Here's an action-packed chapter for ya. Enjoy.

Chapter Thirty-nine: Sing, Swing, Sting

Maggie took us to this great little bar and grill (one of the few places a person could go "out to eat" in Inuvik) where we had burgers and some fantastic home-seasoned potato chips. "All dressed" is the flavor's official name, but the people at this particular place made it themselves through some secret, mystical process. I'd had the flavor when I was in Canada before, and gotten totally hooked on them. Those and Smarties, which brings me to a point that may be significant to some.

I realize in my canon, I'm seen stirring Smarties into my coffee. But at the time of the eclipse, I'd actually never had them before. I'd never heard of them before. To me, Smarties were a chalky, fruit-flavored, pastel-colored candy that came in rolls, wrapped in cellophane. That's the American candy by that brand name. What I was putting in my instant coffee that day was, in fact, M&M's. Why did they make it Smarties in the show, then? I don't know. I'm just a fictional character. But judging by all the smart-assery that went into the writing of it, I'm guessing they just stuck 'em in there because they figured if anyone spotted them and knew the difference, they'd get a kick out of it.

So, back to the all dressed chip, I've also learned that they've been available in America since last year, while they've been a Canadian staple for like... forty years. That's whacked, man. They're so addicting. If I'd tried them as a kid, I probably would have changed citizenship over it. I'd have grown up saying "soar-y" for "sorry" and "eh?" at the end of my sentences. I might even have become a freakin' Mountie.

Anyway, on with the story. We had a really good supper at this place, and while the others had soft drinks, I allowed myself a beer. Just one, because I didn't want the others to feel weird about it. Some non-drinkers seem to think any more than one drink will have you drunk, or at least buzzed. Anyway, I didn't have any reason to over-imbibe, and plenty of reason to not want a hangover in the morning.

"Hey, can we pick up some Smarties on the way back?" I asked, munching the last of my chips.

"He has a bit of a sweet tooth," Fraser told her. "Likes to mix chocolate in his coffee."

"Caramel's not bad either," I said.

"We can stop by the Corner Store," said Maggie.

"I didn't know you had a corner to put a store on," I teased. "Your town's smaller than a two-shot pistol."

She smiled and shook her head. "Actually, we should go to Northmart. I wanted to get some pictures before you left, and I need film. I'm not sure the Corner Store would have it."

I had been to a Northmart in Nunavut with Fraser last time, and he'd already set me straight that it was not the Canadian name for Walmart. "Okay. Sounds good." I looked at the teenager who was doing some karaoke thing that sounded like a song he was way too young to know by heart—the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkel, or some Canadian equivalent. "His voice isn't bad," I commented.

"There's a lady who sings whenever she's here on karaoke night, but I don't see her this time," said Maggie. "I wish you could hear her."

"Fraser sings."

"Well..." Fraser started his awkward modesty thing.

"He sang with a country star once. A live performance."

Now he was turning red.

"Really?" Maggie asked. "You never told me that."

"Well, it wasn't... that..."

"It was a big deal," I said, rubbing it in. I remembered having to physically push Fraser onto the stage when it came to the point, but the important thing was, he had done it.

"You should sing here," Maggie said eagerly.

He shook his head. "I couldn't. Have you ever sung here?"

"Yes," she said. She looked down for a moment. "I sang a hymn here when my mother died, actually. It was a very emotional time, and I found singing to be a good outlet."

We were quiet for a minute and the teenager finished his song.

Maggie lifted her head. "Since then, I've tried a few more contemporary things, though. They seemed to like it. If I can do it, you can."

"Well..." Fraser rubbed his ear, another nervous tick I don't think he's realized he has.

"Go on, sing for your sister," I urged. "Sing that stupid country song you picked out for the duck boys."

He jerked his head up. "It's not stupid, Ray..."

"Well, good. So sing it."

"I'm sure they wouldn't have the proper accompaniment."

"See Joe in the corner there?" Maggie asked. Following her gaze, we saw a middle-aged man at a table. On the floor behind him was a guitar case. "He's always willing to lend out his guitar. You play, don't you?"

A little hesitation was all the answer she needed.

"I'll go ask to borrow it."

"Uh... Maggie... Maggie," Fraser whispered loudly, but she ignored him, crossing the room to the man in the corner.

I grinned, laughing quietly.

Fraser gave me a look. "I hope you're happy."

"I'm mad-happy, Fraser."

No one else had gotten up to sing, and the atmosphere was getting restless (among the dozen or so patrons) when Maggie came back with the guitar. "Come on, I'll introduce you," she offered.

Still reluctant, Fraser let her lead him to the front of the room. And the microphone.

A couple of people recognized Maggie and called her name and clapped.

"Good evening, everyone," she said into the microphone. "I'm Margaret MacKenzie, RCMP, and I'm proud to introduce my brother, Benton Fraser, also RCMP."

Just about everyone in the place clapped at that, and one woman yelled, "Gorgeous family, Maggie!"

I couldn't contain my chuckles, but no one heard me over the chatter and applause.

Fraser took the guitar from Maggie. "I was born in Inuvik and spent some years here as a boy," he said into the microphone. "It's good to be back for a visit. With your permission, I'll sing for you 'When You Say Nothing At All.'"

Tons of applause. Obviously there were some country fans who recognized the title. They got super quiet when he started playing the little intro. Then he started singing, and there wasn't a single sound besides his voice and the guitar. No one ate their fries. No one took a sip of their drink.

Maggie slipped quietly back into her seat. Even she was so captivated by Fraser's voice that she didn't say anything to me. I wanted to say something like, "See, I told you," but even I couldn't bring myself to be the one guy talking during his performance. It was almost as if everyone were taking the key line of the song to heart.

But boy, when he got done, did that place ever get loud. Shouts of "Bravo" and "Stay in your hometown!" were mixed with the clapping, and I swear I heard one "Marry me!"

Fraser just quietly bowed his head a moment before saying, "Thank you kindly for making me feel welcome." Then he returned the guitar to its owner and came back to us.

"Damn, Fraser," I said, "you killed that song."

Maggie looked at me in surprise. "Didn't you like it?"

"No, I mean he was good. If I said he murdered it, that would be bad, but killing it is good."

"It's part of an American sub-dialect in which Ray has been educating me," Fraser explained to her.

"Oh, how interesting," said Maggie, actually sounding like she meant it. "How many dialects does America have?"

"I... uh... well, we got Cajun and surfer," I muttered.

"As I understand it, there are more than twenty unique regional speech patterns," Fraser answered for me.

"Street's not so much regional as... urban," I said. "Like, you wouldn't hear it out in the country. More downtown. It's kinda... slang-based."

"Fascinating." She really sounded fascinated. I usually hear the words "fascinating" and "interesting" from people who sound really bored. "I'd like to hear more about it. But it's getting late."

I checked my watch, which I had set to local time. "Oh, wow. I forgot it doesn't get dark until really late. I thought it was like... seven or seven-thirty. Not nine."

"Yes, and the stores won't be open much longer, so we should go."

We paid for our dinner and made our way out of the restaurant. It took us a while, because people kept stopping Fraser to tell him how much they enjoyed his song.

Back at the cabin, I stuffed my supply of Smarties into my backpack. Then I came out to join the others in the living room. Maggie's buying film had inspired me to buy a couple of disposable cameras, and I brought one of those out with me.

"I wanna go get some puppies," I said. "My mom's gonna want to see them."

The others approved, and I went out to the shed.

I could hear the dogs barking as I approached. "It's just me, guys," I called.

Most of them quieted down, but someone woofed loudly when I opened the door. I looked down the row of spacious kennels and saw Nanouk standing with his ears, hackles and tail all straight up.

"Hey, what's wrong, buddy?" I asked.

He looked toward me and his tail lowered a little, but other than that, he didn't move.

I looked around the shed, but everything seemed fine. I went to the puppy box and shoved the three most alert-looking ones into my coat. By the time I went back to the door, Nanouk's hackles were a little lower, but he still looked like he was listening hard. I frowned. I'd mention it to Fraser and see if he thought it was worth checking around for a trespasser's footprints.

A few things happened at once, then. One, I opened the door. Two, Nanouk erupted into hellish snarling. Three, something was bearing down on me. I tried to get out of the way, getting hit on the shoulder instead of the head. It was a pretty solid blow, and I knew I'd be hurting, but I couldn't think about the pain. I was unarmed (I hadn't thought there would be any need to unpack my boot gun in Inuvik), and I had fragile cargo. I stumbled away from my attacker, just trying to get some distance between us. All the dogs were barking now.

"I've waited a long time for you to come back," said the stranger, a beefy, over-the-hill man. His weapon was a baseball bat.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, hoping I could talk sense into him. He looked possibly drunk, but maybe he was just crazy.

"Four years ago." He swung his bat into a gloved hand with a menacing "puff... puff" sound.

I kept backing away, trying to find a way to circle around toward the cabin. I kept my hand up toward him, the arm on the injured side wrapped around my waist to make sure no puppies fell out of the bottom of my coat.

"You tracked me down with a damn dogsled. Three hundred kilometers..."

He's bat-sh*t crazy! I thought, trying not to panic.

"An' all those kilometers back..." He suddenly took another swing at me.

I jumped back, almost losing my footing in the frozen footprints that acted like potholes in the snow. "Watch it—I've got puppies in my coat, man!"

For a second, he looked a little confused. Then he shook it off and resumed his stalk-an'-talk. "Ain't that sweet. You look different... sound different, now that you've spent all that time in the states... but your name is burned in my memory. And when I heard you were back in your hometown..."

I suddenly realized what the hell he was rambling about. Someone had told him Benton Fraser of the RCMP was back in town. Maggie had said his full name to a room full of people. Word spreads quick in a small town. It had spread to someone with a grudge. "FRASER!" I shouted loudly.

But he and Maggie, as I learned later, had already heard the dogs and left the cabin, Fraser creeping down the side closer to me, and Maggie circling around the other way.

"I'm not him," I said desperately, keeping just ahead of him as he lunged forward again. "I don't even look like him!"

"You couldda had plastic surgery," he pointed out.

I closed my eyes a moment and groaned. This conversation sounded way too familiar. "Really?!"

"He's right," Fraser said, stepping out from the corner of the cabin. "I believe it's me you're looking for."

I was so relieved (and shocked that Fraser had ended a sentence with a preposition) that I dropped my guard and when the guy poked me with his bat, I fell back on my butt in the snow.

"So it is," he said. "You're the son of a gun who hauled me in for... fishing over the limit."

My eyes widened. "That's it? Fishing over the limit? You've been waiting four years to jack Fraser up just because of a lousy fishing misdemeanor?!"

"I did time for that!" the guy snapped at me before turning his attention back to Fraser. "So, yeah. I'm gonna... jack him up. Whatever the hell that means."

"No, you're not," Fraser said calmly.

"Oh, yeah?" He looked Fraser over. "You're not carryin' a weapon."

"That's correct. But my sister is."

Maggie stepped out from the other side of the cabin, revolver in hand. "Put the bat down, sir," she ordered.

I couldn't believe those two. If I'd had the gun, I'd have been all, "Drop the bat! Get down on the ground! Hands behind your back!" She didn't even raise her voice.

The guy looked Maggie over now. "I heard about you," he said. "You like to go around threatening people with empty guns."

Maggie fired the gun into the snow a few feet away from him. "Only when I'm off-duty," she said.

He dropped the bat.

Because we wanted to go with Maggie to turn the guy in, I ended up riding the snowmobile with her, while Fraser followed with the prisoner on the dogsled. The same sled and the same man and even some of the same dogs who had brought him in four years earlier were bringing him in again. You could smell the hatred coming off this guy.

Once he was in a cell, I whipped out my camera. "Pose in front of the bars, guys," I said. "It's a Kodak moment!"

The siblings looked at each other.

"Just pose, will ya? Damn it, I wish you were both in uniform. Oh, well."

They posed, and I even managed to get their irate prisoner in the background.

"Fraser, smile."

"I am," he said. He wasn't.

"Fraser, you're in your hometown of Inuvik. You sang for your countrymen tonight, you saved your friend from being beaten to death, you brought in a dangerous criminal with your sister, and you're about to go home and play with puppies! Smile!"

