by Lou Allin
Raucous crows dueled for the prize of a McDonald’s bag. Wrappers and cups spilled onto the gravel. The crafty birds seemed oblivious to the presence of cars, hopping out of reach at the last second. Down the highway berm on a quad rode a figure in workclothes, carrying a stick with a pick on the end.
The car had barely stopped when Marilyn snapped off her belt, jumped out and ran the few steps to the hospice, yanking the door open. The ambulance arrived and backed in. A man and a woman hustled a gurney with dispatch. Holly held the door for them, seeing a bright and cozy sitting room with a desk to the side. Bateman prints on the walls. A vase of carnations. A shadowed hallway led to the back of the building.
Holly could hear crying from the interior. “Shannon, darling. I’m so sorry. I thought that…” Marilyn said. This part of duty Holly dreaded, forced to take a ringside seat at an inevitable tragedy. It was her role to be supportive but not intrude, get the information required, make sure there was support and move on to the next crisis.
“Please, ma’am,” came an official reply from the crew. “Allow us. We’ll take her now.” Then there was a “Damn!”
“Defib! Stat!” The female ET charged back into the hall and ran to the vehicle. She retrieved a cumbersome machine on wheels and hustled it up the wheelchair ramp.
From inside, yells and thumps ensued, along with a few swear words. A cry rent the air, a dreadful keening alive enough to have strength to die. Then all was silent. Along with the woman at the desk, Holly lowered her head in respect. Had Marilyn arrived only in time to say goodbye?
Despite the early hour, a small crowd was gathering, and someone had the temerity to peek into the front window. Constitutional walkers strolled the quiet streets, fueled in the summer by hoards of tourists stopping at Serious Coffee, McDonald’s and A&W. With no movie theatres or other commercial entertainment other than a par-three golf course, there was little to do but enjoy the temperate weather and watch the boats and comical seals in Canada’s southernmost harbour. Holly went out to supervise, waving off a young boy with a practiced gesture. “We have an emergency here. Please stand back and give the ETs room to work. That means you, son. Now hustle.”
Then the door opened, and the gurney rolled by like a deliberately slow funeral cortege. The body was covered with a light blue blanket, except for an exposed hand with a simple gold ring. Marilyn walked alongside, holding the hand, pacing herself. Her eyes met those of the ETs, and she nodded as the gurney stopped. Her finger touched its soulmate’s index twin in the briefest contact, the final movement in a dance from a bygone era but one in which the energy of life could no longer pass. Then she blinked, moved back, and the team closed the van doors with a gentle push. With no sirens or reason for haste, the vehicle tracked down the road toward Victoria.
Marilyn’s head was bowed, a lonely character on an empty stage. “She just let go. The spark flickered out. I don’t know how she kept going the last few months. Sheer will, I guess.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Holly said, stepping forward to offer support as the woman’s knees threatened to buckle. Yet she didn’t seem the fainting kind. “Should you be driving? May I call someone?”
Marilyn straightened and looked into the distance at the fog across the harbour as if watching her old life disappear into the mist. She had short, curly grey hair in a no-nonsense cut and a broad, intelligent brow. Make-up, if any, was subtle. At five-eight, she was Holly’s height. Her voice became stronger and preternaturally calm, as if she were convincing herself. “Her spirit is fled, and she will bide. Funny, that’s my grandmother’s word, and I never knew what it meant until now. For all our feeble human efforts, deaths can’t be orchestrated any better than births. When I left her yesterday, she was cheerful, almost rallying. Perhaps she knew. Do you think so?”
“It’s possible.” Holly had seen only one person die. Her mentor Ben Rogers, shot by a frightened deaf boy whose air rifle turned out to be a .22. When she thought of Ben, she still saw the red pulse of his blood spreading on her lap while she screamed for help.
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
Holly swallowed, afraid to give a wrong answer, as if there were one. How strange to be having such an intimate conversation with someone she barely knew. And yet it seemed natural. “I’m not…religious in a formal sense. Perhaps the concept is meant to help the living, like funerals for closure. Then again, so many have returned after describing that tunnel of light. I guess I’m saying that anything is possible.” Her mother had told her that once, during a painful and undiagnosed tubal pregnancy, her late beloved father had appeared to her in a dream and told her to go immediately to the hospital. That had saved her life. Or had it been her own intuition for survival?
“There are some things we can’t explain, aren’t there? Beyond science.” Marilyn looked over for a brief validation, and their eyes met and held.
Holly stood, arms at her sides in sad ceremony. Notifying the next of kin in serious accidents or worse yet, fatalities, was a duty every officer dreaded. As part of their training, they had been taught the proper words for empathy, respect and care. But no canned phrases ever seemed to fit the moments. “Sorry for your loss.” #1 “My condolences.” #2. It was like reliving the same nightmare, but she hoped she’d never be calcified against feeling. As if summoned, the sun sliced through the morning fog and backlit Marilyn’s strong profile. She was inspecting her hand as if it belonged to a stranger, perhaps remembering that last touch. This was a delicate leave-taking of kindred spirits.
“We…still have to get gas for your car,” she heard herself say, then bit her lip. She thought about the sad tasks awaiting the bereaved, the paperwork, the palpability. Why hurry? The dead had no timetable. “If you’d like to sit for awhile, can I buy you a coffee?” Did she sound like she was suggesting that the woman pull herself together?
Marilyn managed a smile which bathed Holly in its warmth. Dreamy philosophy gave way to brisk acceptance and a return to the living. “Strong black tea would be best, I think. You’re kind to ask. I must be keeping you from your job.”
“Not at all. This is my job.” Holly shifted in the heavy Kevlar vest. A trickle of sweat was making its way down her spine. “Some people think that we’re on permanent vacation at the Fossil Bay detachment. It’s quiet as…” She stopped and swallowed, distracted by the swooping flight of a shrieking pigeon heading for a daily pile of grain left by the keeper of a convenience store. “As you can imagine.”
Two savvy locals, by mutual agreement they gravitated towards an alley on a backstreet across from the Legion. Dave Evans, his world-class barista certificate proudly on the wall, ran Stick in the Mud coffeehouse as a proud artist. In the small but cozy nook with tempting aromas of house-roasted fair trade blends mingling with cinnamon and nutmeg from on-site baked goods, Marilyn took one of the leather armchairs. Stacks of the radical Monday magazine sat on a table. Local artists were represented by photos and colourful art on the walls. Holly returned with a VOS1N0, Dave’s version of an Americano, named for their former postal code, and a chai. “There’s some sugar if you need it and a warm Morning Glory muffin. Or you can take it for later.” The trite words you need to keep up your strength drifted into her mind, and she batted them to a corner.
The nuances of a smile reached Marilyn’s face. Two shy dimples made their way onto her careworn cheeks.
Holly said, “You look familiar, Marilyn. I’ve just moved back to the area after fourteen years. Sooke used to be a tiny fishing village with a few B&Bs. Now it’s a bedroom community for Victoria.”
“Most of that cookie-cutter development sprawl hasn’t reached Fossil Bay. We…live at Serenity. That little cottage at the Sea Breeze Road corner.”
Did the quaint custom of naming houses come from England by way of California? It seemed more prevalent on the coasts. “Right. Isn’t that a massage therapy business?” Full of retirees and fitness addicts of a left-wing lean, the island offered every possible tr
eatment from chiropractic to reiki to acupuncture to spiritual astrology. Health food stores were as popular as gas stations. If you were looking for ear-candling, you had a choice. Mud baths and seaweed applications along with hot rocks and raindrop therapy advertised relief from toxins and tension.
“Nothing fancy. I have a steady list of clients, mostly older folk who live in the neighbourhood and a few who come from Sooke. Shannon and I bought the place years ago when prices were comparatively low, before the boom. She had a small legacy from her parents.”
Although this was hardly the time to talk money, Holly imagined that they had nearly tripled their investment. Real estate in the last five years had skyrocketed, and the Western Communities next to Victoria were catching up.
