Stung

by William Deverell

  “I wish. What about you?”

  “On the cusp. So they brought you all the way from Vancouver just to cop a plea? Because that’s what you’re looking at. This sucker is a wrap, counsellor.”

  “Dum vita est spes est. While I breathe, I hope.”

  This weird chit-chat has me sitting there with my mouth hanging open. Arthur Beauchamp, out of the blue. Did he parachute from the heavens? I’ve heard about him, Margaret Blake’s husband, he’s sort of famous. Bee-chem.

  Finally, he turns to me, swallows my hand with a leathery, warm grip as he studies me with clear-eyed intensity. Somehow he feels like a long-lost favourite uncle.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Pissed. They wouldn’t let me call a lawyer.”

  “I’m sure they feel bad about that. Well, you have a lawyer now.” He turns to Maguire. “You won’t mind if my client and I have a few minutes?”

  “Five minutes, then we take her in for processing.” Maguire leads Roberts out.

  It’s chilly in here, so why is Mr. Beauchamp taking off his suit jacket? To impress me with his red suspenders? I finally get it. “This will serve nicely as a coat hanger,” he says, and drapes the jacket over the lens of a security camera.

  He draws up a chair, close, confiding, and explains the miracle of his sudden arrival. He flew in from Vancouver late this afternoon, was met by Selwyn Loo, and their first stop was a remand jail. He was interviewing Doc and the gang when my SOS came in. A few phone inquiries, a taxi ride, and he was here within the hour.

  “I blew it,” I say. “They found my plane ticket in my trash folder.”

  “I assumed it was something like that. This is no doubt a very harrowing experience, Rivie. But I’m told you’re a tough, resilient young woman, and you seem to have yourself remarkably together. Take a deep breath and relax as best you can. Now, have you said anything to them?”

  “Only about wanting a lawyer, Mr. Beauchamp. Said it a hundred times, a mantra.”

  “Okay, good. They’re going to take you to the OPP building for photographs and prints, and you’ll be in a cell overnight. Be pleasant with them, talk about the weather if you like, or movies or music, but otherwise keep your thoughts to yourself. That goes for everyone, other persons you may meet, prisoners too. They often like to set one up as an informant.”

  I nod. “What about the night duty guard who won’t wake up? Gooch. What if he dies?”

  “Let us hope he doesn’t. In any event, no blame can attach to you or your friends for a mishap suffered by a fellow so poorly trained by his employer.”

  I find that comforting. Blame Chemican. “I hope it’s not crass to ask who’s looking after your fees.”

  He frowns, as if confused by the question. “I’m not sure if anyone is. Scratch that off your worry list.”

  I’m assuming he’s pro bono — he’s a friend of Selwyn Loo, who’s a friend of Margaret Blake. “Okay, thank you — really, I’m grateful. But please level with me. I’m guilty. I did it and I’m glad, but they’re laying a whole bunch of shit on me, it’s like I blew up the Parliament Buildings. Plus there’s a prime witness who wants to crucify me. So maybe it’s easier for him, me, you, the judge, the Crown, the system, the Canadian taxpayer, if I just plead guilty and do my time.”

  He looks at me severely. “That is an utterly ridiculous thought, if I may be blunt.” He rises with a sigh, reclaims his jacket. “We’ll have time to talk at more length before remand court tomorrow. You will also meet your alleged confederates there. I’ll be seeking what we call Judicial Interim Release — legalese for bail. We’ll have to see where that goes.”

  “Where that goes” doesn’t sound too encouraging. But I take a deep breath and the tension releases its grip. I smile and thank him. I fight off an urge to hug him.

  Bee-chem. Bee-chem.

  4

  Monday, September 24

  I spend a lonely, sleepless night in an OPP cell that reeks of disinfectant, a pillow wrapped around my ears to muffle a morbid soundtrack of metallic clanks and obscene jokes from the cops watching that I don’t hang myself. I struggle to come to grips with a shitty future: lost freedom, lost youth, lost hope.

  They let me have some clothes from my pack to change into. And they provided room service. How delightful: an Egg McMuffin, canned juice, and coffee that could have been brewed in a septic tank.

