The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“Jane don’t think he’s got any people. The only number in his wallet was the trucking company.”

“That’s a shame,” Johnny Red said evenly, in a way someone else might have thought idle.

Cora lifted an eyebrow. He put his long chef’s knife against the curve of a withered onion and said nothing.

Georgie Fiddler did. “Everything all right there, John?”

Johnny’s knife paused. “Cora saw a raven on the motel roof last night.”

“Johnny—” she said, sharp enough to surprise herself. His jaw twitched a little below the curve of his ear; the look he cast her said sorry, and no. She let out a breath and noticed her hand at her own jaw, rubbing it like a feeding baby’s back. She put it in her apron pocket. She needed a smoke.

“It’s thirty below,” Georgie said.

Johnny Red nodded and snipped the shoot end off his onion.

Georgie Fiddler frowned. “So what’s that mean?” He was one of the few fully white men in Sunrise, come up from north Saskatchewan twelve and a half years back. Nobody begrudged him for it — he paid better wages and kept better hours than Mike Blondin, after all — but it meant sometimes he needed a thing explained that should never need explaining.

“The problem with Raven,” Johnny Red said delicately, “is that you’re never sure what you’re going to get.”

“Oh,” Georgie Fiddler said, in a way that meant he hadn’t grasped the half of it. Cora couldn’t blame him. She’d barely grasped the half of it.

“Anyways,” Johnny said, brushing onion from his cutting board, “It’ll go better when he’s gone.”

The silence puddled a little, chilly, on the tiled black and white floor.

“Well,” Georgie said, stiff, “it’ll be a good while for that. The other driver on the route went missing last week, just up and vanished from the depot, and they can’t send another until next week. If they clear the highway tomorrow. So try to keep it under your hat, man.”

Johnny’s expression didn’t change. “So that truck’s gonna sit in your garage for a week?” he said as if he’d not heard Georgie at all.

Cora shot Georgie a look. He took the hint. “Looks like,” he said, and ran a hand through his thin hair. “Northbest’ll be pretty pissed. It’s a perishable load, and boy is it gonna perish.”

“What’s so perishable?” she asked.

Georgie Fiddler smiled dryly. “Fruit. Veg. Stuff I’ve never even seen before. Don’t know how good it’ll be after another night in this weather.”

Johnny put his knife down. “So you’ve got the phone number for this Northbest man.”

Georgie set a torn slip of paper down on the Formica counter. “That’s what I came to bring you,” he said, still a little cool. “And to ask if you could run lunch for two down to Jane’s.”

“For him,” Johnny said.

“And Daisy.”

“I’ll go,” Cora said.

“Cor—” Johnny started.

“Not even Raven lives on thin air just yet.” Her voice stayed level. The colour rose behind his windburned brown cheeks, but he tipped her a nod.

“I can do sandwiches,” he said, and disappeared into his kitchen.

“You sure you’re all right?” Georgie Fiddler asked, and she wasn’t sure if he meant Johnny Red or last night or Raven on the Treeline’s roof, laughing bitter dark.

Cora untied her apron and let out a long breath. “If I don’t come back,” she said, “break all the eggs.”

Inside the kitchen, Johnny Red snorted.

Daisy Blondin was in with the trucker when Cora tapped on the door. “Lunch,” Cora said, stomping snow off her boots.

The trucker was propped up in Jane Hooker’s clean white bed, tee-shirt thin and rumpled, bruise-dark shadows underneath his eyes. Light brown stubble was coming in on his cheek; someone would have to find a razor. Too far away to see his eyes, but Georgie was right: staring.

“Lunch!” Daisy said, and put aside a creased copy of Canadian Technician. Her feet were on the bed; two brown toes peeked out of a hole in her red-and-white striped socks. “No chance you could take over? Jane’s sleeping and my brother’s gonna kill me.”

Cora unbuttoned her coat, but didn’t take it off. Tough words in the presence of Johnny Red or not, she wasn’t staying a minute farther than she had to. “I can’t. It’s lunch rush.”

Daisy sighed. “All right. Let me go to the can.” She wandered around the foot of the bed to the bathroom, and there was silence for a moment after the bathroom door slammed. Cora heard the click of the toilet lid hitting the tank, and another sound: the steady thud of an axe against a whitebark pine. Her forehead wrinkled. It was cold for cutting trees this afternoon, and as far as she knew, the gas for the furnaces wasn’t anywhere near that precarious yet.

The heater pinged and muttered. It was cold in here, too. Her hip ached. The man on the bed pushed himself up to sitting, and she forced herself to stay still. “Lunch?” she asked, and it fell into the silence like a stone.