Marilyn seemed to be distracting herself with the balm of common conversation. But she was a careful observer. “And you…?” She squinted a bit to read the nameplate on the blue shirt beneath the jacket.
In the excitement, Holly hadn’t even introduced herself. A flush of heat rose from her ears in the humid room as she spoke her name.
“You say you used to live here, Corporal Martin?”
“Please, just Holly is fine. My family and I lived in East Sooke when I was growing up. Then I went off to school, joined the force, and now in my third posting, I’m back home, or near enough. My father has a house on Otter Point Place.” She didn’t add that she was living there, nor that her mother wasn’t with them, but she wondered if Marilyn would catch the implication. It embarrassed her to admit that she had no place of her own.
Marilyn sipped her tea. A healthy pink was returning to her face, though her eyes looked strained. People coped in a thousand different ways. Holly’s shoulder radio squawked, and she grimaced. “Sorry, duty calls.” She got up as all eyes followed her. “Pardon me,” she added, speaking to the room. In the worldwide concept of “island time”, cell phones or the equivalent seemed crass and intrusive. The rainforest by the sea was as far from Toronto’s Bay Street as Carmel was from Wall Street.
A few honks sounded as traffic was building in the lock-step migration toward Victoria. A prominent crosswalk allowed a few souls to sprint over the road as a red and white Number 61 double-decker bus pulled in and started loading passengers. One man hooked his bicycle onto the front rack before hopping on, his backpack as large as a turtle shell. Holly answered her radio.
Ann Troy, desk jockey at the detachment, said, “I wondered where you were. We’ve had a call about panhandling at Bailey Bridge. Must be those homeless people who’ve moved in with the warm weather. Some tourist from Toronto didn’t appreciate being hit up for change when he was stopping his Infiniti to admire the ocean.” View spots were magnets to fresh arrivals from the urban mainland. If they didn’t run off the road in slack-jawed amazement, they were likely to screech off onto the berm, flattening the sword fern. Jaded residents were used to seeing the ocean lapping at the front door and only wondered when a tsunami might knock. A sunny Sunday might be the one day they’d go to the beach unless they were surfers monitoring the happy convergence of high tide and gale-force winds.
TWO
On my way,” Holly said. On the temperate south island with snow and freezing temperatures rare as walruses, the homeless lived in “paradise”. The truth was that the brutal, uncompromising rains of winter made life equally problematic. Green moss or black mould grew on everything that didn’t pulsate and much that did. In Sooke, with more population and resources, the homeless had a better support system. One of the churches served a weekly meal, the Salvation Army pitched in, and the Salvation Army provided cheap clothing, gear and blankets. People said with humanitarian pride that they knew their “street people” by name, and they were usually harmless, trundling bottles or cans for returns to the supermarkets and basking in July sunshine on the green near the BC Liquors.
She collected Marilyn, filled a jerry can with gas at the Petro-Canada and put it in the trunk, smiling off the woman’s twenty-dollar bill. “Your tax dollars at work,” she said with a grin.
Ten minutes later back at the Shirley turn, they filled the tank, and the engine started purring immediately. Once again, riding a wave of sorrow, Marilyn’s lips quivered as she offered a departing wave of thanks. “Bless you.”
Holly watched the dowager silver Audi make steady progress down the road, disappearing over a hill. Everyone handled grief differently, but Marilyn seemed to have a core as strong as the muscles common to her trade. Then Holly covered the next few kilometres to the detachment at tiny Fossil Bay. Set in a community of only a few hundred, the outlier post of three officers handled policing another fifty kilometres of blacktop west to Port Renfrew. From there a logging road looped back up to Lake Cowichan, home of yet another of the 126 detachments in British Columbia’s E Division, the largest in Canada with over six thousand employees.
