Stung

by William Deverell

  Otherwise, he doesn’t do much but race about and sleep and eat and lick people’s faces and smell their bottoms and dig holes — Arthur nearly twisted an ankle stepping in one — and create general carnage. Anything in the house that is breakable is now on high shelves. Arthur has been left with two right-foot slippers and a chess set with a missing rook, bishop, and two pawns.

  But such a handsome, noble hound. Arthur forgives him, indeed admires his independent spirit — Ulysses is no master’s obedient slave. There is something soul-satisfying having this majestic animal at his feet of an evening as he lounges in his club chair reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

  Ulysses’s imposing presence helps dilute the loneliness that regularly sets in after Margaret’s departures — she is in Toronto now, putting together the concert fundraiser for the Brazilian bee defenders. A more difficult cause now that Chemican-International has broken the protest. By bribing officialdom, according to Selwyn Loo, whose angry allegations got him a quick ticket back to Canada.

  The dish licked clean, Ulysses stands at the door, letting his so-called master know it’s time for his afternoon walk. Arthur stuffs the leash into his day pack, and Ulysses bolts past the open door, racing with great bounds, like a mighty jackrabbit, toward Stefan and Solara, who are shoring up a snake fence that the rambunctious pup knocked over. Ulysses is fond of Solara but adores Stefan, who talks dog to him, roughhouses with him.

  Ulysses pauses to commune with the goats across the fence, several of which gather and touch noses with him. Now he tears back toward Arthur, who has learned to dodge these rushes. The pup screeches to a halt ten feet past him, returns for a lick and a muzzle nuzzle, and they set off. These are blessed times, his twice-daily dog walks, peaceful and meditative and companionable, as they were with Homer, the pain of whose loss is now beginning to dull.

  The sky is streaked with filmy cloud, a pleasant late summer day, so Arthur takes a break from his dull-eyed poring over mining laws that seem arcane, almost impenetrable. He is out of his element in the civil courts — give him a good old-fashioned murder any day — and feels ill prepared for tomorrow’s judicial review of the Quarry Park rezoning. It’s first on the docket at the Victoria courthouse, so Arthur must catch the early ferry.

  Solicitors for TexAmerica had clamoured for a prompt hearing — delay was costing many thousands of dollars a day, heavy equipment was waiting to be ferried over, hardrock miners were standing by, payroll costs soaring.

  Arthur is weighted down by the burden of high expectations. Yesterday, after church service, Reverend Al convened a Save Our Quarry session, lauding Arthur’s courtroom prowess, predicting he would bring TexAmerica Stoneworks to its corporate knees. An embarrassing standing ovation.

  Arthur leashes Ulysses before they exit the driveway gate to Potters Road. The gate is usually open — it’s a nuisance keeping it closed for the dog, but Arthur lives in hope the pup will grow out of his wandering ways. Homer never wandered.

  Roadside cornflowers are in azure boom, blackberry tangles are heavy with fruit, and so are the branches of plum trees that have multiplied past the orchard fence. Potters Road is a popular stroll for long-weekenders from the city, and here are two couples grazing on plums and berries. Their yappy little dog sets off an alarm on spotting Ulysses, and the tourists freeze. “Poppy, come here!”

  But Poppy either knows no fear or is blinded by it because she races straight for Ulysses and leaps at him, clamping on the loose folds below his neck, dangling there for a moment before Ulysses, with a powerful shake of his head, sends the little dog tumbling head over paws into the weeds. Ulysses tugs at the leash — he isn’t interested in Poppy but wants to meet these interesting humans.

  “He’s very friendly,” Arthur calls as he ambles past the fearful foursome, Ulysses straining all the way. “Just a pup. Enjoy the day.”

  With his thick grey coat, Ulysses doesn’t do well in the heat of the day, so on reaching the far boundary of his farm, Arthur opens a small gate and they enter the forest — fir and cedar and thirsty maples, already yellowing at the top. Unleashed, Ulysses gallops merrily off, down an alder bottom thick with bracken.

  Arthur loses sight of him, and his calls go unheeded. No sound of him crashing through the bushes after another deer — with his growing strength and speed, he may well be capable of running one to ground.