He got up to about a seven or eight-point smile, so I went ahead and took it. Maggie's smile was at least an eight. Pretty darn good. I wound the camera, saying, "Don't move. I'm taking another one in case it doesn't come out. Well, you can move... do a different pose. Fraser, put your arm around her."

"I think you should be in the picture," said Maggie.

"I'll take it," the prisoner offered.

"Not on your life," I snapped. "I paid good money for this camera."

We got a cop to take the picture for us. Fraser and I stood on either side of Maggie, each with an arm around her shoulders.

"I hope your film gets exposed," the prisoner grumbled.

"You've already been exposed," I quipped.

When all the paperwork was filed, all the statements collected, we headed back to the cabin. In all the excitement, I'd thought my injury was just a glancing blow, but now that the adrenaline had worn off, I was starting to hurt. A lot.

I winced as I took my coat off.

"Are you all right?" Fraser asked.

"Yeah... that jerk got my shoulder with his bat and I'm just now feeling it. Get me a puppy and I'll be fine."

"Did you put that in your statement? How hard did he hit you? Are you sure nothing's broken?"

"I said I'm fine." I sat on the couch. "Seriously, I wanted pictures of those puppies, and I'm going to get them."

"All right," Fraser said, but I saw him give Maggie a look.

Once he was outside, Maggie said, "Will you let me take a look at it?"

I knew they were tag-teaming me, but I couldn't resist her. "Well... Okay. But I'm fine."

I legit had to go all the way down because I had put the thermal shirt my mom got me on first before we went out with the dogsled that afternoon. But I decided to be conservative and only pull my left arm out of the sleeve and not even get my head out of it.

My shoulder was very red and faint bruises were starting to show up around some purple mild abrasions that seemed to follow the weave pattern of my shirt. Maggie made a sympathetically pained face when she saw it. "Do you have your full range of motion?" she asked.

I tried moving my arm around. "Yeah... I can move like normal," I said through gritted teeth.

"But it hurts a lot, doesn't it?"

I was not about to admit that.

"I'll get you some aspirin and tea. Did you try my liniment earlier? That should help a little, too."

"Yeah, I tried it. I was hoping you'd get me the recipe. It's amazeballs."

Her eyebrows shot up, and I realized that was probably not the most polite bit of slang I could introduce her to.

Fraser came in then and pulled two puppies out of his coat, setting them on the couch beside me. He also frowned when he saw my shoulder. "That's probably going to be sore for a while," he said.

Yeah, like for the rest of our trip, I thought. Great.

Maggie stepped into the kitchen and started filling her kettle with water. "I'm making tea. Would you get the liniment?"

Fraser nodded and headed for the bathroom.

"I'm really fine," I called to whoever would listen.

"This is no time to be conceited, Ray," Fraser called back.

It took me a minute. Then I laughed. "You just made a joke."

Fraser came out of the bathroom with the liniment. "Yes, I did." He told Maggie, "In the street lingo, 'fine' means 'good-looking.'"

Then she was smiling. She looked... really fine.

Fraser put a gauze pad over the bottle's mouth and tipped it up.

"I can do it myself," I said.

"I'm sure you can," he answered, beginning to dab at the bruising.

I winced. Even the gentle pressure hurt pretty bad. I picked up one of the puppies with my right hand and set it on my lap. "Hey there," I whispered, focusing on the cuteness to distract myself.

The puppy started sucking on my finger.

"Do I taste good? Huh?" I hissed in pain.

"Sorry," Fraser murmured.

I shook my head. "It's okay. It's all good."

Maggie came over and picked up the other puppy, sitting beside me. "You really ought to have said something earlier," she scolded me softly.

"It didn't seem so bad earlier," I said.

"Better safe than sorry."

I smiled a little at her pronunciation of the word "sorry." "Yeah, I know."

"You'd best leave your shirt off to sleep," Fraser advised, capping the bottle. "The less chaffing, the better."

"Okay, but I need it on right now. I'm not showing my mom pictures of me shirtless, holding a puppy. She'll think I wanna be a pinup or something."

Fraser looked a tad scandalized and Maggie blushed slightly—but also looked like she was trying not to laugh.

All I have to say is, I'm super damn proud of that chapter title. Thanks for reading! ~Ray K.