Paul Is Dead

by C. C. Benison

  Alan stops at the building site. Three big rocks once barricaded the property to traffic. He remembers that. Alanna nearly dinged one of them parking her Mustang on their arrival. They’re gone now, of course, removed to allow heavy machinery access. He lifts his eyes through the windshield to the middle distance. A few healthy trees remain, retained to lend eye-appeal to the development. They form a paling, and Alan can detect the sunshine flash of an excavator in motion. It’s almost noon. The machine’s operator should be knocking off soon for lunch.

  Alan steps out of the car into the July heat to the tortured shriek and grind of machinery that’s so been the soundtrack to his working life it might as well be Muzak. He notes the old footpath to the cottage vanished, a broad rutted swath of ruined grass marked with the trails of caterpillar treads in its place—no surprise. How else is heavy equipment to move on site? He’s expecting no surprises, anyway. When he bought this property from his late son-in-law’s estate, he sent one of his project managers to inspect it with Stuart. He didn’t need to. He already knew it well. And he wouldn’t bother now, but for finding an excuse to cool his jets.

  Mariëlle.

  Alan glimpses what should be the contractor’s shack—and must be—but it’s too … nice. He realizes it’s the old sleeping cottage, tool shed, outbuilding thing, saved by chance from last fall’s storm and fire. Dorian gave it some silly French name. Dorian he can remember. He’s popped up on TV in this or that, and once Alanna dragged him to the theatre where Dorian was in one of its forgettable productions. Briony he wouldn’t recognize if he passed her in the street, he’s sure. Nor Lydia, probably. Alanna keeps up with these people intermittently—well, at least the women. He never thinks about them, couldn’t care less about them, really. Forty years ago, he dismissed them as privileged little South End twats, spawn of the enemy class, card-carrying members of the bourgeoisie, and so on and so on, with their private language and high school familiarity and daddies who bought them cars. (Even if he was going out with one whose daddy bought her a car.)

  The excavator grinds on, its metal teeth scraping the ground, peeling off thick layers of earth, lifting into the air, into a waiting truck bed. Alan, watching, finds the rhythm soothing. He is reminded of himself, aged five, watching the workmen pave the street in front of his house in Windsor Park. He remembers the primal smell of the caked gumbo earth and wet cement, which got into this blood because construction for him was never some default summer job—he sought it out, hungry to display his aptitude, his young body, his new working-class sensibility. He imagines himself again, on that excavator, conjoined to the thrusting of the boom and the spiking of the arm as it tears into the moist soil, imagines himself fucking Mariëlle deliriously.

  The old Eadon property, former Black property now, is an expanding no-man’s-land, vegetation blasted, concrete pad smashed up, earth gouged, all reminders of the cottage and its genteel world vanished. Alan recalls Eadon Lodge a white box shimmering in sunshine, the interior an arrangement of shadowy rooms, that high ceiling disappearing into gloom and cobwebs. He paid only passing attention to the great storm that crashed through the place at Thanksgiving last, unaware that his daughter’s estranged husband had even bought lakeshore property until she blew into his and Alanna’s in tears with the news. Sara is the apple of his eye and the crown of his labours, and he tolerated his son-in-law the way Berko had tolerated him, ready when the boy was ready to put away childish things. Berko lost his son in a freakish ballooning accident in Turkey. Alan was losing (had already lost? It doesn’t bear thinking about) his son to meth, somewhere in Montreal.

  The excavator stops in its movements, its engine switched to idle. Alan glances at his watch. Not yet noon. He arches an eyebrow at the operator in the cab who, though his eyes are wreathed in sunglasses, shows no sign he knows he’s being observed. Alan gets it. He pulled this kind of shit, too, when he was young, to stick to the boss. But the operator doesn’t spring from the cab, lunch pail in hand, smiling at release. He’s lifted himself, awkwardly, from the seat as if transfixed by something in the excavator’s bucket. He removes his eyewear, leans closer to the window. Then he switches the machine off, the hush of a summer day rushing in to take its place.