  It can’t possibly get any worse than this. I make a vow to get on top of myself. Accept facts, get real. So I fucked up. So we got busted, too bad, so sad. Now we just ride it out. We’re going to do time, I’m tough, I can get my head into that. An extended holiday, I’ll read books, take courses. Ten years, fourteen? Nelson Mandela did nearly thirty.

  After breakfast, I’m fetched downtown to the courthouse, Old City Hall, to the women’s lockup in the basement, and they put me in an interview room where Mr. Beauchamp waits, doing a crossword puzzle. He is in a funereal suit, but with his flashy red suspenders. He abruptly rises and welcomes me, in his courtly, old-school manner. He tells me he has spoken to my mom and dad, and they are on the way.

  “They both impressed me as thoughtful and caring and wise.” He adds, “They love you dearly,” and I am doomed, I go to pieces, a tropical downpour.

  He knows I’ve been fighting against this moment, this loss of defences, and he goes: “Courage, Rivie.” He takes my hand, the one not grasping a wet ball of Kleenex, and tells me a sad-funny story about the small island he calls home, and his own recent arrest during a protest that fizzled in the rain. This coaxes a smile, even a raspy, feeble laugh.

  I expect him to put on his grave face and instruct me about my criminal charges and my chances, but he prefers to entertain me with the escapades of a giant dog called Ulysses. It’s an almost superhuman task to picture this straight old dude, with his vaguely Victorian manner, as his apparent alter ego: a grass-stem chewer who raises goats on a funky nowhere island and gets busted with the yokel locals. The sixties must have skipped right past him, and maybe he’s trying to make up. Which is kind of cool and lovable.

  Through all this, he holds my hand, and I remind myself this is a professional relationship, it’s business, however unprofitable for him, and I unclasp. I want to tell him I’ll work off my debt on his farm. Bumble Bay? Bungle Bay? I’ll feed the goats, harvest the arugula, shovel the chicken manure.

  He knows, from Selwyn Loo, about my junket to Algonquin Park with Chase D’Amato, who is named in the indictment as a co-conspirator, along with “divers others.” Beauchamp doubts they can link Chase to Operation Beekeeper, even though his prints may be found in Ivor Antiques.

  I think about choices. I could have buggered off with Chase. I could be snuggling with him right now in a log cabin somewhere in the True North. Oh, well.

  Mr. Beauchamp says no pleas will be entered today, no trial date set, but there’ll be a tussle over bail. A “show cause” hearing, he calls it, and the cause the Crown may show is that I’m a flight risk. I go, “Me? Marigold Bright?” His face crinkles handsomely when he laughs.

  He has enough dope on me, from Lucy and Doc, I guess, and my folks, to make a pitch for my interim release. I don’t have great answers for the few questions he asks.

  Career aspirations: “Something to do with words and concepts. Teaching? Journalism? Escape fiction?” (I dare not say I harbour the pretentious notion of writing the Great Canadian Novel. I’m too embarrassed to admit I’m several chapters into it.) Religion: “Faithless Jew.” (I know he wants me to say I’m into God and the whole shtick, but I can’t.) Games, hobbies, sports, pastimes? “Chess, hiking, cycling, reading, dreaming of a better world, and, um, Major League Baseball.”

  * * *

  I’m escorted to a lockup area locally called the “bullpen,” and am accosted by a character with boozy breath, in a suit he must have slept in. “What do you say, honey, you look like you could
use a little legal aid. You’re in luck, I’m on a hot streak.”

  I assume he’s some kind of excuse for a lawyer who snuck in here to blatantly hustle clients. I tell him I have a real lawyer, the world’s best, then make a beeline for my buds, the six other members of the Sarnia Seven, as the media are already calling us.

  While police guards watch, I am swept up in a mass hug. We’re together again! Doc Knutsen and Lucy and Okie Joe, Rockin’ Ray and Amy and Ivor, your friendly neighbourhood eco-terrorists.

  Doc looks gothically bagged but insists he is fine, he is proud: “Our current discomforts are dwarfed by our great accomplishment. We have won, Rivie, we have alerted the world. No matter what happens now or next day or next year, we have won. We have done something memorable for humankind and for all living things on this planet.”

  And suddenly, during this stirring sermon, I find myself going, Hey, girl, you whiny bitch, quit moaning over your mistakes and petty pains, you should feel proud and happy — like Ivor Trebiloff and Amy Snider over there, both of them smiling and composed, tested warriors who’ve done protest time, six months in one case in North Dakota, and have lived lives of no regrets. They were arrested in their pyjamas on Friday night and carried bodily to a bun wagon.

