Deception
in the Snowdrifts
It was one of
those chilly and snowy evenings in southwestern Ontario that seemed to be worse
back in the mid-70s when this story takes place. Woody (short for Woodrow) and
his younger sister, Pinky (short for Pinketta), were pleased to have the old
family farmhouse to themselves that evening because their parents were visiting
relatives. They had invited a few of their favourite cousins to see them that
evening, with the expectation that, as a group, they would later go into town
and drive from the north end to the south repeatedly, which was one of the
popular things for teenagers to do on any given night of the week. Woody’s
cousins, Patsy and Lyn, were his age, and they were in Grade 12 at the
Cornersville County Secondary School – commonly referred to as CCSS -in the
nearby town. Lyn’s younger sister, Jacquette, came with them; like Pinky, she
was in Grade 9 at CCSS.
The group sat around the kitchen
table, drinking rye & Cokes as well as smoking (as any self-respecting
teens their ages did), and chatting up a storm. The wind was howling outside,
and icy snow particles struck the windows startlingly. It was clear that a
snowstorm was brewing, and perhaps not the best weather for a joy ride. Woody
thought he heard the door to the back kitchen open; it seemed strange that
anyone would be coming to their house unannounced on such a wintry evening.
There was a light tap on the door, and then it opened suddenly, banging against
the kitchen counter. Everyone in the room stared in amazement. A young woman
stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, her breathing audible in
ragged, gasping breaths. Although she had heavy makeup on her face, it accented
and enhanced her theatrical appearance. Everyone was startled yet fascinated by
this unexpected apparition: the young woman was wearing a luxurious-looking fur
coat, with a colourful silk scarf carelessly wound around her neck, whilst a
jaunty winter bonnet sat on her head; a few golden tresses fell across her
face. The snow on this young stranger’s clothing was already beginning to melt
in a pool at her feet, which were clad in expensive-looking winter boots. A
beaded bag was slung over one shoulder. Before anyone could move or say
anything, the young woman seemed about to collapse just before she uttered
words that chilled them to the bone:
“For God’s sake, help me!”
…………………………………………………………..
Lyn jumped up from her kitchen
chair and caught the young woman before she swooned, gently guiding her to the
boot bench beside the kitchen door. She also had the presence of mind to pour
water from the kitchen tap into a glass and hand it to the unexpected guest.
Woody closed the kitchen door to keep the frigid winter air of the unheated
back kitchen out. The teenagers started to pelt the young woman with questions,
but Lyn sternly told the group to give their gasping guest a chance to catch
her breath. She sat beside the young woman on the bench and put a protective
arm around her fur-clad shoulder. Looking at everyone and then at the stranger,
Lyn asked calmly, “Are you ready to tell us what happened and how you ended up
here?”
The young woman shook her head,
affirming her readiness to talk. She took a dainty sip of water, then said, “My
car went off the road, and I wandered in the snowstorm until I saw the porch
light outside.”
The group’s first concern was to
determine if the young woman was injured, but she stated that was not the case.
She was only shaken up and, of course, chilled to the bone. The young woman
told the group that she was from London, a city that was a one-hour drive away.
“Why were you up here?” Patsy
asked. “Where were you going?”
When the young woman told the
teenagers the names of the couple she had visited further up the concession,
they looked at each other in surprise. The man she had named was one of the
wealthiest farmers in the community. Everyone said he was a millionaire, but
you would never have known it because he was always clad in his trademark barn
overalls.
Woody’s curiosity got the better
of him, and he blurted out, “Who are you?”
The young woman paused. She
seemed to be trying to remember. Did she have amnesia, Woody wondered? Finally,
she said quietly, “My name is Isabella Labatt.” You could have heard a pin drop
in the kitchen at that moment. Woody’s sister, Pinky, asked the question on the
minds of all assembled there. “Are you from the Labatt family in London that
owns the beer company?” If so, her famous family would have been one of the
wealthiest in the city.
Seeming embarrassed by her
response, the young woman’s cheeks reddened slightly, and she said, “Yes.”
Then, as if it explained everything, she continued, “But I don’t drink beer.”
Woody shook his head, thinking the young woman was a bit of an odd duck.
Lyn asked the young woman if she
wanted to go to the hospital. The response was no. She then asked if she wanted
us to take her to find her car. The response was yes.
The million-dollar question.
Woody asked, “What kind of car do you drive?”
Almost apologetically, the young
woman responded, “A Bentley.” It occurred to Woody that a tractor or tow truck
would be required if any car—especially a Bentley—went off the road into a
snowbank. He told the group as much. “Let’s find the car first and find out the
extent of the problem,” Patsy stated.
Patsy was driving the family
car, a spacious sedan that everyone referred to as more boat than car in size.
They managed to get themselves into the sedan, with Isabella in the front seat
in the middle. Before backing out of the laneway onto the snow-laden gravel
backroad, Patsy asked, “From which direction did you come?” Woody piped up from
the back seat that it had to be from the north because the couple’s farm, where
the young woman had visited, was further up the concession. Although there were
some small snowdrifts on the road, the snowfall was not blizzard-like. At least
not yet, Woody thought.
As the group drove up the back
road to the train tracks, Lyn asked, “Does anything look familiar?” Isabella
shook her head from side to side. Several heads looked from left to right,
searching for signs of a car in the ditch. Within a few minutes, they had
reached the highway to Cornersville, which led east. They had not yet found the
young woman’s car.
“Did you go off the road further
up the concession, past the highway?” Jacquette asked.
