By now a small, snickering mob has gathered. This fearless young constable is not going to back down in front of them, and I fear the impasse won’t easily be resolved. There is no advantage to standing on principle, so I show my Law Society card. “Maybe it’s best that you know with whom you’re dealing. Arthur Beauchamp.”
From her lack of expression it is obvious that Officer Wong has not read A Thirst for Justice. I look about, exasperated. People are gaping from shop doorways, from windows. Pictures are being snapped on cellphones.
I abase myself by importuning. “Miss – I mean, Officer Wong, I’d never set eyes on this vehicle until a few days ago. It’s obviously had many users. Take the suspect goods with you; I have no interest in them. Now I beg you, I must be off to catch a ferry.”
She holds the envelope to the light, looking for fingerprints, then slips it into a satchel. The container of seeds goes in there too, but not before she scrutinizes the newly bought gardening tools.
“What’s in the trunk, sir?”
“Officer, this has gone too far.” I’m embroiled in a ridiculous scene – street theatre, stores emptying, cars stopping, people speculating. What did he do? It’s Mr. Big.
“What’s in the trunk, sir?”
The curious horde presses closer, sharing her eagerness to see what’s in that trunk. Grow lights, maybe, decisive proof Mr. Big runs a major op. Even what is in there – two thick sacks – will look suspicious.
In the face of my silence, Officer Wong announces she intends to read my rights.
“I know my rights.” I get into the car and start it. She races to the front and puts her foot on the bumper. Several people cheer. “Officer 547 Wong,” she says into her radio, “calling for backup. Officer being menaced.”
I turn off the engine. I listen to the approaching sound of sirens.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011
I’m slow to get going because of a myriad of misunderstandings (though it isn’t clear what they are), and once again I’m in a desperate race to make the seven-thirty ferry. But the going is sluggish. I can’t get this old car up to speed, and it dies altogether when I’m halfway down the mile-long causeway to the terminal. I grab my bags and run and run, but the Queen George is sounding its departure horn.
I fall back on my pillow, exhausted from my imaginary run, and become aware of a light-hearted honking sound, then sunshine streaming through my open bedroom window. I pry my eyelids open and see nuthatches exploring the trunk of a fir, snorting their nasal calls. The dream stays with me, vivid, Chaplinesque. Wait … that was not a dream. It happened.
My memory cells finally yawn and stretch awake, and yesterday’s opéra bouffe comes prancing back. The street scene with the mulish, thin-skinned cop. Groans from the crowd, but a few cheers too, when the bags in the trunk turned out to hold rye seed. The hours spent wrangling with senior officers, their call to Garibaldi, to Constable Pound, to check on the existence and integrity of Loco Motion Luxury Rentals and Robert Stonewell.
I finally managed to reach Deputy Chief Joe Collins, who couldn’t stop laughing. By the time the Mustang was released to me, drug-free, I had a bare half-hour to get to my boat. That the tank would run dry on the ferry causeway was foretold. The fuel gauge exaggerates, so tank up early and often.
I spent the night in the terminal with my suit bag as a mattress, barely sleeping, surviving on Cheezies and corn chips from the vending machines. The abandoned Mustang remains in the custody of the ferry corporation, for I have declined to retrieve it or pay the tow and storage fee.
Reverend Al was disgustingly charitable when he met me at Ferryboat Landing. “Show him compassion, old fellow,” he said as he helped get my bags and tools into his car. I told him that, au contraire, I planned to strangle Stoney. After I showered and got some sleep.
It’s already mid-afternoon as I pull on some country clothes. Framed in my window, Niko and Yoki seem like figures in a Constable landscape as they stroll from the orchard with baskets of plums. They spot me pulling up my suspenders and they wave. “Nice you sleep all day,” says Niko. “We work.”
There’s no coffee and everything in the fridge is stale, or worse, so brunch consists of cornflakes eaten dry and an apple that I munch as I head off with my empty rucksack. On my way to the store I will pass by Stoney’s. The Fargo had better be there, and ready.
Niko and Yoki are at our roadside stand, bagging up the plums for sale. “Bad night – no sleep, no car.” Niko has summed it up admirably.
I ask if they’ve seen Stoney or my truck.
“Sorry,” says Yoki, who is as thin and shy as Niko is plump and forward.
Tomorrow, Saturday, they will be off to Stan Caliginis’s vineyard, his planting party. There’s a ceremonial reward: planters earn a certificate entitling them, somewhere down the road, to a bottle of the fermented fruit of their labours.
“Free food,” says Niko. “Whole island come.”
“Whole island minus me.”
“Sorry,” says Yoki.
I take off. The sun is warm. When a warbler warbles, a bothersome aphorism returns: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Maybe the solution is to stop inquiring, stop complaining, enjoy that song.
I find myself out of breath early on Breadloaf Hill. Four days in the city and I’m out of shape – rich restaurant food and lack of exercise. It’s too hot a day for September, my shirt sticking to my back. I pause, panting, on the Centre Road ridge, to take in the island’s worst view: Stoney’s scatter of rusting vehicles, engines, and transmissions and, next door, the Shewfelts, their roof already decorated for Thanksgiving, or perhaps Halloween, with a giant tethered blow-up pumpkin bouncing in the breeze. Gnomes and leprechauns cavort on the lawn.
They’ve built a ten-foot cedar fence to help shield them from what they term, in their plethora of bylaw complaints, “an unmitigated eyesore.” The fence hides the metallic exoskeletons, but the Shewfelts can still see Stoney’s shack on its knoll, and often Stoney himself, nakedly urinating from the deck.
He is not there this afternoon, however, nor is repair job one, the Fargo. I decide upon reflection that is good news; it means the Fargo is likely on the road. The bad news is Stoney has again, unfailingly, converted it to his own use, or, as he calls it, test-driving.
The way is mostly downhill now to Hopeless Bay, with fold-out views every fifty paces of little farms snuggled into the forest, then beaches, rocky inlets, and islets. These scenes remind me how much I don’t miss Ottawa. I haven’t let Margaret know I’m coming, and I must do so soon.
At the Mount Norbert turnoff, the general store and off-kilter saloon come into view. Ten vehicles down there, none of them the Fargo. I have a shopping list of toiletries and foodstuffs, but first I must attend at the mail counter.
I pause at the message board: a new Kestrel Dubois photo. In traditional costume this time, with a confident smile, she is accepting a certificate. Tall for her age, light-skinned, no bust to speak of. I heard her parents on the CBC, frightened for their daughter, stunned by her flight to the West Coast. It was inexplicable that she hadn’t called home; I listened in pain to their pleas for her to do so.
I turn to see Makepeace holding an envelope to the light. On my approach he quickly tucks it under the elastic band of a packet of letters and clamps his hand on it.
“These here are for your wife, and if she signed a Form A-31, I ain’t seen it.”
“What nonsense are you talking?”
“She has to formally authorize you to accept her mail. I been lenient about this practice, but no more. The Postmaster General is tightening the rules because of national security concerns.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Her mail can’t be left gathering dust – she’s a Member of Parliament.” I bluster. “You could cause a constitutional crisis. She might have an invitation from the Queen.”
“I can practically guarantee she don’t.” He hands me a Form A-31. “Her signa
ture on a fax will suffice. Rule C-138.”
After more squabbling and my written declaration that I am married to said recipient and not separated, Makepeace relents on a one-time-only basis. I slip out the envelope he’d been holding to the light. Handwritten. Underlined: Personal. From someone at Greenpeace, Ottawa – Les Falk.
“Given it’s personal, I can’t tell you what’s in it.” Makepeace pulls my own mail from the Blunder Bay box, mostly bills and magazines. The latest Island Bleat. “And one love letter for you too.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Makepeace appears taken aback by the curt tone. “A joke. Bite my head off, why don’t you.”
The love letter, postmarked three days ago, turns out to be a formal invitation to Annabelle’s welcome-back party next Friday. Penned on it: In case you can’t make it, write something terrible about me for the MC to read out.
I stroll over to the bar, signal Emily for a tall-mug coffee, and take it out to the smoke-illegal patio. I wave off an invitation to join the beer-quaffing regulars at the next table and settle in with the latest Bleat. Forbish’s lead article advertises Stan Caliginis and tomorrow’s “ceremonial replanting of the grapes with a Wild West motive.” I assume the editor means motif. The “respected millionaire” wants to “bring the community together to restore the historic old Bulbaconi Vineyard and Winery.”
The latter is an imposing architectural disaster, castle-like, built of granite from the old quarry, and despite its sweeping views, proof that if you build it, no one will come. At least not many, Garibaldi being off the winery tour trail. A local dark theory has the vineyard under a curse.
“He ain’t gonna suck me in.” Ernie Priposki has seen me shaking my head over the article. “I’ll go for the food and booze but I ain’t lining up for no free labour.”
“Well, I’m gonna show him what I can do,” says Baldy. “He’s hiring, and paying top dollar.”
“You ain’t held down a frigging job for fifteen years.”
I interrupt this testy colloquy. “Any of you gentlemen seen my Fargo on the road recently?”
“You ain’t heard, Arthur?” Cudworth Brown, bad poet and local literary lion. His face is strained. “Stoney didn’t make the turnoff at Bald Rock. He rode that sucker two hundred metres down to the gully.”
I jolt upright, coffee slopping from my mug.
“He’s been coptered off the island, man. All we can do is pray.” Cud wearily stubs out a cigarette.
Honk Gilmore sighs. “The Fargo didn’t survive.”
I have gone pale, speechless. I don’t pick up that I’m being ribbed until Gomer Goulet snorts, unable to hold back laughter. The others join in: my history of victimization by Stoney, especially over the truck, has inspired much mean humour.
Seeking forgiveness, they send Honk to my table as an emissary; he’s a mentor for the local growers. “Stoney’s on the run, man. There was a scene here at lunch. Ernst Pound blew up at him over some beef involving that rent-a he loaned you. Stoney took off like a rabbit.”
“In my truck?”
“In your truck.”
“If you see him before I do, Honk, as I expect you will, tell him his car is in the B.C. Ferries pound. I want my truck back.”
“Lights out,” a sentry calls. A flurried butting of cigarettes and emptying of ashtrays. I tell Emily to set the boys up on my tab, and hurry down to intercept Constable Pound, who is just pulling in. He is clearly under worsening strain over his marriage breakdown, making wild tirades as he flails about trying to fulfil his arrest quota.
“What’s going on?” I ask, climbing into his van.
“I know and you know that Stonewell is just a stoner with a scrubby little grow somewhere, but they want me to make a case and grab him. Someone at Integrated Drugs decided Loco Motion Luxury Rentals sounds like a trafficking operation.”
I actually play with the thought of turning Stoney in. He proudly showed me his grow in June, in the broom patch behind the road maintenance depot. With some effort I retrieve my honour. “I want my Fargo, Ernst. I’m not going to get it if he’s hiding from the law. Please put out word he’s no longer on the wanted list.”
I take Ernst’s who-cares shrug as assent and return to the bar and my cold coffee.
Honk Gilmore shuffles back to my table with a hopeful smile. “You work something out for my man?”
“This is the deal: tell Stoney to return my truck or he’ll never see his grow again.”
I spend most of the evening, as usual, brooding – during dinner, and later over Darjeeling tea and the Goldberg Variations – fretting about the Swift appeal, my marriage, my truck, practically anything that comes to mind.
Maybe I’ll find peace if I slay the dragon of Gabriel’s guilty plea. It feels like the python of legend around my neck, the serpent the Romans believed was born from slime and stagnant waters. A plea bargain – such a bargain for Gabriel Swift, so eagerly snapped up by his raw young lawyer. If only I had known what I know today.
Before retiring I remember to set Margaret’s mail on her desk, but I succumb to a temptation to examine that thin envelope from Les Falk, Greenpeace, Ottawa. Dated two weeks ago – slow to get here. I hold it to the light, but I lack Makepeace’s magic eyes. An environmental function they want her to attend. A speaking invitation. Could be anything.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2011
Almost ten-thirty in Ottawa, so Margaret ought to be up, though there’s no guarantee; politics has turned this rise-and-shine farm girl into a nighthawk. My hand shakes as I dial. I don’t know why I’m so nervous about this proposed visit. Maybe out of concern that I’ll be seen as intruding on her hectic schedule, an unwanted relative whose presence must be borne politely.
A clatter as she knocks the phone from its cradle. “Arthur?” A clearing of the airway. “Coffee, I smell coffee.” Her maker has an automatic timer.
“I’m sorry, were you sleeping, darling?”
“Good God, ten-thirty! I have a meeting.” I see her in pyjamas and slippers, padding off to the kitchenette of her paper-cluttered apartment. A thump of the fridge door. A sip of milk. A sigh. “Clean Oceans Conference; I was co-chair. The press conference ran late, reception ran later. Never mind, how are you faring? Is Blunder Bay still above the rising seas?”
I fill her in, rather too gaily, telling her of my preposterous misadventures with Stoney’s rent-a.
She seems unsure whether to laugh or sympathize, and ends up gently chiding. “Oh, and he assured you the car was clean, did he? Poor Arthur, I imagine you were at your most bellicose with that young officer.” Censorious, like Reverend Al. I’ve been under great strain, I want to say.
I bring her up to date on Blunder Bay, reassure her that the farm and I are mucking along just fine, mostly thanks to the enterprise and energy of Niko and Yoki, and that there’s a bit of mail for her, nothing that looks important. Something from Greenpeace. Les Falk.
No response. She goes offline for a moment. “Sorry – call waiting. It’s Pierette.”
I hurry on. “I’ll bring everything when I come to Ottawa this coming week. Along with the alarm clock you forgot.”
She laughs, hesitantly. “Next week?”
I explain my plans to snoop through the Mulligan fonds at the National Archives. As I rattle on about the case I hear the shower start up, imagine her stripping, testing the water with her foot.
Finally she finds a chance to speak. “It’ll be so wonderful to see you. I try not to miss you. Love you.”
Buoyed by that sign-off, I am emboldened this morning to stall no longer and to grub out the chicken pen. So while the girls do the morning milk, I shovel manure into a wheelbarrow, and as I work up a good farmer’s sweat I jettison my worries for the while. One gets gratification from honourable work.
With a barrow full of a sticky mat of straw and excreta, I exit the coop just as a monster pickup purrs down the driveway, pursued by Homer, and pulls up by the house. In the back are
kegs of beer, cases of wine, coolers, several garden spades. I am not particularly surprised to see Stan Caliginis step out (I sense in him a propensity for stalking). Cowboy boots, white Stetson, ornate belt buckle. Presumably he’s been in the city, laying in supplies for this afternoon’s planting party, but why is he stopping here?
Homer, acting the butler, greets him with a sniff, then announces him, a barked message. He means no harm, Arthur, though you ought not to be too effusive in your welcome. I call out a greeting as I manoeuvre the wheelbarrow toward him.
Caliginis takes my hand in a hearty salesman’s grip. “Phoned, no answer. Decided to come by. Heard you had no transpo.” He pats the big truck’s fender. “Just off the lot – 2011 Ford Super Duty, V-8 turbo diesel. Bought it for the farm. Have to spin back to the Big Smoke tomorrow. She’s yours for the week.”
“That’s very neighbourly, Stan, but I’ve vowed to cut my carbon emissions.”
Niko and Yoki have got all the goat milk refrigerated by now and have joined us to hustle a ride to the vineyard. “You like, we go early,” Niko tells me.
“I like you go early. I not go.”
Caliginis looks disappointed in me. I have spurned his generosity, failed in a duty of friendship that I can’t recall undertaking. The WOOFers race off to their dwelling to change. I want to go in and change too, and shower, but am forced to be polite and stay put with my smelly pants and boots and wheelbarrow.
I can’t imagine why the effluvium doesn’t damage his refined olfactory senses, but he seems determined not to notice, even comes closer. “I have an apology. Didn’t know you were AA until I got halfway through the book.”
I ask him why that would be a problem. Because, he says, as a teetotaller I could hardly be expected to “enthuse” over his vineyard project. He doesn’t want it to come between us. He is terribly sorry to have gone on the way he did about his favourite wines. (AAers often have to deal with this sort of thing. It’s presumed that if we can’t enjoy a drink we don’t want anyone else to.)
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 33