  Arthur blinks. He could have sworn he had caught another glimpse of the island’s infamous wandering ghost, spindly Jeremiah in his coveralls. But it was just the play of shadows in the trees.

  He finally spots Ulysses, pawing among the ferns. Not pawing, digging — with a focussed intensity. Approaching, Arthur sees that Ulysses’s powerful scoops have uncovered several clumps of cemented rocks around a depression, apparently some kind of cave-in. Ulysses looks up proudly at his master, panting heavily.

  “What have we here, then? Good dog. Very good dog.” Rewarded with biscuits from Arthur’s pack, Ulysses proudly saunters off.

  Arthur bends low. Two of the cemented rocks have broken off but the others can’t be budged. Definitely the remnants of a man-made structure, the rocks cemented tightly together. As he pulls out some bracken bunches, he sees that the depression forms a five-foot-diameter circle. Surely Jeremiah Blunder’s storied well has finally been discovered.

  The interior is packed with thirteen decades of silt and dirt. Arthur is thrilled with this archaeological find, delighted with his scalawag pup’s detective skills. Ulysses’s many trespasses are forgiven.

  Now he must hire someone to excavate this long-sought antiquity. Dare he enter into negotiations with Robert Stonewell? Known locally as Stoney, the self-proclaimed master mechanic also runs a business called Island Landscraping. A scoundrel, but Arthur is oddly attached to him, however masochistically, and he owns a backhoe with enough oomph to do the job.

  Had Ulysses also seen the ghost? Has Jeremiah led them here? Arthur laughs at that silly notion. He marks the site with a tepee of branches.

  2

  Tuesday, September 4

  As expected, it is heavy plodding in the blocky, seven-storey utilitarian structure known as the Victoria courthouse. Arthur’s passionate defence of parkland is falling flat. His thrashing of Zoller and Shewfelt for ignoring their sworn environmental duties has the judge smothering yawns.

  Mr. Justice R.B. Innes is a new face to Arthur: round and pink and bland of expression except for the occasional condescending smile. Specialized in property law, Arthur has heard, and hence was assigned this file.

  “Anything else, Mr. Beauchamp?” Bo-chomp, he pronounces it, in bastardized French.

  As a last gasp, Arthur pulls out one of the maxims they drummed into him in law school half a century ago. “It has been the dictum of the English law since the Magna Carta that the owner of an estate in fee simple owns everything up to the sky and down to the centre of the earth.”

  “Does not the Mining Act make a clear exception to that rule?”

  Arthur resorts to bluster. “Whether or not the bylaw is valid, the Garibaldi Parks Commission has clear title to the land and therefore it also owns its minerals.”

  “Unless they’ve been granted elsewhere. What’s your position, Mr. Shawcross?”

  TexAmerica’s relaxed, rotund lawyer is a senior partner in one of Vancouver’s big firms. He seems embarrassed by Arthur’s floundering and argues his case briskly and succinctly, as if to put him out of his pain. “Rights of the surface owner are subordinate to those of the owner of mining rights. Section 50, Land Act. When the quarry’s previous owner went bankrupt, those rights were returned to the provincial government, then conveyed to TexAmerica. Exhibits A through J of our evidence folder.”

  “In the form of profit à prendre, I believe.”

  “As a matter of interest, m’lord, the concept of profit à prendre is canvassed in a paper I recently wrote for the Real Property
Law Journal.”

  “Yes, I happened upon it. Admirable piece of work, Mr. Shawcross. Right on point.”

  Arthur attacks his laptop, vainly searching for that admirable piece of work. The term profit à prendre is gibberish to him.

  Shawcross sums up: the zoning bylaw issue is moot; the current park zoning cannot impair his client’s rights.

  “Well put,” says Innes. Arthur waits patiently for this chummy pas de deux to run its course. Innes then asks Arthur if he has any reply.

  Arthur is inspired to offer up an amended line of popular verse: I will arise and go now, and go from Innes, free. But he stays on track. “Nowhere does the Mining Act condone destruction of key habitats of cliff swallows and peregrine falcons.”

  “I suspect there are many other places for your swallows to nest, Mr. Beauchamp. People have rights. Corporate entities have rights. Birds don’t. Mining rights trump the stated purpose of the Islands Trust Act. I so rule.”