  They have their arms around Okie Joe, who also looks totally serene in the knowledge that he has done good and important work.

  Right on, Dr. Helmut Knutsen. Thanks for reminding me what this was all about. The Earth Survival Rebellion rang loud the gong, warning the world they’re killing our bugs and birds. We exposed monstrous lies. Chemican is flailing, blaming everything on bad apples among their scientists who did faulty tests or lied about the results. Several have been fired, and are being welcomed into the offices of litigation lawyers.

  These latest panic reactions, says Doc, prove indelibly that we have won. And it is not out of the question, he adds, that we will win at a more tangible level. Like how, I wonder. Some technicality?

  And what about poor Archie Gooch, still surviving in tubes and diapers? “Shit happens,” says Doc. Does that sound insensitive? I’m not sure.

  The sleazy lawyer, who is the kind they make jokes about — so they threw the lawyer off the plane instead — holds out a business card to Rockin’ Ray. “Yo, hombre, here’s your ticket to freedom. I do legal aid on the taxpayer’s dime. A hole in my calendar just opened up this morning. You wanna fill it?”

  Though off his drugs, Ray looks spacey, maybe because he’s confused by the previously unknown condition of being straight. He focuses on the lawyer, then goes, “Definotly.”

  Lucy and I laugh. Here we are, besties again, different setting, different plot, cracking up over a scumbag lawyer. She’s gold-haired still, but without the audacious makeup, which somehow makes her look nymph-like and forlorn. But she’s all about facing the inevitable and seeking the bright side. “It’s not like the old movies, sweetie, modern jail is almost cushy. We’re first-timers. Go directly to medium security, take workshops in behaviour adjustment.”

  She’s less worried about herself than her lover. Ray is the only one of the Sarnia Seven they can physically tie to the raid at the Vigor-Gro plant. His DNA has to be all over the safety equipment he tossed in the bush.

  “They nabbed him naked in his room in the squat,” Lucy says. “Along with his hash pipe, a pound of bud, two grams of whiff, and ten hits of acid.”

  So he faces this additional array of drug charges, plus the likelihood of being deported to the States, where he’s looking at an assault charge for putting out the lights of a vocal fascist at a Donald Trump event in Fresno. He came up here on the new North America Refugee Act but never got around to filling out all the forms. I’m guessing Ray is not a solid candidate for bail.

  Oklahoma Joe, who has his working papers but not immigrant status, could also be deported. I’d almost forgotten he has a real name — when I looked at the list of conspirators, I went: Who is Joe Meekes?

  We continue to huddle and exchange recent adventures, pumping each other up as we get ready to make our first public appearance since reuniting, like an old eighties punk band. We expect a full house, we expect fans, heartening vibes, pumped fists.

  I like our label, the Sarnia Seven — the rhythm, the alliteration, the good-luck numeral. The Sarnia Eight doesn’t work as well, so I’m glad the media are ignoring unindicted conspirator Chase D’Amato. They haven’t clued into our proper underground name either, the Earth Survival Rebellion, or connected us to Résistance Planétaire. Which is good, we’re not seen as part of some intergalactic conspiracy.

  Lucy takes me aside, cups my ear, launches into a whispered, hilarious side story from just before she got busted — about Inspector Maguire getting his nob sucked in the front seat of a big old Buick by his sidekick Sergeant Gaylene Roberts.

  I am stifling laughter, but also wondering if Lucy embellished. But she insists she saw his belt undone, Roberts’s bramble of hair obscuring the activity below. Also, she has — or had — circumstantial evidence, a photo taken through the windshield showing only his head, presumably as Gaylene was giving head below.

  But her phone was seized, and doubtless the photo erased. We work through the implications of that — falsification of evidence, could that poison the Crown’s case?

  An overweight creep decorated with swastika tattoos is escorted into the bullpen and relieved of his handcuffs. As he’s led toward the stairs up to bail court he gives Ray a Nazi salute — they’ve obviously exchanged a few discourtesies in the male lockup. The freak calls, “My mouthpiece says I’m gonna get bailed, suckers.”

