An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [30]
I give her the opposite of an abridged version of events.
“I’ll run to the barn to get the horses. Won’t take me long,” she says.
I’ve never been on a horse before but she’s already well into the curves of the trail with the dogs in obedient pursuit before I can say no. I don’t want to stay where I am because I might run into Ray and Raven. Regardless of where I go, it won’t be fast, not with a wet boot, sock on one foot, and nothing more than a blister on the other. There’s a detour that leads to a meadow. It’s not where Norah went but it’s grassy instead of rocky and muddy.
I sit on the ground with my back against a boulder like I’m in a front row seat in an open-air theatre. I dig into my pockets for the complimentary trail-mix bar they dropped in the shopping bag when I bought the boots that gave me the complimentary trail blister. The foil wrapping has kept it dry but hasn’t improved its taste. One bite and I throw what’s left into the meadow. I poke the wrapper into my pocket. I watch the gulls cross above then below the horizon as if it was a rope tugged tightly at either end. A piece of an iceberg bobs around in the waves not far from shore. The scene reminds me I should trade my binoculars for a camera.
Elsa kept our camera, her camera, the one I gave her for Christmas three years ago. She took nice pictures of her yoga teacher in his poses at the gym, in the hot tub at his house, in his living room. The landscape pictures she brought back from her trip to India with him were colourful. She caught on to photography quickly. She was right when she said her yoga teacher was far more photogenic. I’d never look like him no matter how many weights I lifted or how many pretzel poses I distorted myself into.
I’m not in the meadow for long before a bank of fog creeps around the point and smothers everything in its path, including the sun. I roll over onto my knees then to my feet. A beady-eyed, bushy-tailed fox bolts to the side, just as startled as I am. His front paw is mangled as if he’d chewed it off. The foghorn blows and he darts off on three legs with the trail-mix bar hanging from his mouth. I hop up onto my feet while I lean onto the boulder for support. The horn blows again. I cut a path through the grass in the thick fog. It doesn’t lead me where I expected. I remember Cyril’s story about the man in Gros Morne park. He separated from the others to follow a side trail then the weather turned stormy. “The crows got him picked to the bone by now,” Cyril said.
Dogs bark.
“Here. I’m herererererere.” I shout until my breath expires while I’m hopping towards the barking. Something cuts into my blister. The dogs bark again. “I’m herererererere.” I stop suddenly like I’ve hit a wall. The wall is a beast as big as a moose. The moose is wearing a saddle. Its reins are held by a man with a head of red hair that would make a fox jealous. We stare at each other.
“You scared me. I thought for a second it was a moose. I’m Carl. You must be with Norah.”
His forehead buckles when he squints at my feet, at my face, at my clothes then at my feet again. I realize I’ve left my other boot at the foot of the boulder. “Did you see the fox with the injured paw?” I ask. “Got caught in one of Ray Harding’s traps, I suppose.”
He tightens the saddle on the horse then watches the dogs chasing the scent of the fox in the meadow. When Norah arrives, she introduces us from on top of her horse. “Walter will help you mount,” she says. “Other foot, Carl. Give him a boost, Walter. Hang onto the horn, Carl.”
He’s smaller than me but much stronger. He nearly catapults me over the top to the other side. He adjusts the stirrups. I haven’t yet steadied myself in my seat when he gathers the reins, shifts the horse to face the other direction then leads us down the trail. Most of the time, I can’t see anything because I have to duck to avoid boughs hitting me in the face. The swaying makes me nauseated. For a while, when I was a young boy, I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up. “You’d be no good at it,” Papa told me. He