Lyne then strolled down to the riverbank with his two companions, where they sat to share a drink and a smoke, to enjoy the evening light in the circling current. The settlement of Soda Creek appeared truly vulnerable, insignificant next to the sweeping brown torrent of the Fraser. Each in turn mused upon the varieties of labour, while the others tipped the jug; they debated and bantered over the subject, tipped the jug some more, and eventually reached a point all three could agree on: that no mere human work, please, be taken so seriously as to hinder or sink the beautiful, vital joy Life offered.
Philosophy done with, discussion itself ran aground upon the glittering shoal of pleasure, their next direction was unquestioned. Although their steps were less than steady, the memory of those women’s smiles drew them like desperate sailors swimming through a gale toward the beacon lamps of Bentham’s Haven, the local sporting house.
Lady Bentham and company heard them coming a mile off. For the eager trio sang on their way. The old fiddler truly outdid himself, stretching folk melodies into strange new wails of lust and wonder, music flew low and swift through the darkening woods, galloped boldly up the dirt track where the wild-flowered hummock made two trails of stormy fragrant green, lupine purple, heavenly gold. First the goat, then Lyne, and the fiddler followed at a bit of a distance, his steps distracted by his tune.
They stammered slightly at the door, entered with the giddy nervous boasting of schoolboys. Into the perfume and lamplight of the Haven’s parlour, not much larger than Lyne’s gaol but finished of course, with rugs, furniture, even pictures on the wall meant to look like rich folks’ art. And the women awaited them. They whooped and passed the Jawbone around; Lyne flashed his money; Lady Bentham supplied cigars; in a jiffy the fiddler had them dancing jigs. And it became one of those ever rare nights when you might step outside from the heat and clamour of the party, take in the shimmery indigo sky together with a great lungful of cool northern air and cry to God your thanks, maybe beg a pardon for the hedonism underway, but here’s hoping the Almighty understands, and raise your glass to the stars.
Then another man stomped out of the backroom: Constable John. Immediately he set to business like there’d been a wagon wreck at high noon. What the hell’s going on?! he demanded. Lyne at that moment was supported by two smirking ladies, puffing a cigar, grinning through his teeth into the red face of the law. Abrupt quiet smothered the parlour.
It was the goat who really got them into trouble.
Having dressed rather in a hurry, the constable had got his fly stuck. Out the front of his pants protruded a droopy white bit of his long johns, not very much, but difficult to miss.
The goat saw this and couldn’t help his blahahat. This drew the others’ attention to the constable’s predicament, and stirred an unstoppable burble of snickering. The constable looked down, saw the limp little flag hanging out of his trousers, and felt not only his confused sense of justice brought to light, but now his manhood mocked, so there was nothing to do but get downright furious, wave his arms, slap Lady Bentham with a fine for operating without a licence, and by god throw this rascal Lyne into jail!!
Since the constable clearly lacked much sense of humour everybody played along. Still grinning, Lyne sat down obligingly in the back of the lawman’s buckboard. Lady Bentham and the other women stood on the porch and watched him go. They all waved, just before he was hauled out of sight, around the bend, to town, and jail.
“We’re going down to the river,” Dan called out from the roadway, where he, Kate and Bea had been waiting. So Gordon and Ian exited the jail through the brushy doorway.
“Do you miss travelling?” Gordon asked, as they trailed after the others some ways behind. This came as a simple question, with no subtext to sweat about.
“Oh yes, I do. I try not to think about it too often, or else I get itchy feet.”
“I know the temptation,” Gordon nodded, “even though we’re happy living here.”
“Soda Creek is far from Perth,” Ian said.
“Yes,” Gordon smiled. He threw Ian a sidelong mischievous glance, then he took a bowlegged few steps, and drawled like old John Wayne: “And it’s a long day’s ride from the Red Sea, Pilgrim!”
Ian laughed. Gordon snickered himself. The others looked back at them, all wearing curious smiles.
Down at the big river’s edge, the five friends skipped stones and played with the dog. The afternoon sunshine was warm on their skin, a pleasant harbinger of the new summer. Ian imagined a southern-style baptismal ceremony, with an open-armed preacher standing up to his waist in the water, while hopeful sinners sang gospel tunes and clapped hands on the shore. But it was the Fraser River, of course. Any preacher who waded in there would wash up at Hell’s Gate, in bits and pieces, two hundred kilometres downstream.
The little white dog cavorted back and forth across the gravel bar, fetching the stick of driftwood that Gordon patiently threw for him over and over. The brief dialogue between them, and Gordon’s good humour, had put Ian at ease. His initial awkwardness and silly macho anxieties were forgiven.
Bea led the way back up the trail through the willows to the road. Ian took Kate’s hand in his own, loved the life in her eyes. She whispered something about getting home and drew closer to him. He glanced behind and happened to see Gordon with his arm around Dan, and they were smiling at one another. Back at the house they lingered in the driveway over their farewells.
In the carport Ian noticed a small vehicle under a canvas tarp. He spotted a curve of chrome fender that looked familiar and he walked over for a closer look. Gordon seemed to appreciate his interest, and lifted the covering to reveal an Austin-Healy Sprite.
“Hey, she is sweet,” Ian smiled. “I owned one years ago, a ’65. What year is this?”
“’67, a Mark IV, with a bit larger engine,” Gordon explained. “It’s a bit of a project, and needs a new top — ”
“Yoohoo?” Kate called over. “Hon, we’ve got to get going.”
The girls were already sitting in the Volkswagen, windows open, smiling at the car enthusiasts.
“Billy Barker, don’t you pee on Kate’s tires!” Dan stomped his foot at the dog, and they all parted laughing.
Ciao! See ya! Bye for now.
Lyne gave in to the warm liquor in his blood, sprawling on the thin bed of scattered wood chips, scent of their resin near his face, four tawny adzed walls circled him, walls he’d made himself, their symmetrical motion creating a fleshy whorl into which his unsteady gaze and mind now stumbled, wandered, was carried away in dream. Arms outstretched he steps, climbs onto a wide boat deck streaked by sunset, speckled by black ants, river taking him with it as he searches fore and aft, feverish, alone with the craft which turns, lists in treacherous amber current, thick as molten gold, alone with the ants that is, the damn crew, other man-jacks all departed, Billy a bit pale around the gills at the helm. The frail boat is bobbing in the whiterush, he clutches the wheel gasping, in swift descent — he must swim for shore. Blurred movement there among the reeds, a woman singing. He kneels in the muddy sand, while the river flows on, undercuts the grassy bank, while ever living ants eat away, voracious, and night passes into dawn, rinsed daylight. Not quite himself Billy leans now in the doorway of the gaol facing the merciless river, where he was, still is though the town is gone, six feet under. Senses unbound, body naked, younger somehow yet he remembers what’s to come, fleeting moments of essential joy. The door he finished yesterday is gone, look, here are rotted holes of the hinge bolts, these four walls he made burnished by indeterminable age, holes in the mossy roof show clear sky with curious white lines, like seams stitched across blue cloth. Billy’s dizzy, watching the empty sternwheeler list and spin in the murky future current which slithers shiny in the canyon, until the old boat at last slips out of his sight around the bend south toward Hell’s Gate and history. Nearby the unseen blessed presence of a woman, a shower of sunlight, green spring growth, aspens in new leaf, blue swallows twitter, flit
about their mud nest under the eaves of the old gaol, the zealous ants march on, and Billy smiles, tastes all this in his throat and lungs in a deep vital breath of mind continuing …
On the drive back to town, Kate and Bea again discussed the particular case that was giving them problems. The “case” was this twelve-year-old girl, let’s call her Lonnie, who was currently public enemy number one in the Cariboo.
The week before, Lonnie had hot-wired an old Barracuda some fool cowboy had left, all waxed up, sitting outside the Goldpan Bar. She eluded two cop cars on the way out of town; they clocked her doing 135 kilometres an hour, in a sixty zone. She had ploughed twenty-some tourist vehicles off the highway by the time she’d got to Lac La Hache, went through a plank blockade, veered onto a back road, then the ’Cuda bottomed out on a cattle guard and tore the oil pan off the engine. A few months earlier she’d pulled a B&E on an insurance office, and locked the janitor in the closet overnight.
Ian was incredulous that a twelve-year-old girl could do such things. How did she learn to hot-wire a car? He wouldn’t have dared invent her as a character, because she seemed unbelievable. But Lonnie was a very real child, in care of the Ministry of Social Services.
Once at home, Kate said she absolutely had to do some work, and tied into her files for a couple of hours. Ian got a cold beer and sat outside on their sloping lawn overlooking the lake.
Next morning he could begin Lyne’s story, a tale too good not to write, with coffee and six hours before his shift at the sawmill. A man is confined in what he creates, and thereby finds freedom. Ian thought back over the day. Every picnic does not tell a story, he knew well enough. The lake was flat and still, a dark mirror of the Sunday evening sky. Certain elements are required in a short story, and actual events may appear to offer these, but rarely do.
Yes indeed, Ian thought impatiently. Then he went back into their basement suite, to find a pen and paper.
Lyne woke. Buckshot rattled in his skull, his eyes felt shrivelled as raisins. So he just lay there.
Sunshine through the barred window gradually, gently revived his mind. As his sight returned he looked around him at the four adzed walls, the inside fit of the notches he’d cut, the clean underside of the cedar shake roof, and the door with the strong black hinges and lock. There was no getting out. But he felt no urgency to leave.
Sometime later in the morning, only when Constable John was damn good and ready, did he stroll toward the gaol to free the prisoner. It was a lazy Sunday, no other activity yet on the main street of Soda Creek. He hoped that wiseass Lyne was parched as a denizen of hell, cowering in pain. The constable twirled the key on his finger.
As he approached the gaol John was surprised to hear a range of odd noises coming from inside. Groans? No. Now that he was nearer he could better make out the sounds. And they were something like fiddle music, something like cloven hooves dancing, and, unmistakably, repeated waves of a man’s deep chuckle.
On yet another Sunday in June, in the third century of this story, Ian was on the back deck helping his eleven-year-old son Noah get his shin pads and cleats on. The soccer game was at 1:00 p.m., and Noah insisted on getting there by 12:30 as the coach had loudly recommended. Ian turned from double-tying his son’s laces when he heard the purring of the car. The Austin-Healy rolled into the gravel driveway like a fantasy on wheels.
To mark the fifteenth anniversary of their marriage, Dan had relented and agreed that Gordon could purchase an Austin- Healy 3000. (Gordon had always regretted selling the Sprite that he owned when they had met.) He spent months on the Internet, and made scouting trips to Calgary and Vancouver, before he found just the car he wanted: a 1966 Mark III, metallic silver-blue, with black leather seats and a walnut dashboard.
They had just acquired the car, and decided to stop by Kate and Ian’s place to show it off.
“Now that is a beauty,” Ian nodded simply, as Dan and Gordon climbed out of the low-slung seats.
“Do you like it?” Dan laughed and spoke quickly. “It’s a bit extravagant, please don’t ask what it cost, but I must say it is a lot of fun to ride around in.”
“And to drive,” Gordon added, with his wry smile.
“Hi there,” Kate called, stepping out of the kitchen doorway with a smile. She had on her patched khaki gardening pants, and a bright green T-shirt with a John Moose logo. “Oh my, that’s it? Nice car.”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Noah, standing in his cleats on the deck.
Ian walked slowly around the Healy admiring its details, the lovely old gauges in the walnut dash, the chrome trim and wire wheels.
“Dad?”
“Yeah? Oh, sorry to run, guys, but I’ve got to get Noah to his soccer game,” Ian opened the side door on the family van.
Kate offered the guys coffee and it seemed they would stay, at least Dan followed her inside the house. Noah was buckled in, Ian was about to climb into the van when a thought occurred. Gordon still stood by the sports car, wearing his weekend garb that included a black leather vest and pirate’s earring. Ian went back across the driveway for one more word.
“Say, Gord, remember that story I gave you a copy of years ago, about the jail at Soda Creek, and the brunch at your place?”
“Yes, for sure,” he said kindly, with one brow raised. Gordon’s hair was now grey, and worn in a short ponytail. Ian’s hair was largely gone.
“Well, it may be included in my next book. Dan has always said that he’s fine with the idea, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever asked you. How do you feel about it? We can talk about it later, of course, I don’t mean to put you on the spot — ”
“We can if you like, but there’s no need. I’m fine with the idea too,” he smiled. “It’s just a story, right?”
“Right, true enough. … Thank you though.”
“Dad!” Noah hollered from inside the van, “We gotta go!”
Jack Hodgins read my first efforts in fiction twenty years ago, and was kind enough to encourage me. He is a mentor and editor who will challenge every element and line of a story, and I am fortunate to have had his guidance while completing this collection. My deepest respect and thanks to him.
In 2009 I attended the Writing Studio program at the Banff Centre, which was a wonderful experience. Thank you to Edna Alford, Greg Hollingshead, Isabel Huggan, and to the rest of the group. Financial assistance from the generous donors to the Banff Centre was much appreciated. I am grateful for a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Earlier versions of stories were published as follows: “Aurora” in dANDelion; “Tents of Flame” in Scrivener and the Inner Harbour Review; “Two Sundays at Soda Creek” in the e-zine Swiftsure Weekly; “Horse from Persia” in Grain and Best Canadian Stories 1997; “Nine Pound Lake” in the New Orphic Review. Thank you to the editors of these publications, especially Dave Godfrey who offered his insight on several stories in this collection.
The Cariboo-Chilcotin has inspired a number of books that I admire, and I feel indebted to the following authors: Sheila Watson, Paul St. Pierre, Robin Skelton and Florence McNeil.
I am forever grateful to family and friends, especially James Lindsay, Kate Link, Ivan Huska, Shane Barr and Jim Garbutt for their support. Big twang thanks to Tom Salley, Murray Boal, and Troy Forcier. Above all, I am blessed to share my life with Eli and Jonas, and with Ann.
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