  Rockin’ Ray yells, “Stick it, you scumsucking pus bag.”

  This prompts him to shoot back at us, with, “They’re gonna lock your asses up, you nigger-loving commie shits.” I give him a middle finger. Unfortunately for him, he looks at me, salaciously, making a slurp sound, when he should be looking at his Indo-Canadian police escort and the half-open door he’s led into.

  A court officer comes in to announce that we have to wait for our debut until after the mid-morning break, and we’re being moved to a bigger court. Apparently we’re of higher status than other prisoners because we’ll be in front of a real judge, not a justice of the peace. I don’t know if that’s bad or good.

  Chapter 12: Arthur

  1

  Monday, September 24

  Arthur has found it a rare delight to defend those who are actually innocent, as opposed to not provably guilty, and rarer still to defend those like Rivke Levitsky who defy the law on justifiable moral grounds and want proudly to be seen as guilty. I did it and I’m glad.

  But it concerns him that this spunky rebel is at serious risk of a lengthy term in the penitentiary. He’d felt unable to say that this morning — she was unhappy enough, surrendering to tears at the mention of her parents’ love.

  Sharon and Holden Levitsky don’t own a vehicle, so are coming in by bus. Sharon is a botanist, and excels in identifying the wild edibles they thrive on; Holden taught literature at a community college before taking early retirement. Arthur finds much to admire about their low-impact, back-to-the-land lifestyle — an achievement he himself strives for when he is not flying across the continent, living in hotel rooms, and dining in fine restaurants.

  Their daughter is worthy of the best defence Arthur can muster, as are her half-dozen confederates. Arthur would have felt like a coward had he not taken them on, and an ingrate given what he owed Selwyn for his toil and generosity in thwarting the despoilers of Quarry Park. So Arthur had no choice but to saddle up and strap on his guns one last time.

  He’d spent much of Saturday running through a checklist of essential chores with Stefan and Solara, and the rest of the day rambling through the woods with Ulysses. On Sunday morning, after making him promise not to run off again — “or that bad man will put you in a cage” — Ulysses stood as tall as his master to give him a lo
ving goodbye hug. Arthur headed off wet-eyed to catch his flight.

  These memories and musings carry him from the downstairs lockup to the grand lobby of Old City Hall, an ornate nineteenth-century Romanesque structure of debatable beauty that is adorned with a clock tower with a five-ton bell. A National Historic Site, yet for the last half century it has been the busiest courthouse in Canada, a judicial beehive. It houses the Ontario Court of Justice, better known as the provincial courts, where the multitudes are judged, where Legal Aid lawyers toil, and where bored young prosecutors direct traffic.

  After admiring the flamboyant lobby Arthur carries on to the lawyers’ lounge, where he finds Nancy Faulk making notes from Operation Vigorous’s skimpy investigation reports.

  Arthur had needed a co-counsel familiar with local waters, and Nancy kept her promise by dropping everything — except her own divorce proceedings — to help him navigate them. A Toronto native with a working-class upbringing, she’s savvy, tough, but abrasive, and has fought and mostly won in the local courts for over twenty years.

  Her firm is Faulk, Quan, Dubois, three radical feminists. That would have made Arthur uncomfortable in years past, but he has been well trained on how to behave by Margaret’s many critiques of a failing she calls his “old-fashionedness.” Liberated of false values, Arthur has lately been confiding to male friends that he himself is a feminist.

  The boardroom of Faulk, Quan, Dubois will be home base for the defence in Regina v. Knutsen et al. Nancy Faulk will be on the record for Ivor Trebiloff and Amy Snider, who though charged with breaking and entering the Sarnia plant have the best of defences: they weren’t there. Nor do they face overwhelming proof that they joined a criminal conspiracy.

  Arthur and Nancy have time to chat before they’re due in bail court, 101. “I assume you’ve met the Levitskys,” he says.

  “And aren’t they the upbeat, über-self-reliant, nineteenth-century Utopians. I’m taking them to the Vanier lockup, then to my place, and I’m giving them my king bed. The one on which I used to open my pussy to a prick named Stanley.” Her husband, also a lawyer. Nancy has shorter hair and wider hips and more worry lines but is still lovely and just as bouncy and irreverent as when they last shared a courtroom, over a decade ago, the Island Airport gold heist.