paid his bill at the liquor store and a company called La Paree Beautee.

  Then Gallen made another pile of the final demands and disconnection warnings. There was a bill from Clearmont Fuels— diesel, propane and gasoline totalling $3817, account in arrears, payment due three months ago, credit no longer being extended on the Sweet Clover account; the co-op had a final demand for the $892 owed for Roundup, electric fencing wire, fence transformers, nails and cattle wormer; Alpine Ford wanted the $1600 it quoted and charged to fix the axle bearings and four-by-four hubs in Roy’s own F-250, a bill rendered in the fall of the year before; and sitting in Gallen’s hand was the power company’s bill: three billing cycles in arrears, and a disconnection for 20 March—the official first day of spring.

  ‘Damn,’ said Gallen, rubbing his face. Roy had ignored a power bill for more than $11,000 and the power company had cut them off.

  ~ * ~

  Lying awake, Gallen listened to the coyotes howl in the still night air. He remembered life in this farmhouse before his mother left, before Roy gave his life to the drink and before his older brother and sister took off for the big cities and their big careers. He remembered being driven home from high-school hockey, his father giving him the run-down on what he did right and what he had to learn; he’d limp into the house and his mom would have a hot bath ready for him, salts and all, mumbling her insults about the game, telling him that he didn’t have to play hockey if he didn’t want to. One morning, his mom had walked out of the bathroom and screamed at Roy when she discovered Gallen’s split eyebrow, an injury Roy saw no reason to bother the doctor with.

  Gallen was always going to be Roy’s boy. As close as he was to his mother, he was drawn to hockey, to the code of never backing down, never abandoning a team-mate, never staying down on the ice, no matter who had landed you there. His coach from his midget-league days, Pat Murphy, had once gone crazy after one of the team had stayed on the ice, writhing in agony, after being checked into the boards by the biggest boy on the opposing team. At their next training, Murphy had told the group of ten-year-olds: ‘No one stays down in this team. This ain’t no soccer game and you ain’t no fucking Mexicans.’

  And that was about as philosophical as it got in Wyoming hockey. His mom had managed to influence his older siblings and they were both lawyers, Patricia in San Francisco and Tom at a bank in Denver. But Gallen had toed the line, played hockey, taken a few bronc rides at the rodeo and then joined the Marines after high school. Back then it seemed enough: the other kids didn’t want the farm so it fell to the youngest. And the youngest had bought the whole redneck dream.

  When Gallen had just turned fifteen, his mother left and Roy started drinking. Roy had a succession of girlfriends and there was a sudden lack of discipline in the life of the youngest Gallen. His mother would call from California and then Hawaii, but she’d never called him to her. Then, in his final year of school, the hay paddock—a hundred-and-forty-acre segment of the Gallen family’s cattle empire—had been sold. Gallen hadn’t seen it coming and hadn’t even thought about it until one day he was sitting in the barber’s chair in Clearmont and a real estate broker called Frank Holst started mouthing off.

  ‘Seen old Roy sold the hay paddock over on East Fork?’ said Holst, and before the barber could point out that Roy’s son was sitting in the next chair, the broker had offered it up: ‘Old Roy’s drinking the farm away.’

  Gallen had spent many summers wet-backing in that hay paddock, making the hay for the winter with Tom and Roy, a third of it sold to other farmers.

  Lying awake now, Gallen thought about his mother and her new life and new husband and new friends. He thought about the split, about his mother’s desire for something bigger and Roy’s love of cattle, horses and hockey

  He thought about Roy losing it all and he knew what he had to do.

  Never stay on the ice.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 5

  Gallen put a piece of wood in the stove’s fire box and placed the coffee perc on the hot plate. Through the kitchen window he could see long plumes of steam shooting from the horse yards built off the back of the old ramp barn—a hundred-and-thirty-year-old wooden cathedral on a high foundation of river rocks. Sometime while Gallen was in the Marines, the earthen ramp structure had collapsed through the stone foundation wall and now Roy was loading in hay with a belt through one of the side doors.

  The only remnant of the old days was the huge white lettering painted on the red boards: Sweet Clover, and beneath it, Gallen Family Farms. For the millionth time in his life he wondered why an Irish farmer would paint a three-leaf clover. Gallen’s grandfather must have been the one and only Irish-American not to paint a four-leaf clover on his barn.

