Promenade

By Sherrie E. Tutt

Smeeth lies like a ladder abandoned along the railway tracks in southern
Saskatchewan. So begins Promenade, a mystery set in a small town on the doorstep
of an Indian Reserve. There isnt much to do, so the women spend their evenings
walking and talking.
The story is told by the community nurse and a young boy. They become entangled
in events that include a fi re, a break-in, elder abuse, counterfeiting, and murder.
The promenade provides a window on the community as it struggles to cope in an
atmosphere of unrelenting heat and interracial tension.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479759125

Sherrie E. Tutt

Sherrie Tutt, a nurse for over forty years, chose writing as her retirement career. She lives with her cat in Regina, Saskatchewan in the midst of the Canadian prairies, the setting for Phin’s Christmas Elf, where long winters provide lots of time for writing. She has tried her hand at poetry and short stories With Phin’s Christmas Elf, her second book, she shares her passion for a good romantic story. A member of the Seniors Education Centre, she speaks to RCMP recruits and community groups about issues influencing seniors. She loves swimming, walking, reading and puppy-sitting.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Sherrie E. Tutt.

ISBN:             Softcover             978-1-4797-5911-8

                       Ebook                 978-1-4797-5912-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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113173

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1 Bonnie’s First Promenade

Chapter 2 The First Fire

Chapter 3 The Day After the First Fire

Chapter 4 Allan and Miz Harry

Chapter 5 The Second Promenade

Chapter 6 Bonnie Butts In

Chapter 7 Herb Visits

Chapter 8 Bonnie Visits Harry

Chapter 9 The Town Meeting

Chapter 10 The Band Meeting

Chapter 11 Bonnie Sees Bradley Koenig at the Fort

Chapter 12 Kohkom Doesn’t Exist

Chapter 13 Powwow

Chapter 14 Allan and the Pretty lady

Chapter 15 Allan After his Trip to the Fort

Chapter 16 The Nurse Managers’ Meeting

Chapter 17 Bonnie Meets the Bad Bunch

Chapter 18 The Second Fire

Chapter 19 Aftermath

Chapter 20 Promenading After the Second Fire

Chapter 21 Talking Things Over

Chapter 22 A Barbecue at Herb’s

Chapter 23 Figuring It Out

Chapter 24 Bonnie Visits the Burned House

Chapter 25 After Bonnie’s Fall

Chapter 26 Bonnie Visits Kohkom After the Funeral

Chapter 27 Bonnie and Guy Puzzling

Chapter 28 Enter the Pharmacist

Chapter 29 The Placement Meeting

Chapter 30 Meeting Allan’s Mother

Chapter 31 The Runaway

Chapter 32 Interviewing Allan

Chapter 33 Marta and Bonnie

Chapter 34 Getting Harry

Chapter 35 The Koenig Case Conference

Chapter 36 The Counterfeit Ring

Chapter 37 Ally’s Attack

Chapter 38 Enter Shopley

Chapter 39 Who is Shopley?

Chapter 40 A Visit with Angela

Chapter 41 Placement Problems

Chapter 42 The Last Fire

Chapter 43 The Wind Up

Post Script

DEDICATION

The future of Saskatchewan rests on the ability of its Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal citizens to learn to honour and respect each other and live amicably together.

This book is dedicated to the Intercultural Grandmothers Uniting and all others struggling to reach this goal.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all those who contributed their knowledge and expertise to the making this book.

Particular thanks go to

Judith Silverthorne;

Bob and Jean Juby;

Members of the 2010 Critical Critters Writing Group:

June Mitchell, Margaret Exner, Maxine Hall, Shirley Bonic,

and Wanda Gronhovd;

Wayne Tunison, Gordon Shearer, Cyril Scheske and the Masonic Grand Lodge for their valuable information about

Masonic traditions and practices; and

Denise Desjarlais, Prairie Spirit Connections for reviewing

the Aboriginal practices described.

Prologue

Hey fats!

Crap! My name’s Allan Koenig and I may only be twelve years old but I know trouble when I hear it.

I figured I could sneak out to Gran’s without gettin’ caught this time ’cause Father wasn’t out back of the store workin’ on his truck. Most days he spends more time under the hood than runnin’ the store that used to be Grandpa’s. Gran lives across the alley.

I took off runnin’. Woulda made it, too ’cept for Big Louie. He caught me roundin’ the fence. By the time I made it to Gran’s I was a mess—dirty, sweaty, sore eye that was gonna be a shiner—and Gran’s eggs were smashed.

But Gran had a sandwich ready. We sat on her step tryin’ to catch a breeze while I ate it. Good thing it was egg. My tongue ran around my mouth, tasted blood and felt a loose tooth. When I finished eating I said, Want me to cut your grass? Gran likes her yard to look nice. We both looked at the dry brown fuzz all over her yard. You mean that? she asked. There sure wasn’t much to cut.

I could water your flowers instead. She looked at the red flowers in the brown pots leanin’ against her step.

The geraniums? I guess…

So I went ’round the side of the house and wrestled the hose so’s l could fill the old tin watering can, the one dinged in the side where Grandpa kicked it. I put water in each pot, careful not to put too much or spill, water bein’ scarce what with the drought.