  3

  Wednesday, September 5

  The evening finds Arthur and about two hundred others at an emergency town meeting in the Hall. A special sailing of the gender-confused vessel known as the Queen of Prince George is due tomorrow: excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks, fuel trucks, semis with tools and materials.

  On the stage, Reverend Al is fielding questions about SOQ’s proposed blockade at Ferryboat Landing. The plan is for a human wall of protesters to stay the Queen George, as she’s locally known, from discharging its cargo. There is an air of excitement and purpose, shouted calls to arms, especially from the dozen late arrivals who’d been celebrating Baldy Johansson’s sixtieth at the local pub, all lit up, exchanging high-fives with every verbal sally.

  Not so merry is Arthur, who sits at the back, alone, wounded, and morose, unable to look fellow SOQers in the eye. Several had attended the debacle in the Victoria courthouse and seen Arthur at his worst. He is on the cusp of senility, the fat-witted Falstaff of the Law Courts. He can picture Judge Innes entertaining his cronies over the inept effort by that poor poop of a counsel, old Beauchamp.

  Taba Jones drags over a chair and settles beside him, too close — with Margaret away, the generously endowed potter tends to become teasingly bold. She lays a hand on his thigh. “You look like a nuclear meltdown. You’ll appeal, right?”

  “Yes.” With minimal expectations.

  “You’ve got to get out of this funk. I’m having some really cool friends from Vancouver over on Saturday for a barbecue. A couple who run a gallery where I show and two of their artists. Hip. Discreet. They’d love to meet the famous barrister.”

  Discreet. That seems a loaded word, hinting of concealment of sinful pleasures, maybe involving the heated pool by her kiln. “I’m not sure, Taba.”

  She goes to his ear. “Arthur, let’s stop this pretence of being blind to each other’s existence. It’s fucking dumb and it’s risky. It signals we had an affair.”

  An affair? It was a single, mindless rut on a hidden mossy meadow. But how alive he’d felt, nakedly mounting her, and even now the memory of it gets his libido churning. It had not been like that with Margaret, not for many years. But his wife has a temper easily ignited — he dares not risk word getting out that he shared a barbecue with Taba and her hip and doubtless libertine intimates.

  “I may have something set for Saturday.” What’s his problem — why can’t he pronounce a blunt no? “I’ll check.”

  “Do that. Let’s be real.” Taba releases her grip on his thigh.

  Arthur takes a deep breath, focuses on Al, who is firing up the troops. “Let’s show them what Garibaldians are made of. Are we all together on this?”

  “Together we stand!” cries Baldy Johansson, who is actually sitting. He gets a round of slapped palms from his birthday celebrants. The loudest of this cheering squad is Cudworth Brown, the ribald beatnik poet, a retired ironworker. “Occupy the ferry dock!” he cries. “They shall not pass!”

  “Save the park!” Mattie Miller calls from across the room, pumping a fist in the air. “Save our beautiful island!” She earns a spirited ovation. A feisty exhibition from the normally mild-mannered grandmother — she raises alpacas just below Quarry Park. Her animals face imminent threats from the noise and dust from the nearby quarry.

  Beside her is her neighbour, Hamish McCoy, the sculptor. “Kick their dorty arses off to Texas, by’s.”

  That generates more cheers, more shouts. “Stand together!” “Never surrender!” Taba calls, “Impeach Zoller!”

  Who is conspicuously absent, as is his cohort, Ida Shewfelt. But RCMP Constable Irwin Dugald, the island’s tall, beetle-browed law enforcer, a man with a poor sense of humour, is standing at the back, making notes, probably jotting down names of the malcontents. Nelson Forbish is also scribbling, furiously. A hot item for the mainstream media for which the porcine local newsman occasionally strings.

  Cud Brown, who is fairly potted, begins a rambling ode to bravery. “Long will be remembered those who stood tall at the siege of Ferryboat Landing . . .” His words are buried by voices raised in song: “We shall not, we shall not be moved . . .”

  Arthur’s depression is allayed. He is proud of his fellow islanders, who have shown themselves unafraid to assemble in a grand, brave act of civil disobedience. He is one with them.