  Taking his mug of coffee to the boot room, he dressed in a red blanket-coat and workboots and headed for Winter in the yards. It was 6.52 am; a line of blue and yellow had formed on the eastern horizon and frozen dirt clattered under his cold feet. ‘Nice morning,’ said Gallen, taking a seat on the platform beside the main gate to the round pen, where Winter was working with Peaches.

  ‘Nice enough,’ said Winter, vapour escaping his mouth.

  Sipping at his coffee, Gallen smoked and watched the Canadian do his thing with the horse, leading her in simple circles around the pen. After a few minutes Winter walked back to the centre of the fifty-foot pen and kept the horse walking on the end of long lunging reins. Using voice commands, he made the horse lope—off either leg—and then rise to the trot, before backing her off again. The horse was obviously well worked but good trainers built them up from the basics, asserting their dominance and making the animal confident about commands.

  ‘She’s a good mare, this one,’ said Winter. ‘Nice ‘n’ easy.’

  Gallen ducked into the barn and carried the saddle to the sand arena for Winter, who’d already constructed some basic rail jumps. Gallen leaned on the fence, threw out the cold coffee and lit another smoke.

  ‘We were going to talk about the shit, weren’t we?’ said Gallen.

  ‘Got one of them for me?’ asked Winter, bringing Peaches around and reaching down for a cigarette.

&
nbsp; ‘Ever thought about going back?’

  ‘To Maple Creek?’ said Winter, sticking the smoke in his teeth and stripping off his gloves, which he shoved in his jacket pocket.

  ‘No, to soldiering.’ Gallen squinted as the sun came over the trees.

  ‘Just as well,’ said Winter. ‘Saskatchewan’s a big place, but maybe not big enough for me.’

  ‘Well?’ said Gallen, after they’d spent a few moments smoking and looking into the distance.

  ‘Think about it every day,’ said Winter. ‘Don’t know how you wouldn’t.’

  The mare snorted and shook herself, the tack ringing like a box of nails.

  ‘Could be something for us,’ said Gallen.

  ‘What? ‘ said Winter, eyes focused.

  ‘Bodyguard. PSD. Protecting an oil executive.’

  ‘Protecting from what?’

  Gallen sucked on the smoke. ‘From hisself.’

  ‘Sounds easy.’

  ‘Easier than an intel briefing,’ said Gallen.

  ‘Ha!’ Winter shook his head with genuine amusement. ‘All looks easy on a board.’

  They chuckled in the morning light. Anyone who’d seen action in special forces knew how brave an intel staffer could be when he was scribbling his lines and crossing his targets on a whiteboard in a briefing room.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’ said Winter.

  ‘Would you go back?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Who for, and why,’ said Winter.

  ‘For me, Kenny.’ Gallen eyeballed him. ‘You work for me and you do it for two thousand a week, full medical, death and disability.’

  ‘I see.’

  They smoked in silence until Gallen mashed his cigarette in the sand of the arena. ‘Guess the first step is knowing if you can work for me.’

  ‘Am right now, ain’t I?’

  ‘Roy hired you,’ said Gallen. ‘This is different—this is back to the life, chain of command.’

  Winter exhaled smoke and flicked his butt end over end into the sand. ‘I can work for you, Gerry.’

  ‘Big dog say, little dog do?’

  Winter spat, looked away. ‘You say two thou?’

  ‘That’s what I can pay.’

  ‘The fuck we doing here then?’

  ~ * ~

  Arnell Boniface smiled as the administration woman carried in the Sweet Clover file and handed it to him.

  ‘Okay, so what have we here?’ said Boniface, a chrome-dome bank manager who hid his distaste for farmers with a chirpy tone.

  ‘I should be on there,’ said Gallen, his hair still wet, his left foot pinching in the brogues he wore three times a year. ‘Dad had me signed onto the trust when I was twenty-one.’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Boniface. ‘Gerard Roy Gallen, Sweet Clover farm on the Line Draw road. There’s your signature, you’re authorised.’

  ‘How’re we placed?’ said Gallen. ‘What does the bank need?’

  Boniface said ‘Well . . .’ like a man who was about to lie. ‘There’s three months’ mortgage in arrears, so we’d like to have that settled. Then there’s another payment due on the fourteenth.’

  ‘Let’s call it four,’ said Gallen. ‘And then?’

  ‘We could discuss the line of credit.’

  ‘Can we shut it down? It’s just eating away at that property.’

  ‘I’ve suggested that to Mr Gallen—Roy, that is,’ said the banker, ‘and he doesn’t like the idea.’

  ‘Can we take the cheque book away from him?’