The white frame building with a cedar-shingle roof was a refurbished cottage with an entrance room, where Corporal Ann Troy and rookie Constable Chipper Knox Singh had their desks, filing cabinets and computers. Remaining were Holly’s office, a lunchroom, a small bathroom, and dark and drear interrogation room. Suspicious of the black mould that lurked under the old linoleum, Holly hoped to update when the budget allowed. The furniture consisted of castoffs from larger detachments, with chipped corners and mummifying duct tape. Holly had made some progress in getting the rooms painted and put up a few landscape prints, but here was the equivalent of Fort Zinderneuf on a day off. Truth was that the post would probably be disbanded before it was remodelled.
Coming through the squeaky front door, she left her hat in the closet, where three sturdy black umbrellas were planted in a stand. With the rains of winter and spring over, they had now entered the dry season. The danger of forest fires replaced floods. Holly took a reusable plastic cup of water from the cooler and sipped. “Tell me more about the complaint, Ann. I checked Bailey Bridge last week. Just an old fire pit and a dozen beer bottles. Did our volunteers report anything recently?” A squad of retirees and youngsters on bicycles made their job easier by reporting suspicious vehicles and property damage. A small percentage of the citizens of Fossil Bay operated their homes as mere summer cottages, so the occasional breakin often went unnoticed.
Ann rose to stretch her aching back as the palsied arm of the wall clock shuddered to nine on the dot. Degenerative disc disease hastened by a daring rescue during a convenience-store robbery had forced her to give up an active career just as she had made corporal. Instead of heading up the detachment by replacing retiring Reg Wilkinson, she drove a desk. The RCMP tried to make accommodations for its staff, especially since they were moved from post to post after only a few years and subject to morale challenges. “Last week Sean Carter said he spotted the first…guest. When you came last fall, the homeless had already moved back to winter quarters in Sooke or Victoria. With that large parking area and the sheltered places under the high bridge, the Bailey fills up fast in the summer. Get used to the minor annoyances and an occasional fight. It helps to set down the rules right off the bat. That’s what I di…used to do.”
“Better than gang wars, I suppose.” Holly felt questions worm themselves around her temple. The more she learned about her turf, the better. Proactive beat reactive. Trouble was easier to head off when anticipated, rather than fighting a defensive action.“But they don’t have vehicles. Where do they get their food? They’re not eating at Nan’s, and the gas station carries mostly junk food and picnic supplies.”
“Some have old bicycles. And it’s easy to hitchhike on the island. People are more laid-back and trusting. Pick up simple groceries like bread, peanut butter, tuna, soup, stuff that can be eaten cold from the can. Pastor Pete does a sandwich run with the Helping Hands van weekdays on his way home to Jordan River. We’d rather he didn’t, since it only makes it easier for them to stay. But try to tell him that.” Ann spread her large hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“Enablement is a problem everywhere, an
d a tough call. Are they all drifters? What’s the profile? Are drugs involved?” Ann and Chipper had come the year before Holly had arrived. As post leader, she was in the initial throes of trying to identify her team’s strengths and build upon them. Rivalry did not belong in the cards. But if she’d been Ann, she would have had a tough time adjusting to being second in command, especially to a leader ten years younger.
“It’s usually a pretty harmless group. At least they’re not hanging around schools like in Victoria, moving in at night with sheets of plastic and sleeping bags, leaving needles and human waste behind. A few older regulars know how to work the resources. Some even have small pensions. Reg said that until a few years ago, there were full-time shacks at Sombrio Beach.”
“That was in my time. Sort of an old hippie hangout. Malibu North. Everything changed when the Juan de Fuca and West Coast Trail system got going. The authorities cleaned house for the tourists.” Holly leaned against the wall and folded her arms. “Sounds innocent enough. I don’t want to come down too hard. Usually it’s live and let live around here. But the panhandling complaint worries me. It was a man, I’m presuming. Was he particularly aggressive? Any charges possible?”
Ann plunged into a slim “in” pile on her desk and consulted a paper. “There was no contact. The guy backed off.” She gave a bark of a laugh. “Wish you’d seen the complainant. About fifty, dressed head to toe in Tilley gear, hat that went through the guts of an elephant, jungle jacket, belt knife. Aluminum water bottle in a case around his shoulder.”
