I walk across the bridge between the USA and Canada. I’m returning to my starting point, Toronto. Naturally, I’m dragging my feet and feeling dreary because my book tour is over. It would be nice, I think, to have it end, not with a dribble, but with a bang, with a good story of some sort. But on this sunny day, there doesn’t seem to be one in the offing.
What most have forgotten, or never known, is that this bustling area of Niagara Falls was once a battlefield, and that, in 1812, Canada and the USA were at war. The war was started by the Americans who were understandably annoyed that the British kept kidnapping American sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy: in a nineteen year period, from 1793 to 1812, some 15,000 Americans were forced into British service in this way.
In May 1813, after a fierce battle and two-days of cannon bombardment, Fort George, on the Canadian side, was taken by the Americans who razed the settlement of Niagara, then burnt what was left to the ground. It was a short-lived victory. Seven months later, Fort George was retaken by the British who marched on to Washington D.C., invaded and burnt the city. The war ended in 1815, but not before 15,000 Americans and 8,600 Brits and Canadians had lost their lives.
In 1885, New York began purchasing the lands around Niagara Falls from developers in order to preserve the scenic beauty and create the state’s first park. In the same year, the province of Ontario established the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park for the same purpose. Way back in the 1950s, when I used to come here as a child, this really was pleasant parkland, but things have changed — don’t they always?
Commercial interests have managed to chew up great parcels of land and spew out modern developments and completely charm-less tall buildings (most of them hotels) on the Canadian side. On the American side, heavy-handed urban renewal and the destruction of the city center in the 1960s put paid to any local charm.
Both sides offer casinos, but the Canadian side is most popular. Its view of the falls is more spectacular, but more alluring still is the legal drinking age of 19; in New York State it’s 21. Also, with its observation towers, high-rise hotels, souvenir shops, museums, indoor water parks, casinos, theatres, neon billboards, golf courses, and fancied-up historic sites, the Canadian side is noisier, livelier, and uglier, therefore more attractive to tourists.
Even though it’s still winter and icy cold, those tourists are glued onto slot machines in the casinos, or standing in long lines waiting to change their money and lose it as quickly as possible. Although there are some who haven’t cottoned on to the fact that they can’t win in the long run, others prefer to ignore the fact. Casinos want you to think that the slot machines are “hot” or “cold” but, in reality, each spin is completely independent of the previous one. If you were to win the jackpot on one spin, then the likelihood of winning the jackpot on the next spin is exactly the same. No previous events impact future events.
Another thing visitors to the city don’t know is that, in 1950, a treaty limiting water usage by power plants was signed by the United States and Canada, and it allows more water to be diverted at night and during the winter months when there are fewer tourists around. In 1969, the American falls stopped altogether when the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the waters to the Canadian side so they could assess erosion. Which is when they found two bodies, one of a woman, and the second of a man who had been seen jumping over the falls. They also found millions of coins. Half a century has passed since then, and with the increase in tourism and consumerism many other things have been dropped into the falls: more coins, cell phones, cameras, baby strollers, drones, toys, keys, motorbikes, a car or two, and possibly a few more bodies or body parts.
Following the Niagara River, I head out of the town center, leaving the slots, the noise, the bright lights behind, and aim for the area of cheap motels. A few look closed down, perhaps because it’s winter, but I do find a room in one that is run by a woman in a frumpy housecoat who should be called Mamie or Sal. She talks out of one corner of her mouth like an old-fashioned gun moll, has a cigarette planted firmly in the other, keeps her head tipped back to avoid the smoke, and keeps her dyed hair imprisoned in rollers (I never knew people still used those).
Hers is one of those classic two story open court motels. I take the top floor thinking it will be calmer without someone walking overhead. Of course, the place seems pretty deserted anyway, so why am I worrying? Except, I’m no sooner settled in and reading comfortably in bed, then a rumbling vroom shakes the whole building. I wait for a while, but the vroom keeps on vrooming, and the noxious odor of exhaust fumes seeps in steadily from around the window frames. Peeking outside, I see there is a pickup truck downstairs and just under my window; its motor is chugging away full force. Abandoning tolerance, I get dressed, furiously charge downstairs and bang on the door of the room below mine.
It’s answered by a mild stocky slob of a guy wearing glasses and a baseball cap. He looks surprised as I rave, then apologizes profusely.
“I didn’t know anyone else was staying here. This is the slow season.” (Does this place really have a busy season?)
I storm back upstairs mollified and even faintly ashamed. He was so nice about it.
Five minutes later there’s a knock at my door. It’s the slobby guy from downstairs.
“Look,” he says, “I want to apologize. I didn’t know I was driving you nuts.”
“You already apologized.”