  4

  Thursday, September 6

  A steady rain has dampened spirits at Ferryboat Landing, and the expected vast throng has not materialized. About a hundred have shown up, standing ten deep at the ferry slip, their arms linked, many awkwardly holding umbrellas, like a patch of giant mushrooms.

  Arthur’s only protection is a felt hat. He is in the middle of the pack, elbow to elbow with Mattie Miller and leprechaunish Hamish McCoy. This pair have had their quarrels, mostly about McCoy’s roaming old pooch, Shannon, but are united in a greater cause.

  Stefan and Solara are minding the farm. They’d been keen to join the demonstration, but were leery of jeopardizing their immigration status. Only one of yesterday’s high-fivers has roused from their hangovers: Cud Brown, an armchair Marxist who has never been known to miss a demonstration. The muscular poet seems not to have heard Reverend Al’s caution to be mute and civil — he serves as self-anointed spokesman for SOQ, giving loud, gruff face time to the mainland press, whose several vans and mobile units arrived by morning ferry. Cud has now joined the front of the line, taking up a position between Taba and Reverend Al.

  The Queen George berthed half an hour ago, and the landing gate is down. Loaded trucks idle on the car deck. The first mate and other senior officers have given up trying to confront and persuade, and are conferring with Constable Dugald, who shouldered his way through the line, jostling Cud. The two are not the best of friends.

  Dugald checks his watch, makes a radio call, presumably to his superiors, then strides across the landing gate, plunking himself in front of the bank of dripping umbrellas.

  “All right, let’s break this up. This is an unlawful assembly. I can think of a dozen laws that are being broken here.”

  “We shall not be moved,” Cud says.

  “Yeah, well, you’re busted, pal.”

  “Okay, I’m busted. Now what? You gonna take me in?”

  Arthur shares Al’s obvious annoyance. There were to be no confrontations.

  “Damn right I am.” Dugald unclips his handcuffs. “Your regular cell is waiting.”

  “I hope you got room for two hundred more in your birdcage ’cause none of us are leaving.”

  “No problem, Cud. We’re using the school auditorium as a holding centre.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and them.” Dugald gestures at the RCMP launch coming full throttle around Ferryboat Point toward the public dock. “Listen up, everyone. You have two minutes to get the hell gone from here or you’re all busted and you’ll be spending the night on a hard wooden
floor.” His voice rising with every syllable. “You want your kids seeing you locked up like common criminals? You want records? Mug shots and fingerprints?”

  A voice behind Arthur: “I got family at home.” Arthur turns to see Luke the plumber sidle off into the rain and mist.

  “I have to take my cat to the vet tomorrow.” Hattie Cooper breaks ranks, pulling her husband with her. A collision of umbrellas.

  “I got sixty kids I have to drive home.” The school bus driver follows them.

  Dugald hollers after him, “Hey, Bjorn, bring the bus back afterwards. I may need it for the prisoners.”

  The exodus of the faint-hearted continues.

  “I have to feed the dogs.”

  “My patio furniture is out in the rain.”

  “I have to take my meds.”

  By now, a dozen uniformed officers have trooped into the ferry compound. Arthur is dismayed — the siege of Ferryboat Landing is self-destructing. But he thinks of that smarmy judge, Innes, and his flip dismissal of the rights of nesting swallows. He takes up an empty position at the front of the line.

  Grandmotherly Mattie Miller, who is as shy and mild-mannered as the alpacas she raises, pulls up her skirts, steps over a puddle, and joins him. So does Hamish McCoy, who despite the occasional muttered profanity has somehow managed to keep his temper.

  The police squad is led by a glum, thickset staff sergeant whom Arthur vaguely remembers from some trial or other. The officer slips past the thinning front lines and confers with Dugald.

  A boom mike appears overhead as the press gather, led by Nelson Forbish who cheerfully identifies the main perpetrators. “That’s the ever popular parish priest, Al Noggins, and that’s the world-renowned sculptor, Hamish McCoy, and over there that’s our very own Arthur Beauchamp, the distinguished criminal lawyer.”

  Shouts from the press corps: “Mr. Beauchamp, a comment, please.” “Tell us how you feel right now, sir.” “Mr. Beauchamp, why have you joined this protest?”