Gran looked at the flowers sort of sad so I asked what else I could do. She useta laugh when I asked that and say, Lookin’ for another cookie? But not today. She just sat there like she didn’t hear.

I asked her two more times before she said I was hoping to stay in my house the rest of my days. But your father thinks I should go to a Home like your Grandpa, her face looked white like the paste we use at school.

I felt awful. Gran’s is the only place I can go to get away from Father. What’ll I do if you go away? I said. She looked at me funny, patted my arm, put the back of her hand to her forehead.

I don’t know, she whispered.

That’s when I started to worry about Gran.

Chapter 1

Bonnie’s First Promenade

At the time of evening when the sun starts to set, the wind shrinks to a hesitant breeze and the mosquitoes have not yet taken over the world, the women of Smeeth go walking.

Smeeth, population 500, lies like a ladder abandoned along No. 15 highway, a gravel road that grumbles under the assault of grain trucks and semis along an utterly flat part of southern Saskatchewan. Main Street, a dirt path maybe sixteen blocks long, double wide to accommodate the horses and wagons that once hitched up in front of bustling businesses, parallels the highway. Together they form a walking track. A few short blocks of small houses, some abandoned, broken or falling down cross between.

Main Street stands mostly vacant except for the odd beat-up car, rusty pick-up or dust cloud lingering in the air after one angles up to the false front hotel or windowless Koen Mart. The street ends where the Indian Reserve begins.

Smeeth has little to distinguish itself other than health services—a hospital (where my office is), a doctor’s clinic, and an ambulance office, all an easy walk from each other. Every other town service comes from somewhere else: policing from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seven kilometers away at Farley; the fire station another twelve at Kendalston.

There’s very little to do on a hot summer evening so the women of Smeeth have taken to strolling around this track, gossiping about the mundane matters that make up their mundane lives. The evening promenade started long before my daughter, Ally, and I came to town. I’m Bonnie Franklin, the new Community Health Nurse.

It was the summer of ’98. I was feeling a bit abandoned, like the town, having been dropped by Allison’s father, my husband of twelve years. It was not a good time for nurses in general either. Health Boards were slashing jobs, particularly management jobs, to cut costs. Bad news for someone like me, a nurse with a brand new Master’s degree. This job, my third in three years, each in successively smaller places, had stuck me in Smeeth.

I didn’t expect to find anything in common with the ladies but desperately needed this job and needed the acceptance of the townspeople in order to keep it. I was counting on the promenade to help.

The walk began when Gladys Smeeth stepped out the door of her tidy bungalow. A stalwart lady of eighty-plus, just shy of five feet, she’s granddaughter of the town’s namesake and would have been the pillar of Smeeth society if it had a society. Smeeth is her town and everything in it her concern. She could toss a baseball across the road to the Indian Reserve, but rarely goes there. Like the rest of Smeeth residents, the Reserve is as much a foreign land to her as if it lay half-way across the world.

I saw her pause to scan the sky for signs of rain and then join Evelyn, her neighbor, best friend and clone (except maybe in smarts). They strolled my way picking up speed in front of the hotel. (Its shabby false-front masks the beer parlor.)

I heard the voices of Rose and her kids as they rounded the corner from ‘the lake.’ A largish marshy pond ringed with bull rushes and weeds, ‘the lake’, nothing but a patch of stagnant water in an otherwise arid land, has as little right to be called ‘lake’ as Smeeth has to be called ‘town’.

Hi Rose, I said, falling into step to walk with her. Busy day? How’s the garden?

She sighed. Not bad, considering. She hauls pails from the lake to keep vegetables alive. Canned beans today. Got three quarts. Not much to show for her efforts, I thought.

Rose, a sturdy woman with work roughened hands, lives in a trailer near the lake and struggles to feed her kids by baking for the older ladies, of whom there are many, the townspeople being mostly sixty-five plus. With her dark hair and silver eyes, she’d have been pretty if she didn’t look quite so worn. Her plumber husband, Mike, was gone as usual ‘plumbing’, probably at some pub or other.

If Rose described me, I suppose she’d sketch a short, lumpy woman, dull brown hair graying at the temples, encased most days in Fortrel.

The evening air pressed hot and heavy. Conversation fluttered from one topic to another, listless like the flies that clung around.

Anybody else do canning today? That was Rose.

Anyone heard if that gang of hoodlums is back? That was Lizzie, clerk at the Koen Mart. I wasn’t sure exactly who these hoodlums were, but they were clearly no favorites of hers.

Rose’s kids, Sally and Nate, hung around the edges of the group, darting into the ditch from time to time in search of a cricket or dusty sunflower. My dog, Pooch, and Rose’s Sasha ambled alongside snuffling at every abandoned gopher hole. Sally ran up to her mum and stuck out her hand. A tiny mauve wild sweet pea blossom lay shriveled in her dusty palm.

