Autumn Leaves Retirement Home lay just beyond the arena on the bank of the river where a small rapids ran along one side of the waterway and a large, deep pool lay along the other. Across the water, the sidewalks and lights of River Street came to an end and River Road, a gravel road now heavily oiled to keep down the dust, began. Beyond that lay the marina, the town dump, a few farms, the lake, and the seemingly never-ending bush.
It wasn’t Travis’s first time at the home. He’d come with his parents to visit a great-aunt who had died a year earlier. Nish, however, had never been, and didn’t have a clue how to behave once he got there.
“Where do you think you’re going, young man?” a turtle-faced woman demanded as he sauntered past the reception desk without so much as a nod in her direction.
“To see Mr. Donahue,” Nish answered, barely breaking stride.
“You’ll have to sign in,” she snapped.
Nish stopped, heading to the visitors’ book and grabbing for the pen that dangled off the end of a string attached to the desk.
“Are you family?” she demanded.
“That’s right,” Nish answered.
She stared at him over the tops of her glasses. Travis could hardly blame her; Nish looked as likely a relative of old Mr. Donahue as the retirement home looked like the hockey rink.
Nish never missed a beat. Catching her suspicion before it had time to go anywhere, he turned and pointed at Travis. “He is.”
“I see,” said the turtle. “What family, exactly?”
Travis had to think fast. “Nephew,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie; there had been a time when he was told to call Mr. Donahue “Uncle Ralph” because Travis’s grandfather and the old man were best friends together on the police force.
The turtle looked dubious, but let them pass after they’d signed in.
“He’s in 228,” she shouted after them.
They found the room at the far end of the second floor, but getting there was a bit unnerving. An old man in a wheelchair had been singing songs without words as they passed. An old woman, her stockings fallen down around her ankles, had sworn at them and swung at Nish with her cane.
“Remind me not to get old,” Nish whispered behind his hand as they headed down the corridor.
Travis said nothing. He felt sorry for these people and was glad that his own grandparents were still healthy and living in their own house. He tried to imagine Nish as an old man living here, but couldn’t. Would he be mooning everyone who passed? Would he be wearing X-ray glasses to see through the nurses’ uniforms? Would he lie in bed screaming “I’M GONNA HURL!” every time a doctor came close?
They knocked at the partially open door.
“Get in out of the rain!” an old voice cried out from the other side.
Nish turned to Travis and made a face. Was that a joke? Or did the person inside really think it was raining in the hallway?
Travis recognized Mr. Donahue at once. He was sitting in a chair beside his bed and was just pushing away his food tray after the noon meal. He was completely bald, his head as polished as the top of the cane Travis’s grandmother sometimes used. Mr. Donahue was fully dressed, wearing a tie and navy blazer with a police crest on the breast pocket, but his shirt seemed to belong to someone twice his size. The collar looked like two or three of Mr. Donahue’s bird-like neck could have fit inside it.
It was almost as if he had shrunk since Travis had last seen his grandfather’s old police friend. Travis couldn’t remember how long ago that had been, but at this rate, he thought, in another couple of years Mr. Donahue’s neck could fit through one of his blazer buttonholes.
“Mr. Lindsay!” the old man shouted. “How kind of you to come.”
Travis was amazed the old man remembered him. It took a couple of minutes before he realized Mr. Donahue had not recognized Travis at all. He had mistaken him for his father.
It was soon clear that Mr. Donahue was about thirty years behind the real world. He was still a policeman in his mind. He was talking with his partner’s young boy.
Nish understood this faster than Travis. And instead of trying to correct the old man, he let the conversation proceed as if they really were more than thirty years in the past.
Mr. Donahue complained about draft dodgers. He bragged about the Montreal Canadiens – who did he think was playing for them, Travis wondered, Jean Béliveau? And he complained about the boring lunches his wife was packing for him. Travis had never even known there was a Mrs. Donahue.
“What’s the biggest crime you ever solved?” Nish suddenly asked.
Mr. Donahue looked up, surprised. His pale blue eyes were astonishingly clear, the whites as pure as snow.
“Biggest crime I was ever involved in,” he almost shouted, “was never solved – and you two boys know that as well as I know myself.”
Travis took a gamble. “River Road,” he said mildly.
“Exactly!” Mr. Donahue said, shaking a long finger in Travis’s direction. “Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Nish took a much larger gamble. “What happened?”
Mr. Donahue looked down again. At first the boys wondered if he’d heard. Then they wondered if he’d drifted off to sleep on them. When he finally looked up, the eyes had reddened, and the pale blue glistened under the ceiling lights.
“I don’t know, boys. Only one person can answer that question, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Who’s that?” Nish asked.
Old Mr. Donahue hammered his fist in fury on the arm of his chair. It glanced off and struck the food tray, sending it clattering to the floor.
“Fontaine!” he shouted. “Zeke Fontaine!”
Travis swallowed hard. He had heard this name only the night before, when his father mentioned it on the way home from the lacrosse game. “Zeke” had sounded funny. Now it struck terror in him.
Sweat had broken out on Nish’s forehead. He was leaning towards Mr. Donahue, working so hard to get him to talk that he didn’t even see the shadow looming in the doorway and the face of the turtle appear, looking like it was about to bite the handle off a rake.
“What is going on in here?” she demanded.
Travis was already picking up the spilled tray. “Nothing – he just dropped his tray, that’s all.”
“What was all the shouting for?” she snapped. “There’s to be no shouting at Autumn Leaves.”
“I’ll shout when I damn well feel like shouting!” Mr. Donahue bellowed. Travis realized there was no love lost between the turtle and Mr. Donahue.
“Who are these young men, Mr. Donahue?” she asked.
“I have no idea!” Mr. Donahue snapped back.
“He’s one of my grandfather’s closest friends,” Travis tried to explain as the turtle pushed the two boys towards the front door. He was surprised she didn’t twist their ears to hustle them out. “I’ve known him all my life!”
“Well,” the turtle said when they got to the door, “he doesn’t know you any more. He doesn’t even know who he is any more.”
With that, she shoved them through the revolving doors and out onto the front steps of Autumn Leaves.
“Who the hell is Zeke Fontaine?” Nish asked as they headed down the driveway towards the river.
“I think I know,” said Travis.
“Well,” Nish demanded, “who?”
“Our lacrosse coach.”