  Boniface laughed. ‘You try that. Tell me how you go.’

  ‘What about you dishonour every Sweet Clover cheque?’

  ‘It’ll work for a while, then Roy’ll be in here yelling at my staff.’ Boniface leaned forward. ‘And if it’s after lunch he’ll be excitable, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I want to bring the mortgage back to square,’ said Gallen. ‘But there’s no point if the money keeps leaking out.’

  ‘You could start with these payments to the beauty shop,’ said Boniface, his finger tapping on the latest statement. ‘I know Roy and Leanne have a friendship, but that’s the main cash flow problem I can see.’

  ‘Can we freeze that chequing account? Just for a month?’

  Boniface spoke into the intercom, asked for the assistant to come through with a bank form. ‘We’ll try it your way, Gerard, but when Roy comes in here I want your John Hancock all over this.’

  ‘That’s fair. By the way, that letter of foreclosure I seen in Roy’s study,’ said Gallen, closing his eyes slowly, ‘that’s not the first, right?’

  ‘He’s had warning letters, but that’s the first foreclosure document.’

  ‘Gimme two days,’ said Gallen, as the forms arrived for Boniface to fill in and Gallen to sign. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ~ * ~

  The beauty parlour smelled of hairspray and bad perfume—the ones that said If you like Joy, you’ll love Glory. The disco phase of Tom Jones played on the sound system and Gallen pushed back his thin dark hair with his fingers as he waited at the desk.

  ‘Hi, Leanne,’ he said, as the woman walked around a Chinese silk screen to the counter. ‘Long time.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Leanne Tindall, wrong side of fifty and still wearing a Wonderbra. ‘If it’s not our war hero. What can I do you for, Gerry?’

  ‘Could we talk? ‘

  ‘Sure,’ Leanne gestured around her, ‘but I’m busy. Got a bridal party in right now.’

  ‘Need to talk about these payments,’ said Gallen.

  ‘Payments?’ Leanne averted her eyes, big acrylic nails resting on her hip, accentuating the swell of her ass in the black leggings.

  ‘Yeah, the cheques Roy’s been sending.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there’s been a couple.’

  ‘There’s been twenty-three, Leanne,’ said Gallen, staying calm, just like they taught him in the Marines. Before you can control a situation, you must first control yourself.

  ‘Now look, Gerry—’

  ‘The cheque-book stubs say renovations and services and investment,’ said Gallen. ‘I’m a trustee of Sweet Clover. Thought I’d come down, see what we’re getting for our money.’

  ‘That ain’t none of your concern, young man,’ said the woman, a darkness building behind the makeup and peroxide bangs. ‘That’s private. You don’t come in here—’

  ‘I’m a trustee of the farm and a signatory to the bank accounts,’ said Gallen. ‘It’s not private.’

  ‘That’s between Roy and me.’

  ‘There’s just under eighty thousand of the farm’s cash invested in this place. That’s between you and me.’

  ‘How dare you,’ she said. Employees looked up from their foils and hair-dryers. ‘You’re as bad as your mother.’

  ‘Not quite, Leanne,’ said Gallen. ‘I ain’t walked out on Roy just ‘cos he’s a drunken cheat.’

  ‘That’s it! Get out, you damn redneck.’ Leanne bustled around the counter, hugging her tiger-stripe shirt like armour. ‘I don’t need no Gallen money, never did. Now git.’

  Gallen walked into the sun on Water Street, one road back from the bustle of Clearmont’s main street. Leanne Tindall had been toying with Roy Gallen since long before the divorce, keeping her own husband on ice while leeching money out of the lust-struck cattle farmer. Roy’s accountant had tried to intervene and he’d been fired; the solicitor was banned from seeing the cheque book. Now Leanne was divorced too and pulling money out of Roy like he was a walking teller machine.

  Sitting in the diner, Gallen ordered coffee and pie and played with his cell phone. Beside him, a man stood and cleared his voice.

  ‘That Gerry? Roy’s boy?’

  Gallen looked up into a fleshy face with dead eyes. Frank Holst, still talking the talk, still wearing his real estate brokerage blazer like it was something to be proud of.

  ‘Frank,’ said Gallen. ‘Ho
w’s business?’

  ‘Fantastic, Gerry,’ Holst said, flecks of dandruff on his shoulder catching the sun.

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘Something might interest you,’ said Holst, his voice switching to the same small-town gossip tone that he’d once used in the barber chair as he accused Roy of drinking away the farm.

  ‘I see.’