  Puzzled, though not concerned, Alan watches the worker—young, fit, as he himself once was—scramble from the cab and hop heavy-booted to the ground. As he does, he glimpses Alan at his post by an old elm that weathered the storm—Alan all duded up in stripy polo shirt and pressed shorts, fresh from the golf course shower and an air-conditioned car. The young man seems to freeze, his body language projecting wariness. Alan can’t read his facial expression at this distance, but something in the young man’s stance draws him from his post.

  “This is private property,” he says, as if he had been taught to say it.

  “I’m one of its developers, Alan Rayner.”

  “Oh … shit, sorry.”

  “Is something going on?” He’s reading now the uneasiness in the guy’s small dark eyes. Possibly part Aboriginal, Alan guesses. The braid’s a clue.

  The guy gestures toward the bucket. At first Alan sees nothing of note amid the clay and stone. And then he does.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  Alan knows, without knowing how he knows, that the mud-caked bones are not those of some animal. He himself has been with work crews when they inadvertently exhumed the bones of a dog or a bison when he worked construction those summers in the late sixties. He knows that is a human femur and that is a pelvic girdle and that is the rounded hollow of an eye of a human skull. Yet irritation overcomes repugnance. The bones exhumed by last Thanksgiving’s storm contributed, at police insistence, to this spring’s start date delay. Now, fuck, here we go again. This property is cursed. Construction will halt, an investigation will begin. Bloody winter will set in before construction can resume and they’ve already pre-sold three units with a scheduled June 2010 opening.

  The young man beside him is expressionless, quiet, unmoving, as if awaiting instruction. With the excavator stopped, all that can be heard is the chatter of birds and the shush of waves lapping the shore. Alan thinks. He knows the right thing to do. But the right thing doesn’t prevail in this business. He looks again at the slimy mess of bones poking from the blanket of dirt, notices a shred of cloth of some nature, faded purple, adhering to the femur, moves around to look into the cavity in the earth last gouged by the excavator’s savage teeth and sees, yes, what must be more human remains. A fat beetle of some nature scurries over the remains. Alan’s gorge rises. He looks up quickly, past the man, around the property, toward the shack.

  “Are you the only one here?”

  The man averts his eyes. “Ben had to go into town.”

  Uh huh. Ben’s fucked off somewhere until the truck’s filled. Sleeping on the beach or having a swim. These rural characters are such slackers. But, in this instance, that’s okay. He puts his hand in his pocket and fingers the winnings from their side bet at golf, a wad of Stuart’s fifties. That, plus what he already has, amounts to about seven hundred dollars. He studies the man’s expression. So hard to read, these guys. Will he take the money? Would Alan have, forty years ago? Yes, he thinks, he would have: it would have been subversive, in the style of the day.

  And he can appeal to the practicalities: if work is halted, this guy could be out of a job—or at least inconvenienced.

  “Look,” he says, “here’s the deal. If we report this, work will stop, and for Christ knows how long. We don’t know who this … guy … woman … person might be …” He glances at the man for a discernible reaction. There is none, but at least their eyes meet now. “It might be best if we just, you know, find another spot for him … it. It’ll mean a little extra work for you, but I can pay you some overtime right now. Okay? What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Noskye.”

  “Noskye,” Alan repeats, smiling conspiratorially, wiggling
his hand in his right pocket. “How would that be? Would that be okay?”

  Noskye triangulates the bucket’s contents, Alan’s face, Alan’s pocket. “Okay.”

  Alan glances again into the bucket. A flicker of doubt slows the hand that will leave the pocket, that will shake the hand, that will seal the deal. Those bones were some mother’s son. Or daughter. But they were uncoffined (surely), they’ve been buried a long time, long before a cottage was ever here (surely), the grave unmarked, unvisited. This is no desecration. Alan is rationalizing, backtracking a bit. If this is some native burial site, ol’ Noskye here isn’t raising an objection. He extends his hand. His hand is met.

  “Okay, then.”

  Alan’s learned to love the dance of deal-making, however small. He’s pleased with himself. He shifts back a little to let Noskye climb back up into the cab and as he does a glint of something metallic, caught in a ray of sunshine, teases the corner of his eye. He peers into the bucket, what the hell is it? Sees nothing, then he does. He holds up a warning hand to Noskye not to fire up the excavator and, revolted, brushes his fingers along the soil, gingerly past what looks like a finger bone, to pluck up the shiny tiny thing. He swipes off some of the gluey muck with his thumb, frowns at the exposed surface, at the distinctive markings. He’s puzzled, but not at the markings’ meaning. At something else. He rummages through flickering memory, what the hell is it? Recalls nothing.

  Then he does.

  37

  “Something came for you this morning, by the way.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, how should I know, Dorian?”

  Charmaine gives her client a vexed glance as she turns to her desk to root through the mail for the envelope. They’re in her Yaletown office, standing by the window that overlooks the street. Really, she thinks, he’s not looking his best, though, granted, the light streaming in this September 22 morning isn’t flattering—to anyone over forty. It’s been a couple of weeks since Morningstar Cove wrapped up and Dorian’s been back in town, staying with friends in Maple Ridge. Too bad about Mark. He was a sort of a steadying influence. Anyway, put the colour back in your hair, Dorian, for fuck’s sake. You look like the old fart you played in the series. She doesn’t say this, of course, though she is worried about him—in her professional capacity: She had reports back from the MC set that a certain sparkle seemed absent in his performance. Fortunately—in a way—the series is wrapped forevermore. No third season. Therefore, no word that Dorian’s character would be written out—drowned before the opening episode or something. It’s a grafter’s life, acting. A casting director called her the day before, seeking actors for the old Robert Young role for a pilot of an ABC reboot of Marcus Welby, M.D., and her first—well, third—thought went to Dorian Grant, but, observing the slight tremor in his hand, she’s giving him fourth thought. Early Parkinson’s? Or is it the drinking? She’s knows he used to be a bit fond of the bottle back in the ’80s, ’90s in Toronto. The DP at Morningstar Cove (an old high school friend, oddly enough) said she thought he might be hitting the sauce. But, like, whatever: it’s never seriously compromised his craft. Lots of actors are big boozers: Richard Burton, William Holden, Errol Flynn, Oliver Reed. Of course, they’re all dead. Were big boozers. Were.

  With Charmaine’s back turned, Dorian’s eyes go again to the pair of moose’s antlers painted white high on the wall above her desk. New? Maybe they’re the whimsy in the corporate-cliché monochrome Charmaine’s going for, but to him they look like wings hacked from an angel’s back. Clarence Odbody’s wings, maybe, the ones he earned in It’s a Wonderful Life for showing George Bailey the positive effect he had on other people’s lives. Who tore them off? And why? They remind Dorian more of the antlers on the walls of Eadon Lodge, but he won’t think about that now, he’s tired of thinking about that. His nerves have been fraying for months. He’s backed off calling Lydia. Hasn’t told her that Dix’s “mother’s-agony” story is squeezed between recipes in the new issue of Chatelaine. Lydia’s backed off calling him.

  He takes the envelope from Charmaine’s hand. His hand quivers, he notes with dismay. Since he’s been back on the West Coast, “resting,” as they say in the trade, he’s been resting with a glass of vodka and peach cider never too far from reach. Michael and Lauren, whose basement flat he’s renting, join him in the daily debauch, as they, too, are “resting,” there being a bit of slowdown in Hollywood North, what with the Canadian dollar so strong these days. He’s had a little eye-opener for breakfast, won’t need another drink till late afternoon, so he’s T’d up for this little strategy meeting with Charmaine. He needs to work. He’s only himself on stage, on set, on camera.

  The envelope is small, padded, the label neatly typed, addressed to him C/O KWUSEN TALENT MANAGEMENT INC., 1236 HOMER STREET, VANCOUVER, B.C. It’s light, too. With a little lump inside. No return address. Meh. Dorian prepares to pocket it in his jacket.

  “You’re not going to open it?”

  “I suppose I could. Would it give you pleasure, Charmaine, if I did?”

  “Yes. Yes, it would. It might be like opening a box of Cracker Jack. There’s something hard in there. I felt it when it arrived. Remember Cracker Jack with the little prize inside?”

  “I’m as old as you are, darling.”

  “Not quite and fuck you.” Charmaine pushes her ropes of ruby beads higher up the crepe of her neck as Dorian tears the top open. He reaches in, but his fingers are too big, the package too tight, to grasp the object slide to the bottom. He turns the envelope and shakes it over his hand. He feels something slight strike his palm.

  “What is it?” Charmaine looks over the tops of her ruby frames at his hand. “Oh, it’s a ring. How lovely! Mark changed his mind? Dorian …?”

  Dorian stares at the silver band in his hand, strangled for words. A tremor tears along his flesh and the band tumbles to the carpet. Charmaine casts him an exasperated glance and bends awkwardly to pick it up.

  “Oh! It’s got peace symbols on it. How quaint.” She examines it, slides it down a couple of fingers of her left hand in succession. It fits her fourth. She da-da-da-das the opening notes of Mendelssohn’s wedding march. But Dorian has gone paler than one of her old clients when she told him Disney was dropping his contract over kiddie-porn rumours. Her smile falters. “Dorian … darling, what is it?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  The faltering smile turns full frown. “Is there a note?” She sees his other hand still clutching the envelope.

  “No note.”

  “I don’t understand. Is someone returning it to you? Is the ring yours?”

  “Is the ring mine?” Dorian hears his voice echo as if from a thousand miles away. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

  38

  It’s a day for letters and happenstance.

  Lydia is the only person in the house alert to the metallic rattle of the mailbox lid opening and closing, and her impulse—almost Pavlovian, born of solitary freelance days before Countervail Press and marriage when the post crowned the day—is to get up and go down to see what the world has fetched up to the door.

  She’s nearest the street, at the table in the dining room, coffee, a plate of orange slices, her new iPhone, her Chicago Manual of Style and laptop arrayed in front of her. Ray is sequestered at the back of the house, in his office overlooking the garden. Erin was up and out early, to class at Hastings Law School. Misaki is in her third week at Jefferson Scott Key elementary. Lydia walked her there a couple of hours earlier, watching her skip along and sing, glad that the disruptions to her life had not affected her, at least on the outside. The two of them (“the girls”) are living now in the garage conversion, completed last month. Finally. Lydia loves them dearly, but a mother-and-child’s messiness can strain her nerves. A whiff of new lumber and plaster and paint lingers still. Lydia can detect it beneath the perfume of the freesias on the sideboard, transpo
rting her—but briefly—to Oxford Street and the redolence of her mother’s renovations.

  Also laid out on the table before her is a manuscript of selected writings in Milton critical studies, which she’s editing for University of California Press. Lydia left Countervail in mid-July, a month after her birthday. She’d been there twenty-five years, the last eleven as editor-in-chief. She’d turned sixty. If she retired then, there’d be a nice symmetry to it, which was part of Ray’s argument. You’ll be much happier and healthier away from Cuntella, he insisted. And he’s right. She has been lifted from the anxiety and despondency that’s haunted her for a year, though not having to endure Cuntella’s braying voice and absurd demands day in, day out, is less the reason than Ray supposes.

  It’s three months since she learned from Briony and Dorian that Eadon Lodge had fallen into the hands of Alan Rayner and his property development company and she’s expected every day for the sky to blacken but, as days passed to weeks to months and the sky clung to blue, she crept from her slough of despair and began to imagine that, somehow, she and Dorian had been granted a boon from a god—Milton’s very God, maybe—to whom she long ago lost allegiance. Even the attention given to Lits’s bones—and they had to be Lits’s; she had the cheek swab; the genetic connection was confirmed—failed to undo her, despite fifteen Warholian minutes of Winnipeg media interest.