The Darkening Archipelago

by Stephen Legault

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  “Had a disagreement,” Cole managed.

  “With what? A cruise ship? You look awful.”

  “Thanks.” He grinned, not feeling the tightness in his face that would ache in the morning. “I feel just fine. Why are you up? It’s two am.”

  Grace put down the book. “The Coast Guard called. Someone found the Inlet Dancer.”

  12

  The heat of August had passed. September ushered in temperate days and cool nights. Archie Ravenwing stood on the deck of the Inlet Dancer and sorted through tackle that he and Darren First Moon used on fishing trips with tourists throughout the summer. It had been a busy season, and this was their first day off in more than two weeks. The gear was a mess. Stowed quickly, late each night, and brought out early each morning, some disorder had crept into the workings of the operation. Archie was no stranger to disarray — his office at home was a working experiment in chaos theory. But here on the Inlet Dancer, order was required for smooth operations, both during the tourist season and during the salmon runs.

  Archie sipped a cup of strong, black coffee from the lid of his thermos as he worked. Every few minutes he paused to look out beyond the harbour to the rounded hills on the nearby islands. A dozen tiny islets dotted the passage between Parish Island and the northern reach of Knight Inlet. The scent of gutted fish and salt water hung in the air. During the hectic summer months it felt to Archie like he had hardly any time to sit and contemplate those hills and the sea that circled them. It had been a busy summer, and he was glad for the work, knowing full well that the commercial salmon season might be a complete bust. The added challenge of the minister’s announcement that more fish farming would be allowed in the Broughton made that reality almost unbearable.

  After the August meeting in Port Hardy, Archie, Cassandra, and Carrie Bright had driven back to Port McNeill, debating their next move. Bright was clear about her role to hammer Stoboltz and the government in the media and in the markets. “We’ve got to take the market away from this industry,” she said, piloting her Toyota Corolla down the hill to the ferry that would take her across to Sointula. “We’ve got the campaign all ready to go. It’s time to start playing hardball.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Cassandra Petrel from the passenger seat.

  “Newspaper ads in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and an on-the-ground campaign to approach restaurant chains and supermarkets to stop selling farmed fish. We’ll go on a speaking tour and try to raise the profile of the issue. We’ll get supporters to walk into their local stores and upscale restaurants with handbills about the facts of farmed salmon and the alternatives. We’ve already got an email list of two or three thousand people. We’ll start with those folks and recruit more through the tour and the ads,” said Bright, her voice sounding confident and determined.

  Petrel nodded.

  Archie was silent in the back seat, watching the harbour come into view beyond the motels and discount stores, listening. He admired Carrie Bright for her determination and enthusiasm. She had built the sos coalition with her bare hands, bringing together oftentimes fractious groups like sport fishermen, First Nations, and environmentalists for the common cause of stopping fish farms.

  “We need to keep up the pressure on the provincial government,” she continued. “They need to be held accountable for this decision. We’ll work with the environmental groups in our coalition based here in bc to put pressure on members of the legislature, especially those sitting on the Task Force that is looking at fish farming.”

  Carrie Bright looked in the rearview mirror at Archie. “You’re awfully quiet back there, Archie. You okay?”

  Archie took his eyes from the sun-speckled water and looked at the two women in the front seat.

  “You okay?” Bright asked again.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re pretty quiet.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “I know it’s hard on you,” said Petrel, “sitting at that table and not having a say anymore.”

  “Never did, really.” Archie smiled and looked back out the window.

  “We were expecting this decision. This government is pro-business. It’s ideological for them. We didn’t really expect them to say no. We’re going to have to fight them all the way on this,” said Bright.

  “That’s not what’s bothering me.”

  “Dan was his usual charming self. Don’t pay any attention to him,” said Bright.

  “That’s not what’s bothering me, either. He’s full of hot air. He’s a racist and a bigot, but that’s not what’s got me thinking.”

  “What is?”

  “Something that Greg White Eagle said — or didn’t say, I guess.”

  “But he didn’t say anything,” Bright said, glancing in the mirror at Archie.

  “Exactly. That’s what I mean. He didn’t say a bloody word the whole time. Not a word. It was like he knew what was coming, and that everything was copacetic. Like he had no worries whatsoever.”

  “What are you saying, Archie?” asked Petrel, turning toward him.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Petrel looked at him. “You think he’s in on the decision?”

  Archie shrugged.

  “You think that Greg White Eagle is in the pocket of Stoboltz?”

  “Or that Stoboltz is in his pocket,” said Carrie.

  Archie watched the water come back into his view, the sun glinting off the ocean so bright he had to close his eyes.

  — Archie finished sorting his gear and turned his attention to half a dozen jigging rods that were laid out on the deck. He picked up the first one and sat back down to re-thread the line and work on the reel.

  “About time we got some cooler weather, hey, Archie?” came a voice from the slip next to the Inlet Dancer. Ravenwing looked up to see Greg White Eagle standing next to the boat. Speak of the devil, thought Archie. Greg had his hands in his pocket and wore wraparound sunglasses, jeans, and a long-sleeved canvas shirt.

  Archie smiled and went back to his work.

  “You’re a hard man to track down these days, Archie. Busy season for you, hey?”

  Archie nodded and kept at his work.

  “Harbourmaster’s log says you’ve been out every day for the last two weeks. A good run for you and First Moon. How is old Darren holding up?”

  Archie put down the rod and took a sip of his coffee.

  “What is it that you want, Councillor?”

  “A chat. Mind if I step aboard?”

  “You know the way,” said Ravenwing.

  Greg White Eagle stepped onto the Dancer, his hands in his pockets making him look a little like a duck waddling on the shore. Greg stood near the bow of the boat and looked around him at the other boats. Then he walked to where Archie was seated on the fish box and sat on the gunwale across from him.

  “Listen, I know what you’ve been up to.”

  “Oh, yeah, what’s that?”

  “Snooping.”

  Archie was silent.

  “No sense in denying it, Archie. I know you’ve been poking your nose into everybody’s business but your own for a long time. It’s your way. It’s the way you do things. But now you’ve been poking your nose into my business, into my personal affairs. Just what do you hope to accomplish? What do you want to get out of that, Archie?”

  Ravenwing sipped his coffee and turned his attention back to the rod, threading the heavy-gauge deep-sea line through the eyelets and tying off a heavy metal leader.

  “That’s one down,” he said, getting up and selecting a second rod. He sat back down.

  “Janice at the band office called me to tell me that you had been there recently. Went all the way to Alert Bay just to poke around. She told me that you were asking to look at the correspondence file. And the financial statements of the band.”

  “Got a right to do that. Everybody does.”

  Greg looked at Archie.
“Everybody does, but nobody ever does it, Archie. What are you looking for?”

  Archie shrugged. He played out some line from the reel that he had opened.

  “Also, I got a call from Lance Grey. He told me that you’ve filed Access to Information requests with his office. What’s that all about?”

  “It’s a citizen’s right,” said Archie.

  Greg looked away. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He stood up. “You’re getting under my skin, Archie. You’re like some kind of insect, burrowing under and causing an uncomfortable itch. I’m starting to feel like I’ve got to scratch. You know what I mean?”

  Archie smiled. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you mean, Councillor.”

  Greg put his hands back in his pockets and blew out through pursed lips. “You know, one of the things I get to do now that I’m a band councillor is to review all the past financial transactions for my office. It’s very illuminating work, Archie. Very illuminating. Do you catch my drift, Archie?”

  “I’m not following you, Greg. Better spell it out.”

  “Well, I’ve been digging through some invoices submitted for work done by a contractor from Alert Bay that were paid out from your discretionary account. Bits of work for a few thousand dollars here, and a few thousand dollars there. General repairs and maintenance work. Nothing too unusual. Could be work on the community centre or the school, or maybe down at the docks. But the trouble is, Archie, that there hasn’t been any work done at the community centre, or at the docks, not that I can see. Nothing more than fixing the toilet at the centre, and nothing at all on the docks. Nothing that matches those invoices. Not around the dates on the invoices, that’s for sure. So I’m starting to wonder — just what was that contractor doing?”

  Archie worked on the reel.

  “So I called him up. The contractor. Really good guy. Loved coming to Parish Island to work. Said that the office he built and the deck that he worked on was such a nice project to do because the view from the house over the harbour was really lovely. He said he didn’t get to finish the deck last spring, but he can come back anytime. Should I give him a call, Archie, and ask him if he’s got time?”

  Archie didn’t say a word. He got up and selected another rod to work on.

  White Eagle returned the glasses to the bridge of his nose. “So that really got me interested, Archie. And I kept looking. Seems you signed a bunch of cheques to Cash to pay off a consultant, your buddy Blackwater. Something about needing to pay him in cash because his ex-wife was garnishing his wages and you wanted to pay him under the table. So his ex wouldn’t get her hands on the money, I guess. Wonder what was really going on there, Archie.”

  Archie snorted and put down the rod. Greg White Eagle was still standing, eyes hidden behind his dark glasses, his hands balled into fists inside his pockets.

  “Be a real shame, Archie, if the people of Port Lostcoast knew what you were up to. That would be a real shame for you and your family, Archie.”

  “Okay, Councillor, you’ve made your point. It’s easy to kick a man when he’s down. You’ve done your homework. Sure, I’ve made my mistakes. But here’s the thing, Councillor. I got nowhere to go but down. I’ve had my day. Been to the a fn, been to Ottawa. Got the ear of the minister. Never did me much good.” Ravenwing laughed. “Even got my picture in the paper. Did my service for my people. I’m just a fisherman and a tourist guide now. Nowhere to go but down.”

  “Fraud is a serious offense, Archie.”

  “Yeah, maybe even do a little time, hey?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yeah, that wouldn’t be too much fun. They might take my house, hey?”

  Greg looked away. “Maybe, Archie.”

  “It’s nothing compared to what they would do to you, Greg.”

  Greg White Eagle looked sharply back at him.

  “It’s nothing,” Archie said, putting a foot up on the gunwale and tying his shoe. “Nothing compared to what they would do to you if they caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.”

  “What are you talking about?” White Eagle laughed, but there was a tension in his voice that had not been there seconds before.

  Archie put his foot down and stood up. He walked over to the fish box, took the cup of coffee, and sat back down. “So I get this file. It’s not a big one. It’s just a bunch of correspondence. Not band correspondence, you understand. It’s printouts of emails. I get it from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. I didn’t even know we kept track of emails, did you?”

  Silence.

  Archie laughed. “So I start looking through them. All very interesting. Starts back in June, a few months after you took office, Greg. But I got the feeling reading them that it was the continuation of a conversation. That the emails were follow-up, you know? That maybe the conversation had started a few months before. Maybe sooner, I don’t know. It was just the way the emails sounded. The emails were all about salmon farming, of course. There was talk of the upcoming announcement by the minister, the one that you and I were at last month. You might remember it, Greg. That was the meeting where you just sat there silently. The meeting where the minister announced more salmon farms in our traditional territory, which may well end our traditional way of life, and you said nothing.” Ravenwing was shaking his head.

  “But what really caught my attention was when the emails started being cc’ed to a Yahoo! account. Did you know that it’s possible to get someone to track down who owns those accounts? I didn’t know that. But I found someone who knows how. Probably some kid in his mother’s basement. Anyway, it took a little digging, but I found out who the account belongs to. Want to guess?”

  Silence.

  “Didn’t think you’d want to guess,” said Archie, smiling. “I’ll tell you. Darvin Thurlow. The account belongs to Darvin Thurlow. I just couldn’t figure that out at first. Why would our band councillor be copying correspondence to the minister’s office to the head scientist at Stoboltz? I guess I’m just kind of slow. But then it all started to make sense. The three of you talking it up before the announcement last month. I think that’s called collusion. I’m not sure, I haven’t looked that up,” said Archie, taking up another rod from the top of the fish box and playing out some line.

  “But it gets better, Greg. Don’t leave now. It gets better.” Greg White Eagle stood, fists in his pockets, looking toward the mouth of the harbour, barely able to hide his anger. “I think it must have been a slip. Something that nobody should have said. But there it was, in an email from just after the announcement. It was from you to Darvin, with a cc to Lance Grey. It said —” Archie touched his temples as if trying to remember — “‘now you’ve got what you paid for.’ I’d say that was pretty stupid putting that in an email, wouldn’t you, Councillor? Lance sure did, because he really laid into you after that one.”

  Greg looked down at Archie. He took a step toward the centre of the boat and placed a meaty palm on the top of the fish box. He leaned in toward Archie. His face was even with Ravenwing’s, and only a few feet away. He reached with his free hand to take his sunglasses from his face.

  “Just what, exactly, are you saying, Ravenwing?” White Eagle spat, the corners of his mouth flecked with white spittle.

  “Sounds to me like someone is on the take, Councillor,” said Archie.

  The two men stared at each other. Finally Greg stood up and laughed. “You’ve got nothing on me. Nothing. That email means nothing.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see.”

  “You listen to me, Archie. You listen. You’ve got nothing. You think that after what you’ve done, people would listen to you anyway? After what you’ve done you’ll be lucky not to be in jail, or living in Port McNeill packing groceries at the Super Save. Nobody is going to listen to you, Archie. They’ll all be too busy working on the salmon farms and thanking me for finally looking out for their best interests, instead of your own!”

  “I suppose they
might,” said Archie. “But when I get to the bottom of what was paid for, the band council might have something to say about rigging an election. Hey, maybe we could bunk together over in McNeill. Save some money!” Archie grinned.

  “You really are a pain in the ass, Ravenwing. You know that? You’re getting to be a really big pain in my ass. You’re an itch. An irritation. An itch that needs to be scratched. You listen to me Ravenwing — you have no idea who, or what, you’re messing with.”

  13

  Nancy Webber drove to where the blacktop wove up toward the height of the south Porcupine Hills, the trees clinging to the lee side of the slopes, the afternoon sun still high in the cloudless blue sky. It was three o’clock when she turned off the pavement, following directions she’d received when she’d called Dorothy Blackwater from the Shell station on the highway in Claresholm.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind me stopping by?”

  “Not at all, dear.”

  “It’s just that Cole has told me so much about the ranch, and I was in the area on a story, and thought I’d just love to come by for a visit,” she lied. When Cole found out there would be trouble. She would have to do what she could to prevent him from learning of her visit.

  “Come by. I’ll fix dinner. I don’t get many guests. It will be nice to have some company.”

  So she turned off the blacktop and drove south and west into the hills, the trees disappearing on the windward slopes of each rise and fall, the rough fescue parkland brown before the heavy spring rain. Two more turns, one missed side road that she had to double back to, and she found Blackwater Ranch. A small, unpretentious sign on the gate told her she was in the right place. She stepped from her car, opened the gate, drove through, and got back out to close the gate behind her. The ranch was laid out in a dale at the base of the drive. The main ranch house was a long, rambling affair with a broad porch in the front and dormer windows on the second floor. Behind the house were the barn and other outbuildings, a drive shed, wood shed, chicken coop, and other wooden buildings. Some of these looked to be well maintained, others leaned eastward, buffeted by the prevailing winds. To one side of the main ranch yard were two ageing and abandoned pickup trucks, one from the 1950s. Otherwise, the yard was orderly and neat. A small kitchen garden was laid out behind the house.