Her voice trembling, Isabella
said, “Yes. (pause) No. (pause) Perhaps.” Woody suspected that, like him,
everyone in the car was wondering if the young woman had amnesia or a head
injury or had just plain lost the plot!
At the wheel, Patsy steered the
card carefully across the icy highway; she drove up the concession line,
Horseshoe Road, which had that peculiar name because it travelled in an arc to
the north, then to the west, and finally back out to the highway. They had
driven only a few minutes on the snowy gravel road. By now, they were almost to
the property owned by the wealthy farmer. Pinky burst out with a question on
everyone’s mind, “How could it be so far away from our home? Isabella, when
walking from your car, why didn’t you stop for help from one of the farms
closer to where you ran off the road?”
The young woman cried, “I don’t
know!” and then covered her face with her hands, her eyes welling up with tears
and her voice trembling slightly.
Patsy made a sensible decision:
“We haven’t seen your car, and the property you were visiting is next. We’ll
take you there.”
All of a sudden, Isabella
shrieked, “No! Not to them!” Grasping Lyn by the shoulder, the young woman
pleaded, “Please take me back to your home.” Lyn explained it was her cousin’s
home, not hers. She asked why the young woman wanted to return there instead of
seeking help from her friends, the wealthy farm couple she had visited that
evening. The young woman did not answer; instead, her shoulders hunched over,
she started sobbing slightly with her face in her hands. Acquiescing to this
strange and distraught young woman, Patsy turned the car around and headed back
down the road. Suddenly, the young woman exclaimed, “I have something to tell
all of you.” She paused dramatically. “Please, don’t be angry with me, but…”
There was dead silence in the car as the teenagers waited expectantly for the
young woman to continue.
“My name is not Isabella
Labatt!”
…………………………………………………………..
After her surprising statement,
the young woman informed the others in the car that she would provide further
details, but only when they returned home. The assembled cast of characters in
the spacious sedan remained silent on the short return journey to the
farmhouse. Everyone wondered about the young woman's identity and the reason
for her surprise appearance that evening. If her name was not Isabella
Labatt, who was she? Did she have a car stuck in a snowbank? Had she visited
the local millionaire farmer and his wife further up the concession? Was she
dangerous? What was in that beaded bag of hers – a knife or pistol? As the
cast of characters disembarked from the automotive yacht, everyone quietly
walked through the snowy yard to the back kitchen door. Woody purposely walked
behind the young woman, either to make sure she did not make a great escape or
to ensure she did not knife him in the back.
As the teenagers took off their
boots and coats in the back kitchen, the young woman responded negatively when
asked if she would like to take off her fur coat. They walked into the kitchen
and sat around the big table in the middle of the room. Woody glanced at his
cousins. Lyn looked a bit miffed as she waited for the denouement to unfold.
Patsy had a skeptical look on her face. Jacquette was staring wide-eyed,
looking around at everyone in the kitchen. At that moment, as everyone stared
at the young woman, a common thought seemed to come to all assembled: in the
harsh lighting from the overhead kitchen lamp, the stranger in their midst did
not seem to be in her 20s, but rather more like a young teenager.
Lyn took the bull by the horns.
“Okay, if your name is not Isabella Labatt, who are you?”
The young woman grinned impishly as
she looked at everyone sitting around the table. Finally, her sparkling blue
eyes rested upon Woody and Pinky. “Should we tell them?” she asked them. At
that point, all eyes were on the brother and sister who sat beside each other
on the far side of the table. Woody stood up, paused dramatically, and said,
"This is Pinky’s friend, Mary-Rose, who lives in the west. She’s here on a
visit.” Pinky explained, while the proverbial penny dropped, “You may recall
that she and her family used to live not far from here, on the highway near
Horseshoe Road, before they moved away.” There was much whooping and hollering
from Woody’s and Pinky’s cousins, and a few well-deserved curses rained down on
their heads! Woody, Pinky, and Mary-Rose had pulled the wool over the eyes of
the others with their little charade. There was no car stuck in a ditch. The
luxurious-looking pelt of skins worn by the ‘actress’ was as fake as the
character wearing it. There had been no visit to the wealthy farmer up the
concession. It was all part of a hastily devised plot. What seemed most
extraordinary was that the idea had come to Woody only briefly before his
cousins had arrived. It was not the first time Woody would direct and stage
such an impromptu play, and certainly not the last! As Shakespeare’s timeless
words have told everyone for centuries - all the world's a stage - and
for a brief moment in time, that stage was in southwestern Ontario, with the
setting a farmhouse in the countryside in the middle of winter, when an
‘actress’ playing the role of a character hastily named Isabella Labatt,
stumbled through a doorway on a journey into the imagination.
John
RC Potter
ohn RC Potter is an international educator
from Canada, residing in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution
(Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and
blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story,
‘Snowbound in the House of God’ (Memoirist). The author’s poems,
stories, essays, articles, and reviews have been published in various magazines
and journals. His story, “Ruth’s World,” was a Pushcart Prize nominee, and his
poem, “Tomato Heart,” was nominated for the Best of the Net Award. The author
has a gay-themed children’s picture book that is scheduled for publication. He
is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Recent Publications: “Heimat”
in Overgrowth Press (Poetry) March 14, 2025 – Overgrowth & “Clara Von Clapp’s Secret Admirer” in The Lemonwood Quarterly (Prose) Clara Von Clapp’s Secret Admirer –
The Lemonwood Quarterly
Website: https://johnrcpotterauthor.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnRCPotter