The Boulder cont...

He saw the hood of a black Mercedes. Nobody he knew owned such an expensive car. The guy must be lost, thought Dad. City people, you just couldn’t let them loose in the back roads, they invariably chose the wrong fork. The vehicle stopped at the top of the road before the meadow, and a short, paunchy man, about sixty-five, in a dark stripy suit and silk tie came out.

Dad let Ti-Noir dance around the man with the shiny black shoes. He faintly tried to discipline him when he put his dusty paws on the man’s suit. “Mr. Lévesque,” the man said. He pronounced the ‘s’ the way English people do who haven’t learnt French and have never caught on that in Quebec, René Lévesque is pronounced Layvaik and not Levesskew.

How does he know my name? wondered Dad. It was Sunday morning. Dad figured it wouldn’t be anyone from the government. Who could this man be? What could he want?

“Do I know you?” He asked the intruder.

“I’m Mr. Loganrooney. Brian Loganrooney,” said the man presenting his right hand for a shake. Dad put his hand in his pocket and moved his head back to get away from the pungent smell of after-shave. The sun danced on the big square diamond on the man’s short, stumpy fingers.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for barging in on you like this, Mr. Levesskew. I couldn’t find your telephone number from Bell.”

Dad looked around him at the sky over the property. There was not a telephone post, not an electric pole. The man followed his motion.

“Oh, I see. You don’t have a phone yet. That explains it. I should have thought of that.”

Dad was a man who liked his privacy. He didn’t fancy strangers wandering uninvited onto his property. Nevertheless, standing there in his plaid shirt, his machete dangling from his left hand, his tall body silently towering over the uninvited guest, he decided to let him say what he had to say.

“I was here to see this property in the spring before you bought it,” said the man. “I was all set to buy it but my wife wouldn’t have any of it. Women, you know! She wanted a piece of property on a lake and, this here, well, with just the pond, and so far from everything…, from people, I mean, she told me there was no way she would ever move here at all.”

There’s just no way to please some people, thought Dad. He figured the woman must have died or left her man, or something must have happened to make him want to buy the land now. But Dad was not selling. Not at any price.

“I see.”

“You got yourself a nice piece of land here for not a bad price at all, Mr. Levesskew,” said the short, fat man, taking in the landscape, all the while trying to ignore the large blade swinging almost imperceptibly back and forth at Dad’s side.

“Uh-huh,” said Dad, not bothering to move his head.

The little paunchy man with the shiny shoes kept on talking. He had backed up a few steps and he kept at a fair distance from Dad. He looked towards the house.

“You’ve got yourself a beautiful house there. Did you design that yourself, Mr. Levesskew?”