The door opened. When we were growing up Grete had been a washed-out grey colour, with flat, dull hair. Now she was still that same grey but with a perm that made her look truly scary, in my opinion. Of course, being pretty isn’t a human right, but the Creator really did skimp on Grete. Back, neck, knees, everything was sort of crooked; even her enormous, crooked nose looked out of place, as though it had been imposed on her narrow face by force. But if the Creator had been prodigal with her nose then He’d been correspondingly mean with the rest of her. Eyebrows, eyelashes, breasts, hips, cheeks – Grete actually had none of these. The lips were thin and resembled earthworms. In her youth she had coated these meaty-coloured worms with a thick layer of bright red lipstick, and it did actually suit her. But then suddenly she stopped wearing make-up. It must have been around the time Carl left town.
OK, so it’s possible others didn’t see Grete Smitt like I did. Maybe she was attractive in her own way, and what I saw when I looked at what was on the outside was coloured by what I knew about the inside. And I’m not saying Grete Smitt was actually evil, I’m sure there’s some psychiatric diagnosis or other that gives a more flattering definition, as people say.
‘It’s sharp today,’ said Grete. By it she presumably meant the north wind. When it came sweeping down through the valley it always carried with it the smell of glacier and a reminder of summer’s evanescence. Grete had grown up in the village, but using a word like it was probably something she had from her parents, who had come here from the north, ran the camping site until it went bust and then lived on social security after both of them had been diagnosed with a rare form of peripheral neuropathy as a result of diabetes. Apparently it makes you feel as though you’re walking on splintered glass. Grete’s neighbour told me neuropathy isn’t contagious in any way, so this must have been a statistical miracle. But statistical miracles happen all the time, and now both parents lived on the top floor, directly above the poster advertising ‘Grete’s Hair and Sun Salon’, although you didn’t see them often.
‘Carl back?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, even though I knew it wasn’t a Yes/No question. It was a statement with a question mark attached asking for further information. I had no intention of providing that. Grete’s relationship with Carl wasn’t healthy. ‘What can I get you?’
‘I thought he was doing so well in Canada.’
‘Sometimes people get the urge to travel home even when things are going well.’
‘I hear the property market out there is very unpredictable.’
‘Yes, it either goes up very quickly or not quite so quickly. Coffee? Custard bun?’
‘Wonder what it is that brings a big shot from Toronto back to our little village.’
‘The people,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ she said, studying my poker face. ‘But then he’s brought a Cuban with him, I hear?’
Now it might have been easy to feel pity for Grete. Parents on social security, a meteorite crater for a nose, no customers, no eyebrows, no husband, no Carl and apparently no desire for anyone else. But then there was that hidden reef of evil you didn’t notice was there until after you’d seen people scraping up against it. Maybe it was Newton’s law about every action having a corresponding reaction, that all the pain she suffered had to be passed on in turn to others. If Carl hadn’t screwed her beneath a tree when he was young and been drinking at a party, maybe she wouldn’t have turned out that way. Or then again, maybe she would.
‘A Cuban,’ I said, wiping down the counter. ‘Sounds like a cigar.’
‘Yeah, doesn’t it?’ she said and leaned across the counter as though we were sharing forbidden confidences. ‘Brown, nice to puff on and … and …’
Easy to light up, my mind instinctively added, even though what I wanted most was to stuff a custard bun into her mouth to stop the rubbish.
‘… very smelly,’ she finally concluded. That earthworm mouth of hers grinned; she seemed pleased with her analogy, as people say.
‘Only she isn’t from Cuba,’ I said. ‘She’s from Barbados.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ said Grete. ‘Thai, Russian, whatever, a skivvy, I expect.’
I lost it. Couldn’t hide any more how much she was provoking me. ‘Excuse me? What did you just say?’
‘That she’s pretty, I expect.’ Grete grinned triumphantly.
‘What do you want, Grete?’
Grete scanned the shelves behind me. ‘Mum needs new batteries for her remote.’
I doubted that, since her mother had called in and bought batteries two days earlier, picking up her sore feet as though the floor was molten lava. I handed the batteries to Grete and rang it up.
‘Shannon,’ said Grete as she fumbled her card through the terminal. ‘I saw the pictures on Instagram. Is there something wrong with her?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ I said.
‘Come on, you’re not that white if you come from Barbados. And what’s the matter with her eye?’
‘That remote control should go like the clappers now.’
Grete pulled out her card and slipped it back into her purse. ‘See you later, Roy.’
I nodded slowly. Of course we’d see each other later. That goes for everything and everyone in this village. But she was trying to tell me something more, so that’s why I nodded as though I got it, and hoped she wouldn’t bother me with the rest of it.
The door slid shut behind her, but not completely, even though I’d tightened the mechanism. It really was time for a new one. Automatic.
By nine one of the other employees had arrived and I was able to go out and clean up after the tractor. As expected there were huge clumps of clay and dirt on the floor. I had some ready-mixed Fritz heavy-duty cleaner that got rid of most of it and hosed it down, thinking about back when we were teenagers and thought our lives could be turned upside down every single day, and about how our lives were turned upside down every single day, when I felt a prickling between my shoulder blades. Like the heat from one of those red laser beams when the SWAT team has caught you red-handed. So that’s why I wasn’t startled when I heard the low coughing behind me. I turned.
‘Been mud wrestling in here?’ said the sheriff, cigarette twitching between his thin lips.
‘Tractor,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘So your brother’s back?’
Kurt Olsen the sheriff was a thin, bony-cheeked man with a trailer-trash moustache, always with a roll-up in his mouth, tight jeans and the snakeskin boots his father used to wear. In fact Kurt seemed to look more and more like Sigmund Olsen, the old sheriff, who had had long fair hair too, and always made me think of Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Kurt Olsen was bow-legged the way certain footballers are, and in his day had been captain of the local team that played in the 4th division. Solid technique, sound tactical sense, could run for the whole ninety minutes even though he smoked like two factories. Everyone said Kurt should have been playing in a higher division. But that would have meant moving to a larger place with the risk of ending up on the bench, and why sacrifice local hero status for that? ‘Carl arrived yesterday,’ I confirmed. ‘How did you know?’