“Yeah, but I’d like to make up for it. Would you agree to go out for a drink and some dinner? I know a simple but really good restaurant just around five minutes away.”
“No, thanks. I have to have an early night.”
“Aw, come on. It’s early and this place I’m taking you to has great food.”
I let him (his name is Rick) convince me. Of course I do. I have very little survival instinct, he seems a nice enough man, and now I’m feeling very hungry.
We drive to the “really good restaurant” in his pickup (isn’t it raring to go?) and the joint turns out to be a neon-lit storefront dive with two tables and a cluster of fat men slugging back beer. The food is the usual fast food glop I never eat, but the salad sandwich is decent and the beer is cold. Everyone is pretty friendly, and Rick obviously knows them all.
When we leave, Rick drives past a huge parking lot filled with trucks.
“That’s my place,” he says.
“Your place? The place where you work?”
“My own company.”
“You own the truck company?”
“Yup. I started out thirty years ago as a driver and put my money to the side, worked long hours, did international travel, scrimped and saved, did two jobs instead of one, but it paid off.”
“Obviously.”
“You know Niagara-on-the Lake.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a gorgeous town just down the road. We can drive there now. I’ll show it to you. I used to live there. Still own a house there, too, but I’ve put the place up for sale.”
I have no way of knowing that Niagara-on-the-Lake isn’t just down the road. That it’s some twenty kilometers away, but what the hell. I’m not going to leap out of the truck because it’s dark, cold, and lonely out there. Besides, what’s there to worry about? Rick is a mild sort of guy, not a serial killer (how many murdered women have said the same thing?) He owns a big company, seems like responsible sort of guy. Besides, wasn’t I looking for something interesting to do on my last night on the book tour? Okay, driving someplace isn’t wildly interesting, but at least it’s something.
We drive through the quiet streets of Niagara on the Lake. Yes, it’s a pretty town. Then Rick takes some back country roads. “I’ll show you my house.”
The place he calls home is a huge sprawling thing set back from the road, just the sort of newish pretentious place the owner of a trucking company would own.
“Why are you sleeping in a motel?” I ask. It does strike me, quite suddenly, as being a rather odd thing to do. The dark country roads we’re rolling down aren’t comforting places either. I’m wondering if being here with this guy is a smart move.
“Because I can’t sleep in the house anymore,” says Rick. “My wife died a year ago, and I can’t stand being there alone. I really miss her, and that big place just gives me the creeps.”
Which sounds reasonable enough.
Soon enough we’re back on the main road again, roaring along the Niagara River and heading towards the falls and our motel, which is a comfort. Of course, the conversation isn’t exactly cheery. Rick tells me about the two bodies they found back in ’69, about other bodies they’ve found since. “Guys always murdering people, dumping bodies here in the river. It’s a pretty lonely place and they think they won’t get caught.”
Yes, this is a pretty lonely place, and with the little elements of gore he tacks on to the conversation, I can tell he’s enjoying himself. Things are definitely strange, but I have the sneaking suspicion things could get even stranger, so I keep asking him questions about the falls, about the tourists, about life here. Good neutral subjects that won’t bring up strangling, shooting, knifing, disemboweling, and hacked up bodies. He answers politely, but I sense he’d rather go back to horror and fear.
We reach the motel, finally. I wish Rick goodnight. He asks me if I’d like to meet him for breakfast at eight—there’s a crazy place just down the road that I have to see. I say I’ll be leaving way before that. One evening of Rick is about all I can handle.
In the morning I make sure Rick’s pickup is gone, then I go knock on Mamie/Sal’s door to pay for the room. When she opens up, I see all is still in place, the hair rollers, the cigarette, the frumpy housecoat.
“Didja have a good quiet night?” she asks.
“Well, after Rick turned off his motor, I did. But he was nice about it.”
“Yeah, him. He’s a strange character. He always stays here.”
“Always?”
“Yeah, he don’t got nowheres else to live, I guess.”
“He told me he used to live in Niagara–on-the-Lake?”
Mamie/Sal snorts with derision. “Oh sure, dream on. Guy’s been staying here in this motel for years. A real loner.”
“Told me his wife died around a year ago.”
“What wife is that? Guy’s never been married in his life. Drives a truck, doesn’t have much of a life.”
“He doesn’t own a truck company?”
“What truck company is that then?” Mamie/Sal shrugs, takes a deep drag of her cigarette, has a long phlegmy coughing spell, then stabs out the fag in the ashtray she is clutching in one hand.
“That Rick? You ask me, he’s sort of a weirdo. You never know, these days, what with…” The incomplete sentence hints at depredation, blood, and darkness.
And so my book does tour end with a story. And a happy end…for me, at least.
More about my books and passionate life can be found at http://www.jill-culiner.com
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com
and on my story podcast at https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner
