by Ron Corbett
“So you’re out there by yourself?”
“It ain’t a big deal. The company was all right with it.”
Working the bush alone, where you didn’t even have a base camp, was beyond crazy. Break your leg and you’d be as good as dead. Yakabuski wasn’t surprised. O’Hearn Forestry Products had made its fortune more than a century ago, when Thomas O’Hearn, a recently arrived stonemason from Aberdeen, Scotland, bought timber rights to half the forests on the Northern Divide. Bought them cheap because no one thought you could get timber to market from the Divide without building costly dams and chutes along the Springfield River. So O’Hearn bought the timber rights for a song and then surprised everyone by not trying to build a thing.
Instead, he sent timber cribs down the Springfield and shot every set of rapids. Lots of men drowned on O’Hearn timber runs, but there were always other men willing to take their place, men who couldn’t make a living on the hundred acres of rock the government had given them as a land grant, men with children walking beside them all day with stomachs howling and bones getting so thin and frail they made small creaking sounds on windy days. To Thomas O’Hearn, desperate men dying on the river was simply the cost of doing business in a tough country. A tree-marker working the bush alone? Yes, Yakabuski could see the company being all right with that.
“You told me on the phone you were marking pine for the mill here in Ragged Lake. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said.
“Me either. That’s what Jimmy and I said all the time.”
“That mill has been closed for a decade. Maybe longer.”
“I know, sir.”
“You sure you’re supposed to be here? There’s no other reason you’d be out at that old work camp?”
“Check with O’Hearn, sir. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Marking the pine around Ragged Lake.”
“So, what made you check out that cabin?”
“It was odd-looking, right? You’ve seen it. Wouldn’t you say it was odd?”
“I guess I would.”
“And it wasn’t supposed to be there. So, what the hell. I had to check it out.”
Yakabuski didn’t say anything. The boy took another drink of rye, a big gulp, although careful to leave a thin line of liquid at the bottom so he wouldn’t be empty and sad. Yakabuski pegged the boy at eighteen or nineteen. He stayed silent, knowing if he said nothing, the silence would soon become uncomfortable for the boy, almost painful, and he would end it by saying something. And that something would tell Yakabuski more about this boy than any answer to the smartest question he had to ask him.
After more time had passed than Yakabuski would have expected from a young, unworldly tree-marker, the boy finally spoke.
“I had a dream last night. One of the strangest dreams I ever had. I saw that squatter cabin at night, all dark and no sound ’cept the ice on the lake snappin’ and creaking. Then I saw a flash of light, and the whole cabin lit up. Then I saw another flash. And another. It was strange light because it didn’t belong there. It weren’t right. Like watching headlights where you know there ain’t no road. Or fireflies out in a snowstorm. I seen that once. Swear to God. Fireflies in the snow.”
The boy paused a moment, as though collecting the memory. Then he said, “When I woke up this morning, my sheets were so wet you’d have thought I’d pissed in ’em. You ever have a thing like that happen to you?”
The boy stared right at Yakabuski when he asked the question, a do-you-believe-it look on his face so earnest and guileless it was uncomfortable to gaze upon, and so the cop turned away, after first telling the boy, sure, stuff like that happens all the time.
. . .
The first thing the bartender did was take his hair out of its ponytail and brush it with his fingers, turning his arms sideways in the process, biceps rippling.
“What’s your name, please?” said Yakabuski, opening the steno pad he had placed on the metal countertop but hadn’t yet bothered to open.
“William Forest.”
“What are you doing open this time of year, Mr. Forest? There’s no fishing. Can’t see there being enough business to make it worth your while.”
“We get some sleds. We’re on the Northern-Gateway loop, farthest point if you’re doing the complete trail. Ragged Lake is where you’re turning around. We used to get a lot of business when the loop first opened. Not so much these days. Price of gas and everything.”
“So why stay open?”
“Probably won’t after this season. The owner has been talking about shutting it down in winter for a few years now. Just hasn’t got around to doing it.”
“How long have you been working here?”
“Three years.”
“You a Springfield boy?”
“That’s right.”
“Who’s sitting in the bar tonight?”
Forest looked over his shoulder, as though he could see through walls, and said, “The old couple are the Tremblays. Roselyn and Gaetan. She’s from Kes’. He used to work at the mill. The big guy sitting by himself is John Holly. He’s a guide. He has a cottage down by the lake. There’s me and Charley, the cook. There’s Marie, she’s the waitress and maid, and also does the front desk in winter.”
Forest stopped to run his hands through his hair one more time. Took a sip from the bottle of beer he had brought in from the bar.
“And the Sports? Who are they?”
“Good question. They checked in four nights ago. Came in on the train from High River. They had reservations. Marie checked ’em in.”
“What have they been doing?”
“They rented a couple of sleds. They stay out most of the day. I think they have something do with the mill. I saw their sleds parked there earlier this week.”
“You don’t know why they would be parked there?”
“No idea.”
“Who else lives in the village?”
“Well, hardly anyone. In the winter this place is pretty much a ghost town. There’s an old Indian woman who lives on a bluff just outside town. And there’s some sort of outdoor survival school in one of the bunkhouses. That’s the other edge of town.”
“What do they do?”
“Run survival courses, backcountry expeditions, shit like that. It’s called Northern Divide Expeditions.”
“They open this time of year?”
“I’m not really sure. You hardly ever see them. I think summer and fall is their busy time.”
“And that’s it? The entire village?”
“The entire village.”
The fan blades in the kitchen dissected the light so the room was cast in quick-cut shadows and the bartender’s muscles appeared jerky and disjointed. Yakabuski looked at his arms and knew somewhere in the Mattamy was a decent set of free weights. What he was not sure of was why a Springfield boy with skin the shade of tea candles was here pumping them.
. . .
“Did you know people were living at the old camp?”
The cook took a large kitchen knife and sliced through the ham and cheese sandwich he had just made.
“Sure, they came into town from time to time. Bought provisions here. The guy cashed a cheque.”
“Cashed a cheque?”
“Yeah, a government cheque. Came in every month and we cashed it for him. The guy was here just three or four days ago.”
“What were they like?”
“Barely saw the woman. And a little girl, swear to God, I didn’t even know there was a little girl. She never came to town.”
“So the guy, then, what was he like?”
“He was coco. That’s what he was like.”
“What makes you say he was crazy?”
“He never took any whisky, for one. I offered to sell him whisky plenty of times.” The cook took a bite of his sandwich. Bread crum
bs rolled down a circuitous route of three double chins to fall on the floor. “And you saw his cabin,” he said. “You’d have to be fuckin’ coco to build a place like that.”
“Do you have one of those cheques?”
“It would be in the office. Marie could get it for you.”
The cook took another bite of his sandwich. Reached for a bottle of beer. Stood there for a minute eating and drinking, Yakabuski waiting for him to speak and break the silence.
“Yeah, a real fuckin’ coco,” the cook finally said.
. . .
John Holly could have been one of Yakabuski’s uncles. A tree-marker grown old. A barrel-chested, burnish-skinned bushman who had been making his way through life as a fishing guide, bush-camp labourer, general contractor, any occupation around Ragged Lake except mill hand. Which surprised Yakabuski.
“You never worked at the mill?”
“I never liked even getting close to that place. It killed two of my brothers.”
“In-the-ground killed?”
“One of ’em. He got drunk and fell into a bleaching vat. The other one you can find down in Springfield. He drinks at the Montcalm Tavern. You know the place?”
Yakabuski knew the place. One of the lowest, rankest dives in all of Springfield, a tavern for men barred from other taverns, for men travelling through life with neither friend nor kin. It was generous to even call the Montcalm a tavern, because it was more sporting pit than anything else — a ring for the deranged, desperate, and soon-to-check-out-of-this-world to congregate, compete, and run cheap hustles on each other.
“I know the place.”
“Then you can understand why I prefer Ragged Lake.”
“If those were your only choices in life, I suppose. The Montcalm Tavern or a ghost town on the Northern Divide. Not an easy life, I would think.”
“It works for me.”
“How much guiding business you get these days?”
“It’s steady. I have regular clients.”
“In the winter?”
“I hunker down. I like to read.”
“Read in the bar much?”
“You trying to be a politician, Detective Yakabuski? No, I do not spend my nights getting drunk at the Mattamy. These are rather exceptional days. The reason I am here. ”
“Did you know there was a squatter family living out by the headwaters?”
“We all knew. They came into town. And the guy built his cabin right on Cap. Some people say there’s good pickerel fishing on that lake. I never thought there was, but some people say that.”
“What did you think of them?”
“I didn’t spend any time thinking about ’em at all.”
“Good-looking wife.”
Holly threw back his head and let out a loud, carefree laugh, his chest heaving like a blacksmith’s billow.
“Detective Yakabuski, if I were a man given to chasing pussy, do you think I’d be living in Ragged fuckin’ Lake?”
. . .
Roselyn and Gaetan Tremblay were more Yakabuski kin. One of the old couples he’d see at the back of any large family gathering. There might not have been a person in the entire room who could tell you the exact family connection. The couple was too old. There were too many missing pieces. But there they’d be at the significant weddings. The saddest funerals. The kind that never strayed from each other’s sides, ate silent meals with heads bowed, seemed more one person than two.
He asked the woman the first question, although it was done out of politeness more than genuine inquiry. Yakabuski was sure enough of the answer to have already started writing it in his steno pad before she started talking.
“I’m from Kesagami,” she said. “I came to Five Mile Camp after my husband died. I had a sister here. That would have been almost thirty years ago.”
“It was mostly Cree that lived at the camp, is that right?”
“All Cree. Occasionally you would get some Algonquin, a gang of boys that had driven up from Springfield, but they never stayed. I don’t know if they never felt welcome or they never liked working at the mill, but they never stayed.”
“The woman who was killed looks Cree to me.”
“She was. I saw her in town a few times. I spoke to her once behind the Mattamy.”
“Just the once?”
“Just the once. And we didn’t talk long. I got the impression I was bothering her. If I had a different impression, I would have gone to visit her. But I didn’t. So it was just the once.”
“Why did you think you were bothering her?”
“Maybe that’s not the right word. She wasn’t rude. It’s just she didn’t follow up on stuff, the way you would expect people to follow up on stuff. She’s Cree, right? I’m Cree. I tell her she’s living next to Five Mile Camp. She acts like she never heard of the place.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
“How could it be true? Then I tell her I’m from Kes’ and I used to live at Five Mile. You know what she says?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s right. How did you know that?”
“You never went to her cabin?”
“Never.”
“And you, sir?”
Gaetan roused himself to stare at Yakabuski. He was a slight man, still dressed in the dark-green work clothes of a mill hand although it was twelve years at least since he had last worked a shift. A roll-your-own cigarette dangled from his thin, chapped lips. A John Deere cap sat on a head that was starting to dry out with age, like an old apple.
“I never went there,” he said. “The fishin’ ain’t no good on the Springfield till you get miles south of Cap.”
“Never went to that cabin on an ATV or anything like that? Maybe a sled in the winter?”
“It ain’t on any trail system. No reason to ever go out there.”
“So you’ve never seen that cabin?”
“I didn’t say that. I seen it once. John Holly told me the guy made his roof out of beer cans, so I went out to see that. Didn’t stop, though. And it was just that once.”
Yakabuski stopped writing and took a sip of his coffee. After a few seconds of silence, Gaetan said, “Like I said, the pickerel ain’t no good till you’re miles south of that place.”
. . .
Yakabuski brought the Sports in together. Well past midnight and time to finish the interviews, move on to next steps. Downey and Buckham were getting restless, pacing in the bar, not on sentry duty exactly, but with a purposeful gait that was not dissimilar. Whenever Yakabuski came out of the kitchen to get a new interview subject, they cast expectant glances in his direction, but he had yet to speak to them. To inquiries from anyone in the bar, they shrugged their shoulders and said they would have to be patient.
“You gentlemen get a question I haven’t had the chance to ask yet,” said Yakabuski, when the Sports were seated. “Why are you here in Ragged Lake?”
The two men looked at each other and it was the older of the two who answered. He was a tall man, with elongated features and no facial hair, fit and able-looking, like dozens of other lanky old Sports Yakabuski had known through the years from helping his uncles with their overflow guiding business. The tall, lanky Sports were the ones you hoped were never in charge of the tip for the fishing party because they never made good tippers. You always hoped for the fat, slovenly ones that smelled vaguely of distilled liquor.
“We are here on business, Detective,” he said. “We haven’t told anyone this yet, but we work for O’Hearn. The company is thinking of reopening the mill. We’re on a bit of an inspection tour.”
“Reopening a pulp and paper mill on the Northern Divide? O’Hearn in a hurry to go bankrupt?”
“It wouldn’t be a pulp mill, Detective,” said the Sport, talking in a languid, sleepy way that made Yakabuski wonder for a moment if he were drunk but
hiding it well. “We wouldn’t bother with pulp at all. Or newsprint. We believe the mill can be refitted to make fine gloss paper.”
“There’s enough of a market for that?”
“Magazines are doing very well right now. Nothing like newspapers. The Asian market in particular is just exploding. We have good wood here in Ragged Lake, good pine, not the junk you use to make newsprint. It always seemed a waste to us, using that wood for newsprint. Just recently it occurred to us that there was an opportunity here.”
“So, why the secrecy?”
“We would dearly like to get the jump on our competitors, Detective. We think this has the potential to reopen a lot of old mills, not just this one. The retrofit we’re looking at is new and quite ingenious. We’ve patented the design.”
“That’s why the tree-marker is here.”
“That’s right.”
“And you can get the transportation numbers to work?”
“Well, yes, we believe we can,” said the Sport, not able to hide his surprise that the cop had asked the one question that mattered. The question that needed an affirmative answer or they were all wasting their time. “We will need a better deal from BMR than what they are offering us at the moment, but they are receptive to the idea. They need the business as badly as everyone these days. It looks quite promising.”
“You’ll bring this old town back to life.”
“I would imagine. We’ll start with one shift, but we plan on running two within a year, a full rotation within eighteen months. That’s the business model.”
Reopening a shuttered pulp and paper mill, people going back to work at what they had been doing in the first place. Getting a second chance like that. Yakabuski had never heard of such a thing.
“All right, gentlemen, let’s have your names, please.”
With a deferential nod and an odd smile that managed to seem friendly but smug at the same time, the older of the two said, “I am Tobias O’Keefe. This is my assistant, David Garrett.”
The younger Sport, who had yet to say a word, extended a pudgy white hand for Yakabuski to shake but let it drop in a few seconds when he saw the cop was making no attempt to grab it. Just then, the maid appeared at the doorway of the kitchen.