Rose’s friend Harry, short for Harriet, joined us from her house near the Koen Mart, although she likely wouldn’t be there much longer. Her husband died without insurance and the bank is foreclosing. A skinny woman of indeterminate age, she perpetually schleps around in canvas runners that have seen better days. Harry splits her days between packing up her home and scrounging whatever work she can get to put food on the table. She has neither training nor skills so can do only cleaning, cooking and babysitting. There are lots of women who need help but few who can pay. What little she earns mostly feeds her cat and two dogs. Usually mild-mannered, Harry can, I’d been told, turn into a harridan if the occasion arose. Anyone mean to her animals quickly got the rough edge of her tongue. Without Rose there would have been many nights that summer Harry would have gone to bed hungry.

Lord it’s hot! Harry said as she pulled up on the other side of Rose.

The usual clutch of kids clustered around the front of the Koen Mart, mostly from the Reserve. Joe Fisher, a tall stringy lad, more man than boy, leaned against the wall. I smiled. His lips quirked at the corners then he ducked his head and pretended to concentrate on drawing circles in the dust with one booted toe, scuffed and worn. Joe’s a good kid. Quiet. Polite. Lives on the Reserve with his grandmother, not part of the usual Reserve crowd. Keeps himself to himself. Doesn’t miss much though. I like and trust him, know and like his grandmother. He and Ally became friends the day we arrived. They’d both be going into Grade Twelve in September.

Another kid stuck his head out of the phone booth, grinned and whistled. Insolent brat, I thought, and laughed. None of the walkers are exactly whistle bait. More like models for the Pillsbury dough boy, you know? Were some of these kids the hoodlums I’d heard about? I wondered.

There was a skirmish—pushing and shoving—. Young Allan Koenig hustled to catch up with Nate. Poor Allan. Probably being picked on again. A chubby twelve year old with straw blonde hair, not even the fact that his Dad owns the Koen Mart where the kids bought their treats saves him. Probably has another cut lip or black eye for Rose to cover up so his Dad won’t see. How Bradley Koenig could get so mad at his son just for being bullied was beyond me. I shook my head. After thirty years of nursing, humans still puzzle me.

I wiped my forehead for the umpteenth time, felt the sweat trickle between my breasts and resisted, barely, the urge to wipe there too. I paused to admire a dry leaf, a pretty copper color in spite of its shriveled state, and sighed. Being so dry, the few trees in town were already losing their leaves and it was not yet the end of July.

A few houses sported flower pots, gauzy curtains, and little patches of prickly grass. Old faces peered at us as we passed. Some smiled. Others peeked then quickly disappeared. Tilley, one of my home care clients, waved what looked like a chunk of Kobasa sausage. I sighed. Tilley’s blood pressure would be high—again. No matter what anyone said, Tilley was always eating and buying food. She could have fed the whole town for a month on the cans and boxes stashed around her tiny house. Still Allan had to deliver more.

We slowed past the old houses. I’m worried about those empty houses, I said to no one in particular. They could be a fire hazard.

Gladys nodded. Kids hang out there, smoking cigarettes, drinking and goodness knows what all. Fire department’s a long ways away, too.

Too damn many kids with nuthin’ to do! Harry said, practically shaking in her indignation. I’d heard some of those kids tease her dogs.

Aren’t they mostly kids from the Reserve? Rose asked in a quiet voice, looking up ahead to where Nate and Allan scuffed along.

Why doesn’t the town tear them down if they’re a concern? I asked, having already brought the subject to the attention of the Town Council who’d shown little interest. I’d been wondering why.

Can’t, said Gladys. According to the law, the owners have to be given notice first. Most are either dead or long gone with nobody knowing where they are. Town can’t do anything.

That explained why no one paid much attention to my concerns. I’d better not get too pushy about the problem. With a daughter almost finished high school, I need this job. Badly. So can’t make too many waves. I was already skating on thin ice because I took the job Karen Plemkin, a local nurse, had expected to get.

St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church, the only church in town, eased into sight, white chipped paint giving it a lost and lonely look. A small dark figure stooped behind a rusty wrought iron fence wrestling with weeds. Father Martin put one hand to his back, waved with the other, stretched then sank back to his digging.

Nearing the school, talk turned to the new principal. Most of us had yet to meet him so were mildly curious. Good looking, Rose said, with a glance my way. Not really tall. Strong-looking. Has that place on the edge of town. Keeps a horse.

And a dog, said Harry.

Really nice, said Sally, back from a foray into the ditch looking for berries.

Still on holidays I expect, said Gladys.

Their voices washed over me as I worried about the old houses.

As we turned for home and straggled past Buster’s Garage the air grew stuffier, laden with dust and the oily smell of hot asphalt. The sky grayed toward night. The buzz of mosquitoes picked up as we approached the lake. Even the reeds drooped. Hands slapping mosquitoes whacked harder, more often. Voices grumbled, their owners restless to be home behind screen doors where the filthy beasts couldn’t reach. Rose and her kids dropped away toward their trailer, Harry toward her little house and Pooch and I picked up our pace toward home.

I took a long time settling for the night. For some reason I felt uneasy.

Chapter 2

The First Fire

A siren woke me about two a.m. At first I ignored it, as if an aggravating intrusion into a dream. Ally and I live in an old house close to the hospital,